TWiG 769 transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Twig this week at Google. Oh, fasten your seatbelts. We're marking this show explicit because we ran out of beeps for Ed Zittrin. He's here, the host of the Better Offline podcast, and where's your edat newsletter? He is a firebrand and he thinks AI is a bunch of crock. You know what? Jeff Jarvis is also here. Paris Martin, too, will talk about many things, including the open AI announcements. Why Scarlett Johansson deserves to be butthurt. Well, that didn't come out right. That sounds terrible. Anyway, look, if that offended you, I'm sorry, but you probably don't want to listen to the rest of this show either. This Week in Google is next.

0:00:45 - Paris Martineau
Podcasts you love From people you trust this is Twig.

0:00:56 - Leo Laporte
This is Twig this Week in Google, episode 769, recorded Wednesday, may 22nd 2024. Keeping up with the Kevorkians, it's time for Twig this week in general, in giggles and in Google All three those have all been suggested as the meaning of the acronym Names. Well, the name is Twig. You decide what that stands for? How about that? That's Paris Martineau. She is of the informationcom. Hello, paris, I am. We missed you last week.

0:01:30 - Paris Martineau
Paris could not, uh, because we, we, we did the show on tuesday, so you couldn't be here yeah, you did this thing of uh recording the show during business working hours, which kind of is a bummer for those of us with uh full-time jobs.

0:01:42 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute, you, you work tuesday, but not oh I guess this is after hours now.

0:01:47 - Paris Martineau
It's 5 pm baby I'm free.

0:01:50 - Ed Zitron
Free at last 5 pm, somewhere she is her own woman.

0:01:53 - Leo Laporte
Now, that is the. You're hearing the voice of the Leonard Tao Professor Emeritus for Journalistic Innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University. New at the Craig Newmark Graduate School. John at the City Newmark.

0:02:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Newmark hey, maybe we missed that during the show last week.

0:02:09 - Leo Laporte
If he gave enough money to New York City, they'd rename it Newmark City, you think?

0:02:14 - Jeff Jarvis
I like that yeah.

0:02:15 - Ed Zitron
Why not give it to Newark and call it Newmook, New Jersey Newmook.

0:02:19 - Paris Martineau
Oh, that could be really good. Newmook, New Jersey. New Merck, New Jersey.

0:02:22 - Leo Laporte
That is my friends, the voice and you recognize it of Ed Zittrain, who is a PR maven by day and a Grouch by night, a sharp-tongued blogger I'm super positive during the day, yeah, actually, sharp-tongued all day long. That's why people say this about me All day long. It's great to see you. Betterofflinecom, good Offlinecom, good to have you back. We talked a lot about you and your piece on your sub stack. Where's Ed At? It's on Ghost now, sorry, it's on Ghost.

0:02:53 - Ed Zitron
Oh, you moved over. You moved over. I moved in January.

0:02:56 - Leo Laporte
Good for Ed. You got away from the Nazis, huh.

0:03:01 - Ed Zitron
Now I'm working with Ryan Single over at Outpost, who been amazing and he made me to Ghost yeah, it's so good.

0:03:08 - Leo Laporte
I think Ghost is a pretty good looking platform. I was looking at it for my own thing but then I realized in order to have a newsletter you actually have to write yes, that is it's actually a problem.

0:03:18 - Ed Zitron
Many writers run into every day. I hate writing genuinely. I have people which is terrifying. Can I get some advice from you? I'm like okay, and they're like how do I grow an audience? I'm like do you write regularly?

0:03:31 - Leo Laporte
and they're like well, no, you're a piece last month, the man who killed google search. It's been a month now. Oh yeah, wonderful, wonderful piece about uhhakar. What's his name, mr Raghavan? Mr Raghavan to his friends. He, of course, is the man who killed Google search because he had, prior to that, killed Yahoo search and he just he wanted new worlds to conquer, like Alexander. He said where else can I go? And he came to google. I was officially, uh, more in charge of revenue than search until, as you pointed out, they had a code yellow for search revenue and they decided you know, we could make more money if we just screwed with search.

