Tech News Weekly Episode 220 Transcript

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

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Tech News Weekly Jason Howell and I have a great show planned for you. First, we talked to Ian Sherr of CNET about Sony's decision to acquire Bunge. Then we kind of compare that to the decision by Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard, and look at the state of things in gaming. Then Protocol's Janko Roettgers stops by to talk to us about virtual squatters. Yeah, there's sort of this virtual space for property acquisition that you may or may not know about. And I'm sort of looking around wondering if somebody else is living in my home, then we celebrate and also sort of say a bit of a goodbye to Wordle after its acquisition by the New York Times before rounding things out with whoo, quite the drop for, for Facebook slash Meta. As the company loses quite a bit of money both internally and then also stock wise after its announcement stay tuned

... (00:01:04):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:01:23):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 220 recorded Thursday, February 3rd, 2022. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by hacker rank. It's time to reboot your technical interviews with hacker ranks. Easy to use tools with a pre-made question, library, code playback, and built in whiteboard. Be conducting better technical interviews and instantly identifying the right talent. Go to hacker rank.com/tnw to start a better tech interview for free

Mikah Sargent (00:01:52):
Today and by Progress. Progress has the technology you need to secure, analyze and integrate your applications, network and processes. Find a out more and download a free trial at progress.com/twi

Jason Howell (00:02:07):
And by it pro TV, are you looking to break into the world of it, get the introduction you need with it. Pro TV, visit it pro.tv/tnw for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use code TNW30 at checkout.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:27):
Hello, and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and beaking the tech news, I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent,

Jason Howell (00:02:37):
And I'm the other guy, Jason Howell. And yeah, the last couple of weeks, I liked your top story here, Mikah, because the last of weeks have been really big in the world of video games and acquisitions. So

Mikah Sargent (00:02:48):
I'm looking forward this. Yes, indeed. We have seen quite a few acquisitions and now we are starting to see some, some conversation about potential antitrust concerns, but maybe the story we're talking about today will help kind of even things out. We'll see, joining us to talk about the PlayStation, Sony and destiny Bunge deal is Ian Sherr from CNET. Welcome back to the show.

Ian Sherr (00:03:17):
How you doing?

Mikah Sargent (00:03:19):
Doing excellent. And how are you today?

Ian Sherr (00:03:22):
I I'm, I'm doing pretty well, actually. I'm I, I've got my little master chief here to, to join us for our conversations. So it should be good.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:31):
I appreciate the decor. So I was hoping we could start today as we typically do in, in any of these conversations with just kind of a basic rundown of this latest news, this news about Sony and what it has decided to acquire and what we know about how much money Sony spent.

Ian Sherr (00:03:54):
Yeah, so it's actually really fascinating because not just Sony's move, but the larger context it happened in. So Sony announced that it's buying Bunge, which is the company that makes a game called destiny. Right now it's very, very popular. They also are known for creating halo where my master chief comes from. And so they are enormous in and of themselves. Sony is said to have spent 3.6 billion with a B dollars on this acquisition, but what's really important to keep in mind here is not just that Sony did this. I mean, that's a big deal in and of itself. And PlayStation fans are excited to have a very popular game is part of the PlayStation world. But what is really fascinating is the larger conversation about all of this consolidation suddenly happening in the video game world. We have just a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft spending an eye watering amount of money. <Laugh> 68.7 billion to buy active vision blizzard. And before that yet take two interactive. The people who may call duty, they bought Zinga the mobile game developer, and they spend $12.7 billion. So it's not just that this happened. It's that suddenly we've got a huge amount of people trying to take control and get their power consolidated around the video game industry for a lot of reasons. And it's really fascinating to watch <affirmative>

Mikah Sargent (00:05:22):
Absolutely. And now there's one clarification that I hope you can make for us, because I think some people will be a little bit confused. Sony bought this company that makes halo yet Microsoft is known for its the, the, the ongoing halo French, and also for using the name Cortana for its own assistant. Can you explain what's going on there? Sure. Did Sony just buy Cortana out from Microsoft?

Ian Sherr (00:05:52):
No. Microsoft would never let that happen. I think <laugh>. So what, what happened was that Bunge has been owned by many companies over the years. So if you go back in time, they were actually bought by Microsoft before the first Xbox came out and that halo game was the halo product for the Xbox. And that was what they built for many years. And then that they actually split off from Microsoft, but left halo under Microsoft's control. So destiny made halo, but it no longer develops halo. And they went on and they created destiny, which they now create and, and develop and keep running. So this is one of those very few times when you have a developer where it matters, whether they made it or they develop it and that they, they just get to say, we created halo. They don't get to say anything more than that now.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:45):
<Laugh> all right. So then now I'm a say a, a PC user or a an Xbox user. And, and forgive me if this even shows my gaming ignorance, but do I have a concern about maybe not being able to play destiny or is destiny already a PlayStation exclusive? What's the, what's the kind of future of, of destiny given that it's I know it's this online game that a lot of people can become a part of and, and it continues to develop and change as the game goes on. Am I, is it gonna be locked down to the, the PlayStation now?

Ian Sherr (00:07:23):
So there's been a lot of chatter within the video game world about what this all means. And by chatter in the video game world, I mean like the Reddit part of the video game world, right? <Laugh> not the developers aren't talking about this subject very much at all, but within the communities of people who buy this stuff, there's a lot of concern. Well, is all of this sudden lamb grabbing causing there to be exclusive, which is very popular in the video game industry, right? Mario is pretty much only on Nintendo, right? A hit master chief is only on the Xbox. And so would suddenly dead, which is a very popular game on all consoles and, and PC as well. Suddenly just become for PlayStation. So Microsoft, sorry, Sony said that they will definitely make it available for anywhere a gamer is. So they are not planning to make it a PlayStation exclusive.

