TWiG 765 transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Twig this week in Google. Paris Martinot is here. From the information, jeff Jarvis for the City University of New York. Well, they did it, they did it. They banned TikTok. The president signed it. What happens next? What can the courts do? Is it all over for TikTok? Ftc banned non-compete agreements, but Mike Masnick says this could be the end of the line for independent agencies and the man who killed Google search. We find the evil genius behind all of Google's problems. It's all coming up next on Twig, podcasts you love From people you trust.
This is Twig. This is Twig. This is Twig this week in Google, episode 765. Recorded Wednesday, april 24th 2024. Inflatable nuts. It's time for Twig this week in giggles, the show where we talk about the latest from google and the google verse and the twitter verse, and we giggle a lot, and it's because jeff and I are just giddy and silly. Jeff jarvis is here. He is, can I? Is it still? Am I I'm?
0:01:18 - Jeff Jarvis
emeritus, I'll always be.
0:01:20 - Leo Laporte
They can't get rid of me forever the leonard tau professor emeritus for journalistic innovation. Where does the emeritus get stuck in there at the end?
0:01:27 - Jeff Jarvis
at the end, leonard tau, professor for journalism, innovation emeritus at the craig newmark graduate school of journalism at the city university now for variety should. But you know, can you cut a little bit out of the new craig song so we could go back and forth, okay sure sure, sometimes use that.
0:01:46 - Paris Martineau
Just like a quick seven seconds.
0:01:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I emailed you both today. I asked Craig whether he would like to come back on and he said, yes, good, so we need to get Craig back on.
0:01:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, we'll definitely play it when he comes on, that's for sure. Yes, yes, I have to figure out if I recorded.
0:02:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Now I feel like we need a craig cowboy song and pigeons too okay, oh, what if the pigeons were wearing a little tiny cowboy hat?
0:02:12 - Leo Laporte
oh yes, oh yes a country song about craig newmark and his pigeons. I remember the guy was gluing cowboy hats on pigeons is better.
0:02:27 - Paris Martineau
I think that I've become a yudio really, really, you can type more things in the song description what else should I say along?
0:02:36 - Leo Laporte
he didn't kill the newspaper paper no, he did not biz also uh he did, mortally wounded hey, hey, hey, hey.
0:02:53 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I won't say that talking about uh, that was rupert murdoch this is gonna be the most confused song.
0:03:03 - Leo Laporte
It's gonna's going to be. So you like Udio. Why do you like Udio better?
0:03:07 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I've used it exactly once and it was fine. I just liked because it had a Longer prompts.
It allows longer prompts, yeah, and I think that that's quite useful and I like that there's a different factor, for you could have a longer prompt and then you could select your musical influence type separately so you don't have to have them combined in one prompt. I like that you can kind of toggle on and off whether or not you want them to rephrase your prompts. On the back end we're talking about two competing AI generative music platforms UDO and Suno.
0:03:43 - Leo Laporte
S-U-N-O dot com and U-D-I-O. It's audio without the A. I figured out, somebody told me. Or studio without the studio, studio without the studio. Here's Craig's pigeon in cowboy hats.
0:03:58 - AI
In a little town down south where the newspapers used to roam, there was a man named Kirk.
0:04:06 - Paris Martineau
I love when the newspapers roam.
0:04:08 - AI
He saw the world was changing, the internet's mighty holy, but he didn't kill.
0:04:14 - Benito Gonzalez
the newspaper bids oh no, he never sold.
0:04:21 - AI
He had a pigeon on his shoulder with a little cowboy hat. Big stroll down Main Street causing whispers as they pass. People called him crazy, but Craig, he didn't care. He had a vision and a dream spread news everywhere. Now Rupert Murdoch came around with his entire night.
0:04:47 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh my God, here's the hook.
0:05:09 - Leo Laporte
It just blows me away. I know it's not great music who?
0:05:13 - Paris Martineau
cares. It's fun, it's quite fun and it's quite fast and it does it.
0:05:18 - Leo Laporte
yeah, it does it so fast, and I'm sure I think there's some thought that maybe there's actual real people's music in here, Like they're actually, but I don't, I don't know. Nobody's yet shown that.
0:05:34 - Benito Gonzalez
Well, it doesn't have to be. The music is made by 12 notes.
0:05:39 - Leo Laporte
There's only 12 notes. There's only three chords.
0:05:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah that's, that was great, that was great, that was great that was really good.
0:05:48 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, suno, all right.
0:05:51 - Jeff Jarvis
And thank you, Paris, for pulling out the cowboy hat at just the right moment. Very good.
0:05:54 - Leo Laporte
Where'd you get that little cowboy?
0:05:56 - Benito Gonzalez
hat. You put that on your cat, it's on my gallery wall behind my laptop.
0:06:00 - Paris Martineau
It's a tiny cat-sized cowboy hat. Oh which. I pair with my tiny cat-sized bolo tie.
0:06:09 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's so cute.
0:06:11 - Paris Martineau
She will wear the bolo tie. She will shake off the hat as quickly as possible, but I've gotten quite a few good photos out of both of them.
0:06:19 - Leo Laporte
So wasn't there a guy going around gluing red cowboy hats on the pigeons in New York a few years ago? Yeah, wasn't it Vegas? Was it Vegas? Oh, maybe it was Vegas.
0:06:30 - Paris Martineau
I feel like the New York pigeons are too wily for you to glue a hat on them.
0:06:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you have to sneak up on them, autobahnorg, these pigeons wearing cowboy hats. They're no laughing matter, because it's actually bad for the pigeons, I'm sure, craig.
0:06:46 - Paris Martineau
I mean, yeah, it was Las Vegas, Definitely not good. It was during the rodeo. They were glued.
0:06:50 - Leo Laporte
It was during the rodeo yeah, yeah, yeah, they were glued. Someone is putting cowboy hats on pigeons in Las Vegas. No one knows why.
0:06:59 - Paris Martineau
Such a dire New York Times combination headline deck. Yes, yes.
0:07:05 - Leo Laporte
The Las Vegas police said it does not appear to be a police matter.
0:07:10 - Jeff Jarvis
At this time, pigeons can't complain, I think they caught the guy actually, as I remember.
0:07:15 - Leo Laporte
I think so too.
0:07:16 - Paris Martineau
Did they catch him red hat handed? I'm sorry I'll leave. I'm leaving the scene. We need a soundboard for this show.
0:07:24 - Jeff Jarvis
We do need a soundboard for the show actually the New York Times, If.
0:07:27 - Paris Martineau
I had the power to make a toilet flush noise happen at any given point this show would be over.
0:07:32 - Leo Laporte
We'll get you one of these little stream decks and you'll be set. Yeah, the New York Times dubbed him the mystery bird milliner.
0:07:40 - Paris Martineau
Oh no.
0:07:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Somebody drank out on that for a week, yeah.
0:07:47 - Paris Martineau
Oh my God, no people were someone. Scooter X just posted in the chat that a group calling itself Putin, which stands for Pigeons United to Interfere, now claimed responsibility for gluing Make America Great Again hats to pigeons.
0:08:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, leave the birds alone. People, poor pigeons. Leave the birds alone. Craig, poor pigeons. Leave the birds alone. Craig's never going to join us this is from the 2020 election. Oh, that's terrible.
0:08:13 - Paris Martineau
Oh no, that's rough.
0:08:17 - Leo Laporte
Stop laughing. People don't like pigeons, do they? And that's why it's really, I think pigeons are great, I like pigeons Do you?
0:08:22 - Paris Martineau
I like pigeons. They're cute. I think pigeons are great, do you? I like pigeons? They're cute. They're just going about their business.
0:08:26 - Leo Laporte
They're amazing. Yeah, we like our pigeons, but I thought city dwellers thought of them as rats with wings or something like that, no, and I don't hate rats either.
0:08:35 - Paris Martineau
I mean, listen, do I want them on me? No, but they're part of the greater city.
0:08:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Out here in the burbs we consider deer to be tall rats because they eat our shrubs. The city people come out and say oh, look a deer. We say oh.
0:08:50 - Paris Martineau
Did you know that there's a serious problem with deer swimming from New Jersey to Staten Island? Have I brought this up on the show before?
0:09:01 - Jeff Jarvis
No, you have not. It's a serious problem. That's such a Paris story.
0:09:05 - Paris Martineau
First of all, I didn't know that deer could swim.
0:09:07 - Jeff Jarvis
What Staten Island got? A problem with our deer. What's the problem with that?
0:09:10 - Paris Martineau
They apparently, because apparently the deer are eating everything they swim over in packs onto the shores of Staten Island and cause havoc. Apparently there was a. This could all be. Hearsay told from my local Staten Island has become very cool among certain uh groups within brooklyn and my local staten island friend is obsessed with the deer aspect and told me that apparently there are groups of vigilantes driving around trucks and sterilizing the deer they're not paying the toll.
0:09:45 - Leo Laporte
It's true. They do it to avoid the toll Notice by the way, that they're very smart.
0:09:49 - Jeff Jarvis
They avoid the bridges.
0:09:50 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you don't want to go on the.
0:09:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Gothel's Bridge. You don't want to do that.
0:09:54 - Leo Laporte
No, you don't. That is just another New York. What would we do without New York, right, I mean?
0:10:01 - Paris Martineau
and New.
0:10:01 - Leo Laporte
Jersey. I mean it takes two.
0:10:04 - Paris Martineau
It does.
0:10:05 - Jeff Jarvis
A story from the New York Times four years ago. The corner of New York City that's overrun by deer, turkeys and feral cats, boy, the city is pushing a vasectomy program.
0:10:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, what Lisa always? Oh, this looks sad. This poor deer, he's just, he's looking at us.
0:10:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, now that I'm here in Staten Island, why don't they tell me this is the place to come to? I thought what's he got on his head?
0:10:26 - Leo Laporte
He's tagged oh, look at that.
0:10:29 - Paris Martineau
What a beautiful. I thought there'd be more to you. Beautiful seven points.
0:10:33 - Jeff Jarvis
They're beautiful, but they're stupid. God, they're stupid, yeah.
0:10:36 - Paris Martineau
I didn't realize they could swim I can't believe they're so buoyant.
0:10:44 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, we're laughing because if we weren't laughing, we would be crying because today the president signed a bill banning tiktok. It's official, so uh, really interesting story in the new york times about how this was accomplished because, of course, tiktok has um lobbyists and certainly has its supporters in Congress. So a cabal, a small group of anti-TikTok Congress members, secretly planned this. They had actually a name for the whole thing. It was a really interesting strategy to get this through. Ro Khanna, who was a California Democrat opposing the bill, shared his opposition through videos on TikTok before and after the vote. He says I voted no today on the bill to ban TikTok. It's hard to, because the bill itself was attached to a spending bill to support Ukraine and Israel, which many members of Congress of course, wanted to do was felt to be fairly urgent, particularly for Ukraine. It passed through the Senate for the same reason. They didn't separate it out and the president signed it, or he said he will today. I think he probably already has by now.
0:12:11 - Paris Martineau
I think he already has. Yeah, he already has.
0:12:15 - Jeff Jarvis
He was in favor of it.
0:12:16 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, he had said in advance that if it gets to my desk I will sign it.
0:12:21 - Leo Laporte
I feel like this is a subsidy for Meta.
0:12:25 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, I mean, it's a subsidy for Meta, it's a subsidy for Snap. It's a subsidy for, yeah, youtube Shorts. But I mean, I think that's all assuming that this somehow comes to pass, which that's a big if. If there hasn't already been a legal challenge, there probably will be within a couple of hours the uh.
0:12:47 - Leo Laporte
The plan was called thunder.
Kathy is surely writing her kathy gellis you're not happy the the uh, it's called thunder run. The lawmakers call it their secretive push I found the new york times story to push to pass the tiktok bill. Uh, they knew they couldn't get it passed as a bill. Remember, chuck Schumer stopped it in the Senate, so it was very clever to attach it to the spending bill to bulletproof the bill from expected legal challenges and persuade uncertain lawmakers. The group worked for the Justice Department and the White House. At the last stage, a race to the president's desk that led some aides to nickname the bill thunder run played out in seven weeks from when it was publicly introduced, which is remarkably fast for washington and unprecedentedly fast for this congress, which has only passed well, at last time I looked 27 bills steve scalise of louisiana, our favorite republican, the majority leader.
You don't get many opportunities like this on a major issue. This is not a major issue. Major issue.
0:13:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Well on the House. I'm surprised that Johnson put it through, since Trump is now pro-TikTok.
0:13:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's because Jeff Yass, who is a major, in fact, the number one donor to Investor no, no, he's the no, no, let me finish the sentence he's the number one donor in this election cycle Wow, whoa, $46 million. But he is, and I know what you were thinking. He also has 15% of ByteDance $40 billion and according to the Wall Street Journal or maybe it was, I think it was a financial times, that's a significant portion, a portion of his personal. He will. He will lose a lot of money. His personal fortune is sunk into bite dance. So Jeff, yes, went to president Trump and said hey, uh, you know this is don't pass this. And Trump came out against it. I, you know this is really bad for who? This is bad for the democrats. This is shooting yourself in the foot. It is.
0:14:50 - Jeff Jarvis
It is the youth.
0:14:50 - Leo Laporte
The youth are gonna, if they weren't mad enough already at biden oh, this is roe v wade for people under 25, I'm sad to say, because roe v wade is also roe v wade for yeah, no, it's's much more important.
But I think a lot of young people are furious at Congress that they would 170 million Americans. Tiktok spokesperson said the bill was crafted in secret, rushed through the House, ultimately passed as part of a larger must-pass bill. Exactly because it is a ban that Americans will find objectionable, they had to bury it. He added that it was sadly ironic that a Congress would pass a law trampling 170 million Americans' right to free expression as part of a package they say is aimed at advancing freedom around the world.
0:15:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Why do they hate it so much, that bunch? Why go to this?
0:15:42 - Leo Laporte
Well, I have a couple of theories. One is that it hurts the Democrats, but two is it's Chinese and I think they're xenophobic. Three, it it satisfies a part of the electorate that says you gotta hit big tech. The problem is it really is a subsidy for american big tech oh yeah, that's what happens again and again and again with regulation.
0:16:04 - Jeff Jarvis
They want to take power away from big tech and they end up giving more power to big tech.
0:16:09 - Leo Laporte
Here's the Washington Post. Trump got one thing right. Well, you never thought you saw that in a headline in the Washington Post. Banning TikTok would help Meta and Google. Congress's first tech crackdown in years is a gift to big tech. This is Will Aramis, who has been covering tech for a long time, formerly with the new york times. Um, now let's talk because, as you said, kathy gellis, uh, when she was talking, we had a very interesting conversation about three or four weeks ago on twit. Kathy gellis said this is a first amendment issue because you're cutting off the um. Uh, you're, the government is cutting off speech for 170 million Americans. Uh, arguing uh in favor of a ban was Brianna Wu, who ran for Congress in Massachusetts is absolutely a progressive. But she said if you knew what I knew she said as running for Congress, I got briefings. If you knew what I knew she said as running for Congress, I got briefings. If you knew what I knew about the dangers posed by TikTok, you would also was a victim of Gamergate, right?
so she's got scars of this she said you would absolutely support a ban of TikTok. I'm not sure I credit that uh. Now here's the question. There's a there's a long-standing tradition that uh Congress can especially regulate foreign commerce right. I mean we have cepheus, the committee for foreign investment in the us, um, but is this foreign commerce? That's the argument and that's why this would be a very interesting uh court challenge. I don't know what the supreme court would do.
0:17:41 - Paris Martineau
But I mean, what even about tikt TikTok would be considered commerce? It's not like it is.
0:17:47 - Leo Laporte
Well, if it is okay. So there are three grounds. This is Casey Newton writing in Platformer. Let's talk about the legal fight and how it's likely to play out. Interviews with legal scholars suggest government will have a difficult time proving its effort to ban TikTok is constitutional. But First Amendment cases are often unpredictable. They say, and here's the key, especially now.
Here's the key Instead of focusing on the threat, propaganda threat or the fact that it's owned by the Chinese, it's expected that if it does go to the Supreme Court, the government will argue it's a security issue.
0:18:28 - Jeff Jarvis
And they'll say it's secret and they can't tell you how. It's a security issue.
0:18:31 - Leo Laporte
Newton points out, the Supreme Court has previously held Congress cannot ban You'd think they could but they cannot ban foreign propaganda, including propaganda from China. And this is an old case Lamont versus Postmaster General. The Postmaster General.
0:18:47 - Jeff Jarvis
What year was that? What does it say?
0:18:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, let me look it up. 1965. Okay, congress told the Postmaster General to block propaganda from the Chinese government, to detain communist political propaganda sent through the mail. And then Congress said the post office needs to send the addressee a card asking whether they wanted the propaganda to be delivered. Obviously, to collect their names, you copy.
