This Week in Tech 1027 Transcript

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

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Twit this Week. In Tech, it's a very different Twit this Week. I got to warn you ahead of time. We've got a great panel, as always. Robert Balassaire, the digital Jesuit, father Robert, joins us. Alan Malventano he's back at Soledime our SSD expert, sam Abul-Samad, my car expert all old friends. But this is a special episode because we're celebrating today our 20th anniversary the first twit aired on April 17th 2005, 20 years ago and because on the thousandth episode we brought back the old panel and we kind of reminisced. I thought it'd be fun on this 20th anniversary episode to hear from our audience, people who watch the show, how they discovered us, where they watch us, that kind of thing. So we've got a lot of videos, poems and letters from you, our listeners, and we'll be playing those throughout the show, talking about the news as well. It's going to be a very special Twit Coming up next.

01:02 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

01:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is twit this is twit this week in tech, episode 1027, recorded april 13th 2025 20 years in the can. It's time for Twit this Week in Tech, the show. We get together for the last 20 years and talk about the week's tech news. This is our 20th anniversary episode. I'm really thrilled to have this group with me. Good friends, padre SJ, father Robert Balasir, the Digital Jesuit, visiting from the Vatican, nice, to see you, father. You can bless this show.

01:54
So good to have you also with us. It's great to have Alan Malventano, longtime friend of the show. He, of course, was longtime host of this Week in Computer Hardware. He is an AI and SSD technologist back at Soladyne. Congratulations, thanks. They keep pulling you back in Former submariner, yeah, among other things.

02:15
And a nuclear guy, and he's got a bunch of cars taken apart in his garage, which is a lucky thing, because guess who else is here? Sam O'Bulluel bull salmon, my car guy, is here. He does the car podcast at wheelbaringsmedia wonderful and is a vp research at telemetry.

02:33 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
hello, mr abul samad hello leo and padre and alan. It's great to be here now.

02:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm honored to be here because yeah, I'm thrilled to have all three of you. Uh, you've all been on many times. I had said Patrick Norton was going to come on the show, but I guess, alan, you strong-armed him. You tried to get your former host. I tried.

02:56 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I think something about an archaeological dig and his garage.

03:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Patrick is famous for having done this show in so many places, including under a car, yeah, in the early days. So, uh, anyway, I would have loved to have him on, but I understand this, things happen. Uh, we did, on the thousandth episode, have Patrick on with a bunch of other uh old-timers, the original hosts. The only one we haven't been able to get on is kevin rose, who's said I will be in the air on sunday. He's traveling like crazy. Uh, he and alexis ohanian are restarting uh dig, former former uh frenemies. Of course. Alexis ohanian, the founder of reddit.

03:37 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Uh, kevin started dig many moons ago um, didn't he, didn't he lose a house?

03:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, sadly, uh he his house burned down in the pacific palisades fire, fires yeah yeah, uh, but uh, I don't think it was his only house, so I think he's okay anyway that house was famous by a raccoon video, if you remember, uh went viral years ago.

04:00 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, raccoon attacked his dog and threw it down the stairs. I thought that was in san francisco yeah, no, this was a new house okay he had recently moved into sadly.

04:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, oh yeah, I might even built it. I'm not sure he built a house. That's a long story. We don't have to go into it.

04:16 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
We only have, I just hope it. I just hope it didn't have his watch collection in it.

04:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's all I oh my god, the watches. Yeah. Well, this show is, uh has been through a lot. In fact, at the end of the show we are going to roll credits for all 389 people who have ever appeared on this week in tech. It's gonna it's worth sticking around for to see if you recognize some of the names. It's kind of fun. The other thing we're gonna do during the show I asked and I've been asking for last month for people to send in videos or stories, uh, about how they started watching twit and so forth, so we're gonna intermingle those into the show. In fact, I'll read a couple of emails that I got. Not everybody sent a video.

04:59
Scott simmons, scooter vc and a proud club twit member, says I can't believe it's 20 years since you first showed up on my ipod. I figured I followed you from tech tv, my unregistered online tech class that was constantly on my tv in my dorm in the late 90s when I was getting into my mis degree. You guys have remained my primary source of tech education and information ever since, and this I it was a great, he says. My favorite moment that I can remember is when I heard Leo praising the USAA banking app and its innovative invention. At the time. It was innovative to deposit a check by scanning it. I work at USAA and while I wasn't part of the primary development team, I worked on some processes that enabled that functionality. To me, it was the highest compliment that leo, whom I've been watching for years, at that point loved something that I'd had a small part working on. I still bank with usa is a great, great bank. Thank you for all you do. You're always a bright spot in my week. I hope you enjoy every second of celebrating this amazing accomplishment. I'll see you on discord. Thank you so much, scott. I really, really appreciate that.

06:04
We've got a lot of videos. We'll play them throughout the show in some surprising locations. Some of these are kind of wild. I'll read one more that I got, because this comes from an unusual location. I want to say hi, my name is Ron. I'm currently incarcerated in prison in Washington. Say hi, my name is Ron. I'm currently incarcerated in prison in Washington. We get to listen to podcasts on the tablet. We get to pass the time.

06:30
I have the joy of remembering you from the screensavers many years ago, when I worked just up the road at Hewlett Packard in Runner Park in Santa Rosa, I would watch you and your co-hosts. You've done so well with the programs and podcasts. Before I was sent to prison, I watched you on youtube. I listened to the 1000th episode and I wish I could be part of your anniversary show, but I won't be out until 2031. Oh man, I wanted to thank you for allowing twit to be offered to us inmates for free, of course. Uh, we're very happy to have you listen.

07:03
As a nerd for over 40 years, it's a blessing to have the joy of Twit every week. I wish we could have the other podcasts you were involved in, but I will enjoy what I get. Believe me, one Twit a week is more than enough. I have watched and listened for 25 years. I enjoy the North Bay Connection. Also, I live in Spokane. Again, thank you for the amazing show and keeping me updated with the tech world. As I am incarcerated, I will join the chats when I'm released.

07:26
Thank you, ron ron, I hope we're around in 2031, but, uh, and I wish you the best. Yeah, well, and this is the thing that's kind of amazing uh, these letters and videos came in from all walks of life, all over the world. Uh, it's really been a joy and a pleasure to do this show, uh, along with you guys.

07:44 - Fan Video - Tom (Caller)
It's really uh nice to have you what do you remember the first show you were on?

07:49 - Padre (Guest)
father robert was the first time you were on uh, yeah, the first time I was on was um. I was in uh in the peninsula, in the south bay, setting up for interop and interop brian chee, yeah, and I. And what was the show that you did before Twit back in the day?

08:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it was the Tech Guy. There was Security Now and. Amber MacArthur's Inside the Net.

08:12 - Padre (Guest)
It was Tech Guy.

08:13
And I was in the chat room and I mentioned oh gosh, I had already done the listener call-in show for Tech News Today. And I said, oh, yeah, I'm in the area. Oh, can I come up to the studio? I'd love to watch in person. And you said, if you come up, I'll put you on the show. And so I jumped into a car with brian chee hauled nice butt to petaluma and yeah, that was my very first episode very first show that we did was april 17, 2005, so, uh, this is the closest date we could get.

08:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh to that. It was only 34 minutes. Patrick norton, kevin rose and robert heron you can still listen to it if you're getting warmed up.

08:54
Yeah, yeah, you want to hear just a. I could play a little bit of it just to give, oh, that kind of extreme. This is how weird it sounded. It's very different. We were on skype. As long as we're catching up, what you up to these days, robert? Everybody knows Robert Heron as the, as the crazy lab rat who specialized in video and would come on the show and with his whacked out hair and tell us the latest, patrick, was under the car.

09:14 - Fan Video - Nate (Caller)
I think you're not on TV though, or these days?

09:16 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Probably, no, not these days. I am working, though, for extreme tech and PC magcom, and I'd love is back when it was revenge of the screensaver.

09:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Incredible this is. This is. It was the revenge of oh, we found my salad, thank God. This was the revenge of the screensavers uh, which I only called it that briefly, because I got an email, a cease and desist letter, from Comcast saying we still use that name. You can't use that name.

09:42 - Padre (Guest)
I kind of thought I might episode. Yeah, I asked recording on like little zoom, zoom audio recording no, no, that was skype.

09:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, that was that was. That was the only reason we I realized we could do this. First time we did it was january of 2005, after mac world expo, and yes, we were all sitting in a table at a at a bar, the 21st amendment brew pub and yeah, it might have been a zoom, I don't, it was something oh no, no, it was a rants rants recorders you knew?

10:08
yes, sam, it was that morant's recorder, a solid state reporter this is like way, way pre skype-a-saurus yeah, but but because somebody called the radio show shortly after that on skype, I realized, oh, I could do a show with people in different locales, and so those those early uh twits were mostly done on skype, not with skype. Source one call when you, when you start like those first shows you had.

10:34 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
You even expanded out of the attic of the uh cottage I was in a.

10:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was in a tiny little garrett room of an old bed and breakfast that we called the twit cottage later, but I was in a single, the smallest room in the cottage in the attic. It was tiny. In fact there is a system with kevin rose where he takes a tour, very short tour yes, no, yeah, I've watched that one too.

10:58 - Padre (Guest)
Wasn't there a time when you would have people record locally on a little audio recorder and then you try to?

11:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
combine the audio file later because I did that. That was just one time that was so hard we never did a lot of podcasts today stay do what they call double enders, where everybody records locally and then somebody assembles it. But the problem with that is it takes a long time to edit it and put it all together and to keep it synced we said I mean we sort of do that now.

11:23 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It's gotten easier now with services like stream, yard and and so on. We use restream, yeah yeah, they record everybody locally yeah, and upload it to the server and then I just grab them off the server and it's much easier nowadays we use zencaster, even the brewpub.

11:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The brewpub twit episode was episode zero yeah, technically I don't consider it episode one because it was a one-off right, but and I didn't, it didn't intend it to be a podcast or well, I guess it so technically was, but really we just put on a website, yeah, and I, and because 30 000 people downloaded it, that's when I said, geez, I wish I could do this more often. Like, well, the light bulb was when skype. I realized I could do it more often with skype, because everybody you know, kevin was in la patrick, uh, I don't remember where pat I think he was in san francisco, but you never know where patrick's gonna be. He's finally settled down a little bit.

12:17 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Alan, do you remember the first time you were on? I think the first time I was on was when I was up in petaluma. I think I came in in studio and did one. The dvorak was on was when I was up in petaluma. I think I came in studio and did one. Devorek was on it. Um, it was like when the samsung 840 evo had like come out around then like this is way, way back. I remember that because devorek asked me like what's your favorite ssd? And then he, he like he spot checked me with wire cutter oh, that's so like, while I was answering let me see if you're right, he's searching.

12:47
He's like oh yeah, that's what wire cutter says. Yeah, I get no spam.

12:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, he used to love to come up because he would stop at the costco in nevado on the way to petaluma because he said that guy got a great wine buyer there. Sam, when was the first?

13:02 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
time you were on. My first time on the network was in January 2011 at CES, because you and I I first met you in 2010 when you were at the Maker Faire in Dearborn oh yeah, in Michigan and then the following January. At that point, I was working for GM and we did a segment with the gm envy concepts.

13:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's oh, yeah, was that ces or complex.

13:29 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It was a cs, I remember, uh, and then I wasn't actually on twit, I think, until like 2014, um, by which time I was, you know, I had shifted away and I was I was, uh, working as an analyst at that point so I think you were a regular.

13:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You were a regular on the radio show, of course, for many, many years, for a long time. Yeah, he was our car guy on the radio show. Well, don't worry, there will be news this week we aren't gonna ever appearance.

13:57 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I think leo was uh this week in computer hardware number 48. This is when you hosted this week in computer.

14:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I used to host it back in the early days. Yeah, a lot of times when we launched a show, I would host it for a while, just to get it off.

14:09 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah it was my first ever appearance. I was in a barracks room on a Navy base in Norfolk and I field stripped a Drobo on the stream. I love it.

14:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you were still in the service at the time. I, I love it. So you were still in the service at the time. I was still in the Navy. Yeah, wow, wow. That's amazing, we've had so many great people. And, as I said, stay to the end of the show, because at the end we're going to show credits for everybody who's ever been not on the whole network, just on this show. On this Week in Tech, we probably should mention some news. This was kind of a crazy week with the tariffs. Uh, the latest is the tariffs are off, well, sort of off, except for china, where the tariffs are. I don't know how high they are, because I can't keep track well over a hundred percent enough to make it. So you really wouldn't want to buy anything made in china and then on and off. Uh, just this weekend the president gave all cpus, computers and parts made in china a break, wide-ranging exemptions.

15:22 - Padre (Guest)
That was on Friday night yesterday yeah even that has changed, because they came out two hours ago and they said no, no, no, we're not really giving exemptions. Yeah, these are just pausing.

15:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're pausing those tariffs we wouldn't want anybody to get comfortable with this situation we wouldn't want the market to settle or anything.

15:40 - Padre (Guest)
We wouldn't want people to be able to figure out a supply chain for the next two years. So let's, let's keep some uncertainty in there. We don't know what happened?

15:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I imagine tim cook called the president and said dude, you're, you're literally going to put apple out of business because the tariff with 145 tariff on iphones would make the iphone unaffordable. Apple did move a lot of its manufacturing, as much as it could, to india, vietnam and brazil, but but still the majority of stuff is made in china and assembled in china. They even flew a number of big cargo planes from india trying to get as many iphones into the united states. Before the tariffs went up. Vietnam had a 49 tariff, but that's paused, but again, it's only for 90 days. None of this tariff, but that's paused, but again, it's only for 90 days. None of this is enough for.

16:30 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Apple to say oh we dodged a bullet.

16:36 - Padre (Guest)
What would happen if an iPhone doubled more than doubled in price?

16:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh. Well then, then it's cheaper to fly to another country. Buy an iPhone and fly back. Yeah, you'll get a nice trip to Thailand. Yeah, yeah, uh, same thing with the same thing with laptops and, more importantly, for cpus, which would affect cars, wouldn't it, sam?

16:50 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I mean, the cars already have that absolutely, yeah, uh, in fact, you know, we were just as we were recording this morning and I was, uh, reviewing the, the truck that I was driving last week. It's a truck that was built here in the us. It's a gmc canyon and looking at the window sticker, you know they've got some data on content and it said on there U S and Canada content, even though it's assembled in Missouri, u S and Canada content 49%. And and it doesn't break out what the Canadian content is versus U? S, and then another 25% from Mexico and then the other 26 percent from somewhere else. So even a vehicle that's built here, at least at a minimum, at least half of the value of it came from outside of the United States and probably closer to about 60 to 65 percent of the value of the parts and so on came from outside the U? S.

17:43
And electronics are a big part of that, you know, cause there's a lot of chips. You know whether you're talking. You know older legacy designs that might have a hundred electronic control units scattered around the vehicle, or more modern designs like the, the one I was just driving the other day, that have a central computer with two Nvidia Orin chips in there. You know that's a big chunk of the value of the vehicle is just in.

18:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Silicon is imported uh that on friday at midnight, exemptions were granted to computers, smartphones, monitors, flash memory, dr d ram and other storage like hard drives, uh, video cards, flat panel televisions, regardless of screen type, power supplies and other finished goods. Silicon chips no longer tariffed, nor the fabrication machinery needed to make them. However, apple watch bands are still tariffed, leather goods, iphone cases still tariffed, cabling, pc cases and the raw materials to make them aluminum, titanium and steel all still tariffed. How does, how does solidime? How does an ssd manufacture does solid?

19:01 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I manufacture its chips in the us uh, well, I mean there's some, but there's still plenty of fabs that are overseas. Just like any other, just like any other chip, right?

19:14 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
and then, leo, just to follow up on what you just said, I just pulled up whitehousegov and the latest. The most recent article on here is sunday shows president trump's america first trade policies in action and it's got some bullet points of what was said by people like howard lutnick, the commerce. The most recent article on here is Sunday shows President Trump's America first trade policies in action and it's got some bullet points of what was said by people like Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, on tariffs for certain electronics, which is what you were just referring to. These products are going to be part of the semiconductor sectoral tariffs which are coming. We need to have these things made in america.

19:44 - Padre (Guest)
Uh, so you know they may be sort of on pause for now, but coming back soon at who knows what the lesson is in two months, everyone, please build fabs that normally take between six and ten years to spin up properly yeah, that's about right.

19:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, just do that, just do that and you're never gonna make iphones in the the US. That's a pipe dream. No, no, right, right. I mean I think it was Lutnik, or maybe it was Besant, who said oh yeah, we'll have. Americans will be screwing in tiny screws any day. Now, it's not going to happen.

20:18 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I mean, you would think the only way that they could pull it off was if everything, or the majority of it, was automated. But even that's not the case, because all the automotive engineers are over in china, plus the robotics come from china.

20:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Automation, automation what's happened, you know whether you agree on the idea of tariffs and whether it makes sense economically is we've been living in a world where it was essentially a free trade world for a long time, and so we've created these multinational supply chains and you're asking to, overnight, stop it, right, and I don't know if you can, yeah, uh. It's even worse if you say stop it, or maybe don't stop, wait a minute, don't stop it. No, but no, oh, you're gonna. Maybe we'll stop it in three months. We might. I don't know. I don't know how. What must be going on in the boardrooms of apple right now?

21:12 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I mean, or, or every big deal, or yeah, I mean instead of I mean instead of spending cycles on innovating, everybody's having to think about contingency plans. For what?

21:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do we do? I don't even know how you make. How do you make plans for something like that?

21:27 - Padre (Guest)
exactly. Well, I mean, basically, they'd be saying we know that we can. We can force him to back down. We, if we complain enough and we threaten him enough with the economic consequences, he'll back down, at least temporarily. So you could get into the cycle where, every two or three months, there's a pause, everyone loads up on every possible chip that they need while the tariffs are down, which will essentially mean that the Chinese companies make all the money that they were making before, so there's no effect to them and there's no reason for them to negotiate.

21:58
And then it goes back to a tariff and we have a panic and the market drops out and the treasury bonds continue to rise, and then, two months after that, he'll pause it again. It's, the problem is, you can backwards engineer what's happening. Lutnik is claiming that this is all part of the plan, but we know it's not. We know that there was panic, so that they they stepped back, and then people started saying, oh well, trump is surrendering. So then he redoubled his efforts and then he backed off, and then he redoubled so then he redoubled his efforts, and then he backed off, and then he redoubled.

22:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It may not even matter what trump does, because china has suspended exports of rare earth. Minerals, yeah, and magnets, uh. China is just. They of course have their own tariffs on inbound us stuff, but china is just turning off the tap, whether there's tariffs or not.

22:43 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Well, the other interesting thing that China said the other day was you know, after they cranked it up to 145 percent, you know China was at 125 percent. Yeah, we're not going to bother going beyond that, we're done at 125. There's no point in us continuing this tit for tat because it's not going to have any effect.

