This Week in Google 793 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google. Jeff Jarvis has the week off. No, it's not what you think. He's actually in Germany right now and can't join us, but we do have Paris Martineau. Also Mike Elgin joining us from Mexico, and Emily her new name is Forlini, but you might know her as Emily Drybelbis from PC Magazine. Now I have to warn everybody it's the day after the election. We have a new president-elect and the entire topic of this show is how a new administration is going to work with Silicon Valley. What's going to happen to the tech? We're interested in AI, evs, big tech in general under a Trump administration. That's the topic for the day. If you don't want to hear any politics, you might want to skip this show, but if you're interested, we're not taking a point of view. I think we're really talking about what's going to happen to cryptocurrency and others in a Trump administration. That's next on TWiG.

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This is TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 793, recorded November 6th 2024. The Aftermath it's time for Twig. This Week in Google Shall. We cover the latest in the Googleverse. Really, we're going to cover today and I guess I should give you a content warning the impact of a new united states administration we are the day after election day on the tech sector and I think there will be a massive impact. Uh, don't worry, jeff jarvis is not here. He took the day off to get drunk. No, he is, he is at can con or con, con, con con, not con con.

He is, uh, traveling and not able to be with us. But yeah, paris martinez, here, it's nice to see you, Paris Martineau, from the information she writes for the weekend covering youth issues. Hi Paris, hi Hi, lovely to see you Also with us. To replace Jeff Mike Elgin, who is in Mexico, in El Sargento, mexico. His newsletter Machinesocietyai Gastronomanet is his website, and he is, of course, on Mastodon at Mike Elgin, hi Mike.

0:02:26 - Mike Elgan
Hey Leo, Thanks for having me on. This is a wonderful day to have me on to complain about all things. You are in Mexico and it looks like the ocean is quite blue where you are, yes, and I'm just going to stay here.

0:02:39 - Leo Laporte
On the Baja Peninsula. It's very nice. Turn your mic up just a little bit, if you can. Okay, we'll do, mike, give us as much as you can, okay. I want to welcome emily forlini to the show. You may remember her as emily dry belbis. She's been on the show many times before from pc magazine. Now, uh, with her that's your married name, forlini.

0:02:57 - Emily Forlini
Yep, congratulations thank you very much, happy to be here.

0:03:00 - Leo Laporte
Interesting, interesting topic for sure well, I know one of the things you cover is evs and, uh, I you know it. So, just in case you slept through yesterday, the president-elect, donald trump, will take office january 20th, um, and that, I think, is going to make a big difference in a lot of things. But, of course, our focus is the tech sector EVs for sure he is. In fact, in his victory speech, he actually name-checked Elon Musk, called him a genius, and I think Elon Musk is going to have a huge role to play in the new administration, so that's going to change things quite a bit. Plus, and I don't think that I think this might be a little bit underreported but not only is Trump now pro Bitcoin I'm sure JD Vance is but the crypto industry donated a lot of money to down ballot contests and I think I saw the number 153 new members of Congress who are pro cryptocurrency. So now you have no wonder Bitcoin went up to $75,000 in the last couple of days. Now you have a very pro crypto government.

When President Trump was speaking to the Bitcoin conference, he said I'm going to fire Gary Gensler, the head of the SEC, who has advocated for regulating Bitcoin as a security, to do a standing ovation. So much so he said it again. He liked the sound of that, so did they. So I don't know, I don't know where to start. Maybe we go through you one, one by one, and and just your overall impressions. Uh, trump administration. While it would be bad, I think, for a great number of constituencies, is it good for technology? Paris?

0:05:00 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think it's a broad question. I think that there are a number of tech leaders that have bet quite a lot of money and time that it will end up being good for them. I mean, chief among those is Elon Musk, who's poured tens of millions of dollars into this race if not hundreds of millions at this point and it seems to have paid off for him. You also have seen an outpouring of support from venture capitalists like Andreessen Antorowitz. Sean McGuire at Sequoia has been a staunch Trump supporter. The boys at All In chief among them David Sachs, have been huge Trump supporters, huge Trump supporters, and it seems not entirely unlikely that someone like David Sachs could end up with a cabinet position or an ambassadorship out of this, which I think will be interesting to see how that shapes US policy.

0:05:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, sachs spoke at the Republican Convention. He's the host of the All In podcast, and so it's nice to see a podcaster in prominence. Uh, he, but he also he also um uh.

Trump will have a, a republican senate, so cabinet member, cabinet confirmation will presumably be automatic. So anybody that the president puts on the cabinet will probably get in, and that means David Sachs could walk right in. So it sounds, in general, like it's not too bad for tech. I think it's probable that we'll see less antitrust regulation. You think Elon? I mean Mike Elgin.

0:06:42 - Paris Martineau
You think Elon Musk comes out of the side?

0:06:45 - Mike Elgan
People always confuse us because we both have a space program. Yeah, um, uh. I, I think you know it's. I think it'll be interesting at least in one dimension, which is that if the new administration is very pro-ai uh, removing regulatory shackles from ai and very pro-bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, then the server shortage, the the sort of you know we have, we have tech companies talking about and investing in nuclear power plants to deal with all the energy, all the energy saving for those of us who turn off the lights and uh and and and try to avoid using too much electricity be washed away by the enormous demand for power for these massive data centers that are going to be required to you know, that's going to happen anyway, even with a less tech-friendly administration. So that's one dimension that we have to be concerned about. We also in the area of energy. Donald Trump is very anti-wind energy. Yes, unaccountably, he says he causes cancer and kills whales.

So I see a sort of a coldness toward renewable energy sources and a friendliness toward things that gobble up massive quantities of energy, so that could end up being a bit of a problem in the long term. That's not necessarily directly a tech story, though, so I you know, who knows, who knows what, what, what is going to happen. Because one thing we do know take TikTok, which is on the on the rundown and I hope I'm not putting that cart before the horse, but TikTok is something that Trump was very much against and while he was president, uh made moves to get rid of it. Then, when he was running for office, he saw that they, that the Biden administration, wasiktok, so he thought maybe I can pick up the TikTok vote by being pro-TikTok, so TikTok itself by dance. The company is thinking okay, we have a pro-TikTok president, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think his pro-TikTok stance was a campaign tactic and I don't think that says anything about whether he'll be pro-TikTok or anti-TikTok once in office.

0:09:11 - Leo Laporte
The information exclusive. Tiktok sees Trump victory as app's best hope. The clock is ticking. I think it was January 19th. It's talking, or talking as well. It was January 19th that TikTok had to resolve this by selling themselves something I think is interesting.

0:09:31 - Paris Martineau
Here is one. I feel like the january 19th date has always had kind of an asterisk near it, because of course, tiktok is going to challenge this law, as they have and as they have and they're hoping to kind of get an injunction or something along those lines, a sale or a ban.

But they've also floated that they think Trump could take other steps that would blunt its impact. If he isn't able to, you know, convince Congress to repeal the ban, such as just Trump could tell the Justice Department don't enforce it, and I guess that's a viable strategy. I hadn't really considered that as a way to get around it, but I suppose that would work if the Department of Justice isn't going to come after TikTok for not complying with this rule.

0:10:30 - Emily Forlini
Well, it was a bipartisan like this is. One thing Democrats and Republicans did agree on is that TikTok's data collection is an issue, a national security issue and a privacy issue. So are we thinking that he's just going to come in and continue to change that perception and that everyone was just spineless on that?

0:10:48 - Leo Laporte
Well, and I'm going to ask the question if TikTok is so powerful, did they actively promote a Trump election? I mean, it's probable that Kamala Harris would have done the same. Kamala Harris would have done the same thing as Biden has done, which is to ban TikTok. So look, tiktok is supposed to have this great influence on the American electorate. Is there any evidence they tried to to to push a Trump election? I don't think so.

0:11:15 - Emily Forlini
Well, they've been fighting for their life a little bit. Trying to. Everything is a PR move now, and so what I've seen on TikTok is I'm getting like ads from TikTok that say you know, we provide accurate information for this election, like your election source. So they're trying they're always trying to rebrand and trying, and I mean we did. Trump's campaign was on TikTok, kamala's campaigns on TikTok and of course, there's a million people talking about politics on TikTok. So it's a very politically active and TikTok's trying to be seen as a reputable place to have that discussion. So that's what I've seen.

0:11:50 - Mike Elgan
The beauty of social networking algorithms to the owner of the social networking company is that there is no evidence to be found because the algorithms are secret. Nobody knows how many people saw what. But I think the larger picture is that friction between the United States and China is a near certainty with Trump in office. He was talking about imposing 10% or 15% tariffs on all goods entering the United States. It seems unlikely that he would do that because that's crazy. That would decimate poor people in the United States who rely on low-priced imported goods. But he's talked about that. He likes tariffs. He calls himself Mr Tariff. So if there's tariffs for imported goods, it's going to be a trade war with China and TikTok will be an easy and available pawn in that game with China. So I just think there's almost no chance that that that Trump won't hammer or get rid of or ban or force a sale of tick tock, given the likely friction between China and United States that's coming.

0:12:58 - Leo Laporte
He's already gotten what he wanted out of being on tick tock, which is a younger vote.

0:13:04 - Emily Forlini
That's right, he'll do whatever he thinks people want him to do is kind of my perception on this, just given that he did completely flip on the TikTok issue and nothing changed besides what he said about it.

0:13:15 - Leo Laporte
When you say people want him to do, I don't know if it's what people want him to do I think it's what's going to get him the most advantage at any given time that's a better way to say it. The most advantage at any given time. It's a better way to say. It's a better way to say it. What do you think?

0:13:28 - Mike Elgan
anybody influences him? I think he's. So he's really. He's in a really interesting position now because, assuming that this is his last term, uh, he's got, he's got a republican congress completely. He's got a. He's got a republican leaning supreme court and he's going to be the president. So there's like he has no reason to please anyone, right, yeah, and he's going to be the president, so there's like he has no reason to please anyone.

0:13:48 - Emily Forlini
Right yeah, and he can't run it again. Right, he's maxed out. This is our last Trump term, so it'll be interesting to see how he takes that, because there's no running again.

0:13:59 - Leo Laporte
Right. What about antitrust regulation? One of the things that was interesting, I think everything. By the way, the way things were or even are today is up in the air. It's gone because it used to be that you had both the left and the right going after big tech for different reasons, but they at least agreed that big tech's too big, that big tech's too big. Now, with with, I think, a trump administration, I wonder if uh antitrust actions are just going to disappear. I obviously lena khan is going to disappear. The ftc will probably not be encouraged to go after uh big companies now, but you know trump doesn't like google very much well yeah, I think.

0:14:47 - Mike Elgan
I think antitrust action may be based on um trump's past uh actions um as as a political tool. So he has gone after uh amazon because of jeff bezos and the Washington Post. This is probably why the Washington Post didn't endorse Kamala Harris out of fear of retribution through antitrust action. So I think we can look forward to antitrust action that's somewhat selective and based on who's kissing the ring and who isn't.

0:15:22 - Leo Laporte
Bezos congratulated Trump today for quote an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory, which isn't saying anything, but it is. It is currying favor and not you know. Look, I wouldn't expect any business leader at this point to do anything that's going to harm his or her business or her business, and so you probably could make the case that people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were betting that Trump would win For sure.

0:15:53 - Mike Elgan
And also Jeff Bezos has his rocket company, which the government would be his customer, so he's got to worry about that one too.

0:16:01 - Emily Forlini
I had an interesting perspective on this. So, yeah, I used to work at Amazon when Jeff Bezos was CEO and I had a lot of respect for him at that time. I saw him in person many times at like all hands meetings and things like that, and he earned my respect in the way that he approached issues and I had no real reason to like him. I mean he was a distant CEO and I just naturally was like I think he's smart, like him, I mean he was a distant CEO and I just naturally was like I think he's smart. And I remember at one all hands meeting when he was sparring with Trump. These meetings, by the way, took place in a stadium in Seattle, like a huge stadium, and so they would have like Amazon, amazon, amazon going around the lights and it was nuts. They'd have bands and like people. It was just crazy.

And there was one where he directly talked about Trump and he he was very confident and a little antagonistic, that like, oh, if Trump wants to criticize us, go ahead. Like in democracy, you criticize, you accept criticism and you should never be afraid of that if you're doing what you want to do. And I definitely felt like he was confident to stand up to Trump in that moment in a very public way. So I'm a little less personally convinced that he was doing this just to curry favor with Trump. I'm not sure if he's completely changed, but a lot of people have. A lot of people in Silicon Valley have gotten more right-leaning or kind of gotten more interested in Trump. But that's just my personal opinion. When I did hear him speak directly about Trump in a way that I don't think that's on the internet or anything- Andy Jassy said current CEO.

0:17:33 - Leo Laporte
Congratulations to President-elect Trump on a hard-fought victory. We look forward to working with you and your administration on issues important to our customers, employees, communities and country. I'm sure this is. I don't know if Tim Cook did the same thing, or Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai, but I'm sure this is.

