Transcripts

This Week in Google Episode 643 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. 


Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiG This Week in Google. The last show. The last live show of 2021. We've got a best of next week. Stacy's in the house. Jeff Jarvis. Ant has the week off. We'll talk about Jack Dorsey's anti-Web3 Twitter post. Will Bitcoin replace the US dollar? An IPO for Reddit, everything Google killed in 2021. And we finally get the answer of what's happening to the update for the Pixel6. A whole lot of that and more coming up next on This Week in Google.

New Speaker (00:00:28):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:46):
This is TWiG This Week in Google episode, 643 recorded Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021. The verdict lady. This Week in Google is brought to you by Imperfect Food. Imperfect foods is catching the food. That's falling through the cracks of our food system by sourcing quirky yet delicious foods. Right now imperfect foods is offering listeners 20% off your first four orders. When you go to imperfect foods.com and use the promo code twig, and by userway.Org. Userway ensures your website is accessible, ADA compliant and helps your business avoid accessibility related lawsuits. The perfect way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities. It's not only the right thing to do. It's also the law go to userway.org/twit for 30% off Userway's. I powered accessibility solution. And by AT&T active armor, you've spent the day staring at your phone, waiting for that one. Call from the job, the hospital with a family, and it finally rings.

Leo Laporte (00:01:57):
But guess who it is? A robot. Don't let fraud calls disappoint you. AT&T makes your security a top priority. Helping block fraud calls with AT&T active armor. It's not complicated AT&T active armor. 24/7 proactive network security fraud call blocking and spam notifications to help stop threats at no extra charge compatible device and serve of us required. Visit att.com/activearmor for details.

Leo Laporte (00:02:29):
It's time for TWiG This Week in Google the show. We cover the latest from Google, the Google verse, the metaverse all the verses. It is our last live episode of 2021. Hello, Stacey Higginbotham, staceyoniot.com. Good to see you. Hello. Happy, happy holidays.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:52):
Thank you. Happy holidays to you too.

Leo Laporte (00:02:53):
Only three shopping days left. Oh, I know.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:02:57):
I feel bad for everyone else shopping.

Leo Laporte (00:02:58):
I know you you've all done. Not only have done your shopping. They're wrapped. They're under the tree. They're ready to go. Have you baked the gingerbread cookies yet?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:06):
They're the last item. They are happening this afternoon. The butter is soft. The cookies are,

Leo Laporte (00:03:13):
The butter is soft. The cookies are hard and all the world's is stage. It sounds so good. It sounds so cozy in the Higginbotham home. Jeff Jarvis is also here. Mr. Cacio e Pepe.

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:27):
I, I, I, I I'm sorry. I I'm not ready. It's it's like on time. What? What's going on here?

Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
Yes, we're doing the show. We're starting. No, no BSing. No, we're gonna get in. We're gonna get out. Stacy's got cookies to cook. This is my last show before the holiday break.

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:44):
Oh, that's it. You're just eager to get. I am so eager. Nobody

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:46):
Blink.

Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
You'll miss it. I'm so eager. We will have a show next week, December 29th. It'll be our best of twig. Some great moments. That's this is that's one of the shows that's really the best OFS gonna be great because there's so many silly things and fun things that happen throughout the year. So make sure you download that. And then we'll be back a week, two weeks from today, which is January 5th with an all new episode. And of course is on vacation. He tells us he's binge watching succession, even as we speak so good for you. We actually had a discussion before the show. What is, but is it a band? What is a binge he's watched two. It sounds like. Is that a binge?

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:25):
He says he doesn't binge watch. He doesn't binge watch, Ant. That's one of his rules,

Leo Laporte (00:04:29):
Rules, but he's

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:31):
Is, does

Leo Laporte (00:04:31):
Not binge watch. So according to him 

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:36):
That's under the binge threshold, thus

Leo Laporte (00:04:38):
Under the binge threshold. <Laugh> I think we have a show title before we've even begun. <Laugh> So it looks like CES is it's still on it's two weeks from now, January 5th. It's still on, but boy,

Jeff Jarvis (00:04:59):
That'll be lonely. It's gonna, you

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
It's gonna be quiet. So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:05):
I just canceled my stuff. Not that I'm a huge drop, but you're not going. I joined the I'm not going.

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:12):
I, well, I, you know what? I'm relieved. I was worried about you, Stacey. I'm actually, I'm honestly earnestly relieved. I'm glad you're not going.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:18):
I was less worried about me. I just feel like, like, you know what if I caught it and brought it to somebody who didn't need to get it, my like, it just, it felt irresponsible.

Leo Laporte (00:05:29):
It seems like bad timing. Had they been a month later, maybe it wouldn't have be a, you know, Omnicron, would've burned through. I have a feeling it's gonna be like that. Where there's this big surge, then everybody gets it. <Laugh> and then it goes on and burns itself out. Anyway, Amazon isn't going, Meta is not going. These are the announcements. Pinterest is not going. Twitter is not going. The announcements by the companies are shortly followed by announcements from CNET and The Verge. And Gizmodo, they're not gonna go then in that case, I'm not going <laugh> Ant's not going, cuz we told him he couldn't.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:04):
Oh good for you protecting Ant.

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
Well, yeah. And, and yeah, and his family and us and I just, I knew he wanted to, but yeah, he does want to, and I don't blame him, but this is not gonna be his, I wanted to, it's just,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:06:15):
It's not gonna be, be any fun either. I mean, and by fun, I mean like it's not gonna be professionally all that useful. It doesn't sound like

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:23):
CEO about the hardware guys. Have they have they canceled or 

Leo Laporte (00:06:28):
HP is not as of yet. This, yeah. You mean the big TV companies? Cuz they're kinds, Samsung, LG. I think they're all going. I would bet

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:36):
They probably they're. All those stuff was already there.

Leo Laporte (00:06:38):
That's right. Data ship it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:06:40):
A lot of them were sending smaller teams or only their us based teams was what I got from a lot of people in China and Europe

Leo Laporte (00:06:49):
Here from the verge is a picture of the sad balloon that is CES <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:57):
Was like it's in a bad motel. It's

Leo Laporte (00:06:59):
It's raining in a parking lot. CES itself says no we're no we're still going. In fact more people signed up after those stupid 40 companies quit <laugh> we got 60 new exhibitors. So there! CES will be in person, January 5th through 8th. This is the statement from gene foster, head of marketing and communications from the consumer technology's Associa sponsors. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:07:33):
That's a tough job. Was it hard to cancel your stuff Stacy?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:37):
No, I mean, I, I wasn't, I just called and I had to call my hotel and that's where Google's hold for me really came in handy.

Leo Laporte (00:07:46):
Oh yeah. You just said what you know. Oh yeah. Cause I bet they were quite busy.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:51):
CES. Yeah, they were super cuz you, you couldn't cancel online. You had to call. Yeah. Boo

Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
CES will be on in person. Says January 5th through 8th in Las Vegas with strong safety measures in place and digital access is also available for people that don't wish to, or can't travel to Las Vegas. Our mission remains to convene the industry and give those who cannot attend in person. The ability to experience the magic of CES digitally. While we received,

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:20):
You're gonna get a, you're gonna get a hammer to smash the bottom of your feet. So it feels like you're going to CES

Leo Laporte (00:08:25):
<Laugh> there you go. Virtual CES kit <laugh> while we recently received 42 exhibitor cancellations, less than 7% of our exhibit floor lessons. Last Thursday, we've added 60 new ex exhibitors for our in-person event, registrations for both digital access and Las Vegas event. Oh interesting. They, they mix those together are showing strong momentum with thousands more registrations in the last few days. So they, you know, they're saying we're gonna, we're gonna do it safely. Vaccination requirement, masking COVID 19 tests combined with lower tests. They handed you

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:59):
Two tests. You, I got an email like middle of last week, right after we did the show saying, Hey, we're gonna send out two tests when you get there. So

Leo Laporte (00:09:11):
Yeah, it does kinda remind me a little bit of mobile world Congress, 2020. Remember with, they kept saying doggedly, no we're going no we're going. And they finally said, no, we're not, but it is, you know gosh, it has to be a big loss. I don't know what kind of insurance they were able to get after last time. Yeah. That's the problem. But it's a big deal, you know, you have you, they buy up O hotel rooms ahead of time so they can charge exorbitant rates to the, what was the,

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:35):
When south by Southwest didn't have insurance. I remember we were talking about that, that time somebody

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:39):
Did have I by Southwest 2020,

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:42):
But they did not have insurance. Right. We were, it was, we talked about time, some other conference, right. There was some conference that did have it. Right. I can't remember who it was. It was smart.

Leo Laporte (00:09:52):
Yeah. That really almost put south by out of business. I think they had to get a white night to come in and save them. So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:58):
They, they had a buyer come in and buy them. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
Yeah. Sad. Yeah. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Right. You know what are you gonna say? 

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:11):
I was like, where'd that come from?

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:14):
Where did that come

Leo Laporte (00:10:14):
From? Actually? Well, it came

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:15):
From because there's anti capitalist rant

Leo Laporte (00:10:17):
There. Monday, Monday, we did our holiday special and it, you know, I can't remember what the number was, but the, the richest people in America got much richer during COVID oh yeah. 600% or something. Some huge growth mm-hmm <affirmative>. So while, while you know, CES and south practically face bankruptcy, people are outta work. Businesses go out down, you know, main street USA is gutted. Amazon, you know, is doing pretty good. Jeff, Bezo doing, but let us,

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:47):
Us let us, Leo, Leo, let us have a moment of silence for Elon Musk tax, bill

Leo Laporte (00:10:51):
<Laugh> whining, bill, bill million dollars. And he's so mad about it. Oh he's so dude, you a richest man in the world, a richest man ever worth more than 270 billion and you're cuz you have to, to pay taxes, taxes, pay your taxes. You know

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:08):
What? I pay more taxes than he does based on like per capita. And you know, you don't see me complaining.

Leo Laporte (00:11:17):
Let's talk, hate them. Let's talk weird tweets. Shall we <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:20):
Oh yeah. Let's we, are we going with Dorsey?

Leo Laporte (00:11:23):
We're going with Dorsey. We're going. It was so much

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:26):
Fun. He's having such a good time

Leo Laporte (00:11:28):
Now. So now that he's not the head of Twitter he's tweeting and a good tweet. I thought that he put out yesterday, you don't own web three, web three is all the rage. These days, everybody's talking about this decentralized blockchain based worldwide web. You don't own that. He says the VCs and their LPs limited partners do it will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity with a different Le label. Know what you're getting into? Of course the promise among all the web three advocates is that it isn't centralized. It is completely decentralized. And you know he's his point. In fact, I think he, he had a kind of in all, in all of his replies, he kind of implied this. His point is it's really a buzzword created by Andre Horrowitz <laugh> and that's the VCs he's talking about. And their limited partners are all their investments that he's talking about. He says this, they really own it.

Jeff Jarvis (00:12:33):
Oops. Yeah, I did have in the the thread and I screwed

Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
It up. Yeah. I, I, I was, yeah, it was such a long thread. I'm not gonna find it because a lot of people responded to him. A lot of people called him crazy. Mostly the web three advocates. Oh the bros. Absolutely. Yeah. <Laugh> feces congrat the sales VC at VC Braggs tweeted. How dare you question the integrity of VCs <laugh> <laugh> and, and you know, you've taken a lot of VC money, so I don't know what you mean. Says Adam R to which Jack says, this is why I know exactly what I mean now he's at, out of it. He can he can say this. So I, you know, I'm not gonna weigh in on this. It's just right now. It's it's just a catchphrase anyway. Well

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:24):
The, the beauty is when Jack's tweeted that he was banned from

Leo Laporte (00:13:27):
Web three. Yeah. So and mark, mark Andreson who of course is one of the principles at Andre Horowitz. He was the guy who made all the money on Netscape, became a venture capitalist. He immediately blocked <laugh> Jack Dorsey. How dare you question Jack

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:45):
Is like, so, so block happy

Leo Laporte (00:13:51):
Mark. Andries yeah. Mark and I got

Jeff Jarvis (00:13:52):
Blocked like two years ago. I have no idea deal what I did wrong. I've never criticized him. Never had cause to that. I know of never criticized the company. I don't know what I did. I've been blocked for a long time before Jack <laugh> take well

Leo Laporte (00:14:05):
Okay. In his defense. And there's no reason to defend him, but in his defense, that's the best way to use Twitter is to immediately block people you don't want to hear from. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:16):
Yes. But I would say the reasons he blocks people are not, I mean, he's got either the thinnest skin in the world or he's just like,

Leo Laporte (00:14:25):
Well, he just doesn't need it. Doesn't want it in the noise. I, you know, honestly that's kind of, my motto with Twitter is follow freely and block justice freely, even more freely. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:35):
I, I block happily if someone's insulting me, but I don't block

Leo Laporte (00:14:38):
People. Maybe not block. Maybe just UN disagreeing. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:43):
No, some people, this person has a different take. I should probably, I mean, I'll at least read it and see,

Leo Laporte (00:14:47):
Yeah. Some people want to hear the other side. Most people don't <laugh> most people just, they wanna, you know, just, I kind of feel like it's my job. Yeah. Yeah. That's different. Yeah. You're different. Yeah. I, you know, I, if, if mark Andries doesn't, you're like, I don't doesn't want to hear criticisms of web three. Fine. I don't. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:07):
That's certainly his right. But, but you, you lose out on some interest in fun and, and, and challenges that are worthwhile sometimes. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:15:16):
Especially

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:17):
As an invest. Well, come back. I miss

Leo Laporte (00:15:18):
You. Aw. Do we miss Jack at Twitter? I don't think we do.

Jeff Jarvis (00:15:23):
I don't think does

Leo Laporte (00:15:24):
Jack missed Twitter's care or no? Yeah. Yeah. Jack has not lost his enthusiasm for Bitcoin. However, he he does say Bitcoin is gonna replace the us dollar someday. This is in another, another tweet tweet exchange with Cardi B, who is, of course, as everyone knows a world famous economist and rap star Cardi asked on Twitter, or if crypto will replace the us currency to which Dorsey replied. Yes. Bitcoin will. There you go. I love how worlds come together. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:06):
Come on.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:06):
That's Twitter

Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
Right there for you right there. Twitter, in a nutshell, Cardi B and Jack Dorsey back, back and forth

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:13):
Talking about crypto. There's nothing more Twitter than that.