The Supreme Court ruled it had an unconstitutional, chilling effect on speech. They overturned the law. Unconstitutional chilling effect on speech, they overturned the law. So this seems to be that the First Amendment protections are pretty strong Data privacy. The other argument that government Newton says the government will likely struggle to make a convincing argument that banning TikTok is necessary for protecting Americans this way, especially when and we've been saying this again and again protecting Americans this way, especially when and we've been saying this again and again, and this is a professor of law at the University of Minnesota they don't even need to steal it.
The United States is a notorious outlier among developed nations for its lack of a national data privacy law. This means the Chinese could just buy from data brokers and other third-party aggregators much of the same information they would get from having access to TikTok user data. We've been saying that for months. So, first Amendment they're not going to win in the court on that. It is protected speech Privacy. If you don't pass a law protecting Americans from meta, you know it's going to be pretty weak. Americans from Meta you know it's going to be pretty weak. So they think Newton thinks that it's going to be a security argument.
0:20:31 - Jeff Jarvis
So Daphne Keller put in something that I didn't understand. I asked her to explain it to me because I'm stupid. Either blue sky or threat. That's the problem. Now I can't tell her. If anybody said anything. I think it was blue sky where she said that. There she read the law, read the bill, and there was a clause in there that talks about automatic appeals straight to the appeals court on this law like skipping a level uh and that's to hurry it up right, that's to get it right to the supreme court, if possible and and that there was a here, she says.
I finally read the tiktok bill. One thing I hadn't picked up from the coverage is that legal challenges to the law go directly to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and there's a short statute of limitations. So I said, can you explain? And she hasn't responded. I don't know what that means.
0:21:20 - Leo Laporte
So, the way this law is constructed, tiktok has nine months to sell itself, nine months from now to sell itself.
0:21:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Which they're going to refuse to do.
0:21:28 - Leo Laporte
If the sale is in progress, the president has the right to extend that for another three months. By the way, that nine months brings us up to the day before Inauguration Day. Oh boy.
0:21:41 - Paris Martineau
But it's also I mean, it seems incredibly unlikely that even if ByteDance in some world decided to sell TikTok found a buyer, china now has a say in any TikTok sale because during, I believe, one of the earlier waves of a TikTok ban movement, they uh these export control regulations that specifically say that, um, the chinese government now has to approve if someone is going to export a content recommendation algorithm, which is essentially the key part of tiktok. So if anybody wanted to purchase tiktok and by purchase TikTok we really mean purchase that For you page algorithm they would have to get approval from the Chinese government, which doesn't help the case, because then it says that it's in the thrall of the Chinese government.
0:22:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we don't think the algorithm is not for sale and Steve Mnuchin, former Treasury Secretary, who is one of the people who wants to buy TikTok, says I don't need the algorithm. There's some.
0:22:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Mnuchin. He's an idiot. Well I know he doesn't know what he knows.
0:22:50 - Leo Laporte
But some. It's an interesting case. I mean, is the algorithm some magic secret sauce or is it very obvious? I mean, recommendation algorithms aren't that complicated, are they?
0:23:04 - Paris Martineau
Anyway, I, anyway, I suppose that's what we'll find out.
0:23:07 - Leo Laporte
I think it's going to the Supreme Court. I don't know if the Supreme Court is so conservative that they might not ask for receipts when the government says security, security, trump's free speech, because that's the argument, trump's free speech, because that's the argument Rosenstein says the government can't just say national security and do what it wants, but courts, including the Supreme Court, just give a lot more leeway to the government in First Amendment cases about national security. What arguments? This is again from Casey Newton, quoting law professor Rosenstein, law professor Rosenstein. Rosenstein expects to see discussion of China's active manipulation of domestic media, including sweeping censorship and propaganda efforts. The State Department published a report last year that found that China employs a variety of quote deceptive and coercive methods. But you know, we've not seen the receipts. This has all been asserted that TikTok is used to propagandize or that Tik TOK is used to spy, and we haven't seen evidence.
0:24:12 - Jeff Jarvis
But the bill doesn't. But I don't know that. They have to prove that, because it's not like. This is a court case where they're accused of a crime. No, no, no, no, no no no, no, no To the extent that they're not accused of a crime right. The no no, no To the extent that they're not accused of a crime Right. The government just says we don't like them.
0:24:28 - Leo Laporte
You got to sell it. They're not. So those arguments this is what Rosenstein is saying. You can't just say security, security to the Supreme Court. They're going to want to see the evidence, so it is a court case, I mean maybe not.
Maybe TikTok just says, yeah, fine, whatever, no, they're not going to. It's a big market. Now there is a precedent. India banned TikTok some years ago, you may remember, and this is this is the Washington Post's point that this is, this is very good for big tech. When India banned TikTok, people just kind of almost seamlessly moved to Facebook's Instagram and to YouTube shorts. It wasn't, you know, meta's Reels YouTube shorts gathered up all of those people. Months after Meta launched Reels, google's YouTube debuted its own short form video feature.
I'm reading from the Washington Post. I'm reading from the Washington Post Industry analyst eMarketer predicts Meta could capture 22 to 27% of TikTok's US ad revenue and more than $2 billion, and Google captures 15 to 20% another couple of billion. And the precedent is in India, where they just moved right, right over. This is a quote from the Post. Again, they had to rebuild their audiences and some of the appealing features of TikTok were lost. But life moved on and I think that's probably what's going to happen. It's just. It makes just makes me sad, especially since Congress has yet to do anything about comprehensive privacy legislation.
0:26:04 - Paris Martineau
yeah, yeah it just. It is a real head scratcher as to why this was a policy priority, given the other things that were on the dial I think they really think that this is going to hurt democrats. I really do yeah, that's where we that's where we stand now in our politics.
0:26:21 - Leo Laporte
I'm sad to say, but biden went along with it.
0:26:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I think he's the same way, he goes along with being anti-230. He wants to repeal 230, which is just wrong and stupid.
0:26:30 - Leo Laporte
But it's old man technology um, yeah, I think it's just a generational um, but the white house says we're going to continue to use our tiktok account to promote the president for the election until, uh, we don't we can't, god.
0:26:44 - Paris Martineau
I wonder what the comp? What do you think the comments are like on the white house tiktok account right now?
0:26:51 - Jeff Jarvis
should we go look, I feel like we got it, you know look.
0:26:57 - Leo Laporte
It's not a look. This is social media. It's not going to change the world.
0:27:00 - Jeff Jarvis
It's not that important speech, though no, we've got to stand up for speech. It's's more important than that. It's not just, oh, it's social media. That's like saying, oh, it's just a pretty impress, oh, it's just a broadcast hour. No, it's the people's pretty impress, the people's broadcast hour. That's why we've got to be angry on their behalf, our behalf.
0:27:20 - Leo Laporte
Well speaking of which you'd like to get out to your comrades. You know, you young people, you should just get off your phones and go put your feet in the grass and smell the air. This is the birds Watch the clouds.
0:27:33 - Paris Martineau
I can listen to the bees on TikTok with all of the beekeeper accounts that I follow.
0:27:38 - Leo Laporte
That's not the real bees. That's fake bees. What is Biden's account?
0:27:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm trying to find that now. I don't think it's the potusgov.
0:27:47 - Leo Laporte
I don't think that's it's biden hq on tiktok.
0:27:50 - Paris Martineau
Okay, thank you wow, they didn't get potus uh, I don't think they can use brandon oh, let me pause that.
0:28:01 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to. I'm just looking at the comments. Thank you, dark brandon just yeah uh, signs a tiktok fan into law today while still posting a tiktok yuck, yuck yeah okay, that is an incredible tiktok user.
0:28:13 - Paris Martineau
Uh vibe, though he signs tiktok ban into law while still posting yeah, keep tiktok, keep tiktok, bro.
0:28:20 - Leo Laporte
Keep tiktok up. Joe is a dumbass. Give us the app, joe. Uh yeah, I'm here for petty joe biden bro has an account too. Keep tiktok. Saw this on tiktok dig. Need to keep tiktok. A lot of keep tiktoks wow look at that. It's all saying keep tiktok um if if nothing else it's certainly the case that Scalise says, yeah, this isn't going to be good for us in the long run, especially since Trump is now saying no, no, don't ban TikTok. Yeah, he's made the Republican Party the party of his self.
0:28:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, they slavishly do everything that he wants, except this. It's so bizarre. They could have had a border bill. They got rid of it because of him.
0:29:06 - Leo Laporte
Well, I don't want to get political on this, but I just uh.
0:29:08 - Jeff Jarvis
No, I'm just saying the inconsistency and I, and I just claim my interest in this because my son is a tiktok star and has made a career on tiktok salt hank's take on this he you know, a year ago started moving over to instagram.
0:29:22 - Leo Laporte
I mean, not, he just he's needed to diversify. So he does. Does YouTube shorts? He says at this point, youtube does not deliver for him. Very well, uh, but Instagram he, you know, he's got two and a half million Tik TOK followers but only a million and a half reels followers. But I think he's pretty satisfied.
0:29:40 - Paris Martineau
A million and a half.
0:29:43 - Leo Laporte
You know it's so fun to watch him him. You know he's got a cookbook coming out in october. He does these cooking videos and he's got his latest sponsor, kentucky fried chicken. What, wow he's doing. All right, my boy. So he's got better sponsors than we do. He's got a larger audience and he got a lot of larger audience within months and now he has probably his ad revenue. I don't ask him those numbers, but I'm sure his ad revenue is.
0:30:12 - Jeff Jarvis
So did he go? Where is he at, like Kentucky Fried Chicken headquarters? I'm watching now. Saucy nuggets dispenser, that's what he's doing.
0:30:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he's testing nuggets. Whoa. This is a risky thing. I got to say this is a risky thing. I got to say this is a risky thing to do because it's an ad right.
0:30:37 - Paris Martineau
Plain and simple and the comments say that you know the top. The second one is how much is KFC throwing?
0:30:40 - Leo Laporte
at you dog, right? I think in the long run people go well. Good, I hope you got a big paycheck out of that and they move on.
0:30:44 - Paris Martineau
Get that bag Every.
0:30:45 - Leo Laporte
YouTuber is doing the same thing, right, oh yeah. But yeah, let's see, he's got Whistlepig. That's a good sponsor. Nice whiskey manufacturer he's got some good sponsors. I know he flew out to New York to do Panera. He's doing all right.
0:31:07 - Paris Martineau
Pan new york to do panera. He's doing all right panera. Yeah, he's doing all right.
0:31:09 - Leo Laporte
Tell him to tell panera to bring back the french onion soup at panera city locations and the black bean soup.
0:31:12 - Paris Martineau
I shall it's criminal that I can't get a french onion soup, my local panera bread. What is the world coming to?
0:31:20 - Jeff Jarvis
I agree, I agree and in fact, tick tock bring back French onion soup. Those are our causes.
0:31:26 - Leo Laporte
In fact, saul Hank has an excellent French onion soup recipe on TikTok. So when worlds collide and all that right Get it while you can? Yeah, you can make it, make his own. It's funny because I actually wooed his mother making French onion soup, so I don't know how he knew that, but it all comes around. Let me see if I can find it.
0:31:52 - Jeff Jarvis
It was good soup Leo.
0:31:54 - Leo Laporte
It worked. Here it is Saul Hanks' French onion soup. That's what you're looking for.
0:32:02 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what you're looking for.
0:32:03 - Leo Laporte
Paneras yeah, this is the real deal. This is how I made it. I didn't, you know, it's funny. I taught him a few things. I cooked with him, for sure, but most of what he learned he learned on YouTube, from you know, youtube cooks, yeah, and that's his whole life. That's all he really wanted to be, and I think he's living living his dream. A youtuber, um well, let's see, this is what's really interesting. He cannot break through on youtube because it's more long form he has. He broke through on tiktok, for sure. The short form suits. You see how he edits really quickly. Yeah, and their sound is very sharp. It's all about sound. It's almost what do they call that? The kind of it's hypnotic sound. It's.
0:32:55 - Paris Martineau
ASMR.
0:32:55 - Leo Laporte
ASMR. It's fast paced, it's more visceral. It's visceral and YouTube is much more slow paced. Right, he's had a hard time breaking through. Reels is so close that I think he's happy. He's fine with Reels but honestly, what he does was for TikTok 2.7 million followers, I mean that's you know. There's a guy this French onion soup recipe that you just watched has 27.9 million views. That's TikTok. That's the power of tiktok, and he's not even close to the biggest tiktoker by far. Now I have to say he doesn't make any money from tiktok. They, you know their creator fund and all that. They don't share much revenue with him. Uh, they haven't made a lot of money. That's part of the reason. They're not.
0:33:41 - Paris Martineau
They're not profitable I mean they're not profitable, yeah but that's.
0:33:46 - Leo Laporte
He's smart enough to know that what you? You don't do it for their money. You do my mind on youtube, but you do it to raise your you know profile so that you can get a cookbook and you can get advertisers, get a tv show and all of that it's democratized work for exposure.
0:34:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Exactly how old was he when he stopped wanting to take over Twit. There was a time right. He still wants to take over Twit. I thought he did.
0:34:12 - Paris Martineau
No, we're talking.
0:34:13 - Leo Laporte
Well, he worked here for a while as a salesman and realized he didn't like that side of the business at all, so that was a good lesson for him. He worked here more than a year trying to sell ads and he hated it. It was a good lesson for him that he doesn't want to do that, so like his father yeah, I don't like it either.
0:34:30 - Paris Martineau
Thank god I met lisa well.
0:34:31 - Leo Laporte
Now he does a different type of ad sales well, somebody sells those ads, by the way he makes them, but somebody he has managers and people who sell that. Now here is a YouTube. Well, I don't want to keep going on Salt Hank and all that, but I could.
0:34:50 - Paris Martineau
This week in Salt Hank, if you talk me into it?
0:34:52 - Leo Laporte
I could. The YouTube stuff is just not as compelling. I think it's 14 minutes and so it's hard for him to make something as compelling. That's just because he's not suited to that medium. He's suited to the TikTok medium. Frankly, all right, welcome to episode two. So we're making some beautiful short ribs, we're going to braise them in a nice spicy broth. So this is just. It's not the same, is it? It's a TV show.
0:35:15 - Paris Martineau
It's very different. I mean still 100,000 views though.
0:35:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and 120,000 subscribers, but that pales compared to, you know, 2.7 million followers this is also a lot more work than what he has to do for it's true. Yeah, that's true, although those tiktoks are not that easy. That's an all-day shoot to do a you know minute tiktok. I don't know it makes me, it just makes so. So I say that by way of saying I do have a?
um, a conflict of interest with tiktok. I love tiktok and I and I was, and it made my son's career um, but I also think it's wrong. I just don't see the hazard that it poses any more than look. It's clear that the same hazard is posed by twitter, which is a hive of scum and infamy. Um, including chinese propaganda and russian propaganda.
0:36:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, this is the thing too china is awful because they censor.
0:36:14 - Leo Laporte
Let's be like china right, that's not the excuse. Let's not be like china. That's the whole point.
0:36:19 - Paris Martineau
Yes, well, that's depressing I think a hive of scum and infamy is potentially very good to show time it's.
0:36:32 - Leo Laporte
Actually I think the quote is villainy, but I I couldn't really call it villainy. So infamy is is better. Yeah, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. There we go. So now I don't know. You know I'm, yeah, the thing that bothers. Here's the thing that bothers me most of all, as much as we hate it. Government and politics is important because that determines our future. But what happens when these things happen is people through. I'm tempted to to throw in their throw in the towel. They throw up their hands and say well, you know, government doesn't represent me, it's just some nosy parkers in washington dc and the hell with them all. But when you, but that's kind of way, that's what they want. The less we interfere with our evil plans, the freer they are well, it's even more than that, leo.
0:37:33 - Jeff Jarvis
I would say now it's, it's an effort by one side. I'm sorry folks started to get a little clear, but give me a minute to destroy those institutions. It's not just we get to take them over, it's that they're. These are awful institutions. We're no longer in charge of them. Ergo we're going to destroy them. And so cynical acts like this let's do something that, even though the boss of our party doesn't like it's going to make the Democrats look bad. That's nihilism of the worst sort.
0:38:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and the long-term impact is is what I worry about, where people just get up. They know they no longer want to vote, they no longer want to participate. They just say, well, it's hopeless, I give up, I'm just gonna live my life and uh and screw them. Ban or not, says spy glass. This is the end of tiktok as we Now. By the way, this is the point. Whether they win and lose in Congress, what happens now is advertisers leave the and creators leave the platform. I mean, you don't think Henry hears this and says, well, I'm going to put more effort into TikTok?
0:38:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Absolutely not Well, doesn't Henry? Hang on for as long You're making a bet. It's just like stock market.
0:38:51 - Leo Laporte
You're making a bet. It's just like stock market. You're making a bet on the futures. Um yeah, but if advertisers I mean the service this is, uh, from spyglass is already reporting to bleed money, despite its size and growth, will bite dance, keep subsidizing it if revenue starts falling and if congress says you know you're gonna sell I mean it is.
it is what kills a platform, whether it gets banned or not. I think it's probably the case at this point that it's dead, although, as Spyglass points out, the best hope TikTok may now have is that Donald Trump comes riding back into the White House. 270 days from today is January 19th 2025, the day before inauguration. Surely, tiktok can argue for a one-day delay while they await one day's executive order.
