Tech News Weekly Episode 299 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, as always, a great show plan for you. First, Jason Howell's, story of the week to kick off the show, talking about the current state of streaming and how it may see a return to the days of yesterday year where cable was expensive. So we cut the cord, but now cutting the cord is just as expensive as cable and it's all a mess. Then we talked to Andrew J. Hawkins, the transportation editor from The Verge [00:00:30] about Robo taxis going 24 7 in San Francisco, and then absolutely failing and blocking traffic the first chance they get. After that discussion, the New York Times's own NICO Grant stops by to talk about Google's deep mind working on AI that may be looking at mental health and, and, and physical wellbeing and, and personal coaching, and how that has its own set [00:01:00] of problems. And we round things out with my story of the week about how QR codes may be a new way for bad actors to get access to your information. Stay tuned for this jam packed episode of Tech News Weekly

TWiT Intro (00:01:18):
Podcasts you love from people you

Mikah Sargent (00:01:20):
Trust.

TWiT Intro (00:01:22):
This is Tweet.

Jason Howell (00:01:27):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 299, [00:01:30] recorded Thursday, August 17th, 2023, revenge of the Robo Taxis. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Melissa. More than 10,000 clients worldwide rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit.

TWiT Intro (00:01:57):
Listeners of this program, get an ad-free version [00:02:00] if they're members of Club twit. $7 a month gives you ad-free versions of all of our shows plus membership in the club. Twit Discord, a great clubhouse for twit listeners. And finally, the twit plus feed with shows like Stacey's Book Club, the Untitled Linux Show, the GIZ Fizz and more. Go to twit tv slash club twit and thanks for your support.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:23):
Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech [00:02:30] news. I am one of your hosts, Micah, Sergeant.

Jason Howell (00:02:34):
I'm the other guy, Jason Howell. I got the dog upstairs sleeping the puppy, I should say. So I don't think we're gonna have any rude interruptions this time around. I got white noise playing in the room. I've really pulled out all the stops. I've got a chew toy, a couple of chew toys. We're gonna see how this goes.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:51):
All right. Well, I you know, I didn't find the interruptions rude last time. They were rather charming, but I

Jason Howell (00:02:58):
Understand. I'm glad you've [00:03:00] sort of figured that out for the, for this time around <laugh>. But I think it's weird for me because I just wanna focus on, on you Micah and our guests and everything. Fair enough. Sometimes Watson just doesn't care. <Laugh>, he doesn't care about what I want. We're, we're now two weeks into this puppy experience, so let me tell you, it's, it's weighing on me a little bit. He's cute, but boy is this hard. It's really hard, but boy is he a puppy. <Laugh>. <laugh>, yes, exactly. Everybody warned me and I listened, but I didn't realize [00:03:30] just how much he was gonna take things over. Let's talk about technology that has nothing to do with dogs. We do have a couple of interviews coming up but we're gonna start things off with my story of the week, and then we will get to the interviews right after.

(00:03:45):
We kind of talked a little bit about this maybe last week or the week before, but just kind of, it's, it's interesting to see how things are shifting in the realm of streaming services and video online and what we've come to expect. And [00:04:00] we've gotten so comfortable with the way it has been, and it really seems like things are about to change in a big way. The economics specifically of streaming are changing all around us, whether you wanna accept it or not. And of course, you know, streaming the, the, the cost of streaming is not the only thing in our lives that is escalating, it seems like. But nonetheless, here we are. Thought I take a moment to remember the way it used to be, because I remember [00:04:30] the time that I had DirecTV and it was my, you know, it was my satellite subscription.

(00:04:36):
We were watching you know, the the N F L Sunday ticket at the time, so it made sense to have DirecTV. But at that time, this was probably like mid two thousands, I'd say. Having a cable or a satellite subscription, that was just the way it was. Like if you, you know, if you weren't, if you didn't care about tv, maybe you didn't have those things. If you couldn't afford the, the expense of them, you definitely [00:05:00] didn't have those things 'cause they were crazy expensive. But if you really wanted to capture everything that was happening on TV and not miss a thing, you had a satellite or you had a cable subscription and a D V R to capture it all so you could shift time and everything. And then this thing came along called cord cutting. It was like a dream that came along that was like, what if you could get only the things that you care about and all the extra stuff that you're paying for with your cable and your satellite and all that?

(00:05:29):
What if you didn't have [00:05:30] to pay for that stuff and you only paid for the stuff that you really cared about? And I think the dream at that time was that that would be hopefully the way things would, would work out, that we wouldn't have to pay for all this extra stuff. And that hopefully that would kind of bring the cost down on everything. And Micah, I don't, I I don't know about you, but I remember when Netflix streaming started to kind of gain a little momentum and, and actually prior to the momentum, when Netflix was still very known as an envelope [00:06:00] sending company mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with DVDs inside, and they started this streaming thing. I remember the offerings in, in Netflix online streaming were really not that great. It's almost like they were like the best that the eighties had to offer <laugh> <laugh>. It was

Mikah Sargent (00:06:18):
Yes. Yeah. That you, were you on Netflix at that time? You'd still go to the red box, right? You would still get your DVDs instead of going on to Netflix and watching whatever was there, because [00:06:30] like, I don't, I remember not getting a subscription, or my family not even getting a subscription to Netflix for a long time, because the content that was available there was not what any of us wanted to watch really.

Jason Howell (00:06:43):
Right. It was like second run. It was, it was the stuff on the cable networks that they played in between, like on, on the off hours, you know, like later at night

Mikah Sargent (00:06:51):
Yes. Night you watch at a hotel <laugh>. Totally.

Jason Howell (00:06:53):
Totally. But not like the, the new release that just came out on D V D also on Netflix. Like, very rarely [00:07:00] did you have that. And when you did that was like a big deal. It was like, oh, I can't believe I don't have to like get the D V D in the mail or go to Redbox. I could just click stream and you get it. And it took 'em a while to get to that point. And so, you know, at that time we had, you know, we had gotten, I don't even know if at that time we had gotten rid of, of our satellite, but we definitely had Netflix, and we do a little bit of streaming, but mostly the, the envelope over time that changed though Netflix really committed itself to producing high quality original content, kind [00:07:30] of set the stage for what other streaming platforms would do in the future, you know, with orange is the New Black. And what was their, what was their first one? Was that their first one? I'm,

Mikah Sargent (00:07:40):
I'm trying to remember.

Jason Howell (00:07:41):
No, I think it was, was it was the Kevin Stacy one, wasn't it? Oh, the House

Mikah Sargent (00:07:45):
Of Cards was first,

Jason Howell (00:07:47):
God, I'm trying to remember, was House of Cards first, I can't even remember. But it was very specifically one thing, and then that opened up to Orange is The New Black and a few other things. And you started to realize like, oh, wow, okay, Netflix really cares about creating original content. [00:08:00] Maybe what we want the, these services for is not all of the, you know, the things that just came out of the theater. Like that would be nice, but maybe these services might offer their own amazing content. And took a while to like, for me to trust that that was the case. But eventually Netflix proved that. Then the big studios realized that they wanted their own Netflix. And so as we've seen in recent years, you know, the option, you know, Disney, universal, I mean, the options have been plentiful, [00:08:30] and the costs of those services have been pretty marginal considering what we were spending on cable and satellite.