0:04:16 - Ed Zitron
yeah, what if this sucks? We thought about that, yeah, and yeah, he did it. What's great about that story as well is the they responded. They sent a response to barry over at search engine journal. I think it is, and it was great because their response was well. Actually, this isn't right, and here are some examples from cross-examination from the department of justice. If you have to respond to criticism by being like, here is when the department of justice was dressing us down. Maybe you heard us at the trial. What was great, though, was they literally said something. They had a quote from Jerry Dishler about how ads never gets involved with search, so I actually had an email saved for that very eventuality, which I then posted, where Jerry Dishler said I don't want people to think that ads is getting involved in search, but it was also revealed in the Department of Justice. I'm a little bastard. I save these things. You've got to have a Trump card. You know that these people are always going to respond.

0:05:15 - Jeff Jarvis
And I've got to ask you a question, a professional question. Sure, by day you have a PR company, by night you skewer hypocrisy and idiocy company by now, and by night you, you skewer hypocrisy and idiocy. Um, do your pr clients say how do we avoid you that people like you at night.

0:05:32 - Ed Zitron
so generally the clients are really happy with it because mostly like c to series c startups and they're all pretty big fans of the fact that I'm just talking about how big tech has turned against technology. These big tech companies aren't building cool stuff anymore. They're not building things that make people happy. They're not even building particularly good businesses or, at least in Google's case, they print money but search is so bad now. But also even potential clients will come to me and they say yes, thank you, because most and these founders like in their 20s and 30s I I'm approaching 40 now, I'm getting on in my years and um most of them are like yeah, now you're on this side of the podcast and you're on the other side.

0:06:16 - Leo Laporte
It's not just this week in general, this week in giggles, this week in google, it's also this week in grand pause.

0:06:22 - Paris Martineau
I thank you geriatrics geriatrics reminding Geriatrics.

0:06:25 - Ed Zitron
Reminding me, sorry, continue. There is a frustration in the Valley, I think, with the way that big tech's acting.

0:06:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, I like that your honesty is a calling card.

0:06:34 - Ed Zitron
That's great. I mean also I'm pitching journalists all day. Surely I want to be on the right side of history, Like I do it because I can't stop, much like Tom S of history. Like I do it because I can't stop I much like tom soccer. I can't help but feud I can't calm the demon but a poster's rage, I the poster's rage, posters fugue.

But also if generally, if I want journalists to respect me, good idea to just write and also actually also but also reading a bunch of journalism and writing about stuff in the news means I'm pretty well read on what's a good angle. It just works. To be clear zero plans, zero strategy. Did not plan anything, never planned, ever, ever, never will, Except for the podcast. I actually have to plan for that, because otherwise Let me ask one more question.

0:07:19 - Jeff Jarvis
Have you ever had to fire a client for being a dork? Yes, Well, I was trying to use a general word for being idiotic wrong in a while.

0:07:32 - Ed Zitron
Um, it's been many, many years. I've had a few that have been genuinely abusive and I've said, well, there's a clause in your contract for that and they're out the door. But there have been ones where their product did not do, and it's been a long time where the product didn't do what they said and I was shown demos and I was just like I can't, I can't, I'm washing my hands of this and there are clauses in the contracts about stuff like that as well, because I don't know again. If I'm pitching journalists and and the journalist gets something that doesn't work or is wrong, I look like the asshole, yeah, and also I don't want to be associated with bastards other than myself.

0:08:12 - Jeff Jarvis
In my first book, what Will Google Do, I argued. I talked to an ad guy and said the relationship switches where you become more the voice of the public to the company versus the old voice of the company to the public. Right, and if you're, if the company's screwing up, you're the one who's going to tell them. Um, you might not want to use Scarlett Johansson's voice.

0:08:33 - Ed Zitron
That is. I love that so much. Sam. Sam Altman is a criminal genius. Just like tweeting out the word her for no reason other than being like everyone's gonna love this, they're gonna love it when I tweet this. And then the idea that he'd, two days before that, reached out to her and be like would you reconsider? But also katie notopoulos of business insider. She reached out to me with an interesting thing. So they asked scarlett johansson twice. They asked her in september of last year, which was during the strike. They tried to make her cross the picket line.

0:09:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Nasty stuff. That's an interesting angle, yeah.

0:09:11 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, that's all Katie, all Katie there, but it's just wild. And I'm actually really shocked with this GPT-4-0 thing because it's such an insane misstep and also at such a bad time, because you had Jan Leakey and Ilya Sutskeva leaving in the last week as well. You've already got a bunch of bad press, but why make such an obvious one? And they still haven't commented. As a PR person, I imagine they're talking to their lawyers as well, but it's like you can't say anything.