Ian Sherr (00:08:16):
They have done stuff in the past where they've offered special kind of, you know, in game gifts and stuff like that that are only for Sony fans and whatnot. But otherwise it seems as though Sony for now sees the opportunity just to have it under their control and also have that team as part of their larger team. I am curious to see though, what happens when Microsoft acquired Bethesda, another you massive acquisition that happened a couple years ago that involved the games, fallout and doom and all of that stuff. And one of the conversations was, well, are all these massive games gonna suddenly be Xbox only? And Microsoft has actually confirmed that going forward. Some of those games may very well only appear on the Xbox or PC, which means not the Nintendo switch or the PlayStation. So this stuff is really fascinating to watch, but for now, when it comes to bungee and destiny, it seems like it's a non-issue at the moment.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:13):
Understood now the activism blizzard acquisition part of that conversation, whenever we saw the reports about it talked about how it was likely that the company was shopping around for a buyer, was looking for someone shopping around rather, and had hoped to be acquired due to it being embroiled in a bit of a, of a ongoing controversy due to its head perhaps being involved, but in definitely in the, the reports that have come out showing a, a lack of action in several types of harassment and ongoing concerns. There is this bungee acquisition. Does it have any kind of internal concerns or was this just as far as we know was this Sony acquisition just about kind of matching what else was going on in the gaming industry? Yeah,

Ian Sherr (00:10:10):
I, it, it's hard to tell right now, I, I do have to give a lot of credit to my friends at the wall street journal who brought that story about act vision, cuz that was incredible reporting that really changed the way a lot of us understood what was going on when it comes to Bunge. It seems as though one of the things that they talked about in the press releases was having enough capital to really expand what they wanna do. And this is a conversation that's got, that's ongoing all the time. Is that making video games, even though it seems like it's a very glamorous job with a lot of money is actually extremely hard and it costs unbelievable amounts of money. And so the reality of it is that Bunge has intubated, right? We don't know for sure, but they've very much suggested that they have more ideas coming down on the pipeline as they should. And that this agreement may be something that helps them finance all of that. And that might be a really important part of what's going on here is not, you know, corporate drama or anything like that or stuff going on with executives. It may simply be a matter of, they need a large player to support them just like by the way, Microsoft supported them with halo when it came to destiny, activism blizzard helped them launch blue destiny back then and now whatever's next might be. So they needed Sony to really make it work.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:33):
Yeah. One of the, the trends that I've seen come out of this is an ongoing conversation and about the importance of AI and other types of machine learning technologies and the part that they play in creating these games and maintaining these games and building these games. So I'm curious, do we think that this is going, we're gonna continue to see these larger companies acquiring these game studios, these game creators in the interest of sort of merging the, the, the, the, the talent that they have in AI and machine learning with the talent that these video game creators have. Do you think this is just kind of the, the start of these acquisitions or was this kind of the last big one that we'll see for a while? Yeah,

Ian Sherr (00:12:22):
It's really hard to tell, right. I mean, first off 68.7 billion, it's hard to wrap my head around what that even looks like. If there's an airplane hanger, like I just it's CRA right. And I remember when like Oculus was bought for 2 billion and everyone's like, wow, that's a lot of money. And when Instagram was bought for $1 billion, you remember those old days. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (00:12:45):
<Laugh>

Ian Sherr (00:12:46):
That's right. It's, it's kind of crazy to think what we're in here, but I will say that the industry seems to go through moments of ups and downs, where there is a huge amount of acquisitions and then it calms and then it happens again and then it calms. And so I think right now we're in this interesting churning moment. And I think part of what's driving it is that there's a ton of competition between Microsoft and Sony about what the next generation of gaming's gonna look like. Both of them have talked about how they don't just see it about the PlayStation five and the Xbox series X. They're very happy if you buy them. But what really is going on is that they are building up these worlds that they want us all to interact with, right? The Xbox community, the PlayStation community, where I've got the different games that I log into and all of this type of stuff you think about game streaming and the idea of being able to play a game like it's a Netflix movie and, you know, just over the internet, not having to have a disc or download anything, those types of things require that these brands get even bigger.

Ian Sherr (00:13:48):
And I think that is what's going on partially. There's a lot of talk about the metaverse and what shared digital worlds are gonna of feel like, and that word came up during Sony's pre present announcement about this. And they'd be crazy not to mention that word, but we're starting to see kind of the tech industry is, is starting to kind of come together around the video game industry because there's this feeling whether or not it happens, I'm curious, but there's this feeling that video games are part of the next big step of the tech world. And that is where I think Sony's money is really headed.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:22):
Now the, I know you're not you know, first and foremost, a policy guy, but there was a report. I, I think it was earlier this week. It may have been last week. That said the FTC instead of the department of just, just might be put in charge of reviewing the Microsoft and activism, blizzard acquisition to see if that's going to go through and there are back and forths on, on whether it will end up getting a pass. I'm curious what you think about this Sony acquisition and the Microsoft acquisition. Do you have any predictions you want to make on if these will end up going through, or if there's going to be a concern about monopoly or other antitrust issues?

Ian Sherr (00:15:06):
Well, first off, there's definitely a concern without question. It fair enough. It's worth noting that the FTC and the DOJ split up a lot of this type of stuff. So the FTC takes some of them, the DOJ takes others. So just because it's the FTC, I'm not reading too far into that, but I do. It is worth noting that especially that of the FTC has been very vocal about the tech history and concerns about larger conversations around monopolies and power and Microsoft spending a, a, a, again, just unbelievable amount of money on activism, blizzard is, is going to get the government's attention without question. I don't know what it's going to look like, because it seems like every administration in Washington has had a different approach to what they consider to be monopoly power and what is acceptable competition. You know, the way that we saw the acquisition between T-Mobile and sprint happen, you remember all of that, that turned very much on who was in charge in Washington. And so I wonder what this is going to look like as well, but bra odds are one of the things I think we're gonna all take out of this is that the video game industry is not some little group of people that make games for nerds in their basements, right? That this is one of the largest entertainment mediums in the world. And now it's starting to be treated that way by the larger public and the larger market. And that means a lot of this attention that they've never seen before.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:39):
Ah, understood. Understood. Well, that was an excellent answer. And you always provide excellent answers when you're on the show. Thank you for joining us today. If folks would like to follow you online and check out all of your great work, where should they go to do so?

Ian Sherr (00:16:53):
Yeah, I, I try to keep it easy. Almost every platform. My username is Ian. Sure. I a N S H E R R Twitter. Facebook doesn't matter. You'll find

Mikah Sargent (00:17:02):
Me there. Thank you so much, Ian. We appreciate you.

Ian Sherr (00:17:06):
Thank you.