0:17:51 - Paris Martineau
I believe they did this is the smart thing to do, right. I do think that Andy Jassy's announcement deserves a little bit of an asterisk here, because he has a particularly unique experience when it comes to sparring with trump and the trump administration. Uh, under the last trump administration, amazon web services which at the time was what andy jesse oversaw was awarded a like nine billion dollar contract the pendant and then trump basically took it away because he was mad at Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post and Amazon generally.

0:18:31 - Mike Elgan
So I do think that Andy Jassy, of all of these CEOs, is the one that probably has the most experience with the potential ramifications of angering a President Trump a president, trump, yeah, and ceos like you know, uh, tim apple and uh and uh and and jesse, uh, of course, um, bezos is not no longer ceo of amazon, but ceo types, and you know, company owners are not at liberty to to exercise their own personal um you know opinions about these things. They have to represent the shareholders and the in the and the value that they hold in the company. And so, you know, congratulating Trump, doing all this stuff is just, it's just what a CEO has to do, I think.

0:19:14 - Leo Laporte
You're talking about the joint it's the JEDI, the Joint Enterprise Defense and Infrastructure Contract, which is a $10 billion over 10 year deal with the Department of Defense to kind of update their cloud uh computing, um it oracle. It was originally considered gift wrapped for amazon until oracle contested it, citing the national defense authorization act, and then, august of 2019, weeks before the winner was expected to be announced, president trump placed the contract on hold so that defense secretary mark esper could investigate complaints of favoritism towards amazon. It was then awarded to microsoft, but I, as far as I know it's it's a judge then halted microsoft's work on it and it's still kind of up in the air.

0:20:05 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, uh, so the department of defense did not get its jedi cloud uh at all and they're still using like will a trump administration make any difference?

0:20:16 - Emily Forlini
like it's just this classic run around where it's like this big hubbub and then in the end it's like nothing happened yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a good question.

0:20:24 - Mike Elgan
It is a different time and I I think in 2016, uh, trump maybe not even expected to win, but now has had a lot of time to prepare the other thing I yeah, the other thing is that I think trump cares about the things he cares about and he'll sort of, uh, offload the stuff he cares less about to other people, and it depends on who those people are and and so on. So we don't know. We don't know what the trump administration looks like yet. I mean, we can, we have some general idea, but we we don't know. You know, for example, military contracts and things like that, how involved he's going to be in those sorts of things.

0:20:59 - Leo Laporte
We just don't know and you're right, he doesn't care about the things he doesn't care about.

0:21:03 - Emily Forlini
I think broadly. We know he's a fan of big business. So, whereas maybe Kamala Harris, is a businessman, or at least he was on TV and he has some businesses not as big as Amazon, but yeah, he's a fan of big business.

He'll probably cut tax breaks to businesses which will make Amazon and others very happy businesses which will make Amazon and others very happy. He probably won't do things that Kamala Harris talked about in her campaign, which is more about funding startups or maybe some other players in tech. We could see. I think we definitely the cast of characters we have now that I write about and we talk about all the time. We will definitely have the same cast of characters, unless something random comes out of the woodwork, like chat, GPT. But the government is probably not going to support smaller tech. I mean, that's kind of my opinion Probably just continue to support the big guys. So maybe it'll be some continued golden age for big tech.

0:21:59 - Mike Elgan
Well, we also live in an age.

I mean, the future is coming upon us very quickly and everything's changing very, very, very quickly, and we're entering into an era of supranational oligarchs like Elon Musk who have, or individual people who have power, that's.

That's comparable to a nation state. They have their own space programs that control electricity grids. They have incredible power. They have incredible power and, you know, one approach that Trump could take now that he's in it, you know, in his hopefully final term is that he may see these external powerful people as kind of threats to his own power and may seek to sort of kneecap them the way Putin did in Russia.

And so, again, I think we're in completely new waters now and we really don't know what's going to happen. But I have the feeling that his love affair with Elon Musk is going to be temporary, because Elon Musk himself is just too powerful. He just controls too much, and Elon Musk's power is much more global and exercisable. Of course, the president of the United States has enormous global power, but to exercise that power is much more difficult and consequential, whereas Elon Musk can just send an email and shut down every Tesla in a country, or they can use their SpaceX satellites to cut off satellite internet for a country, or they can use their satellites spacex satellites to cut off, you know, satellite internet for a country or whatever.

0:23:27 - Paris Martineau
I do think we're also going to have to reckon with, as a tech, as tech industry participants or critics, with the reality of a, the owner and operator of a major social media platform being an arm of a highly political, politicized and polarized government. Yeah, yeah.

0:23:51 - Emily Forlini
I do think social media played a big role in the election. It plays a big role in the way that we consume information and now it's potentially going to be playing a big role in government through Elon Musk. And something I'm concerned about is that people are not consuming nuanced information and there's a lot of algorithmically fed content. That is not that natural discovery process where people can find see different viewpoints, and that's the one thing I really would like to change in this country is the quality of information and education. Education and I am this type of thing makes me concerned that it's just going to continue and become cemented as an even deeper reality where we can forget that there might be an alternative, that you don't need to learn everything on social media.

0:24:33 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, I mean there's news out there, I think, this week that Meta has actually got a lot of increased their numbers for engagement by using AI as part of their algorithm to increase engagement. And so the application of generative AI to increase engagement means the sort of TikTokification of everything. Where I mean TikTok differs from other social networks mainly in the fact that it's mostly algorithm generated. You follow people, but really what most people see on the feed is what the algorithm is feeding. It's a very, very good algorithm. It's very strong and it really shows you stuff that you just makes you want to keep consuming those pellets like a rat in an experiment.

And I think I think that all social networks are going to get a lot more like that, even though, of course, they've all tried by emulating the feed right, or whatever they call it, they all have a TikTok-like feed. But I think all the other parts of those social networks, the text parts, will get AI-based sort of engagement algorithms. It's going to make the problem worse and not better, unfortunately. So I think the only hope is that we have to, you know, raise our own kids to stay off. And, on the plus side, a lot of school districts are banning phones in school, so that'll help a bit.

0:25:52 - Emily Forlini
That is positive.

0:25:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't see any way a government can fix that. I think it's going to be up to us at this point to fix that. If you were the CEO of a, a tech company, or if you were a venture capitalist, or if you were thinking about doing a startup right now, how do you plan the next four years? How do you think about it? What is anything changed? Do you go ahead and do the same old thing? Um, I think one of the problems that we have and it's going to be a general problem is it uh president trump's somewhat unpredictable right. You don't know exactly where he's going to come down on something.

Elon, you raise a really interesting point that elon's kind of playing with fire uh here, because, uh, we've seen uh trump do this before turn on somebody that he was in love with minutes before.

And I think you raised a good point, mike, that that could easily be elon. In his uh x brief x stream that he did in the election night eve from his plane, uh said that he has the way to trump on the way to mar-a-l. The way it didn't work, I guess, and he was having technical difficulties, so we went back to playing his video game, but he said he formed, of course, a PAC, the America PAC, with one hundred eighteen million dollars, according to the Washington Post, of his own money. He said it's going to keep going after this election and prepare for the midterms and any intermediate elections terms. In any intermediate elections uh he is, is he's going to aim to weigh in heavily, which, tells, is really elon saying I have political aspirations? Now, he's not a us citizen, so he can't or wasn't born in the us, I should say, so he cannot, uh, run for president.

0:27:42 - Mike Elgan
And there was a theory powerful friends in government who might overturn that particular thing oh well, it could be no way.

0:27:50 - Leo Laporte
Uh, I don't think he wants to be president. Honestly, that seems too limiting. Yes, exactly right, he's got bigger aspirations than that.

0:27:57 - Emily Forlini
Yeah like what is his end game, because it feels like he's taking his eye off the ball a little bit with tech. I mean, if you look at twitter and tesla, specifically, twitter's in a weird moment where it's declining in users. Ad revenue is not coming back, so where is that going? I don't know Tesla's at this weird moment where he doesn't want to make any new car types. I mean there was a Cybertruck, but before that we've seen the same Model 3, model Y for years. They've been refreshed slightly. The S and X are declining in sales, so the lineup is what we have.

He doesn't want to make the $25,000 EV. All he wants to do is solve self-driving, which is going to take years and is not an immediate product release. So with his own companies, there's a little bit of a stalling out feel to me. And then he wants to spend all this time and money on politics and I don't know where he wants to go with that either. So to me he's a little bit of a question mark. Just being part of the Trump administration doesn't really answer that question mark.

0:28:58 - Mike Elgan
Well, I think, yeah, I feel like he has ambitions.

0:29:02 - Leo Laporte
There's no question about that.

0:29:04 - Mike Elgan
Are they ambitions, though, or is it a compulsion? Is it narcissistic personality?

0:29:09 - Leo Laporte
disorder. He's as unpredictable as the president, isn't he? Yeah?

0:29:12 - Emily Forlini
so that's what I'm saying, Like where is this going? I mean, I don't think he really has respect for government in the sense that he would be a mayor of a city. You know, that's not cool enough. No, I don't think he wants to govern at all, he just wants to influence the opinion, I guess, which is why he bought twitter, right um, don't you?

0:29:30 - Leo Laporte
think the election of president trump is good for x, that x has a future now, I think it's getting more and more niche and I don't see it because it's too conservative it's slowly morphing into parlor and um yeah you know what to trump trump's truth social uh when got a significant burst in the stock market after the election, that's a mean stock, though they've never made any money.

0:29:56 - Emily Forlini
Well, I guess twitter is not exactly famous for profit I don't think twitter is really keeping up with the video situation on tiktok.

0:30:03 - Leo Laporte
Interesting as much as say Instagram and Facebook are. Yeah, because there's.

0:30:08 - Emily Forlini
Instagram reels, which isn't okay. There is some content sharing between those things. I think it's just a different philosophy and it has not really responded to TikTok.

0:30:19 - Leo Laporte
I have to say the 4U content I see on X has very much looks like tiktok.

0:30:25 - Emily Forlini
Now it's almost all video mine's not, maybe it's just see that's the other thing is.

0:30:30 - Leo Laporte
X is different for everybody, isn't it?

0:30:32 - Emily Forlini
I'm a big nerd on twitter. Like I just use it for work, and you know I use it. It's almost like linkedin for me, so maybe that's why yeah, um, yeah I wonder, I mean this is first of all.

0:30:46 - Leo Laporte
Elon can easily afford to lose his stake in twitter. It's not 44 billion dollars, because he got banks to pony up 18 billion dollars, so he only has whatever the difference is. Uh, it is potentially problematic because it's it's. It's based on his stock holdings uh, particularly on his spacex and tes Tesla holdings, so he can't afford to destabilize those stocks, I think.

0:31:12 - Mike Elgan
I think that X is not a big deal for Elon Musk's own personal financial portfolio. He convinced some other people to throw in and he's probably concerned about that part of it, but I think it's mostly a means to an end. It's a way to have more influence over the international conversation about various things he cares about. And again, I think he's a narcissist and I think the end game is he just wants everybody talking about him all the time and so you know, I think, trump is that way too.

So I think, I think, we, we, um that's why you see a head-to-head conflict ultimately.

0:31:55 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, so it gets more obviously we don't know the answer to this, but I do wonder when do you guys think elon musk and trump are gonna break up? Because there's no way that this.

0:32:06 - Emily Forlini
There's no way that this happy friendship can last very long I mean maybe I'll be totally proven wrong, but they both seem historically to be kind of mercurial people who I'm just gonna be like karen kardashian and chris humphries, like they're gonna get through the tv wedding and then three days later they're gonna break up how many?

0:32:25 - Leo Laporte
how many scaramuchis will it be? Is the question?

0:32:28 - Paris Martineau
yeah how long was the scaramuchi again?

0:32:31 - Leo Laporte
it was pretty quick, a couple weeks or something.

0:32:33 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, yeah. But one one uh disincentive for trump to break up with elon is that uh is is x right, so uh he x has some it's powerful isn't it yes, and among the people who care about to get trump elected.

0:32:48 - Leo Laporte
I mean, that was a very valuable asset. Yeah, what happens? One of the things that puzzled me about uh musk's support for trump was I don't think trump is is interested in evs at all. I think he wants to promote gas cars. So, Emily, I mean this is your beat. Why would I don't understand You're saying he's. Is he given up on Tesla?

0:33:13 - Emily Forlini
Well, trump did not like Musk initially. Yes, and he has campaigned against EVs to audiences that want to hear that and to other audiences he'll say things like EVs are okay, I just want there also to be hybrids and other options. So he has, yes, he has used the word hybrid, he has endorsed it and these things. With Musk, he realized that was his single biggest tool to get voters out and to activate young men. He is not happy that you know, lebron James or Ariana Grande or all these celebrities just come out of the woodwork for Kamala Harris, and Musk was really his biggest celebrity by far, so he leaned into that. Probably where they can net out is that Trump says I'll repeal, you know, the tax credit for EVs and Musk says, fine, you know, we don't need government subsidizing things.

0:34:03 - Leo Laporte
I don't think you get them anymore for Teslas anyway, right, they've sold so many that.

0:34:08 - Emily Forlini
You can. That's actually a common misconception that expired like years ago. I keep hearing that. But yeah, you can that cap. It doesn't exist. It hasn't existed for a couple years.

0:34:18 - Leo Laporte
As long as it's made in the US, you can get your $7,500.

