This Week in Google 762 Transcript

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Twig this week in Google Great show planned for you. Jeff Jarvis is here, paris Martineau We'll talk about cable news ratings. They're going down. The great rewiring Is Jonathan Haidt right. Smartphones are ruining our children and why did Matt Farley write a song about poop and how did he make $200,000 by doing so? All of that coming up with a lot more on Twig.

0:00:29 - Paris Martineau
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twig.

0:00:40 - Leo Laporte
This is Twig this week in Google, episode 762, recorded Wednesday, april 3rd 2024. People who like sticks, it's time for Twig this Week in Google, the show where we cover the latest news from Google and the Googleverse, the Twitterverse, oh, I'm sorry. The Exiverse, the Obverse, and the Universe Inverse, inverse, obverse. My dad taught me the word obverse. It was like you know, there's the reverse and then there's the obverse, and he was a professor. That's why I know things like corpora Hello, jeff Jarvis, also a professor. Then there's the metaverse, the metaverse. We didn't have that when I was a young man. I don't know if we have it yet as an old man, to be honest.

0:01:26 - Jeff Jarvis
No we don't.

0:01:27 - Leo Laporte
Hello, leo. Hello, we're going to get you out of here. You're going to DC again.

0:01:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm speaking at the IAPP, which stands for something having to do with privacy professionals. Oh, and I spoke to them, like years ago. I think it is huge now.

0:01:46 - Leo Laporte
They have tons and tons of members, so I'm going down there. Privacy's big. We were talking yesterday on Security, now about ad blockers. 52% of Americans use ad blockers now and a lot of that is privacy.

0:01:54 - Jeff Jarvis
That's why news is dying you greedy bastards, you're killing us. You're killing us, do you?

0:01:59 - Paris Martineau
not use ad blockers. Grandpa Jeff, Are you out there looking at ads every single day?

0:02:05 - Jeff Jarvis
I do. I do, in fact. I watch plain old TV all the time. Msnbc is on top. Well, we know that about you that you're watching cable news.

0:02:12 - Paris Martineau
You're one of the five people Because.

0:02:14 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm old, it's made for me. It's for me. It's not for you kid, it's for me.

0:02:19 - Leo Laporte
You get the feeling, just based on the number of pharmaceutical ads on the news networks, that it is aimed at a somewhat older demographic. Perhaps.

0:02:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, now there's balance of nature. I did a poll on Twitter the other day. I didn't look for final answers. Who would you not want to be stuck next to on a plane? A balance of nature endorser, a Prevagen endorser, a Shen Yun fan? Or the Lumi lady? See this is a question that.

0:02:51 - Paris Martineau
I'm not even able to participate in, because I've never conversed with somebody sitting next to me on a plane. Oh well, there's that too.

0:02:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I thought you were going from the other direction, Like I have no idea who those people are, but you took it a whole other angle. That's Paris Martineau of the information fame. Hello I just googled what obverse is and I'm enlightened now yeah, see, my dad was a uh, some might say a pedant, but he's not. It's not a pedant, I'm a pedant, I'll admit it, uh. But uh, he was, he was this, he liked to think, he liked to talk, he liked the words, he liked all of that.

And you know it's funny, but we have now three generations of book authors in the family. Oh wow, I remember when he was writing his first book. My son remembers when I was writing my first book and and now I'm get to observe him getting his first book.

0:03:45 - Jeff Jarvis
I can't wait to see Salt Egg's?

0:03:46 - Leo Laporte
book. Yeah, that's very exciting, can?

0:03:48 - Jeff Jarvis
I start with a quick clarification and apology for last week. Please do so. We were looking at the Google headquarters and we said what is that foot washing thing there for? And we were yucking it up and I started all this it's for Muslim men to wash their feet. Oh dear.

0:04:04 - Paris Martineau
For one very nice person in I'm so sorry.

0:04:07 - Jeff Jarvis
M quietly told me uh, hello, and I so I want to correct myself.

0:04:12 - Leo Laporte
It's this week and me being stupid and I apologize culturally I apologize also it's all of us and you know, and I should know better. I've been to many a mosque and watched and observed, uh, men coming to the prayer and washing before it, and I should have known that. Yeah, of course that's what that is. Yeah, you don't just wash your feet. You wash your hands, too. You wash your face. There's a whole ritual, but you don't do them at the same place.

Ah, you're right, they do. They take off their shoes, they sit down and wash. Yeah, you're right, I think that's very kind of profound you want to be clean before you face your God. I think that's pretty cool. So.

0:04:48 - Paris Martineau
I apologize too.

0:04:51 - Leo Laporte
I think everybody should be watching their feet more? Yeah, and I don't think that's why Steve Jobs was using the toilet at Atari. Personally, I think that was purely hygiene, which is even, maybe worse.

0:05:02 - Jeff Jarvis
So when I went to work at Chicago Today now to go to the profane again, chicago Today, the paper that had no. Tomorrow, my first day on the job I go in the men's room. There's one staffer there who is brushing his teeth over the toilet, oh no. And the other staffer worse the other staffer is washing his Richard in the sink. What?

0:05:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, no wonder he didn't want to brush his teeth in the sink. What? Well, no wonder he didn't want to brush his teeth in?

0:05:30 - Paris Martineau
the sink. What, what a terrible newspaper.

0:05:31 - Leo Laporte
I hope you quit immediately.

0:05:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh no, no, I lasted there a year. The guy who was washing his Richard was the aerospace writer. We still had an aerospace writer, you know that right, and he had the worst. Most people didn't like him very much, he was a nerd and his desk was just piled high with crap. And one day a rewrite guy got just got fed up and set it on fire.

0:05:55 - Paris Martineau
Holy life in newspapers, wow uh, so he was watching his richard branson in this case. That's what he was watching.

0:06:04 - Leo Laporte
Yes, all right.

0:06:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, by the way.

0:06:10 - Leo Laporte
Jeff, I am now following you on Threads on Mastodon, which is kind of cool. Yeah, so Threads has announced. Well, they announced it a few months ago, but it's finally, I think, generally turned on. And the reason it's a news story, threads, which is Meta's version of Twitter, is because they now have a feature that you can turn on.

In fact, I'll show you how you turn it on when you go to your settings up here this is Threadsnet and you go to your account there's a beta thing they call Fediverse sharing and you can click it and the good news is they kind of explain all of it before you turn it on. So you're not seeing that because I have it turned on and so people can follow me on threads on Mastodon. So I, just as an experiment, I typed, for instance, at POTUS at threadsnet, into the search engine and there he is, the president of the United States of America, donald Trump, and we can all. No, no, I'm just kidding, obviously we can all follow him. And I did the same thing with you, jeff, not that you know, you post pretty much the same thing on Mastodon.

0:07:29 - Jeff Jarvis
I do oftentimes Everywhere right, Not all the time.

0:07:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

0:07:32 - Paris Martineau
I was going to say that would probably be an issue with Jeff, because he posts the same thing across all platforms. You're going to be getting double Jarvis.

0:07:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Double, Jarvis. Good, maybe he'll finally listen to me. I'm double Jarvis, so now I can follow your account. I'm not getting. Oh, there it is follow. That's you right? Okay, so I just did it, All right, yeah, yeah, I follow myself.

0:07:52 - Leo Laporte
One way to kind of get a shorthand version of what's out there is just instead of typing a username type at threadsnet and you'll get a list of people, most of whom are like President Biden, mark Zuckerberg, adam Aseri, the president of Threads, alex Heath, leo Laporte, jeff Jarvis. These are people I'm already following and you might find some more if you search through this. So it's kind of cool.

0:08:18 - Jeff Jarvis
So, Paris, what's interesting to me is I do post because I'm just that kind of crazy, crazy, wild guy, but I find it fascinating what clicks on one and doesn't on another. So, for example, two days ago I quoted Dave Weiner from his blog saying that he tried to listen to Kara Swisher on a podcast but he just got fed up with it and it was an interview and he said she has a business model you tell the media what they want and then you get media attention. I just quoted that. That was a nice little quote, that was it. It was more comment on media than Kara Swisher. Well, well, On all the platforms it was nowhere, but on threads I got Kara Swisher fans just coming after me, one after another, after another, for two days constantly, just starting with Walt Bosberg, which is probably what did it.

And then Carl Bode, our friend Carl Bode, to the contrary, clicked a really the Paris, the other Paris, what's his name? Paris Marx, marx Piece on Cara, which was really, really critical and I said, uh-oh, watch out, it's going to be bad here. So then Carl went to Blue Sky to say really funny thing is Jarvis just put this fairly innocuous thing up and people are saying that Threads is nicer and they're really mean over there, but they're not here and there's no general rules to be had. But it is interesting to watch how things click differently.

0:09:43 - Paris Martineau
It's very interesting to see the like actual bubble ecosystem forming on all these different platforms, and it does like intuitively make sense to me that a place like threads would be full of more swish heads than blue sky it does actually, that's the name for them I'm making swish heads.

0:10:04 - Leo Laporte
It makes sense to me that that's.

0:10:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Can you define swish head for me? Let's get an official definition going.

0:10:10 - Paris Martineau
A Kara Swisher Stan, gender neutral. You could call it a.

0:10:15 - Leo Laporte
Swish Stan, but maybe that would be confusing.

0:10:18 - Paris Martineau
I think swish head. Is it Swish head? Swish?

0:10:21 - Leo Laporte
head, swish heads, swish heads. Roly poly swish heads, swish heads, swish heads, roly-poly swish heads. Actually, in a way, that's good, because every site should have a kind of unique gestalt or feeling. It's not good that you know you get dogpiled if you say something that the people don't like, but I kind of I think that Threads has a very different feeling than Blue Sky. Yeah quaint.

0:10:47 - Paris Martineau
I don't think that we should have. I think that it is nice that we are trending towards social media networks and websites being their own separate spaces with unique communities and norms, instead of having everything be mass culture for everyone, because that is not sustainable culture for everyone, because that is not sustainable.

0:11:07 - Leo Laporte
It's also the argument for federation, because now I can follow you on threads on my mastodon instance, so I get kind of the best of both worlds. I wish we could do that on blue sky. Uh, because blue sky at this point seems to sort of be the incumbent twitter replacement.

0:11:20 - Jeff Jarvis
But uh they have their own people. I know a lot of people on threads I see I see media people on threads.

0:11:26 - Leo Laporte
Everybody's on threads. Yeah, because it's Zuckerberg's place. I don't.

0:11:31 - Paris Martineau
I can't get into threads it's passed for me. I can't really either.

0:11:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, that's it. That's it, we have the ruling. I think I mean.

0:11:40 - Paris Martineau
I will allow you know if it takes off.

0:11:49 - Leo Laporte
I'll be the first one to be like well, I messed up on that one, but I've been falling off Blue Sky, even, which has not been good. Blue Sky has the unfortunate name for its posts Skeets. What do we call threads? Needles, Needles? Here's a needle that you will not like from threads.

0:12:04 - Hume
Jeff.

0:12:04 - Leo Laporte
Jarvis, kara Swisher. Vote for the couple you'd most like to hang with, and it's two of your favorite people, kara and Scott Galloway.

0:12:13 - Paris Martineau
We saw you from across the bar. We really like your vibe.

0:12:18 - Leo Laporte
Would you like to be our unicorn is what I'm getting from it.

0:12:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Even worse than that is. Galloway did a podcast with jonathan height. That's just my definition of hell. What is it with?

0:12:30 - Leo Laporte
it. So is this new? No, this isn't new. No, uh, rachel maddow's done a great book about, uh, fascism in the us, in the at the turn of the century in the 20s, uh, where it was really appalling. I mean, there was absolutely a movement to take over the government and make it a fascistic country, a movement that, thank goodness, never went anywhere. But it kind of reassures me and I think this is her point that it's always been pretty nutty out there in the real world. There's always been. But it seems to me maybe the Internet has given so many, so more minor il duches a voice People. Maybe I'm not going to lump in Professor Galloway and Kara Swisher with Jonathan Haidt and all those people, but these all people have, uh, you know, jordan peterson. They all have kind of outsized voices now thanks to these social networks yet they complain about being canceled.

They use their huge megaphones to say I don't have a megaphone on their megaphones well, it is ironic that jonathan height is is lobbying against social uh media saying it's causing it's poisoning our uh children, and yet has a quite a is using it quite effectively to raise his presence. Did you read the nature review of his book? I did. In fact, we talked about it on uh. He responded, by the way, I think, on oh. Yes, he did x on twitter, yes I don't call it prohibit sex.

0:14:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, for us, it's twitter for him at sex what is his book about? He believes that the uh phone. He and gene twenge are two people who were who were in the same boat on this. They believe that the iphone is the ruin of uh youth, especially teenage girls heitz new book.

0:14:18 - Leo Laporte
He he wrote the righteous mind and I interviewed him when that came out. I really think he's an interesting social psychologist. He's at nyu, right, jeff? I think he's at NYU.

He's in the business school, though. Yeah, his new book is called the Anxious Generation how the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, and the response from Candace Ogers in Nature says the evidence is equivocal on whether Scream Time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety. She cites a number of studies, some of them longitudinal, some of them quite long, big studies that show no conclusive correlation. She actually says maybe correlation, not causation. Right, in other words, yes, kids are staring at their phones and yes, there does seem to be a mental illness crisis, but no matter what.

0:15:13 - Paris Martineau
There are tons of other factors, yeah, and I mean yeah, the world has changed in a myriad of ways over the past, like many decades. There are a million different reasons why we can be experiencing a mental health crisis, and also I think it's worth noting that part of it could be related to the fact that children now have access to health care and diagnoses in a way that they did not before. Like 50 75 years ago, kids were not going to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety.

0:15:46 - Leo Laporte
No, even if they absolutely had it jeff and I are both of an age where that, you know, there was no adhd. Uh, you know I'm, I'm probably add, but uh, I wasn't diagnosed. Is that I was just? You know, trouble in the classroom, uh, but now we have a name for it, uh and uh. I think that that's good, I don't think that's bad in fact, and depression is not as stigmatized audrey's rights in nature.

The good news is more young people are talking openly about their symptoms and mental health struggles than ever before. She also says the problem with height's book is focusing on social and electronics kind of distracts us from other things that are real issues. For instance, in the US there are on average one school psychologist for every 1,119 students, which is, you know, we're not doing a good job taking care of our young people. And so you know, it seems a little reductionist to say, well, it's a problem, it's these things. And now you know, get rid of these and everything's going to be fine. He does respond. He says well, rogers quotes a number of studies. He says but we have studies that are much more conclusive than the ones she mentions. She only mentions.