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
Doco co-founder Billy Marcus in response, posted a meme about how doco is more stable than the us dollar. Is it? Oh, I want do coin to be the, I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:32):
Think do coins Fiat. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:16:35):
Like, yeah. I don't, I don't think so. Boy, that's all of our stories. Thank you so much for joining us. This gonna be a slow, this gonna be a very, this nothing happens in the year. Huh? Nothing is going on. Did we? I think we already, maybe this was a TWI, right? Cuz Jeff was here. Talked about

Jeff Jarvis (00:16:55):
Kind of confusing you. Cause you're thinking, oh, heard jar. We already talked

Leo Laporte (00:16:58):
About confused about that Jarvis. We were talking about Reddit. So it looks like gonna go to an IPO. And we talked a lot, little bit about Reddit on on Sunday on the twin. I think Reddit's my favorite social net work. And I, the reason I like it is because you're very much in control of what you see. You follow subject matter. Not people you could follow people, but I don't. I think most people just use it by following subreddits. And then, and what I like about it as, as my enthusiasm shift, which they do rapidly, I can just shift my Reddit to follow the things I'm interested in. It seems like a good

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:35):
Way to, so I've been trying Leo, cause you said that on Sunday that if you like Reddit and I wasn't using Reddit much, so I've been trying to more it, I still like Twitter better.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:45):
Well, Twitter's short, but Reddit's fun for, I feel like Twitter is maybe a good coffee shop and Reddit is like the local

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:55):
Bowling alley.

Leo Laporte (00:17:56):
Yeah, that's good. Oh my

Jeff Jarvis (00:17:59):
Wait, wait, wait. Let's, let's deconstruct that. I

Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
Hate bowling. I'm in the,

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:03):
You wear strange shoes and your thumb gets sore and I went,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:08):
You're hanging out like a coffee shop. You've got this veneer of an intellectual, whatever, but really it's just a coffee shop and people are chatting about their eyes. They're whatever they think they're just kind of focused on. They have some pretensions around it, right in the bowling alley. You know, you can be ironic, but you're still, it's gonna be pretty UN pretentious.

Leo Laporte (00:18:28):
Well, you know, and, and, and I did mention this yourself. I did mention this that the best part of Reddit for me is following the hottest posts and not necessarily reading the comments on those posts. Sometimes I do, but the posts themselves are what I follow. And that's less of a bowling alley, cuz it's not so much a conversation as people. Hey, here's a, here's something I realized or story,

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:52):
Which is why you like Twitter, top articles.

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
It's, it's similar to top articles except it's long form instead of being, you know, 280 characters, it could be and there's often images and you know, it's, it's just more, you know, I, I follow basically you know, a few enthusiasms, like the shows. I like the, the hard where I like the, you know, and then news and politics and the COVID chat was, was really good. The COVID 19 I guess I stopped following it probably should be time to follow it again. <Laugh> I just, I like it. Anyway, I think they'll do well. So that's who benefits from that con day, right? Kind of

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:34):
Conde. I said this on, on, on twin, but I'll say it again. I was there or I guess it was, yeah, I was there. When, when Steve Newhouse, my boss loved dig, wanted to get in on dig was I forgot to date. He tried to get me to get him in on Facebook. I failed him. I failed him on dig, but he, after I left, he, he out of nowhere bought Reddit. Cause it was kinda the second choice to dig. Right. It was poor. Man's dig. Well <laugh> I guess he won. And he very wisely spun it off, such that they had equity so that the, the owners still felt like owners and employees could feel a steak and so that they had something to trade with. So it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, stock market equity, but it was spun off in essence from con, but con owns the lion share of it. So they'll do very, very well. He bought it for a song. What did he buy? I forget what he bought it for

Leo Laporte (00:20:25):
Couple hundred million. That much even 

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:30):
Let me see here. Well, come on, tell me this, this Quora. That's why it's, Quora's a pain in the butt.

Leo Laporte (00:20:41):
Quora results. Quora Quora results come up 10 million

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:44):
To 20 million.

Leo Laporte (00:20:45):
Oh, nothing. A song you're right. Nothing.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:47):
Nothing.

Leo Laporte (00:20:48):
Wow. Dig was even valued at 60 million. Wow. Nothing.

Jeff Jarvis (00:20:53):
What was Kevin Rose? When

Leo Laporte (00:20:55):
He was on, on the cover of business week? It was the $60 million man and Kevin, we used to mock Kevin. He was still at tech TV when that came out and we used to mock him. He said, yeah, no, I didn't get any of that 60. He's doing our on the other hand. He's he's doing fine. Yeah. He was an early investor in Twitter among other things. Oh nice. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, nice. Nice work. If you can get it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:20):
I have never gotten anything. My only early investments have been in things that have failed.

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:25):
<Laugh> pretty much the same here. Yay. I have no, I was going through rental business cards. I had my partner at day life business cards. <Laugh> I had help boxes of 'em partner

Leo Laporte (00:21:33):
At day they day. What was, I don't even know what

Jeff Jarvis (00:21:35):
That was. Day life was a Google news as an API. I know the, the brand sounded like a day spa where you get, you know, hot stone massages, but it wasn't

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:47):
<Affirmative> Ooh. I would like a hot stone massage <laugh> I didn't have I'm like, yes, please.

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
A survey says Americans, widely distrust, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. I know, I, I believe me, I would not be doing this. I would not be doing this story if it weren't for such a slow week,

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:06):
You left it off the run just to no, it's in the

Leo Laporte (00:22:09):
Run on. I hate to say it. Okay. Heather Kelly, we're waiting for the Washington post, but they're quoting a survey from the Washington posts SHA school poll. Many Americans use social media and most use Facebook, but 64% say the government should do more to reign in big tech companies probably is. It's one of those things where it's really easy to get people to say stuff like that. Exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:32):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
That's a good idea. Yeah. I like that idea. Good idea.

Jeff Jarvis (00:22:36):
The, the one question was do you depend upon your phone? Yeah. And <laugh> and depend upon the toilet too. What's the

Leo Laporte (00:22:45):
Problem? What does it mean? It doesn't, there's not a lot of context, internet users. Here's the question. How much do you trust each of the following? How much do you trust each of the following companies or services to responsibly handle your personal information and data on your internet activity? Oh, guard

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:05):
You, you just, you did the setup for that is so obvious.

Leo Laporte (00:23:08):
How much do you trust these country companies with your privacy? In other words, and then the dark is trust. Not much at all. The light blue is trust a great deal, a good amount. And the gray is no opinion. Facebook came out because

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:23):
Amazon people are not wrong.

Leo Laporte (00:23:26):
They, they trust Amazon's number one, they trust yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:30):
More than half. And I, I think it's, you do trust them. You trust them with your data. You don't trust them to necessarily do right by the merchants trying to sell you stuff. But Amazon's they, your data goes in. It never comes back up. I guess that's

Leo Laporte (00:23:42):
True. Apple is actually behind Amazon by a goodly amount then Microsoft. But how

Jeff Jarvis (00:23:47):
Much you, how much data do you really give apple versus Amazon?

Leo Laporte (00:23:51):
Right? Well, potentially everything cuz you carry their phone around. So, oh yeah. Potentially if they wanted it, they could get a lot of information historically. They are they don't try to get everything and, and of course they make a lot of do a lot of marketing and spend a lot of marketing. Well they selling their bug as a feature. Yeah. Yeah. Saying, Hey, you know, we're safe. 43% trust Microsoft just slightly under apple. Google is actually doing fairly well. 48%. Trust them a great deal. 35% trust, two 15 for WhatsApp. 19 for Instagram 12 for TikTok. Tuck's the least trusted. I'm sorry. The interesting.

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:34):
The WhatsApp was a huge,

Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
I don't know. Yeah. Lot of, I don't know in WhatsApp. That's the biggest, they're a third set. I don't know with TikTok. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. What should I trust? 'em I don't know. I don't who they are. And, and you know, it's, it's because of the large and shifting, I don't know percentage, you can't really, it's kind of weird because for instance, YouTube is trusted by 35% of people, but mistrusted by 53%, which is a fairly hefty proportion. So it's a little, it's a little confusing.

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:08):
It's it's I mean, I, I, I often quoted these moments, the brilliant James Kerry, the late professor from Columbia university who said that pigeon polls preempt the public conversation. They're meant to measure. Yeah. What we have here is, is a case of self-fulfilling prophecy from media, right, right. 3 billion people still use Facebook media or beating everybody over the head. Yeah. It's awful. It's evil. It's terrible. Do you think they're awful and evil and terrible, right?

Leo Laporte (00:25:32):
Yes. Oh see, it's almost a measure of, you know, have you been reading our stories more than anything else? Exactly, exactly. Yeah. mostly there isn't something

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:40):
Going on here. I'm not denying that, but it's just media never acknowledge their own self-reflective impact. And by the way,

Leo Laporte (00:25:50):
Conflict of interest most say targeted ads are annoying, invasive and not helpful. This is very counterintuitive. 82% say of people say targeted ads are annoying invasive and not helpful. I don't, I, I don't understand that because people

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:08):
Get upset by, well, no, I also think people get creeped out slash upset over like a pair of shoes following you. That is, it is disconcerting. Especially if like you looked at something that isn't related to something you actually want. Right. That's when you tend to notice it so I can see why people think

Leo Laporte (00:26:28):
It's annoying. Yeah. I'm not buying horseshoe. All right. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, I even don't even want to continue on cuz it's right. It's not. Thank you. It's not, it's not good. I'm

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:40):
I'm my blood, my

Leo Laporte (00:26:41):
Blood pressure. It's just a pole. I don't think they're, I don't think they're very useful for anything they're dumb. Yeah. But

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:47):
1, 1, 1 you're you're willing to go with I'll I'll just note newspapers went after radio. They went after billboards. They went after television. They're going after the internet. It's nothing new. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
Nothing. Yeah. Let's tell you a little break. We can actually this might be interesting. Go back and in, in time and look at the year in review Jason's put in a bunch of stories from the past year with oh, wow. That just popped in there. Thank you, Jason. That's nice. Thank you, Jason. We'll do that. That, that fun. Finally, something to talk about instead of Washington, Washington, post pulse, have either of you ever done imperfect foods? I, I have, I had a completely wrong impression of what these guys were imperfect foods. They're actually pretty perfect. <Laugh> that's the, is my bottom line on this. We've been, we've been getting it now every week. I love it every day. Delicious groceries fall through the cracks of our food system, just cuz how they look. Imper foods is turning this around by sourcing quirky at delicious foods and delivering them to you in a way proven to reduce emissions by the way, this, this is a sponsor in case you didn't notice.

Leo Laporte (00:27:54):
So let me talk about this cuz when I heard that and I that's the ma that's the kind of the top line pitch of foods I thought, oh well, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna, I'm gonna have a Ru of bag. Looks like Richard Nixon, or I'm gonna have a, you know, bruised apple or something. No, actually this is fantastic food. I'll give you an example. We got pomegranates they're they're smaller than the pomegranates, the size of my head that I can buy at whole foods. But in every other respect they were delicious. They were sweet. They might even be better than the giant pomegranates. It, it, it turns out 35% of the food food supply in this country gets unsold or UN uneaten more than a third, just because the grocery store doesn't, you know, want, thinks nobody will buy it or whatever. So you can change that equation within imperfect foods.

Leo Laporte (00:28:42):
It's a grocery delivery service off entire line of sustainable groceries. By the way, we can get a lot of our shopping done there because it's not just produce it's everything. Now they taste delicious. They reduce waste. They the way they do it is great. They, they organize the deliveries in the group so that the truck only goes to the neighborhood once a week. So they to emissions fact about 25 to 75%, fewer emissions than individual trips to the grocery store on average imperfect food customers saved six to eight pounds of food with every order. I just, I, this is better than your grocery delivery in so many ways, I get some of the best broccoli I've ever had from imperfect foods last week artichokes. And then we can also get butter, cheese chips, everything, almost everything we buy at the grocery store from imperfect food.

Leo Laporte (00:29:36):
So this makes me so, so happy. And by the way, I'm really like this, say goodbye to packaging guilt. It's the only national grocery delivery company that makes it easy to return your packaging. After every order plus they don't use plastic bags. So it's just a cardboard box with cardboard liners. So the, the waste is very, very minimal and there's no plastic in it, you know, except for the, you know, prepackaged stuff like fruit juice and stuff. I know that's my big thing right now. I'm really trying to cut back on plastics. You get to choose. It's really good. I, I, and, and I, I just think that the name of the company implies there's gonna be something wrong with these. And there is nothing as far as I could tell there is everything right with them. I guess they, you know, if I may,

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:23):
Yes. You know, you think about it. The ugliest tomatoes are usually are

Leo Laporte (00:30:28):
The best, most delicious tomatoes. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. You know, you really don't want the biggest zucchini or the biggest POME grand, the biggest anything. Plus grocery stores carry for instance they carry ha avocados instead of the, I think the more delicate, more delicious greener fores because the Faires show bruises and the Haas are black, so they're bruised, but you can't tell that to me does not make it a great avocado. Imperfect foods is a solution to this help, help the world, just go to imperfect foods.com and look at these numbers and you'll see how great this is for the environment and how great it is for you. M perfect. IM P E R F E C T foods, M I M P E R F E. CT foods.com. If you use a promo code twig, you'll get 20% off your first four orders, your first four orders, very easy to pause.

Leo Laporte (00:31:28):
In fact, we're pausing it this week cuz of Christmas and starting it up again next week. So you know, again, on average imperfect foods, customers save six to eight pounds of food with every order food that would be thrown out, tossed away, used to feed animals or something else, not, you know, taking off the grocery shelves, that's a big deal. And and I have to say, it's no sacrifice at all. Imper foods.com. The promo code is twig. That's how you let 'em know you saw it here and please do use that. Cuz not only will you get that 20% off for your first four orders, but you'll let them know you saw it on TWI. Just go to imperfect foods.com and use the promo code, twig imperfect foods. They're perfect.

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:11):
So Leo does it. So they, they, they kind of recommend a package to you, but you can change it.

Leo Laporte (00:32:15):
It looks like they give yeah. Yeah, exactly. You completely customize it and you can also then say, I want this every week. Yeah, it's great. It's like a farm. It's very much like a farm box mm-hmm <affirmative> but it's more like a, I would say it's a cross between a farm box and grocery delivery because you can get groceries too. You can get everything and

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:33):
Well you can get rid of the

Leo Laporte (00:32:34):
Dreaded brussel sprouts. You don't have. Yeah, we get brussel sprouts cuz we like it. You would they're delicious.

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:40):
Oh no, they're not. They are three mile island cabbages. They are, they are freaks of nature. They were not. They're called Christmas

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:48):
Tree balls.

Leo Laporte (00:32:50):
Oh that's that's appetizing. That makes sense. My parents used

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:55):
To call them Christmas tree balls and I loved them because of it.

Leo Laporte (00:32:58):
It's so cute. It did. They cook

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:59):
Today. I learned from de site that sausage and V and potato salad is a Christmas Eve tradition in Germany. I'll buy that. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Yeah. Like that. That's good. Isn't that? What they eat every day. I know. I love. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:17):
So it's traditional Christmas too Christmas.

Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
Every Eve it's an Eve. We eat in the Eve. We eat bread in the morning. Sauce verse went sour CRO at night or to sell and cutoff actually is German. So in Germany, do they call it German? Potato salad? <Laugh> I'm just curious

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:38):
Like, like day aren't Danish. I don't think so. They just call it car

Leo Laporte (00:33:43):
It's but is it like, so is it like American P potato salad? No, no American

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:47):
Potato salads. Of course. Like everything else, ization. They don't put, you know, Hellmans

Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
There's no mayonnaise in the German. It's vinegar and bacon vinegar. Yeah. Yeah. I really like, but on

Jeff Jarvis (00:33:58):
Yeah. Yeah. German, potato German cucumbers. Hell was magnificent too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:04):
Here is the Google graveyard for 2021 courtesy Android police.

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:10):
It's a crowded place. This,

Leo Laporte (00:34:13):
The last service to be killed this year shall be the first in this reverse chronological list. They say angular, JM, wait a minute. They killed Anang oh no. Ang. They lives on his angular. They just took the JS out. Okay. No, that's no big deal. That's not death. That's not death. That's this one, no reaming

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:33):
Newsletter amaze me. We, we hardly knew

Leo Laporte (00:34:35):
Ye it's a, is this newsletter a newsletter? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:38):
Well it was a newsletter service launch around for like three months <laugh> and it never really worked and they're killing it before it's it's launched,

Leo Laporte (00:34:46):
Started and died in the same time quarter. Wow. Is it

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:51):
The same quarter of services gone before? You know it, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:34:54):
Newsletter. Ugh. Wow. You know the problem with doing this is that if people invest time and energy into creating a newsletter or ause, maybe this is the problem a newsletter <laugh> and then it gets killed a month later. It's like,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:09):
I don't think anybody could actually use it yet. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:12):
Yeah. I feel like, you know, I would've seen marketing for it cuz I get marketed as just about every new newsletter or service out there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:19):
This was from the Google area one and 20 team, their experimental team, Google toolbar, which had been around for 21 years. But I don't think anybody used toolbar with browsers these days. Right? no, they,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:37):
They went through this as, as a kind of wonderful nostalgic visit to decade

Leo Laporte (00:35:44):
Ago. Yeah. Yeah. Remember we had the, we we'd have the toolbar. There were all sorts of toolbar. You'd sometimes in your browser of three or four stacked back because mostly cuz browsers didn't do anything. The Google the Google toolbar basically was a search box below the address bar and had built in Google translation support. Yeah. We don't need that cuz you just type it in. You don't need anymore. Google my maps app, the,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:15):
I didn't know this existed, but I used the version of this all the time.

Leo Laporte (00:36:19):
Yeah. That will that and that will continue on it's only the Android app. Yeah. So what does it do?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:25):
You can create like, like I actually, we are going to Portland right after Christmas. Hopefully unless it snows. And I just created like a map for like, this is where our hotel is. These are the four restaurants we wanna eat a, you just save everything you want to do. And

Leo Laporte (00:36:40):
It's, it's like when you'd go to AAA and they'd give you a trip tick, it was a, and they'd give you, so it was a paper map and you you'd tell 'em and they'd mark off the route and all the places you're gonna stop and all that stuff. AAA used to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:53):
I don't know about that. There's also a service called road tripper and I've actually used Thater this and it's really good. It

Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
Seems like that would be, that should be built into maps. Like you should be able to give it way points in maps and right. I don't understand why they don't.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:06):
I've always thought this do not. Yeah. I'm like why, why is Google leaving this by the side of the road? Because it doesn't make sense. Yeah. Anyway.

Leo Laporte (00:37:16):
Okay. I guess you can do, you can view your, my maps using Google maps, but they didn't wanna make the complexity of creating a map, be part of Google maps. So if you go to google.com/well, you know, this is the other problem. Here's no maps for you. Here's the address? There's soup for you. Here's the address? Google.Com/Maps/D/U/Zero/I don't, that doesn't seem that memorable that you can create a new map and all that. So that's cool. I like that. I hope they don't kill that. You can even add layers

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:53):
That's yeah, no, it's a really, it's a nice tool. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:57):
Just so what they're killing is the Android version of right? Just the app, just the app. Now I've lost my place by 

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:06):
Next was September 30. Google bookmarks,

Leo Laporte (00:38:08):
Google now. Yeah. I'll have to go back. There we go. Google bookmarks. Well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:16):
But they didn't kill bookmarks. This, this was set me terribly

Leo Laporte (00:38:18):
When I saw the first, this is a, the bookmarks in Chrome. This is the that's bookmark, you know, like delicious and we use Pinboard pin. Board's great. I like Pinboard bookmarks held on save places in the map app. Actually I did use that, but the good news is your maps saved. Places are still on maps, which is where you thought they were <laugh> yeah. Okay. Chat base. That's about four years old. I don't remember that one. It was an analytics. It was an analytics platform for the Google's dialogue flow chat bot. Oh geez. I don't know anything. Now they bought Fitbit remember and and absorbed it a couple. When did they absorb it? Fairly recently? They have now killed. They acquired it in 2019. They killed Fitbit coach and Fitbit yoga or FitStar yoga. Fitbit coach was

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:10):
Stupid. Okay. I didn't even know Fitbit yoga existed.

Leo Laporte (00:39:13):
Okay. Take so

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:15):
That no, no sadness there. Well, Fitbit coach was just annoying because they like, it was a separate app.

Leo Laporte (00:39:23):
Anyway, it was a video based standalone body, weight workout app.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:28):
Yeah. And it was this whole separate app and it, it just, it didn't work well

Leo Laporte (00:39:35):
Gonna the base functionality actually an improved functionality will still be in the main Fitbit app, but there is no more Fitbit, separate coach, separate app for FitStar yoga, separate app tour builder was a service been around since 2013 allowed you to build interactive tours, complete with images and videos inside Google earth. Oh, I remember that. But, but Google earth still has similar tools. So this is, yeah. I think we hyped this on the show. This's so cool. Seeded. Yes. Oh really? When it first came out in 2013, I think we did. Wow. Of course we did expeditions and tour creator. This is a, a, well expeditions is the one we, this is yeah, but this is the VR platform you'd used with cardboard. It basically the, you know, the students could go anywhere. Yeah. Cool. American natural museum. That was neat. Yeah. Natural, natural history.

Leo Laporte (00:40:30):
Goodbye. Tour creators been killed off. Okay. Poly never heard this was launch 2017 a repository for 3d objects. You could what's the metaverse gonna do without them. Apparently. That's why they're killing it. The metaverse went on without them leaving poly in the dust. Wait a minute. Google play movies and TV, which we're not talking about out. <Laugh> okay. This was replaced by Google TV, but this is like a chat Brandy. Now I don't even understand. Anyway. Yeah. Whatever it's gone measure is gone. We knew that this is the, oh yeah. That made us sense app. Yeah. You can't measure your own banana anymore. Yeah. Banana for scale. Nope. No longer. Stop it there. Keep going, keep going. Going zinc render. It was a developer focused platform, a cloud rendering service for animation and visual effects. They bought it in 2014, killed it in 2021.

Leo Laporte (00:41:37):
It was used in American hustle. Transformer's dark side of the moon and star Trek into darkness. Hmm. Timely. They killed timely. And back in may, that was the alarm clock. Oh, well, no more service. The whole thing is gone. Oh, I used timely. I remember that because you'd set the alarm on any device and every device would now have an alarm and all your devices would go off at once. Oh no, no. That was good because you might have left your phone in somewhere, but everything you have, the whole thing would go off. I actually like Lisa got mad at you for that. Once timely was a really nice clock. I that's sad so that even the servers are gone for that one in April Google shopping, the app was killed off in March, Google, public alerts and Google crisis map.

Leo Laporte (00:42:31):
I'm sure there's something to replace that Google go links in March. The shortened links shortening service, Google cardboard. Oh, I remember when you and Gina came back from Google IO trying to put it together in the backseat. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. <Laugh> edit. Did it. We couldn't. It was under everybody's seat at Google IO. Yeah. swift for TensorFlow. You probably know about that, Stacy. I don't it was apple swift language combined with Google's TensorFlow or source library. Yeah. Yeah. And tilt brush, which was a really fun applic VR application. Yeah. Zillow open source. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:19):
Did this person UN ironically use the phrase funnest VR applications. <Laugh> TILs brush was one of Google's funnest VR applications.

Leo Laporte (00:43:28):
I think that is an UN ironic use. I think so of these superlative of the pseudo superlative, it should be most fun. Yes. It greats.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:39):
I'm just gonna say that. Great. It

Leo Laporte (00:43:41):
Greats a little. I think though as we've learned in our magnificent bastard, tongue words become acceptable over time. I, I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:50):
Know, I know I'm like, oh, is that, is that a word that is about to become

Leo Laporte (00:43:54):
Acceptable? Think so. And I think you nailed it because I think it was used originally, ironically, like a kid would say funnest and adults when they said it were being ironic. And then the, as often as the case, by the way, with languages, it shed the irony and all the remained was the glittering. But it was reading

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:14):
Today about magazines through the century. Cause I'm working on a project about that. And ti I didn't know, this time invented all kinds of new words, including tycoon socialite. Oh, pundit. Oh, kudos. Oh, estimate male chauvinist and televangelist.

Leo Laporte (00:44:34):
Wow. I was at first sounded like it was all Gatsby era, but I see some of the more recent stuff coming up. Wow. Good for time. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:45):
How did sus

Leo Laporte (00:44:48):
<Laugh> what

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:50):
Sus sus think

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Being suspicious. Okay. Oh, sus, oh, that's

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:54):
Sus Frank Norris was credited with naming world war II in 1939.

Leo Laporte (00:44:59):
Because at the time there'd only been one.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:01):
Yeah. I don't think it was hard. That's like web three <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:45:04):
Right. It's not hard. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:05):
Was like, I, okay. I guess we'll

Leo Laporte (00:45:07):
Him credit. It's the next world war? What, what, what should we call it? The next world war? The one after I guess it could have been world

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:13):
War. We're gonna call it one, a one the sequel. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:45:18):
What? Okay. That one's obvious. But like, if you use the word tycoon, how is anybody supposed to know what you're talking about? I don't know. Right. Cause I mean, we now know what

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:28):
Well, that's like we, we talked about unicorn companies a year. You had to describe unicorn, I guess it's or a, a company that's been valued in excess of a billion dollars. And now we're

Leo Laporte (00:45:36):
Just like, oh, it's unicorn. And then wasn't there an FSCO Fitzgerald novel, the last tycoon. So obviously it got picked up pretty quick.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:43):
It's also a title applied to foreigners, to the show of Japan and power between 1857 and

Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
1868. That sells. Oh, that's where it came from. So maybe it was the late 19th century that the TA

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:55):
Great

Leo Laporte (00:45:56):
Lord. There you go. That's okay. In very first thing Google killed this year was the Lu project to put internet connectivity in a balloon in the stratosphere. Oh yeah. And

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:09):
You know, last year when we did the show, remember we did a, and we predicted what they were going to kill in the coming year. I have no idea what we said they were gonna kill, but I'm curious how

Leo Laporte (00:46:19):
Well we did. Let's not go to that tape. <Laugh> <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:23):
There was drinking. It was Mary Jo Foley. Micah,

Leo Laporte (00:46:26):
I think yeah. Was like, oh, we should find that. Yeah, we should. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:29):
No. That was like two years ago. Cause that was last year was

Leo Laporte (00:46:32):
COVID right. It was, was the last one before

Jeff Jarvis (00:46:35):
That's the, the life

Leo Laporte (00:46:36):
Disappeared. That's the 19 Nielsen made each of us different drinks to, based on our personality. Yeah. one more thing. The first app to be killed in 2021, the first app was app maker which I had used to make apps. I, they say in Android police says in this article that it was for businesses, but I'd used app maker to make apps and it was actually pretty cool. So there you go. That's the official then that's the change log. That's the ultimate change log. Those, this is the life change logs, the doom log, the doom log. Thank you, Android police for putting that all for working hard man together. Yeah, yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:19):
Yeah. With commentary nonetheless.

Leo Laporte (00:47:21):
Yeah. Well done. The funnest

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:23):
Commentary

Leo Laporte (00:47:25):
It's so is the next stage most funnest or most?

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:31):
I dunno, it's fun. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:47:36):
Google says ChromeOS users are engaging with Android apps 50% more than they did last year. I don't even know what that means. What does it

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:45):
Mean?

Leo Laporte (00:47:47):
Do you use Android apps in your Chromebook

Jeff Jarvis (00:47:51):
Bar? I don't have a Chromebook. Barely.

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
Apparently you're in the minority that the incr Android apps used more this year, but I mean, I don't know how much they're used. Well, driving 50%

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:05):
Increase. So I don't know YouTube is on there and it, it took me and I should have written it down. It took me days to figure out how to stop it from launching the app. Every time I clicked on a YouTube link.

Leo Laporte (00:48:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you made it your default player and you've got a Chrome browser there, which really is how you prefer I'm sure. Yes.

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:25):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:48:26):
2021 was a good year for app publish more than 900 publishers worldwide saw their first million dollars or more in net income. And that number is up significantly over years previously. The, you know, it's split between apples store and the Google store. The green is Google play. The blue is app store. Actually the biggest growth was last year. 20, 20 people were stuck at home. Yeah. And then there was a little drop off for 2021, but still that's a lot, that's 900 companies that you know, suddenly exceeded a million dollars in net revenue. Can those be one

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:09):
Person?

Leo Laporte (00:49:10):
Yeah. Shots. Many, many of them are probably I would guess. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:14):
Yeah. I wonder. Did they, did they classify? Like what types of apps? I assume it would

Leo Laporte (00:49:19):
Be entertainment or workout. They did. So this is in the app store, but I, it may be roughly, let's see, you know, this is both. Okay. So games in 2021 with the 32%, 11% social networking. That's a, that's a growth over the last couple of years, entertainment down a little bit, 7% health and fitness. 7% productivity had doubled year over year, 6%. And then a big chunk, I guess, I guess. Yeah. Communication. Shouldn't publishers did very well on Google play. According this what? A communications publisher. 

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:01):
I have no idea what that is.

Leo Laporte (00:50:02):
Well, I think it's your people, right? Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:05):
Oh like media media. No, I would think it'd be like blue jeans or zoom

Leo Laporte (00:50:09):
Communication. Oh, now we don't, I don't know. New publishers, 139 publishers are projected to surpass the million dollar mark. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:19):
A publisher there. Anybody who puts an app up. So thus they are communications apps. Thus it's yes. Things like communication.

Leo Laporte (00:50:27):
So it's zoom. Okay. That makes more sense. Now they're all that's publish. You were right.

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:31):
You were, they all publish apps, which makes no sense, I guess, but what other ver gonna use?

Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
I, no, that's the word

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:39):
Is I actually wrote post about two books, about libraries and stuff that I really liked today. And I realized I was putting the verb into publish. That was a, I said, or as we'd call it now share. So it's a, it's a, it's a antiquated verb.