0:34:21 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, so as long as it's made in the US, with also a domestically sourced battery is a big issue, and one thing I think that Musk is happy the tax credit will be repealed is that their batteries are from China, so they've spent the better part of this year being eligible and ineligible, depending on their supply chain and if their packs come from China for this and that model and this and that trim. So repealing the tax credit removes the spotlight on Tesla that not all of its cars are from China and so it can source the cheapest packs possible, so that's a big incentive for Tesla.

0:34:54 - Leo Laporte
Wow, yeah, Wow. You're watching this week in Google Jeff Jarvis, who would probably be a little bit more upset right now he's not with us. He's at CanCon, which is where is that? Paris? Where is he?

0:35:11 - Paris Martineau
It's in it's ConCon and it's in Germany somewhere.

0:35:15 - Leo Laporte
It's not in.

0:35:15 - Paris Martineau
Can. It's not in Can it's ConCon, but I think it should be at in Can.

0:35:21 - Leo Laporte
If you're doing it well, anyway it's a content conference.

0:35:28 - Paris Martineau
Is that a conference of con con people? No conning, no conning going on. Maybe a little conning.

0:35:30 - Leo Laporte
Okay, a little bit anyway. Uh, jeff will be back next week, where I'm thrilled at, mike elgin here, uh, and of course, emily, uh is is always welcome on our shows. So we got a. We got a pretty good panel and I'm sorry if you don't want to hear anything about politics, but really I think we do need to talk about and this is the perfect show.

0:35:50 - Paris Martineau
It would feel dumb to be talking about anything else today after the election.

0:35:55 - Leo Laporte
And I think we're doing it as best we can in a nonpartisan way talking about what it's going to look like in 2025 for tech companies and the pros and cons of it all. Do you want to pick a date for Elon and Donald's breakup? I think January 28th. I can't comment.

0:36:19 - Paris Martineau
I mean that would be less than a mooch.

0:36:22 - Leo Laporte
Less than a mooch. It might be the new standard.

0:36:26 - Emily Forlini
I'm going to write it down. Everyone say a date. I'm going to write it and then on that date I'll check in.

0:36:32 - Leo Laporte
I feel like even at the rally where Elon made his debut, jumping around like a crazy man behind Donald stealing focus, I think that that actually even then was the president was a little annoyed here's the other thing is.

0:36:49 - Mike Elgan
That is that when's the last time elon musk was an employee taking orders from the boss, right, and, and he's. If he's going to be part of the government, then then he's going to have to answer to a superior uh, in the form of donald trump, and I can see some source of friction there, because usually Elon Musk does his own thing. On the other hand, trump may just say hey, do whatever you want with the US government. You're the expert at cutting people.

0:37:14 - Leo Laporte
Turning the government into Twitter is not a very good selling point Also.

0:37:19 - Emily Forlini
Elon might be critical of Trump's work. He'll be like why is that still inefficient? Or why are you focusing on this and that? And that might at some point become annoying and distracting for Trump, I mean that's I'm going to.

0:37:28 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to adjust my date, Emily. All right, I am going to say by June 1st. I'm going to give him a few months.

0:37:36 - Emily Forlini
Do you have any rationale for that?

0:37:37 - Leo Laporte
Like any, just by summertime, I think once, once the the white shoes and white belts come out right after It'll be right after you think it's a good time to be single and maybe enjoy the warm weather. It's going to be a hot Trump summer Hot.

0:37:54 - Emily Forlini
Musk summer.

0:37:56 - Leo Laporte
So I think that sounds not so good.

0:38:00 - Emily Forlini
There might be some babies out of that one with this track record A hot musky summer.

0:38:03 - Paris Martineau
So I'm saying Juneune 1st right after memorial day, all right, just the idea of that, uh, plus the words I'll. I'd say I'm not going to put any definitive date on a breakup or anything, but I will say I think we should check in by summer and see how tensions are, whether they're warm or not.

0:38:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, dead pirate. Uh in our uh discord says mid-february everyone gets depressed.

0:38:32 - Emily Forlini
In february it'll just get moody.

0:38:35 - Leo Laporte
What do you? What do you? What do you think? Uh, paris, you want to make a token bed in our pool here oh, I just said uh, let's check in you don't want to give a date? Okay? No there's no, there's no payoff, so I guess it's okay. Mike, what do you think? How long will elon last? End of next year?

0:38:55 - Mike Elgan
I think the end of next year, I think it may take a little longer because, uh, I don't know there's. They've both got a big mallet hovering over each other's heads.

0:39:06 - Leo Laporte
It's true. I mean, yeah, there might be a kind of a tense frenemies situation. Emily, what do you think?

0:39:14 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I'm trying to think of how we could actually develop a real opinion on this, Like is there any event coming up or policy that's expiring? Anyone in the Discord know?

0:39:26 - Mike Elgan
It depends when the next game releases, the next game that Elon wants to play.

0:39:31 - Paris Martineau
Well, Elon claims that he's a top 20 Diablo 4 player worldwide, which would require him devoting hundreds of hours. How could he?

0:39:43 - Emily Forlini
possibly have time for that.

0:39:44 - Mike Elgan
He paid for that.

0:39:45 - Leo Laporte
Come on yeah, I guess there's people in china who'll grind out the gold for you.

0:39:52 - Emily Forlini
Yeah I'll lean more towards mike. I think it might take a little over a year to kind of get into it, um, especially because at this point their reputations are kind of linked and maybe they'll be incentivized to keep up the charade for a little bit longer.

0:40:07 - Leo Laporte
I can't speak for Elon, but I know Donald Trump knows perfectly well that nothing, there's no memory.

0:40:16 - Emily Forlini
Goldfish status.

0:40:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you can basically do anything you want, say anything you want. There's no memory. Do anything you want, say anything you want, there's no memory. So I don't think, I don't think Elon Donald will be in any way constrained by this sense of well. I called him a genius. They're all geniuses until they're not.

0:40:37 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, I know all the incentives, elon is just.

0:40:39 - Leo Laporte
I don't. I think Elon is not very rational at this point. To be honest, I don't think he's rational very rational.

0:40:46 - Emily Forlini
At this point, to be honest, I don't think he's rational at all. So well, maybe that'll be kind of spurring the next pendulum swing politically or even in tech. Like they're aligned now they're going to fight like rare, like cats, they're going to break up and then kind of develop yeah yeah, maybe he'll decide to go in a certain direction. That will take the country in a certain way.

0:41:02 - Leo Laporte
There is there is a conspiracy theory, uh which I admit and I mentioned it before, is a pure conspiracy theory that the people of the tech community, like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, knew that President Trump didn't really want to govern. He likes the being of the president, but he doesn't want to do the work of governing. And figured, let's get our guy, jd Vance, who's definitely Peter Thiel's boy, in there. Jd will end up taking off, taking some of the role of president and we will be able to create a technocracy. That's what I wonder. If that's what Elon is thinking that it's about. I know he is and I know it's what Peter Thiel is thinking and what Mark Andreessen is thinking. It's about time we got the politicians out of here and let the smart guys in Silicon Valley run the place, because we can do a better job because we're data driven.

0:41:54 - Emily Forlini
It's true, but they don't make data driven political arguments. I mean, where was data in any of the conversations about the election, which I was really disappointed by? I would like policy to be informed more. By that, I would agree, in this case, with technocrats, or whatever we're calling them. I don't know if they just have this smoke and mirrors of how they present themselves and ultimately they want AI to take over or something, but that would be a huge shift.

0:42:19 - Leo Laporte
AI is going to be the kind of wild card in all this. If it does anything more than it's done so far. I mean it's right now. It's kind of wild card in all this. If, if, if it does anything more than it's done so far, I mean it's right now. It's kind of it's kind of a shell game. But if ai really gets smart, what? Uh, we'll take a break when we come back. We could talk about ai regulation with the future of. Is sam altman happy about what happened last night? That's the question. Think, think about it. Great panel, lots to talk about.

The impact of Trump administration on technology is kind of our subject for the day on this week in Google and it's you know, one of the things we're talking on Sunday with Amy Webb, futurist, and she consults very big companies and governments about planning, about strategic planning, about planning, about strategic planning. It's one of the things she said is, if it was the title of the show you have to embrace uncertainty and, as a leader, you have to plan for uncertainty and have a strategic plan that makes sense in a variety of outcomes. So I think probably that's what Silicon Valley is doing right now, as best they can. It's not like. You know what's going to happen in the next four years.

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0:47:20 - Mike Elgan
I don't think.

0:47:21 - Leo Laporte
I haven't seen a cow at all here, so you're on the Baja Peninsula, so maybe you should try mooing.

0:47:28 - Mike Elgan
I should try that. Yes, no, we're, we're. We're sort of north of Cabo San Lucas, kind of on the. It's a pretty area, yeah, really like the of Cortez side.

0:47:37 - Leo Laporte
Are you doing a gastronomad adventure in that area? No, no, just vacation.

0:47:45 - Mike Elgan
Just hanging out, um yeah, just hanging out with the family.

0:47:47 - Leo Laporte
Nice, yeah, I'm glad you're having a good time. It's great to see you. Machine, his newsletter is now at machine societyai and well worth the subscription. Really great stuff also here. Paris martineau, you can subscribe to the information dot com and read Paris's work on the weekend, every weekend. That's true, every weekend. What was the information's reaction to this election cycle?

0:48:15 - Paris Martineau
I mean, we're a nonpartisan organization, so no particular partisan leaning we are. However, have reporters working to chronicle how this is going to impact the tech world Right? I know a lot of my colleagues are making calls and trying to figure out how Silicon Valley is reacting to this and what this is going to mean for companies like TikTok, meta you know, elon Musk.

0:48:41 - Leo Laporte
You linked to a Business Insider story that said Silicon Valley is officially grieving over Trump, but quietly gleeful over I will say.

0:48:53 - Paris Martineau
I've been making some calls today and the thing that strikes me is how different now is from 2016 for Silicon Valley. Is from 2016 for Silicon Valley? In the wake of Trump's first victory, we saw tech companies, big and small, having outsized reactions. There was famously an all-hands where Google's top executives expressed their grief and frustration over Trump's victory. You had, you know, companies granting workers time off and things like that. It could not be more different. This year. You don't have this time around, as we talked about before. The ceos of all these major companies are congratulating trump on his victory. They aren't sending out emails to their employees reaffirmingming values that they think will be threatened by a new Trump administration. It's kind of business as usual.

0:49:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I have to think that in their heart of hearts, as Emily was saying, this is going to be a pro-business administration. I think there will be less regulation, for sure. I think there will be less antitrust prosecutions. I think mergers and acquisitions are going to boom and I would imagine venture capital funds will loosen up as well. The stock market's initial reaction was very positive this morning.

0:50:18 - Emily Forlini
Well, on AI regulation, I do think there's probably less of a prospect that there will be some kind of bill. I mean, I think he said he wants to remove the executive order. That's kind of tackling bias and algorithms and just responsibilities for what the chatbots produce nothing on AI. That being said, I do think that we've been doing basically nothing on AI and if you guys followed that bill in California, gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi, who are both Democrats, kind of put the kibosh on it. So it seems like both parties have been unclear what they want to do with AI. Although Biden had that executive order. Now there's probably even less chance that we will do anything to make sure that AI develops responsibly. They think that will help innovation. The CEO of Anthropic put out a big post last week that says he don't think it will help. He doesn't think it will help innovation because it will just create this out of control, free for all. So I don't know what do you guys think on that Do?

0:51:25 - Leo Laporte
you want AI to regulate it. Elon Musk was the signatory to that letter last year that said halt AI for six months. It could be an existential threat to humankind, Right? Ironically, he has his own AI Grok and has spent a lot of money on AI. I kind of think, a little cynically, that Elon just wanted everybody to stop for six months so he could catch up.

0:51:49 - Mike Elgan
Well, that's the cynical version of what lots of companies are likely to do, which is to see regulation as a barrier to entry to startups. So if you're anthropic, if you're open AI, If you're open AI, you really want to make it expensive to deal with regulatory requirements for small startups that couldn't ever afford it.

0:52:14 - Paris Martineau
And by the way we haven't mentioned the O word, the optimist robots, elon's ridiculous, the classic O word.

0:52:18 - Mike Elgan
He wants to make a 10 billion of them. Those are AI, but like with legs and arms and you know, to mow your lawn and babysit your kids and walk your dog. So that's another thing that we're going to see. I mean, he's pretending, like this is imminent, that this army of robots is imminent. It's a few years off, but still.

0:52:41 - Leo Laporte
He thinks we're going to Mars next year. I mean he's not a rational actor. Yeah, it's going to years off, but still he thinks we're going to mars next year.

0:52:45 - Emily Forlini
I mean, he's not yeah rational. Yeah, it's gonna take a little longer.

0:52:47 - Mike Elgan
But again back to the trump administration. Donald trump as a person is non-ideological and he doesn't have strong feelings about ai. That's what or the cyber as he calls it, and so, and so he's gonna, he's going to basically hand that policy over to people who do care about those things, and again I think JD Vance and Peter Thiel, and Crypto czar Barron Trump. Yes, exactly Right.

