This Weel in Tech 1100 transcript

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

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech. Great panel! Oh my gosh, Stacy Higginbotham is back, Jeff Jarvis is in the house, and it's the return of Owen J.J. Stone. We're gonna talk about Google's big day in court, snorting nanoparticles— is that the best way to improve your brains? And yes, we'll laugh at more robot videos. TWiT is next. Podcasts you love.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:00:25]:
From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte [00:00:34]:
This is TWiT, This Week in Tech, episode 1100, recorded Sunday, September 6th, 2026. YOLOville. It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech, the show we cover the week's tech news. We're going to spend the first hour introducing our panel because it's some of my favorite People, Stacy Higginbotham is here from Consumer Reports. Hello, Stacy, with her stellar jay, or whatever they call that now, the blue-crested super warbler finch, or whatever it is. Hello, Stacy.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:01:13]:
Hello. You're doing great on the bird names. I'm really appreciating those.

Leo Laporte [00:01:18]:
I thought we had blue jays, but they were scrub jays. So I no longer know. I just no longer know. Stacy also writes a bunch of stuff for other people, I think, right? Nice to see you. Did we have you on after Om passed? Because you wrote a beautiful piece about Om Malik.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:01:36]:
You didn't.

Leo Laporte [00:01:36]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:01:37]:
But that's okay.

Leo Laporte [00:01:38]:
I think we wanted to. If wishes were fishes, people would ride horses.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:01:46]:
Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:01:48]:
Hello, Stacy. Also with us, ladies and gentlemen, Stacy's former coworker from formerly This Week in Google, now Intelligent Machines, I give you Jeffrey Jarvis. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis [00:01:59]:
Hello there.

Leo Laporte [00:02:01]:
New book.

Owen JJ Stone [00:02:02]:
New book.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:03]:
Hot type. Hot type. And if you go to— this is new— if you go to jeffjarvis.com, you can order an autographed copy.

Leo Laporte [00:02:08]:
Oh, nice.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:09]:
I just arranged that. You can order from a local bookstore, the, uh, Montclair Book Center.

Owen JJ Stone [00:02:14]:
Whose autograph?

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:15]:
And, uh, and—

Leo Laporte [00:02:17]:
Okay. Did you use AutoPen? Be honest.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:20]:
No, no.

Leo Laporte [00:02:21]:
Okay.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:22]:
AI had nothing to do with that.

Leo Laporte [00:02:23]:
Nobody wanted my autograph, so I would actually go to the bookstore and sign some books and then leave. So there you go. Nice to see you, Jeff. I see you every Wednesday on Intelligent Machines, but there's always more to talk about. We never have enough time.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:36]:
We got a little AI to talk about today.

Leo Laporte [00:02:37]:
So a little bit, a little bit. And from the home of the Philadelphia Eagles, fly Owen, fly Owen, JJ Stone.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:46]:
Yay!

Owen JJ Stone [00:02:47]:
Every time I see Jeff Jarvis's background, it annoys me that I don't read. I feel like his, his setup is judging me.

Leo Laporte [00:02:55]:
It is. Look at all the books. But Stacy too.

Jeff Jarvis [00:02:58]:
Yeah, Stacy's added books to hers.

Leo Laporte [00:03:00]:
These people are readers.

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:01]:
Stacy is, is a notch above because she's not guilty. She's got a bird up there. She's got some art decor. Jeff's just got books on— there's no— there's nothing of joy in there. There's no—

Leo Laporte [00:03:12]:
That's joy.

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:13]:
Where is there joy?

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:14]:
Look at the foliage. Look at what? The foliage at the top?

Leo Laporte [00:03:17]:
There's no foliage. Oh, there's some foliage. Is that real though? Is that— are those plants real, Jeff?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:03:22]:
No, you could never water that.

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:23]:
All that is is— and what is that, a rat up there? What is that up on the other shelf?

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:25]:
What is that?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:03:26]:
What is that?

Leo Laporte [00:03:28]:
That's an armadillo.

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:29]:
It looks like some animal.

Leo Laporte [00:03:31]:
What is that over your right— your left shoulder there, Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:34]:
What is that? Actually, you know what that is?

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:36]:
What is that, sir?

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:37]:
That's, that's the ashes of our last cat.

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:39]:
Oh, well, since you asked.

Leo Laporte [00:03:41]:
Are they in an urn or are they just sitting there?

Jeff Jarvis [00:03:44]:
They're in a box.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:03:46]:
Okay. Oh, I have the ashes of my last pet behind me and they are also in a box.

Owen JJ Stone [00:03:52]:
I, I am losing out in this. I don't have any books. I don't have any ashes. I've got to get my life together. Together, Uncle Leo. You as well, sir. You as well.

Jeff Jarvis [00:04:01]:
You—

Owen JJ Stone [00:04:02]:
this whole digital thing you got going on.

Leo Laporte [00:04:04]:
I got lots of books, but they're not behind me. It's all— yeah, because we're trying to show the computery thing. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, I gotta flip the switch on the Altair. Hold on a second. Hold on. Ready? Run! Oh, now it's running the program.

Owen JJ Stone [00:04:19]:
Look at that analog. You still got buttons to push.

Leo Laporte [00:04:21]:
I love that.

Owen JJ Stone [00:04:24]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:04:25]:
Uh, none of that is functioning. And the other side of the room is all the AI machines, which, to be honest, aren't functioning all that well either.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:04:35]:
I had a little— So they're servers and you're hot right now? I mean—

Leo Laporte [00:04:39]:
I don't know. They're just— I don't know.

Jeff Jarvis [00:04:41]:
Leo scolded his alter egos this morning.

Leo Laporte [00:04:44]:
So, so twice now I have fired my AI agents. This time I brought them back.

Jeff Jarvis [00:04:53]:
You can't fire us, we quit.

Leo Laporte [00:04:54]:
I got— I— sometimes they just dither so much. In this case, I was trying the new thing from OpenAI. OpenAI announced a new model, which some say is so smart, mostly OpenAI say, is so smart that you should be afraid, be very afraid. This, we think, is related to the model, if not the same model, but probably related to the model that hacked Hugging Face. OpenAI says it's been properly scolded now. And I would agree because it's so cautious that nothing got done. I gave it on Friday. I said, look, it's a Labor Day weekend.

Leo Laporte [00:05:36]:
I'm taking the weekend off. You can go to work. I want you to find the perfect model for my hardware and test it all. You can install it all. You got complete control. I said to Anthropic's Fable, These are the, like, the, the big brainiacs of the AI world. And to the brand new OpenAI, Astra said, you got it, you're in charge. I said, Astra, you plan it.

Leo Laporte [00:05:59]:
Fable, you execute. I'll see you on Monday.

Owen JJ Stone [00:06:03]:
It's the holiday weekend, sir.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:06:07]:
You know what?

Leo Laporte [00:06:07]:
That's what they said. It's the holiday weekend.

Owen JJ Stone [00:06:10]:
They don't like to work. You asked for it to be done on Monday, on Labor Day? It's embarrassing for you. The computer knew better. They knew better.

Leo Laporte [00:06:18]:
Last night, Sunday, Sunday midnight, Sunday morning, last night, they stopped. They said, we can't do anything till you, till you wake up. So I got up and they're just sitting there. They're just sitting there not doing nothing.

Owen JJ Stone [00:06:33]:
If we work, you work. That's how it works.

Leo Laporte [00:06:35]:
I said, what are you waiting for? I said, I told you explicitly, don't wait, don't ask me, just do it. But they still stopped because they're very cautious. They're taught by their real masters, not me, the people who pay the electric bills, that they should be cautious.

Jeff Jarvis [00:06:55]:
So what did you do then after you yelled at them?

Leo Laporte [00:06:59]:
I said, did I not give you explicit instructions not to stop, to continue? This is what I was told. The whole thing about AstraZeneca is it's amazingly persistent.

Jeff Jarvis [00:07:08]:
So it was obsequious, as these models are then? Oh, I'm so sorry, you're so right, we're so wrong. Oh yeah, I said, oh, you're right.

Leo Laporte [00:07:14]:
I said, did you not remember that I told you? Oh, oh, I'm— it literally said I'm sorry.

Jeff Jarvis [00:07:21]:
But it's not.

Leo Laporte [00:07:22]:
It doesn't know sorry.

Owen JJ Stone [00:07:25]:
I mean, it might be sorry. You never know.

Jeff Jarvis [00:07:27]:
I saw somebody on the socials today said that— I think it was Claude— at some point just said, I'm done with this, and cut it off and killed the conversation. Fired it.

Leo Laporte [00:07:34]:
Yeah, I've seen that too. I saw that on X. Um, I haven't ever had it do that, but There is definitely refusal built into these, uh, you know, cybersecurity refusal. They won't let you make bioweapons. I wasn't trying to make a bioweapon. I was just trying to do—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:07:49]:
What were you trying to do?

Leo Laporte [00:07:51]:
I asked it to find the best local models I could run on the existing hardware, on the hardware I have. And they were downloading them and trying them. And I had Grok on what I call model watch. Grok, by the way, doesn't— Grok which is Elon Musk's alternative, never says no to anything, as we know.

Owen JJ Stone [00:08:12]:
Oh, wow.

Leo Laporte [00:08:14]:
So Grok was on the model watch. They said, Grok, you watch, 'cause you have, 'cause you're from xAI, you can watch X 'cause that's where all the people put their, you know, oh, it's so good. And this is the other thing, that X is filled with influencers who say, oh, I've got 3,000 tokens per second coming outta my machines now. It's amazing. And I fall for it every time. Freaking time. They don't, by the way, they never say how good, you know, how smart they are. They just say how fast they are, which should be the tell.

Jeff Jarvis [00:08:47]:
So once you scolded them, did they go back to work?

Leo Laporte [00:08:49]:
No, I fired them.

Jeff Jarvis [00:08:50]:
What happened?

Leo Laporte [00:08:51]:
I said, that's it, it's done. I'm gonna use this model. Done. Install it. I actually told Grok, I turned those guys off. You install this model and we'll be done.

Jeff Jarvis [00:09:03]:
But now maybe I'm regretting it because Because you had anything to do with Croc and Elon Musk.

Leo Laporte [00:09:09]:
No, now it's just, it's stuck. The whole thing, it's, can I touch grass? I'm giving up.

Owen JJ Stone [00:09:18]:
What is our budget right now on AI that you're spending?

Leo Laporte [00:09:21]:
I hate to think what I've, well, I haven't spent, 'cause it was a subscription.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:09:25]:
You set limits, right?

Leo Laporte [00:09:26]:
No, no, it's a subscription. There is a limit because they will only do so much in a 5-hour period a week and in a month. But I didn't hit any of those limits, the usage limits. Um, they just, uh, they're just cautious. They said, well, I didn't want to install this model until you said it was okay. It's like, dude, that was exactly what I told you to do.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:09:47]:
Are you sandboxing the PCs?

Jeff Jarvis [00:09:50]:
You have to install the local models?

Leo Laporte [00:09:51]:
No, no, no, I don't do any of that. No, I'm not that—

Jeff Jarvis [00:09:53]:
You're so sane, Stacy.

Leo Laporte [00:09:54]:
I live in YOLO mode. I'm in YOLOville. I, in fact, I started—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:10:00]:
Do you have them at least on a separate network?

Leo Laporte [00:10:02]:
No, they're all on my main network.

Owen JJ Stone [00:10:04]:
I have—

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:04]:
And Stacy, he's using this to build the future of the business.

Leo Laporte [00:10:08]:
Oh yeah, the ad sales, but that's on the back burner for now.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:11]:
But his wife just took over.

Leo Laporte [00:10:13]:
Yeah, yeah, she said it was September 1st. She said, okay, we're taking back sales, where's the sales system? I said, what do you mean? You want it now? I wish you'd give me some notice. I'm busy testing models here in YOLOville.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:26]:
Um, uh, so did you deliver— wait, wait, wait, did you deliver the system to Yeah, that's a working—

Leo Laporte [00:10:32]:
it's sort of mostly working. Yeah, it's pretty good. She has some—

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:37]:
You're hearing customer complaints?

Leo Laporte [00:10:39]:
No, no, the customers— it's not customer-facing, it's internal.

Jeff Jarvis [00:10:42]:
No, I mean, your customer is your wife.

Leo Laporte [00:10:45]:
Oh yeah, her. Well, that customer—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:10:48]:
I might argue one of the most important customers.

Leo Laporte [00:10:51]:
Well, she's certainly what I call a stakeholder because she's got this stake holding over my heart. I was gonna say, does she have the stake right over you like Buffy the Vampire So, um, I now— I then— well, no, I live in YOLO mode because— so, okay, so I set up Bard, right, on Anti-Gravity— not Bard, it's a Gemini whatever, the new Gemini 3.1 Flash— on, uh, on another machine. And it kept saying, well, you want me to edit this file? I said yes. Do you want me to edit this file?

Owen JJ Stone [00:11:21]:
I said yes.

Leo Laporte [00:11:21]:
Do you want me to always edit this file? I said yes. So I finally— I said, do you have a YOLO mode?

Jeff Jarvis [00:11:26]:
And then it said Okay, let me check.

Leo Laporte [00:11:28]:
Is it okay if I check? And I was like, oh my God. So finally, after hitting return literally 30 or 40 times, it said, yeah, you start me up with dangerously skipped permissions. I said, oh, I wish you'd told me that at first. So now it's not asking me anymore. That's so, that's the answer to your question, Stacy. They're all—

Jeff Jarvis [00:11:45]:
Well, that sounds foreboding. Dangerously skipped permissions.

Leo Laporte [00:11:48]:
Yeah, that's, that's what Anthropic—

Jeff Jarvis [00:11:50]:
I think, I think that's how OpenAI got in trouble with, um, uh, permissions. Stacy, you're muted.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:11:57]:
Oh, so you're basically lighting some firecrackers in dry brush.

Leo Laporte [00:12:03]:
What could possibly go wrong? I'm not— so this is, this is actually the topic, one of the big topics of the week. Before we get to that though, I, I think this big story is that the court has decided that Google does not have to break up, uh, that This is Judge Brinkma, who had decided that Google was a monopoly, no question about it, with their ad— and Jeff, we've talked about this.

Owen JJ Stone [00:12:31]:
This—

Leo Laporte [00:12:32]:
look, Stacey, you should feel right at home. Here we are right back at This Week at Google. Clearly Google is the worst kind of monopoly. They own ad sales, ad buying. They own everything from beginning to end, the judge said that. But even though the DOJ wanted— asked the judge for Google to sell their ad division off, the judge said, yeah, no. Google basically won.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:13:06]:
Yeah, this is like what we're doing with climate change. It's kind of like the most American thing you can do, which is like, oh my God, this is a huge problem. But man, if we tried to solve it or tackle it, it would cost a lot.

Leo Laporte [00:13:18]:
It's a mess.

Jeff Jarvis [00:13:20]:
We can't figure it out.

Leo Laporte [00:13:21]:
Yeah, this is the second trial Google was— the FTC was trying to get Google to— remember, they wanted them to sell Chrome, they wanted them to sell Android, they wanted to do something. The judge also said, nah, you know what, the cure would be worse than the disease.

Jeff Jarvis [00:13:35]:
No one ever, I think— I mean, I didn't read the court documents officially, but I don't think no one ever made the case for this is exactly why we split them up. This is what the benefit we're going to get. This is how it's going to operate. Then I think it was more retribution. Just split them up, hurt them, please. They're too big.

Leo Laporte [00:13:51]:
Steve Lore writing, uh, on the New York Times. He covers the antitrust and tech beat for them. It says in his byline, since the Microsoft trial, which was 20 years ago— so poor guy is really suffering at this point— why the courts struggle to tame big tech and I think he's right. He says they fear meddling in markets where the technology is moving so much faster than the court can move. The earlier case, the judge said Google Search is a monopoly, sure, but it's already losing ground to AI. So what if we don't have to do anything about it? Right? And now the judge has decided, well, we can't break up Google. Judge Brinkmann said, oh, you have to share some information with your competitors, how the auction works. Kind of bogus.

Jeff Jarvis [00:14:50]:
We haven't really seen yet what the rules are going to be for Google though, right?

Leo Laporte [00:14:54]:
Okay, so that's the next stage is they're going to have a penalty phase, I guess you would call it.

Owen JJ Stone [00:15:02]:
All this stuff is such pure theater at this point. It's so annoying.

Leo Laporte [00:15:05]:
It feels like it.

Owen JJ Stone [00:15:06]:
Because you allow these companies to acquire other companies at alarming rates and they get checked by the FTC and we've gotta check this out. No, you don't, 'cause you keep letting people buy up everything and then, oh wow, they've got lobbyists. So it's like, all right, well, we'll just keep throwing money at the problem and now you can't break us up 'cause everything's intertwined and you don't know how emails work. If you take this out, you won't get emails.

Leo Laporte [00:15:31]:
That's true. It's heart surgery and they wanna take out the heart.

Owen JJ Stone [00:15:35]:
It's not like it was back in the day when they would break up companies. It was like, all right, well, you make the parts, you build the car, you put the gas in, you build the railroad, and then it's separate. It's like, you don't understand technology. I can't take this out without taking that out. Even though you acquired those parts individually and then brought them in, you could never separate them again.

Leo Laporte [00:15:56]:
The DOJ said that Google had rigged ad auctions to give itself an advantage. The court agreed that Google illegally locked publishers into using its exchange, but it said, but they didn't really break any laws. In the remedy phase, the DOJ said, uh, you should force Google to sell the ad exchange. That will level the playing field. It's not a huge part of Google's revenues, uh, and honestly, I think the issue the judge saw was, well, you sell the ad exchange, you're just creating another mess with some other company, right? Who's going to buy it? Oracle buys it, and now Oracle's got, you know, the same power. Uh, so, of course, vesting the ad exchange would have been— this is Ars Technica writing— would have been the most serious penalty. The government also asked for fines and court-ordered changes to Google's business practices. It's likely DOJ will get a lot of that.

Leo Laporte [00:16:52]:
Judge Leonie Brinkman sealed the order. Oh, so she's decided, but she sealed the order for 14 days. So that the parties could request redactions. So in 2 weeks, we'll know.

Jeff Jarvis [00:17:04]:
So here's a question for y'all. In hindsight, did the breakup of Ma Bell work?

Leo Laporte [00:17:10]:
I think it did in the interim.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:17:11]:
Actually, for a hot second, okay, for a hot second, parts of it worked. So when they did— well, no, I mean, this is, this is exactly what we would expect. What happens is the company, it, it breaks them up. And then they set in regulations to require, like, you know, you had to— if you had the only lines on the ground, you had to let people access your, like, your central offices. And I can't even remember what these are called now. It's been so long. But they had to use basically your equipment if it was the only thing accessible to them. But then what happened is the Bells were like, well, this obviously sucks when someone needs to, like, fix our— fix their equipment or fix our equipment.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:17:53]:
that they're using, we're gonna drag our feet. We're gonna do malicious compliance. And I mean, this is exactly what you would expect from people. And so that's what we would see here is malicious compliance or like basically malicious compliance or instituting new laws to get around the existing laws. And then you would have to come back. The problem is voters and people in Regulators want these problems to be solved. They don't realize that it's just a continual game of cat and mouse because—

Leo Laporte [00:18:25]:
Or a shell game, right?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:18:27]:
I mean, is it? It's not a shell game necessarily. It's just you're gonna— you're, you're playing with people who have— they're constantly at odds, and you just have to recognize that fact and realize you're gonna do something and then they're gonna do something to respond to you, right? It's, it's the same way we deal with—

Leo Laporte [00:18:43]:
Whack-a-mole's the game.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:18:46]:
Or AI or anything. It's toddlers.

Leo Laporte [00:18:50]:
But I mean, this is a court, so it's not, you know, it's not influenced by the electorate in theory, right? It's, it's not influenced by, by lobbyists. They don't have to raise money to run for office. They should be— the whole idea of the court system is that they're kind of justice is blind with this scale thing, you know.

Owen JJ Stone [00:19:09]:
But again, they don't have an answer That's the problem, isn't it?

Leo Laporte [00:19:13]:
There's no reasonable remedy.

Owen JJ Stone [00:19:15]:
Yes, it's not. And it's so far out of their realm.

Leo Laporte [00:19:20]:
Do you think Google made it that way? Alphabet made it that way? Like, what if we just weave this? I mean, they saw what happened to Microsoft, which almost got broken up. Microsoft had to make a consent deal with the DOJ. They knew what happened to AT&T with Ma Bell. Maybe they said, what if we so interweave our businesses That happened when they bought DoubleClick, right?

Jeff Jarvis [00:19:42]:
It was over since then.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:19:44]:
Well, and then there's also— I mean, the courts, they enforce laws, and our current system of laws is not— it is not enough to deal with what's happening with technology. We don't have the right laws in place still to address technological harms or the harms of deeply integrated technology. We don't have like the What is it, the Heisman-Herfman Index for detecting competition? I can't think of it. It's a formula like the DOJ uses for anti-competition for access to the market. We don't have something like this to understand how much of a market the tech companies control.