23:04 - Padre (Guest)
you know it's, it's just ridiculous they said you know, 125 is effectively the same as 4 000 at that point. It's so why it's it? That's, it's childish. Now there is, there is a vocal group on the groups that we monitor that are saying oh, this proves that the us needs Greenland because Greenland has all these rare Earths that we're looking for. They don't mention that it would take 20 years to set up the infrastructure and drill through ice sheets so you can, you know you're not, you know we're also have those rare.

23:34 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Earths right here in the United States yeah, we're just not mining for here, yeah yeah we've got all we've got a lot of these materials, most of of these materials but we just haven't been extracting them.

23:44 - Padre (Guest)
They just found a huge cache near Las Vegas.

23:47 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
But, that takes time to spin up right. That's not a thing. Overnight you can just suddenly poof. Now we have all these rare earths.

23:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean it's funny because, okay, I don't know what commentary there is to make. It's obviously a problem, that's that, and we're just going to have, we're all in. Uh, we've got a crazy person driving the car and we're all in the back seat and we have. Do we have any?

24:14 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I'd like to add something else to this, which is, you know, kind of, even beyond the tariffs, the whole deregulatory policy that the administration has, which is, you know, for the auto industry, for example, you've got this push to pull back on all the emissions and fuel economy regulations, which is one of the things that was driving the move towards electrification. Okay, so we do that. And then you've got the tariffs, so you're pushing automakers and suppliers to put manufacturing back in the US, where it's going to be more expensive, so you've added costs there. Now you have pulled back on the other regulations, and now the automakers have more incentive to invest more in old technologies, continue building internal combustion engines and so on, but at the same time, the rest of the world is not pulling back on that. So you've got to have electrification, and so you're adding costs all over the place stacked on top of each other, which is going to reduce the resources that these companies have for R&D and innovation, and we're already losing on innovation to China. And so what's going to end up happening if we continue down this path is the US auto industry essentially becomes an island that with products that they can't sell anywhere else in the world.

25:50
Nobody wants what Trump wants them to build. And so the and you know you look outside of the US. You go to Canada, you go to Mexico. You know they're moving forward with things like electrification. You go to Mexico, you know they're moving forward with things like electrification, south America even. And so with these trade policies, they're going to say all right, byd, you want to build a factory in Windsor Ontario, come on in. And so the US industry is going to be completely isolated and totally non-competitive in the rest of the world and they're going to end up getting crushed, not to mention the fact that doge has fired most of the safety experts yeah, well, there's not not a great loss there, because they've been utterly ineffectual for the past decade.

26:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anyway, okay, okay, but I think elon has something to do with that right, because they were investigating as car safety. Yeah, full self-driving vehicles. Uh, in full self-driving in that tesla vehicles. Sam, if you could turn your mic down just a little bit. You're clipping a little bit.

26:53 - Padre (Guest)
Uh, we're gonna there's one tariff thing that I think it's important to get on the record because, yes, so often misunderstood. John gerard brought it up in the the discord when he says what does free trade mean? Does that mean that no country had tariffs of any amount on American goods? This is actually really important. It's a good question, because I live with three economists, three economist professors, and what they have tried to explain to me is it's so difficult to actually calculate what tariffs are, because it's not just outright we're taxing this percentage of whatever you sell to us. They can count as tariffs.

27:29
Do you have lax employment standards that allow people to work in substandard conditions for substandard wages? Do you have environmental laxity that allows people to pollute, which drives down their costs because they don't have to worry about being fined or having to pay for cleanup? Do you have a system of economy that charges the same amount for transportation of goods between your provinces and other countries? Now, depending on how you add those numbers up, you can get extremely high numbers or extremely low numbers. What this administration has done is they've taken all the worst case numbers because they want to show a worst case scenario, but that doesn't actually reflect what the real tariffs are and we don't know what the real tariffs are, because even the best economists can't give us definitive numbers. They can just say this country has lax environmental standards, this country has lax employment standards, this country has a easier transfer between countries, so it's it's. It's a good question. It just doesn't have a simple answer we enjoyed the benefits of that though right exactly iPhones by a lot cheaper.

28:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Because, yeah, we like that.

28:37 - Padre (Guest)
We want that. We don't want to be polluting our environment, we don't want to be running sweatshops, we just want the finished product. Well, okay, but then you can't blame us for giving you what you want, right?

28:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
wow, it's a complicated world. Uh, there, that's the. That's the truth of it. Yeah, um, let's take a little, uh break. I'm going to play a video and then we're going to go into a spot and we'll have more. Uh, we're done with the tariffs, though we'll have more others. Other news, uh, where you're watching the 20th anniversary episode. I would never. If you'd asked me 20 years ago if this would be the topic, I would not have thought that I was very. I I have been very bullish on the tech sector, obviously, um, I'm a little less bullish now. Uh, here we go with a our video. I'm going to do it in alphabetical order of your first name. This is Alexander.

29:30 - Fan Video - Alex (Caller)
Hello Leo, hello the team at this Week in Tech. My name is Alex. I'm a software developer from Brazil, but I live in the northwest of France in a very small city called Loc-Mariacare. I've been listening to the show for over 10 years now, and you guys are part of my Monday morning routine. With you guys, I've learned a lot of things about smart speaker, cryptocores and now I'm learning a lot about AI. Thanks for the great work. Bye-bye.

30:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, alexander. We'll stop and we'll get to andrew in just a second.

30:06 - Fan Video - Nate (Caller)
Andrew, hold on, we're gonna have more what's going on there in just a moment.

30:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I had my. It segued to the next video. I put it all into. Thank you, vlc. We were trying all different ways of playing. This turned out vlc was the best way to do it. We're going to have more with this week in tech in just a little bit. Our great panelists, alan malano, now back at Solendime. Congratulations, I guess. Right, yeah, they made you an offer you couldn't refuse. I'm glad to hear it. It's great to have you.

30:34 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Making the SSDs faster.

30:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you know the usual, yeah, the usual. But I see this AI. Are you doing AI too?

30:41 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, so I went to fison for a year and worked on a bunch of ai related ssd products and, uh, our projects, and turns out that that's also, uh, one of the things solid I was looking for, so it came in handy it's good to have some skills in this day and age congratulations. As it turns out, it's handy to uh offset some gpu vram with some ssd uh capacity in some cases, because you know gpu vram is kind of pricey.

31:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, absolutely also sam abul samet, who has recently changed jobs. He is now an analyst at telemetry.

31:17 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Same same beat basically the car, basically the same beat. Uh, doing market research um for um, the, the transportation, mobility, mobility industry we just published our first market forecast report last week and doing advisory work with a number of clients. So, yeah, same same kind of stuff, but no longer being censored by my employer.

31:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh well, talk about guide hats. They were in the news, as a matter of fact, in just a little bit. Your former employer also. But you can? You can recuse yourself from that conversation, I'm sure? No, I'm happy to talk about it. Oh good, all right, and then there's all they are.

31:54 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
My former employer.

31:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, then there's Father Robert, who responds to a higher authority you will have to work with AI.

32:07
So, authority you, you will allow you to work with AI. So, yeah, well, there you go, there you go. It's great to have all three of you. Thank you for joining me on this 20th anniversary edition, our show today, brought to you by zip recruiter. They've been with us for many a year, both as an advertiser but also as the company we used to do hiring.

32:20
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32:54
Zip Intro gives you the power to quickly access excellent candidates for your job and it's kind of like speed dating. You do it via back-to-back video calls. Now you you of course, pick the candidates, you pick the time, and zip intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you. Then you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as tomorrow. Right, it's so easy. And, by the way, when you're you know down a person you maybe do want to do this tomorrow. I want to hire somebody fast. That's what zip recruiter is all about. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with the new zip intro only from zip recruiter, rated number one hiring site on g2. Try zip intro for free. The website is ziprecruitercom. Slash twit again. That's ziprecruitercom. Slash twit again. That's ZipRecruitercom. Slash twit. Zip intro Post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Let me play one more video. Then we're going to get back into the news. This is Andrew Andrew.

34:02 - Fan Video - Andrew (Caller)
Happy anniversary Twitch gang. I've been watching since about 2016, when Leo was still on the radio. I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed the content and being a part of Club Twitch, and also thank you for the great product you've recommended over the years.

34:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Happy anniversary. Thank you, oh, and we'll get to Ant in a bit. Stay tuned, ant, don't go anywhere. Thank you, andrew, really great to have you in our club, and thanks to all of our club members. We started that a few years ago when ads were a little bit lean. It's worked out really well. We're really glad to have all those wonderful club twit members, so thank you for being a great part of the twit fam.

34:54
Uh, back to the news jack dorsey and elon musk. This was an Started with Jack Dorsey who said delete all IP law on Twitter. To which, yeah, interesting huh, this was yesterday or day before yesterday. To which Nicole Shanahan, who said I am an actual IP professional here. No, ip law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations. If you want to reform it, let's talk. To which, jack, he amplified a little bit, said creativity is what currently separates us and the current system is limiting that and putting the payments disbursements into the hands of gatekeepers who aren't paying out fairly. And actually this is something as provocative as that tweet is. This is something even cory doctor has been saying for a long time. Is that copyright only favors really the publishers, not the creators. It's the publishers who wanted copyright in the first place and can you imagine though a world?

35:58 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
without ip protection he's kind of dipping into patent trolls too there. Yeah, yeah, patent trolls another problem elon mus.

36:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, patent trolls is another problem. Elon Musk, by the way, responded with two words I agree.

36:10 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, let's be serious. What they're after is the ability to feed everything into their AI. Oh, that. That's it, that's what they want. Everything else is a smokescreen. They can say, oh, we want to make sure that creators are paid fairly for their creations, but no it's.

36:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We would like to be able to train our llms on absolutely everything without restrictions, and then we can figure out payment later, if we ever get to that point it's an interesting debate, though, because you're right without trademark and copyright protections, without patents the whole idea of patents was to encourage inventors to invent stuff and then, after a suitable period of time where they exclusively enjoy the fruits of their invention, uh, it's put out into the public so that everybody could benefit from that patent, which has seemed like a good idea at the time well, and and it was and it still is, except that, um, somewhere along the way over the last several decades, we've gotten to the point where there was so much stuff that people were trying to patent and we didn't have competent patent examiners that actually knew how to evaluate these patent applications, and so they were just granting patents willy-nilly on everything, especially on software that had no business being protected.

37:33 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
There were some genuine innovations that deserve protection, but the number of those was a tiny fraction of the total number of patents being granted. That's why we got into this whole mess with patent trolls. Right, we had an episode of Twiet where we actually brought whole mess with patent trolls Right.

37:45 - Padre (Guest)
We had an episode of Twiet where we actually brought in someone from the US patent, the USPTO, and essentially what he told us was look, the people who really know this stuff, who can pick it up immediately and look at a patent application and say whether or not this is unique and novel. They work for the other side. We can't pay enough for these novel. They work for the other side. We can't pay enough for for these, these specialists, to work for the government. So of course we're going to have substandard uh review of applications and that hasn't changed. There's so much more money to be made on the other side of the patent troll fence this is an interesting debate.

38:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When jeff jarvis comes by with intelligent machines on wednesday, I'm sure he'll have something to say about this too. He said has said for a long time that copyright anyway uh is problematic uh from a creator's point of view. But you're right. I think that the real reason jack dorsey and elon musk want to do it is so they can uh is. Does dorsey have an ai?

38:42 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
uh play uh he says I would.

38:45 - Padre (Guest)
I would be shocked if he's not an investor in xai right, and so you actually I think, yeah, his twitter's, his twitter, uh shares were rolled into xai, so yeah, so he's got that much.

38:56 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, that's right. Yes, it's all one he was. He was probably also. I think he was also an investor in xai even before that.

39:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, correct, okay okay, tomorrow, uh, meta's court date appears. The ftc wants to break up meta. He wants, uh, wants facebook, instagram and whatsapp to be three separate applications. Um, and this will be a trial, an antitrust trial that begins tomorrow, which could completely change meta's business or not. The? That's the question. Now. This one is going ahead even without lena khan running the ftc, so meta has made enemies in both administrations. Apparently, meta's statement says the FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows Instagram, facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, google's YouTube X, imessage and many others. More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the commission's action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final. That's a good point. They were allowed to buy whatsapp and instagram. Should they be forced to divest now?

40:20 - Padre (Guest)
what harm is caused by the integration. So I I don't. I, so I'm playing devil's advocate here the fact that they can combine three extremely popular services that operate in different niches. How are they leveraging that unfairly? Or is it just because it's one company and we don't like that? I mean, in order for there to be a violation, there has to be some sort of leverage that they're applying between the products in order to improve the overall position of all platforms. Do you see that happening? Is that actually happening?

40:53
guys yeah, it's hard. It's a very hard question. I mean I, I would like it.

41:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're also in the us. We don't have a good handle on how powerful whatsapp is.

41:03 - Padre (Guest)
You do in italy, though, right oh gosh, yes, it's the default here. Everyone uses it outside of the united states.

41:09 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It is pretty much the default. Is it now the rest of the rest? Yeah, outside the us, yeah, africa, asia, europe, it's all whatsapp, apple messages pretty much yeah, apple, apple messages is pretty much a US centric thing or North America centric, and you know Signal is gained, you know, a bit of traction over the years but it's. But WhatsApp is really the one because you know it's supported things like group chat a lot earlier and a lot better than other services.

41:43 - Padre (Guest)
But the question is, because I don't see it on this end does whatsapp then drive traffic to instagram? And probably not facebook. Instagram drives traffic to threads, but that's kind of de minimis um right, so it'd be hard to prove the harm unless you're saying oh no, they're using the fact that that whatsapp operates with Facebook to hurt platforms like X and uh and blue sky and you'd have to agree that, uh, there is plenty of competition for WhatsApp and for Instagram.

42:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is there any competition for Facebook? No, not really no. But who uses Facebook except old people like me, right?

42:22 - Padre (Guest)
I've been pushing signal, I've been telling people, if you sign up for a signal, there's a less than zero percent chance that you'll get us secret military war plans.

42:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's that's joining the group. Yeah, uh, the judge hearing this uh is good. It's, uh, it's a bench case. It's not, there's no jury. The judge hearing it is actually, uh, an interesting judge. He's also hearing the venezuelan case, the the deportees to venezuela case. Judge boesberg um, it's unclear what the trump administration you know, remember, mark keeps going to the white house in mar-a-lago. He's made multiple trips. Mark zuckerberg it's unclear what the president himself thinks. Uh, zuckerberg donated a million dollars to the inaugural committee. He has agreed to pay trump 25 million dollars. Uh, the president sued facebook and instagram for being suspended after january 6th. They settled. Facebook settled that in a clear attempt to kind of curry favor with the president. Um, unfortunately, so far, the ftc is pursuing it aggressively sorry.

43:31 - Padre (Guest)
It is kind of clear in the sense that remember, not too long ago trump thought tiktok was the worst thing ever, I know, and it was the reason why we needed to get rid of section transactional, of course, yeah. But then he got popular on tiktok and there were a lot of influencers on tiktok who were pushing the the trump weight well, also, 30 of tick tock is owned by a big donor jeff.

43:52
Yes, precisely yeah so if the same thing starts happening on facebook, if the data starts coming out oh no, they're really pro trump on facebook then he'll back down, because we know that's. That's his number one priority. I want to to look good.

44:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The new chair of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, said his lawyers are raring to go against Meta, but he also said at that same time I will obey off lawful orders from the president. So in a way, he's leaving the door open for President Trump to.

44:19 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, what one thing to remember is that one of the first, one of the early executive orders of this administration was that the DOJ would no longer prosecute cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Correct, which effectively, is make bribery great again. Yeah, I mean that in my prior job, you know we had to go through regular online training courses job, you know we had to go through regular online training courses, and one of the ones that we had to do at least once a year actually, I think over the last several years I ended up having to do the same course like twice a year was, you know, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, because you know we weren't allowed to give or accept bribes in exchange for business when I worked for premier on the radio show.

45:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
even then, a clear channel, which was the owner at the time, would say here's, you know, here's what they have little quizzes like joe is trying to get his goods through the, the port of, uh, you know, frankfurt, and uh, he wants to give the port director a thousand dollars to help things along. Is that okay? And of course you're000 to help things along, is that okay? And of course you're supposed to say no, of course not. That's bribery. Well, not anymore. Yeah Well, it'd be interesting to see. At this point, breaking up meta doesn't seem like a big deal. Remember, the government also is talking about breaking up Google.

45:46 - Padre (Guest)
But they can demonstrate a harm. So the connection between the browser-.

45:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's easier for that. Yeah, yeah, it's easier.

45:51 - Padre (Guest)
It's easier to show that, yeah, they're leveraging something bad here With Meta's properties. I mean, yes, they have cross-posting, but I don't see how they're hurting competition by having those three. They are incredibly popular but they're not stifling competition.

46:07 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
At least between Facebook and Instagram, maybe not so much with WhatsApp. They do share the data that comes through those and they use that as part of their ad targeting algorithms, and so it does amplify a lot of what they're doing with the ad targeting and, at least in theory, you know, makes that more effective. It allows them to get higher prices for the ads in, in much the same way as what google does, you know, across their various properties with advertising in a completely unrelated story.

46:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When you go to see the new megan M3GAN, you will be encouraged to interact with the evil doll via a Megan chatbot. Meta is launching its MovieMate technology with a screening. This is just why this is just what you want in a theater allowing moviegoers to second screen during the film to access exclusive content, trivia and behind the scenes info in real time this is fantastic, leo.

47:12 - Padre (Guest)
I love this because I needed a really good reason to never go to a never, never again, unbelievable yeah if I wanted to be watching a movie with a bunch of people looking at their phones, I'd go to my parents house.

47:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I don't mean that's not what I want in a darkened theater. Good answer, uh, good, unbelievable. We got so many videos and I'm going to try to play as many as I can, but this was one video that, uh, that brought me I would say, brought me a little bit uh to tears from a dear, dear friend, aunt oh hey there, chief twit, mr leo laporte, miss lisa laporte and the entire twit family.

48:00 - Ant Pruitt (Caller)
Hope y'all doing okay. I wanted to send in my video to say first congratulations and happy 20th for everyone there at TWIT and also just to say thank you for everything that you and the family has done for me and my family. Before ever becoming an employee at Twit, I let it be known that I was a fan. Yes, the economy went to craptastic and everything changed and I'm no longer there as an employee of Twit, but I am still a fan. I still watch the shows regularly, each and every week, whether I agree with the stuff that's discussed or not. It's nothing but love and nothing but respect, and I appreciate everything that you all have done for me.

48:55
Um far as the experience that I've gathered there, um, that I still find useful to this day. Far as how I used to watch Twit, I remember watching it just on an old CRT computer monitor back in the days, in the early 2000s, and just waiting on that RSS feed to update. Of course, now that's changed to watching it via the YouTube feed on my big screen TV, and when I was thinking about watching it back in the days, it reminded me of one of the first times that we met. Actually, it was the first time that we met in person here in Petaluma, when the whole family came out, when we got together to meet for dinner, together for meeting, got together to meet for dinner.