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
Yes. I have nothing to

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:01):
<Laugh>. You can tell like sure. Yes, Jeff they're tolerating me going off on these hand. Nothing to say back. Cause what the hell that killed another 45 seconds. I don't know what

Leo Laporte (00:51:12):
That means. I like it. Actually. Here's a shocker. Are you ready? Yes. Top domains for 2021. Google, which of course dominated for years was number two, two TikTok. Yay. Tiktok up from number seven last year. Most popular domains in August through December of 20, 21 TikTok. Wow. I was on,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:44):
I sucked down a lot of TikTok,

Leo Laporte (00:51:45):
But did you do it in the app? That's what's interesting. This is not the app. Yeah. This is tiktok.com versus Google. Do you know what it is?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:52):
I bet it's because people, when you share something on like Facebook or

Leo Laporte (00:51:56):
Twitter, it opens the web. Huh? It opens the app, the

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:59):
Web. Oh, maybe so. Yeah. And, and where's, it was Google. You offered, don't go to Google to go to Google.

Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
So last year, the top 10 were Google. We exactly what you would think. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, apple, Netflix, Amazon TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter kind of got sh shook up in 2021 TikTok. Then Google, Facebook, Microsoft, apple, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:28):
Where did Instagram?

Leo Laporte (00:52:30):
And it, Instagram fell off.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:33):
God is asterisk. What does that mean? You

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:34):
Know, but did, was it last year that inst they, they Instagram changed it. So you could no longer see things

Leo Laporte (00:52:40):
On the web app, unless you that's what happened? They didn't, they wanted you, they pushed you to the app. Right? So

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:46):
I, I old enough to remember when Yahoo was number one, me too, Jeff Long since you're

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:53):
Not, I was like, that's not that long ago. <Laugh> it's forever an internet time, but

Leo Laporte (00:52:59):
This is all from CloudFlare. So they have some pretty good, they have some on stats. I would trust this. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Boy, I think we gotta get to Dana boy or some sociologists on this. I mean, what is this, what does this indicate really interesting. But a lot of it too

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:14):
Is I think you're right. Leo is, is, is how are they defining web visit is critical to this list.

Leo Laporte (00:53:23):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It just says people going to that site,

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:27):
Nonetheless tos exploded. Yeah. and it's the, it's the I didn't put it on the rundown cause I'm, would've me off unless you wanna me off, but I that's a sport. Vox had this ridiculous piece day just snotty, naughty knows about, oh, TikTok and all this horrible things. People wasting their time. It's just terrible. Screw you. It's the people making their own content. There's great stuff there. It's fun. I went for through today for about an hour looking for something to irritate ant, but I enjoyed it.

Leo Laporte (00:54:00):
There really it's funny. There was such phobia in the Trump administration about TikTok being a Chinese company, spying on our youth, et cetera, et cetera. That's just disappeared. Now people just enjoy TikTok for what it is. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe we put our, there are still people who are concerned about it. Yeah, maybe it is. I don't know. I don't know. For some reason in all of 2021, YouTube, which usually ranks six or seven was number one on one day in 2021, February 2nd, 20, 21. God, what

Jeff Jarvis (00:54:33):
Could that be?

Leo Laporte (00:54:36):
Why says CloudFlare one can only guess, but back then, although it was the week of the super bowl and some commercials, like the one from Doritos with Matthew McConaughey were out of on that day, there was another newsworthy event. The me and mark who DETA had happened the day before. And remember this video of a fitness instructor, she was filming her workout. As the coup was happening. You could see the military pulling up at the palace and it became viral. It was also the day. I don't know. Donald Trump announced a new legal team for the impeachment trial. I don't know team three trial four. I don't know. It's hard to keep track Bezos announced he would step down his CEO on February 2nd. I thought YouTube event.

Jeff Jarvis (00:55:24):
No

Leo Laporte (00:55:26):
February haven't baby shark dance was the most viewed video of all time. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:55:33):
Giving me an excuse to play it one more time. No, I'm not gonna do that. I should, can I show this video of the this is from BBC news. They'll probably take it down. So I just throw the sound down. No sound. And then they won't know that we're playing their little video. So she was just doing a little exercise routine. You see at the, at the gates of the palace in me and Mar when military vehicles start to pull up, she's oblivious. She's just doing her, her thing. This is the beginning of the coup and me and Mar here come the here, come the trucks. She's not, she doesn't care. No, she just, she's doing her little. It's actually kind of hysterical.

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:16):
It's a metaphor for so much. Yeah. This is how the Internet's dancing while Rome burn. This is,

Leo Laporte (00:56:21):
This is life on the internet. Of course there's a big barricade across the the, the way, I don't know. I guess at some, oh yeah, they're opening the barricade, not the barricade. They're going in. They're going in the military sees power. The hunter sees power and the, as the BBC points out the lyrics, they're coming one by one to fight over the throne, but she didn't know how apt that was. There they go. Is that wild? Brits

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:51):
Always appreciates some good irony there.

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:53):
Yeah. So <laugh> yeah, they understand irony far bit of me.

Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
So the cloud CloudFlare says the only thing we could figure out in February 2nd is that why you two became number one that day? Social media domains continued high in the ranking. The nine main social media applications, all in the top 100, the only one out wish they did this over

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:15):
Time. Be happy,

Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
Like longer time. Well, they do look, you'll be happy to hear this. The only one out was quora.com <laugh> so they do, this is a year. Yeah. This plot. And so you can see with the colors you know, Facebook's green. So it's pretty high in the, these are the rankings on the left. One through a, I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:35):
I'm curious, like how many new entrants we've had in the last 10 years for

Leo Laporte (00:57:40):
In social media? Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:42):
Or in any of these? I mean, just think about like, when was the last new entrance to this particular table. I mean, from

Leo Laporte (00:57:52):
Most popular social media domains in late 2021, cuz it varied throughout the year. But as of right around now, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Quora, Stacy.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:05):
I think you just made

Leo Laporte (00:58:06):
A really important point. Snapchat still

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:09):
Uhhuh Stacy.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:11):
The fact that TikTok could come out of kind of nowhere and go to number one is to say that there are huge opportunities compete with the big kids. Huge. Well actually, and you gotta have the back of the Chinese government.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:24):
I'm gonna actually you, so TikTok purchased a company called musically, which was really big on the tween girl set. And I can't remember when they did that deal, but that helped propel them into the direction they ended up with before. Yeah, it was a, it

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:39):
Was a jump. But it was much smaller, much smaller. Yeah. Well

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:44):
Yes it was

Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
Years ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thousand 17.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:50):
So only.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:51):
Yeah. So TikTok maybe came outta nowhere, but it kind of came outta nowhere over the last five years.

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:56):
Well it's like, it's like Google buying YouTube, you know, gave him a heads up and video. Right. So you could, yeah. I mean, there, there wasn't a head start there, but who would've

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:06):
Thought you could and bite dance bite. That's who I was looking for. It was bite dance that bought them. Yeah. That bought them. Yeah. Bite dance was not a small company.

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:14):
No, not China. No, no, no. True, true in China, but well, well what I'm saying is if you, if, if, if your Warner brothers may at rest in peace, you know, you, you had the, it's like watching succession by the way, you know, code a succession by <laugh> by watch MCCA go Joe

Leo Laporte (00:59:31):
Or whatever it's called. Oh yeah. That's fun. They're always getting, trying to buy somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Most popular chat apps platforms not changed. Signal up a point taking over for WeChat. Number one is WhatsApp. I guess that's not a surprise. Number two, telegram number three. Wechat. Oh, I'm sorry. Signal went down a point. I'm sorry. Number four. Signal. So WhatsApp is pretty dominant as the preferred chat I app. I think this is a little bit colored by the fact that this is web based as opposed to app based. I mean really most people use well, absolutely. Maybe they're just looking at the IP addresses. I'm not sure, I guess, because it's CloudFlare, they're looking at access to the servers, so maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter most popular. I think they tell us somewhere in this, I'm sure they do.

Leo Laporte (01:00:31):
And if I had read it more carefully, <laugh> I would know this broad internet traffic related year in review. So I guess it isn't just websites. It's in a internet traffic as a whole. And they certainly know that for a number of reasons. I mean, they're the kind of the front end to a lot of sites on the internet signal skyrocketed in January. But WeChat came back in February. You remember when signal started to skyrocket when WhatsApp announced the, they were gonna, their, the privacy share all their information, share their information with Facebook. That's, that's exactly what oops. Most popular metaverse domains, Roblox fortnight second life. There's not a lot of competition, Oculus and Minecraft, not even in the top 100,000

Jeff Jarvis (01:01:25):
So well, are those are, how are those web at

Leo Laporte (01:01:27):
All? That's it's it's gotta be internet traffic in general. It's gotta be internet traffic catch sites. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. Yep. So there you go. Actually, that's really good. We're gonna, I think we'll be following that year every year now from now on the yeah, that's a really good CloudFlare top.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:01:44):
Well, and that's why I think it's interesting to see like over time partially, because I think it would show how once you're big enough, you kind of just get entrenched up there and it makes sense. I mean, if Google everything about Google, including maps and did it say it included mail? Let's see. I can't remember. Let's

Leo Laporte (01:02:05):
See. I do

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:06):
Scrolling out. It includes maps, translate photos, flights, books, and news. Okay. But it doesn't

Leo Laporte (01:02:11):
Include mail. Yeah. Gmail must be right by itself. Separate, bigger than anybody. Yeah. That's interesting. It doesn't include Gmail. So it's not, it's really kind of not fair.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:23):
Well, no, it's just the more services you have. The more reasons people come to you and that makes a hundred percent sense

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:32):
Also in a world where things are still embedded to an extent, right? You still can query something in your browser and not go through both pages. Google's highly efficient, still as much as the EU complains about them, they are

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:51):
It's life easy for people and bad for startups and competition. <Laugh> ah,

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Let's take a little break. And then we'll I think J has prepared some TikTok enjoyment for us, some something on our plate. Not as much as I

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:04):
Wanted, but

Leo Laporte (01:03:07):
I don't want this to be this week in TikTok.

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:10):
No, we have, we have one TikTok and we have one TikTok story that I is gonna be very interesting, particularly for the Laport

Leo Laporte (01:03:17):
Family. And what's the what's odd is see what are you talking about? Tiktok and odysey I have no idea. No, I'm talking to Stacy. What did you just say? Tiktok and odysey. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:29):
No. I was gonna say with TikTok, one of the most aggravating things is at the end of the year, all they're doing is showing off like the most viral video. Oh, like what was your, so basically you're seeing all these videos you, so before

Leo Laporte (01:03:40):
You're like, oh yeah, that's annoying. Now. I don't understand. Does a creator have to go along with that? Or does TikTok just doing it to them?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:48):
I think they repost it. Yeah. Okay. The creator repost

Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
It. So the TikTok tells you what your most viral video is and then you post it. Yeah, they do that on a Facebook. People do that. My top 12 pictures from Facebook or 10 or whatever it is, what kind of not Facebook I Instagram. I do not. No, cuz we've seen 'em all and you, yeah. You want new, you want, there's a demand for fresh content on TikTok. Henry tells me I need my fresh,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:13):
Oh, dopamine

Leo Laporte (01:04:14):
Rush. He feels the pressure man. He's oh, I bet he went on. The whole family, went to Mexico for vacation and he's I gotta make, gotta make video, gotta make video because you gotta feed the feed the monster. Our show today brought to you by user way.org. Really a fan of this company. We have a lot of blind listeners and I know, you know, while podcaster great for blind listeners, the worldwide, we not so much. So websites often leave them in the dark. If you will. It's all about accessibility. And by the way, you have a legal obligation to make your website accessible. According to the Americans with disabilities act, you've got to be ADA compliant or you're open to lawsuits user way solves that problem. It's an incredible AI powered solution that with one line of JavaScript enforce the hundreds of web content accessibility guidelines.

Leo Laporte (01:05:13):
It can achieve more than an entire team of developers. I know the idea of making your website. I mean, everybody likes the idea, but it also is challenging cuz you, you worry, it's gonna cost a lot. It's gonna be hard to do, gonna be a lot of maintenance, not with user way. One line of JavaScript makes your website accessible. It's simple, it's easy. It's cost effective. Start by going to user way.org/to it and using their ADA scanning tool. To see if your website is compliant, you can run it through, you can check it. You can see, you can see where the problems are. You might decide as some of the biggest companies in the world have decided to use user way over a million websites. Now user user way, including Coca-Cola Disney, a FedEx Walmart UNICEF uses user way and now user way is making its best in class enterprise level accessibility tools available to small and medium size businesses for a small and medium size price.

Leo Laporte (01:06:10):
In fact, it's very, very affordable, which was a huge relief to me cuz you know, I know I wanna offer an accessible compliant website. It's not just the right thing to do it. It's good business sense. You don't wanna turn people away. 60 million Americans with disabilities, w you want to purchase your products, but when they can't use your shopping cart, that's the end of the line user way will fix image tags. It will remediate complex nav menus. It'll ensure all the popups are accessible, that your, your shopping cart is accessible. It'll make sure you use accessible colors while remaining true to your brand colors. And it'll give you a detailed report of all the violations that were fixed in your website. User ways, easy to install. It's just a plug in with some of the big sites like WordPress. It works with shop. I works with Ws AEM site, core SharePoint, but any site you can add a line of JavaScript to user way we'll work with and it integrates seamlessly. It's affordable and it'll help you meet your compliance goals. And really most importantly, improve the experience for your users. Just ask Susan Bennett, the former voice of Siri.

Speaker 4 (01:07:17):
Hi, I'm Susan Bennett. The original voice of Siri. You won't hear me say something like this too often. I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're looking for, but every day that's what the internet is like for millions of people with disabilities user way fixes all of that with just one line of code.

Leo Laporte (01:07:39):
Well, that's it user way can make any website fully accessible and ADA compliant with user way. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly, customize it to fit their needs. It's a great way to show your commitment to millions of people with disabilities and it's easy. And it's very affordable. When you go to user way.org/twi, you'll get 30% off user ways. AI powered accessibility solution, user way, making the internet accessible for everyone. I like that user way.org/twi user way.org/twi. If you've been waiting and waiting for an update to your pixel six, Jeff, you thought you got it, did you? No, I didn't. Yeah. Stacy, you did somebody got it. Maybe it was Ann. I thought I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:29):
Got it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:30):
So you were the unlucky one because Google's play caused it. So the big December update, which is not just a security update, but was a fix for a lot of things, apparently caused some number of people to have connectivity problems that reduced it reduced their you know, their bars and they were dropping calls that were getting low local quality. I don't know if you've been,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:54):
My island has tear service. So I would not notice

Leo Laporte (01:08:57):
Told, you know, you wouldn't know. So there's been a lot of, you know, question back and forth what's going on? Why can't I get it? What this is the slowest rollout ever in history. Well, now it's pretty apparent that Google has actually paused it because of these connectivity issues. And until they fix it, they're not gonna push it out. So the, the December update at this point, probably a January update and and don't feel bad if you didn't get it, cuz very few people except Stacy. Got it. So this just,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:27):
This just, oh you wanted this just in. Yes. Well I don't know. Is this just in the FTC is looking at Amazon's cloud business. Oh, did you see that story? No, I didn't see that. It was in Bloomberg. It's a, it's a Bloomberg. So federal investigators have contacted several companies about AWS, Amazon web services 

Leo Laporte (01:09:49):
And Le con at it again.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:52):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:09:54):
She, I think, you know, I think we can safely say con Congress is gonna do diddly because they can't seem to get anything done anyway. So this seems like an unlikely scenario, but if there's any hope of regulation of big tech in the United States, it's gonna be through the FTC

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:11):
And that's terrible because the FTC a, they have regulatory guidelines. So what will happen is if they find or censure Amazon here, Amazon will Sue them. They've clearly they've already demanded a recusals. Amazon's clearly not gonna just like roll over on this. So then we'll get a lawsuit, then we'll get the inevitable counter suit. Then we'll get, you know, the appeals process and everything. And it'll be just like Microsoft antitrust all over again. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:10:39):
She, of course when she was a Columbia law school professor wrote papers warning

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:45):
About it was a foundational antitrust paper.