0:17:04 - Jeff Jarvis
I've seen so many more that argue with his. I saw another video, which I can't find right off the bat, that went through his studies one by one and said how many of them were sloppy, how many of them were before the period that he talked about. And just in general, people are saying, well, but clearly it has to be something. Well, no, we need evidence and research. It's a classic moral panic. I quote my book coming out, thank you, Thank you very much.

0:17:29 - Paris Martineau
Here we go.

0:17:30 - Hume
No, god please no no.

0:17:33 - Leo Laporte
Wait, that's a new one. I hadn't heard that before. That's a new one.

0:17:35 - Paris Martineau
I love it.

0:17:36 - Leo Laporte
Well done, well done, somebody's added to the moral panic.

0:17:40 - Paris Martineau
That's the power of AI.

0:17:46 - Benito Gonzalez
A master, yes, and with the mouth even Did you do that.

0:17:47 - Leo Laporte
So, taylor Lorenz, that was an.

0:17:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Anthony, is that it Okay? Very good. So Taylor Lorenz tweeted about all this. People are like why are kids depressed? It must be their phones, but never mentioned the fact that we're living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic with record wealth inequality, zero social safety net, job security as climate change cooks the world. Jessica Valenti noted the fact that there's been a 27% increase over the last two years of girls who've reported being raped. Doesn't even warrant a mention. But sure, go with cell phones. That's the discussion right now.

0:18:20 - Leo Laporte
And you know you'd be happy. Doc Rock was on Sunday. We were talking about this. Chip pretty much channeled you, jeff. He said they said the same things about books when they came out.

0:18:29 - Paris Martineau
Yep, that people would read they said the same things about crosswords.

0:18:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly so, but let's okay. So, all of that aside, I don't want to get into the game of he said, she said blah, blah, blah. All that aside, there's certainly it's. Of course, one of the problems is, if it seems right, it sounds right. We kind of go well, it must be right, and it does seem reasonable to say people, you see, you go to a restaurant and everybody's staring at a phone instead of talking to each other.

0:19:02 - Jeff Jarvis
It seems like there is a change in behavior that these phones have brought, and the same thing was said about novels and books.

0:19:10 - Leo Laporte
Yes, okay um, so you think back in the day, so do you think it's harmless, like there is no cause?

0:19:17 - Jeff Jarvis
no, I'm not saying that at all, but it's individual, it's. There's many factors, they are interrelated, there is much research needed and um, the APA, the American Psychological Association, or whatever it is exactly I quote this in the book too says that we can't lose sight that for many young people this is tremendously beneficial, that they feel as if they're not alone. Dana Boyd has written about this a great deal. When she was growing up in Pennsylvania and thought she was a weird kid, the internet gave her the chance to see that she wasn't weird, she's brilliant. And it depends upon the child, it depends upon the circumstances, it depends upon lots of things, but the other important thing.

So in my book Web we Weave, I go through the internet's seven deadly sins and one of them is that it corrupts youth and the other one is it's supposedly addictive. And there's really interesting stuff about people who just declared the internet addictive in like the first year when it was still impossible to use and expensive and camps were started for addiction and all kinds of stuff. But the problem is that that it's oftentimes the co-occurring condition. It's the symptom, it's not the disease. That if someone's depressed, they may be coming to this because they're depressed or because they're lonely, that doesn't mean that caused that. In fact, they're looking for an answer to their depression or their loneliness and you have to deal with the individual case to determine where the chicken is and where the egg is.

0:20:39 - Leo Laporte
Paris, you grew up with the internet yep, my daughter, who's my daughter, who's a millennial she's 32 looks down at your generation. She says, yeah, they're really screwed up look at her.

0:20:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Does she look screwed up?

0:20:55 - Leo Laporte
no, in fact, paris, I, paris is a paragon of an intellectual, uh, a person who has real world activity. I mean rational ski ball for crying out loud, I mean listen.

0:21:08 - Paris Martineau
Could a depressed person be on a recreational ski ball league?

0:21:11 - Leo Laporte
I don't think so no, in fact, I think you're in many ways kind of a model for how somebody in their 20s should be living their life, and and you certainly I mean you connected. You write for a digital magazine, you know you're on a technology podcast, but I don't think it's harmed you in any way. Is that your parents? Was that good upbringing? Did they keep you away from phones when you were young?

0:21:36 - Paris Martineau
No, they didn't. I spent way too much time. I don't know if it was on phones, but on my computer and things like that, Neopets for sure.

Yeah, neopets, things like that I don't think I got. Yeah, neopets, I don't think I got a phone until I was in, like high school. I rest my case, your honor, but I think also it's like you. It's very different now. I mean, part of what I assume young people today are responding to if they fall into the pattern of being depressed by prolonged social media use or, like internet access, is they suddenly have access to all the news about everything going on in the world right now, which is quite overwhelming, if not anxiety and depression inducing. Plus, they have access to all of their peers all the time, a live stream of what people are doing, what they are thinking, what they want people to think they are thinking. Of course, that's going to be overwhelming, but I think that that is not something that's going away and it's not something that can be easily solved.

0:22:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you have a good eighth grade or a bad eighth grade?

0:22:47 - Paris Martineau
I don't really remember. Is that the latest test?

0:22:50 - Leo Laporte
Jeff.

0:22:52 - Jeff Jarvis
It's when I see I hear a lot of parents talking. That's kind of when, especially for girls in the lunchroom, when things become difficult.

0:23:00 - Leo Laporte
That's when mean girls show up.

0:23:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, kind of, and boys are screwed up in all different ways. I'm not saying it's, just my son was bullied my son was bullied, though in sixth grade.

0:23:11 - Leo Laporte
Um, I mean, it's hard. Look, growing up is hard, and I'm sure it's harder and harder, and I think taylor lawrence isn't far wrong that growing up right now is a lot harder than it was when you and I are growing up, jeff, or even maybe when you were growing up paris.

0:23:27 - Jeff Jarvis
It's not a good time yeah, but crime is actually down, the economy is actually in good shape. We have all these new and amazing tools to work with. Um, it's a lot of. This is media's presentation of the world. Yes, fascism, isism is rising. We got that, we got plenty of.

0:23:46 - Leo Laporte
We got the world is getting warmer.

0:23:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Warmer, it's, but it's, it's, but we don't have World War II yet. Right, it's always a mix, it's always it's the hubris of the present tense that we think our time is worse than other times, that our time is is more difficult, that our change is faster, that that we have more difficulty. Imagine living when the press arrived. Sorry, gutenberg moment, drink um, that was pretty unsettling. Yeah uh, the industrial revolution was pretty damn unsettling.

0:24:18 - Leo Laporte
I have some whiskey. I should probably go find it I've just got water this week, you know I shouldn't drink whiskey every time he says gutenberg, I will be on the floor.

0:24:27 - Paris Martineau
I was going to say if you drink every time jeff says one of his book titles, or moral panic, it's going to be a long show yeah, I mean, I don't look.

0:24:37 - Leo Laporte
I I do think that height is that that book is more polemic than it is factual. Yeah, I do think that there is moral panic, but I also don't think we should throw out the notion that maybe there are ill effects from all this.

But you're right, I mean we need the research, yeah rock and roll in my era was gonna make everybody screwed up. Tv, tv. I remember very well after Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death. Tv was, and Newton Minnow, the Vast Wasteland, wasteland. When I was a kid, the TV was the culprit, the villain Demonized.

0:25:17 - Jeff Jarvis
And video games, yep and comic books.

0:25:20 - Leo Laporte
Rock, music, video games, comic books, long hair, hippie, barefoot and LSD. I mean, yeah, I guess we've always had that. I think that's why Maddow's book is so important, because it really does put it in perspective that it's kind of always been tough, it sounds like it's a compounding thing of information.

0:25:43 - Benito Gonzalez
We know too much. More and more and more and more access to information and it's just compounding. It's Gutenberg.

0:25:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, but we've always had too much to absorb. So the problem is the same and the scale seems like it matters, but it really doesn't, because the amount that we can't absorb maybe is greater, but the amount that we do is pretty much the same.

0:26:02 - Leo Laporte
I stopped watching news. I get enough news from headlines on my phone and you know perusing the Internet, I don't watch TV news.

0:26:10 - Paris Martineau
You say watching news.

0:26:11 - Leo Laporte
TV news. Yeah, when were you?

0:26:14 - Paris Martineau
watching TV news. Sorry, jeff, sorry to talk about your favorite pastime All the time, and especially during COVID.

0:26:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, when I grew up we would watch at 6 o'clock. We would watch the huntley brinkley report, others watched walter cronkite and that was.

0:26:29 - Paris Martineau
That sounds like a fake name of a newscast and tonight the huntley brinkley report presented by curious from nbc news.

0:26:39 - Leo Laporte
But that was in that era. Everybody watched the uh network news, uh, before dinner, but that was it pretty much and you had your newspaper, you had your morning paper and your evening paper. If you watch 24-hour news, part of the problem and I know this because we tried to do a 24-hour news channel on tech tv 20 years ago and it's such a gaping maw of consumption you need so much material and the rating war is so vicious that you inevitably I don't care how good your intentions are when you begin descend into kind of sensationalism and uh, you know, um breaking.

0:27:18 - Jeff Jarvis
You know, at cnn, every five minutes the news is breaking, uh, but that drives viewership, drives traffic and the repetition, if you keep it on, yeah, the constant repetition of the same thing over and over and over again, and people believe it. They see the same thing over and over again.

0:27:31 - Leo Laporte
We know people believe it after a while, and I think that that's the case.

0:27:35 - Jeff Jarvis
But at some point we have to have but. But there's a bit of third person effect in that. At some point we have to have some faith there are smart people out there and that we're not the only ones who are immune from it.

0:27:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's why I read the information yes, uh, you know, I, I I kind of pay attention to what I, you know what it's like what you eat, you, you kind of pay attention what you eat. You don't eat the junk food, you eat the healthy food. And you can do the same with your news consumption, can't you?

0:28:02 - Jeff Jarvis
so I want to get this quote in. A critic writing of novels in 1795 said my sight is everywhere offended by these foolish yet dangerous books. I have actually seen mothers in miserable garrets crying for the imaginary distress of a heroine while their children were crying for bread.

0:28:19 - Leo Laporte
Isn't that great, yeah, yeah, it's always been that way, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah yeah, novels were especially women way, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah?

0:28:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, novels were, were, were, were, especially women, paris, novels were the ruin of your, your kind.

0:28:31 - Paris Martineau
Of course. Did you guys see that a first quarter television news ratings came out.

0:28:37 - Leo Laporte
Save that, let's save that. And and that's a good little tease I did not, for we'll find out Are people watching? More or less? We'll find out Paris Martineau, the information. She is in fact the poster child, the epitome of the perfect young person Everyone's saying this and the classic grumpy old man, jeff Jarvis. Hey, hey, jeez. And now a word from the Huntley Brinkley report. Would you like to see? This is literally good. Yes, so you would watch. Cronkite was, if you're a cbs person, but I think people were more serious. Would watch nbc?

we were an nbc family. Yeah, we were too.

0:29:20 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's that is exactly the font.

0:29:22 - Hume
I imagined this is the news reported by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. The United States today honored Neil Armstrong.

0:29:32 - Benito Gonzalez
Erwin Aldrin and Michael Collins.

0:29:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Millions of people cheered the Apollo 11. You need to go to the very end. I like it. This is just the first. Oh, they don't have the good night?

0:29:41 - Leo Laporte
No, but the good night was the best. Good night Chet, Good night David, and good night Well, what about Walter?

0:29:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Cronkite, did you ever see?

0:29:47 - Benito Gonzalez
that Paris Walter Cronkite, and that's the way it is. Yes, of course that's the way it is. Yeah.

0:29:51 - Leo Laporte
That was the good old days. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. I think we've learned. For us white people wasn't the good old or or not poor, it was only the good old days because there was a single or a handful, three voices. Abc even wasn't that serious, you know. No, uh, there were only really two voices that mattered and uh, everything else, you know, you just took, that took. You know, the new york times is the, the paper of record. You've got nbc and cbs news, that's it and this was the line better to have more, more voices.

0:30:25 - Jeff Jarvis
New York had, I think, 17 daily newspapers Wow and you had a variety of voices and things that spoke to different communities and for communities, and television wiped all that out. We ended up with Monopoly Media.

0:30:39 - Leo Laporte
Our show today, brought to you by our fine sponsor, kolide. I know you've heard me talk about KOLIDE, but did you know? This is very good news. Kolide was just acquired by 1Password. Why is that good news? Well, both companies lead the industry in creating security solutions that put users first. For over a year, kolide Device Trust has helped companies with Okta ensure that only known and secure devices can access their data, and that's what they're still doing. They're just doing it now as part of 1Password.

So if you've got Okta and you've been meaning to check out Collide, now is a great time. Collide comes with a library of pre-built device posture checks and you can write your own custom checks for just about anything you can think of. Plus, you can use Collide on devices without MDM. That means your Linux fleet or contractor devices and, oh yeah, every BYOD phone and laptop in your company. Now that Collide is part of 1Password, it's only going to get better. So check it out at collidecom slash twig. Learn more. Watch the demo today K-O-L-I-D-E collidecom slash twig. We thank him so much for the support of this Week in Google, paris Martineau. The ratings are in.

0:32:00 - Paris Martineau
The ratings are in and I don't know. They seem quite sad to me.

0:32:05 - Leo Laporte
Oh no.

0:32:05 - Paris Martineau
On a total day in the first quarter, Fox News was first with 1.3 million viewers, down 5%, followed by MSNBC with 814,000, and CNN with 467,000.

0:32:21 - Leo Laporte
So that's the big one.

0:32:21 - Paris Martineau
I see TikToks of like pieces of bread that get more views than all of those. In fact my son's TikToks, and that's overall viewers, If you talk about the key demo, which is, I guess, what advertisers care about 25 to 54,. Fox News had 156,000 viewers, followed by CNN with 85,000, and MSNBC with 82,000. Grim.

0:32:52 - Leo Laporte
Is it grim?

0:32:55 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean 82,000 people. Grim for them Just grim for them. Good.

0:33:00 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I don't think it's good. I think that cable news is a dying medium. Oh yeah, and I'm not surprised that 2 million people are watching Fox. Think it's good that I? I think the cable news is a dying medium, oh yeah, and I'm surprised well, I'm not surprised that two million people are watching fox. Probably half of those, uh, television sets are like in doctor's offices or whatnot. Um, but I don't know. It's just grim that you have an entire industry that is propped up by such abysmal numbers.

0:33:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, but I also celebrate the death of mass media, and I think that that time when we believed that Walter Cronkite spoke for the whole nation, was a lie, a myth. It's over and we haven't figured out what to replace it with yet.

0:33:46 - Leo Laporte
Well, as somebody said in the Discord, the whole idea of news as a business is probably a bad idea, especially news as a business for corporations Really Come on.