0:39:32 - Jeff Jarvis
There'll be court delays. Yeah, wild story, but you also look at it. What if it does get sold to? What's his name? Steve Mnuchin? Mnuchin and Twitter's in the hands of Musk. What happened to public discourse? What happened to the tools that gave us public discourse? And I love it dearly and I want it to succeed. But Mastodon is still the little Mastodon and it doesn't need to be huge. But our public discourse is in bad hands.
0:40:03 - Leo Laporte
I think social media is really under assault. In general, I thanks to people. Yes. And his book. Uh, you know the how it's making teenagers insane, um.
0:40:15 - Jeff Jarvis
Mike Masnick had a great review of the book.
0:40:18 - Leo Laporte
Is it? Is it really a loss to lose? I know what you're going to say, jeff, but I'm going to let you say it Is it really a loss to lose social media? There's a lot, you know. Twitter is just made to get you in trouble, to make you upset, to ruin your day. I don't think that's a good place to spend your time.
0:40:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Do we really need something like this? So a fine advocate for the devil you are, sir, and I will give you one word back, which is Black Lives Matter. We wouldn't have had that, and Me Too, I don't think that's true.
0:40:50 - Leo Laporte
I think you said that but, Black Lives Matter was more than a Twitter account.
0:40:55 - Jeff Jarvis
It was ignored by media for centuries.
0:40:58 - Paris Martineau
I do think that, jeff has a point that social media has ignited waves of social movements at a speed and velocity that is previously unfathomable, and if we were to roll back the clock to where people did not have access to these places of community and means for organizing, that would be bad no-transcript, especially because they are the voice of people we, as somebody in the discord is saying, barry fm, we had social movements long before the internet.
0:42:06 - Leo Laporte
Uh, we had the anti-social movement. We had uh the suffrage movement, we had the civil rights movement no, no, finally, finally, but in 1965 we passed the civil rights Act thanks to Martin Luther King and a determined, nonviolent protest countrywide for years. That didn't need Twitter.
0:42:27 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I'm not to clarify. I'm not saying that social media is a necessity for any social movement. I'm just saying it is an expedient in a way that I think it is hard to ignore now. I think it would happen anyway, I think you can't really put that back in the bottle.
0:42:41 - Leo Laporte
ignore now, I think it would happen anyway.
0:42:42 - Paris Martineau
You can't really put that back in the bottle.
0:42:43 - Leo Laporte
No, I think it would happen anyway.
0:42:44 - Jeff Jarvis
In 50 years?
0:42:45 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. I don't think so. I think that people will find a way to fight for justice regardless of social media. I think that's myopic. I don't think social media is necessary for social justice.
0:42:57 - Jeff Jarvis
Easy for us to say I mean.
0:42:59 - Paris Martineau
Yes, I think you're correct that if suddenly all social media was wiped out, people would still find a way to organize and fight for justice. It's just a form of communication that makes that quite easy.
0:43:14 - Jeff Jarvis
It's more democratizing. Listen, in East Berlin they used mimeograph machines and typewriters. Yes, people will use what they have to use.
0:43:23 - Leo Laporte
And things like Signal and Telegram and WhatsApp are not social media. Messaging systems are used to organize quite effectively.
0:43:33 - Jeff Jarvis
But they're not used to convince. They don't reach enough people to do that.
0:43:38 - Paris Martineau
to bring in new people, to bring in more people yeah, you can organize the people you already have all right, I'll play uh, I'll play leo's advocate here um I got you two against one now chance that what we could be doing, what we're doing right now, is engaging in a moral panic ourselves that the idea that oh, tiktok's going to be banned, and now we're up in arms, imagining all the horrors that this could rot.
0:44:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Good counselor, good effort, but I would say that that's not really what I'm arguing. I'm arguing simply for the defense. This is what I do in my next book, the Web we Weave, on sale October 8th.
0:44:22 - Paris Martineau
Hey, there we go.
0:44:24 - Jeff Jarvis
I argue that it's about the defense of speech. I'm not defending internet companies. I'm not even defending the internet. I'm defending the rights that it has brought more people, and that's what matters to me, and speech matters.
0:44:37 - Leo Laporte
I mean, when the internet first appeared, I, like you, really saw it as an opportunity to democratize speech. You know, before the Internet, speech really was only available to the person who owned the presses or the microphones of the TV towers, and it really opened that up to everybody. And, by the way, the ills and the goods that have come out of that are almost an equal measure. Right and what? We didn't anticipate all the ills that might come out of that. But we did anticipate that the democratization of speech would be a good thing, and YouTube is an amazing example of that.
Anybody can make a video. Blogging was an amazing example of that. Anybody could create a blog. It's gotten easier and easier. Twitter made it even easier. Still, you didn't need to really have any skills at all and, technologically speaking, you could just write a line or two and ignite a fire. I agree that's a very powerful tool it, it. But it's a double-edged tools, double-edged sword, and it we and it we and it cuts both ways and um, and I'm starting to wonder if the benefit that we get from it is not outweighed by the ill that it causes who's to decide that?
0:45:49 - Jeff Jarvis
that's the problem is that's. That's a a conservative position, as in conserving the power that existed before to control speech. Every time there's a mechanism that enables more people to speak, there is a an effort to stop that, to control that, to to worry about that, and in the end, we figure it out because in the end, people have a right to speak and a right to be heard, not listened to. Nobody says that I got to listen to idiots idiots but I can try to be heard and, um, this takes away that from so many people who do not have the power that I've had for 50 years as a journalist no, as a white male cis tenured uh emeritus, emeritus journalist.
Uh, I've had this power for 50 years and there's a hell of a lot of people out there who did not.
0:46:43 - Leo Laporte
Yes, I would agree with you 100%. Anything that would take away the ability for everybody to have a say in their lives or in the conversation is a bad thing. So I'd agree with you on that. Let's take a break. We're going to take a little break and when we come back, the government did do a very good thing, a thing I don't. People don't people really understand what happened yesterday, but we'll talk about that in just a second.
Hey, it's this week in giggles, or government, or google, or in general, with paris martineau and jeff jarvis. Uh, first a word from our sponsor, yahoo Finance. Every time you know, on MacBreak Weekly or this Week in Google, it is not unusual for me to say you know, oh, the stock market reacted poorly today to the news that Google just fired 28 people, or whatever, and pull up a stock chart and I don't know if you've noticed, but almost universally when I do that, I pull up Yahoo Finance. I have a strong preference for the financial information I get from YahooFinancecom. It is a really good tool. One of the things we use on the air all the time is the so-called advanced chart, which I really love because I can zoom the scale in and out. Let's take a six-month scale and I can go back in time, I can look ahead, I can zoom it in and out, and that is a really valuable way to look at a trend line. The news headlines in Yahoo Finance are incredible. This is, I think people forget what a great tool this is for people who invest. When you're talking about your financial future, you know you want to do everything and you want to do everything right. You've saved, you've researched. I assume you've invested all you can. I know I did, but now it's time to take those investments to the next level by using the tool that every financial great has used for over 25 years Yahoo Finance.
Whether you're a seasoned investor or looking for extra guidance, yahoo Finance provides all the tools, all the data you need in one place. It is still, to this day, the number one finance destination, and for good reason, because with Yahoo Finance, you can get a holistic look at the entire financial news cycle. I'm talking breaking news, original editorial perspectives, analyst ratings and more. This is a really good way to understand what's going on in the markets, and I've done this, and you can do it too. Securely link your brokerage accounts for a unified view of your wealth, your net worth, your 401k, all your investments. That comprehensive perspective is very important. It distinguishes great investors from the also-rans, and Yahoo Finance ensures you have the insight to examine your wealth in its entirety. 90 million people use Yahoo Finance every month and I'm one of them. The real strength is helping you on your way to financial success. For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor.
Yahoofinancecom, the number one financial destination. Discover it again. I'm sure you've used it. It's still there. The number one financial destination. Discover it again. I'm sure you've used it. It's still there and it's still great. It's better than ever. Yahoofinancecom, yahoofinancecom and I have it bookmarked. I go there every day. Yahoofinancecom. Thank you, yahoo Finance, for supporting this week in giggles. Thank you, yahoo Finance, for supporting this week in giggles.
I have to say that I have been bound by non-compete clauses in the past. I'm proud to say we've never used them here, partly because non-compete clauses are illegal in California, but now, thanks to the FTC, they're illegal in the entire country. The FTC banned non-compete agreements that restrict job switching. This is something Silicon Valley has used for years. You go to work for Apple. You'll sign a non-compete that says you can't go across the street to Google or Meta, and what that does is it keeps workers from getting the optimum pay, from getting the best job. The Federal Trade Commission yesterday banned employers from using non-compete contracts to prevent most workers from joining rival firms Popular with labor. But the Wall Street Journal says it faces an imminent court challenge from business groups. It's the first time in more than 50 years that FTC officials have issued since Reagan I believe since before Reagan have issued a regulation to mandate an economy-wide change in how companies compete. This is a big change. This is Lena Kahn at work. I think it's a great thing.
0:51:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeff, explain why a non-compete to keep keep you from going to another job, from job switching, is a bad thing it's a bad thing in a lot of ways, in that it limits the employee's ability to be flexible and move around. It keeps wages down because it's harder for companies to try to get you and compete and give you more money because you can't go there. It limits in journalism. It limits people's voices. You get people who get fired from CNN and they can't go anywhere. Brian Stelter can't go anywhere else for a certain amount of time, of course, because he's also being paid by them for a while.
I don't know how this affects severance periods and it's just simply anti-competitive, and so I'm glad it's gone Now. That's not the only thing that happens. I also, when I was at Time Inc, I refused to sign the managing editor's contract because I had a non-disparagement clause and I said, as a journalist, I'm not going to sign a shut-up clause. Disparagement is my double middle name, exactly so. As a result, even though I quit though they would have been happy to fire me they wanted me gone. I gave up three years salary, bonus and benefits.
0:52:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm amazed. I mean, we do ask people when they leave to sign a non-disparishment clause and it's usually contingent. Their severance usually is contingent on that.
0:53:08 - Jeff Jarvis
That's very common and that takes a lot of guts to not sign it Three years, I believe actually if it was not the FTC another regulatory body recently had decreed that, banning specifically that leo tying severance to the signing.
0:53:30 - Leo Laporte
Non-disclosure you already signed it.
0:53:32 - Benito Gonzalez
It's too late I actually think that I mean this was like a Does it void it?
0:53:37 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, Okay, go ahead yeah it does void the pass Go ahead disparage us.
0:53:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Talk about how Leo eats sloppy hamburgers. Yeah, I'm a pig, you can disparage him.
0:53:50 - Leo Laporte
It turns out, one of the reasons the FTC could do this is non-compete clauses violate an old law. There's a 110-year-old law that prohibits unfair methods of competition, so it isn't merely them making up a rule. They're enforcing a law that's been on the books for 110 years. But one in five American workers has a non-compete, specifically that keeps people from working for a competitor. Patrick Delahanty, our engineer, said he used to work for Monstercom and had a non-compete that kept him from working for another job site for four years. That's very typical. Four years, four years that's very typical.
0:54:28 - Jeff Jarvis
And Patrick didn't get four-year severance. No, no, no, that's beyond your severance payment.
0:54:32 - Leo Laporte
He signed that on entry, as these are mostly signed not on leaving but as you begin a new job. Yes, yes, leaving, but I'm as you get a new job sales staff, engineers, doctors and salon workers. Salon workers are among the most common type of workers affected by the by these non-compete clauses. The reason is you go to work for a hair salon and they don't want you to go across the street to another hair salon and take all your clients with you yeah, yeah, businesses say, well, this is a good way to protect our intellectual property and our investment in our team.
Uh, the final rule becomes effective in four months. Uh, it was literally hours later.
0:55:14 - Jeff Jarvis
The two lawsuits were filed all the wall street journals going bananas on this.
0:55:19 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, did you read mike masnick's's write-up of this in Tech Dirt Leo.
0:55:23 - Leo Laporte
Not, yet. What did he say?
0:55:25 - Paris Martineau
I thought this was a really interesting perspective. I mean, he begins this piece by saying I think the spirit of this law is correct Non-competes should be banned. I like the FTC's approach. However, let's see.
0:55:41 - Jeff Jarvis
He doubts their authority to do? Basically that's what I'm wondering.
0:55:44 - Paris Martineau
No, specifically what he's saying is that it looks like this is being positioned to challenge like that people are have already filed a 570 page lawsuit within hours of this decree being dropped that not only challenges. Very shortly after the new rule dropped, long before anyone could possibly read the 570 pages, a Texas-based tax service company also filed the lawsuit. The 570 pages, I guess, is the lawsuit.
0:56:16 - Leo Laporte
Is the judge? Is the FTC rule?
0:56:17 - Paris Martineau
The timing, the location and the lawyers all suggest that this was clearly planned out. The case was filed in northern Texas. The law firm filing the case is Gibson Dunn, which is one of the law firms you choose when you're planning to go to the Supreme Court. One of the lawyers is Gene Scalia son of late Supreme Court, justice Antonin Scalia.
0:56:36 - Jeff Jarvis
It's all just a great deal, Also their general counsel clerked for Alito and is married to someone who clerked for Alito and Thomas.
0:56:45 - Paris Martineau
It doesn't just seek to block the rule, it's basically looking to destroy what limited authority the FTC has. So, the main crux of the argument is on more firm legal footing. Masnick writes claiming that the rule goes far beyond the FTC's rulemaking authority. Claiming that the rule goes far beyond the FTC's rulemaking authority.
0:57:12 - Leo Laporte
So it's a really interesting piece that Mike writes up because it says that this all seems to be kind of heading towards a collision course for the FTC and people looking to weaken its power.
The FTC, by overreaching or this is what the lawsuits claim is demonstrating why they shouldn't be allowed to do anything. It should be an act of Congress, not the FTC, that decides these kinds of things, and so Mike's concern is that this will actually undermine the FTC's authority in a broad way. In fact, the complaint says the FTC is unconstitutionally structured. The commission itself is unconstitutionally structured because it's insulated from presidential oversight. This just gives the Supreme Court this is totally an opportunity to get the Supreme Court in on this and say oh yeah, you know what You're right. This the the Constitution vests executive power in the president, not the commission or its commissioners. Constitution vests executive power in the president, not the commission or its commissioners. The FTC act it's a part of the executive branch Insulates the commissioners for presidential control by restricting the president's ability to remove them, shielding their actions from appropriate political accountability.
By the way, FCC is also run this way, by the way.
0:58:16 - Paris Martineau
The lawsuit is basically attempting to say that all independent agency years are unconstitutional. This is one hell of a claim, writes Mesnick, and would do some pretty serious damage to the ability of the US government to function. Things that weren't that political before would become political, and it would be a pretty big mess.
0:58:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Once again, they're trying to destroy the institutions.
0:58:36 - Benito Gonzalez
Sounds like the Federalist Society that's doing this.
0:58:38 - Paris Martineau
I mean yeah this has Fed society, Fed suck all over it.
0:58:43 - Leo Laporte
So if you're a conspiracy minded person, you might say this whole. I don't believe Lena Khan and the FTC would participate in this. I think that she is genuinely motivated by desire to make the world better for workers and for all of us, but unfortunately she has played into the hands of people maybe she is.
She's played into the hands of people, and the three two democratic majority in the fdc have played in the hands of people who would not merely want to preserve the non-compete but in fact would want to eliminate these independent agencies entirely. No ftc, no fcc.
0:59:22 - Paris Martineau
I imagine there are a few other environmental regulatory commissions they would like to get rid of as well yeah, and, as mike points out, it's happening at a time when the supreme court majority has made it pretty clear dismantling the entire administrative state is something that it really looks forward to doing mike is so good mike is great.
0:59:42 - Leo Laporte
Mike says non-compete should be banned, but the end result of this rule could be they end up being used more widely and that would really suck. Uh, okay, well, we'll watch with interest. Um, maybe premature celebration as ever?
0:59:59 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah, as ever well, you tried to cheer us up there, leo, but you failed I've got something that could cheer us up.
1:00:06 - Paris Martineau
Uh, line 104.
1:00:09 - Leo Laporte
Um oh no, there's an orb shortage uh, wait a minute, world coin is running out of orbs world coin can't make enough orbs.
1:00:19 - Paris Martineau
People are desperate for these orbs. They've got 300 to 500 orbs out there that were supposed to be floating around picking up eye scans and biometric scans to generate cryptocurrency. But people are so hungry for the orbs they can't make them fast enough.
1:00:36 - Leo Laporte
And they're, they're, uh yeah I love uh reed Reid Albergati's caption on his photo of a person staring at the WorldCoin orb. The caption is out of this orb, sam Altman, baked crypto project. Backed and baked crypto project. Worldcoin faces an orb shortage.
