This Week in Tech Episode 1075 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech, the Ides of March edition. Jennifer Pattison-Touhey joins us from The Verge, Richard Campbell from Windows Weekly, and Ian Thompson. Big layoffs are coming from Meta, plus they don't like their new AI very much. Speaking of bad AI, we'll talk about the woman who lost 5 months of her life due to incorrect face recognition, the Doge depositions they tried to hide, and he's back. Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber, says his new company makes gainfully employed robots. Twit is next.
Iain Thomson [00:00:36]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust.
Leo Laporte [00:00:40]:
This is Twit. This is Twit. This Week in Tech, episode 1075, recorded Sunday, March 15th, 2026. The Commonwealth Club. It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech, the show we cover the week's tech news. And as usual, it was a big and busy week, but fortunately we've got the best panel here. I love it. Jennifer Pattison-Touhey is here, senior reviewer for The Verge.
Leo Laporte [00:01:13]:
Hello, JPT.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:15]:
Hello, Leo. Lovely to be here as always.
Leo Laporte [00:01:17]:
Love having you on. Of course, Jennifer's a regular not only on, uh, The Verge but on our Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent. And covers smart home, and her poor family has to put up with a door that has many locks.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:31]:
Many locks, many doorbells, yeah, many robot vacuums. I have UPS guys will come up to my door and be like, okay, there's 4, and then they just knock. Who needs a doorbell?
Leo Laporte [00:01:44]:
So many doorbells. Yeah, isn't that funny? We have a Ring and nobody ever rings it. Also here, this is a Commonwealth show from Ireland and the UK, now almost a citizen of the United States, Ian Thompson, who does Letter from America at TechFinitive. Good to see you, Ian.
Iain Thomson [00:02:07]:
Yes, it's always good to be on. And yeah, here in sunny and very dry California.
Leo Laporte [00:02:12]:
Yeah. And it is going to be very hot. We're going to have a heat wave.
Iain Thomson [00:02:17]:
Well, very hot by California, by Northern California standards. I suspect Los Angeles is looking at us and sniggering slightly.
Leo Laporte [00:02:24]:
Oh my gosh, it's in the 70s.
Iain Thomson [00:02:26]:
What will we do?
Leo Laporte [00:02:27]:
And host of, of course, Windows Weekly and RunAs Radio, the great Richard Campbell joining us from British Columbia. Hello, Richard.
Richard Campbell [00:02:35]:
Hey, Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:02:36]:
Nice to see you.
Richard Campbell [00:02:37]:
Yeah. Not, you know, born in New Zealand, grew up in Canada. So all Commonwealth all the time.
Leo Laporte [00:02:43]:
All Commonwealth except for me. I am the rebel son.
Richard Campbell [00:02:47]:
You're the rebel.
Leo Laporte [00:02:48]:
Yeah, we had to split off and we're sorry about that now. And can we come back, please?
Iain Thomson [00:02:53]:
Well, I was chatting to somebody about that and it's just like, yes, rejoin under the British monarchy. Oh, Prince Andrew. No, never mind.
Leo Laporte [00:02:59]:
Never mind. He's not a prince. Let's be clear. He was.
Iain Thomson [00:03:02]:
Oh, yes. Well, no, they're gradually cutting his name down. So he lost his titles, then he lost his home. And it's just like, there was a British comedian called Mark Steele who was just like, eventually in about a month or two, it's going to be, oi, Andy, you wanker.
Leo Laporte [00:03:20]:
The story— we don't usually talk about Meta on this show because Meta really has become kind of legacy company to some degree, uh, although Instagram's still going strong. WhatsApp is used all over the world, is probably the preferred messaging platform in most of the world except, you know, the US and China. Uh, but they are facing, I guess, I don't know, um, hard times. Meta, we are seeing, is planning massive Layoffs as AI costs mount. This is from Reuters. Reuters says they're going to shrink Meta by 20%. Yeah, that is—
Iain Thomson [00:04:02]:
those data centers don't pay for themselves.
Leo Laporte [00:04:04]:
Yeah, they say, they say they're going to spend $600 billion in data for data centers by 2028. So yeah, you gotta, you gotta pay for it somehow.
Iain Thomson [00:04:14]:
Well, I got a disturbing email this week from a software engineer, not at Meta, but a similar company who was saying basically for the last 6 months he's been instructed to use AI tools and they've been recording his prompts and his actions.
Leo Laporte [00:04:30]:
Oh wow.
Iain Thomson [00:04:30]:
And now they've outsourced his job to 2 lower grade engineers using the information that he was forced to give them. And I think that's the way it's going and Meta will do the same.
Leo Laporte [00:04:41]:
We're hearing this story in a lot of places. In fact, friends of mine who are in fact training their replacements, but instead of a worker from China or in India, it's an AI.
Richard Campbell [00:04:51]:
Yeah.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:04:52]:
Well, and I mean, Meta has been hiring AI talent from everywhere, right?
Leo Laporte [00:04:57]:
Yeah, that's not working out so good, is it?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:04:59]:
But also that's where all the money's going, right? So it makes sense that they have to lay off other people because they're spending so much money on the AI talent. And then this, what was it, about 2 years ago, they did like 3 or 4 huge huge rounds of cuts.
Leo Laporte [00:05:14]:
Um, so yeah, 11,000 2 years ago, 10,000 last year.
Richard Campbell [00:05:18]:
Yeah, these weren't actually cuts per se because they never stopped hiring, which is weird. We looked at Microsoft's, uh, annual report for last fiscal, and they, they laid off 30,000 and they hired 30,000.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:05:33]:
So then, you know, total net employment was the same, but they're hiring for different roles, right?
Richard Campbell [00:05:38]:
So yeah, that's a great question whether that's true or not, or is it just You only hear about the layoffs and those are good for the stock price.
Leo Laporte [00:05:47]:
And it did acquire two engineers, the guys who did MaltBook.
Richard Campbell [00:05:52]:
They bought the whole thing.
Leo Laporte [00:05:56]:
They got the whole thing. Actually, what's the only thing that bothered me about that is Ben Parr is one of the two guys. Ben's been on this show many times. I love Ben. Ben's an old friend. I didn't know he did MaltBook. I would have had him talking about that. But anyway, So congratulations, uh, Ben and his, uh, his partner Mark.
Richard Campbell [00:06:13]:
But isn't the bigger arc on this Meta layoff that all of the Magnificent Seven are off so far this year, to like to the tune of a trillion dollars?
Leo Laporte [00:06:22]:
Yeah, but, but there's an upside to them. Meta on Thursday, according to the New York Times, has decided to delay the release of its latest model, Avocado.
Iain Thomson [00:06:33]:
Um, why do they get these names?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:06:36]:
Well, avocado, it's got to be perfect, right? There's only a moment where it's just ripe enough.
Leo Laporte [00:06:41]:
Oh, apparently it's not ripe enough in this case. Uh, so they're gonna take the seed out, they're gonna, they're gonna put it in a glass with toothpicks, and maybe another one will grow. Actually, if you want avocado, there is— there— Chipotle has an AI they call, uh, something like avocado, and somebody discovered that it's probably Claude in the background Because they were, they gave it a, they said, can you write a Python? After asking it for menu recommendations, could you write a Python program for me? And it did.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:07:14]:
The Chipotle AI?
Leo Laporte [00:07:16]:
Yes.
Iain Thomson [00:07:17]:
Oh God.
Leo Laporte [00:07:17]:
Yes. On its website.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:07:19]:
Salsa.
Leo Laporte [00:07:21]:
Yes. So that's something you probably should be aware of. If you're going to use an AI on your website, you might want to, you know, like limit the questions.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:07:30]:
Put some guardrails up. Just a few.
Leo Laporte [00:07:32]:
Just a few.
Richard Campbell [00:07:33]:
I don't know if you've noticed this, when you fire up a lot of web-based LLMs right now, they do a lot of are you a human validation.
Iain Thomson [00:07:41]:
Right. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [00:07:42]:
So clearly they're dealing with exactly that problem.
Leo Laporte [00:07:44]:
So sick of CAPTCHAs, please.
Richard Campbell [00:07:47]:
Because the bots are hijacking these free LLMs.
Leo Laporte [00:07:50]:
Right, right, right. Meanwhile, of course, Meta's on trial, that big case in San Francisco on addiction. The case that Snapchat and TikTok settled out of, but Meta and YouTube are still fighting. And actually, it went to the jury on Friday.
Iain Thomson [00:08:08]:
That's going to be really interesting.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:08:10]:
Yeah. So the exact same thing.
Iain Thomson [00:08:13]:
No, no, no. I mean, I'm sorry. Mark Zuckerberg on the stand looked really, really uncomfortable.
Leo Laporte [00:08:19]:
Yeah.
Iain Thomson [00:08:20]:
And it's like, have you actually built your platform around dopamine hits? We're obviously not going to say that, but That's what it is. So a jury trial, that's going to be really interesting.
Leo Laporte [00:08:35]:
Now, I imagine the jury is probably not sitting during the weekend, but I mean, they went out on Friday, so it should be closing statements on Thursday. Actually, it's in Los Angeles. The plaintiff is a 20-year-old woman who said she was hooked early on to social media and as a result has had miserable, a miserable life. Which, by the way, okay, excuse me, I'm sorry you had a terrible life, but really, you're blaming social media for that? Seems a little far-fetched to me. I think the real question the jury has to answer is, is there such a thing as social media addiction? Is that even a thing? Right?
Richard Campbell [00:09:13]:
Yeah, I'm parallelizing this with the smoking addictions, and it also took about 20 years for the first cases to really start showing up saying This is intentional. And it led to the discovery that eventually found, you know, proved that the companies knew and optimized the product for addiction.
Leo Laporte [00:09:30]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [00:09:31]:
And we have that same evidence coming out of Facebook.
Iain Thomson [00:09:33]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Leo Laporte [00:09:36]:
The 20-year-olds, both defendants and plaintiff appointed, this is from AP, to a turbulent home life. Or the woman, her attorneys say she was preyed upon as a vulnerable user. And there's a lot of smoking gun email evidence that they kind of did prey upon people. You know, they were trying to make them— they were trying to make their sites sticky. But I mean, who isn't, right? I wish this show were stickier.
Iain Thomson [00:10:03]:
But there was that case, uh, about 10, 10 years ago where academics, um, did a paper on how Facebook could change people's opinion based on the newsfeed that they got in. And there were two scientific papers on this, and then Facebook immediately retracted them. Um, Facebook as it was then. You know, this definitely has an effect Their entire business model is built around it. So yeah, put it up in court. The tobacco thing is exactly on point.
Leo Laporte [00:10:30]:
Yeah, but you can say there's a direct link between smoking and cancer. That's evident. It's much harder to prove that. In fact, both sides, uh, you know, admit that she had a difficult home life before she started using social. Media. And the defense said that she turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism to escape her mental health struggles.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:10:58]:
Uh, it seems like from what I've been reading from our reporting— and we've got a reporter there at the trial— and she was saying that they basically, the only thing they have to prove here is that the products did cause some form of meaningful harm, which is not a huge leap, especially when you're able to examine the, as you mentioned at the top, the kind of the dopamine hit, the algorithms that are pushing forward, keeping you on there, not necessarily to try and make you happier, but to do whatever it does to pull you in. And that is the— I think that's the key. It's the algorithms. Like, is it the algorithms that are actually causing harm by pulling you down into whatever rabbit hole?
Leo Laporte [00:11:45]:
But how do you prove that harm? I don't understand how you prove that.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:11:47]:
Well, and that's going to be the challenge. But one of the, the piece that, um, uh, we have on The Verge that our reporter, um, Lauren Feiner, who's there, she said the entire courtroom— so there's like tickets that you can get to get into one of the 15 public seats in—
Leo Laporte [00:12:05]:
that's how much people want to see this. Wow.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:08]:
The entire courtroom outside was full of parents whose children have been meaningfully, they believe, have been meaningfully harmed by social media. Either they committed suicide side. There was an instance of one girl who was able to get like, uh, fentanyl-laced pills off— she didn't know it was fentanyl.
Leo Laporte [00:12:25]:
Well, that's different. Yeah, that's definitely liability if you're buying fentanyl on Facebook. Yeah, that's liability.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:33]:
But the point here, what's so interesting is there are so many parents that have experienced something that's caused significant harm to their children through social media. And it's, it's a fascinating debate to sort of be like, well, how much of this is down to the individual? How how much of this is down to what the platform is feeding them, and is the platform making it worse? And if the platform is making it worse, can you prove that that is meaningful harm? And if this— I mean, it's going to be a landmark case either way, I would say. I think even if there is not a very good resolution, the fact that it's getting this attention and that people are actually, you know, finally focusing on what, what social media is doing— is it bad? You know, is it causing harm? It's conversations we've been needing to have for a long time, and I feel like we talk about it every time I come on the show, Leo, but, um, it's not there in the broader, you know, consciousness, I don't think. And I think this is going to push it there. I mean, I have two kids who grew up— so I have a 15 and an 18-year-old— and so, you know, they were right on the sort of cusp as where social media became sort of all-encompassing. That's the way children communicate to some extent. And when you, when you look through the issues that some people sort of say, well, some social media is actually good because it does have— it's a good way of connecting, it's a good way for people to find their group. It's like back to the old, you know, chat rooms.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:14:00]:
You know, I, I remember on Oscar night 20 years ago, 30 years ago, sitting up with— in a chat room with Titanic fans because Titanic was up for the Oscars. And it was like, you know, the internet lets you connect with your with your, you know, your people. But once they've grabbed you, these platforms, if they're trying without, without, uh, without any care for what cause— what, what harm it might cause— to suck you in and keep you there, that to me feels like a step too far. And that's like with, with, with the tobacco companies, you know, they knew their product was addictive and, you know, Does Facebook, does Meta know its product was addictive and did it keep making it more addictive and that causes meaningful harm? I mean, you're right, Leo, it's a hard one to prove, but it's an interesting one to talk about.
Leo Laporte [00:14:54]:
Yeah. And of course, the next industry that's going to be challenged about this is AI because there are already trials and there will be many, many more from parents who I— and look, my heart goes out to these parents, the kids. Nobody's saying that these children aren't hurting. I think there's a lot of reasons that young people might be hurting these days. But, you know, everybody who creates an entertainment is trying to make it sticky. If you binge a Netflix— and this is one of the arguments of the defense lawyers— if you binge a Netflix— actually, I think it was Adam Mosseri of Instagram— if you binge a Netflix, you know, they want you to watch that, you know, as to your detriment, to the point where you don't eat. They're trying to make something that's really compelling. Um, but is that, is that a cause for mental illness? And, uh, is it— are you liable for the damages it causes? I don't know.
Leo Laporte [00:15:56]:
I mean, I think that's with video games. Remember that people were saying the same about World of Warcraft.
Benito Gonzalez [00:16:00]:
Well, Facebook claims they're not a publisher though, so they're not making any of this stuff. So they're not responsible.
Leo Laporte [00:16:05]:
Well, no, I think there's no question Facebook's liable because if the only argument is whether that caused harm, it's clear that Facebook is more than a publisher. Any company that has an algorithm that surfaces— if you just publish stuff in a chronological case law, then you're a publisher. Yeah, but they don't—
Richard Campbell [00:16:23]:
you know, the first step— again, I'm going to use a smoking parallel again. The first steps that happened with the smoking thing was age limiting. You had to be a certain age to be able to buy cigarettes. You know, that was the progression. So, you know, here we are at the beginning of this. And there, you know, now the argument will be it's a case of harm, but only for minors. So we'll put an age gate on it.
Leo Laporte [00:16:43]:
You could make the case that sugary cereals have killed many people.
Richard Campbell [00:16:48]:
Well, you have. And that litigation's flirting around out there.
Leo Laporte [00:16:51]:
I guess. Yeah, but I mean, I feel for the parents. I feel like they're looking for a scapegoat.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:16:57]:
Is what I thought. I think there is enough evidence out there that social media has caused harm for, especially for younger people, because, you know, they're not— their brains are not fully developed. That impulse control, that addiction focus, vulnerable, is much— yeah. Um, and, you know, there is, of course, there's an onus on the parents too, but also a lot of parents of this generation weren't really aware of what was— of how powerful this was. So I, I agree, it seems like, you know, okay, Netflix, we all want to binge watch, you know, the next season of Stranger Things. But it's, it's a different interaction from sitting and watching a TV show, which something you may do with your family, um, to interacting with your friends and people like you and your peers on social media and seeing the way you're supposed to be theoretically. And that, that caught— that's what's causing in, in many ways, I think, the long— we've seen a huge spike in depression for adolescents, especially adolescent girls. I mean, Instagram was famously— has been very bad for body image for teenage girls, and there have been lots of studies about that.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:18:10]:
And, you know, magazines in the '80s and '90s, those were really bad for body image for teenage girls, but there was something different about having magazines on a stand versus having a small device that you're lying in bed with and like consuming that's continually sending you data and making you feel worse. And I think the key thing, and this is because I'm a journalist, is curation and being and editorializing. So, you know, a magazine or a Netflix show, you've got people creating the content and having some sort of human input, whereas with social media, the algorithms and, you know, just anyone, anyone out there can throw whatever they want up there. It just feels so much less curated, so much less careful. I mean, there are problems with stuff on TV, but we have age limits on TV shows too, right? That's one of the ways that we're supposed to help, you know, not damage our children by showing them— I watched Silence of the Lambs when I was far too young, and I've never recovered. Um, I just feel like we don't— because we could— we sort of dismiss social media because it is so many different things, right? It's not really just one. Like, Netflix shows you movies and TV shows, but social media shows you everything, and it's overwhelming. And I, I think that the problem comes down to the algorithms, um, and this is something that we see throughout the internet, right? We've seen many tech companies be approached, you know.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:19:40]:
I think YouTube was— are they still in the case about the algorithm for YouTube where that caused terrorism? I don't know, did that one get dismissed? But there's a lot of these that comes down to the algorithm, which is where the computer is deciding what you should watch. And that's taking the human element out.
Leo Laporte [00:19:59]:
And that's where things get scary. Yeah, I think algorithms are problematic. But McDonald's designs its food to be as addictive as possible. And you could probably make the argument Dunkin' Donuts have killed more people than—
Iain Thomson [00:20:12]:
Well, no, but I mean—
Leo Laporte [00:20:13]:
I mean, are they liable? Should McDonald's be liable because they made their food, they made Happy Meals and they addicted children, and, and those children suffer from obesity and later illnesses as a result, with a higher mortality. Should we go after McDonald's? Is that similar?
Iain Thomson [00:20:29]:
I have to say, looking at that new burger, why not?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:20:33]:
McDonald's isn't in your face all the time.
Leo Laporte [00:20:36]:
Sure it is. It's advertising like crazy.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:20:38]:
Yeah, but you're not get— you're not— you don't have access, access to it 24/7, especially if you're a 15-year-old girl, right? You're not unless you live around the corner from McDonald's, I suppose.
Benito Gonzalez [00:20:47]:
Yeah, your phone's not giving you a burger every 5 minutes.
Leo Laporte [00:20:52]:
Yeah, but I mean, well, then, then you should—
Iain Thomson [00:20:54]:
Jennifer is a parent, so I mean, Jennifer is a parent.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:20:58]:
It's—
Iain Thomson [00:20:58]:
this is what really worries me about social media, is that the kids can't escape it. It used to be if you got bullied at school, you went out of school and then you went home and you had lived your own life. With social media, it's in your face 24/7, and it it does seem to cause harm. I'd be curious on your insight on that.
Leo Laporte [00:21:16]:
Seem is the problem, by the way.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:21:17]:
Yeah, it's hard to prove. Yeah, I mean, and individuals like, you know, that people may be predisposed to depression and it creates more of, you know, it can pull you further down into that. Or you may have been completely well-adjusted and then you get cyberbullied by people in your school. I mean, my daughter's school has like an online burn book on Instagram, you know, which is horrific. I don't let my daughter anywhere near Instagram. But yeah, there's—
Leo Laporte [00:21:45]:
that was that Netflix show Adolescence, right? That was, that was why that grabbed people, because that was what that was about.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:21:52]:
That's what we're seeing. And yeah, it's also one of the things, you know, outside of the algorithm side, is you— I, I was reading a story recently where someone was talking to— it was a teacher, and they were talking about like at recess or when the bell rings, you know, 20 years ago, the the halls would be so loud, right? You could barely hear yourself talking. Everyone's playing, chatting, talking. And now it's quiet because as soon as people get out of the classroom, they look on their phone. So that, yeah, real, you know, social media is taking away real socialization, in real life socialization. I mean, and that's caused— that's one of the issues causing a lot of harm. And, you know, COVID compounded it because kids were literally not allowed to hang out with her friends for over a year.