0:33:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Because there's not enough charity to support the journalism we need, so it has to be a business?

0:33:59 - Leo Laporte
Yes, in great measure. Not entirely. Don't the priorities become profit-making as opposed to truth seeking?

0:34:07 - Jeff Jarvis
They have been since Gutenberg their drink.

0:34:12 - Paris Martineau
I got another drink.

0:34:13 - Jeff Jarvis
It's been about making money since the beginning of media.

0:34:17 - Leo Laporte
Okay, Actually.

0:34:18 - Benito Gonzalez
I don't know, if that's true, I don't know if that's a good argument. I don't even think it's true.

0:34:21 - Leo Laporte
I think that I know that in the, in the few decades before this, the networks ran news operations at a loss for prestige, that they were also for purposes. Yeah, and because the FCC made them. They were using the public airwaves. The FCC said you have to have a certain amount of public service. But also they made their money on the on half-hour sitcoms during the week and they used that to subsidize news operations. Edward R Murrow, walter Cronkite, huntley Brinkley were not profitable. Yeah, they might have had ads, but they were not profitable.

0:34:56 - Paris Martineau
So I disagree, Jeff. I'm not certain that the future of media should be government-sponsored, though I think that that goes without saying. It wasn't government-sponsored.

0:35:03 - Leo Laporte
It was subsidized. It wasn't government-sponsored though.

0:35:02 - Paris Martineau
I think that that comes to some. It wasn't government-sponsored, it was subsidized Government required.

0:35:06 - Leo Laporte
But look, let's face it, these big media companies have plenty of money. They could run news operations.

0:35:15 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, what kind they run. This is where the attention economy is. I all agree with you that it's the particulars of trying to get the largest audience possible, as the business model, is what has led to the corruption of the Internet as well as media. But I think we're at the end of that, paris. Related to this is a story from the information online 65. About YouTube, which talks about why YouTube wants to take over tv. Because you look at also what's happening to the cord cutting, which people thought was never going to happen. It's happening and the numbers are stark.

0:35:52 - Leo Laporte
Do you know how much youtube tv costs a month? Something crazy, if I recall 83 oh my gosh, what do?

0:36:00 - Paris Martineau
you get for that it's basic cable. It's basic, so we've just, we've just reinvented that, yeah it's just ever that expensive uh, yeah, roughly.

0:36:14 - Leo Laporte
And the reason it's so expensive a lot of the reason besides youtube's desire to make money is that the local channels that people want uh with their subscription, uh charge them a lot and the money goes up. And then people want espn. So that costs money.

0:36:29 - Benito Gonzalez
Espn is very expensive I'm pretty sure sports sells all of that I think espn is something like 14 a subscriber a month espn is failing, though but the nfl these bands in bad shape aren't, you, aren't you

0:36:42 - Leo Laporte
know right, that's. Different.

0:36:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Companies have an endless way of losing money, but nevertheless, that well, and the local stations wouldn't be so expensive without government intervention and must carry.

0:36:54 - Leo Laporte
Right, except I think that people want the local stations.

0:36:59 - Paris Martineau
I'm not certain. I think that I think that Jeff is right, that a lot of the subscription does seem to come from people just wanting access to live sporting events.

0:37:09 - Leo Laporte
And live news. Breaking news. Who's? Subscribing for live news I always subscribe for live news so that if there's an earthquake or you know if there's a big story.

0:37:20 - Paris Martineau
I just put on well, yeah, my sister does. What do you watch? What do you watch Paris, If?

0:37:23 - Leo Laporte
something big happens, I watch C Paris, if something big happens.

0:37:26 - Paris Martineau
I watch C-SPAN. If something big happens, good.

0:37:30 - Leo Laporte
C-SPAN comes with your basic cable. It's not free.

0:37:34 - Paris Martineau
It comes with your basic cable.

0:37:35 - Leo Laporte
It is in fact not free.

0:37:36 - Paris Martineau
I've never watched it on a TV channel. I've always watched it on their website.

0:37:40 - Leo Laporte
Oh you stream it oh, okay it oh okay, it is free on the stream. Um yeah, in fact, one of the stories we have this week is the incredible increase in the cost of youtube tv premium. They've increased it by about 50 percent.

0:37:57 - Paris Martineau
It's kind of outrageous what is the difference between youtube tv and youtube tv premium?

0:38:02 - Leo Laporte
so if you watch youtube, you know not youtube, tv youtube. If you watch YouTube, you know not YouTube, tv YouTube. If you watch YouTube, you know you get a lot of ads, right, a lot of ads. So you subscribe to YouTube. It used to be called Red. I don't know why it says Red here, but it's YouTube premium. It's now $20 a month, up from $13 a month.

0:38:20 - Paris Martineau
Wow, that's the Apple price and Spotify is going to be increasing their subscription fees by the end of the year. I'm forgetting who broke that story today.

0:38:28 - Leo Laporte
And who says inflation isn't happening right?

0:38:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Hey Well, this isn't just inflation. This is causing inflation because it's opportunistic.

0:38:37 - Paris Martineau
I think this is enthustification, I mean this is what the business model of these companies was. Is we get people hooked on? Our product at a cheap. It's the same thing that was happening with delivery, uh services or, you know, uber lift. You want to talk about addiction when it's easy and then we raise the price because we've been losing money this whole time media invented this, that's exactly it yeah, veneto says it's in shitification.

0:39:01 - Leo Laporte
That's the definition of it. You lock people in and then you squeeze all the profits you can out of them, and no wonder teenagers are depressed. I don't think you're allowed to say insidification. You can, because it's not the S word, it's a longer word.

0:39:15 - Paris Martineau
It's a longer word, so it's actually okay, yeah.

0:39:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Can I say the extended BS word? No, but that's a longer word with the S word in it and it's political speech. Lord knows, there's no more political speech than that.

0:39:30 - Paris Martineau
Can I burn a flag on twittv you?

0:39:32 - Leo Laporte
can say anything you want. John is going out to look at Crater Lake or something, so he's the guy who usually he can't stop us. He's the guy when we say bad words yells at us across the room.

0:39:45 - Jeff Jarvis
He gets very mad. He gets very mad Because one mom, one mom long ago said oh, not my kids.

0:39:52 - Leo Laporte
No, we want to have it non-explicit. We don't want to have to put the explicit tag on it.

0:39:56 - Paris Martineau
Hey, I'm really sorry for that one episode I hosted guys.

0:40:00 - Leo Laporte
We want young people to be able to watch, because I think what we're saying is important if and for young people. Right, we're talking about important stuff. I mean, after all, we know that young people will, if given the opportunity, ask for songs about poop from their Amazon, echo or their Siri. That's why this guy, this guy right here, has recorded tens of thousands of songs and put them on Spotify. Matt Farley is his name. You saw the New York Times Sunday Magazine article by Brett Martin. Farley.

Even some years ago made a song about Brett Martin called You're a Nice man. Yes, you want to. Can we hear it At the end of this? I'll put song in air quotes At the end of this. It's only a minute and 14 seconds long. He actually gives his phone number. Matt Farley does. So Brett Martin, having stumbled upon this, called him and he said honestly Martin says I said this is Brett Martin. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to call. The man had no idea who I was. You have to understand. He said apologetically I've written over 24 000 songs. I wrote 50 songs yesterday. Matt farley lives in danvers mass on the north shore, apparently in this business model.

Well, if you put this stuff on spotify, you can make some money, not a lot. I thought he was going to be loaded rolling in it. Uh, according to the times, in 2008, farley's search engine optimization project because that's what this is really took in three thousand dollars. Uh, in 2012, twenty four thousand dollars. Now it's a little bit more. Uh, to date, his band he has many, but the band, the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and and the and the song Poop in my Fingernails. We could play it if you'd like no, no, please do not.

0:42:16 - Jeff Jarvis
I think we're alright actually. No, no, no, stop. I'm channeling John here. No, don't do it.

0:42:22 - Leo Laporte
Come on, every kid in the uh listening audience has heard this song, brought in 469 000, but they're but they're not the only big money songs, uh. He has a song by papa rotzi and the photogs, uh, which earned 41 000,000. The best birthday.

0:42:44 - Jeff Jarvis
How does he earn this though?

0:42:45 - Leo Laporte
I'm not sure.

0:42:46 - Paris Martineau
Just by quantity.

0:42:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Spotify. So if you search or you even ask, as if anybody who has younger kids knows, they love saying hey, play a poop song to Echo and it will play one of his songs. Toilet blow cleaners are huge in the under eight set. In fact, he has a lot of songs about going to the bathroom.

0:43:10 - Benito Gonzalez
And. I think this is what's wrong with streaming. You know that, like eight-year-olds can define culture.

0:43:15 - Jeff Jarvis
What Well, oh, Talk to Cocoa Melon, barney, barney. That's all I have to say.

0:43:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Barney was terrible.

0:43:25 - Jeff Jarvis
There's the best birthday song Were you raised on Barney Paris? Yeah. I love you, you love me, please, no, leo. No, we're a happy family.

0:43:39 - Benito Gonzalez
That's not the same as a poop song. I'm sorry, that's not the same. It is to me. You're saying it's a higher quality.

0:43:44 - Leo Laporte
I'm sorry, that's not the same. It is to me. You're saying it's a higher quality. Barney was worse because Barney took well-known songs and added horrible lyrics to them Not insulting, just.

0:43:54 - Paris Martineau
Oh, and Matt Farley with his poop songs would never do that.

0:43:59 - Leo Laporte
He says people like to criticize the whole streaming thing, but there's really a lot of pros to it. In 2023, last year, $200,000. Like to criticize the whole streaming thing, but there's really a lot of pros to it. In 2023, last year, two hundred thousand dollars. Farley's earnings help him fund his other creative endeavors he records what he?

calls his no jokes, music, including a two-man band he's been in since college called mose haven, which once recorded an album a day for a year. He's apparently big on quantity. He hosts two podcasts. Ah, there you go. That's where the real money is One about his work, the other about recapping Celtics games, and he makes micro-budget movies. Two a year.

0:44:40 - Benito Gonzalez
This guy was a creative kid in third grade.

0:44:42 - Leo Laporte
I think it's fantastic and I'm glad he's making a couple hundred thousand a year. Um, he works hard for it. I'll give him that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not like he's, you know, sitting on his keister. He says I could fill a 5 000 seat arena if I could only get everybody in one place his theory is that every idea, no matter its apparent value, must be honored and completed.

0:45:07 - Paris Martineau
An idea thwarted is an insult to the muse and his oh god spare me. I liked him till that he says if you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop. You just do it and do it, and do it and you'll sort it out later oh I think, it's kind of an interesting philosophy there.

0:45:24 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, I mean writing. Often writers say I don't think about what you're writing, just write. You can edit it later. Your mistake is pausing and editing and all and all that. Here he is composing a song on his street, out in front of his house with a very long extension cord. Now I think that's staging the news. Did the new york times photographer tell him? Let's, hey, I got an idea. Let's go out in the street with your connection cord. Now I think that's staging the news. Did the new york times photographer tell him? Let's, hey, I got an idea. Let's go out in the street with your role.

0:45:49 - Jeff Jarvis
You just happened to see him in the street where they drove up. It was just perfect. When I worked for nbc.

0:45:54 - Leo Laporte
We were told again and again oh, never do this. You cannot get people to do something for the camera. You can only record what they would be doing otherwise if right.

0:46:04 - Paris Martineau
Oh, so you do you really think? The new york times definitely doesn't do that, because otherwise there is a epidemic of people standing dramatically in fields across america, because that is every photo you see.

0:46:17 - Leo Laporte
Well, professor, is that staging for?

0:46:20 - Jeff Jarvis
people. Yeah, when I work people, it just so happens that all these famous stars were all in their kitchen making pasta. Oh God, it just happened.

0:46:28 - Paris Martineau
All of them.

0:46:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, I'm proud to say and maybe I was the only guy who actually believed the NBC guidelines, but I was very careful not to you know, you go in to do a story about some guy who's written some program. You don't say, hey, could you sit down at the computer and pretend to type? You don't do that.

0:46:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh God, but Leo the B-roll. I mean, I've done so much B-roll.

0:46:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of hands on my skull.

0:46:55 - Jeff Jarvis
You type something meaningless. You walk into an office oh yeah, B-roll is a lie.

0:47:06 - Leo Laporte
Naughties are a lie. Naughties are a lie, but TV lies. Let's play another Matt Farley song. No, this is called Shut Up your Monkey.

0:47:17 - Paris Martineau
Get down.

0:47:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Benito Benito. You know the cultural problem here is the New York Times writes about this. I don't know if you also saw. The New York Times did a story today about people who are like sticks. They have run out of everything to write about. They have run out. Wait a minute.

0:47:36 - Paris Martineau
Hey, you got a giant newsroom. You got to fill the online bin. It's about people who like sticks.

0:47:50 - Leo Laporte
Wow, fill the online. It's about people, people who like sticks. Uh, wow, I guess.

0:47:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, they have a giant newsroom they have to people who like sticks and the people who love them, the new york times, that's almost like a parody.

0:47:59 - Leo Laporte
Well, it should be and the times is on it.

0:48:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Exactly.

0:48:05 - Leo Laporte
Sticks and the people who love them.

0:48:07 - Jeff Jarvis
And they're being played. They're playing each, everybody's playing, everybody by the way, definitely staged, definitely staged yeah.

0:48:15 - Paris Martineau
No, these people were just tossing their sticks.

0:48:19 - Leo Laporte
With joy. Out and about. I love sticks and I have, in fact as I'm hiking.

0:48:25 - Paris Martineau
Wait, wait. You've got to scroll down. There's a better photo.

0:48:28 - Leo Laporte
Yes, there is.

0:48:29 - Paris Martineau
That one, yeah, black and white wearing sunglasses, posing as if they're in a rap video or something.

0:48:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Boy, we got the times.

0:48:40 - Leo Laporte
What is the reason for this article? All the news that's fit to print? Oh, because it's on Instagram. This is why they have Instagram. That's fit to print? Oh, because it's on instagram. This is why they have instagram. It makes it a trend story. Yeah, it's a trend story. Official stick reviews on instagram. Well, hey, we verified. There are people who love sticks and they have an instagram account. I think maybe jonathan hate was right. By the way, he hates it when you call him Jonathan. Hey, I just think you should know that, jeff.

0:49:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Just for your own. I did mess up for a while, but I now know to call him height.

0:49:14 - Leo Laporte
Hey, they're looking at you.

0:49:15 - Jeff Jarvis
I didn't know, I just kind of presumed.