1:00:59 - Paris Martineau
I just thought it was a thought. Are they hard to?
1:01:00 - Leo Laporte
make.
1:01:03 - Paris Martineau
They got a lot of tech in that orb.
1:01:04 - Leo Laporte
There are currently between three, by the way, the orb scans your iris.
There are 300 to 500 orbs in the field, according to Tools for Humanity, the startup behind WorldCoin. They're manufactured in one factory in Germany. They look simpler, but they're actually packed with sensors designed to outsmart attempts to create fake world IDs, ensuring that each digital identity issue is tied to a real person. Do we believe any of that? I don't know. If you scan your iris, they give you some crypto WorldCoin, in fact and apparently that's been, except in what? Spain? Except in nowhere. Anyway, you get 10 world coins and then, oh, by the way, you get three world coins every two weeks thereafter.
1:01:55 - Paris Martineau
So it's like a universal basic income One man used his world coin to buy a goat over Easter, so you know.
1:02:04 - Leo Laporte
That man was Craig Newmark, Just FYI the value of one world coin is $5. Well, that's a lot of money, especially not in the US but in India or Africa. That's $50 they're giving you.
1:02:20 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, you got $50 to get your eyes scanned and then another $15 every two weeks.
1:02:26 - Leo Laporte
I can understand that. Who cares if they've got my iris? It's very Toscreal, right, Jeff?
1:02:35 - Paris Martineau
It's all about preparing for the future of something. Drink, drink. Last time I spilled water on my face.
1:02:42 - Leo Laporte
we'll see if it goes better this time well, maybe that's why you tweeted I need a hellgate new york investigation of all the various nyc nuts.
1:02:52 - Paris Martineau
We gotta talk about these inflatable nuts if for those who do not live in new york was this posted on 420?
1:03:00 - Leo Laporte
I'm curious.
1:03:01 - Paris Martineau
No, this was posted today, okay.
1:03:03 - Jeff Jarvis
I put it up on the run these nuts haunt me.
1:03:07 - Paris Martineau
They are kind of like a wacky inflatable arm. Deez nuts, that nut Look at that nut. Why is that nut so sensual looking? This is what's great about, not that one. That one's fine.
1:03:18 - Leo Laporte
This is what's great about New York City? It?
1:03:21 - Paris Martineau
is a small nut-based chain, local chain. You can go in there and get nuts by the scoopful, but over the last year these inflatable nuts have started appearing. That one is new. That one's the one near my office.
1:03:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you take a tour around purposely?
1:03:40 - Paris Martineau
just to take these pictures, no these are all just photos that I've come across in my day-to-day life. That's my skee-ball team in front of the sexy nut it demands to be taken, and then, if you scroll down, people responded with two new nuts. I hadn't seen An Upper East Side nut, and oh no, that's not it. That one, the Upper East Side nut. And oh no, that's not it. That one, the Upper East Side cashew. Look at it. Oh, that's kind of it's terrifying. There's another one that's a David Foster Wallace nut yeah.
1:04:11 - Leo Laporte
Or a Salt Hank nut, depending on your. Or a Salt Hank? Yeah, that's true.
1:04:14 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, so I mean, these guys are just outside the nuts factory. All throughout new york city there's a different one on in front of each location and I wanted to know why.
1:04:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Have you gone in and bought any nuts there?
1:04:28 - Paris Martineau
paris, no, never well, actually I bought some spices from there once.
1:04:32 - Leo Laporte
It is really only the case that in a place as with as dense as new york city that you could spot a trend like that. Otherwise there'd be too spread out and you wouldn't really catch on right away. But because everything's within a few city blocks, you immediately catch the trend.
1:04:51 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.
1:04:51 - Leo Laporte
The inflatable net trend.
1:04:54 - Jeff Jarvis
But without social media, we wouldn't know it.
1:04:57 - Paris Martineau
We wouldn't know it. What a loss to the world. They're by themselves.
1:05:00 - Leo Laporte
It is.
1:05:00 - Paris Martineau
What a loss to the world so I'm saying that in this tweet. The context for those who are not in new york hellgate is a great hyper local new york media publication started a year or two ago by some new york city journalists highly recommend their stuff and I was like hellgate, you need to get to the bottom of this, figure out who's because. Who is making these inflatable nuts? What is the direction that they are given? Were they told to make that nut look like an instagram influencer?
1:05:29 - Jeff Jarvis
the pistachio. What's what? Paris? What's fascinating, too, is that there's a variety of the nuts. Now there is one thing that all new yorkers know is there's one standard huge story high inflatable rat.
1:05:40 - Paris Martineau
Yes, it is used at all strikes I do know that scabby the rat and I believe that they've had a manufacturing issue to where the supply of scabbies are limited oh, there is more than one scabby, just like there's more than one world corn orb and more than one nut fashions, oh yeah is it just Mr Peanut?
1:06:00 - Benito Gonzalez
Extended Universe.
1:06:01 - Leo Laporte
That's a great question, or the PEU as we call it or the MPU See.
1:06:10 - Paris Martineau
These are all questions that should be answered in the investigation published.
1:06:14 - Leo Laporte
I think you're right. Let's take a break when we come back. The man who killed Google Search. I knew there was something wrong with google search and now I know why. But first a word from our sponsor, bit warden. Oh oh oh. I love bit warden. This is the password manager you should use. It's the one I use. It's the one steve gibson uses. I'll tell you why I love bit warden. It open source, which means you know it's good. It doesn't have a back door. It's properly written. But it also means the community can contribute back and has. That's why Bitwarden is always getting nice new features. It also means that Bitwarden for individuals is free. It's open source. It's free forever, unlimited passwords. It supports passkeys. I love the passkeys support. It also supports YubiKeys all of that for free. It is a cost-effective solution for home and office that works on every device you have and could dramatically increase your chance of staying safe online, always adding new features.
I've talked before how a SecurityNow listener actually added a feature to Bitwarden. We were talking about the fact that most password managers use a password derivative function, a hash called PBKDF2, which is flawed. It's not memory hard, and Steve Gibson said well, there are two very good algorithms for this, scrypt and Argon2, which we probably should start using, especially now that our machines are fast enough. Quexin, who was a listener, wrote two of implementations, one for each, and did a, submitted what they call a pull request to the open source repository for Bitwarden, saying hey, here I offer these to you. Bitwarden looked at them carefully, they vetted them, of course, worked with Quexin and said we're going to implement Argon2. And with that simple stroke of the pen, they made themselves so much more secure than other password managers. I immediately turned on Argon2 and turned off PBKDF2. That's just an example of how open source can really make a difference in this sphere.
They just launched a really nice, elegant new feature called inline autofill Makes it easier than ever to log into websites. Now, when you click on your name or your password on a website, you'll get a drop-down menu that lets you choose the login and fills it in immediately. It's so nice. It's how all password managers should work. Clicking on the login is exactly what you expect, what you'd want, but you do have to turn this on. So if you're a current Bitwarden user new users I think you'll get it automatically, but if you're a current user, go to your settings menu. In the browser extension, select autofill and then, in the drop-down box, show autofill menu on form fields to pick which option works best for you. W show autofill menu on form fields to pick which option works best for you. Wired Magazine calls it best for most people.
Fast Company honored Bitwarden as one of the 2023 brands that matter in security. It is the open source password manager trusted by millions For your individual use, but also for your office use. In fact, you can get started with a free trial of the Teams or Enterprise plan right now at bitwardencom slash twit, but you can also start using it free across all devices as an individual free forever. Bitwardencom slash twit. It starts with the free plan, the personal plan, and the businesses can add their own organizational vaults as well to this. Bitwarden also allows you to host your own vault. If you don't want to you know you say I don't trust anybody you can do that as well, although I trust Bitwarden and use them to host my vault. I just think Bitwarden is great, free for life. Bitwardencom slash Twitter it's a really good.
I know you use a password manager because you're smart, but when people, when friends and family, and you know how it is you say, please, can you just use a password manager, please? When they say no, it's too expensive, it's too complicated, show them Bitwarden free and I think they might just change their tune. I just saw a story somewhere that said like 50% of all corporate employees reuse passwords, like use the same password over and over again. Like half, you need Bitwarden, you need Bitwarden. Thank you, bitwarden, for your support. Bitwardencom slash twit Let them know you heard it here Helps us an awful lot if you do that. Yeah, biden signed it. It's in the big headline. Yep, it's. Biden signs tiktok bill into law, starting the clock for bike dance to defest nine months. I'm just sad, that's just really. I just I don't think our security is improved because of that and our privacy.
I don't think it's improved because of that. I mean, look, I have no problem with a government agency or the military or even a private company to say to its employees don't use this on our, on your you know company phone or your government phone. Don't no tiktok. I don't have a problem with that, that's fine, that's appropriate. But for the government to tell me on my personal phone I can't use TikTok because they might invade your privacy, screw you. You're trying to invade my privacy right and left. Who are you to say that?
1:11:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeez.
1:11:33 - Leo Laporte
Keep TikTok, keep TikTok, keep TikTok. Yeah, a chant is heard around the world. Keep TikTok. Well, no, you know what it's over. I think it's over. It doesn't even matter what we say. At this point. Advertisers will abandon the platform. Creators will abandon the platform.
1:11:52 - Jeff Jarvis
And it's just going to wither away. Tell Hank not to leave.
1:11:54 - Leo Laporte
No, hank, no, oh, I don't think he'll leave.
1:11:55 - Paris Martineau
Tell Hank to hold the line yes.
1:11:59 - Leo Laporte
But, of course, who benefits from this is Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. That's who benefits from it. Yeah, In fact by the way there's a good piece in the New York Times suggesting that this has been planned all along by Mark, like this was a strategy, what that sounds like a conspiracy theory.
1:12:20 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, what that sounds like a conspiracy theory.
1:12:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, um, well, let me see if I can find the article because I can read you. It started a few years ago. He started an article or a column? Ah, that's a good question. This is the washington post 2019, and it's not a opinion piece. It's oh, it is, it's analysis. What is that? Is that?
1:12:43 - Paris Martineau
opinion analysis is new. It's not it's not opinion news between it.
1:12:48 - Jeff Jarvis
It's news analysis mark's opinion, written by somebody who's not the opinion section, but yeah well, and it's willow rim is who I trust in.
1:12:55 - Leo Laporte
Uh. So we know that facebook was terrified of tiktok, that they tried to buy it and couldn't, just as they did with Snapchat. So they immediately cloned it. But TikTok has maintained its hold on teens and is making inroads with adults. In 2022, after Meta's flagship Facebook app lost users for the first time, the company overhauled it to be more like TikTok. App lost users for the first time, the company overhauled it to be more like TikTok. This is Will Aramis again struggling to fend off TikTok in the marketplace.
Facebook tried another attack, demonizing it. Zuckerberg took aim at TikTok in a 2019 speech at Georgetown University. While our services like WhatsApp are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections On TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions that these protests are censored even in the US. Is that the internet we want? He said. This is six years ago.
Two years ago, washington Post reports Facebook's quietly paying a major Republican consulting firm, targeted Victory, to push local news stories and op eds that painted TikTok as a danger to kids and society. These included stories about dangerous viral TikTok trends Remember Tide Pods, many of which turned out to be overblown or to have also spread on Facebook. Moral panic Still the narratives caught on, with lawmakers who raised them at congressional hearings. Still the narratives caught on with lawmakers who raised them at congressional hearings Last year. When the FTC announced plans to bar Meta from monetizing the personal data of minors, the company blasted the agency for quote, allowing Chinese companies like TikTok to operate without constraint on American soil. So, yeah, you could say that they lobb lobbied for this. They got what they wanted. All right, I'm sorry I brought it up again. I'm just mad as heck. I know they're really more, far more important things in the world. This is not the most important.
Speech is important speech is important but yeah, I mean, look, if we don't talk about it and fight for it, uh, exactly who is I mean, I don't think cnn's where else could bit warden advertise and speech on tiktok be protect.
1:15:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Thank you, this is why we exist.
1:15:06 - Paris Martineau
This is that's right, because we care about something you need to subscribe to club twit so that leo can keep doing this and reach 20 years not just me, you paris and you jeff, and all of you, you know one of the things.
1:15:20 - Leo Laporte
We had this. We celebrated our 19th anniversary a little late. We did real anniversaries last week, as you know, I mentioned it on the show, but we had a 19th anniversary party Sunday. We had an open studio, lots of people. It was so nice.
1:15:32 - Paris Martineau
How was that?
1:15:33 - Leo Laporte
So much fun. We went to Lagunitas afterwards and about I think there were about 20, 25 people in the studio, another 10 went with us over to Lagunitas and we had a nice meal and talked.
1:15:44 - Jeff Jarvis
You picked it all up.
1:15:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh, you're amazing. It was club members, but what well? Lisa is amazing, but one of the she actually used her personal credit card to pick it up. One of the one of the things I realized talking to all these people, we have the best audience, an amazing audience.
Yes, from a professor of physics at university of california, berkeley, to a woman who works at facebook on the meta glasses, to her, her, I guess, boyfriend I want to make assumptions her male friend who works on the pixel watch. He came from uh, fitbit. He does the fitbit integration on the pixel watch to it professionals, engineers, coders, from all over the world and it was really fun. It's always fun, and I realized the real benefit of twit is not us, you and me and paris and everybody, but uh, but the community, us and everybody, the community around us is amazing and so, yeah, one of the benefits of club twit is you get to be in that community, in the discord, you get to hang out, uh and uh.
Well, all right, joe is an art school graduate. Well, joe, we'll give you a pass, but but everybody else was pretty nice. No, I love joe. Joe came two weeks ago to visit us. The guy who does all of our stickers. Uh, it's a great community. You can go there on the discord, you can ask questions, you can get help, you can talk about all sorts of things that geeks care about space and beer and uh everything also says a lot about what you do in terms of the you're.
1:17:20 - Jeff Jarvis
You're serving an audience that's smart and savvy. They are very. If you didn't serve them well, they'd desert you.
1:17:27 - Leo Laporte
But that's the point is, we're all together trying to learn more about this stuff so one more benefit for your seven bucks a month besides the ad-free shows and the special stuff we do and video of shows we only put out audio for and access to discord is a really great community you can hang out in and I think community is extremely important. So if you're not a member of club, join the community seven bucks a month.
1:17:49 - Paris Martineau
Twittertv slash club twit if five to ten percent of you guys subscribe to club twit and we get to stay around me and jeff can finally make it out there for a live tape and that's actually true, yep, and we would fire all the advertisers.
1:18:05 - Leo Laporte
I love actually bit warden people like that. I'd probably just do them for free. Let's put it that way, because there's some that you know. We recommend stuff all the time that is free. By the way, after talking to the woman who works at meta, she let me play with her glasses. I bought a pair. Oh wow, yeah, and they'll come. And meta has just added a new feature to this, where the meta ai, llama ai is built in and you can say, hey, I'm looking at something, what is that? And it will, for better or worse, tell you what it is.
1:18:34 - Paris Martineau
So they're enhancing it you've got to test them out against your other glasses.
1:18:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the Brilliant Labs glasses are also coming in the next couple of weeks, so I have two pairs. Did you order an R1 Revit? I didn't, did you? Benito? Did anybody?
1:18:50 - Benito Gonzalez
I didn't. I wanted one, though they're so cool.
1:18:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Last night they had the unveiling. Oh, I'm tempted. The CEO did this and it's a curiosity. It's cool. It already looks better than uh the watch McCullough the humane pin yeah. Yeah, Uh, so they had the, the, the video, uh, there's an hour long. Uh, CEO talk.
1:19:26 - Leo Laporte
And there are reviews now on the verge and other places. Uh, you know, look I. I think humane probably wasn't the right form factor and was depending on a laser projection technology. That really was just a gimmick and it wasn't real. I think, though, that there is some and these may also be kind of flops in the marketplace, but the r1 uh, that limitless a device I was talking about there from rewind that I bought, and the brilliant glasses and the metal glasses these are all unlike the vision pro, I might add real steps forward into a world where ai is always on, is always your partner. You have augmented reality. I think this is this is very exciting. The r1 whole point of the r1 is it does a lot of what a smartphone does, but it doesn't have apps. It contacts AI. So if you say I need Uber it's an agent.
I need an Uber. It will go out and book an Uber.
1:20:09 - Paris Martineau
Look all of these are going to be, but why? I'm sorry to butt in here, because you can just talk to it, it's easier. But I mean what makes that better or easier than a smartphone?
1:20:19 - Jeff Jarvis
So we had Mark on the AI inside, we had Mark Spunauer on and he was there at the TWA Hotel, which by the way, did they ever send you any swag? No, they never sent me any swag.
1:20:29 - Paris Martineau
I was devastated because I would have really repped it.
1:20:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Anyway, he was there last night and so he spoke about it and he thinks that for young people younger even than you, paris it might be a cool device to have and you could leave your phone behind in some cases, though I don't know if that's true social, but what he said, I'll be curious to see what you think about this with your mother, leo uh, of a few years ago, that for old people, rather than having to go and open up the app and figure out this, and that if you just if you can say to it I want to go from here to leo's house, pick me up in 10 minutes, it can do that.