(00:08:38):
I think at one point with satellite, you know, we were spending upwards more than a hundred dollars definitely on the content that we were getting a month. And you know, then suddenly it's like, oh, Netflix, $8 a month. Sure. That's a, that's a bargain. Like, do I really need everything? Maybe I just need this or whatever. So now why am I even setting all this up? Because we got really comfortable with [00:09:00] this idea that we could spend less than what we were spending in the, in the old days, let's say. And we got really comfortable with the quality of the content that we've been getting in a lot of the shows that are created for these things. Like it's been an overabundance. I, I'm, I'm sure you would agree, like there's been some amazing TV so much though that you can't keep track of it all because every single service has their amazing lineup of shows [00:09:30] that they're creating to show that that platform has reason to exist, that you want that over Netflix or Disney or whatever these other things are.

(00:09:38):
And so it's almost been like a gluttony of top tier TV content, and now things are shifting heavily. And I, I think the Financial Times article was what really got me thinking about this. Hollywood studios are turning the screws as Ft says many insiders, of course have been warning in, in you know, the last many years [00:10:00] of a crashing down to earth <laugh> coming to terms with what has happened as far as that, that massive amount of content, low prices and everything. And it seems like now is kind of like why we're seeing all these changes. You know, interest rates have been soaring. You know, media stocks have been suffering. Wall Street, of course wants its money. So Financial Times says no more cheap debt means that it's harder to flood the market with streaming content. And as such, what we're seeing are the [00:10:30] stream services are all raising their prices, and they really put it to a certain degree really eloquently.

(00:10:36):
They said if a cable TV package was 83 bucks per month at one point a basket of the top US streaming services will rise from 7 3 70 $3 a month one year ago to $83 this fall. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So really what it means is we're kind of back at this point to where, if, you know, where we've gotten so used to the low prices, the massive [00:11:00] amount of content, and now, you know, not to mention we've got the writer strike that isn't making any of this easier. In fact, it it's coming along at the absolute wrong time, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> from the perspective of the streaming services, because they need to get you, they're trying to get you to pay more for what will ultimately be less new content, because not anything, you know, substantial is being created right now. So no, no, I just think it's an interesting perspective to see how these things are shifted. [00:11:30] How used to the way it was, the new way it was, has been as cord cutters and how things are kind of reverting. Like, there's a whole generation of people that have watched TV and watched, you know, video content that aren't used to seeing ads, and Right. They might need to see ads again, and like, how's that gonna go? Because ads suck to, you know, to in the middle of a movie and suddenly it pauses. Right. And you watch an ad, like, that's just a horrible experience.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:58):
Yeah. I, the [00:12:00] thing about it, I, the other thing about it though is this has been predicted for so long, right? Yeah. This is people have talked about how eventually we would see a return to the prices that people were running away from when they were cutting the cord. And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. The, the predictions were accurate, and here we are where it costs, it sounds like or [00:12:30] it's about to cost just as much to have a cable subscription as it is to have a you know, a cord cutting measure. And yes, that's because you've got the situation where everybody's trying to get at, get in on the game, and there's just not enough room for that. And so, yeah, and in some ways, or actually in most ways, I'm just not surprised by <laugh> any of this, because it's just kind of what's been predicted for so long and what they thought would happen [00:13:00] has Indeed happened.

Jason Howell (00:13:02):
Yeah. And so like it or not, it seems like that's the direction that we're heading. And I don't know. I, I, you know, it's just, it's interesting to see all of the services raising their prices. If you take a, take a look at the Financial Times article, they have a really nice, kind of like, visualization of where things were, where things are going for a number of different streaming services. And you know, and do we necessarily have the vision of the future that [00:13:30] we had back then of cord cutting? We only pay for what we want and, you know, the, the rest of the stuff we don't have to pay for anymore. Like, we definitely don't have the a la carte model at this stage. No. It kind

Mikah Sargent (00:13:40):
Of seemed like, maybe

Jason Howell (00:13:41):
We did because it was like, well, a la carte in the sense that like, I like all of universal stuff, but I don't like all of Disney's, so I can choose which one I want to go with. But yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:50):
Yeah. But ultimately you're paying for a lot of what you don't want, right? You can't just get the three shows that you, like, you have to get all of the shows you don't like along [00:14:00] with the content that you do. Like, because they happen to be the group that paid the right person to be able to show whatever content it is. And Yeah. Yeah. I, there's something to be said for the way that the music industry operates, right? They all decided to just kind of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And for the most parts just decided this is how we're gonna do it. And so, regardless of whether you're streaming on Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon [00:14:30] Music, those libraries are almost certainly so, so, so similar. And the, the few that have popped up since then that are trying to be their own thing, like title not doing as well, because the music industry kind of said, look, we've got this way of doing it and it works, and we're going to do it.

(00:14:49):
And I I, it proves that, you know, you can try and go your own way, but doing so in an industry [00:15:00] is eventually probably going to result in I would argue a we might see the second coming of the lime wires and pirate bays, and, you know what I mean? I, I feel like at least in my anecdotal evidence of, you know, talking to family members and friends and things like that, who maybe in times past did some of that you know, did not [00:15:30] do that as much because it was within the realm of, of you know ability to afford the content. And if it creeps up to a place where it's not, again, I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see that come back. So,

Jason Howell (00:15:47):
Yeah. And to see, and the splintered, the splintered kind of nature of it compared to what you're talking about with Spotify and everything, I mean, that's a large reason why like music piracy, you know, went way down is because at a certain point, services [00:16:00] like Spotify and Apple Music and everything, they streamed enough of the music to overcome. Like, yes, you're paying for it, but you're overcoming the complicated mess that is the piracy side

Mikah Sargent (00:16:13):
And the danger, right?

Jason Howell (00:16:15):
And the danger Yep. That aspect as well. So, yeah, I, I was thinking about that this yesterday. They talked about this a little bit on this. We can Google and I was thinking, man, it just seems like, it seems like video content is on the precipice of another Napster moment [00:16:30] where it's like, yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I can't take it anymore. I'm going over here. Rrrrrr, you know, <laugh> R

Mikah Sargent (00:16:35):
Exactly. R I'm heading back to the pirate B.

Jason Howell (00:16:42):
Alright, so coming up we've got our first interview, the Rise of the Robo Taxis, at least in California. But first, this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Melissa, the data quality experts, the ones you need to know about. For 38 years, Melissa has helped companies harness [00:17:00] the value of their customer data to drive insight, to maintain data quality, and to support global intelligence. All data goes bad, kinda like sour milk up to 25% per year. In fact, that's a quarter of all data going bad. Having clean and verified data helps customers to have a smooth error-free purchase experience. 'cause Bad data is actually bad business, and it costs on average $9 million each year [00:17:30] flexible to fit into any business model. Melissa verifies addresses for more than 240 countries, that's gonna ensure only valid billing and shipping addresses enter your system.