Exactly so good with his laptop that he's going to put him in charge. So, anyway, it's not about trying to reverse engineer Donald Trump. It's trying to sort of figure out who the people are who are going to be in those positions.

0:53:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I guess, because AI at this point is spending money, not making money. They're less of a interest to Donald Trump.

0:53:39 - Emily Forlini
Should be.

0:53:40 - Leo Laporte
Should they, should they? Yeah, I'm thinking Trump got elected.

0:53:46 - Emily Forlini
I just want Sam Altman to tweet with a capital letter.

0:53:52 - Paris Martineau
I mean.

0:53:53 - Leo Laporte
I think, if I think about it, he's got to be relieved that that Kamala Harris did not get elected because that most likely would have led to more regulations of some kind.

0:54:04 - Mike Elgan
And taxation of wealthy people. So I mean that's the other part of it is that these very wealthy people are going to believe that Trump is going to lower their taxes, and so I'm sure they just see it as a win-win. Less regulation, lower taxes for me personally, Beautiful.

0:54:22 - Emily Forlini
I didn't even mention taxes. Lower taxes for me personally, beautiful. I don't think there's any clear path to federal AI regulation for either administration. Maybe we're seeing more on the state level, like California, but I do not see any evidence that we are any closer or would have been under Kamala Harris to actually passing something.

0:54:40 - Leo Laporte
One of the reasons, though, that Gavin Newsom vetoed it is because, if California does it unilaterally, all the AI companies just moved to Texas. So he didn't, he did. He even said this explicitly. I don't want to do anything to chase these guys out of California. A federal law doesn't have that, you know, problem.

0:54:58 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, but if you're in, it's an interesting point because if you're in any state, you're that tech company will still operate with users in California, so it would have to comply. It's kind of like GDPR.

0:55:11 - Leo Laporte
Right. So I think this particular law, though, was you know, was things like if you are of a certain size, you have to have a kill switch If you're not operating in California. I don't think you would be bound by that. Maybe you would.

0:55:25 - Emily Forlini
I don't know yeah. But I guess I just say that because people think that it's going to be this unregulated utopia under Trump and I just I don't actually think there's a lot of evidence that it would be that different in terms of AI regulation.

0:55:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think with AI he doesn't have an opinion at this point Absolutely not.

0:55:44 - Mike Elgan
He may have an opinion about, about the rivalry between the united states and china, and he will we, if he hasn't been told already. He will be told that you know china's nine months to 11 months behind the united states in ai progress and if we over regulate our industry, they're going to catch up and surpass us and then china will have bigger ai than we are and he doesn't want that. He'll be opposed to that. So I think that's the dimension he will respond to probably.

0:56:09 - Emily Forlini
I worry about his ability to compete with China in technology, just based on what I've seen with EVs. China is blowing us out of the water, running laps around us on not only just the cars but the batteries and battery technology, which is very important for the future of energy supply, running every kind of device from an iPhone to a house to a commercial building. This is very important and he has just torn down any momentum towards that, while not acknowledging how far behind the US really is and it's somehow not part of his MAGA agenda. So there's a real disconnect to me on his actual ability to compete with China.

0:56:50 - Leo Laporte
Although I imagine he will continue the CHIPS Act, which has been a fairly successful Biden administration initiative to although they haven't spent much money yet, but at some point fund a a us chips industry and to keep us chip technology uh out of china actually taiwanese chip uh technology out of china as well, the technology's developed by tsmc um if you recall, in his first term he he went through every obama initiative and undid it because it was an obama initiative and, for the things that were favorable like nafta.

0:57:31 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, he just created a new one and put his name on it. So he he will be. If, if history is a guide, he will be undoing that, whether it replaces it with something identical? Is the maggot reasonably like? Likely, but he will undo it.

0:57:45 - Emily Forlini
I feel like he mostly and correct me if I'm wrong just kind of governs by, you know, either tearing things down or signing an executive order or issuing a tariff. Like have there been any major bills like the chips act or the ira that came out of his administration?

0:58:03 - Mike Elgan
Hey, never forget about infrastructure week guys.

0:58:08 - Paris Martineau
Some say it's still happening to this day.

0:58:10 - Leo Laporte
Someday. You know, who is happy is the crypto industry, because they have money right and they were not unwilling to spend it. The New York Times says the crypto industry spent over $130 million on the election, more even than Elon. It paid off a string of victory for congressional candidates who had expressed support for cryptocurrencies. Bernie Moreno, who's a crypto executive, beat Sherrod Brown in Ohio. It helped that he got a $ million dollar donation from the cryptocurrency industry in the weeks before the election. Yeah, um, the crypto army is striking, says tyler winklevoss, a spokesman for the leading crypto super pack, blasted out the oh Ohio results in an email with a subject line Crypto's big bet pays off.

0:59:06 - Emily Forlini
Am, I, am, I crazy.

0:59:07 - Mike Elgan
Here's 130 million, not that much money in politics it is, so it's amazingly cheap to buy in the down ballot ones.

0:59:14 - Leo Laporte
I mean, it's a billion dollars to get elected president right, but in the down ballot, because they're local, I think you don't have to spend quite as much, but 130 million is a big, is a big percentage of 1 billion.

0:59:27 - Mike Elgan
I mean, that's a lot of additional money. Um, I I actually, I mean, I I think that I think the if you want to look at how the us will be under trump, I think we just need to look at el salvador, right Bukele. There, of course, they legalized Bitcoin as a they made it their currency.

0:59:49 - Leo Laporte
They didn't want the dollar anymore.

0:59:52 - Mike Elgan
No, they still use the dollar mostly. Most Salvadorans aren't really involved.

0:59:56 - Leo Laporte
That's a measure of its failure, right? I mean, that wasn't Bukele's plan.

1:00:00 - Mike Elgan
Right, but I mean, it's the most Bitcoin-friendly, friendly country. And also the other thing about El Salvador that's that's notable is the roundup of all the gang members without, without any trial, with no representation, with, with no hope of you know, an appeal, and just a massive human rights violation. That also was very, very, very popular in the country, because it basically went from the murder capital of the world to one of the safest countries in the world overnight. So I think I fear that the treatment of undocumented immigrants is going to be not as draconian as rounding them up and putting them in prison, but but pretty draconian, and so I think that we're going to kind of look a bit like el salvador, possibly a combination of bitcoin and heavy-handed law I know you've spent a lot of time in el that's my phone.

1:01:03 - Paris Martineau
That's the wrong button that was a accidental moral panic that's what a moral panic sounds like what's the interest in crypto?

1:01:13 - Emily Forlini
because it has been objectively bad business. I mean, my crypto wallet is not looking good. I didn't put that much in it.

1:01:20 - Leo Laporte
It was an experiment, but it's still not recouped you just didn't put your money in the right crypto. That's all. Actually, Bitcoin is $75,000 right now.

1:01:32 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I mean, I guess I was like that hype when everyone was talking about it. It hasn't recovered, though. It has not been a steady up and up and up. It has not been a consistently good business, which is a little surprising to me that it's back in the conversation in such a big way.

1:01:47 - Leo Laporte
Well, there are people who made quite a bit of money and they're making sure it stays in the conversation, like the Winklevoss twins. There is a tracker, according to the New York Times, called Stand with Crypto, an industry group that vets politicians. They say 253 pro-crypto candidates have been elected to the House of Representatives, compared to 115 anti-crypto candidates. That's a pretty good majority In the Senate 16 pro-crypto candidates like Bernie Moreno were elected, 12 anti-crypto candidates. So you've for sure got a Congress that's pro-crypto. You've got a president-elect who, as I mentioned, said let's get rid of Gary Gensler.

1:02:33 - Emily Forlini
We don't want any regulation of crypto. Basically, I think, is what he's saying.

1:02:36 - Leo Laporte
It kind of sounds like we need to rebrand Congress as the crypt. Well, it's good for crypto. Although, again, mike, you're right, well, it's good for crypto. Although, again, mike, you're right, a lot of the established people say let's have some regulation because they don't want upstarts to come along. Right, but I think they'll get what they want. They have the best Congress money can buy.

1:02:59 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, Well, countries that embrace crypto have a lack of trust in their national financial institutions and often a reason to not trust it. It could be serious corruption or it's very difficult for the average person to have a bank account or to transact regularly. I mean the, you know it's called fiat. Money could be collapsing, so we just don't really have that here.

1:03:26 - Leo Laporte
And I hope we would never-. No, it's the strongest currency in the world.

1:03:28 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I hope we would never get to that point. So it's this some people interpret the crypto push as kind of eating into the stability of our financial system and just being more unregulated. What do you guys think about that?

1:03:45 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's supposed to be a currency. Theoretically, proponents would tell you that it's for buying and selling things, but really people use it as an investment.

1:03:55 - Paris Martineau
It's a kind of investment.

1:03:56 - Leo Laporte
Speculative.

1:03:57 - Mike Elgan
Speculative investment, and in my opinion, it's an objectionable kind of investment because you're not really feeding anybody. If you invest in some company that sells things or makes things or something like that, you're contributing to goods and services that people need to live their lives, whereas Bitcoin is like the whole cryptocurrency in general. The whole point of it is that there's no benefit to anybody except the data centers uh, they're using to mine the stuff or whatever, and so it's. It's really, uh, it's really problematic in that sense.

1:04:30 - Leo Laporte
um, it's great for money laundering ransomware's gone through the roof because of the availability of cryptocurrency right and and and and.

1:04:40 - Mike Elgan
it has to be said, and I I hate to to to say this because because I know that, um, there are a lot of people listening who voted for Trump, no doubt, but Donald Trump himself is, in fact, a money launderer. He laundered money for the Iranian what do they call it? Revolutionary Guards there's an incredibly detailed New new yorker piece on that from a few years ago and he laundered money through his hotel, his uh buildings and stuff like that. So that brought that bugs me a bit, um well, he probably loves this.

1:05:15 - Leo Laporte
He, uh, the biden administration, says the new york times, spent years pursuing crypto companies for violations of security laws. President-elect trump has vowed to end that crackdown and make the United States quote the crypto capital of the planet. End quote.

1:05:29 - Emily Forlini
That's what Wyoming tried to do.

1:05:31 - Leo Laporte
They were like we're going to be the most crypto-friendly state.

1:05:34 - Emily Forlini
They were accepting startups, telling people to move in, probably giving tax breaks on crypto startups. It just flat out did not work.

1:05:43 - Leo Laporte
One of the problems of, of course, with crypto is you can donate uh to a political campaign anonymously, which our election rules prohibit.

1:05:51 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, you have to pay taxes on crypto. Now the irs is like no, no, no we are.

1:05:56 - Leo Laporte
That may not last long either, right?

1:05:59 - Mike Elgan
we don't know um, but all these transactions can happen outside the US, theoretically right. So I don't know. It's the murkiness of it that is so problematic, I think.

1:06:15 - Emily Forlini
Is this the?

1:06:16 - Leo Laporte
murkiness of is it going to happen. I don't think that it's Trump's ideology. I don't think he has that much of an ideology. I think he just sees that as a money tree that he can shake or could shake during the campaign.

1:06:28 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, he may want his very own. Weren't they talking about the Trump's? Talking about his own?

1:06:34 - Leo Laporte
cryptocurrency. Yeah, started by two really skeezy characters, but again, it's just another way of making money.

1:06:44 - Emily Forlini
Maybe he'll pardon Sam Bankman Freed.

1:06:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, if Sam Bankman Freed. By the way, one of the things he went to jail for was campaign finance violations, because he did, in fact, try to influence the midterms in 2022, donating millions to candidates on both sides of the aisle.

1:07:06 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, terms of 2022, donating millions to candidates on both sides of the aisle yeah, so well, it's probably worth it for people who have systematically removed all crypto information from their life to get up to speed on that. Maybe look at how it works. Like this is. We need to understand these things so we can properly guide them. Yeah, um.

1:07:22 - Leo Laporte
Among incumbents who are out, Katie Porter, who was running for Senate in California. Adam Schiff beat her in the primary. The Times said a super PAC spent 10 million dollars on attack ads against her. She was a crypto skeptic. Schiff has demonstrated support for crypto and digital assets. According to Stand With Crypto, Schiff has demonstrated support for crypto and digital assets. According to Stand With Crypto, John Tester lost. He expressed skepticism about crypto and Fairshake said that they were going to donate money to run against him. Apparently, they didn't ultimately do that, but Tester did lose his seat. So yeah, I mean I worry a little bit about that. I mean I'm not anti-crypto per se, but I do worry that it is bringing a bunch of people into play. You know what the real problem is money in politics. That's really the problem.

1:08:18 - Paris Martineau
Yes, money in politics and also, it's just never a good idea, I think, to have completely unregulated securities. The we have rules around investments in the us typically to protect investors, and I think it's not generally a good idea to have a completely unregulated investment vehicle I also think people need to understand the nature of US power globally.

