This Week in Google 800 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 and this week it's a special Twig the best of 2024. Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

0:00:14 - Craig Newmark
This is Twig.

0:00:20 - Leo Laporte
This is Twig this week in Google, episode 800, recorded for Christmas Day 2024. The best of 2024. Hello everybody, I'm Leo Laporte. We've given Paris and Jeff the week off, but, believe me, we have lots of great content from the year gone by. It's a look back at 2024. On this special episode of this Week in Google, we'll start off with Jeff with an interesting proposition. So I like your idea. Tell us what your idea is.

0:00:56 - Jeff Jarvis
So Bell Labs in Murray Hill, with the famous Bell Labs, where so much occurred, is closing. Occurred is um is closing uh, the bell labs and now owned by nokia, or whatever's left of it, is moving to a new facility in new brunswick by rutgers, whole modern. So the old bell labs, which is this phenomenal building in murray hill and phenomenal grounds, is going to be empty and I'm proposing that it be turned into a museum and school of the internet. Brilliant, you think about it? Why there the internet wouldn't be possible without so much that was forged at bell labs transistor, laser, information theory, unix, communication satellites, fiber optics, advances in chip design, cellular phones, compression, microphones, talkies, the first digital art, artificial intelligence. You wouldn't have an internet with so much of, uh, what was done at uh labs, unix, for crying out loud.

0:01:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the c programming language.

0:01:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Both came out at bell lab, yeah so there's a computer history museum in silicon valley, there's a television museum in the paley center in new york and the museum of the moving image of new york. Glenn and I well know that massachusetts I give a plug to him in this Glenn has a museum of printing online. There are, you know, I'm using artifacts online, but I think it's important that we have a place to recognize the, the, the development of the internet, to talk about it, to think about it. You all know that I want to start an educational program in internet studies, bringing the humanities and social sciences into this. I think it's a place to do it. So, in internet studies, bringing the humanities and social sciences into this, I think it's a place to do it. So this was my little jump on an idea. I want to end with one thing on this.

0:02:30 - Leo Laporte
Does Nokia still own it, by the way? Yeah, I believe so. It's not AT&T anymore.

0:02:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Not AT&T anymore, no, not long since. So David Eisenberg I think you know, yes, of the Cluetrain, a 12-year veteran of Bell Labs, wrote the infamous memo pushing the value of the stupid network.

0:02:48 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, that's a different David.

0:02:50 - Cathy Gellis
You think he's David?

0:02:51 - Leo Laporte
Weinberger.

0:02:53 - Jeff Jarvis
This is David.

0:02:53 - Leo Laporte
Eisenberg yes, yes, yes.

0:02:56 - Jeff Jarvis
So he in his own website says that the memo was received with acclaim everywhere in the global telecommunications community, with one exception&t itself. So heisenberg left at&t in 1998. So I think it'd be wonderful kind of justice to make uh bell labs the place for the internet. So I just put it up. I love this we'll see if there's any.

0:03:17 - Paris Martineau
I love this yeah, great idea it's also less than an it's an hour drive from where I am, so then I can visit the internet museum field trip I I also went there once.

0:03:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I used to. We started njcom. We did start njcom.

It was the star ledger right it's the star ledger where who I used to work with when I worked, uh, on that. So we went to visit bell labs and I think nokia owned it then, before it went to Lucent or Lucent owned it, I don't know. It's been a child shoved around from house to house but it's, you know, drab, as I remember industrial green walls. But you walk by the labs and you see the benches and the blackboards and you think what genius was in there, what happened in these places? It's haunted by genius. We can't let it become condos or warehouses.

0:04:08 - Glenn Fleishman
I think it's also good to be a place where you could go and see the internet. Right, and I'm sort of being funny, but yes, back in the 90s when I had an early internet company, I would get calls from local media all the time because they needed to kind of b-roll. They want to shoot. They'd say, can we come and look at the internet? I'm well like, glenn has it. Glenn has the internet.

Sure, it's in this room, it's some sun systems, and they would come in and we would talk about the internet or get like national news and be like this guy has the internet. And it felt a little like, well, people are looking for a thing, a physical thing, to put on it, and now, as a phone, the internet. So I think there's actually something nice about instantiating the notion of the internet as a place, as a thing you could go and look at what made it in a way that there's no, as you said, there's no technology museum that is specifically devoted to what the internet was, what it became, what it is now, what it's going to become.

0:04:58 - Jeff Jarvis
I think it's great and do an oral history with, with, with sir tim berners-lee and with umizSurf and the folks who were there at the beginning, and I think it's something we've got to remember. I plug my books at every opportunity, as the poor listeners of this show know. I did it in my testimony. I was very proud of myself. I got a notebook plug for my testimony.

0:05:22 - Leo Laporte
We noted that, by the way, you also. You didn't mention it by name, but you got to plug in for this show too well, actually, actually I did because that was my intro.

0:05:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, so the name of the show was in the intro. Did?

0:05:32 - Leo Laporte
they mention this week in google.

0:05:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, they did, and your ai inside and ai inside, which, by the way, continues on which, by the way, well, while we're on that, just real quickly, tomorrow jason is going to drop episode zero of AI Inside at aiinsidestory, with his Patreon up to support it, and then next week we'll have our first real show. Great.

0:05:54 - Leo Laporte
So it's the show. Basically, you were workshopping in a club. You're just going to keep doing it. Yeah, wonderful.

0:06:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Glad to hear it. So, anyway, it took 500 years to decide to study the book. We can't wait that long for the internet, we need to study it now.

0:06:10 - Glenn Fleishman
And you can have an animatronic Al Gore who can guide you through the museum.