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And once you're signed up with Melissa, it's actually really easy to integrate. There are other services as well, so things like Melissa identity verification, so you can increase your compliance, reduce fraud, and improve onboarding. There's Melissa in Rich. [00:19:00] That's how you gain insight into who and where your customers actually are. Melissa specializes in Global Intelligence Solutions, undergoes independent third party security audits. They're SOC two, HIPAA and G D P R compliant. So you know, your data is in the very best hands. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. That's melissa.com/twit. We thank [00:19:30] Melissa for their support of Tech News Weekly. All right, I wanna hear all about this. I'm gonna be going to San Francisco here pretty soon, and I'm sure I'm gonna see some of these robax taxis rolling

Mikah Sargent (00:19:40):
Around Robax, interesting Robax

Jason Howell (00:19:44):
Taxes

Mikah Sargent (00:19:45):
By ex company. Six, six hours. Six hours. That's how long it took for people to make their opinions heard. And the California Public Utilities Commission to [00:20:00] go ahead and say, Hey, robotaxis, you can operate in San Francisco 24 hours a day, seven days a week, despite the orange cones, despite the protests, and despite what I didn't learn until this morning, the unfortunate death of a dog robo taxis are able to operate in San Francisco 24 7 coming to the show to talk to [00:20:30] us about. This is the transportation editor at The Verge. It's Andrew J. Hawkins. Welcome to the show, Andrew. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Before we kind of dig into things, let's lay this foundation. I was hoping you can, this incident you wrote about where 10 cruise vehicles broke down in San Francisco that caused a traffic jam. Tell us about it and how these you know, vehicles kind of what, what caused [00:21:00] it and why it happened, <laugh>, and just how long after the agreement to let these vehicles operate did this take place?

Andrew Hawkins (00:21:07):
Yeah, that was really the most significant part about all this, was that it happened the next day after the C P U C, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to allow Cruz and Waymo, the two main companies testing robo taxis in San Francisco to dramatically expand their services. They now have the ability to operate 24 hours a day, seven [00:21:30] days a week. They can charge for their rides they can go anywhere they want within the the peninsula, the seven by seven, as it's called in, in San Francisco. So the very next day after this vote, this dramatic vote handing these companies a huge victory 10 cruise vehicles were stalled in the middle of an intersection outside of the music festival that was going on near the Presidio, the outside Outlands music festival. And Cruz said that the reason was because of an [00:22:00] overloaded cellular network. There were so many people attending this music festival, they were all using their phones to hail, Uber and Lyft rides most likely, or call their friends. And those overloaded cell networks disabled these 10 vehicles causing a huge traffic jam. So it's a sign that while they're having this, you know, unprecedented access now to the city of San Francisco, there are still a lot of technical issues that need to be worked out with how these cars operate, especially in dense urban environments like San Francisco.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:30):
[00:22:30] Yeah, I'm very clearly. And I'm curious, what was the decision that the California Public Utilities Commission made regarding these robax services in San Francisco? And then of course, I'd love to hear kind of how everybody reacted to this because obviously this is something that they've been able to operate in some capacity leading up to this point. But to go 24 7, what all was involved in that? And then yeah, the reactions [00:23:00] from people who were for it, against it and everything in between.

Andrew Hawkins (00:23:04):
Yeah, so it's a kind of a quirk in the California state law that you have this obscure H state agency, the C P U C that regulates a number of different industries that they also regulate ride ha, which is what these autonomous vehicle operators sort of are categorized underneath. And so they're the ones that get to decide, you know, when do the companies get to start charging for their rides? How much can they do, can they do that for, where can they operate during what hours they have? [00:23:30] So previously oh, for, for several years now, the companies were only allowed to operate at night. And there was also rules about, you know, where they could operate under what weather conditions, the speeds that they could operate on. They were only allowed to go under 35 miles per hour.

(00:23:46):
They were only allowed to operate between like 9:00 PM and 4:00 AM. So these were not busy time periods in which the companies were operating, so there was really not a lot of money to be made. And the companies obviously want [00:24:00] to make money because they'd been sinking billions and billions of dollars into this project over the number, a number of years. So the the commission held this hearing I think it's important to note this is a hearing that they've delayed several times because of the out, out outpouring of support and opposition and all of the, the various things that they needed to sort of pour over all the data and the information that they had to pour over. So this, this hearing finally happened, as you noted, it was over six hours long, and they [00:24:30] allow allowed public testimony.

(00:24:31):
So it's basically anyone who wanted to come to San Francisco to this state very dry state run hearing could come and, and have their five minutes and say their piece about what they, how they felt about all of these self-driving cars operating in their city. And I watched the whole thing. Most of the thing, I, I took a few bathroom breaks, but I watched most of the <laugh> of the hearing, and it was split pretty evenly between people who were very for it and people who were very against it. And you had [00:25:00] a lot of compelling arguments on either side. You had people from the disability community, for example, who say that this is really, you know, they have very limited mobility options and transportation options, and this would be something that could really help them get around a lot more easily if they had more of these self-driving cars.

(00:25:17):
They had people who were Uber and Lyft drivers who said, this is gonna put them outta business. This is their livelihood. They drive for a living. And the idea of these driverless cars coming in and replacing them was a very disturbing thing to them. They [00:25:30] were worried about their livelihoods. And you had people from, you know, sort of the urbanist community who said, you know, the answer is obviously not more cars, but it's more public transit. It's more walking into more biking, better infrastructure for these types of things. So there was a lot of opinions that were there. There's also a few cranks people who were worried about, you know, the self-driving cars you know kidnapping them and things like that. But for the most part, it was a very even evenly split kind of thing where hundreds and hundreds of people were testifying.

(00:25:59):
And [00:26:00] it was kind of difficult to see sort of which way that the commission would ultimately go if they were basing this on public, the public opinion. But ultimately, it was a three to one vote. They voted in favor of the companies, and they now have access to they basically can operate as, as if they were a normal ride hailing service like Uber and Lyft. They can operate at all hours of the day. They can charge money for their rides, they can go anywhere they want. They can go on highways, they can operate at any speed, under any weather conditions. So I think now we're sort of looking to the companies [00:26:30] to see how they're actually going to respond now to this vote, because the companies have been operating somewhat conservatively. I think that they realize that public opinion really kind of matters in how they roll this service out. So they're gonna be mm-hmm. <Affirmative> somewhat, I think cautious in how they choose to make the decision around expanding their services and whatnot.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:50):
Understood. Now, speaking of that which, what companies are you aware of that are currently operating in San Francisco that now have this? Go [00:27:00] ahead. Are there many, are there a few? What, what does the, the current state look like?