1:08:44 - Mike Elgan
One of the biggest, most powerful things about the United States is our control of the international monetary systems. A blockade? It's not a blockade at all. It's mostly the US control of financial systems that prevents them from functioning like a normal country financially. And I oppose the ongoing Cuban embargo, but that's the nature of it and the US has. That's how the US, us sanctions is how we sort of like punish Russia for its various deeds and so on. And again, I think crypto kind of weakens that. Any sort of attention that goes to these alternative financial systems over the mainstream regulated global financial system does not work in our favor as a country. So I don't know, it's just again, we're in new territory now a country. So I don't know it's, it's just we're in again. We're in new territory Now if we really go all in on Bitcoin it did not help Trump coin, which is now pretty much underwater.

1:09:53 - Leo Laporte
But who knows there's there's more time for that, you know. But yeah, I know, I think the biggest risk, of course, is people. Uh, you know, you can now buy crypto in your, in your 401k, you can invest in crypto. Um, and I I worry about people who are naive investors uh, falling for the big gains that some have made and, of course, those gains are at the cost, at the, at the cost of the uh investors who put money in and got out.

1:10:24 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I mean you hear things like people you know converted their whole 401k to crypto, or a big portion of their portfolio. It's definitely a very risky investment. You can wipe out what you and your family are relying on real quick, so you definitely need to tread lightly if crypto is reemerging in a big way.

1:10:46 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, because the thing is that you're not investing in anything. You are investing in a boom and bust cycle that exists purely in a world of its own making. There is no investment underlying it.

1:10:57 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, exactly.

1:11:00 - Leo Laporte
You're watching this Week in Google. Paris Martineau is here, jeff Jarvis is not, but Mike Elgin filling in in, and it's so great to have you along with emily and I. And I want to keep calling you dry belbus, but it's forlini, is that's your? Your married name, your new name? Yeah, congratulations bc magazine do you? Want. You didn't want to hyphenate dry belbus forlini could be fun, could be a lot of syllables.

1:11:24 - Emily Forlini
If you grew up with my last name, you would know how it is unacceptable to add more letters to it. The other conversation, the name change topic, is a very interesting one. I don't suspect many people in the tech industry have gone through that, since it's male dominated. But you know it's a, it's a big thing, so I appreciate it.

1:11:43 - Leo Laporte
I know for my wife it's a big thing, so I appreciate it. I know for my wife it's a lot of work to change all your documentation and it's a it's a big process.

1:11:52 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I mean, everyone has their own reasons to do it and it is a process.

1:11:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, have you completed it or all your documents in the proper form?

1:12:02 - Emily Forlini
No, I just went to the social security office today, for example, and requested a new card.

1:12:07 - Leo Laporte
Oh how fun.

1:12:09 - Emily Forlini
Yeah. So that guy at the office told me he was up all night watching the election because last time he's part of the government, right? So it's like who he's working for. And he said last time the Trump administration had long periods of shutdowns where he didn't get paid. Last time the Trump administration had long periods of shutdowns where he didn't get paid, so he was eagerly trying to see who would win, to see if he was going to have payment blackouts in the next four years.

1:12:29 - Leo Laporte
I was like oh geez, oh my God, I think now with the Republican House and Senate, you're not going to have those problems. But who knows, Maybe I'm being a little over-optimistic.

1:12:46 - Paris Martineau
Has the Republican House been called, yet.

1:12:49 - Leo Laporte
No, I'm calling it right here. Wow, Breaking news everyone. It's pretty obvious that that's what's going to happen. But no, I'm not going to say anything. I'm not calling it.

1:13:03 - Mike Elgan
But there's a chance that that, uh, such people will be eliminated. So there, there's a there's a stated desire to dramatically reduce the size of the government.

1:13:12 - Leo Laporte
So right, uh yeah, he may lose his job, but at least he won't lose his pay.

1:13:16 - Paris Martineau
He'll get paid as long as he's still working probably still working yeah, elon musk has said he wants to, uh, lead the newly created department of governmental efficiency or the doge office right, yeah, oh, you're kidding.

1:13:30 - Leo Laporte
He's calling it the doge office of course he is.

1:13:34 - Paris Martineau
Of course he is leo he loves what else were you expecting?

1:13:38 - Leo Laporte
I think donald trump might be our first meme president well, he already was oh, it's too late, too late, uh, yeah, no, it has.

It is still. The house is still up in the air, uh, but it uh, I, I don't know. It could take a long time before we know it's not. It's going to be close and this will be interesting to see how united a republican House and Senate really are, because, remember, the House has been a little contentious, even though it's controlled by Republicans now. It's not been an easy thing to do to get a bill through the House.

1:14:16 - Emily Forlini
It's more infighting. It's like the Musk-Trump breakup, where now all just wondering how are these people going to do when they're all together? They've been fighting, fighting a different enemy. Now they're just going to be fighting each other because we have to fight someone, right or?

1:14:28 - Leo Laporte
maybe not be happy, maybe they'll all be unified. And there's one advantage of having a strong leader is, uh, he can set the agenda and say this, you're going to do this and and that's that. And I think they are fairly scared of him they are.

1:14:43 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, yeah, he'll be in a great position to to, to, to um, you know, to take all of his fans and and move them against anybody who you know goes against him to to what what do they call it? Uh, that, where they um uh get him in the primaries how primary them is the verb.

1:15:03 - Leo Laporte
How important important is social media to that for Elon Musk and for Donald Trump? How?

1:15:10 - Mike Elgan
does he?

1:15:11 - Leo Laporte
mobilize. How does he get him?

1:15:15 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, I know he called me Musk too.

1:15:17 - Leo Laporte
Everybody's Elon Musk. To me, we're all Elon Musk now.

1:15:21 - Mike Elgan
I think it's huge. I think people are getting their news from social media, so I think they're getting their, their, their. There's a huge chunk of the country that gets their news from Trump rallies, social media and nowhere else, so I think reality is shaped.

Podcasters yes, right, and, and, and radio and radio. If you go into the rural areas there's, there's some pretty crazy radio that's been going on for 20 years and so that's where the information comes from. So I think it's. I think it's to answer your question. I think I think social media is very, very large to that constituency and and it gives it, gives president Trump a huge amount of power over Congress.

1:15:59 - Leo Laporte
And he knows, I mean if, if, if. Nothing else, he he's media savvy. He knows exactly how valuable that is and how how important it is, right uh, to his space.

1:16:08 - Emily Forlini
I just hope. I mean we're just talking so much about everyone's gonna fall in line. They're all gonna be, you know, sheep to him. Everyone's gonna be, you know, just going off self-interest. I mean that's like what we're talking about and I think it would just be such a shame if everyone just became a follower. Everyone fell in line, like if there's one thing that Donald Trump tried to do was to emerge with a different narrative, and I feel like we need, more than ever now, a lot of diverse narratives, like it cannot just be this era where all the tech companies and all the people in Congress and the whole public on social media just kind of like fall in line with whatever's being said. It's just a great disappointment I.

1:16:46 - Mike Elgan
I don't think that's going to happen socially, you know, in society in general, but I think that's absolutely going to happen within the republican party and with business and tech it sounds like right with tech, though I mean, that doesn't help innovation, in my opinion no creative thinking, we need creative thinking. Yes, it's going to be problematic. You're watching this.

1:17:06 - Leo Laporte
Week in Google, kind of a political show today, and I apologize if that's offending you. We'll be back to our usual flim-flam and jib-jab next week with Paris and Jeff Jarvis. It's usually a lighter show, I have to say, but these are important things to talk about and, I think, to understand, even though it's very difficult to predict, honestly, what's going to happen. Yeah, our show today, brought to you by 1Password I know you know the name, 1password, one of the best password managers out there. But this is a new product from them and it's for business. It's called extended access management.

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1:20:09 - Emily Forlini
It's not necessarily techie per se, but I have people in my family who voted for different parties, so we're kind of split and mixed. Like that's challenging. How do you guys handle that, or how are we going to think about that for the next four years?

1:20:26 - Paris Martineau
I've experienced something similar in my family. Honestly, this is the practical advice I have. I've found it helpful to erect a firewall. Just don't talk about politics.

1:20:39 - Leo Laporte
Your parents didn't call up and gloat.

1:20:43 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I'm not saying any specifics of who or what you already told us.

1:20:48 - Leo Laporte
It's too late. It's too late um he told us I told you leo oh, you didn't tell us on the air. Okay, I don't know.

No, I didn't, I don't know, I have no um, but I apologize but, I will say that, uh, pretty much everybody, everybody in Lisa's family, voted for Trump. In fact, her, her folks, had Trump 2024 flags for the last four years and a bumper stickers and signs and stuff. And, yeah, we did the same thing Firewall, you know, her father would wear his MAGA hat into the house and I never said anything, I just treated him as a dotty old man. But Lisa said you know, please don't wear that in the house. And I think that that was appropriate. So we agreed no, no, no signs. No, no, no clothing in the house.

It is, it is a challenge, but I think, honestly, I feel like now that the election's over, it should be, or it is in fact, a less of a challenge. I I'm graciously say, hey, congratulations. Uh, you know, your team won, well done. If I'm honestly, if trump hadn't won the popular vote as well, I might have been a little salty about the Electoral College, but that's had nothing to do with it. It was a, it was a fairly resounding victory, and so my attitude is we should be gracious and defeat, as we would be in victory, and I will be watching with interest over the next four years. If I were gay, transgender, a female, I might be a lot more worried. Uh, if I cared about reproductive rights, I might be very concerned. Immigrant.

1:22:36 - Emily Forlini
Uh, if I were brown, if I were, whether I were documented or not well, it's kind of hard to find a family that doesn't have one or multiple people in those categories right I would imagine that this is really hitting a peak today for a lot of people who are listening I mean, there's a lot of tears being shed, but what do you?

1:22:56 - Leo Laporte
you don't emily, you don't go to your uh, other family, your your Republican family members, and say, oh, I hate you.

1:23:06 - Emily Forlini
I really prioritize family so I would always go keep the relationship Um. But my family growing up we were just fierce debaters, like I'm one of four kids and around the table like it was dog eat dog and I was the youngest, so like I had to come triple prepared. You know, like that was just how we were and that doesn't go away. You know you want to engage triple prepared. You know like that was just how we were and that doesn't go away. You know you want to engage with other people and like what do you really think? So we still do some of that, but with we're adults now.

1:23:32 - Mike Elgan
So you know, with more understanding, I think it's an opportunity for us to re-embrace constructive, friendly debate and to sort of revel in the quality of the debate, to be respectful, listen to each other, yes and to have debates and leave the debate with a good feeling, even if there's strong disagreement. That used to be the case, and the problem is when everybody gets so freaked out and so angry that you start resenting each other and that that's a problem. So one of the things that we can all work on is to understand when we're going in that direction. Cut it off no more politics, talk about something else and and but if we can have these conversations as constructively as we can.

For a long time, it's been very popular in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to embrace stoicism, right and, and I would encourage people to drop stoicism and embrace Epicureanism. Epicurean philosophy predates stoicism and basically goes something like this the purpose of life is happiness and the source of happiness is friends and family, and food and drinks and forgetting about all the stressful things in the world, and that's something we're very bad at. Because of social media, the whole world's ills come crashing in on us all day, every day, and it stresses everybody out and divides everybody. And if, to a certain extent we want to take action politically and, and, and you know, do everything we can for for people through politics. But then at the end of the day we need to let go of all of that stuff and just and and just have some some nice Mexican beer.

1:25:07 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, well said, and I also try to get a great point. I try to not just be a walking algorithm, like I'm just everything I saw on social media, like hurling into the debate, like sometimes not regurgitating arguments you see online or forgetting like hey, my house is fine, my neighborhood is fine, like what's happening in my community or my state, just like grounding it in real examples, not just like what this and that person posted. I also try to do that. It's more just thinking for yourself really at that point.

1:25:36 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, and seek out opportunities. We were talking about RFK Jr and you know he may be involved in health policy and if he's going to ban some artificial colors that are bad for kids, then I'm in favor of that and we can all agree about stuff like that.

1:25:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he said why is it that our Froot Loops in the US have 19 different ingredients, where in Canada they only have two or three?

1:26:02 - Mike Elgan
well, that's, that's just one example. If you, if you go through the ingredients of junk food like mcdonald's and kentucky fried chicken, if you go in europe, they have different ingredients. They hit there. It's slightly healthier there and, of course, the obesity rates they're starting to fall in the us actually, partly because of ozempic but weik, we have been too lax about regulating dangerous food additives.

1:26:26 - Leo Laporte
It's funny because that's what RFK Jr was all about early in his life. Yes, Until the brain worm.

1:26:34 - Emily Forlini
Well, I ate a whole bowl of pasta while I was watching the live coverage last night, and I probably need a beer tonight, so I'll probably work in on my own obesity.

1:26:42 - Leo Laporte
Pasta is my comfort food. I can dig that.

1:26:45 - Emily Forlini
That's got to still be allowed.

1:26:47 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I made a giant chicken soup from scratch at the beginning of the week and I've been going through that all week. That's delicious.

1:26:54 - Leo Laporte
The little things? No, we have. Thanksgiving is coming. This is in the United States. This is going to be a real opportunity to practice your Epicurean philosophy.

1:27:01 - Emily Forlini
Yes, it's a good time to put our focus on food.

1:27:05 - Leo Laporte
Food and family and love and not worry about politics. Right, it's hard for some of us, because we've so demonized the other side, to drop that.