0:06:14 - Mikah Sargent
God it's mine, it's all mine Explain repeatedly.

0:06:18 - Glenn Fleishman
I didn't say what they said, I said, but anyway I did.

0:06:21 - Paris Martineau
I was instrumental in the internet growing.

0:06:25 - Glenn Fleishman
I did not build the internet. It's just in a loop and it follows you around. You're like okay, Al, I get it, I get it.

0:06:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't travel, I'm just thinking that you would Paris, since you saw wood on the street Because of the outside.

0:06:38 - Paris Martineau
I was just telling you I do saw wood in the street. She builds furniture I do have an industrial size measuring tape at my office desk, just in case Just in case.

0:06:49 - Leo Laporte
This is what I travel with.

0:06:51 - Paris Martineau
Oh, and my version of that is during the summer months, I travel with a pair of garden shears in my bag in case there are any low hanging. I do because, as Jeff, a fellow tall person, will understand the trees will sometimes be really low, and then you no, I'm not stealing anything. The trees will be really low on my walk to and from the subway and they'll hit me in the head and no one turns them.

0:07:14 - Craig Newmark
I hate that. It's like guerrilla gardening Wait wait wait.

0:07:16 - Mikah Sargent
You need to change, you need the world. I'm a fellow tall too but I never.

0:07:26 - Leo Laporte
I would always just limbo under the trees, not flip. I would forward limbo under the trees that's for wimps.

0:07:28 - Mikah Sargent
You go around with shears and you cut she's a gorilla gardener. I'm joining this club it's great, it's phenomenal.

0:07:35 - Paris Martineau
It gives you a sense of power how big are these shears. They're pretty large. I'll see if I can find them do you put them up your sleeve?

0:07:42 - Mikah Sargent
send them to me, because I'm gonna get some and I'm joining your class, paris you are gonna make such a great old lady I swear to god that's the kind of thing, fran lebowitz.

0:07:55 - Leo Laporte
I have to say the idea of paris walking around new york city pruning trees randomly pruning trees cracks me up. There will be more about this later. By the way, you're watching our best of 2024 for this week in Google. We're so glad you're here. Happy holidays On. We go with one of our favorite guests on this week in Google. This was actually the first time the wonderful Molly White made her guest appearance the wonderful Molly White made her guest appearance.

Yeah, I was going to point to the Wikipedia article on the lamest edit wars. Were you part of this lamest edit war?

0:08:41 - Molly White
It's a list of them, oh.

0:08:47 - Paris Martineau
So I don't think I've been a part of any of them. Okay, I think it's a list of them. Oh, so I don't think I've been a part of any of them. Okay, I think it's really funny. The disclaimer up top says this page contains in bold material that is kept because it is considered humorous.

0:08:55 - Molly White
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously we like to warn people before we get too crazy no irony on wikipedia um my favorite one is towards the bottom, where people were edit warring, which is really just when you're editing back and forth between versions of a page over whether or not we could call the tiger the world's most powerful cat these are hysterical, the things people fight over.

0:09:26 - Leo Laporte
Uh, the bgs. Are they a british or australian group? Freddie mercury uh, what's his true ancestry? Jennifer aniston is she american or american born? Is she greek american, english american, greek and english american? Does she need all those prefixes? Uh, so, copernicus, pg, woodhouse, verner, herzog, saladin, all of these have been edit war subject matter. Which one is your favorite here? The last tiger, the tiger it's, it's towards the bottom is the tiger the well? That's a really good question. Is the tiger the most powerful cat?

0:10:08 - Molly White
I don't complete with accusations that people were tiger fanboys a revert war led to arguments about how tigers would match up versus bears and crocodiles.

0:10:18 - Leo Laporte
Oh my, complete with another revert war about the inclusion of a youtube video showing a tiger fighting a crocodile.

0:10:30 - Paris Martineau
Wow, wow I love it. Um, I want to talk next about a uh a great article that the new york times did on taking a deep look into musk's uh charitable foundation, and I want to also throw it to ed for kind of an overview of this a little bit, because I know you just did a podcast episode about this where you interviewed, um one of the authors of it, david farenthold, I guess. Can you tell me a little bit about the article and like what that was?

0:11:01 - Ed Zitron
like absolute legend, David. He jumped on the phone the day after the article went out. What a legend. So long story short, Elon Musk parked about $5, $6 billion of Tesla shares. To be clear, he didn't buy them. These are just shares he had in the Musk Foundation, a nonprofit.

Now, part of the rules of doing this is you have to spend 5% of it every year to qualify for the $2 billion-odd tax break you got. He regularly fails to do so. He regularly fails to donate enough money to do so. But he also, unlike, say, Larry Page's foundation, he doesn't dump it in a donor-advised fund which is kind of a black box for giving grants to people. No, he has no staff. He has two unpaid volunteers and he is the other person on the board and it isn't really obvious where the money goes. When it does go somewhere, it goes in either very small amounts and does very little, or very large amounts and also does very little. There is a school called Ad Astra which is literally inside a SpaceX compound where Musk's's own children go. It used to be outside, now it's inside a spacex compound. They got several million dollars. He gave a hundred million dollars from the musk foundation to another non-profit just called the foundation.

0:12:22 - Paris Martineau
Uh, really firing on all cylinders that is so so good foundation it really is.

0:12:29 - Ed Zitron
It bought a bunch of land out very close to a boring company site in texas. Very cool, very good stuff there.