49:48
Queen Pruitt says oh, you're the white haired guy on the screen that is watching all the time. I'll never forget that because she was just as genuine as she always is and the look on your face you just laughed and it was a really good time it was. It was Nothing but love for you and the whole Twit family. So, yeah, feel free to stay in touch. I will continue to watch the shows, like I normally do, and continue to do whatever it is that I'm doing as a full time creator, as a full-time creator again, um, happy 20th to you. Here's to many more, as long as you want to mister, I'm going to retire.

50:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's thank you. Thank you, aunt pruitt, and I have very fond memories of that barbecue we had with the hardheads and uh, queen, the queen, and uh, it was so much fun and I miss you. And I see, of course he's in the Discord right now, a member of our club, and we just miss him. I have fantasies someday, if we raise enough money with the club to bring Ant back, a lot of the people we've had to leave behind along the way it's not an easy thing running a business, as you might imagine we will have more very, very, very kind videos from a whole bunch of people. All right, let me do one. I gotta do one more, one more video, because this one is well an unusual place watch.

51:15 - Fan Video - Chris (Caller)
Let me finish hi, leo chris here, club tip member and listener since, I think, late 2005 when I got into podcasting. I listen to all episodes of MacWay Weekly and Twit everything that Micah does, and occasionally I dip into Security Now and Windows Weekly. But they're a little bit geeky even for me. I'm two years older than you and retired. As I was coming up to retirement, my wife was worried that I'd just vegetate in front of a computer, so she suggested we started sailing. Well, we'd already been sailing for a little while, but now we've been sailing continuously around the world for three years In fact. Right now we're sailing past French Guiana Devils Island, actually, where Papillon was imprisoned for, I think, 13 years and in four days time we'll be in the Caribbean and we'll have completed our circumnavigation.

52:21
Anyway, I wanted to say congratulations on 20 years of podcasting and Twitter and MacRae Weekly. I've listened to most of the episodes and enjoyed them all. Of course, with Starlink nowadays and high-speed comms, I know you like travel. You could buy a boat as well. Buy Starlink on it and do the next 20 years. Don't tempt me. Cheers Leo and all the team.

52:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you. It's so great to hear from you, andrew, on his boat next to Devil's Island Amazing, actually, that was Chris on that. Thank you, chris. All right, we can now do some more news. I have so many, we have so many very thoughtful, very kind videos. Uh, I thought it'd be fun to do a clip show, but not clips of us, clips from our viewers and our, our, our family, really, and it's really fun to see all of those people.

53:17
Uh, as long as we're still talking trump, I cannot resist this one. Uh, we are big fans of Christopher Krebs. Oh no, yeah, very smart guy. He was the head of the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, cisa, during the last Trump administration. He made the mistake of saying that the 2020 election was free and fair and was, in fact, he said, one of the most secure elections in american history, which caused some enmity, I think, with the president, trump, on wednesday, signed an order targeting him for investigation by his basically pet Department of Justice. At this point, no accusation of a criminal act by Chris Krebs. And he as far as.

54:13
I know I'm a very high integrity individual. This is not to investigate him for any particular action.

54:20 - Padre (Guest)
This is. I would like you to find a crime.

54:22 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Find a crime. It's harassment. That's all it is. It's plain and simple harassment.

54:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Krebs works with our friend Alex Stamos at Sentinel One Great guy and absolutely high integrity, and this is it's more than harassment. It's really the beginning of what I fear is a kind of authoritarianism almost a stalin-esque authoritarianism, uh where people who disagree with the president are then prosecuted we'll see if anything comes to this, it might just be an eo that does that.

54:54 - Padre (Guest)
Nothing happens right I mean there's, there's very few people who have the 10 000 foot view of security like krebs, krebs krebs can do it all and we are allowing a man whose feelings were hurt because Krebs didn't go along with the party line and he's allowing him to sacrifice expertise for loyalty. I mean, that is insidious. Once you start doing, end up with with not with a non-functional government, because if people in the government can't disagree with the party line, you don't have a government.

55:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have, yes, men yeah, and you don't want the remaining people at sisa and, by the way, quite a few of them have already been fired. You don't want them fearing political retaliation sometime down the road for doing the right thing. Half of the full-time staff at 40 percent of the contractors, are um under the gun. They haven't been fired yet, but uh, it is imminent. Uh, sisa, how important is sisa uh to our uh security?

56:02 - Padre (Guest)
extremely. It's. It's basically the, the first, the last, the only line of defense we have for for most of the most secret stuff that that the united states deals with. Yeah, if you don't have a functional sisa, you are essentially telling all of the bad state actors it's open house, go ahead and do whatever you want, as long as you pay lip service to one or two people in our administration and we won't call you on it.

56:26 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
It's, it's such a bad president yeah, half mcgillio, half my navy career was in cyber security right, yeah, I know and, uh, I mean this goes just beyond this for this particular case.

56:37
The thing that bothers me about this is if you're an expert in the field like, for example, I deal with SSDs day in, day out if I need to make a statement about just a way that the thing acts as an expert in the field, like I need to be able to just call a spade a spade, whatever the case may be Right, but in this case this guy is getting, you know, harassed and gone after because he just called it. I mean, I guarantee you he had a whole bunch of data at his disposal to back up what he said.

57:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He also revoked krebs. Uh security, uh clearance, which he's been doing, uh to almost everybody in previous administrations. The irony of this is trump had appointed krebs as his first director. Yep, he actually built the agency. Uh n News quoted one CISA employee. It's really tough. It's a really tough time for all of us. Right now. Every day somehow feels more bizarre than the last. It's incredibly difficult to focus on our mission. That's serious. They have a very, they have an important mission.

57:39 - Padre (Guest)
When he was asked about Krebs, trump said he gave that line about oh, I don't think I ever. I don't really know him. I think I met him once, maybe, but I don't know who he is. It's like, wait what? That's the answer you give to about everyone who you've thrown under the bus.

57:54 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
It's to the point where it's almost a comedic. Like you know that that's going to happen. If it's somebody that he, it looks bad. If he knows them, then he just doesn't know them and like it's just, it's almost like a like a joke at this point you can see it like crabs acted fairly honorably.

58:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He declined to comment on the EO. He did on Wednesday uh, repost 2x the message he published in 2020 after Trump fired him. Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend today, secure tomorrow, yep.

58:29 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That's called taking the high road, kids. Yeah.

58:32 - Padre (Guest)
And remember when Krebs was doing this in 2020, he didn't say, oh no, the president is lying. He didn't say, oh, there's so much propaganda. He said from my scope and the mission that I have been given, we have seen no attacks on the US election system. That was it. That's the thing that hurt Donald Trump's ego, because someone didn't even call him a liar, just said no, no, I'm not going along with what you're saying.

58:58 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Honestly, there's an opportunity for the investigation air quotes around investigation to just backfire because, okay, fine, dig into it and find all of the things that he was using to justify his statement. Right, and find, you know, prove that there was, in fact, you know, no interference. There are, or something so negligible that you know had no impact yeah, but none of that's ever going to get published.

59:20 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
None of that's ever going to get released.

59:21 - Padre (Guest)
That'll be suppressed, yeah or there will be another eo investigating the people who were doing the investigation exactly just it's a russian doll of nested investigation. It really is.

59:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Trump administration is currently purging CISA's workforce. Emails went out to CISA employees encouraging them to retire early or take a buyout package by tomorrow. A second email sent by the acting director, bridget Bean, reiterated that offer.

59:53 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Trump has nominated a permanent director, sean planke, who's yet to been confirmed by the senate so having, uh, having done a couple of decades of government stuff myself, I can say that there's an awful lot of things in place where, the way that things work, there's an awful lot of institutional knowledge that gets carried forward to like as you get new people in, then there's turnovers and there's very sort of structured ways to you know. Somebody doesn't just show up in a new role and then the first day they're just doing an amazing job, like they have to go and learn from all their peers they're sitting next to and figure out how to do. How do all these systems work? How do all these systems work? How do all these things work? And I mean I've never been in one of these organizations when just a whole quarter or a third or a half of them were just wiped out.

01:00:43
But I just can't even think of the type of like damage that does as far as the institutional knowledge carrying forward works. And also, how long does it take to get that back, because a lot of that knowledge was hard fought Like. Also, how long does it take to get that back, because a lot of that knowledge was hard fought Like people had to make a lot of mistakes along the way to figure out. Oh yeah, you can't do that that way. You have to do it this way.

01:01:02 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
This is how it works correctly and you just it's almost like you're starting from scratch after you do something like that, and that's exactly what you're going to have is starting from scratch, because a lot of those people, if not most of those people, even if the administration changed and somebody wanted to hire everybody back, a lot of those people are just, they're not. They've lost their trust. They've lost their faith in in the, the government and in the, in the system, and they're not going to want to come back. They're not going to want to be a part of this going forward, yeah.

01:01:37
So, this is our allies, no longer. You know. It's going to take decades before they trust us again.

01:01:42 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Right. So, because of all that churn that you caused on the front end, on the back end, all of your best people, well, they're going to go somewhere else, especially if they were in the government working and you forced them to go over into the civilian side and find work there that they'll pay way more for.

01:01:59 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, exactly.

01:02:00 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Nine times out of 10, that's where the real money is. You know, those people that are working for the government. They were doing it kind of for the same sort of reason why I served in the military, Like you don't serve in the military.

01:02:10
Yeah, you don't serve in the military to make a lot of money. You do it partially because you're trying to do something for the country and even government workers generally. Even though there are some pay grades that are making decent money, they still don't hold a candle to what you make on outside of that sphere. You go into cybersecurity, especially cybersecurity. You go on the outside of the government for cybersecurity. You're making double right and out of those people. When you try on, like going back to the backend thing, when you try to rebuild the government agency if you do actually need a government function for that, for that, whatever that thing is, whatever that purpose is, you're no longer going to get the best people or even close to it. They're just not going to have, they're not going to bother right, because why would I want to go work there when I can go work someplace that actually has their stuff together?

01:03:02 - Padre (Guest)
right. You know, at DEF CON every year there's always some sort of presence from the NSA or another intelligence agency trying to recruit people who would be very good at this job. And the way that they try to recruit them is they acknowledge upfront you're not going to make as much as you would as a private firm, a commercial firm. However, if you've got a passion for defending the country and that actually worked, that worked in many, many cases, you can't make that pitch anymore. If you come to DEF CON this coming year and you try to make the pitch, do what's right for your country, you'll get laughed out of the auditorium yeah, but the good news is we're making shower heads great again, and I think I think that is all that matters, right how many times do you have to flush that toilet, leo?

01:03:47 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
how many times?

01:03:48 - Padre (Guest)
10 20 times well, it depends how many documents are in it yeah you need a high flow.

01:03:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm talking about the executive order, uh, that trump put out on wednesday, uh, titled maintaining acceptable water pressure in shower heads. Uh, it's something on the campaign trail. He complained about toilets, shower heads. I saw a republican spokesperson on fox the other day say finally your dishwasher is gonna really wash dishes, which I just maybe you know I I have not had a problem with my dishwasher getting the dishes clean.

01:04:26 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
And you know, actually, in since we bought this house eight years ago, I've replaced, you know, what were almost certainly decades old toilets with modern low flow toilets, and they work so much better. Yeah, those old toilets, yeah, those were the ones that I'd you'd have to flush three or four times.

01:04:48 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, these new ones one flush, boom, it's one flush does it to even to even go down that road about dishwashers in particular is hilarious, given that anyone who's watched one or two or half a dozen technology connections videos about how dishwashers work which is, by the way, if you are on youtube and you want to go down a rat hole for a whole- entire afternoon feel free, right, uh, but they use just a few gallons of water.

01:05:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's amazing, they use almost no water.

01:05:16 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, it's amazing how they're able to clean, you know so it's not. It's not even a flow issue. So where you usually hear the, you know the complaints from, you know a person who probably doesn't need to complain about it.

01:05:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I feel like President Trump has never once loaded a dishwasher.

01:05:30 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Oh, there's no way, he's probably never even seen a dishwasher.

01:05:34 - Padre (Guest)
I don't even think yes, I think it's because he doesn't realize that dishwasher is a machine. He thinks it's actually an immigrant hired.

01:05:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a guy named jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, it's just bizarre, but you know, anyway, you can only laugh. You can only laugh. What else you?

01:05:50 - Padre (Guest)
can kind of track back the genesis of a lot of these really weird eos. Probably. He was at mar-a-lago and a guest said, oh, the water pressure is really low in my room, right.

01:06:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And so he said, oh well, I'll make an eo about it he also did an eo on uh on led lights saying they look him, look, make him look orange no, it's not, I think it's the lights.

01:06:10 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry. No, it's not the light. Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry, I don't think it's the lights. You know, that's actually a really good chance for Phillips with their hue series to to send a bunch to Trump and say, hey, you can make yourself any color you want. I am lit by.

01:06:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
LEDs right now. Yeah, in fact, I could use a little more orange. To be honest with you, I'm a little pale, pale. All right, let's. Let's play some more videos. This is Christopher. Christopher, go ahead.

01:06:36 - Fan Video - Christopher (Caller)
Hello Leo and Twit family. I'm Christopher. I live in Buckinghamshire in the UK. I grew up with you and Twit while I was in London and commuting on trains to work every day. I first discovered the network while standing on an underground platform. I had my iPhone 3GS in my hand and I wondered what more I could do with it, and I discovered podcasts, and from there I discovered MacBreak Weekly. I then discovered all the other shows on your network I liked.

01:07:03
Try, before you Buy one of my favorite deep cuts of yours, please bring it back. But I'll forever be sad that I never got to visit the studio. That was on my bucket list whenever I go over to the West coast, um, but I do look forward to the tour that you said you were going to do. So please make sure you do that and come over to the UK and I'll be the first to buy a ticket and I'll be the first in line, um. Anyway, thanks for everything. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, thank you for keeping me company on my commutes, my marathon training runs, my Thank you for keeping me company on my commutes, my marathon training runs, my cleaning the house and all the things that you do, while you're just consuming a podcast. On a day-by-day basis, you give me inspiration on all of my endeavors and I'll forever be grateful for that. So take care, and I look forward to the next 20 years. Thank you, christopher.

01:07:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you remember, know how that was a?

01:07:52 - Padre (Guest)
great show, mr, know how. And Before you Buy I love those shows and Before you is thank you christopher.

01:07:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, do you remember? Know how that was a great?

01:07:58 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
show before you buy yeah, we're the host of know how you did a great job. Those, yeah. Yeah, I just want to piggyback on that.

01:08:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have no idea how many things I have accomplished while listening to things off this network that's the best thing about podcasts you don't really have to listen to them, you can just have them on the background, both both you, both things that I've accomplished and things that I've learned from the various shows.

01:08:18 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
There are so many things that, from listening to conversations that seemingly unrelated to what I do, it's like, oh, that's a good idea, I can use that over here. And there's so much that I've learned that I have applied in my various jobs in my career over the last 20 years.

01:08:38 - Padre (Guest)
it's, uh, it's, it's been amazing, yeah which is why I don't listen to any of the true crime podcasts, because I already know how to successfully murder someone. I don't want to learn that. I don't want to learn that.

01:08:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's another one. This is henry.

01:08:52 - Fan Video - Henry (Caller)
Henry, go ahead hey, leo and gang, this is henry from abbotsford, british columbia, canada, also known by some as the 51st state, though some of us appear think of that little country down there as the 11th province. I like that idea, thought I would give you a quick history of my discovery of twittv. Oh, before we start, no, that's not a shrine, I'll get to that. So it was the middle of the night in November of 2007, I think it was, and I couldn't sleep. So I got up, turned on TV and here was this program called the Lab with Leo Laporte. It was filmed in Vancouver and hosted by a Canadian. Well, so I thought you feel fully, nearly good.

01:09:43
Anyway, I was hearing things I'd never heard before on a TV computer show. You know you're just like well, here's the latest HP color printer and, yes, it prints in color. But on this particular program you were talking about all kinds of things that were really interesting I'd never heard before. In fact, I think that was the episode that you had the creator of Ruby on Rails. So I quickly became addicted to that and then shortly thereafter it went off the air. So I lost track of Leo for a to that and then shortly thereafter it went off the air. So I lost track of Leo for a few years and then discovered him at this place called the Twit Cottage and he was doing podcasts. Well, you were doing podcasts, so I have been an avid listener ever since, followed you to the Brick House house and then to the side studios, and where this comes in, these guys is, uh, I drove down to the studios for what turned out to be the last ever live recording of twit and, uh, I have to tell you that not only was that a great experience, but this is a time where you'd already had to cut back, let some hosts go.

01:10:58
Two of them were there that day, jason and Ant, and as a testament to the quality of people you are, even though they've been let go, they both showed up. Jason was on the panel and Ant was in the background taking pictures, hugging people just having a great time, and that was such a great experience. Well, and for dinner and it really is a family there. I'm very impressed with what you have built and continue to, and I just hope it goes on for years and years. You're getting my little contribution every month in the Club Twit and I really hope that. Well, is it going to be a competition between you and Steve to see who continues the longest. Let's not make it a competition. Oh yes, and then I met those. Where is this? I met these two guys who signed the pictures and had a good conversation with them them. You're a great bunch. This is an excellent thing you're doing. I love it so thank you, henry.

01:12:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thanks, thank you, and that is not a shrine. I just want to make it clear hey, leo, it's just, it's just a, uh, it's just a shelf with a bunch of twit stuff on it, that's memorabilia, memorabilia, it's just memorabilia, it's just memorabilia.

01:12:14
Hey, we'll have more with our great panel. I'm sorry, guys, you have to put up with all these videos, but I really wanted to honor the listeners, the community around the show because, honestly, it's meaningless for us to sit around, John, if we don't have all these wonderful people listening and we do our shows live for that very reason that you know that, Robert, we we love having a chat room going on and people talking back to us. It's, it's really a lot of fun.

01:12:41 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
So so, speaking of old, speaking of old twit related stuff I don't know if this is actually a connection I can make here, but I was, so I submitted a video kind of quasi as a fan. But here, but I was, so I submitted a video kind of quasi as a fan. But I've been on a few shows, but like I submitted a video for one of the anniversary things and I wasn't sure I remember that alan yeah, yeah, I was like in my garage.

01:13:00
There was like a cylinder head behind me and stuff, and it's just, you know, four houses ago. So I was I it wasn't the 10th anniversary show, but I was skimming through the 10th anniversary show just now and there was a segment where you went like years before the 10th anniversary show and you're in your attic, yeah you know, and you're like somebody's showing you a mixer I think that was kevin rose.

01:13:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that was the system.

01:13:25 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
It might have been kevin rose showing you a mixer now I don't know if that mixer direct like that actual mixer ended up with ryan at pc per or not. Maybe it might have and in case now you have it.