1:21:05 - Leo Laporte
right, it starts to get you toward that agentic interface is one step further from the actual nitty-gritty of it and one step towards a natural interaction with an agent. Yes, and I, I do think we're going to get there. I don't know, these are early day devices. Yeah, yeah, but I, I do think we're going to get there? I don't know.
These are early day devices, but I do really think we're going to get there, and I'm for I mean. The other thing is these are these are a 10th or less what the Apple glasses were. By the way, vision, the latest rumors on the vision pro is that Apple has cut the order in half the manufacturer order and have. That Apple stores are not seeing people come in for demos anymore, that they rarely sell more than one a week, that the interest in the vision pro and it seems to be the case anecdotally as well it's just dropped off the face of the earth I sat next to a guy on the plane coming back from austin who was using it the whole way and it does look silly.
1:21:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, you're pinching did you talk to him no, I didn't. I of course wanted to take a picture of him, but then I don't know what he can see out of it he can see, unless he's watching a movie in which he can't well when it came time to get the pretzels, he recognized the pretzels were coming and he asked for the pretzels, so he knew that with it on, yes, it's funny because I was sitting behind somebody on my flight back from mom's and he wore it.
1:22:19 - Leo Laporte
At the beginning I thought oh great, as somebody's wearing it, I can have. And he took it off after 15 minutes and it never appeared again.
1:22:24 - Paris Martineau
So I'm shocked that neither of you guys leaned over and asked them about it.
1:22:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I absolutely would have, and I don't talk to people on airplanes, I don't I don't talk to people on airplanes either, but that's an easy in if he'd had a rabbit r1, I would ask him about it if he'd had a, you know, but I'm not easy in.
1:22:40 - Leo Laporte
If he'd had a Rabbit R1, I would have asked him about it If he'd had a, you know, but I'm not interested in what his thoughts in the Vision Pro are. He's disqualified himself by buying one.
1:22:50 - Jeff Jarvis
I agree. I agree, the Rabbit added a keyboard on the screen.
1:22:55 - Leo Laporte
Ah, interesting, that's not good.
1:22:58 - Paris Martineau
But the screen is so tiny For me the.
1:23:00 - Benito Gonzalez
Rabbit's, just designed by Teenage Engineering, who makes amazing stuff, so like I just wanted to hold it.
1:23:05 - Leo Laporte
It's like that panic game device, it's like those little mini pocket synthesizers Look, we're going to have something like this, probably smaller than this, I think, for old people too, jeff and I'm going to include myself in this the idea of recording our entire life and then letting us ask oh, did my son visit me yesterday? What was that? Tell me how that went and what did we talk about. That's going to be very valuable. I really think I want this. I want this assistant, as you know, illustrated in the movie her. I want something in my ear or in my glasses or in my pocket that I could talk to, that remembers what happened, that I can lean on, uh, without having to turn on the phone and do all that.
1:23:48 - Jeff Jarvis
I think it makes some sense either of these and and you know if I were a student in college now and I could turn it on and then have it, give me the transcription and the summary of a lecture. What if hit of a button?
1:24:00 - Leo Laporte
what if you could say to it I would love this hey, could you cancel that subscription? I forgot I still had that. Oh, I just got a check. Can you cancel that for me?
1:24:10 - Paris Martineau
I want these agents to do stuff like that yes man, I would pay for it if it could cancel my subscription right now to z5 india and I think india's premier streaming service which I subscribe for in in the original language. I need to.
1:24:27 - Leo Laporte
I've got to set a reminder to cancel that after the show, for those who don't know, on april 20th uh, a day that will live just a day, uh paris got together with 10 of her close friends. By the way, she has so many friends she had to narrow the list down.
I would hate to be the 11th person some people had to part ways and you had a wonderful time wandering around doing stuff, but you ended up at your apartment watching the Togulu movie, the Indian movie RRR, which which is a crazy movie we showed a little bit of it and got taken down earlier.
1:25:05 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, we got our Twit.
1:25:08 - Leo Laporte
YouTube live stream taken down by watching that and Willie Nelson's new song about cowboys but highly recommend.
1:25:15 - Paris Martineau
If you want a wild movie to watch with your friends and you haven't somehow already seen RRR movie to watch with your friends and you haven't somehow already seen RRR, which apparently was incredibly popular all around the globe about two years ago, I'd really recommend it.
1:25:28 - Leo Laporte
So here's an article from Mashable uh, kimberly Gedeon went to the launch party a foot aching, an hour and 12 minutes, she said. But these nine features are sick and I am kind of impressed. Okay, big deal travel case that acts as a stick kickstand.
1:25:44 - Benito Gonzalez
I agree, though, with you, benito the form, the form factor is cool it's the design of this yeah, yeah, it's really, it uses shaking gestures to access the settings menu.
1:25:53 - Leo Laporte
You shake the rabbit like you've got maracas in your hand. I saw him do it on the screen and it was true uh it's not a touch screen.
1:26:00 - Paris Martineau
You undo stuff on on the iphone. It's not a touch screen. Isn't that just how you undo stuff on the iPhone? On the iPhone, yeah.
1:26:04 - Leo Laporte
It's not a touch screen. You'll need to use the scrolling wheel to navigate the UI. Look at this, though it can digitize your handwriting.
1:26:10 - Jeff Jarvis
This was. It didn't just digitize it, so that's a.
1:26:14 - Leo Laporte
somebody drew a spreadsheet, a chart, and he said make this into a chart and switch this column in that column and it imported it, did it and did it, and I don't know if this is google sheets. I get uh or excel, but that's emailed it to him too. That's amazing. This is using 4g. Uh, it now has a keyboard, which I don't think is a good idea.
1:26:38 - Paris Martineau
How does that work if it doesn't have a touchscreen?
1:26:40 - Jeff Jarvis
No, kidding Are you sure it doesn't have a touchscreen? I thought that's what they just said.
1:26:45 - Paris Martineau
You have to use the rolly wheel.
1:26:47 - Jeff Jarvis
That's a good question. If you have to roll around for it, that would be dumb.
1:26:54 - Leo Laporte
Play Spotify. I don't really care about that. The thing about that is that Humane can't do Spotify it it can order food, but it has to be doordash, don't care. See, this is already. I'm seeing a little problem here. Yeah, you can get an uber, not a lyft. Um, there's merch. Well, who cares?
1:27:16 - Paris Martineau
okay, is the merch cute, though? That's my question.
1:27:19 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah it is I bet you it is Teenage engineering that strap, I like that strap I do like that red bag.
1:27:27 - Paris Martineau
I could be into that.
1:27:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Is that a bag or is that the thing that's it?
1:27:31 - Paris Martineau
Oh, that's fun.
1:27:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it can also be worn as a wearable.
1:27:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Well no, they hinted at it.
1:27:40 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to wait on the Rabbit. I think the Rabbit's not quite what I want.
1:27:43 - Jeff Jarvis
The other advantage, the reason Jason uses it or he's got coming, but he also got included in the $199 is a year in perplexity.
1:27:51 - Leo Laporte
Ah, yeah, well, I already paid for perplexity, which is well worth it. In fact, I think I got a year of it, so that is a good deal. These are the glasses I should be getting. Well, they said April, we'll see. We'll see that. Have an OLED layer in the clear frame.
1:28:07 - Jeff Jarvis
It's using my lenses, so you're definitely getting your prescription of that.
1:28:11 - Leo Laporte
And I got my prescription.
1:28:13 - Paris Martineau
Leo, when you get them, you have to wear them for an entire show.
1:28:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, I think that that's our rule here I will, and you got to use that, I will. Micah sacrificed his head for this. You have to.
1:28:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I got for Micah the MetaGlasses because I couldn't get my prescription. They have prescriptions, but mine is too extreme for the MetaGlasses.
1:28:31 - Paris Martineau
So I just got clear ones. Your eyes are too busted for Facebook. My eyes are too busted for Meta.
1:28:36 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, I like this idea. I feel good about this. I think we're getting there. This is going to be an interesting use case.
You talked about the go ahead. Sorry, no, please, no, no, you go. I'm just seeing more and more kind of people saying you know, it's not really we're getting so close, but we may never get there and this is going to be just another you know, disappointment with ai and uh and I'm and I, I agree, there's absolutely that risk. One of the problems is they've already ingested everything they can ingest. Uh, there is some thought the next chat gpt, chat gpt4 will be very impressive by all accounts, but it seems difficult to imagine how they can get any better by ingesting more content, because it has ingested the entire world.
1:29:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Sam has said, the models get smaller now, and I think that's there's other things to work on, I guess. Stochastic parents said a long time ago that there was no need for them to be this big.
1:29:39 - Leo Laporte
It was kind of modular, by the way speaking of stochastic parrots and Timnit Gebru, I've been thinking about her article that we talked about last week with eugenics, and her argument is it's like eugenics primarily because AI is going to hurt the disadvantaged. It's going to put people out of work.
1:29:58 - Jeff Jarvis
No, it's also about them talking about creating the superhuman. Uh, this is, this is about. That's why the, the, the um, uh, transhumanism is putting things into the head to make better humans. Uh, uh, bostrom, who, who's?
1:30:18 - Leo Laporte
yeah, he just got uh defunded at his service got ended up oxford.
1:30:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Then he quit, but he was done at Oxford. He has not fully disabused the notion that a form of eugenics is fine.
1:30:32 - Leo Laporte
So there's some people who support it, just as there are people who support eugenics in other areas. That is not necessarily a concomitant of ai, though there are people who support. Okay, those are those are terrible people, those are terrible people but it's not necessary to say ai eugenics, and my point was there are a lot of things that disadvantage poor people they don't say ai eugenics, they say test trail eugenics. Okay all right. Yeah, I don't like those test.
1:31:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, like effective altruism started with mosquito nets in Africa, but it quickly went to eh, screw them, that's not going to make that much difference in the future. I know better uses of this money, See.
1:31:11 - Leo Laporte
I feel like, though, that Gebru, especially, doesn't really want more work on AI. The impression I got was, by its very nature, research into AI is a form of eugenics. And then I disagree with?
1:31:27 - Jeff Jarvis
no, I don't think. I mean, I know, that's not what. What Emile Torres says.
1:31:30 - Benito Gonzalez
I don't think that they go that far.
1:31:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, Uh, let's see, but uh, back back before you've talked about the limitless right. Yes, back before you've talked about the limitless right yes, I ordered it, but what about?
1:31:45 - Leo Laporte
have you seen the io one? Oh dear this is another one.
1:31:47 - Jeff Jarvis
It's ridiculous. Look at the size of this thing in your ear.
1:31:50 - Leo Laporte
Uh linked online uh 75 oh, I y o not, I uh yo I see the jersey person, I say hey, yo say hello to your new computer I yo one, so it's an earbud oh, oh, scroll down. You're not gonna guess the size, leo, yeah oh, it looks like a gauge in your ear.
1:32:17 - Paris Martineau
It's giant it looks like a giant. It's big, almost as big as that person's ear. It's like a head knob it's a knob for your head.
1:32:28 - Leo Laporte
They say it's the first audio computer well, it should be huge because it's got a lot of circuitry and battery in it. I don't mind that I.
1:32:36 - Paris Martineau
My question is regular earbuds fall out of my ear with a frequency that frankly, baffles me. How would this giant?
1:32:46 - Jeff Jarvis
thing, not this is custom molded.
1:32:47 - Leo Laporte
They're going to staple it into your ear. No, it's molded.
1:32:50 - Paris Martineau
It's like Leo's Okay how are they getting a mold of my ear?
1:32:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Because you're paying a fortune, because it costs $700 for the cheap one.
1:32:58 - Paris Martineau
So does someone come and take a mold of my ear or do I have to pour stuff in there myself, because that sounds complicated.
1:33:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Leo, how do you do it?
1:33:06 - Leo Laporte
I go to an audiologist. I wear as you know, I wear in-ear monitors that are molded to my ear. No one else can wear them because they fit my ear. You go to an audiologist.
1:33:15 - Paris Martineau
They put pink goo in your ear with a little string in it when the goo comes.
1:33:21 - Leo Laporte
Well, you and the other thing is you have to put some um tongue depressors in your mouth to keep your mouth slightly open. So you're like this, and then you have to sit there for a few minutes and then they come and they pull on the string and it goes, it pops out of your ear and then they have a perfect does all the wax you've ever accumulated.
Yeah, you should clean your ears before you do that first, I would clean your ears, uh, because otherwise, and I you know anyway, um, uh, and then you put it in a box, in my case, and you send it off to the jh audio folks. That's where I get my uh in ears from. And then, and then they make it. And, by the way, they keep the molds.
Well, at first I thought, oh, these will be soft. They're actually really hard plastic, so it takes a little getting used to to really shove it in your ear. But once it's in, you can wear it all day because it doesn't feel like anything, it's just there.
1:34:17 - Jeff Jarvis
But this is how my father's hearing aid was made. Yeah, good hearing aids would be like that, yeah, yeah so um. So the vad pro costs 1650 dollars yeah, I'm gonna.
1:34:28 - Leo Laporte
I'm gonna say at this point, there's gonna be a lot of people jumping in. This is the one that molds to your ear, not the uh io. So I'm gonna say that I will wait, because I think Humane taught us a lesson, didn't it? Yes, that there are a lot of people jumping on this bandwagon.
1:34:46 - Jeff Jarvis
I finally watched Marquez's video of the Humane and I think it was incredibly fair and had the receipts and it was right it was mostly, I think, the headline that bothered people because he said it was the worst tech product he'd ever reviewed.
1:34:59 - Benito Gonzalez
That's how you make YouTube.
1:35:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, I was just going to say and this is the downside to the YouTube culture is it really promotes sensationalism. You need to make those sensationalistic statements to get to garner views on YouTube. That's why I like TikTok. It's not about that. There is no headline. It's really measuring how long you stay before you go. I'm bored Scroll. I'm TikTok. It's not about that. There is no headline. It's really measuring how long you stay before you go. I'm bored Scroll. I'm bored.
1:35:24 - Jeff Jarvis
And Marcus said that he wanted the headline to be. It's either the worst technology ever made or I'm stupid.
1:35:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and he didn't choose that because I don't know, because he's not stupid, because he's not stupid. Thank you, Benito. That's Benito Gonzalez, who is also not stupid. We're very lucky to have a very smart producer for this show. Yeah, I think this is going to be just one of many, many, many bandwagon devices that I'm going to wait and see.
1:35:56 - Jeff Jarvis
I've already ordered three now. That's enough for now. I'll just wait. So, leo, one more question here. I was talking about this with Jason. I wonder what? So your interface with these things is going to be oral insofar as you speak to it. But what's the best? Return back, we see three chances here. Right, one is glasses, where they're kind of like oh, I can look at that, that's what, brilliant is doing or it's audio Yep, or it's audio to your ear.
1:36:20 - Leo Laporte
That's what Meta is doing.
1:36:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Yep, or it's a little screen which is the Rabbit.
1:36:25 - Leo Laporte
That's what our ones do.
1:36:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Or it's the Focaccia laser which is.
1:36:30 - Leo Laporte
That's honestly. That's all that Humane did wrong, but that was their primary product was a third stick.
1:36:38 - Jeff Jarvis
But basically, is it ear or eye for the return back? I don't know. I think it's probably both.
1:36:45 - Leo Laporte
There's no reason why glasses can't also have. So the Metaglasses have very good sound. The Brilliant I don't know yet, but it's definitely got a heads-up display I think it makes. The nice thing about heads-up display is it can not these yet, but down the road it can hover over the head of somebody you're talking to. If you're talking to somebody in translation, you can actually see a text translation. Is that better than an oral translation? Yeah, maybe.
1:37:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Um are you tempted by any of these devices?
1:37:16 - Paris Martineau
I'm curious with the meta glasses. I mean, I guess I should have looked this up on my own. Could I be reading a text message right now while staring at you guys?
1:37:27 - Leo Laporte
No more than you could with the. Airpods.
1:37:35 - Paris Martineau
Your AirPods did that also, where if a text message came in, it would go boom, you've received a text message from me, but it won't show things on my screen as I'm looking at the world. My screen being my glasses.
1:37:41 - Benito Gonzalez
That's a good question, aren't the meta glasses just audio.
1:37:44 - Paris Martineau
Meta glasses are audio the brilliant glasses might the meta glasses are just audio, then why are they glasses?
1:37:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Because they have cameras on them. Camera Camera.
1:37:52 - Paris Martineau
I don't like that. No then it doesn't interest me.
1:38:03 - Leo Laporte
I would be interested if I could keep up with my group chat while doing the dishes. Well, no, let's be honest while doing this show. Let's know, let's be honest.
1:38:06 - Paris Martineau
I do that already, because I'm seated at my computer. I'm. You can't mix technology and water, so, frankly, a lot of my interest in ar products is around doing the dishes in ar products is around doing the dishes.