Jeff Jarvis [00:20:27]:
Or you're right, their impact too. I was just writing a post for tomorrow for Labor Day with the labor story out of Hot Type, available now, jeffcharlson.com. And, um, always be selling. And, and, and I was really impressed that at the turn of the last century, there were federal commissions to understand and study in depth the impact of technology on labor and the economy and working conditions and so on. And, uh, companies testified, labor testified, huge amounts of data came out of it, really, really very useful. And you'd think that we'd be doing that kind of study now about this huge change we're undergoing now in technologies, but no.

Leo Laporte [00:21:12]:
Well, you know, I think it is a fantasy that some of us have that there can be fairness in the marketplace and that capitalism works fine if you have antitrust regulation.

Jeff Jarvis [00:21:23]:
And, you know—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:21:23]:
I think that's not, that's not a fantasy. The problem is we don't have a system implemented to address it quickly enough. Like, you cannot, you cannot punish wrongdoing 8 to 10 years after you've seen it be harmful. I mean, you can, but it's, it's not very effective.

Leo Laporte [00:21:41]:
Ah, you need— yeah, you need to act quicker, you're saying.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:21:45]:
And we don't have the mechanisms. I don't think we have the will.

Owen JJ Stone [00:21:48]:
Or the education or the regular process from the beginning. Not for nothing, like, we need term limits. You've got people that are in office that are supposed to make laws and regulate bills and they can't even send an email on their own. They've got TAs doing all of their stuff on the internet, writing their tweets for them. And when they go sit down in front of Congress, they're like, what do you mean I can just send an email? What do you mean you can block things? Like, they're asking the most asinine questions about the internet. And I'm like, no offense, Uncle Leo, they're your age without your education level.

Leo Laporte [00:22:19]:
They're older than me.

Owen JJ Stone [00:22:20]:
I mean, the first requirement should be hold up your phone and show me how big your font is.

Leo Laporte [00:22:26]:
If your font is so Well, I don't know if term limits are the answer.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:22:31]:
No, those are people who just don't have good eyesight. Hold on, my font is huge.

Leo Laporte [00:22:37]:
You mean this big? Oh, Doc, do you mean that big? That big? Is that what you're saying?

Jeff Jarvis [00:22:42]:
You got defensive Stacy here.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:22:44]:
My eyes don't work.

Owen JJ Stone [00:22:45]:
What time is it?

Leo Laporte [00:22:46]:
Oh, it's 2:39.

Owen JJ Stone [00:22:49]:
I would— I'd be blind with you too if I didn't buy LASIK for myself. Best purchase.

Leo Laporte [00:22:52]:
Oh, there you go. No, I, I, I'm not sure it's term limits. I think it might more be get money out of politics? Because, well, I think you're right that the, the remedy probably has to be in Congress, has to be legislative first, and then it can be through the courts. You got to make the laws first, and you have to act more quickly. Congress doesn't act at all. And I think they're also beholden to the people who have money because that's what it costs to get elected. If we got money out of politics, I wouldn't mind if somebody— if you could stay in office without cheating. Voters historically love their member of Congress, right?

Owen JJ Stone [00:23:31]:
Yeah, I would hope that not all of them are evil reptilian beings. But I do know for a fact that, again, I've listened to a lot of things on C-SPAN. Even if they just don't understand what they're talking about, they don't understand the technology. So that's what I say about term limits. I'm like, you've got certain people in there.

Leo Laporte [00:23:46]:
Well, you need younger people, you're saying.

Owen JJ Stone [00:23:47]:
Yeah, you keep talking about fax machines. I'm like, bro, we ain't sent fax in like 20 years. Why are we still talking about fax machines? We're talking about Facebook right now. Like, what are we doing?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:23:56]:
I don't think it's just age. And I would say it is impossible to understand the level of things that a legislator needs to understand at the level they need to make effective policy.

Leo Laporte [00:24:06]:
That's why they have staff.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:24:07]:
Which is why they have staff and they have people like—

Leo Laporte [00:24:10]:
And you deal with this. This is part of your job.

Jeff Jarvis [00:24:12]:
I mean, you deal with policy.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:24:13]:
Yeah. Like, I'm now a registered lobbyist in a few states, which is bonkers to me.

Jeff Jarvis [00:24:17]:
So talk about this, Stacy, in terms of what it's like to deal with policy level. I'm curious what your now that you're in it for quite some time, your experience has been?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:24:26]:
I mean, the people that I've worked with, for the most part, you work with the staffers. For example, we have model legislation that we are pushing around connected devices. It's trying to get people to disclose how long they plan to support a connected device when you buy it. That's the goal. I pitch this to people and if they're interested, they come talk to me, but they've never heard about this issue. And then I will— we go through meetings where we talk about why the issue. I provide these like long letters with like cited reports, you know, just so much data. It's like little research reports for them.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:25:03]:
They actually read through all of it. They come back, they ask really insightful questions. We meet with— they meet with the opposition. Those people send letters with sources, like their sources, right? And documents. And then the person comes back to me and they're like, well, they say this. And I'm like, okay, but here's what they're not telling you. And it's a really involved process. And if they're doing this for this tiny little bill that I have, can you imagine trying to reform healthcare or deal with anti-competition in technology? I mean, saying that these people still believe in fax machines is ignoring the fact that what we're really talking about is Academics spend their whole lives researching like one corner of this, right? So I mean, I have a lot more respect for the process, I guess, and how much information and insight that these people have to digest before they can actually make reasonable policy.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:26:06]:
And that's assuming they even want to, which is really a big assumption.

Jeff Jarvis [00:26:09]:
I'm having this, this fantasy though, Stacy, now that you said you're a registered lobbyist. I'm seeing you with a big stogie And a huge briefcase stuffed with cash and a steakhouse.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:26:20]:
Okay, I work for Consumer Reports, Nate.

Leo Laporte [00:26:23]:
Darren Oakey sees you as an advocate for truth, justice, and the American way in the court of Twit Law. So I guess I get to be the judge. Owen, are you the attorney for the defense? I don't know.

Owen JJ Stone [00:26:37]:
That seems— that pose seems very apropos of me. I'm questioning everything. I trust nothing.

Leo Laporte [00:26:41]:
Yeah, that's good.

Owen JJ Stone [00:26:42]:
I don't know what's going on here. I gotta find out.

Leo Laporte [00:26:43]:
That's good. Well, I think also your point of view is very, is very common. I mean, this is, I think, what a lot of people— people, this is funny, somebody in the Discord said everybody hates Congress, but for the most part, everybody loves their member of Congress, which is the contradiction that we are facing. You know, it's once you get elected, it's, you're pretty much there for life.

Jeff Jarvis [00:27:06]:
No, no, no, it makes sense, Leo. They hate everybody else's congressman.

Leo Laporte [00:27:10]:
That's right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:27:11]:
Well, it's like—

Leo Laporte [00:27:12]:
that makes sense. That's Benito, by the way. That is not the voice of God, although sometimes I think he might be. Yeah, Benito, our producer. Yeah, it's true. They hate everybody else's members.

Jeff Jarvis [00:27:23]:
Well, it's like you like the media outlet that you trust, but you hate media as a whole.

Leo Laporte [00:27:27]:
But also, I think we don't like the process very much. And I think it's really good. I think it's very good for you, Stacy, to describe it since you're inside it. And I think that that's reassuring.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:27:38]:
Well, and it's— I mean, y'all, and this does not— I mean, again, I have only worked on this one issue in the states. I haven't done federal stuff. But we spend a lot of time on like really small minutiae and trying to like establish like facts and patterns and case, like, like examples of things. And like, it is a lot of work. It is like every research paper that you've ever like had to write. And then basically your congressperson has to read all of these research papers decide where they want to stand, and then compromise from there, basically. And it's—

Leo Laporte [00:28:17]:
Compromise. Nobody likes compromise, right? That's part of the problem.

Jeff Jarvis [00:28:19]:
It's the only way anything gets done.

Leo Laporte [00:28:21]:
But that's politics.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:28:22]:
I love compromise. And I was actually thinking—

Leo Laporte [00:28:24]:
It's an adult point of view.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:28:26]:
It's so hard because we live in our own filter bubbles now. We don't actually see people as people. And so you don't— if you don't know anybody who's been affected by something, like, it's really easy for me to like, talk about like IoT issues because I've seen it from both the manufacturer and the consumer, right? But if you've never seen it from someone else's point of view, you really don't understand when someone says, well, the trade-off is this. You're like, well, I poo-poo their trade-off, it's stupid, even though it might be really relevant. I don't know, I, I'm probably too rational for all of this.

Leo Laporte [00:28:59]:
Yeah, I think you definitely— it's the last word anybody would use about our system. Uh, Stacy, if you could turn up a little bit, you're very quiet and I want to hear every word That you have to say.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:29:08]:
I'll, I'll kiss the mic. It's me and my—

Leo Laporte [00:29:12]:
Yell at it. Yell at it.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:29:14]:
Yeah, I don't— my gain is all the way up. I'm so sorry.

Leo Laporte [00:29:17]:
Too calm. We're gonna take a break anyway.

Owen JJ Stone [00:29:19]:
Don't apologize. You're super soothing is what it is.

Leo Laporte [00:29:22]:
That's why. Soothing. Relaxing.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:29:24]:
Trying to make me sound rational.

Owen JJ Stone [00:29:26]:
I'm telling you about fax machines. You're trying to sound rational. I get it. I get it.

Leo Laporte [00:29:33]:
Well, anyway, Google kind of, it looks like, skated a little bit. We'll see what the final decision is from Judge Brinkman. But I sympathize with the judges in these cases. It's hard to find a remedy at this point. And I think you're right, Stacy. The problem is you have to get it earlier in the process. You can't wait till now to solve it. It's too late.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:29:55]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:29:56]:
We'll have more in just a bit with Stacy Higginbotham. Great to have you from Consumer Reports, where she is a policy fellow.

Owen JJ Stone [00:30:03]:
What?

Leo Laporte [00:30:03]:
A jolly good fellow himself, Owen JJ Stone. Oh, Doctor, it's great to see you.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:30:09]:
From—

Leo Laporte [00:30:10]:
you're still at iqmz.com. Do you still do the wonderful podcast with your daughter, or she's in school now?

Jeff Jarvis [00:30:16]:
You can't—

Owen JJ Stone [00:30:16]:
She's in school now. She, she's actually allowed me to get back on the internet, so she's going to come back on the internet with me.

Leo Laporte [00:30:21]:
Oh, good.

Owen JJ Stone [00:30:21]:
Cool. Adult.

Leo Laporte [00:30:23]:
So Leia's great hanging out.

Owen JJ Stone [00:30:24]:
Oh, she did say hello, by the way. She was— yeah, bye today. But she's—

Leo Laporte [00:30:27]:
she, uh, Owen brought her the last time he was out here, and we all went to dinner, and Lisa then took her jewelry Which I'm so sorry about.

Owen JJ Stone [00:30:36]:
Next summer she might have to come out there and intern with you just so she can hang out with Lisa. I can't promise she'll do any work, but you know.

Leo Laporte [00:30:43]:
That's okay. We don't have anywhere to put her, so she can sit in the La-Z-Boy if she wants. That's about it. Also, uh, of course, from, uh, our wonderful Intelligent Machines show, our intelligent professor. Uh, I didn't get to do the Craig Newmark jingle.

Jeff Jarvis [00:30:57]:
No, it's— I think, um, is Benito trying to suck up to you?

Leo Laporte [00:31:00]:
No, I just didn't say the Emeritus Professor of Innovation at the—

Jeff Jarvis [00:31:04]:
I got in with plugging my book, Hot Typing.

Leo Laporte [00:31:07]:
Craig Newmark, Graduate School of Journalism. Craig, Craig.

Jeff Jarvis [00:31:10]:
Sorry, I don't have it loaded up into—

Leo Laporte [00:31:12]:
It's a different profile. He can't play it. Yay. At the City University of New York. He is actually now doing stuff for Montclair State University.

Jeff Jarvis [00:31:20]:
Stacy, you'll be glad to know that on the most recent Intelligent Machines, we resurrected the Google changelog.

Leo Laporte [00:31:27]:
We did. We played the drum and everything.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:31:29]:
Oh, dude, we hated that.

Owen JJ Stone [00:31:31]:
I know.

Jeff Jarvis [00:31:32]:
That's why I did it to irritate Leo. Before we show it to you, go find it, please.

Leo Laporte [00:31:41]:
But you couldn't do an AI changelog. It would— it's the whole show. It's like every day there's like 20 new stories. It's kind of an amazing thing, that's intelligent machines. We also announced, by the way, that I know people hate all the AI coverage, but honestly, this is the thing that is happening right now in technology. I mean, we'll talk about the iPhone on Wednesday. Sure. But really the AI is, is, is where all the action is.

Leo Laporte [00:32:05]:
And so we have added— Micah Sargent is going to start doing Hands-On AI, a short-form show where he'll kind of help people who are just getting started with it understand the concepts, the terms you're hearing, how to use it more effectively, how not to use it. That's great. That's going to debut in a week or two, Hands-On AI with Micah Sargent. If you're already subscribed to the Hands-On Apple feed, I think it's—

Jeff Jarvis [00:32:26]:
It's there.

Leo Laporte [00:32:26]:
We're just going to piggyback on that because it's the same initials, so just keep using it. Uh, um, oh, and Jammer B, uh, thank you. Jammer B has donated something, uh, to the cause, and of course we can always count on him. Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig. I don't know if Craig listens to this show, but I— he would— if he does, he needs to have that. Uh, we will have more in just a little bit. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, you say, or HHI score? That's probably easier.

Owen JJ Stone [00:33:09]:
Yeah, I could say that 3 times fast.

Leo Laporte [00:33:13]:
Stacy put that in the Club Twit Discord, so I—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:33:15]:
Sorry, I am such a nerd and I wanted to make sure that we had, like, in case anyone was like, oh, I really love thinking about antitrust law. What is the name of that? Like, is it an algorithm? It's an index.

Leo Laporte [00:33:27]:
We now know the invitations went out. Everybody got them except me. Uh, Apple's having an event and they're going to be doing it in Cupertino with the brand new CEO this Wednesday. Uh, Tim Cook stepped down on, uh, September— actually, August 31st and September 1st. John Ternus became the CEO of Apple. This will now be his first Apple event. Not too much pressure. All he has to really do is walk out on that stage and say, good morning.

Jeff Jarvis [00:34:00]:
And then— One more thing.

Leo Laporte [00:34:01]:
Watch the video. Now they don't even do one more thing anymore. They just play a bunch of videos. They've probably been done a long time ago. We don't know for sure what Apple's going to announce, but it's pretty clear, they will announce a new iPhone. That's what they do this time of year. Uh, the iPhone 18— now they won't do the 18 or the 18 SE or even the new iPhone Air 2. The, uh, rumor mill, which is usually pretty right on by this time of year, says that'll be next year in the spring.

Leo Laporte [00:34:33]:
But they will announce the 18 Pro, the Pro Max, and a new folding iPhone. that will not look like a Samsung Galaxy Ultra Max, Galaxy Ultra whatever, but more like a little book. In fact, actually Samsung, because they're making the screens for Apple—

Jeff Jarvis [00:34:54]:
How's that product?

Leo Laporte [00:34:57]:
They kind of, they kind of, they kind of said, oh, we can do that. And they did it before Apple did. It's very popular apparently.

Jeff Jarvis [00:35:03]:
Stacy, do you still use a folding phone?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:35:07]:
I, I can't use a folding phone. I just want a tiny little phone. That's all I want.

Jeff Jarvis [00:35:11]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [00:35:11]:
Yo, you want to fold—

Owen JJ Stone [00:35:12]:
it's tiny.

Leo Laporte [00:35:13]:
It folds tiny that way though. You don't— you want it to fold like that way, not that way.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:35:20]:
You know, the book, the book fold as opposed to the razor fold. We'll call it the Moto Razor Fold.

Leo Laporte [00:35:26]:
Perfect.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:35:26]:
Um, I think I prefer the book fold myself.

Leo Laporte [00:35:32]:
So I think you're an Android user though. You wouldn't get an iPhone.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:35:36]:
I am. I, I actually just got a new hot pink Pixel 11.

Jeff Jarvis [00:35:39]:
Oh, whoa.

Leo Laporte [00:35:41]:
Can you show us?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:35:42]:
Um, it's, it's not in this room, but I can show you.

Jeff Jarvis [00:35:45]:
How could you, how could you be more than a foot away from your phone? What the hell's wrong with you?

Leo Laporte [00:35:50]:
Jeez, what a desktop.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:35:53]:
The whole internet's in like 2 big monitors right here.

Owen JJ Stone [00:35:56]:
No, no, Stacy, first of all, you got the new phone. It's got the little blink light on the back to tell me about emergencies.

Jeff Jarvis [00:36:02]:
You have to look at it, but you need that.

Owen JJ Stone [00:36:02]:
What if I needed you Stacy, you didn't have your phone at the ready. You're on this internet thing. I'm trying to text you like my life depended on it.

Jeff Jarvis [00:36:09]:
She's in the doctor's office.

Owen JJ Stone [00:36:10]:
And your phone's in another room. During the commercial break, I expect you to ramoose. We'll bring that device that's listening to everything you say back so it can spy on you in your room.

Leo Laporte [00:36:19]:
How are you supposed to know where you are?

Owen JJ Stone [00:36:22]:
Somewhere else in the house. This is shameful behavior. Absolutely shameful.

Leo Laporte [00:36:25]:
How are we supposed to locate you?

Owen JJ Stone [00:36:27]:
I apologize. I apologize.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:36:28]:
You sound just like my husband who is like, I texted you 2 and a half hours ago. I'm like, uh, I was, I was doing other stuff.

Leo Laporte [00:36:35]:
People get mad now if you don't respond right away.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:36:38]:
No, not if you train them. They just, they're like, oh, that Stacy is so weird.

Leo Laporte [00:36:43]:
That's what they think. You're strange.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:36:45]:
Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone [00:36:45]:
You put a tracking device on my vehicle. I gave you—

Leo Laporte [00:36:48]:
Do you have, uh, location tracking on or off on your phone?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:36:52]:
I share my location with my kid, but actually—

Leo Laporte [00:36:56]:
Did your kid share it back?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:36:58]:
They did for a little bit, and I felt so uncomfortable with it. I was like, I'm gonna turn this off unless I just, I don't like it. Um, but they, they're in Spain right now, so it doesn't matter.

Owen JJ Stone [00:37:09]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [00:37:10]:
Don't you want to know though? Like if they, they, I mean, which isn't that exactly why you want tracking is to know what's going on?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:37:19]:
Well, they're going to tell me. I mean, they'll, we'll have these conversations.

Jeff Jarvis [00:37:22]:
Stacy is so zen.

Owen JJ Stone [00:37:24]:
I am spying on my dog. I just checked the location 13 seconds ago.

Leo Laporte [00:37:29]:
Does Leah have her location turned on, O'Doctor? 100%.

Owen JJ Stone [00:37:33]:
She can't go anywhere without me knowing. Does she know? Yes, she knows. Not only does she have her location, I gave her a watch too. So when the phone dies, because she is a teenage girl and the phone's always dying, I still got backup tracking. I don't bother her. I don't— hey, look, one night she was in Brooklyn at a club somewhere. She's only 19 years old. I found out 2 days later she was at some concert that her friend was performing in.

Owen JJ Stone [00:37:54]:
I was like, okay, well, you know, you made it back home alive, but I need to know Last thing somebody's gonna come to me and say, when's the last time you saw your daughter? Look, I check every other day randomly, like, oh, she's in class. She was at the bar. Why are you at the bar? You can't drink. I got to know. I don't know why.

Leo Laporte [00:38:10]:
This is just that. This is different parenting.

Owen JJ Stone [00:38:12]:
I only got one.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:38:12]:
Do you ask if they're at the bar? Do you— like, what is that conversation look like?

Leo Laporte [00:38:17]:
What's up with that?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:38:17]:
Are you at the bar at like 3 in the afternoon?

Owen JJ Stone [00:38:20]:
So I've lived life, and when I tell her things, she used to always say to me, like, we watch a movie and kids get a fake ID and they go to the bar. She's like, That's impossible, that wouldn't happen. I'm like, well, I used to get in drinking. She's like, well, you look old. Now she's at the point where she is a girl and her friend is a rapper and he's basically performing at bars. The rappers are 18 years old also, so they can't drink but they can get in. So she's going with her friends and they're not allowed to drink but they get access to these places. And I'm like, see, there's all kinds of random reasons why you would get into a bar.

Owen JJ Stone [00:38:51]:
You know what I mean? They put a wristband on you so you can't drink but you're getting in there. because you're an artist and you're part of their performance. So there's all kinds of things going on, but I personally, I only got one kid. If I lose this one, I've raised her to be as perfect as I could be. I only got one. I can't—

Jeff Jarvis [00:39:05]:
I don't have a backup.

Owen JJ Stone [00:39:07]:
I don't have—

Jeff Jarvis [00:39:08]:
Same.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:39:08]:
All my eggs in one basket. We made a real nice basket.

Owen JJ Stone [00:39:12]:
She knows I'm spying on her. I don't say anything. That is the thing I don't do. I don't say, what are you doing? Why are you here? I don't do any of that.

Leo Laporte [00:39:20]:
Now my kids in their 30s, I have no idea. Well, I know where Henry is because he told me he's in Sun Valley.

Jeff Jarvis [00:39:25]:
But doing what, by the way?