Leo Laporte [00:22:37]:
Yeah, I mean, that could be, I mean, COVID. There's a lot of factors. There's a lot of reasons a kid might be depressed now that I think are legitimate. Yeah. I think my problem is, is you can prove a causal relationship between cigarettes and cancer. That's very clear. It's much more difficult to prove that causal relationship with social media. It's one of those things that feels like it's bad It seems like it's bad.
Leo Laporte [00:23:02]:
We kind of all agree, yeah, it must be bad. But it's very hard to demonstrate the causal relationship. Yeah. And I worry because— well, we'll find out. This trial is going to be so interesting.
Iain Thomson [00:23:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is why I think a jury trial is fascinating for this, because you actually get input from people at the sharp end. You know, it's not— yes, there'll be the long arguments about whether or not tobacco causes cancer, and then it was finally proved. When it comes to social media, it's much more fluid.. But having a jury trial and having people whose kids and relatives have been involved in this, I think that's going to be a very interesting result.
Leo Laporte [00:23:41]:
Well, we'll find out. I think we'll find out this week. And, uh, I think, uh, both YouTube and Meta are watching with great interest to see what happens. And you can tell, I mean, the fact that Snapchat and TikTok settled out short, right before the trial, tells you they had some real concerns about their livelihood. Let's take a little break. We have more stuff. Is that one of your house? Is that your house talking to you? Someone just rang the doorbell.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:24:06]:
Someone's at the doorbell.
Leo Laporte [00:24:09]:
Sorry. You know, you now have all those interesting voices with Alexa Plus. You did not like Alexa Plus, Jennifer, did you? Sassy, sassy voice. I picked sassy. Lisa loves sassy. She loves it. Like we'll say, set a 5-minute timer for broccoli. I say, and then it goes, 5-minute timer for broccoli.
Leo Laporte [00:24:26]:
Oh, that's going to be delicious. Or it should be done just right. And it's like, and then Lisa, I know to me it's like, really? But Lisa go, oh, and she says, thank you, Alexa. And it says, you're very welcome. They have a conversation.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:24:41]:
Yeah. I, yeah, I'm excited about this new sassy because I was getting really fed up with the new Alexa Plus. Yeah. And the sweet. And yeah. And like, I would be like, add 'Add peanut butter to the shopping list.' Oh, you're going to be making some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
Iain Thomson [00:25:00]:
Those would be so good! To the moon, Alice! Also, I say, as a Brit, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is horrible. I don't know why Americans like it so much.
Leo Laporte [00:25:07]:
This from a guy who eats Marmite.
Iain Thomson [00:25:10]:
Okay, I do.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:25:11]:
I love Marmite, but I also love PB&J, so— but that's because I'm American and British.
Leo Laporte [00:25:17]:
Julia Child said it's the perfect sandwich. "Sweet, nutty flavor of the peanut butter combined, I mean, the nutty, salty flavor of the peanut butter combined with the sweet, fruity flavor of the jelly on the crisp toast. It's perfect," said Julia Child.
Iain Thomson [00:25:31]:
No, I'm sorry, Marmite and cheese sandwich. That's the way to go.
Richard Campbell [00:25:35]:
Ah, boy. That's as British as it gets.
Iain Thomson [00:25:37]:
It is.
Leo Laporte [00:25:37]:
A little too much umami for me, baby. Let's take a little break. When we come back, well, you know, I like it that we can argue over that. That's better to argue over than social media. It's less consequential anyway. Uh, yeah, it'd be very— it's going to be very interesting to see what the results of this trial are and this resonance.
Iain Thomson [00:25:58]:
Also, Zuckerberg looks so uncomfortable on the stand. Well, you know who else broke a sweat?
Leo Laporte [00:26:03]:
You know who else looked uncomfortable? The Doge Boys in their depositions. We'll talk about the Doge depositions in just a little bit. Boy, was that revelatory. Immediately pulled down, but too bad, once it's on the internet, it lives forever.
Iain Thomson [00:26:20]:
404 did a really good write-up of this. They sat through 6 hours of Doge testimony, and I would highly recommend reading that. Save it.
Richard Campbell [00:26:29]:
Anyway, we'll come back.
Leo Laporte [00:26:29]:
We'll talk about it, 'cause I think it's important, but we will talk about that. Great show, great panel already kicking things off, getting a little feisty. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge, Ian Thompson, great to have you with your new column at TechFinitive. The Letter from America to— but it's really not to Brits, right? I mean, it's to everybody.
Iain Thomson [00:26:52]:
Well, yes, but it's a primarily British site. But at the same time, I think things need explaining to the rest of the world because we're in a very weird place in America.
Leo Laporte [00:27:01]:
I hope you could explain it to Americans, to be honest. I'd like to know. I'd like to understand. We're on the site. Where can I find that Letter to America? I'm at the Tech Finder.
Iain Thomson [00:27:13]:
Yeah, if you just go to my name on there. I just put I-A-I-N and, um, that's your—
Leo Laporte [00:27:20]:
that's the problem. Yeah, there you go. Ian Thompson's Letter from America in the, in the style of Alistair Tommy Cook.
Iain Thomson [00:27:30]:
America is a very strange place at the moment, so yeah, the more we explain that, the better. Yeah, because it's losing soft power.
Leo Laporte [00:27:37]:
I think that picture says it all right there.
Iain Thomson [00:27:39]:
That's the, uh, oh God, that was so humiliating to have him, you know, I did love that his son wiped a bogey on the side of the presidential desk and it was just like, wow, this is how politics go.
Leo Laporte [00:27:52]:
You know Trump had the Resolute Desk removed, steamed, and disinfected immediately after. All right, let's take a little break and we will come back with those. Oh, and I forgot to mention Richard Campbell also here. So nice to have him from Run As Radio. And of course, The wonderful Windows Weekly every Wednesday on this very channel. Our show today brought to you by ExpressVPN. Now going online without ExpressVPN would be like, I don't know, leaving your laptop unattended at the coffee shop. Everyone needs ExpressVPN because every time you connect to an unencrypted network at that coffee shop, at a hotel, mine is the airport, I always want that free SFO Wi-Fi.
Leo Laporte [00:28:39]:
And I always go, no, your online data is not secure. Any hacker on the same network can gain access to and steal your personal data. And by the way, they are. And send it to— every time I'm at the airport, free SFO Wi-Fi, I fire up ExpressVPN and now I feel like I can use it with impunity. ExpressVPN is the one I use. It's the best VPN out there. It's the only one I recommend because they really are committed. They go the extra mile to keep your privacy private.
Leo Laporte [00:29:07]:
I use it whenever I travel to keep up on my shows, to watch football. It's the best VPN. ExpressVPN is super secure. It'd take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past their ExpressVPN encryption. It works on all devices— phones, laptops, tablets— rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com/twit. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S vpn.com/twit and find out how you can get up to 4 extra months. Expressvpn.com/twit.
Leo Laporte [00:29:46]:
Speaking of Trump, apparently the, uh, Trump administration is saying, uh, we want $10 billion for brokering the TikTok deal. For brokering it? For brokering? Just finders fee? Yeah, yeah. I mean, now it doesn't— I presume it doesn't go into Trump's pocket.
Iain Thomson [00:30:08]:
This goes to the Treasury, or his Kuwaiti bank account.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:30:11]:
But I wouldn't assume anything really.
Leo Laporte [00:30:13]:
Maybe I shouldn't. Yeah. Uh, investors, uh, in, in, in the U.S. version of TikTok, including Oracle and Silver Lake, agreed to pay the government $10 billion for making them, uh, that deal. And you know what, they did pay well below what I think everybody considers market value for TikTok for the US operations.
Iain Thomson [00:30:36]:
I mean, 10 years ago, Leo, I was on the show and I got an awful lot of flack for saying that America has legalized bribery and called it campaign contributions. But in the last couple of years— that's so old-fashioned. Wow.
Leo Laporte [00:30:49]:
It's not even campaign anymore. You got a hole in the East Wing. Hey, come on, we'll 'Let's put some money into it.' Yeah, let's buy your crypto coin.
Iain Thomson [00:30:58]:
Let's, you know, it's just—
Richard Campbell [00:31:00]:
'Would you like an airplane?
Iain Thomson [00:31:01]:
We can hook you up with an airplane.' I wrote a whole article about that. They're gonna have to strip that plane down to the bare bones to make sure there's, you know—
Leo Laporte [00:31:10]:
It's gonna cost them billions to make it into—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:31:13]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:31:13]:
It's not gonna save anybody any money. Let's put it that way, to make it into Air Force One.
Iain Thomson [00:31:17]:
It's a gift, you know, or a bribe, whatever you want to call it. As I say, I'm going for citizenship. So I love our maximum leader, Donald Trump. But at the same time, for goodness' sake.
Leo Laporte [00:31:28]:
Wall Street Journal says the $10 billion payment would be nearly unprecedented for the government helping a transaction. Nearly? Nearly. But many point out that the $14 billion these companies paid for the US version of TikTok was well below what its actual value is. Oh, and by the way, they also have to share profits with ByteDance. Which owns 19.999%. So it's not even out of the hands of Chinese investors, really, uh, or Chinese security company or Chinese infrastructure. It seems like it's the same old TikTok. Even the algorithm doesn't seem to have changed.
Leo Laporte [00:32:10]:
Any thoughts on that?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:32:12]:
Is it— I seem to get the same thing a lot more often, but they're like, like repeated videos. Like, it's almost like there's less less content. I'm not a huge TikTok user though, but, um, maybe that's why I don't get much new stuff. But yeah, I feel like every time I open the app, I get— I'm getting the same things often, um, which— yeah, but other than— I mean, there was quite a lot of chatter right after the launch, like the switchover, that there was significant issues and it didn't seem right. But it— other than that, I mean, the content I see is what I know, what I would expect to see. I just keep seeing the same thing over and over again, uh, which is good for me because I turn it off.
Leo Laporte [00:32:52]:
That the $10 million will be spent on floor chimes for all, um, floor what? The president gave Marco Rubio some floor chimes.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:33:04]:
I think—
Iain Thomson [00:33:04]:
oh, the shoes.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:33:05]:
Oh, the shoes.
Leo Laporte [00:33:06]:
Yes. Okay. And they were a little bit— so embarrassing. They were kind of like clown shoes.
Benito Gonzalez [00:33:10]:
It looks like the whole cabinet, by the way.
Leo Laporte [00:33:12]:
Oh, the whole cabinet has to wear these shoes.
Iain Thomson [00:33:17]:
Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, how low your self— we were talking about social media lowering self-esteem. Having to wear outsized shoes just to do your job, that's a real lowering of self-esteem.
Richard Campbell [00:33:29]:
It is.
Leo Laporte [00:33:29]:
You know what, it's a real power move, isn't it? I'm gonna give you some shoes, make sure you wear those now.
Richard Campbell [00:33:37]:
It's what Tony Soprano would do. Buy the same shoes but the right size. Like he's not going to look that close.
Iain Thomson [00:33:45]:
Well, I mean, JD Vance told an interesting story where Trump asked Marco Rubio what his shoe size was. And he said it was 7 and then made a joke about shoe size relating to genitalia size.
Leo Laporte [00:33:59]:
It is very small, I might add, a 7.
Richard Campbell [00:34:02]:
Which is a line that Rubio used in 2015.
Iain Thomson [00:34:06]:
That's what the hand size thing is.
Leo Laporte [00:34:08]:
Oh, the hands thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. This guy's—
Iain Thomson [00:34:12]:
it's all high school. It's really high school. This is not what you expect from your government. I mean, okay, British politics is bad, but it's not this bad.
Leo Laporte [00:34:24]:
You know, it's Keir Starmer, really?
Iain Thomson [00:34:28]:
Nigel Farage.
Leo Laporte [00:34:28]:
But Nigel Farage.
Iain Thomson [00:34:31]:
Boris with the hair.
Leo Laporte [00:34:35]:
Oh God. Did you really? Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Prime Minister, funny hair. Yeah, he seemed like he was actually a sweet guy, even though he's with a—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:34:44]:
what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I, I was a lowly sort of intern. I worked at The Telegraph when he was at The Telegraph, um, so I, I only crossed paths with him a couple times, but he's, he's very funny, actually very smart. He seemed very personal, really smart. Yeah, um, yeah, and that—
Leo Laporte [00:35:01]:
but yeah.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:35:02]:
But going into politics will, you know, make you crazy.
Leo Laporte [00:35:07]:
He's a unique, though, British politician, isn't he?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:35:10]:
There's something—
Richard Campbell [00:35:11]:
yes, everybody loved him when he was Mayor of London, right?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:35:14]:
Yeah, yeah, very popular. It's kind of the Rudy Giuliani of the UK, like kind of the same. Yeah, the other way.
Iain Thomson [00:35:29]:
Yeah, no, I mean, I do love the anecdote that his hair was perfectly done and he went out to a press conference, he was, hang on a second, roughed it all up and then went out there. It's a very carefully curated image. It's a look. But yeah, he was great as mayor of London in terms of, because London's getting a lot of stick at the moment as being a crime-ridden hellhole, despite the fact that we've got a lower murder rate than pretty much every American city. But Boris actually boosted London and you've got too many people just going, oh, London, it's crime, it's terrible, you know, but Boris actually did a lot for the capital.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:36:07]:
Just not a lot for the country.
Iain Thomson [00:36:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not a great prime minister.
Leo Laporte [00:36:12]:
A great leader. She was at Twitter when Jack decided he wanted to do a little research project on kind of open social networks, funded something that ended up becoming Blue Sky. Jay Graber took the helm. She was CEO. She's now stepping down at Bluesky. She's going to be the chief innovation officer. But there's the— one of the investors is going to become temporarily CEO, Tony Schneider. But they are going to do a CEO search.
Iain Thomson [00:36:48]:
I do hope they don't ruin Bluesky.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:36:49]:
I was going to say, is that everyone's favorite now? Or where are you all? What's your favorite?
Iain Thomson [00:36:57]:
X, Twitter. Richard is shaking his head at this one.
Richard Campbell [00:36:59]:
Yeah, like there's a favorite there, you know. I get a lot of the tech crowds on Bluesky, and so I get strong responses for when I'm talking about podcasts there. The real weird geeky guys are on Mastodon, but they're the only ones who can figure out how to do it.
Leo Laporte [00:37:17]:
Yeah, we run a Mastodon instance, twit.social, which you're all invited to join. And I love Mastodon. I'm a big fan of the idea of federation. I'm going to admit kind of a dirty little secret though, because when Elon bought Twitter, I got off of it immediately because I really realized that it was going to go downhill and he fired everybody and all sorts of technical issues happened. And then of course the Nazis came in and he brought back a lot of people who really should not have been brought back. But in this age of AI, I have to confess, I'm reading Twitter a lot these days. I don't post there, or X, I don't post there. I don't have high hopes for its future now that he has X money.
Leo Laporte [00:38:02]:
You saw that he gave Shatner like $20 of X money and Shatner turned it into $200,000 in charity donations because he sold Apparently, if you give somebody on X money, which it's only in private beta right now, but if you give somebody some money and I think Elon gave him $42, right? The magic number. And if you give somebody some money, like if you could get somebody to send you a dollar, if you get Will Schatz to send you a dollar, you would now be in the X money beta. So he was auctioning off a dollar at a time. Elon's $42 raised $200,000 for charity. So I think that's actually pretty sharp. That's pretty good. Anyway, it's my dirty little secret is that I do now check because it is where all the AI bros go. It is one way to keep up.
Leo Laporte [00:38:54]:
I think maybe the best way to keep up with what's going on in a very fast-moving arena.
Iain Thomson [00:39:00]:
I mean, in one way it's good in that you've got a competitive, competitive social media.
Leo Laporte [00:39:06]:
Yes, there's no winner anymore. There is no favorite, right?
Iain Thomson [00:39:08]:
It used to be just Twitter. Now you've got Bluesky, you've got Mastodon, you've got to an extent Reddit and a bunch of other sites.
Leo Laporte [00:39:16]:
You know what you don't have anymore?
Iain Thomson [00:39:20]:
Dig. Oh God, this was hilarious.
Leo Laporte [00:39:22]:
Please go on. So, you know, I have a little bit of a, you know, dog in this hunt because Kevin Rose, I worked with him, of course, at TechTV and he started Dig kind of when he was there and the Dig Nation podcast. And in some ways I feel responsible for the death of Digg because I was encouraging him to make the changes that ended up becoming Digg 4.0, which turned out to make Digg be the most gameable thing in the world. Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman came along and said we could do a better Digg and created Reddit. Digg died because it was being gamed so badly. Reddit won, in effect. But Kevin, and oddly enough Alexis Ohanian, Reddit's founder, Restarted Digg, and they've been public for a few months. They're shutting it down again because they say it's being gamed by bots.
Leo Laporte [00:40:19]:
Wow. The same reason it shut down last time. 2 months after their highly anticipated return, Digg announced the site's going offline as a result of a, quote, unprecedented bot problem. They're going to rejigger it. They thought that AI would solve this, that AI would keep the bots off. But what they underestimated was, as they did last time, was how, uh, incentivized the bots are. And they're using AI too.
Iain Thomson [00:40:51]:
Um, so they're going to— it's facing the same problem at the moment. I mean, it is bot-infested. Uh, I'm on— there's a Reddit thread I'm on called Ask Brits, and You know, there's a conversation about Tesla and we got, I don't know about this. Tesla's really popular in the UK. I bought a Model S the other day and it's really, really good. And then directly beneath it, hi, Tesla is underrated. I bought a Model 3 the other day and it was just like you had to post up bad bot clumsy.
Leo Laporte [00:41:22]:
There's a lot of it. X says it suspended 800 million accounts in 2024. Over spam. And $800 million. I remember when Twitter had $350 million total. I think that was when they sold it to Elon. It was $350 or $400. $800 million, more than double.
Leo Laporte [00:41:43]:
It suspended several hundred million late last year. This is, uh, this is what they told UK, the UK. It's according to The Guardian. Um, that's a problem if you're getting that many bots.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:41:58]:
Uh, I mean, kind of ruined all of social media.
Leo Laporte [00:42:00]:
They told Parliament it was continually fighting state-backed attempts to hijack the agenda on its network with Russia, the most prolific state actor, followed by Iran and China.
Richard Campbell [00:42:11]:
Makes you wonder what the operating sites are doing or not doing.
Leo Laporte [00:42:16]:
Yeah, I mean, if— yes, I mean, X has done a lot to try to stop those bots, and apparently it's done nothing. In fact, Well, here's the story from Wired.
Richard Campbell [00:42:25]:
The original accusation to the old, uh, Twitter board is that they weren't managing bots, that their accounts were—
Leo Laporte [00:42:31]:
that was what his whole thing was. He's like, I did such a bad job, clearly didn't do it. Well, you could say in his defense, they banned 800 million of them now.
Iain Thomson [00:42:46]:
Yeah, and they still allowed Steven Laxley Yellen to get on, get back on there. But I mean, look, But it's— this is a problem with all social media. Bots are everywhere, and there needs to be a screening mechanism, but no one's come up with one yet.
Leo Laporte [00:43:02]:
Remember, of course, that X was home to a lot of non-consensual sexual images and got in a lot of trouble all over the world. It was banned in some countries. They claim to have fixed that. Now, according to Wired, fake AI content about the Iran War. Is all over X. And, and not only is Grok failing to verify the video correctly, it's creating its own images. They're using Grok to do it.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:43:29]:
X's AI. The video game war.
Leo Laporte [00:43:30]:
I mean, right? Well, it is. Look at the administration's horrific, horrendous promo videos using video games and movies. And I've never seen anything like it.
Iain Thomson [00:43:44]:
I don't know. I mean, remember the opening stages of Gulf War I. Shock and awe. Yeah, well, when you saw like smart missiles going right down into the bunker and everyone was like, this is absolutely amazing. Now it's AI generated and it's deeply disturbing because, you know, democracy depends on information. And if it's when you've got the White House putting out AI generated slop, That's really worrying.
Leo Laporte [00:44:11]:
Well, even more worrying to me is that Pete Hegseth and Department of Defense have shooed out all the real journalists from the Pentagon and the BBC is still there. They've still got a seat there because it was, you had to sign an agreement saying, I'm not going to say anything bad about the Pentagon to stay.
Iain Thomson [00:44:29]:
They're a foreign press. They didn't have to sign that. It was only domestic. But the BBC did actually hold him to account. And said, right, okay, you said 6 months ago that their nuclear capability had been destroyed and now you're saying it's been destroyed again. Can you expand on that? And it was perfect British passive aggressive. I did love them dearly for that.