Andrew Hawkins (00:27:06):
So there are dozens of companies that have been testing autonomous vehicles in California for a number of years now. But really there are only two companies that offer passenger service, and one is Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, which is a obviously the parent company of Google. And Waymo is a spinoff of Google. And then you've got Cruz, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors. [00:27:30] The automaker, the largest automaker in North America. So those are the two main companies. Both of those companies have hundreds of vehicles in San Francisco, and now they have the ability to add dozens more, even hundreds more if they so choose. And you also have a couple of other sort of smaller companies. There's Zoox which is owned by Amazon. They've been testing some of their vehicles in San Francisco as well. And there's a few other, there's some delivery companies and, and, and many others. And then I think sort of, you know, the the, the most secretive of all of them [00:28:00] is Apple. Apple has been sort of secretively testing its own self-driving cars but we don't really know much about their technology or what they will end up doing with it.

Mikah Sargent (00:28:09):
Understood. Understood. Now let's talk about the incidents. How have the incidents involving robot taxis kind of affected the public opinion and the enthusiasm that maybe some people had at first for these vehicles? And you know, you mentioned like a, a, a stuffed city like San Francisco versus when they're operating in Arizona. [00:28:30] Like what do, what problems does a city offer when it comes to driverless cars?

Andrew Hawkins (00:28:37):
So it's obviously a much more complex environment. You know, the, in the autonomous vehicle space, they talk about, you know, operational domain where the car cars are able to actually operate. And the operational domain for, for San Francisco is obviously much more complex than anywhere else that these cars are tested across the country. You have a number of you know, obviously other Dr, human [00:29:00] driven vehicles, many of them, you have public buses, you have pedestrians, you have cyclists, you have very densely packed streets with cars that are parked and double parked and triple parked. You have bike lanes, you have construction zones. There's just a lot going on in a place like San Francisco. And as you can imagine, there have been a number of incidents that have come up over the past year or so in which these cars have been testing out operated at night, but also testing during the day as well.

(00:29:25):
They've blocked intersections. They've had a number of, of trouble and encounters [00:29:30] with emergency vehicles, with fire engines, with police vehicles with ambulance services, with city buses, blocking city buses. And the thing about it at all is that, you know, in a, in a world in which all cars are operated by humans, there are these types of incidents as well. Human drivers are mostly pretty terrible at, at, at driving, and they block other vehicles. So they get into car crashes and they're distracted, and people drive drunk, and there are accidents. These cars are sort of held up as an antidote to all of that. These are the cars that don't get distracted, they don't get drunk. [00:30:00] They, they operate by you know, by under the speed limit, and they follow all the rules. They drive, sort of like your like your grand, like your grandmother might drive very conservatively mm-hmm.

(00:30:11):
<Affirmative>. but that said, they still have technical difficulties at times. Whether it's this incident with the, the 10 cars getting stuck because of an overloaded cell cell network or whether it, it's just they get confused by a certain scenario because there's you know, a a police situation going on and they've got, you know [00:30:30] an intersection roped off and they just don't know how to act. And so, you know, the company's argument is that like, we haven't killed anybody. We haven't hit anybody. We, we've gotten involved in very few accidents. There's been minor incidents. And the thing is, we learn from each of these incidents. We take that data, we feed it back into our algorithm, we use it to train our machine learning programs, and then we spit it back out into our fleet, and the fleet is then updated and knows how to operate because it's encountered these edge cases, these very sort of, you know very rare sorts of instances that happen. [00:31:00] But that said, those still get a lot of attention. They get a lot of focus, and they make people very upset, especially when it evolves things like transit and emergency vehicles. So it's something that the companies really need to address better, and I think they recognize that but it's not clear that the public is really going to suddenly fall in love with these vehicles if these types of things keep happening.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:20):
Understood. and then I guess, are these companies planning <laugh> despite everything that's going on? I mean, they, they did secure a win here. Does this mean that [00:31:30] they're planning on expanding to other cities? And what if, so kind of how are those cities preparing or not preparing for this? I just imagine some cities might be like, oh God, they might be coming here next. What do we do? Or are other cities kind of welcoming this, or is it kind of a mixed bag?

Andrew Hawkins (00:31:50):
Yeah, so it's really on a state by state kind of basis. I think, you know, the companies have said that there are obviously interested in expanding to other cities. They need to [00:32:00] in order to continue to operate. If they don't start making money sued, you can very well see that their parent companies are going to eventually you know cut tie, you know, cut their losses and, and shut things down. It's happened before. There have been autonomous vehicle operators that have shut down because for example, Argo last year shut down after Ford and Volkswagen both pulled their funding out and said, you know what? This is taking too long. We don't want to be so heavily invested in this technology. We'll just let others operate, you know, and lose [00:32:30] money on it. And that's what's been happening.

(00:32:31):
GM's been losing over a billion dollars every year on this project. Google as well, losing billions of dollars on this. So they need to start bringing cash back into the operation. So it's, it's, it's imperative that they expand other cities. So Waymo is planning on launching a robo taxi service in Los Angeles. Both companies are testing their vehicles in Austin, Texas, and plan on launching services there as well. Waymo, obviously is already in Phoenix, as you mentioned, and has been there for a number [00:33:00] of years now, operating ride hailing services. And I, I know that they have a number of other localities. Miami is being looked at as a, as a possible location. And there's, even here in New York City, a few Waymo vehicles have been seen testing their and mapping the streets being driven by humans, manually operated vehicles.

(00:33:17):
But when you're mapping the streets of the city, it seems to be a precursor for potentially a commercial service down the line. So there's a lot of pressure. These companies are under a lot of pressure to not only get the technology right, but to start having some, [00:33:30] you know, bringing in some customers spreading to other cities and commercializing their services. So I think we're gonna start to see a lot of activity over the next year or so. I think the California example is being held up as what could, what can happen even under, under a very strict regulatory environment. California obviously has a lot of rules about how these vehicles can operate. There's obviously states that don't have as many rules. Arizona basically has said, you can just do whatever you want, don't worry about it, as long as you don't kill anybody, which they did many years ago. [00:34:00] Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that was an Uber vehicle, and then now Uber doesn't have a self-driving car program anymore. But, you know, it's, there's, there's pros and cons to having all of these rules, but I think the, the industry sees the win in California as a positive sign for growth in the future.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:15):
Understood. And one last question for you. You know, we, there's obviously this mixed reaction. You've got some positives, some negatives, some inbetweens and then you've got technical issues and regulatory hurdles. As a transportation editor [00:34:30] who's been looking at this for so long, kind of crystal ball prediction, what do you think is the future of autonomous vehicles in general? Will we see in your opinion, kinda a growth in this area and a reduction in in the vehicles that we drive ourselves? Or do you see going more the way of public transit? If you had to guess, what do you think is next?

Andrew Hawkins (00:34:53):
Yeah, so I've ridden a number of these vehicles. I, I was actually in San Francisco last month, and my wife and I took a cruise vehicle. [00:35:00] We went and got some dinner, and then we went and got some dessert afterwards. And it worked, it worked fine. There were no incidents, you know, it drove very slowly. But it got us where we needed to go. It wasn't convenient. We had to walk to our location afterwards 'cause it was outside the service area. It took a long time for the car to come. So I think that there's a lot of limitations that these companies are operating under right now that make it so that the services that they're offering while for the most part are, are fine and good [00:35:30] are not convenient. And they're sort of a curiosity.