0:12:39 - Paris Martineau
He also donated 55 million dollars to a cause of a guy who auctioned off seats on a spacex flight, who then immediately boughted off seats on a spacex flight, who then immediately bought three more seats on another spacex flight and I think one of the interesting things that I that, uh, david, the reporter brought up in your interview is part of what is supposed to be happening here is, if you are getting this uh tax break from being a charitable organization, you have to do charitable things, meaning you have to do things that benefit the public good. And this article, the thing that it kind of hits again and again, is that it's unclear if any of kind of the Musk Foundation's investments or philanthropic endeavors, it's unclear who they benefit outside of Elon Musk or Elon Musk's employees and customers, which is incredibly unusual for a charitable foundation.

0:13:33 - Ed Zitron
Well, a good one he did as well was. He said he was going to fix the water problem, the water contamination problems that plague Flint Michigan Promised he'd do so. He actually tweeted at one point that he'd already done so, and then deleted the tweet in 2018. He gave him about $1.2 million dollars, which is it's good. He did something. They bought water filters for the school. They bought laptops for the school great idea. They then responded to him with a four-page plan, basically saying here's how you do, here's how we will do the thing you promised to help us with, and then you can fix the water as you promised. He sent a tesla development executive to flint, michigan, who gave people rides around the um, around the parking lot. What of the of city hall? Hey?

0:14:18 - Paris Martineau
a ride in a tesla.

0:14:20 - Ed Zitron
That's incredibly charitable and then he said, hey, well, we might build an office out here. You'll never guess what happened. He didn't build anything. He didn't fix Flint Michigan at all.

0:14:36 - Paris Martineau
Some of the details in this story are just wild. I mean, as you'd expect from an Elon Musk story, some of them are kind of. I'll quote from here Among the donations the Musk Foundation has made, there was $55 million to help a major SpaceX customer meet a charitable pledge. There were millions that went to Cameron County, texas, after a rocket blew up, and there were donations to two schools closely tied to his business, one that was literally physically walled off inside a SpaceX factory compound and the other, like you mentioned, is located next to a new subdivision for Musk employees.

I just want to go into a little bit more about the one you mentioned. Ad Astra, which is Latin for to the stars, ostensibly was founded by Musk as a nonprofit school to explore new ways to teach math and science and this is from the Times again. But that school, too would serve a personal purpose for mr musk in its first year of operation, out of his home in the bel air neighborhood of la, five of ad astra's 14 students were his own children. The headmaster said the only criteria for admission were quote kindness and eagerness to learn and parents that worked at spacex company store.

0:15:52 - Jeff Jarvis
I just want to again underscore. I made fun of the new york times using the verb underscore the other day for what reporters really want to say themselves. So anyway I'll underscore cashmere hill and david fernold. I've I'm. The Times is driving me completely batty lately with its credulous coverage of fascism and it's Biden but his birthday polls and all this stuff. But the Times is also the repository for people like Farenthold and Hill who do this kind of great work and we just more of this, please, less of the other crap.

0:16:21 - Leo Laporte
That Ed Zitron. He's quite the character, isn't he? I mean, wow, I'm glad I was not here, uh, for that, but it was wild, wasn't it? Uh, you're watching the best of 2024 on a special episode of this week in google. Happy holidays, we're glad you're here on. We go now with uh. Let's see a visit to a new york city apartment with a built-in podcast studio. It's a dream come true we're gonna.

0:16:49 - Jeff Jarvis
We're gonna go to to paris's borough, we're gonna go to brooklyn and borham hill. A new building, a lovely new building, trying to be in the neighborhood. A nice place. Read about it all. It has a steam room, it has all kinds of other things. It has a podcast studio. Oh, I'm moving there now in the apartment building.

0:17:12 - Leo Laporte
I bet you the rent in that apartment would be less than the cost of our studio here.

0:17:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Right and you get to be neighbors with paris.

0:17:21 - Leo Laporte
I like brooklyn. Is this a good? Is borum a nice place to live?

0:17:25 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I like Borum Hill, it's cute.

0:17:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Cute is the right word.

0:17:30 - Leo Laporte
Is there a picture of the podcast I want?

0:17:32 - Paris Martineau
to see what the rent is here. What's the address?

0:17:38 - Jeff Jarvis
It says the small ones. They have five bedroom ones. They haven't priced that the small ones start at A studio starts at $700,000.

0:17:50 - Paris Martineau
A month. No To purchase. Oh, okay, purchase.

0:17:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Actually that ain't bad.

0:17:54 - Leo Laporte
That's not for a studio, that's how much it would cost for a studio here.

0:17:59 - Paris Martineau
No for a studio apartment in Borm. The studios in these big buildings are, like barely big enough for a clean bed.

0:18:08 - Leo Laporte
1,100 square foot house in Petaluma would be a million dollars, believe it or not.

0:18:13 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, no. 1,100 square foot. Anything in Brooklyn is going to be a couple million.

0:18:19 - Leo Laporte
Probably, yeah, Probably yeah. Studios of five bedrooms start at 700,000. 12,000 square feet of exterior amenities, a cold plunge pool, a podcast studio, a steam room.

0:18:32 - Paris Martineau
You do your cold plunge, you record a quick three-hour podcast then you go into the steam room.

0:18:38 - Leo Laporte
That's what I'm thinking we spend $8,000 a month on this. I could just shut this place down. Live borum hills.

0:18:46 - Paris Martineau
Do the show from there. Get one and a half apartments in borum hill and do the show from there well, yeah, I don't know if I want a studio. I'm a little old for that my other thing is very silly, but I saw it and I thought you guys would find it fun. It's cow magnets um which.

0:19:04 - Leo Laporte
Not something you put on your fridge.