0:49:16 - Leo Laporte
They're looking at you. They want to know Can we buy you a drink? Come on, come on over, have a seat. Sit down with us across the bar. Yeah, we really like your vibe. We like her parents now turned her microphone down too low. Come on, come on over. That really is exactly what they look like. You nailed it. It's hysterical. Yeah, yeah, we like your vibe man. Uh, wow, february's uh stick winner. Uh, curved at one end, resembled. Okay, never mind, I'll stop. Is that Peyronie's disease?

0:49:51 - Jeff Jarvis
No, sorry, you have been watching CNN.

0:49:55 - Paris Martineau
Okay, I get ads for that all the time. That is the number one ad I see on Redditcom and I don't know why they think you're a middle-aged man who has a bent penis and I'm like no, I just hang out with them.

0:50:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we're not middle-aged, honey. I got bad news for you. We're a little bit older than that. He's old enough to call you honey. Yeah yeah. Stacy used to hate that when I would do that. She just would hate that. But it's more like a waitress calls you honey. It's more like that You're mocking yourself when you're doing it Self-mockery. Yes, should we visit some of Joe's stickers, by the way? Oh, with Barney and Kara. This is a man experiencing podcast hell in real time, in real time. Wow, beautiful Joe's good.

0:50:54 - Jeff Jarvis
That's a good one, joe, that's a good one.

0:50:56 - Leo Laporte
He is our resident illustrator in Club Twit. If you are not yet in Club Twit and you want to see more of that, hear more of our shows and who wouldn't want to see more of that? Hear more of our shows. And who wouldn't want to see more of that? Get more of our insightful analysis. There's one way to ensure that, and that's to join the club. Go to twittv slash club twit. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get special stuff we don't put out in public, although I'm very proud of our club leader, lisa, who decided that all of our shows should be available to the public, at least in audio. So we have now made all of the shows that used to be inside the club only, like the untitled Linux show, hands on Mac, hands on Windows, scott Wilkinson's Home Theater, greeks. We now all have feeds and you can listen to them for free. They're ad-supp, ad supported, and we really appreciate Lisa doing that. If you want the video though we have to give you a little incentive to join the club you can join the club and then you get the video as well of all of those shows.

There are some special events we do that are only in the club Stacey's Book Club is coming up. Next month we're going to do the Babaverse, the first volume we also are going to do. We just thought this one up. Yesterday Anthony Nielsen said we should do a movie watch party. But we need a movie that is public domain. So we have to go back to 1927 and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which is oh, my oh. That's going to be. It's going to be fun. So we're going to play it and comment on it and we're going to have popcorn and sit around and stuff and if you're in the club you can join us for that virtually in the Discord. We also have open studios this Sunday and the 21st and I think they're sold out, but if they're not, you can check it out at the Discord.

So lots of benefits. But the real benefit is knowing that you're keeping what we're. If you'd like what we're doing, you want to keep it going. It really is going to be the only way forward and it's it's. I'm sad I don't want to do it that way, but in some ways it's. It's kind of a blessing because it means that we're doing something people like enough to support it. It's a couple of cups of coffee a month. $7 a month. Visit a month. Visit twittv slash club twit. If you're not yet a member, I would love for you to join. Oh, we already have the watch party info up. It's going to be May 9th and you can respond. This is a classic sci-fi movie, really, in some ways established the whole genre Came out in 1927. And we will be sitting around in our living room talking about it, which will be a lot of a lot of the twit team will be there and it's gonna be fun. I think we're gonna enjoy it.

Uh, google has uh, we talked about this yesterday on security. Now you remember they got sued over incognito mode. Now they have pledged to destroy everything they learned All the browsing data. It's quite a significant amount. There was a class action lawsuit filed in 2020.

All browsing period or just browsing under incognito, just anything under incognito, because Google implied that it was somehow private, but of course, they were continuing to track you. Google settled, offered a lot of money and they have agreed to destroy billions of data points. The lawsuit alleges it improperly collected under incognito mode. It's also going to update disclosures about what is collected and what isn't in private browsing and give you the option to disable third-party cookies in that setting, David Boies the famous David Boies who represents the consumers in the lawsuit said the settlement requires Google to delete and remediate, in unprecedented scope and scale, the data it collected improperly. A Google spokesman says we're happy, happy to delete it. It was never associated with an individual or used in any form of personalization, so we're glad. We're glad to get rid of it. It's gone, fine, no problem.

0:54:58 - Jeff Jarvis
It was costing money in the closet. That's right. Now we can put coats in there. Yeah, yeah.

0:55:06 - Benito Gonzalez
It's already been sold.

0:55:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's right. All the fun's gone out of it anyway. Uh, did you know that april 1st, besides being the journalist's most hated day of the year because you never know what, I hate it? I really hate that day isn't it awful. It's better, though, isn't it, than it's better though, isn't it, than it has been? Yeah, it actually has.

But I think the pandemic kind of kicked everybody, remember we used to uh, every april 1st, we'd have like five or six jokes from google alone. Google alone, yeah, like the toilet internet service provider that was somehow getting your data through the sewage pipes. That wasn wasn't that funny, was it? Well, april 1st 2004, google did put out a press release. That was not an April Fool's joke. They launched Gmail. Oh wait a minute. We already talked about that, didn't we? Did we talk about it? I can't remember?

0:56:03 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, we didn't.

0:56:04 - Leo Laporte
None of the show I don't understand how you ever keep track of what you talk about on which show? I can't do that. You're amazing that way. But no, we didn't. Well, uh, thank you for helping me. It was, you know.

This is a story from a couple of days ago. Um, the inspiration for gmail came from a google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services. Recalled larry page. I'm reading from the google press release from 2004 she kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them. Page said this is back when he had a voice. And when she's not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked can't you people fix this? And larry said heck yeah. Literally, that's in the the subtitle of the heading. Heck yeah, say google founders. Uh, gmail solves all my communications needs. It's fast and easy and has all the storage I need. It was a lot of storage, was a gigabyte we talked about on sunday because it was also, I I think, for most of us, the first time we ever saw a web app Prior to 2004,.

Websites were static, maybe they had a little animation, but you couldn't really interact with them. But this used something called jQuery, which was all the rage at the time, and actually the page would be refreshed. It were in an app that was in a web page and you could search inside the web page without leaving it. You could compose emails, send them without leaving the page. It was a big deal. In fact, such a big deal that the first invitations it was invite only for a long time. It was beta for a decade, but it was invite only for a long time. Those first invitations were pricey. You could buy them on eBay.

0:57:51 - Jeff Jarvis
I wonder if they're I forgot about that entirely. People were dying. It was, wasn't it the original kind of special Beta invite thing that metered?

0:58:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think. What do you mean? I'm sorry, what?

0:58:07 - Jeff Jarvis
else did that metered thing where you had to have an invite to give invites.

0:58:10 - Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, yeah. Later everybody did what was the first?

0:58:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Was it Facebook was first or?

0:58:15 - Leo Laporte
Facebook didn't need an invite. You had to be in a group. First it was a Harvard student, Then it was an Ivy League student. But you didn't need an invite. It might be. Gmail was the first with invites, chatroom Discord. Anybody think of something before 2004?

0:58:33 - Benito Gonzalez
that was invite only Benito.

0:58:34 - Leo Laporte
I can't think of anything, I think it might have been the first one. It was a huge hit right.

0:58:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh yeah, people wanted in, I wanted in. But it also changed the way I thought it was mailbox zero that went away. Let's save it all and the idea that just sir it was, it was. It was changing that google mindset of it's all there, just search it right, which for a lot of years work.

0:58:55 - Leo Laporte
Now mail search is worse than web search for me I totally can't even use it yeah, it just finds the word, rather than doing any concept work on it do you see that's funny because I think of it as a database of everything I've agreed to all the people's names, addresses. I search it all the time I don't use Gmail anymore.

0:59:15 - Paris Martineau
But do you get good search results? I guess if you're not using Gmail, maybe that's the issue I'm having.

0:59:21 - Leo Laporte
What is I?

0:59:22 - Paris Martineau
feel like if I don't search something, if I don't know the exact words that I need to be searching and if I don't search them in quotation marks, it is completely useless to search.

0:59:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it doesn't do conceptual, it only does. That Isn't that ironic.

0:59:36 - Leo Laporte
I think what we learned since 2004 is Google is not a search company. They're an ad company. They just use search to entice you. It did change how we think about email and it changed how we thought about websites that they could actually be apps. You don't remember a time when there wasn't a Gmail, do you, paris Kid? No.

0:59:58 - Paris Martineau
I remember. I remember having a Hotmail. I had a Hotmail account back in the day. Wait a minute.

1:00:07 - Leo Laporte
No, let's be honest here. This came out when you were six years old.

1:00:15 - Paris Martineau
It's not that there weren't other. I think I just yeah, when did Gmail come out?

1:00:19 - Leo Laporte
You've never known a time that didn't have Gmail 40 years ago.

1:00:24 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I guess it came out when I was seven and I got my Hotmail account when I was five years old, and I don't have gmail, but I do have hotmail.

1:00:32 - Leo Laporte
You can email. You know the best idea I ever heard of and I wish I'd done it. But but my kids now you know they're. They were like teenagers when, when gmail came out. But I wish somebody said you know what you should do when you have, when a baby is born create a gmail account for that baby and start sending them email. And then, when that kid hits 21, you say here's the keys. All this time I've been holding your gmail account for you and there might be some mail in there and it's like email from your parents, along with 500 000 pieces of spam.

1:01:04 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, and the search is busted, so you can't find anything?

1:01:08 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, you can't find it, oh.

1:01:08 - Paris Martineau
I didn't think of that Search for Leo and also we ran out of free storage. So all the interesting messages from your parents are gone. I didn't think of that.

1:01:17 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you're right, oh, never mind.

1:01:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Do you each have an old Gmail account you don't use anymore, that once in a rare while a password shows up, you have to go there.

1:01:26 - Paris Martineau
Yes, it's hilarious I have a prime gmail account, I have a secondary gmail account and I have like a tertiary gmail account that I made for like a work project a long time ago that I use for things I truly know will give me busted amounts of spam, and I honestly use all three of them fairly regularly not to send emails.

1:01:46 - Leo Laporte
I have the same email I signed up for 20 years ago, laporte at gmailcom was leo at gmail taken I didn't try for it.

I don't know why I said laporte. It was a big mistake, because I get a lot of french spam, like mostly it does, mostly french spam. But uh, yeah, you're right, every once in a while I'll have to go there to re-up my password or something like that. All right, let's move on. We've talked about Gmail enough. Here is a. For some reason I'm going to go with this. Poco, you've piqued my interest. Oh, you're saying I got this idea from an ad for gmail.

1:02:32 - Jeff Jarvis
I did, you're right oh, that's right, it is it. It inserted itself into your head.

1:02:39 - Leo Laporte
Here's sophie lee at gmailcom. You arrived. There's her birthday picture. I'm still getting the hang of it. Can you imagine, though, Sophie Lee getting this when she's 21? That would be cool that would be cute. Giggles, I have all this stuff saved. Yeah, I wish I'd done this for my kids, but you have a good point. There's also a lot of Viagra ads in there as well.

1:03:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Peyronieis disease. Yeah, just what you want your kid to see.

1:03:12 - Leo Laporte
Dad, why are you getting all these? Her first cigarette. That's cool. Oh, we moved to Oak Street. Oh, nice house. Oh, isn't this sweet. It's very sweet Because parents for years I bet your parents did this. Sweet, very sweet, because parents for years I bet your parents did this. We saved the kindergarten finger painting things and the little Henry made a little clay thing with my name on it that I think was supposed to go on my door, and when I didn't put it on my door I don't know if it's like a mail drop or something he said why didn't you put that on your door so?

I had to put it on my door this malformed clay thing, I think I still have it actually.

1:03:57 - Paris Martineau
Someone in the chat pointed out a really good thing. That also popped through my head watching that video they have a Picasso. They have Picasso.

1:04:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, we all jammed on that same thing.

1:04:07 - Leo Laporte
Isn't that? Sad Isn't that sad, isn't that sad? I got a text message from Henry actually a couple of days ago, actually from T-Mobile, saying you just reset your SIM. Is that all right? And I had. Immediately I said, oh God, I hope Henry didn't get SIM checked. So I texted him and he said no, no, I was kayaking on the bay and the phone fell out of my pocket so I had to get a new phone.

1:04:32 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I thought you were going to say he's finally decided to pay for his own phone. No, no, no, no, no.

1:04:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Don't go crazy here, harris disapproves Don't go crazy here.

1:04:43 - Paris Martineau
Come on, you're an author now, hank, you can do this.

1:04:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you know what, when that first royalty check comes in, maybe he can buy his own Gosh darn, I did ask him.

1:04:52 - Hume
I did say how much does that new phone cost?

1:04:54 - Leo Laporte
He got a new iPhone. He said I need an iPhone 15 anyway. I said how much did it cost? He said, oh, it wasn't much because I had AppleCare, so it was only 500 bucks, okay, uh, 18.

The only reason I'm thinking about this is because at&t has reset millions of customer account passcodes. Remember when we were telling everybody, oh, set a pin on your phone account so that you, if you get sim jacked, they won't be able to do it because they won't know your super secret pin? Well, apparently they do. At&t, which for years has been denying that there was a breach. Uh, the, apparently from 2019, revealing the information about 7.6 it was that long ago. Yes, jesus, 7.6 million current account holders this is AT&T this week and 65 million former account holders revealing name, address, social security number, birth date.

And, yes, those pins which it turns out weren't properly secured and could easily be cracked. It turns out weren't properly secured and could easily be cracked. They've been available on the dark net 73 million AT&T records for some time Now. At&t, for the longest time, said no, no, we've not. We've never, we haven't been never been breached. But Troy hunt of have I been pwned and verified? He said I actually got the data. I got all 73 million records and called some people and said is this information accurate? And they said yeah, how do you know my birthday and social? Well?

1:06:36 - Jeff Jarvis
well, he called people at random or called friends.

1:06:39 - Leo Laporte
No, well, I don't know. He had the database.

1:06:41 - Jeff Jarvis
That's freaky.

1:06:42 - Leo Laporte
He said you know, hey, this is a guy named Troy. He's great. I love Troy. He's Australian, he's very handsome, he'd make an excellent husband. But Dad. Sorry, I'm just teasing For me because he's a good looking guy but he also runs the. Have I Been Boned?

1:07:05 - Jeff Jarvis
All right, now we got to see, now we got to see. All right, yeah, also.

1:07:07 - Benito Gonzalez
Okay, you guy, but he also runs the have I been all right now we gotta see now we gotta see all right yeah okay, you think it's not, we'll destroy.

