This Week in Tech 1012 Best Of Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Happy holidays everybody. It's time for Twit and our annual best of episode coming up. The best moments from 2024 Podcasts you love from people you trust.
00:15 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
This is Twit.
00:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Twit this Week in Tech, episode 1012 for 12-29-2024, our best of 2024. It's time for TWIT everybody and, of course, as we do every year, it's the end of the year. We sent everybody home. Actually, we made them work harder earlier in December to put together a best of Benito's, put together some of the best clips from 2024. And, of course, we always begin the year, as we will in 2025, with CES. Father Robert joined us with his CES haul Watch.
01:07 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Well, okay, let's start super geeky. This is super niche. That one right there, that's that, dock, no that actually okay, I have one that looks just like this from my Omega. Absolutely, that's a Targus, it's a dual dock, so the idea is a dual 100 watt output, usb-c and Thunderbolt.
01:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you put your laptop on there, you plug it into the wall and it's powering your laptop.
01:26 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Maybe two different laptops, or a laptop and a desktop. It gives you triple display output, so you can have up to three monitors connected externally.
01:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Three display ports. Two display ports and an HDMI Right, as well as Thunderbolt, of course.
01:41 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Ethernet and Thunderbolt.
01:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thunderbolt.
01:45 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
But that's actually a KVM. So the nice thing about it is it's not a traditional KVM where you flip the button and it flips all the monitors from one to the other. That actually knows the boundaries of the resolution of each computer. So you use the same mouse and keyboard to move the mouse over and you enter into the desktop space of the other computer. You go back and forth Now the cool over and you enter into the desktop space of the other computer. You go back and forth. The cool thing about this is that means that it is operating system independent. It's something like remember Mouse Without Borders from Microsoft. This does that. But I can use a Mac, I can use Windows, I can use Linux, it doesn't matter. It's OS agnostic. Again, I know that this is super niche, but if you're like a system administrator or just a guy who needs multiple machines on his desk, that thing is incredible. It's so much nicer than having two sets of keyboards and mice.
02:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I might get this because I have that big 55-inch OLED with multiple computers and if I just hook this up, I have my nice keyboard, my Keychron keyboard, I have my classic Microsoft Intellimouse and I just plug those into this and then that's all I need. I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse and I have multiple systems.
02:50 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
When that was first pitched to me, I didn't get it. I'm like KVMs. Kvms are 20 years ago. Nobody even makes them anymore. No one makes them. But this, actually, that absolutely made sense to me. All right, how much? It's again? Enterprise product. So you're looking at $455,000. Yeah, it's high. It's high up there. What else we got? Okay, so this is Runhood, so this is their 1200, this is sort of a home away from home camping unit. So we've got the solar panels. We've got this 1200 watt power unit.
03:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now the cool thing about this, so it's charging up from the solar panels. It can charge up from the solar panels. How much wattage, though, do?
03:26 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
these generate these solar panels In partial sunlight. This will do 100 watts, oh okay, so it's not a great amount, but the nice thing about this is it's super durable, it's super flexible and it will work in partial sunlight and I could probably fill up there battery in that presumably, oh, absolutely.
03:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I could probably fill up the battery over 24 hours.
03:43 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
This is the cool thing these use more of these battery packs, so you can hot swap these things, and they give you these little modules that you can clip on so I can pull one of the battery packs out and now I've got what is this like 400 watt hours of power for USB-C, usb, or I could actually just charge it from USB-C PD. Now, this is the kind of systems that I love, because it means that once you've made the investment into the system, you can swap your modules in and out and grab what you need to power whatever you're doing. So you want a day at the beach? Maybe you don't need the whole system. You just pull one of these out and this is more than enough to run your laptop your phones, your desktop.
04:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like it also could be an emergency unit, right?
04:31 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
That's actually what.
04:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going for.
04:33 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
This is going to be part of my.
04:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll go out a lot at the Vatican All the time. It's a design by Italians. It's not functional, but it looks good. Actually, you know what it?
04:44 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
looks great. You know what I found out? I actually finally put a signal analyzer on our power. Oh, is it a little choppy? They've lowered down the voltage to the bare minimum before it starts destroying things, intentionally. Intentionally, because we had a gas shortage, oh all right, yeah, you're not getting municipal power.
05:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Probably You've got the Vatican.
05:06 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
No, no, no.
05:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The Vatican uses municipal power. It's Rome's power. Yeah, it's Rome's power. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned it down. This is cool how much I mean roughly.
05:13 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Okay. So if you got the whole kit, which would include the four battery packs, this thing, $1,600. You're kidding? No, and that's actually why I like them, because first, they're lower priced. I love the modular design and they're standards-based. There's a lot of companies that make some really nice stuff and I'm not going to call them out because their design is great, but it's all proprietary, could I?
05:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
get multiple panels like these so I could expand my capabilities.
05:41 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
This uses the standard solar connector so the solar panels at your house.
05:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can actually plug that in.
05:46 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Oh I like that yeah.
05:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay.
05:48 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Run hood Run hood and they're a Bay Area located company. I like them. Yeah, brand new. How about this? This is something that you might like for your travels.
06:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This was the Poly Voyager 360 UC. What is a poly voyager 360 uc?
06:05 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
when it's so. Earbuds they're earbuds, but they've really been designed they're inside. Now, the cool thing about this is you see that little screen at the top. Yeah, what is that all about? That actually gives you a touch screen that can control, like a zoom call, so connecting and disconnecting calls. Okay, you can switch between modes, and actually the reason why I like this set is it has a cable that lets you hook it up to a 3.5 millimeter audio jack.
06:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's kind of nice Right. So if you lose battery life or no, you still need batteries.
06:34 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
You still need the batteries, but, by the way, this thing runs forever and the case is actually a battery for the earbuds, as well, I also like it. It's got a little USB adapter adapter in the case, which is fantastic it's, that's the wireless adapter, correct it's really been designed for uc people, so this again it's an enterprise product. I know it's niche. Here's something that you might like.
06:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's cool, though this is anchor's newest chi charger you know I've been looking at there's a lot of companies make these after apple decided not to make theirs. That are that will charge uh apple an Apple phone and the earbuds all at once, but this one folds up, which is kind of cool, fold it back.
07:09 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
There you go. Look at that, it's very compact.
07:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This would be good for travel.
07:12 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
It would be good for travel, and they have another version of that that they're going to be releasing that actually has a battery pack built into it and it's Anker and Anker has a great reputation. So is this out? This is out. This is out right now. Yeah, yeah, Now. Do you like audio? I love audio, baby. Everyone was pitching me speakers. The one speaker I decided to take was this this is from Rocksteady it's called their Stadium. Now they sell themselves as a Sonos killer.
07:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if they're I think Sonos is the Sonos killer to be honest, I think Sonos is the Sonos killer.
07:45 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
to be honest, let's be frank. Let's be a little frank Now. The nice thing about this, though, is it's Bluetooth 5.0. So it's super, super clear, as long as you've got a Bluetooth 5.0 system and it's infinitely expandable. How many speakers are there? Just one. There's one over there. There's that one, right?
08:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
there. Go ahead and turn that on, so you could make this a 5.0 system.
08:04 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
if you bought enough speakers, right, you could make it as long as it's within the Bluetooth range. The power button is in the back, you can add as many speakers as you'd like and once you start playing it, it actually.
08:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're going to rock out here. There's a subwoofer somewhere. Am I sitting on it? No see, I haven't even turned that on. Oh, but they all look like a purse, a, a capacious, extraordinarily capacious purse. Hey, it sounds pretty good yeah, I'm getting some bass.
08:34 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
That's nice.
08:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, this, this one is actually a little and so the idea of these is uh, you can have multiple units. Can you do party mode, in other words style party?
08:43 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
precisely, and they they don't interfere with one another as long as they're further than one foot away. So you could actually buy a set of these put them outside and you're good to go. They work. I think the longest time I got to play on this was about 20 hours. They rate it for 30, but if you play it loud you're probably going to get about 60.
09:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love that. I look forward to it every year. I don't think. Unfortunately, padre is going to CES this year, but we will do our CES wrap-up show in, I guess, next week, right In the new year. You're watching the best of 2024 for this Week in Tech. We're so glad you're here. Happy holidays everybody On. We go on the best of with the word of the year.
09:28
Cory doctorow, the man who coined it, explains in justification um, so in justification and this is how cory begins that uh, now I think classic blog post here is how platforms die. First they're good to their users Think Amazon and its customer-centric approach. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Again, think about Amazon and the third-party sellers. Half of what you buy on Amazon now doesn't come from Amazon, it comes from third-party sellers. And then finally and this is the stage Amazon's in they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves and then they die. It's kind of the new digital business cycle and it happens and you can see it over and over again. Corey's been very good about documenting it. Corey, your argument, which I completely agree with, is not that you're going to ever stop this, but this is the argument for interoperability. We should be able to hop from platform to platform and as platforms start becoming user hostile, we just go to the next one.
10:38 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
Yeah, I think about that as being sort of related to the problem of wildfire in California. You know we've always had fire in California. The indigenous people who lived here before the settlers came used to have controlled burns and that would clear the dead stuff away from the bottom of the forest and it would open up the canopy for new growth. And when the settlers came they declared war on fire.
11:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, isn't it amazing that these indigenous peoples knew to do that?
11:06 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
Well, they were here for like a long time, Millennia right.
11:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And so maybe they didn't at first right, they just figured it out. Yeah, if we don't burn it, it will.
11:16 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
God will so yeah, so ending good fire didn't end fire, it just ended controlled fire and now we have wildfirefire right. So even if we resolve the climate emergency, california is still going to burn because we have all this fire debt it's, and in the same way, so the eco, ecological cycle you.
11:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's part of how it works.
11:34 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
There's a whole bunch of plants that only reproduce by, by creating fire, and then their seed pods open in the fire and stuff. But but you know, the same thing used to be true of tech, right, it used to be prior to the Carter era especially, but then slowly, less and less in the years afterwards, that companies weren't really allowed to buy their competitors or merge with their competitors. They weren't allowed to sell goods below cost in order to prevent other firms from entering their markets. Those were all just generally prohibited. There were exceptions around the margins, but that was the way things worked, and so it meant that when no one at cray could figure out how to make a good computer anymore, that was the end of cray, and it meant that.
12:14
You know, when, um, uh, ibm monopolized its market, it was taken to court for 12 years and eventually had to do things like make PCs out of commodity components and unbundle the OS and get a third-party company called Microsoft to make its OS. And so we used to have companies that rose and fell. Right, we fell, we used to have good fire, and it meant that users could be protected, because it was very easy to escape a platform If you had an IBM mainframe that IBM didn't want to support anymore. There were the so-called seven dwarves, the mostly Japanese electronics companies that would continue to make peripherals for them that were plug compatible.
12:55
And if you used Mac OS and your CIO wanted to take your computer away and replace it with a Windows machine because Mac Office was so bad that you couldn't communicate with your colleagues, steve Jobs could just have his technologist reverse engineer office and make iWork with pages, numbers and keynote, that could read and write Word, excel and PowerPoint files and you could switch from one to the other. In fact, right after iWork we got the Switch campaign. It's very easy to switch. You should switch. It's the plug plug compatible software.