Leo Laporte (01:10:47):
Yeah. Warning about Amazon. And that's why Amazon said she has to recuse herself. Courts said, no, she doesn't. And now that she's the chairperson of the FCC FTC, it looks like there's gonna be a lot more activity against big tech from the Ft, which, and

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:03):
She has certain muscle, but you're right. Congress won't Congress is doing stuff for headlines, Mike Masick and Jeff Koup were going angry today because Klobuchar and company were demanding to know about moderation decisions from the platforms. Well, that's the first amendment question. It's not, not government's right to do that. You wouldn't ask the New York times who, how dare you ask anybody else. Yeah. But they're just doing it for, they know that they can't do it. They know what it, it violates the first amendment, but they're doing it to get headlines. Yeah. So that's what Congress is out

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
For. Yeah. It's kind of a depressing,

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:37):
There's real work to be done, but they're yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:39):
Jerks. well, they're just turning out to be the Pauls that we used to think they were and turns out they really are

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:48):
Pauls Pauls, Pauls, P O LS. Oh, got it.

Leo Laporte (01:11:56):
It comes from, what does it come from? Like Taney hall. And you just, you know, the, the notion of these kind of corrupt ward healer who yeah. Runs the joint, but doesn't really look out for his constituency particularly unless it serves his ambitions. That's what I mean when I call you AALL okay. The first Tesla baby has been born,

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:22):
This is a pretty amazing story.

Leo Laporte (01:12:24):
<Laugh> so you're on Sherry 33, your husband Keating, Sherry 34 of Wayne, Pennsylvania on their way to the hospital. When her water broke, traffic was really bad. Wasn't moving too well. Well he puts the car. So he, the auto, he sets the nav for the hospital and, and he says, he's got his hand lightly left hand lightly on the wheel wall laning back to check on his wife in the backs, in or the kids in the back seat, front seat and swiveling to tend to his wife in the front seat. Iran's contractions were one minute apart. You know what? That means? She was squeezing my hand at the point where I thought she was gonna shatter it. I was saying, okay, focus on your breathing. My adrenaline was pumping. I said, Rafa, everything's fine. Your baby sister is arriving. The 20 minute drive to the hospital. Felt like two hours. Each time she caught her breath between contractions. She glanced at the GPS to clock their progress just as they pulled up to the hospital, the Tesla driving the whole way I might add, she whispered, oh my God, Keating. She's out. A pediatrician happened to be standing right outside the doors. He summon nurses who raced down, cut the umbilical card over the car's front seat, baby healthy mother, healthy and car made it. The first

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:57):
He, he said he had to do some major cleaning with the car <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:14:01):
Hey, who cares? You know, that's fine. That's why you get the leather seats. Yeah. <Laugh> that the birth apparently was flawless. And you know, they, the, the family of four made it to the hospital. Thanks to the Tesla driving them there. So they're calling it the first Tesla self-driving baby. They

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:22):
Considered briefly though. She, I think quite properly vetoed this, using the middle name te oh no,

Leo Laporte (01:14:28):
No, no, no. But no, they're gonna call her Mave. Mave Lilly, obviously Westworld fans. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:40):
It is pretty cool. Yeah. Nice family. It's so dangerous cuz we know it's not

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
Good. I know.

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:45):
Well he can't but what are you gonna do if you're, if you're in that position, you pull over

Leo Laporte (01:14:51):
Just like everybody's done. Since the car was invented, they did it in buggies. <Laugh> you just pull over, you pull

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:57):
Over, you call 9 1, 1. You

Leo Laporte (01:14:59):
Have the baby <laugh> but we're but we're almost there. We're almost there. Watch the GPS honey and breathe. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:08):
Can, can, can you go a little lighter in my hand? C can you look over my head a little bit? The

Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
Case of the self-driving baby, they should, they really should have known named your test. I think that sounds

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:18):
Why about you 10 to one, 10 to one nickname.

Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
That's what she gets called, right? Yeah. So this is the TikTok story you put in here from the verge TikTok kitchens. So you know, I have a little bit of self interest conflict of interest with this one because my son is on TikTok with 1.7 million followers. He's a Chuck chef, but apparently he picked a good time to become a TikTok chef. Cuz cooking is huge on TikTok and TikTok has decided to create up kitchens with some of the creations of their content creators. This is, you know, all of this, every one of these platforms is vying to get creators, to make stuff on their platform. Cuz essentially you get free content. It's what drives the platform, whether it's YouTube or TikTok or Snapchat or Twitter or whatever or Instagram. So this is the spiff that TikTok is offering these cooks. You know, we'll take your recipe and we'll let people order it. They're gonna or open 300 locations across the us to start. But plan on expanding to 1000. By the end of next year, they partnered with virtual dining concepts, which is I guess a popup kitchen, ghost kitchens. Yeah. A ghost kitchen

Jeff Jarvis (01:16:34):
Company. They use, they use some existing restaurants I think. And then they create kitchens.

Leo Laporte (01:16:37):
It'll be delivery only. So brand to go to it'll cook up some of the trendies recipes on the app. I know that Henry's stuff. I'm sorry. Salt Hanks stuff would probably be among those TikTok kitchens will operate out of some existing kitchens like PPO and Bertus Ooh, near me. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:00):
And they'll share revenue with the creators, but they don't have to. Right. Cause you can't copyright a recipe, right? No. Right. So, but TikTok

Leo Laporte (01:17:10):
Knows the creators will go. It's about the creators. Yeah. Look it, they, they, all they have to do is look over their shoulder at Twitter and what, and how they killed vine by not valuing the creators. And they know that how easy it is to lose these people. So yes. Yeah. They're gonna make sure. So the very first menu feature the baked feta pasta,

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:27):
But by the way, yeah. Who really one that right. It was fun to watch. I don't want it

Leo Laporte (01:17:31):
Even fun to you. Look good. Are you gonna

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:33):
Order that to be

Leo Laporte (01:17:34):
Brought home? I don't think so. Air fried strips of corn known as corn ribs, you know, they really need to talk to my son, the crispy cheese covered pasta chips and the Smashburger. These are all novelty foods, not good foods. Right?

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:48):
You want, you want to great killer. Yeah. Roast beef sandwich with cheese on it and, and J like

Stacey Higginbotham (01:17:55):
Pancakes. No, what you want is to taste something crazy. This is, this is a search. This is entertainment. This is the

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
Food. All right. You're right. You're not ordering this for dinner. This is just say, Hey, you

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:05):
Gotta let you do it once and you don't do it again. Yeah. Mr.

Leo Laporte (01:18:09):
Mr. The Mr. Beast burger, Mr. Beasts, the number one YouTube star VDC created a kitchen for him with a Mr. Beast burger towards the end of last year. They sold 1 million burgers in three months and there are now 15 kidding me. Yeah. And there are now 1500 kitchens throughout the us Canada and the UK. So yeah. It's good timing. I mean <affirmative> and

Stacey Higginbotham (01:18:30):
It's possible that some of this will become like part of the food lexicon, but the nice thing about ghost kitchens is you just they're outfitted specifically to make, to, to turn out batches of stuff and then flip.

Leo Laporte (01:18:44):
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:46):
Right. The, the, the fad goes fine. You're done. Yeah. Geez. I could an order. A Mr. Be Berger.

Leo Laporte (01:18:54):
Well, you could have, I don't know if they, you should check. No, look, maybe Bertus will bring one over for you,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:00):
Your heart, Jeff, your

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:01):
Heart. I can only get delivery though. Not pick

Leo Laporte (01:19:08):
Yes. Pretty far away. No, I think they don't want you to see where it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:19:14):
It's the bodega. The street. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:16):
Well, I think it's probably Bertus for you

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:19):
Or maybe a trailer where they make meth O other

Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
Days. Well, you don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had mentioned that Google TVs were yanked from best by some Mely. We, we, we hypothesized it's because TCL is gonna be making the Amazon TVs featuring the fire TV, but TCL has resumed selling its Google TVs. They had to roll out some software fixes. So it was just a software. No problem. Right. Yeah. And these are actually very nice TVs. TCL has for years offered Roku built in and now they're offering Google TV built in, into its six, five and six series. Apparently the software was sluggish and buggy. And now that it's updated, they're back on sale sidewalk labs, which is Google's data Toronto smart city. Yeah. Yeah. Now folded back into Google,

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:22):
Dr.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:22):
Ross, the core, not Cory doctoral. 

Leo Laporte (01:20:24):
Dan, Dr. Dr.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:26):
Ross. Yeah. Office, sorry. Has health issues. So, and they also, you know, they were, this is their ignoble retreat from activists against what they were trying to do. It'll

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:37):
Be on next year's kill list. I'm afraid. Oh dear. Yeah. I, I still think there's very neat things to be done there, but I

Leo Laporte (01:20:43):
Wish, oh, I totally do. I do

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:45):
Think, I, I think anytime we talk about smart cities, you have a inherent conflict of interest between citizens who, you know, are distrustful of data in cities that are like yeah, we'll do whatever we can to help get a cool service and offset some of our costs because people don't wanna pay taxes. And it's just, it's a, it's a nasty thing.

Leo Laporte (01:21:08):
I think it's also somewhat, there is some, I'm sorry, Jeff moral panic here. And this is the tension,

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:14):
A trademark Leo that's my,

Leo Laporte (01:21:16):
This is the tension throughout everything we cover, which is that data can make it better. You know, this is, you know, having the data Google was,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:24):
They didn't wanna share that data with others. They wanted to take data, but they didn't wanna provide it out. And that that's not cool.

Leo Laporte (01:21:32):
No, it's the city's data. So that obviously is a nonstarter. And if they're gonna be intransigent about that, yeah. It doesn't work, but there's also this legitimate, I understand concern for privacy and, and I don't think there's any evident that the city government is gonna protect your data any better than Google would,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:53):
Would probably be worse.

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:54):
Yeah. Probably worse. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:21:56):
But people don't want the big company to get it. Right. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:21:58):
Well, it's it wasn't just that they didn't want what they didn't want. Was Google getting access to this data when other competitors couldn't come in that's right. Access to the, I

Leo Laporte (01:22:07):
Understand that. Yeah. And that, but see, that's an easy thing to fix. And if Google doesn't fix that, then that's just then they're wrong. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:13):
Yeah. Yeah. Well then Google, but to Google's point they're like, why would we share this data? This is why we're doing and investing in this is so we can get access to this information.

Leo Laporte (01:22:22):
Oh, you mean they're not doing it for the public. Good. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:27):
So, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:22:29):
You must have put this in because there's a question mark next to this story. Yes I did. Does this mean anything? I could tell you Verizon and Google, cause let me just get the story, then you can explain it. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:41):
My news feed, cause what I do is to, to look at the show and irritate Stacy and put things into the rundown. If I go to Google news and, and, and, and type in Google, it it's weird. But if I go to search Google for Google and then click on news, then I get a nice feed. Suddenly today there was kind of a, a redesign and there were also more press releases in it, which was a little interesting. And so I came across this one for Google and Verizon and, and so my, my mind was thinking, it's a news story. I realized it's a press release, but then I read it. And I think, what the hell does this mean? So I thought I'll ask Stacy

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:19):
That's fair. Cause it made

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:20):
No sense. I couldn't get any sense out of this thing.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:23):
Yeah. So what's how happening is, you know, big picture. Oh, did you read the headline out loud here?

Jeff Jarvis (01:23:29):
No, I didn't Verizon and Google cloud to collaborate, to deliver 5g mobile edge computing, to bring the power of the cloud closer to mobile and connect the devices at the edge of Verizon's network, a lowercase edge in that case, next paragraph, Google distributed cloud edge, all uppercase, Verizon 5g edge intends to bring compute and storage services to the network, edge lowercase E to support real time enterprise applications. I throw my hands. I said that I don't, I, I have no idea what's happening. Is there anything else?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:04):
So basically what's happening. Yeah. There, there is a thing happening and there's this thing is this one the telcos have given up on the cloud and we, we saw this company, this happened in 2020. We saw these deals. Microsoft has one of these with Azure or sorry at and T has one with Azure. Verizon has one with Google and with AWS at and T might have one with AWS. Anyway, the point is all the stuff used to happen in Google and Azure and AWS's cloud data centers. Right. You know, the ones that keep going down so with 5g and everything happening on your mobile devices, and then this idea of like the edge being like inside a factory latency becomes important. So you don't wanna send your data all the way back to Google's data centers. You wanna send it someplace a little closer. So Verizon, they have little tiny data centers all over the place because they've got cell towers all over the place. And at the base of those, they've got a bunch of servers. They also have like central offices for, you know, the telco networks. So now you can get access to Google or Amazon or any one of, depending on the partnership, they run their cloud software in Verizon's data centers because it's lower latency.

Jeff Jarvis (01:25:24):
So, oh, so what is it's it's like, it's like a what's the, what's the company with the Hawaiian name that puts everything in all the servers around the country, the world AAI. So a sponsor by the way, on and off. So, so it is near the edge. It is literally physically around their network. That's what you're saying.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:25:43):
It is physically on their network. It's a little different. So AAI only does, well, they have they've expanded, but they, this is, they do service Google's cloud software. So basically you, if you build something designed for like Amazon or Google's clouds, you are, you're using certain services. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you don't have to change anything about your application to run it now a little closer, because it's gonna run on those same services located. Got it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:26:09):
Okay. Now makes sense. Thank you, Stacy. I knew you would know. I don't know if it was worth talking about, but I just didn't couldn't figure

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:15):
Out yeah. Like a,

Leo Laporte (01:26:17):
We throw that term around. So it's good to explain it. I think I was, I was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:21):
Gonna say the biggest deal with the edge and you're going to hear this. This'll be a point of contention for like the next few years, as people will be like the edge and there's the, the telco edge, which is what these people are talking about. There's the, you know, edge edge, which is usually like a gateway device, like a, just a server that's sitting in like a factory floor. And then there's what a lot of the cloud companies call the farthest edge, which is actually where I'm most excited, which is actually the devices themselves. And so when, what I'm actually really excited about is what the cloud guys call the farthest edge is the most interesting place because that's where you're seeing a lot of really cool innovation happen with distributed computing. And you're a bunch of startups arise trying to make it so you can actually do an ad hoc, distributed computing kind of system.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:15):
And that's gonna be awesome because then you don't have to send stuff back to the cloud. There's gonna be more data privacy. There's gonna be lower latencies. It it's gonna be really cool, but nobody yet has a dog in that hunt except these startups. And so you get a lot of like the big guys kind of like calling things. That's the edge that aren't really the edge. And you're gonna start seeing the big guys buy companies here, as they realize their container strategy is going to ultimately fail for the IOT. So like next three years or so, that's gonna be a huge thing to think about like a big macro picture.