01:13:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it a is?

01:13:38 - Fan Video - Nate (Caller)
it. I just thought I would I didn't?

01:13:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it is a mackey. I just want to show you your old mixer.

01:13:43 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That's the original mixer. It was in my garage from when we cleaned out the studio wow, so that was the mixer that we started.

01:13:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have the you have more than I do. That's the original and there's a story, I think I have some of your light panels, I hope you all have fezzes, we'll make you wear those.

01:14:02 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Pretty sure I got some of your light panels in the basement. You might um, you might know just random stuff.

01:14:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They've been scattered to the wind. So the that mixer, the mackie mixer, I had I guess because of radio, I can't remember why I had it, but that's how we were able to start the podcast and each of the different people had pots and all that stuff. And when it broke, colleen henry, who was, or colleen kelly, who was our engineer, the story, colleen's story, is amazing. She came by one day, the cottage. She was studying sociology at san jose state and she wanted a job as an intern even though she was a sociology major. But after I talked to her for a while, said I'm not going to give you an internship, I'm going to hire you. Would you work for us? And she became our first studio engineer. And when that board broke she took it down to a little place down in San Francisco where a guy named Burke McQuinn was working and Burke fixed it so it's her fault yep, uh, and Burke did such a good job.

01:15:05
Colleen came back and said you know this guy, burke, he'd be good to have around because he can fix stuff. And Burke is still with us. In fact he was over here. We invited him over for easter, which is most of you know is next week, uh, but he showed up today. So I we got to visit with burke a little bit. He says, yes, I gave that mackie onyx mixer to ryan so that is the one so this is it.

01:15:30 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Burke has validated it because you have it now.

01:15:34 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
So we have the provenance confirmed I have the history.

01:15:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, the lineage saved this video, so if anybody asks, you can say where it came from. That's awesome, oh my goodness awesome and you know what?

01:15:47 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I didn't even know. It wasn't until I was skimming the video from the 10th anniversary and I was like that's in my garage, oh my.

01:15:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
God, I can't believe it. I just ran out there. You had that all this time.

01:15:59 - Padre (Guest)
I can't believe there are two things from the brick house that I really missed. The first is the, the main cabinet. That would that really nice arcade cabinet that we used to have.

01:16:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I love that name, cabin. Who took was the pinball machine? Yeah, the pinball machine, yeah, was a gift from um, oh, I forgotten her name, jerry. Um, jerry, oh, jerry, uh, ellsworth, ellsworth, that's it. Jerry ellsworth was who, among other things, uh, repaired pinball machines. She gave us that. Somebody took that when we moved out of the brick house and somebody also took the main cabinet, which was a gift from a little.

01:16:33 - Padre (Guest)
Who has the main cabinet?

01:16:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, and and jerry ellsworth made that the comedy worked on this.

01:16:37 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, worked on the commodore 64, and she told you that there's a back door in there.

01:16:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can get a whole commodore basic out of that. Did you know that?

01:16:44 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
yeah, well, it's got. If you open it up it has like solder pads for all the other uh peripherals.

01:16:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She did that she said I was, I wasn't going to build that without putting a whole common. Let's take a little break. Uh, we will have a lot more, more, more reminiscences. It's a clip show. We should be sitting on a couch, but anyway. Uh, and more visits from our great listeners. In fact, joe esposito is coming up in just a minute.

01:17:11
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01:19:19
Here's a testimonial from mark tolson uh, he's the it director for the city of champaign, illinois. Another critical um supplier, a city right, they're under attack all the time schools, cities, ports. Mark says, quote threat locker provides that extra key to block anomalies that nothing else can do. If bad actors got in and tried to execute something, I can take comfort in knowing threat locker will stop that. That's what you want. Stop worrying about cyber threats. Get unprecedented protection quickly, easily and cost effectively with threat with ThreatLocker. Visit ThreatLockercom slash twit to get a free 30-day trial and learn more about how ThreatLocker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. Threatlockercom slash twit. We thank them so much for their support of this Week in Tech and you support us when you go to that address. That way they know you saw it here. Threatlockercom slash twit. One of my favorite people in our club twit and I know you've seen his illustrations, his, his very, his, very cool pictures is a joe esposito.

01:20:27 - Fan Video - Joe (Caller)
He is a graphic designer and he sent us this video, joe hey, leo and everybody who works at twit, this is the video about how I found twit and what twit has meant to me. Kind of per your request, and like a lot of people, I think that the first experience I had of twit wasn't really twit, it was tech tv. I came to tech tv wasn't from the very beginning. I I found it right around the time that the new set was in place. I remember the new set was kind of a big deal, so I don't know what year that would have been, but I know patrick was the co-host and I know there that the new set had just come into place and it was a really neat channel because there wasn't a lot like that that I remember on television at all, something where you know it was a lot of the kind of geek interests that of course now you can find everywhere, but at the time it was something special, the total channel. I remember there was just lots of really neat stuff on that channel and it almost felt like a custom tailored television channel for me and so I became a fan then and I remember in probably it was oh four and I was it was in 2004 I had come out to see my who eventually would become my wife, and one of the priorities I had was oh, I want to see a taping of the screensaver.

01:21:39
So I got to actually go to the I think it was. At that point G4 had already acquired it, so it was whatever the studios were called. But I went to the show and got to meet you and Patrick, and I remember the show was one of the segments was about slide rulers, which I thought was kind of funny Came to a show that's basically about cutting edge tech and the episode I got to see was about slide rulers Still a great show, but it was just kind of one of those irony things where it's like, oh okay, cutting edge computers and slide rulers, all right, this is what the episode is going to be. And then at the time you hadn't announced that you were leaving the network, but it was not too long afterwards that you had said you were departing and so I think, like a lot of people, I thought, well, that's it. I mean, I don't know when I'm going to hear his voice again, when I'm going to see this type of content again. Maybe you never will. And then, of course, revenge of the Screensavers, which then became Twit started up.

01:22:28
I got to go to one of the early live reunion things. I don't know if it was an official episode or not. I want to say it was in the back of an Apple store. I remember Patrick Norton was there because I helped him clean up cables and I talked to him about kind of being from the East Coast a little bit, but it was. I remember there were a lot of people, I think I want to say Dvorak was there and a number of others and, like I said, I think it was in an Apple store.

01:22:53
And then I remember Twit started up and started getting going and one of the things that you kept saying was that podcasting was something that everybody could have a voice in. And that really struck a chord with me. And so a year after the first couple episodes of Twit, I started my own show and I'm still doing it. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of our show Not anywhere near as good as anything that's on Twit and probably never will be, but honestly, twit has been part of my life now for so long that it's really hard to imagine it not being around. So I'm really happy that the club has been able to kind of keep the network from going off air.

01:23:30
I actually got to go to not only the original Brick House I had a brick in the brick house I got to go to the East side studio, got to go to the second to last show, which was kind of a sad thing, but I think it's worked out very well. I think the the move to all online.

01:23:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the new studio, seamless, I mean, there's been no impact on anything.

01:23:46 - Fan Video - Joe (Caller)
The quality is still just as good it so, yeah, anybody who is watching this if you're not part of the club, you should be, because, just like so many things, creators can only exist with your support and you know you've seen what's going on with everything. The only way to really keep something around, if you care about it, is to support it. So I'm really happy that there's a way for me to support Twit directly. I want to thank you for all the years and everybody in front behind the camera. It's the personalities, but it's also the people who put the shows together. It's just been again such a foundational part of my life. I'm thrilled that everybody's still around. I'm thrilled that twit's still going strong and I hope it only gets better with age. Just like well, I don't drink wine, but that's what I hear like a fine wine. So thank you for everything and I'm looking forward to many more years of everything I've enjoyed so far thank you, joe, and thanks for all the great illustrations.

01:24:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I gotta play one more. You saw the video guy on a boat. I have heard from people a number of times that they watch while they're driving combine harvesters. This one is johannes from austria hello twit crew. This is hannes from austria.

01:25:02 - Fan Video - Alex (Caller)
This is how I have been listening to a lot of twit podcasts over the year he's driving a, a combine harvester or something I don't know, club member and this and us since 2014.

01:25:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Bye, bye, honest. Thank you.

01:25:22 - Padre (Guest)
It's so great to know you it was a kubuto, a kubuto tractor. It's definitely not a john deere no, it was.

01:25:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it was a kubuto or something like. Yeah, it was really cute, and he had behind it he was towing some sort of wheat, uh, thresher, or I don't know what he was doing. Maybe he was cutting the wheat or something, maybe he's just mowing the lawn, I don't know. Anyway, it's really nice to have all of these wonderful people watching the show, and it's great to have you guys on the show. You probably didn't realize when you came here that it was going to be such a kind of a different episode, but I appreciate your patience.

01:25:56 - Padre (Guest)
It's fun to see. I started as a fan from back in the tech TV days. I went to an episode taping with you and Patrick Norton when Patrick was showing us how to make a cantenna out of a Pringles can.

01:26:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right, that's right.

01:26:09 - Padre (Guest)
That's right, and it was new for me because remember before that there really wasn't intelligent tech stuff, it was always a segment on another show, and so you had this, this, this network dedicated to technology and and science and stories that I actually cared about.

01:26:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I yeah it changed my life yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I feel very fortunate. By the way, sc homestead in our youtube chat says that is a disc arrow. He's plowing the fields for the next uh crop and, by the way, it looked like he wasn't driving the wheel was a lot of a lot of modern tractors have automated driving capabilities now.

01:26:45 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
um, yeah, primarily using gps. Uh, you know, because it's you're, it's. It's part of what they call precision agriculture, right, so they can more precisely know exactly where they're planting, how many seeds they're planting and get just the right density of plants in there Do?

01:27:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they use AI in those.

01:27:08 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I mean they're starting to. Some of the early ones didn't really use that, but yeah, they're starting to. Uh, you know, some of the the early ones you know didn't really use that, but yeah they're, they're starting to incorporate that certainly. Um, you know, deer has been uh a leader in this space. They've they've done a lot of interesting work with um, with automation and uh in uh agricultural equipment I wish I could find it.

01:27:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Somebody some years ago sent me a video of him in his combine and it was like a living room, the whole thing was completely automated and it was a house-sized farming thing. And he says you know, I don't really have much to do as we ride up and down in this thing, so thank you for the podcast. It's pretty amazing what they do now.

01:27:53 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
At least the last two or three years, deer has had a huge booth in the west hall at ces and you know they have these giant tractors in there. Most of them are, you know, have automated driving capabilities and and and seeding and harvesting, and they there's. I'm not sure if Deere has this, but there are companies that have developed stuff where you know, as they go through the field, as the vehicle drives through the field, they're using AI and vision systems to look for weeds and then using lasers to zap the weeds, yeah, yeah, it's amazing that way they can dramatically reduce the amount of of pesticides that they need to use, because they're literally just zapping the weeds as they go.

01:28:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here is this is the deer booth at ces yeah, here's the giant harvester, uh, that we were talking about, and the guy the operator really is there just to padre, you have the one with the uh, the big triangular tracks on it.

01:29:02 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, padre, oh, there you go look at that see trying to wow I think I've got.

01:29:07
Oh, this was my favorite, I love this big, oh yeah, the uh big dump truck, the caterpillar mining truck. This was actually one of the first commercial applications of automated driving technology that came out of the DARPA Grand Challenge program. So after the DARPA Grand Challenge concluded in 2007, some of a couple of the leaders of that program, chris Urmson and Brian Stileski Chris was the overall team leader from Carnegie Mellon that won the DARPA Urban Challenge in 07. And Brian led the software effort on that they went to work with Caterpillar and worked on deploying automated driving systems for these giant mine trucks because they're so difficult to drive and it's very dangerous. And Chris stayed there, I think about a year, year and a half, and then moved over to join Google to start the Google Self-Driving Car Project, which is now Waymo.

01:30:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought his name sounded sounded familiar.

01:30:14 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
That's interesting brian brian stayed another year or so to complete the project at caterpillar. These were first deployed commercially in 2013. There are about 550 of these trucks these autumn, these autonomous mining trucks, in service now on three continents around the world.

01:30:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, and you remember in the early days of the darpa grand challenge, the cars would go six feet and go right off the road. We used to watch it and laugh and say, oh, you're never going to get these things to work, and that's. I always remember that when people say, oh, we'll never have full, you've said it yourself we'll never have full self-driving. We'll never have artificial super intelligence. You know things. I never thought we'd have a. You know four terabyte hard drive Things.

01:31:03
Technology has a way of surprising you sometimes Sam has famously said, though there'll never be a level five full self-driving vehicle, four terabytes Leo, I still stand by that, I don't know.

01:31:13 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Said, though there'll never be a level five, uh, full self-driving vehicle and I still, I still stand by that I don't know. I think it's very unlikely that we will get to a system that can operate fully unsupervised in all conditions.

01:31:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, no, I I think uh, uh, alan. It was uh right around the year 2000 where I said by the 2020, we won't have spinning hard drives anymore, we'll have memory cubes. I mean, hard drives have survived and thrived much farther than we ever thought they would and they're much denser than we ever thought. What are the largest hard drives now? Spinning drives? I think 24 now.

01:32:00 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I think we're up to and petabytes are on the way. How about ssds? Are they competitive?

01:32:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
solid dime makes 122 terabyte ssd 122 terabyte unbelievable, unbelievable it's a two and a half inch form factor.

01:32:09 - Padre (Guest)
It's like this, it's like this size that's one of my pet peeves about science fiction uh shows, tvs. Uh tv shows and movies that they set the future date that someone traveling back in time from right way too soon. It never makes sense. 2049, wait, that you're telling me. They invented time travel by 2049 or 2001. No, come on, go further, out thousand years.

01:32:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you might need one of those petabyte drives if you use Microsoft Recall to keep track of everything you do on the computer. Recall is finally coming out with a release preview. I can't you know they announced this when, ages ago.

01:32:53
That first announcement didn't go too well they announced it in uh, I think it was almost a year ago. Uh, people said what you're? What? That's a security nightmare. They backpedaled and then, you know, they said well, we're going to delay it. They they restated the security goals. Some have said that they I think paul thoratis said this is what they had originally said, but they I think Paul Thorat has said this is what they had originally said, but they weren't. So we're so unclear about it that people thought it was really a security nightmare. Well, finally, they had planned to launch in October. That got pushed back. Now they're going to put it out for the insiders in the release preview channel, according to blog post on thursday. How do you feel about? Uh recall?

01:33:40
I like the idea of it if it's local yeah, but see to me, if it's, it's most useful. If it's not local, if it's on every device, you have right, who cares if this one computer knows what you did? That's why I carry this thing around. Yeah, the little AI device I've showed it many times it's called a bee that is recording all the time and then make summaries and notes for me at the end of the day.

01:34:07 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Ideally, an AI should have every bit of information but yeah, well, I mean, I'm talking, like you know, by by local I mean private to you know, within your own sphere of devices, not just microsoft has all that you wanted on multiple.

01:34:23 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I mean, we all use multiple devices and you want to be able to recall as it stands it's only on that one computer right.

01:34:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It does not cross device lines and I think that it's safe to say it is private, although security experts worry that it is a treasure trove for hackers if they could get in.

01:34:45 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Correct. Yeah, the better the AI makes things for you to find your own stuff more easily and index all of your own things. They're also better if somebody gets in that's not supposed to be in. They could just easily find all your stuff.

01:34:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Robert, are you slathering at the chops I?

01:35:02 - Padre (Guest)
am not. We are currently planning our Windows migration strategy because we've got a large chunk of the organization that does not want to go to 11.

01:35:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what are you going to migrate to?

01:35:13 - Padre (Guest)
So we've already started switching off some of the most critical infrastructure to Linux. We do not want to go to Apple. There's a couple of services that are stubborn, we don't have good analogs yet, and it's not about recall. Actually, I find the feature interesting. It is an interesting set of functionalities that get added to Windows, but we've been so put off by the Windows 11 experience, especially at the enterprise level, that we just don't see ourselves.

01:35:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Come October, Microsoft says Windows 10 users will no longer get support. You've got to go to Windows 11.

01:35:50 - Padre (Guest)
They'll extend that.

01:35:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They will absolutely extend that. Yeah, they have in the past.

01:35:54 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I think it's still greater than 80% of everything it's increased.

01:36:00 - Padre (Guest)
Windows 10 has increased from the last metric, so people are getting really upset with a lot, and part of it is just they don't want to be force fed a lot of changes that they didn't ask for, and it seems like with every release, 11 adds something You're like why did you do that? Or why did you take that away? This functionality? That's, that's just silly. So recall would actually be one of the reasons I would stay, just to see how it works. It is an interesting idea. I'm with Alan. I've got a lot of privacy concerns, especially with you centralizing my data and allowing an AI to prioritize what is important, right. But I mean, for me, operating systems are now like TVs. I'm so done with smart TVs. Give me something that's solid, that works, that is stable, that is secure, and I'll be happy with that OS for the next 20 years.

01:36:52 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, but then how are they going to make money off you in perpetuity, right?

01:36:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, this is what Microsoft says in the release notes. To use recall, you'll need to opt in. That's good. Originally it was opt out. You'll need to opt in to saving snapshots which are images of your activity, the AIs and they use various AIs to analyze those snapshots, to extract the information from them. You'll also have to enroll in Windows Hello to confirm your presence and that's for security, so that only you can access those snapshots. Microsoft says you're always in control of what snapshots are saved and can pause saving snapshots at any time. As you use your Copilot plus PC throughout the day, working on documents or presentations, taking video calls and contexts, switching across activities, recall will take regular snapshots and help you find things faster and easier. There was concern about it taking snapshots of your credit cards. Uh, I don't, you know. In theory, I think they say, oh, we're not going to do that. But um, how will they know without looking at it If they're?

01:37:57 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
going to take a picture of it. It just seems wasteful to me generally because they're talking about saving a bunch of screenshots, but that's the most like low tech way to do it, like I mean you have. If you want to know where you want on your browser, you can. Chrome has a browser, has history of all the URLs you want to know where you want on your browser. You can. Chrome has.

01:38:13
Your Chrome browser has a history of all the URLs you went to. It's all just. You can distill what would be, you know, potentially terabytes worth of screenshots into just like a few kilobytes worth of just metadata.

01:38:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I think that's the theory, I don't. Do they preserve the screenshot, I don't know. Or after they analyze it? I think that I don't know.

01:38:29 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I would hope I would hope that it ingests the screenshot and then just takes what it needs from it. I think that's the plan and then it just goes away, because otherwise it's just going to be a space hog.

01:38:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I do remember them talking about the storage used and it wasn't vast, okay, but I can't remember the exact details. You do have to have a co-pilot plus PC, which is the new standard for PCs. Have a co-pilot plus pc uh, which is the new standard for pcs. Uh, at least 40 tops in the uh in the um neural processing unit, 16 gigs of ram, 8 logical processors, uh to use recall. You'll need at least 50 gigs of storage space free okay, saving snapshots automatically pauses once the device has less than 25 gigs left.