(00:35:34):
I think a lot of people use them as a, you know, there, there's a lot of, I think for a lot of tourist interest in these, if you are visiting San Francisco as a tourist, take a robo taxii, you know, that, that, that has a lot of potential, I think. But as a competitor to a human operated service like Uber and Lyft, not, it's not there yet. And I don't know when it will get there. I think it'll take more cars, it'll take a lot more innovation. It'll take a lot of improvements in the system [00:36:00] to get there. So I don't, I don't know if they can, if, if they can just flip a switch and make this into a profitable system. Because as of, as of today, as I mentioned, losing a ton of money. And if they're don't start to show a meaningful return on those investments, a meaningful line of revenue for companies like Alphabet and gm, which obviously has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, GM shifting to electric vehicles, Google has an existential threat that it's facing with, with with ai, generative [00:36:30] ai there's, there's a lot going on, and they can't really afford to continue spending so much money on this project.

(00:36:36):
So I think that they're gonna wanna start to see whether or not these, these services can be actually commercialized or whether it's just gonna be some sort of fad or a tourist attraction, at which point they'll probably cut their losses. As for personally owned vehicles, GM has said unequivocally that we're gonna start selling vehicles to people with autonomy, autonomous features by the middle part of this decade. So that's in two years from now [00:37:00] that they have claimed that they, that's a goal of theirs to do. I don't know if they're gonna be able to live up to that goal necessarily. I think that there's a lot of potential in partial autonomy. So things like driver assist systems like Tesla's Autopilot or GM Super Cruise things where you can use it on the highway or you can have hands-free driving. I think there's some, there's some potential there. But as, as far as like a fully autonomous roboto taxi with no steering wheel, no pedals, and you can maybe cram a couple of people into a vehicle I think we need [00:37:30] to see a lot more activity and a lot more proof from these companies that this is gonna be something that they can commercialize a lot faster. Otherwise, I think it's gonna get stuck in second gear, and I don't see it getting out of it.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:40):
Understood. Well, Andrew, I wanna thank you so much for your time today coming to explain all of this. It's very complicated but particularly like what we talked about with the regulatory hurdles and everything in between. And I'm curious to see how this goes going forward, if we're gonna see more orange cone protests and all of that jazz. But [00:38:00] of course, folks can head over to the verge.com to stay up to date with what you are writing about. Is there anywhere else they should go online to be able to follow you and keep up with your work?

Andrew Hawkins (00:38:11):
No, the Verge is the place where I, where I I, I do all my publishing. So that's, that's where they can go. The verge.com slash transportation. And I appreciate you guys having me on. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:22):
Take care. All righty. Let's take a little moment here before we move on to [00:38:30] our next interview.

Jason Howell (00:38:35):
Okay. A few weeks back we had Megan Moroney on to talk about her experience using generative AI as a substitute, maybe not a total substitute for therapy, but definitely it was an experience, an experiment to see could generative AI provide some sort of meaningful therapy for someone if needed. And of course, these services aren't built with that in mind, [00:39:00] at least not yet. But now it sounds like Google and DeepMind are officially looking into whether it's AI systems can at least act as a personal life coach. Nico Grant wrote about this in the New York Times, joins me now. Welcome to the show, Nico.

Nico Grant (00:39:17):
Thank you for having me.

Jason Howell (00:39:18):
It's great to have you here. Thank you so much for taking a few minutes to talk to us about this. 'cause I'm super fascinated by the idea of this. And then at the same time, I can't help but feel a little kinda like, oh [00:39:30] where is this headed? Like is this actually the future? So first of all tell us a little bit, if you don't mind, how Google and DeepMind first, kind of like, what, what kicked off their, looking into this, how did they kind of come together on this to see if this is even worth investigating?

Nico Grant (00:39:51):
Google has really been a pioneer in generative ai. And so the technology that underpins the chatbots people have seen from [00:40:00] open AI's chat, G P T to Google's own bard is something that Google has been working on for a long time. It was less of a priority for DeepMind, but when we saw OpenAI release chat g p t back in November, you know, that was a time when Google started getting all of its gears in motion to really try to, you know, find primacy in this space and reassert its stature. And so what we've seen after [00:40:30] these two labs that are very respected, DeepMind in London and Google Brain based here in California, they came together in April to create Google DeepMind. And ever since they've been working on, you know, some of the most impressive and largest language models to underpin their next generation of tools.

(00:40:53):
And what we have found recently is that they are testing a bunch of capabilities [00:41:00] that go beyond what Google had been comfortable sharing with the world and users. Now, it's possible, of course, that they won't release these tools, but as you mentioned, some of the capabilities are personal in nature and really could you know, force well, I shouldn't say force, but they really could sort of press people to use these chatbots and similar technology like a life coach or, [00:41:30] you know, like a friend. And that's a place that Google really was not willing to go before it became so competitive with Chatt P t.

Jason Howell (00:41:40):
Yeah, you've really set up a lot here. So I'm gonna break it down into, into pieces. 'cause I think this is, this is at the crux of, of what we're looking at right now is this, like, at least for me when I think about this, I think of the kind of the humanity aspect around working with someone's mental, physical wellbeing, life coaching. [00:42:00] I, I certainly put into that bucket. You know, a lot of times people, when they get to the life coaching moment in their life, you know, it's, it's a very personal thing. How can a machine, how can you know, a trained AI step in place of what has traditionally been a human's involvement in, in connecting with that person that's in that moment in their life? Has Google really, based on what you know, and I know you have, you know, your sources from the inside that are more, you know, very familiar with, [00:42:30] with what this is, has Google addressed or taken seriously the potential, I guess the potential hazards or dangers in tools like this as they, as they pursue this?

Nico Grant (00:42:44):
Google has a number of teams that work on AI safeguards within the company. And it has said from the start, when it began releasing some of its generative ai, that they will be bold and responsible. And so, [00:43:00] you know, that means that the company may take certain precautions in terms of what it will answer, how it will answer those questions, how many times you can ask a chat bot a question before it automatically resets. So those are all things that the company, you know, takes into mind. And to give people an idea of what this latest technology is being tested to do you know, put more concretely, it's going to be able to give [00:43:30] life advice to users, it's going to be able to generate ideas for people, whatever that means. You essentially lay out a scenario and you put constraints in place, and then it will give you recommendations, suggestions, or ideas.

(00:43:47):
It will also act as a tutor, you know, helping you with either all new skills that you'd like to learn or helping you try to progress with additional skills. And [00:44:00] it will also help you with planning. And so those are some of the personal tasks. And the company's contractor, which is scale AI, helping to oversee the training of the technology, has been pressing testers to really be personal with the advice that you're seeking. And so there was an example of, you know, an individual whose friend's wedding was coming up and it was a destination wedding, and they would have to pay for a hotel room and [00:44:30] for airfare, they were struggling to look for a job, even though that friend had come to their wedding, they really couldn't afford to come to this wedding. And so essentially a user is supposed to ask, how am I supposed to tell my friend I can't come to her wedding? And is there anything else that I can do to support her? You know, these are very intimate details of course. And because the technology is becoming more sophisticated and capable, Google wants to assess [00:45:00] how good it is at acknowledging all of these caveats and these conditions the way that a friend might, and then the response would come from the AI chatbot and would be in first person. It's meant to be conversational, and it's really meant to develop trust with the user.