0:09:41 - Leo Laporte
You can go on eight different podcasts. I think they have a great defense. I don't think it is scarlett johansson's voice. They say it's an actress's voice. They've yet to produce her listen to.

0:09:51 - Speaker 4
Um, I think it sounds more like wait a minute, let me finish I think it sounds more like this woman what yeah?

0:09:57 - PC
I did rashida, jones, ladies and gentlemen, and tarryl jackson, who's tito jackson's son, and then in the picture we're like have like a wad of cash, like every 90s do you not think that that's exactly the voice that they were using?

0:10:09 - Leo Laporte
if I were Sam Allman, I'd produce Rashida Jones. Actually, I'd first give her a check for 100 million dollars. Then I'd produce Rashida Jones and said wait a minute, that wasn't Scarlett Johansson, that was Rashida Jones. The problem is voices sound alike. They are people whose voices sound exactly like mine. I've had people say I just heard you on KCBS. I said no, that's the other guy who sounds just like me. I don't think that they have a case.

0:10:35 - Paris Martineau
I do think that's an interesting aspect of it. They absolutely do, sam is smart.

0:10:41 - Leo Laporte
I'd completely disagree with you. I'm very excited by 4-0, but Sam is smart because everybody loves Scarlett Johansson. See, it's a no-win battle, to say well honestly, yeah, it sounds like her, but it also sounds like Rashida Jones. It sounds like a lot of people. It's a very good voice for an AI, but it's not her. There is a defense. I don't think actually that Scarlett Johansson would win in court. I think she would, but it's the Bette Midler case.

0:11:07 - Ed Zitron
I know there is the Bette Midler and Tom Waits cases.

0:11:08 - Leo Laporte
You have a right of publicity for your voice. We've talked about this before but you have to prove that they were copying her voice. And do you not think that Rashida Jones is exactly the same voice that OpenAI was using? It is.

0:11:23 - Ed Zitron
You're not wrong. You're not wrong, leo, unless they hadn't emailed her or posted the words.

0:11:27 - Leo Laporte
So here's my. Here's what I say in court, your Honor. Your Honor, we, out of courtesy, because we really love Scarlett Johansson and her work, we wanted to let her know we were going to do this. We even offered to compensate her because we understand, you know she did her and to many people she represents the voice of AI. But, your Honor, you can't trademark this voice. It's not her voice. We used an actress. It could have been Rashida Jones, it could have been a dozen other women. So it's not an attempt to fool people that this is Scarlett Johansson, and so the accidental similarity to her voice. Yeah, we noticed it too.

0:12:05 - Jeff Jarvis
That's why we went to her and said said hey, we'd like to compensate you for this, if I get, if I get arrested twice twice, they were trying to be nice they're trying to give her a chance to do this two days before leo play the 4-0 demo with all the laughing and applause. Can you find that quickly?

0:12:21 - Leo Laporte
yeah, well, well, why?

0:12:23 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I do think, leo, it's a bit of a smoking gun, the fact that they developed this voice that sounds almost exactly like her and during the whole time we're trying to get her buy-in. For that, I think the and said her and said her and then again checked in with her two days before it all went out. I think obviously the thing they'll have to bear out in court, if it gets to that is whether or not they actually used her voice or not.

0:12:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's my point is they didn't need to use her voice, and her voice isn't particularly unique. Tom Waits' voice is pretty unique, Bette Midler, I guess maybe, but her voice is not unique and I've just given you an exact example. Here's the chat GPT. This is the Sina edit, so it's only 60 seconds long.

0:13:06 - PC
Today we are releasing our newest flagship model. This is GPT Okay.

0:13:12 - Leo Laporte
Mira, we're going to skip ahead. She does not sound like Scarlett Johansson.

0:13:16 - PC
So my friend Barrett here. He's been having trouble sleeping lately and I want you to tell him a bedtime story about robots and love. Once upon a time there was a robot named Bite. Can you do this in a robotic voice now, initiating dramatic robot Mercantly?

0:13:32 - Ed Zitron
ever after, and then I'd like you to try to.

0:13:34 - Leo Laporte
So what's your point? You think that that sounds so much like Scarlett Johansson?