01:39:16
You have to use BitLocker or device encryption, obviously, to protect yourself, and you have to, in rolling windows hello, as I mentioned, to verify your identity. It's interesting, I'm very curious. We shall see.

01:39:29 - Padre (Guest)
We shall see. One of the things that was drilled into me from the time that I started was having good archiving processes. So over the last 30 years I have a set of descriptors that I put on every file and project that I ever create. That's smart. It makes it possible for me to go back by date or topic. Yeah, it's disciplined. So basically, recall says no, don't do that, I'll do that for you, right? So if you haven't done what I've done, then recall could be very. That's the same thing here.

01:39:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, even though ai is yet to be useful enough so that the stuff captured by this b is super useful to me. It is capturing and saving all the time and I'm hoping, as years go by, I will now have a kind of a database of things that I've said and done and agreed to and other people have told me and so forth. It's recording my piano lessons, it's recording shows, it's recording everything. I'm hoping that that will become more and more useful down the road. It's kind of an investment in the future.

01:40:26 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Is it saving all of that to bees servers or?

01:40:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
to your own. Oh yeah, it's exfiltrating this. Okay, so we?

01:40:35 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I interviewed the founders on our shows so what it does, is it?

01:40:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
this is a really just a microphone which sends to the iphone, which does send it to an unnamed. He said the. The founder said it's some commercial ais and some of our own, so he wouldn't say which AIs they use, and I think it's probably moving around quite a bit. Sends it out to them. Deletes the recording though. Okay, so the recording is deleted after it's analyzed.

01:41:04 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, so it just transcribes and saves.

01:41:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Transcribes and then extracts. So I do have transcriptions of the most recent conversations, that I can identify speakers, but not of the past.

01:41:18 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I don't know the thing that I'm kind of waiting for, like I'm a digital pack rat, much like Padre is, I've tried to be as good as I can within reason and within, like you know, not to go too crazy to where it's diminishing returns. But I try to somewhat organize things. But I'm kind of holding out for the local AI, for the models you can run on your own hardware to get good enough to where you basically have, you know, the movie her available locally.

01:41:45
That's what I want, Right, and you can just hey go through all my stuff.

01:41:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Exactly.

01:41:49 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I need you to organize all these things, figure out you know, index everything so that if I just want to ask hey, where's that picture? When I was, you know, in the Twitch studio that I had Show me all those pictures. We've been doing that today.

01:42:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
People have been pulling up you know old images. I would like to say where was I on December 20th 2012? I'd love to be able to ask that. It's almost like a diary of yours. It also almost like a diary of your. It also keeps track of your agreements. So I have a to-do list. It generates a proposed to-do list, which you can then say yeah, yeah, keep that one. No, no, I'm not gonna do that. And and so it's really nice to keep track of your agreements. I like the idea. Anyway, I think recall is a good idea.

01:42:24 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I understand the security concerns this is the yeah and I mean I mean I've been doing, you know, somewhat low-tech version of the AI thing just out of necessity, even though it's not actually AI. But I try to make sure all the pictures or the file names are actually like the date and time of the picture, for example, and things might be sort of sorted into folders loosely. But I mean there are some tools. You don't necessarily have to have AI to have really good ability to find all your stuff. Like there's a tool called Void Tools. It's the the company or not company, but the guy has a thing called void tools. There's things they're just called search everything, right, right, and it's just a program. It indexes all your stuff, even if it's on a remote, like it's network storage.

01:43:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dream of techno.

01:43:06 - Padre (Guest)
You've got all this stuff digitally you should be able to do that right where I would use it is if you had something that was smart enough to go through the literally tens of thousands of hours of footage I have, and there you go, the meta descriptors of conversations and scenes. That's that's where I actually could use help I can beat you, uh, on that.

01:43:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You want to hear some twitch stats that have been compiled, oh boy, oh no, by our esteemed team. There have been 1030 episodes, obviously, um. The first episode where any video exists is number 24. The longest episode, which was from 2018 episode 699. It was a best of those this doesn't count almost four hours, three hours 56 minutes. The longest non-best of was from um 2022, was called the whole internet burrito and it was three hours 36 minutes. We might beat that today, I don't know. The shortest episode introducing ipac is that the compact ipac was 2006.

01:44:13 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It was before the iphone oh my gosh, that sounds about the right. That sounds about the right time frame.

01:44:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ipaq, it was 24 minutes long average episode length. It's been getting longer, but if you include the older ones, two hours three minutes. If you wanted to listen to every episode of twit it would take you 88 days. Nine hours 31 minutes and 59 seconds with no sleep with no sleep constantly.

01:44:42
Listen, not here or here, not listen whatever. I smell a challenge, you don't have to process it, um. So, anyway, it's been a long and a crazy trip and a lot of fun and I really thank all of the people who've been part of this. You'll see, as I said, a scroll of all the people who've ever been on to it as contributors. I couldn't. I wish I could. I tried. We don't have a record of everybody who's ever been on the staff.

01:45:09
There's so many people that I would love to thank People like, as I mentioned, colleen Kelly, our first studio manager. John Slonina, our last studio manager. Burke McQuinn has been with us almost since the beginning. Of course, my wife, lisa, who's been the CEO and our executive producer since 2015. So much I don't want to leave people out. There's so many great people, so many editors. Of course, our current team is wonderful. There is a crawl at the end of the show where you can see the current people. I just couldn't get all the names of the people who have, uh, worked at twit, but there have been so many. I thank you each and every one of you. You want to see another? Uh, let's do one. One more video. I know I'm really slowing the show down. I apologize, but uh, people were nice.

01:45:52 - Fan Video - Mark (Caller)
I love these here's a guy in a fez hi Leo and all the family, congratulations on 20 years. That's how long I've been listening. I started on a palm Treo and I went to the Nokia N95 he brought every one of them in between. There was a whole bunch of others, of course. Uh, your Nexus One with the rolly ball, ah, I love that First Android phone.

01:46:15
Pixel One, lots of others in between, obviously, and now I listen on an LG V40 because it has a really good DAC and yeah anyway, so 20 years, good one, thanks.

01:46:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you for wearing a fez.

01:46:33 - Padre (Guest)
I love that he wanted a phone with a good deck. You don't hear that anymore.

01:46:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, and that lg has like a really excellent high-res deck in it, so I understand why it listens. Thank you, mark. I appreciate that.

01:46:45 - Padre (Guest)
That was a great video you know, leo, that reminds me of those days we would have at the brick house where a box of leo's stuff would just show up just old gadgets we called them and I would just put them in the conference room and, uh, I would just say, have at it.

01:47:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And people, I was always afraid there'd be knifings, but no, it always worked out towards the. Towards the end. We had people put colored stickers on it and then, you know, we figured out a way to allocate it Because as we got closer to leaving the studio, the goods that were put on that table appreciated considerably in value.

01:47:21 - Padre (Guest)
A lot of computers, it helped that we had such a diversity of people in the brick house that we all wanted different stuff. Like some of us were just interested in historical tech items, other people wanted tech items they could actually use.

01:47:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, and let's not forget the no hole oh.

01:47:38 - Padre (Guest)
I love that I miss that place so much so in the old brick house.

01:47:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it was huge. It was 10,000 square feet on the main floor where the studio was. But there was also a 10,000 square foot basement which we didn't even have to pay rent for because the ceiling was so low that you would hit your head on the sprinkler pipes. So they couldn't rent it to us. But we had it and we filled it up and it was the home for many years of something I knew nothing about. I found out after the fact that you and others had built what was the no-hole.

01:48:16 - Padre (Guest)
The no-hole was a space that we had hidden behind racks and the cage so you couldn't really see it, and it had workstations, it had a fridge with alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages, what you had a bar down there. We had a bar down there. We had all the quadcopters, we had a nice, very nice bean bag, the arcade machine, so it it was a place for us to uh, retreat between shows. It was. It was quite nice, but you kept it a secret. I mean, it was an open secret. We never tried to hide it. We just didn't talk about it unless we were in the knoll.

01:48:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I knew, knew nothing about it and that was, that was you, but it was also your, your two, ryan, brian yeah, brian and burke. Brian and his brother both worked for us. They were wonderful. I just saw brian the other day. He's working somewhere.

01:49:07 - Padre (Guest)
Good, facebook, I can't remember yeah, he was at google for a while, then facebook for a while and now he is moved on. He just told me. I can't remember.

01:49:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, he mentioned it jammer b is in our chat, our our longtime studio engineer. Jammer b, you knew about the no hole, right okay? Chamber b knew about everything going on in that burke says, he threw sharp things at you down there, padre burke did not at first.

01:49:33 - Padre (Guest)
At first burke did not like us down there because we were intruding on his space.

01:49:36 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
That was his domain, his space, because that's where all the wiring was, from the cameras to the track.

01:49:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, well, and the server room was there. We, we actually built it and cl you know a room around where all the servers were, because the way the studio was set up, that all the sets were around the perimeter and there was a desk in the middle with all the switches and the turret, the boards and and jesus john's idea was brilliant it rotated so it could aim at whatever set. So the technical director was sitting in his turret and was looking at the show so it could rotate around 360. Well, it couldn't do. You couldn't rotate it twice.

01:50:15
It would, it would stop you start snapping cables if you went twice, yeah because all of the devices in that turret had went down through a hole in the middle of the floor to the server room. So there were big cables going down and all the work was being done in the basement in the server room when all the noise?

01:50:32 - Padre (Guest)
in the basement, in the overhead of the basement, there were just bundles of network cables oh, beautifully done too, yeah oh, and, by the way, we got a big upgrade to the no-hold when pixel core moved out, because we took their cage. We took the entire pixel core. You took the cage that became our and we got a couch down there. We got carpeting down. It was fantastic.

01:50:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So so it was such a big area, we rented some of it to alex lindsay and his pixel core. In fact, we rented a bunch of the studio as well to him and he put up uh fencing. He put up cyclone fencing around it to protect it because there was valuables in there. So when they left, you just you broke in and you took that space as well.

01:51:07 - Padre (Guest)
Huh oh yeah, yeah, are you kidding, do you understand? We used to have quadcopter races underneath the studio. Wow, that was. That's how big the thing was it was huge.

01:51:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I used to race my bicycle around under there, oh yeah, yeah, uh, before we built it out when we first moved in. All right, one more video. This is Nathaniel. Let me click the link hello Leo.

01:51:31 - Fan Video - Nate (Caller)
My name is Nate Abbott and I live in Gilmanton, ironworks, new Hampshire, and I discovered you in 2005. I thought I'd share a funny story from way back then and I don't know if you remember this, but I believe I was researching what Twit was and I went searching and found a post from you looking for your, your twit uh, broadcasters that week and apparently people weren't getting back to you and you thought you would just go to the beach and I was probably desperate. It sounded like a bad day for you, I think. Ultimately you got that episode together and people came together and twit carried on. But that's how sketchy it was back then and it's amazing to me what you were able to do. I think it's hard for me to express actually what it's meant to be Moved up here.

01:52:23
In 1998, started an MSP business Back then it was just a reseller business and tech services and really 90% of the time in the car when I'm driving I am listening to Twit. It's just been invaluable to me. Also, security now, in particular Steve Gibson, has meant a lot. I remember being ahead of the blaster worm. I didn't have any servers working as firewalls which, if you remember, back in those days there were a lot of Windows, small business servers that were sitting on their rear end, so to speak, hanging out on the internet and Blaster just went wild. I used to listen to Buzz Out Loud and I can recall how CNET couldn't seem to sell an ad on that show, while you were selling ads every single week on twit and all and you were building your portfolio of a video and audio shows. Um, I've been absolutely devoted to twit since that whole entire time since then until now I I just want to give thanks to, first of all to you, because it's meant a lot to me to have you there every week, essentially ring leading a tech talk. That that I can't have with anybody here where I live, except one or two people, in particular Mike Elgin, who I just want to mention, taking over in the place of the great Tom Merritt. When he left, mike was in a tough spot and he handled it like like he was, was born for it, and I still love to listen to mike elgin and I'm kind of dying to go on one of his trips.

01:53:58
Renee ritchie, ian thompson, abra arhidi, amy webb, um, jason calacanis, stacy higginbotham, paris martineau, aunt pruitt, jason howell, um, and the great john c devorek, who I recall from those early days. Kevin Rose obviously become a legend at this point. It's quite a circle you've created there and I really have to salute you for the work that you've done and the unique and unmatchable thing that you've created there for us, and I appreciate it just more than I can say there for us and I appreciate them just more than I can say. So congratulations on 20 years of TWiT. Who would have thunk?

01:54:40
Oh, and one last thing congratulations to you for highlighting women, who are excellent in the tech industry and getting them on your show just about every week. I really think you've made a difference for a lot of people who might have thought eh, I'm not sure IT or tech or computers are for me, because I'm a woman and it seems like a pretty male place and I have a someone I've met recently who is struggling with everything. So you're doing great things in the world and thank you again for 20 years. Thank you, take care of leo, thank you.

01:55:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you, nate, I appreciate it. Yeah, I, we've. We've been all about diversity, equity and inclusion since before it was trendy, and now that it's no longer trendy, we're still all about, uh, diversity, equity and inclusion, um, because it's a big tent. It's a big tent and we love uh getting as many people as possible uh into the tent, so that's very kind of you. Thank you, nate, I I appreciate it. Uh, we're gonna take a break. Come back with more. There's some more tech news.

01:55:53 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Before you do, leo, I, I need, I need to get out of here in a couple of minutes. You told me you were going to have to leave, so let's say goodbye to Sam.

01:56:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's great that you could be here for the first half of this 14 hour show.

01:56:05 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
And if you're still going, when I get back I will jump back in. Yeah, we might be, who knows? We still.

01:56:35
I'm only halfway through the videos. Thank you, sam. It's great to see you. Sam, his podcast, wheelbearings, is at wheelbearingsmedia Great show If you're a car nut. You got to listen and watch and, of course, he is now an analyst. We didn't get to the extended Twit family. It's been great to interact with you and the rest of the team and all the other participants on this show and all the shows over the last decade or more that I've been actively participating in it and, like I said, I've learned so much uh about this, uh you know about about so many things uh from the different shows. So, um, yeah, just thanks and uh, and keep it going as long as you can I will.

01:57:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As long as my brain doesn't give out, my voice doesn't give out and we still have somebody to listen, I'll be here. I want to honor all these great listeners and viewers. Thank you, sam, all right. Thanks, everyone, take care. Take care, sam, there was that day when I'll be here. I want to honor all these great listeners and viewers. Thank you, sam, all right.

01:57:15 - Padre (Guest)
Thanks everyone, Take care, Take care Sam.

01:57:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There was that day when we actually had a studio, a big giant movie studio in Marin. I think Alex Lindsay arranged it for us and nobody showed up.

01:57:33
That's a nightmare scenario that you throw a party and no, I think that's the only time, uh, that I can remember that we didn't do a show because I mean, if nobody showed up, I really couldn't do it. I think there was one time where we ended up doing the show with our audience, with our listeners. That was fun. But I don't think, I think we've only missed one show because nobody showed up. But I don't think I think we've only missed one show because nobody showed up. By the way, benito was working for Buzz Out Loud. When he was listening to Buzz Out Loud, we stole pretty much everybody Tom Merritt, uh, molly Wood, veronica Belmont, um, benito. I'm here, jason.

01:58:07 - Padre (Guest)
Howell, all worked at Buzz Out Loud, all end up working for us at one point as actor at one point or another you know, that's actually what connected me to twit, because back when I was working and living in washington dc, buzz out loud had a call-in show and I sent a video, a correction to molly wood, and so she read that. And then, years later, when jason was working at twit, I submitted a video for the listener call-in, and he remembered me from buzz hello. So he's like, yeah, let's play this. Yeah, buzz. Years later, when Jason was working at twit, I submitted a video for the listener, colin, and he remembered me from Buzz out loud so he's like yeah, let's play this, yeah, buzz out loud is a great show.

01:58:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh and uh and uh. I was actually sad that seen it, uh ended it. But it was a daily.

01:58:44
That was pretty hard to do a daily hard to do, five days a week, yeah yeah, I can imagine we used to do the giz whiz, the Dick T Bartola show, five days a week and that was murder. But you know, I was thinking about that the other day Dick, who still does the GizWiz. He does it with Chad, now another former employee, chad Johnson, who started the OMG Craft show on our network and eventually said I want to go independent, I want to do it on YouTube. We said, yes, he and Chad still do the GizW whiz and I was always amazed that they could come up with a new crappy gadget every day of the week it was kind of kind of mind-boggling I think there's a shortage of crap talking currently there's plenty.

01:59:24
Yeah, yeah, still going strong, uh. And actually somebody in our youtube chat is uh, sir, one sir is saying wasn't the longest show the new year's show? That's a good point. We did two 24-hour shows. This is true new year's eve, two successive years. And then lisa said never again, you're killing the staff. I said, but I like it. They say, yeah, but you aren't doing all the work I.

01:59:50 - Padre (Guest)
I was one of the the stops because I was in Hawaii when that happened, so I had three hours back.

01:59:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That started because Lisa and I were staying at a friend's house on New Year's Eve and we watched the ball drop at 9 pm, because we're in California, 9 pm is midnight East Coast time, and then it was over. We said wait a minute.

02:00:12 - Padre (Guest)
All I remember about that new year's is that when I left for hawaii, you didn't have a tattoo on your ass, and I came back you had a tattoo you know what's weird about tattoos?

02:00:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I still have it. They don't go away. It goes away. I keep waiting for it fade out. So I said, you know, we should do a new Year's Eve show that doesn't end at 9 pm East Coast time. In fact, we should do a New Year's Eve show that starts when the New Year starts in the Solomon Islands or wherever it is, and continues all the way through till the New Year is gone all across the globe, and that's why it was 24 hours.

02:00:49 - Padre (Guest)
That was educational, because that's the year I realized there aren't 24 time zones in the world, because there are some weird offsets 30 minute offsets yeah, so we were.

02:01:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There was one we were doing 15 minutes apart, chamber b. Well, I want, I, I. This is why lisa won't let me do it anymore. I said I want to pop a champagne bottle every time it's new year's eve somewhere and I want a balloon drop every time. So we would have because I wanted to have it's happy new year 24 times, actually turned out like 27 times, um, so we got the cheapest champagne we could get. There were magnums, but they were awful, but they, but you know you could pop them. And uh, and jammer b the first time he attached a bunch of balloons to a rope, that's right, came down, just bring them back up and it was pretty pathetic.

02:01:43
They were just kind of flop. Different. It was different. So the second time, poor jammer b, he went up in the ceiling and he wired. Each balloon had its own little fishing line, hundreds of them across the ceiling, so that he could let them fall. And they did, it was beautiful and then ratchet them back up for the next balloon drop. So we could do them all. And the saddest thing, oh, you did two at a time. Jammer bees in our chat room. The saddest thing is when we left the brick house, jammer b said yeah, we only use that once yeah, oh, a lot of work.