1:27:18 - Emily Forlini
Well, sometimes it's hard to feel like you're actively engaged and working to make things better and also somehow not caring yeah, yeah, how do you do both, how do?

1:27:27 - Mike Elgan
you do both yeah, the frustrating can though I think you can the frustrating thing is we all we all understand that, that the others, that that our political people who oppose our positions politically, are getting totally different sources of information. They don't know the things we know and we don't know the things they know because there are two channels of information, and so we should be encouraging everybody to change that and to to broaden our source of information. And I would encourage everybody to go to all sidescom. All sidescom is a is an independent organization that will take a news story and say here's what the left says, here's what the right says, here's what the center says, and instead of getting one story about every topic, you get three stories about every topic from the whole perspective.

So you say, oh, that's what Breitbart is saying, this is what MSNBC is saying, and here's what AP is saying, and here's what AP is saying, right, so it's really nice to you know, it's it's really nice to be able to. And they also have matrices for not only left and right, center and moderate, left of center, right of center, but they also have them for fact checks, not fact checked. So there are sources of information on the right, for example, that are fact checked and many that are not fact checked and vice versa. So if you can narrow your information sources down to the fact-checked and you also get the spectrum, and I think if more people were getting their news like that, I think we'd be in a better position to understand each other.

1:28:52 - Emily Forlini
That's cool. It's like an automatic version of what I do. I always go when anything happens. I go to CNN and Fox and I compare the headlines, and if something is huge on one side and nowhere on the other, I know it's falling flat with the other audience and it's not a real point. So that's a super cool website. It seems like it just does it in a way better way.

1:29:13 - Leo Laporte
Somebody in our club a few days ago recommended another similar site, mike called Ground News, that does almost exactly the same thing. In fact, it shows with a story, a bar showing how each different media reported it, and it also has something really interesting which is a blind spot feed, which is stories that if you are on one side you might not see. So these are, for the right, stories that had little to no reporting on the right, and for the left, prince William and biodegradable sneakers. Okay, yeah, the right didn't really cover that.

1:29:50 - Mike Elgan
I did not hear about that. What a great site and what a great feature.

1:29:55 - Leo Laporte
That sounds really fantastic. And stories on the left that have little note of reporting on the left, for instance, West Virginia voters approving a constitutional ban on physician assisted suicides. So I think this is really actually fantastic Ground news. So there's two different places you can go to try to get a more balance in your life. I like that idea.

I subscribed to a ground news, but I'll have to take a look at all sides as well, I think I did it before the election, but I wonder, do you think there'll be less of an issue that we were very worried about? Disinformation, russian attempts to sub suborn our democracy and so forth? It doesn't feel like that had a lot to do with this.

1:30:48 - Mike Elgan
Well, you had the Russians spreading disinformation for Trump and you had the Iranians spreading disinformation for Harris, and they kind of balanced each other out. But in 2016, it was all on Trump's side. China's also chimed in to a certain extent, so there's, I think what's happening is that the different disinformation is is more balanced, actually, and the other thing that the russians were apparently uh preparing is, if harris had won, they were going to try to foment a lot of violence between the election and the, the, the inauguration, um, and they were working on all kinds of ways to do that, but um, it's.

1:31:29 - Leo Laporte
I feel like it didn't change p. I feel honestly, I feel like this was a very maybe I'm weird, but an honest vote. I think the people who voted voted their genuine feelings, not because they were misled or lied to or Well, you never know.

1:31:45 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think that's the case every year.

1:31:47 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, A lot of misinformation or disinformation comes from within Also, like we have tons of people, I see posting things just to get likes or reposting things. It's we all play a role.

1:32:01 - Leo Laporte
But it's often a confirmation bias, right? I mean, you kind of pass on the thing that you agree with and others agree with you, and it's just reassure, it reaffirms your belief rather than changing anybody's mind.

1:32:14 - Mike Elgan
I think, yeah, I think we're more affected by a lack of information than than misinformation or disinformation. There, you, you, affected by a lack of information than than misinformation or disinformation. There, you, you, you can talk to your average american voter and they just don't know anything about anything. It's just, it's, it's, it's really phenomenal. They have, they have perception, they have, uh, you know, feelings about maybe they don't like immigration, or you know, maybe the the left is too woke, or you know, maybe the the left is too woke, or you know whatever, whatever the feeling is, but but when it gets down to policy, or how the constitution works, or how the electoral college works, or how foreign policy works, or what america's alliances, what their function is, or how the world economic system works, no clue. And so I think that's the biggest. You know, education and and and self-education, or the lack thereof, is the biggest, bigger problem than disinformation.

1:33:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, although I'm of the opinion espoused by people like Jonathan Haidt and Kahneman that we really are driven, are led to our beliefs by emotion and then later use our reason to justify our feelings, and I think that this was very much a feeling election that people voted their feelings.

1:33:32 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think a lot of exit polls were showing that one of the top issues for voters was the economy. And I mean, if you look on paper, the economy is technically good, but people feel the economy is bad. That matters way more, right, yeah.

1:33:46 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I think that emotions are generated by information. Like I don't think it's completely divorced in any way, like what Paris just said, or how many people are amped up about immigration that have just never even seen a migrant or transgender, people who have no one in their life. Who's transgender? It's like they're seeing information online and deciding about it and voting on it and getting a reaction from it. So it's the emotions are coming from the information, always.

1:34:15 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, I think you're right and from a futurist point of view, I think we're entering it's an early indication that we're entering into a world where things are. We live in kind of reality and we also live in virtual reality. We live in augmented reality, we live in artificial reality. People are following influencers that are CGI, you know, and we're just in the early days of all that, and we're entering into a world where there are multiple layers to the reality that people live. Like you say, they've never seen a migrant. They walk around the neighborhood, everything's peaceful and quiet and pleasant and nice, but in their minds, based on their media exposure, the world's on fire and it's just. Everything's a nightmare. So I don't know what we can do other than encourage everyone to live their actual lives and get good information and also live your actual life.

1:35:10 - Leo Laporte
You know, the use of transgender people in the campaign by the Trump campaign really bothered me, because, I think you're right, mike, I think very few people know very many transgender people and if they do, they're probably okay with them because they're family members but it played on a very strong emotion that people have of disgust or revulsion, and it and it got people to think, you know, I mean trump was saying things like, oh, they're gonna, your child's gonna go to school and it's gonna come home a different gender like, and no one could possibly believe that's the case, but it triggered a very strong emotion in people and that's kind of what I mean.

Uh, it was possible, in a way, to pass along disinformation that created a perception that there is bad inflation or, you know, even though gas prices and food prices were going down, or that, uh, that your school's gonna send your boy home as a girl, uh, triggered something in people very visceral that, oh, I think, overwhelmed any rational sense. But but that was, uh, you know, I think that's a lesson unfortunately a bad lesson that our campaigns have learned that we're going to see more of in future campaigns well, and and and again.

1:36:33 - Mike Elgan
I think in general this ties into technology, because I think that the overriding anxiety is things are changing too fast. Yeah, and and and. Trans uh, trans people are part, are part of that, immigration is part of that. All these things are changing. I don't get it.

1:36:49 - Leo Laporte
What's our lives too fast.

1:36:54 - Mike Elgan
And people want things to change, to be slow or non-existent and it and I think that's stressing people out and I think we in the tech industry. You know the stuff I write about. I write about the stuff that changes culture. So my the basic formulation for my newsletter is basically it's cyberpunk, non-fiction. I think late 20th century cyberpunk is the best description of where we're at now in technology and where we're going we love that stuff but we're unique but it, but it's.

I I can imagine that my newsletter would be super stressful with people, because I'm talking about chip and brain implants and, like you know, ai, artificial limbs and like all this kind of crazy cyberpunk type stuff, which is the world we're living in. So the world is, the change that we go through is going to keep accelerating and this will keep stressing people out, because a lot of people don't like the pace of change. That's the biggest stressor, I think. I think people don't understand.

1:37:49 - Emily Forlini
And there's uh, what's that? I saw something. It was like everything is a conspiracy theory when you don't know how anything works right, yeah, yeah and I think it's all magic.

right it's. It's just ripe to to use or wield, Like you said, Leo, about trans people. You don't understand it. I will wield that in my campaign and I will so fear and mistrust rather than understanding. And so if you approach every change that way, of course you're going to be kind of dominated and ruled by it. You don't know even what you're talking about and you're going off fumes.

1:38:22 - Leo Laporte
Right, you're watching this Week in Google with a very fine panel. I appreciate the support we get from our fans, especially from people in the club. I want to encourage you to join Club Twitter if you're not already a member. It's $ dollars a month. We try to keep the price really affordable. You can give more, by the way, you don't. You don't have to stop at seven dollars, but that's the. That's kind of the base, although we have added a few features to make it more enticing. For instance, your first two weeks are free. So if you're wondering what's it like in the club, this is a great way to find out. First two weeks free. Also, you'll get a little code when you join that you could put on your social media or give to friends or make a billboard that you put up on the highway, and for everybody who joins the club, from that code, you get a free month. So a club could be less than seven. It could be free if you do it right, if you use all your skills to promote it.

We want you to be in the club for a number of reasons. First of all, it really helps us keep the lights on. We've had to shrink as the podcast industry has kind of rejiggered as the celebrities and the influencers are getting the ad dollars these days, youtubers not so much. Shows like ours that have been around for a long time that are long and thoughtful and boring we don't get the ad dollars that those do and, as a result, we need to go to you. If you like what you hear on the maybe not this show in particular but if you like the shows, if you like the content we're producing, if you want to join a really great community of smart people in our Club Twit Discord, you do do get ad free versions of all the shows. So that's another reason to join. You don't ever have to hear another ad like this.

You also get the twit plus feed, which has events that we do in the club to a discord. We stream those live often so everybody can watch, like our coffee episodes, stacy's book club, micah's crafting corner. But they also go on the twit plus feed for people who can't watch live and our club members get access to that. So there are a lot of benefits. There's more. Even, I want you to go to twittv slash club twit. Take a look and see if it sounds like something you'd like to do. You can try it for two weeks free twittv, slash club Twit. I do want to encourage you to consider it, though, because it's what's keeping us going, and we'd like to keep going.

1:40:46 - Mike Elgan
And, if I can chime in, if you're a club member, as I am, you don't have to get the ad-free version. You can get the ad version as well, because I like the ads. The advertised products are great. You'll learn new things about 1Password, for example, new products and so on. So, you can get the ads too. The other thing is don't call it shrinking, leo. Call it the Department of Podcasting Efficiency.

1:41:09 - Leo Laporte
Dope. We had Elon Musk come and he said this has to go and this has to go. And that studio, what do you? It was true. I mean, it's kind of crazy to have a studio in this day and age when you can podcast from your laptop anywhere. Mike's sitting outside on the balcony.

1:41:23 - Paris Martineau
It is now hardcore.

1:41:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we've gone hardcore, that's it.

1:41:28 - Mike Elgan
And you should be here, Leo. You should be here doing the show. What are you doing up there? I?

1:41:32 - Leo Laporte
wish I were. We have a team of 11 people who work very hard to to make it happen and gizmo that makes it 12 hello and one cat who I'm trying to get to meow into the microphone he looks so excited she's upset that I made her sit up instead of stay on my lap. She's going to show you her butt now. She really is a cuddle munchkin.

1:41:52 - Paris Martineau
I'm I'm kind of amazed she is yeah she just knows it's after 6 pm where I am and this is the time in which I should be playing with her, so she's gonna bother me until I do it uh, where I'm ready to wrap this up so that gizmo can get lunch or dinner.

1:42:10 - Leo Laporte
Um, is there?

1:42:11 - Paris Martineau
anything.

1:42:11 - Leo Laporte
All of the above ideally all three at the same time. Is there before we get to our picks of the week? Is there anything more that we should do you think we should talk about in our look ahead to January 2025?

1:42:30 - Paris Martineau
I mean, this isn't really, I guess, January 2025, but I was sad to see the Mozilla Foundation laid off 30% of staff.

1:42:38 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, you know, I worry about that so much I use the Firefox browser. I really think we need to have a non-Google browser in the world.

1:42:48 - Paris Martineau
Even if it's funded entirely by Google.

1:42:51 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's, I mean, that's the beauty of it. Mozilla, mozilla Is anyone using that? I use Firefox. Yes, firefoxfox, it's very good, you know yeah, people like firefox.

1:43:05 - Emily Forlini
I don't care less if firefox left the planet the firefox boys are gonna come at you. Once you locked into your browser, that's what you use, so I I couldn't care google huge power because everything else is based on Chrome.

1:43:25 - Leo Laporte
As an example, google has decided to deprecate their manifest V2 and move to manifest V3 for ostensibly security reasons, but what it ends up doing is makes it very difficult for ad blockers to run.

1:43:38 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's why I'm going to leave Google Chrome. Honestly, where are you going?

1:43:41 - Emily Forlini
to go, why I'm going to leave Google Chrome. Honestly, yeah, where are you going to go? Where are you going to go?