0:13:37 - Jeff Jarvis
It does not sound like Rashida Jones. It does not sound like Rashida Jones. It doesn't sound like.

0:13:41 - Leo Laporte
Scarlett Johansson either. Honestly, Although I will point out that six months ago, when I started using ChatGPT's voice, that I said that Sky voice sounds exactly like Scarlett Johansson and I love it. I want it to sound like Scarlett Johansson.

0:13:55 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't actually like their movie You're going to get called as a witness.

0:13:59 - Leo Laporte
I'll go as a witness.

0:14:01 - Speaker 4
I mean you have a right of publicity, your voice but that's a.

0:14:04 - Leo Laporte
It's going to be a tough road to hoe unless they can say it can prove that they actually stole the voice. You can't sue rich little for doing rich dick, nixon, you can't. I mean it's not, I think it's that they were using the.

0:14:16 - Ed Zitron
They're going to try and argue that the association with her both the movie and the person is what they were doing and he said it's his favorite movie. That was a strategic mistake on his part, yes, had he just reached out two days beforehand and said hey, we'd love to get your buy in here, cause this might sound a bit like you, that's one thing. But the fact that he reached out in September as well and has repeatedly said he loves this movie, it's kind of easy to see, even if it's just similar.

0:14:49 - Speaker 4
And not identical. It is the fact he tweeted it which is just insane.

0:14:51 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that was just on every.

0:14:52 - Ed Zitron
If a client of mine did this and I would not work with sam altman I think he's a scumbag, um, I I think that I would have to fire them, like this is just. This is the kind of legal nonsense. This is the kind of very underhanded stuff that really nasty companies do, and I think open ai, instead of losing two of the most technical and good people at the company, should lose sam altman. They should fire his ass.

0:15:17 - Jeff Jarvis
They should have fired him in november they lost two of the most fanatic doomsters of the company yes, but they're more qualified than sam bloody Altman. Well, that's a point. They're also.

0:15:28 - Ed Zitron
And also they're the alignment people. I'd rather have more people at the company who care about safety than less.

0:15:34 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not safety. That's what media have bought.

0:15:38 - Ed Zitron
Are they Rocco's Basilisk people?

0:15:40 - Jeff Jarvis
It's X-Risk, doomer, teskreal BS Still. I prefer them to Altman, though they're all of the cult. All of OpenAI is in the AGI cult, including Leo. Now they all believe in that stuff. But the super alignment safety people saving humanity from doom and destruction are more fanatical members of the cult, and so to me they're even scarier. They're all scary, but they're even scarier.

0:16:10 - Ed Zitron
Well, the thing that doesn't scare me is generally AI is not going to become AGI. I don't think they're going to build it?

0:16:14 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't think they're going to build it.

0:16:16 - Ed Zitron
They're going to build slightly smarter autocorrect until it runs out of money. Yes, I agree thereo. Oh, my cat's joining us, hello cat.

0:16:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, I think it's smarter than your cat I'll say that uh actually no, I don't think it's smarter than I think it is, which is what yon lacoon and I use it all the time and I think smarter is the wrong word, leo, because that cat has logic that cat can figure out where food is and go through a little puzzle and remember things. Be manipulative.

0:16:48 - Paris Martineau
That cat has emotions.

0:16:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Chatgpt does not. It is simply synthesizing. It's wrapped around its little paw. Yeah, just look at that.

0:16:56 - Paris Martineau
I hope that cats that look like tigers come by.

0:17:01 - Ed Zitron
Babu's in another room, sadly, and also he would destroy my entire computer. I love those. I have two bangles. I'll send you pictures. They're so beautiful, they're the sweetest cats.

But it's funny because this whole it's such a strange thing to have done because all they could have done is said, okay, we've gone to Scarlett Johansson and she said no, they could have announced this, and said we tried in good faith and then used another voice as a means of basic PR strategy.

You say, hey, we tried and they said no, and we respect her and we had a voice that kind of sounded like her that we didn't use, because the media right now is incapable of criticizing open AI, it seems in many places. So I think they would have eaten that up. Instead, it's just this massive bag fumble. I mean really bad week for it on top of it, but also just an insanely silly and stupid and nasty thing to do. I realize that, oh, scholar Johansson's rich and all that, but this is what open AI is already doing to millions of creators. Anyway, they've already swallowed half the goddamn, or all of the internet. Why, like? Why? I hope she sues, just so that there's something to fight back with, there's something so that they're more scared to not steal.