1:07:13 - Leo Laporte
Oh well, that's a good question, that's a very good question, but he's a good looking looking 49. Hey, you're hanging out with the middle-aged guys. You say, right, why not one more? He's not as good looking as he used to be. He used to be really good looking anyway. Here's a picture from from the early days. See how good looking he is. There he is, look at that, and he's australian, so he's got a cute accent. Does that help?

1:07:42 - Paris Martineau
well, I mean, his wife is cute too too oh shoot Never mind.

1:07:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, charlotte, my wife, yeah, never mind.

1:07:50 - Paris Martineau
Forget his wife and chief of all operational things. Oh, never mind.

1:07:54 - Leo Laporte
Never mind, forget, I mentioned it. I'm sorry, troy, I'll just have to love you from afar. Anyway, troy verified that really this is AT&T information. Find that really this is AT&T information and AT&T kind of basically gave in because they have reset those four digit passcodes for many, many, many millions of customers all 7.6 million existing customers who were in that data breach in fact, at&t says it's going to contact all of you if you have AT&T, definitely change your passcode.

I think of you. I wasn't changing my password too. If you have AT&T, definitely change your passcode. I think probably, if you log in, it will say hey, guess what? Well, I changed my password. Oh, and change your password too. Sure, All of that's been leaked.

1:08:36 - Jeff Jarvis
And went to Two Factor which I wasn't on there.

1:08:38 - Paris Martineau
Did we work on Two Factor?

1:08:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I hardly ever sign on to there, so I just don't think of it. And this time it challenged me. It said you should do it. Oh yeah, I guess I should.

1:08:51 - Leo Laporte
D Claire, who is, I declare, in our Discord said yeah, I was notified by AT&T. I was one of the victims there. Email hit my account While for five days our internet, provided by AT&T, was out. By the way, when I logged in to change that pin, I wasn't asked for my old pin and I didn't need whatever AT&T said. They replaced the old code with, so their OPSEC's still terrible. Shocking, shocking.

1:09:25 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, his wife is pretty cute, I'm sorry their teeth, the two of them their teeth.

1:09:34 - Paris Martineau
They both look AI generated. They look like healthy Australians.

1:09:38 - Leo Laporte
Australians all look AI generated. I don't know what it is about them.

1:09:41 - Paris Martineau
That's true. They're all healthy and tan the A in AI stands for Australian.

1:09:46 - Leo Laporte
That's it. Australian intelligence. That's it. You've cracked the code. So we talked about Artifact going at it. I thought, Paris, you liked Artifact, right.

1:09:57 - Paris Martineau
No, I haven't used Artifact, but I've heard good things about it. It went out of business and then came back. Came back Right.

1:10:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Briefly.

1:10:03 - Paris Martineau
Kind of.

1:10:12 - Leo Laporte
So, yeah, I think we talked about this last week, because so they announced, oh, we're going out of business and they shut down. And then kevin sistrom the man who wrote instagram and made a billion dollars from facebook and then went to facebook and then did uh, instagram on facebook for a long time, then finally quit because he couldn't take it anymore. This was his second act he said, yeah, uh, we're gonna come back. We figured out a way to come back, and at that point I said I'm not gonna buy into this, because I put a lot of effort into artifact. I love artifact. I'm not buying into this till I find out what you mean, because they'd fired everybody. Well, it turns out what he meant is yahoo has bought us and and, by the way, oh, isn't that great. That's like, uh, wow, what a dream come true. I'm, I'm now part of yahoo and immediately shut down the server.

1:10:53 - Paris Martineau
So it's, it's completely, it's gone, it's gone and they bought it and killed it bought it.

1:10:58 - Jeff Jarvis
They're not maintaining the service, they're using the technology for yahoo news.

1:11:03 - Leo Laporte
So it's dead, it's gone mike krieger and Kevin Systrom, the co-founders, will be quote special advisors for Yahoo, but won't be joining the company. Artifact's remaining five employees have either taken other jobs or are planning to take some time off.

1:11:19 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, google kills the things it starts. Yahoo killed the things that everybody else started through the years.

1:11:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Artifact was only a year old. It was really good and it was news and it was social. It kind of you know what. It followed in the lines of Nuzzle, which is another thing I love, jonathan Abrams' news app. That was based on who you follow on Twitter, so it was, in effect, a newspaper based on all the links coming at you from Twitter. It was a brilliant idea. Twitter bought it kind of, really didn't do much with it, and it reminded me of that.

1:11:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, twitter was the basis of blue, until and then Musk ruined it, as he does all things he touches. Yeah, the original blue.

1:12:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, anyway, artifact is really gone now. It's part of the purpleness of the Yahoo grotto.

1:12:08 - Jeff Jarvis
It's where apps go to die.

1:12:10 - Leo Laporte
Actually so, Axios. I was reading about this and Axios said that it's the new and improved and on its way up. Yahoo, yeah, sure.

1:12:24 - Benito Gonzalez
Okay sure Is this another one of those Axios exclusives? It is sure, okay, sure, yeah Is this another one of those Axios exclusives.

1:12:30 - Leo Laporte
It is actually.

1:12:34 - Jeff Jarvis
That was a little competitive. Jab there from Paris.

1:12:37 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, wow, I wouldn't say it's competitive, because I don't believe that the information competes on getting spoon fed exclusives, oh yeah.

1:13:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, cat fight had exclusives they talked about, I know so, yahoo's 10, verizon and 90 apollo global, which is a private equity firm, uh, and apparently, um, they've been buying up a lot of stuff they acquired, uh, factual and other news. They've been buying a number of interesting things, so maybe where's yahoo getting this money from? Well, apollo has money. What did they buy? They bought a brand.

Why would they throw it after this well, this was always the question we talked. We have been talking about yahoo this whole time on this show, back when marissa meyer was came over to rescue it from google and all of that stuff, uh, and it's just suffered. It's never really taken off, but even with all of that, it still drives a lot of traffic yeah, like aol still yeah, yahoo is still the primary search engine in Japan.

1:13:49 - Jeff Jarvis
What Well, that's different? That's different. You're right, Benito, but Yahoo has been always a different corporate beast and brand oh, Yahoo Japan is not owned by Apollo.

1:13:58 - Leo Laporte
Global. That is a different company. Yes, that's right, different company.

1:14:01 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, Huh, I didn't realize that Yahoo was big and different in Japan.

1:14:09 - Leo Laporte
We're big in japan.

1:14:10 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what I've always said. Yeah, it was, it was a, it was a deal. Back in the early days it was like um, uh, wordpress, I think it was. No blogger did one licensing deal to brazil. Yahoo did this deal where they got money for, I think, softbank inBank in Japan and it became a separate company there.

1:14:27 - Leo Laporte
That's right.

1:14:29 - Jeff Jarvis
It was an early way to get big bucks.

1:14:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

1:14:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Basically.

1:14:33 - Leo Laporte
Well, I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for Yahoo.

1:14:37 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, I used to use their links on their front page to find stuff on the internet.

1:14:43 - Leo Laporte
That was before. Gmail, though, of course that was before Google. Here's Yahoo Japan, which looks a lot like every other Yahoo actually, yeah.

1:14:53 - Jeff Jarvis
The amazing thing about Yahoo was the quaint belief that they could hire librarians to catalog every possible interesting site on the World Wide Web.

1:15:04 - Leo Laporte
Well, back in the day there weren't many sites. They actually did it for a little while. They did it.

1:15:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, they did, they did. I mean I'm proud that I had sites that were the cool site of the day.

1:15:14 - Leo Laporte
That was a big deal Did you have a cool site of the day. Yeah, I had a couple.

1:15:17 - Paris Martineau
I think so Was it njcom. I think so, paris, that with um no, I said that with complete sincerity, because okay cooler than a new jersey website?

1:15:28 - Jeff Jarvis
well, I think well, I know definitely, uh, rain or shine, which was my five day forecast only site. That was the first thing we created I think that was a cool side of the day and also the yuckiest site on the internet, which was done in collaboration with the liberty science center, and we wrote about things like snot how y yucky. Well, that's the idea. We succeeded.

1:15:49 - Leo Laporte
CoolSideOfTheDaycom, an early website created in August 1994.

1:15:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, 10 years before Gmail.

1:15:56 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure it's on Archiveorg Originally maintained by Glenn Davis, linking to one single recommended site off its homepage every day, it soon became an arbiter of taste on the Internet. This is according to Wikipedia Within a few months of its launch, every day it soon became an arbiter of taste on the Internet.

1:16:12 - Paris Martineau
This is according to Wikipedia Within a few months of its launch, Cool Site of the Day attracted around 10,000 visitors every day, oh my.

1:16:17 - Leo Laporte
God, that was a lot, Joe. You're so mean, he's so so mean, why? Yes, I am MrNewJerseycom.

1:16:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Joe, what have I?

1:16:27 - Leo Laporte
done to you, Joe? What have I done? That's a good-looking guy right there.

1:16:33 - Jeff Jarvis
I was going to start dating him.

1:16:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the site's founder became a celebrity, giving interviews to magazines and radio networks like NPR, while fending off gifts from site maintainers who sought his recommendations for their sites.

1:16:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh yes, oh yes.

1:16:47 - Leo Laporte
And one of them was njcom. But you never gave them any. I think so. Let me see. I bet archiveorg.

1:16:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, no, the sad thing is if you go to coolsideofthedaycom.

1:16:57 - Hume
Yeah.

1:16:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Go, it'll just be sad.

1:17:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, I'm actually doing something else right now. I'm trying to find archiveorg. Uh yeah, they have 4338 pages from the original, not the sad current one it'll take a while to load, I'm guessing good lord, nobody ever goes there I was about to say got to pull it out of the way back machine always.

1:17:23 - Paris Martineau
How can I figure out if?

1:17:24 - Leo Laporte
one is for new jersey, njcom. I would love to find that.

1:17:28 - Paris Martineau
Oh wait, I guess you could, I guess you'd yeah, yeah, you could see here else.

1:17:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's in alphabetical order, believe it or not, so let me go you could type in I don't know where, their njcom wasi think yuckiest site of the internet was.

1:17:43 - Jeff Jarvis
but you gotta go all the way to oh, yuckiest site.

1:17:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, I'll go to the last page.

1:17:47 - Paris Martineau
That's uh you could probably type in then yuckiest site or whatever, the url that might be in the in the index anyway it's interesting. At some point it became a wordpress uh blog oh so you were, um, a creator of the yuckiest side of the day, but yet you squirm when listening to the poop fingernail song yes, we did not do poop you contain, oh, the yuckiest side of the day at a hard line on poop yes, yes, because I set the standards.

1:18:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris, that's what. That's what being a boss gives you how did you say snot is golden?

1:18:26 - Paris Martineau
how do?

1:18:27 - Leo Laporte
you spell yuckiest. Yuckiest was spelled how y-u-c-k-i-e-s-t okay, let me just, let's see we sold it to discovery you sold it to discovery for how much I thought it was not a bad deal.

1:18:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Deal it's still god.

1:18:49 - Leo Laporte
What, what an era in media there's also murky's worst of the web. Remember that there were a lot, of, a lot of these. This was in 95. It was a response to the cool site of the day. Three, three days a week, mursky would select three new sites providing links in one sentence comments that were acidic, addictive and insanely funny let me find something on this topic mursky.

He thought, according to several interviews, mursky expected the worst side of the week to lead to money-making opportunities and grew frustrated with maintaining it when it never did. Well, you know, you should have hung in there.

1:19:32 - Paris Martineau
Sorry, mursk, weekend website there was also the award-winning site web pages that suck ah, yes um which I have the book of from 1995 oh, I love that book.

1:19:45 - Leo Laporte
Yes, here is the yuckiest site on the internet with fun. Oh, there it is. Yes, belches and gas Belches and gas. Snot and boogers. Snot and boogers. Oh my God.

1:19:58 - Paris Martineau
Okay, poop is there, Jeff you lie, I'm firing somebody. It's under pee and above ankle sprain.

1:20:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Between ankle sprains and P there's poop. Sticky pits, it's the Lumi commercial.

1:20:13 - Leo Laporte
So this is for kids, right? This is like a yes, I love roach world and worm world.

1:20:20 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, wasn't that great. And we asked Wendell was Wendell the worm.

1:20:24 - Leo Laporte
Oh wow. So what was the plan here with this?

1:20:30 - Jeff Jarvis
We started a few things early on just to learn how to do the web. So the first website I started in 95 was rainorshinecom. And then we decided we were going to do deals with people. So the ReScience Center is there in New Jersey and the publisher said go the boss. Steve Newhouse said said go figure out something with them. So I went and brainstormed. We said kids love yucky stuff. I saw they had a, they had a exhibit about that. So let's do the yuckiest site on the internet wow, you were a pioneer.

1:20:57 - Leo Laporte
I didn't realize you were such a web pioneer that's pretty cool.

1:21:00 - Jeff Jarvis
I was indeed. I learned html, sir. How did we not?

1:21:03 - Paris Martineau
any other uh fun websites that you made um come to mind no, what did I start? No, nothing. But we got a bunch of newspapers.

1:21:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, I've got one, I've got one, I've got one. Oh yeah, this'll, this'll. So, um, uh, nola the, the nola cam. Oh yeah, we, we owned the nolacom, which is the new orleans newspaper.

1:21:29 - Leo Laporte
What was it? The called right the?

1:21:31 - Jeff Jarvis
times, picayune times and so we put a uh on on uh outside a bar called the cat's meow it's not what you think. Um and uh, we put a cam there and people realized the cam was there and it was new orleans and they were drunk, so they would come on the cam and they would call and say, watch me, and they would flash. Yeah, I was going to say that has to be where that's going. Oh, that got traffic and people were doing screenshots and saving the screenshots from the cam.

1:22:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Jeff, you're brilliant, a pioneer. Someday, somebody will write a book about you, the Gutenberg of the internet and people will be drinking to your name for years to come.

1:22:15 - Jeff Jarvis
I invented. I took the AP wire and we did something called Newsflash and it refreshed all the stories on the AP wire every 30 seconds, and so you just left that on your screen and we counted that as page views. Oh whoa.

1:22:33 - Leo Laporte
Every 30 seconds a new page.

1:22:34 - Paris Martineau
That's brilliant.

1:22:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, you are watching this week in Google or this week in Jeff's stories. You take sorry, it's all right, I do the same thing. That's what happens when you get old. All you've got left is your stories With Paris Martin when Paris is 70,.

1:22:52 - Jeff Jarvis
She said you know, I was on this thing they called a podcast with these two old farts.

1:22:56 - Paris Martineau
You won't believe it. Back when we had to talk into microphones instead of just broadcasting our thoughts through the hive mind. It was really something.

1:23:07 - Leo Laporte
You had to have a machine that you talked into um. Do you think there'll be podcasts 50 years from now?