Jason Howell (00:17:07):
Thank you, Ian. Yeah, and I just want to tag on before we go. We, we had this in the run down yesterday on this week and Google this story and kind of the, all, you know, all around the kind of games, acquisitions and everything. And one thing jumped out to me. There was an estimate that it's 180 billion in revenue in 2021 for the games industry compared to the motion picture industry around 80 billion. So that tells you something

Mikah Sargent (00:17:30):
Right there,

Jason Howell (00:17:32):
Like billion more. Wow. I mean, it's just is a huge difference.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:35):
Is most of that buying jewels to keep playing the free play games on your phone?

Jason Howell (00:17:41):
I would imagine a lot of it is. Yeah, no question <laugh> seems that way anyways. All right. Up next. Did you know that your home, like the home you actually live in right now might already be occupied by a virtual squatter? Well, it might be. We're gonna talk about that. It's really interesting. But first this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by hacker rank. You've got deadlines, you've got frustrating interview tools that aren't set up for or technical interviews. If you're giving technical interviews, you know, all about this, conducting a tech interview might be the last thing that you have time for. It's just complicated, right? You know, to spend the first 10 minutes of your interview, just trying to set up an environment so that you can actually share code, you know, from all of those documents, the dozens of documents that you're pulling from it wastes your time to waste your candidates time.

Jason Howell (00:18:30):
But fortunately hacker rank has developed an integrated development environment, an IDE just for the tech interview process. They've got a set of easy to use interview tools. That'll just make it much quicker for you to find the best developers for your technical projects. Now, the developer interview tools include many things, but you've got a pre-made question library that has more than 2,500 questions. So you're gonna be able to quickly find the right questions for your specific coding needs. You also get a code playback feature, so you can review the candidates coding approach. And then of course go back and score their skill levels. You've got a built in whiteboard, so you can collaborate in real time, see how the problems are solved, that sort of thing. And overall, it's all about rebooting your technical interview process. And you can do that with hacker rank, click interview done start using hacker rank for free today, and you'll see how much better a technical interview can.

Jason Howell (00:19:30):
And B it's time to reboot your technical interviews with hacker ranks, easy to use tools with a pre-made question, library, code playback, and built in whiteboard. You're gonna be conducting better technical interviews and instantly identifying the right talent. Just go to hacker rank.com/tnw, and at you'll start a better tech interview for free today. That's hacker rank.com/tnw, and we thank them for their support of Tech News Weekly. All right, so there's the real estate market, right? That, that we all know. And we're very familiar with at this point's been around for kind of a long time, and then there's the virtual real estate market. And then if you wanna go kind of even deeper, there's the virtual real estate market that's based on actual real estate, which, you know, can get a little confusing, but I would, I would guess get used to it because it really seems to me anyways, this is the kind of the foundation of this burgeoning metaverse that we're all supposedly gonna be spending on lot of time sometime in the future. So joining us to talk about this kind of confusion around what real estate is in the virtual world, and especially when it's tied to your own home is Janko Roettgers from Protocol. Welcome back to the show.

Janko Roettgers (00:20:47):
Thanks for having me.

Jason Howell (00:20:47):
Yeah. It's great to get you back. And I love this story because a, I didn't know about any of these experiences, these games, whatever you'd like to call them prior to reading this, but B it just, it got my mind rolling. Like it's just not something that I had considered that our real estate, you know, the, the homes that we own and in might actually have other occupants that we can't see. Right. And that's how you start your piece. You talk about a little bit of a discovery that your own home is being owned already and occupied in a virtual world. Set the stage for that. Tell us a little bit about that.

Janko Roettgers (00:21:22):
Yeah. So I was checking out a platform called Upland a couple weeks ago or a month ago. So an up plan is basically a monopoly game that plays out in the real world. So instead of using a traditional game board, they use maps of real cities where you can then buy and trade properties tied to real addresses. And the first thing I did to just get a sense of how this all works was once I registered for it, I just put in my own address and just tried to check out my own neighborhood. Right. And turns out that somebody had bought the address of my property in this game a couple months ago and was now renting it out and making some in-game money with it. And it was a pretty weird feeling that I got from this, because I had never anticipated any of that.

Jason Howell (00:22:12):
Yeah. It's, it's like it's, it's literally, it's like life that's happening, layered on top of where you already are. And, and understanding that like, like you said, this is a game, right. This isn't, we aren't really talking about the metaverse that we, I kind of feel like the foundation is being laid for this isn't a virtual world in the sense that you're in virtual reality or even augmented reality, but it is to a certain degree taking something that exists in the real world and repurposing it in a digital way. Like what, what was the feeling that you got from that? Like, what's unsettling about that because it's not like these people are in your home, but I guess to a certain degree, they kind of are <laugh>, it,

Janko Roettgers (00:22:53):
It, I think it part of why it felt a little bit weird to, to discover this is that there was some monetary aspect to it, right? Yeah. I mean, once I did the math, I found out that this person was making like the equivalent in a force sense or a month by renting out this, my place, my, their place, however you wanna call it at this point. Right? Yeah. So it wasn't real money. It wasn't any substantial amount of money, but it still felt kind of weird that they were selling something that I thought belonged to me.

Jason Howell (00:23:25):
So interesting. So interesting now like I said, I don't know that Upland in itself qualifies as like a metaverse contender, but you know, yet who knows these, these kind of experiences and these kind of games could have plans to expand into the virtual world. What, I mean, if that happened, like any idea, what that might look like, like you, you wrote about up Upland, but you also wrote about spot and geo web. These are three different kind of ways to do this whole virtual virtual real estate based on real real estate. But like, do any of them have plans to eventually kind of merge this into a metaverse experience at some point? And what might that look like if they did?

Janko Roettgers (00:24:11):
Yeah. I think they all have plans that are much bigger than what they do right now. For example, with app plant, they do wanna eventually provide their data to other developers so that they can build their own maybe games, maybe apps on top of it. And they also wanna go in AR and I think that's the really interesting point, because right now this plays out on the map on the computer. It doesn't have really any real world implications, but if we consider that maybe in five years, maybe in 10 years, maybe sooner, we will all wear these apple glasses or Google glasses that provide us with information, wherever we go. And wherever we look, it could be that somebody then looks at my house and sees information that not I put there, but the person who bought that years ago on Upland put there, right?