Leo Laporte [00:44:52]:
Well, and Hegseth has excoriated the US media for telling people bad things about the war. Like, that's their job, dude.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:45:02]:
Yeah, exactly. Now, Brendan Carr is threatening to, um, he's doing his thing where he goes and says things and expects networks to then follow suit without actually doing any regulation. But, um, he has said that he's going to— he's threatening to revoke the licenses of the networks that are portraying the war incorrectly because Trump is—
Iain Thomson [00:45:22]:
yeah, not— that was shameful. Well, I mean, when I saw that, I went back to an article I'd written 10 years ago where Brendan Carr was kind of like, you know, we need free speech, we need an open platform. And now he's, now he's in charge. It's just like, yeah, get out.
Leo Laporte [00:45:39]:
You know, we want free speech for us, not you.
Iain Thomson [00:45:43]:
Very much.
Richard Campbell [00:45:44]:
Yeah. They even did pull a broadcast license. Nobody uses the airwaves anymore.
Leo Laporte [00:45:49]:
It's right. Doesn't matter. It's kind of old-fashioned anyway.
Richard Campbell [00:45:51]:
I think these are just empty threats because Trump's mad. So he has to make the noise that Trump wants him to make.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:45:57]:
Well, they're not empty though, because they What happens is the networks do act on them because they— because that's the real problem. It's like, so there's no actual regulation or enforcement happening here. They're just all running scared because their deals aren't going to go through.
Richard Campbell [00:46:12]:
Or, you know, and the experience is when you run, you run, they come get you again. Yeah. And when you say, come at me, bro, they walk away.
Iain Thomson [00:46:21]:
The Mark Carney example. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Hex has said the quiet part out loud earlier this week. He was just like, once Ellison takes over CNN, then we'll see some— and it was just like, wow, you're actually saying that.
Leo Laporte [00:46:36]:
You know, this is how bold they are. They don't have to deny it. They don't have to hide it.
Richard Campbell [00:46:40]:
But it does speak to the idea that if you actually want to have some idea what's going on in the US, you don't look at US media.
Leo Laporte [00:46:47]:
Yeah, well, I'm good to know that the Beeb still has somebody in there.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:46:51]:
That's good. Yeah, we've been watching BBC and Sky News now because you can get a feed from both both on, um, I think it's like free as well, like Samsung TV Plus, or like all the— what are the free TV streaming services that, um, give you all the channels? And, and the Sky— because the Beeb's been under a lot of scrutiny recently.
Leo Laporte [00:47:12]:
Yeah, but Rupert Murdoch, yeah, Sky, right?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:47:15]:
Yeah, Sky News has always been— I mean, Sky News has always been fairly good. I mean, I don't know, Ian, do you ever watch it?
Iain Thomson [00:47:23]:
No, I mean, I watch Sky News. That's what I care And I mean, the thing is Murdoch hasn't taken as heavy a hand with Sky News as he has with, for example, The Sun.
Richard Campbell [00:47:34]:
Right.
Iain Thomson [00:47:35]:
Yeah. The Sun, he would call the editor every day and discuss what they were gonna put on the front page. Sky News has got some really good journalists. They've got some really good coverage.
Leo Laporte [00:47:44]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [00:47:44]:
Okay.
Leo Laporte [00:47:44]:
You know, the same thing for the Wall Street Journal. You could say the same thing for the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. You know, the editorial board might have some, a slant, but the reporting is very good. The people are very good there.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:47:54]:
But it's harder and harder to find news that you feel confident in these days.
Leo Laporte [00:48:00]:
Well, and that's why maybe the real issue with social media is that's where a whole generation gets its news now. I mean, yeah, they get their news from TikTok and Instagram.
Iain Thomson [00:48:10]:
And I had a bit of a retro moment.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:48:12]:
People my age, although they actually get news because I remember being that true, never watching the news.
Leo Laporte [00:48:18]:
My daughter says You know, we— if she's 32, so she's not quite in that generation, but she says, we use TikTok for search. I said, you can't use TikTok for search. She said, well, ask a question. How long is the Golden Gate Bridge? I said. She said, enter it into TikTok. And I found it. So you actually can use TikTok for search. There's so much content on there.
Leo Laporte [00:48:39]:
Don't ask it when Tiananmen Square happens also. But you do get the answer. Yeah. Speaking of problems with Avocado, Meta's AI, Elon Musk has been firing people at XAI saying it was not built right to his satisfaction. It's not built right. It's interesting because, you know, ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Anthropic's Claude are dominating. In fact, the Chinese OpenAIs like DeepSeek and Qwen also very, very good. But for some reason, Meta and X are having trouble with their AIs getting it to do anything.
Leo Laporte [00:49:16]:
Maybe the standard is so good. X has been losing people. Of the 12 people who founded the company XAI in 2023, of 12 who founded the company 3 years ago, only 2 are left. Last month, some significant departures, quite a few. At an all-hands meeting last month, Musk said, these are deliberate exits. Some people are better suited for the early stages and less suited for the later stages. Electrek says this is, this is a problem, you know. So X is making money in one company.
Leo Laporte [00:49:57]:
Elon's making money in one company, SpaceX, losing money massively on XAI and losing money on X. So what are you— what's the solution? You put them all together and you have a SpaceX stock IPO.
Iain Thomson [00:50:14]:
Ketamine is a hell of a drug.
Richard Campbell [00:50:17]:
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. But it's also a fairly clever move. I mean, there are— none of them are public companies. Not now. He gets to do what he wants. Yeah, he took X private, but he took Twitter private when he bought it, right? So, you know, you don't actually even know the truth, which means it's probably worse than you think. So I think it's a great way to hide problems, right?
Leo Laporte [00:50:35]:
His whole plan is to take Tesla, SpaceX, XAI, X, Neuralink, The Boring Company, mush them all into a big ball.
Richard Campbell [00:50:42]:
I don't think he's going to get Tesla in there because Tesla is public.
Leo Laporte [00:50:45]:
He can't. Tesla's public. That's right.
Richard Campbell [00:50:48]:
That's right. So, yeah, you know, there's, there's much more regulation and trouble around all of that, but he's already munged the rest together.
Leo Laporte [00:50:53]:
Now he is treating Tesla though as kind of a resource. I mean, he's moved AI engineers from Tesla to XAI and so forth, but he's mostly borrowed against Right. He's deeply leveraged in the—
Richard Campbell [00:51:08]:
Yeah. But which is the nature of billionaires, right? You only, you just borrow money against your stocks. Right. So you never have taxes. Right. It's all well and fine until you tank your stock price.
Iain Thomson [00:51:17]:
Yeah. I mean, we've seen this also in the rest of the industry where you've got Oracle investing in NVIDIA to get, you know, stuff from them. A whole bunch of companies investing in NVIDIA to—
Leo Laporte [00:51:29]:
And then NVIDIA investing back.
Iain Thomson [00:51:30]:
'Cause this is— Exactly. It's a massive—
Leo Laporte [00:51:33]:
You buy our chips with our money that we're gonna going to give you.
Iain Thomson [00:51:37]:
Well, exactly. I mean, financially, it's a Chinese military parade of red flags. You would not touch these things. And yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see how that works out.
Leo Laporte [00:51:46]:
Well, tomorrow Nvidia has a big, big shoe. We're going to talk about that in just a little bit. I know you're excited about that and you've been doing some prep work, Ian. And I, I know, uh, Richard Campbell will also have things to say about that.
Richard Campbell [00:51:57]:
I said this on Windows Weekly, it's like, wow, you weren't happy selling shovels, so now you're going to go try and get some gold. Really?
Leo Laporte [00:52:03]:
That's right. That's right. Going for the gold. Jennifer Pattison Toohey is also here. We will talk about GTC in just a little bit. This Week in Tech brought to you this week by Modulate. This is actually a really cool company. They started first with video gaming, trying to get the abuse down in video gaming.
Leo Laporte [00:52:23]:
And now they're expanding. Every day enterprises generate millions of minutes of voice traffic, customer calls, agent conversations, fraud attempts. And most of that audio ends up just being treated like text. It's flattened into a transcript. There's no tone, intent. The risk even kind of is watered down because it's just words on paper. Modulate exists to change that. They did it in gaming.
Leo Laporte [00:52:50]:
Their technology supported major players like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. There's also all that voice, right, going on during these massively multiplayer games. They've been using their specially designed AI models to separate playful banter from intentional harm, and they're doing it at scale with millions of players simultaneously. Today, Modulate is also helping enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, understand 20 million minutes of voice every day. Not as a transcript, but listening to interpreting what was said and what it actually means in the real world. It's a very special model. It's Modulate's newest ELM, they call it. And I love the name Velma 2.0 with a little nod, I think, to Scooby-Doo.
Leo Laporte [00:53:40]:
Velma, that's the smart one, right? The one with the glasses. Velma is a voice-native behavior— this is so cool. It's a voice-native behavior-aware model that was designed and built to understand real conversations. Not just transcripts. It orchestrates 100+ specialized models, each focused on a different aspect of voice analysis. And the result is you get accurate, explainable insights in real time. You got to check this out. Velma ranks number 1 across 4 key audio benchmarks, beating all large foundation models in accuracy, cost, and speed.
Leo Laporte [00:54:19]:
It's number 1 in conversation understanding, Because it's designed to do this, right? Number 1 in transcription accuracy and cost. Number 1, you need this in deepfake detection. And number 1, this is the one I really am amazed by, in emotion detection. Built on 21 billion minutes of audio, Velma is 100 times faster, cheaper, and more accurate than LLMs because it's tuned for this, right? Understanding speech. Better than Google Gemini, OpenAI, better than xAI. Most LLMs are a black box. Velma doesn't just assess a conversation as a whole, but breaks it down for greater accuracy and transparency. It produces timestamped scores and events tied to moments in the conversation so you can see exactly when the risk is going up, when behavior shifts or the intent changes.
Leo Laporte [00:55:14]:
You could see it right there. With Velma, you can improve your customer experiences, reduce risks like fraud and harassment, detect rogue agents, and so much more. Go beyond transcripts. See what a voice-native AI model can really do. You know what? You can actually check it out. Go to Modulate's live ungated preview of Velma. It's at preview.modulate.ai. That's preview.modulate.ai.
Leo Laporte [00:55:42]:
Ai to see why Velma ranks number 1 in leading benchmarks for conversation understanding, deepfake detection, and emotion detection. Very cool stuff.
Richard Campbell [00:55:56]:
preview.modulate.ai.
Leo Laporte [00:55:57]:
We are entering very interesting times, I have to say, with, with AI. Very, very interesting times.
Iain Thomson [00:56:06]:
So what? Well, the The UK is changing the, the Bank of England is changing the faces on banknotes.
Leo Laporte [00:56:14]:
No more Churchill on your banknotes?
Iain Thomson [00:56:17]:
Yeah, but everyone's like, oh, that's so woke. But at the same time, they're taking Alan Turing, famous homosexual war hero, off the 50 quid note. And I was talking with someone on Reddit about this and it was just like, they're putting badgers on the notes. It's just like, I would pay money to see Alan Turing on the back of a badger. And somebody just created an AI picture of that and posted it up. Is it very good? It's pretty damn good.
Leo Laporte [00:56:42]:
I like the idea of wildlife on your bills. I think that's kind of neat. And the British bills are very colorful, right?
Iain Thomson [00:56:49]:
The banknotes. Oh yeah, we have fun with it.
Leo Laporte [00:56:51]:
They're quite pretty.
Iain Thomson [00:56:52]:
Here's a— Although now you have the Donald Trump dollar coin coming. And the, so first sitting president who's actually put his name on the, his face on the currency.
Leo Laporte [00:57:03]:
I think though, to be fair, that isn't intended as regular currency. That is like, like, you know, a special—
Iain Thomson [00:57:09]:
I was gonna say, who actually uses dollar coins, right? I mean, I've got very few of them.
Leo Laporte [00:57:15]:
Sells those.
Richard Campbell [00:57:15]:
It's more like, um, you know, New Jersey.
Leo Laporte [00:57:20]:
Yeah, it's a special thing.
Richard Campbell [00:57:21]:
New Jersey Transit uses the, uh, the coin.
Leo Laporte [00:57:24]:
So they're gonna put badgers on them?
Iain Thomson [00:57:26]:
Uh, they're gonna put a whole bunch of wildlife on them.
Leo Laporte [00:57:30]:
Um, now King Charles is still on the front.
Iain Thomson [00:57:34]:
Presumably so. I haven't held a UK banknote for over 2 years. So, Jennifer, sorry.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:57:39]:
I've probably got one right here, actually. I was just in Costa Rica, and they have animals on their banknotes. I like that. I have some. They're beautiful. Because— and they have like a little thing. This is a UK— this is a British banknote. So there's a—
Leo Laporte [00:57:55]:
See how pretty that is? There's a QE2.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:57:58]:
Beautiful. And then this is who's— I don't know who that is.
Leo Laporte [00:58:00]:
That's Jane Austen? I don't know. No.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:58:03]:
Oh no, who is that?
Leo Laporte [00:58:04]:
It's a man.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:58:05]:
It's a guy.
Leo Laporte [00:58:07]:
Look at our beautiful colorless green banknotes, right?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:58:13]:
Joseph Mallard William Turner.
Leo Laporte [00:58:15]:
Oh, Joe Turner. Old Joe Turner, sure.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:58:17]:
But the Costa Rican ones, they have like sloths and monkeys, and when you put them together like this, they have like a little— I should go get it. It's much better than bending the Queen's head, but the flowers come together to form the flower of the region that you're in. It's like it's really neat, kind of little Easter egg things. And there's their banknotes are like yellow and green and blue and much more colorful than ours. But yeah, I agree.
Leo Laporte [00:58:44]:
U.S. money is really boring. It's really— but let's be fair. Who uses cash anymore? Or do you? I get cash. I go to the bank and get cash, but mostly it's for tips.
Iain Thomson [00:58:55]:
Because I like to know. I cash— our local banh mi place only takes cash.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:00]:
Well, it's getting more expensive.
Leo Laporte [00:59:01]:
That means they're money laundering.
Iain Thomson [00:59:03]:
You know that, right? No, no, I'm, I'm sorry. This guy's been doing it for 30 years. He does the best banh mi on the planet.
Leo Laporte [00:59:10]:
Well, it's probably worth it.
Iain Thomson [00:59:11]:
It's, it's, it's a Vietnamese guy and he's— it's a family-owned business, but they only take cash because why would you pay 2 to 3%?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:19]:
Yeah. And it's getting more and more expensive for companies to use retailers to use. So like you, when you do see this in LA and California, we see this in the Southeast all the time. You go into a restaurant or a shop and if you pay by card, any card, even debit card, there's a 3% charge on your bill.
Leo Laporte [00:59:38]:
So that I think will be the merchant pays that.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:41]:
Yeah. No, but you, you're paying 3% more. You pay it.
Richard Campbell [00:59:45]:
Yes.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:45]:
They're like, if you're going to pay by card, even debit card, You're building it 3% more.
Leo Laporte [00:59:51]:
I think that's against the law to say that it's cheaper if you pay cash.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:54]:
The gas stations do it too. Really?
Iain Thomson [00:59:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, no, if you buy petrol, then it's significantly cheaper to pay with cash.
Benito Gonzalez [01:00:04]:
This is how it used to be though, right? They used to always pass on the credit charge to the person, right?
Leo Laporte [01:00:10]:
Isn't that how it used to be?
Richard Campbell [01:00:11]:
Yeah, just mark everything up 3%.
Leo Laporte [01:00:13]:
I mean, they may be secretly doing that, yes. But you're supposed to have this, I think, maybe I'm wrong, but I think I remember that you were supposed to have the same price price for cash or credit, that you weren't supposed to have separate prices.
Richard Campbell [01:00:24]:
I'm just surprised that they do it that way rather than just mark it up and say 3% discount for cash.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:00:28]:
Right.
Richard Campbell [01:00:28]:
Much more positive.
Leo Laporte [01:00:29]:
Yeah, you could do— yeah, I just, you know, I don't know what gas costs in your foreign lands, but here in California it is $6 a gallon in Petaluma now.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:00:41]:
Oh yeah. Oh, ours just went up, but it's nowhere near that.
Leo Laporte [01:00:44]:
Yeah, well, we pay more in California because of tax. Uh, yeah, and also California requires that the petroleum— petrol, as you would say— gets refined in the state, which costs more.
Iain Thomson [01:00:55]:
And well, also, I mean, there's less pollutants. But yeah, SF Standard had a thing. They found $6.50, uh, the most expensive gas on— in San Francisco.
Richard Campbell [01:01:05]:
Oh wow.
Iain Thomson [01:01:05]:
It was weird because I, I posted a picture up, you know, Big Sur Route 1. If you've ever driven down there, it's a fantastic driving road, but there are only 2 petrol stations and they screw you so hard.
Leo Laporte [01:01:18]:
10 years ago.
Iain Thomson [01:01:20]:
Yeah, exactly. So I took a picture of their gas prices and it was $5.50. And now that just looks sweet. Oh, and by the way, on the Discord channel, Club Twit, I've just posted a picture of Alan Turing riding a badger.
Leo Laporte [01:01:35]:
Well, now I've got to join the club. That's for sure. That's worth it. That's worth your club membership right there. Let me see if I can pull it up here.
Richard Campbell [01:01:44]:
These English badgers are so much sweeter than North American badgers. North American badgers are terrifying.
Leo Laporte [01:01:50]:
Well, I mean, that is a beautiful image.
Iain Thomson [01:01:53]:
It is.
Leo Laporte [01:01:54]:
He's so small and the badger's so big.
Iain Thomson [01:01:57]:
The great badger. And British people of a certain age will recognize the meme, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger.
Leo Laporte [01:02:04]:
What was it? What was it?
Richard Campbell [01:02:05]:
And then it would go mushroom, mushroom, mushroom.
Leo Laporte [01:02:11]:
That's— but that was universal. That was worldwide. Very well. Here is a I took a picture of our local gas station. Regular is $5.99, Plus is $6.99, V-Power is $6.39. That's a Shell station. I took a picture because I thought, you know, someday we'll look back and say, wow, it was only $6 a gallon.
Benito Gonzalez [01:02:33]:
A mere single digit.
Leo Laporte [01:02:36]:
Wow.
Iain Thomson [01:02:36]:
Well, no, but I mean, Jennifer is a Brit. As a fellow Brit, you can understand this. When I first came over here, and I was talking to the taxi driver on the way back from the airport about British petrol prices. He was like, hang on, you're paying $11 a gallon?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:02:49]:
I was about to say it's a lot more expensive in England.
Leo Laporte [01:02:53]:
Yeah. Yes. They hide it though by putting it in litres, which—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:02:56]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:02:56]:
Yes.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:02:56]:
It's harder to tell. It's harder to tell. It took me a while to figure out that. I was like, oh, wow, it's a bargain here. And down here in the south, it's $3.50 right now. And but like a month ago, it was $2.70. So we've had a huge, like, overnight, what, 2 weekends ago it went up.
Benito Gonzalez [01:03:12]:
And of course, it wasn't $2.70 in California since like 20 years ago.
Leo Laporte [01:03:17]:
Yeah, we haven't seen $2.70 in ages, but it all trickles down too because truckers, all the food you have, you eat everything.
Richard Campbell [01:03:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know what the price is because I pay with electricity.
Leo Laporte [01:03:29]:
Yeah, me too. I'm all electric. Looked. So tomorrow Nvidia will, uh, begin GTC, its annual conference, and Jensen Huang will do the keynote. We will be covering it. Jeff Jarvis, Micah Sargent, and I will be turning on our cameras at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern, 1900 UTC to— I'm sorry, 1800 UTC— to show Jensen's leather jacket. And, and apparently they're going to have some— I think they're going to have some big announcements. I think this is really be maybe the most important GTC keynote ever.
Leo Laporte [01:04:05]:
NVIDIA is of course on the cutting edge of AI development. One of the things that they're going to announce is Nemo Claw, which is an AI agent like OpenClaw, but they say will be more secure. They've been talking about this, I think, for a while. I don't think this is a big surprise, but we haven't seen it yet.
Richard Campbell [01:04:27]:
And well, it's not hard to be more secure than OpenCog.
Leo Laporte [01:04:31]:
I know. Uh, they also, they also say that will not require CUDA, which is of course, uh, NVIDIA's proprietary language that requires an NVIDIA GPU, which means I guess you'll be able to run it on non-NVIDIA hardware. We'll see. The NVIDIA hardware is actually appreciating in value. I saw a story you could buy H100 cards, their old GPUs, but they cost more than they did 3 years ago when they came out. So if you invested, better than buying $2 bills, buy Nvidia GPUs. They also, according to the Wall Street Journal, uh, plan to reveal a new chip system for inference computing that will incorporate a chip designed by Groq. Not Groq, Elon's Groq with the K, Groq with the Q.