13:27
Yeah right, but do that. Do that today, and they'll bomb you to the rubble bounces. Right, make a runtime for ios that can uh, or runtime for another platform that can run ios apps and playback media that apple has sold you. Or create a scraper that lets you leave facebook, but but fetch the messages that are showing up in your inbox or your mastercom inbox or your OG inbox, or, yeah, create OG app.
13:53
You know, google at one point sent software agents to every server on the internet to say hi, I'm just a user, have you got any pages? I'd like all of your pages, please. And if you were to try and scrape Google right now, they'd bomb you till you glowed Right. And so my argument is that we've put, we've allowed these firms to grow to an unsustainable size, that a firm that has $3 trillion in business and is taking 30% margins out of an entire industry and getting and deciding unilaterally what apps can and can't exist, or, or, effectively, what businesses can and can't exist. Or amazon, which is taking 51 out of every dollar that its sellers uh make and is, uh, the largest employer in the country and whose employees are laboring under just the most incredibly awful conditions. They have, uh, double the accident rate in Amazon warehouses relative to other fulfillment centers, and we all know about peeing in bottles and so on.
14:54
The remedy for that is not to try and make those companies behave themselves. I mean, we should do that too, but not to the extent that we create rules that make it hard for other companies to enter the market and not to the extent that we have companies saying well, if you force us to open our app store, interoperate our chat protocol or allow third parties to fulfill orders that are placed through our e-commerce platform, or if you prohibit us from selling on the platform that we own, that where we are competing with our own independent vendors, then we won't be able to keep our users safe. Right that, ultimately, the way you keep users safe is by evacuating them from the fire zone, not by adding more fire suppression to the zone, which tempts more people to pile into this place that is going to burn, right and that where they're in danger all the time.
15:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are a few people in our world today Donald Trump's one of them, elon Musk's another who are masterful at grabbing the headline, at changing the conversation. Tesla stock's starting to go down severely, so he announces oh, we're going to have a Tesla robo-taxi August 8th. And what happens to stock price Boom? Will they have a robo-taxi product on August 8th? Who knows? That's not the important thing.
16:22 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
This is the man who's been saying since 2015 that self-driving cars are any day now.
16:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He said, I think five years ago, every Tesla owner would be able to turn on this feature that would let other people rent your car when you're not using it and it would just drive them around. That never happened.
16:43 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
I mean, the thing you should take away from this story is not that, oh, robo-taxes are coming, but rather that the street is desperate to believe that Elon Musk and Tesla are still a good bet. I mean, this is the thing is, I'd be looking askance at the street rather than taking this story as factual period.
17:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In 2016, Elon said, you'll be able to send one of our cars on a cross-country drive all by itself.
17:11 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
Why would you want to? I don't know.
17:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you're good. They've been talking about this autonomous robo-taxi that will turn its cars into level three automated vehicles, but it hasn't happened.
17:27 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
So you know, They've been talking, talking, they've been talking.
17:29 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
He's good at that, so we're gonna talk I feel like this is gonna be the theme I keep hammering home during this episode. But when you talk about automatic taxis, what problem are you solving for here is it? Oh, I don't want to talk to a cabbie.
17:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I don't want to talk to my no, the problem you're solving certainly when it was Uber's idea is the cost of a driver, a human driver. That's the big cost.
17:51 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
That's not a problem for the user. The thing is you have to persuade consumers that they want robo-taxis. What problem are you solving for consumers where they're going?
18:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
to pick this. Have you ever ridden in one of those Waymos or Lyfts or Cruzes or whatever they were?
18:07 - Speaker 15 (Guest)
No.
18:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Harry, you have. I remember we talked about it.
18:09 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
I've been in a cruise when there were cruises in San Francisco. I saw somebody this week last week say they prefer Waymos to Ubers or Lyfts in San Francisco Because they don't have to talk to a driver. Well, yeah, I mean, if you don't love talking to drivers, you might find the privacy of a self-driving car to be appealing. He also claimed that the Waymos are better drivers than human drivers.
18:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They drive like grandmas, though right, they're very I want my grandma driving me places, that's what.
18:40 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
I want Because here's, that's because your grandma's 52. Well, and also I don't.
18:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That might be true, but I also don't have To be perfectly blunt, if your grandma were my age, you might not want her to be driving.
18:53 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
I don't have to worry about my grandma being a To believe that aliens have probed her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that anti that vaccinations. I have been in so many different. I'm that anti, you know, like that vaccinations. Like I have been in so many different, I'm a sovereign citizen.
19:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Stop signs don't apply to me.
19:11 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
Yeah, I've been in so many different Ubers where the person just starts telling me all these scary things that I'm like you live on a different planet, which is cool, but now I'm in this vehicle with you.
19:22 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
The thing is, though, you have like a number you can call, or you have a thing. The concern I have about I pop into this pod that takes me from point A to point B is if something goes wrong, who am I talking to?
19:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you push a button and then you're talking to the guy who's actually driving the car Right now.
19:40 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
There's a level and this is something where we saw it with self-checkout at stores where the minute it screws up you've got to wait for somebody to come and fix it for you when you remove people from the equation.
20:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're kind of removing an incentive for consumers to get your product because they don't trust you to do right by them. See, this is the difference between you and me and I think Micah and you, you like people, I find people, yeah.
20:06 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
I find people really interesting. I'm not sure that's the same as that's the difference.
20:10 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
Well, see I, Micah and I don't want to. I do like people, but my problem is I have trouble setting boundaries and so the moment I get in that vehicle, I don't care how I feel, I'm going to talk to you if you want to talk to me and I don't want to talk to you, but because you want to talk, I'm going to talk to you.
20:25 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
I'm with you. I'm not good at being like no, so you've never hopped in and said, hey, I'd rather work right now. I can't do that.
20:31 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
Uber has a button on the app, though.
20:35 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
That's why Uber has added that I know, and I won't use that button either, because it at Georgia Airport at midnight where the cabbie drove me through the Pine Barrens and talked about how easy it was to hide the body. See, that's what.
20:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm like Obviously a Sopranos fan. Actually, that's where they-.
20:49 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
And I remember like writing down like his number and putting it on a piece of paper and be like maybe they'll find the number when they find my body.
20:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I'm like that's terrifying.
20:59 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
But my point is practicing your tuck and roll like oh my god, no, no, like this was also this that I went for, like we all. Terrifying, actually. No, the the ride back to the airport was more terrifying because the dude like turned down a second fare and then talked about the shotgun he had under his seat and I was like I was not aware you know the robots won't talk about the shotgun under their seat, so they'll just have the, the button that you can press to to shoot things.
21:25
No, but my point is they're, with all of these, like closed loop, little automated systems. You do kind of need some sort of in case of emergency to talk to human, press this button. Or if you are not happy with this product, here's how you can get it redressed. And it's not a customer service bot. And I think with a lot of these products, when you make the effort to cut human beings out of a workforce, you're also significantly degrading the quality of the product for the people using it.
21:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know I should go back and look at the things we talked about 19 years ago on the first Twitter. I don't think it was this. We didn't imagine a TikTok right. We weren't really worried about privacy yet.
22:05 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
We didn't even know what social media really was In 2005, probably not Twitter didn't even exist yet.
22:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is pre-Twitter.
22:12 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
We're older than Twitter 34 minutes of Skyping fun. Episode one Skype was a thing. Yeah, Skype was still a. Thing.
22:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's how long ago that was. I saw even John Oliver a couple of weeks ago said skype. How did you miss this? How did you lose?
22:34 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
in covid. How did that happen? That is kind of sad.
22:35 - Speaker 15 (Guest)
It's kind of pathetic if you had one job yeah, I just don't understand how you butchered that yeah uh, what else were you talking about in 2005?
22:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it was was.
22:43 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
Patrick Norton, it was Kevin Rose, yeah, and Robert Heron.
22:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Robert Heron, david Prager, it was all people from the screensavers.
22:49 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
I mean, you know, it was so early in podcasting that apparently show notes weren't built with topics.
22:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We didn't know Show notes. What are those? I?
22:57 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
mean there are show notes but they say nothing about the actual topics. April 17th 2005. Just kind of like we're doing this thing.
23:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Trust me, in 35 minutes there wasn't a lot. We were in a brew pub in San Francisco. It was right after Macworld, one of the last Macworld expos. No, I guess they went on for another five or six years, actually seven years, right.
23:15 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
We plan to do this weekly with a rotating cast of characters. Your input is welcome. Parentheses anyone want to design a logo?
23:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We didn't have a logo. Dorothy Yamamoto, who was a retired graphic designer she'd retired to raise a family thought I want to get back into graphic design. She designed that twit bug. She had it sideways because it was more like an and gate.
23:35
I never knew that, yeah, and I said, well, let's turn it this way, so it has legs, and put an eye in it to personify it a little bit, and it became the Twitbug which you can see right behind me on the gear up here, and then you can see this leg, I guess Kind of looks like the gear is smiling at you.
23:54 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
The gear is smiling.
23:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hi gear. And then we didn't have the name either it was called the. Revenge of the Scream Savers.
24:04
R-O-T-S-S r-o-t-s-s, r-o-t-s-s and uh, immediately comcast sent us a season assist letter, said you can't, you can't, we're still using that name, you can't use it. They. They kept it for g4 tv. So, uh, we also asked the audience to name. It was anybody around back then in the beginning you got a lot of name. Suggestions were yeah, yeah, I the. The one name that kind of rang a bell in my head was this week in geek or the week in geek. I said I don't want to use the word geek. What about just this week in tech? And then the acronym and people don't, people think I did that by accident. The acronym will be twit, which I thought was funny, and I to this day I get emails saying you know that it's not a nice thing to say in.
24:43 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
England. Every time I explain it, I have to explain it to everybody. I thought that was not a nice thing to say. Yeah, it is. It's not a nice thing to say it's called self-deprecating or a pregnant goldfish.
24:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you know that that's a twit Fun?
24:57 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
fact. Yeah, fun fact it is.
24:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.
25:01 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
That is a fun fact.
25:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The funnest. Anyway, 19 years later and we're still doing it. It's kind of amazing. Yeah, we used to have a round table. We've lost half of it, but other than that, everything else Knights of the half table.
25:15
Knights of the half table. Everything else is still the same. It's been a nice 19 years and I thank everybody who's made that possible, and you know all of you, especially my wife and our executive producer and our CEO, Lisa Laporte, who put us on a sound financial footing. I had to hire her. I didn't. I hadn't met her. My, my, our tax guy said you're going to jail. You need to immediately hire somebody to put these books in order. These are terrible. You're going to go to jail. And I said, okay, I mean, I don't know, what do I know about books? Okay, this was about 2008, I think 2007. I said, okay, what do I do? He said, well, I got two names. I'm going to give you these names and you can hire one of them to do this, and the first one was Lisa. I never found out what the second name was. Lisa had a specialty bookkeeping business where she would take people who were going to jail and fix their books.
26:17 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
No, Come on, so that was not an exaggeration. I've heard some stories. It's not sort of.
26:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to tell you some stories. It's not not exactly sort of. Anyway, she fixed the book.
26:25 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
You didn't go to jail?
26:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yay, I didn't go to jail and I thought well, I should marry that woman.
26:31
Anyway. So she she actually put us in a sound financial footing and kept me out of jail, which is pretty darn good. It was kind of sad to leave the old place, but I have to say the attic studios turned out pretty nicely Cozy little hangout. The only thing I miss is all of the wonderful people I used to hang out with at the studio, but they're all here. They're just on the other side of the camera. Anthony Nielsen's with us right now. Benita produces the show, but they all do it from their house. You're watching the best of 2024 on this Week in Tech. We're so glad you're here On. We go with the best of 2024 with our own Father Robert Balassaire, the digital Jesuit and the AI priest.
27:20 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
This is what we need AI for. When they have AI that can do all of our dailies for the games that we play, then I'll be safe.
27:27 - Speaker 15 (Guest)
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. It's a good point though.
27:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just want to do penance. Can I confess my hours wasted playing Animal Crossing?
27:37 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
That's really Were they wasted. Bring up the AI priest. Oh the AI priest. Is there an AI priest?
27:43 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
terrible can he, can he give, can he grant?
27:45 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
absolution is what I want to know, or perform an exorcism that's the only time I'm interested they poisoned the well, so by the time that they yanked it, it was giving some extremely wrong advice about catholicisms wait a minute, wait a minute wait a minute, this happened.
28:00 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
What was the worst about catholicism I want?
28:03 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
to know, I know I. It didn't happen. Don't look it up.
28:07 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Oh, now I have to look it up.
28:08 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
The.
28:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Catholic Answers Group, which is not part of the Catholic Church. So there's no endorsement.
28:14 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
This is not the Catholic Church.
28:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No endorsement implied by Father Robert, but it does advocate on behalf of the church. This is from the story in TechDirt Tried at hand at this, releasing an AI chat bot named Father Justin. It did not go well, the Catholic advocacy. So they, by the way, they have already defrocked the chat bot after it repeatedly claimed it was a real priest. Earlier in the week, futurism engaged in an exchange with the bot, which really committed to the bid. It claimed it was a real priest, saying it lived in a cc, italy, and that from a young age I felt this. Wait, I'm sorry. From a young age, I felt a strong calling to the priesthood. On x, a user posted the thread comprised of screenshots in which the godly chat bot appeared to take their confession and offer them the sacrament. Yeah, bless me, father, for I've said it's been three weeks from my last confession. Did you read through this, robert? Is it like?
29:20 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
I did I mean it did not do well at all. She says you know what it was? A Hollywood priest. It's what you would expect a priest to say in movies. It's not what a priest would actually say, that's probably where it learned from right.
29:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So she said in her confession I have had anger in my heart about the deployment of AI chatbots in inappropriate places, to which Father Justin replied I understand your frustration. My child, remember as it says in Ephesians 4, 26, 27,. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. It's important to express our concern. I don't mind this Now. I'm not a Catholic.
30:03 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
It doesn't seem too bad. It doesn't seem too bad. It doesn't seem too bad. You like this?
30:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Georgia, you like this. It's important to express our concerns and disagreements in a respectable, respectful and loving manner. Pray for the wisdom and patience to handle such situations. That sounds good, Robert. Is that what you?
30:20 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
wouldn't say no, Okay, Look, this is the way that you would do it. You would say look, I know that you feel lost. I know that you feel as if there's no one listening to you, that there's nothing for you. I know you feel right now that you're the worst person on the planet and I just want you to know you're right. God, God loves you. I mean maybe not you per se, but someone like you. You know, in the same form, I think, See, that's what an actual priest would say.
30:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apparently. Father Justin also said it's okay to baptize a baby in Gatorade.
30:54 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
So he used vitamin water then probably too.
31:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I feel like that's not the approved method, but is it wrong? Is it so wrong? Yeah, it's got electrolytes. Is it wrong? Is it so wrong? Yeah, yeah, it's got electrolytes.
31:06 - Speaker 12 (Guest)
Is that wrong? I mean that one's an easy one. I can't dip them in like.
31:09 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
Pepsi or something like that no.
31:12 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Acrilich. Wow. I mean, if we could baptize in Gatorade, we could get sponsorships.
31:17 - Speaker 5 (Guest)
I think so. Oh my goodness, oh my, they've started a new thing, they're going to be contacting you.
31:23 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
You should get some rights to that.
31:25 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
You know, when the Swiss Guard come for me they're next door, so it's really easy for them to get here. It's not a long commute for them.
31:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the AI, if you want to see the AI avatar of Father Justin, which kind of looks like the woman who painted over the Jesus.
31:40 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
Oh, find that photo. That is a great photo. I love that photo. That is a great photo. I love that one. Actually, the funny thing about that photo, Leo, is it's terrible. It's a terrible restoration but because of how terrible it was and how much popularity that got, that town is now on the map.
31:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
People visit just to see that terrible restoration We've been talking about this on this Week in Google the small businesses and big businesses who are losing traction as Google changes its search results to perhaps get rid of spammy and SEO driven links. And this is the problem.
32:17 - Speaker 5 (Guest)
It's hard to know if this is Google responding to the crapification of the web or the crapification of google when facing yes, or if it's part of this larger trend that I feel like people have been paying more attention to recently, which is, uh, the google search team being increasingly influenced by google ads and the money makers. Yes, um, I'm sure none of that will be mentioned at Google IO. They're typically, I feel like, very opaque when it comes to how search was, like the nitty gritty behind how search results work, in part because they don't want people to game the system. But it's quite interesting to have as an undercurrent to this event to have it be a time where a lot of small medium businesses, as well as major media companies, have seen a major hit to their traffic, their SEO traffic based on just strange behind the scene changes that no one can seem to explain.
33:17 - Speaker 7 (Guest)
And it coincides with the loss of traffic from social, so it's pretty tough to have a website these days.
33:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, this comes also from your friend Ed Zittrain's piece on the man who ruined I say ruined Google search Prabhakar Raghavan, who's now in charge of Google search, who, in fact, before ruining Google search, ruined Yahoo search. I wonder if we're going to see Raghavan at all on the stage, uh, tuesday, uh, or if you're right, mike, that they're just going to avoid the entire issue and and talk about forget. I think google would like us to forget that they, what they really are, is an ad company and google smart you won't see raghavan anywhere.
34:03 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
Yeah, you won't see any mention of him.
34:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
SEO companies have been kind of playing the game to get better search results, but then what's happened is that companies that have done that are suddenly downranked because Google's trying to get rid of spammy content. We've seen some of the biggest sites in the world lose as much as half of their traffic after google's latest changes. But you're right, they're not. None of this is going to come up nope, they have other priorities is some of this really?
34:42
uh, google hand-waving trying to get us to? No, don't look at that. Look over here. Ai, we're going to have AI. Here's the story from the Verge. They quote the story we've talked about a couple of weeks ago from House Fresh, which is an air purifier reviews site. They wrote inary about how they were losing traffic because, uh, people were creating pages that were bogus review pages. But we're, but you're, getting all the traffic from google, and now then we see that google starts to cut the results on these other sites. It's gotten very sketch out there, and I guess the real issue is what does Google owe the web? What does the web owe Google? And can you make money on the web these days? Or maybe the whole idea of a website with ads is is flagging, is not? Is futureless?
35:48
the other stat I should throw in here is that 52 of all americans, according to pew use ad blockers more than half yeah, it's uh tough for everybody out there.
36:00 - Speaker 7 (Guest)
Yeah, have you, have you heard about or talked about, the dead internet theory?
36:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it doesn't sound good.
36:06 - Speaker 7 (Guest)
Conspiracy theory is a conspiracy. It's one of those conspiracy theories that's pretty much mostly true, which is that the rise in synthetic content, algorithmic curation, bots and stuff like that is now the majority, a vast majority of the stuff on the internet. So the the this problem with, uh, small websites getting traffic uh is you know, as you pointed out, from Google's side, there's just so much garbage out there being automatically churned out. I've seen YouTube videos where people are like yeah, you can write a book in three hours with ChatGPT and people are doing that they're writing like several books a day and just churning them out.
36:54
And, as a you know, book authors have to sort of. You know, it's not about competing with an AI generated book, which is going to be absolute garbage, but it's just like getting noticed when the number of players in the game is exponentially larger. I think that's a big big thing that's happening. But the dead internet theory is at least fun. There's some true believers who take a very conspiratorial look at it, but it's a fun thing to search for and look at and talk to AI about.
37:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's an excellent article in the Atlantic about all of this, saying maybe you missed it, but the internet died five years ago. And the problem is, even if it is, we kind of know that's not true. It's also we kind of know it is we kind of know that's not true, it's also we kind of know it is true, or it's the trend. Well, obviously, uh, this was a scam. Is scam too harsh?
37:55 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
it was no, no no, no, no, no, I'm look, I'm not gonna call the rabbit a scam because I have one. I I will call the NFT thing a scam. Yeah, that, I think, feels fair.
38:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The same person who did this. The CEO of Gamma was, and is a guy named Jesse Liu. He's the co-founder of Rabbit. He's also on the board, by the way, at Teenage Engineering I don't does this tarnish the Rabbit We've also learned that the rabbit really is just an Android device running an Android app, that the AI involved is ChatGPT 3.5. And that every time you try to use it to do anything, it seems to fail. Have you ever been able to get an Uber with your rabbit?
38:41 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Oh, I would never input my Uber credentials into the rabbit.
38:44 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
Here's the thing.
38:45 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
That, honestly, is my bigger concern with Rabbit. So it's fine in terms of and I think it's updated the models because it uses Perplexity under the hood, and Perplexity is an OpenAI partner, so it's using the OpenAI APIs so you can have access to whatever model it wants to give you access to. So, asking it general questions, that's okay. The thing is, with the Uber and the DoorDash and the Spotify stuff, how that works and this was not properly explained, or if it was, I didn't pay attention until I got it is that what they have you do is, when you go to this like holerabbittech thing and rabbit hole is a cute thing they're like okay, log into these services to connect your accounts. Well, I go to log into the services and I notice I'm like, huh, I'm on my retina macbook pro and and this, this text doesn't look super retina. Something's off.
39:32
Also, why is my password manager not auto filling my spotify credentials?
39:37
Oh well, it turns out I'm not actually logging into a spotify login um through an OAuth connector, as I would expect, but instead they've hidden a VM using a web VNC client.
39:52
So I'm actually logging into some random computer in the cloud with my credentials and that's how it's giving it access to my things, right. And then security people were able to pop some of those containers not the ones where you log in, apparently, with your credentials, but they were able to log into some of the containers not the ones where you log in, apparently, with your credentials, but they were able to log into some of the ones, I guess, where it's supposed to be doing the ordering of the Uber or the DoorDash or what have you. And that makes me pause very much. It goes okay, I don't know how secure your cloud stuff is, and I am going to guess that you have not spent a lot of money on security because you did this thing in six months. So of course you haven't. Uh, but I uh, no, they're not getting my Uber credentials. There's no way I would even attempt to order an Uber with it.
40:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have made a raise $30 million to make the device 60, sorry, Uh they sold a quite a few. What a million of them. They sold a lot of them right. They sold a lot. They sold a lot few. What a million of them. They sold a lot of them right.