02:02:14 - Padre (Guest)
I I missed that. We did so much experimentation, so much fun house. It was a lot.

02:02:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was also that was the same year that you broke the twit desk doing the Harlem Shake, I believe yes, right, and I could roll that in right now because it lives on on YouTube and I'm just hoping that benito does not roll it in. We'll get a copyright strike. There's that.

02:02:40 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
And then there's the two times that you had exercise balls burst twice under you.

02:02:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One, only one, was on camera. One was on the radio show it was at the cottage.

02:02:51 - Padre (Guest)
It was at the cottage, right? Well, you heard it was boom, it was over.

02:02:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So there's audio of that, but there is video of me, because the second time it happened, yeah, the problem was I can't remember, was it you, john? Somebody said you know those exercise balls, the ultra burst or anti-burst, ultra fit stability balls you buy because I used to sit on a stability ball for years, most of the time. The trainer told me once, sit on a stability ball. So I did. He said you can get those cheaper from china, so we bought a bunch of them cheaper. It was colleen okay, I don't want to incriminate you, jammer b. So colleen bought a bunch of knockoff stability balls which they popped. We never after the second.

02:03:37
The second time I knew it had popped because I I started to sink, yeah, and then and then what I didn't realize is yeah, there's a period of time when you are just going and then after a certain point it goes boom and you're on your yes, you just this was that was at the cottage.

02:03:53 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I think that was just like, for a moment you're on your yes, you just this was that was at the cottage. I think I'm melting, I'm melting and then whoa, where's Leo?

02:03:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
all right, I don't want to take the time to go find those, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna let you roll both of those in, benito, put them in the post. Okay, we'll put them in post. It's great to have father Robert balancer. You can stick around, right. I know it's late at night what is it?

02:04:13 - Padre (Guest)
oh, of course yeah, uh it's uh, it's getting close to 2 am, I think oh, I'm so sorry.

02:04:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, we're gonna keep you up a little later. Alan malventano, it's not quite so late. Where? Where are you located?

02:04:24 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I forgot I'm on the east coast, I'm in kentucky so it's dinner time in kentucky.

02:04:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, um, let me go out and get some k KFC while we take this little break. Okay, do they eat KFC in Kentucky? Not really, you got.

02:04:39 - Padre (Guest)
Popeyes, the original maker of KFC in Kentucky. He has a restaurant that people tell me you actually have to go to. Oh, because he got upset with what KFC did with with his recipe. So he has a restaurant where he actually makes his original recipe. Is he a kentucky colonel? Uh well, originally, yeah, who was, I think, dvorak?

02:05:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
was a kentucky colonel somebody on the twit panel.

02:05:04
You can buy them, I believe. All right, we're gonna take a little break. This show brought to you by NetSuite. You know we talk a lot about the present on this show, but we also talk about the future, and that is a lot harder to know. What does the future hold for business? You ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers, especially now. Rates are going up. Rates are going down. It's going up, no, it's going down. Can somebody please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their operations with NetSuite by Oracle.

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02:06:25
If I had needed this product, it's what I'd use. This is the solution for any enterprise, whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Netsuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seizes your biggest opportunity. Speaking of opportunity, you might want to check out the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. This is free right now at netsuitecom slash twit, and this is something everybody needs to know the CFO's guide to ai and machine learning. What does this mean for your business? The guide is free. Netsuitecom slash twit. N-e-t-s-u-i-t-e. Netsuitecom slash twit. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. Another video I think we might have a podcaster in this one. He's got a pretty good looking setup. This is Patrick. Patrick.

02:07:16 - Fan Video - Patrick (Caller)
Hi, leo, and congratulations. For more than 20 years, you and the Twit Network have been a direct influence on my life in more ways than one, whether it's entertaining me or giving me advice in my everyday job, to helping me with my career success, to giving me the passion to explore new hobbies. It's been absolutely invaluable. To even the occasional chagrin of my wife. You've literally become the voice of a third person in our house. I'm sorry. I've installed speakers everywhere, including in the shower and in 20 other locations, with a whole home speaker system, just to be able to listen to Twit wherever I am and whatever I'm doing. I can honestly say that in these 20 years I've listened to every single episode, and thank you again so much. Here's to 20 years. I've listened to every single episode, and thank you again so much. Here's the 20 years more, and hopefully that's not all 20 years powered by ai leobots thank you, that's patrick foxhaven.

02:08:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He now he must have a youtube channel. Right, he must, he's got three basketballs.

02:08:18 - Padre (Guest)
The enterprise ncc 1701 I see that yes and what looks like a Game Boy, and then up top that's like some sort of scrolling disk optimization screen.

02:08:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, this guy's got a YouTube channel or a podcast or something, right. Although I'll be honest with you, alan, I kind of prefer your set. I like the funky set with a lot of stuff going on.

02:08:41 - Padre (Guest)
It's a real set.

02:08:42 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I got all sorts of tchotchis back there, chachkis, that's it I got, and I got, uh, I mean, this is like, uh, an optane wafer.

02:08:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, oh, wow whatever happened to obtain yeah, I'm still.

02:08:57 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I'm still waiting for the harvard business study to come out on, like the, all the ways that this was simultaneously too early and too late of a technology to to exist, yeah, and um, intel's layer cake memory, right, that was kind of the idea.

02:09:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was stacked or something yeah, cross point it was cross point.

02:09:19 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That's right, it was three-dimensional yeah, yep, yep yep it was three, three, three dimensional and phase. Basically they would never admit to it, but we were so excited.

02:09:29 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, we were so excited by that tech. I remember wanted to see it, yeah yeah yeah and then it didn't really do anything how about dire wolves?

02:09:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
how do you feel about? Are you excited about dire wolves coming back?

02:09:40 - Padre (Guest)
absolutely, because it means we don't have to worry about endangered species anymore, leo, because we can always bring them back, make them again.

02:09:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But scientists back. Scientists were so focused on what they could do, they didn't think whether they should do it. No, this is scientific american saying sorry. Yeah, tell us what. What?

02:09:59 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
it's not really a dire wolf alan they only kind of sort of did it. They took some of the dna and they grafted it into a close well, they said it was a close relative. But even that's up for debate this is the same company.

02:10:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, uh, what is it? It's a terrible name. Colossal bioscience, doesn't that sound like? If you were an evil, you know, mad scientist, you would call it colossal biocent.

02:10:26 - Padre (Guest)
They, they're the ones who did the woolly Mouse right this is the, the genetic equivalent of taking the body of a humvee, putting it on the chassis of a Suburban and saying you can now buy a military vehicle.

02:10:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like it, but it's not it it's a gray wolf whose genome has been edited to give it some dire wolf like traits the dire.

02:10:49 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I mean, listen, there's, there's plenty of novel, like there have been advancements that they have done like, without a doubt, to do to accomplish what they have so far. It's just that their, their pr is spinning it a little pr. They're just spinning it a little too, far. They're just spinning it a little too far.

02:11:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I actually interviewed George Church, who some say is the father of modern genomics, and he has been working and he made a good case for it on bringing back the woolly mammoth. It's not like to create a Jurassic Park, it's to actually preserve the permafrost in the Arctic. So his point was that the permafrost holds a lot of carbon dioxide. It's frozen in there and as it melts, of course it's released into the air and causes greenhouse. It's a greenhouse gas, causes greenhouse effects. Greenhouse it's a greenhouse gas, causes greenhouse effects.

02:11:45
He says that it's been trapped there to some degree because they had giant mammals thousands and thousands of years ago. That would stomp it down. But with the extinction of these giant mammals it's not getting compressed and, combined with climate change, is gonna pose a real problem. So and I there's a triangulation, you can go back and look at it church and is working with a company to to kind of try to recreate this woolly mouse. I think was uh, I don't know if it was a first step, but to try to recreate the woolly mammoth, not because it would be cool although it would be cool, but because they want to repopulate that arctic area to protect it, to protect the permafrost.

02:12:27 - Padre (Guest)
We don't need woolly mammoths to pound down that ice. Just send me and the population of springfield, missouri, do a quick run, it's all good okay anyway.

02:12:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, there's been a lot of mocking of this. Uh, you know, dire wolf, and even I've even seen people mocking the woolly mammoth I.

02:12:48 - Padre (Guest)
I don't want to mock it, though, because it is.

02:12:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is interesting genetics I think there's a point also to be honest, right, yeah?

02:12:53 - Padre (Guest)
it's it's in the pr that it gets ridiculous yeah, I mean they had to.

02:12:57 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
They had to, uh, make genetic, like when you're trying to change dna, usually you have to go in very precisely and you can only tweak like a couple of Chrome. You know a couple of things, right.

02:13:09
But or you're going to have like. Well then they're doing it like in in batches. They're able to do like for every time you unwind the chromosome and pass it through this thing, you can actually make multiple changes per pass now, which is like a pretty cool thing. It's like you're able to do multiple edits for one operation, which lets you change more, and that's that's all I mean. There's benefits that you can that can come from this that extend well beyond just making you know a pseudo, you know pet or whatever you want to call it.

02:13:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, if they had a baby, if they had like miniature.

02:13:50 - Padre (Guest)
William, it's every cute running around the house. I think, well, no, leo, come on, I don't want like a woolly mammoth in some woman's purse.

02:13:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's, that's just. Yeah, it's like baby yoda, it'd be kind of cute, uh. Speaking of science, uh, apparently the new budget the administration is proposing has some fairly significant cuts to NASA's budget not the budget to go to Mars, but to the agency science budget. Five billion out of the people, one of the groups that are saying we're going to have climate change, it's going to be a problem, uh, they oversee planetary science, earth science, astrophysics research and more. Uh, the science programs are going to get in this new budget a 50 cut in funding, which is significant.

02:14:47 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I would like to point out that, uh, I don't know numbers off the top of my head, but the NASA budget is already infinitesimally small compared to extremely.

02:14:55 - Padre (Guest)
Yes, yeah it should be larger, yeah this is what happens when you put an industrialist in charge of an organization that does research. Research is always looking at something that might be useful 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line.

02:15:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a cost center. It's not a profit center.

02:15:12 - Padre (Guest)
Exactly. We reap the benefits for that in future generations. The industrialist is always saying that's wasted money that could be used to do something that we do now. So you know Musk is all about. Let's make rockets now. We know how to make rockets now. We know how to get me to Mars so I can say I'm the man who landed a man on Mars. But that does nothing for space exploration 10, 20, 30 years down the line. And I want NASA to focus on those 10, 20, 30 years down the line that's so does so does the nominee for a director, jared Isaacman.

02:15:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
During his confirmation this week he said I strongly supported NASA's science programs, but traditionally the NASA director spent a lot of energy fighting for more money and not getting it. So we'll see. But that's a little concerning. But we still have the dire wolf, so that's okay.

02:16:03 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, I mean a lot of those tech I mean talking about like benefiting industrialists. It's almost like a short-term versus a long-term play, if you want to just do the thing right now, versus the things that get developed through NASA programs. Since it's a government and public funded thing, it ends up going to the public. Well, what happens? You end up with a bunch of other related industrialists that can take advantage.

02:16:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, and then you also get pork barrel programs like the SLS that are really non-functional but exist only because every member of Congress could send a tiny bit of that budget to their state, to their industries. I mean, I think the sls is literally made, has parts made, in every state of the union.

02:16:48 - Padre (Guest)
Because of that, right it's just nuts and then they wonder why it's so over cost. Right, because you did it in the most inefficient way possible.

02:16:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah yeah, but and this is not, this is not a partisan problem, and this happened in the obama administration. It happened. The biden administration happened the trump administration. This is, this is congress just not wanting to spend money on this kind of stuff it's also the way that we look at public service.

02:17:13 - Padre (Guest)
When we're electing someone for office, especially for for national office, for federal office, we want to know what they're going to bring to us right, and so we they have to. It's like a quarterly report at a company they have to show for me. I got this bill, I got this money. I got this check, this type and whatever it might be coming into my state. Well, that's great if you only care about the next election cycle but do you think we'll ever ever go to Mars?

02:17:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do you think that that's really in the cards?

02:17:42 - Padre (Guest)
uh, I think we will, and then everyone would say okay, we went there, there's no reason to go back. Mars is a horrible Target for space exploration it's it's the worst place to go. It has. It has no magnetosphere, which means that any terraforming, which some people keep saying- oh, well, just terraforming with nukes.

02:17:59
It goes away right. There's no. There's no shielding from radiation. It gets less than 40 of the sunlight that you get on Earth. It has less than one percent of the atmosphere. It has toxic, poisonous perchlorates built into the regolith. It is a horrible Target for terraforming. I mean, much better is the moon. The moon would be a fantastic place for us to go, but it's not sexy like mars padre, didn't you watch total recall?

02:18:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
get your ass to mars, please. Uh, I'm gonna read a poem. This is, um, this is a poem written. Let me see if I can find it. Uh, I really liked it. Dan shepherd in paducah, kentucky, just down the road from you, a piece. Oh yeah, yeah, uh, I don't know if he's a colonel, maybe he is, I don't know. Dan wrote this.

02:18:50
20 years of twit. It mostly rhymes. Back in the day I was tech elite with an ipod so big it doubled as a seat firewire, blazed at 400 pace or so I thought I was young, give me grace. And emac chugged at 800 megahertz downloading twit while making it hurt on 56k. It took all night. One episode, it was a long fight. John c devorek, always contrarian. Kevin rose, a dot-com barbarian. Hodgman cracked jokes. Was was a sage. Jason yelling about funding his next stage through dial-up screeches and wi-fi waves. Leo and Cruz still fill my days from iPods to airpods. Look how we've grown. Yet somehow Leo's inbox is still overblown. Yes, it is, as a matter of fact, so happy 20th twit. You techie delight still keeping me up way too late at night. And if my modem dials up once again, just know, I'm trying to download the tech guy. Amen. Thanks for 20 years, thanks for a great poem. That's really fun. And uh, here's a let me pull this one up a video from paul go ahead paul.

02:20:07 - Fan Video - Paul (Caller)
hey, leo, I'm paul smith and I have been with you guys since the very beginning, since the original name. That copyright prevents us from saying um, revenge of the screen, sa. You guys have made it 20 years. In fact. It's your show that inspired me to go into teaching IT work in high schools and computer science. I currently am a computer science teacher for middle and high school in a small town in Illinois, not too far from Mr Norton, and I teach computer maintenance to high schools as well. I just want to say congratulations and let's hear for many, many more.

02:20:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Those are always the people I love hearing most from are people who were inspired by the work we did on tech TV or here on Twit to get into teaching, to get into technology, and I hear from those people all the time that's really been a blessing, get into teaching, to get into technology and I hear from those people all the time it's uh, that's really been a blessing. Um, I'm really kind of most proud of that. More news to come in just a bit. Alan malventano and father robert have stuck around. You are, you are, uh, troopers, I guess. Well, well done. We. We only have, let me see, uh, we only have five more videos to go. That's all, just all, and two more ads. We're good, we're good, and one more news story.

02:21:32 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
We're lucky, we got padre and it's uh, isn't it palm sunday, oh no, no, it's monday, you have to work.

02:21:38 - Padre (Guest)
It's monday. Oh yeah, I worked all day. Oh oh, robert, you want to?

02:21:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
take a nap during this next ad. Please be my guest. I rested last week. I got a great picture from you, roberto, of uh with your holding your palm. I guess it looked like the church he goes to. They have a photo op when you get your pump. Do churches do?

02:21:59 - Padre (Guest)
that there are actually quite a few, in fact. Uh, the church of san ignacio, which is ours. Um, they have a mirror that you, you go up to and you, you, you put in a euro coin and it turns on the lights. So you, oh my gosh, there is uh there's roberto there you go with his palm cross. You know, the two days that get the highest attendance are ash wednesday and palm sunday, the two days that we give stuff out for some reason.

02:22:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's you, you want to smudge on your forehead? Come on down. We're giving them out for free. Do you have to do that to everybody as they go by you wow. Yeah, that's a lot of work. I mean, I actually fold up the fronds.

02:22:42 - Padre (Guest)
Canonically could I just like sprinkle. Does it throw it into people's faces?

02:22:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, no, don't make me be sacrilegious. You just, you just egging me on here what are you doing for? Easter. What's your Easter going to be like?

02:22:56 - Padre (Guest)
busy. It's going to be right here at the Easter week. Holy Week in the Vatican is just gorgeous. Pretty much any hour of the day there's ethereal music that just comes from St Peter's and it washes over the top of our house, so I hear it in my office. It's amazing this Monday is it begins?

02:23:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yes, well, it started yesterday yeah, or yesterday it began, yeah, we were um we were traveling and I remember being in spain during holy week and they have these parades through the streets. Each church has its own float, usually uh, showing, um, uh, jesus in the cross and, uh, you know, his. What are they? The agony, what do they call it? The, the stations of the cross? Stations of the cross? Uh, it's funny because in spain, jesus is very well dressed and the women around him mary, magdalene and his mother, beautifully dressed in spanish, uh, regalia.

02:23:55
It was quite something and then and these and these floats are very big, very heavy and carried, carried by people, uh, in medieval robes. Basically, it's quite an amazing sight.

02:24:09 - Padre (Guest)
I, I, was fascinated just don't go to the philippines.

02:24:12 - Benito (Announcement)
I was about to ask you I was about to ask if you've done the philippines, because I used to go. That was traumatic. I used to go to san fernando, pampanga every, every holy week and what, what happens.

02:24:22 - Padre (Guest)
If you actually want to see someone really, not virtually and not fake, get crucified, go to the film traumatizing okay it's yeah okay, do they? I don't it's a thing, it's a thing they actually they actually walk down the streets self-flagellating. Some of them are carrying across wearing crowns of thorns so they do the stations it's like parades it's parades of them it's why it's if, if you're into gore and vor, yeah, that would be a good holy week for you. That was not my thing.

02:24:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not my thing no, I'm just seeing if I can find some pictures of these.

02:24:58 - Fan Video - Joe (Caller)
Don't get pictures, no, not at the crucifixions no no of the parades they were.

02:25:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were quite beautiful. Okay, um, I have. I know I have some uh here. Wait a minute, let me. It was uh. We didn't plan the trip for Holy Week, but but once I realized it was Holy Week I thought, oh, this is gonna be fun.

02:25:17 - Padre (Guest)
We're gonna get to see some beautiful uh things we are starting to see what the Jubilee year will do to tourist traffic here, because we're now in tourist season and it's significant.

02:25:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a big bump wow, yeah, yeah, uh, well I I won't.

02:25:33 - Padre (Guest)
And also they're coming after tourists. So if you come to italy, they're coming for you, the inspectors, because they know that tourists make mistakes. Well, because if you get onto a bus, you buy a ticket. You actually have to validate your ticket in the machine, in the bus. People don't know that all the time, that's not oh, I remember that.