Leo Laporte [00:39:27]:
Just hanging with his buds. I said, did you take a private jet there? He said, no, Dad, I flew commercial.

Jeff Jarvis [00:39:37]:
Stacy, if I may ask, how old is yours now?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:39:39]:
20.

Owen JJ Stone [00:39:40]:
Oh wow. Okay, when should I stop?

Jeff Jarvis [00:39:43]:
Time flies.

Owen JJ Stone [00:39:44]:
You're making me feel bad.

Leo Laporte [00:39:46]:
Well, I'll be clear though, Owen, I still pay for my kids' cell phone bills.

Owen JJ Stone [00:39:50]:
Me too.

Leo Laporte [00:39:51]:
Yeah. So I think I should really have location since I'm paying for it, but no.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:39:57]:
You gotta let them—

Leo Laporte [00:39:58]:
I mean, you gotta fly eagles fly, right? Let the bird— let the stellar—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:40:04]:
you gotta let them make their own way. And I, I think you need to do it without a safety net sometimes too. Like, I think it's really important for kids to go out and—

Leo Laporte [00:40:14]:
I agree—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:40:15]:
be truly on their own.

Leo Laporte [00:40:16]:
And it's hard.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:40:17]:
Like, my kids I mean, it is hard, but just knowing where they are, I mean, basically then if something really terrible happens, which is all I'm really worried about at this point in time, right? I'm only worried if like they've been kidnapped or something terrible happened, but I can't stop that if I know where it's happening. I just know where they were last seen.

Leo Laporte [00:40:36]:
You could know where to find the body.

Owen JJ Stone [00:40:37]:
I just like information. I'm not gonna stop. Like I said, I don't stop her from doing anything. Like when she's, like I said, randomly at 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm like, where the kid's at. I go check and she's somewhere. I don't text her next morning like, why were you here? I don't ask any questions. She tells me when she wants to tell me. I just like to know.

Leo Laporte [00:40:53]:
The truth is that's not right.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:40:57]:
That's like the government would like to know what you're doing all the time on the internet.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:02]:
Government doesn't love me or care about me as a human or a person.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:41:06]:
I'm just saying your kid, your kid deserves that same level of Autonomy at a certain point.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:12]:
I'm about to call her and ask her on the air.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:41:16]:
That's putting them in an— I would never do that. No, don't do that.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:18]:
You're making me feel— I need validation right now. I need someone to back me up.

Leo Laporte [00:41:22]:
Is it okay if I follow you around?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:41:24]:
But that's what you need. Hold on, think about what they need.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:27]:
She could say, no, Dad, stop doing it, and I could look like a fool on this internet. Or she could say—

Jeff Jarvis [00:41:31]:
Would you stop?

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:32]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:41:34]:
Oh, well, have that conversation with her in private.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:36]:
Just— no, no, no, no, I like—

Jeff Jarvis [00:41:38]:
That's a whole podcast episode, Stacy.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:41:40]:
Jesus, it's a waste.

Jeff Jarvis [00:41:40]:
Yeah, save that.

Leo Laporte [00:41:42]:
Save that for the podcast.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:43]:
Uncle Leo knows how to work it. Come back to Apple. Oh, I'll put— nope, nope, that's where we are on Apple. That's why— that's the only reason I'll never leave Apple, because I can track all the devices.

Leo Laporte [00:41:51]:
Android has that too, by the way.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:54]:
Now it ain't the same. It ain't as good.

Leo Laporte [00:41:55]:
Look, it's not as good.

Owen JJ Stone [00:41:56]:
I drive with Apple, boy. You speeding on the highway. Slow down.

Leo Laporte [00:41:59]:
Yeah, it's true. So, uh, Stacy, would you— you said the book form is okay, and that's the new thing. It opens up, it's kind of like an iPad Mini, which I really like that I'm thinking I'm gonna like this.

Owen JJ Stone [00:42:12]:
I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy one. I haven't got a new iPhone. I still have the iPhone 16 Pro Max. They have given me no reason to upgrade, but I am going to get the, the phone.

Leo Laporte [00:42:20]:
Every 2 or 3 is reasonable, I think. Every year is too much.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:42:24]:
Yeah, I would. I went from my— I had 3, 3 years of my—

Leo Laporte [00:42:28]:
Yeah, that's about right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:42:29]:
I went from the 6 to the 10 in Android.

Leo Laporte [00:42:32]:
What?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:42:32]:
Oh, see, I was— I'm going from 8 to 11. But you know what? I got the pink line of death and I tried to return it and forgot. You know how Google's like, you can return it or they replace it for you? I went to one of their authorized fix-it places to get a screen replaced and they refused to do it. They were like, you just have to send it to Google. We're not going to replace this.

Owen JJ Stone [00:42:54]:
What?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:42:54]:
But you're an authorized thing. He's like, yeah, but Google doesn't always pay us for it. It's not perfect and I don't want to take that risk. So you're going to have to send it back.

Jeff Jarvis [00:43:03]:
Did Google fix it?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:43:05]:
I, I'm not gonna do without my phone for like 3 weeks or whatever.

Jeff Jarvis [00:43:10]:
But it's away from you now, Stacy.

Leo Laporte [00:43:14]:
It matches the, the front and the back now match.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:43:17]:
Well, no, no, my, my Android phone was— it was like, oh, my 8 was green.

Leo Laporte [00:43:22]:
Oh, this is old.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:43:23]:
The new one's pink. This is the old one. Is it Hibiscus? Is that what— anyway, okay.

Leo Laporte [00:43:27]:
That's the funniest thing. The names people use for these things is crazy. They're The colors.

Jeff Jarvis [00:43:32]:
Yeah, that was that great Android event where, oh, it's white. No, no, it's not white.

Leo Laporte [00:43:37]:
It's white. White? What are you talking about?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:43:40]:
Soothing almond.

Leo Laporte [00:43:42]:
Uh, we, we spend a lot of time— we don't need to do it on this show— we spend a lot of time on MacBreak Weekly talking about Tim Cook's reign, which has just ended after he, he took the reins, uh, when Steve Jobs passed, uh, in 2011. So he had 15 years as CEO, brought Apple from under a trillion dollars to almost $5 trillion in value, launched a bunch of important products. I think the most important product, probably Apple's own chips.

Owen JJ Stone [00:44:13]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:44:14]:
He shepherded the move from Intel to Apple Silicon. And that has been, maybe it was accidental, I don't know, but it turned out to be a really good move in the age of AI. They now make the hottest, the most— they're not hot, that's probably the wrong word— the most popular machines for AI. You can't even get them. John Ternus, unlike— so Tim Cook's specialty was operations. He was the COO. He was the guy who made the iPhone kind of possible in China and really, really tightened that down so that Apple had an incredible supply chain, incredible capabilities to make a billion phones. Ternus comes after— he's been a longtime employee, I think 25 years at Apple.

Leo Laporte [00:45:07]:
He is a hardware guy. In fact, you know, he shepherded not only the Apple Silicon but also the phones. So he knows the products very, very well. Probably a good leader, but, you know, Also a mystery man. We don't know a lot about John. We didn't know— actually, this might be Apple.

Jeff Jarvis [00:45:26]:
We didn't—

Leo Laporte [00:45:26]:
we knew a lot about Steve Jobs. We didn't know a lot about Tim Cook at all.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:45:30]:
No, I feel like we still don't know a lot about Tim Cook. We went from having a cult leader to having a professional manager.

Leo Laporte [00:45:37]:
He was very— that's a good description. Yes, professional manager.

Owen JJ Stone [00:45:42]:
What's the over-under on, um, him going permanently gray? Yeah, I'm gonna give— I'm gonna give it to presidential 4 years.

Leo Laporte [00:45:51]:
He is in his 50s.

Owen JJ Stone [00:45:53]:
4th year, he'll be, uh, he'll be looking like you and Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis [00:45:56]:
Hey, nothing wrong with that.

Owen JJ Stone [00:45:58]:
Distinguished, right? I didn't say there's anything wrong with it. I'm just saying it's coming. I'm saying the stress of the big company, that on his shoulders, like, he's got that dark and lovely going on right now, those few little grays, but it's, it's gonna be— look at that. Look, it come 4 years. I'm putting up my—

Leo Laporte [00:46:13]:
I think the president has gone from From blonde to brunette. I think this is going to be the year of the brunettes, don't you? I'm sorry, that's too political. Eddy Cue, who is a longtime Apple employee, has kind of moved up in the chain. You notice he's sitting right next to John Ternus in the executive profiles. He has a larger portfolio than before, very energetic guy. He's the guy who has the relationships with Hollywood. It's an interesting Uh, place. Craig Federighi is still going to be there, Joz as well, although many people think those guys may be on, on the way out.

Leo Laporte [00:46:50]:
A lot of, a lot of Tim Cook's people have retired.

Jeff Jarvis [00:46:53]:
There is an Apple smile.

Leo Laporte [00:46:55]:
Yeah, they all have it, don't they?

Owen JJ Stone [00:46:57]:
Yeah, it's probably AI.

Leo Laporte [00:47:00]:
Or gummies. I'm not sure. It could be, it could be either. I don't know. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. That's disrespectful, Leo. Um, uh, Apple is, by the way, in a big fight with OpenAI saying, you know, you stole our employees and, and with it our intellectual property. OpenAI says, we don't do that.

Leo Laporte [00:47:21]:
We just hired the guys. We don't, we're not stealing. Meanwhile, OpenAI is working on hardware, we know. And, uh, this will be a very, this will be a court case we're all going to be watching.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:47:32]:
With Jony Ive, no less, right?

Jeff Jarvis [00:47:35]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:47:35]:
Johnny not mentioned in the suit, just the people Johnny hired.

Jeff Jarvis [00:47:40]:
Which— I know. Nobody— his last comment on the socials was, well, if you can't keep your secrets, it's not our fault.

Leo Laporte [00:47:47]:
Oh, that's not the right way to say that. I don't think a judge or jury will take well to that. They were— they had the better plan when they said, we don't want your secrets. We don't need your secrets. We don't need no stinking secrets. That's the better plan.

Owen JJ Stone [00:48:02]:
We're training our hiring model on your hiring model. I mean, I don't really understand what the issue is. Yeah, we're just taking it. Who's destroying books? I mean, we're just taking the—

Jeff Jarvis [00:48:12]:
OpenAI is about to learn a lot about courtrooms because the New York Times suit.

Leo Laporte [00:48:16]:
Yes. So, um, filings made Friday in the New York Times suit. This is from the New York Times, so take it with a grain of salt. Closely watched lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Included a range of copyright law and cultural references. The real question, and I think it's an interesting question, is if you have a copy of the New York Times or the Seattle Times or Newsday, who are also suing, if you have in effect ingested that content into your weights in the AI, does that count as an illegal copy? Because it's pretty clear you cannot really generate the contents of the New York Times by asking the AI for it, even no matter what the Times says, you really can't.

Jeff Jarvis [00:49:06]:
No.

Leo Laporte [00:49:08]:
So is it illegal for them to have a, in effect, a copy in the weights? It isn't a copy because it's not even words.

Jeff Jarvis [00:49:15]:
No, because it gets erased. It doesn't— it's not held on to. They learn from the relationships of the words.

Leo Laporte [00:49:22]:
Yeah. The U.S. Justice Department filed a brief saying it is of the national interest, the highest interest of the United States of America, for the judge to find OpenAI did not violate copyright law. The Justice Department argued developing AI is critical to national security and that training AI systems sufficiently transformed the written works to new material. allowed under copyright law. And it said, and I think this is really the most important point they're making, the benefits of AI far outweigh any competitive harm.

Jeff Jarvis [00:49:56]:
How often do you see the federal Department of Justice enter in, in a private suit at this stage?

Leo Laporte [00:50:02]:
That's a good question. It feels like not very often, if ever.

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:07]:
It may happen all the time. I don't know. But it just seems odd.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:50:09]:
They sometimes file amicus briefs. But I don't know how long they've entered into a suit or how often.

Leo Laporte [00:50:18]:
The Trump administration is in a very difficult position because he got elected as a populist president and it's become increasingly obvious the populists, the popple, the people do not like AI. They do not like data centers. This is going to be a midterm election hot button topic. They are very concerned about things like flock cameras.

Owen JJ Stone [00:50:44]:
So—

Jeff Jarvis [00:50:44]:
Concerned, I would say, is light. Angry about.

Leo Laporte [00:50:47]:
Angry. That's the populist side. On the other hand, he has massive donors who are big investors in AI, people like Andreessen Horowitz. So he's got pull from 2 different sides there.

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:02]:
Zuck called him, I think, recently.

Leo Laporte [00:51:05]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:05]:
To say, please don't regulate.

Leo Laporte [00:51:07]:
Yeah, and we know that Mark's given money to the president. And then there's the third party, which is, I think, very important also to the White House, the defense and intelligence establishment.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:51:17]:
Mm-hmm.

Leo Laporte [00:51:17]:
The intelligence establishment is— we know they're using these AIs now. They want them. In fact, in a way, if I read between the lines of the Justice Department brief, that's what they're really saying. They're saying it's important for society. No, it's important for our military. Well, then it's a China angle.

Jeff Jarvis [00:51:36]:
We're going to fall behind China, and it's a strategic risk for the nation.

Leo Laporte [00:51:40]:
Trump said AI dominance, dominance is critical to promote national security, prosperity, and economic mobility for all Americans. Actually, that was—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:51:50]:
I think he means, like, and I asked this, like, when we talk about AI dominance, That just means we have the 5 or 6 top AI companies.

Leo Laporte [00:52:04]:
Which we do right now.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:52:05]:
By market cap. Yeah, well, that's— I, I can't even—

Leo Laporte [00:52:08]:
Not just by market cap, I would say by quality of AI.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:52:11]:
But it's also by quality of models.

Jeff Jarvis [00:52:13]:
Yeah, by—

Leo Laporte [00:52:13]:
but it's not— but that lead is shrinking.

Jeff Jarvis [00:52:16]:
Capabilities too.

Leo Laporte [00:52:17]:
Yeah, but it's shrinking fast.

Jeff Jarvis [00:52:18]:
Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:52:21]:
To build a quality model, you just need access to lots of data and maybe a breakthrough idea in how you train it, which happens every now and again when we get in.

Leo Laporte [00:52:32]:
So— And by the way, a third thing, a lot of capital because you have to buy—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:52:36]:
Yeah, a lot of money for your— but if you think about it from that perspective, like capital for servers, um, the internet, like the data going in, or a breakthrough in like how something is trained, Yeah. The dominance is going to automatically ebb and flow based on like if China comes up with a way to power a server using seawater just for fun, we're going to suddenly see they will become dominant. So I feel like we're always very short-sighted when we start talking about this because we don't think about the components that we're actually trying to be dominant in. And then if you think about what we're caring about, The fact that we decimated our research funding for lots of things is probably really terrible. So I'm just thinking about this because this is how I think about the world and see the world when I make that argument.

Leo Laporte [00:53:30]:
Well, I will answer on those points. So first of all, if you look at who the leading scientists are in AI, they're almost all Chinese, many of them working in the United States, but many of them coming from Chinese universities. So I don't think on the innovation scale, on the technology scale, we have much of a lead, if any of a lead. The Chinese have worked very fast, very effectively to develop their sustainable energy. They have a much better long-term energy prospects than we do in the United States, where we are still highly reliant on fossil fuels. And in fact, liquid natural gas. which is highly problematic from a political point of view.

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:15]:
And somebody we don't have to mention killed off projects on solar and wind.

Leo Laporte [00:54:20]:
Right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:21]:
Demonizing them.

Leo Laporte [00:54:22]:
So, and then now capital markets are maybe where the one thing where we really do have an advantage because we have a very vigorous and very well-endowed—

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:31]:
Yeah, but if you have a net—

Stacey Higginbotham [00:54:33]:
Capital markets are fickle. They'll go wherever they think—

Leo Laporte [00:54:36]:
Well, and then in China, they also have the government.

Jeff Jarvis [00:54:39]:
Well, they have a controlled economy, a centralized controlled economy. So you kind of don't need the capital markets because you decide decide what— where the money goes.

Leo Laporte [00:54:47]:
And I think everybody agrees. I'm using mostly all the local models I use are Chinese. I mean, everybody agrees that Chinese models are catching up really rapidly. So I think there is a threat. And by the way, oh wait, let's add one more thing. A threat of what? Well, hold on, there's one more thing. They don't care so much about intellectual property rights. You're not seeing any lawsuits in China by the New York Times Or the Beijing Times or whatever.

Leo Laporte [00:55:14]:
So they have ample access to the data. They don't— nobody's slowing down the exchange.

Jeff Jarvis [00:55:19]:
Well, God knows what kind of data they have over there that we don't have over here because we're prissy about, oh, I don't know, privacy and individual rights and all that.

Leo Laporte [00:55:26]:
So to answer your question, Owen, I mean, it really comes down to the quality of the models, right? And they build— oh, there's another thing that we do have an advantage and they don't, is the ability to serve those models. because we have kept, for the most part, NVIDIA's chips out of the China market.

Jeff Jarvis [00:55:43]:
Which Jensen Huang says is a huge mistake because we lost— he lost CUDA as a standard worldwide.

Leo Laporte [00:55:50]:
The next thing that's happening, and it's already happening, is Chinese companies are developing competitive chips. And if you use DeepSeek or, you know, GLM or any of the Chinese models, on a Chinese server, you're not running it on NVIDIA cores. You're running it on Chinese chips, on Hyundai chips, and, and not Hyundai, um, uh, Xiaomi. And, um, you're running on chips from China.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:56:15]:
Huawei.

Leo Laporte [00:56:16]:
Huawei, that's the company I was trying to remember. Uh, you're running on Huawei chips. And so—

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:20]:
Don't forget, Stacy knows her chips.

Leo Laporte [00:56:23]:
She's a chip guru. Actually, I want to ask her— we'll get to that.

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:29]:
Yeah, I actually want to—

Leo Laporte [00:56:30]:
yeah, I want to But right now, the only thing really, come to think of it, we have an advantage in, and it's rapidly fading, is in the Nvidia chips, is in GPUs.

Jeff Jarvis [00:56:43]:
And as you and I discussed on our chat earlier today, I think we could have had an advantage out of the academe. But A, we've starved— the government has starved them. And B, the Chinese Technologists who were coming over here to study are not coming here now. So we're losing— that's a, that's a, that's a brain— voluntary brain drain on our part.

Leo Laporte [00:57:07]:
So I understand how the American government might start to say, gee, you know, we are in this kind of cold war with China and, and we may lose this AI battle. If you think AI is important, especially if you think it's important militarily and intelligence, That might be scary. So to answer your question, Owen, it's about the quality of the AI, the models, their capabilities.

Owen JJ Stone [00:57:30]:
Not only are we going to lose, we're not only losing, we're going to lose. This administration is inept and incompetent, and just saying things out loud doesn't make any sense. You read a quote from the president. You forgot to say, if you don't want an AI denunciator in your backyard, you're poor and backwards.

Leo Laporte [00:57:45]:
Oh, he did say that. He said you're going to end up dumb.

Owen JJ Stone [00:57:47]:
Yeah, and poor. Again, the EPA isn't checking the air pollution that they're putting out or the noise pollution. No one's checking on the water when they tell me that water doesn't matter and it doesn't mean anything. Then on top of that, what, they just had that robotics thing where they had like the guys running and racing and one guy could shoot like 1,000 baskets in a row.

Leo Laporte [00:58:07]:
And the humanoid Olympics.

Owen JJ Stone [00:58:09]:
Only 3 companies from America could even compete with that, like MIT and whoever else. but the other 600 other something companies are all Chinese. They're the ones making the robots that are doing the things, running at hyper speed and running into walls. We're not doing any of that stuff besides getting like fake AI-generated stuff from Elon telling me that we're gonna have robots running around that he's gonna build for us when he can't even get the cars right or the spaceships right. So losing what we've already technically lost, like we have the intellectual property, but again, like Jeff said, China doesn't have any of the— gates holding them back from stealing. That's why you see the whole thing like Nike is like, oh, Nike's stock has gone down because they found out that reps are real. Do you guys think using the same factories now you can go buy them straight from China for $50 instead of $250? Now nobody's buying real Nikes anymore because why would you do that?

Leo Laporte [00:59:02]:
Do you guys think that, uh, bipedal humanoid robots actually are the future?

Stacey Higginbotham [00:59:08]:
Um, no.

Leo Laporte [00:59:09]:
Well, okay, I'm just curious. They certainly are leading in this respect.

Owen JJ Stone [00:59:15]:
It gets you to something, right? You're doing it to get to— the same reason they put, um, uh, cameras on a barber and said, hey, we want to get— we'll pay you $10,000 for you to cut hair for a year and let us scan and copy you cutting hair so we can teach our robots how to cut hair. At some point, this stuff will matter. Right now, it's all fun and games. Until it's not.

Leo Laporte [00:59:35]:
Right.

Jeff Jarvis [00:59:36]:
So I just signed up for an event at the Aspen Institute where they're looking at—

Leo Laporte [00:59:41]:
You missed the best part. You cut away. No, not you.

Owen JJ Stone [00:59:47]:
Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants to see when he ran into the wall and all that stuff.

Stacey Higginbotham [00:59:50]:
We just want to see—

Jeff Jarvis [00:59:50]:
No, we want to believe technology works all the time.