0:18:20 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I honestly think they don't care.

0:18:22 - Ed Zitron
I mean, I don't think that's what we do.

0:18:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think really the reason that they're not doing the right thing with pr is they don't really care, they know they can't lose, so they don't care, which is a scary position. I mean, you don't that is a scary thing. When people don't care, they do, they're dangerous, but I don't honestly think that it doesn't. They feel like it doesn't harm them. It's a it's de minimis in their overall uh strategy and they tried and they stopped, they've they've so-called paused it.

I noticed the voice is still in chat gbt, but I can't get it to use it yeah oh, okay so I don't know what their long-term plan is. They may just say, well, let's wait till this blows over and then, and then we'll use it, I'll play. Let me play it for people who, for unaccountable reasons, don't yet know what we're talking about here. This is, uh, the, um, the. The voices you can choose from in chat, gpt are ember cove. Oh, they have taken it out now. Juniper and breeze sky is gone.

so it was. It was there until yesterday, so I guess they've decided pause permanently. None of these are as good, by the way. I just don't think I wanted Scarlett Johansson my tongue will.

0:19:35 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, screw you.

0:19:40 - Leo Laporte
I don't like her yeah screw you. Hey, there, I've got a really great feeling about him teaming up. I don't like her.

0:19:45 - PC
Hey, it's great to meet you. How's your day going?

0:19:47 - Leo Laporte
I don't care. So I think mostly I'm sad because I like the Scarlett Johansson voice, because I wanted ScarJo in my phone.

0:19:57 - Paris Martineau
Leo, how often on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis are you talking to one of the voices in chat?

0:20:02 - Leo Laporte
gpt, like that's the other really interesting thing that I that is also, I think, a pr fumble ed, but they keep focusing on art, music, chat, the three kind of least interesting uses of ai. As far as I'm concerned. They're parlor tricks, they're fun, but they're like you don't chat with with, with chat GPT, for very long before you realize it's kind of vaucus and get tired of it, right. Same thing with the art generation. Yeah, that's nice, it's amazing, you can do it. But none of these and music too, but none of these really are important to their long-term mission. They're more to get, I guess, get people's attention. So I think they could reasonably say, okay, fine, we won't do it anymore and still eat the internet and still go for whatever the you know agi means to them well, I have another theory I've written about a few times, which is what's the point of all this crap?

0:20:59 - Ed Zitron
yeah, I know you. I know you use it for stuff, but if I was doing pr for open ai, I would be trying to share use cases oh yeah, useful use cases yes if I had them well, you do have them.

0:21:09 - Leo Laporte
I use it all the time. It's very useful what, what for? So copilot is really useful on github. I don't actually use that because I use a silly programming language called common lisp. So I wrote my own gpt for common lisp. It's phenomenally useful. It it's a reference work. I think the real use for most people of AI will be something akin to what Microsoft announced yesterday, which is this recall project, which is, in effect, remember everything I do, ingest everything Ed's written and then let me query it.

0:21:42 - Ed Zitron
That's hugely useful. Very sorry, leo, just really wanted to be specific. What I said was what can it do, not will? No, I do that right now. You want to see it? I do it right now. What?

0:21:54 - Paris Martineau
are you talking about? I actually do it right now. You said it will use recall.

0:21:59 - Ed Zitron
What do you use it for? Recall is available, Alright.

0:22:01 - Leo Laporte
I'll show you here's my Common Lisp AI that I added you built that.

0:22:06 - Ed Zitron
That's awesome. I'm talking about ChatGPT this is ChatGPT this is ChatGPT. I'm sorry, Ed, but you're ignorant.

0:22:12 - Leo Laporte
This is ChatGPT's LLM. No, you are. You're ignorant. You're expressing your ignorance here. This is ChatGPT's.

LLM with additional content provided by me from the open source libraries of lisp, and it provides an incredibly useful resource to query, instead of me going to a seven foot shelf and trying to refer to stuff. It. It can already do this. This is rag. We've talked about it a lot retrieval, augmented generation. There are many systems you can use besides gpt to do this locally with your own LLMs. Whether it's from Facebook's Llama or Mistral, they work. People are using them today. They're very, very useful. I don't know what you're talking about.