Janko Roettgers (00:24:56):
So suddenly you can tie information or AR layers to these real properties, to people's homes, to businesses and so forth. And then the question is, who has the right to say anything about my house, put a billboard in my backyard, stuff like that. Right. And so right now it's a game right now. It's very like few people know about it, but that could actually be an issue too, because if only a couple people know about this, and it's only enthusiast and maybe people who are D into blockchain and, and, and these kind of games, what does it mean for the rest of the world? Right. We've seen I, I live in Oakland. I live in the east bay and there's been a lot of talk about gentrification and all these things, displacement and people moving in who have a lot of money. And in a way you could say the same happens here, where people who have a lot of knowledge and maybe of money can snap up these things early. And then in the future that if we don't even know how it looks like yet, they will be the property owners and can then decide whatever information can be on top of these AR layers or whatever else happens with it. And that's sort of concerning.

Jason Howell (00:26:02):
Yeah. I mean, there are so many comparisons then the, I think the one that kind of comes to mind right now out for me is, you know, cryptocurrency, right? Like 10, however many years ago when Bitcoin was, you know, just this BR this brand new thing that absolutely no one understood, except for a very small select few people who had a lot of, you know, saw a lot of potential in it invested early. And by the way, did not have to invest nearly the same amount of money into it then that you do. Now, if you want to, you know, get into trading cryptocurrencies, but they, over time, you know, because they had the knowledge and the exposure and the interest in this when no one else was paying attention, now they have the, you know, they, they have these large, vast, you know, stores of money that they can literally influence, you know, their whales at this point, they can influence the entire market based on them being there in the beginning.

Jason Howell (00:26:54):
I think that's one of the, the really, you know, the, the, one of the questions that really stood out for me in reading your piece is just that fact that like so many people don't know that this happening yet. We're also on the cusp of this kind of this transition into what many tech companies feel is like the next wave of, of, of technology and the internet and everything with a metaverse and, and everything going on there. So how does something like this kind of combine with the momentum to move towards the metaverse and what does that look like when it all plays out, you know, 10 years down the line when Facebook, you know, is able to realize like it's meta vision long term, or what are your thoughts on that?

Janko Roettgers (00:27:35):
Yeah. I think those are really interesting questions and that's really hard to find an answer. I, that was one of the reasons I wrote this story. I really wanted to know, first of all, I wanted to know whether I should do anything about that guy who bought, or that person, right. The AR layer or the, the virtual layer to my house, and whether even I could do anything, like what's the legal situation. So I talked to a law professor and he was kind of stumped by all of this and said, there is no, no analogy to it. There is no case law. I can point to this is this there's no precedent. Exactly. and then the question is then I point point put that also to the company in this space, like, what are you gonna do when these things come up? And some had no answers at all. Some just said, oh, let the market decide. And others had like really complicated scenarios where they said, well, we, we built this into the system and we wanna make sure that late comers also have a chance and that people can't just hoard property and so forth, but essentially these rules that are now fleshed out could be really consequential in the future.

Jason Howell (00:28:37):
Yeah, no, no question. And especially as we've seen, you know, the, the desire of anyone who seems to be creating experiences or, or whatever, like their desire is to grow. And so they're gonna grow with systems that, you know, really pull people in. We've also seen, you know, that these, these experiences can be built with kind of, I don't wanna say addictive, but, you know, kind of hooks in them that, that make them more appealing and harder to, to, to put away. And how does that interplay here and, you know, really on the other, it feels like right now, it's easy to look at and say, well, there really is no consequence. It's not real money. They're not actually living in the home, but we don't actually know where this all builds out 10 years down the line. Are there ways for real life, property owners who, you know, so like, I don't know if you own your building or if somebody else does, but if whoever that is, your rec recognizes that, Hey, wait a minute, this building is being sold in this virtual land. And I don't want that. Are there ways to prohibit that from happening,

Janko Roettgers (00:29:34):
That really depends on the, on the platform or on the game or whatever you wanna call it. Some of them, so in Upland, you're basically out of luck at this point and maybe it doesn't really matter. So it's, it's not a high stakes game in a way, and it is a game. So maybe you just like, I don't know, you should just go with it S spot, which is a, a sort of similar, but not quite the same thing based on a, so AR app where you can buy little land markers or process of land. They told me that people can actually contact them and say, I wanna opt out. I wanna take my property out of this, but they also have far fewer users and the chances are your house still doesn't belong to anybody there. Yeah. And then in, in geo web, the third sort of project I've wrote about that is one of these far more complicated things where maybe there's a higher turnover of properties and you might be able to SW swoop in at some point and buy it back or make sure that nobody else buys it.

Janko Roettgers (00:30:35):
So there's no clear answer to this. But you might just wanna have to check out <affirmative> what, what happens to dollars right now?

Jason Howell (00:30:44):
Yeah. Right, right. Check in, see, see what they're doing. And I'm sure these, aren't the only three that, that exist out there. And won't be saw an article yesterday or the day before. I wish I had it in front of me, so I could quote the actual figure, but it was all about virtual real estate. And just like, you know, the, the billions of dollars that it's already worth and where that's gonna be 10 years down the line. And so it seems like, you know, when, when we're talking about virtual lands and, and real estate in the virtual world, and then this, like on some degree, there's, they're separate, but I, man, they're, they're just gonna start, you know, converging together. And I, the, the potential of actual money being made in the virtual space on real life, real estate is super high. I feel one question that I have through all this is in real estate, in real real estate, if someone owns the land you know, that they've purchased, they also own air rights.

Jason Howell (00:31:39):
Usually you own, you know, the air that is above the land that you purchase. Therefore you can control that, right? You can, you can develop on the air that is above the land that you purchased. Do you think that, I mean, I realize this is, you know, looking into a crystal ball, but it's a fun exercise. Anyways. Might we see a future where real estate loss starts to the, the avenue of virtual real estate and the layers that are contained within, so that maybe we have air rights. Maybe we also have virtual rights.

Janko Roettgers (00:32:13):
What do you think that that's certainly an option? I, I don't know if the law will catch up with it quickly enough. Yeah. And it, that seems pretty

Jason Howell (00:32:20):
Advanced.

Janko Roettgers (00:32:21):
It's also a question, right? Should it really, like, my story was all about my house and people owning virtually as to my house, but you could also look at different scenarios. Like, let's say, I don't know the burger joint down the street, but you had food poisoning. Maybe it should be well within your right or leave a marker there for people to say, don't order the, the, the, the, the rare burger here it's really bad. Like, there's a freedom of speech issue too, when it comes to especially commercial venues and so forth. Right. And even when I talk to, when I talk to lawyers about this, it turns out the property rights that, that we all think of as fairly absolute, I bought my house. I can and do stuff with it. Right. There's a lot of like constraints to it. Right. You, you bought your house, but you didn't buy the address. So Google can use the address in that map. Oh, I see. You can take a photo of their house. If you're on private property in the us, you can take a photo of anybody's house. A thing that you can see from the outside is fair game. So there's a lot of stuff there that isn't clearly defined, and it's only gonna get more complicated in the future.