Leo Laporte [01:05:20]:
NVIDIA licensed the design from them last year. So they just announced the new platform, the Vera Rubin platform a few months ago. So they're moving very, very fast. I think it's gonna be very interesting to see what Jensen announces. You're gonna watch that, right, Ian?
Iain Thomson [01:05:37]:
You said you were. Yeah, no, I was out with some analysts last night and they were talking about this. NVIDIA's really got to take the market by the throat at this point because its stock is massively overvalued.
Leo Laporte [01:05:54]:
Yeah. NVIDIA is the Straits of Hormuz of AI.
Iain Thomson [01:05:58]:
That's a very— I might steal that actually. But I mean, on one level, it's kind of like everyone's waiting for the bubble to pop, you know, and what's going to happen to NVIDIA when that happens. So I think NVIDIA is getting its defense in first. And is that some of these new announcements look really, really good. But I think fundamentally talking to people in NVIDIA and talking to the analysts behind it, there's gonna be a bubble bursting and then they take over and try and salvage something from, from the wreckage. But they're actually in a pretty good position. The open source AI in particular is getting a lot of attention because it's like, Okay, you're actually opening this up and that's gonna bugger up some of their, you know, commercial competition, but they're willing to do it.
Leo Laporte [01:06:49]:
I have to say the frontier AIs are still ahead by a long shot. There's nothing like Claude. In fact, one of the things Anthropic announced this week is Opus 4.6, their frontier model, now has a million token context window. Up 5 times from its 200,000. That means it can ingest much more data and work on it without choking. That's a huge leap. Nothing close with the open platforms. Now, I'm with you.
Leo Laporte [01:07:23]:
I think we need open platforms. I think they're really important. We don't want a handful of companies to dominate this.
Richard Campbell [01:07:28]:
Go ahead, Richard. Yeah, you used to have to pay a premium to get the million thing. Like I have a bunch of friends who own who pay for a number of Max accounts because they're software developers. They're literally running these things against each other, and a bunch of them are paying the premium for the million. And now they've opened it up, which to me, you know, Anthropic's so far ahead on the efficiency equation that I think they're finding out, okay, we can make this make economic sense too.
Leo Laporte [01:07:53]:
I think that must be it. They also announced that they're going to give you double the usage at off-peak hours. So they, you know, everybody's been talking about, and maybe they're doing this at a great loss, I don't know. Ed Zitron and others are talking about how much Anthropic is losing on every single token they sell. I don't know if that's the case. We just don't know how much it costs.
Richard Campbell [01:08:17]:
We argue about the max accounts can't continue because, you know, $200 a month and all you can eat is kind of nuts.
Leo Laporte [01:08:23]:
It's not exactly all you can eat. You can run out, but I have not. I pay $200 because I get that much value out of it.
Richard Campbell [01:08:30]:
No, and I have friends who, if it was $1,000, they'd be paying too. Like, they are knocking it out.
Leo Laporte [01:08:35]:
Well, that's what I'm afraid of. I think they're hooking me.
Iain Thomson [01:08:39]:
And we're back to social media again.
Leo Laporte [01:08:42]:
Social media. Honestly, I probably would pay more because I'm so tied into the ecosystem. I briefly, when ChatGPT-5.4 came out, I thought, oh, I got to try this. This is supposed to be better. Codex is supposed to be better and I got to try it. And I moved everything over and I felt like I was breaking up with my girlfriend. Very difficult.
Richard Campbell [01:09:05]:
But, uh, the thing that's interesting with the token limit issue is one of the things we're doing very heavily in software is breaking down into smaller pieces to stay under the token limits, right? Um, because we get better quality. A, if you overflow, you have problems anyway, but in general, people are well even under the quarter million because you get better quality code when you take a smaller bite.
Leo Laporte [01:09:27]:
All I know is I have a little progress bar as I'm working that shows how much of the context I've used. And it used to fill up pretty quickly. When you get to more than 60, 70%, you really want to compact it and save what you've learned. Because every time you clear the context window, it's like you knocked all its brains out and start, hello, who are you? It starts from scratch. So it's like the guy in Memento. He doesn't remember anything. So you kind of want to, you save notes, you say, okay, I'm going to compact the memory now. I'm going to, so remember what we were doing.
Leo Laporte [01:10:01]:
And then you kind of have to start up again and has to read in and so forth. But now I can't, I mean, I'm looking at that bar. It doesn't move. It's like, it's amazing. It's very hard to fill up a million tokens.
Benito Gonzalez [01:10:13]:
The question, Leo, is what is this worth to you then? How much, what's the absolute limit you would pay for this?
Richard Campbell [01:10:18]:
What will you pay?
Leo Laporte [01:10:21]:
Don't test me.
Benito Gonzalez [01:10:22]:
That's all I'm saying. No, but does that square with how much Anthropic spends on it? Is that the arithmetic that needs to work?
Leo Laporte [01:10:30]:
Well, first of all, we don't know how much it costs them. And there is definitely some efficiencies that they're gaining, obviously. Well, for instance, NVIDIA said the Vero Rubin platform is, I forgot what it was, but it was a significant, like 10 times less cost than their H200s. I mean, they're making massive improvements in efficiency. We just don't know. We don't know if it's a money loser or what. I mean, that's always been the contention is that for $200 a month, you're getting thousands of dollars.
Richard Campbell [01:10:58]:
But Anthropic seems to be the company accelerating away. Like they're, they are dropping new things out. Like this was always a conversation early on was like, what happens when these companies use their own tools to improve their tool? And that's what they're doing. And that's what we're seeing. And more so than any other, they seem to be suddenly accelerating away from everyone.
Iain Thomson [01:11:17]:
On. Well, I mean, it's also kind of a grudge match because Anthropic was founded by people that looked at OpenAI and went, bugger that, we're, you know, we're doing our own thing. And they're stealing the march on them at the moment. They really are. I mean, with OpenAI in particular, just dying on its backside amongst users because of the political stances they've taken, Anthropic is saying, looking at that and going, yeah, let's get in there.
Leo Laporte [01:11:43]:
Here's an interesting story. I'm very curious what you think about this. You are, of course, familiar with Perplexity. They have shopping bots on Perplexity. You can say, I want to buy some running shoes, trainers in your parlance. And I have to remember we're doing foreign language programming now. And so you want to buy some, or maybe you want to buy a jumper. Sweaters, as we call them.
Leo Laporte [01:12:12]:
And, uh, which, you know what, jumper is a much more civilized way to talk about it than sweater. More Aussie too. Yeah. Uh, so let's say you're shopping for a bicycle. You call it a bicycle, right? So you're shopping for a bicycle in Perplexity. It will then show you a bunch of sites. You can even say, buy me a bicycle. You could say, Perplexity, do the research, get me the best running shoes money can buy.
Leo Laporte [01:12:34]:
Buy. Your budget is $200 or whatever, and it will buy them. Well, Amazon didn't like that too much. Uh, this is using the Perplexity browser Comet, which is agentic. Amazon didn't like that too much. They sued last November demanding that they stop making purchases for users online. This week, a judge ruled in favor of Amazon. It's a temporary injunction, but they said that Perplexity's Comet can no longer buy stuff from Amazon's website.
Richard Campbell [01:13:10]:
Judge Maxine Chesney— it does undermine Amazon's model of selling you their stuff, right?
Leo Laporte [01:13:15]:
Well, it's a couple of things. Amazon also has ads on their site, right? They make a huge amount of money from the ads. Uh, but they also— yeah, Amazon Recommends, Amazon Suggests, and you don't see any of that if you're using a bot. You don't see Amazon's site if you're using a bot. Not. The judge said Amazon has provided strong evidence that Perplexity's Comet browser accessed its website at the user's direction but without authorization from Amazon. When did I have to get authorization to use a website? Yeah, as a human, do I have to get authorization?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:13:49]:
Well, I mean, I'm sorry, I'll say their argument is you have to have an account, right, to use to buy something on Amazon.
Leo Laporte [01:13:56]:
It's on the internet. Well, but I presume that Comet is using my money with my account.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:14:04]:
And that's where the argument falls down. It's like you've given it authorization. So yeah, they don't have— and the irony here is this is exactly what Amazon is trying to do with Alexa Plus.
Leo Laporte [01:14:15]:
Exactly. And Rufus, which very few people know about, but Amazon has an AI agent on its site and they want you to use Rufus, although In a related story, Amazon had an all-hands with its engineers who they were said, you can't use Claude, you have to use Cairo, our in-house AI, to do your engineering. They had an all-hands saying you cannot use any of our code that you've produced with Cairo without getting a senior engineer to sign off on it, because apparently it's been causing some problems.
Iain Thomson [01:14:47]:
They now— well, they had that massive outage.
Leo Laporte [01:14:50]:
They denied— first they said it was was caused by AI. Now they're saying, oh no, no, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't AI.
Iain Thomson [01:14:57]:
But I've got a bridge I could sell you.
Leo Laporte [01:15:00]:
Yeah, they say please don't use our AI to solve your technical problems. Um, yeah, I mean, don't you— when you're— you— when I'm using, uh, Chrome and I go to Amazon and I'm buying something, I'm using Chrome to buy something on my account with my permission. How is that different? I think the judge got this wrong.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:15:23]:
Yeah. And this is something that my— our esteemed editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel at The Verge, has been hammering on about AI agents since day one. He calls it the DoorDash problem, which is that basically the whole point of agentic AI is to circumvent the place that the Amazon or the DoorDash, like the place where you're going to go to buy the thing or the Uber, you know, so that service is no longer going to get users coming to it, just like like news organizations are no longer getting users coming to it because AI is just summarizing their information and spitting it out. If you can do everything with AI, what happens to the services that you are using because you are no longer using them yourself and these agentic tools are going there for you? And this is like what Rabbit was trying to do. This is what all of— Yeah, this is what all of This is sort of the goal of a lot of the current agentic AI out there. Alexa Plus, I'm sure with Gemini, and there's, they just actually, I did drop this link in the show notes, but Gemini just launched this week on the new Samsung device. You can use task automation with Gemini. So you can get Gemini to do your, order your Uber, or they launched with Uber and one other feature.
Iain Thomson [01:16:50]:
But yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:16:51]:
On the new S26 Ultra.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:16:53]:
Yes, it's just there now, but eventually I'm sure we'll see it go to all of the phones that support Gemini.
Leo Laporte [01:17:00]:
So how many different AI agents on your Samsung phone? You've got Bixby, right?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:17:06]:
They don't discriminate, Samsung. They're open to everyone.
Richard Campbell [01:17:09]:
But it is only a temporary injunction, right?
Iain Thomson [01:17:12]:
Which really—
Richard Campbell [01:17:13]:
it is. Is this a case? Is it— is it causing harm?
Leo Laporte [01:17:16]:
Like, then you— yeah, yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:17:18]:
The judge will probably lose on the actual case.
Leo Laporte [01:17:20]:
I hope so. Well, because it blows the whole thing up if they do, including their own products. The judge said the court finds Amazon has shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim. Amazon said, they kind of admitted what we've been saying, that Perplexity's agents, uh, first they said, well, it's a security risk because it can act, uh, with using private customer accounts without requiring a password. But then they admitted it. They said Perplexity's agents created challenges for the company's advertising business because when AI systems generate ad traffic, the impressions have to be— we have to figure out if it's an AI before we can bill the advertisers.
Richard Campbell [01:18:04]:
This requires modifications.
Iain Thomson [01:18:04]:
How much does this entire business model—
Leo Laporte [01:18:07]:
it's a flawed business model, dude. The system adaptations are necessary to maintain contractual obligations with advertisers. Who pay only for legitimate human impressions.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:20]:
Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting case because it is what goes to the core of what's gonna happen. I mean, no one's sad about Amazon. No. But we are sad about our news websites that no longer get any traffic to them. So eventually will shut down and we will no longer have originally reported news and AI will just have to make up more stuff because there won't be any original content out there. And we are, you know, we are sad, like we're seeing different, like smaller businesses that managed to do well on the internet, you know, getting disintermediated. And that type of thing is what AI is.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:53]:
I mean, AI is coming for everyone's jobs as we keep being warned. In fact, there's a great piece in The Verge this week about which— about people whose jobs are going to be lost by AI. But AI is going to completely change the internet and completely change the business models of every website out there. So, I mean, Amazon, like I said no boohoo's here for, for them, but, um, we got to start the fight somewhere.
Leo Laporte [01:19:18]:
I mean, there's— I mean, you're right. And same thing happened to restaurants, and it's been really hard on restaurants, uh, you know, that without asking the restaurant's permission, companies like— I can't— was it Uber Eats or DoorDash?
Iain Thomson [01:19:33]:
DoorDash did that. They would sign up restaurants without their permission and take a commission from Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:19:40]:
So I understand if I were a small restaurant owner or my son, for instance, who is a small restaurant owner in New York, those guys could kill you. Imagine, you know, all of a sudden you get an order for 100 French dip sandwiches, you know, and you've got customers waiting in the store, but you've got to fulfill these customers' orders and you didn't even sign up for it.
Benito Gonzalez [01:20:02]:
I mean, this is what Amazon did to literally every brick and mortar store.
Leo Laporte [01:20:05]:
That's a good point.
Iain Thomson [01:20:06]:
You started at Amazon.
Leo Laporte [01:20:10]:
It's a very, very good point.
Benito Gonzalez [01:20:12]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:20:13]:
Come to think of it, I didn't, I wasn't even thinking about that. Let's see. All right. Let's take a break and then we will talk more about Doge and the amazing Doge deposition videos. Wow.
Richard Campbell [01:20:31]:
Wow.
Leo Laporte [01:20:31]:
Great panel. This is fun. And we're moving along, Jennifer, because we're going to get you The Oscars start soon and we're gonna get—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:20:38]:
I've been peeking at the dresses.
Leo Laporte [01:20:40]:
There's some good ones. Yes, right now it's red carpet time.
Benito Gonzalez [01:20:42]:
Yeah, you want to be an hour late anyway, so when you skip the ads you basically catch up to live once you've skipped all the—
Iain Thomson [01:20:49]:
I know, it's kind of like an American football game in that respect, you know, but skip over the ads and it's—
Leo Laporte [01:20:54]:
and this is what really makes me mad about social media. Forget all this about making our kids crazy. I have to— then I don't want to see any spoilers because it's coming across and it's on my phone, it's on my watch, it's everywhere.
Iain Thomson [01:21:06]:
Oh my God. Yeah, exactly the same problem last night. The Chinese Grand Prix ran at midnight and I had to turn my phone off. Turn everything to make sure I didn't get spoilers.
Leo Laporte [01:21:18]:
By the way, are we not loving the new era of Formula One, Ian?
Iain Thomson [01:21:23]:
I am iffy about it.
Leo Laporte [01:21:25]:
Oh, it's so exciting.
Iain Thomson [01:21:27]:
No, you see, I'm sorry. I've been watching Formula One for 40 years. And in my mind, when you're driving a Formula One car, It's balls to the floor, go as fast as you can, and now you've got to recharge the battery. Yeah, it's quite Mario Kart. A lot of drivers have said it's exactly like Mario Kart because if you charge the battery enough, you get a magic mushroom and you go much faster.
Leo Laporte [01:21:52]:
No, when to let the banana go. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is, it's much more complicated. But you know what, this is a generation of drivers, they're all like 20, that grew up on Mario Kart. They've played, you This is a video game to them. Yeah.
Iain Thomson [01:22:08]:
I mean, I think this is why we're going to lose Max Verstappen by the end of the season because he's just not enjoying it at all. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:22:13]:
Because he's not winning at all.
Richard Campbell [01:22:15]:
This is one of the reasons I like it is because it's 3+ Gs in these turns. Like you, you're seeing your weight to the driver.
Iain Thomson [01:22:21]:
Like it's really a difficult thing. And you've got a 30-pound helmet on your head as well, which is being forced to the sides.
Leo Laporte [01:22:28]:
So yeah. Well, they have that hands device.
Richard Campbell [01:22:30]:
So they need those things. But you know, the reality is we haven't been going faster for a long time because you can't keep the driver safe. Yeah, true. I mean, a long time ago, they could be 300-mile-an-hour cars.
Leo Laporte [01:22:41]:
Just everybody would die. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, well, that's— it's much safer than it used to be.
Iain Thomson [01:22:46]:
Much. Well, yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the Group B rally series in the '80s where they basically said, you know, let's take all the regulations out. And yeah, a lot of drivers got killed.
Leo Laporte [01:22:57]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you like Apple's new—
Richard Campbell [01:23:02]:
I do.
Iain Thomson [01:23:02]:
The thing I know, I'm using it, added a lot of ads.
Leo Laporte [01:23:05]:
All of a sudden there's ads on F1, which I don't like at all. I paid a lot more money though for the F1 TV subscription, so I guess that's—
Iain Thomson [01:23:13]:
well, I mean, F1 TV I think was about $90 a year last year, and I'm fine with that if it means no adverts and I can get the British commentators. I'm down with that.
Leo Laporte [01:23:22]:
That. Yeah, we still— the good news is we still get the F1 TV commentators. You still get Crofty if you want Crofty.
Iain Thomson [01:23:29]:
Uh, Crofty's losing a bit, but I do like Martin Brundle. No one can do a fast lap like Martin Brundle.
Leo Laporte [01:23:33]:
I like the Scottish guy, David Coulthard.
Iain Thomson [01:23:36]:
He has— oh yeah, on the, on the main feed. DC is fantastic, you know, and he's, he's very sarky. Uh, when you get, um, Nico Rosberg doing commentating, I highly recommend it. Yeah, because he He is snarky as all hell, and I do like his commentary.
Leo Laporte [01:23:54]:
I'm sorry, we got started talking about— Sorry. Yeah. Never start us on F1. Ian and I will go on and on and on. All right, we're going to take a break. Come back. Let's talk about Doge when we come back. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who has Costa Rican money.
Leo Laporte [01:24:09]:
Did you have a good time in Costa Rica? I'm so jealous.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:12]:
Oh, it was amazing. You recommend it?
Leo Laporte [01:24:14]:
Yeah.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:14]:
I want some tips. It was our 20th wedding anniversary, and we had gone there. Congratulations. We had— thank you. We had gone there for our honeymoon, so we came back and we brought our kids with us. So, and to the exact same place, and it was the Osa Peninsula. It's like the remotest part of Costa Rica you can, you can get to, really.
Leo Laporte [01:24:33]:
So it's funny because I know many people go there, but everybody has a different reason for going. You have the Atlantic, you have the Pacific, you have the jungle. It's all different things.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:43]:
Yeah, this is like the rainforest, like, so we were deep in the jungle, so it was like pumas and monkeys and toucans and coaties and everything. We saw all wildlife, um, in the house actually. You know, we, we were in a house like an Airbnb, but it had no walls.
Leo Laporte [01:24:57]:
Okay, I don't like that. Okay, we did that once in Mexico. We got what they call a palapa, and when I saw that the whatever monkeys had nibbled the soap, I said, we're moving, not staying here. But to be fair, our, our, our firstborn was like, uh, 6 months old, so I, I didn't want them to nibble our 6-month-old soap.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:18]:
Yeah, yeah, I, I I can understand. But it was, it was like, it was like being in—
Leo Laporte [01:25:21]:
that is wild. They were coming in the house.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:24]:
Yeah. And the raccoon— the raccoons came in the house. Oh no. Which, which— they warned us this, and, um, I said to my husband, well, there's like one part of the house that's like a big, almost like a safe with a big heavy door. So they, they put all the, like, that's a sign in there. And I was like, we should put the food in there and the trash. And so he diligently one night packed everything into there and then forgot to shut the door.
Leo Laporte [01:25:50]:
Oh no, raccoons are not so dumb, are they?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:52]:
One raccoon came and then 5 more. He's like, he went and got his other—
Leo Laporte [01:25:56]:
Hey guys, they forgot to close the door!
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:59]:
Come on! And the raccoons in Costa Rica are not like the ones in the US, which, interesting side note, are apparently becoming domesticized— domesticated, which is very interesting. But the ones in Costa Rica are huge. And this one stood up on its back, on its hind legs, and because I went down to shoo them away, and it stood up at its hind legs and it was as tall as me. What? I'm 5'10".
Richard Campbell [01:26:21]:
What? With these, these are coatimundis, right?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:26:24]:
They were not— no, no, it was an actual raccoon. But it did— I know what you mean about it. It almost looked like a cross between the coatis. It was, yeah, it was big. Yeah, on its hind legs.
Leo Laporte [01:26:35]:
Yeah, I was like, oh, that's terrifying.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:26:38]:
You can have the bread.