0:19:06 - Paris Martineau
No, not something you put on your fridge. This site explains what is a cow magnet. Have you ever heard of this type of magnet? Actually, cow magnets are very popular with farmers, ranchers and veterinarians because they're a well-known method of preventing hardware disease in cattle. Hardware disease is basically where cows just eat some sort of metal Tin can and then it ends up in the digestive track and hurts them when they try to expel it.

So, in order to fix it, what they just basically it is they put a bit, they give the cow a big magnet, they swallow it and it sits there and it just collects all the metal.

0:19:43 - Leo Laporte
It's cow magnets do they occasionally?

0:19:47 - Molly White
do they ever open up the cow and get it out?

0:19:49 - Leo Laporte
or does it?

0:19:50 - Molly White
live there.

0:19:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh it just, it just stays there.

0:19:51 - Paris Martineau
I think it just yeah, it just stays there.

0:19:54 - Leo Laporte
They're very strong magnets, alnico magnets, in the shape of a smooth rod, about half an inch by three inches.

0:20:02 - Jeff Jarvis
This is life with Paris.

0:20:04 - Ed Zitron
How do you find out?

0:20:05 - Mikah Sargent
about cow magnets.

0:20:07 - Paris Martineau
Honestly, I saw it on the Y Combinators news website. Sometimes I just go on there and look at these Don't tell me combinator's news website, sometimes I just go on there look I must have missed the uh hacker news.

0:20:18 - Leo Laporte
Uh cow magnet piece.

0:20:19 - Paris Martineau
I love hacker news they just linked to this website and I was like listen, I'm here for cow magnets, this is it.

0:20:26 - Leo Laporte
Wow, yeah, who knew I? I wonder.

0:20:29 - Paris Martineau
I bet you, there are people in our audience who are saying right now oh yeah, cow magnets sure yeah, that's why you can't know about cow through tsa you didn't know that, yeah I just think it would be really funny if we approached like human medicine, like these veterinarians where it's like, uh, people keep eating metal and getting sick, let's just put a big magnet in there scooter x has put a link to the amazon cow magnets listing master magnetics original cast alnico five cow magnet half an inch in diameter, three inches long, pack of two for 22 that's reasonable.

Oh, it's got a little cartoon cow inside diagram. That's interesting. But you could only feed them one, because if they ate two they go. Then they would. They would get preparation together yeah yeah, the history there.

0:21:21 - Jeff Jarvis
You need the cow's privacy to be violated under hip-hop. So you know, do two people who bought.

0:21:28 - Leo Laporte
People who bought the master magnetics, original cast cow magnet, also bought, and then it's just a bunch of cow magnets the last slide in this amazon uh display is a thing that says vets agree, get magnets in the cows early oh my god, don't wait till cows are already sick. Make them swallow this now. I wonder if humans should do this.

0:21:56 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean there's the whole dangerous things trying to put in little magnets in your hands and whatnot.

0:22:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh, here explains One magnet works for the life of the cow. Administer with an ordinary balling gun. Oh, ow, I don't know and I don't want to know.

0:22:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Poor cows, poor cows, cows, poor cows, poor cows.

0:22:20 - Paris Martineau
We need an intervention no, we don't jeff for paris stay away from me.

0:22:26 - Cathy Gellis
no, no, paris, um jeff has sadly miscalculated. I will stand by tab hoarding with you. It's correct, yes, it's correct, it is correct.

0:22:36 - Leo Laporte
This is from xcom. I probably have a brain disease because I genuinely believe I need every one of them. According to one tab, you have stand back 6,775 tabs.

0:22:51 - Cathy Gellis
I do have to say I don't think I've achieved numbers like that, but I am impressed and I will not give you crap Is that all at once.

0:22:56 - Leo Laporte
They're not all open.

0:22:57 - Paris Martineau
Well, no, it's because I use one tab whenever I have a lot of tabs going on. Frankly, my most common use of one tab is whenever I'm going on this show and I need to make room memory-wise to be on Zoom for three hours or whatever. So then I click the one tab. Button on like 20 different windows and they all go in there, and then if I need to search for them again, they're all there.

0:23:20 - Leo Laporte
So this is actually of great interest to me. This is is this your habit as you're researching for a story or whatever, or what chicken to buy? Yes, you will open multiple tabs and you'll have them all open at once I will open.

0:23:33 - Paris Martineau
I'm trying to see if I can get a count here. Let's see. I just all read the ones that I closed before I got in here. One was a window with 19 tabs. Another window is 7. Another window with 36 tabs. A window with 16 tabs. A window is 20 tabs. These are all from today. The window is 24 tabs. Another window with 11 tabs. Uh, six tabs, 23 tabs.

0:23:56 - Cathy Gellis
I'm still on today okay, that was, that's all. I'm traumatized because I recently had some sort of crash where previous session could not be reloaded, um, and since then I'm already back to 103, and this was like a couple of days ago.

0:24:11 - Leo Laporte
I don't understand have as a non-tab person. I don't get it.

0:24:18 - Paris Martineau
How are you a non-tab person? Are you just looking at one humble webpage?

0:24:24 - Leo Laporte
I have two tabs open right now. Yeah, I close tabs all the time. Now I pin tabs. I do have some pinned tabs, so maybe that's what we're talking about here. This is in Firefox. I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. These are sites that I go to all the time, like TechMeme and so forth. These are more like bookmarks. These are actually the sites that I go to as I research.

0:24:47 - Paris Martineau
I have 23 tabs I've opened during this show.

0:24:50 - Leo Laporte
That's like me closing tabs. I try not to so you never, basically you just you never, I try not to.

0:24:54 - Cathy Gellis
I have to be careful when I close them because if I close them too soon, I will need them immediately a half a second.

0:24:58 - Leo Laporte
Well, you know about history, right?