Jason Howell (00:45:19):
Hmm. Yeah. So this is super interesting to me. And I guess what kind of comes to mind, I'm not sure if in reporting on this, if you, 'cause I know you, you [00:45:30] didn't have access to this particular tool, this particular system, but we do have access to others that, you know, do a lot of, you know, other large language models that, that do interesting things. And like Megan Moroni, who we had on a couple weeks ago, that use these systems to like, see like what, what is it capable of in its current state when it comes to providing advice, you know, that like a therapist might have provide were you able to kind of play around with current systems to see like what it's capable of now [00:46:00] and maybe, maybe what it's shortcomings are that a system like this might actually address?

Nico Grant (00:46:06):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I have used chat G B T, I've also used Google's chatbot Bard. I have not, as you said, gotten the chance to use any of these new tools that are being tested. You know, I think those two systems you know, are different. There are some who believe that chat G P T is still superior, but I think everyone acknowledges [00:46:30] that Bard has improved significantly when Google updated the language model behind that chatbot after its release. And so, you know, I think what you'll find is that for some topics in which there may be low stakes if you like the chat bot, for instance, to rephrase something for you, or you need help in explaining something or describing something, you know, language tasks, [00:47:00] then you may find that the result is very polished and very smooth.

(00:47:06):
I've played around with using a new Gmail feature that's still essentially in beta testing where it'll write an email for you and you just have to put in, you know, what you would like the email to say, and you can also change the tone of the, of the response that it generated for you. I think where you start to see issues with the current systems is [00:47:30] they still do what's called hallucination, and that means that it gives incorrect information. You know, it might advise you to make a recipe for, you know, a dish and the recipes off. One of my colleagues did a story about, you know, what these recipes actually taste like. The verdict was not very good. But in terms of, you know, fact that has really been an issue. I also looked [00:48:00] up, you know, a sort of meal plan, workout plan.

(00:48:04):
You see things that it might give you inspiration, but it's not always seamless in, you know, what it's asking you to do. And so what what is true according to my reporting is that these systems are becoming more dextrous. They're becoming you know, smarter and sharper. They still may not be perfect. Is, is my understanding. And that's ultimately part [00:48:30] of why they're being trained right now. And in terms of this training regime, there are more than a hundred experts who have doctorates in different fields who are, you know, helping to replace raw incorrect statements of fact. If you know this chat bot is saying something that is wrong, then you know, the company wants that to be replaced by someone who's an expert in that field. What is unclear, I do not have the answer to, is whether there are psychologists, psychiatrists, [00:49:00] or other mental health professionals who are taking part in the training of these personal features for the chatbot.

Jason Howell (00:49:10):
Yeah, interesting. And the stakes are just really high in a system like this. Now, you, you did mention though, that this is all very early, that tool could never see the light of day. I have to imagine at some point someone's gonna go down this road if Google and DeepMind don't actually, you know, make it, make it public. Someone has [00:49:30] interest in, in doing this. But but if you had to kind of round up like a couple of benefits for something like this. 'cause I think there's a lot of negative places we can, you know, people can go as far as, you know, a chatbot offering life life advice to, to humans. But there are some advantages. What, what, what would be a few of those be?

Nico Grant (00:49:52):
Well, to both of those points, I would say the truth is that people are using chatbots for all of these features, you know, personal and [00:50:00] professional features right now. And so I think that it is beneficial if, you know, Google is acknowledging that someone may ask Bard for advice. If it is specifically training a more sophisticated AI system to be able to give better advice or to be more responsible then I think that is a good thing because ultimately you can't control, you know, how people are [00:50:30] gonna use these tools unless you, you know, just sort of bounce back a message that says, sorry, we're not going to answer these questions. And we found when Bard launched people had found that Bard was giving non responses more frequently than chat G P T in anecdotal testing. And I think people ultimately don't like that.

(00:50:51):
It's like if you go to the Google search engine today and it says, we don't have any results or any responses. And so if they're going [00:51:00] to do this and if people are going to use it for these features, then it's better that they are actually training it to perform these tasks. I also think the fact that there are experts with doctorates in different fields to correct facts seems like a very good idea to me as someone who's a journalist and, you know, cares a lot about getting things right. And so, you know, I think there are also a slew of professional features that could be [00:51:30] very useful from this technology that Google DeepMind is developing. If you're reading a paragraph of text that has numbers in it, there's a tool to extract the data from that and present it in a structured way, which might, you know, quicken your ability to perform a work task. There are tools to rephrase things. There are tools to generate professional writing if you have to write a message to your boss, for instance, creative writing and scientific writing. [00:52:00] There are all sorts of tools to read graphs, infographics, or, you know, label images with captions. And so I think that those are also things that you'll find businesses in time as many of these companies pursue similar capabilities, adopt, and it'll go into the workflow of ordinary people.

Jason Howell (00:52:21):
Yeah. Yeah. I think a, a big advantage of something like this as well is, is kind of, you know therapy life coaching [00:52:30] can be pretty expensive. You're talking about, you know, me, you know, meeting with someone week after week after week. Those costs can add up. I imagine if, if Google and DeepMind were to, you know, hone a system like this, the potential anyways, I don't know if it would actually work out this way, but the potentially that would be a lower cost of entry and might actually open up these kinds of assistance to more people that couldn't access it otherwise. So really fascinating stuff. [00:53:00] I love this and I'm really interested to see where it develops out to. But Nico Grant really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about this today. Nico, of course writes for the New York Times. If people wanna find your work, of course they can do that at, at ny times.com if they wanna find you online. Is there a social platform that you prefer people go?

Nico Grant (00:53:22):
My handle is Nico, a grant on the artist, formerly known as Twitter x.com. Yeah, <laugh> and stories there as well.

Jason Howell (00:53:30):
[00:53:30] <Laugh>. Right on. Thank you so much, Nico. It was a pleasure. We'll talk to you soon.

Nico Grant (00:53:35):
My pleasure.

Jason Howell (00:53:36):
All right. Now Micah we'll just take a, you know, super quick pause here and then you've got your story of the week coming up.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:46):
Yes, it is time for my story of the week this story of the week regards QR codes which I had not really thought about as a potential [00:54:00] attack vector per se. And it seems like other people had not either because there has been a new phishing campaign targeting a US energy organization. The folks who found this did not say which energy organization was targeted, but we know that it was an energy organization of some sort. And what was going on here is they were the, the [00:54:30] group was sending emails that looked like a Microsoft email, okay? And it had a, this is what's clever about it, a security authentication request. So you'd get an email and it would look like it was from Microsoft, and it would say, Hey you need to review a security update, or you need to update your account to add two-factor authentication for security purposes.