Jason Howell (00:33:27):
Yeah, no question, no question. Well, I love your piece. It really got my mind going. And I appreciate you writing it. And I also appreciate you taking time to talk about it here. Yaka rug, of course writes for pro call.com. If people wanna follow you online, where can they find you?

Janko Roettgers (00:33:45):
I think the easiest way is go to protocol. We have a newsletter there too, that we launched recently, entertainment newsletter. You can Skype to that. You find my Twitter link there. Just go to protocol and find me there

Jason Howell (00:33:54):
Right on. Thank you so much, Yako. Appreciate it. We'll talk with you soon.

Janko Roettgers (00:33:59):
Anytime.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:01):
Righty. Up next. Wordle has a new home, but first, Aw, but first I know this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by progress. Progress has been enabling enterprise experiences for decades and has assembled the technologies that will have empower businesses to thrive in a post COVID world. Most companies don't have the resources to invest in technology as digital Goliaths. They need to use technology to create differentiation with a smaller investment. They can achieve this by turning to progress as their trusted provider with progress. Any organization can achieve the level of differentiation that is critical in today's business environment, whether you're an it professional concerned about networking and infrastructure security and compliance or enabling web and digital experiences. Progress has a solution for you. There's move it managed file transfer. It provides control security and visibility over all file file transfer activities, transferring confidential data through insecure channels opens your organization up to liabilities.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:08):
So with a managed file transfer solution, you gain insight into who has access to your files. And if the file was accessed and when the file was accessed, there's also WhatsApp gold network monitoring, which allows you to monitor networks, applic and devices, both in the cloud and OnPrem there's Kemp load master load balancer. It's a next generation load balancing and application delivery solution for private public and hybrid cloud. The flow Mon network intelligence, which is a network performance monitoring and network detection and response solution, and Sitefinity digital experience platform. So you can build digital experiences across channels that improve business agility and foster personal relationships with visitors progress. As you can tell, has the technology you need to secure, analyze and integrate your applications, your network, and your processes. Find out more and download a free trial at progress.com/twi don't miss out. Visit progress.com/twi for your very own progress swag bag.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:08):
Thank you so much to progress for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right. So couple of weeks ago at think it was I, my story of the week was about a game that everyone had started playing on. You could see it on Twitter a lot of times where people were sharing their progress, how they beat Wordle. And one of the things that had come up at the time was people were being a little cheeky about it. They were sharing score and the word Wordle, but they weren't really telling people where to find it. And as time went on, there were a lot of different ways that folks were creating apps and creating all of these different websites and whatnot to mimic word. And so you would maybe become a cross like a clone, a fake one something that wasn't the real thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:02):
So I was very adamant on anytime I talked about Wordle doing my best to answer anyone's questions or share the link to the site. It was a website, not an app or anything like that. Now given its popularity and that whole, whole range of times where we saw folks kind of trying to mimic Wordle, there was a, there's a, a, a, I think it's an, a discount ticketing service, something like that for, for air for flights ended up making their own word that was using airport codes that Johnny jet on of days, the tech guy, he ended up talking about that. There are all of these different kind of ones that are being made all over the internet, but the original Wordle, the true Wordle created by a developer was acquired by the New York times gaming sector.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:58):
So the New York times games obviously has things like the crossword spelling B and a few others. They have purchased Wordle for an undisclosed seven figure amount and will keep Wordle going as part of the New York times games. What's interesting here is that is the, is, is the response that has come forth. And I wanna talk about sort of my complicated reaction to this as it first happened and sort of how I felt about it afterward. And I'm curious to hear Jason, your take on things. So when I first heard that Wordle was acquired, I did have that immediate reaction of like, oh man. And the reason why is because Wordle at its start was created by this developer, he made it for his partner and wanted her to just have a game that she could play that was fun, and then realized as he started to share it with some more folks that other people liked it as well.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:02):
And so they wanted to share it with more people and that's how it grew. And the developer was like, look, I'm gonna keep this thing free. I'm gonna keep it free of ads. I'm going, like, I just want this to be a fun thing that people go on the end internet and do and have fun with. And so it had this very pure and, and loving approach, and it all felt very pure and loving in, in its whole. It was just like this good thing that existed. And anytime there's an acquisition, almost every time there's spirit that gets lost. I have worked at two companies that were star. I started at them when they were startups or very small businesses that later were acquired and the heart and soul of the company was lost when that happened. We've seen companies that get a acquired by bigger companies and the heart and soul of the original company gets lost.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:00):
It's terrifying when acquisitions happen. In my opinion, given the history that I have myself experienced and that you see from different things that you love. However, I saw a tweet fly by that that sort of SP up my processing, cuz I think I would've gotten to this point in the end anyway, but it was really nice to see it. So succinctly put and the tweet basically said, and of course paraphrasing here it's delightful that something can be made out of love and never sort of given over to gross this meaning like adding all these ads and all that kind of stuff. And the person at the end can still find success with that thing that it can be acquired. And we, so, and this is where somebody might go, but might ask, okay. But like is making money off of a thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:54):
The ultimate goal, like is that the ultimate goal of horse, it would be lovely if everything was Lollipop's gum drops and, and unicorns and money wasn't necessary to function in the society that we have. But given that financial success is a relative, relative important form of success for most people. You know, you've got the 1% and you've got everybody else. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, this is a form of success that I feel comfortable celebrating, given that this thing was created out of love that it was unadulterated and went through kind of all the way to the end. The New York times says there'll be a good steward of this. And of course, we'll see how that happens. The reaction, I, I do a podcast on Wednesdays called clockwise, and this was one of the topics on the show. And everybody on the show had the same reaction that they subscribers to the New York times already.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:54):
So they weren't worried that it would ever go away for them. Same. I also don't really need to worry that it's gonna go away. Cause I do subscribe to the New York times, but I do, I am a little bit concerned that eventually, and it's pretty much, you know, the writings on the wall that eventually this will end up behind paywall like the crossword and all of the other games, but for now it's still available for people to play. You can still use Wordle and I am happy for the developer who just did a good thing and yeah, exactly what you said. Eric in the chat making money is important if you like to eat and sleep indoors. I exactly <laugh> so there you go. Yeah. but yeah, Jason, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Jason Howell (00:42:39):
I mean, okay. So I haven't, I haven't found myself my life overcome by world obsession. I, I think about it every three or four days and I go, oh, I'll go on there. And I do it. And it's fun. I mean, I really like it don't get me wrong. It's just, I, I'm not in like the daily kind of routine of it and sharing screenshots of it at the end of the day for me, what matters most is that if someone makes something and you know, it, it takes the world by storm. And you know, ultimately at the end of the day, I love how this was made. Like the, the, the person behind this, you know, the reason Josh Wardle is his name. I, I only just now realized that his name was was so close to Wordle. Oh. but you know, he created it for a, for an audience of one, it ended up taking on a life of its own.