1:38:25 - Leo Laporte
So if I could multitask more, I agree with you getting things wet. I think that would be great. Yeah, no, I, I listen to books while I'm uh. Yeah, so you get a open ai powered. This is the brilliant glasses open and they look just as dorky as that visual analysis the world around you, powered by open ai. So, just like the metaglasses, they have a camera which then can give you feedback. I like this. This is whisper, which is open ai's translation and transcription tool. Translate what you see and hear. It doesn't say anything about notifications. Search the live web for what you see. That's perplexity. So that's, uh, that's what. Meta is also starting to have subscriptions to all these services open.
1:39:01 - Jeff Jarvis
That's perplexity. So that's uh, that's what. Meta is also starting to have subscriptions to all these services open.
1:39:03 - Leo Laporte
Ai and perplexity probably, but I already do so. Hack and modify. Uh, it is open, which I like. Um, I guess that means they have an api. So anyway, they. They made this company made a monocle which I was okay.
1:39:18 - Paris Martineau
The monocle is really something, isn't that funny.
1:39:21 - Leo Laporte
I also like the charging device, which is called mr power. It should have a mustache, it should have a little mustache.
1:39:27 - Paris Martineau
It really should. Yeah, that should. That's probably an add-on so orange nose piece.
1:39:31 - Leo Laporte
So it does have an app that you put on your iphone or pixel phone. So that's, I think that this will be very interesting I don't see any reason why it couldn't do notifications at some point. Um, I'll let you know. I ordered it, uh, some months ago and supposedly it's coming. The monocle's been out for a year or two I love the aesthetics of the monocle.
It's really chaotic looking you have to put it in your eye. I don't like you have to. Oh, you clip it on your glasses you clip it on your glasses, yeah, yeah, I was really I came. Did anthony nielsen buy the monocle? I can't remember. I was somewhat tempted, but I think I'm actually very happy with this new form factor.
1:40:14 - Benito Gonzalez
I think the glasses will be interesting that wasn't, that was a cute experiment, sorry my only question for this kind of tech is like how much of this data is it keeping? Where's it going? I don't care who's holding on to it.
1:40:24 - Jeff Jarvis
In order to be in the future, in order to join the future, you've got to give up some things.
1:40:31 - Benito Gonzalez
But not all the things.
1:40:32 - Paris Martineau
I give it all up, maybe some things. Leo gave it all up years ago.
1:40:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, a, I did it just to be, you know, a podcaster and a broadcaster. But I'm not, you know. It's so funny because I do know people who've been very good at keeping their boundaries around. We were talking about the other day, about steve martin, who in the documentary his daughter is a cartoon because he doesn't he doesn't want to extend his notoriety to his family that haven't signed up for it. Now, I never did that.
My kids were on camera when they were little. I was just blah, and I've always been that way, because I just feel like that's just who I am is just. I got nothing to hide and maybe there'll be a consequence. I don't think so, but maybe, but nothing to hide. But now, at my age, I'm 67. I want to rush this along as fast as possible. I don't have unlimited time, like you, benito. This stuff has to happen the next 20 years, so I'm giving them anything they want, and I would encourage you to do the same, because I only have 20 years. So hurry up, okay, and so I. All of these are early days experiments. These are the Atari 400s of the AI revolution. These are very, very early experiments as is the.
Apple Vision Pro. So that's the way to look at it, and yeah, so what if they get everything I ever did? What are they going to do with it?
1:42:00 - Jeff Jarvis
My life's an open blog. I talked to students at ucla today and somebody asked me about that how public to be and I said it's got to be your choice. I'm an old white man with right tenure, nothing to lose, right? Um, you're right, I'm not gonna lose at this point. But there is benefit in sharing, there's a generosity in sharing, absolutely, um, and and but you know, you're right, do you want to share directly yourself, or is it through the company, or what do they have? But at some point you have to look what's the actual harm.
1:42:26 - Leo Laporte
That's my attitude, and I also agree with you, jeff, and I say this to you, benito it's your choice.
1:42:31 - Benito Gonzalez
I am an ethnic minority though.
1:42:34 - Leo Laporte
So like that's the first up against the wall when the revolution happens.
1:42:37 - Paris Martineau
So yeah, Jesus Christ Leo.
1:42:41 - Leo Laporte
If no, I completely understand that. As older white men, we got nothing to lose. We're obnoxious already. We're already top of the food chain, Maybe not much longer actually. We'll see. And you know what? If not, I wouldn't be surprised. Let's take a break when we come back, I promised it. The man who ruined Google's search.
1:43:08 - Paris Martineau
We're going to get to Google. Eventually we will get to Google. This is Google News this Week, this Week in Giggles with Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau.
1:43:17 - Leo Laporte
I'm Leo Laporte. All right, this was a great piece, I thought, and I'd love to run it by you to see what you think.
1:43:26 - Paris Martineau
I would say Ed says he's willing to come on and talk about this anytime. Do you know Ed? Yes, Ed was my guest on the show when you were gone.
1:43:35 - Leo Laporte
We're talking about Ed Zitron, who wrote this yes. I should have called him for today.
1:43:40 - Benito Gonzalez
I asked him before after Twig if he would come on Twig and he's like yeah sure.
1:43:45 - Leo Laporte
Okay, we'll get him on, maybe next week. Yeah.
1:43:48 - Paris Martineau
He's like yeah, sure, okay, I'll get him on. We'll get him on, maybe next week. Yeah, he wasn't available today.
1:43:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, he's an outspoken fellow, Ed. I think most of the audience loved him.
1:43:59 - Leo Laporte
There were a few dissenters.
1:44:00 - Paris Martineau
The Ed episode generated more comments on the Discord and Twitter Twittercommunity.
1:44:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah yeah, hey, don't lurk on Twittercommunity Sign in and we can, uh, we can participate, discuss, uh. But I liked what he wrote and I think it kind of resonates with me because I feel like this is what's going on. So, uh, and, and did he? Did he talk about this, uh on the show before? I mean, is this, am I rehashing something he talked about when I wasn't here?
1:44:28 - Paris Martineau
no, I don't think so. No, this is a new blog.
1:44:30 - Leo Laporte
This came out okay this week uh, so it starts by talking about the. Let me see if I can find it now. I can't for some reason find it, did I? Did I not put it in the?
1:44:43 - Jeff Jarvis
I put it in. You put it in it's where's your?
1:44:46 - Leo Laporte
ad dot at the man, the man who killed Google search.
1:44:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, there it is, 33, right.
1:44:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, whereisyouredat is his blog, so he talks about Ben Gomez, who was Google's head of search, gomes Gomes okay, from the very earliest time and much beloved and much beloved. One of the battles Gomes had to fight continually is the pressure from the sales side to modify Google search to improve revenue. Okay, this is really important. The story begins, ed writes, on February 2019. When Ben Gomes, google's head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dishler, then the VP and general manager of ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then the VP of engineering, search and ads on Google properties, called a code yellow for search revenue due to and I quote, says Ed steady weakness in the daily numbers and a likelihood that ad revenue would end the quarter significantly behind. Now the code yellow was as bad as it gets that's DEFCON 1 in Google terms and the concern was several advertiser-specific and sector weaknesses existed in search. They, I believe, if I'm synopsizing this correctly wanted search to change so that they would make more money. Larry Page very early on larry page.
1:46:32 - Paris Martineau
Very early on they had also noted, I believe, uh in there, that part of why search wasn't making as much money is because people like the amount of searches people were doing wasn't growing at the rate they expected. Like people were finding what they were looking for too quickly and then going to whatever they were clicking which, which was the original mission of google.
1:46:47 - Leo Laporte
Yes, they always said we're going to get you out of google as soon as possible yeah uh, they discussed how the search team wasn't able to finally optimize engagement on google without quote hacking engagement a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on the site uh, and they were reluctant to do that, understandably. Larry Page, early on in the history of Google, wrote in the very first PageRank paper, said that no search engine could survive if it sold advertising. It would corrupt the search. So there was always a strong wall between search and advertising.
1:47:27 - Jeff Jarvis
There's a little. There's a little little perspective there, which is that bill gross had done um, I'm forgetting what the brand was, but it became yahoo. Uh, where he was, he was explicitly selling search position, and so they were reacting to that in part.
1:47:43 - Leo Laporte
It wasn't just association uh, in february 6 2019, gom said he believes search was quote getting too close to the money, in other words, that wall was dissolving, and said he was concerned that growth is all that google was thinking about. This is 2019 is five years ago. Um, now fast forward a few years and Gomes is out.
A little over a year after this in 2020, google would make Prabhakar Raghavan the head of Google Search. He came from Yahoo, where he basically ran it into the ground by selling links. After nearly 20 years of building Google search, gomes would be relegated to SVP of education at Google In other words, pushed out, and he has been. It says he was chased out. Ed writes by a growth-hungry managerial types led by Prabhakar Raghavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume. Now, remember, suner Pichai is McKinsey, so he is also a management consultant, right?
1:49:02 - Jeff Jarvis
We forget that yeah.
1:49:03 - Paris Martineau
And I think Ed notes also in the piece he's using management consultant here as just a pejorative.
1:49:09 - Leo Laporte
It's the worst thing you can be, and I think we all agree that he's right. Yeah.
1:49:15 - Jeff Jarvis
As McKinsey is under investigation today for what they did with opioids. Yeah yeah.
1:49:20 - Leo Laporte
A quick note. Ed writes I used management consultant there as a pejorative, while he exhibits all the same bean counting morally unguided behaviors of a management consultant. From what I could tell, raghavan never actually worked in that particular sector. This is it, he's a bean.
Ben Gomes, he says, is a hero. He was instrumental in making search work. Who he says that? Well, I'll tell you who. The man who killed Google Search is. It's Raghavan, and he said Raghavan essentially dissolved that wall between search and ad revenue, and and search did, in fact and I think anybody uses Google knows this, search In fact was degraded to improve revenue.
1:50:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Right and it was been well, and it was also manipulated more by bad forces, and they didn't do. You know, then Matt Cutts isn't there anymore they didn't do enough to fight back against the manipulation of search.
1:50:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, raghavan was head of search at Yahoo from 2005 through 2012, a tumultuous period that cemented its terminal decline, love ed. When raghavan joined the company, yahoo had a 30.4 percent market share. This is at a time when google had 36 percent, so it was in the game. By the end of his tenure, google magahu was down to 13% and it shrunk for nine consecutive months and was even being beaten by Bing. Oh, the indignity. Oh the indignity.
From the very beginning was so shit at his job that in 2009, yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its own search technology and just licensed Bing's engine in a 10-year deal, which he says has likely precipitated the overall decline of Yahoo, which went from a $125 billion company to a $4.8 billion company in a matter of 10 years. Actually, I do not disagree. An interview with dan farmer, my good friend, in 2005 at zd net raghavan spoke of his intent, to quote align the commercial incentives of a billion content providers with social good intent. Uh, I, I think it's pretty clear that raghavan did exactly what he wanted to do, and it's exactly what Gomes did not want.
1:51:53 - Paris Martineau
Something I thought was interesting is this piece by Ed really took off, went big on, you know. Reddit, various social media places. On Hacker News also. I always really like to look out for the comments on Hacker News because they're sometimes quite interesting. And the top comment on this piece. I mean this person obviously could be making all this up, but it seems like he was a Google engineer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they say ex-Google search engineer here from 2019 to 2023. I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change from what I've heard was losing Amit Singh-Gahal, who led search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There's a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should have used less machine learning or at least contain it as much as possible so that the ranking stays debuggable and understandable by human search engineers that's interesting the person continues.
My impression is that since he left, complexity exploded, with every team launching as many deep learning projects as it can, just like every large tech company has, and the guy goes into more detail about how. Like, obviously the older systems have obvious problems, but the newer systems have hidden bugs and conceptual issues that often don't show up in the metrics and compound over time as more complexity is layered on. What I thought was kind of a really interesting take on this as well is like this problem compounds itself, especially once you get the money men in there too the money men in there too.
1:53:35 - Jeff Jarvis
There's another piece that's oddly kind of related this week which says that um, uh search engine journal had quotes, uh, I think gary aisles uh says that basically links aren't important to google anymore.
Oh, page, the essence of page rank, page rank which was links right which was all links, but but the thing, when I, after 2016, the election, and I ended up talking to google search quality people just out of you know, friendly what do we do? Um, uh, what they made clear is that all signals degrade. Because I was talking about signals of quality and signals of this, they said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but every signal gets manipulated and it degrades.
1:54:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah that's what our friend Matt Cutts was in a constant war with.
1:54:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, exactly, yes, so that even links, so that you know, I think it's not as if, oh, Google was fine and they screw it up. Google was in a constant war with bad forces and the bad forces started winning Now. Bad forces in this case is defined as two things, I think One is spammers and the other one is internal ad salespeople.
1:54:43 - Benito Gonzalez
And when did they change their motto?
1:54:45 - Leo Laporte
Don't be evil. That was four or five years ago. They dropped that.
1:54:50 - Benito Gonzalez
That all kind of lines up, and of course, today's story from CNBC.
1:54:54 - Leo Laporte
Google search boss one, Prabhakar Raghavan, warned employees to prepare for a different market reality. Things are not like they were 15 to 20 years ago. This was from an all-hands meeting.
1:55:08 - Paris Martineau
Did he say that things are about to get really weird?
1:55:12 - Leo Laporte
No, he was not. It wasn't Ragamon. This was an all-hands meeting that CNBC got a recording of. He said he's shortening the amount of time his reports have to work on certain projects. He was wearing a hoodie with the words we use math on the front. Uh, he was wearing a hoodie with the words we use math on the front. By the way, steven levy said that, even though sundar pichai is the ceo, that raghavan is who runs google. That's an interesting point. Uh, raghavan reports to sundar pichai, but he leads search ads, map and commerce. So, yeah, he's Google. He said. Google's digital ad business has become the envy of the world. Over the last three years, annual revenue had grown by more than $100 billion. So see, from Raghavan's point of view, he's a a great success. This is what he was put in to do. The problem is from users point of view. As a user of google, I think I can say this it's crapified.
1:56:18 - Benito Gonzalez
Google search results he's the cheap and shitifier he's an and shitifier like the best one, yeah very good at it.
1:56:25 - Leo Laporte
100 billion dollars over three years, um but I don't like. The problem with that is users leave. I just read a tweet from christina warren, my good friend, who said yeah, I'm gonna pay for coggy search, which I've been kind of promoting for a long time. You have to pay for this, but there's no ads. So to me it's worth it and, by the way, their search results are very good. Stephen Wolfram is on the board. It was bootstrapped by the founder, vladimir Prolovak, in the first few years, and then they raised money from members in an external fundraise. I love Kagi Search I know Christina does too because it's just as good as Google Search used to be without the ads. So maybe we have to pay for search. Maybe that's the key right, although I paid for Neva and it wasn't enough, was it?
1:57:29 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's the question here. It's part of the problem is that Google has it's entrenched at this point. Is it ever going to get I? Mean, yeah, is it ever going to get to the point where it's as unpleasant of a product experience to where the average. Joe decides to look for alternatives.
1:57:53 - Jeff Jarvis
It seems unlikely, aren't young people searching on TikTok?
1:57:58 - Paris Martineau
They are, I mean, I do think that's also part of it, that's all over.
Probably the biggest threat to something like Google is just a dramatic change in consumer habits. It seems like the average young person, I mean I don't know. When I was at a high school a couple of weeks ago for a career day, me and the other person in the journalism room were asking people how they get their news and everyone kind of looked at us quizzically and eventually kind of the answer was TikTok. But it seems like people of that age aren't searching stuff at all.
1:58:31 - Jeff Jarvis
So from my experience in bridal yes, I said that you make a beautiful bride. I would, wouldn't I Was it. Bride.
1:58:39 - Leo Laporte
Magazine. It was Bridal Magazine.
1:58:42 - Jeff Jarvis
It was Brides Modern Bride and Elegant Bride.
1:58:47 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute. Why did you need three different? Is an elegant bride different from a modern bride?
1:58:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Ergo the point of the story. Yes, so the new houses thought they had wrapped up bridal. We owned all three bridal brands. That's it, we own brides. That's it, that's over. And then one day we kind of and I was to start the bridal site and make it as cheap as possible, which I did, and fine, done, okay, we got brides.
1:59:10 - Paris Martineau
The master of the bridal bundle.
1:59:12 - Jeff Jarvis
That's the thing, and I quite enjoyed having to say I got to go to a bridal meeting and so one day we just kind of looked up and said, oh hell, what's that the knot? Oh, and it was because it was in Bridal. Especially the New Yorker. The readers stay around forever In Bridal. They flush out every 18 months and you hope for their sake they never come back, Right, yeah, so if you see a new audience coming in, yeah, fine, you and I are the age, Leo, where we're still going to Google because we did that the whole life online. But to get young people to change their habits is not that hard, yeah.
1:59:55 - Leo Laporte
The knot, by the way, failed also and is now just a wedding planner. Yeah.