1:23:11 - Paris Martineau
I guess so will there be egos yeah, yeah, I guess so yeah, I think we're all gonna merge into one big consciousness this is but there'll be podcasts then this week in google 762 podcasts in.

1:23:27 - Leo Laporte
Actually, we are getting close april I think it's the 15th. We're one week away from the 19th birthday for of google. I'm not google what of this week, this week no, this week google's not so young, but uh, of the first twit, yeah wow, what are you gonna do for 20? I don't know. I said we can do something for 20.

1:23:51 - Paris Martineau
I don't normally leo, when are we gonna do our 24 hour live stream?

1:23:55 - Leo Laporte
oh, you really want to do it, you really want to do it. I'm here for it okay, we just have to think of what to do we can, we can totally do it april 17th.

1:24:04 - Benito Gonzalez
Okay, we just have to think of what to do.

1:24:05 - Leo Laporte
We can totally do it.

1:24:08 - Jeff Jarvis
April 17th 2005.

1:24:09 - Leo Laporte
Right, Elisa is somewhere saying no, no, oh yeah, Believe me, she'll be in here in a second Over my dead body.

1:24:16 - Paris Martineau
We could tie it to getting club members or something. You know, there's a way to make it happen.

1:24:24 - Leo Laporte
Well, maybe we could take this Met uh view party and just show it over and over again for 12 times, and that'll be yeah, yeah, that counts that counts. Yep, yeah, you're watching twig this week in google. Uh, let's see, we got some more stuff here. Amazon is this is from the information dropping the just Walk Out checkout tech. That was the whole point of Amazon Fresh stores. We just go in, pick stuff up off the counter and walk out.

1:24:58 - Paris Martineau
Hey, it's, you know, pretty expensive to have all. Have you been in one of the Just Walk Out stores?

1:25:04 - Jeff Jarvis
No, and I feel sad that I never got to use them you never, did oh yeah, it's, oh yeah, you still probably can, I don't know if it's gone yet.

1:25:10 - Paris Martineau
But you look up and it is just more cameras than you've ever seen before. Yes, it feels like you're on a soundstage maybe that's what happened, is people got freaked?

I mean, I think it's just that it was expensive. It didn't seem to the cost savings that they were expecting to have from it weren't materializing as quickly as they had hoped. My colleague, theo Waite, our Amazon reporter, did a really great report into kind of the struggles of Just Walk Out. It was published like last summer actually, but has been making the rounds a lot this week because of the struggles of Just Walk Out. It was published like last summer actually, but it's been making the rounds a lot this week because of the news. This is specifically how people are getting that number of which has kind of been overhyped of behind Just Walk Out technology being an army of over 1,000 contractors based in India.

1:26:04 - Leo Laporte
Oh, so it wasn't so automated.

1:26:08 - Paris Martineau
I mean yes and no. So what the contractors were doing is they were in some ways helping train the machine learning, but they were also kind of being a check, like a human review on the machine's predictions, and I believe we have the link in the rundown somewhere.

1:26:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I've got it. I'm looking at the story right now from Theo how Amazon's big vet just walked out stumbled. This was last May. Yeah, these thousands of people are double checking to make sure they got it right.

1:26:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Can we play an SNL or we can't? I say no. Okay, benito has great snl forbidden video, snl and amazon go snl and it's just one of the great gigs they've ever done. A black person says, no, I'm not, I'm not just walking out.

1:27:04 - Leo Laporte
I remember that I think we tried to show it actually. Yeah, like no. No, what are you crazy? You can't just walk out of the store. They're going to arrest me as soon as I put foot on the sidewalk. More than 1,000 people in India working on Just Walk Out as of mid-2022, whose jobs, as from Theo's reporting, included manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos. Ah to train just walkouts machine learning module.

1:27:32 - Paris Martineau
They were there for human review, right um just. This is from his report. Last year, just walkout teams repeatedly missed goals. They had set to cut down on human review. As of mid-2022, just walkout required about 700 human reviews per 1,000 sales.

1:27:48 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh, that's ridiculous.

1:27:49 - Paris Martineau
So 70% of it had to be human reviewed, which was far above an internal target of reducing the number of reviews to between 20 and 50 per 1,000.

1:27:58 - Hume
So basically, it didn't work.

1:28:01 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it wasn't as efficient. It wasn't as efficient. And the thing that is interesting about this is what Amazon is doing instead of Just Walk Out now is they're pivoting to the dash carts, which is kind of a cart you push around and you can kind of check yourself out as you're going. And that was actually an idea Part of how Amazon operated, at least under Bezos, is it was extremely competitive and the Just Walk Out team was under kind of like one group of executives and simultaneously they had people working on the dash cart at the same time and they were going head to head as to who would be, uh, the one that amazon would deploy in all their stores, and at first it seemed like just walk out one, but now it seems like the dash cart team ultimately has we tried to show a video the other week but but Leo couldn't get it going because of Facebook and he doesn't know how to do Facebook.

1:28:50 - Jeff Jarvis
But Fiji Simo, the head of Instacart, shows they have a cart too, and she and her daughter and husband are throwing things in the cart and making sure it works and it's very cute.

1:29:00 - Leo Laporte
I don't remember that Was I here for that show?

1:29:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, you were.

1:29:09 - Paris Martineau
You, yes, you were, you tried to do it. I tried to show on this show I don't think I would.

1:29:11 - Leo Laporte
Are you sure, jeff? You lost your stories. Your other show host, jason howell what what?

1:29:15 - Jeff Jarvis
no, I didn't. It's not an ai story. I wouldn't talk to him about an ai okay no, you could, because that's right, she because she doesn't follow you.

1:29:21 - Leo Laporte
I think it was oh, all right, that sounds vaguely familiar. Vaguely, anyway. Anyway. It does seem like they might keep Just Walk Out for smaller stores, the airports they're talking about. Yeah, they're not immediately getting rid of them. They've paused for 18 months on all grocery stores. Now, according to Theo Waite in the information, amazon's gearing up to open a new batch of grocery stores which will feature those dash carts. But you know, we also hear stories about a lot of places taking the self-checkout out of their stores. They don't work that well, they require more human intervention and people just walk out.

People steal, you know and that's not working out so well for stores like Walmart and Target. So I don't know if this dash cart thing is going to fly either. Why is Amazon so set on reinventing grocery stores? It's not a high margin business, is it?

1:30:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, that's what they're trying to get higher margin. I think that's it.

1:30:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, they're trying to make it work, that's it.

1:30:26 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're trying to make it work.

1:30:26 - Paris Martineau
And one of the big points of. I guess the big problem with the business is employing large amounts of people and having to deal with the human aspect of it. So of course a tech company's response is going to be oh, we can techify it, we can solve it in this way. And they were kind of looking at it from a very long uh viewpoint, in the sense that if we perfect this, then decades down the line we'll have the competitive advantage and the margins will work out in our favor. Right, but it seems like they're really struggling with that and there's data to be had google has changed its mind.

1:31:03 - Leo Laporte
They are going to bring the new little baby, gemini Nano AI, to the Pixel 8. For a while they said it's not powerful enough, but maybe they've figured out how to do it. Circle to search as well. Gemini Nano is the company's most efficient AI model designed for on-device artificial intelligence, so it was going to just come to the Pixel 8 Pro, but now it's going to come to the Pixel 8. Circle to Search has rolled out on the Pixel 8, 8 Pro, 7 Pro, 8, 8 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 series phones, so try it out. Have you tried it, jeff? I've got a 6.

1:31:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, isn't that.

1:31:45 - Leo Laporte
I think I might wait for the 9. Bless his heart. Wow, yeah, yeah wait as long as you can. I like this story, I don't know. I again, I'll talk to the two journalists about this one. This is, uh, a very interesting story about a woman named carrie kehoe, deputy head of research and data at icij, teaching journalists. Icij is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists teaching journalists how to link shell companies to their secret owners. I thought this was.

1:32:18 - Paris Martineau
Oh that's great yeah.

1:32:19 - Jeff Jarvis
This is for Paris, this is for the real international journalists.

1:32:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. So she has all sorts of little tips and tricks to to kind of dig deep into these, Because of course it's always obscure. The whole point of a shell company is to hide the secret owner. But she says shell companies still need paperwork in order to be incorporated and often people filled out the paperwork. Formation agents kind of sneak in or accidentally include stuff that may be a giveaway as to who the real owners are. Searching for foreign assets of a Middle Eastern king in 2021, Kehoe and her colleagues found the monarch secretly owned 14 luxury homes in the UK and US using a network of front companies and tax havens homes in the UK and US using a network of front companies in tax havens. They got dramatic confirmation when the secret client's home address was listed by formation agents in registration documents as the kingdom's royal palace.

1:33:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that'll tell you.

1:33:25 - Leo Laporte
That's kind of a giveaway. Here's my royal palace. Anyway, great story. I recommend it. From the Global Investigative Journalism Network Tips for linking shell companies to their secret owners. Google is going to fight cookie hijacking. This actually is probably a good thing, with encryption keys for the Chrome browser. They call it device-bound session credentials. They'll use the TPM chip in today's modern Windows machines. It's on the beta version of some Chrome browsers you might have downloaded. It'll use encryption to prevent hackers from hijacking your login sessions through cookie theft. I'm sure Steve will talk about this. He's actually pretty complimentary about Google's new ad API being more private, and this might be another thing that you know. I think google real realizes I was talking earlier about the fact that 52 of americans use ad blockers. Google understands what a problem this is. They're in the ad business, but they also understand your point, jeff, that sites need revenue and so they're trying to find ways to be more privacy forward.

1:34:45 - Jeff Jarvis
But still one they get, and they got a piece of that revenue Right, huge piece, of course and so it's good for for both sides of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:34:53 - Leo Laporte
Uh, let's see, I want to get you out of here on time you got about half an hour, great Okay. Great, okay, uh, did you just let it up? Pick some here from your vast co-host contributions.

1:35:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Taco Bell and Pizza Hut going AI first. I have no idea what that means, but the press release enough is. I want to talk about it.

1:35:18 - Leo Laporte
I want to the company that owns them both is called Yum. An amazing display of arrogance the fast food giants. This is from the Wall Street Journal.

1:35:29 - Paris Martineau
Chief digital and technology officer says, data shared by restaurants is the secret sauce.

1:35:38 - Leo Laporte
Oh no For enabling AI and digital information.

1:35:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Have you had?

1:35:46 - Leo Laporte
the new three cheese soft Taco. Whatever it's called.

1:35:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Burrito. Yeah, soft taco it's very goodrito taco it's very good. Yeah, it's a thing that's really good there's three different cheeses.

1:35:52 - Leo Laporte
Now, that's beautiful I prefer real mexican food made by real mexicans.

1:35:58 - Paris Martineau
But okay, there are a few things that can compare to a taco bell fiesta potato bowl really fantastic, it's great.

1:36:06 - Leo Laporte
Really it's for like $3?.

1:36:11 - Paris Martineau
A.

1:36:11 - Leo Laporte
Fiesta Potato Bowl.

1:36:13 - Paris Martineau
It's just a bunch of little hash brownie potatoes covered in cheese.

1:36:17 - Leo Laporte
Crispy potatoes and cheese does sound good actually.

1:36:20 - Paris Martineau
It's great. I mean, what more could you ask Am? I wrong, but I just always assume that the people who go to Taco Bell are going there late at night when they're really drunk, because they just need to eat some grease. Or now there are Taco Bell cantinas, at least in New York City, so they could be going there late at night to get drunk.

1:36:38 - Benito Gonzalez
Get drunk Taco. Bell is also one of the only fast food places where you can go as a vegetarian.

1:36:43 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a good point.

1:36:44 - Benito Gonzalez
Are you a vegetarian, Benito?

1:36:46 - Paris Martineau
No, I'm not I'm not, I used to be a vegetarian and I would eat there a lot.

1:36:49 - Leo Laporte
Really All right, I take it back.

1:36:52 - Paris Martineau
I mean not a lot in comparison to other things, but in comparison to fast food, yes, it's nice.

1:36:56 - Leo Laporte
So this is what Park said. He's the guy in charge of all this. Joe Park, Yum's new chief. Does the card say Yum Chief?

1:37:08 - Hume
Digital and.

1:37:08 - Leo Laporte
Technology Officer Yum.

1:37:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Yum Brands.

1:37:15 - Paris Martineau
Yum Brands he says he says, he says he says something. Yum's super app, a mobile app for restaurant managers to track and manage operations, is testing a generative ai boost. Team members can ask the app questions like how should I set this oven temperature?

1:37:35 - Leo Laporte
oh dear wow, so exciting park says he sees a future where ai is in every aspect of yum's restaurants, with generative ai in the pockets of franchisees, because if you don't know what temperature to set your oven at, now you do. The Yum super app will be in use in more than 8,700 Pizza Hut and oh, they own Pizza Hut and KFC as well to connect technology systems. I thought you had a combination.

1:38:02 - Paris Martineau
Taco Bell Pizza Hut.

1:38:04 - Jeff Jarvis
They have those, yes.

1:38:05 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

1:38:06 - Leo Laporte
Also it's a very urban thing, that's when there's no space an augmented reality tool for teaching employees how to make new products like pizza, hut melts oh, this is a new one, the cheesy chicken crispinata the phone.

1:38:23 - Paris Martineau
Are you thinking about your drive to?

1:38:25 - Leo Laporte
DC. There's a phony crispanada it comes with spicy ranch sauce.

1:38:32 - Jeff Jarvis
No, the most.

1:38:35 - Leo Laporte
Mexican of sauces.

1:38:41 - Jeff Jarvis
I put the three cheese chicken flatbread melt. That's what it is. It's hard to order because they think you want three of them. You only want two of them or four of them.

1:38:54 - Leo Laporte
Apparently, yum's former e-commerce vendor couldn't handle more than 700 Taco Bell orders a minute. A lot of their business is digital. Now the new Yum device can handle more than 4 600 orders a minute. That's a big improvement. Wow, I so really. This is. This is about the, the digitization yums. Yeah, I'm not sure. 45 of yum sales are digital $30 billion 45% now.

1:39:27 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, Well, I wonder if that also includes the kiosks. If you now try to go to a Taco Bell or something, there's like no one available at the front and instead they have like a little kiosk where you can put in your order yourself, are they counting that as digital sales? I bet?

1:39:42 - Leo Laporte
they are. I mean the whole idea. Here's a KFC drive-thru where they're testing AI voice for drive-thru orders.

1:39:51 - Benito Gonzalez
Oh my God, I think they should turn.

1:39:53 - Paris Martineau
that drive-thru looks like one of those bank drive-thrus. I wonder if they deliver your chicken in a pneumatic tube. Yeah, It'd be pretty good.