Jason Howell (00:43:26):
He, through his own admission really didn't seem to care much about the, the kind of what he could do with it. And like you said, kind of like, you know, fuse it within app purchases or ads or whatever, to really make like a killing off this thing, even though he totally could have. And he would've, you know, and we probably known probably would've faulted him for it because that's what a, a lot of people that, that create things are looking for. They're, they're creating enough things to get to the point to where they do that one thing that takes off. And then, Hey, look at, you know, my life is, is secure for, for exactly the reasons that you specify it, right? Like I'm, I make enough money to live and that's great. This is what I was looking for. Instead he chose to, to sell to New York times. So he did get some compensation for it. From what I read, it was a lower six figure deal. So who knows what that is, but it's not like, let's just, let's just say, it's not like life changing money, right? Like it's not millions upon millions of dollars that are, that are going completely

Mikah Sargent (00:44:27):
Low. I, I wanna make sure that I, cuz I said low seven was low six, low seven it's low seven low seven 50 low seven

Jason Howell (00:44:33):
Low seven. Okay. I, I had thought that it was low six. Okay. So that's so that's yeah. Okay. That changes things a little bit, but still even there. Right? Like if he had monetized this to the gills, the way a lot of developers would have probably had the potential to make an him out more than probably what he got out of the deal out of New York times. Yeah. But still chose to go with the New York times because he was influenced by the New York times games section. So it's kind of like a returning home for the game. Right. And also like that's enough, apparently that's enough for him to feel justified and, and, and valued. And at the end of the day, that's kind of, my point is I just want, if somebody makes something, I want them to feel like their work is valued.

Jason Howell (00:45:15):
And if this deal is something, you know, where he feels that then fantastic. He did the right thing. I don't know what the New York times are gonna do with this. I do know that I saw articles yesterday that said making sure that you, you can continue playing word all is as easy as right. At clicking and saving it because it runs entirely in the browser, including the entire dictionary nothing's being pulled from the cloud. So if you really want to be sure that you have this like pristine version of Wordle, it's pretty easy to do. But I don't know. I, I, I like the New York times and I appreciate the New York times. So I hope that they kind of keep it as pure as possible. I,

Mikah Sargent (00:45:52):
Yeah. And there's also the fact that given it's continued popularity, we don't know what kind of money he was having to pay behind the scenes to keep like, yeah,

Jason Howell (00:46:03):
Totally. Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:04):
And if, if it was gonna, if it was getting to a point where it was like, I'm gonna have to take this down because it's too popular. And I can't afford to keep it running or I can make some money and also give it to someone who can keep it running for a longer period of time. That's a, that's another factor. So totally this, this could be for the sake of keeping word alive, which I think is great. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:46:26):
This ensures that it has a longer lifespan than perhaps he was, he was able or willing to give to it. So I don't know, I have no problems with this. I think, I think, you know, he, he made the decision that he that, that worked for him in his life and he could have gone in a completely different direction. Instead. I think this probably keeps it as pure as it's going to be, but who, but again, we don't know what it New York times are gonna do with it. So I guess, I suppose cross your fingers if you're a huge word.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:54):
Yes, indeed. Fingers cross that they care for it. I would like to have it in, in an app. So that will be nice. I imagine it'll end up coming to to the app store officially, which would be

Jason Howell (00:47:06):
Good. No, yeah. I would be surprised if it didn't. Yeah. cool. Well congratulations to him. Yes. And yeah, so up next, I'm gonna talk a little bit about Meta's big plunge. I'm not talking about like a good plunge, like you're plunging into the water, having fun by the beach or whatever. This has been, not a very good plunge, the last 24 hours for MEA. But first this episode of techniques weekly is brought to you by it pro TV. We love it. Pro TV they're doing for it, what we do for technology, right. Creating amazing content around it. And if what you're looking for is an it education. You can't do much better than it. Prot. There's one thing that everyone knows about it it's that it's constantly evolving. If you're an it professional, you need to learn and apply new skills to updates and changes.

Jason Howell (00:47:56):
So you don't, you know, continually fall behind in the it world. You need to keep yourself relevant. It pro TV learns about the changes and then gets new content to you right away. So you're always ahead of the game and learning faster than the competition. They literally, they keep you relevant. For example, they just released the new compt pen test plus course with this, you can join the entertainers, Daniel Lowry and Ronnie Wong to learn penetration testing, vulnerability assessment management skills. It's an 18 hour course by it. Pro TV. It's pretty awesome. Learning gets certified in it in a way that works with your schedule. And that also happens to be entertaining. That's the beauty of it, right? It's it's on your own terms and it's fun to watch. They have seven studios they're filming Monday through Friday. Their courses actually go from the studio to the course live library in 24 hours.

Jason Howell (00:48:52):
So quick turnaround, they make sure you're prepared for your exams with their virtual labs and their practice tests as well. It pro TV's monthly theme. They've been doing this lately, that different themes for every month in February, it's hacking. They actually have two webinars that you can catch blueprint for a successful pen test. This is, you know, tips and tricks to maximize your investment on February 10th at 2:00 PM Eastern, and then starting your ethical hacking career. A pen tester's guide. That sounds awesome. That's on February 24th at 2:00 PM Eastern featuring Philip Wiley. Who's the author of the book, the pen tester blueprint, starting a career as an ethical hacker. It pro TV's free hacking weekend. They've been doing this too, taking a weekend out of the month and giving you some free access takes place on February 19th and 20th and courses that will be free for it.