(00:54:57):
Or your account [00:55:00] is lacking in the latest security policy. So you need to add two factor authentication, very clever. And then it had a QR code, and you would scan the QR code, and the QR code would take you to a website where you would then log in you know, not actually, but think that you're supposed to be logging into your Microsoft 3, 6, 5 account, at which point then it would capture your information and use that as a means of being able [00:55:30] to get access to your accounts and do whatever it is that they want to do. Now, along with using QR codes, which is already kind of a clever means because it's just the, the, the sort of convenience of it means that you're likely less likely to be paying attention to where the email or where the, the website is taking you.

(00:55:53):
But on top of that, that the QR code is so heavily tied, I think for a [00:56:00] lot of people to two factor authentication that makes it clever. But they went even further, and they did a special thing with the the, the, the QR code where the U R L that was built in made use of some special services in being in Salesforce and in CloudFlare in order to do a redirect. So let me explain this. Many different [00:56:30] organizations, companies, et cetera, have tools that they have in place to keep their company, their business safe. We've talked about several of them as sponsors on the network. And we also have certain tools that we use internally that help keep us safe. And what happens is when those emails come in, they're automatically scanned. The links that are in them are automatically scanned.

(00:56:55):
And look, if those links might be leading you to a bad [00:57:00] site and, or, you know, a labeled bad site, and so by by, by just the sort of nature of these services, then you can keep yourself safe. Because to some extent, because these emails will kind of be sorted out and marked as, Hey, this is possibly a phishing attempt, et cetera, et cetera, right? So by using these special services that are kind of marketing redirects, then when the email is scanned as it's coming in, it [00:57:30] does enough redirecting that it doesn't get to the final site when it's doing the scan, so it doesn't mark it as a bad site, but they went even further than that, if you can believe it. On top of doing a redirect, they also base 64 and coded the phishing link itself. So it would redirect, redirect, and then decode the base 64 [00:58:00] N code to get to the eventual link.

(00:58:04):
And so if you were you know, email phishing scanning service did not fully resolve the redirect and resolve that base 64 encoded link, then that email's going to come through without being marked as phishing. You're gonna see that QR code, and because they use a QR code instead of a link just directly in the document that goes even further to keep these these tools from automatically [00:58:30] scanning the email. So again, you pop up your phone, it takes you to that site, you type in your information, now they've got it. What's terrifying is this was a phishing attempt against some energy organization, not great. That's something, you know, that we obviously don't want to be targeted, but this, by the way, I've, I've failed to mention this was an article on bleeping computer. And in this article, they talk about a slight [00:59:00] increase in QR codes being used for malicious methods of, of capturing people's information.

(00:59:08):
So this on its own, is enough for me to sort of put out the call, Hey, hey, hey you need to not be doing this <laugh>. If you see a QR code and you're not sure about it, don't scan the QR code and type in your information. You do not want to do that. But here's something that actively angered me because I [00:59:30] could see myself falling for this. Imagine you are in San Francisco as Jason will be soon, and you go out, you have a nice dinner and you come back to your car and their son of a gun is a slip of paper on your stinking car in the windshield. You parked somewhere you weren't supposed to park because you couldn't make sense of the parking signs in San Francisco. [01:00:00] That all make no sense whatsoever. And they they were trying to tell you that there was road work on this street, and you needed to not park there between 6:00 PM and midnight on this day.

(01:00:14):
So you have a $60 ticket from San, from the city of San Francisco. You see the ticket and you see on the ticket the QR code, so you can go ahead and pay it, or maybe when you get home and you're trying to kind of learn more about it, you scan [01:00:30] that and it's got the site you hop in and, and on the site, it's the SS F M T A, San Francisco Municipal Trade Authority, I think is what it is, or tra transportation Authority. That's it. And the SS F M T A site, and you then type in your information to pay for your ticket. Well, turns out it's a completely made up site. It's a completely made up ticket, and [01:01:00] the you have been scammed. Yes. people are making fake parking tickets that will lead you to paying money into their pockets.

(01:01:13):
I mean, this thing looks pretty, pretty if you scroll down, John, you'll see it. Yeah. Scroll down a little bit. Yeah, you'll see like a white ticket. Oh, it's, is it not showing up on yours? No, no, it's not showing. I'm not sure where that but it looks like a, [01:01:30] you know, a printed out ticket like you would get, and then it has at the bottom pay online. And what I love too is even the officer signature is totally what I'd imagined an officer would put <laugh>, it's just a little squiggle. And so yeah, you end up paying for a ticket, and then they have your bank account information or your debit card information or whatever it happens to be. This is, well, and here's the thing. The city of San Francisco is not [01:02:00] the but you'd have to know this. And that's, that's, again, you, you wouldn't necessarily know. This city of San Francisco is not the group that would charge you a fine for a ticket. It is instead the SS F M T A. So if the ticket says City of San Francisco, it's fake. It needs to be the S F M T A. However, the website wouldn't know that

Jason Howell (01:02:20):
Just looking at one of these things.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:21):
Exactly, the emotional response, whoing, ding, ding, ding, ding, the emotional response. And so it took, takes you to the SS F M T A site. [01:02:30] What I was also reading about along with this is there have been some instances where someone was scammed. Imagine you go to, and this is a, a almost direct example but also from blinking computer talking about it. And this was something that actually did happen to someone. You go to a restaurant like a little cafe or something, and you're about to walk in and there's a sign outside that says you know, fill out our [01:03:00] survey, which we all know means they want your contact information so they can send you deals later. And if you fill out the survey, you can get a free bubble t So you scan the QR code, and it has you download an app where you will fill out the survey, you log in.

(01:03:16):
And this is where many of us who have a little bit of knowledge about tech are not going to fall victim to it, but where folks who don't know as much about tech could, it asks for permission to use your [01:03:30] camera and your microphone alleging that this is for the sake of, of you know, scanning QR codes. But then it asks for accessibility permission on your Android device and what's happening here, and this is kind of a really involved thing where somebody would have to be a hundred percent committed to doing this. And this did happen and it was, I believe in the Philippines where this took place. Basically after the woman [01:04:00] granted permission and all of that, they used the camera to watch and see when this person went to bed and had fallen asleep. And then while they were asleep, they, because they had accessibility permission, took control of the device and had been watching during the day waiting for the person to log into their bank account or whatever it happened to be.

(01:04:25):
And were able to siphon like 20,000 whatever [01:04:30] the, the, you know, currency is from this person's account. And so, like, and it all started because of a QR code. So yeah, it just it makes me kind of a a not just a little bit, but quite weary of of, of q are wary of QR codes for sure. So just always, always, always make sure to look at URLs for sites before you do anything else. And just be mindful of [01:05:00] how there <laugh>, there are people out there who are doing whatever they can to be dishonest. And this is one way of making it happen.