Leo Laporte [01:26:39]:
Did it try to wash you?
Iain Thomson [01:26:43]:
No. I mean, as a fellow Brit, I find trash pandas absolutely terrifying because they have no fear whatsoever. You know, it's just like if you see them on the street, they're just like stand up on their hind legs and go, yeah, you want some?
Richard Campbell [01:26:57]:
You know, I mean, oh my God. I mean, urban raccoons bulk up to fight dogs and they're quite assertive. Yeah, I live in their country. You simply do not leave anything edible outside. Like, no, stop.
Leo Laporte [01:27:11]:
They will go through it all. Well, I should have known this. Palapa in Mexico, the bed didn't have feet, it was hanging from the ceiling. I— that should have been a giveaway that there was something that might crawl up a bed leg. And so we're just going to hang it from the ceiling.
Iain Thomson [01:27:28]:
The bear thing does terrify me because I went camping up in, um, up in the Sierras, and my wife woke me up in the middle of the night just because there were bears prowling around our tent. And, you know, we've done the thing, we put the food in a bear box and the rest of to it. Yeah, but she's just like, isn't it amazing? It's like, there are two thin layers of nylon between me and huge sharp pointy teeth. Oh yeah, not something I'm enjoying.
Richard Campbell [01:27:54]:
Yeah, and they like toothpaste too. Don't bring the toothpaste in your tent.
Iain Thomson [01:27:57]:
Like, oh, that I hadn't heard. I mean, yeah, the, the thing the, the guide told us was, if it's brown, lay down. If it's black, attack. And it's just like, I know I'm going to die thinking, well, it's kind of brown.
Leo Laporte [01:28:11]:
Is it a blue dress? Is it a black dress?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:28:14]:
I I don't know. My husband was a fishing guide in Alaska for 4 summers, and he once was cleaning fish on the end of a dock, and, um, one— a huge big brown bear who had hurt paw came onto the dock. It's like, oh, you look like a big fish.
Leo Laporte [01:28:32]:
Would you like that?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:28:35]:
Thankfully dinner. Yeah, thankfully he had a radio on him, but the bear was going right for him. Um, wanted. Yeah, so it's— they're pretty scary creatures. They're great to view from a distance, a very safe distance.
Leo Laporte [01:28:47]:
Richard's quite the fisherman.
Iain Thomson [01:28:48]:
Well, I mean, I mean, I had a—
Richard Campbell [01:28:50]:
and lived with it my whole life, so I'm not that anxious about it. But you don't mess with brown bears. I think brown bears are serious business.
Iain Thomson [01:28:56]:
Yeah, well, an old schoolmate of mine, uh, worked on Svalbard, uh, in the Arctic Circle for a couple of years. That's a whole other league. Yeah, exactly. You're, you're allowed out of the town unless you've got a gun on you because they will, you know, polar bears are just like, ooh, crunchy, you know.
Richard Campbell [01:29:15]:
Well, and it's also a big deal if you do shoot a polar bear, like that's your mistake. Like we did the expedition out of Svalbard and it's like, yeah, checked very carefully there was no bear around because they're endangered. And if you shoot one, now you have a lot of paperwork to do.
Leo Laporte [01:29:30]:
Wow. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:29:32]:
Wow.
Leo Laporte [01:29:32]:
Uh, we're taking a little break.
Richard Campbell [01:29:33]:
Come back, get your head around how big a polar bear is.
Leo Laporte [01:29:36]:
Like you, I'm not sure I want to.
Richard Campbell [01:29:38]:
Oh, No, thank you very much.
Leo Laporte [01:29:40]:
Massive.
Richard Campbell [01:29:40]:
Just a different thing.
Leo Laporte [01:29:40]:
Is it Cuda Monday?
Richard Campbell [01:29:42]:
They yank whales out of the water.
Leo Laporte [01:29:46]:
Yeah.
Iain Thomson [01:29:46]:
Wow. Yes, David Attenborough had a marvelous series on, on, on the Life on Ice thing where, yeah, they're literally hanging around where the whales would come up to breathe and then just yank them out. Pour in, rip them out. Yeah, we got food.
Richard Campbell [01:30:00]:
Yeah, snack time. The only time polar bears are fun to look at is when they're so stuffed full of whale they can't even move.
Leo Laporte [01:30:06]:
Now they're on the money. We are talking to the Commonwealth version of This Week in Tech, Richard Campbell from Madeira Park, British Columbia. Ian Thompson, he's visiting San Francisco, but he really is an Irishman.
Iain Thomson [01:30:24]:
Well, Irishman?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:30:25]:
Scots, please.
Leo Laporte [01:30:26]:
Scots. I thought you said Ireland. I know, I always thought you were Scots.
Iain Thomson [01:30:30]:
No, no, I'm half Scot and half Yorkshire, which makes me the tightest person on the planet.
Richard Campbell [01:30:37]:
Jennifer will understand that.
Leo Laporte [01:30:37]:
There's only one type cheaper than the Yorkshireman, and that's a Scot.
Richard Campbell [01:30:42]:
Yes, my mom— this is the house—
Iain Thomson [01:30:42]:
this is how copper wire was invented, two Yorkshiremen fighting over a penny.
Leo Laporte [01:30:49]:
Wow. And Jennifer Patterson Tuohy from The Verge, great to have all three of you here. Our show today brought to you by Monarch. I know I'm not supposed to talk about competition when I talk about Monarch, but I gotta tell you, my subscription, uh, recently— okay, I, I bought a I buy a year every year and I subscribed and I bought a year. And so my subscription came up and I thought, well, I really ought to look around and see what's out there. And I literally spent a morning installing all the other guys. And I said, what am I doing? There is nothing as good as Monarch. I love Monarch.
Leo Laporte [01:31:27]:
So yes, I re-upped, especially now, right? It's tax season. This is when, you know, unfortunately for a lot of people, this is the one time of year people look at their finances. Monarch's great for that, of course, but it helps you make progress with your money all year long. So you don't look back on April 15th and say, what happened? Uh, Monarch is fantastic. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting, accounts, and investments, net worth, and and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with code TWIT.
Leo Laporte [01:32:14]:
That's the way to do it. Monarch isn't your average personal finance app. Unlike all those other guys, and I, like I said, I wanted to be fair. I gave them all a try. Nothing like Monarch. Monarch is built to make you proactive, not just reactive. And what I really like about Monarch is it has Monarch Intelligence built in, AI. And it's not just any old AI, it's trained by certified financial planners and advisors.
Leo Laporte [01:32:41]:
So it's smart about money. Get access to the AI assistant, which is in effect 24/7 access to a financial coach available anywhere inside Monarch. And you can ask it about everything that's in your Monarch privately. Financially, personally. You can ask about trends in your spending, how to pay off debt. The AI system has all the answers. You also can use the AI to get insights. It'll comb through the data to surface insights that are specific on how you're spending your money, how you're investing, how you're budgeting, all the hidden patterns.
Leo Laporte [01:33:17]:
It'll identify lifestyle creep versus inflation. You know, why am I spending more? Is it inflation is, am I actually kind of up in my life? It's changes in savings rates, all, I mean, it's incredible. And every week you can get the AI Weekly Recap. Let Monarch look out for your money with a personalized weekly summary that alerts you to spending spikes, big shifts in net worth, upcoming expenses. Ooh, another thing I love, they just added this splitting bills. It's easier than ever. You don't need a separate app. You scan a receipt or upload it.
Leo Laporte [01:33:51]:
It, and Monarch will automatically parse the items— this is the AI at work again— and the prices for you. And then you can share a link or a QR code with your group, and everyone can say, yeah, that was mine, that was mine, and settle the bill effortlessly. This is a nice feature. They just added this. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use code TWIT at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at Monarch monarch.com, code TWIT. There was no question in my mind, Monarch is worth every penny.
Leo Laporte [01:34:24]:
I love Monarch. So of course, the big story this week was a whistleblower that says one of the Doge engineers in the Social Security database copied records from 500 million people. That's more than there are in the United States, so I guess 500 million records maybe. Uh, he possessed two databases from the Social Security Administration, Numident and the master death file. The whistleblower said the person asked for help transferring the databases from a thumb drive to his personal computer so he could, quote, sanitize the data before using it at a company he was going to. He is currently employed. This is exactly what we were worried about, to be honest, when these kids, these 20-somethings, got brought into government. The Social Security Inspector General's office is investigating this.
Leo Laporte [01:35:28]:
It is, it is a credible story. And, and the guy who took 500 million records for, I guess, living and dead Americans— that's why there's so many of them— includes Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race, ethnicity, parents' names. And we know who it is because it's been revealed. And we know he went to a company that works with Social Security. He had essentially unrestricted, God-level security access to the Social Security Administration systems. These are databases that until now have been treated as highly secure, highly private. The government expects us to give them all the information every year when we file our tax returns. In return, we expect them to keep it private.
Iain Thomson [01:36:22]:
Yeah, how's that working out? Yeah, I mean, it's just like you let a bunch of— I mean, we'll talk about this later, but you look at the people that were behind this and you know it's just they would instantly take this because it's fantastic data. Why wouldn't you? But yeah, I mean, the fact also that they asked for help about this shows—
Leo Laporte [01:36:47]:
Hey, can you help me? Yeah, I can't figure out how to get this into my personal laptop.
Iain Thomson [01:36:54]:
Yeah, I just— it boggles the mind. It really does.
Richard Campbell [01:36:58]:
Most of this data was in M365 Government. Ah, was they got the admin accounts?
Leo Laporte [01:37:06]:
Yeah, they got God accounts.
Richard Campbell [01:37:08]:
Yeah, they called it. So they got admin access, which means they literally had drive-level access to everything. They may or not be able to utilize the data or anything, but you've got drive-level access, so copy everything.
Leo Laporte [01:37:21]:
Uh, Wired got the, uh, identification. I won't say the person's name on the show, but, uh, he is now the chief technology officer at Laidos. Lighthouse, because Lighthouse works with the Social Security. They have a $1.5 billion 5-year deal working with the Social Security Administration. He's denying everything, of course.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:37:45]:
Of course. I feel like the problem is, you know, every week I get another letter from another company saying that my Social Security number and every other thing I've given them has been exposed. It's like, whose Social Security number your phone number is not in the wrong hands these days. It's like we need to have a complete sort of reset on how we've— we handle or what data actually becomes— is essential to recognize and identify us. I saw another article this, this week about something like an absurd number of tax returns have been filed using fraudulent data. So people— and it's quite common, I hear, to like log in to do your taxes if you use an online service and it'll be like, oh, you've already filed. Oh no, because that's not good. Yeah.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:38:32]:
Yeah. So like we've, we've lost control.
Leo Laporte [01:38:33]:
Well then that was what Doge was supposed to fix, right? Doge was supposed to fix fraud. The sad truth of it is, you know, Elon said it was going to save the government $2 trillion. It saved very little money. In fact, that's—
Iain Thomson [01:38:47]:
It actually cost more money than it saved.
Leo Laporte [01:38:50]:
Yeah. And that's actually the cause for this lawsuit by the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Historical Association. They're suing the National Endowment for the Humanities because their grants were cut by Doge. Hundreds of millions of dollars of grants were cut by Doge. And in this lawsuit, the Doge kids were brought in to testify. Now, the MLA posted that on YouTube. And the judge immediately said, uh, yeah, no, that's a deposition, that's confidential, you can't post it. Uh, but of course once it's on YouTube, too late.
Iain Thomson [01:39:33]:
Yeah, it's— no, I mean, 404 did a fantastic job on this.
Richard Campbell [01:39:37]:
Yeah.
Iain Thomson [01:39:38]:
And I feel for Joe Cox. I've known him for a while, and— but they actually had somebody sit through 6 hours of this testimony and go through with it. And the guy— some of these guys, there's a Germans have a word for everything, okay? And there's a German word, and forgive me for this, but it's Backfellschmied, which is a face made for punching. And my goodness, I looked at that and it was just like, this guy was like, no, we just fed it into ChatGPT and it told us whether it was DEI or not. So we just deleted it. And it's like, that's people's lives.
Leo Laporte [01:40:12]:
Here he is trying to explain what DEI is. There was the EO explicitly laid out the details.
Iain Thomson [01:40:19]:
I don't remember it off the top of my head.
Richard Campbell [01:40:21]:
I'm asking for your understanding of it. Yeah, my understanding was exactly what was written in the EO.
Leo Laporte [01:40:25]:
Yeah, he says, I don't know what DEI is, but I know it when I see it, right? They were basically— they were— if, if, if a, a grant application mentioned a Black person, a tribal person, a Native American LGBTQ, it was in there. They would just cancel the grant, period. That was it. Yeah, it was basically a word search.
Richard Campbell [01:40:52]:
I know what it means. He was just searching for the string. Exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:40:55]:
I don't know what it means. I just know what I'm told.
Benito Gonzalez [01:40:58]:
Even the word diverse was in that. So like, even when diverse, even stuff like, yeah, we need diversity, equity, inclusion, even like we need a diverse set of evidence, stuff like that even got. So it was. Connected to anything racial or anything like that.
Iain Thomson [01:41:14]:
I was, I was talking about this with my next-door neighbor, um, because there's a younger guy than Justin Fox who was also deposed, and she's a teacher, and she was just like, I know those kids at school. They think they know it all and they know bugger all. And they are kids. Yeah. And I'm not surprised they stole the data because why wouldn't You know, it's like you've got access to that database.
Leo Laporte [01:41:38]:
I almost don't even blame them. I blame the people who put them in there. Yeah. That's who you blame.
Iain Thomson [01:41:45]:
What's the German word? You've got it up on the screen now. I can't pronounce it because it's German and I can speak a little French but not German. But backfätschelglänzch. So it's basically a compound word meaning to punch someone and their face. So it's a face made for punching.
Leo Laporte [01:42:05]:
Pfeif in Gesicht. Yeah, it's hard to say.
Iain Thomson [01:42:08]:
Yeah, I've tried to learn German for a couple of years and I just can't do it.
Leo Laporte [01:42:13]:
Backpfeif means punch or slap on the cheek or face, and Gesicht means face.
Iain Thomson [01:42:19]:
So yeah, yeah, there's a reason there are no great German love poets, put it that way.
Leo Laporte [01:42:23]:
It isn't exactly a romantic language. Uh, let's see what else. We're talking about things government is doing that we don't like. How about this? Texas has banned lab-grown salmon because Texans have, quote, a God-given right to know what's on their plate. And for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab.
Iain Thomson [01:42:59]:
So it's, it's, it's poisoned by pollutants. It's got heavy, heavy metals in there.
Leo Laporte [01:43:03]:
But well, that's the reason stuff is just, you know, well, that's a reason to ban it. Okay. But I think you could, oh no, yeah, the lab-grown stuff doesn't have that.
Iain Thomson [01:43:15]:
No, exactly. If you, if you catch a salmon in the river, God knows what's gone into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know exactly what's going on.
Leo Laporte [01:43:23]:
A California company called Wildtype, they sell lab-grown grown salmon. It's never salmon that never swam or anything, it's just they take cells and they grow them, right? Yeah. And they're suing Texas because Texas bans cell-cultivated meat. The company's founder says lab-grown salmon eliminates the mercury, microplastics, and antibiotic contamination found— typically found in seafood. Does it— have you— has anybody tasted lab-grown meat?
Iain Thomson [01:43:50]:
Uh, yeah, I've done lab-grown meat. It's honestly, it tastes pretty much the same, you know. I mean, it's— it even bleeds because they put beetroot juice in there.
Leo Laporte [01:44:00]:
But I mean, stop doing that, that's disgusting.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:44:02]:
I mean, we, we probably need to start growing more things like this because, you know, we, we— our resources— I mean, salmon, that's still fairly— I mean, after one really— they were close to extinction a few decades ago, but they brought them back. But then And things like beef, you know, that the resources that they use to—
Leo Laporte [01:44:25]:
oh, forget data centers, yeah, a lot of water, more of this, not less.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:44:31]:
And the quote at the end of this article, that, and from my least favorite governor of all time, um, is, um, that we're fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.
Leo Laporte [01:44:49]:
I'm like, what What, what, what? Authoritarian Gulf. By the way, yeah, people might think since we were talking about Texas you're talking, uh, about Governor Abbott.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:44:58]:
It's actually Ron DeSantis you're talking about. Okay. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I, I live very close to Florida. My parents lived in Florida.
Leo Laporte [01:45:05]:
Um, and there's a ban in Florida and Texas.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:45:08]:
Yeah, Ron DeSantis is one of the— yeah, anyway, I won't get too political. Well, yeah, this is insane. This makes no sense to say this is the global elite's plan. What— why would, why would the global elite want to force people to eat lab-grown meat? What is the point here? Is it always to get rid of farming? Is that the point?
Leo Laporte [01:45:26]:
No, we've seen people who brought you COVID vaccines, the global elite.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:45:31]:
We have a global food crisis, and if we can create another way to, to develop nutritious without killing an animal, without killing an animal, without ingesting toxins and plastics ourselves, um, yeah. And they're not talking about saying like, we can't— you can't eat real salmon. Common, but, you know, having alternatives is—
Leo Laporte [01:45:50]:
that's the thing.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:45:51]:
Why ban it?
Iain Thomson [01:45:52]:
Yeah, right.
Richard Campbell [01:45:53]:
Well, no, it's already labeled.
Leo Laporte [01:45:56]:
Yeah.
Iain Thomson [01:45:56]:
Yes. I mean, Leo, you're up in Petaluma, which is big chicken farming country, and if you go downwind of a chicken farm, my God. And yeah, same thing with the beef feedlots. I would welcome that lab-grown meat.
Leo Laporte [01:46:09]:
We call it here the Sonoma aroma.
Iain Thomson [01:46:14]:
Really?
Leo Laporte [01:46:14]:
Oh my God. Uh, here's another one that makes me mad. So apparently, uh, there is now, uh, and I bet you would know about this, Jennifer, uh, you can get plug-in solar panels. They're, they're very— you don't have to install them on your roof. You could put them on your, on your deck, on your, uh, a garage, and they plug in and then they power your house. They're popular in Germany. More than 1.2 million of the systems are registered with the German government. They are not legal in the US because— Except for in Utah.
Leo Laporte [01:46:50]:
Oh, Utah. Good for you, Utah. Utah has the first law supporting plug-in solar.
Iain Thomson [01:46:56]:
Finally, Utah's ahead of the game.
Leo Laporte [01:46:59]:
But of course, utilities don't want you generating your own electricity. And so it's illegal. State lawmakers are now in 30 states talking about about making plug-in solar legal. Have you played with this at all, Jennifer?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:47:14]:
You know anything about it? Yeah, well, it's actually very common in Europe. In fact, my, last time I visited England, I was at my aunt's house and they had literally found a solar panel in a dump and resurrected it and plugged it into their house and were powering some lights on their porch because these can't necessarily power your entire home.
Iain Thomson [01:47:36]:
No.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:47:36]:
These are small arrays that you could just power like your refrigerator if the power's gone down, or you could power a small apartment maybe. And so the roof balcony solar is kind of what was the original kind of trend in Europe, is that, you know, if you have a small apartment and you just want to power a few things, you can just hang solar off your balcony. And it's a way of bringing solar to people that live in apartments as well, because you can't, you know, right, for so long solar is really really limited to someone if you own your own home and you've got to spare 20 grand to install them. And they're really— it's a complicated process. Um, my colleague Thomas Ricker at The Verge, who's in, um, Denmark— nope, the Netherlands, Amsterdam. He lives in Amsterdam and he tests a lot of this type of plug-in solar or portable solar. And it's, it's a great— it's a great thing to be able to have a backup source that is not the grid without having to invest a huge amount of money. I mean, I've got solar panels.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:48:39]:
I think, Leo, you have solar panels, don't you? I do, yeah. Yeah, and they, you know, it's great if you can have it, and we're seeing it.
Leo Laporte [01:48:46]:
But they're hugely expensive.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:48:47]:
I think we spent tens of thousands of dollars on them. And the utilities are pushing against this for safety reasons, they say, but obviously a significant issue for them is they don't want people generating their own power. Although there are some utilities who we're seeing sort of the flip side because we are seeing a real real surgence of VPNs, so virtual power networks, so where utilities can actually tap into people who have that, who are generating their own energy and storing it in batteries in order to help stabilize the grid. So I think we're kind of at a, we're at a tipping point with the grid in America. And I can imagine whilst we're seeing resistance to this type of technology today, I would have thought you know, within the next 5 to 10 years as more and more electric utility companies start to realize the value and benefit of being able to kind of spread the generation of energy and not just have to rely on large power plants. Not that small little solar panels like this are gonna help, but just solar panels in general in people's homes, batteries in people's homes. I mean, actually we've seen an uptick of people installing batteries without solar panels. Panels just so that they have a resource, like instead of a generator.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:50:04]:
Yeah, they can time shift. And the time of use rates. So I think we're going to start, this is going to start to be a big trend.