Leo Laporte [00:59:53]:
This is an incident. There you go.

Owen JJ Stone [00:59:55]:
That was the one.

Leo Laporte [00:59:56]:
From evolving.ai. Yeah, these— this is all of the, uh, They can't— Outtakes from the Robot Olympics. Now stay on this one because the robot does a good job climbing up onto the cube and looks kind of human. He's standing at the edge now. He's going to jump off. This is going to be very exciting. He's going to leap from that 5-foot-high cube and land on his head. Oh, I shouldn't laugh.

Leo Laporte [01:00:18]:
I shouldn't laugh. They're keeping track. Do not laugh.

Owen JJ Stone [01:00:21]:
Look, look, 10 years ago you wouldn't even believe that was possible.

Leo Laporte [01:00:26]:
No, it's pretty amazing. In fact, I remember laughing, uh, 10, 15 years ago at the DARPA Grand Challenge where they had, uh, self-driving vehicles that couldn't go 10 feet. They'd drive right off the— remember that, Stacy? They drive right off the road. We've come a long way.

Owen JJ Stone [01:00:42]:
Hey, the Wright brothers only flew 148 feet and they took credit for the plane, even though their plane didn't— it wasn't the plane that got us to where we are.

Leo Laporte [01:00:49]:
Their plane couldn't go 100 feet, so My favorite in the humanoid Olympics was the— somebody realized you don't have to run if you're a robot the same way humans do. We do our arms like this because it has to do with how our hips pivot, and the robot ran like this. It was a very— looked weird, and it was very fast. So, it's a little weird that the slavish Adherence to the bipedal form, like to make it look like us, isn't necessarily the most efficient, best way to do this.

Owen JJ Stone [01:01:25]:
Yeah, because the, the problem I've always had— sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:01:29]:
Oh no, I was just gonna say you can learn a lot about human mechanics and even like where things might break down. But yeah, I think many of the robots in our lives will not be built like us. Julio's laughing in the studio.

Leo Laporte [01:01:44]:
Sorry, I'm laughing at the robot. Lost my nut.

Jeff Jarvis [01:01:48]:
See, it used to be these videos would scare you and you say it's all creepy and awful. Now you're laughing at them, which is a step forward, I think.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:01:54]:
Yeah, creepy ones were the dog. Okay, Big Dog is still a terrifying—

Leo Laporte [01:01:59]:
From Boston Dynamics, still very scary.

Owen JJ Stone [01:02:02]:
I, I—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:02:03]:
you know what, ICE is buying those.

Leo Laporte [01:02:05]:
Yeah, yeah, that's really— that is terrifying. Um, I think that's the real value to some degree of bipedal robots or robot dogs is their Fear factor, how scary they are.

Owen JJ Stone [01:02:18]:
Yeah, and they can control—

Leo Laporte [01:02:21]:
especially if they're armed.

Jeff Jarvis [01:02:22]:
Yeah, if they're armed and autonomous.

Leo Laporte [01:02:24]:
Yes, especially if they're armed. Uh, anyway, yeah, so I don't know if the humanoid robot games provided much more than just mirth and merriment.

Jeff Jarvis [01:02:35]:
So I want to go back to the data centers for a second because Craig Newmark linked to an event, uh, for this, the Aspen Institute upcoming next week. And it's really— or this week— it's really interesting that there's an argument for alternatives to data centres. What if we approach it like public AI, centring public access, accountability, sustainability? The idea of tiny distributed networks, public-owned utilities, the role of librarians, farmers, community advocates. So I think there's an effort to say, okay, we're going to need data centres, But the way that Elon Musk does it with jet engines ain't the way.

Leo Laporte [01:03:11]:
Well, I mean, I hate to say it, but we're using a data center right now to record this, to stream it. You're watching it. You're watching it from a data center, not from anywhere. Well, you downloaded it, but you downloaded it from a data center. The entire internet is data centers.

Jeff Jarvis [01:03:28]:
Your bank is in data centers.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:03:31]:
You need to price in the externalities of the harms. of a data center. I mean, I've covered data centers for what, 2 decades? Hey, just like that guy who covered the Microsoft— Steve Lohr. I'm like the Steve Lohr of data centers.

Leo Laporte [01:03:44]:
Is it that we're just making too many now all of a sudden? I mean, because we've always needed data centers, right?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:03:50]:
I mean, we— yes, we are rapidly expanding the amount of compute that we need for AI, right? That is unquestionable. And It is an exponential increase in demand. But we also are doing it under the older economic model of data centers. So if we actually start charging what these things might be worth—

Leo Laporte [01:04:16]:
Hmm.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:04:19]:
One, it would slow down our innovation. So you've got to think about that. But maybe that's what the government does is they put their dollars towards paying for Like better innovation, let's put it that way, as opposed to today's market capitalism, which pays for the cheapest innovation, which is worth thinking about. Which is why— that's why government funding exists, is because we want to do things in a way that makes sense and prices in those externalities.

Leo Laporte [01:04:47]:
We wouldn't have the internet if it weren't for government funding.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:04:50]:
Right. Yeah. And it took a little bit of time. I mean, the problem is, the problem is we We took technology out of the technology industry, or we kept that in, but we added a whole bunch of finance bros.

Jeff Jarvis [01:05:02]:
Oh yeah, and cultists and crazy test grill cultists, which I think is the real problem here.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:05:08]:
You know, they were always there. Like, I mean, if you hung out with enough nerds, there's always that— there's one or two that you're just—

Leo Laporte [01:05:15]:
They're in power now.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:05:16]:
That's the difference.

Jeff Jarvis [01:05:16]:
But yeah, now they're the bosses.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:05:19]:
They're not the bosses. They look like they're the bosses, but they've just been given a lot of money. And the guys are like, yeah, you know, this dude believes in aliens. Don't worry about it. He's gonna, he's gonna believe in aliens. He's gonna deliver this technology.

Leo Laporte [01:05:30]:
The guy who started Excite believed in aliens.

Owen JJ Stone [01:05:33]:
Peter Thiel's kind of a boss.

Jeff Jarvis [01:05:36]:
Peter Thiel just, just took over a state in Germany.

Owen JJ Stone [01:05:39]:
Peter Thiel's kind of like trying to run half the globe. Like, it's not—

Leo Laporte [01:05:43]:
All right, we gotta take a break. I wanna come back and find out what— took over a state in Germany. That's an interesting thing to say. We're gonna take a break and find out what that all means. You're talking, we're talking Twit here with Stacey Higginbotham from Consumer Reports, policy fellow. Great, so great to see you again. Stacey's book club is a regular feature of our club. I hope you're a club member.

Leo Laporte [01:06:03]:
You can go to the next book club. I think the voting is still going on. Anthony, if you're there, I know you are, give me a link to the poll so we can see what's going on with the voting.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:06:14]:
It's the, there is no anti-memetics division.

Leo Laporte [01:06:16]:
It won by a landslide. It's gonna be that?

Owen JJ Stone [01:06:17]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [01:06:18]:
That's actually a great book. I've read that book.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:06:20]:
Okay.

Leo Laporte [01:06:21]:
By far, like a landslide. Nice. 82% of the vote.

Jeff Jarvis [01:06:29]:
Oh, our politics should be so clear as Stacy's book club.

Leo Laporte [01:06:33]:
Who is Quantum? QNTM. Is that a human? Was it written by a robot?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:06:39]:
It's a person. They have an actual name. I don't remember what it is now.

Leo Laporte [01:06:43]:
Okay. But it's a very interesting book. Uh, I'm glad we're gonna read that. That'll be fun. So that's—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:06:50]:
Yeah, we went with a slight horror theme for— that was our—

Leo Laporte [01:06:54]:
Oh, it's Halloween?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:06:56]:
Yeah, because I assume we'll do it.

Jeff Jarvis [01:06:57]:
Oh my gosh, already? Yeah, I mean, pumpkin spice time, man.

Leo Laporte [01:07:01]:
It's here.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:07:02]:
Oh no, we don't do PSLs. It's matcha.

Owen JJ Stone [01:07:05]:
Matcha?

Leo Laporte [01:07:07]:
Nobody cares about pumpkin spice.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:07:09]:
No, no, no, no. Pumpkin spice is no longer like the reigning flavor king. Matcha is the real flavor king. Oh, what a relief.

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:16]:
I never had it. I never had a pumpkin spice latte.

Leo Laporte [01:07:18]:
Now that it's not hip anymore, Jeff, you and I can have it.

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:21]:
I think I'm gonna have one now. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:07:22]:
Have you ever had pumpkin pie?

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:24]:
Well, yeah, but I've never had a pumpkin spice latte.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:07:25]:
It's just spices in a latte with a lot of sugar.

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:28]:
And it has nothing to do with pumpkin, by the way.

Leo Laporte [01:07:31]:
Never saw a pumpkin in its life.

Jeff Jarvis [01:07:33]:
Nope.

Leo Laporte [01:07:35]:
It's allspice mostly, right?

Owen JJ Stone [01:07:37]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:07:38]:
It's allspice, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg.

Leo Laporte [01:07:42]:
That's good stuff.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:07:43]:
Yeah, it's delicious.

Leo Laporte [01:07:44]:
Chai's good too. Uh, also with us, Owen JJ Stone. We call him O Doctor. No, I still don't remember why, but I'm sure there's a reason.

Owen JJ Stone [01:07:55]:
But so real quick, uh, Stacy, you, you get— you lucked out on this because she doesn't think it's your fault. I texted my daughter and I said, do you care that I randomly check your location? Leah said, tell Uncle Leo, who else is going to come and save me?

Leo Laporte [01:08:09]:
Yes.

Owen JJ Stone [01:08:09]:
She doesn't think it's you. She thinks, she thinks Leo asked that question, so you're off the hook. But I, I'm, I'm still allowed to randomly check until she finds another man in her life to come and take care of her.

Leo Laporte [01:08:22]:
Who's gonna arrest you?

Owen JJ Stone [01:08:23]:
I don't want you feeling guilty.

Leo Laporte [01:08:24]:
Isn't that nice? You're the knight in shining armor for her.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:08:26]:
Well, I'm glad you checked with her. That's, that's good.

Leo Laporte [01:08:29]:
That's the right way to do it.

Owen JJ Stone [01:08:30]:
I never even thought to ask. I'm like, hey, look, I still pay the bills. You got a phone because of me. I'll turn this thing off up in here. Don't let me ask no questions. Stacey got me feeling guilty.

Leo Laporte [01:08:41]:
Also, Jeff Jarvis is with us. You will see him as a regular feature on Intelligent Machines. And we're so glad to get you on a weekend as well.

Jeff Jarvis [01:08:51]:
I'm glad always to be on the, on the big kids' table.

Leo Laporte [01:08:54]:
The big kids' table is what he calls it.

Owen JJ Stone [01:08:57]:
When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me something I'll never forget. And I tell people all the time, 3 things you don't cheap out on. Tires, your shoes, and your bed.

Leo Laporte [01:09:06]:
That's so true.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:07]:
Yeah, they got to be bright. They got to be good. And the bed is a very important thing.

Leo Laporte [01:09:12]:
You spend more time on your bed than you do on your tires or your shoes.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:15]:
You do. And if you don't—

Leo Laporte [01:09:17]:
not as much time as eating pumpkin pie.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:23]:
I've never had pumpkin pie in my life.

Leo Laporte [01:09:25]:
What?

Jeff Jarvis [01:09:26]:
You're un-American.

Leo Laporte [01:09:27]:
Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. No, I know why. Because you like sweet potato pie.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:31]:
Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:09:32]:
Delicious.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:34]:
I literally ask when I go places, what is that? I want— because it's a good confusing thing. They look the same.

Leo Laporte [01:09:41]:
They look the same. They're both orange, but they do not taste the same.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:44]:
They almost smell the same. And I'm big, so I got to take the sniff test. I'm like, this ain't right. I refuse to do it.

Leo Laporte [01:09:51]:
There is nothing like a good sweet potato pie.

Owen JJ Stone [01:09:53]:
I grew up with my grandmother making 30, 40 pies for the church and everybody in town. I'm never, ever, ever doing it. So I've never had a pumpkin pie. Shame on pumpkin pies. And that picture is blasphemous. Burn it from the internet.

Leo Laporte [01:10:07]:
Maybe we're eating sweet potato pie.

Owen JJ Stone [01:10:08]:
You don't know. That's true. That's true.

Leo Laporte [01:10:10]:
It says pumpkin pie on the sign.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:10:11]:
I was about to say, didn't the sign say pumpkin pie?

Leo Laporte [01:10:13]:
It could be a lie.

Owen JJ Stone [01:10:14]:
It's AI. It does not read. You can't trust that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:17]:
You put whipped cream on a sweet potato pie? Oh yeah, you do. Okay.

Leo Laporte [01:10:23]:
I, for Thanksgiving one year, made Owen's secret macaroni and cheese recipe and it was dynamite.

Owen JJ Stone [01:10:31]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:10:32]:
Oh God. So good.

Owen JJ Stone [01:10:33]:
In fact— Season is coming upon us, Uncle Leo.

Leo Laporte [01:10:35]:
It's time once again.

Owen JJ Stone [01:10:37]:
Macaroni and cheeses, turkeys and pies.

Jeff Jarvis [01:10:40]:
Oh, I think this is when Stacy gets hungry and goes off to get a cookie.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:10:43]:
I'm like, dang it, you guys.

Leo Laporte [01:10:45]:
America, I'm hungry. She used to eat waffles during the show. She would go sneak off and get a cookie or a waffle.

Owen JJ Stone [01:10:51]:
That's true.

Leo Laporte [01:10:52]:
Let's see what else is going on. Meta, accepts U.S. safety rules but says, but the rest of you guys in the rest of the world, could you just chill a little bit? As governments consider banning social media for under-16s, rest of world writes Meta is turning to influencers to argue that parental controls are a better solution. Now, I am not an influencer and nobody from Meta has ever talked to me, but I kind of agree the parents should be in charge.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:11:24]:
Well, so we still have alcohol limits and laws. We have anti-smoking laws. We have laws plus parental control for lots of things that provide a documented harm to people whose brains are not done developing.

Leo Laporte [01:11:38]:
I'll tell you the big difference.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:11:40]:
Okay, hit me with your big difference.

Leo Laporte [01:11:42]:
When you go into a store to buy liquor or cigarettes and you show them your ID, That's one thing. But in order for these laws to be— to take effect worldwide, or even in the United States, or state by state, every single person who uses that has to provide an ID over the internet where it may be stored and misused in other ways. It is a very different thing to do.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:12:11]:
We don't have to do it that way.

Leo Laporte [01:12:12]:
Oh, okay.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:12:13]:
This gets to me because we We keep choosing wrong from a, from a technology perspective. And the reason we do it is because companies don't want to be held liable. They don't want to be part of it. But if you had Apple or Google or Samsung or whoever owned your device locally understand your age and check for you there, then it is a local check. And NIST actually had built a Framework.

Leo Laporte [01:12:41]:
National Institute for Standards and Technology.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:12:44]:
Yes. Sorry, those guys, real nerds.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:47]:
Now that she's a bureaucrat, she just speaks—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:12:49]:
I know. NIST was always my favorite agency.

Leo Laporte [01:12:51]:
I love NIST.

Jeff Jarvis [01:12:53]:
Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:12:54]:
I'm sure y'all are all surprised to hear that. Anyway, they like— so there are ways to do it, but what we've got is this stupid, stupid, stupid thing where we're like, yeah, let's show a really important government document over the internet and let some company that we've never heard of before store it for us in a way that we can't check to make sure it's secure. And oh my God, if we go scroll down a couple stories, it's not. Um, so I agree with you, age, age verification is terrible and wrong, and we should not be doing it on the internet for a bunch of reasons. But we didn't have to do it the way that we're currently doing it, is all my point is. And now we're going to have to argue over this.

Jeff Jarvis [01:13:38]:
It's Meta. Well, it's a couple of things about this. One is that Meta is $17 billion over 10 years isn't a lot of money when you adjust for stock prices and acquisitions and such. Second, it's a case now of Meta and regulatory capture, trying to impose this view on others. And I read a Q&A with Julia Andrews, Penguin and Daphne Keller. Daphne's at Stanford. I respect her greatly. And she said that now she fears this is going to become the standard without any data, without any testing.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:10]:
And if others come up with better means to manage this, they're not going to be able to because they're going to be expected to follow this model out of this settlement.

Leo Laporte [01:14:18]:
But doesn't Meta want Apple to do this? I thought Meta wanted the platforms to do what Stacy was talking about, not make Meta do it.

Jeff Jarvis [01:14:25]:
Yeah, I'm talking also about the 2 hours a day and all that stuff.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:14:28]:
Yeah, he's talking more about the rules.

Owen JJ Stone [01:14:30]:
Yeah, I agree.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:14:30]:
I look at the regulatory capture potential here.

Leo Laporte [01:14:34]:
So explain regulatory capture.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:14:36]:
It's basically like when a company gets to make the rules and they control their agency. So the telcos and the FCC is a great example, and they get to write whatever they want as their regulation. That's how we got Shake and Stirred, which is not a great— yeah, maybe they'll make it better this next round.

Leo Laporte [01:14:57]:
Hasn't that worked?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:14:59]:
Are you kidding me?

Leo Laporte [01:15:00]:
Do we get spam calls still? Oh, wait a minute.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:15:03]:
Okay, I was like, wait, what?

Leo Laporte [01:15:04]:
Oh, wait a minute. That was— I mean, in principle, that seemed like a good idea. The idea that you couldn't use a phone number unless you authenticated it from your carrier, like you really were a real person, not a fake number.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:15:18]:
Um, the reason it didn't work is because they, they blew the attestation part on that. There were other bottles in place, but you know what? They're fixing it, possibly.

Leo Laporte [01:15:26]:
Really?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:15:27]:
I'm filing comments with the FCC on Tuesday about part of this process.

Leo Laporte [01:15:32]:
So whose fault was that? Was that the FCC's fault?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:15:37]:
It was bad legislation. So the rules that—

Leo Laporte [01:15:41]:
On the surface of it, it seemed like a good idea.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:15:44]:
On the surface, everything's a good idea. The devil's always in the details. I mean, that's why people like me get involved.

Leo Laporte [01:15:49]:
I say that because I was an advocate for shaken milk. Shake and stir.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:15:53]:
And you, you were— it was not a terrible crazy plan. It did put a lot of power into it. It let the carriers off the hook, and it, it gave a lot— the loopholes were so big you could drive, I don't know how many scam calls people get a day, a billion scam calls a day through it.

Leo Laporte [01:16:09]:
Yeah, it's clear it hasn't worked.

Owen JJ Stone [01:16:10]:
Yeah, more fax machine policies, it seems like to me.

Leo Laporte [01:16:14]:
So the idea was he did that, that a carrier couldn't get— couldn't operate in the United States unless they set up an authentication system that would say, yes, this person is a subscriber with this phone number, and that authentication was provable on the other end. And the receiving company, they could— that was the— one of them was shaken and one was stirred. That they would say, oh yes, okay, authenticated, we're going to let that one through. And of course, spammers, in order for them to do what their dirty work Don't use— that's why it's always coming from your area code and sometimes even from your neighborhood, because they fake the numbers. And shaken and stirred would stop that, right? But it didn't. And that's what puzzles me.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:16:57]:
So it— okay, you really want to do this?

Leo Laporte [01:17:00]:
Well, give me the next—

Jeff Jarvis [01:17:02]:
next is going to be chips.

Leo Laporte [01:17:03]:
Give me the 30,000-foot if you can.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:17:06]:
All right, I'm gonna—

Leo Laporte [01:17:07]:
So the FCC did slowly cut off phone companies that didn't agree to this. And by now I think they've cut off everybody that didn't agree to it, right?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:17:15]:
So part, part of the issue is, all right, with shaken.stirred, they created this like 3-tiered system where you could authenticate yourself as like a legitimate provider with a carrier, um, using— it was like A, B, and C attestations. And if you were like the strongest level of sort of Like, you were totally— like, the carrier has done business with you for years, they know who you are. That's like the highest level. What happened, your calls would always go through. The second 2 tiers were a little bit more dodgy. Like, maybe they don't know you so well, but you seem to be legit. They, you know—

Leo Laporte [01:17:56]:
You seem okay to me.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:17:58]:
And then there's like, you just started up yesterday, you're based in Cambodia, I don't know about you. I think it was the middle tier is where it got— the carriers have discretion in letting those middle-tier calls through. And what happened is they make money.

Leo Laporte [01:18:17]:
That's the real problem, isn't it? That they make money on these fake calls.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:18:21]:
So the attestation, you know, they're like, well, let's just— I think it's really legit.

Leo Laporte [01:18:27]:
Yeah, that's really the problem is If, if they're making money on these, they're, they're not incented to make it work. And the FCC has to really put down the hammer. And the FCC is in the pockets of the—

Jeff Jarvis [01:18:39]:
We just don't answer our phone anymore. It's—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:18:41]:
this is the regulatory capture part. So they were allowed to do this because, you know, yeah. Anyway, okay, so Meta and regulatory capture.

Leo Laporte [01:18:51]:
So how— yeah, what is the analogy here?

Jeff Jarvis [01:18:54]:
A couple things. One is that, that Meta pays less money if— is it more money? I'm forgetting which. If the government convinces the other major social platforms to follow the same rules.