1:43:43 - Leo Laporte
Firefox, firefox, that's why you need an alternative, because Brave is Chromium-based Arc, edge is Chromium-based Arc, which I really like is Chromium-based Yep, and so they're really going to have to do what Google says, not what Google says, not to mention that Google's real businesses is ads, and so their browser is always going to be better at collecting information about you.

1:44:06 - Emily Forlini
And I'm just going to do everything in Microsoft Paint after the election. I think that's really smart. I think.

1:44:12 - Paris Martineau
I think that you should just have us do everything.

1:44:15 - Emily Forlini
We should have a full Clippy browser when I'm feeling hardcore, it'll be notepad.

1:44:20 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, it's sad to say here uh, the mozilla foundation, uh, which is the non-profit arm of uh mozilla laid off 30 of its employees. They say they face a quote relentless onslaught of change. I know how that feels. Um, they're reorganizing teams. The mozilla foundation said they had 60 employees a couple of years ago. Um, although according to some people with knowledge of the matter says tech crunch, it was closer to 120, the times of left. So honestly, if they went in three years from 60 to 120, they doubled in size. Cutting 60 to 120, they doubled in size. Cutting back to 90 isn't necessarily.

1:45:05 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I feel bad for the 30 people who are affected, but yeah I mean, I think it just also shows that they're changing the way they're operating a bit right.

1:45:15 - Leo Laporte
Um, it's no longer a world where they see themselves continuing to expand at this rate I do believe it's important that firefox uh succeed and continue, just as an alternative uh to a world that's chrome based. I'll I'll eat my words yeah, you don't, you know you don't want to. For instance uh, do you use an ad blocker, emily?

1:45:39 - Emily Forlini
I do sometimes. I actually turned it back on to support all the publications that I surf all day because I'm writing articles and researching all day.

1:45:49 - Paris Martineau
You're out there just raw dogging the internet.

1:45:52 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, it's rough, it's rough.

1:45:53 - Leo Laporte
I have to admit my excuse for using ad blockers, because I'm showing pages on the screen, like this TechCrunch page, and I don't want a bunch of ads cluttering up what I'm showing. But I also continue to use it when I'm not on the air.

1:46:07 - Emily Forlini
So maybe that's well. It just makes I just really appreciate a physical book, or I even have print magazines. It is the most pure calming experience. I could not recommend it enough. Another good, probably fodder for soothing post-election. Just to get off the internet.

1:46:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah, I have a very large, long science fiction book. I started just because I knew I would need some distraction. Video games are good for that too. I think yeah, what was Animal if I I used animal crossing to relieve the rentless monotony of covid, uh, the covid quarantine, and I think I might go back to it, I imagine leo, we've got to do our baldur's gate three run.

1:46:51 - Paris Martineau
Oh oh, there was some thought about doing it tomorrow um I had it on my laptop.

1:46:59 - Leo Laporte
Well, no, well, we wouldn't do it without you. You're our team leader. I don't know if I'm ready tomorrow okay, but if I've given advance notice is thursday, a bad day for you to do that, to do something like that I mean any weekday you have a job during.

1:47:16 - Paris Martineau
I do have a job but I can. I can find some time. We'll see jessica. I have to go.

1:47:20 - Leo Laporte
Just let me know I have to play boulders gate three.

1:47:23 - Paris Martineau
I don't know. No, probably not gonna work, but I do. I am gonna be off a couple days around the holidays.

1:47:29 - Emily Forlini
I don't know, yeah, you guys gonna live stream this. You could probably make some yeah yeah, so that was the idea.

1:47:33 - Leo Laporte
well, we don't need to make money. We we have the club. That was the idea to do a club event. All of the club shows are moving. The ones I do are going to move to Thursday at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern. And because of staffing and we do a lot of little things in the club like that, like the coffee show and stuff, so, and Paris is a big Baldur's Gate three person, I find it difficult. I think wasn't Anthony Nielsen going to join our party?

And then Joe from the Discord and Benito too.

1:48:10 - Paris Martineau
Oh, how big a party can you have.

1:48:12 - Leo Laporte
I think four.

1:48:14 - Paris Martineau
So we'll swap some people around.

1:48:15 - Leo Laporte
No, we can have Anthony Nielsen, Benito, you and me. How about that? And then should I be the healer? Because somebody needs to be the healer and I want to be the healer is there a healer?

1:48:27 - Mike Elgan
you can absolutely be the healer nobody wants to be the healer

1:48:30 - Paris Martineau
you can be a cleric I really, you can play shadow.

1:48:33 - Emily Forlini
That just also stirs the pot.

1:48:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, right it creates things to heal. I'm not fixing you. Yeah, I'm not fixing you, I'm sorry. Yeah, the you.

1:48:42 - Paris Martineau
I'm sorry, I've got one spell slot I do think we need to get leo a controller if he's going to play, because I think he'll be confused trying to play it on mac.

1:48:54 - Leo Laporte
I think that I've been trying to play it on the keyboard, the controls on on the keyboard are are less intuitive than the controller. I have controllers. Should I use an Xbox joystick style controller? Okay, okay.

1:49:06 - Paris Martineau
That works.

1:49:07 - Leo Laporte
I have plenty of those that I can use with the Macs.

1:49:10 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, I forget. You're a gamer, I'm not a gamer.

1:49:13 - Leo Laporte
Gamers would say I'm not a gamer, although I have a game I like to play, but that doesn't count. What are we doing next? Mike Elgin on the Gastro Nomad Tours.

1:49:26 - Mike Elgan
Well, next is Oaxaca, again in December.

I'll never forget that we have some new ones coming up which is Sicily we have two Sicily experiences in 2025. And it was funny because, amir, we were talking about election stuff and politics and how everybody's upset and all that kind of stuff, and Amir was saying you know, the world needs us now more than ever. What people really need is to go on an extraordinary journey of food and wine and go back in time to where things are simple and you're sitting around a table with people in some beautiful foreign country having delicious food, for example, in the italian experience, and so yeah, so, so we've got. We've got a full deck uh with uh experiences.

I would encourage people to if you're thinking about it for a long time to sign up soon, because we're getting to the point where there's so much word of mouth on these experiences that they're filling up like way in advance. So I would encourage everybody to sign up. Don't wait. Send me an email if you're just even thinking about it, because the gastronomic experiences are just. You need this, you deserved it and you should. You should join us. So where?

1:50:36 - Leo Laporte
in Sicily. Are you going to be?

1:50:39 - Mike Elgan
We're going to be mostly centered around Etna, which has a spectacular wine country around the eastern half of the volcano Like halfway up the volcano is this half ring of wineries and the food and the wine culture around Etna is spectacular. And then, you know, we'll go a little bit further from that. But that's another world and I would encourage everybody. It's a bucket list item and you really deserve to experience that. It's beautiful there.

1:51:08 - Leo Laporte
I can endorse it. Lisa, and I did the Oaxaca experience when you did it during the Day of the Dead. Yes, and it changed our lives. We had an ofrenda for the Day of the Dead this year. Fantastic, wonderful.

1:51:18 - Mike Elgan
And we had an, a friend, uh, uh, for the day of the dead, this is fantastic and I printed out pictures of some of our uh uh ancestors.

1:51:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, wonderful, it's really nice.

1:51:26 - Mike Elgan
That's a great uh concept and we should we Americans should embrace day of the day.

1:51:32 - Leo Laporte
They do in Petaluma. We have a day of the dead is a big deal in Pet Fantastic. All right, good, sicily, let's all meet there next. Great See you there. We're going to take a little break when we come back. Picks of the Week. You're watching this Week in Google. I don't know. Emily, do you know about the Picks of the Week? Have we talked about? Have we had that conversation?

1:51:59 - Emily Forlini
I don't think so, but we'll run with it. What?

1:52:01 - Leo Laporte
is it? Think about something. I'll give you some time mike and paris will do theirs and just think about something doesn't have. It could be a book, a movie, it's something you want to stop for a minute or two.

1:52:13 - Paris Martineau
It's something like I've done every pick from like a website I like to a product I'm using, to going to a corn maze with your friends to you know what. I'm going to. I have a two parter of this week. My first one is this website the New York times tech guild put together.

They're on strike right now, but and they've asked people as part of it, to pause your use of New York Times games, because they're the ones that maintain that and they're currently on a protected labor strike because they've been trying to get a contract for a while. But in order for you to get your fix while also standing with workers, they've put together their own strike versions of New York Times games that are updated every day.

They've got Strykle the are updated every day. They've got strikele the wordle one. They've got connected a connections version, you know. They've got a whole word search. It's all little fun stuff and it updates every day. Um good for them.

1:53:11 - Leo Laporte
yeah, they went on strike right before the election and I have a friend of mine, uh, daniel, who is on our micro blog, said I have a I can't remember what dan Daniel had like 700 day Wordle streak and he was going to break his streak just to support the guild. So good on him.

1:53:30 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

1:53:31 - Leo Laporte
But you don't have to. You can break your streak, but not give up your Jones your game. They have connected. They have word search your game, and they have connected. They have word search. They even have frogger eighth avenue, where you can jump across eighth avenue trying to get to the times building not, not, yeah, which is frankly, a game we all need.

1:53:51 - Paris Martineau
Um, and the last thing I want to plug is uh is the florida access network. It's a group that uh provides financial and logistical support to women seeking abortion services in florida, who just uh declined to pass a bill that would have extended the right for abortion access this really frustrated me, because they got 57 of the vote for but in florida you need 60 percent. It's a constitutional amendment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:54:21 - Leo Laporte
And so this would have enshrined the right to abortion in Florida, where of course, it is illegal and it failed After six weeks After six weeks. Yeah, it failed because they didn't quite get to, but I mean 57% of people in Florida support it.

1:54:37 - Paris Martineau
I mean they still got, yeah, more than half. So come on Well.

1:54:44 - Emily Forlini
I figure.

1:54:45 - Paris Martineau
One way to you know support people who want to accept to express their right to choose legally in a legal state is by supporting organizations like this. They help them do it.

1:54:59 - Leo Laporte
Florida Access Network at FLA, fl Access Network dot org organizations like this that help them do it. So florida access network at fla, fl access networkorg. And uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's about, uh, access to reproductive health. I don't think that that's too much to ask. Uh, good, thank you, and I'm glad you could promote that guild site. I didn't know about that. That's great, I'll have to tell. Daniel Punkass about that. Mike Elgin, your pick of the week, my friend.

1:55:28 - Mike Elgan
Well, so I am enjoying this site called WebCheck, which basically is designed for open source intelligence. It reveals every possible thing that can be known about a website all at once, in just a few seconds. All the information can be found if you use a combination of other services, but to the best of my knowledge, this site is the most thorough in exposing every single thing there is to know, and we need open source intelligence in journalism now more than ever, or even among the the technical lay public, because there's a lot of shady dealings going on and you can. You can get clues and information about a

1:56:11 - Leo Laporte
website and put it in the address like, for instance, I didn't know our server was located in dublin, ohio. That's, that's quite a revelation, yeah, so it's.

1:56:22 - Mike Elgan
It's a great site. It's a fun site and it's shocking how much information it just wow, reveals on a single page. So it's it's a lot of fun, and and so I encourage everybody to check it out web dash check dot x, y, z's it, and it's just fun to do it.

1:56:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, frankly, that's cool. All right, emily, by now you have some idea of what we're talking about. Emily Forlini, from the fabulous PC Magazine your pick of the week, all right.

1:56:56 - Emily Forlini
Well, these are very altruistic and lovely picks.

1:57:00 - Leo Laporte
No, pick something really self-centered here. Pasta.

1:57:03 - Emily Forlini
Pick something stupid. I have something really self-centered and stupid, so I am going to solicit some feedback on a social media account that I'm thinking about starting. Oh, and I would like to know what you guys think about it.

1:57:16 - Leo Laporte
Okay.

1:57:17 - Emily Forlini
So what Mike was saying, my kind, like my kind of guilty reading pleasure is like explorer firsthand accounts, like from throughout history, like people who explored and like did something crazy.

1:57:30 - Mike Elgan
I love them. I love them so much.

1:57:33 - Emily Forlini
So like a historically focused explorer tales account basically that just kind of like sparks people's imagination and has like little excerpts from those writings.

1:57:46 - Leo Laporte
This is what the internet is so great is just some weird obsessive thing that you're really into and sharing it with people and they go, wow, that's great. Now, where would you put this? On threads on blue sky, on X, where would you put this?

1:58:01 - Emily Forlini
That's the really hard question. It's so much easier to just put it on Twitter or something because it's text, just paste the text right. But I don't feel like that's the right platform, if I can get it together, I think Blue Sky would like it. Really.

1:58:15 - Leo Laporte
Here's what I'm going to suggest. I got a tip for you. Yeah, please, if you use an iphone, I do. There is an app called croissant. It is a buttery smooth app that lets you post to blue sky, mastodon and threads oh cool, all at the same time. I would suggest doing it on mastodon too, because there are a lot of history nerds on yeah, that's what you defined, yeah, yeah and the nice thing about this app which is I can't remember, it's five bucks or something.

I use it all the time is you can post the same content, exact same content, once on all three sites. So it's very nicely done. It does allow you to attach images, create threads. You can have multiple accounts. I use it to pass posts to all three. Notice no X, Probably more having to do with the cost of the X API than anything else.