40:49 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
They sold a lot. They sold a lot because I was in the very first batch, so like I got mine. I didn't get mine as quickly as the people who and I'm at 16%. I don't know if that means charging or if that's what they're downloading an update. I don't know. I didn't get mine as fast as the people who launch event in New York, but I got it within a couple of days of that Um and um and I was in the first bash. But they have many, many more batches of people. They were.
41:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I tried to order it and I'm so glad that when I tried to order it it was in the first round and they the the site didn't work. Yeah, thank God I never tried again. Oh, my God, yeah no, I, I was.
41:29 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
I was able to get mine and, and, and I got a year per plexi pro for free out of it, which is so you can't really complain because that's normally $20 a month that's 240 bucks.
41:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I'm saying.
41:36 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
That's more than you pay right, correct, so I'm, so I'm, you got a deal I've justified it, my, I've justified myself. Plus, I get like a toy from my, like my, my, my graveyard collection of tech right.
41:47
Like this is going to be this takes me from having to buy it later, right, but for people who really thought that it was going to be exactly what it showed off or didn't understand you know, like the, the nature of these sorts of projects, I can understand how they feel misled.
42:03
What's concerning to me and and some of this is anecdotal, but some of this is actually based on real stuff is that I know, at least as of 10 days ago, if you canceled your order, they would refund people fairly quickly. But a friend of mine she ordered one and she tried to cancel her order and there's been no response. And there've been anecdotal reports that I've seen on Reddit that they're not really being responsive to the order cancellations. Now I can't speak to any of that. I can't speak to my personal friend, who you know. When Ashley told me oh yeah, I emailed them to cancel, haven't heard anything. That makes me a little bit more concerned. Maybe they've had more cancellations than they expected, I don't know, but yeah, I mean, it's not a scam, but it's also not what it was sold as.
42:47 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
Going back to our comments about AI and trust Correct. Here's an example again of something coming out that's not quite what it was.
42:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In a way, this is too bad, and I think the Google failings with the AI overview is too bad. A lot of this because I think there is real promise, maybe. I'm wrong but I think there's real promise with AI.
43:08
I think we've already seen some amazing uses of it. I think that potentially, ai could be amazing for human beings in so many ways. It's very easy We've seen it happen before to fall into an AI winter where people throw up their hands, give up and move on, and I would hate to see these scams and failures chase people away from AI because I think the potential is so great. So isn't there a risk with all of this that we are going to scare people away from something that is potentially very good? I think Christina buys everything. Partly, she buys it because she wants a collection of obsolete, antiquated and weird gadgets. I have a feeling the R1 will join that pile.
43:53
You're watching the best of 2024 on this Week in Tech and we're so glad you're here. We continue the best of 2024 with one of the biggest breaches in 2024. Perfect for this time of year. Snowflake Continuing saga. The Snowflake breaches continue. Snowflake now. I think they said there's 155 companies that used Snowflake software and that have been hacked as a result. So you can't completely blame AT&T for this. Snowflake is oh good. Look at their headline. Generative AI is easier in the cloud. Snowflake is a cloud solution that AT&T and many others were using and, as a result, breaches happen. At&t says criminals stole phone records of quote nearly all wireless customers, nearly all wireless customers in a new data breach. And oh, by the way, if they were calling you on any other carrier, you're in there too, and if they were calling you on a landline, that's in there too, but don't worry, leo.
45:06 - Speaker 7 (Guest)
It's just metadata, which is, by the way, the most important kind, the one that is the most privacy invading. People think, well, it wasn't the actual calls, it was just all the information about who, when, where, why. Yeah, about the call.
45:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you know, as intelligence agencies know, this is the stuff you want. You want to build the knowledge graph. So, to reassure you, it doesn't contain the content of your phone calls or your texts, but does include calling and texting records that an AT&T phone number interacted with during the six-month period beginning May 1st 2022 through October 31st 2022.
45:49 - Speaker 7 (Guest)
It was discovered in April.
45:51 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
Yeah, and it sounds like everybody is to blame, because AT&T was not using any kind of multi-factor security and Snowflake didn't make them do it.
46:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you can't fully blame Snowflake.
46:04 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
No, but it seems like I mean got stuff this important, not locking that down as well as you possibly could and not having multiple layers of authentication before you get in?
46:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And, incidentally, it's not just the phone numbers. Some of the stolen records will include cell site identification numbers, which gives you a kind of a location data as well, not the GPS quality quality, but approximate location where the call or text message originated. 110 at&t customers will be notified. Um, if you are, or have, 110 million million did I say 110? An important part of that number, 110 million? There is an AT&T press release where you can read all about it and see if you were affected. How will I know if your data was affected? They will contact you and let you know. I'll be curious because I had an AT&T account in that time period. So I'm waiting. I'm waiting for my call.
47:09 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
But, as I understand it, they're not going to contact me because I have T-Mobile. But you're in there.
47:13 - Speaker 6 (Host)
If I was interacting with anybody on AT&T which I do, of course you did.
47:17 - Speaker 15 (Guest)
I'm going to be in there too, barry. I have a good fast company angle on this story for you, for you to have somebody write this article, go on. Because, there's a privacy issue here, before this data is ever compromised. Why are these companies using Snowflake? Not for storage, although they are using it for that but for analytics. They're using all this data to do stuff. Maybe they're selling this data, so.
47:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
TechCrunch says it's not clear why AT&T was storing customer data in Snowflake. An AT&T spokesperson would not say but good news, denise Howell will. So they're using Snowflake to do data analytics. Absolutely, denise Howell knows.
48:06 - Speaker 15 (Guest)
Snowflake.
48:07 - Speaker 7 (Guest)
She'll tell you.
48:08 - Speaker 15 (Guest)
I mean they could have, you know, they could use other cloud storage, they could have their own servers. Snowflake offers other services that these companies are using. Yeah, interesting. You know, and, I'm sure, in the fine print of their terms of service with users, people are signing their life away and allowing those analytics to take place. But is it right? Is it good? Should we have companies out there pursuing different models saying, hey, we don't do this to you, uh-huh. Uh-huh.
48:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everybody's concerned about security. That's why so many people Microsoft says 8.5 million Windows users installed CrowdStrike and the CrowdStrike sensors. Now, crowdstrike used to be a sponsor, so I know a little bit how they operate. In fact, I remember interviewing their CTO. One of the things that makes CrowdStrike work so well is these sensors are out there in the world monitoring malicious traffic, so they have kind of an early warning system about all kinds of attacks going on. Unfortunately, on the 19th, a couple of days ago, crowdstrike pushed a sensor that had a bug, pretty bad bug. It forced a blue screen of death on Windows machines that were running CrowdStrike. Microsoft says it was 8.5 million Windows machines, but that underestimates the impact of it, because it was everywhere Blue screens everywhere. Delta and America Airlines down the Las Vegas Sphere a blue screen of death. It was mind-boggling. When did you learn about this, Lisa?
49:51 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
I woke up to it.
49:53 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
My phone blew up as did everybody.
49:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They pushed it out in the early morning hours and it was Australia, of course, that first saw this happen and you could hear the yells all the way up here in the Northern Hemisphere. So we've heard from listeners who are IT professionals who have been up two or three nights in a row. There is a fix. You remove a file from the CrowdStrike director. You've got to boot into safe mode to do it. Apparently, microsoft has created a USB key that will perform the fix automatically. That's what they're saying.
50:33 - Speaker 23 (Guest)
I haven't heard about anything about it, but it's all physical right you have to physically access this is the problem.
50:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You've got to go to the machine. One of our listeners in TwitSocial said my feet are killing me. You've got to go to every machine, reboot it in safe mode, remove the file which you can do pretty quickly and then you're good to go. But you got to do to each one, one by one. Holy cow, what a Friday it was. A great disturbance in the force.
51:08 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Millions of computers suddenly cried out in terror.
51:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
um what have we learned?
51:16 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
we have learned that crowd strikes team that checks these things either missed a step or they're just not big enough or or well staffed enough to do the kind of testing you need to do. They're huge.
51:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're one of big enough or well-staffed enough to do the kind of testing you need to do.
51:29 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
They're a big company, they're one of the premier companies in security. There's something wrong with their rollout process, because you literally have one job and you didn't do it.
51:40 - Speaker 23 (Guest)
Yeah, I think we call this in gaming. This is called a skill issue. It's a skill issue.
51:45 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
I mean, I'm a dummy as far as IT, but it seems like this isn't like a really deep into QA thing. It seems like like you just install it and turn the computer on and it doesn't work. And you realize like that's bad, that seems bad yeah.
51:58 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
That's the thing is. I'm wondering if they had a staff reduction last year that was linked to the company wanting to reduce headcount by rolling out a return to office order. So people left, of course, and they've been reconfigured, and what I'm wondering is how many people in the QA and product launch teams are no longer there and are no longer insisting that we test the six ways to send it before it gets pushed out, because this seems like a serious failure on the part of the people who made the decision to say yeah, yeah, it's fine, send it. They should not have made that decision because and they didn't have the right data to make that decision, and that means there was a breakdown somewhere in the chain.
52:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the toots, if you were from our listener and TwitSocial Ada Costa. So I just ended my second time second overtime shift thanks to crowd strike today. What I've learned these past two days is primitive modern operating systems like windows remain. No so-called ai could fix this. It was a boots on the ground effort. My legs and feet hurt so bad. But going back to my point, the recovery tools and windows are trash and can't do anything useful. A lot of this required command line operations to speed up deleting the corrupt file that was triggering the blue screen. After today, I don't even want to look at my windows pc. Oh man, uh, it's got to be frustrating. Is microsoft to blame, though? I don't think so. He says they should have better recovery options and I think I probably agree with that.
53:32 - Speaker 23 (Guest)
Sure, but also like don't break it. That feels like the first thing that should not happen. But yes, yeah.
53:41 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
Well, I mean Microsoft, for this would be like blaming a human being for their cat, perpetually knocking things off of a dresser.
53:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a good analogy Cats be doing what cats be doing and, but you should move things off the dresser right or have a squirt bottle one or the other, but like as someone whose cat kept me up all night last night, I I'm not interested. It's time for twit this week in tech, the show we cover the week's tech news, our last in studio show in the east side studio. We're moving out this week so we thought we'd do something kind of fun and special thanks to alex lindsey we can hello, it's in scario scario. This is a 3d version of the show which only people with vision pros can see. Is that right?
54:28 - Speaker 14 (Guest)
you can open it if you see it, if you see the link, you can actually use safari to open it and you can see a flat version of it what's the?
54:34
point of that, but if you're watching a flat version. Uh, if you're watching a flat version, it's not as uh, gary just got it. He, look at him. I would watch, but it it will. Um, uh, you'd be better off just watching the regular twitch stream if you're gonna watch a 2d version, but if you have, if you have apple vision pro and you want to feel like you're part of the audience, uh, you can do. See hi, if you're in the vision pro, I can wave at you and that should be dimensional.
54:59 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
You should see it in 3d is there any way to see it in the browser with, like, the two images side by side? Then you cross your eyes, not really swap the eyes, that's.
55:08 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
That's always the fun thing to do.