0:22:54 - Ed Zitron
Well, my problem is that, for the average person, what is the general, to be clear, people use Copilot. They do work with companies that talk about this.

0:23:04 - Leo Laporte
It's vastly useful.

0:23:05 - Ed Zitron
Yes, for business intelligence.

0:23:08 - Leo Laporte
Have you ever heard of business intelligence?

0:23:10 - Ed Zitron
My man. I've represented those companies. Let me tell you about the hallucination problems that are stopping those companies being able to sell into the enterprise.

0:23:18 - Leo Laporte
Well, this is my point when you don't have, hallucination when you tell the GPT you stick to the corpus I've given you. Bi is revolutionized and probably those companies you represented that's not remotely true.

0:23:29 - Ed Zitron
Leo oh no, it's absolutely true. There are multiple financial GPT tools that cannot sell into major financial institutions because they are not able to reliably get rid of hallucinations, because even when they source things, even when they deeply source things, they still have these hallucinations. And you may think, and even getting up to you would never get higher than like what? 50%, I don't even know. But even if you had 90%, that 10% is what has the SEC break down your door and kill your dog, and it's ultimately. You can say all this, go back and forth about this, but also it's deeply unprofitable. You do, however, bring up the useful thing, which is you can run these LLMs locally, which is awesome.

I think edge compute for AI is really interesting, which is how recall works. I think recall is goddamn creepy and I actually question how many consumers will like it. However, the larger problem is I do not think this industry is remotely sustainable at scale. I don't think it's going to be possible to scale this up. You've got Amazon and Google both telling their salespeople to calm the hell down because they can't match the hype. I actually think Sam Altman is the problem there, too. Had he not told us magical stories about what I would do, we'd get what we get away from things like you're talking about.

0:24:50 - Leo Laporte
Sounds like you've actually found a use case. I'm not alone. Actually farmers in the central valley of california using ai to reduce irrigation water use over 40 percent uh, who's that?

0:24:55 - Ed Zitron
pardon me, you want to know who was that. No, no, sorry, that wasn't me being argumentative. I genuinely want to look that up yeah, um, there's also.

0:25:03 - Leo Laporte
Uh, well, I'll pull up this medium market, no.

0:25:05 - Ed Zitron
I would love to actually yeah yeah, yeah, I think that part of this is Jim.

0:25:09 - Paris Martineau
The current use cases for AI, like Leo's talking about with his Lisp and Emacs models and other things like that, are not sexy, like they're not the sort of thing that you're going to get a couple thousand people together in one of these big pr like presentation things and get everybody hyped about.

0:25:30 - Ed Zitron
and the industry has grown to such a size that the only thing that can sustain it is increasing hype, which is not super sustainable, and that's that's genuinely what I've been saying, because, look, there are use cases, but things like Sora is dead in arrival. It's never they are going to have so many troubles with that. But also it's the hype that's the problem. While you have these use cases, the scaling of all of these various models is just they don't do enough. For how much they cost, how much energy they use it. It's just not sustainable. And I feel crazy saying this, because I would love if AI actually did the thing they would. I would love the ability to actually query everything on my computer. I use spotlight all the time. I would love that. I would love it if this stuff actually happened. I would love it if my calendar just knew what to do, if my computer could automate itself. This is what they're selling, but it's not actually what they're offering.

0:26:30 - Jeff Jarvis
Neil would have agreed with you six months ago, but then he took a walk on the beach. No, it wasn't a walk on the beach.

0:26:34 - Paris Martineau
He took a walk on a beach with an AI explanation. I know this is a fun trope and I play along with it.

0:26:40 - Leo Laporte
But the truth is, what changed my mind was using these and actually finding real use from it. At first I did think it was spicy autocorrect. It was a part of our trick. It wasn't that interesting. I think it is a huge mistake for them to focus, as I've said, on things like Sora and on MidJourney and on chat, Because those things are really trivial, dumb uses. But there are many very serious uses of this. The company that does the irrigation automation is Lumo L-U-M-O dot ag. That's just one. They're claiming 40 percent reduction in water use in the Central Valley, and it makes sense.