02:25:51
No, I didn't know that yes, that's a 50 euro on the spot, fine. If you cannot pay it on the spot, it becomes an 80 euro, fine. If you try to leave the country when you get to the airport, it's a 400 Euro, fine, so don't yeah, so when you get on the bus, validate your ticket correct.

02:26:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And another thing that I didn't know until I got to Italy you order you, you pay for your Cornetto and espresso first at the cashier and then you go to the counter and you show them receipt and you get your cornetto and espresso. It's two separate transactions it depends.

02:26:29 - Padre (Guest)
If it's like my coffee place down here, they know me, so we just order and then we pay at the end oh okay, but most places yeah, you pay up yeah, you pay up, yeah we went to the when you come, I will take you to my place downtown.

02:26:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is the best coffee and the best pastries we went to the famous tazodoro, which is the original home of espresso. They say and yeah, it's a. And then you stand there at your, at the counter and it, it's wonderful, lovely that has spoiled me every time I come home.

02:26:58 - Padre (Guest)
Uh, the coffee. The coffee tastes like water. Now, yeah, I know this is great.

02:27:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe a snob how about let's take a trip to Tasmania? Are you ready? This is Richard he's.

02:27:07 - Fan Video - Richard (Caller)
He's down under watch hey Leo and the team at twit, richard from Tasmania, australia, here, congratulations on 20 years. Such an amazing achievement. I've been following tweet for 19 of those 20 years, when I was living abroad and bought my very first ipod and got me through lots of commutes and work days and since then it's got me through many more and workouts and chores. So thank you for everything and here's to another 20 more thank you and you wanna you want.

02:27:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you want to go to tasmania, you know how you're gonna go. You're gonna go in an airplane, maybe with the stork hey, leo and the twit team.

02:27:48 - Fan Video - Stork (Caller)
I just wanted to say congratulations on your anniversary. You all have been a constant source of entertainment and consistency throughout the last some 20 000 flight hours of mine. I've been watching and listening since the tech tv days and then now into the podcast era. I Love everything that you do. Thanks for everything.

02:28:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Isn't that great. What is that plane? Do you know, alan? Can you tell it's not a jet. It looks like it's a turboprop, maybe.

02:28:12 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Don't ask me, I can identify a submarine.

02:28:16 - Padre (Guest)
I'm trying to. I don't know the airport, it does not look familiar.

02:28:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It doesn't look familiar. It looks from it's. This looks like a regional. Uh, it could be like a commercial. He might be at the commercial tournament. Yeah, well, maybe, yeah, I don't know.

02:28:28 - Padre (Guest)
Anyway, and he calls himself the stork yeah, that's not a seven, six, seven, seven. Yeah, that's not a big one. It's not a bullet. No, it's not a jet.

02:28:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like a turbo, proper regional. I wonder if he delivers babies. If he calls himself the stork, maybe that's the baby plane oh care, flights for babies maybe okay.

02:28:44
Uh, let's take a little break. I do have some more news, but I have lots of other things to do. First, let's talk about our great friends at Express VPN, our sponsors for this segment of the 20th anniversary twit. I've been using Express VPN as my VPN, not for 20 years, but for quite some time. Let me give you an example why you'd want to use it.

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02:31:45
I think I've been using them for about five years now, have you? Yeah, yeah, I'm not kidding about the free SFO Wi-Fi. Uh, every time in an airport I want to use that Wi-Fi right, but I'm always.

02:31:56 - Padre (Guest)
It's nerve-wracking it's amazing how many I get to fall for this. When I do flights out of the united states, I will create an ap with the name of the free ap from the airport. That's what really worries me right.

02:32:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why would you do that, robert?

02:32:12 - Padre (Guest)
I just want to see how many devices auto connect. It's always about a dozen in the plane. It's like you, don't you? You honestly think that 10 000 feet in the air away from the airport, you're still getting that wi-fi signal?

02:32:24 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
hmm oh, you mean you're on the plane and you say free, free airport, wife. Yeah, everybody has their phone.

02:32:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It'll be like their phone is automatically yeah it may say yeah, maybe set to automatically join it yeah, yeah, precisely so. That's another thing forget those networks you're right.

02:32:39 - Padre (Guest)
So all I do is I have my laptop that's connected to the plane wi-fi and I run a little cane enable and I'm basically the man in the middle and it works every single time, sigh.

02:32:53 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
He's a white hat.

02:32:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, he's a white hat. That's the good news. He never does anything bad with your information. You see that priest on row 17? He's hacking you.

02:33:06 - Padre (Guest)
Row 17.

02:33:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm in like 35, 36 leo, come on you don't get to sit up front huh, not anymore. So, um, I'm glad to see, alan, that you're working in ai for a soledad. That's very good. I prefer to work in A1 myself. Here we go. Linda McMahon yes, she's a McMahon. She's the wife of what is it? Vince McMahon? Vince McMahon, vince McMahon of WWE and, very nicely, the Secretary of Education in the United States. She was speaking at an Arizona State Summit for Educators in the united states. She was, uh, speaking, uh, at a, uh, arizona state summit for educators, speaking to teachers. She's the new secretary of education. Uh, she said. Uh, she was talking about a school system that's going to start making sure that first graders or even pre-Ks have A1 teaching in every year. Now, even if she was saying AI, should first graders or kindergartners be taught about AI at that age? I don't think so.

02:34:17 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Listen, leo, I can't even think about what you just said, because as soon as she said A1, I for one welcome our stakes off.

02:34:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So far, really then she said now that maybe she was. You know, it was a slip. Right, it was a slip. A1. No, she said it again. Kids are sponges, she said. They just absorb everything. It wasn't that long ago that it was. We're going to have internet in our schools now.

02:34:39 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Let's see a1 and how that can be helpful and there, if you watch the video, there were two other adults sitting across from this woman and neither one of them corrected her.

02:34:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, no, because you don't correct people in the Trump administration. I don't think they knew.

02:34:55 - Padre (Guest)
I don't think they knew. Honestly, they might have been like talking about a one.

02:35:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, heinz knew what she was talking about. They immediately posted on Instagram.

02:35:05 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Instagram, that's the best oh, agree, best to start them early.

02:35:11 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, that's great with a picture of a1 steak sauce next to them you know if, if they had any marketing budget, they would spin up a division of Heinz that does AI, but they call it a1 a1 in artificial intelligence systems, I mean free press repress.

02:35:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you think she actually thought it was a? That was a slip right?

02:35:35 - Padre (Guest)
no, or she's reading a multiple times. She did it multiple times. It means she doesn't understand what it is.

02:35:41 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
And she just read saying kids should be taught it yeah, she just read about it and she thought that it was a one in print.

02:35:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, this is the secretary of education.

02:35:51 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Well, listen, merit-based Leo. It's all merit-based these days, right, right, right right, uh, be careful with your chrome.

02:36:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Researchers have uncovered dozens of sketchy chrome extensions. The sad thing is they have four million installs, yep, and many of these extensions were featured on the chrome store, the extension store.

02:36:22 - Padre (Guest)
I have removed all extensions, all, I think stop.

02:36:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I don't. I've removed Chrome. It's the first thing I did. I still use chromium, I use Edge, so yeah, yeah, but you can't use a an ad blocker on Edge right because of that manifest you can. You can yes you can't use ublock origin. You can use a somewhat stripped down use other ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I uh what I moved to and I like it. I would recommend it.

02:36:49 - Padre (Guest)
The zen browser, which is a firefox fork I tried this after the last time I was on and actually it's nice, it's very nice it's early, it's beta yeah, well, it reminds me of what chrome was like before it started getting bloaty right, and I wonder if that's just the life cycle of a browser. They always start out fast and sleek and slick and then it's called, and dare I say it, to a priest in shitification yes, corey doctorow was right uh, and that's what's happened to the chrome browser.

02:37:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's when a company uh, it's a stage in the company's life, usually the end stage in a company's life as corey defines it. You know, when a company, it's a stage in the company's life, usually the end stage in a company's life as Corey defines it. You know, when a company starts like Amazon starts, they want to build customers, right, so they keep prices low. They say we're all about the customer. Then they get enough customers and then it's going to be all about the businesses.

02:37:39
Same thing happened at Amazon. They brought in all the third-party sellers. Now, by the way, this is going to bite them in the butt because many of these sellers are in China and basically, what's going to happen to Timu, Shein, Alibaba, anybody selling on Amazon from China? With the tariffs? You can't, You're out of business and that's at least half of, I think, Amazon's business. But the third stage is when you stop extracting, you stop caring about your customers, you stop caring about your businesses and you just extract as much value as you can. And it's clear Amazon's in that stage, Google is in that stage. It's kind of sad.

02:38:24
By the way you want one more in shitification story? I don't know if this is true. Hit me it's from carl bode's writing about this in tech dirt. You know that vizio was bought by walmart. Walmart uh has been trying to and shit, if I mean leverage uh, standby mode, they they call it scenic mode and vizio says walmart says it's supposed to display relaxing ambient content when your tv is idle for a period of time, which vizio claims adds to the environment of your home or office. Well, I don't know if you saw this on reddit, but one Vizio uh owner was annoyed to leave his room and come back to a loop of Kristi Gnome saying if you're an immigrant, get out.

02:39:15
Oh my goodness over and over again apparently Vizio is selling Max, this time as ads that's.

02:39:23 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That's not very soothing content for my television no no, like flowers and rivers and yeah and stuff. This was on red.

02:39:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I left the tv idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about half an hour I started hearing christy gnome praising trump and telling immigrants to get out of america over and over. I went into check and caught this video looping three more times before it went back to the nature clips.

02:39:48 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That's very 1984 now what's funny is where did those televisions come from? China, it's circular, so there's going to be less of those televisions.

02:40:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, there'll be far fewer, oh yeah, far fewer um, I you know can you get a dumb tv now?

02:40:08 - Padre (Guest)
is there any manufacturer that sells a dumb tv?

02:40:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you can buy a computer monitor. You can buy a computer monitor but it's going to be more expensive, right for the square footage expensive.

02:40:18
Yeah, I was blown away I I went to costco the other day and they're selling. I went to Costco the other day and they're selling 85 inch TVs for 800 bucks. Of course, yeah, oh, yeah. But the reason they can do that is because those TVs spy on you. They show you ads. Plus, they tell advertisers what you're watching, what you're doing. They all have cameras built in so that you can zoom from the TV as one does.

02:40:45 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I have a. I have all of the samsung endpoints for the tv related things blocked at my router that's the way to do it.

02:40:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've got a pie hole that kills all their uh, their dns queries yeah, that's why I actually don't care whether I can run you block origin anymore, because I block it all upstream, upstream yeah, and we don't use any of that.

02:41:04 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Smart tv stuff is only a backup. It's uh, you know I've got shield pros on all the sets you know.

02:41:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The problem is I have, unfortunately I have a bunch of samsung tvs and yeah, they, even if you're running an apple tv, it's very hard to you have to go through the samsung interface to get to the apple tv. Right, you can't just have it come up. Unless you figure that out, I would like to have it come up on the. I don't want to see any of the samsung crap. I don't think you can, and I definitely now don't want to see any of the vizio crap.

02:41:34 - Padre (Guest)
Wow, there's a I I had to set up um the tv for my father because he's mostly bed bound now and I wanted to make sure he could access everything but the tv. And I wanted to use a fire stick and I wanted to use an Apple TV, but because those functions are also built into the TV itself, he keeps choosing the wrong services. Yeah, that's right finally, I just had to give up and just set it up on the TV, even though it's horrible.

02:41:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah it's slow, the apps aren't up to date, but it's easy to use. My same with my mom who's got alzheimer's um, you know she's got. I bought her a tcl with roku built in. That's exactly what my dad has. It's a lot easier for her to use. She doesn't have a separate thing.

02:42:13 - Padre (Guest)
She doesn't have to switch hdmi ports or any of that and I went up and down the aisles at costco just looking for any tv that didn't have any smart features and not a single one none this is in made real.

02:42:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's terrible. All right, uh, let me play. Uh, I got a great video for you. Can I do one more? I got two more, I'll do. I'll do one more. This one I think you're gonna enjoy. Uh, this video it's.

02:42:41 - Fan Video - Tom (Caller)
Tom Britton from freak show, intel and the Dangerous Circus. I'm Galeo. It's Tom Britton from Freak Show and Tell and the Dangerous Circus. I'm in my little Chicago rehearsal space tonight so you get to see a little behind the scenes with non-theatrical lighting. I don't remember how I first found the TWIT podcast 2005,. You only had a handful of episodes and there weren't a lot of podcasts. So I think I listened to all the podcasts on earth, yours included. Since then I'm a member of Club Twit and I enjoy a lot of the contents of the Twit family of programming. So I want to tell you a very heartfelt happy anniversary from all the Twit fans on earth. So you you make a wish Me. I'm going to blow out the candle for you. Happy anniversary, leo, doing the Twit baby.

02:43:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, look at this fire eaters fire Tom from freak show and tell. That is unbelievable, isn't that great, you know that's. The other thing that's amazing about this is the not only all over the world, but all work, walks of life, all kinds of people. It's just such a privilege, uh, to be able to do this and to have done this for 20 years. I really appreciate it.

02:43:45 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
One more ad, one more story. Back in the day, you were calling them netcasts.

02:43:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that was a mistake. So on the very second Podcast Expo this must have been 2007, I got up on stage, did the keynote. I said why are we calling them podcasts? Why that's because they run on an iPod. They won't always run on an iPod. Someday there'll be other ways to listen to podcasts besides iPods. Plus, apple owns the trademark. Do you think that's a good idea? Can we call them something else? What about this? They're? They're broadcasts over the internet. How about we call them netcasts? And oh, it has this wonderful connotation of your casting a net to bring in people and nobody, everybody hated it.

02:44:31 - Padre (Guest)
I called it for years. It was a good I I still love hearing that netcasts you love from people you trust.

02:44:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean come on only on the old shows, because Jerry Wagley, who was our chief of marketing, I, was at a podcast expo about four years ago. I guess they've changed it to the podcast movement, which is a terrible name, but anyway. Uh, and we were at the podcast movement and jerry said can we please, can we please just call them podcasts? And what was amazing is I I guess in that session where we recorded netcasts you love, we also had them say podcasts you love. So we were able to edit it and we've been a podcast network ever since and guess what we're there today, leo, there's no more ipods, so yeah, exactly.

02:45:16
So what is a podcast?

02:45:18 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
it's listen. It's the same reason that when you save something in word, it's a little floppy disk yeah, yeah, I guess it is.

02:45:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, there's some people who made a retronym. It stands for play on demand or something like that. But I know, just trying to make it work, but I gave up because people they call it a podcast. They understand what a podcast is. They don't understand what a netcast is, so I gave up. I was right, though.

02:45:41 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I'm just saying there's an alternate timeline somewhere where everybody's calling them netcasts what?

02:45:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do you call it when it's on YouTube? Do you call it a podcast YouTube does? That makes no sense.

02:45:51
Yeah, I know no, now everything's shorts, shorts, deep shorts, that's all shorts it's true all right, we're gonna see Padre in his shorts in just a moment, but first, no, we're not. No, I'm just kidding, that's a tease, uh. But first a word from our sponsor and a company. I am very proud to be representing bit warden, the trusted leader in passwords, but also pass keys. Yes, I manage all my pass keys in bit warden and I'm loving it, and they even manage secrets, so it's a great way to send documents encrypted to keep track of your api keys and your secrets, without uploading them to github by accident. How many times that happened, right? No, you gotta have bit warden. With more than 10 million users across 180 countries, over 50 000 businesses as well use bit warden. You know I don't always think of it as a. I think I know it's great for individuals because it's open source, it's free for life, but it's great for businesses too. In fact, it's consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction by G2, recognized as a leader in software reviews. Data quadrant. Bitwarden continues to protect 50,000 businesses worldwide.

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02:47:50
Open source means they move fast, constantly adding great new features. They just did a survey. They've new findings from Bitwarden highlight get this 65% of all enterprises more than half still rely solely on passwords. They're not using single sign-on. They're not using pass keys. That's not good. With a password, you know people are writing them on a Post-it note, put them on their monitor. Password management is cited in the same survey as the top IAM challenge for 35% of organizations. Only 21% implement passwordless authentication. We can fix that. Enterprises face ongoing credential security risks and I don't want to call bitwarden a password manager because it's so much more. It supports sso, it supports paskies, it supports passwordless.

02:48:40
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02:49:28
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02:50:17
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02:51:19 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Before you move to that so Bitwarden, one thing I like to commend them on is built into their official client is also if you are self-hosting your own service.

02:51:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you're an individual, you can self-host it. That's right.

02:51:31 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yes, which I'm self-hosting across all my devices.

02:51:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's excellent third-party servers. There's a Rust server. Do you use that one or do you use the Bitwarden?

02:51:40 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
It's just a Docker container.

02:51:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just a docker container, it's just vault wars. It's easy like that. Yeah, yeah, a container on my synology nas. You both use it and you both host your own vaults. Yeah, that's trust. No one bitward. Yeah, yep, yeah, troy hunt was just getting off a plane. He was on a long flight.

02:51:57
He was a little jet lagged when he got an email that purported to be from intuituit MailChimp saying oh, we had to pause your newsletter because of all the spam. If that was an error, click this button and fix it. And Troy said I was jet lagged, I wasn't paying attention, I clicked the button and then here's the interesting thing he said I wasn't worried, I had two-factor. He used the two-factor. But here's the thing Of course it was a phishing site. It wasn't MailChimp, and nowadays, because they automate these phishing attacks, they could reuse his credentials and the two-factor. Within 30 seconds they stole his mailing list. Now, to his credit, troy, because he runs have I've been pwned? Said I've been pwned. I apologize, my mailing list got out. This is how it happened. But it just shows you if it can happen to the guy. I mean, he's a security guru.

02:52:55 - Padre (Guest)
If it can happen to him, it can happen to anybody never click the button don't click the button authentication redirects are relatively rare, though, so that was a yeah, extremely, it was a good attack, but it was probably a spear phishing attack.

02:53:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, they knew where they were going with that and they knew troy would probably have two fa and sad, not bad okay that doesn't happen though now I gotta try that son of a. Do you still have the flipper zero I gave you I do I do.

02:53:27 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That thing has become extremely useful um I need to pick one of those up ever increasingly digitized uh area of rome they call it the multi-tool device for geeks, ostensibly.

02:53:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean you can go through customs with it, because it's got a little game, I don't know, it's like a snake game or something on there not anymore.

02:53:45 - Padre (Guest)
They know to look for it, oh yep. So when I when I travel with that, I have to pack it into, uh, into checked luggage oh, because they'll.

02:53:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They'll say oh, you got a flipper zero they'll take it yeah your cyber buddy. They uh just announced a new product. What is it? I gotta find it.

02:54:03 - Padre (Guest)
It's not on their site yeah, it's one of a new hat yeah, yeah, no, no, no it's not for the flipper zero.