Leo Laporte (01:27:50):
And what does this have to do with Microsoft's edge browser?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:27:54):
Nothing. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:27:55):
Absolutely nothing. <Laugh> actually speaking of browser's Chrome 100, which is, that's a major landmark. What is Chrome currently? Is it 96, 97? We're getting close. Chrome is set to reach Virgin 100, but apparently it's according to the chromium BR bug tracker, it's gonna break some websites. Yeah. The websites that are known to be affected are primarily those developed with a web design kit called DDA or DDA. These websites all use the same bit of code to check what version of Chrome you're using. They're used to two digits. This is kind of like a mini Y two K <laugh>, but three digits. I don't know what the hell that is. I don't know what the hell it is. That's 

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:56):
I love how people just make the same mistake. That's so over and over and over again.

Leo Laporte (01:29:01):
So due to blocks automatically any version of Chrome below 40, however, when you get to 100, if you only look at the <laugh>, if you only look at the first two digits, it, it looks like Chrome 10, and it will be blocked. And so there, so something's gonna have to give, I think they'll figure out a way around this, but anyway, <laugh>, that's just so stupid. One, one solution is to add a flag to Chrome colon slash slash flags that will be able to the it give you the chance to test whether a site will be affected. And it looks, it'll let you put the major version 100 in the minor version position in user agent. Huh? So instead of saying Chrome, one hundred.whatever.zero, it'll say Chrome 99, 100. <Laugh> thereby bypassing it. That's ridiculous. But that's what we have to do.

Leo Laporte (01:30:08):
Sometimes that is the world we live in. That's the world we live in as life is ACLU. Yeah. What a clue is that crazy it's time for speaking of the edge, time to go off the edge with our Ft segment, Melania Trump planning to launch her new NFT platform. And of course its its intent is to inspire it's. It's all about the inspiration president Donald Trump once called Bitcoin a scam that competed against the dollar, cuz everything's a competition, but on Thursday Melania announced a new business venture embracing cryptocurrency and digital art, a platform to sell NFTs. This is the first thing she's done since leaving the white house. <Laugh> I don't sure who's NFTs. Well, I guess I do the first NFT offering is a watercolor depiction of Melania's cobalt blue eyes. It's called Melania's vision. As a collector, if you buy the NFT, you'll get an Alet to inspire.

Leo Laporte (01:31:18):
Each NFT will cost $187. Next month she'll offer NFTs in a quote, one of a kind auction of historical importance that will include digital artwork, physical artwork, and a physical, one of a kind accessory, by the way. That's the hot new thing right now. Tom, Tom Brady just sold 1.3 million in NFTs HES, a a quarterback for the Tampa bay Buccaneers and the greatest of all time. He's he's he auctioned off, not possession of, but an NFT of his old college cleats. <Laugh> his college resume. And I think, I think you get a little thing, a little token that you can hang around your neck. 

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:03):
Can I do an NFT of the, the, the memo that rejected entertainment weekly or

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's if somebody will buy it, do it according to the former first lady, a portion of the proceeds unspecified, what portion portion? A portion. I dunno. We're gonna give 'em a penny. I don't know. We'll assist children aging out of the foster care system. So there you go.

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:37):
And, and by the way it speaks,

Leo Laporte (01:32:39):
It speaks,

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:41):
It speaks, the NFT speaks. It says something. Yes. She says something

Stacey Higginbotham (01:32:46):
<Laugh> does it say, be best, be best, please be best. Please let it say be best, be best.

Jeff Jarvis (01:32:53):
It says something that's just pure pap. I can't remember what it was and I, I had it

Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
Before and I, oh, I wish I I'm looking at the Wal Washington post story about this. Anyway it's

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:07):
Interesting if you 

Leo Laporte (01:33:09):
<Laugh> okay. That's fine. You know? Okay. Nevermind. We don't really what's over now. We don't that's over now. We're moving on. It is. If we had the audio, if you the audio I'll play it. No, no, no, it's fine. I, I guess only you only get the audio. If you buy the NFT, it brings

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:25):
Back terrible memories. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:33:28):
Adidas is revealing a new NFT project with the board ape yacht club. This is, I just, sometimes I feel like I don't know what this world is that I'm living in, but it's nothing like,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:40):
I, I, this makes me feel old in a way that nothing else in

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:43):
My life has. Yeah, I know, but I don't think it's aged, but I have a teenage daughter. What yacht club does the board, but the NFT part is not age. It's aging bros who love that stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:33:54):
The board API club, it, which membership is granted by owning one of 10,000 profile pictures, board apes, the NFTs cost at least $200,000 a piece. And Adidas apparently purchased an Adidas clad ape named indigo Hertz. Then there's this G money guy. I it's just, I can't <laugh> it's just, you know, I just read it and I glaze over well, it's

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:23):
Like me in that press release. It's the Verizon press

Leo Laporte (01:34:25):
Release. We don't have anybody here to explain it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:28):
I know.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:34:31):
And your eyes may have still glazed over which would've been totally fine. It's not exciting.

Leo Laporte (01:34:36):
The world's very first text message is now an NFT and get this it's sold for $150,000 at a Paris auction house. This is what you get, which is a picture of a phone with the SMS on it. So

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:53):
Who had the rights in a sense to sell that?

Leo Laporte (01:35:01):
That's a good question.

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:02):
Like cousin Richard,

Leo Laporte (01:35:03):
Jarvis. No let's yeah. So it, the, the first text message was sent in December 3rd, 1992. So we just missed the anniversary. Remind me next year to, we could celebrate the 30th anniversary of first text message. It said Merry Christmas. It was sent by British programmer, Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis, director of Vodafone Jarvis received the message on his orbital nine oh one cell phone <laugh> at the company's Christmas party. The NFT itself is a replica of the original communication protocol that transmitted the SMS. The unknown buyer who has to pay in E will receive a digital frame with a 3d animation of the message being received. I guess it's, I guess it's P worth sold it. I, you know, just weird.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:05):
I recently told my children that I sent the first text. They said, dad, you can make a fortune for

Leo Laporte (01:36:11):
Our errs. Oh Lord. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has sold the NFT of the first ever it made on Wikipedia. Right.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:20):
Which off with some Wikipedians. But even for

Leo Laporte (01:36:25):
<Laugh> the <laugh> so 

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:31):
The fun part is on Twitter all the time. People, people fighting about NFTs and web three and nobody knows what anybody else is talking about. When I go to academic things, they spend the first half of the day explaining finding terms. Yeah. But, but nobody knows what these terms mean. Yeah. Well they think they do, but everybody's saying different things to each other and then they're arguing about it and I can't get my head into it. It's

Leo Laporte (01:36:53):
Like you're in an eternal clubhouse loop.

Jeff Jarvis (01:36:57):
Oh, I'm I have tried to read and I haven't finished it yet, but did y'all read Tim O'Reilly's thing on web three? No, it's a, it's an open tab. Stacy. It's an open tab and I it's an yeah. That's, I'm like, it's an open tab that I'm getting to, as soon as I'm done with my emails <laugh> yeah. So maybe next week or yeah, it may sit there for a while, but when you think about a web 2.0 itself was hub of a sort like, oh, we, we already finished web. We know what the next one is. We know what the third one. No, maybe web 0, 0, 0 1. We we're early in this thing.

Leo Laporte (01:37:36):
Let me let me do the Google change log and then we can we can get your picks of the week cuz

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:43):
It was like, you guys you're just suffering here.

Leo Laporte (01:37:45):
It's painful. It's just, it's just painful. Google change

Jeff Jarvis (01:37:50):
Log.

Leo Laporte (01:37:51):
So you remember last week we all got severe weather alerts for a cyclone coming to the Philippines. I guess there is a fix, which is essentially they've turned off severe weather alerts in the pixel launchers at a glance widget, just completely disabled. That's one way to fix something. Google,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:11):
At least when the snow hits Seattle later this week, I'm not gonna get a notification.

Leo Laporte (01:38:16):
Well you might, but you just won't get it through that widget. If you use the, at a glance widget, you might get a notification in your phone. In other ways you probably will. Yay. No one's saying Google hasn't said, but nine to five Google noticed that that they've been the severe weather been disabled and you can't reenable 'em so, Hmm, Hmm. That's a change, right? That counts. Google is turning. If you've got an on hub router now I'm not even a fan of the, of the current Google wifi routers, but I don't remember these on hubs. This goes back on they

Stacey Higginbotham (01:38:55):
People, people did buy them. I think Kevin used to have them many, many years ago. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:01):
Yeah, they're turning off the controls. So this is an example of an IOT device that doesn't actually work without support from the company. Although you know, most routers that we're used to do that just a box. It's a computer in a box, but these on hub routers apparently need support from a Google server that will be lights out. December 19th.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:28):
Yeah. Well most of our

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Routers these days, they already did that's a couple of days ago. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:35):
But they did give you a disc count a 40% off discount on the nest, Google wifi routers. Yeah. If you want those, I would not recommend

Leo Laporte (01:39:44):
Them. No I wouldn't either. And I think those would you recommend these days. Oh, euros. Good.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:50):
I like the euros. I like the Orbis.

Leo Laporte (01:39:53):
That's exactly. So Scott Wilkins asked me that's the two I recommended

Stacey Higginbotham (01:39:57):
TP link has some good ones too.

Leo Laporte (01:39:59):
There's a problem in <laugh> the TP link, apparently setting up a invisible wifi public wifi network on some of its routers,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:11):
You know, we get all up in arms about that every single time someone does it, but you know, Comcast has it all the is P have their little fake wifi network or their public wifi is on existing numbers. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen it from, oh, I can't think of the company right now. I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, if that's not your jam then don't, I think

Leo Laporte (01:40:33):
This one you can't turn off, but I think they're gonna fix that by adding that feature in a, in a, in a

Stacey Higginbotham (01:40:39):
Firmware you're automatically opted in. Yeah. Just like Amazon sidewalk network, kind of like that.

Leo Laporte (01:40:44):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> Hey, I like this new rules for incoming voice calls. If you use Google voice, you can now control who gets forwarded. You could forward calls from specific contacts to linked phone numbers or directly to voicemail. So if you decide, I don't wanna get any more calls from Jeff Jarvis, send him straight to voicemail by person. You can opt to and it go ahead groups

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:11):
In your contacts. So if you act actually like I'm like sitting here thinking, oh, if I had actually labeled all the PR people in my context as PR people, I could be like, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:19):
<Inaudible> yeah. You could set custom voicemail. Greetings for specific contexts used to be able to do that for groups. I mean, you can't do that for groups. <Laugh> I remember it kind of puzzled my family when I said hi, this is Leo. I can't take your call right now. Leave a message. I love you. <Laugh> Jennifer said, do you say that to everybody who calls? He said no. No. It knows it's you, it knows it's you <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:43):
You just call yourself

Leo Laporte (01:41:44):
Lao Lao. Well, for my family, that's my real name. That's the name I use. Yeah. Oh, oh. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:50):
Just was wondering about that. I'm T L

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:55):
We could call

Jeff Jarvis (01:41:56):
You Leo. You could call, call you Leo. I like Lao. Leo's very

Leo Laporte (01:41:59):
Classy. It's yeah. It's L E ante GU over the E acute accent over the EO. It was the be of my childhood because you know, I mean, you know, right. A kid with a, a di critical mark on his <laugh> his Leo, what the hell? So when I got in a radio for a while I used a phony name. It was Dave Allen and Dan Hayes. But when I got the radio in San Francisco I said, I would like to use my real name now. And my program director said, well, what's your real name? I said, this Leo alt. And he said, that sounds gay. You can't use that. I said, San Francisco, what are you talking about? So, so I said, well, my and the driver's license is spelled Leo. I could just say Leo. And they said, that's fine, much more manly. So, but, so I call you Laport that name. I love that. I guess it's too fancy's. Yeah. If you wanna call me Leo do Lisa, it's funny because I tell Lisa, you should call me Le that's my name? And I'm your husband. You can call me my real name now, but she, she alternates back and forth because you know, at work, she calls me Leo and yeah. Anyway, so I am. And so that's why I said that on my that's the thing, they got a custom message cuz they knew who I was. I grabbed onto

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:23):
That. That's what? Yes, like a Jack Russell terrier out of foot, who's his liar

Leo Laporte (01:43:29):
Opt to screen calls from specific contexts. So you can really go person by person apply rules for all your contacts or specific groups within your context. This is great. I hope they can that Google fi will get this. Cuz when I got fi, as you did too, you gave up your Google voice phone number to your fi number. And I think you lose some of the features of that. Now of course they're giving Google voice new new features. So that's cool brand new. There's your, that's a change. And the home mini, they finally stopped selling it. This is that's the little Google home fabric colored, Google home, which was the least expensive should have had that should have been on the list of things killed you. Yeah, I think that's a great little product. The nest mini replaced it. So it's really, there is still a mini, but 

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:17):
What does the nest mini look like?

Leo Laporte (01:44:19):
Let's go to the store and find out store.google.com.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:26):
Sorry. I'm just like what? There's there's another small one. The

Leo Laporte (01:44:29):
Nest mini second generation. <Affirmative> it's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:31):
Even more Mikey. Oh, it looks just the same thing. It's similar.

Leo Laporte (01:44:35):
Yeah. It's it's another Google rebranding. Well, but it's got the little lights on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the whole, I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:42):
Think it's is it entirely fabric colored or covered? I can't tell

Leo Laporte (01:44:46):
No. The bottom's color opposed to it's load 3d image. It's no longer a

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:52):
67 Falcon. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
Okay. I was the same, I guess not two tone. I guessing I get what you're saying now. Punchy it's yeah, I am too. It's not two tone. So I didn't realize they still were selling the version called the home many. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Trying to see where they would sell that.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:20):
I don't know, but you can get the, you can get the nest mini for 25 bucks. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:45:24):
Yeah. That's why it's important that they, I think they still sell these inexpensive ones. They have to compete with Amazon echos and they sound as on them. They're better than the echoes. They sound fine.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:36):
I, I think Google speakers, I prefer their sound to the me too. Echo sounds me too.