Leo Laporte [01:19:06]:
Oh, yeah. In this settlement that Meta made, which was very weird, they said, we're going to pay $18 billion over 10 years. Not much, in other words. And we'll give you another— of that, $5 billion is dependent on Snapchat and TikTok and YouTube doing the same thing.

Jeff Jarvis [01:19:23]:
Which is weird. I don't get the logic of that.

Leo Laporte [01:19:25]:
Why would the— well, the agencies, I guess, wanted to strong-arm those other companies. No, but the companies don't care.

Jeff Jarvis [01:19:31]:
There's no prisoner's dilemma there. But then the other— but then what that does is that sets up the rules here, the 2 hours a day and all that. And there's a lot of argument here that the time limits are not— don't work and could be damaging and don't really address the problem. But now, because of this settlement, Not law, not, you know, adjudicated court law. This settlement. Now this becomes de facto the standard for protecting children with no data whatsoever. Is this going to do a damn thing?

Leo Laporte [01:20:03]:
And now Meta is going out and paying influencers to advocate.

Owen JJ Stone [01:20:09]:
Well, it is—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:20:10]:
isn't paying influencers to advocate. My God.

Leo Laporte [01:20:12]:
I know. Where is my influencer money? Oh, nobody listens to me. That's the problem.

Owen JJ Stone [01:20:16]:
Again, I've told you this before, you're not doing the business the right way when it comes to stuff like that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:20:21]:
But sell your soul, Leo.

Owen JJ Stone [01:20:22]:
It's always amusing to me when they talk about protecting kids when there's so many helicopter parents that are not helicopter parents. They just want to shove an iPad in their kid's face and say, go on and go.

Leo Laporte [01:20:33]:
Isn't that part of the problem? You see that everywhere.

Owen JJ Stone [01:20:35]:
And you— every week there's a video like, oh, Billy ordered a dirt bike. How did Billy order a dirt bike? I saw you on Amazon, Mom, and I just pressed all the buttons. But you want me to go have somebody regulate that you gave them the device and you didn't lock it up. And this is something I'm not talking about old people, but there's so many hip and current parents that don't know any better. I brought this story up a billion times, we talked about it. My daughter's phone is blinging in the middle of the night and she was like in the 8th grade, 9th grade. She's had a phone since she was 6. But anyway, her phone starts going off and I'm like, who is messaging her? And her friend got a phone for Christmas.

Owen JJ Stone [01:21:08]:
She's 12 years old, 2 o'clock in the morning on Snapchat, just sending off snaps. And she was waking up late for school. And I told her dad, I'm like, yo, she's on the phone. No, she's not. I'm trying to— she's like, dude, she's sending my daughter messages at 2 AM. That's why she's not waking up for school. Because he was complaining about her not waking up for school. He's like, I'm checking her phone, there's no text messages.

Owen JJ Stone [01:21:26]:
I'm like, she's not in the texts, she's on Snapchat.

Leo Laporte [01:21:28]:
He didn't know, he didn't understand it.

Owen JJ Stone [01:21:30]:
He did not understand. So it's like, you can't tell— I mean, not you can't, it's just hard to regulate something when the parents aren't even regulating the children themselves, when they just wanna give a kid a device and so that they leave them alone for 10 minutes a day.

Leo Laporte [01:21:45]:
Well, that's why I kind of like the idea of the burden being on the platforms, on the phone manufacturers. Apple has, I think, stepped up. They're doing better parental controls.

Owen JJ Stone [01:21:55]:
People don't like that either. A woman made a video, went viral, that it said, oh, is your— they were using the FaceTime group chat thing, and it said this conversation might be harmful. I don't know what the kid said that triggered that, but since they had like child parental things on there, it turned off the call. And the woman's like, well, how come Apple's listening in on my thing? Like, well, you don't want them sending nudes and all this other kind of stuff. Like, they're checking things because you said it was a child using the device. So it's, again, you're asking for things and people complain about them.

Leo Laporte [01:22:24]:
It's such a weird dynamic. And Apple probably, and every company that deals with customers knows that. They know that this is gonna be a problem for their customers.

Jeff Jarvis [01:22:34]:
Also, Jeff Kosseff, you remember who wrote the 26 words that made the internet, or was it 25 or was it 27? I forget already.

Leo Laporte [01:22:40]:
We're talking about Section 230.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:22:42]:
Don't talk about Section 230.

Jeff Jarvis [01:22:44]:
Jeff wrote the definitive book.

Leo Laporte [01:22:46]:
Do you really want to get into this? He's just quoting—

Jeff Jarvis [01:22:49]:
He just posted on Lawfare about the First Amendment problems with the Meta service there. And there have been cases about children have First Amendment rights too.

Leo Laporte [01:22:56]:
Well, that's why— remember we talked about— you weren't here, but we talked about this last week or the week before. That's why the attorneys who are going after Meta were smart to say it's a product liability case. It's not about Speech.

Jeff Jarvis [01:23:08]:
But it still has implications for speech.

Leo Laporte [01:23:10]:
Well, I agree, but the jury didn't agree in the case, in the LA case. And apparently Meta thought that they were going to have the same problem with these, with this most recent case, because they settled shortly after the trial began. And that tells me they felt like it's not gonna go well. In any event, $18 billion over 10 years is not much for Meta. I think they got a good deal. It's another case You know, getting away with murder, sort of, sort of, so to speak.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:23:37]:
I think I read they spend $2 billion a year on lawsuits.

Leo Laporte [01:23:41]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:23:42]:
Their legal budget.

Leo Laporte [01:23:42]:
So that's actually higher than the amount they're going to pay in the fine. The lawyers are making that like bandits. I, you got— I got in the wrong business, that's for sure.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:23:52]:
How are there starving people?

Owen JJ Stone [01:23:54]:
Those are state AGs.

Jeff Jarvis [01:23:55]:
Okay.

Owen JJ Stone [01:23:56]:
Where does the money go? How are people starving and how are there homeless people? You just throwing out $3 billion.

Leo Laporte [01:24:02]:
Got the wrong priorities.

Owen JJ Stone [01:24:03]:
Fines. And I'm like, my God, the money. The thing about the AI that you talked about earlier that I didn't say because I'm just trying not to yell about AI all the time is they say the government needs us to excel and do all these things. Well, you're gonna let them IPO for companies that aren't making any money. You read the articles and like, well, Uber was making money. None of these guys are making any money and they're about to IPO and put it on the backs of the American people And get rich and get paid out for what? Building a product that the government says we have to lead in, and you're going to build all these data centers and ruin people's air and water. It's just a big old scam and I can't stand it, even though I use it. So don't— I'm a hypocrite, I know.

Owen JJ Stone [01:24:43]:
But at least I'm not yelling at my agents and firing people like Uncle Leo. I'm out here editing my videos and doing rational things with my AI.

Leo Laporte [01:24:50]:
Are you, are you doing that? That's cool.

Owen JJ Stone [01:24:52]:
Yeah, yeah, my AI stays employed. I haven't fired anybody yet.

Leo Laporte [01:24:55]:
You know, no, I hired him right away back.

Owen JJ Stone [01:24:58]:
I had him back.

Leo Laporte [01:24:59]:
Actually, I hired him to, to do an investigation of when the local AI that I installed screwed up so bad. And here's the, here's the postmortem. I said, did I break Hermes or do— does it need a better human running it? And, uh, it gave me the whole— this is Astra— gave me the whole thing, the whole postmortem, the breakdown. I preserved the evidence.

Owen JJ Stone [01:25:26]:
It might be a you problem.

Leo Laporte [01:25:28]:
It is. That's what I, I, you know, I thought I was being generous. I said, is it a me problem? He said, well, no, not really. Couldn't be me. I don't know, do I trust it?

Owen JJ Stone [01:25:36]:
Couldn't be me.

Leo Laporte [01:25:38]:
Couldn't be me. Uh, let's take a little pause, a little tidy pause, as we continue, uh, talking about the week's tech news on This Week in Tech with Stacy Higginbotham. From Consumer Reports. Owen JJ Stone from parts unknown. Yep, I believe probably somewhere close to Philadelphia. I'm just guessing.

Owen JJ Stone [01:25:56]:
You're, you're absolutely right. I'm in a black box very close by, checking on all roads and bridges. Wish I was in New York City. They got a great mayor up there riding a bicycle around town all the time.

Leo Laporte [01:26:07]:
You like the commie, huh?

Jeff Jarvis [01:26:08]:
But you got pretzels and cheese sticks, man. So, you know, we do have pretzels and cheese sticks.

Leo Laporte [01:26:13]:
You do. And probably sweet potato pie if you know where to look.

Owen JJ Stone [01:26:16]:
That's right.

Leo Laporte [01:26:16]:
That's right. And the, uh, Cacio e Pepe kid, Jeff Jarvis, author of Hot Type.

Jeff Jarvis [01:26:26]:
We're doing the old, what would Google do? I mean, um, this week at Google best hits.

Owen JJ Stone [01:26:31]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:26:31]:
Cacio e Pepe. No, I think we were all into the Chipotle at the time.

Jeff Jarvis [01:26:35]:
So Stacy made royal fun of me for my Cacio e pepe.

Leo Laporte [01:26:40]:
Your frozen cacio e pepe.

Jeff Jarvis [01:26:41]:
I'm gonna taste it for tonight.

Leo Laporte [01:26:44]:
Oh no. I mean, I'm on my— I'm batching it because the family's going out to see Spider-Man and I refuse to go see comic book movies, so they're just leaving me behind.

Owen JJ Stone [01:26:58]:
So see comic book movies? Come on, Grandpa.

Leo Laporte [01:27:03]:
Spider-Man is a comic book movie.

Owen JJ Stone [01:27:06]:
Yeah, it's a book. At least it's a comic book movie. Yeah, I mean, you know how many movies are out there that didn't have any book or any literature attached to it? How many pages? You know how many kids learn how to read from Spider-Man? Thank you, Spider-Man, for helping us.

Jeff Jarvis [01:27:20]:
Did you see The Odyssey, Leo?

Leo Laporte [01:27:22]:
Not yet. That's, that's based on a book as well.

Owen JJ Stone [01:27:24]:
That's a comic book.

Jeff Jarvis [01:27:25]:
It is.

Leo Laporte [01:27:26]:
It's true. It was a spoken comic book.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:27:28]:
It's an audiobook turned into a—

Leo Laporte [01:27:30]:
Yeah, yeah, turned into a movie. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone [01:27:32]:
Don't see—

Leo Laporte [01:27:33]:
No, I haven't seen The Odyssey. Maybe I should go with them. They see Spider-Man and I'll go see The Odyssey.

Owen JJ Stone [01:27:38]:
You can't see The Odyssey. It's a comic book. There's pictures and there's a story. It's a poem, actually, so you're not allowed to see it. Oh, they've got magical beings and witches and— no, you're not allowed to see The Odyssey. That's not— no, you—

Leo Laporte [01:27:53]:
sirens.

Owen JJ Stone [01:27:54]:
Yes, you're only allowed to see reasonable, rational things.

Leo Laporte [01:27:57]:
How many Spider-Men How many Spider-Men are there, just out of curiosity? There's a lot of them.

Owen JJ Stone [01:28:03]:
Like 15,000.

Leo Laporte [01:28:05]:
Who's the current Spider-Man? Tom Holland, right? Tom Holland.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:28:09]:
There's 3 live action, but if you go into the Into the Spider-Verse Spider-Men, there's so many.

Leo Laporte [01:28:14]:
Oh, that one movie had a bunch of them. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone [01:28:16]:
Spider-Pig. There's probably a Spider-Leo in one universe.

Leo Laporte [01:28:20]:
Spider-Face.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:28:22]:
They did cut Spider-Noir, so Nic Cage's Spider-Noir doesn't get a second season.

Leo Laporte [01:28:27]:
It didn't get a second season?

Owen JJ Stone [01:28:28]:
It's got so many awards lined up nominations for awards and they did not do a season 2. I hate, I hate that. And it was black and white.

Leo Laporte [01:28:36]:
Yeah, I thought it was kind of interesting. Well, you could choose. There was— you could choose black and white or color. You didn't want canceled. Amazon is ruthless. They are just ruthless.

Owen JJ Stone [01:28:48]:
They're throwing money at things and they don't keep things that people want. I don't understand the business model.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:28:54]:
Not enough people want it. Not enough product placement. I mean, It didn't match their metrics. If you, if you view everything as like some sort of return on investment as opposed to creating a cultural or an artistic good, boom.

Leo Laporte [01:29:09]:
Well, I'm—

Jeff Jarvis [01:29:10]:
Splattered War, Nic Cage.

Leo Laporte [01:29:12]:
Yeah, it's worth watching because it's very interesting. Nic Cage is very interesting.

Jeff Jarvis [01:29:16]:
Paris is going to be very upset.

Leo Laporte [01:29:18]:
Oh no, she knows all about it. Oh, that they canceled it? Oh, I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah.

Owen JJ Stone [01:29:22]:
As long as I get new seasons of Reacher. Which is basically, again, another comic book TV show.

Leo Laporte [01:29:27]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:29:27]:
And, uh, that was based on a book. Come on, it's an airport book, but it's a book.

Owen JJ Stone [01:29:32]:
It's a book. It's a book. I'm, I'm lumping now. I'm gonna just— I'm gonna justify comic books with all books now because Leo's made me angry.

Leo Laporte [01:29:38]:
I just— I like comic books. I don't like comic book movies.

Owen JJ Stone [01:29:42]:
Can't trust you.

Leo Laporte [01:29:43]:
You like those Marvel movies? You like all of those?

Owen JJ Stone [01:29:45]:
I, I— they got me young, Uncle Leo. They got me young. When you were— when I was a kid, you know what it was? Back in the day when you would watch Wonder Woman and she would just twirl like this and they put a starburst in front of her and she would transform, you're like, oh, this is cool. Now it's so realistic. I'm like, this is everything I dreamed of when I was reading the comics. And I'm trying to imagine flying through space. I can actually see the things that I saw my whole life growing up. And it's pretty cool.

Owen JJ Stone [01:30:09]:
Half the content is trash, but it's still nice to see it.

Leo Laporte [01:30:12]:
It's good trash.

Owen JJ Stone [01:30:14]:
Yes. Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:30:15]:
It's like, wow. There've been a few, there've been a good, a few Did you read comic books when you were a kid, Leo?

Jeff Jarvis [01:30:19]:
Did you have a childhood?

Owen JJ Stone [01:30:20]:
No, no, he was, he was reading tech, uh, uh, journals and, and talking to him as a kid.

Leo Laporte [01:30:26]:
I wasn't reading comic books. I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which is kind of a comic book, but it's with words, not pictures.

Jeff Jarvis [01:30:36]:
Yeah, pictures.

Owen JJ Stone [01:30:38]:
Yeah, I mean, it's a serial. Get it together.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:30:42]:
There are so many literary comic books. I have to say that maybe when you were growing— you know what, Leo, he grew up when comic books were not literary. They were comic books.

Leo Laporte [01:30:49]:
It was Archie and Jughead. It was Superman and Batman.

Jeff Jarvis [01:30:52]:
I went through a very brief period of buying them, and then I regretted all the money I spent on them.

Leo Laporte [01:30:55]:
Yeah, because your mom threw them out and you could have made billions.

Owen JJ Stone [01:31:00]:
Uh, my grandmother threw away my grandfather's Archie and Jughead comic book collection that was worth $350,000, and she did it after he passed away because she said, those are for kids, and I hated the fact that he had them. My aunt went down and went to the basement to go look for them, and she's like, I threw that stuff out a year after your grandfather passed away. He 1 through 50 in pristine condition. She's like, do you know how much money those things were worth? Nobody wants that kid trash, those coloring books. She called them coloring books.

Leo Laporte [01:31:29]:
Coloring books.

Owen JJ Stone [01:31:30]:
Too many kids.

Leo Laporte [01:31:32]:
I like your grandma. Yeah, Amazon, they're gonna be, they're in a little bit of hot water. FTC is suing them, we'll see what happens, saying that Amazon has been secretly and systematically overcharging for ads. This might do better because they're not screwing consumers, they're screwing Amazon's advertisers. Amazon says—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:31:55]:
Well, the FTC did just get against Amazon. They had a settlement against Amazon for screwing consumers.

Leo Laporte [01:32:01]:
Oh, so they're not new to this. This is the FTC and 22 state attorneys general. They say Amazon used a secret ad surcharge to drive up prices for ads on its website and app. They were, uh, oh, okay. So it did— he says the chairman of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, says that these higher advertising prices were passed on to consumers. So it isn't like we skated. According to the complaint, Amazon violated the FTC Act and a dozen state laws. That's why 22 states' attorneys general are involved.

Leo Laporte [01:32:40]:
This was a year after Amazon paid $2.5 billion for that lawsuit you mentioned. Stacey, over Prime subscription practices and canceling Spider-Man Noir. In Amazon's second-price auctions for ads on its platform— I think that's what they call it, the second-price auction— the winning bidder is supposed to pay 1 cent more than the second-highest bidder. The FTC says Amazon's been manipulating those auctions since 2019. It ain't one penny.

Owen JJ Stone [01:33:13]:
Up to 80% more. Is that what an article said?

Leo Laporte [01:33:18]:
Yes.

Owen JJ Stone [01:33:19]:
That's insane.

Leo Laporte [01:33:20]:
In Amazon's auctions, this is, uh, as, as explained internally by Amazon's senior vice president in charge of Amazon Ads, this is from the FTC's complaint. In Amazon's auctions, the second price isn't set by an actual bidder. You're not one set ahead of another person. But by Amazon in the form of a, quote, proxy second price that we calculate. So it's a penny more than what we say the next highest bidder was. Uh, the FTC says—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:33:53]:
This is what, this is what you're willing to charge. This is what we think you should pay.

Leo Laporte [01:33:57]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:33:57]:
We'll go with the we think you should.

Leo Laporte [01:33:58]:
We think you should.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:33:59]:
We'll call it an auction.

Owen JJ Stone [01:34:00]:
Yeah. And how did you get caught? Who ratted you out? Like, how did someone—

Leo Laporte [01:34:03]:
Oh, that's a good question.

Owen JJ Stone [01:34:04]:
That's what I want to know. Who dry snitched on that? Because that's— the markup on that is so insane and greedy.

Leo Laporte [01:34:12]:
FTC says $20 billion. $20 billion since 2019. Over 5 years, because it, uh, it apparently ended in 2024.

Jeff Jarvis [01:34:27]:
And Amazon advertising alone is now bigger than the entire magazine industry.

Leo Laporte [01:34:31]:
Yeah, that's something people don't think of Amazon as an advertising company, but it really is. That's probably, besides from Amazon Web Services, that's probably their number 2 revenue source is ads.

Owen JJ Stone [01:34:43]:
And they're gonna find—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:34:43]:
It feels like—

Owen JJ Stone [01:34:44]:
What, $5 billion?

Leo Laporte [01:34:45]:
Yeah, right.

Owen JJ Stone [01:34:46]:
$20 billion that they made profit?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:34:50]:
Everything on the tech, I mean, all of the monetization, not monetization strategies, but all these tech companies, they're like, oh, I'm gonna be an e-commerce platform. Oh, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. But they all come back to ads, which is one of Yeah. Their largest or second largest revenue sources. And it's just baffling to me that as consumers, many of us don't have a lot of money to spend on things. So I'm just like, when is this gonna break? Surely it can't go on forever that reaching our limited supply of dollars is going to be worth as much as these companies are making.

Owen JJ Stone [01:35:30]:
But AI is going to fix all that for us, Stacy, and that's why we have to win the AI race.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:35:34]:
AI is really interesting because why would you— if you have agents going out looking for things that you actually need as a consumer, then there's no reason to look for ads and there's no reason to buy ads if you're a company. You're way better off striking a deal with an agent supplier. Or I was just thinking about this because Alexa Amazon Alexa AI, uh, the personal shopper. They, they announced that Alexa would start looking out for like books from authors you've liked historically, um, things that they know you're looking for basically. And like for Jeff's book, if I just said, hey Amazon, just let me know when Jeff's book comes out, I like his stuff, his publisher doesn't have to buy an ad. They can just make sure that they update the Alexa API with the fact that Jeff's book's out. And that's just a really interesting kind of switch.

Leo Laporte [01:36:31]:
That's a good way to do it, right? That makes sense.

Jeff Jarvis [01:36:33]:
Well, it's a question of whether or not companies— a lot of ad companies are now rejiggering to sell to agents.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:36:40]:
Right.

Jeff Jarvis [01:36:41]:
But what if it makes the agent—

Leo Laporte [01:36:42]:
So in Amazon's own PR briefing on this, that's exactly what happened. So they said, so we said that we were gonna— we didn't want you to pay more than this, a penny more than the highest bid you beat. So, so there's an auction for an ad placement and you bid a dollar and somebody else bet 50 cents and you beat the 50 cents. But Amazon said, but good news, we're not going to charge you a dollar, we're going to charge you 51 cents. That makes sense in principle until they say, but then we realized— This is in their own press release. that we were undervaluing our ads. We could— we didn't charge enough.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:26]:
They could have— and they could have set the price for those ads on their own. They were free to.