Leo Laporte [01:50:12]:
I think there's an upside to the gas crisis, the oil crisis, that might be it. If energy price becomes, for fossil fuels gets so high, renewables get—
Iain Thomson [01:50:24]:
You can get your solar panels shipped in. They don't have to go through the Straits of Hormuz.
Leo Laporte [01:50:29]:
But it's, I mean, The utility companies are worried because it's always hot. So, and anyway, they raised a lot of safety concerns.
Richard Campbell [01:50:38]:
Backfeeding's an issue, but backfeeding's also testable.
Leo Laporte [01:50:41]:
Well, and they point out there have been millions of systems installed in Germany and there have been no safety incidents reported at all.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:50:48]:
And the UL is doing, they're doing certification for these systems. And I think that's sort of going through tweaks, but eventually it should be, I mean, I think there's a lot of fearmongering and maybe scaremongering right now, But ultimately, this solution could be applied to— and it's great to be able— I mean, instead of having an AC unit sticking out your window, you can hang some solar panels and power your fan in the house.
Richard Campbell [01:51:15]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:51:15]:
Part of the problem is that in California anyway, these are private— our power companies are private industries. And they really— their business really is building power plants and then selling—
Iain Thomson [01:51:29]:
PG&E are just the scum of the—
Leo Laporte [01:51:32]:
sorry, I shouldn't say it. Times in the last 2 years.
Iain Thomson [01:51:36]:
Well, we've just got another fee this month, but I mean, they're really worried about this because as Jennifer pointed out, if you've got local power things, local power systems sorted out, that kind of takes their entire modus operandi away. I've just started CERT training with the fire department here, and they're saying get solar because, you know, when the electricity goes out, you're on your own. Own and you need an independent power supply. And, you know, if the electricity goes out across the state after a major earthquake, there's going to be no gas pumps working. So if you've got an electric car, get yourself—
Richard Campbell [01:52:13]:
California require solar panels on residential now?
Iain Thomson [01:52:16]:
Like, on new residential?
Richard Campbell [01:52:19]:
Yeah. Oh, good. You have to get a permit to not put solar panels.
Leo Laporte [01:52:22]:
Oh, that's great.
Iain Thomson [01:52:23]:
I love hearing that. With new builds, then.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:52:25]:
Yeah. Sorry. And if you want to buy DIY. If you're, if you, if you're interested in this, I mean, you could technically do this where even if you're not in a state that allows it, because it doesn't require any permitting, you just have to make sure that no one's going to buy one. But you can buy them. So EcoFlow actually sells a DIY balcony solar system that you can go and buy.
Leo Laporte [01:52:45]:
I really like this. I might— I have a balcony.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:52:47]:
It's called Stream Series.
Leo Laporte [01:52:50]:
We had, uh, there it is. I have to correct it because we did, we We had, I think, 60 solar panels on our old house and 2 Tesla batteries, but we moved and we don't have any now. We don't have any batteries now. And I feel naked, to be honest with you.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:53:03]:
I actually just got a whole system installed that I'm going to test. So I'm going to start covering a lot. The EcoFlow smart panel and EcoFlow batteries.
Richard Campbell [01:53:13]:
I'm testing. We're putting that in here too.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:53:14]:
You are? You are? Okay.
Richard Campbell [01:53:16]:
Well, the whole point with that, with the smart panel is you get to pick what breakers essentially go on battery. So there's no backfeeding risk, because when the battery is feeding it, that breaker's not on the main panel anymore.
Leo Laporte [01:53:29]:
Yeah, so the panel feeds the battery and then the battery feeds the breaker, so that eliminates the backflow.
Richard Campbell [01:53:34]:
Yeah, but they switch between them. Okay, so yeah, being like, when, when power goes out here, not that unusual, I'm basically living in the wilderness, uh, there's some things you just don't want to power, right? You don't want to power baseboard heat, use the fireplace, like that's not necessary. So yeah, those breakers are literally marked as—
Leo Laporte [01:53:50]:
But your refrigerators, you definitely want to keep that one going, right?
Richard Campbell [01:53:54]:
Keep some lights going, like that kind of stuff.
Leo Laporte [01:53:55]:
That's where all the bear meat is.
Richard Campbell [01:53:57]:
Yeah, let the stove go. You're gonna cook on the cast iron, right?
Leo Laporte [01:54:02]:
Yeah, and this is a review from last year that Thomas Ricker did, but it's on The Verge EcoFlow. So you can get them now.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:54:09]:
So that's— You can buy the balcony ones. Yeah, you just only technically legally allowed to use them in Utah. But yeah, 'cause the permitting and all of that with solar is one of the one of the biggest, you know, pains along with the price.
Richard Campbell [01:54:22]:
Not a small problem.
Leo Laporte [01:54:24]:
Well, and that was— we had to— we bought it from SolarCity, which is now a Tesla company. And you actually— we had a power purchase agreement. It was kind of a crazy thing. It's amortized over 20 years and the whole thing. And when we moved, it was a big pain. We had to kind of— the new owners had to take over the agreement. It was just kind of a mess.
Richard Campbell [01:54:43]:
It's really added some complexity to your sale.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:54:45]:
But the idea here of just being able to plug it into an outlet rather than having a regular— literally just to an outlet instead of hooking it all up into your electrical system.
Leo Laporte [01:54:54]:
You need an inverter or anything, or that's what the— that's in the—
Richard Campbell [01:54:57]:
it's in the— inverter's in the panel.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:55:00]:
And then you could plug it into one of EcoFlow's backup battery power things too, so that you could then have, you know, you could power anything from that. They have their big portable batteries with lots of outlets and plugs in, and so if you plug the solar into that, you can charge the battery, and then from the battery you could charge anything in your house. So it'd be great for, you know, for areas where you have frequent power outages. I mean, I live in the South where we have hurricanes, which is one of the reasons we wanted to try testing this system because I'm now technically my own little microgrid. So if when I generate enough power, I can run and I get a little alert on the EcoFlow app, it says, oh, you're off-grid. And it's like, woohoo.
Leo Laporte [01:55:44]:
I love that feeling. Isn't that great? Yeah, when we had that, so the test Tesla Powerwalls. It was great. Every once in a while we'd be, or we'd be feeding power back into the grid, which is also cool.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:55:53]:
They don't let you do that anymore. Well, I mean, you can, but they don't give you any money for it. They don't pay you for it anymore. No. So that's why batteries are much more attractive now. 'Cause the more, when you generate more energy, just save it for yourself and use it later.
Iain Thomson [01:56:07]:
We are thinking about that in ourselves just to, you know, 'cause the power goes out occasionally, but if there's a bad situation, then it's nice to have that power in-house.
Richard Campbell [01:56:19]:
Yeah. Australia's got the highest percentage, especially southeastern Australia, of residential solar.
Leo Laporte [01:56:24]:
And there's a lot of sun. It's a lot of sun.
Richard Campbell [01:56:28]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:56:28]:
It's an endless supply.
Richard Campbell [01:56:30]:
So now you have to have the ability for the power company to disable your solar because they're overwhelming the grid.
Leo Laporte [01:56:36]:
You have too much.
Iain Thomson [01:56:37]:
Too much.
Richard Campbell [01:56:38]:
Oh, good grief.
Iain Thomson [01:56:40]:
Yeah.
Richard Campbell [01:56:41]:
If only.
Iain Thomson [01:56:41]:
I mean, I'm surprised that Arizona hasn't gone big on this because they have the sunshine. Sunshine. Yeah, you know, Arizona and New Mexico, they could be huge solar states, but instead they're building data centers in a water-poor area. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Benito Gonzalez [01:56:56]:
Yeah, just imagine if our government was into renewables, right?
Leo Laporte [01:57:00]:
Just imagine. It was ironic because while the current administration doesn't like any of this because they got a lot of—
Benito Gonzalez [01:57:07]:
it's all happening in spite of them.
Leo Laporte [01:57:09]:
It's happening anyway because the economic The economics of it are so good. Remember that Trump stopped that big wind installation off the coast of Massachusetts? It's now done. The judge said you can't stop it. It's now done. And Bill Gates just got permission to build his TerraPower nuclear. This is— these are the new— you're an expert on this, Richard. These are these new sodium-cooled nuclear.
Richard Campbell [01:57:34]:
Sodium is not new. Okay. So normally we make nuclear power with using water as both the working fluid and the moderator. Light water reactors are the majority of reactors in this world. And there's reason for that. Moderation means we slow the neutrons down. You use what they call a thermal neutron instead of a fast neutron because the neutrons interact with the water and it changes. The nice thing when you're in the thermal neutron spectrum is you don't need as many to interact with the radioactive material.
Richard Campbell [01:58:03]:
Material, so it's a little easier to manage, although it has certain side effects.
Leo Laporte [01:58:07]:
And, and you're heating the water for steam to generate electricity as well.
Richard Campbell [01:58:10]:
That's how the secondary— yeah, becomes the— that's the part of— it's the working fluid. It's what moves the heat to the heat exchangers to make the energy. Uh, when you play with— when you're working with sodium, sodium is transparent to neutrons, so you are working in the fast spectrum. Now, there's an upside and downside to this. The upside of the fast spectrum is high velocity, high energy neutrons are more likely to break uranium up rather than to make it into higher actinides. You know, the primary source of plutonium for nuclear bombs is light water reactors. Light water reactors, because the neutrons move slower, sometimes the neutron sticks to the uranium and then decays in an alpha particle to become a— does beta decay to become neptunium. And then when it does it again, it becomes plutonium.
Richard Campbell [01:58:59]:
Plutonium. Huh. When you're in the fast spectrum, you're far less likely to do that. It tends to break the atoms into pieces. You're doing transmutation. You're making cesium and iodine and a bunch of other things.
Leo Laporte [01:59:09]:
So that's cool.
Richard Campbell [01:59:11]:
And plus, molten sodium can handle a lot more heat. In order to get enough energy out of water, we have to pressurize the reactor, right? You wanted the water to get up to about 300 degrees, which it doesn't want to do. So you have to keep it in a pressure vessel. When you do this with sodium, you don't have to pressurize. Sodium happily runs along about 600 degrees. So you can handle a lot more energy. What's the downside, you ask? Well, sodium reacts with absolutely everything, mostly water, which turns to be everywhere. So you have to purge the vessel and all pipes of any moisture of any kind.
Richard Campbell [01:59:43]:
Pretty much all hydrogen has to be purged out of it.
Leo Laporte [01:59:45]:
So everything— I seem to remember in high school chemistry that we had That little piece of sodium we took out and exposed to the air and it burst into flame.
Richard Campbell [01:59:53]:
Burst into flame, you throw it in the water, it'll explode.
Iain Thomson [01:59:57]:
Yeah. Okay.
Leo Laporte [01:59:57]:
And you're gonna fill up your reactor with that. And we're using this to cool the plant?
Richard Campbell [02:00:01]:
Well, you're using that as the working fluid.
Leo Laporte [02:00:03]:
It's not a working fluid. Oh, okay, we're using this to heat it up.
Richard Campbell [02:00:06]:
It gets hot, you pump that away.
Leo Laporte [02:00:08]:
How do they scram this though if it doesn't slow the—
Richard Campbell [02:00:13]:
You scram it pretty much the same way with absorbing rods, with boron rods. Okay. Parts similar. Uh, it does run at a higher temperature. The, the downside is your neutron concentration is really, really high, so it is tricky to manage. Yeah, slowing them down, shutting them down, and speeding them up, all that, it's fairly tough. But that's part of the Terropower design. So they're actually using lithium beryllium salts as the heat transfer fluid.
Richard Campbell [02:00:41]:
So this is, uh, a way instead instead of— It's not sodium.
Iain Thomson [02:00:46]:
—steam.
Richard Campbell [02:00:47]:
Well, it's still got its problems.
Leo Laporte [02:00:49]:
Beryllium's wildly poisonous. Oh. But— Well, I'm not going to eat it.
Richard Campbell [02:00:52]:
That's okay. No, but the upside to using the salt approach for doing the heat transfer is they can store it. And so rather than having to constantly vary the performance of the reactor, how much you're charging based on power needs, you run it at full bore all the time. And when you don't need as much power, you just store that as excess excess heat in the beryllium salts. And that's very clever. Like, they're talking about it's a 300-megawatt reactor, but they can do like 4 hours at 500 megawatts because they have all this excess heat stored. Um, the real challenge with molten— with, with working with sodium reactors is when you do need to shut them down, which you do occasionally, you have to get all the sodium out of the reactor vessel or it reacts, maybe it explodes. Like, it's dangerous and fires.
Richard Campbell [02:01:36]:
So there's only really one sodium reactor working in the world right right now and it's in Russia, because they're not that worried about the fires. They're okay with that.
Leo Laporte [02:01:44]:
We had Chernobyl, it was okay.
Richard Campbell [02:01:46]:
We could do it. It's not a big deal.
Iain Thomson [02:01:49]:
Russian engineering.
Richard Campbell [02:01:49]:
And to be clear, if you read the article, I mean, they've gotten permission. So they built the energy generation island first. So this was the beryllium salts and the generators and all that stuff. They didn't have permission to build the reactor at all. They just got permission to build the reactor now, but they do not have permission to get any fuel. They can't turn it on yet. No. Well, they're not even allowed to buy the fuel, and they need Haylou fuel, which is like— the source of the fuel is going to be a problem.
Richard Campbell [02:02:17]:
They're going to need literally to specially make that fuel, and anything involving radioactives is hugely difficult. So they— I mean, it's backed by Gates, so they can afford to wait. Like, they're not exactly on a budget per se. Um, the upside, if they can make this thing work, is it is fuel burner. They'll want to buy used light water reactor fuel. Oh yeah. Consume it in this reactor. Neat.
Richard Campbell [02:02:44]:
So that is a feature if they can make this thing work. And obviously we build more of them because it does tend to consume actinides more so than light water reactors do.
Leo Laporte [02:02:56]:
And are these the modular smaller nuclear power plants I keep hearing?
Richard Campbell [02:02:59]:
So far they talked about in the $300 4-megawatt class, which is a sort of large modular reactor. SMRs were kind of a way to be allowed to talk about nuclear reactors when you're not allowed to talk about nuclear reactors. And so, you know, even in the case in Canada where we were headed down the path of using the GE Hitachi SMR at the Darlington B site, they've now backed away from that. Because once you get all the permitting done and you're ready to build a reactor, it's like, you might as well build a big one. A, you know how to run them already. B, they make a lot more power and they're kind of simpler. The current legal rules for nuclear reactors require a separate control room for each reactor. Well, that's fine if you only have 2 reactors.
Richard Campbell [02:03:37]:
What if you have 16?
Iain Thomson [02:03:39]:
That's a lot of control rooms. I mean, I interviewed— there's a startup called DeepFission. I interviewed them about— because their idea is to drill a mile down into the planet below the aquifer, put a small pressure, a small nuclear reactor down use gravity to pressurize it. And yet the control room problem is a massive one.
Richard Campbell [02:04:00]:
It's a big one because, yeah, yeah. And NuScale, who's another SMR company out of Idaho, they actually got the permits to be able to do a combined, they convinced the energy agency to actually allow them to do combined control rooms, but then they lost their permits. Buyer. So now they're struggling to— they've now got to deal with Romania. Like, they're trying to make this go forward, but the regulatory body was built around large reactors, and it's extremely hard for small reactors to make sense in this current regulatory environment.
Leo Laporte [02:04:35]:
Let's take a little break. When we come back, Travis Kalanick is back.
Iain Thomson [02:04:41]:
Oh boy. Turns up like herpes.
Leo Laporte [02:04:43]:
Yes. And he's been very busy. So, you know, stay tuned. We are talking about all kinds of stuff this week on Thanks to Richard Campbell, great to have you from Runners Radio and Windows Weekly. Jennifer Pattison-Touhey of The Verge, senior reviewer there. And Mr. Ian Thompson, his letter from America appears in Techfinitive at techfinitive.com. Our show today brought to you by Spaceship.
Leo Laporte [02:05:13]:
I'm not talking about UFOs, I'm talking about Spaceship, which is my favorite domain register, but more than that. If you've heard us talk about Spaceship before, there's a reason it keeps coming back. Spaceship is rethinking how people register and manage domains, and it's a huge success. Its fresh approach has led to more than 6.5 million domains being under management in record time. I mean, from 0 to 6.5 million in nothing. And this kind of growth kind And it comes very simply from giving people what they want. Spaceship offers transparent, low pricing on domain registrations. When I was looking for a domain for a Paris Martineau's news site, we found it for, you know, I think $60, then $30, and I found it for half the price at Spaceship.
Leo Laporte [02:06:05]:
But it also makes it very easy to set up a website, to set up a VPS, to set up email. And the pricing is so good. You know, it's, it's so good that you're going to want to move from your existing registrar. They make transfers and renewals very easy and very affordable. There's more clarity over what you're paying for over time. So it is a great value, that's for sure. But the platform is also especially built for flexibility. You can easily and instantly connect your Spaceship registered domain to Spaceship products.
Leo Laporte [02:06:40]:
The web hosting, professional email, virtual machines. You can build and test before committing because almost every Spaceship product comes with a 30-day trial. I love that. I think that's always the way it should be, and they really do too. But if you prefer to use your own tools, no problem. Just point your domain to what you need by updating your DNS records or name servers. In fact, when I set up a Secretly British for a pair of address. She hasn't set up the site yet, so I just pointed it to her existing site.
Leo Laporte [02:07:11]:
It was super easy, and she got email with it and everything. So you have the freedom to build your stack exactly how you want. When you're ready, you can set up whatever you need. Basically, it's the best of every world. Visit spaceship.com/twit to learn more. That's spaceship.com/twit. And by the way, gorgeous site too. We found the best registrar.
Leo Laporte [02:07:32]:
It's Spaceship And they have a nice little AI named Alf that will help you do all the hard stuff. Spaceship.com/twit. It was all over X. Travis Kalanick is back, man. And it turns out he never left. Travis Kalanick, you know the name. He's the guy who created Uber and then was forced out by the board for a toxic workplace.
Iain Thomson [02:07:59]:
And I don't know. I would say for good reason. Yes. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:08:03]:
I think he's quite a character. And certainly people still have a lot of, I think, affection for him. What he did immediately after was he started ghost kitchen company. That was weird, called Cloud Kitchens. And then he had a real estate called City Storage Systems. But he's renamed it all. To Adams and published a website with a manifesto. The thesis— it's adams.co, and if you go to adams.co/vision, you can see the manifesto.
Leo Laporte [02:08:44]:
He starts by saying, I left Uber in 2017 heartbroken. It was only days after the death of my mother and near-death of my father in a boating accident when investors decided to come out from the shadows shadows and exploit this vulnerable moment to wrestle control of my company away from me. I bled, but I did not perish. I got back up and fought my way back into the arena. And a lot of people said he's been secretly creating this empire. He says, and actually I thought this was the most interesting part of this, I don't really know if Adams.co is going anywhere or if his vision has any sense to to it. But he said, you have to understand, my idea has always been to digitize the physical world. He says, that was my life's work.
Leo Laporte [02:09:35]:
So Uber was to add software, in effect, to ridesharing, right? Then he did real estate. Then he said, our first computer was a food computer, which digitized manufacturing, real estate, and logistics for food. He says the whole thing, the whole world is food. Everything comes from growing it, mining it, and transporting it. And so he wants to do all three of those with AI and robots. That's the real business. At Atom's, we make gainfully employed robots, specialized robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large. Are you interested in investing? What do you, what do you think, Ian? Are you ready to put some money on the table?
Iain Thomson [02:10:29]:
I, I do love the phrase gainfully employed robots, which means not gainfully employed humans, you know. I mean, it's—
Leo Laporte [02:10:38]:
that's what he says. It's going to be a golden age where you won't have to work. Uh, yeah, but then you also don't get The next golden age will be upon us when the means of growing, mining, manufacturing, and moving physical things becomes fully divorced from human labor. Which does raise the question, well, who's going to buy these things you're growing, mining, manufacturing, and moving if nobody has a job?
Iain Thomson [02:11:06]:
Oh please, those are piffling details, Leo.
Leo Laporte [02:11:09]:
Honestly, it's just— he says The cost of a unit— cost per unit of intelligence is going down in price by 90% per year. That's probably true with AI. I don't know. Total capabilities and general intelligence have increased nearly a thousandfold over the last 3 years. Possibly true. Hardware, software, and manufacturing productivity will continue to compound each other to ever-increasing speeds of progress. We're only a millionth of the way there, Ian, don't worry, but the inevitable destination is the singularity. Uh-oh.