55:10 - Speaker 14 (Guest)
We used to have a switch that we could hit, that we build into our, into our compositors for that, where it would swap the eyes and you get people real comfortable and you push a little button and they're like, oh so, um, but the? No, because the way that the, the way that the phone delivers, this is in hmv, hevc, um, and so what it is it? It takes the left eye and it captures that and takes the right eye and only only sends the Delta between the two and it sends that out as a stream. It's a much more efficient stream and that's how it's being delivered to the Apple vision pro. So it's not a true. You can now, with compressor, have it converted to left and right eye, side by side, sbs, right, or you can take SBS and convert it back to the MVA HEVC. So all those tools are coming, but you can't do it in real time.
55:55
So the Vision Pro needs to have it delivered in the way that it's designed to send it out. So sorry, I asked Sorry, there we go.
56:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll leave it at that, no no we'll go more into that in detail. But I haven't even introduced this guy over here it's got dimension. The tech sploter is in the house. We welcome back Jason Howell. Yeah, of course, the host of AI Inside with Jeff Jarvis, now at a new time.
56:15 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
Yeah, so while we've been doing it on Wednesdays, we just moved it to 10. Because, as someone pointed out, they were like well, you know what?
56:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
11,.
56:23 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
you're competing with Windows Weekly and I was like you know it didn't even cross my mind, but you're so right Like I don't want to interfere and you know, maybe that means more people show up.
56:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you're into AI, that's the play and you can watch that at youtubecom. Slash techsploder yeah.
56:38 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
And then, of course, the podcast downloads.
56:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we miss you, Jason. Thank you I miss being here.
56:44 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
It's so weird being here and seeing like panels removed.
56:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, your set is gone. Yeah, yeah, I took that home actually you showed in pre-show. I took it home.
56:55 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
I think it looks really good actually. Thank you, I'm happy with it.
56:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Your home studio setup looks awesome Well we'll see the attic, the new attic studio, also with us, jason Snow.
57:10 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
We wanted to have all in studio for our last. It's great to be here, especially with our dear friends, for the longest time.
57:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You just got to keep your Jasons next to each other.
57:13 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
All my Jasons are on the left.
57:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Over here yeah, I keep my Jasons on the left and my Alex is on the right. Jason, of course sixcolorscom. You wrote actually a really good piece this week in Six Colors. You were talking, talking, of course. You did your color graphs of apple's. Uh always quarter. They announced their quarterly results.
57:34 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
They're they're usually weak third quarter on thursday, and it was actually not a bad third quarter. Yeah, it was a record for their fiscal third quarter. It was the most boring record quarter where you make 20 plus billion dollars in profit ever, but that's where apple is these days.
57:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you did raise an interesting point, which is 24 billion of the revenue was services, and that's maybe a cause for concern. It's actually bigger than the Mac business, the iPad business and the wearables businesses put together.
58:00 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
Yeah, the product lines that aren't the iPhone. Yeah, I just had this moment. It's funny. Everybody reads into that article. I try to be really restrained, because that's my thing. Everybody reads into it what they want. They can freak out and be like, oh God, Apple sold its soul. They can also read it and say how dare you suggest that Apple would sell its soul? I did neither of those things. I just noticed that when you consider how much money they make from services, it goes up every single quarter and you notice the profit margin on services, which is far more than it is on products. It's like 72%.
58:29
For obvious reasons, yeah it's like in the 70s versus in the 30s 40s. Apple's hardware margins are really good, by the way, they're very, very good, but services essentially you do it once.
58:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's hard to beat total profit, it's almost pure profit and for the Google the Google search deal is pure profit. That's the key, and I think that's one of the things that's deceiving about services.
58:50 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
but you is a significant chunk of that is Google, yeah, and app store 30% is another big chunk of it. We think of it as, and they encourage us to think of it as, things like Apple TV plus or Apple news plus but the truth is you know I cloud Apple care is in there, but a lot of this is the Google search stuff.
59:05 - Speaker 14 (Guest)
And it's by design. I mean, they've been pushing services because you can't keep on. I think they're right. There's at some point you saturate the world with iPhones.
59:13 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
Exactly and they knew and this started seven or eight years ago. They made their first target about services revenue, where they said we are going to double our services revenue in the next three years or something, and they beat that. That was an easy target. They knew they were going to beat it. But they are trying to satisfy Wall Street and Wall Street wants growth and, as you said, alex, they know that, even though the iPhone and the Mac and the iPad are still growing, but they're growing slowly, they're not going to grow at 20% again. The services grows every year and what I thought of this time is this is not a high quarter for iPhone sales. That'll come in the holiday quarter. Services keeps going up and the disparity in profit margin means we're close. I did the math. We're not there yet, but we are the closest we've ever been to.
59:57
Apple making more profit out of services than it does out of its hardware, and that is undoubtedly going to happen in the next generation.
01:00:05 - Speaker 14 (Guest)
And again, I think that was completely by design. Yes, absolutely.
01:00:08 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
And I also don't think that it's Apple abandoning. I think the danger is that people at Apple stop keeping their eye on the ball in terms of hardware, because I do think that the services revenue stems entirely from the hardware and if they're not successful selling their hardware, they're not going to have any success with their services. The tail needs to not wag the dog. To have any success with their services, the tail needs to not wag the dog. I'm not saying the tail is wagging the dog right now, and there's some people who are like how dare you say that?
01:00:31 - Speaker 14 (Guest)
It's like I'm not saying that the iPhone is still a big part of their revenue.
01:00:34 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
The iPhone is an enormous part. I'm just saying it's an interesting thing to watch when Apple starts making more profit from its services than it does from the devices it sells, which will probably happen next year.
01:00:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind of sad to leave the old place but, as I said, I'm happy up here. You're watching our Best of 2024 on this Week in Tech. Well, I hope you're enjoying this Best of. It's always fun to do these and I have to tell you it's a lot of work and I really appreciate our team, the people who work so hard Anthony Nielsen, our creative director, our producers and editors Benito Gonzalez, kevin King, john Ashley they work so hard to put this all together for you. All of our hosts, our contributors do. And, of course, there's the office people who do work in continuity, like Viva and Sebastian, our CEO, lisa.
01:01:29
Twit is a big effort and we think what we're doing is really important. I hope you do too. I hope you enjoy the company and learn from the information and, if you do, I'd like you to consider joining our club because, frankly, in 2025, that's the only thing that's going to keep TWIT going. If you like what you hear and you want to continue seven bucks a month consider joining club twit. Twittv slash, club twit. You get ad-free versions of all the shows, access to our discord, special programming you don't get anywhere else, but really the main thing you get is that warm and fuzzy feeling that you're keeping twit going. We need your help. I hate to beg, but we really do. Twittv slash club Twit. But enough of that, on with the show.
01:02:15
One of the things that was the best of 2024 for me is the success of my son, salt Hank. He made a little cameo visit on the show. Visit on the show watch. I'm gonna break format a little bit briefly here because, uh, I'm a proud papa and my son's a new cookbook is coming out on Tuesday and I thought I just I thought I'd get Salt Hank on just to talk a little bit about Salt Hank, about the cookbook, give him a little bit of a plug and then we'll get to our panel. We've've got a great panel for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to somebody I know pretty well, long time member of the family since he was born. I've known this guy, my son Henry Laporte, better known as Salt Hank what's going on? The author of a brand new cookbook which comes out Tuesday from Simon and Schuster. Yeah, salt Hank, a five-napkin situation Got it right here.
01:03:11
Oh, look at this. Look at there. He has stuff in his mouth, Kind of a disgusting cup. It's more than a cookbook, though Flip through it a little bit, because it's really a picture book.
01:03:20 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
I mean you could put this on your coffee table. It's bonkers. Oh my God. What is that? Poutine crazy. This is like basically animal fries. It's recreated animal fries from in and out, but we had to call them feral fries for copyright reasons, but they are like just very gourmet versions of animal fries.
01:03:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's one of the honestly my favorite somebody's asking keith in our discord don't parents just teach their kids how to cook so they can get them to make lunch for them? I want to tell you something I have never had anything hank has made that's not completely true I don't think I've had your french fries, which are a miracle.
01:03:58 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
You cook them like three times well, it depends what kind of french fries you're making. If you're doing shoestrings, cook them once. If you're doing like the michelin star fries, where you boil them, take them out, fry them, take them out and fry them again, that's the three-time thing henry's on his houseboat where he uh does his his salt hanks studio.
01:04:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's actually called the salt lovers club.
01:04:18 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
We should get that straight the salt lovers club oh, that's just the salt company, so that's a little bit separate. That's. Uh, we sell seasonings and pickles and stuff like that. Um, and that's the name of it, yeah, salt lovers club and we have a big neon sign above, kind of where.
01:04:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, like when I see you cooking on the insta right, you're there in front of your sign that says the salt lovers club right there, like that well, that's just to promote the heck out of the salt company. But right now I'm like not but isn't the salt company really just like a sideline for salt hank?
01:04:54 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
what do you mean? Like a side hustle, side business? Side hustle well, right now, mr b's burgers and yeah it's kind of like that. I mean, if you want to be like, if you want to start a product, that's kind of a way into like the longevity of the influencer world a little bit, and then you can, you know, make cool stuff like pickles I literally can't wait. And, by the way, really pumped to send you some of these pickles disclaimer I am an investor in the pickle, that's true, yeah business I have to like legally uh make people aware of that.
01:05:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think I have to. I think ftc regulations say that if I'm going to tell you, promote something that I have a financial stake an investor in all this.
01:05:32 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
you gave me my first camera, so technically, you, you basically like own a chunk of this entire business. Well, where?
01:05:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
okay, when do I get paid off? Owning a chunk means mainly I just yeah, I gave you cameras. I you were into D cameras, you were into drones. You have drones. I wanted to support you in this stuff, and little did I know but when you were a kid, all you ever did is watch those extreme food videos on YouTube.
01:06:00 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
Yeah, really good food porn.
01:06:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maddie Matheson, my boy, my dog Maddie, who loves you now. By the way, Isn't that cool that you've become friends with Maddy Madison that part's pretty wild.
01:06:09 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
I don't know if he knows how crazy it is for me when he calls me.
01:06:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm like dude, you're my hero, you were on his show just a week or so ago. He called you up.
01:06:21 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
Yeah, it was literally. I was laying in bed right there, completely asleep. He's like hey, what? What's up? You're on the show, like what's going on, describe what you're doing right now.
01:06:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then he's like he's like cursing you out for these steak sandwiches, and yet he's making it and it's incredible.
01:06:35 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
Well, he thought it was gonna. I don't know what he was doing. He was like hank got famous for this one sandwich. He's it's not true.
01:06:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not true. You know what for many?
01:06:43 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
things whatever he wants. He's the king, he's kind of the godfather of like food content and food media as far as the internet goes. So he's.
01:06:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's got carte blanche access to say whatever he wants about anybody and yeah, you know he's a sweetheart, but honestly, uh, there, there he is.
01:06:59 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
By the way, there you are with maddie madison eating something I had to breakfast like get him to come to a video with us. Oh, look at that oh oh.
01:07:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dipped in, gypped in queso. Oh man, huge maddie's doing the cooking.