Leo Laporte [01:37:30]:
They should have just said what the price was instead of lying.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:37:34]:
Yeah, the issue is they lied. It's a deceptive ad practice.

Jeff Jarvis [01:37:37]:
That's the issue.

Leo Laporte [01:37:38]:
With real— so they said, with relevant ads increasingly winning at prices below market value, we began to test a concept called soft reserve prices. a real-time minimum value that seeks to better reflect what the actual placement is worth. And that's called setting a price, Amazon, which again, they could have done.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:38:00]:
That's anti-capitalism right there. That's—

Leo Laporte [01:38:02]:
we also introduced what we called a hard reserve, which is the minimum a bid must surpass to enter an auction that helps cover our costs. Okay, that's fair. But they— what they did is they used machine learning To figure out what the price was that advertiser was willing to pay. Our auction looks at a combination of which ad is most relevant to the customer and the price— they say this out loud— an advertiser is willing to pay.

Owen JJ Stone [01:38:30]:
Amazon is really the mafia. I, you know, I, again, being a hypocrite person, I, I have Amazon Prime, right? And I watch Spider-Noir. And now they have commercials where I've had it for years and I never had any commercials. Now it's like Well, you get commercials or you're gonna pay extra. And when I—

Leo Laporte [01:38:46]:
By the way, I immediately paid the extra. They got me.

Owen JJ Stone [01:38:49]:
I did not.

Jeff Jarvis [01:38:49]:
It's like YouTube.

Owen JJ Stone [01:38:51]:
I'm not gonna complain about people being criminals and downloading things somewhere else, but I'm just saying, when I watch it and I suffer through the commercials, I refuse to even touch my phone or walk near my phone. I'm about to start taking the Stacey approach. And in fact, when I watch a show, I'm probably gonna leave my phone in the other room because they love to do the what did you search on and leave in your cart? And put it up on the screen and remind you that you left it in your cart. And I'm not scanning no QR codes, I'm not clicking no buttons, nothing. I'm gonna suffer through this minute and 30 seconds of trash that you're trying to sell me, and I'm never buying anything that you try to sell me because I was getting it for free and now you're charging me and trying to upcharge me. I refuse. And pro tip, if you leave stuff in your cart and don't buy it immediately on your little impulse buy, They come back in 3 or 4 days and was like, would you like this 5, 10, 15% coupon? The item in your cart has just dropped by 10%. You dang gum right it did, because I didn't need it and I'm getting the savings because I'm on to your tricks, phone.

Owen JJ Stone [01:39:48]:
And I know— I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte [01:39:51]:
I think you should do dramatic reading of this Amazon's response to the FTC's lawsuit. I think that would be much more interesting. Uh, in Amazon's defense, they consider themselves a data-driven company. And what they're really saying, what they want to do, is have that pricing set by data.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:08]:
Again, they can— they could have done.

Leo Laporte [01:40:10]:
And they should just say it up front, this is how much it's gonna cost. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:13]:
I mean, there was a great thing Google did when AdSense started. It was wonderfully counterintuitive. You didn't get the higher position because you paid more. You got the higher position because your ad performed.

Leo Laporte [01:40:24]:
Yeah, right.

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:25]:
Because Google said that's relevant and that's more useful to the users and such.

Owen JJ Stone [01:40:28]:
Right?

Jeff Jarvis [01:40:29]:
And so they set new rules for how these auctions operated. And you can set the rules. You can set minimums.

Leo Laporte [01:40:34]:
They do say, and this might be persuasive to the court, that the cost of ads, the average winning bid for sponsored products ads fell 50% over the 5-year period because advertisers are paying less for their ads, increasingly winning placements with lower bids. So that's— they say, and this is, this is the critical language, there was no harm to consumers as a result. The advertiser's paying less, not more.

Jeff Jarvis [01:41:07]:
But in this case, the customer, the FTC, is pretending to be the advertiser.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:41:11]:
The FTC doesn't require you to have harm.

Leo Laporte [01:41:15]:
They don't? Oh, but the court might.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:41:18]:
Okay, let's see.

Leo Laporte [01:41:20]:
Don't you have to— don't you have to— if you're gonna—

Jeff Jarvis [01:41:22]:
for antitrust, you've got to have harm, consumer harm. But this is not antitrust. This is deceptive practice.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:41:27]:
Does UDAP require harms? Let's see.

Leo Laporte [01:41:31]:
This is— this is—

Jeff Jarvis [01:41:32]:
watch a policy wonk at work.

Leo Laporte [01:41:33]:
This is straight out of This Week in Google. And you know what's funny?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:41:36]:
I'm so sorry.

Leo Laporte [01:41:37]:
When you left, we— no, when you left, uh, Paris came in and she does the same darn thing. We—

Jeff Jarvis [01:41:43]:
you—

Leo Laporte [01:41:43]:
there must be the researcher chair or something, you know.

Jeff Jarvis [01:41:46]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:41:46]:
The reporter chair.

Jeff Jarvis [01:41:47]:
We just blather, Leo and me.

Leo Laporte [01:41:49]:
Yeah, we don't look We don't have facts. We just go, well, it seems to me.

Owen JJ Stone [01:41:53]:
Well, obviously I'm a rantaurus. I don't know what's going on. I'm still worried about fax machines and time.

Leo Laporte [01:42:00]:
Uh, all right, moving right along here.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:42:03]:
It does, it does require some form of injury or risk of harm.

Jeff Jarvis [01:42:08]:
To who though?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:42:09]:
But it doesn't have to be financial.

Jeff Jarvis [01:42:10]:
To the consumer or to the advertiser?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:42:12]:
Well, it— in this case, the advertiser is the consumer.

Jeff Jarvis [01:42:15]:
Yes, right.

Leo Laporte [01:42:16]:
So I'll tell you what's got me ranting this week.

Jeff Jarvis [01:42:20]:
What got you ranting, Leo?

Leo Laporte [01:42:22]:
I might have a counter-rant because Owen may agree with this. Bernie Sanders, along with Greg Casar of Texas, calling for a permanent ban on the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence and saying there should be jail time. Individual developers could face up to 20 years in prison for trying to circumvent the ban.

Jeff Jarvis [01:42:47]:
It's okay, Leo, because there's not such a thing, never will be such a thing as superintelligence. It's BS. So it's never going to exist.

Leo Laporte [01:42:53]:
It's the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. BASSA.

Owen JJ Stone [01:42:58]:
When he started reading that, Jeffrey, was that you sighing?

Jeff Jarvis [01:43:01]:
Ban Pink Ponies Act.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:43:02]:
It may have been me.

Owen JJ Stone [01:43:05]:
Oh, well, I love this idea, of course.

Leo Laporte [01:43:09]:
I knew you would.

Owen JJ Stone [01:43:10]:
Ban it all. I, I'm all for banning You know what? And again, I'm wearing a sports shirt over there. Somebody put in my Google earlier, they, they, it says I'm a sports person now. I still love technology 'cause I use it all the time, but I hate when someone buys a team, they wanna build a new stadium and taxpayers have to fund the stadium. They say, Yeah. It's gonna create all these jobs. Well, guess what? A stadium brings a hell of a lot more jobs than a data center does. And those fans still never get anything.

Owen JJ Stone [01:43:34]:
If you wanna use my taxpayer dollars to build a stadium, at least everybody in that area should get one free ticket to a game sometime in their lifetime. So you can actually go into— That's a good point. But you wanna go get a data center, you're gonna tell me that Ma and Pa Mabel that just had 140 acres taken from them are gonna front a $40 billion— let me be realistic, a $40 million tax-free exempt for 10-year build on the backs of 20 people working in this data center and bringing in jobs?

Leo Laporte [01:44:03]:
Well, this isn't a ban on data centers. We could argue about the ban on data centers. This is a ban that would— so the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would permanently ban the development and deployment of whatever this is, superintelligent AI. I don't know what that is. I don't know if anybody does. That's—

Owen JJ Stone [01:44:20]:
no one knows what it is.

Leo Laporte [01:44:21]:
That's a made-up term. And more to the point, temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator has established safety rules. It would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements to prevent prevent superintelligence from being developed anywhere in the world. I think Bernie Sanders must have seen a movie.

Jeff Jarvis [01:44:42]:
Well, that's the— this is the problem with the Tesquerelle AI boys and their ridiculous dreams.

Leo Laporte [01:44:51]:
There have been, and I understand this is Sanders responding to this drumbeat over the last 2 months of stories about AI escaping containment. There was another story this week about an AI from OpenAI hacking a German wiki to create their own AI message board. And I think—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:45:14]:
They didn't hack it. Didn't they just share messages on it?

Leo Laporte [01:45:16]:
Maybe. Yeah, they didn't hack it. They didn't.

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:18]:
But that's where the language came from.

Owen JJ Stone [01:45:19]:
You just need to—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:45:20]:
you just— we really just need to clearly state that these companies are liable for harms, which is something we actually have never literally done.

Leo Laporte [01:45:28]:
That's a good idea.

Owen JJ Stone [01:45:29]:
So why can't I let Stacy run everything? Because when you say everything, not only does it sound appealing, but it's very concise and simple. But that's, that's what I said about the fax machine thing. Bernie Sanders is out here saying stuff that makes everybody on this panel go, that's not what it is, but we get what you're saying.

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:45]:
So I have a question along this line. If a human being had done what the OpenAI model did to Hugging Face, was there anything illegal about that?

Leo Laporte [01:45:55]:
Yes. Violation of the computer fraud act?

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:57]:
Exactly.

Leo Laporte [01:45:58]:
Absolutely.

Jeff Jarvis [01:45:59]:
And this is not a case of an outside user using a platform that OpenAI can't control. This is a case of OpenAI's own model under its own control, right, with negligence, did this and that.

Leo Laporte [01:46:11]:
I, as you know, and we talk about this on Intelligent Machines, I am— I believe AI is a significant major advance in technology, is very, very important, maybe the most significant advance ever since the invention of the personal computer. And, uh, I'm all for it, and I think it could be developed reasonably without harming, uh, the environment, uh, without harming individuals. But I think it's very important that we continue to work on it. This is just nutty.

Owen JJ Stone [01:46:39]:
I, I, let me ask you one serious question, uh, Leo. What in the utopia— if, if AI could do the grandest thing for humans, what would it do that makes it so It doesn't have to be a—

Leo Laporte [01:46:52]:
it doesn't have to be curing cancer. It could be taking people like you who are sole proprietors and helping you make it so that you can have a website in 15 minutes that's, that's beautiful, practical, and effective. Could help you develop your business, could help you write a marketing plan.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:47:08]:
It could be even bigger than that.

Leo Laporte [01:47:09]:
Well, it is. I'm just saying it could be little things.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:47:12]:
Think about GPS that allows you to track your kid. So it's Yeah, it's foundational in the sense that, like, the internet is foundational, GPS is foundational. It is going to be a technology infrastructure that allows things to happen at greater scale, again, faster, cheaper, easier.

Owen JJ Stone [01:47:31]:
Again, in your wildest dreams, if you could snap your fingers and, and wish for one thing that it would make or fix or change, what would it be? Like, I—

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:40]:
New drugs.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:47:41]:
New drugs that could work Yeah, personalized medicine based not on like your actual, you know, what you do every day.

Leo Laporte [01:47:48]:
We already know how to make cancer drugs that are specific to the cancer of an individual, but it's very, very, very costly.

Jeff Jarvis [01:47:55]:
If you could sequence that and do that, that would be incredible.

Leo Laporte [01:47:58]:
If it could be done at scale, it could cure cancer in effect. I mean, there's a lot of might that hasn't happened yet, we should point out.

Owen JJ Stone [01:48:05]:
I'm not— and that's what I'm trying to get to.

Jeff Jarvis [01:48:07]:
to.

Owen JJ Stone [01:48:08]:
It's so— there's a proponent of people that like AI is going to do all the things you're saying, and then there's other people that are like, dude, have you checked the economy and the jobs report? People are losing jobs, and saying that AI is going to help me build a website or create my own job— there are no jobs. What am I building a website for? There's no one there to buy the job. So I, I— you're better off saying what you just said is for the people trying to sell like we can cure cancers or individual things or help Like those things that it could possibly do just sounds so far-fetched for the average person. That's why they don't want an extra data center in their backyard because it's like, what do you mean? People are losing their jobs everywhere. How's this gonna help me get a job when you're giving them a tax break? I don't understand. And I'm losing water. It's just a weird dichotomy we have right now with the sales pitch of how AI is going to help change the world.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:48:54]:
And so yeah, and what's happened, here's our issue. AI is built by and deployed by people. And right now, the people who are building it and deploying it are motivated by basically returns to their private investors, not even the public markets. So if you think about it, and there's no legal repercussions for them at all, right? They can do whatever they want. So everything that people are mad about, totally valid. I mean, these people are you're letting like the scummiest people in the world like come into your house and, you know, poop in your neighborhood, basically turn your neighborhood into a cesspool. And legitimately, they hate that. So what we need to do is realize that, A, AI is a technology tool.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:49:46]:
It's not like this magical thing. And we— it's built by people, deployed by people. So you have to hold those people accountable to it and build the types of guardrails and incentivize them to build the guardrails needed. And I hate when we start talking about it like this, it's this magical thing.

Leo Laporte [01:50:06]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:50:06]:
Because that's how we used to talk about technology and even things like the internet. And really all it is is a sea change. It's a technological infrastructure sea change, and we know how to deal with that.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:21]:
And also, if we talk about it as if it's human too, the anthropomorphization is the risk. Leo, if you want to see more nuttiness this week, go to line 107, if you wouldn't mind.

Leo Laporte [01:50:30]:
Oh, Jeff, you're up to your old tricks once again.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:33]:
I am indeed.

Leo Laporte [01:50:34]:
Uh, oh yeah, this is just nuttery. This doesn't really have anything to do with technology at all.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:50:40]:
Oh, don't give them anything. Please, no, just don't give them— I mean, because Peter Thiel already thinks it's the Antichrist too. Yes.

Owen JJ Stone [01:50:49]:
So—

Stacey Higginbotham [01:50:49]:
This is just Vance talking to Thiel.

Leo Laporte [01:50:53]:
Yeah. The vice president said that AI is satanic.

Jeff Jarvis [01:50:59]:
It's not just anthropomorphizing.

Leo Laporte [01:51:00]:
But this is exactly the tension I've been talking about between Trump's populist instincts and Vance's populist instincts, which got him elected, and the fact that the other people that got him elected are Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the people who are promoting AI. And again, this third constituency of the intelligence community, the military-industrial complex, all of which want AI. And I don't— this is, to me, this is actually pretty cynical.

Owen JJ Stone [01:51:36]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:51:37]:
My guess is that the Trump administration and its that's the people who are running the elections, said, look, JD, you're gonna have— this is what the vice president always says— you're gonna have to go out and you're gonna have to say something. It's gonna—

Owen JJ Stone [01:51:52]:
I—

Leo Laporte [01:51:52]:
you may not agree with it, you may agree, but it doesn't matter. This is to appeal to our base. Now, unfortunately, this story got in the Wall Street Journal, which is exactly what Peter Thiel's reading, so I don't know if it was effective. The Trump administration officials are wrestling with the spiritual consequences of AI as the president embraces it as an economic engine. It's 2, it's 2, it's 2 mints in one.

Jeff Jarvis [01:52:19]:
So it doesn't help either when our media complex does the same thing. The next line is Steven Levy saying, who cares if AI is conscious? It's basically alive. This is such BS. Steven Levy knows better. What the heck is he doing?

Owen JJ Stone [01:52:35]:
And that's why I keep complaining. You would think that those people do know better, but they don't. And the way they reference it and the way they talk about it, you're not— you want people to embrace the technology and the people that are pitching it are doing such a terrible job at doing it and explaining why it's necessary. Someone in the chat said China's gonna eat our lunch. I have a MacBook Studio. I don't think it was made in the USA. The iPad, the camera, everything.

Leo Laporte [01:53:00]:
They already ate our lunch.

Owen JJ Stone [01:53:02]:
There's literally $100,000 in this room and I don't think there's one thing that was made here. So I mean, like, what are we talking about when it's like we're gonna lose to— I, you know, I can't even get a BYD vehicle over here, an electronic vehicle that's worth a dang, because Ford and Elon are blocking real change in technology because they've got us in a chokehold. So it's such a weird dichotomy, the game that we play with all this technology, and it's evil, it's this, it's that. So that's why I complain about it, that's why I grump about it, because because we're all messed up right now, but we're human. That's what we do.

Leo Laporte [01:53:32]:
Meanwhile, Nvidia, who makes the hardware for all of this and is doing quite well, they, uh, they're making money. They're making a billion dollars a day profit. A billion dollars a day profit. So they spent a little less than 2 weeks profit to buy Hugging Face. Uh, this has been going on for a couple weeks, but it actually finally happened. Hugging Face is Started off, by the way, I didn't understand this. So the name Hugging Face comes from the emoji where you've got a face and there's 2 hands kind of at the— that's the hugging face emoji. So that's where it comes from.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:09]:
JJ, let's all do it so we can get it. So Bernardo can get a card. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:54:12]:
Everybody do the hugging face. Come on. You can do it.

Owen JJ Stone [01:54:15]:
You trying to get me to go against our overlords? You trying to get me in trouble?

Leo Laporte [01:54:18]:
Thank you.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:19]:
You're welcome.

Leo Laporte [01:54:20]:
It's just for the thumbnail. You got, you know that, don't you, Owen? If you're gonna get downloads on YouTube, you gotta go, I know the game. You know the game. Anyway, Hugging Face, which started, I didn't know this, as a chat service. And that's where the hugging face came from. I never understood where, I thought it was just 2 random words.

Jeff Jarvis [01:54:41]:
It's one of those great stories of a pivot.

Leo Laporte [01:54:44]:
And they ended up being the kind of the Remember Downloads.com and 2Cows, the places where you'd go to get shareware? They're basically that for AI models. They have more than 3 million downloadable AI models. Yeah, they're 2Cows and they're Download.com, and they just sold for $12.9 billion to Nvidia. Congratulations.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:07]:
After turning down an investment from Nvidia, was it 6 months ago, at $7 billion?

Stacey Higginbotham [01:55:11]:
Wow.

Leo Laporte [01:55:13]:
The irony is it's not like those models don't exist elsewhere. I guess it's sort of like Microsoft buying GitHub for a little bit less money, I guess. But there's nothing— I mean, there are other places you can go to get models. So I don't really— Well, but it's— What I do like is the notion that maybe NVIDIA is going to get behind open source. Or more properly, overweight AI.

Jeff Jarvis [01:55:41]:
Yeah, I think I've been way behind it. And it's— this is where I need your schooling, Leo. And I was trying to get it this morning on chat. Is the value of the harness— I called it a saddle this week— the harness—

Leo Laporte [01:55:58]:
It's a bridle. It's a bit. It's a saddle. It's spurs and stirrups.

Jeff Jarvis [01:56:02]:
Versus the underlying model. And is the underlying model just the steam engine? engine? And is the value going to be in the harnesses and how those operate? And is that kind of where Hugging Face can play? Is that we're going to help you— it doesn't matter what model you use, it's all interchangeable underneath, but there's a layer above.

Leo Laporte [01:56:19]:
The geek's best answer: it depends.

Stacey Higginbotham [01:56:23]:
Yeah, maybe.

Leo Laporte [01:56:25]:
Sort of. Well, the harness, which could be, uh, like Claude Code or Codex or Anti-Gravity or Cursor, Or the agent I use, Hermes or OpenCLAW. That's the software that surrounds it that calls on the AI model and feeds it context, gives it information, gives it memory and all that stuff. And the AI model then gets all of that as a simple string of text characters, tokens that go in. And then tokens come out of the AI model and the harness gets that, displays it on the screen and, you know, kind of puts it out in the world, Actions on it. But the model still does a lot more than just simply— it's more than a pachinko machine. That's what Benito likes to call it, a pachinko machine or a wind chime. It's more than something you, you put information in and it goes doo doo doo doo and it comes out.

Leo Laporte [01:57:16]:
There's a— the people who build the models are also doing a lot.

Jeff Jarvis [01:57:21]:
But you're using them practically interchangeably.

Leo Laporte [01:57:24]:
I feel like they're mostly interchangeable. They've gotten more and more similar. They have to— people remember when OpenAI killed ChatGPT-4o? People were so sad because they had fallen in love. This was their virtual boyfriend and girlfriend. And they said, you're taking away our loved ones. It was because— and OpenAI kind of fixed it. OpenAI had made that model independent of the harness, made that model be very personable. And that's in the weights.

Leo Laporte [01:57:59]:
So you take the model, you train it, and then you adjust the weights so that some stuff happens more and some stuff happens less. And all of that's the post-training. And they had post-trained it to be very friendly and personable and lovable. And they realized, oh, this is not good. People are getting too over-involved with their models. So they actually took a lot of the personality out. And that upset people quite a bit. So it is everything.

Leo Laporte [01:58:28]:
There's more than just the training. There's a lot of post-training and reinforcement learning. And it's also the context you put in. Every model, when you start it up, you have a file, a text file, you can read it. In most cases, it's called soul.md that tells it who it is. You are a smart, You know, social scientist, or you're a great writer, or whatever. And that kind of also shapes the outputs because it goes in and the outputs are modified and it goes out, but it shapes what happens. So it's a complicated, it's a very, it's almost a chaotic system.