1:59:10 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, well, I want somewhere that's just more. Yeah, for pleasure, for interest. It doesn't need to be in the mix on the politics or anything. It's meant to be escapist for sure.

1:59:22 - Leo Laporte
You know it's always a challenge. I asked cory doctor why he's still on x, uh, and he says because that's where all my friends are right. He, um, he likened it this was on twit a couple of weeks ago to the town in fiddler on the roof. What is that? An that? Anatevka? Because he said, you know, every few years the Cossacks would come and beat the crap out of everybody in Anatevka but they wouldn't leave because that's where their family and friends were. But that's the sad thing about Fiddler on the Roof At the end the Tsar actually throws them out and forces them them to leave.

But they didn't leave until they had to.

2:00:01 - Mike Elgan
I guarantee you that all his friends are not still on X. Most are not, but still it's a community. There's a slow bleed of our friends on and I won't use the thing. Why not on Substack, medium or Ghost or something like that? If you're good at something never do it for free, according to the Joker.

2:00:21 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, yeah.

2:00:22 - Paris Martineau
He's only made great choices.

2:00:24 - Emily Forlini
Don't you need to have some advertising on social media and then drive them to the sub stack.

2:00:29 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, do both. Yes, yeah, so it'd be like snippets.

2:00:31 - Emily Forlini
But then the sub stack would be the full writing and then the comments on it, because there's also interesting stuff like problematic narratives about you know, the quote natives and there's like all kinds of stuff that pops up. Yeah, so that could be discussed.

2:00:45 - Leo Laporte
Here's something in between a ghost blog and social media which is called micro blog. I don't know if you're familiar with micro dot blog. Manton Reese made a really cool site. It hasn't had the uptake that I would like to see I my blogs on there there, but there's also a timeline of short posts you could put on there so you could write long as I do, long uh posts. Micro blog all right, right, micro dot blog, um, so I write long posts there, but also you can have short posts. And it is a mastodon or, I'm sorry, yeah, I guess mastodon it's a. It's an activity pub endpoint, so you also get a uh mastodon account and you can. People could follow you from mastodon, which means they can follow you also from threads. So, uh, microblog is kind of interesting. The real problem with all of this is discovery, and that's where twitter, I'm sorry to say, still has the advantage. Right, uh, I get find you on twitter like I don't know I have.

2:01:45 - Mike Elgan
I have tens of thousands of followers on on x and I have I don't know 11 000 on macedon, and the engagement is vastly higher in macedon isn't that?

2:01:54 - Leo Laporte
it's interesting our web engineer, patrick uh, is posted in discord that twits posts get much better engagement on blue sky than even though we have a fraction of the followers.

2:02:05 - Emily Forlini
I mean my posts on Twitter get very little action. I get tons of views on TikToks, tons of likes, and they're not even that great. I mean some platforms. It feels like you're giving it out for free. If everyone's there in the right community, you don't even have to work hard.

2:02:18 - Mike Elgan
I mean, if you kind of sort of want to get off X, the way to get off X is to go into the things that you promoted of your own writing and look at how many, how much traffic it drove to those links and you'll see that it's three or five, it rounds to zero. And you think, and then you come to the conclusion it's like why am I doing this, why am I zero? And you think, and then you come to the conclusion is like why am I doing this? Why am I holding my nose and and and being on elon musk's platform when I, when it's not driving any traffic?

2:02:46 - Emily Forlini
yeah, yeah well, the other thing I need for my idea is ideas about stories to cover. So if anyone wants to message me on instagram or tiktok or x with your favorite Discovery Explorer stories, I will write them down and put them on this future account. Nice, exciting.

2:03:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so we follow you on Twitter and then you would announce it there Would that be a good way.

2:03:13 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I want to do it anonymously. I kind of like the idea of pretending I'm some kind of historical bard, oh, you want to be like horse e-books, right?

2:03:22 - Paris Martineau
You just want to be no one knows who you are. Everybody wants to be horse. E-books We'll see.

2:03:28 - Emily Forlini
I mean, this was a big step. I got out there some interest. Maybe I'll do it.

2:03:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:03:34 - Paris Martineau
I think it's a great idea.

2:03:35 - Leo Laporte
You know there's no way to monetize it. It's not going to promote your fame.

2:03:40 - Mike Elgan
Make it a book.

2:03:41 - Emily Forlini
I do think it could be a horse e-book.

2:03:45 - Mike Elgan
Yes.

2:03:45 - Emily Forlini
I could probably easily self-publish a compilation of all my favorite. And why not? And why that I can't swear Not F not?

2:03:54 - Leo Laporte
Steve Martin, who was a very active Twitter user and very funny Twitter user, actually did make a book out of his tweets and there's a little bit of a tenuous twig connection, because when he was trying to compile all of his past tweets you know he's good at the one line or they're hysterical he asked for help and our former host helped him out. I've forgotten her name now, which is terrible. Oh no, you know what I'm talking about.

Stacey Election brain Before Stacey Gina Trapani. Gina, yeah, she had written a tool that in the old days of twitter could could track all your posts and stuff and and congregate. The api broke that very quickly but steve uh, get steve, on twig, yeah um I can ask. I can ask. I wonder if he he's kind of busy with his this tv show?

2:04:59 - Paris Martineau
he does, but um wonder if he he's kind of busy with his this tv show. He does, but um, yeah, it doesn't seem as important as talking about google and other things, but he plays a podcaster, which, I wonder, isn't that fun? Yeah, he's gotta do some work in the content minds to get into scene it's research for him the uh the uh book came out in 2012, so it's been a while.

2:05:19 - Leo Laporte
It was called the Ten. Make that Nine Habits of Very Organized People. Make that ten the tweets of Steve Martin. And it was very, very funny, gosh, I can't believe it was so long 12 years ago.

2:05:33 - Emily Forlini
Well, that's a lot cooler of a book than my proposed book.

2:05:36 - Leo Laporte
But that's the point, is that you can do that right, you can make something out of that.

2:05:40 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, you can do it Well, but that's the point, is that you can do that. Right, you can make something out of that. Yeah, you can do it.

2:05:44 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to partner with Mike and we're going to give out the book for free to your gastro nomad participants. Yes, absolutely Brilliant, Because they are explorers all of them.

2:05:51 - Emily Forlini
They're explorers. They want the best, the best, the best stories. They want to make them themselves.

2:06:04 - Leo Laporte
So we'll team up it. So let's see Epicurean celebration. That's right. Emily Forlini is so great to have you on with your new name. You may remember her as Emily Drybelvis, but we still think you're fantastic Either way. Pcmagcom, she is now Emily Forlini on X and soon we'll be look for a. I don't know what you call it. You call yourself Amundsen tweets or something like that. Yeah, I don't know, you can call yourself Amundsen Tweets or something like that.

2:06:23 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to figure it out. That's the next step. So next time we meet we'll do a name brainstorm.

2:06:29 - Leo Laporte
That's a great idea. Thank you, emily, it's great to see you.

2:06:32 - Emily Forlini
Yes, it was a lot of fun.

2:06:33 - Leo Laporte
Yay, Mike Elgin. Man, you always make me jealous.

2:06:44 - Paris Martineau
The sun is going down in baja. Yes, it's a beautiful day we have margaritas.

2:06:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you're having a baja blast. That's right. Every time you've left the camera.

2:06:48 - Emily Forlini
Have you been sipping, margarita?

2:06:51 - Mike Elgan
no, I started with beer and then somebody brought me a margarita, and so it's it happens, I gotta get way more chill on these yes well, we're gonna, we're going to be here for another week. So come, come join us. We got plenty of room here.

2:07:04 - Emily Forlini
Oh how wonderful Site sources.

2:07:08 - Leo Laporte
Doesn't it look beautiful? Look at that Machinessocietyai gastronomianet, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention hello chatterboxcom.

2:07:19 - Mike Elgan
Yes, my son hello chatterbox. Yes, thank you calm, because that is kevin's uh uh company, which, uh, it's a. It's a smart speaker that children build uh eight years and up. A lot of adults build it too. And then it it, it, it uh has plugs into open ai. It has plugs into wolfram alpha, it has a, it has uh, it has apis into all kinds of information sources and you can basically teach it to do anything. It's very private. It's the only COPPA-compliant smart speaker for schools and if you're interested in learning about AI, learning about smart speakers, want a smart speaker, have a child that wants to do a really intelligent project, it's the perfect product. So I would encourage that.

2:08:01 - Leo Laporte
Thank you for letting me plug that. Oh, you know, I love Kevin and I'm really glad we could.

2:08:05 - Mike Elgan
Yeah, and he's doing great with it. It's selling into a lot of schools around the world.

2:08:10 - Leo Laporte
It's such a good idea. It's such a good idea, especially now that generative AI is all the rage.

2:08:16 - Mike Elgan
You don't want AI to be a black box. No, it's to understand it and to understand how to control it. That's exactly right.

2:08:23 - Leo Laporte
Paris, martineau and Gizmo, we thank you so much for being here. Paris writes for the information. She's always looking for a juicy scoop. You can send them to her signal, but don't use your work phone.

2:08:38 - Paris Martineau
Martineau.01. Subscribe and a mild call out. Do you, if you work for a major tech company or a minor one, um reach out to me in my signal? Martino.01, I'm kind of looking into how tech companies are responding or not responding to the election this year in comparison to cycles past, so kind of trying to get just a broad view from inside after 2016.

2:09:08 - Leo Laporte
I wrote a long uh thing that I sent. We sent to all the team. Um, that wasn't. I should see if I could find it. It's probably in our slack somewhere but um, that was look, we're going to take the high road and we're not going to get political on this, but we have the right to defend ourselves against racism or bias of any kind. This time I don't know if it's a smaller team I think we all understand that, but Lisa said you should say something, so I guess I'll have to put out a little bit of a smaller post.

2:09:47 - Paris Martineau
I mean, that's what I think is interesting is many companies are not. That said something eight years ago are not doing it now.

2:09:56 - Emily Forlini
It would be interesting if you could find some examples of tech companies, especially major tech CEOs, who are not as happy as they appear, because I feel like that's the narrative is like people were more left in 2016 or in the past, and now Silicon Valley has gone right, and so I don't know if I 100% believe that yet. So I think there's a lot of truth to it, but if you could find any counterpoint, I would be very interested.

2:10:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's an interesting question. Of course, if they're not going to say it in public, maybe they'll say it, that's why, we got to get juicy scoops in our DMs. Yeah.

2:10:30 - Paris Martineau
Hey, reach out to me. You know where to find me, signal martino.01.

2:10:35 - Emily Forlini
Get over there if you got something to say.

2:10:38 - Leo Laporte
I'm more injudicious than most most company executives. I don't give a damn. That's why we did this show. So there, what are you going to do to me, donnie? So thank you all for being here. No, I think we. I think it's good to take the high road, to talk like adults and discuss it and do what we can and live the Epicurean life. Yes, I'm going to go. I'm going to go get a burrito. Thank you, paris.

2:11:06 - Paris Martineau
Thank you, Mike.

2:11:06 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Emily Good. Have a wonderful evening and we'll see you next week.

2:11:12 - Mike Elgan
Yes, burritos are good.

2:11:14 - Emily Forlini
Like we're ending on a like rainbows and sparkles.

2:11:17 - Mike Elgan
And burritos.

2:11:18 - Emily Forlini
And burritos and burritos and burritos you're all stars in the darkness.

2:11:26 - Leo Laporte
Burritos still exist. They're non-partisan burritos actually have. For now I've been eating one, the whole show.

2:11:30 - Emily Forlini
Oh you wait, you've been eating a burrito and mike's been drinking you didn't know that was an option, did you? I mean, I have this what are you drinking?

2:11:43 - Paris Martineau
paris, is that straight vodka uh, no, I'm drinking red vermouth originally rocks, but she's a hipster, now it's yes.

2:11:51 - Emily Forlini
Oh, I'm such a rookie, like what am I doing?

2:11:55 - Paris Martineau
listen. I don't normally drink during this show, but it felt like it was called for if I was gonna have to talk about the election for god knows how many hours I was like well well, your, your long nightmare is over.

2:12:09 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, paris.

2:12:10 - Paris Martineau
Thank you mike the perfect way to end a podcast.

2:12:13 - Leo Laporte
The long nightmare is over. We do twig every wednesday, 11 am, no 2 pm. Pacificm. Eastern 2200 UTC. Because we are now on standard time.

You can watch us live on eight different platforms. We stream live to Discord for our club members, of course, but also YouTube, twitch, tiktok, linkedin, facebook, xcom and Kik. You pick the one that matches your political persuasion and watch us there. That's fine, but that is only during the show. After the fact, you have to watch by downloading a copy of the episode, whether it's from our website, twittv, slash twig, or there is a YouTube channel dedicated to this week in Google, which is a great way to share clips. If you, you know you see something you want to tell somebody about, you could clip it on youtube. That's a very easy way to share it, uh, but best way to listen to show, I think, or watch, we have audio and videos to subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way, you get it automatically the minute it's available. Uh, links at the website twittertv twig. Thanks for joining us, thanks to our club members for making it possible. We will see you next week on this Week in Google. Bye-bye.