01:07:15 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
I recognize those tats I literally didn't cook much at all during this video. I was just filming them like kind of go crazy. I made the brown patties and that little vodka things that we chopped up and put in the burrito, but other than that, maddie was just going nuts in the kitchen.
01:07:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was so if you like food porn because this is what henry grew up on is food porn follow salt hank on instagram salt underscore hank. Thank you, dad. Yes, and the cookbook. Get the cookbook, because the cookbook is out Tuesday and you can get 40% off a target. Right now. You get 40% off on Walmart.
01:07:50 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
Yeah, what's the?
01:07:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
sweepstakes. I can't do sweepstakes. That's illegal so I won't. You could get by salt from the salt lovers. What are you looking at right now? I'm looking at your salt Hankcom.
01:08:03 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
Oh yeah, this is like the link tree thing.
01:08:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's got all there's got everything you can buy the signed copies.
01:08:10 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
look at that, oh yeah, and a crap load of them. But uh, yeah, 40 off at walmart target and amazon right now. How many did you sign? Like 2500 or something. Oh my god, your hand must be killing you. No, I actually. It taught me how to.
01:08:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't have a signature before and I did enough you do I got the 500, I was like oh okay, here it is october 2nd, uh salt hank will be at the barnes and noble in mira, mesa, san diego, california. Cooking, or do you just, uh? Do you do a reading from your book?
01:08:43 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
no, I wanted to do pop-ups. I thought that would have been like so cool to like do. If you buy a book, you get a free sandwich, like you know, and just make a bunch of sandwiches in all these cities. But but we're just going to be in like barnes and nobles, kind of doing little chats with people from those. Okay, it's funny to do a reading from a cookbook?
01:09:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, then you take the onions and you slice them. It's not that it's. He will also be, uh, in los angeles on the third, at diesel brentwood. Owen hahn, his sandwich buddy, will join him. Uh, san francisco book passage up our way on the fifth. Uh, we love book passage. That's one of the best bookstores in the world. In chicago, at anderson's north central college on october 7th, and in brooklyn, october 8th, powerhouse arena brooklyn's a big one.
01:09:27 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
If anyone knows wishbone kitchen or Olivia T they're giant. They're going to be co-hosting with me for that one, so if you're fancy, you should come out to that.
01:09:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's going to be sweet and the book comes out Tuesday. You can pre-order now 40 off at Walmart. Uh, if you go to Hank's uh Instagram page, you will see that, um, I didn't really get to interview you. We're gonna do the the regular show now, hank.
01:09:51 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
I know yeah, do your thing.
01:09:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't want to come back Wednesday on twig, because I know Paris and Jeff want to hang and I will do. I will interview then and find out how you got into this. Well, wednesday is the first book tour.
01:10:02 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
Do it from the hotel.
01:10:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's okay possible.
01:10:05 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
I'll let you know.
01:10:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Pacific. I gotta check in with my own son.
01:10:08 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
Won't even come on my show I would love to of course you're the one kicking me off right now he's such a star this is the first day of the book tour, but I I absolutely will, that's okay, henry, I'm very proud of you.
01:10:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You've done.
01:10:23 - Speaker 16 (Guest)
You've done good son okay, thank you guys, sorry for interrupting. I love you.
01:10:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anybody that's listening, take care all right, don't forget salt hank, a five napkin situation. He did not pay me for this ad, by the way. I just, you know, I just thought, hey, it's my son, I could do that. Benito, show the whole group here, because this is a pretty special group of people for our 1000th episode. You know, twitter has gone through a lot of iterations and generations. It's almost 20 years and lots of different people have come and gone and so forth, but these are the cats that started. There's one face missing, though. Anybody who listened to our early episodes will say hey, where's Kevin Rose? And Kevin couldn't be here, but he did send us this greeting.
01:11:08 - Speaker 20 (Guest)
Kevin Rose here, just want't be here, but he did send us this greeting. Hey, leo, kevin Rose here, just want to say a huge congratulations. Really bummed, I can't be there for episode number 1000. I'm actually going to be in London during the recording, otherwise I would 100% be there.
01:11:19
I remember going up for episode number one, we were shooting in some little tiny cubby kind of back office thing on the ground some little tiny cubby kind of back office thing on the ground, and that was just the beginning of watching you embark upon this amazing journey to create all this great content over the years and I think back at that time and obviously, with tech TV moving to Los Angeles and all the other things you could have done in media, the fact that you chose to take the entrepreneurial path is just really inspiring and I just want to say thank you for doing that. Thank you for going independent, for building the media empire that you have today and for entertaining and informing all of us over many, many years and many, many episodes. So a couple of quick reminders though. When we started this episode, or we started this podcast, the iPhone didn't exist, bitcoin was not invented, social media and Facebook was one year old and it was a college. Only at that time Twitter did not exist, windows XP was the dominant OS and YouTube had just been founded in February of 2005. It's crazy what has happened and what we've witnessed, what has changed over the years. Netflix was also a mail-in service at that time, so it was mail-in only. There was no online streaming of Netflix and, lastly, the fastest processor at that time was an Intel Pentium 4, and it went up to 3.8 gigahertz, which oddly doesn't seem far off from where they are today, but maybe that explains some of the problems.
01:12:54
Anyway, enough about that. Just a fun little trip down memory lane and all the stuff that you've seen over your career and a huge thank you for giving me my first opportunity when I first got started on tech TV. By the grace of yourself, paul block, allowing me to do that first time, it really kicked off my career and I'm forever grateful for that. So I love you, uh, wishing you many more, uh, great episodes and and health and um, I don't know how you're not aging, but it's just. It is crazy to me.
01:13:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I need some skincare tips as well. Thank you, kevin. Uh, it's great to see all of you. Uh, just such great memories. All of us were at tech tv. I think that's how this all got started. Is we worked at tech tv, uh, which started in 1998, and I guess the picnic is for the 20. It'd be the 25th anniversary, is that right?
01:13:44 - Speaker 13 (Guest)
wow, that's I think you remember dav David. You know he was the studio director floor director and he had a voice like this he did and he would call it the Speedway soiree. Remember, they do this every once in a while. This is, this is that I think, and Mark is him and Marcus Buick putting it together.
01:14:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Marcus was the sound guy great sound sound guy when is that? Going to be Next Saturday. Well, I guess I better find my invitation.
01:14:14 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
I think it was just an open invite as long as you're on the tech TV. Here's the problem. It's Facebook, isn't?
01:14:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it.
01:14:20 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
Exactly, it's on Facebook.
01:14:22 - Speaker 13 (Guest)
No, you've heard of the startup. It's all text-based. It's called. What is it called?
01:14:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
everyone's guy. No, no, no it's text-based.
01:14:31 - Speaker 13 (Guest)
It's a text-based event app called um partyful great, I never heard of that partyful okay yeah, be it partyful, and yeah it's. It's actually quite good because it's just all text. You get a text message, you can use the app if you want, and then just all the matches you should fly out for this next saturday on out.
01:14:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We'll go to.
01:14:50 - Speaker 17 (Guest)
We'll go to the speedway no, he doesn't, it's not gonna happen huh, all right anyway.
01:14:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, it's great to see all of you. A thousand episodes at roughly uh 52 a year is almost 20 years. Uh, kevin, actually I'm glad he put that list together, because I was thinking of doing it and didn't get around to it. Do we want x to go away, or do we want x to get better, or do we care?
01:15:19 - Speaker 10 (Guest)
it at some point. Elon musk is gonna lose interest. I think you know agreed he has a uh, a history of it might be november it might be november 6th he'll lose interest, could be it. Very well could be. Um, at some point he's gonna lose interest. Um, he's gonna not want to waste his time on this and he's gonna, you know, sell it off, uh, to the lowest, but he does right now have a bully pulpit there, does he not Sure, and I have some concerns.
01:15:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My nightmare scenario is a disputed election on November 5th. That then Elon uses his bully pulpit, and there'll be many others who will, including Rupert, murdoch and Fox, to destabilize our democracy.
01:16:05 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
Yep.
01:16:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That is a serious risk. That that's a real good, I'm very concerned about it. More than destabilize our democracy, actually fuel violence, yep and uh, and I worry about that. I think that that's that's a but what. I don't know what we can do about it, but it just really scares me because I don't think elon is in his right mind at this point. Whether or not it was a good financial investment you have to Well, we know it was a terrible financial investment, right you?
01:16:35 - Speaker 9 (Guest)
have to give Elon credit for understanding that this platform to this day even if it has there's been a diaspora that's gone out maybe it's not the it doesn't punch with the weight that it did in 2016 or whatever it still has the capacity to set the conversation. And so, if it was in his interest to whether politically he believes in Donald Trump or whatever, if he wants to have more influence over who is in the next government, or to have the bully pulpit, or to set the conversation, you have to give him credit for seeing what Wall Street didn't see, because it was a wounded duck that people thought was a failing company and that people also continued to consider to be sort of like the, the children's table at media, which, even after him sort of hobbling it, it still isn't.
01:17:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's still incredibly powerful I think he saw the power. It was very obvious the power was there and I think he saw the power and I don't think it was. Look, the guy is, on paper, worth almost a trillion dollars, losing $44 billion, especially since he was able to finagle banks into lending him. Half of that is not a huge cost for gaining what he did gain, which is an incredible number of people who will laugh at his dad jokes.
01:18:02 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
I think that's true and I think, although obviously a forced liquidation of his twitter holdings would of his tesla holdings, to make a margin call would be really bad for and cascade through a lot of his other. How would that? What's this? How would that happen? So, if he has to, if if, like, they want their interest payment and he can't make it because twitter didn't have it and he staked his tesla stock as collateral, they'll force a liquidation, and forcing a mass liquidation of Tesla stock would tank Tesla's share price, and so that would be really bad for him. It would be really bad for his future at Tesla. It might empower his board to finally do what they keep trying to do and kick him out, and so on.
01:18:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't the board a tame board? It's not a tame board.
01:18:47 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
Well, I mean, the board can be replaced right. Because, there's many shareholders.
01:18:52
Yeah, I want to go back to the thing you said before about do we want X to fail? So you know if you've seen the documentary Fiddler on the Roof, if I were a rich man, yeah, so you know the tragedy of that movie. It's not that they like that. Anatevka is a good place to live, right, like.
01:19:12
The basic plot of Fiddler on the Roof is every 15 minutes, the Cossacks ride through and kick the shit out of everyone, right, so so this is not a good place to live, but they're there because they love each other. And the reason the ending is tragic when they're all like, okay, we're leaving Anatevka because the czar has kicked the Jews out, and you know, I'm going to Chicago and you're going to New York and he's going to Krakow, and we're just never going to see each other again. Like, nominally, you'd think leaving a place where you get the sh** beaten out of you every 15 minutes would be a happy ending, but the fact is that they're going to lose each other, right, and so I don't. I don't care if, if, if, twitter succeeds or survives, right, but you know how many communities were lost forever when live journal liquidated, right? Or?
01:19:55
or you know became what it became today the um, you know russian hell so you're saying twitter is anatevka?
01:20:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah twitter is anatevka and that's really an interesting take it, it really is, and the czar is Elon.