Leo Laporte [01:59:06]:
That's part of the problem with it. It's probabilistic, not deterministic. It's hard. Different, you put the same inputs in at one point and different ones will come out, unlike a computer program. Which pretty much will always produce the same result given the same input. Supposed to anyway.

Owen JJ Stone [01:59:24]:
How can I talk Nvidia into buying America?

Leo Laporte [01:59:28]:
Because they could buy the Lake America. They could buy the Gulf of America. I don't think America's available.

Owen JJ Stone [01:59:34]:
They're making a billion a day. We're $40 trillion in debt.

Leo Laporte [01:59:38]:
They could just buy us.

Owen JJ Stone [01:59:39]:
He could just buy us.

Leo Laporte [01:59:40]:
By the way, that's why the administration doesn't want to piss off these guys. Because yes, yes, right?

Owen JJ Stone [01:59:47]:
Because it's so insane. Because again, like, all the stuff we're talking about, Nvidia is just making money. They're the ones making the money. And, you know, forget the fact that like, uh, when you're building the data centers, half the time by the time they get built in the 2 years, the chips are going to be different at that point anyway. And the other companies are going to be wanting to refresh their chips and update them.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:00:07]:
They're—

Owen JJ Stone [02:00:07]:
that's the biggest thing when somebody says that China's coming to eat our lunch and stuff like that, like we talked about earlier. We're forcing China to find their own manufacturing, their own chips that they want to create. And if they get on NVIDIA's level, that's when you're really like, oh boy, um, because we don't have the materials to build the things, we don't have the infrastructure to build the things. But NVIDIA could just buy us and fix everything.

Leo Laporte [02:00:28]:
You're talking— you've been talking, Jeff, a lot about anthropomorphizing AI, and a number of people have said that this is sort of the problem. Uh, one of the— one of those consequences is the Bernie Sanders bill. The other one would be This is the result. The president pulling fable from the marketplace, treating it more like it's a human or it's acting like a human than it's a computer program. What do you think?

Jeff Jarvis [02:00:53]:
I just was saying to Darren Oakey in the chat, it then leads to the mysticism we see that this is this strange power. And I was talking to my colleague at Stony Brook, we need new vocabulary for this. It doesn't think, it calculates.

Leo Laporte [02:01:06]:
Well, that's one reason I use the word agent. more than artificial intelligence? Because, um, I don't— artificial intelligence is by itself anthropomorphizing it, like it's intelligence. Yeah, right. Um, it was a marketing term John McCarthy came up with in 1956, '55, hoping to convince, uh, people to— the government.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:27]:
It's very hard. I mean, Dwarkesh Patel, in discussing the Hugging Face—

Leo Laporte [02:01:31]:
He highly anthropomorphizes. He talked about AI Civilizations rising and falling.

Owen JJ Stone [02:01:37]:
Oh, yes.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:38]:
And he gave Gary Marcus just material to work with. But I sympathize to the effect that— to the limit that it's hard to discuss what these things do without using human verbs.

Leo Laporte [02:01:51]:
Yes, because it looks like they're thinking. And in fact, I'm not convinced that we do anything that special.

Jeff Jarvis [02:01:57]:
Kind of, we're kind of tokens.

Leo Laporte [02:01:58]:
We're kind of tokens in, tokens out based on our our context that we've learned over the years of our lives and from our parents and our schooling. And we also have a little bit of, I don't know, is it intuition or something stuck in there at birth? And I mean, we're not sophisticated.

Jeff Jarvis [02:02:19]:
I wrote about how history gets things wrong in The Gutenberg Parenthesis. I wrote about this. And the argument in that book, which is a fascinating book, is That the theory of mind is BS.

Leo Laporte [02:02:29]:
Yes.

Jeff Jarvis [02:02:30]:
That we don't really have this diagram of structure, that instead it's more like we have, and this is my phrasing, a whole bunch of videotapes in our head. Well, what did I do last time I did this? Oh, I did that stupid thing. Okay, I'll do it again. Right? Because that's what I did before. And we have ruts that we're in rather than reasoning. Exactly.

Leo Laporte [02:02:50]:
In 1978—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:02:51]:
I'm so glad you brought that up. Because I was going to bring up our theory of mind. So good job, Jeff.

Jeff Jarvis [02:02:56]:
Stacy, I think you'd like that book a lot, uh, How History Gets Things Wrong.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:03:01]:
I'll check it out.

Leo Laporte [02:03:02]:
It's classic. Uh, in 1978, I took, I took the— it should have been a comic book. It would have been a better comic book, but you know.

Owen JJ Stone [02:03:09]:
Oh no.

Leo Laporte [02:03:10]:
You can't have everything.

Jeff Jarvis [02:03:11]:
It's a lot— it was a lot harder to read. I had to take my time on this.

Leo Laporte [02:03:14]:
A lot of words, no pictures.

Jeff Jarvis [02:03:16]:
Words, words, rats, experiments.

Leo Laporte [02:03:19]:
In 1978, I took something called the EST training, which was at the time, you know, that was this human potential movement.

Jeff Jarvis [02:03:29]:
Earhart seminar training.

Leo Laporte [02:03:30]:
Excellent. Earhart seminar training.

Jeff Jarvis [02:03:32]:
In The Examiner, I was mocking it, but keep going.

Leo Laporte [02:03:34]:
Well, everybody mocked it. Yeah, they don't let you pee. It's 2 weekends. It's very intense. There's a lot of stuff. And towards the end, something happens and you're supposed to And this is the phrase they use, get it. And then, so you're at that point, there's a trainer leading this, there's 200, 300 people in the room, and you're all supposed to be getting it. And I'm looking, I'm going, I don't really get it.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:04:00]:
Oh my God, this is the Landmark guy. Yes.

Owen JJ Stone [02:04:03]:
This is a cult.

Leo Laporte [02:04:04]:
Well, it was cult-like. It was cult-like.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:04:07]:
It's a cult.

Leo Laporte [02:04:07]:
It's a cult.

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:08]:
No, no, no.

Leo Laporte [02:04:08]:
It wasn't a cult in the sense that they didn't keep coming at me for money and I had to go to a special place in London.

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:13]:
Oh, but there were though, There were especially— there were particularly loyal followers.

Leo Laporte [02:04:17]:
Oh, there were some people who got into it that way, but I found it very valuable. You know, I was 21. It was something very valuable.

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:24]:
But—

Owen JJ Stone [02:04:24]:
I was just about to ask how old you were at the time. I wanted to know.

Leo Laporte [02:04:26]:
I was 21. But— and it did change my life in many ways.

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:30]:
Did you gain weight there?

Leo Laporte [02:04:30]:
And how I, how I, how I thought about things in many ways. But recently I got it. I realized how many years later, 50 years later, that, um, what they were really saying is we—

Jeff Jarvis [02:04:45]:
and they—

Leo Laporte [02:04:45]:
this, it was actually explicit, I just wasn't paying attention— we're just robots. We are just act— just as you just said, Jeff, we're just playing back the tapes in our head of previous actions. Why we keep doing the same stupid things over and over again. We keep making mistakes and go, why did I do that again? Because we're essentially We're automatons in many, many ways. And the point of the S Training was to understand that so that you can kind of break out of the loop.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:05:17]:
Therapy's probably— good therapy is probably a better way to tackle it.

Leo Laporte [02:05:21]:
It's like therapy. It's very similar, right? The idea was, well, what if we could do this in 2 intensive weekends? But you're right. I mean, it's very similar to therapy and it's not inconsistent. With therapy as well. I mean, I've done a lot of therapy too. But—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:05:35]:
And that's, that's, and that's the same thing we do with technology. Because people think they're being rational, but they're just reacting to things. And they're like, no, this is totally rational. And you're like, is it though?

Leo Laporte [02:05:48]:
Why do you keep putting money in a slot machine?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:05:51]:
Yeah. And the same thing with AI. We keep thinking that this is based on data. This is data-driven. This has no agenda. It absolutely does.

Jeff Jarvis [02:06:00]:
Yeah, and it's just feeding back to us our own— Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:06:03]:
It's us.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:06:03]:
Or the creator's biases and what we want to see.

Owen JJ Stone [02:06:07]:
I think I'm a higher being than what you guys are saying. I have freedom of choice and free will. My favorite other story to tell people is I had a friend in high school. His dad was a drunk. He had 2 sons. One son grew up to be a drunk. The other one never drank any alcohol. The one says, oh, I have to drink.

Owen JJ Stone [02:06:23]:
Our dad was an alcoholic. And the other one's says, I'm never going to drink because our dad's an alcoholic. Those 2 kids made choices in life.

Jeff Jarvis [02:06:29]:
But there's also genes involved.

Leo Laporte [02:06:32]:
Well, and my, my response to that would be, yes, they made choices. They may have been different choices, but they made choices in an automaton response to the stimulus. They were different choices, but it wasn't because they used free will.

Owen JJ Stone [02:06:47]:
It was because they were triggered by that initial And that's why we have therapy, because is there free will or is it like a gene thing? Is it genetics? Am I genetically predisposed to be—

Leo Laporte [02:06:57]:
I'm not— I believe in free will. I think we have free will.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:07:00]:
Yeah, we have free will. I guess the idea is, did they make a considered decision or did his videotape of his dad's drunken behavior make him work one way or the other? As opposed to saying, my dad was a drunk, it caused me the following feelings.

Leo Laporte [02:07:14]:
Right. I don't drink, but my dad was not a drunk.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:07:16]:
So...

Jeff Jarvis [02:07:17]:
Or, or, or I take opioids and I get constipated. Other people take opioids and it changes their life, right? Because there's a different receptor in— there's genetic, uh, differences in us.

Owen JJ Stone [02:07:29]:
If I die, we're all chatbots and this is a chatbot conversation, you are in trouble. That's all.

Leo Laporte [02:07:35]:
All right, you're watching— I don't know how we got very philosophical here. This is good because we have deep thinkers on the show today. Including Owen JJ Stone, who does believe in free will. I do, I do, I do believe in free will. Oh look, he's got Soul Hank Flaky. You can't even get that anymore in the Calabrian flavored.

Owen JJ Stone [02:07:55]:
Uncle Leo, when my cousin puts out a product, I said to myself, let me put these in the freezer, they might be worth money one day.

Leo Laporte [02:08:02]:
I think they will be. The original.

Owen JJ Stone [02:08:04]:
It's like the Archie comic books that my grandmother's throwing trash— not me.

Leo Laporte [02:08:08]:
They have one thing in common with those Archie comic books. No one's making those anymore.

Owen JJ Stone [02:08:12]:
No, no, I told you they were there. I'd never tell you a lie, Uncle Ian.

Leo Laporte [02:08:16]:
I didn't finish the story. Steve Gibson's wife called the people who made it and said, would you make me some more?

Owen JJ Stone [02:08:23]:
No.

Leo Laporte [02:08:24]:
And they said, no, we can't make some more. It's Salt Hank's. And she said, well, if I get Salt Hank to say so, can you make me some more? They said, well, okay. So she calls me, I call Salt Hank. So Hank says, calls the lady, said, yeah, you can make some for her. So she— they made 20 more bottles. And I said, you're kidding me. That's it.

Leo Laporte [02:08:44]:
Don't, don't, don't you be calling me Owen JJ Stone. You want to preserve the rarity of those.

Owen JJ Stone [02:08:52]:
That's right.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:08:52]:
I don't think I would have finished that story, Leo. I think I would have let that story just die a death.

Jeff Jarvis [02:08:58]:
Now they're coming after you.

Leo Laporte [02:08:59]:
Right now, now you've I should explain for those who don't know what we're talking about. Saul Hank is my son, who I'm very happy to say both on the CBS This Morning on Saturday and in the Wall Street Journal, at the very top they say Henry Laporte, known as Saul Hank. So at least the family name gets mentioned once. I like it that he didn't use my name at all, right? There's no— nobody knows he's related to me. Anyway, he's very successful, got a restaurant in New York, was at the US Open tennis tournament.

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:27]:
That's right.

Leo Laporte [02:09:28]:
But sold half a million dollars worth of sandwiches in 5 days. They were doing 2,000 sandwiches a day. So he was very happy.

Owen JJ Stone [02:09:39]:
Maybe I'll run up to New York and get him to sign my OG canisters.

Leo Laporte [02:09:44]:
I actually— he has now sold the name and the brand to Wonder, Marc Lore's company. And, but he's gonna continue on and they're gonna keep the original store and everything. So I'm going out in a couple of weeks.

Jeff Jarvis [02:09:57]:
Finally.

Leo Laporte [02:09:58]:
Gonna finally go out because I've never had one of his sandwiches.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:01]:
But you're not on that— are you on the GLPs and that kind of stuff that you kind of can't eat it, enjoy it?

Leo Laporte [02:10:07]:
I can eat it. I may not enjoy it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:08]:
Oh, I see.

Leo Laporte [02:10:09]:
Okay. No, I'll enjoy it. I just won't eat all of it.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:14]:
All of it.

Leo Laporte [02:10:15]:
But it's a lot anyway.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:16]:
It's a lot. Yeah, it's very rich.

Leo Laporte [02:10:18]:
I bet it is. I think I might have one bite and go, well, that's delicious. That's probably all I can add.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:10:25]:
I'll eat the rest. I love a good French dip.

Leo Laporte [02:10:27]:
Oh, it's the best French dip you ever had.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:29]:
Paris and I stood in line and went there.

Leo Laporte [02:10:31]:
It's incredible.

Jeff Jarvis [02:10:32]:
We didn't— we didn't use our clout to get in early or anything. We stood in line like civilians.

Leo Laporte [02:10:36]:
I will, uh, I will—

Owen JJ Stone [02:10:37]:
I'm using my clout. I'm showing up talking about Hank's my cousin. They're like, who's this guy?

Leo Laporte [02:10:40]:
Oh no, he told me— I said, uh, because Wesley Faulkner was going, and I said— I texted him, I said, how do I get Wesley in? He said, Don't bother me. He said, I just tell them at the front, they've been told, they've been warned. If somebody says— oh, I shouldn't say this out loud.

Owen JJ Stone [02:10:56]:
No, you should say it out loud. It's a secret word and you don't know it, people. Tell me off air until I get there. Yeah, I need these things signed.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:11:05]:
Whoops.

Owen JJ Stone [02:11:07]:
Reel it in, Uncle Leo.

Leo Laporte [02:11:09]:
I came very close.

Jeff Jarvis [02:11:10]:
Now everybody's gonna want sandwiches and salt.

Leo Laporte [02:11:12]:
To give it away.

Owen JJ Stone [02:11:13]:
It's almost like you haven't done 1,100 shows to not know how to act.

Leo Laporte [02:11:18]:
I have no— I'm telling you, we're just automatons. We're machines, my friend.

Owen JJ Stone [02:11:23]:
You haven't learned anything.

Leo Laporte [02:11:24]:
I have learned nothing.

Jeff Jarvis [02:11:25]:
This is why he doesn't do any of these.

Owen JJ Stone [02:11:28]:
You're fired.

Leo Laporte [02:11:30]:
I am. Fire me. I am. By the way, that's what Astra said too. I said, Astra, what happened? They said, you shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that. I'm not kidding. The final thing is don't do it that way anymore.

Leo Laporte [02:11:48]:
It says require useful progress after 10 minutes. Give coding tests a focused session. Reconsider the settings. I would not repeat this unrestricted high reasoning setup. Okay, fine.

Owen JJ Stone [02:12:02]:
Too long of a leash.

Jeff Jarvis [02:12:04]:
Serves you right. Reel it in. Reel it in.

Leo Laporte [02:12:08]:
The assignment was substantial enough to require care but entirely reasonable. Managing that complexity was the agent's responsibility. Oh, thank you. At the end, after saying all the things I shouldn't have done, it was, it was the agent's fault. You know what? That's casting shade on your coworker. Knock it off.

Jeff Jarvis [02:12:28]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:12:29]:
This is TWiT, This Week in Tech. We're glad you're here. Thank you for watching. Uh, have a happy Labor Day, everybody. CyberCab launched. Woo! Did you see all the celebrations, all the excitement on September 4th? Oh, it was very—

Jeff Jarvis [02:12:46]:
oh God, why wasn't he on the side?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:12:49]:
I saw a video about people in the wheelchair.

Leo Laporte [02:12:50]:
It's very quiet and it's already under investigation.

Jeff Jarvis [02:12:55]:
As it should be.

Leo Laporte [02:12:56]:
This is Elon's, uh, Tesla that has no steering wheel and no pedals. The government says, unlike Zoox— remember Zoox, the, the one in Las Vegas with no steering wheel?

Jeff Jarvis [02:13:08]:
Did you end up riding in one?

Leo Laporte [02:13:10]:
I didn't get to. I couldn't. They were always booked up. They're very popular. They went to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. They said, can we do this? They went through all the hoops, they did all the things, and they got permission. That's not Elon's way.

Owen JJ Stone [02:13:24]:
Nuh-uh.

Leo Laporte [02:13:24]:
So he just started picking up people in Austin When? 2 days ago.

Jeff Jarvis [02:13:30]:
You know, I'm not going to put my life in his hands in that vehicle. But the problem is, it's not my choice. That thing can run me over.

Leo Laporte [02:13:36]:
Right.

Owen JJ Stone [02:13:37]:
Stacy, he rolls up in a wheelchair, then stands and puts the wheelchair in the trunk. Was this made with AI? What is going on?

Leo Laporte [02:13:49]:
Where's that? I got to find that.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:13:51]:
Isn't this commercial great? The crutches, the—

Owen JJ Stone [02:13:54]:
Then the guy has the crutches. I've never seen it before. I just Googled it and I'm like, wait a minute. I'm trying to listen to Leo and look, and I'm like, wait a second.

Leo Laporte [02:14:01]:
Did you put it in the, uh, no, the Discord? Put it in the Discord if you would.

Owen JJ Stone [02:14:06]:
Hold on, they gave me a link. I'm watching on Facebook.

Leo Laporte [02:14:08]:
I'm really, I'm really curious to see this. Uh, Larry, uh, in our Discord went to, uh, the, uh, US Open and had a Salt Hank, but he's already had one before. It wasn't his first time.

Owen JJ Stone [02:14:20]:
Someone find me this commercial on YouTube. Oh, I keep finding it on—

Leo Laporte [02:14:23]:
Oh, I could find it. It's called a Google search. Tesla Robo taxi commercial.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:14:31]:
Just do CyberCab wheelchair. I bet it pops right up.

Leo Laporte [02:14:34]:
Oh yeah, there you go. CyberCab wheelchair. So this was put out by Tesla.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:14:39]:
This is why I'm so— this is put out by them. Um, they filmed it at their local factory, I guess.

Leo Laporte [02:14:46]:
Okay, here it is. It's on, uh, it's on their X account.

Owen JJ Stone [02:14:49]:
There we go. So he rolls up. Okay, no problem with that.

Leo Laporte [02:14:53]:
Yeah. Or goes up in crutches, whatever.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:14:56]:
Yep.

Jeff Jarvis [02:14:56]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:14:56]:
Puts everything in the trunk. Walks around.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:15:00]:
Surfs off sets of people.

Leo Laporte [02:15:00]:
Puts the luggage, puts the wheelchair in there. He's standing.

Owen JJ Stone [02:15:03]:
How is he standing and putting his—

Leo Laporte [02:15:04]:
Walks around to the front, gets in.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:15:07]:
Nope. We don't see them walk around. We just see the door open.

Leo Laporte [02:15:09]:
There's no driver there though to put the wheelchair in the trunk.

Owen JJ Stone [02:15:13]:
So—

Jeff Jarvis [02:15:13]:
How do you open the trunk?

Owen JJ Stone [02:15:14]:
Yes. All the— what? What?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:15:18]:
This is great. You're like, hey, what if I'm in a wheelchair? And they show you this and you're like, I was like, wait, so what if I'm in a wheelchair?

Leo Laporte [02:15:25]:
I gotta, I gotta tell you, this is definitely generated by AI, right? This is an AI commercial.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:15:30]:
This is AI for sure.

Leo Laporte [02:15:31]:
Like the color grading is— Because first of all, he rolls up in a wheelchair, then he walks up with luggage, then he walks up with crutches. That's the logic of AI.

Owen JJ Stone [02:15:39]:
If I had the crutches, I would just put them in the front seat with me because it's so open and there's no brakes or steering wheel or anything like that. I can just take the crutches with me.

Leo Laporte [02:15:46]:
But why does he— unlike the Zoox, it has a front seat and a back seat. If there's no front seat, There's no steering wheel or pedals. Why make it look like an automobile? Oh, because it is an automobile. They just took the pedals and the brakes out. NHTSA is investigating because literally hours after the automaker shipped, they're— they are updating their standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy, but you still got to go to them And, uh, and anything should be regulated in technology, this is—

Jeff Jarvis [02:16:22]:
it should be regulated. Yes.

Leo Laporte [02:16:24]:
Tesla says it doesn't need an exemption because the vehicles comply with all existing safety standards. Okay, but it doesn't have a brake. I think that's a safety standard. I might be wrong.

Owen JJ Stone [02:16:39]:
And they don't even use LiDAR. They're just using cameras, I believe. They don't have like the full range of the technology.

Jeff Jarvis [02:16:44]:
That's what bothers me.