0:25:01 - Cathy Gellis
It's. The problem is I'm relying on the browser technology and you know I keep achieving you know, inadvertently tab bankruptcy because it blows itself up and I can't get them back. But but no, normally I'm just trying to keep it as the running to-do list. It's easier to go back to them where if they're closed, it's a little too out of sight. I don't mind.

0:25:18 - Jeff Jarvis
See, it's interesting. Mind you, the new Chrome uses AI to organize your tabs. Oh, god.

0:25:25 - Paris Martineau
no, I think that's my tabs are in specific orders and I need them to stay that way. So you move them around, oh yes, this specific orders and I need them to stay that way, so you move them around. Oh yes, this is also how I feel about Windows on Mac. They, I believe, automatically have a system on that will reorganize the order of your Windows. I turn that off because I have an order and it does not need to be messed with.

0:25:50 - Leo Laporte
No, I agree with you on that.

0:25:51 - Cathy Gellis
And I am interested in what Paris would recommend as tab managers, because I've been relying on the browsers.

0:25:57 - Paris Martineau
I really like one tab honestly, because, especially I mean you can then like I'll hit the one tab button in Chrome or whatever and it will save. It'll say like you've saved your window that had 26 tabs and it'll have the icon for it and the name of the website. And so back when I had a computer with less ram, I would do that often whenever I uh overloaded my computer. Luckily or, I guess, unluckily I now have a computer that I maximize just to be able to hold as many tabs as possible.

0:26:30 - Leo Laporte
So I'm unchained but first of all, you get that many tabs, you don't? You can't tell from the tab what that page is.

0:26:41 - Paris Martineau
Right, it's just see, leo, there's this. I mean. Well, that is a problem. If I ever get to the point where you can't really even read the description at the top, then I move the tabs around. But there's also a feature I don't I assume this is in other browsers. Right now I'm working on a story about a nonprofit organization, so I was looking for I knew I had a section of tabs that were all the different annual reports, and so I just type in my browser window annual report, and then it says do you want to jump to these tabs? And I click it and then I go there and I'm back in my spot.

0:27:14 - Leo Laporte
You can only look at one tab at once, though. Right, you never look at multi. You don't like to split?

0:27:18 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I've got two screens up right now, so I can look at two tabs or I could.

0:27:22 - Leo Laporte
Okay to have multiple things on one screen I just don't understand it as an organizational style, and I also know that browsers just hate it. I mean, it's just a terrible thing to do to your computer.

0:27:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, no, now Chrome will basically turn off a tab if it's not used up for a while.

0:27:43 - Leo Laporte
Well, that must be annoying to you as soon as you click on it, it comes back.

0:27:48 - Cathy Gellis
The problem is that the web isn't. No, it's there.

0:27:50 - Jeff Jarvis
It just fades it.

0:27:53 - Cathy Gellis
The web isn't stateless anymore, so they're constantly using the data connection and doing some processing while it's open so I think the point is it stops that to kind of make it stateless, and then when you go back it wakes it up I don't know, I'm just, I'm a tab closer apparently it is a girly thing to have many tabs no, no, I.

0:28:13 - Leo Laporte
I have learned that I am in the minority, that most people have lots of tabs, especially technical people.

0:28:18 - Cathy Gellis
Actually, this is something else. The Venn diagram of things I have in common with Mike Masnick is he has massive loads of tabs as well, oh yeah.

0:28:26 - Leo Laporte
I feel left out. Honestly, everybody I know is tab heavy and Tab heavy and I just don't understand the workflow at all. I close tabs as I go. Well, I just hope they have better tab hygiene in the new year. That's all I can say. We love having Kathy Gellis on. She's great and we will have more of her in the new year. I promise you You're watching the best of this Week in Google 2024. We're so glad you're here on. We go with more of the best of this week in Google. I was not here for this one. Micah Sargent was filling in for me and we got a little taste of Paris's entrepreneurial reporting Watch.

0:29:14 - Paris Martineau
I found out where the skin came from, from. I don't know if you guys want to know no, I do, yes, we do it's from a company called promo cell um. It's called normal human dermal fibroblasts um, and it's described on the website as, and I quote, primary normal human dermal fibrobras isolated from the dermis of juvenile foreskin or adult skin.

0:29:40 - Mikah Sargent
Stop, stop you're kidding me? No, I'm not. It's the scraps at the hospital, right?

0:29:54 - Paris Martineau
so it's either that or it came from adult skin from different donors. But you know that's just what the website said and I thought you all need to know. So it's a smiling penis face actually potentially show title.

0:30:10 - Mikah Sargent
No, no we can't.

0:30:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, come on smiling penis face. No bad, that's actually pretty good. People are gonna want to watch the show to find out. I think I don't think I'll watch all three hours to find out what it is.

0:30:22 - Paris Martineau
You can apparently request the available donors and ask uh, I don't want to know hi, I don't want to let you know what's real.

0:30:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris is a reporter Amen.

0:30:36 - Mikah Sargent
This is what it's all about, guys.

0:30:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Can you buy them and can we order some for Leo?

0:30:46 - Paris Martineau
We could. We could get 500,000 cells of juvenile foreskin cryopreserved for $662. Oh, come on, let's do a Kickstarter for this?

0:30:58 - Mikah Sargent
I think we can't. It's cryopreserved too, so he'd open it up and he'd be like Lisa says, you ordered what.

0:31:13 - Paris Martineau
Oh, they've got a real sale on just adult. No specification. Cryopreserved.

0:31:18 - Jeff Jarvis
We don't want to know you can get it for $323.

0:31:21 - Paris Martineau
It's like, where did that even?