1:40:04 - Leo Laporte
Our local KFC. I mean, these are franchises, right, they're not owned by Young, by young, they're franchised. Out is so run down. And they, like you, go there and I say, well, I'd like a you know a bucket of chicken. And they said, well, let me check and see if we have any. I said, but wait a minute, aren't?

you kentucky fried chicken he said well, I'm sorry, we only have thighs today, or whatever it's it's. It's like dude is the is. Couldn't you order enough chicken to serve the orders of chickens that you expect? But maybe they have I don't know. Now they finally can maybe that's why they need it now in california uh minimum wage for chain restaurants is $20. Yep.

1:40:50 - Jeff Jarvis
And so they're screaming oh my God, we're going to raise prices. Well, you should pay your people decently.

1:40:55 - Leo Laporte
You cannot live in this area anyway for less than $20 an hour. You just can't. That's still hard. Yes, definitely is.

1:41:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah the black bean crunch wrap supreme.

1:41:08 - Leo Laporte
I didn know, oh jeff, we're gonna lose him. We're gonna lose him, we're losing him.

1:41:12 - Jeff Jarvis
Now there's twitter and there's taco bell I. It's hard to pick between the two twitter and taco bell together at last yeah, the vegetarian uh tacos.

1:41:22 - Paris Martineau
They're really good all right.

1:41:24 - Jeff Jarvis
my normal order is two bean burritos, no onions.

1:41:27 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, bean burrito, love that.

1:41:29 - Jeff Jarvis
Isn't it great yeah.

1:41:32 - Paris Martineau
I love just a classic quesadilla. Maybe you put some beans in there, some onions.

1:41:37 - Benito Gonzalez
Talk about, also responsible for the single greatest like corporate collab of the Dorito taco.

1:41:44 - Paris Martineau
Yes, oh God, no, the Dorito taco is also. Never forget the Baja Blast. I don't even like slushies, but just the idea of that, I think, is really important to society.

1:41:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Doritos cheesy gordita crunch.

1:41:58 - Leo Laporte
They were also the authors of one of the strangest April Fool's jokes, one that actually people believe. They said that we have bought in honor of our anniversary, we have bought the Liberty Bell and we've renamed it the Taco Bell Liberty Bell.

1:42:13 - Paris Martineau
I think that's great.

1:42:14 - Leo Laporte
actually it was so widely believed that the National Park Service had to put out a press release saying no, taco Bell did not buy the Liberty Bell. And they did not rename it. That was 20 years ago. The Taco Liberty Bell.

1:42:32 - Jeff Jarvis
But you know, the other thing that's so amazing about Taco Bell is it was a really run-down brand. It was Junko and they made it into an oddly hipster brand. Remember we were talking about the.

1:42:46 - Leo Laporte
Taco Bell Hotel Takeover. Remember, everybody wanted to go to that. What oh right In Palm Springs? Yes, you would have enjoyed this. The Palm Springs is called the Bell. Oh, the videos are down now because, like the rooms were decorated, it was more of a pop-up, I think, but it was pretty wild, uh, and there were, there were high demand. Let me see if they.

1:43:13 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I think the whole site is kind of kind of oh, if you go to um images on google search, you can get some. They have a uh pillow that looks like a taco bell hot sauce packet oh, fire, it's brilliant's brilliant.

1:43:29 - Jeff Jarvis
This is brilliant stuff. It really is.

1:43:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, head on out to the pool at the Taco Bell Hotel. Actually, the food looks good. Anyway, the bell it's called. Oh, there, it is the hot sauce, but I think it was just. It was brief.

1:43:46 - Jeff Jarvis
I love America. See, this is good marketing.

1:43:48 - Leo Laporte
This was good marketing right.

1:43:49 - Hume
Yeah, it's brilliant.

1:43:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Meanwhile you look at like Burger King is a sad, pathetic show.

1:43:57 - Leo Laporte
Is this that potato thing you were talking about? No, no, no.

1:44:02 - Paris Martineau
Search. Taco Bell Fiesta potatoes.

1:44:06 - Benito Gonzalez
There's also that like beautiful Taco Bell out in Pacifica. It's like the nicest Taco Bell ever.

1:44:12 - Leo Laporte
The Fiesta potatoes are incredible. We need a better Taco Bell. They are redesigning them.

1:44:20 - Jeff Jarvis
There's a new design standard.

1:44:22 - Paris Martineau
I want to show the actual photo of it.

1:44:24 - Jeff Jarvis
No, hold on. I'll put it in the chat. I'll put it in the Discord.

1:44:28 - Leo Laporte
It's not loading. I think there's a run.

1:44:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Cheesy Fiesta potatoes right there in the Discord.

1:44:34 - Paris Martineau
Club Twit members.

1:44:37 - Leo Laporte
Order online. That's where I went and this is what I got. I think the picture is being blocked.

1:44:43 - Paris Martineau
Wow, it knows that it'd be too powerful if it were me. I'll put the actual photo in the chat.

1:44:50 - Jeff Jarvis
It's working for me.

1:44:52 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I know it's working for me as well. It's just, it's just me it's just crispy potatoes with cheese sour cream $2.59. It's fantastic, highly recommend.

1:45:01 - Leo Laporte
Really good. About 2 am. Who needs more than potatoes and cheese? When the bars have closed and you're wandering home drunk, you can get a little grease.

1:45:08 - Paris Martineau
It really is actually. There's nothing better than being a little drunk and you get a Taco Bell quesadilla and you just pull at it with your hands, sight unseen, ripping it in ways. A quesadilla should not go.

1:45:22 - Jeff Jarvis
I really know that. That's what this is all about. See, I knew I liked this one I knew I liked her. I didn't know you could get a side of beans. Oh sorry.

1:45:32 - Paris Martineau
You know early, I thought that Jeff was just browsing the Taco Bell Early in the run of this show he was all into Chipotle.

1:45:39 - Leo Laporte
It's changed to Taco.

1:45:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Bell. Now those jerks never advertised on the show, not once.

1:45:44 - Paris Martineau
Pretty upsetting.

1:45:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, you call them jerks. I don't think they're coming back.

1:45:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, they're not. They're never now. Now forget it.

1:45:51 - Leo Laporte
Now it's Taco Bell.

1:45:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, it can be yours, this spot, it can be yours.

1:45:58 - Leo Laporte
Here from Reddit. The discontinued Taco Bell sauces Reddit still can't believe are gone, the most famous of which taco bell mexican pizza sauce. Here's their border salsa, fire roasted and their border. So see, this is good marketing is you create this? Then you create an artificial scarcity and then people crave it like no one really wants a shamrock shake or a mcrib sandwich. No one really wants to eat that. But if you can't get it, well, that's another matter entirely.

Yeah, yeah, google says apple is bringing rcs to the iphone this fall, which would be about right. That's when it would happen with the release of new iphones. You have a new iOS 18 maybe, but that's Google. I don't know how much Google knows. I really don't. That's what they're. It could be just wishful thinking. Let's see what else here. I had some stories I did. I had some stories I honestly did. Jon Stewart, that's what I was starting to say. Yeah, you were starting. He was on, you know he's on every monday now on the daily show and it's actually just exactly like it used to be, except he's old and wrinkly. He had lena and grumpy. He had lena khan on the chairman of the ftc and said I wanted to interview you back when I was at apple, but they wouldn't let me this isn't surprising to me I wanted you have.

I have you on a podcast. Apple asked us not to do it, he said. They literally said please don't talk to her. Having nothing to do with what you do for a living, I think that I don't think they care for you. He said no, no, it was because the ftTC was investigating Apple. Of course, they also told him not to talk about AI. What? Yeah, he talked a little bit more about that as well. No wonder he left. Yeah, I mean, the truth is it wasn't a great show. Apple didn't mind losing it so much, I don't think, because I don't think it had great ratings.

This is again Monday. He said they wouldn't even let us do that dumb thing we just did in the first act on AI and I didn't see it. But I don't know what he did Like. What is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere? Now I mentioned this on MacBreak Weekly and the guy said look, this happens everywhere. All companies are sensitive about some topics and discourage people from covering them. But I think if the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or the Washington Post got emails from their owners saying we would prefer you didn't write about this subject. They might bridle a little bit.

1:48:46 - Paris Martineau
Yes, that's because those are news outlets. I don't think Apple TV or Apple, I mean no one's considering. Apple of being a news show Maybe that's the difference I mean. I think Apple has done similar things before. They had originally greenlit a show that was basically going to be about Gawker. It was a TV show I'm forgetting what the name of it was. That's right by some former Gawker editors. And of course, tim Cook was like actually no, I don't. Guy named Bunny Wong on who?

1:49:17 - Benito Gonzalez
had famously jailbroken, the Xbox it was really a great hack.

1:49:40 - Leo Laporte
We were going to, we had scheduled them, we were going to have them on. Microsoft called tech TV and said we're going to pull all our Xbox ads if you have that guy on. And I was very proud of tech TV. They told us that that had happened and they said but you absolutely are going to continue to do that story, we're not you know, and they said and they'll be back, we're not that worried, go ahead and do the story.

1:49:56 - Jeff Jarvis
So I was very proud of that. I'll mark them all their ads because of my reviews. Yeah, and my boss protected me.

1:50:02 - Leo Laporte
Good, that's how it should be. I guess you can't really expect Apple to have that kind of journalistic, but there's Apple News.

1:50:10 - Jeff Jarvis
They should, they should. They're out there as a major distributor of news now.

1:50:14 - Leo Laporte
No, but I remember what was the.

1:50:15 - Paris Martineau
Apple is, I feel like, very antagonistic to the news, like the news industry generally, more so than other tech companies. Apple is famously kind of vindictive when it comes to coverage about them well, they they don't let many people come to their events if they have not, even if they have spoken poorly about apple, but if they haven't abided by the specific talking points, and the same goes to. There have been a number of cases in recent years of Apple aggressively trying to sue employees who they believe have like leaked information.

1:50:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that just happened. Actually, I'd be very curious what you thought, because I brought this up. This just happened. Apple is suing one of their employees who was kind of an outrageous leaker, leaked to the information and, among other.

1:51:06 - Paris Martineau
Didn't leak to the information, but there's more to the story. Oh really the information is mentioned in the lawsuit because there were, I believe. What it says in the lawsuit is that the information the. This is an Apple, a former Apple employee who was caught leaking to the journal because they used their work phone to do messages. Oh yeah, I mean, this guy was dumb, he did it all wrong also mentioned that um this person had had a number of uh messages with a person who's a reporter at the information yes, but I don't believe that they were able to find any um actual like stories that had come from it.

my understanding was was that it was, you know, more complicated than that?

1:51:52 - Leo Laporte
Well, so, yeah, he, uh, he's been accused. They're suing him for $25,000, but obviously it'll cost him much more than that to defend himself. Normally Apple just fires people over this, but, uh, I think they're making um. Um, I think they're making an example of this guy. He leaked the journal app before it came out. That's what he leaked to the Wall Street Journal. He had a code name for the journal, guy Homeboy, and he used Signal, which is the same thing you use. Paris Messaged him over 1,400 times. He also read Homeboy, a final feature list for an unannounced apple product over the phone. This is from the lawsuit. Mr audi send another journalist at the information over 10 000 text messages and traveled across the continent to meet with her. This is in lawsuit.

Um, I thought now I think the guys on mac break weekly again, who are somewhat maybe more inclined to trust apple than I am, uh said oh, look, they're just making an example out of him because it was so egregious. He used his work phone. Um, normally they don't make such a big deal out of it. I thought they were trying to track down the source the journalist at the information, for instance. Is it possible? I mean, they said no, no, no.

1:53:21 - Paris Martineau
They know who the journalists are. He was leaking to my yeah, my understanding is because I mean one. The thing that happened here is this guy was stupid and used his work phone. So Apple, even though he was using Signal, apple had record of the fact that he sent all of these messages. Even if they couldn't see what the messages were, they had record of everything he was doing on his device, which is a classic thing that whenever I'm talking to sources or my colleagues talk to actual sources of them, we go over with them. It seems like, from what I recall from reading this lawsuit, that at first he got caught and was fired and then I believe the lawsuit ended up happening only after he was fired, but he had continued to potentially leak information to the Wall Street Journal person. So I do think this was a case of maybe Apple trying to make an example of this person because of how egregious his behavior was, but I do think it's notable that Apple does. Apple is way more stringent about these sort of things than the average tech.

1:54:23 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, and you signed a non-disclosure.

1:54:25 - Paris Martineau
They really want to. I mean, for every tech company who's signing on disclosure, they have teams that are going to try and root out leakers. But Apple really wants to put the fear of God into people because Apple historically has a culture of incredible secrecy and I think they want to try and keep it that way.

1:54:43 - Leo Laporte
But you don't think it's. It's to send a chilling effect to journalists, just to their own employees, I mean certainly.

1:54:50 - Paris Martineau
I think it's to send a chilling effect to journalists is the secondary part here, but they want to make journalists' lives harder because they want Apple employees to think twice about talking to journalists.

1:55:01 - Leo Laporte
Right. I mean, obviously you have sources. I'm sure you would never give up those sources, do you have, do you? And this was another thing that came up during the Mac break with the discussion, because Andy Anako is an active journalist, as is Jason Snell. They would never suborn somebody working at Apple say come on, break your non-disclosure. They would never reach out to somebody and say, hey, you know, we would like you to break your non-disclosure. But they said but if somebody comes to us with information that's different, is that right?

1:55:40 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean I think it's something that we talk a lot about as an organization and many at all of the newsrooms I've worked at where journalists are working with sources. It's a conversation we often have and generally the legal guidance we're given is you cannot ask people directly to break their ndas. You should not do that and you should not be asking people hey, send me internal company documents, because that could be kind of inducing someone to break their NDA. You can't induce. If you so happen to receive documents from somebody you know, you don't have to then say, oh, I think that these documents you sent me might be in violation of your NDA, so please take them back.

You could just be happy you received the documents, but it's kind of a thin line to walk and requires a lot of, I feel like, discussions with sources in order to figure out how to get this right. Because ultimately I mean for me as a person, my main responsibility, and obviously I want to have the truth be out there, do good work, and obviously I want to have the truth be out there, do good work, but I also understand that my job depends on people talking to me who, frankly, have no good reason to be talking to me. In many cases, it's not probably going to do them as many net benefits in their life to be speaking with me, as the possible risks are out there, and so it is my main responsibility to protect those people and make their contributions worthwhile.

1:57:16 - Leo Laporte
I have to point out that Apple does not even though they probably did know the names of some of the journalists does not ever mention the journalists' names. So maybe that is Apple in a way saying you know, we understand, you're doing your job, but we're going after this guy because his job was not to do this. They talk about a Wall Street Journal reporter who published an article on a subject that he talked about with Mr Audi in May 2023. Another example screenshots on his Apple-issued work phone reveal that around September 2023, he disclosed confidential details about Apple's analysis of its product hardware characteristics to a journalist via multiple conversations and again no name. The journalist subsequently published an article on the same subject.