Leo Laporte [02:11:40]:
Superhuman intelligence and efficiency. Until then, I don't know what's going to happen after that, but until then, abundance will be creating more jobs, not less.
Iain Thomson [02:11:51]:
So there. Yeah, right. I, I get the feeling with so many of these tech bros that they've read Ian Banks and not really understood the message behind it.
Leo Laporte [02:12:00]:
But it is exactly what Ian Banks' universe was, right? Where there kind of everything was handled, everything was made.
Iain Thomson [02:12:07]:
Well, yes, but he, he kind of skips over the 7,000 years before that where there were sort of mass problems. And if you read his notes on the, on the development of the culture, you know, it's just this was a necessity thing, but it got there eventually.
Leo Laporte [02:12:23]:
Yeah, yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:12:23]:
But I mean, it's many generations have to die, but you know, that'll be fine.
Iain Thomson [02:12:28]:
Well, just as the Palantir CEO said, you know, it's just Yeah, you're all gonna lose your jobs, but trust me, it'll be better, really.
Benito Gonzalez [02:12:35]:
It'll be great. That is the last phrase, though. That is what they think, though. Probably, yeah. They're saving the trillions.
Leo Laporte [02:12:42]:
Who cares about the trillions of the future? It's the future we care about, not the present. Kalanick says his last 3 words are, "I never left." It sure looks like it's a pitch to investors. Remember, Uber never made money.
Richard Campbell [02:12:59]:
Money. I don't know if he raised more money than anybody until AI came along, right? Right. Yeah. My favorite quote on all that is, when you raise $60 billion, there's no way to make good choices.
Leo Laporte [02:13:11]:
You have too much money to make—
Richard Campbell [02:13:13]:
you have too much money. Yeah, you can't possibly make good choices.
Leo Laporte [02:13:17]:
Uh, somebody pointed out, I think it was Robert Scoble, that the— what happened at Uber was the whole plot was really to have self-driving vehicles. It never made economic sense if humans were involved. So, but when, when he was forced out, the company got rid of the autonomous vehicle portion of the business, and so it never was going to make money.
Iain Thomson [02:13:40]:
The interesting thing is the guy— I'm sorry, Uber remains the only self-driving vehicle company that's actually killed somebody. You know, they, they, they actually went in there, you know, somebody got run over, they, they died, and you know, yeah, you're right. The Uber economic business model doesn't make sense without self-driving cars. And it's interesting to see who they've teamed up with, but I personally wouldn't trust Kalanick further than I could throw him. And I have poor of a body strength, so it hurts.
Richard Campbell [02:14:10]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think Waymo has a fatality as well. Oh, really?
Leo Laporte [02:14:15]:
So let's make it, that's fair.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:14:17]:
Let's spread it out. I do think the theory here behind robotics the aesthetics in being specialized robots rather than single, rather than an all-purpose robot like a humanoid makes an awful lot of sense. Not sure whether specifically his, you know, this business is gonna make sense, but I've spent a lot of time with robots and individual, like single-purpose robots and even humanoid robots. And there is, there's a place for robotics, that in our lives and in our workforces and in our homes. And single-purpose, individual, specialized robots that can do one or two things really well, I think, is really the future of robotics in our society, rather than the sort of flashy Jetsons, Iron Man dream of a robot that can do everything. That's the Elon dream. Yes. I just don't see that actually happening.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:15:16]:
Actually, and I've said this before on the show, I know, and I know there's people in the Discord that vehemently disagree with me and think we're like a day away from humanoid robots, but I think it's a lot further away than we think.
Leo Laporte [02:15:28]:
And you have more experience with robotic household things than anyone. Yeah, remember I had a robot fell on you, for crying out loud.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:15:37]:
Yes, almost killed you. Almost got me. So, and then that's the biggest thing. I think I think that's the biggest fear and concern and reason why we won't have humanoid robots is they are dangerous. And whereas single purpose or dual purpose specialized robots make a lot more sense.
Leo Laporte [02:15:54]:
Well, interestingly, Kalanick says he's an investor in Pronto, which is a self-driving truck startup, but it focuses on mining sites where there are no people, right? And in fact, Pronto is run by The guy Kalanick recruited from Google, Anthony Levandowski, he got in trouble with Google for taking information, it was claimed taking information from Google and bringing it over to Uber. And apparently he's working with Levandowski again.
Iain Thomson [02:16:25]:
Yeah, that was a really interesting case. It was just like, oh, I'm leaving Google. I'm starting, I think it was Otto, self-driving truck software. And oh, we've just got bought out by Uber for a massive amount of money. For a product which doesn't have any, you know, anything in it.
Leo Laporte [02:16:42]:
I mean, so honestly, Google sued Uber for stealing that information. Levandowski was actually convicted of stealing trade secrets. I forgot this part. He didn't go to jail because he got pardoned by the president.
Iain Thomson [02:16:56]:
So yes. Also read the court documents, some of the testimony there, the discovery on that. This is a really interesting person, possibly not in a good way.
Leo Laporte [02:17:06]:
It is tempting to think that this is basically another, I don't want to say con job, but similar to, you know, sort of—
Richard Campbell [02:17:16]:
Or did you say startup?
Leo Laporte [02:17:20]:
Yes. Startup with very big ambitions, right? Very global kind of futuristic ambitions.
Benito Gonzalez [02:17:28]:
But like mining is one of those jobs where like maybe humans shouldn't be doing that anyway.
Leo Laporte [02:17:32]:
Like, shouldn't be mining, right? And I kind of— I thought that was kind of an interesting insight that, you know, everything's either grown or mined and then manufactured. And that the, you know, they're really 4 things that you need to solve. John Cusack said all that. Mining materials, and then transporting them. Well, I mean, where— say anything.
Iain Thomson [02:17:56]:
The mining— sorry, the mining thing is very interesting because is in Australia they've already automated a lot of the lorries that are working in mining compounds because it's a really simple use case. There are very limited roads that these trucks can go through because the mine is built down and they build the road in there so you can map it out really easily. So yeah, mining will probably pay, but he's late to the party. But I don't know, when I read that piece and it was just like, give me more money now.
Leo Laporte [02:18:29]:
It does feel like a kind of a magical pitch deck, you know. Uh, but it's okay, I don't have enough money to invest, so I'm safe. Um, a Tennessee grandmother— this is a horrific, uh, case of misidentification— a Tennessee grandmother was jailed. A facial recognition error linked her to fraud. She's from Tennessee, but Fargo, North Dakota police— it's not that close to Tennessee if my, um, if my geography is correct— identified her, uh, using face recognition. They said, oh yeah, she walked into a bank in Fargo, North Dakota and, uh, committed fraud. They came to Tennessee, they arrested her, put her in jail for 6 months in Fargo. She's a mother of 3, grandmother of 5.
Leo Laporte [02:19:28]:
She said, I've never been to North Dakota. Uh, she'd never been on an airplane until she was flown to North Dakota for charges. U.S. Marshals arrested her. The only evidence apparently was this face recognition. She remained, uh, started in a Tennessee jail 4 months without bail while awaiting extradition, then charged with 4 counts of unauthorized use of personally identified information and 4 counts of theft. Uh, according to Fargo police records obtained by WDAY News, detectives investigating this case in May and April of last year reviewed surveillance video used face recognition. The face recognition said, oh yeah, it's this woman in Tennessee.
Leo Laporte [02:20:16]:
Uh, the detective told the court, we gotta get her. By the time she got an attorney and went to trial, they proved that she was still in Tennessee at the time, 1,200 miles away, at the time of this bank fraud, which a simple check of her bank records and location records easily could have revealed.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:20:38]:
Trivial. Yeah, it takes so long to figure out that she— I mean, they should have made these steps before arresting her.
Leo Laporte [02:20:45]:
Oh, really? Yeah, they called—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:20:46]:
it's called an investigation. Yeah.
Richard Campbell [02:20:48]:
And don't just rely on this technology. Hold her on— I mean, she, she was held on extradition, right? Like, she had been charged, she hadn't gone to court, she hadn't anything.
Iain Thomson [02:21:00]:
I mean, it gets worse.
Leo Laporte [02:21:02]:
Sorry, go ahead, tell us the rest of the story.
Iain Thomson [02:21:04]:
Yeah, no, no, this is it. She lost it all. But it gets worse because when they found out their error, they released her from jail on Christmas Eve with no money, no way of getting in contact with people. And it was only down to the kindness of a local, a local person that she actually got somewhere to spend Christmas that was warmer. I mean, Fargo, I've never been, but I know it's damn cold.
Richard Campbell [02:21:26]:
They, they stick her out of the jail in Fargo in the winter. Bye-bye.
Leo Laporte [02:21:30]:
I guess we, I guess we got the wrong person. See you later.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:33]:
They don't take her back to Tennessee. I assume she is going to get a lot of money in the future.
Iain Thomson [02:21:38]:
One would hope.
Leo Laporte [02:21:39]:
Yes. While she was and unable to pay bills. She lost her home, her cat, her dog. No amount of money replaces that. She says no one from Fargo Police Department has apologized. So this is where AI really can go wrong.
Richard Campbell [02:21:55]:
But yeah, this is computers, full stop. Remember when it's like, oh, the computer said it, so it must be true, right? Right. Yeah. Somehow the science fiction layer we've added to computing has brought back this level of stupidity. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:22:08]:
And really, as always, it's not the AI, it's the people using it that are the problem.
Iain Thomson [02:22:13]:
Well, yeah, but I mean, what kind of policeman actually goes out and says, well, the AI said it, it's fine, you know, we're not going to bother doing any kind of investigation?
Richard Campbell [02:22:20]:
Jail for 4 months while we figure out how to extradite her.
Iain Thomson [02:22:24]:
Yeah. And there's no comeback to them because, you know, Fargo taxpayers will pay the eventual lawsuit, which I hope she wins and gets an enormous amount of money ourselves.
Leo Laporte [02:22:35]:
Here's the good news. Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir— oh geez— says that—
Iain Thomson [02:22:42]:
you and me both, Richard.
Richard Campbell [02:22:45]:
Yeah, I haven't heard good news from that guy ever.
Leo Laporte [02:22:48]:
He was— this is an interview on CNBC. He said AI technology disrupts humanity's trained, largely Democratic voters and makes their economic power less and increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male working-class voters. So AI is going to be bad if you're educated, female, and a Democrat, but it's going to be good—
Richard Campbell [02:23:14]:
I don't even understand the logic. That's just extraordinarily convoluted, you know.
Leo Laporte [02:23:20]:
I don't even— yeah, I don't even understand the logic.
Iain Thomson [02:23:26]:
Uh, I guess I get the logic. The fact that he said it out out loud was really, really— I mean, I know it's a Peter Thiel company, so it's obviously going to be a bit weird. But the fact that he actually said, this is what we're working towards, is just like, are you aware of public relations?
Richard Campbell [02:23:46]:
You know, well, it's a sort of constructive way of saying it democratizes knowledge. Like, you could have gone down that path. We argued that was what the internet was going to do in the first place.
Leo Laporte [02:23:55]:
Yeah. And of course, Palantir's all over the government. The Register had this very important story about how the Department of Agriculture used Palantir's lethal AI weaponry to find seat assignments for employees at the department.
Iain Thomson [02:24:12]:
Nice. Yeah, no, they're into the UK as well. They've just signed major contracts with Britain's National Health Service, and in part organized by the disgraced Peter Mandelson. But I mean, they are getting their claws into government.
Leo Laporte [02:24:28]:
SDA's chief data and artificial intelligence officer, Christopher Alvarez, says other software companies can probably sort out seating plans, but only Palantir can do the job right. Probably assigns Democratic women offices way far away, I would guess.
Richard Campbell [02:24:45]:
But I would also argue, like, let's be clear, we're not fans of this guy, but no, not a stupid man.
Leo Laporte [02:24:52]:
No, he's very smart.
Richard Campbell [02:24:53]:
Who was he actually talking to when he said those? Ah, yeah, right.
Leo Laporte [02:24:58]:
I think he's somebody who doesn't want Democratic women in power.
Richard Campbell [02:25:03]:
This is like, I'm looking forward to the phone calls I get for, you know, what I can do from there.
Leo Laporte [02:25:08]:
You know, he knows who signs those checks. Yeah. MIT Technology Review: How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the We kind of knew this, right? When Niantic, which was a Google company at the time, created Pokémon Go, the wonderful game my wife still plays avidly since July of 2016. So there was a game before Pokémon Go that built this dataset? Ingress. Ingress. Yeah. And I was an Ingress player back in the day. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:25:37]:
Because you had to be a lot smarter. You couldn't be a Democratic woman and play Ingress. So, no, Ingress was hard, but it had the same idea, which is that you walk around in the real world and use actual geographic waypoints.
Richard Campbell [02:25:52]:
The genius of Niantic is they got us to build the dataset because I wanted more nodes to play Ingress. I would find everything that could possibly be tagged as a landmark. Exactly. Get more nodes in my neighborhood.
Leo Laporte [02:26:05]:
Thanks to Ingress and Pokémon Go, they have 30 billion— 30 billion waypoints all over the world. Images of urban landmarks outsourced to Pokémon Go players. Players, and they are selling that information to delivery robots.
Richard Campbell [02:26:25]:
Genius. Because there was no money in Ingress. There's no money in Pokémon Go. I mean, right, they started to try and charge for things and people just stopped playing, including me.
Leo Laporte [02:26:34]:
So the company's latest product is a model. They're out of the Pokémon business, remember? They sold that to the, uh, Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Their new company is Niantic Spatial. They say their latest product is a model that can pinpoint your location on a map within a few centimeters based on a handful of snapshots of the buildings or other landmarks in the area. It knows immediately, oh, I know where you are. That could be used by more than just delivery robots.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:27:07]:
Yeah, there's, I mean, there's been a lot of news recently around about how, you know, the surveillance state is developing in this country. And yet things like this, it's like, it's great when we have technology companies creating something that's useful, but now when we have a government that is becoming increasingly authoritarian there, and, you know, based on the previous article as well, like all the pieces and parts are so easily brought together to like just know where everyone is at any point and who they are based on facial recognition that may confuse my mother from Tennessee with someone from North Dakota.
Leo Laporte [02:27:46]:
It's like, oh my God. Stories go together, they mesh, don't they? They all go together somehow. I don't know. I didn't plan it that way. Let me take one last break, and then, 'cause Oscars are gonna start any minute now. And then, and we will have some funny final stories to cheer you up, okay? To cheer you up. Jennifer Pattison, to it. Who's just can't wait to see who won the Best Picture Award.
Leo Laporte [02:28:08]:
How many of the 10 pictures did you see?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:28:11]:
Um, I managed 4, I think. It's hard.
Leo Laporte [02:28:15]:
Maybe 5. Lisa and I used to have this thing of we're going to see every one, but everyone—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:28:19]:
and now there's 10, it gets a little harder.
Richard Campbell [02:28:22]:
Yeah, I think enough people were doing that that they just added more because it's good for business.
Iain Thomson [02:28:26]:
Good for business.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:28:27]:
Yeah. I have not seen Sinners though, which I know I should have, and that's probably the one that's going to win. Oh, it's a brilliant—
Leo Laporte [02:28:33]:
my whole family's seen it except for me. Such a wonderful film. It combines vampires and great music, and it's just a really interesting— it's such a different genre-busting film.
Benito Gonzalez [02:28:46]:
It's shot so well too. It's a beautiful film.
Leo Laporte [02:28:50]:
It's beautiful. Uh, and, uh, I think the star is going to win a Best Actor because he plays two roles, plays his brothers.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:28:57]:
That's the way get it. Yeah, like Oscars are nothing if not predictable.
Leo Laporte [02:29:02]:
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, anyway, we'll be back in just a moment with Ian, Jennifer, and Richard on a very fun, uh, This Week in Tech. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate our show today, uh, brought to you by ThreatLocker. We had a great time, didn't we, Richard, back in Orlando last week, uh, for the ThreatLocker Zero Trust World? So much fun. They are a very impressive company, and I learned a lot. They had a bunch of great seminars, hands-on workshops and stuff. They do zero trust.
Leo Laporte [02:29:37]:
Their, their zero trust platform now delivers the industry's most comprehensive suite of zero trust solutions. They've actually made some big announcements at Zero Trust World, protecting endpoints, networks, and the cloud. This is new. By extending zero trust enforcement to cloud services and company networks, ThreatLocker makes sure that devices are validated through a secure broker before connecting to platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Asana, Google Workspace, and GitHub. Your nightmare is somebody takes a thumb drive and plugs it into your M365 database, right? And not just exfiltrates information, but infiltrates malware, ransomware, Or they send you a phishing email, or you see an ad on a website that actually is malware. Even if that happens, even if a user is sticking a USB thumb drive into your database or successfully phished, attackers cannot— this is so, so cool about zero trust— they cannot access resources unless they have possession of the user's trusted device and the trusted password. Trust is built in with ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker works in every industry, PCs and Macs and the cloud.
Leo Laporte [02:30:53]:
Now it provides 24/7 US-based support, the best support ever. We met a lot of the support people, they're great. Windows, Mac, Linux— of course I always leave Linux out— no, Linux too. It enables comprehensive visibility and control. Ask Rob Thackery, he's an end-user technical architect at Heathrow Now this, if you think about it, Heathrow Airport is the last place you want ransomware, right? He said ThreatLocker was the most intuitive solution we tested, and the responsiveness of the organization, the willingness to engage with us, set up a demo, and work with us on weekly audit reviews was very good. It's great to have an ongoing relationship with a company that's so responsive to our requests. I am not surprised now, having met with them, met the ThreatLocker team. So impressed by them.
Leo Laporte [02:31:43]:
They're trusted by so many companies, global enterprises like JetBlue, the Indianapolis Colts, the Port of Vancouver. ThreatLocker consistently receives high honors in industry recognition as a G2 High Performer and Best Support for Enterprise. Summer 2025, PeerSpot ranked them number 1 in application control. They got GetApps Best Functionality and Features Award in 2023. With ThreatLocker and their ring-fencing, you can confidently ensure that users have access to a consistent, safe network connection. I think sometimes you think zero trust means zero access. No, it means that users can do what they need to do without risk. You can have offices, remote users, internal servers, critical services all maintain smooth operations without the need— and this is key— to open inbound ports or deploy traditional VPN solutions, which, you know, give you a, you know, a point out there in the real world that the bad guys can hammer on.
Leo Laporte [02:32:44]:
Your end users will get the secure, reliable internal system access they need without— and this is important— complex infrastructure changes. Get unprecedented protection quickly, easily, and cost-effectively with ThreatLock. ThreatLocker. I was so impressed. Visit threatlocker.com/twit, get a free 30-day trial, learn more about how ThreatLocker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. It's threatlocker.com/twit. We thank them so much for their support. It was really great to be out there, and I hope we can do that again, uh, Zero Trust World in Orlando.
Leo Laporte [02:33:21]:
Uh, are you ready for flying cars, Jennifer?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:33:25]:
I was just in Orlando and I'm doing lots of flying What? Were you? I was. I went to Universal. At Disney World? Yeah. Epic, epic Universal.
Leo Laporte [02:33:34]:
Oh, did you do the Harry Potter, you're flying on a broom through Hogwarts ride?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:33:39]:
Um, not one. That's fun. I haven't done that. That's the Hagrid's one, right? Yeah. Motorcycle? No, I did the, um, it was Ministry of Magic. So it's the new one. It was very fun. Oh my goodness, though, that park is a disaster.
Leo Laporte [02:33:54]:
Is it? Oh, because it was crowded?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:33:57]:
Just look, they— all the rides were down. So, oh, everything was broken. It was the night of the clocks going forward. I read this on Reddit because while I was standing in line, I was on Reddit like, what do I do to get around Epic faster? Reddit is like the solution for everything. Um, and apparently they were saying that this is a big issue in parks because everything's run on computers, and when the clocks go forward Somehow manage every year, twice a year, it manages to mess them up. You'd think they had programming prepared for that. But there are lots of flying in Epic and no flying cars though. But I would love a flying car.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:34:37]:
That's like my dream.
Leo Laporte [02:34:38]:
So I'm excited about this. The federal government has announced a new pilot program designed to get new kinds of ultralight vehicles and eVTOLs, which is electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, running.
Richard Campbell [02:34:51]:
I mean, they're basically drones though, right? They're big drones.
Leo Laporte [02:34:54]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, but there is— there's a pilot right now still. Yeah, but soon. But when you go—
Richard Campbell [02:35:01]:
when you're in the ultralight class, you need very little training.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:35:05]:
Oh, disturbingly little training.