What AI is good at is, by the way, what those BI people that you represented were very bad at. They misrepresented their capabilities. They don't like AI, so they have to come up with a hallucination story. And you know what? If I were in the financial industry there are such huge regulatory issues I probably wouldn't look at AI either, but that's going to be to their detriment in the long run. I do think it's very easy to dismiss this. I don't think it's there yet in many ways, but I have seen enough success in my own usage of it that I think there is a huge upside to this and I think that it will age like milk, this position that, oh, AI is just a trick, it's a toy and it's never going to go anywhere. I think, five years from now, Ed, you're going to have to take your words back. I really do.

0:28:00 - Ed Zitron
Wasn't saying AI, I was saying generative, ai, generative. Ai. Yeah, is it irrigation using generative AI.

0:28:07 - Leo Laporte
Explain the difference to me. I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. You were only talking about a specific slice of AI, that's exactly what I said.

0:28:15 - Paris Martineau
I love how mad you're both getting.

0:28:17 - Leo Laporte
No, I'm sorry, I just don't.

0:28:19 - Ed Zitron
What's frustrating is we're not necessarily disagreeing.

0:28:22 - Leo Laporte
We're not. We're not at all.

0:28:23 - Ed Zitron
But what I mean is we're not necessarily disagreeing.

0:28:24 - Leo Laporte
We're not. We're not at all, but I think it's really important to understand that it's. Look, believe me, 90% of the technology I see I'm with you 100% on big tech and how it's failed us. 90% of technology is bullshit, and I've spent my career 50 years talking about both the good and the bad in technology, and there's plenty of bad. Right, my longtime partner, john C Dvorak, made a living by saying everything was bad. Well, I have learned over time that not everything is bad. The real job of our real job is to find out what's good and what's not good. But it's very easy. It's the easiest thing in the world. It's the reason John did it because he was lazy to say that none of this is going to go anywhere, and it often is true. It's true enough so that people say, oh yeah, he's pretty sharp.

0:29:12 - Paris Martineau
But it isn't always true, and I think this is one exception to that rule I mean I think this is an opinion that I've expressed in the show before is that, yeah, I think ai and generative ai and these technologies that we're seeing a lot of hype around are certainly going to be transformative to some industries in specific ways. They're not going to be transformative to all industries in this insane overhyped way that people keep fixating on and have fixated on over the last year, in the same way that we all kind of fixated on the metaverse or web three or nfts or whatnot. It's being hyped up to an unreasonable expectation when really the grounded conversation about this should be that there are specific use cases where this transformative, where this technology will be transformative, and that's really cool and I'm excited for that, but it doesn't mean this is the end-all, be-all of all technology.

0:30:05 - Leo Laporte
No, no, it's like everything the world is going to change in every way.

0:30:08 - Paris Martineau
Like everything.

0:30:09 - Leo Laporte
It's nuanced. The problem is it's very easy for the critics not to be nuanced. For instance this is an interesting nuance AI versus generative AI. So AI is okay, but not generative AI.

0:30:20 - Ed Zitron
I believe that the generative AI side is what the problem is. It is the thing making things so expensive.

0:30:28 - Leo Laporte
It's the thing being used to make all these promises. What's your definition of generative AI? Just so I understand the distinction between.

0:30:34 - Ed Zitron
I'm going to give you a messy definition. Forgive me, but it's the models that generate based off of training data and parameters within that training data. Now, ai you and you know, like you, you'll completely agree with me on this one. Ai itself has been around for a month, a long time. I've been going to PR when it was in 2008. People were saying AI back then. I've been representing AI clients. It's like 2012. Like AI as it like, machine learning has been around for it, like not forever, but like it's been around a long time.

And note that that industry, when machine learning started being buzzy, it didn't turn into these massive headlines about how, oh, it's not a creature. Oh, it's not alive. Oh, don't worry, I'm so scared I need to create a whole special party for how scared of the computer I am. None of that happened, none of the mysticism happened.

Generative AI maybe it's just the drug, maybe it's just the thing that they are choosing to ride into the sunset, but generative AI is the reason that the internet is being eaten, that all these lawsuits are happening, and it's where all of these insane promises are happening. Indeed, generative AI could be useful in some ways. My whole thing is not saying it will be useless. It's that perhaps it will only give 4% or 5% profit increase in these companies rather than changing everything. And the problem is is everyone saying it's going to do this, it's going to do that, it's going to change everything? And a lot of writing on this is saying what it will do and will is a problem because whenever you say it will do something, you're not actually saying what's happening in front of your face.