02:54:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's, oh, oh yeah it's an interesting new product, but what is it? But they have an infrared transceiver, they have bluetooth, they have everything on this thing, um yeah there's all sorts of little add-ons for it yeah, I didn't want to. I did not want to own one, to be honest. Uh, I thought this is dangerous. I may have been on a.

02:54:35 - Padre (Guest)
Royal Caribbean cruise not too long ago and with an add-on I was able to clone the rfid on the cups that give oh, no I may. May have not saying I did that. I may have did you hear that it was actually?

02:54:54 - Fan Video - Nate (Caller)
really hard, it was just a non-standard rfid tag on their other cups.

02:54:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was really hard. Yeah, uh, flipper zero now makes the busy bar. This is not a security product. It's a little expensive 250 bucks. It's a little thing. You tap you can have it say on air see, I was thinking of getting it for that. Uh, you can have it say you're busy. The idea is you put it on your desk. This is, if you're still, if you did a return to office, right? Uh and uh, let me see, I think it's a kickstarter you know what?

02:55:27 - Padre (Guest)
it sounds kind of uh silly.

02:55:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But oh no, you need this, that's yeah, I would actually get one of those. Yeah, yeah yeah, so it's. Uh, no, that's not it. Let me see if I can find it. I hate it when they have a story about something and they don't put a link.

02:55:50 - Padre (Guest)
Now what I would really want to do is create a project, of course, using my 3D printer and a couple of Arduinos, to when I engage the busy function. If someone stays in front of my desk for more than three seconds, it directs a spray of compressed air at them. That is a busy bar.

02:56:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It has a Pomodoro timer in it, it has an api, so you can have it, say or do anything, but the ostensible reason to have it is so that you can have it on your desk and it can shoo people away and it can say come back. It'll actually say come back in 20 minutes or something like that. 250 bucks a little much how much?

02:56:26 - Padre (Guest)
but the flipper zero was cheaper than that, right yeah, well, I mean it was when it came out, but then it became so popular that I mean they were, there was a secondary market for them, don't you?

02:56:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
love, that's a little timer, cool, I like. Yeah, um, it's a it's but it but it can be programmed to say on air, they call it a productivity.

02:56:46 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That's a decent-sized device, though it's got two screens on it. Yeah, for $250, that's actually not a bad price. It's high, but you know, yeah, I get it it makes a little more sense, seeing the size of it.

02:57:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look, somebody's walking up to him and he's busy, so he hits the timer Go away On air. That's walking up to him and he's busy, so he hits the timer Go away On air. That's a good one. On a call, you can actually have it using the API.

02:57:12 - Padre (Guest)
Integrate it with the software so that when you're on a Zoom call you can have a little sign that says I'm on a call right now, you know who would have loved this Burke, because he was always trying to flip on that little light that he had set up to say shut up, shut up when we were being too loud.

02:57:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, remember that in the old, in the brick house. Yep, I see the whole thing. I don't think he really got it. My idea was to have an open studio so there would be a commotion, so there'd be a live place. So I didn't mind that people were talking that was the idea always on streaming.

02:57:42
That was great, but broadcast people like burke said no, no, there shouldn't be any noise. I remember we first, when we first went on the air from the brick house, I got a irate email. You know the living room set, we had the camera in a corner facing us and behind us was the whole studio, including the, the windows out to the street and stuff, so you would see everything going on. That was my intent. I wanted to feel like a lively, like a maker space, like what you're going to build. And somebody sent me an irate email saying I just saw somebody walk by behind you as you're doing iPad today with a spoon, like they're going to lunch. How dare you? I said they were.

02:58:23 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, I did an episode of Before you Buy where some guy walked past the window without a shirt in his underwear.

02:58:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nobody would do that, would they? I have a bad habit.

02:58:40 - Padre (Guest)
Benito can find that episode.

02:58:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes.

02:58:44 - Padre (Guest)
I don't. What was I drunk? What was episode? Yes, I don't. What was I drunk? What was that? I don't remember. I just remember looking at the monitor going is that? Is that? Oh my god, what's happening? Right?

02:58:56 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
now I was keeping up I do miss the vibe of the cottage, though. Where it was it was sort of like um, what's that radio show with the dude with the hair, howard stern yeah, it was. It had a kind of a howard stern vibe early on, yeah, because you were at the desk and then you'd have people would come into the studio but they'd be sitting at the couch and right the camera up in the corner was a little weird, yeah, yeah no, but it was. It worked. Right, it was, it was cool.

02:59:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, now I can't. I can't have anybody in the studio. It's too small, it doesn't have any room for anybody, which is sad to me. We set it up, you know, I set it up so I'd have multiple cameras and all that. Yeah, but uh I mean, that's not, I was gonna put people in that chair, but there's a teddy bear there now and you can't you can.

02:59:41 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
You can squeeze like one or two people in there, probably yeah, I mean that's why we got three cameras.

02:59:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's no need for three cameras. I don't know I've I'm still. It's a work in progress. All right, one last video and then one last story, and then we will be out of here. You guys have been very patient. This is from tony. I was doing an alphabetical order by last, by first name tony, give us your story hello, leo and team twit.

03:00:12 - Fan Video - Tony (Caller)
Congratulations on 20 years. That is a quite a miraculous milestone in podcasting. Um, there are many things I'd love to say to you, leo, but I'm going to keep this short. First of all, congratulations. Happy birthday Made it to 20 years.

03:00:31
You are really the reason I am doing what I do. There's a couple things I do. I have a website, I have a blog, I have a book, I have all kinds of things, and it really all started back at Tech TV Days all kinds of things and it really all started back at tech TV days and I was sitting in my living room watching you on call for help, showing all these great applications and things that you could do on a Mac, and it really convinced me to go out and buy a Mac. I can't even remember, but I bought a program that you demonstrated on how to create a website and I went out and created a website for my passion, which was Disney DisneyByTheNumberscom and then watching your podcast and I went out and created a podcast.

03:01:17
So I have to credit you with the things that I do as well, that I do as well, because without Tech TV, without Call for Help and all the great shows there with Kevin Rose and Amber Mack and everybody back in the day, I probably wouldn't be doing these fun things that I do today. So thank you very much for your time, your effort, everything that you put into this. I know it's time-consuming, I know it doesn't just maculously appear on uh, an RSS feed. So thank you for everything that you do and congratulations on 20 years and I hope you do it for another 20 more thank you Tony.

03:01:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you Disney by the numbers very successful Disney podcast. We've had people. I've had, uh, people on the show who did the voice of Porky Pig, uh, and I had a Disney Illustrator do this, uh, some years ago. This was a Mickey. Uh, there's a lot of Disney geeks. It's an interesting overlap between Disney and twit. I don't know, I don't know what that is. I guess everybody loves Disney and a small portion of the Venn diagram also loves Twit. Maybe that's what it really is. Anyway, thank you Tony. Thanks to everybody who sent letters and videos and I think I've got everybody in. I hope I did. Thanks to all the people who made Twit what it is after all these 20 years. And, father Robert, it's been a pleasure knowing you. Somebody asked in the discord um, does robert ever age? Because you don't. You don't not allowed to I'm contractually obligated not to yeah, like fine wine.

03:02:57 - Padre (Guest)
Yes, it feels like we've we've perfected telomere therapy here in the vatican. I think that might be it uh.

03:03:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Roberto found the video of me on my ball listen to that this is oh yeah, oh dear. I punched a hole in my ball I think you changed the can't.

03:03:17 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Did you change the camera? Terrible, change the camera. There you go. That's it.

03:03:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought I was going to sink slowly. I'm sinking. As it turns out it doesn't. It was a slow leak.

03:03:35 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
It's the best I watched that live and I almost fell out of my chair.

03:03:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what happens when you buy cheap chinese balls.

03:03:48 - Padre (Guest)
Well, good news, those balls aren't cheap anymore, ladies and gentlemen they had a whole rack of them at the, at the brick house.

03:03:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We did remember, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I stick with these ultra fits. Anti-burst, that's the key stability ball. I recommend it. Anti-burke stability ball. Somebody also found I might as well play it oh the uh, the video of the harlem shuffle, where this is in the brick house, where, uh, I do you remember this fad? It was a very brief fad where people would be in an office or whatever and then they would um, they would just burst into um song and dance and they would often wear wear like horse heads and different animals. Oh, yeah, yeah, and then, uh, so I thought, well, we should, we should do the harlem shuffle here in the studio. But what I didn't know oh gosh, you know what? There's so many great posts in here I'm having trouble finding. What I didn't know was, uh, that I couldn't really safely stand on that table so here we are.

03:04:54 - Padre (Guest)
This is a weight-bearing table no, this is dvorak.

03:04:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
On the far left, uh, rafe needleman. To my right, uh, jason snell. Is there? Somebody's on the Avatar? This is in the Brickhouse. We thought we'll do our version of the Harlem Shake and, uh, there's a kid in the robot head. That was from the OMG craft show.

03:05:20
And then and then we all get up and do the thing and then that's the piece of nephew, and then we all get up and do the thing with the horse's head and but I made the mistake of stepping on the table and I am not exactly, uh, lightweight and I broke it. Burke did fix it. Ah, burke did fix it. Uh, he, burke did fix it. He put Anyway, that was a long time ago, it was a whole thing, it was a whole thing.

03:05:53 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
The audio version of the ball burst. The first ball burst yes, I think that was when you had. It was one of the better grade ones, let's just say. And so. It was unexpected. So, even though you had the hile mic and it was audio only that's the one where you can actually you heard it.

03:06:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can hear it went, boom it was just there, was just like that was in the cottage upstairs.

03:06:16
That was the old old place. From justin I've been listening since the revenge of the screensavers. That was the very first Twit Twit1. That was on a desktop PC at my mom's house when I was in high school. Pretty sure I was using the Windows version of iTunes back then. I don't know, I don't think so. One of my highlights was getting to meet Leo at the Eastside Studios. My wife planned a trip to Petaluma into our California road trip. Planned a trip to Petaluma into our California road trip. I even remember smashing my elbow into the side of the set, which made a stronger memory. Yeah, proud to be a Club Twit member. Big thank you to Leo, all of the hosts and all of the behind the scenes staff. From Justin. Thank you, justin. Bill wrote.

03:07:00
I watched Leo on the screensavers on tech tv and was heartbroken when it ended. But I kept up with leo and was excited when the podcast was announced. I remember downloading the first episode and loading it into my old panasonic mp3 player that you plugged into your computer, yep, and dragged songs onto like a thumb drive. I'm sure that leo would agree that none of us could have known back then where this journey would take us. I do. It's been a mind blower.

03:07:27
I've enjoyed the Twit Network from before it was a network through the present day. The hosts have informed, inspired and entertained me for the last 20 years. The shows come into my life multiple times every week and I still look forward to each one, just like that impromptu first episode. Since I first started listening and watching, my daughters have been born and grown to adulthood. I've changed jobs and houses and towns. Your shows have been one constant in my life. No matter where I've gone or what I've been through, twit has been in my life. Happy birthday, twit. You've been a wonderful gift to me. Here's hoping for another 20 years. Thank you, bill. Thank you, bill. That's wonderful gift to me. Here's hoping for another 20 years. Thank you, bill. Thank you, bill. That's really great. Oh, here's one more from the farm hi and welcome to the farm.

03:08:13 - Fan Video - Michael (Caller)
My name is michael smith. I'm an ipe professional in south carolina and an avid twit tv fan. My favorite shows are twit back break, weekly security now and my all-time favorite windows, weekly. Uh. Pictured my liver and my wallet. Both, thank you, but my palate doesn't. And this. This is where I listened to my twit podcast who would have thought we'd have two tractor videos.

03:08:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now that's a deer right and that looks like. In fact, that's how he knew it was a harrow. He's also driving a harrow. Honey and eggs. Wait a minute, what are you up to?

03:09:08 - Fan Video - Michael (Caller)
But seriously, leo, congratulations on 20 years. 20 years, that is amazing and uh, I'll see you on your next podcast. Come join me on youtube. Let's see homestead see you there.

03:09:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're almost as old as his tractor. I love it. Thank you so much. That is. That is awesome. So that's a 60-year-old tractor that he restored A John Deere no 5 sickle bar mower.

03:09:33 - Benito (Announcement)
I think we can use AI to make that pullout turn into the Twit logo in the grass. I bet you we can make that happen.

03:09:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you can do, that would be hysterical Anthony, get on it. Get on it, Anthony.

03:09:47
Yeah, he gives us permission. Jammer B's been posting uh memories uh in our Discord. That's the place to be if you want to keep the party going. Our Club twit Discord uh is available, uh to everybody who's a member of the club for seven dollars a month. Uh, and we we brought back I'm very pleased to say the annual plan by popular demand, mostly by demand from my wonderful wife and our executive producer, lisa uh. So she demanded it and we brought it back. So if you want to join the club seven bucks a month or 84 a year you get ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the discord. You wish you were there right now, because it's really kind of a party going on in there, with all of the folks showing pictures and so forth. Uh, please join the club. Twittertv club twit father robert balisier, the digital jesuit. Thank you for staying up late with us on holy week. You're going to be. This is a tough week for you. I've completely forgot.

03:10:43 - Padre (Guest)
I am so grateful to you no, I mean I wouldn't have missed this. I mean twit's a big part of my life, leo. Oh I'm so. Any chance I get I'll come back.

03:10:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you're a darn big part of our life and I love your new plan, which we won't say anything about in public, but I love.

03:10:57 - Padre (Guest)
It may take a few years to materialize because I have to get permission to leave rome first, but he responds to a higher authority I do, I do, but once it's built, I mean, there's definitely going to be a studio there among the maker space.

03:11:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I hope so. I really look forward to that. Uh, thank you, robert, for being here, thanks to samuel bull salmon, who was also with us but had to depart a little bit early, and, of course, alan malventano. You tried, like the dickens, to get patrick norton to make it.

03:11:26 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
He couldn't I tried he was. He was half in, like for the first. When I first asked him. He's like, oh yeah, yeah, I could probably do that. And then like a few days went by and he was like oh, no, that's that's about what I that's.

03:11:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He tried, he tries and I love him for that. Uh, I also asked kevin Rose. He couldn't make it, but you know what I'm glad I had you guys on this is this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. And really, this show our 20th anniversary show was really all about honoring the fabulous audience members of our community the twit army forever.

03:12:01
Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it. Thanks to all of you for joining us. Uh, next it'll next time it'll be easter sunday. I don't know if we're going to be able to get anybody to show up for for that. Uh, we'll see.

03:12:12 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
It'll be interesting I think there were some names on the are there some names on there.

03:12:16 - Padre (Guest)
Are we going to roll the credits you've got? You've got a full schedule.

03:12:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah yeah, okay, good, we got a full full schedule.

03:12:21 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
You got at least a couple in there.

03:12:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, next week we hope you'll be here Sundays 2 to 5 pm, as we we always have been on Sunday, for some reason. Uh, I guess it just made sense 2 to 5 uh pm. Pacific, that's 5 to 8 pm. Eastern time. It's the middle of the gosh darn night. Vatican time uh, 2100 UTC.

03:12:43
Uh, we invite you to watch live if you'd like. We are on seven, eight different platforms. If you include discord for our club members, there's also twit uh, twitchtv, youtubecom, xcom, tiktok, facebook, linkedin and kick. Eight different live streams. And if you're chatting with us in the live streams, I see all the different chats. So we love having you, but you don't have to join us live. We, we absolutely have room for you. Uh, uh, anytime that you want to watch, just download a copy of the show from the website twittv. There's also a YouTube channel. You can go there at any time and watch the youtube videos youtubecom, slash twit. All of our shows have a dedicated youtube channel and, of course, after the fact, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player and listen whenever you gosh darn want to audio or video.

03:13:37
I'm going to roll a list of the 389 people who have appeared on this show and say great having you all. It's been a wonderful 20 years and, as a number of the videos said, yeah, let's go for another 20 more. Why not? We're still having fun, right? Thanks for joining us. As I've said, for the last 20 years, another twit is in the can and now all the people who've made this show possible. Thank you everybody. Have a great night. Here's to 20 more. Thank you everybody. What a pleasure this was.

03:14:12
Uh worked out better than I actually thought it would work out. Good, it was really fun. Yeah, really was fun. Uh, because you know it was nice. We had a great variety. Some really, there's a lot of different interesting stuff. It worked out very well. Natalie I mean, yeah, remember natalie. Yeah, she, she went off and ran off with uh. Clayton um luria remember callie lewis? There's so many names on here, right? So many wonderful people. I think this is in the order caris switcher, in the order of the number of times they appeared on the show, correct? I? I think what we got here.

03:14:45 - Padre (Guest)
Now if you could find when we get down to one like the one-off guest.

03:14:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll tell you when one happens, because it'll be up Adam's five, that's five right. Yeah, emily's five, lexi maybe, no, nope.

03:15:05 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Are these in quasi-chronological?

03:15:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, they're in order of number of appearances. So now we're at one.

03:15:13 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, okay, yeah, Sherilyn has only been on once. Yeah, I think we're on one oh.

03:15:17 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I didn't see my name.

03:15:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All these people have appeared on one show.

03:15:23 - Padre (Guest)
And it's a long list. Yeah, I think you guys missed me because I've been in three or four show and it's a long list.

03:15:26 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Joe's only done one. I think you guys missed me because I've been in three or four.

03:15:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You didn't see your name.

03:15:31 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Was I in there.

03:15:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're in here.

03:15:35 - Padre (Guest)
You were on the third episode of Twiet.

03:15:37 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Computers never make mistakes. Was I on the third episode of Twiet? You were on the third episode of Twiet. Padre man, I felt like I was not filling large enough shoes every of twilight. Huh, you're on the third episode of twilight. Padre man, you, you, I. I had to like I felt like I was not filling large enough shoes every time I was on twilight, because you would just shower me with just way too much praise isn't it just like?

03:15:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
isn't padre?

03:15:56 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
fantastic it's just like I felt, like I was like the, the king of freaking everything after well we have to sell you up.

03:16:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean you are a submariner, a nuclear, a nuclear engineer and an intelligence you used to contract to the nsa. You have some pretty hot damn credentials there, boy I've had.

03:16:15 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I've had a few careers you've done a few things.

03:16:18 - Padre (Guest)
You're my ssd guru, that's true those things he used to tell me that you need to make your guests shine. You have to make them comfortable.

03:16:27 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
That was the whole point.

03:16:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah. You don't have to kiss their ass, but you come pretty darn close.

03:16:34 - Padre (Guest)
No ass kissing involved. It was all about letting them express their expertise. That was the whole thing. I don't know.

03:16:41 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
I don't want to bring it up there on a show, but a good thing to reminisce on is the famous Leo spit take when he learned that he worked at the NSA.

03:16:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, that was a bit of a shock.

03:16:52 - Allyn Malventano (Guest)
Yeah, I dropped that on him. Sitting next to him on Twit, what I was just like "what!!!???"