Leo Laporte [02:35:06]:
Good. Yeah, there's an untrained person sitting in there pretending to be a pilot.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:35:11]:
My son is training to be a pilot right now, and yeah, this is the future.
Richard Campbell [02:35:15]:
Yeah, real pilot training is no fooling, but the ultralight because largely ultralights are a single person. You're only likely to kill yourself in them. So the FAA is like, ah, go ahead.
Iain Thomson [02:35:25]:
But there are companies like Archer.
Leo Laporte [02:35:27]:
But yeah, you know, Archer has an electric taxi, 4 passengers, 60 to 90 minute trips. Yeah, it'll be in Texas, Florida, and New York.
Richard Campbell [02:35:36]:
So that'll be a service, right?
Leo Laporte [02:35:38]:
Yeah, well, like right now, if you're rich, you could take a helicopter to the airport from Manhattan, right?
Iain Thomson [02:35:44]:
I think, yeah, but I mean, come on, we've all driven on American roads and we've seen how American drivers operate. And I'm sorry, the idea of letting your standard non-pilot trained person do this, the software better be damn good because otherwise you're going to have these things falling out of the sky.
Leo Laporte [02:36:02]:
Yeah, it doesn't just affect the person in the plane, it's whoever's below the thing.
Richard Campbell [02:36:07]:
The question is, can an electric-based battery-based giant drones, these 4-seater drones, so they're not burning fuel, even though they're piloted, like just as an Uber service, but going rooftop to rooftop, like what was always proposed in New York, except that helicopters are extremely loud and they're expensive and fragile, right? And so these are more robust, more redundant machines. Like you could have a certain, you know, availability going rooftop to rooftop.
Leo Laporte [02:36:36]:
Uh, here is from the FAA. Here's the video.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:36:39]:
It's going to look just like this. The Jetsons.
Iain Thomson [02:36:44]:
Oh, I'm sorry, when you lead up with the Jetsons, you instantly lost the argument.
Leo Laporte [02:36:49]:
I think the same guy does the White House, uh, socials is doing this one. So they're all of this new technology, these eVTOLs that are going to take people from— eVTOLs. All right, that's how you say it, huh?
Richard Campbell [02:37:00]:
That's— no, no Nobody says it that way.
Leo Laporte [02:37:03]:
Okay. Yeah. Is that Scott Bassett? I think it is. Uh, we're going to innovate with eVTOLs.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:37:10]:
Okay. I did see a flying robot vacuum at CES that can like has little drones that lift. Well, what good is a flying vacuum? To get it up to the stairs.
Iain Thomson [02:37:22]:
Yeah. Oh, the stairs. The Dalek problem.
Leo Laporte [02:37:27]:
Yes. I am going to fall over. I'm sorry. That was Sean Duffy.
Richard Campbell [02:37:30]:
I would have dominated the world, but I had a curb in my way.
Leo Laporte [02:37:33]:
They all look the same to me. Uh, hey, here's a big story. Now, you mentioned the Academy Awards are going to still on network television but will not be by 2030. They'll be on YouTube. This year, YouTube surpassed Disney— not this year, last year, 2025— Disney, Paramount, and Warner in ad revenue. It is now the number one media platform. $40 billion in ad revenue.
Iain Thomson [02:38:00]:
New. Remember when it was ad-free? Yeah, those days have long gone.
Leo Laporte [02:38:04]:
It's more than Disney, NBC, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery together. Together.
Benito Gonzalez [02:38:10]:
Yeah, because all of those people are also on YouTube.
Leo Laporte [02:38:14]:
Yeah, well, that's true, but I think it's pretty clear. I mean, you pointed out YouTube TV is $85 a month now. It's, it's, it's cable.
Benito Gonzalez [02:38:24]:
Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:38:25]:
So all those people are also on YouTube. Yeah, I knew YouTube had it though. When— so my husband is the absolute least tech-forward person ever, hates— actually hates technology, and only got an iPhone like 8 years ago. Um, and he now watches more YouTube than regular TV. And it's like, that's because it has all the niche—
Leo Laporte [02:38:47]:
the regular TV.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:38:49]:
Yeah, if you want Alaska fishing guide videos, exactly, you go to YouTube, you go watch them on YouTube. And he, he follows follows like these, um, motorbike camping, motorbike influencers like who go all over the world and do amazing trips. And he's living vicariously watching them.
Leo Laporte [02:39:06]:
And he wants to poop in a bucket just like them, right?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:39:08]:
He wants to be— he wants to live in the middle of nowhere with no technology except for YouTube.
Leo Laporte [02:39:17]:
That's the secret. That's the secret reason we've got, uh, we've got the key thing about YouTube.
Richard Campbell [02:39:21]:
YouTube is every long tail culture you could imagine. Exactly. Yeah. And they're somewhere. You can say everybody's YouTube experience, including us, including us.
Leo Laporte [02:39:32]:
And I don't know. I mean, that's remarkable.
Iain Thomson [02:39:34]:
I mean, during lockdown, I started watching a channel called The Outdoor Boys and it's a bloke in Alaska who basically goes out, as Jennifer said, you know, goes out into the wilderness and builds his own campfires and the rest of it. And yeah, it's, it is cable now because you've got a list of subscribe channels you'll subscribe to, and you just check on those and see what comes up.
Leo Laporte [02:39:58]:
Uh, the Ig Nobel Prizes, which I have always loved every year, is moving out of the U.S. They're moving to Switzerland because they don't think it's safe in the U.S. This is from the Reg. They used to do it at Harvard, MIT in Boston. The next one's going to be in Zurich. Mark Abraham's the founder and ceremonies GDC said during the past year it's become unsafe for our guests to visit the country. We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners or the international journalists who cover the event to travel to the USA this year. It's going to be an issue with the World Cup.
Leo Laporte [02:40:35]:
It's going to be an issue with the Olympics, which are a few years off.
Richard Campbell [02:40:38]:
The, the MVP Summit is next week, and then the number of non-US people going to the summit now is— it's dropped off hugely.
Iain Thomson [02:40:46]:
I mean, it's a huge issue for Hacker Summer Camp as well.
Leo Laporte [02:40:49]:
I mean, even GDC, which was last week, the Developers Conference, a lot of companies didn't go because it was in the US.
Richard Campbell [02:40:57]:
You put a grandmother in jail for months for no particular reason and same thing, just let her go one day. You scare a lot of people.
Iain Thomson [02:41:07]:
No, I mean, it was interesting. I was at RSA last year and I was speaking to Sophos, which is essentially now a Canadian company. And they told their staff, you don't have to go, but we would like you to. You know, if we're giving you that get out, because crossing the borders these days is, is tricky. Um, and as I say, DEF CON, Black Hat, BSides is coming up next weekend. A lot of European hackers are staying away because just in case, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's like Hutchins, who saved, you know, who killed off an entire virus system, was picked up in DEF CON because of something he'd done as a teenager.
Leo Laporte [02:41:51]:
On the way out. By the way, Marcus Hutchins was one of the keynoters at the Zero Trust World, but we had to leave before he spoke, so we didn't get to see his talk. But it's—
Iain Thomson [02:42:00]:
He's a great chap. Yeah. I mean, I have a photo of him. We were doing a data sharing thing because with the DEF CON badges that year, you had to share with a certain number of people. And I got a picture of us sharing data. And he's a lovely chap. He's gone a bit influencer late, but it's a real problem because a lot of the top talent isn't coming to the US anymore because they're worried about border controls. And all it takes is one RC border patrol officer to get you in a whole world of trouble.
Richard Campbell [02:42:32]:
Yeah. With no recourse. Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte [02:42:37]:
Uh, not all, not all is well in Switzerland though. They did, uh, this is also from the Register, the, they did an Eve voting pilot. Unfortunately, uh, 2,048 ballots— an interesting number— cannot be counted because they couldn't be decrypted. Oops. Oops. Uh, you know, they were very secure.
Richard Campbell [02:43:01]:
So secure that the official place is key.
Leo Laporte [02:43:03]:
We mean it. Uh, 3 USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked.
Iain Thomson [02:43:13]:
So I, you know, yeah, what with the ProtonMail scandal in Switzerland at the moment. Oh yeah, and it's not— we talked about that last week. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of iffy. And also the Swiss are really uptight. They make the Germans look relaxed. Um, I went to a press conference in Switzerland and the bloke announced he came in 10 minutes late, um, was just like, I'm very sorry, I was busy doing something. And one of the journalists said, oh, polishing your Nazi gold, were you? This guy was insta-banned, you know.
Leo Laporte [02:43:49]:
Oh yeah, you don't say that. Yeah, even if it's true. Uh, well, and as I often do with an in memoriam, you know, it's one of the things, we've been doing this for so long, uh, that many of the people who are young when we started are now passing away. And at the age of 92, the Turing Award-winning computer scientist who invented Quicksort, Tony Hoare, C-I-R Hoare, has passed. But he was 92. But we should probably mention that because it was a good life and well lived.
Iain Thomson [02:44:21]:
Yes. You know, I mean, he did some really fundamental work. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:44:26]:
He said, uh, there are two ways of constructing a software design. One is to make it so simple there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. Very inspired. He will be missed, but we are grateful to him for Quicksort, which is—
Iain Thomson [02:44:47]:
and he got the Turing Award, which is the tech equivalent of the Oscars.
Leo Laporte [02:44:52]:
That's right.
Richard Campbell [02:44:53]:
Speaking of which, the guy who takes the blame for the null, he says that was the worst mistake ever.
Leo Laporte [02:44:59]:
The null?
Richard Campbell [02:45:00]:
Yeah, the null was the most expensive mistake he made. The idea that a Boolean is not just true or false, but could also be a null. A null? And coding around nulls, man, is hard. Like, it's just a sheer amount of code to cope with a null. And Tony Hoare years ago just said, worst mistake I ever made was introducing the null.
Leo Laporte [02:45:20]:
Isn't that—
Iain Thomson [02:45:21]:
It's kind of like Tim Berners-Lee was interviewed And he's like, what's the biggest thing about the World Wide Web that you didn't get? He goes, I have no idea why cats are so popular.
Leo Laporte [02:45:32]:
You've obviously never had one. He introduced null references in Algol and it's referred to as the billion dollar mistake. At least that's what he called it. That's the one. Yep. Hey, you know what?
Richard Campbell [02:45:45]:
Of course. He thinks a big man to own up to.
Leo Laporte [02:45:48]:
Yeah. Sorry about the billion. He said because it was so easy to implement.
Benito Gonzalez [02:45:54]:
A lot of people got jobs though, probably.
Richard Campbell [02:45:56]:
A lot of people unemployed because of that, probably kept a lot of people busy.
Leo Laporte [02:46:00]:
That's true, that's true. All right, hey, thank you, Richard Campbell. We'll see you on Wednesday. I really appreciate your spending time with us on this Sunday.
Richard Campbell [02:46:08]:
It's real close to, uh, uh, St. Patty's Day, so got a little Irish.
Leo Laporte [02:46:13]:
Oh, a little Irish something for Windows Weekly. Well, I'm gonna make myself a car and beer beef, so we can have corned beef and cabbage. How about that? Lovely food.
Iain Thomson [02:46:23]:
Yes. I mean, in San Francisco they had the parade yesterday and it was amateur hour in the pubs. And I, I just, I put out on Blues because I just like, please tip your bartender because they're having a hell of a time of it.
Leo Laporte [02:46:36]:
Oh, it was just crazy, crazy. Uh, Richard, we'll see you Wednesday with something, a little something Irish. Of course, you catch Richard on runnysradio.com where you also find.NET Rocks. And if you like Richard's talks about all things scientific, like his nuclear talk, he does these deep dive geek talks on.NET Rocks. Is there a way to search for him?
Richard Campbell [02:47:01]:
Just look for geek?
Leo Laporte [02:47:02]:
Search for geek. And you'll find him. Thank you, Richard. Wonderful to see you. Take care. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, senior tech reviewer at The Verge. Always a pleasure to have you on. We'll catch you you on Tech News Weekly every month with Micah Sargent.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:47:18]:
Yeah, always fun to be here, even with the Oscars.
Leo Laporte [02:47:22]:
Yeah, go, you go. Now you can skip the ads, so that's a good thing.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:47:26]:
I know, see all the, all the dresses. Has it—
Leo Laporte [02:47:29]:
has started, right? I believe it started 15 minutes ago. So, but don't watch, don't start at the middle. You want to see the opening number and all of that. So yeah, thank you, Jennifer. Run out of here, go, Coco. Are your kids watching it? Do you— does your family watch it, or is it just you?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:47:46]:
No, no, my, my family is thrilled that I haven't forced them to watch it yet.
Leo Laporte [02:47:52]:
It's really interesting. It used to be like a national holiday.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:47:56]:
It was appointment viewing. Everyone had to go. Yeah, everyone had to watch it.
Leo Laporte [02:48:00]:
And now, yeah, we're the few, the proud people in our generation.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:48:05]:
I know, sad. I know, it's sad. Very sad. But I still I still love it.
Leo Laporte [02:48:09]:
Me too. Cling to it. Can't wait to watch it. And of course, wonderful to see you, Ian Thompson. I'm glad you'd write in that column at Techfinitive, Letter from America. And you'll catch his freelance writing all over the internet. And he's on Blue Sky, if you could figure out how to spell his name.
Iain Thomson [02:48:28]:
I-A. That's the problem. Yeah, I know. My parents and I have had words, put it that way.
Leo Laporte [02:48:35]:
Always great to see you. I'm sorry, you know, we used to have a studio Ian and his wife would come up and they'd even go to his— the little English shop we had in town and buy more Marmite, you know. But not anymore.
Iain Thomson [02:48:45]:
Oh, they had such great Scotch eggs. The best place to get Scotch eggs ever found in California. Yeah, is that a high bar? I mean, well, there is that. It's a bar. There is a place in San Francisco that they've just opened a British pub, they're charging $15 for a Scotch egg.
Richard Campbell [02:49:07]:
What? What is it? Dance?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:49:10]:
What? Yeah, I mean, egg, sausage, and breadcrumbs.
Iain Thomson [02:49:12]:
Yeah, well, exactly. You know, if I want to get screwed, I want a kiss, not a credit card receipt. But you know, it's just like—
Leo Laporte [02:49:19]:
what do they call them? Bacon buddies? Bacon buns?
Iain Thomson [02:49:23]:
Oh no, bacon butties. Yeah, if it wasn't for the fact that American bacon is so bad, then, you know, bad, bad, bad. Bad. Have you found a back bacon sauce yet, Jennifer?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:49:35]:
Or a—
Iain Thomson [02:49:35]:
what, sorry, a back bacon sauce?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:49:38]:
No, I have not found the bacon in this country. It's impossible. Sausages either, really hard. Good sausages.
Richard Campbell [02:49:44]:
Up here we just go to the British butcher and literally buy all the things you need. Oh nice, we have dedicated butchers for such a task.
Leo Laporte [02:49:52]:
I, I do think I'm just going to mention this, I don't know if it'll satisfy, but we get our bacon from a little Polish company called Nuskies, N-E-U-S-K-E-S, and they have Triple cut, triple thick butcher cut bacon at a ridiculous, suspiciously expensive price. Yeah, this doesn't look good. Let me show you Nuskie's. I just found a recipe for Bacon Buddies. Nuskie's is the place to get your bacon. I bet you, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just thinking it might be.
Iain Thomson [02:50:20]:
I found a place in Berkeley that does proper back bacon, but they charge a dollar a slice. And it's just like, oh, for goodness sake. I love bacon, but not that much.
Leo Laporte [02:50:29]:
I think Nuskie's, I think Nuskie's is more than that. I just bought, uh, 84 ounces for $130. How much is that? It's a lot.
Iain Thomson [02:50:40]:
Yeah, I mean, I've cheated. I've got a mate who works at a butcher. They, you know, they will actually cut you the proper piece of pork so you can let it cure.
Leo Laporte [02:50:52]:
Uh, it's not really bacon, is it?
Iain Thomson [02:50:54]:
It's, it's something else. It's basically pork with a, a mild fat round. Whereas American streaky bacon is just, it's too thin. A minuscule amount of meat and an awful lot of fat.
Benito Gonzalez [02:51:09]:
Yeah. Americans call it ham.
Leo Laporte [02:51:11]:
Americans call it ham.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:51:13]:
It's more like a ham. Yeah. Or Canadian bacon. Canadian bacon's a little closer. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Loin.
Iain Thomson [02:51:19]:
Yeah. They're both loin cuts. That said, no one does hash browns like America. That was a real, you know, I had to know.
Leo Laporte [02:51:27]:
Or pancakes or waffles. Yeah, well, the Belgians do waffles pretty well. All right, now you're making me hungry.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:51:33]:
No, I have, I have ribs on the grill, on the smoker. I think I did this last time because it's like 6 hours, so it's perfect.
Leo Laporte [02:51:41]:
The show's just long enough to smoke.
Iain Thomson [02:51:43]:
Have you got a big egg or—
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:51:45]:
I have, I have a smart smoker right now. I'm testing the brisket smart smoker. Um, It's Brisk It.
Leo Laporte [02:51:55]:
Oh, I have a Traeger and I haven't been able to since we've been under construction, but I wanna get back to my briskets. I love making a good brisket. But yeah, you get up at 3 in the morning to start it. It's so annoying.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:52:06]:
But the great thing about the smart one is you don't have, you just, it does, it has, uses algorithms to adjust the cook as you go. So I just put the ribs on, press go, and come back 6 hours later and it's perfect.
Leo Laporte [02:52:19]:
And it's cooked brisket. Brisket.ai. So you know it's right. Brisket.ai. Oh, now I'm wondering maybe an AI barbecue. And it's really not that expensive. I want it for $400, which compared to a Traeger. Traeger is really expensive.
Leo Laporte [02:52:38]:
Yeah, it's the AI-powered Wi-Fi grill. Oh, maybe a brisket is in my future.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:52:44]:
Yeah, it's pretty good. I've been testing it for a while. I did a video on it a little while ago too. Oh, good. I'll go look at your video. Of you.
Iain Thomson [02:52:52]:
Yeah, right. Did what? Sorry, I hope you mix your own sauce. I know you live in the South where it's a religion, but yes, and you have a paintbrush that you slop it on.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:53:04]:
Yeah, I, I'm not a purist barbecue person because to me barbecue means cooking burgers in the backyard, which is what English people do, and getting rained on while you do it. Yes, but I'm learning. I've never they've made a good brisket though. That's very hard to do. So I like to go to the local barbecue shops here, which are pretty awesome. So yeah, you're, you're in a, you're in a good spot for the barbecue.
Leo Laporte [02:53:27]:
Barbecue.
Iain Thomson [02:53:28]:
Yeah, yeah. It is remarkable that in the Bay Area you cannot get good barbecue. It just— barbecue and pizza are two things that the Bay Area does not do well.
Richard Campbell [02:53:38]:
I'm so jealous of it.
Benito Gonzalez [02:53:40]:
I've written Jones and Brakely.
Iain Thomson [02:53:42]:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I've been there.
Leo Laporte [02:53:44]:
That's the one where they, they're behind bars and they slide the food out and they put a piece of white bread on it and they slide it out under the bars. Yeah, I've been there. Thank you everybody. We do Twitter every— go eat, go watch the Oscars, whatever you want to do, have a drink. Uh, we do this show every Sunday from 2 to 5 PM Pacific, 5 to 8 Eastern. That's 2100 UTC. You can watch us live YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, no, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kik. Or if you're a club member, I hope you are, in the club Twit Discord.
Leo Laporte [02:54:21]:
That's not the reason to join the club. The reason to join the club is ad-free versions of all the shows, special programming. We did our AI user group on Friday. It was fantastic. Great interview with Cindy Cohn, who is the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She has a new book. We did that on Thursday. These are all club specials.
Leo Laporte [02:54:37]:
Joining the club supports everything we do here, and it's a great way to spend $10 a month and get something I think pretty important. So if you enjoy the education, the entertainment, and the company that you get from TWiT, please, twit.tv/clubtwit. We'd love to have you in the club. After-the-fact, on-demand versions of our shows available at the website twit.tv. There's a YouTube channel, actually the YouTube channel for every show we we do. You can just go to youtube.com/twit to get a link to all of the different ones. And then, of course, it is a podcast, so you can subscribe audio or video or both on your favorite podcast player. Do leave us a 5-star review.
Leo Laporte [02:55:15]:
Let the world know. When you've been around 20 years, you're no longer the flavor of the month. So it helps. We've been, we've been smoking this show for a long time. It's a long, slow cook. Thank you, everybody, for being in here. We'll see you next week. Thank you, Jennifer, Richard, and Ian.
Leo Laporte [02:55:31]:
Have a great evening. Another TWiT is in the can. This is amazing.