Jason Howell (00:49:46):
Pro TV members include compt pen test plus that's PT 0 0 2 hands on with hacking certified ethical hacker. That's C H V 11, penetration testing tools and techniques is also Linux shell scripting the basics a whole bunch to choose from on that free weekend. And don't forget your it team needs to level up and enjoy the journey. Check out an it TV business plan for your team today. If you're looking to break into the world of it, get the introduction that you need. You can get it with it pro TV, visit it pro.tv/tnw. Make sure and do that. That way. They know that you heard about it through Tech News Weekly, you'll get an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription when you use the code TN w 30. So it pro.tv/tnw. And then once you're there, use the code TNW 30, that way you'll get the additional 30% off for the lifetime time of your active subscription.

Jason Howell (00:50:48):
It pro TV. They're awesome. Check it out for yourself, build or expand your it career and enjoy the journey. And we thank it. Pro TV for their continued support of the TWI network and Tech News Weekly. All right. So it's, it appears as not all wine and roses for Facebook or meta or whatever you want to call them yesterday. Facebook posted its earnings report. I promise this won't be a, a boring earnings report update but there will be some numbers in here. You won't have to do any math. The problem isn't actually that they did poorly as is often the case, right? Like you see these earnings and you're like, oh, wait a minute. Actually, you know, they they're make a bank. It's just that they projected poorly. And that, of course, as we know, has consequences they projected 3 84. They ended up coming in 360 7 as, as far as earnings per share concerned this $3 and 67 revenue actually ended up a little bit higher than projected $33 67 33.6, 7 billion, sorry.

Jason Howell (00:51:49):
Versus 33.4 billion. So a little bit up there, but I think what's really important. The thing that I'm kind of focusing on here is that for the first time ever Facebook dropped daily active users 1.929 billion daily users from 1.93. So not a lot, but when you're talking about the billions, it's actually a lot and it's a drop for the first time. So that's pretty significant that's for the previous quarter. And then they saw some you know, a drop in daily active users as well monthly active users for the quarter and for the year. And I think, I think what's interesting to me is that this been active users. Isn't really surprising if, if you're paying attention, right, like more and more, we're starting to see services like TikTok coming along and really in many ways, eating Facebook's lunch in, in one area that's really important.

Jason Howell (00:52:44):
That's newer, younger users, right? Younger users. Aren't really finding Facebook as relevant as some of these other social networks. And Facebook is more and more becoming the, the network for the olds. You know, <laugh> book is about family and politics and maybe selling a few things and everything. Facebook has Instagram, and I think that plays to a little bit of the younger set, you know, by comparison, but they don't break out Instagram numbers. It's hard to say exactly how much that works in their favor. But again, you know, I mean, let's be real TikTok is on fire right now. And and I would say to a certain degree competing in very similar space as Instagram. So you have to imagine there's, there's a lot of pressure there as well. And we haven't even talked about the metaverse, but I dunno. Does any of this surprise you Mikah, what do you think? So

Mikah Sargent (00:53:40):
The thing that surprises me I guess, is that this is happening perhaps sooner than I expected that the daily active users is going down because I thought we would continue to see that for a little while before it ever started to, to dissipate. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, Facebook is very, very, very good at using emotional manipulation to continue daily active user activity. And because of the just absolute swell of misinformation information and disinformation right now, particularly given the pandemic, I was a little bit shocked to see that there would be a drop at all because everybody loves to share their own, the conspiracy theories on the platform about how, you know, this or that and the other. So I thought it was gonna take until after of the pandemic, at least before we started to see that change. But apparently not.

Mikah Sargent (00:54:53):
I would also love I wish that that Facebook broke things out because I would love to know how much is actual Facebook daily active use and how much is Instagram data active use? I would love to know that, to know that. But yeah, I do think that as far as Instagram goes, TikTok is getting it because it was interesting just the other day. I was on TikTok and there was a live stream. And one of the things that TikTok has that I think a lot of apps these days have is the builtin ability to add captions or subtitles to your video automatically. And so I don't know if this is true. All I can do is base it on the behavior of this person, which I just found interesting when I saw the I'll explain just like what it is, but when I saw them do this, I thought, huh, I wonder sort of just sort of process in my head, but watching a video and this gal was showing off her collection of like small items like little minis and during it, she said you know, she's talking to the live audience, thank you, blah, blah, blah.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:04):
And then she goes and be sure to subscribe here. And she holds a up a note. And on the note, there's a printed out icon of Instagram with her username below it on Instagram, but she didn't say it out loud. And so immediately I go, oh my God, I don't know if it's true, but I am sure that she's read somewhere that you shouldn't say the names of other platforms out loud because TikTok video processing is already automatically listening. For caption sake, if you end up saying the name of a different platform, then you might get brought down in the, in the ranks. You know, your, your video may not be as featured as much. So I found that really interesting, but it made me think about how, when I go to Instagram and scroll through on the sort of discover section, most of the videos there have the TikTok logo in them because it's just videos that the person posted on TikTok, but they're just wanting to sort of spread out their platform.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:02):
So yeah, if it wasn't like if Instagram didn't have that video stuff, I think Instagram would be doing a lot worse. It is because of that, that they get those daily active users still because people are going from TikTok to their Instagrams to post them there too. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so, yeah, I do think that Facebook is in a bit of running up against kind of first daily active users. In general, you can only get so many, but also is running up against a shift in interest. And I think that that's part of why it's trying to stake its claim in the metaverse and be one of the companies that sets the foundation for the metaverse in the hopes, it's a gamble that they will get eyes where they're losing them elsewhere.