0:31:22 - Mikah Sargent
come from Great who knows Holy cow. My life was changed today because I just wonder now how much skin that is used in research is actually coming from that, from the byproduct of genital mutilation, which it is.

0:31:42 - Paris Martineau
It's true, there's a lot of trucks talking about that in New York City.

0:31:47 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute, wait, wait. I'm hearing something Coming in from somewhere in Pigeon Park. Ladies and gentlemen, oh, he's up in the air. Oh, my Craig Newmark. How you doing, Craig, you want?

0:32:13 - Jeff Jarvis
to set the record straight, I understand?

0:32:15 - Craig Newmark
correct me please. I own no pancake machines. I just think of how, uh, how tough they'd be to clean. Plus, uh, mrs newmark, better. That's the truth. Pancake machines are in airport lounges and the first thing I do is push the start button even before I put my luggage down. Because he's got priorities.

0:32:42 - Leo Laporte
You do it for the food, or you do it for the fun.

0:32:46 - Craig Newmark
Food fun and to remind myself that I have the tastes of a peasant. I was, uh, raised that way in a junk, in a neighborhood with junkyards. Yes, wow, I may be a peasant with money now, but I'm a peasant.

0:33:04 - Leo Laporte
This is everyday people right here you never, you never you can take the boy out of the junkyard, but you can't take the pancake machine out of the boy, I guess, or something so so you spend, I think, too much time in alaskan air allowances considering how often you have uh marked in social.

0:33:24 - Craig Newmark
I thought it was so often it had to be at home um, I've been traveling back and forth more than you think between new york and san francisco in new york now. But the deal is that you know, the lounge is a nice indulgence. Like private jets are out of the question. But free pancakes not bad. But again, I commit to the statement that Mrs Newmark makes better pancakes than the machine does.

0:33:56 - Leo Laporte
I honestly would hope so. These are disgusting, that's horrible.

0:34:02 - Jeff Jarvis
They're pretty good. I've had them too.

0:34:04 - Leo Laporte
Are you saying, craig, they're better than you would expect, but not as good as Mrs Newmark's craig? They're better than you would expect, but not as good as mrs newmark's.

0:34:09 - Craig Newmark
They are considerably better than you'd expect. They seem to be sanitary, so they are. They're touchless. Yes, I want to know, seem to be seen how many do you have at a city?

0:34:22 - Jeff Jarvis
uh, generally two, sometimes more.

0:34:23 - Craig Newmark
As you see, I'm very efficient and I pre-syrup the plate at the city Generally two Sometimes more. As you see, I'm very efficient and I pre-syrup the plate before the pancakes drop.

0:34:34 - Jeff Jarvis
I respect that game. I'm anal enough that I actually get upset. See, it's a little off there.

0:34:40 - Leo Laporte
It's a little off.

0:34:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Your target pre-gaming.

0:34:45 - Mikah Sargent
I respect that. I have to try that. I've never even thought about that. All right, queen Pruitt, tomorrow we got pancakes pre-syrup in the plates.

0:34:54 - Leo Laporte
Now, Craig, I guess really it does beg the question. You know, maybe you don't have it in the kitchen, but you could have it in your office or something, just in case you had a craving for pancakes. If I did that, that, then the pigeons would get to it just don't confuse it with the shredder. How are? How are the? By the way, I share your fascination with how these things work there. There are kind of an amazing scientific scientific achievement it's a genius.

It's a genius invention. We're looking at Craig's Insta. He's Craig Newmark on Instagram and he's got close-ups of the insides. He's following the pancake, the world-famous pancake printer from Alaska Airlines. My favorite one was the very sad one of the pancake machine all closed up for the night. No access to the pancakes. That was tragic, very tragic. How are the pigeons? These days. By the way, Are they doing well?

0:35:58 - Craig Newmark
The pigeons are well. We saw a ghost face killer this morning and, although I was surprised, there were a couple rivals for his uh well, he's boss of the pecking order, and we thought scarface and big face were in a shallow grave someplace.

0:36:17 - Jeff Jarvis
oh wow but I saw in new york wow sleeping with the fishes.

0:36:22 - Leo Laporte
When you say ghostface killer you're not. It's not a euphemism.

0:36:26 - Craig Newmark
He might well be wow, well, he's tougher than I am, but apparently I saw a scarface in front of the coffee shop today, oh, thank god. And apparently scarface was exiled. Uh, for a moment I thought it might have been a vision from, uh, pigeon heaven uh, but apparently you saw, saw Scarface outside your home, out in the wild Outside of Joe's coffee in the village. So I was pretty glad to see him because, again, I didn't want to be a seance.

0:37:05 - Leo Laporte
A pigeon seance is kind of a pathetic event, I must say how many regular pigeons do you have?

0:37:11 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, it's a regular cast of characters in your atrium there if you hear I don't know, hit the table there's only a limited number that are visibly distinct.

0:37:26 - Craig Newmark
A pigeon mostly looks the same, like the big uh. They say the same thing about us but, yes, I wasn't gonna go there. There's a big pigeon idol going up on the high line and it conforms to the uh pigeon ideal ah, the platonic ideal of a pigeon, a perfect pigeon on the high line.

0:37:49 - Leo Laporte
Craig, does people, of course, know who Craig Newmark is Craig's List you ever hear of that and his philanthropies are at craignewmarkphilanthropiesorg. That's a sweet shot of you, craig. Love that. Such a cute shot. Love that shot. It says I'm an old school nerd helping to protect people, protect our country, and the donations that you have given, not just to Pigeon Rescue but to journalism. You gave another $10 million to CUNY earlier this year. Well done, that's really great. And in fact I don't think Jeff would have had a job.