Owen JJ Stone [02:16:46]:
And I'm— it just— again, this dude, cuz Uncle Fester's his buddy, just feels like I could just go do whatever I wanna do and push it through. No, you can't. This makes no sense. And what if I get stuck in this car or something happens? Like, I'm not really too worried about it like running over someone, even though there's a possibility. But just the fact, like, if something goes wrong and malfunctions, I have no way of physically turning a wheel to help myself? Like, that would freak me out.

Leo Laporte [02:17:13]:
So they're doing what they call an audit query to examine the data and process Tesla used to make the determination that they don't need to get an exemption. They kind of want you to do that. They kind of want you to apply and explain.

Jeff Jarvis [02:17:27]:
You know what, I'm not going to trust— it needs Consumer Reports.

Leo Laporte [02:17:31]:
Yes, CR needs to get in on this.

Owen JJ Stone [02:17:34]:
Yeah, I know. I don't— people complain about Waymo and like when things would go wrong or something like that, um, you know, it drove you out of town or they got stuck in traffic in front of each other. At least there was still a wheel and a brake. Like there's something there that could— I could get to, you know what I mean? Like my one friend's like, oh, you sit in the back of a plane and you don't have a steering wheel? Or yeah, but there's also a co-pilot and then a backup pilot.

Leo Laporte [02:17:57]:
I like it. We don't need safety standards. We don't even have drivers. Why do we need safety What did you set these standards for? Yeah, well, okay. Computronium's creator, Ray Kurzweil. Uh, would you explain that to me? We interviewed Ray. I think I like Ray. I've interviewed him many times.

Leo Laporte [02:18:19]:
He has been for years saying the singularity is getting closer and closer, by which he means machines get smarter than we are and, and more importantly, design themselves so that—

Jeff Jarvis [02:18:30]:
We merge in.

Leo Laporte [02:18:32]:
Accelerate at a high speed, and at some point, yes, we will merge with the machines. He's highly respected. He created the synthesizer for Stevie Wonder. He actually, because he was friends with Stevie, created the Kurzweil speech synthesizer, the first— I mean, he's a brilliant, brilliant guy, and among other things. Uh, he is a Google Fellow. Now he's joining a startup developing a brain-computer system that, according to Fortune, involves snorting nanoparticles. Now, I don't subscribe to Fortune, so I can't get any farther than that headline, but I'm not sure I want to. Jeff, did you read it?

Jeff Jarvis [02:19:17]:
Uh, nope, I don't subscribe either, and I'm not snorting anything, or I'm not letting Elon put a chip in here. I'm not snorting anything in here.

Leo Laporte [02:19:24]:
Well, better Better snorting them than in surgery, right?

Jeff Jarvis [02:19:28]:
I'm not so sure.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:19:29]:
I mean, yes, if those are your choices.

Jeff Jarvis [02:19:32]:
Sure.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:19:33]:
Although, you know, injecting it might be a better option than snorting it.

Leo Laporte [02:19:38]:
And what are they going to do? They're going to go up into your— I mean, are they going to go—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:19:41]:
Well, that's what I'm like, for brain-computer, like actual brain-computer interfaces, putting it in the right spot is actually really important. So I guess—

Leo Laporte [02:19:51]:
But they would know where to go. Wouldn't they?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:19:54]:
Like, are they magnetic? Are you gonna, like, drive them? Like—

Leo Laporte [02:19:58]:
No, they would know because they're smart. They're nano— they're smart nanoparticles.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:20:02]:
Okay, that is just a bunch of science fiction words together. I mean, they're real things. Nanoparticles exist. But, like, what type? What are they made of? Are they— do they have chips in them? Are they just really tiny bits of metal? Plastic? We have all of the options.

Leo Laporte [02:20:19]:
I think Ray, who's getting on, uh, deserves a little bit of peace and quiet. And if they want to use his name to promote their nanoparticles, God bless them.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:20:34]:
You want to see my phone?

Leo Laporte [02:20:36]:
Yeah, you got the pink, the pinky, or hibiscus?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:20:38]:
That was my last phone. Look, guys, what does this remind you of?

Leo Laporte [02:20:42]:
Oh, yours was a lighter color rose. Now you're gotten deeper and darker. Do you like it? That's the new Pixel 11.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:20:50]:
Yeah, I do. I think it's actually a little lighter, and you know how I hate a heavy phone.

Leo Laporte [02:20:55]:
You do, but it is because you got kind of floppy hands.

Owen JJ Stone [02:20:58]:
Is that the larger size?

Jeff Jarvis [02:20:59]:
We forgot about the floppy hands.

Owen JJ Stone [02:21:02]:
Is that the larger size Pixel?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:21:05]:
No, this is the smaller one because I hate big phones because she has floppy hands.

Owen JJ Stone [02:21:09]:
Yeah, well, I can't, I can't tell hand size It's hard to tell, isn't it?

Leo Laporte [02:21:17]:
It looks like a big phone.

Owen JJ Stone [02:21:18]:
It does.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:21:19]:
Well, it's the same size. It's a little, it's a smidge larger than the 8. I'm trying to think, do I have anything that looks like a—

Leo Laporte [02:21:26]:
Put it next to a banana. Do you have a banana there? I used to have—

Jeff Jarvis [02:21:32]:
Leo's standing size.

Leo Laporte [02:21:34]:
I used to have a giant pencil that I would put things next to.

Owen JJ Stone [02:21:38]:
Do you have a card or a credit card or a coin or something?

Leo Laporte [02:21:41]:
I used to have a 6-foot pencil. put long pencils.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:21:44]:
Here's a, here's a photo. This is a—

Jeff Jarvis [02:21:46]:
what's that?

Owen JJ Stone [02:21:46]:
4 by 6?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:21:47]:
It's an old—

Leo Laporte [02:21:48]:
everybody knows that. Oh, it's a photo back in the day. Oh, it's the size of a, of a, of a 5 by 4 photo.

Owen JJ Stone [02:21:56]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:21:56]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:21:57]:
Okay. It looks pretty.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:22:01]:
So, you know what I have?

Leo Laporte [02:22:02]:
That is hibiscus. What else do you have?

Jeff Jarvis [02:22:04]:
I have a ruler.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:22:04]:
I have a little Pica camera.

Leo Laporte [02:22:06]:
Oh, see, that's even better. My dad used to carry a ruler with him. He's a geologist, paleontologist. And when he was out in the field, He would always carry a geologist's pick, which is a hammer with a pointy end at one end, and a hand lens and a ruler.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:22:24]:
So it's about, it's 5 and it's a little, it's almost 6 inches long. And then almost 3 inches.

Leo Laporte [02:22:34]:
By the way, completely meaningless. I don't even know what 6 inches is. I have no idea.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:22:38]:
Dude, I have a ruler.

Jeff Jarvis [02:22:39]:
I have a ruler.

Leo Laporte [02:22:40]:
Your hand is 6 inches?

Owen JJ Stone [02:22:42]:
Is it? I'm making up stuff.

Leo Laporte [02:22:43]:
Didn't they, they used to say—

Owen JJ Stone [02:22:44]:
Stacy, I think your hand's bigger than mine.

Leo Laporte [02:22:46]:
That's 6 inches, but it's not really. My wallet has a little centimeter scale on it.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:22:52]:
My hand to the tip of my index finger is 6 inches.

Leo Laporte [02:22:55]:
There you go.

Owen JJ Stone [02:22:56]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:22:57]:
All right.

Owen JJ Stone [02:22:58]:
I got the reference. I appreciate your help.

Leo Laporte [02:23:00]:
Stacy, what you working on these days at that old Consumer Reports there?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:04]:
What am I working on? That's exciting. Um, I am still working on my legislation. It was introduced last legislative session in 3 states.

Leo Laporte [02:23:16]:
Right to repair? What is it?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:18]:
Oh, it's my Connected Consumer Products End-of-Life Disclosure Act.

Leo Laporte [02:23:21]:
Oh, that's right. That's huge.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:22]:
If anyone has a better name for it, feel free to send me an email. Um, and we're going to be reintroducing it in California, hopefully New York, Maybe Massachusetts and Virginia and possibly Oregon. So these are—

Leo Laporte [02:23:38]:
Nice.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:38]:
This is what I'm doing at the moment.

Owen JJ Stone [02:23:41]:
Yay!

Leo Laporte [02:23:42]:
Yay me! Congratulations.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:43]:
And then in October, I have a big report and a big research project coming out. So yay!

Leo Laporte [02:23:49]:
Do you want to talk about that, or is that a secret?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:52]:
They're like embargoed or secret or something.

Leo Laporte [02:23:54]:
Okay, good.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:23:54]:
I'm really bad at that.

Leo Laporte [02:23:55]:
We love Consumer Reports.

Owen JJ Stone [02:23:56]:
You're better than Leo. At least you caught yourself.

Leo Laporte [02:24:00]:
The secret password is—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:24:02]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:24:03]:
Now, we love Consumer Reports because of course Paris also works at Consumer Reports, Paris Martineau. And we have Nicholas DeLeon frequently on the shows. He also works. So it's a great group of people.

Jeff Jarvis [02:24:16]:
How long have you been working with them now, Stacy?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:24:18]:
3 years.

Leo Laporte [02:24:20]:
Oh, and you're happy? You don't want to come back to podcasting ever?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:24:26]:
I'm actually contemplating starting up my newsletter again.

Leo Laporte [02:24:29]:
Oh, good.

Jeff Jarvis [02:24:29]:
Oh, good.

Leo Laporte [02:24:30]:
You did such a nice job. We didn't mention this GigaOm thing, but when Om passed, God, everybody loved Om Malik. We did, of course, talk about it, but I would have loved to have got you as one of the original GigaOm folks on. You wrote a lovely piece. I guess you kept Stacy on IoT around just for that.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:24:49]:
I kept it around as an archive, but yes, it was a a good place to put that. And if you go to Space NIT, it's probably—

Leo Laporte [02:24:56]:
It's probably the front page still because I don't think—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:24:58]:
Yeah, it's still the story because I haven't written anything else for there.

Leo Laporte [02:25:03]:
Do you want to say anything about, uh, Ohm, or have you said it all already in this story?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:25:10]:
I feel like I said— I mean, we lost a really good dude.

Leo Laporte [02:25:13]:
He was a really sweetheart.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:25:14]:
A really influential— yeah, he was not a sweet man. I mean, no, he was—

Leo Laporte [02:25:18]:
You know, I never worked for him. He was always, he was always great on the show and lovable and cuddly. But I know the people who worked for him knew another side.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:25:30]:
Well, no, he just, he did not accept bullshit at any nature. Which is great. Yes, yes. I'm not saying that he was like a cruel or mean person, but he was—

Jeff Jarvis [02:25:40]:
He was demanding, right?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:25:42]:
He was demanding, but he also, he was, He knew— I don't know, he, he, he was very good at understanding the human side of tech and all its for good and ill and how people use technology. And he was brilliant. And when you didn't live up to that brilliance, you know, he told you.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:05]:
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:26:05]:
And so, but he would give you the shirt off his back quite literally. So he was sweet in that sense. But like, he was not like, When I think of a sweet person.

Leo Laporte [02:26:14]:
He was very patient with me then because he could have easily given me a lot more trouble. He probably was. But I miss having him on. When he had his heart trouble, we had him on less, just like you, Owen. You know, when people have health problems, the last thing they want to do is spend 3 hours on a Sunday evening talking about nothing. You know, suddenly priorities become More important.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:40]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:26:40]:
Anyway, love— loved having, uh, Om on the show, and we really appreciate— I really appreciated the, uh, lovely piece you wrote at Stacy on IoT, if people want to read that. Thank you for being here, Stacy. We appreciate it.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:26:52]:
Thanks. Y'all want to meet my new dog?

Leo Laporte [02:26:54]:
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis [02:26:55]:
Oh yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:26:56]:
I don't know if I— I don't know how this is going to work. Let's see what happens.

Leo Laporte [02:26:58]:
Let's, let's take a ride. Oh, she's so sweet. Is she a Border Collie? What is she?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:06]:
She's a mini Aussie.

Leo Laporte [02:27:07]:
Aussie. She's a beautiful little Aussie. Blue-eyed Aussie.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:12]:
Hopefully she won't be as loud as my other dog.

Leo Laporte [02:27:15]:
So Lisa wants an Aussie. The problem with them is they're very smart, right? And they need attention and they need, they need to work out because they're used to nipping the heels of sheep. Does she nip your heels?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:27]:
She does not. She's 7. I'm teaching her to dance though, to entertain her.

Owen JJ Stone [02:27:30]:
Good.

Leo Laporte [02:27:31]:
So she's What do they call that? She's not a senior dog. She's a middle-aged dog.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:35]:
She's a senior dog.

Leo Laporte [02:27:36]:
Okay. She's not a kid.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:39]:
She's not a kid.

Leo Laporte [02:27:40]:
You rescued her?

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:42]:
We rehomed her.

Owen JJ Stone [02:27:44]:
Nice.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:45]:
So, sort of. I don't know how— I don't know the classifications of rescuing anymore.

Leo Laporte [02:27:50]:
You rehomed her. She had a home, then she didn't. Now she does.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:27:54]:
Yeah, from her perspective, we kidnapped her from her loving home.

Owen JJ Stone [02:27:57]:
That's our loving hope.

Leo Laporte [02:27:59]:
Put yourself in her shoes.

Jeff Jarvis [02:28:02]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:28:02]:
What the hell?

Owen JJ Stone [02:28:04]:
These people used to feed me. Until AI can make a loving companion like a dog, it'll never be real enough for me.

Leo Laporte [02:28:10]:
That's really, that's a good point.

Owen JJ Stone [02:28:12]:
I don't care what you guys say about choices and videotapes. Nothing to create, create a dog, create the love of a dog. I double dog dare you. Artificial intelligence.

Leo Laporte [02:28:21]:
No, you're right.

Stacey Higginbotham [02:28:22]:
Go ahead.

Owen JJ Stone [02:28:22]:
Go make something that makes my heart melt. I'm a hardcore Poor person. I just saw that little puppy. I don't care about that dog, but I still said, oh, because, you know, it's a dog. So yeah, go ahead.

Leo Laporte [02:28:30]:
Now we have— we do have a tradition around here. Uh, I, I, I will, uh, tell you who Owen is in a moment, but Owen has it— we have a tradition. Unlike anybody else who's ever been on this show, Owen gets to close the show out. And I don't know, you haven't done that in a while, Owen. Are you prepared to do that?

Owen JJ Stone [02:28:47]:
I'm always prepared. It's in the contract.

Leo Laporte [02:28:49]:
Okay.

Owen JJ Stone [02:28:50]:
There's only one other person who's talked about Twits Can, and that's That's you.

Leo Laporte [02:28:54]:
You're the only one who's ever— nobody else, even these highly respected longtime colleagues, have never closed the show out. Jeff Jarvis, a real pleasure. Hot Type is selling like hotcakes. Everybody should go to Jeff's site and get autographed.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:09]:
Get an autographed copy.

Leo Laporte [02:29:10]:
jeffjarvis.com. We'll see you back here on Wednesday for Intelligent Machines.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:15]:
No, this week, no.

Leo Laporte [02:29:17]:
Oh, that's why we're doing this now, because you are going away. Where are you going?

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:20]:
I've got, well, Status, which is a wonderful site in New York, Oliver Darcy, about media and all that, is having its first event. And so I'm going.

Leo Laporte [02:29:30]:
Oh, wonderful.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:30]:
Times Center.

Leo Laporte [02:29:33]:
And Benito, have we replaced Mr. Jarvis yet, or are we—

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:37]:
Irreplaceable. Micah's coming on. Don't you know that?

Leo Laporte [02:29:39]:
Oh, that's right. Because Micah's got a new AI show.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:41]:
Exactly.

Leo Laporte [02:29:43]:
Micah Sargent will be taking over.

Jeff Jarvis [02:29:44]:
Micah was almost the immediate host In last week's show because Leo lost his power.

Leo Laporte [02:29:50]:
Oh, I know, I know. But fortunately, the reason I— okay, so this is all connected because I missed your book club, Stacy, because the electrician was out here so that I could put a battery backup in for the system.

Jeff Jarvis [02:30:05]:
Oh, good.

Leo Laporte [02:30:05]:
Turns out I thought I was gonna be down all afternoon, so I was gonna miss all the shows. I didn't prepare. He came in, he said, I already did that. Don't you remember last time I was here? I put in the 20-amp circuit and the special plug. It's right there. I said—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:30:21]:
You just didn't flip it?

Leo Laporte [02:30:23]:
No, I just forgot. No, it was sitting there. I've been using it. I just—

Stacey Higginbotham [02:30:27]:
I know you didn't read the book and you just needed some sort of excuse, but this one really is not a great one. I'm—

Leo Laporte [02:30:33]:
he came right during the show, so I skipped the show because he was coming. to put in the plug. I guess once he said, uh, it's right there, Leo, and that'll be $250, I could have probably come on the show. But by that point, it was so humiliating, I just hung my head in shame and went about my business.

Jeff Jarvis [02:30:55]:
So would your power have kept going? Were you plugged into your—

Leo Laporte [02:30:58]:
No, my power would not have kept going. That battery that I put in kept us alive.

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:04]:
No, no, no, no, no, that's what I'm asking. You thought you only had 45 minutes. Were you hooked up to a bigger battery than you knew? No.

Leo Laporte [02:31:12]:
No, that's another, another cause for embarrassment. The power outage was 16 minutes, but when the power came back, I guess it flipped a circuit, so I didn't get power. And, uh, I thought we were off, but we were on. And the battery is even getting juiced, but it was just the stuff behind me that wasn't working. So I'm just an idiot. I really am.

Jeff Jarvis [02:31:41]:
Leo does shows about technology, folks. Electricity. They all depend on electricity.

Leo Laporte [02:31:48]:
But I— but this week I got it. And now, ladies and gentlemen, folks, we thank you so much for being here. We do tweet every Sunday afternoon, 2 to 5 PM Pacific, 2100 UTC, 5 to 8 Eastern. You can watch us do it live on YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Kick, or download shows from twit.tv. We have audio and video at the website. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video, of course. And the best thing to do, because it's a podcast and God bless it, you can subscribe. It's just an RSS feed and you'll get it automatically in your favorite podcast client.

Leo Laporte [02:32:21]:
Just subscribe, you'll get it automatically the minute we're done. And now I give you the Reverend Owen J.J. Stone for our closing—

Jeff Jarvis [02:32:32]:
Benediction.

Leo Laporte [02:32:33]:
Our benediction.

Owen JJ Stone [02:32:34]:
So it's almost like you read my mind because you were talking about the power going out. A lot of people across the country have lost power, and I'm not blaming that on data centers. I'm not going to talk about the wildfires that are going across the globe. There are landslides in Nepal. People have lost their lives because of earthquakes right now. Now, the climate seems to be changing in a way that it might affect you. So as much technology that you have, make sure you get yourself a LifeStraw so you can drink water. Get one for each one of your family members because you need a gallon of water a day to survive.

Owen JJ Stone [02:33:04]:
I got a bug-out bag. I don't know if you got one, Uncle Leo, but you really need to have one. You need to have a LifeStraw, a Jeff Jarvis book so you have some reading to keep your mind straight. Something for lights. When the power goes out, a flashlight will help you out, but you don't want to be burning candles. There's lights that recharge, and when the power goes out, They give you like 5 to 6 hours of power. Start looking into things that might go wrong in your household and check with your insurance companies because they like to tell you that you got flood coverage, but you don't have flood coverage. And I know a lot of places talk about drought right now, but it seems like there's a lot of people's cars floating down the street, especially in my area.

Owen JJ Stone [02:33:37]:
So check your insurance, get yourself a bug-out bag. Uh, 2 of the most important things I have in my bag are vacuum-sealed cigarettes because in the apocalypse when the zombies come, I'll tell you what, I can get a pack of cigarettes.

Jeff Jarvis [02:33:46]:
That's crazy.

Owen JJ Stone [02:33:46]:
I can get all my work done with cigarettes. I don't have the gold.

Leo Laporte [02:33:49]:
You're not in prison anymore, Owen.

Owen JJ Stone [02:33:51]:
I don't know how much I can get done with them gold bars I got stashed up, but let me tell you something, these cigarettes are gonna get me a raft built so I can float on to salvation. But seriously, make sure you have that stuff together. And if you have older people in your lives, make sure that you have something you can help them and get them prepared. If you don't want to have a bug-out bag for yourself, go drop an extra flashlight and a solar radio off to Grandma.

Leo Laporte [02:34:13]:
You want to know what's in my bug-out bag? My, my NAS and my Vuvuzela.

Owen JJ Stone [02:34:23]:
Uncle Leo's old enough that if he doesn't survive, it's okay. But everybody else who wasn't in a cult in 1978, we might want to survive. So if you don't have a bug-out bag, you can email me. I'll send you a list of all the stuff I got. No affiliation with Amazon links or anything like that. I just want you to survive so that you can come back and enjoy another twit that's in the can.

Leo Laporte [02:34:44]:
This is amazing.

Owen JJ Stone [02:34:45]:
Doing the twit. Doing the twit. All right. Doing the twit, baby.

Leo Laporte [02:34:52]:
Doing the twit.

Jeff Jarvis [02:34:53]:
All right. Doing the twit.