Jason Howell (00:57:46):
Yeah. And that's not just a gamble, it's a long term gamble, right? Like they said, you know, we said earlier, this is like, you know, the metaverses we inve envision, you know, it's, this is like a 10 year play, right. So they've gotta, they've gotta, still continue to be relevant in building this, you know, and the excitement around and everything for the, for the next 10 years, speaking of the metaverse, this is the first report where they've actually broke out numbers for their AR and VR division. Reality labs is what they call it. And they disclosed that for the previous year. They lost 10.2 billion in that group, 6.6 billion lost the year before a, but they've also been putting a lot more into that group and, and, you know, they've made no, no claims that like this was gonna be a huge money maker, at least here in the short term. So again, not that surprising. But they brought in 2.3 billion in revenue for this quarter. That's up from 1.1 billion in 2020 entirely. So obviously upward

Mikah Sargent (00:58:48):
Movement, general revenue,

Jason Howell (00:58:50):
General revenue based made coming into that division. That's a good question. Where, well, I mean, coming from ads. Yeah. I mean, I mean, does that include, that probably includes the meta quest as they call it now and, and everything hardware there a guess. Yeah. And but I mean, I don't know that that makes up all of that, but you know, if they're making money from apps and games being sold on the, the store fronts for the MetWest I suppose maybe that would be wrapped in there too. It's it's a good question. I don't know exactly, but I'm guessing there. But yeah, staying relevant for the next 10 years while they build up and hoping that, like you said, it's a, it's a gamble if 10 years goes by, is this metaverse their version of the metaverse? Is this the thing that people like, like, is it going to be as essential as they want to believe that it will be down the line, but no matter what, it's having an effect on the, on the, on the company, right. Stock dropped 25% overnight. Woo. Which, which by the way, Bloomberg said could be the single biggest market value drop ever ever. That's a huge number 20 billion in, or sorry, 200 billion in value wiped out overnight.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:10):
Okay. That's wow. When you put it that way.

Jason Howell (01:00:14):
Wow. Insanity. Yes. Right, right. 25% losing value losing 25% value doesn't mean anything until you have the actual, you know, value behind it. That's $200 billion. So insane. So

Mikah Sargent (01:00:27):
I don't know. I bet they did. They're like, can we like never report a drop in daily active users ever against

Jason Howell (01:00:33):
These <laugh> so anyways, we'll see what this means. You know can these, if this kind of a true happens every quarter for, I don't even know how many years like, is like, do they just continue business as usual? Oh yeah. That's just the price we have to pay for the 10 year vision. Or do they make some big changes to that vision? Yeah, I don't know, but it's interesting, nonetheless, that's a huge drop in value

Mikah Sargent (01:01:01):
That's which I gain my God.

Jason Howell (01:01:04):
So,

Mikah Sargent (01:01:05):
But anyways, I, I don't own a public company that's for sure. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (01:01:09):
Yeah, that would, that would make your, your heart skip a beat, I think a little bit, if you were heavily invested in meta and that happened, be like, wait a minute. What just happened to yeah. To me anyways. So that's my story of the week. I'm sure we'll hear more about this every single week for the rest of our lives.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:27):
<Laugh> they'll still be here. They may be losing daily active users, but

Jason Howell (01:01:32):
They'll still be here. Right. They'll still figure out a way to, to, to do that. All right. So we've reached the end of this episode, Tech News Weekly, always a lot of fun talking through this stuff, and I'm just now realizing so much of today's show to do with, with gaming and virtual and everything. So just a, just an observation. I, I enjoy that. So hopefully you do too twit TV slash TNW. We do the show every Thursday. You can go there to subscribe to the show and audio and video formats. Also just wanna put it on your radar, twi.tv/survey 22. You, yes, you can take the TWI survey right now. It only takes a couple of minutes. We don't do anything with this information other than look at it and understand you better understand what we're doing better what we're doing, right. What we could could be doing better. It's all in an effort to enable us and inform us to bring you content that you are looking for. So twi.tv/survey 22, answer as much, or as little as you like. And we appreciate that you do that. Thank you.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:36):
In dub to blare is another thing we would appreciate you doing checking out club TWI for seven bucks a month. You just had to twi.tv/club TWI, and you can join the club. What happens when you join the club? Well, you get every single one of Twitch shows ad free. So you'll be able to listen to each show with no ads. You get the nice little F feed of each of the shows. You also get access to the TWI plus bonus feed. That is a podcast feed that has content. You won't find elsewhere, including AMAs. One with Georgia Dow recently, we've had Mary Jo Foley Jason and I all sorts of great stuff there. And even more coming up, aunt prude is in charge of, of, of that, and is always adding awesome new stuff. And then you also get access to the discord server.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:26):
If you're going, one is a discord server. Well, if you ever use Microsoft teams or slack, you'll be familiar with the way it looks and works. You just, it's a great place to communicate with other folks and all of us here at TWI as well. If that sounds good to you, twi.tv/club TWI, to check it out. We also heard that some folks wanted to subscribe to individual shows directly. If you are using apple podcasts, you can do that. You just go into apple podcasts, you look up Tech News Weekly, or the Twitch show of your choice, and you tap to subscribe for 2 99. It's the audio O version of the show, no ads 2 99 a month. So you can do that there. And it all works through your apple subscriptions. So it's a very easy to add and manage those subscriptions.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:13):
As you need to. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mica Sergeant on many, a social media network, or you gonna head to Chi wawa.coffee, C I H H eight, do out coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online Tuesdays iOS today, of course today Tech News Weekly. And soon I just had somebody from Australia say I just got back from a holiday and was listening to the tech guy. And you were there before and now you're not there. What's going on due to the BAS mandate in the county. I'm not currently there on Saturdays, but I'll be returning soon with Leo LePort on Saturdays for the tech guy. Jason, what about you crossing

Jason Howell (01:04:49):
Fingers for you? I'm at Jason Howell on Twitter doing all about Android at TWI do TV slash AA, just wrapping up a very busy week here at TWI Leo and Lisa we're for the week. So Mike and I were filling in for Leo on some of his shows. So, you know, check the back catalog of shows from this week and you'll see more of us. If you wanna find more of us, you'll find us there. Big thanks to everyone who helps us do this show each and every week. John Ashley Burke at the studio, I was just told yesterday that John Sina he's like, thank you for thanking me every week, but that's my day off. And I'm at home watching the show. I'm gonna thank you anyways, John. So there you go. And big thanks to you. Yeah. Take that. <Laugh> big. Thanks to you for watching and listening each and every week. All of you, not just John, but the rest of you as well. And we'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody. Bye.

Ant Pruitt (01:05:41):
Did you spend a lot of money on your brand new smartphone? And then you look at the pictures on Facebook and Instagram and you're like, what in the world happened to that photo? Yes, you have. I know it happens to all of us. Well, you need to check out my show hands on photography, where I'm going to walk you through simple tips and tricks that are gonna help make you get the most out of your smartphone camera or your DSLR or mirrorless, whatever you have. And those shots are gonna look so much better. I promise you, so make sure you're tuning into twit TV slash hop for hands on photography to find out more.