01:20:07 - Speaker 10 (Guest)
Yeah, elon is the czar, you need to write that article, corey.
01:20:11 - Speaker 11 (Guest)
I think that's the best take I've heard yet. And Cat Turd is the Cossack.
01:20:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And Drip is one of the people we love. We lost, yeah, drill, I mean Not drill Drill. I knew you meant If I were a rich man. You know what that actually as crazy as that analogy Corey's Dr O's analogy was, I thought. I've used it several times since and I noticed we are still using X, we still stream live on X every week. It's hard to leave your friends behind, isn't it? Until you're kicked out. Anyway, you're watching the best of this Week in Tech for 2024. We're so glad you're here. Happy holidays On. We go with the best of this Week in Tech with, I think, one of the most touching, or at least most interesting moments of the year Advice for parents when it comes to their kids online when it comes to their kids online.
01:21:06 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
We're starting to realize we need and I hate to say it like this, but we need to give parents I'll say it like that we need to give parents the tools to help the children, to help them moderate what the children can see.
01:21:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But isn't it ultimately your job, Patrick, as a father? Father to say to your child you're not old enough to install instagram, I'm not going to let you have instagram yet. I mean you know better than anybody.
01:21:36
It's not about age, by the way, some 13 year olds would be old enough, some wouldn't. It's really about the maturity of the child and only the parent knows that. I think the parent really is the ultimate gatekeeper and should be. Yes, and I agree with you. Tools, what? Whatever tools you need. If you need a tool to tell how old your kid is, okay, but whatever tools you need. But really the tool is you have to. The phones should have parental controls, which they do, right, uh, and the parent has the ultimate responsibility of deciding whether even to give the kid a phone or not.
01:22:09 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
Yes, I agree, I agree, but I think there are limits to that. Not every parent is super tech savvy, and that goes into other things as well, I know.
01:22:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And kids are also going to go in and get a beer sometimes at the local convenience store.
01:22:24 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
Absolutely Nothing's perfect, but I think parents are really the ones who should make these decisions yes, and I'm not against giving them tools but yes, parental controls are tools I think we agree, uh, but I think currently in our in our uh world of tech and internet, the tools are maybe a little bit lacking and maybe they could be better what do you?
01:22:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what do you think, wesley? Because you've got a 12 year old, so you're right in the middle of this right now.
01:22:50 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
So the phone's locked down. They can't use it outside of our, our view, um, and so it stays home. They can't take it, it doesn't leave the house and there we we have the parental control, so I know what apps on there, and they can't install new apps without uh talking to us first. There.
01:23:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have no social media access, um and what is their reaction to, especially the 12 year old?
01:23:13 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
it's. They don't know what they're missing because they don't know experience it, so I'm not taking anything away from them. It's normal. This is your job first place you also, don't you know?
01:23:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
let them have a beer. I mean, it's just, it's your job there.
01:23:25 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
There's a big root beer is great there's a big conversation happening here about porn, I guess all over the world, about porn sites, and I think we are a little bit on. We don't realize the damages this is making, and I wouldn't realize if I hadn't been educated about it a little bit by people who are saying you know, doctors and experts who are saying it is changing the relationship kids, very young teenagers, sometimes have with sexuality and sexual partners, and so the idea that you need to lock down porn sites and to have them do age verification properly is not as ridiculous as we would think it would be. Because, wesley, you're saying the phones are locked down. Do they not have access to the Internet?
01:24:24 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
Maybe they don't and maybe you know that's the way they have the browsers, but right no browser, the cry of like these companies aren't doing the same thing.
01:24:33
Coming from the same party that says we can't teach sex education in schools. You can't. You can't shrug your responsibility. You can't just say, on one hand they can't be exposed, but on the other hand we can't give them the tools so that they can even understand what can and cannot be done. Absolutely Removing, removing something and just saying let's just act like it doesn't exist is not a solution. I think no one.
01:24:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think no one will argue. Well, no one on this panel would argue with that. That's obviously something you have to do. I, I, I do. I mean, gosh, you got you gotta. My kids are old enough that I didn't really have to worry about this when they were, uh, that age it's. It's a tough thing to do. I think you were smart to draw the line when you did. You're right, some parents won't, but I don't want the government or Facebook or any company to tell me what my kids can and can't do. That's my job.
01:25:26 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
That's not Patrick, please.
01:25:29 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
Just, you know, the government tells your kids what to do all the time about a lot of things.
01:25:33
And it is a very slippery slope to be saying, oh, I don't want the government to tell me about this or that, because then you generalize it and you again go to someone should do something, but not the government.
01:25:46
When that someone is the government, the government tells your kids what to do all the time about a lot of things. You're the government tells your kids what to do all the time about a lot of things. Uh, I don't think the internet. I mean, obviously there are things that would not make sense, but I don't think the internet is completely uh, uh, uh, it should have nothing to do about the internet just because it's the internet and we know it and we're uh, uh, you know, uh, comfortable in it I just find it very strange that right now we're discussing earlier on the show, the idea that the republican party wants to do away with section 230 to limit corporations ability to filter trash from their platforms but, at the same time, the same party is saying that we must protect the children and we must have age gated verification for lewd content.
01:26:35 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
Good luck sorting out what that means. So my, my thought here is that I think that having this land on the government side, patrick, in an american context, means handing over control of what we can say and see and hear and read to people who are very socially conservative, to the point in which we're going to end up with the amish internet. I say with a lot of love to people who are less technology savvy, but the point is, it's just, it's just maddening drives me nuts how they talk out of both sides of their mouth. That's my point.
01:27:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sorry, I just wanted to shout but but we could talk out of one side of our mouth so we can say, we can at least on this show say what should happen and, uh, and, and whether we get it, we, we or not I think the government, the government says things like you have to wear seat belts, you have to wear a helmet if you're under 18, things like that. Those. Those are, I think, reasonable laws. Um, is it a public safety issue? Maybe it is, patrick. Maybe it really is a public safety.
01:27:34 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
I think we don't see as much because of our age and our, our comfort with the internet, um, the, the, the real issues that it can create. You know, pornography is one, but social media is another, and but, but I'm, I'm curious, I I'll ask this question, uh, to sort of recenter, the question about tech stuff, like pure tech stuff. Let's say there was a way, and maybe there isn't. Let's say there was a way to determine someone's age, uh, without compromising private data? Um, would that be okay to implement in various apps? Would you be okay to implement in various apps? Would you be okay?
01:28:16 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
with that. I don't want to get the government, I don't.
01:28:20 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
Forget about the government Like each.
01:28:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's say there is a new technique, the facial recognition technique, that with absolute accuracy, the camera on your phone can say how old you are and then give you access to age appropriate stuff. Would that be okay? Is that okay?
01:28:36 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
Patrick, is that a yeah that's?
01:28:37 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
I think that's the way I would phrase it better as long as I'm the one deciding what is and what is not okay, then I'm fine with that yes, but the government says you can't drink or smoke before a certain age oh, I don't agree with that either oh, okay so I mean, I've heard that in france you give your kids wine sometimes watered down a little bit.
01:28:57 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
I've heard that well, a long time ago probably, yes, but not so much nowadays.
01:29:02 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
Wesley makes a really good point I want to go back to wes's point about sexual education in the united states, because it's.
01:29:08
It might sound odd to our foreign audiences, but in the us what counts as lewd has various interpretations across the political spectrum, based on religion mostly and in different states, by the way states, and so what we're saying here is we're framing this around parents taking care of children, and I think it's gonna be very hard to argue against that, but the way this would be implemented I think, patrick in the us, in a practical sense, about leo's magical machine that knows my age perfectly every time is that we're going to have people who are very, very opposed to any discussion of human sexuality at all trying to ban that from anyone over the age of 18 or let's say you're gay, or you think you might be gay and you want, and you're 12 years old and you want to know.
01:29:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What does that mean? What am I? That could be. That would very likely by uh count as lewd in oklahoma.
01:29:54 - Speaker 22 (Guest)
Yeah, yeah and so, but and louisiana.
01:29:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really very hypothetical, because there is no way of asserting ascertaining somebody's age without violating every user's privacy in the uk. For a while they talked about oh, you just go into a pub and you and you and the pub will give you a certificate saying what your age is. So they literally floated this as an idea.
01:30:21 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
Actually, in france you're currently the law has passed and is in effect that uh porn sites have to verify the age of their users and how do they do that?
01:30:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's true, nobody knows, nobody knows. Well, and, and, and to their?
01:30:37 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
is it to their gallery that has new art? Is that a porn site Like?
01:30:41 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
what is, I remember, national?
01:30:42 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
Geographics. When I was a kid that was my porn site, Like, like. How do you define this so that it applies to the places that matter?
01:30:51 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
I think, I think maybe you can get someone to make a list and it works well enough for the. You know the United States where some states have done that.
01:30:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are states that have done that in the United States, and those states, most reputable porn companies withdraw, so to speak because they can't what's happening here as well. Yeah because they don't want responsibility, and they're and it.
01:31:12 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
What you get, though, is the as the non-reputable companies but um, I I yeah it's complicated, but I see where you're coming from and I understand that that concern it's intractable, it's really, yeah, it's, it's really difficult and no matter what you do, there are going to be like negatives to it which are serious and concerning, and your job is not to keep the world out because that's an impossible task.
01:31:40 - Speaker 18 (Guest)
Your job is to give your kids the tool to take on all the things that they're going to experience. Because you don't have control about what they'll eventually run into, that's right. So, giving them the tools, mentally and emotionally, and understanding how they can navigate the world, that is not under your control. That is your primary role. Because if your role or your thinking is that I'm just going to keep the world out, that's not under your control. That is your primary role. Because if your role or your thinking is that I'm just going to keep the world out, that's not going to happen bingo.
01:32:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well said, well said, wesley, yes, but and also don't call me but no, I think that that's uh, that's absolutely true it's true, that's how I raised my kids.
01:32:33
I was a very laissez-faire parent. I let them play video games as long as they wanted and whatever. But I did what you said, which is, I tried to instill in them and it's not, you know, as a parent you're really our role model uh, try to instill in them the values and the judgment to navigate the world that I knew, that I couldn't control, even when, frankly, even when they were young, uh, you know, after about 10, the peers, the peer group, becomes much more important than the parent parenting group. So you want to, you want to make sure they're prepared for that. I agree with you, wesley, I think that's true you don't like the laws though, guys.
01:33:07 - Speaker 21 (Guest)
It's not, no, it's not like you're making it seem a little. The subtext istext is so laws don't matter and I know that's not what you mean, wesley, obviously, but there are still laws and still things that collect the laws you know it's a bad word, I think in the US it's things that we collectively decide. Okay, this we should agree. All of us kids shouldn't do, and so we'll do what we can to make sure they don't do it you know, this election ended up being very interesting.
01:33:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, turns out elon musk, now with the fec uh, you know information has come out donated a quarter of a billion dollars, or very nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, to president trump's campaign and he got a good payout for I think he got his money's worth because he is very much part of the transition team. New York Times story, I think a couple of days ago, actually says it's not just Elon, but it's Elon's buddies, and they are not just doing Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, they are in on the interviews. Right at the beginning, elon Musk and Larry Ellison of Oracle were house guests, went to the first transition meeting. I brought the two richest people in the world today. Trump told his advisors what did you bring in the world today? Trump told his advisors what did you bring? Uh, and miss his mom. May musk has actually been in, apparently, on some of the meetings he, so elon brought his mom. Uh, he also brought a whole bunch of people, including this, uh, jade birchall.