0:38:22 - Craig Newmark
If it weren't for you, you might be able to hear me. Someone just tried calling me and it knocked Zoom off the air. No, we hear you?

0:38:30 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we hear you. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, we're going to let Craig push some buttons here. Other donations a million dollars to help military-connected families. Late last year, that was after the Lahaina fires. After the Lahaina fires.

This is just, craig. You are, in every way, kind of what we hope successful people become in this country and what unfortunately so rarely successful people become in this country. So, thank you for being a Mitch. Well, I hope you're enjoying this best of. It's always fun to do these and I have to tell you it's a lot of work and I really appreciate our team, the people who work so hard Anthony Nielsen, our creative director, our producers and editors, benito Gonzalez, kevin King, john Ashley they work so hard to put this all together for you. All of our hosts, our contributors do. And, of course, there's the office people who do work in continuity, like Viva and Sebastian, our CEO, lisa.

Twit is a big effort and we think what we're doing is really important. I hope you do too. I hope you enjoy the company and learn from the information and, if you do, I'd like you to consider joining our club because, frankly, in 2025, that's the only thing that's going to keep Twit going, if you like what you hear and you want to continue. Please, seven bucks a month, consider joining Club Twit. Twittv slash Club Twit. You get ad-free versions of all the shows, access to our Discord special programming you don't get anywhere else, but really the main thing you get is that warm and fuzzy feeling that you're keeping twit going. We need your help. I hate to beg, but, but we really do. Twittv slash club twit. But enough of that. On with the show. I uh, I. I want to do this story because I was gonna be in this movie. I've told you this story when I met francis ford coppola and he cast me.

0:40:30 - Jeff Jarvis
This is a good story yeah, no, you didn't tell the story. No, you didn't tell that story I never told that story.

0:40:34 - Leo Laporte
He cast you in what so way back when, when I was an acting student, so this is maybe 30 years ago. Uh, you know, when you're an acting, when you're an early actor, you get this magazine. I know they probably don't have it anymore. We're in the back there's all the auditions, and I spotted an audition for francis ford coppola for, uh, zoetrope, so I submitted a recorded monologue.

0:40:58 - Paris Martineau
Mcbeth's how was it recorded? Was it on a vhs?

0:41:02 - Jeff Jarvis
do you know? It was just audio.

0:41:03 - Leo Laporte
Still have it no, I wish I did, it was just audio. You still have it.

0:41:06 - Paris Martineau
No, I wish I did. It was audio. Did you send it via mail?

0:41:08 - Leo Laporte
yes, I mailed it and they called me and they said, francis would like you to come down, so we went to the zoetrope building in san francisco with a few other actors down in the basement. Francis, francis ford coppola, the great director, was pretty big and I think, wore the same black suit every night. It was just like a tent that he wore. And so you go down in the basement. He has a beautiful recording studio and we recorded from the script that he had. It was for a movie that was going to be called megalopolis. Now this is the 80s. Jeez, he has been making this movie since then. Wow, the recordings that we were making were what they call previs.

Some directors Hitchcock was famous for doing a sketch of each shot. Many modern directors actually make audio comic books like a like almost an animated show of the movie ahead of time, and that's apparently what couple of this. So I was the we were do. I was the voice talent for the detective in megalopolis. I only did it for a few nights. I I francis said can you sound more like bob woodward? And I said what? How does bob woodward?

he's from nebraska I think he wanted me to sound more like dustin hoffen playing bob woodward.

0:42:26 - Jeff Jarvis
But I think he wanted me to sound more like Dustin Hoffman playing Bob Woodward, but Bob Woodward has a unique. No, bob Woodward and Kurt Anderson sound uniquely alike. They sound like a Nebraska accent.

0:42:36 - Leo Laporte
Well, maybe that's what he wanted. He wasn't clear. You could have been famous Leo. If you just listened to him and did what he wanted, well then I made a mistake. It would have taken a while.

0:42:48 - Jeff Jarvis
The next day I had father guido sarducci on my radio show.

0:42:49 - Leo Laporte
You probably don't remember. Yes, I do. He was on saturday night live. He was a comedian, don novella, who played one role, one role only. It was a uh uh, chain-smoking vatican priest named father guido sarducci, with a bad italian accent. Coppola liked him, he had. He's cast him in other movies I mentioned. Made the mistake of mentioning oh yeah, I've been working with Francis. We're doing the voice track you mentioned on air well, I was during the interviews, but it was probably wasn't on air, but it but it was okay, no, no, no, no, I know I, I know better than that.

But during a break I said oh, you know, don, I was, you know, I know you're friends with Francis I'm doing. He called and snarfed my job. They recast. So that was that. Anyway. The movie is finally out after, with don novello in it. No, I doubt. Okay, I still haven't seen megalopolis. I'm not sure. I'm not sure at this point. Uh, I actually, uh, I actually won. Hey, we're so glad you're here. This is the best of 2024 for this week in Google On, we go with the best of 2024, with what was turning out to be, I think, one of the most interesting uses of AI all year long AI-generated podcasts.

0:44:06 - Jeff Jarvis
I did two, I did two. I did one where I took seven articles that were in the rundown last week on AI and put it up. But then I decided to do the Paris version, where I took her oomph about her new beat. So there was one, I think, four stories, oh, and I had to make PDFs of each story Easy. Just put it Wow and then put it in. So here's the Paris show.

0:44:28 - AI
That's a phrase that makes you think of you know robot teachers and kids writing essays with a blink. But that's funny, right? There was a lot of fear when tools like chat GPT came out Like. Everyone was worried about the future of learning, but what's happening in schools today is way more complicated than that.

0:44:52 - Paris Martineau
We've got a bunch of research.