Leo Laporte (01:45:42):
And that's all together. Truncated out of nothing. Nothing string and chew. Gum change log. Yeah. show today sponsored by at T active armor. You know how it is, you spent the day staring at your phone. You're waiting for that critical call. Maybe the, the job offer or you know, your friends in the hospital or a family member needs a ride. And then the phone rings and you jump, you leap, you pick it up and what it is, it it's a robot trying to sell you more cars, insurance or some such vacation timeshare. I just fraud calls are it they're done for me because I've got at and T active armor. Don't let fraud calls disappoint you at and T makes your security a top priority. Helping block fraud calls with at and T active armor. It's not complicated at and T active armor. 24 7 proactive network security fraud call blocking and spam notifications to help stop threats at no extra charge. Compatible devices, service required. Visit att.com/active armor for details. The phone rings some guy named Laos on the line, trying to talk to you. Who the hell is that? And why does he keep saying he loves me rebranded by

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:06):
Google. <Laugh> I love, I love looking. I love Jason just on the minute. Right? So I'm watching. I love I go to the bottom of the rundown and see the edit notes. Yeah. At and T a has false start. Boom. There it is. Right. It's all

Leo Laporte (01:47:21):
There. It's amazing. Oh, he's this thing he's sitting there watching the show. What a thought? What a concept. Poor

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:27):
Guy. He, you had to pay him to do that. I, I guess 

Leo Laporte (01:47:30):
But beta says at two 30, I have have to pay all my friends. Jeff <laugh> yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:47:34):
Even you even, yes. I'm grateful as hell. At 2 36, Leo says Al E X a do you

Leo Laporte (01:47:44):
Bleep that? Yeah, you do. Wow. Even though that was not the Al E X a, that is Amazon echo. That was the a E X a, that used to be the web plugin. Remember that? That you would add a toolbar, right? I think right that right? I think that's what I was talking about. I don't remember. This was called a long time ago. Yeah, the toolbar. Oh, now he said it again. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:09):
I get to watch it. Go ahead. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
Jeff you're easily amused. Stacy. Do you have a, do you have a pick behind the scenes stuff?

Jeff Jarvis (01:48:18):
How they

Leo Laporte (01:48:18):
Make the sausage, how they make the sausage fascinated? Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:22):
Oh Lord. Do I have a pick of the week? The answer is

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
Not. You can say no,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:33):
I'm just, I I'm like, oh, you know what?

Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
So last week of the year. Right? Right. No, no. I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:41):
I, I was like, I have lots of things I've been enjoying in of the, them

Leo Laporte (01:48:44):
Are like, I'm gonna ask you a question. Okay. Okay. What's your favorite gift that you're giving year? Your husband and wife, wife, your husband and your daughter don't listen, right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:55):
They do not.

Leo Laporte (01:48:57):
So what are you excited about? Is there, is there a gift you're giving besides slippers? We already know you're giving that. So that's a very good question. I like that one. Cause that would be a pick of the year. Really? Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:08):
Does it plug in whatever it is?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:11):
I, I didn't, I actually, this year I got, I didn't get any connected gifts. It's

Leo Laporte (01:49:15):
All clothing and stuff.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:17):
Well, it it's because I really had a lot of second guesses around like privacy issues and

Leo Laporte (01:49:24):
See moral panic is ruining Christmas. Oh boy. It is.

Jeff Jarvis (01:49:28):
Yeah. They're

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:29):
Getting C presents. They think good

Leo Laporte (01:49:33):
Presence. People just privacy. First evil. How about Alexis with a bow on it?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:37):
Yeah. That's not happening. <Laugh> I'm I'm trying to think of, I know what I got a cocktail shaker cuz we have the, my favorite cocktail. Shakers. You know how you have

Leo Laporte (01:49:49):
Cocktail shakers? Oh, I have many. I have one. That's a penguin. I really like it.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:53):
Oh, very nice. Yeah. So like the traditional Boston shaker. Yes. You know, when it gets cold, it gets stuck. You can't get the

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
Lid off. Oh my God. This is the biggest problem.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:02):
So I like we had had this ox. Is this a

Leo Laporte (01:50:06):
Cocktail? A cocktail shaker. Lid remover.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:09):
No, it's, it's a different kind of cocktail shaker unscrew. So we had one that unscrews and this one was it was an Oxo one, but then the rim came off and so I got another one in it's called. I'm gonna tell you cuz it was a Kickstarter.

Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
Oh this is even getting better and better. This is is good. This is if I just search for Kickstarter cocktail shaker, I bet I could find it. The elevated craft cocktail shaker. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:37):
Elevated craft. I was like element. So this is what I got him. And it's excellent.

Leo Laporte (01:50:42):
I wait cow is the highest end cocktail shaker ever. They raised half million.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:49):
Yeah. So, but it screws and the top is also the measuring cup, which is a very nice thing. So this is something I'm excited to give and you can buy it. Now it's available

Leo Laporte (01:51:00):
On the side side. You can order it. Oh, it looks big too. Like you could put a bunch of martinis. You could put

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:05):
Two like substantial cocktails in

Leo Laporte (01:51:07):
There. No more sticky leaks. No more frozen hands. No more stuck. LIS yes. I thought it was just me. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:14):
Oh man. This is like a really, I, I am truly excited about

Leo Laporte (01:51:17):
And if you wanted to it's and you could buy the gaskets. Oh it's got gaskets.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:23):
Yeah. So you can buy gaskets when you're gasket

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
Is a very good gift. So you,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:28):
You bought this for yourself, Stacy. Yeah. I bought it for us. <Laugh> but it's going

Leo Laporte (01:51:33):
To him. No, that's a perfect gift. And because it's a Thermo, you don't get cold hands. Even this is so who would've thought they could put such energy into such a simple product. This is great. Oh, I, oh, look at that. There's the measuring cup on the side.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:54):
Oh that is nobody. Tell my husband. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:51:57):
Top secret surprise. There you go. And yeah, you can go. They've the campaign kickstart campaigns ended, but you can't order now. Elevated craft.com. Oh man. I wish I could get this in time for Christmas. This would be great for Lisa. Oh my God. She's watching. So she might be look at glass cocktail straws too. Leo. It's the perfect gift for new year's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:26):
El. It is.

Leo Laporte (01:52:28):
Oh, is it right now?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:34):
I love getting here from buy myself. It's my favorite

Leo Laporte (01:52:36):
Thing. Getting lay to buy. Should I get it says don't forget. Lay, lay on layover. Backup gasket kit. Well, they're only $5. Sure. Why not? I don't think you need the gasket kid. Well, you know, you don't want to get caught without a gasket. You don't

Jeff Jarvis (01:52:50):
Wanna blow a gasket and then <laugh> you

Leo Laporte (01:52:53):
Got dribbles. Oh my God. This is so cool. Jeff Jarvis while I'm ordering <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:01):
You can order it.

Leo Laporte (01:53:01):
I can't, I can't. You can't tweet. No, it's different. Very, a big difference. Yep.

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:07):
So I got one here. Yes. Which is that January 1st will be, since we're not back before then public domain day for 2022. Oh. And as we go year by year, lots of things are coming out in the public domain. Yes. works from 1926 will be open to all, including all kinds of songs that Leo could turn into a new theme song for us, but it will still get taken down somehow by YouTube. No doubt. Even though they're in public domain has the rights to books include Whitney, the P public domain. Oh gosh.

Leo Laporte (01:53:40):
You mean

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:40):
It? Wasn't some also rises. Dorothy Parker's enough rope. Langston Hughes is the weary. AGA Christie's the murder of Roger

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
Aroy oh, that was a great book. Yes. I loved

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:52):
That. And, and the Ferber's showboat. Okay. Willa Katherine's by mortal enemy. HL meins notes on democracy. Okay. And then sound recordings, which as of January 1st two could play without, with, with, with, with abandon and Rico, Caruso performances from RTO and LA Trata and ABOM.

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
Ooh, but

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:19):
They're you could click on these things. Oh, modern offs.

Leo Laporte (01:54:22):
Li's lead. These are in pub. Oh, they're not in public domain yet though.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:25):
They won't. I think, I think you can get away with it.

Leo Laporte (01:54:27):
Leo. I think you wouldn't that be funny if I got a take down for something that could be public domain in like two weeks.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Who who's gonna take down Sergei rock bottom offs. Liba lead with Fritz Chrysler,

Leo Laporte (01:54:39):
Serge. Mike Sony's classical music division. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:44):
Fanny. Bryce. My man now that's a good one. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:54:46):
Let's play the, let me play that. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:49):
My man Al Josen Swanee will be public domain gen one. Oh wow.

Leo Laporte (01:54:58):
This is from the Zigfield Folies of 1921 stick at YouTube

Speaker 5 (01:55:06):
One.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:13):
It's pretty cool.

Leo Laporte (01:55:14):
This is from the library of historical audio recordings@isevens.org. That is really neat. So this is right now, still under belief it or not still under copyright. Yeah. Amazing. Isn't that's how that's how screwed up our copyright. Yeah, it just goes on and on, on movies

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:32):
Entering the public domain. What? The German expressionist classic Faust FA Don w the first feature film to use the Vitaphone sound system. Oh, made famous of course. In singing in the ring.

Leo Laporte (01:55:48):
Oh yes.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:52):
Funny.

Leo Laporte (01:55:55):
You know, this is actually great, but I can listen to old 78 away from you from the library of Congress.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:02):
I never, I,

Leo Laporte (01:56:04):
It really feels like that's why I need to read that's old timey. That's great. It is. This is why you

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:09):
Need to read Matthew Kirsten. Baum's bitstreams the future of digital literary motor heritage, cuz it's kind of about just

Leo Laporte (01:56:17):
That. So this is all stuff that's gonna be public domain on January 1st,

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:21):
Musical compass, some biggies here. Gentlemen, prefer blondes. Wow. By, by Blackbird. Mm-Hmm someone to watch over me. George Kwin. Oh wow. Are you lonesome tonight? When the red red Robin comes Bob, Bob bobbin

Leo Laporte (01:56:41):
Along, you mean I own Roy oh, royalties for all the time. I've sung that.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:46):
I know. I know

Leo Laporte (01:56:48):
All the wedding.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:50):
Songza love, song,

Leo Laporte (01:56:52):
Love song. The Kaza love song. Can't play that though, right? Because there's no recording. That's the composition.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:01):
Yes. A piece of music. Yes. There are course two distinct copyrights, performance and creation. Right, right. So this is public domain time.

Leo Laporte (01:57:11):
I, I love this and this is all because Congress has neglected for the last few years to extend copyright which they normally do in honor of Mickey mouse every few years in,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:25):
At the BES of

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
<Laugh>. So that's great. And public domain is so important and oh yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:57:34):
Speaking of public domain, here's a good book. If you guys have time over the holidays, it is auto penciller did an anthology, an espionage. It's the great big book of espionage. And it is such like incredibly old stories in the intro to each story. And then the intro to the book takes a really thorough look at the history of SP novels. And,

Leo Laporte (01:58:03):
Oh, this is E Fleming, Eric, these are, these are classics.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:58:08):
So it, but it, it goes, it's classic all the way up. It, he does such a it's he's very educated in the history of these books. So he take, it's like a, it's like a college level course of like the history. It's excellent. I will tell you if you get it on audible, it is 40 powers.

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
That's a lot of fine novels, but I am gonna put it on my audible because I would love this. I

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:34):
Mean, it's really well done. Less audible. Yeah. You want a great audible recommendation?

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Sure. Go for it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:58:41):
The layman trilogy, which is on Broadway now, limited term big deal. It's actually, it's, it's written in essentially unstructured free verse history of the layman bank from the beginning to the

Leo Laporte (01:58:53):
End. Oh wow. Creatively written in ways I can't begin to describe performed beautifully in this, in this recording and I, and, and, and it's wonderful. I just bought the library book that you recommended. So I don't,

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:11):
I just wrote about that the library

Leo Laporte (01:59:13):
Fragile history by Andrew pedigree. But if you think the layman well, I think the

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:18):
Library's also very, they're very, very, very different.

Leo Laporte (01:59:20):
Well, now I have the 40 hour big book of ESP espionage. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:23):
That's the that's. If you go to my medium feed, I'm gonna plug rare plug here. If you go to my medium feed, jeff.medium.com, I have two new posts. One is about the library and about bitstreams and the continua I saw in them about, about how everything is processed and everything is a commerce. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:59:43):
So, and that library, what library is

Jeff Jarvis (01:59:45):
This in? I don't know what it is. I just stole the photo, but it's magnificent, isn't it? Yeah. I saw that photo because somebody said he or she was being rushed out by security guard. Wondering why I wanna wanna take a picture of that.

Leo Laporte (02:00:00):
<Laugh> why do you doing there? Why would you wanna take a picture at

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:04):
A library? There's a guy escorted me. How baffled by someone was sneaker to a building to take this picture?

Leo Laporte (02:00:08):
Yes. I would, I would like to know what the library is. The the, the famous library at the milk a, in Austria is the model for what it, the, the library and the name of the rose. I think so, but anyway, one of the

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:26):
Great things, I love libraries, pedigree and Devens, the library of fragile history at the beginning, of course, they start with the library in Alexandria, cuz you have to right. And the funny thing was when Nixon went to Alexandria in a triumphant tour of Egypt, he asked to see the library <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:00:42):
I? Yes. And, and what was the response? Well,

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:49):
The thing was, they didn't even know where it was. <Laugh> where

Leo Laporte (02:00:53):
It had been. It burned down a few years ago. Mr. Nixon, but a

Jeff Jarvis (02:00:56):
Fascinating little Tibit here from the book. Is that, is that because they were proppy scrolls pedigree into said that they would've had to have been copied every century or two cause they would've crumbled of their own accord. Interesting. And, and the larger, the library got the more impossible that became, so scale was sought after and also a curse. Yeah. All the way back then. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
Wow. That's fascinating. <Affirmative> okay. So the public domain that's good. Did you wanna do the internet hall of fame and duckies too? Cuz that's good. We could, we

Jeff Jarvis (02:01:32):
Could, yeah. I, I, I never much like awards and things like that, but I wondered how many of these names, you know, I didn't know many of them

Leo Laporte (02:01:41):
Let's go through them. I'm not coming up. Carlos Alfonso, advanced internet development in Brazil, Bob block, the from the Netherlands, see, these are all so Hans Verner brown designed the national science foundation network, NSF net in the us for Deren from Denmark who founded the eOne, which is not what you think it is, but the European internet backbone, I think that's a song that

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:10):
Just went into, into public

Leo Laporte (02:02:11):
Domain. The eOne is to that toe bone. Ya Grun rod from the Czech Republic champion of networking for of development in CZE Slovakia, Sahan, Caribbean. So far. None of them, no. Okay. Oh yeah. Dan Kaminski who passed away this year. That that's the one, that's the one I knew. Yeah. Who of course created the DNS system actually no repaired the DNS system when he found the Kaminski bug. You know, he's the only one I think on this whole list, but that's actually why I think it's important to cover these. These are not publicity exercises. Yes. That's true. These are really about remembering the people who made such a difference and really didn't get much credit. So internet hall of fame.org, congratulations to the 2021 induces bill

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:01):
Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:03:02):
You should be there. We, no, I did nothing. <Laugh> no nothing. Although this might be in there, this is very cool. The story of, well, I love the title. I blew $720 on a hundred notebooks from Alibaba and started a paper website business. The idea is the author thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could write a website, a blog post, a medium post in my Mokena notebook and then have a trace. How do you say it? I've always wondered is that there is no way to say it. I've I've asked them many times. Moche Mo it's all phony, cuz they're pretending to be, you know, a classic notebook from France, but they, and when you, when you go to the website, it says pronounce it wherever you want. I always say they come from state island. Is that deal? Exactly. I always pretend it's Italian moleskin cuz moleskin is disgusting.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:01):
That sounds kind like it was something that was taken off a dead animal

Leo Laporte (02:04:05):
Roadkill. Yeah. Anyway. So he bought whatever those notebooks, it sounds

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:09):
Like, like a moles

Leo Laporte (02:04:11):
Anyway, not skin, a MOS skin, a Mo skin. Perfect for covering a notebook. Oh perhaps except that it's not. It's just paper cover. Ben Ben, who is a full stack developer and entrepreneur started an ice cream business in a cookie dough business among others. Thought it would be really cool if people could write their website in a notebook and then scan it in. When he first did the scans with his phone, it, the results were so terrible. You could show this on the screen, John, I mean the J for gobbly book, but then he had a brilliant idea. Run it through G P T three everybody's favorite artificial intelligent. And in fact with a little work, it, he was able to get excellent results. So he built a little prototype, then went online and he bought a bunch of notebooks from Mulkin went online, sold. That sounds dumb.