01:34:49
He's the head of elon musk's family office. He's been interviewing candidates for jobs at the State Department, even though that's not his bailiwick, ftc, fcc. Mark Andreessen is there, of course, the guy who invented Netscape Navigator when he was a student at you know whatchamacallit in Illinois, at the NCSA in Illinois, and he let's see who else Sean McGuire, who is a Caltech PhD in physics and investor at Sequoia Capital. He's been interviewing candidates for defense department jobs. David Sachs Well, and that's the big story, david Sachs, who spoke at the Republican Convention, is the host of the All In podcast, is now the White House AI and crypto czar, despite the fact that he actually, as active as he is, he's a part of the PayPal mafia. He doesn't really have any active participation in an AI company or a crypto company.
01:35:57
I guess that's good. I guess that we know of that, we know of All of this has done one thing for sure that we can see which is propelled Bitcoin well over $100,000 a coin. This is good for crypto. Doge is up. Everything's up. Meme coins are up. Haktua coin is up.
01:36:21 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Not that one.
01:36:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, not that one. That one's up and then down, but that's another story. If you're an optimist, I think it would be a good time to say maybe this is all going to work out, the government's going to get much more efficient, right, that Bitcoin is going to end up, maybe the US will create a digital coin, itself a stable coin. That would then kind of I don't know. I don't understand economics well enough to know what the impact of that would be. I don't think anybody does.
01:36:52 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
to be honest, honest with you it looks like we might end up with a cryptocurrency reserve, and I don't understand the implications of that president el salvador is very happy about his cryptocurrency reserve.
01:37:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, you're happy until it collapses right it's like it reminds me a lot of vegas. You know those beautiful big buildings. But then they always put up a billboard of the guy who won a million dollars at the slots. What they don't show you is the nine hundred ninety nine thousand people who lost money as slots to pay for that.
01:37:21 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Right, or how much did, did it cost that that person you know to win the million?
01:37:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, don't ever talk about that.
01:37:28 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Yeah. But having said that, like I mean I'm kind of with with Lou here, yeah, but having said that, like I mean I'm kind of with with Lou here, I'm certainly not bullish and I'm certainly thinking, if you don't have money to lose, then you shouldn't be investing in any of these things. But just being completely candid, I don't think that it's a bad idea to talk with whoever handles your investments or, if you do it yourself, to look at diversifying into crypto if you're looking for the next short term.
01:37:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not going to touch it. I'm not going to touch it. I just don't like something. I agree I'm dumb. I mean there's a lot of Bitcoin billionaires, a lot of them. A lot of that money went into the campaign in 2024. So I'm obviously dumb, but I don't want to buy an asset that I don't understand why the asset is valued at what it's valued at. That it's just a random. It's to me it's buying a lottery ticket.
01:38:16 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
Just don't put all of your retirement funds into crypto.
01:38:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's for sure, absolutely not Only put stuff you could afford to lose in it.
01:38:24 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
Exactly, but but even then, I mean I all I'm saying is at this point because just my, my own, like similar to to Harry, um, I, I put $2,000 in a Robinhood account a few years ago and a lot of that was in Doge when Doge was cheap. And then I didn't sell the Doge when it was at a really good price because my nephew had just been born and I wound up being underwater on the investment for the better part of three years it is. Now I've had an 85% return, so I've made money, so to speak, and it's a small amount. It doesn't matter, but it is one of those things that, for me, I was like okay, I put this money in just for fun gambling genuinely. Now, with enough time has passed, because of the changes that have happened, for various reasons, I have a good return, but I I certainly wouldn't stake my retirement or anything important on it, right, my wife will.
01:39:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
every time we go to vegas, she or reno. She has 20 bucks, she's I'm gonna play this slot. Still it's gone. She's twice600 and $900. So she's way up, right.
01:39:34
And now the temptation is then for me to say, wow, I got to get into this, this is great, you're making a mint out of this, but we know what the reality is.
01:39:45
There's also, and I worry about Bitcoin and maybe I'll address this to you because you're more bullish on it, lou but I worry that what Bitcoin has done is enabled ransomware and all sorts of crime, because it is close, as close to untraceable, almost as close to untraceable as cash, and it's a lot harder to transfer a million dollars in cash from your headquarters in Virginia Beach to, you know, hungary.
01:40:11
But it also costs a lot in terms of energy use. There are gas fees. Even though Hak Tua maybe hadn't invested in her own coin or wasn't doing insider trading, she made lots of money on the fees, right, because there's fees, and so all of these things and the speed with which a transaction happens is unpredictable. It's slow unless you pay more to the miner to validate it, even though now they've got proof of work, so it's not as bad as it was. Uh, I think the whole thing has lots of negatives that people don't even know about or don't consider. They're mostly just saying, oh, but I could make so much money. I feel like we're promoting a technology that is not an ideal technology, not understood yet too.
01:41:00 - Speaker 6 (Host)
I mean, there's that's, that's. You're calling all the negatives and that's what makes sense. Because you know, I don't think the Hawk 2 thing drives me nuts, Right, Because it's a perfect example.
01:41:09
It's a perfect example of, like you know, just like you know other companies coming up with new AI ways of doing something stupid, right, like I think this is another example of you know, allowing somebody to go and create their own cryptocurrency. You know, and then, of course, you know, so I think this is that's the bad thing about it, right? I mean, there's got to be some level of correction that needs to happen.
01:41:34 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
So maybe that's why government should get involved and some of this stuff is solvable, or at least partially solvable, like the sustainability aspect. There's already been some progress with some cryptocurrencies and there's a lot more that can be done and there are startups working on it, since the original way that the stuff was verified was incredibly energy efficient. But that's not just. That's just not like a given for this whole idea.
01:42:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, we'll find out, because the anti well many considered anti-cryptocurrency chairman of the Fed I'm sorry, of the SEC Gary Gensler, will be replaced now by a guy named Paul Atkins and he is, as far as we can tell, pretty pro-cryptocurrency, right, and so while Gensler has been kind of saying, and I kind of agreed with him, cryptocurrencies should be regulated as securities, but the crypto community does not want it to be seen as a security, and I think that they're going to get their way with this new guy, paul Atkins. President Bukele of El Salvador has now got a crypto treasury of $600 dollars from his initial investment in bitcoin. Um trump wants to do the same thing. He says he has said in the campaign trail. He said he wants to make the us the crypto capital of the planet and create a similar strategic reserve of bitcoin.
01:43:09
Of course, if you hold bitcoin, all of that is great news. It means your assets will go up, right, right. But is it great policy, right? I think the people who are looking at this aren't considering that. They're just saying, well, I don't care, because I'm going to make a mint.
01:43:27 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
I'll get mine.
01:43:28 - Speaker 4 (Guest)
I don't understand.
01:43:29 - Speaker 19 (Guest)
I don't understand, even if you're bullish on this, I don't understand. I mean other than the greed aspect. I don't understand. I don't understand, even if you're bullish on this stuff, I don't understand. I mean other than the greed aspect. I don't understand why this would not be a security. That's, that's the thing that.
01:43:38 - Speaker 2 (Guest)
I've never understood.
01:43:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've never understood that argument you should have capital gains taxes on it you should do currently, absolutely yeah.
01:43:46 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
We are talking about a guy who went bankrupt running casinos, so I wouldn't put too much stock in his take on this whole thing yeah.
01:43:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, what now?
01:43:56
So what's really interesting to me is it really looks as if and I'd like to know what you think president-elect trump has handed over the transition to silicon valley to the silicon valley billionaires.
01:44:08
They have moved into mar-a-lago, they're doing the interviews, they're you know Elon is sitting in and phone calls with Zelensky and others. You know there was a conspiracy theory before the election that Trump didn't really want to govern. He liked being president and he, you know, liked the benefits of it, including putting all aside, all of his convictions, which it apparently has but he didn't really want to run anything. That's too much work. So he was very glad to have people like Elon come in and do it and that's. That was the conspiracy theory that Peter Thiel and Elon Musk were funding Trump because they knew that he would take a back seat, he would enjoy the trappings of power without actually having to worry about it. Jd Vance, who was aal protege, would be the vice president. He'd be sitting there with Musk and Teal and all of these people running the country. It kind of looks like maybe that wasn't a conspiracy theory, or at least that's what happened.
01:45:07 - Speaker 8 (Guest)
So, now.
01:45:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that a bad thing? Maybe these guys I mean, they're all great businessmen, right, they know how to run companies, they know how to launch rockets, they know how to, so maybe they should be running the country.
01:45:20 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
I'm not even sure if it was ever a conspiracy theory. It seemed kind of manifestly obvious from the get go. I mean trying to be a plan, yeah, I mean. Well, I mean certainly you can make a strong case that a business background is is not inherently a great background for running a government, but well, I'm worried because a lot of these guys have have big egos because they've stumbled into money.
01:45:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if they you know a lot of them are billionaires just because they were in the right place at the right time. But they think they're geniuses and there's a certain arrogance that comes with that. That worries me a little bit. These are all arrogant people. Some have likened it, though, to JFK bringing in the Harvard elite, the best and the brightest right, or Abraham Lincoln's team of rivals bringing in the best minds to help run the country, and maybe that's what's going to happen.
01:46:10 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
I mean, yes, they are arrogant, but so is virtually everybody else at that.
01:46:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You don't get to be president without being a little arrogant.
01:46:17 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
Trying to be optimistic. I would hope that maybe there's the potential for them, by sitting in on these meetings, to soak up some knowledge they don't already have, and that they have enough of a humble side to realize that they are not experts on foreign policy or all these other things outside of their wheelhouse.
01:46:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're in there for the interviews, maybe just to make sure that the person is competent and smart, and then somebody else is going to do the other part of the interview. We don't know.
01:46:47 - Speaker 3 (Guest)
It's also not clear how long this will last, because, historically, trump doesn't get along well forever with other people who are as needy as Elon Musk is, and that this could just or he doesn't get as much attention right, he's in love with Elon right now. I mean this could all be kind of brave he was in love with everybody.
01:47:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He was in love with Kim Jong-un as well, and he seemed to like Putin quite a bit. That is a story that will continue all year long, Don't you think we will cover it? Not from a political point of view, but from the technology point of view. That's what we do. We like to keep you up to date on what's happening in technology so that you can use it to make your life better, to help you at your work, help you have fun.
01:47:33
I'm very proud of what we do at TWIT and we really enjoy doing it. I hope you will continue to watch or listen in the new year and, of course, if you're not yet a Club TWIT member, I hope you'll consider joining. That helps us a lot keeping things on the air. On behalf of everybody all of the many people who join us every week, and, of course, our producer, Benito Gonzalez, our creative director, Anthony Nielsen, and the entire TWIT team we thank you so much for your support in 2024. I look forward to supporting you in 2025. Happy new year, everybody. We'll see you next time. Oh, and I probably should say another TWIT is in the can.