2:00:00 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, now it's Zola.
2:00:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh, is that the place you youngs go to plan your?
2:00:06 - Paris Martineau
nuptials. There's Zola. There Do the youngs go to plan your nuptials, Zola.
2:00:08 - Jeff Jarvis
There's also something else, how many weddings a year? Do you have to go to Paris?
2:00:14 - Paris Martineau
I'm only at one or two a year right now, but I know it's about to get crazy. You know what's funny?
2:00:18 - Leo Laporte
It's so interesting because, as you are starting to go to more and more weddings, jeff and I are starting to go to more and more funerals, more funerals.
2:00:25 - Benito Gonzalez
That's really fun for you guys and I'm in the middle and all of my friends are getting divorced.
2:00:28 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, so we're going to look for one.
2:00:31 - Paris Martineau
Benito, you should get on that. It could be a good business idea. Life passages you could make the knot, but for divorces.
2:00:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, the untie, the unknot, the untie. Yeah, the untie.
2:00:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, talking about how young people need to be taught in college how to bait.
2:00:49 - Paris Martineau
Oh no, no, that's all they're doing in college, creepy.
2:00:54 - Benito Gonzalez
Incredibly creepy. They need to learn how to do their taxes in college.
2:00:57 - Leo Laporte
That's what they need here is by the way and you can see it's just not as elegant of a site. Divorcemagcom.
2:01:05 - Paris Martineau
Building tolerance for uncertainty during divorce.
2:01:11 - Leo Laporte
This is the number one divorce blog on the internet since 2016 the top thing says are stock options considered assets during divide?
2:01:20 - Benito Gonzalez
to be divided during divorce god, even the design of the site is super sad. It's sad.
2:01:25 - Paris Martineau
It really is quite sad.
2:01:26 - Leo Laporte
It's the saddest sight ever, ever, ever. Oh man, oh boy. Six tips for a great single mom, Easter.
2:01:38 - Paris Martineau
Accept help to speed up your court process. Reasons you should go back to work after divorce.
2:01:48 - Jeff Jarvis
How to survive the divorce process with a narcissist.
2:01:51 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wow, I should read that. All right, anyway, now we're depressed.
2:02:00 - Paris Martineau
Actually I'll send Lisa that article.
2:02:04 - Leo Laporte
Let's see. Do we want to do more? I'll tell you what we're. We're at the end of our two hours, our proscribed time, but I will let you put so many wonderful links in here Um.
2:02:20 - Paris Martineau
Hey guys. Uh, we'll take a trip to line one, oh four. One, oh four is waiting for you, you know what could be the solution to all those scary Boston dynamic robots? What Hair? Furry robots Make robots hairy is what Eve Pizer wrote this last week in the Verge, as she sums up more hair equals less scare.
2:02:45 - Leo Laporte
Here's a furry robot. Yeah, it just looks like it's decaying oh, oh, I don't like that actually at all, it doesn't no, no, friendly, it looks like it.
2:02:54 - Jeff Jarvis
It holds infections. Yeah, yeah, an infectious yeah, robot the furby.
2:03:00 - Leo Laporte
All right, that was your, that was your pick that was.
2:03:03 - Paris Martineau
That was my pick. It took up a whole 45 seconds and I think we could do a little news with meta's.
2:03:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh results were out, and how did? They do well, they did okay, but their shares still plummeted because they disappointed isn't that funny because tesla, who reported great losses, shares went up 12 percent.
2:03:24 - Paris Martineau
Yeah well, elon musk said that tesla should be thought of as an ai or robotics.
2:03:32 - Leo Laporte
That doesn't oh, I am glad to see that ghost, the very popular uh blogging platform that actually I've been thinking about adopting, is now using activity pub, which I think is great ghost is a newsletter platform well, they say newsletter, but it's really a blogging blog slash people leave substack, yeah, but I mean a lot of people use it for websites like 404.
2:03:57 - Paris Martineau
Media runs on go, yeah, really goes was started.
2:04:00 - Leo Laporte
In fact, I um, I kickstarted, I kicked in on the kickstarter. It was started as a blogging platform and I think that just the difference is that over time they've pivoted to smartly yeah to newsletters as well as blog, because really it's just another way of delivering your uh, your blog, uh hey, yeah, a uh little fun fact here 404 media's website, which runs on ghost, was designed by great designer aaron shapiro, who is the friend of mine, who so wisely called this the podcast I co-host with my dad.
Oh, so you know, props to him. Jason Kobler from 404 has been on. It's actually 404 is, to me, the closest thing to what Twit was, which was people who were in mainstream media. Who kind of left Did they all work for BuzzFeed? Who did they all work for? They all worked for Motherboard. Motherboard, that's right. And you know, motherboard just kind of went down the tube, so they just said, no, we're going to start our own thing, and so I absolutely support them. That's why we had Jason on, and I'll plan to have others on from there. Um, it isn't the best looking website ever. It's modern, I guess.
2:05:12 - Paris Martineau
Right, it's attitude, yeah, it's yeah yeah, it's dark mode, which I hate, of course you can turn off the dark mode click on the little sun oh, good day sunshine, but I bet I'm so much better Really. Oh wait, you can play Doom on the website. How do you do that? What Uh?
2:05:38 - Leo Laporte
now just Google.
2:05:39 - Paris Martineau
I like your friend, I like your friend, you can hear Google 404 media Doom and it's like the third response or I guess it's 404 mediaco slash doom.
2:05:50 - Leo Laporte
That's what well, that would be easy that would be easy.
2:05:53 - Paris Martineau
He he spent a lot of time coding doom I got a little extra budget.
2:05:58 - Leo Laporte
I didn't really have to put much work into the actual design, so let me build doom into it. That's, that's impressive, is it javascript doom?
2:06:09 - Paris Martineau
I mean, yeah, it is js yeah wow, okay, 404 media, you win now you can win at doom jeff.
2:06:22 - Leo Laporte
One last story, anything important oh, let's see here.
2:06:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Um, I'm thinking that we should warn our audience about beware the fake podcast invitation scam.
2:06:34 - Paris Martineau
Have you guys gotten this? Because I got one of the ones they're referencing in this. Yeah, the one that the invitation to speak on a podcast hosted by a member of the Barron's online community.
2:06:46 - Leo Laporte
Wow. This is from our friend Alex Kant kantrowitz, the big technology podcast and website. Legit looking invites can turn into a nightmare as scammers steal would-be podcast guests online accounts during the tech setup. Holy cow, do not fall for this. Do not fall for this if benito comes calling, watch out.
2:07:10 - Paris Martineau
I love that he reached out to ask Alex Samos about it and he goes that's nuts, I haven't heard of this one. Podcasts is nothing sacred. I agree, alex Samos. This is the final frontier.
2:07:23 - Leo Laporte
So is this the one that Johnny Jett got scammed by Sounds?
2:07:28 - Benito Gonzalez
like it. Yeah, that's what happened?
2:07:29 - Leo Laporte
Johnny Jett got scammed by? Sounds like it. Yeah, that's what happened. Johnny Jett fell for this. Poor guy lost his entire social and bank accounts and everything. On this Two weeks ago, alex writes a podcast with, quote a top 1% audience whose listener net worth averaged $2.5 million. See, as soon as I read that, I go. Yeah, that's a scam. Asked me to join as a guest. The host was familiar with your work, citing a recent cnbc appearance, and seemed ready to hold an engaging conversation. It seemed worthwhile, except the podcast was fake. With a bit of research I found no evidence the host had ever spoken on a podcast, let alone alone hosted one On YouTube. He had a channel with one video and one subscriber and when I asked for a link to his show he uninvited me. So maybe that's the thing to do is say yeah, let me know more about your show. Where can I hear it? What a scam. What a scam. That's terrible.
2:08:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I guess, I guess these people have so much time but, like when respectable outlets ask me to go on, I look at my schedule and I'm shocked that these people have so much time. But when respectable outlets ask me to go on, I look at my schedule and I'm like I don't know if I have time to do all the prep calls and the after calls and the blah blah blah, I hate prep calls.
2:08:41 - Leo Laporte
They use fake podcast sets to hawk products, mobile game sites, that juice download counts. Oh, iheart did that. Preying on potential podcast guests to steal their online credentials. Wow, I bet you, that's what happened to johnny jet. We he boy.
2:08:58 - Jeff Jarvis
He had a terrible tale of woe wow that's be warned people, yeah yeah, uh, all right if it's.
2:09:07 - Benito Gonzalez
If it's not, benito, don't do it yeah, if benito calls to me, though, please, please, reply to me yeah, reply to benito only and send her all send benito says so go even if I ask for your social security number, you need to give it to me he needs it, he really needs it, and we don't charge you to be on the podcast, but but we do like to ask for a deposit, so we will need a credit card.
2:09:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, just in case you trash the room, actually a debit card specifically. Oh, a debit card Very nice, so that you can't, you know get that back Very very nice.
2:09:40 - Paris Martineau
You can't do a charge back.
2:09:55 - Leo Laporte
Let's take a little pause. That refreshes and we will be back with your picks of the week. You are watching this week in google. No changelog this week, but if you really hanker for one, just go look at what maps is doing.
2:10:00 - Paris Martineau
There's all sorts of new stuff in google maps. Yeah, I hear you can turn left and right now.
2:10:02 - Leo Laporte
It's crazy, that's incredible. All right, let's uh kick things off with paris martineau's thing of the week all right, I was gonna talk about this cool little web.
2:10:13 - Paris Martineau
You stole my web space. That was not, okay, listen, you can talk about it then, because I've got a different pick. Good, take your pick back, my pick it's a fun little thing back you know what the problem is.
2:10:26 - Leo Laporte
Par Paris and I are now both reading the same sources Hacker News.
2:10:31 - Paris Martineau
Pinboards Fest. I did see it on there and I was like, oh, this is Leo Bate, I'm going to talk about this in the show. But no, you can talk about it, because I forgot we were talking before. But it reminded me of my true pick, which is called Boy Room. Boy Room, what's Boy?
2:10:45 - Leo Laporte
Room.
2:10:50 - Paris Martineau
I'll read the opening to a New York Times piece about boy room first. In her new video series, comedian Rachel Koster explores some of the foulest, most unsightly corners of New York City. No, not the grimy sidewalks of Times Square or the platforms of especially smelly subway stations. Miss Koster trains her critical eye on the squalid apartments of male 20-somethings. It's a TikTok series that has been coming across my thing. This is where she goes into the apartment of a man who just identifies himself as middle part, which is spray painted on his wall. And it is actually like it is a full tour of these boys rooms and they are.
2:11:29 - Leo Laporte
What a brilliant. They are grim. What a brilliant TikTok.
2:11:33 - Paris Martineau
May I note that there's bell hooks on his nightstand there's also just a bunch of random sodas and I think that's a Slim.
2:11:42 - Leo Laporte
Jim that he ate through the wrapper and old Spam yeah.
2:11:46 - Paris Martineau
It's incredible.
2:11:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I really implore you to go. I can't believe she's sitting in there. No, on that bed.
2:11:54 - Paris Martineau
There's also towards the end. She says they had to bring in special lights to light the room because it is so dark in this room with the overhead lights on that they could not film. He does have dark hand, which I guess is good.
2:12:08 - Leo Laporte
Always good.
2:12:09 - Paris Martineau
Always good to have some around, yep and then at the end she offers, uh, recommendations on how to fix all of the rooms. Uh, so I don't know, this has really been um, I don't know, it's been nice she says, I almost gagged in the smell of cigarettes when I walked in.
2:12:25 - Leo Laporte
Wow, this is great, he has a rat's tail that yeah, levi, 24 and ridgewood oh, it's his own rat his own rat tail, he also has jorts.
2:12:38 - Paris Martineau
Uh, he has a bunch of pants tables wow.
2:12:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, ladies, snap these guys up, wow yeah, so you know it uh you know, it's really quite interesting I.
2:12:51 - Leo Laporte
I think this is such a brilliant idea for a tiktok um, and this is why they're also on instagram, if tiktok goes yeah and I think they're smart. Yeah, only 112 000 followers, but I think you're gonna make the difference. By the way, I just lost my doom game on 404 media, so I'm gonna have to start, oh rip yeah, sad, sad, uh, knee deep in the dead, the shores of hell, inferno.
Your choice, the shareware version. Oh, he didn't bother putting the full paid version on there. Wow, isn't that cute. That's so cool. It's really quite cute, love it all right, all right. Now talk about equinoxspace well, it's just a silly thing. Did you play it? Did you finish it?
2:13:37 - Paris Martineau
I didn't finish it. I couldn't, I could. I only played a little bit and then I couldn't find the first thing. You're supposed to find, that access code. Oh, I found it. I'm an idiot, yeah where is it?
2:13:48 - Leo Laporte
it's, you'll find it. It's the idea. This is actually kind of a cool idea. It's really cool. It's all in javascript or maybe web sm. Uh, it's really a show-off for this company that does this kind of thing.
2:14:02 - Paris Martineau
Um, oops, let's see it's a browser-based, like point and click style game yeah, yeah, and it's fun. Where you wake up on a spaceship that's been caught in some asteroids. While you're passed out, everybody else evacuated and you're being guided by the AI voice assistant to try and keep everything going.
2:14:21 - Leo Laporte
You can turn on the sound Benita.
2:14:23 - Equinox
Our ship was hit by an asteroid on our way to planet Astralis. All other passengers were able to evacuate, while you were unconscious, as the onboard AI assistant.
2:14:33 - Leo Laporte
I guess I can't do anything, yet I have to listen to the exposition.
2:14:46 - Paris Martineau
Alright, show me where the access card is. I don't think that one opens. I was playing this before.
2:14:55 - Equinox
I need you to find a way to access the ship's cockpit and get us out of here.
2:14:59 - Leo Laporte
Here is the hub where we all hang out and look at a projected universe, Uh-oh. But I have no time to do this because the asteroids are coming. Let's look in the cafe. Well, there's stuff here. Just wander around and go to all the different places that you can go. This way is restricted, so we can't get in here unless we can find this ID. So he's going to tell me. You're just a simple AI.
2:15:38 - Benito Gonzalez
I do like the overall design of this game, isn't it pretty?
2:15:42 - Leo Laporte
It's really cute. It's a fairly simple game. It's not the most complicated game in the world. It took me about 15 minutes to end it, but you know it's fun and the idea is it's free and it's online. Equinoxspace there is, I know, I can't remember where I found.
2:16:00 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it's kind of hard to find the access. Oh, there it is. Gosh darn it.
2:16:05 - Leo Laporte
So, and then now we go to the hub again.
2:16:07 - Jeff Jarvis
We go back because we're trying to get to the If the AI were so smart, wouldn't it know where it is and tell you it?
2:16:11 - Leo Laporte
did. In fact, it gave me a hint. It said well, the last time the access code was used, so now we have to get aboard.
2:16:18 - Equinox
Now listen up. This ship is equipped with an emergency warp system that should allow us to instantly get away from oh good, we can use the emergency warp system. That's great.
2:16:28 - Leo Laporte
Deus Ex Machina yeah it's very much like Deus Ex, kind of I'm making a joke about oh, but there is actually a game called Deus Ex, believe it or not. So I'll take a seat, but the engine won't work. So there's a few steps. I don't want to spoil the game for anybody, but there's a few things you have to do. There's a puzzle you have to solve, and it's fun. I really enjoy it. Notice, the wormhole sensor, quantum calibrator and orbital mapper are all off.
I think if we turn those on. There's the orbital mapper, here's the wormhole sensor, but where is the other doohickey?
2:17:14 - Paris Martineau
Is it that red? It's over there to your left, I think, right this thing, Is that flashing red light? Yeah Up there. Cautiously press button.
2:17:23 - Leo Laporte
Now let's launch the warp and get the hell out of here, because we got to. We made it Good job, we're safe and sound to. We made it Good job, we're safe and sound.
2:17:31 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, we did it.
2:17:32 - Leo Laporte
Game over. We did it.
2:17:34 - Benito Gonzalez
That's the whole game.
2:17:36 - Leo Laporte
Well yeah.
2:17:37 - Paris Martineau
I think so.
2:17:38 - Leo Laporte
I think it is the whole game.
2:17:39 - Paris Martineau
I mean, what else could happen?
2:17:41 - Leo Laporte
Oh, no, anyway, you have to wander around.
2:17:45 - Paris Martineau
You hate to see it.
2:17:46 - Leo Laporte
It's a fun little game.
2:17:54 - Paris Martineau
It's a fun little game. It's fun that you found it too. Now that you know where the access card is, you can probably figure out the rest. Listen, that really does. I swear I searched that room too.
2:18:00 - Leo Laporte
I love you in the hat. That hat is awesome. I want that hat. I'll post the link from Etsy. I got a you know, we got some cat costumes actually for our our own cats um. Some of them worked better than others.
2:18:18 - Paris Martineau
Our cats don't really like paris, like wearing costumes uh.