0:44:53 - Leo Laporte
Do you recognize the article this is based on? Yes, yeah, I mean, it's just very funny that it's got like a cold. It's so natural.

0:44:55 - AI
Yes, yeah, or these articles you name it that paint an interesting picture. So let's dive deep into ai and education. Initially, yeah, there was a lot of fear, and rightfully so. I remember those articles from the atlantic and inside higher ed teachers this is not good this puts us out of business jeff yeah this

0:45:11 - Paris Martineau
is better than anything we could do why are we out here at 7 pm at night doing this guy?

0:45:17 - AI
no kidding giggling, they're laughing, yeah, we're saying they're saying like you know, about the death of critical thinking and all that yeah, it's interesting, though right this fear.

0:45:28 - AI
It always comes up with new tech and education, like think about calculators or the internet, even letting kids have cell phones in class. Every time there's anxiety and, to be fair, the worries about jobs and critical thinking sounds nice.

0:45:41 - Leo Laporte
I'd like to get to know her. He's pretty friendly sounding too. Yeah, so did steven explain how they're doing this? Are they those are real human voices that they've ingested?

0:45:54 - Jeff Jarvis
on, yeah, but it's been ours the thing about, about, uh no, book lm is that it's fairly rag based in the sense that it doesn't go off in making up stuff all over, but it obviously uses context and brings context into that discussion.

0:46:12 - Leo Laporte
It's it's pretty damned amazing uh, this is steven's post, actually not stevens uh, from biao wang notebook. Lm now lets you listen to conversations about your sources, so you provide it with what is the limit? You said the word rag retrieval, augmented generation. It's when you take documents and feed them to an llm and then ask it to summarize. What is the limit of the number of documents?

0:46:36 - Jeff Jarvis
I think it's 50 now it's quite a lot. 50, wow, we could take. It'd be. It'd be. I didn't want to, I have a life, so I didn't do this. But it would be interesting to take, let's say, last week's show and take all the articles we in fact talked about, make a PDF of each and put it in and see what podcast it created.

0:46:53 - Paris Martineau
I don't think it would have a fun diatribe about WikiFeet though.

0:46:57 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it wouldn't.

0:46:58 - Paris Martineau
That's the sort of human content you can only get on this week's.

0:47:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Google here with us.

0:47:06 - Leo Laporte
I do want to ask a little tiny favor from all of you, not just club members. Every year, you may remember, we do a survey of our audience. We want to get to know you a little bit better. It helps us with sales because we can say you know, as we often do, 70 percent of our audience are it decision makers, that kind of thing. Uh, it's a very quick survey, shouldn't only take you a couple of minutes. Twittv slash survey. This is the new 2024 2025 survey. We're startinga little bit earlier this year than we usually do. Uh, it just helps us and it would be a be doing us all a favor if you, uh, if you did it so in between shows, maybe. Uh, twittv slash survey. Thank you so much, paris. How is that going, by the way? How's it going?

0:47:53 - Paris Martineau
great, I had my final class on uh this weekend. Uh, I think somebody posted in the discord earlier a photo of me with my saw. I can repost it. So, um, let me use a big saw and I'm taking a test this weekend for people who perhaps don't listen to every single show.

0:48:13 - Leo Laporte
Damn you, what's wrong with you?

0:48:16 - Paris Martineau
catch us up. Um, so the lore of this is that I have long been a guerrilla gardener. In the spring and summer months I carry around a little uh pair of pruning shears and I trim low-hanging branches. I recently learned there's a way to go legit, and it's by taking classes offered by the New York City Parks Department funds. This group called NY Trees that does a citizen pruner course. So I've been taking courses over the last couple of weeks on how to properly prune and care for New York City city street trees. It was mostly virtual, but the last one was in person, um, this week in the upper west side, and they just posted in the discord a photo of me with the big saw that they let me use to cut uh that is a big saw whoa, don't mess with paris, ranger, paris wow that's me, so I've gotta take a test.

Uh, I'm probably gonna do it this weekend and then, if I pass, I'll get a license to um, a smaller saw and another glove, are you?

0:49:21 - Leo Laporte
allowed to walk the streets of new york with that saw yeah, I will. I go the other way if I saw somebody, you look like the grim reaper well, it's not normally that big.

0:49:34 - Paris Martineau
I extended, excited to cut down a branch. Ah, I was doing a three-point cut to cut a larger branch to make sure it wouldn't fall is the?

0:49:43 - Jeff Jarvis
is the test uh at a tree or over a piece of paper?

0:49:48 - Paris Martineau
It's virtual, it's like an online test, just to ask you, if you know the. I have to identify common street trees. I have to answer questions about how to prune and care for them.

0:50:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Different things like that. I put a story in the rundown to this effect because it brings this together with Google Line 138.

0:50:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I was still looking at Paris and her giant saw. Hold on, hold on. I got to move on. Is that your motto, by the way now, don't feel guilty, feel healthy. I think that's appropriate.

0:50:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you choose the setting? It's kind of perfect, yeah, yeah.

0:50:27 - Leo Laporte
Pretty good right. So Paris has told us that once she does get her actual physical license, she will have a little graduation party for her and for those of you who live in New York City, beware of a lady with pruning shoes she has a license to prune. It is a fun show, I have to say, and we're so glad that you have been part of this week in Google in 2024. On behalf of Paris Martineau and Jeff Jarvis, I'm Leo Laporte. We hope you have been having a wonderful holiday, a wonderful Christmas Day if you're watching on Christmas Day and we wish you the best for 2025. And we will be here for you on the TWIT Network, so we'll see you next year. Happy New Year, everybody.

0:51:17 - Mikah Sargent
Take care.