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:14):
Yeah, topic <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:05:17):
And created paper website.com. And you can now go to his website and sign up. The pricing is affordable. He'll send you if you get the ultimate deal for $8 a month, he'll send you actually $99 for a year, a, a notebook that he, these are the ones he bought from Alibaba. But the idea is you then take a picture of it and it gets uploaded and put on your blog. And in fact, the entire post that I'm reading from here was written in a notebook and uploaded to his blog. It's actually a really cute story, tiny projects dev. And and, and it has a very happy ending because it actually worked. He went viral on Twitter and he's now got, got on product hunt and he's now making a living. How do you think he'd

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:12):
Do with this?

Leo Laporte (02:06:15):
Yeah, I think if you got not, well you gotta start, stop crying while are taking your notes. That's my head running. It's it's I to read? I can't read. You must have been doing it in the rain then because it does look like it got. That was, that was

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:26):
A spilled thing. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:06:29):
You, you know what you really need. And I now am getting one, the elevated craft hybrid cocktail shaker. No more spilling martinis as you take see? Oh yeah, I got one, one. Yeah. It might even come. It might even, I chose expedited shipping. Wow. It might even come for

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:48):
Christmas. So what cocktail would you make with it for new year's?

Leo Laporte (02:06:53):
Lisa loves margaritas, but I personally, my specialty of usually would, would make a gin and tonic or martini, but my specialty is lemon drops and this would be excellent for making lemon drops hundred and 70 milliliter lemon drops. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:11):
What lemon drop. Yes, sir. What would you say is your cause I'm gonna guess it's gin, but I'm not sure. What is your specialty

Leo Laporte (02:07:19):
Drop? Oh, I know it, her specialty is

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:21):
What is it?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:22):
Go ahead, Stacy. Well a G and tonic doesn't count, right? Because no, that's what I'm saying. That's a two drink cocktail. I would say the green lady is my

Leo Laporte (02:07:30):
Specialty drink. The green lady green

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:32):
Lady. What's that? Yes

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:34):
It is gin.

Leo Laporte (02:07:36):
Char. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:39):
Mint and a little bit of simple.

Leo Laporte (02:07:41):
Oh yeah. I found it on I found it on the internet.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:45):
<Laugh> there you go. But

Leo Laporte (02:07:49):
I mades, there you

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:52):
Go. It's it's you can find the recipe on the internet. It's ver vert. What is lady in French? 

Leo Laporte (02:08:04):
From ver,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:06):
Maybe

Leo Laporte (02:08:09):
From vert, from Vertu. What did you think it was from Vertu Lafa vert

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:15):
Green lady cocktail. Let's see ver lady, the ver lady. That's

Leo Laporte (02:08:21):
What it's called she's first aisle. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:24):
She's ver

Leo Laporte (02:08:27):
Okay. Why did I think, I thought we'd had a conversation some years back about booze that you really, I thought it was gins. It's gin.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:37):
It's gin. He know gins. This gin isn't that drink? I also like fond of,

Leo Laporte (02:08:44):
I got a bottle of gin recently. I had to throw it out. It was just, yeah. Some, some of the new stuff where they're trying things. Oh, they tried too hard. Yeah. What's your favorite? Gin? Stacy.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:08:56):
It really depends. You want my like

Leo Laporte (02:08:59):
Foresty? Didn't we buy weren't we gonna buy you the gin of the month club or something? I feel like Kevin actually wait, it was year. It was the advent calendar. Advent calendar. That's it. Right, right.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:10):
Kevin did send me one and it was that's

Leo Laporte (02:09:12):
Awesome. That's awesome. That's actually, it's too late now. Unless you wanna drink all 25, it's too late for that, but, but oh, that's a great idea. The premium gin advent calendar. See, he knows you. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:27):
He, well, I don't know. One year he sent me like some computer stuff. Oh, it's still sitting down there in the storage room.

Leo Laporte (02:09:34):
Lamb ladies. Kevin. She said that with lo yeah, we thought she, she was talking about absence, the green ferry, which is another thing entirely.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:09:43):
Oh, I've been making an martini that involves absent and grine. And that is also delightful. We did that for the oh y'all TWI book club announcement. Okay. Before we go, that was so exciting. Two things. Martha Wells, author of the murder bot books won the Hugo this year. Go her.

Leo Laporte (02:10:04):
All right. For the murder bot books

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:08):
For the murder for the most recent one. It's

Leo Laporte (02:10:10):
On that. That's fantastic.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:12):
So yeah. Quality literature happening with us. And then our next book is anonymous by Anna Lee Neitz and we're talking about that on the 13th at I'm not gonna lie to you about times, so

Leo Laporte (02:10:28):
I'm gonna look it up. I think it's 2:00 PM. Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern think it's 1:00 PM. 1:00 PM. Oh see, without, this is why I'm looking at, we don't know he's busy, binge watching or whatever. He calls it. That's not binge watching succession

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:41):
Watching it as, as much as he can bear until he can hand these people so much to be Esther, turn off succession.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:47):
It is, oh, it's 1:00 PM.

Leo Laporte (02:10:50):
PM. Pacific 4:00 PM. Eastern. that would be 2100 UTC.

Jeff Jarvis (02:10:59):
So, so Leo, a little Christmas gift to me here. One TikTok,

Leo Laporte (02:11:02):
One TikTok for this. All right. You get one. So last week TikTok

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:06):
On, on TWI. This is line 1 41 on TWI. I tried to convince Leo that bunny, the talking dog uses the buttons to talk and he was his usual cynical growly self. Now bunny is learning to count line 1 41. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
Okay. <Laugh> You know, it's not that hard to train a dog to hit a sequence of buttons in order. Well, no, let's let's just see here. Okay? Okay.

Speaker 6 (02:11:36):
Okay. How about good girl? How about

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:44):
Yay. Bonnie knows how to count.

Speaker 6 (02:11:49):
Okay. How about,

Leo Laporte (02:11:52):
Are you just teasing me now? And why does bunny have blood down her front? I don't know. I don't know. Looks like Bunny's been eating something she shouldn't have. Okay. How

Speaker 6 (02:12:02):
About,

Leo Laporte (02:12:04):
Why is this good?

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:10):
Why you should have seen Stacy buddy has one of those things where the dog hits the button and oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:14):
Oh, I, so I, I know about it because the guy who's working with bunny right now, he was the guy who'd invented something called clever pet, which was a connected pet toy that I actually had for my dog for a while. <Laugh>. And so now he's on this thing and it's just a trip and a half to see where he is gone

Speaker 7 (02:12:36):
Soon today, ring go by. Hmm. Nope. Ringo is family.

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:45):
He drove, drove. Leo drove

Leo Laporte (02:12:47):
Crazy. This is like that talking gorilla thing. Hate it where it's just not, I met that co Coco, Coco. Coco does not

Jeff Jarvis (02:12:57):
Coco did Coco Coco recipe. I will say

Stacey Higginbotham (02:12:59):
On that. I think some of the dogs do actually learn the words and associate them with something because oh

Leo Laporte (02:13:06):
Yeah, you can say walkies and they know you're going for a walk, but there's

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:10):
The dogs that go and hit the treat button. They're just like treat, treat, mad, treat, treat

Jeff Jarvis (02:13:17):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:19):
I'm like, yeah, they

Leo Laporte (02:13:19):
Get it. All right. And we will wind up our holiday special. This is the last show of the year with this video of a Tesla being blown up with dynamite. Why? Why? Because Burke says, so I don't know why. I guess she doesn't like her Tesla and she's decided she wants to blow it up. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:46):
But you could do so many other things.

Leo Laporte (02:13:48):
Elon. What Burke, why, why, why, why is he blowing up his Tesla? Because he had,

Speaker 8 (02:13:52):
He just bought it and Nike, he used it's gonna cost him. He has to buy an entire new battery pack to, to get to work again.

Leo Laporte (02:13:59):
Okay. So in order to get to work, he'd have to buy new batteries, which is probably as much as the car costs a lot and new tires. So he decided, so he decided instead what wouldn't, what could possibly go wrong if, if I blow it up with dynamite. Oh wow. It went up too. That's a lot of Dyna. Holy cow. Oh, here it is in slowmo. When get slower.

Speaker 8 (02:14:20):
It's better. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:14:23):
Okay.

Speaker 8 (02:14:25):
It's it's a good payoff.

Leo Laporte (02:14:26):
It's it's I have to say winter in Sweden is brutal. <Laugh> they are so bored. So bored, bored. They go Tesla

Speaker 8 (02:14:36):
And there's an even better one here. He's exploding.

Leo Laporte (02:14:39):
<Laugh> B exploding. How did you find this Burke and you search for exploding Teslas? No, no. He

Speaker 8 (02:14:45):
Was in the right to repair.

Leo Laporte (02:14:47):
Oh, is in the right to repair. Oh, right. Because he should be able to fix this, but it, us so much money to get Tesla to fix it. At least he, you know, he did some nice that this is the amazing one. Look at this. This is the fuses being lit, I guess

Speaker 8 (02:15:02):
It's the de the debt court. And you see the pressure wave and everything is great.

Leo Laporte (02:15:08):
Yeah. Quite a pressure wave. All right. Well, there's a great way to end show <laugh>. That's kind of what this show was like. <Laugh> exploding. Tesla just kept on trying to mow up the rundown. <Laugh> thank you so much, Stacy. I hope you have a great holiday. You're gonna do some fun things. You don't have to come back here tomorrow our next week, cuz we're gonna do the best of, so we'll see you in the new year. So have a happy new year as well. Thank you for excellent, happy new year. Excellent choices. For my holiday giving <laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:46):
I'm so glad you asked me. I was like, oh man, I got nothing.

Leo Laporte (02:15:50):
You had nothing, nothing but you did. You did. You had something? Yeah. Happy, happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Have a great, a great happy

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:58):
Holidays. I hope y'all have a wonderful, warm, safe, and COVID free holiday.

Leo Laporte (02:16:02):
Yes. We're staying inside with open for that people. We, we already know people we've already infected. Jeff Jarvis is the Leonard tower professor for journal holistic innovation. And I neglected to do this at the graduate school of journalism at the city of university of New York in a very, very Hardy, thank you to Eric Jones, artistic director of the master singers of Virginia who sent us that he says I'm a professional professional coral conductor. And listen it to twig from the beginning I noticed on last week's podcast that the singing entry for Craig Newmark had gotten a little long and that, and that Leo spoke over it in my impatience. I confess, I decided to have my choir sing something short and more along the lines of how Leo, Jeff, and aunt used to try Sing it

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:02):
To you. It's brilliant. I can imagine how he had to explain this to his choir. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:17:07):
We're singing. What anyway. Thank you. The, to Eric Jones and the master singer and the singers of Virginia msva.org that is gonna be a permanent part of our repertoire. That's really nice. Can you do a,

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:20):
A theme for us?

Leo Laporte (02:17:22):
Let's not go, let's not push it. <Laugh> anyway, Jeff, it's great to always be great to work with you best. I love both of you. I miss aunt, but we're, we know he's happily discussed with a nice whiskey and and the succession family. He's, he's making meat right now. He's making meat. There you go. Making meat. The love

Jeff Jarvis (02:17:45):
Love to, to everybody in the team.

Leo Laporte (02:17:48):
We have a great team. They work hard and they play hard and they're gonna go out and have some fun. We have more shows tomorrow, tech news, weekly smart tech today, and then we're gonna close up shop. The studio will go dark until until after new year's day. Our, for my first show back is January 2nd with the tech guy. Thank you everybody. Merry Christmas, Jeff. Right? Christmas, Stacy, happy new year to you both. We do TWI every twig rather every Wednesday 2:00 PM Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2200 UTC. You can watch us do it. Live@Twilivedottwidottvorchatwithusliveatircdottwi.Tv. Join the club TWI of course, for the ad free versions, the, the discord where you can chat and the, the TWI plus feed plus Stacy's book club, the untitled Lenox show the GIZ fi so many more shows that we don't put on the regular podcast feeds $7 a month.

Leo Laporte (02:18:40):
It's a nice way to support the network. We really appreciate it. And you get some nice benefits to go to twi.tv/club TWI to find out more if you don't want to listen to the show, live or chat live with us. Of course you can chat after the fact at our TWI forums, www.twi.community or on our Mastodon instance, twi.social. Get the shows on demand. After the fact from the website, twi.tv/twig, there's a YouTube channel or subscribe in your favorite podcast, client we're everywhere. And if you download it that way, you'll get it on a automatically the minute it's available. Merry Christmas, everybody. Thank you for being here. It's been a fun year and we look forward to another great year next year on this week in Google. Happy new year, everybody. Bye bye.

Jeff Jarvis (02:19:25):
Android is constantly

Speaker 9 (02:19:27):
Evolving. And if you are part of the Android faithful, then you'll be just as excited about it. As I am. I'm Jason Howell host of all about Android, along with my co-hosts Florence ion and Ron Richards, where every week we cover the news, we cover the hardware and we cover the apps that are driving the Android ecosystem. Plus, we invite people who are writing about Android, talking about Android and making Android onto the show every tuesday@twi.tv. Look for all about Android.

All Transcripts posts