2:18:22 - Leo Laporte
No, neither cat uh did, although I'll find you a picture, because there's some very uh. You know, the thing about pictures of cats on Instagram or anywhere is when you put costumes on them, you take a picture very, very quickly because it's not going to last. I don't see if I can find. You know, the problem is I have so many cat pictures to wade through that it's going to take me a while to find the costume cats. Well, there's one. This one didn't work out too well, as you can see. She's struggling. She doesn't really want to be santa claus. Uh, that year was not a not a good year for santa Claus. There are some cute ones. Lisa has the best pictures on her phone. Let me see if I can find. Yeah, there's way too many.
2:19:16 - Paris Martineau
I love how many cat pictures.
2:19:17 - Leo Laporte
We have so many cats. You're only in 20.
2:19:20 - Paris Martineau
Do you remember what year it is? That's normal.
2:19:23 - Leo Laporte
I think I've gone too far back now. These are kittens. Oh, look at the baby. Yeah, she's your kitten.
2:19:29 - Paris Martineau
How too far back now these are. These are oh, look at the baby. Yeah, she's your kitten. How many photos of cats do you think I have?
2:19:32 - Leo Laporte
on my phone. I bet it's like a thousand. You have a thousand. Yeah, you sure do. I'm sure you do. I've missed the the good, maybe cats and hats, do you think it'll actually? How smart is google's photos?
2:19:42 - Paris Martineau
I have two thousand two hundred and four photos of cats.
2:19:47 - Leo Laporte
I probably do too.
2:19:50 - Paris Martineau
I don't know if it'll focus.
2:19:53 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so I did search for cats and hats, and this is what it came up with. There's the cat.
2:20:01 - Paris Martineau
I mean that is a cat and a hat so point to Google.
2:20:04 - Leo Laporte
Jeff Jarvis your pick or number of the week, my friend.
2:20:08 - Jeff Jarvis
I'll brag a little bit here. So I read a Times story for things to do in Toronto and they did a feature on Issues, which is a magazine story. You can't find magazine stores anywhere. They're gone, they're all gone. There's a store for magazines in Toronto and they said that they were inspired by the store in London called Bag Culture in Toronto. And they said that they were inspired by the store in London called Mag Culture, and so I sent them both letters saying wouldn't you like to carry a book about magazines that looks like a magazine? Yeah, Toronto, shrugged at me, but Mag Culture in London, God bless, them did it and they sent me a picture this morning of my book about magazines as a magazine on the shelf.
2:20:50 - Leo Laporte
Bloomsbury, right between Alex Brodovich Astonish Me and Photography in the American Magazine. You know what I think that's the perfect place for your books.
2:21:03 - Paris Martineau
It is. I think it really is. You could even fit more stacked on top of it. You could have a set Height wise.
2:21:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, I think so, so I use that to try to shame the Toronto store into carrying it.
2:21:15 - Benito Gonzalez
We'll see what happens. How did that work? Did you tweet at?
2:21:17 - Jeff Jarvis
them? I don't know. I just mailed them a copy today. I said it's little. Look how little it is. By the way, you can order magazine website magculturecom.
2:21:33 - Leo Laporte
yes, which might be a good way of rewarding them. That's true, yes, and my london twit friends, uh, please go to bloomsbury just take a trip.
2:21:36 - Jeff Jarvis
The address there. Well, go to where the where is it? Where's the address there?
2:21:39 - Leo Laporte
mag culture uh about they have a podcast as well, wow, yeah, they do all kinds of things.
2:21:46 - Jeff Jarvis
Very nice guy uh.
2:21:47 - Leo Laporte
270 st john street there it is 270 st john's meg culture.
2:21:54 - Paris Martineau
Wow that's cool, tie really well in with the show. It's in clark and well uh, you know how jeff earlier was talking about how he didn't sign a non-disparagement agreement. That's an anecdote in the beginning of that's right, that's why it's in there.
2:22:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, god bless you. Oh really, oh yeah, have you not?
2:22:10 - Paris Martineau
read jeff's book not yet.
2:22:11 - Jeff Jarvis
No, if you did, you'd know that. No, he hasn't.
2:22:14 - Leo Laporte
This is for real jeff fans everybody knows no one buys books anymore, and I wish somebody would just tell jeff that they can't stop him, so that's a fascinating roundup here.
2:22:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Elle Griffin went through, I guess, the entire transcript of the Penguin Random House attempt to buy Simon Schuster trial. Yeah.
It was published and she went through it all to get lots of fascinating details about publishing. It was all in the trial, but it was really kind of interesting and everybody gets so surprised. I happened to have lunch with the former president of that company last week and they say that a book can get on the New York Times bestseller list with 4,000 copies If they're sold in just the right way. Fast enough, you can get there, but in 2020 2020 only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies and 96 percent of books sold less than a thousand copies my first book sold 55,000 copies and was a bestseller that year.
2:23:22 - Leo Laporte
For pearson hank's book, who he's being published by simon and schuster and it is all just pre-order is already a bestseller has far exceeded their, In fact, Simon.
Schuster his editor said it's the best launch we've ever seen. So the hope is that we can get on the New York Times bestseller list in October when it actually comes out. He's got a pretty good advance a little bit north of that, so he's got a little makeup. But, yeah, thank you, tiktok. Advance a little bit north of that, so he's got a little. He's got a little makeup. But uh, yeah, thank you tiktok. Uh, and I read books non-stop. Well, I listen. Does listening count?
yeah, yes, oh yes, it does, absolutely it does and I read and actually I read quite a few books on e-reader. I just ordered the new and I'll bring it in for review. It should come in the next week or so. The new Kobo Libra 2. I mentioned this.
2:24:18 - Paris Martineau
Is this different than the book you talked about, the e-reader you talked about buying last week?
2:24:23 - Leo Laporte
No, this is the one. It's a color, it's e-color, so as soon as it comes in and it's waterproof.
2:24:30 - Paris Martineau
Isn't that just a tablet, a waterproof tablet?
2:24:33 - Leo Laporte
Hey, knock it off. Is this the one? Sorry, sorry, sorry I don't know I got the color. Sorry, it's e-ink, though it's e-ink, so it's not a tablet, it's e-ink. It's e-ink, it's like a Kindle, but it has some color. I'm sure the color is somewhat washed out. It also has.
2:24:52 - Paris Martineau
You can take notes on it. What is the benefit?
2:24:55 - Leo Laporte
of e-ink Very low power.
2:24:56 - Jeff Jarvis
This has weeks worth of power.
2:24:59 - Leo Laporte
And it's easier on the eyes because it doesn't flicker. There's no refresh, it's just static. And because you can write on this one, I think this might be kind of interesting. Anyway, static, and because you can write on this one, I think this might be kind of interesting. Anyway, I do read books on e-ink. In fact, my latest book I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, I just uh bought is all about, uh, professional automated trading, because I've decided there's no money in podcasting you gotta be a day trader.
Maybe there's money in day trading? I I don't know, I'm just thinking.
2:25:30 - Jeff Jarvis
While we're mentioning books, I saw this book in the bookstore. I haven't bought yet, but I'm going to buy it. It is Adam Moss, who's a brilliant, brilliant magazine editor speaking of magazines, former editor of New York Magazine, founder of Seven Days has a new book out called the Work of Art, which looks just phenomenal. It is him talking to artists about how they create the art art of all kinds of definitions. It's a big $45 book.
2:25:55 - Leo Laporte
Ooh, it's beautiful. It just looked wonderful. You know, what I got for Lisa for her birthday last year was Dave Rubin's book on creativity. That was quite good.
2:26:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh yeah.
2:26:08 - Leo Laporte
But this might be good for this year.
2:26:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Look how classy we are we're classy Talking about books.
2:26:14 - Leo Laporte
We're classy, I love books. In fact, I tell my daughter who, unfortunately, she's a little older than you, paris, she's.
2:26:23 - Paris Martineau
That is unfortunate.
2:26:26 - Leo Laporte
She's a generation where they just read online. I mean, she doesn't read books anymore.
2:26:30 - Paris Martineau
She just no.
2:26:31 - Leo Laporte
I like reading the internet yeah, I know, because you were raised properly, I went wrong unlike some people.
2:26:37 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, out here I really, I say parents abby, you gotta read literature.
2:26:42 - Leo Laporte
We gotta read books, not the internet. The internet, in fact, by the way, does this seem the case to you? It is now overwhelmingly link bait. No one can publish anything on the Internet without saying you won't believe what happened next, or? Something like that it's very depressing to me and I have to say, unfortunately, I have to read a lot of news right and I just see all this stuff and it's like every single article.
2:27:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, and everybody complained about oh news is news is being hurt. No, we ruined it.
2:27:11 - Leo Laporte
We, we absolutely ruined news yeah it's a mess yeah, I guess I mean it was a race to the bottom to get clicks and links and that's why you get link paid. But I mean you could also say that they're doing it because they need the revenue and the revenue is not there. I don't know, I don't know what happened, but it's well. It because they need the revenue and the revenue's not there.
2:27:28 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know. I don't know what happened. Well, it's one of the ironies. Eli Pariser, who complained about the filter bubble, tried to solve it by creating what was the company he created?
2:27:37 - Leo Laporte
Was it PostNews, because they just went out of business? No, that's another story.
2:27:42 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, this was some years ago. It was the one that said and you won't believe what happened next. They invented that.
2:27:48 - Leo Laporte
No Outbrain or.
2:27:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Taboola no, no, those are bad companies. This was an attempt to do a good company Of the same idea. Well, he started the idea.
2:28:02 - AI
Oh damn Boy did he get a kill out of his profile?
2:28:05 - Paris Martineau
I made a joke Taboola Because I think that we should make that joke, taboola.
2:28:16 - Leo Laporte
Upworthy is what you're trying to remember.
2:28:17 - Paris Martineau
Upworthy, upworthy. Thank you Sorry, I was vamping until we figured out the name of the joke. I think that was really good.
2:28:22 - Jeff Jarvis
So Upworthy was started with the best of intentions to drive people to good news, but it started and proved the success of the horrible clickbait headline and you won't believe what happened next. Best of intentions sigh.
2:28:39 - Leo Laporte
Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of this mightily depressing show. You know, the good news is podcast is on a roll. Oh no, that's not true.
2:28:51 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, the good news is Twitter is doing well financially.
2:28:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we're surviving. That's not true either. So never mind Forget, I said anything. I'm going to go out and buy a bunch of small hats and put them on some pigeons and live my best life. No, I think that, honestly, where I'm bullish about all this is I think that we can succeed. It might be at a much smaller scale, but as a niche product that serves an important role. Who was remember the? Was it a Mendocino newspaper, the small town newspaper that got all those awards? Do you know what I'm talking about, jeff?
Yeah, yes, I know exactly what you mean yeah, uh, not because he had a big audience or anything, but because he stuck to his guns and produced great journalism even for a small audience, and it lived.
2:29:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh no because, because what the book stories we just talked about says what? What media says? We have this myth that to be successful you had to be millions and huge, and that was never, ever really the case. There were blockbusters, there were exceptions, yeah, and big enough is what we should be concentrating on.
2:30:02 - Benito Gonzalez
The money. People don't like hearing that, though, Jeff.
2:30:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's the problem. Is the money? People is the problem. Yep, why can't I remember I hate being old that paper? It was up the coast in California, wasn't it? Oh, you want to, did he win at Pulitzer?
2:30:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, yes, yes, yes, the. Was it the Marin County? No, no, no county no no, no, no, no it was up in point.
2:30:37 - Paris Martineau
Raise the raise point raise light, was it? The point raise david mitchell of point david mitchell, yes, this goes to retcon five in the chat because he lives out there, he knows they went to a memorial, that they went to that memorial and that's why they missed the party.
2:30:52 - Leo Laporte
Really. Oh Wow, david Mitchell passed away last year at the age of 79, so it was a very late wake, but okay, maybe.
2:31:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Maybe he was the guy who exposed Synan synanon the cult yeah he was terribly well respected, and that's the thing I mean.
2:31:14 - Leo Laporte
This is a tiny, tiny town newspaper, but you could still and that's I kind of that's what I want to be, uh just a small niche publication with a dedicated community that supports us where we really uh are tell the stories that need to be told. I think that's not a bad thing. You read the eulogy. It's a great con. Five uh read the eulogy. The memorial was held until the rain stopped, which, of course, they just retconned. Five worked there as a copy editor when he was a teenager. Oh wow, nice. Well, wow, that's a good reason to miss our event. But you know, retcon, you can come and visit anytime you you're more than welcome. We love having you in here you got, you got a rain, check rain, so to speak.
Thank you everybody for being here. We do this week in google, wednesday afternoon, 2 pm pacific, 5 pm eastern, 2100 utc. You can watch us live on YouTube. If I don't get us kicked off at youtubecom slash twit, I did earlier, I apologize. Youtubecom slash twit. Did you record the show, benito, because YouTube will not have the beginning. I did. Okay, good, okay, we can't count on YouTube.
2:32:24 - Paris Martineau
Did you record the show is such a funny question to ask three hours into the show.
2:32:32 - Leo Laporte
I'm not going to say a word.
2:32:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, by the time we actually started the official show, we were back on, Were we? Oh?
2:32:37 - Leo Laporte
good.
2:32:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
2:32:43 - Leo Laporte
Let's just put it this way YouTube has saved our bacon once, more than once probably. I mentioned this before, but I'll say it again. Many years ago I used to host Floss Weekly and we did an interview and I also edited it at the time and I accidentally erased the show. So I had to call the guest back and the host back and redid the whole show. We did the whole thing again and then I erased it again.
2:33:06 - Paris Martineau
Was it better oh?
2:33:08 - Leo Laporte
my God.
2:33:09 - Paris Martineau
Leo.
2:33:10 - Leo Laporte
Did you?
2:33:10 - Paris Martineau
call him back.
2:33:11 - Leo Laporte
I did and I sent him a big coffee basket and of food and stuff and I said I am so sorry. The good news is the third show was better than the first two. Yeah, because you practiced. Well, we should rehearse, but but so, benito, I've done it and it's uh. So that's why I always say did you record the show? Because leo actually recorded it, but he deleted it, so don't delete it either.
2:33:33 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, but either the real, the real crunch time comes now. Don't delete the show.
2:33:38 - Leo Laporte
Don't delete the show.
2:33:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Twice. I've had people interview me and they've done it on Zoom and then afterwards they've they screwed up and there was no Zoom recording.
2:33:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, they screwed up and there was no Zoom recording. Yeah yeah, it's unfortunately very easy to do. We have multiple redundancies, so that we haven't lost a show. I don't think since then.
2:33:57 - Paris Martineau
Hey, let's not say this Knock on wood, knock on wood, guys, knock on little tiny cowboy hats.
2:34:03 - Leo Laporte
Paris Martineau writes for the Information where she is working on a gangbuster story. All about RRR, I don about rrr. I don't know, we don't know multiple years late we don't know what the story is, but it's going to be big.
2:34:16 - Paris Martineau
If you have a scoop, she's on signal martin o01 that's me, that's her and I will be seeing jeff in person on tuesday for his big fancy conference.
2:34:29 - Leo Laporte
Yes, wait a minute, tell me about that. What's that all about?
2:34:33 - Jeff Jarvis
With the Common Crawl Foundation, ai, the right to learn and an open internet. Where can people get tickets? They can't. It's oversold.
2:34:42 - Leo Laporte
You tell us now.
2:34:43 - Paris Martineau
You can't be there, yeah.
2:34:44 - Leo Laporte
Will they record it?
2:34:47 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know.
2:34:52 - Leo Laporte
I'm co-convening and I'm moderating, but they're nervous about recording because they want people to talk frankly, but oh, they want chowder house rules no, because there's journalists there, so the journalists can do it on the record oh okay, I like it that you just let me say chowder House.
2:35:07 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I'll do a little field report afterwards Anything at all?
2:35:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, thank you.
2:35:15 - Leo Laporte
Thank you to Jeff Jarvis.
2:35:17 - Jeff Jarvis
I know what you mean. I speak for you.
2:35:19 - Leo Laporte
I know you know what I mean Is the director of the Townite Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism Demeritus at the Craig Newmark. Graduate School of.
Journalism at the City University of New York, new York, new York, new York. And thanks to all of you, especially a deep thanks to all our Club Twit members who make this show possible. We'll see you in the Discord. I'm Leo Laporte Back Sunday for Ask the Tech Guys. Oh no, back tomorrow, 2 pm Pacific. 5 pm. Eastern Club members join me and Stacey Higginbotham for Stacey's Book Club. We're going to have a lot of fun.
2:36:01 - Paris Martineau
Enter the Bobiverse.
2:36:03 - Leo Laporte
Enter the Bobiverse. It's a really good book. It's so much fun and it's very easy and light. And it's a really good book. It's so much fun and it's very easy and light and you could probably read it between now and then. So if you haven't read it yet, get the book, read it. It's very good. On Audible Recommend the Audible version and we will talk to you 2 pm tomorrow. Thanks everybody, we'll see you next time on this Week in Google. Hats off, cats on.