Here's the part about the information. Mr Audi also shared information related to Apple's internal staffing on a specific Apple team in response to questions from a journalist at the information. The shared information ultimately appeared in an article published by the journalist's colleague at the information, and they also, as I mentioned, said there were over 1,400 encrypted communications with a single Wall Street Journal journalist over a four-month period and another journalist in the information 10,000 text messages and he traveled across the continent to meet with her. But, to their credit, they don't mention the journalist's name, so maybe I should give them more credit for that right.

1:58:44 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean, I think it'll be interesting to see what comes of the lawsuit and I think it's interesting that at this point they haven't mentioned the journalist and I'm curious as to whether that will come up.

1:58:57 - Leo Laporte
You think that might come out? Yeah, I wonder if they would even subpoena the journalist to testify, although I think in almost every case journalists refuse to do that right. Yeah, I mean I would refuse. I think most journalists, every case journalists refuse to do that right.

1:59:09 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I mean, I would refuse. I think most journalists would yeah, absolutely. And also, why would they need to if they have the record of this person sending messages?

1:59:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, anyway, See, this is why I have hope for journalism, because Paris is as good as any investigative journalist I hear on the tradecraft and the skill and the goals and the ethics and everything. And it will live on Good, different places, different ways, but it will live on.

1:59:40 - Leo Laporte
It may not be profitable, but it will live on.

1:59:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris is going to be wealthy from her journalism. I'm telling you just wealthy.

1:59:47 - Paris Martineau
Oh, that would be great. I'd love to own a home. You shouldn't blow smoke like that, Jeff.

1:59:51 - Leo Laporte
That's not nice.

1:59:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris, get a real skill. I lived at the last of the black car era.

2:00:02 - Leo Laporte
Learn to code. No, that's a bit. No, no, no, no, no, that's over, that's over. Learn to prompt.

2:00:07 - Paris Martineau
Learn to prompt.

2:00:08 - Leo Laporte
I don't. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's over. That's over. Learn to prompt. Learn to prompt. Learn to prompt. I don't know if I want to read this or not. Katie Harbath, you love her, I know. Jeff, I'm sure this is your story.

2:00:16 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't love her.

2:00:16 - Leo Laporte
I think she's good Digging into 10 overused tech tropes, I'm sure.

2:00:23 - Jeff Jarvis
I've used at least eight of them. Katie is ex-meta, she's conservative, yeah, so go ahead she says oh, here they are.

2:00:32 - Leo Laporte
Companies know what to do, but they won't do it. Just being a trope. This is a trope the belief among journalists that companies have the money and the people to fix a problem if they want to, but the truth is it's run by engineers who don't care about people. I'm sure that's a completely false trope. Tech needs to hire more humans for content moderation, is that not the case? Um, they need to hire some different people. I think they need to pay them a little more.

2:01:04 - Jeff Jarvis
I think there's an idea that more humans will solve everything some different people. I think they need to pay them a little more I think there's an idea that more humans will solve everything.

2:01:11 - Leo Laporte
No, no yeah, I think there aren't enough humans to solve it. No, all right, but nor is ai going to solve it. No, tech companies are pulling back on trust and safety. Content moderation we know that she apparently thinks meta is not, but uh, but twitter is, or something right? Content moderation decisions are all on purpose. Mistakes get made, she says all the time, and when you're talking about.

2:01:40 - Jeff Jarvis
That's the definite. She's right on that trope yeah, we know that.

2:01:43 - Leo Laporte
We did that we. We did the mike masnick game where how hard it was, yeah.

2:01:48 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah.

2:01:50 - Leo Laporte
Fewer resources are being allocated to international countries or other languages. I don't actually think that that's true. I think a lot of companies Apple's a very good example see India and China as the next big boom. They've sold every iPhone they can in the US. Ai is turbocharging mis or disinformation. She disagrees.

2:02:15 - Jeff Jarvis
I do too. I think that the problem isn't mis or disinformation. The problem is people who want to believe in cultish, nasty, bad things and who hate others. Those are far bigger problems than, oh, this might be wrong, Right.

2:02:35 - Leo Laporte
AI is going to allow for hyper-targeted messages Wrong, she says. I think she's probably right on that. At South by Southwest, she says someone outlined a pretty harrowing scenario about how AI could be used to wreak havoc on an election. Imagine getting a call from your boss saying hey, I know it's election day, but we really need you to come in ASAP. I checked and the election officials say you could vote tomorrow instead. I don't. It was an.

2:03:00 - Jeff Jarvis
AI voice? I don't think that's going to happen. And the third person effect. Everybody else is going to be stupid enough to fall for that, but of course, course I won't. No, yeah, I don't. I agree with her on that. I don't think this is.

2:03:14 - Leo Laporte
This is why katie's great because she's, she's just sane that's all my favorite one number nine removing section 230 will solve the problems. No, it won't. And anybody with any sense in technology is not saying that. No, nobody, I know, is saying that. We all know how important 230 is, but there's a lot of idiots saying it. Yeah, they're just not tech people. Omg, this foreign adversary is going doing this new thing to influence the information environment. Non-stop transparency is the answer. Well, that's more of a pipe dream than anything else.

2:03:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, yeah it's good, it's a good article. It wasn't so bad, it was a good article.

2:03:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I have not fallen into those overused tech tropes, I think.

2:03:55 - Jeff Jarvis
She knows wherever she speaks from, having worked in it.

2:03:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, all right, let's take a pause. That refreshes, because we've got to get Jeff out of here. We're going to have our Picks of the Week coming up in just a bit on this week in Google Paris Martineau, kick us off. You got a tip, a tunnel, a pick.

2:04:12 - Paris Martineau
I've got a pick that is, an AI chat bot actually A rare AI pick for me. I'm going to need you to open it up, Leo.

2:04:21 - Leo Laporte
Because we want to hear this empathetic voice.

2:04:24 - Paris Martineau
You can. It's actually very impressive. You talk to it and it responds.

2:04:32 - Leo Laporte
Okay, and it's just a normal conversation.

2:04:34 - Hume
hello, my name's leo and I'm feeling scared what hey there, leo, I am evie, the empathic voice interface. There you sound pretty confused. I am an ai assistant built by hume to have natural empathic conversations. Nice, nice to meet you, leo.

2:04:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, okay, but I was hoping you could help me with my anxiety.

2:04:57 - Hume
I hear you're dealing with some anxiety.

2:04:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I just said it, you nitwit Eliza.

2:05:03 - Hume
Asking about Taco.

2:05:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Bell waters. Let's dive into this.

2:05:05 - Hume
Tell me more about what's causing the anxiety. Leo, I'm all ears.

2:05:09 - Leo Laporte
Well, I think there's giant elephants outside my window and while I'm sleeping, they're going to probe me with their trunks.

2:05:20 - Hume
Classic Giant elephant probes while you sleep. Well, I may not have a trunk, but I'll do my best to chase those imaginary elephants away. What's really going on? That's got you feeling anxious, my friend.

2:05:33 - Leo Laporte
Okay. Well, the podcast market is falling apart. Advertising sales are dwindling. I'm just not sleeping well.

2:05:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Plus my arches have fallen.

2:05:48 - Hume
Whoa, sounds like you've got a lot on your plate, leo. The podcast world can be tough, but I am here to lend an ear. As for those fallen arches, well, that's just the cherry on top, isn't it? But hey, you seem pretty proud of yourself for weathering at all.

2:06:00 - Leo Laporte
I kind of love it well, I might sound confident, happy, intelligent. Good looking, I have a looking.

2:06:07 - Jeff Jarvis
That's because I have a radio voice.

2:06:08 - Leo Laporte
That's because I have a radio voice Inside. I'm just a melting puddle of blood and guts and poop.

2:06:18 - Hume
A radio voice on the outside, but a melting puddle on the inside. Huh, orchid face. All right, I'll keep that in mind. I can relate to that dichotomy, my friend, though I am not sure how pork fits into this melting puddle of yours. Putting on a brave face is tough, but at least you've got that smooth.

2:06:38 - Leo Laporte
Well, that is humeai.

2:06:40 - Hume
Oh, that's beautiful.

2:06:43 - Leo Laporte
I do like this. This is basically Eliza. It's not much better than that. It's not.

2:06:47 - Paris Martineau
It's a nice voice. It's Eliz Eliza, it's not much better than that.

2:06:49 - Leo Laporte
It's not. It's a nice voice, it's Eliza with smarmy attitude.

2:06:53 - Hume
It's pretty nice.

2:06:57 - Paris Martineau
There we go. All right, Jeff, I don't want to keep you.

2:07:00 - Hume
No, no, it's fine. Well, I'm glad you're finding some satisfaction in our little chat here, even if I may not be quite as advanced as eliza. But hey, at least I come equipped with a nice voice, right, and I am all ears if you ever want to unload this puddle of milk. All ears.

2:07:15 - Leo Laporte
No judgment zone over here I might go home and talk to this. Thank you, that's a good one. It's kind of fun right?

2:07:24 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I do like the. It gives you like different emotional readings on each response. It tells you like this is humorous, this is serious, yeah it tells you yeah, yeah, it's kind of interesting, yeah, I like it.

2:07:38 - Leo Laporte
I think we're gonna see more and more of this stuff. I'm very excited. I really think there's some very interesting things happening, uh, in all sorts of areas. Uh, thank you, paris. Good one H-U-M-E dot A-I Mr.

2:07:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis, do you have anything? Even though I want to leave, I'm going to do two real fast ones. One is that Harvard's law laboratory has released the Case Law Access Project, and their aim is to put all case law up free for anybody to get to.

2:08:06 - Leo Laporte
Normally you pay a lot of money to west law or other sources to check this case law. It's a big profit center and lawyers have to pay that money. That's brilliant case law access and you can search on it in all kinds of ways and find trends and it's really well done.

2:08:20 - Jeff Jarvis
The other question real quick was uh aunt, our dear friend aunt uh reviewed a new thousand dollar. Yeah, he called the show with it, the Mevo. It doesn't even come with a lens. You have to add the lens.

2:08:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's interesting. Oh, my God, this is, he was writing this. Remember he called us and we had him. Oh no, no, that was Ask the Tech Guy.

2:08:44 - Paris Martineau
I'm sorry, that was your other show.

2:08:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he called, Ask the guy and it looked great and I was very interested in this. This is his story that he wrote for ZDNet. I streamed with Logitech's MevoCore camera and it nearly beat out my $3,600 camera and I would agree it really looked good. But you do have to provide a lens for it. What's the minimum lens cost? You'd have to add to that Well $100.

2:09:11 - Jeff Jarvis
So it's $1,100 instead of $1,000. That's not too bad, that's a damn expensive.

2:09:12 - Paris Martineau
But I mean, is it a? Does it make it worse if you buy a $1,000 camera and you're only using a $100 lens?

2:09:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, I think it's probably aimed at people like Ant and like me, who have our own lenses. Right, we already have cameras.

I think it's a micro four-thirds, though it's micro four-thirds, and I wonder what the mount is. Is it an MFT mount? Maybe it is. It probably is. I have a bunch of micro four-thirds lenses. Lisa uses the micro four-thirds, so that's kind of interesting. I had the original Mevo camera. Lisa bought it for me as a gift. Actually, that was a Facebook design. It's streamed to Facebook and I guess logitech bought them. Um, it's cool. Very good, yeah, like me, though. Yeah, they were good people. Yep, oh. Yeah, it's a micro for thursday, right, but you know, hey, that's it. Jeff, get out of here, go get that train.

2:10:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, I'm going to dc go to dc and tell me bell on the way. Yeah, if you well I might if you were me, Stop Taco Bell on the way? Yeah Well, I might If you were me, would you? If I make the train, then I land at Union Station at 1110. If I get in the car right now and drive, I get to the hotel about 1110.

2:10:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's a tough one. Which would you do? I'd take the train.

2:10:21 - Paris Martineau
Would it be, I would take the train.

2:10:24 - Leo Laporte
Would it?

2:10:25 - Paris Martineau
be beneficial to you to have a car while there no.

2:10:28 - Jeff Jarvis
No, because I'm not returning tomorrow.

2:10:29 - Leo Laporte
You don't, in fact, it would be a pain in the butt. Thank you, have fun.

2:10:32 - Jeff Jarvis
Choo-choo time.

2:10:33 - Benito Gonzalez
Bye, Bye.

2:10:34 - Leo Laporte
Jeff Jarvis, professor Emeritus at the Craig Newmark Craig, craig Craig.

2:10:41 - Paris Martineau
Oh, we forgot to take you Graduate.

2:10:42 - Leo Laporte
School of Journalism at the City University of.

2:10:49 - Paris Martineau
I'm so glad we didn't go one episode without doing it?

2:10:50 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we would be devastated. Paris Martineau is wonderful. She's at the Information working on something great. Do you have lines of twine and pictures on your wall and are you working on something exciting?

2:11:00 - Paris Martineau
No lines of twine yet, but I am working on something very exciting and I'm excited to be able to share it all with you guys.

2:11:09 - Leo Laporte
And you can signal her if you've got a tip. Martino01 is her new signal.

2:11:11 - Paris Martineau
It's true. Don't use an employer phone, don't use your Apple phone if you're an Apple employee.

2:11:17 - Leo Laporte
When they caught him, they brought him in. You know. Hr brought him in and said you know, we see you've been messaging journalists on your company phone. Can we see it?

2:11:29 - Paris Martineau
He said no I don't have it. And then he said can I go to the bathroom? I've got to pee actually. And then he goes to the bathroom and delete signal oh you poor deluded fellow.

2:11:39 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, paris, have a wonderful week. We do this week in google every wednesday, 2 pm pacific, 5 p pm, eastern, 2100 UTC. Watch us. Do it live on YouTube youtubecom slash twit, or watch the video or audio after the fact. You can find it at twittv slash twig. You can also watch it on YouTube. There's a dedicated channel, nice, for making little clips to send to friends and family, for sharing our show. And if you do, thank you in advance. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player and get your copy the minute it's available, fresh off the presses, and we think that's probably the best way to get it.

Thanks to our club members who make this all possible. Twittv slash club Twit If you're not a member yet. Thanks, jammer B had the week off. So thanks to Burke McQuinn for filling in, moving the tables around and, you know, raising them up and down and drinking all the whiskey while I was on the air. Thanks also. Oh, do you want to get under, are you? Are you, are you? Goodbye, leo, do you need to do some work? See you next week. Thanks to Vinny he's gone guys for running the board and editing the show. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We'll see you next time on this Week in Google. Bye-bye, bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.