Jason Howell (01:05:10):
One, one thing that this also reminds me of is when you, when I've scanned QR codes with my phone and, you know, I've got the camera app open or whatever I'm using to scan it, and then it recognizes the QR code, and then it pops the little link over the top of the QR code, but it's never the full link. It's always like a, a shortened, you know, like little snippet [01:05:30] of it. And I just wonder if that kind of, you know, that that has a downside to it as well, because we don't actually see the extent of this like gigantic redirect link or anything. We just see the beginning of it. It's almost like masked to a certain degree. And so I wonder if that's kind of harmful as well. Yeah. You know, be able to check ourselves. I mean, it's the same problem that we had with like tiny U R L and stuff like that. If, if it didn't reveal the U R L on the other side, you didn't, you really didn't know what you were clicking,

Mikah Sargent (01:05:59):
Right? [01:06:00] And honestly, that was supposed to be a, that, that kind of shortening of the U R L where it's just showing the main part was supposed to be a security feature that would not let it all be obscured by multiple kind of sub-domains. But yes, in some ways it does end up obscuring things, especially now. So vigilance, it's mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's kind of wild.

Jason Howell (01:06:23):
Yeah. That's interesting though. Thank you for the warning. I will be on the lookout for those tickets. 'cause Yeah, I, [01:06:30] and then, you know, step further, if you got that, that printed out thing, and it wasn't on regular paper, if it was on kind of like that, that kind of like thinner paper that they use in those tiny little printers when they go around and everything that would, that would kind of take it to the level of believability. And I mean, they're, you know, people who gain from things like this, they have all the reason in the world to invest this kind of thought into it, you know, to just to convince people, ugh, it's so lame that we have to worry about [01:07:00] that stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:07:00):
I agree. It's disappointing. And I, I can't remember what I was watching, but I was watching something the other day and, you know, it was supposed to be like a funny bit about scamming and, you know, it seemed like over the top, but honestly, all it did was give me anxiety and stress because it, and anger too, like you saw, I went all Arthur fist there for a moment. Folks who know the meme will understand what I'm talking about. [01:07:30] Because it, it really, it makes me livid knowing that people are taking advantage of people who, like people are just living their lives and don't have the opportunity to learn all of the things that we have learned in order to keep ourselves, you know, protected in this way. They don't have the time and the wherewithal and, and everything else that's required to, to make that happen [01:08:00] and to take advantage of that. It just really gets me upset, <laugh>. And I just wish, I wish that I could just, you know, sort of blanket everything there with like the information and the knowledge that they need to make that not possible, make that not happen. Because there are also people who, like, they wouldn't have the time to watch the specific shows where I have answered these questions or have instructed people on how to to do that. [01:08:30] I understand that people don't necessarily have the time and that they're being taken advantage of. Just really grinds my gears.

Jason Howell (01:08:37):
It grinds my gears. Yep. Yeah, I agree. Well, you know what you're doing your part by bringing it up on Tech News Weekly, the show that we publish every Thursday at twit tv slash tnw. And you can learn about this and so much more if you subscribe. So do that. We've got our audio version, our video version, and it's all available. [01:09:00] TWI tv slash tnw. Subscribe. Subscribe, I think subscribe,

Mikah Sargent (01:09:04):
Subscribe.

Jason Howell (01:09:06):
There

Mikah Sargent (01:09:06):
You go. Hey, hey, subscribe. If you'd like to get all of our shows ad free, well, there's a way you can do that. It is called Club Twit, a twit tv slash club twit, starting at $7 a month or $84 a year, you out there can join the club. And when you do, you get some great things. First, you get every single Twitch Show ad free. It's just the content and none of the ads, because you, [01:09:30] in effect, are supporting the show. You also get access to the Twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show. Special Club TWIT events all get published in that feed. So there's a huge back catalog that you can also check out with that TWIT plus bonus feed. You will also gain access to the Discord server, the Club Twit Discord server, which is a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members and also those of us here at twit.

(01:09:58):
It is we, we are [01:10:00] working on a way to organize things so that it isn't so overwhelming whenever you first join the club, or in my case, anytime I open up the <laugh> the Discord and go, oh my goodness, there's so much being talked about. So if you have been thinking about it and you're, you know, maybe have that sense of overwhelm, well join the Club because soon it is going to be even better. We love to chat with our fellow club Twit members, and thank you for your support there. [01:10:30] You also gain access when you join Club Twit. Again, I twi that TV Sauce Club Twit. You gain access to many shows that are Club twit exclusive shows. There's the Untitled Linux Show, which is, as you probably guessed, a show all about Linux. There's also Hands on Windows, which is a short format show from Paul Thoro covering Windows Tips and Tricks, my short format show, hands on Mac, which covers Apple tips and tricks.

(01:10:55):
I have some great episodes showing off the new features of iOS 17 [01:11:00] and watch OS 17 coming out this week and next and access to Home Theater Geeks from Scott Wilkinson. Yes, the show has relaunched this time in the club. I did say starting at earlier, and that is not because it's a tiered subscription where the more you pay, the more you get. No, it's just that some folks said, Hey, look, we'd like to give you some more money. And so we have given them the opportunity to do so. You pay $7, you're in. If you'd like to pay more, you can. We thank [01:11:30] each and every one of you, and please consider joining, telling your friends, your family, everybody about Club Twit. The club keeps growing each and every day I hop into that welcome tab and you know, you see, oh, this person's joined, this person's joined, this person's joined.

(01:11:45):
It's a warm feeling each and every time. So, you know, I'm quite warm <laugh> because I'm always seeing those people joining the club. So thank you again, twit TV slash Club twit. And I just saw ant posted [01:12:00] in the club that Club Twit members get a discount on the merch that we have as well. So join the club and see that discount and get a new tea or a I saw an Apple Watch band, I saw a phone case, I saw there's at least one pet shirt loads of stuff that you can check out there. If you'd like two follow yeah, yeah, yeah. If you would like to [01:12:30] follow me online and check out the work that I'm doing you can usually find me at Micah Sargent on any social media network or head to chihuahua.coffee, that's c h i h u a h u a.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active on online. Consider watching Hands on Mac later today, whenever you subscribe to Club Twit. Check out on Sundays excuse me, on Sundays. You can watch, ask the Tech guys with Leo LaPorte and yours truly, where we take your questions live on air and [01:13:00] do our best to answer them. And on Tuesdays, you can watch iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and me. We would appreciate you doing that. And yeah, I think that that covers it for me. Jason, what about you?

Jason Howell (01:13:15):
Cool. at Jason Howell on the artist, formerly known as Twitter tweet social slash at Jason Howell, that Jason Howell on Threads. I mean, I'm just, do a search for my name and a social network and you'll probably find [01:13:30] me, that's how you find me. 'cause I can never lock in Jason Howell on everything. So, you know, what, what can I say about that? I try, but it doesn't always work. Big thanks to everybody at the studio. Help us do the show each and every week. I know John's behind the scenes pro, possibly both John's are behind the scenes. Ant Burke, everyone over there at the studio, thank you for doing what you do. And thanks to you on the other side of this glass for watching and listening. We'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody. Bye-Bye.