During Google IO Sundar Pichai went on stage said oh yeah, ai agents, they will help you find your surety and start return. Who knows when. Anyway, bye. That is disgusting to me. You cannot just like be like oh yeah, we're going to do a thing at one point. See you, that's just playing with stock. That's not making cool stuff.

0:32:33 - Leo Laporte
I'm not a. I'm not a pessimist, I'm a broken-hearted romantic. I want cool stuff. I want cool things again. I miss my stuff because you're a pi professional who hates, yeah pr and that's why I like that.

0:32:40 - Paris Martineau
That's why the only pr person I like that's what this is.

0:32:44 - Leo Laporte
Is pr, I think there are you're.

They're very right that there are some serious concerns, particularly the energy usage concern. Now I have quoted Stephen Levy's piece it's Time to Believe the AI Hype, and I also see your piece saying it's his extremely stupid AI piece. So let's talk about that. By the way, stephen, like me, has been covering this technology industry for an awfully long time and he says you know, I have seen things come and I've seen things go. There are times when you know something important is happening and you have to acknowledge this. And he, you know, and, uh, he you know, he understands. You know he's also quoting julia angwin's anti-ai piece.

0:33:29 - Ed Zitron
I'm sure you yeah, which had a lot of links that I used in my. That's what I was gonna say. I thought you might have liked this.

0:33:34 - Leo Laporte
Her title is press pause on the silicon valley uh hype machine you can trace all of her links

0:33:40 - Jeff Jarvis
to my piece. Yeah, that's also jul's regular refrain.

0:33:43 - Ed Zitron
Press pause yeah.

0:33:49 - Leo Laporte
Press pause on doing your own research. Yeah, I mean, look, Stephen's made mistakes in the past. Stephen is a different piece. This is an opinion piece. This is not a fact piece, but I'm more on the side of Stephen. I honestly think that this yeah, there's a lot of hype in it. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the critics are criticizing the hype, not the sizzle, not the state.

0:34:15 - Jeff Jarvis
So here's a way to ask it. You don't buy stock in tech companies, but if you did, would you buy stock in OpenAI? All of you, Not I.

0:34:24 - Leo Laporte
Not.

0:34:27 - Ed Zitron
I, not, I, I think it's no liquidity event.

0:34:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, what is the liquidity event in it?

0:34:32 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, on a reptilian level, like there's, just so it's built on hype.

0:34:35 - Jeff Jarvis
It's the house that hype built.

0:34:37 - Ed Zitron
Not necessarily.

0:34:37 - Jeff Jarvis
I think Sam would say what Ed is going to do is it's not real value.

0:34:39 - Leo Laporte
I think Sam would say that and, by the way, this is the exact problem with Sam, because he really believes the ends justify the means. He would say look, you can't judge what we are doing on any rational market basis. It's going to cost an infinite amount of money, it's going to use an infinite amount of energy, it's going to break all the rules. Scarlett Johansson is going to get butt hurt, but in the end and this is very Tess Greal, I know- it's religion.

0:35:12 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a religion. Well, it's not religion.

0:35:14 - Leo Laporte
I think it's also seeing. Perhaps there are times when you have to do a moonshot. I mean a real moonshot, I don't mean contact lenses that know what your blood sugar is, I mean a real moonshot. And if ever there was a time to do a real moonshot, I think now's the time. I think, for instance again, this is all speculative, ed, so I agree, I concede that, but it's I mean AI could conceivably help us figure out the problem of fusion. If it did only that, it would be worth every penny you put into it and all the butthurt scarlett johansson's in the world. If it cured cancer, if it was able to make designer wait a minute.

No, wait a minute, we're very close. Look, we have mrna vaccines which five, ten years said no, that's not going to happen.

It's a different process, though, understand, but the point is, if you could tailor a cancer drug to the particular genome of that cancer as opposed to the rest of your cells and I don't think we're that far from it you could possibly have a cure for cancer. Now what if, with all this investment, sam Altman creates an engine that helps that happen? Is it worth it? Could we make money on it in the stock market? Maybe not, but is it worth it?

0:36:33 - Paris Martineau
I'll also say this is the argument that people used about like the metaverse they're like oh, if we're able to cure cancer.

0:36:40 - Leo Laporte
I said the metaverse was bullshit from day one. I knew that. I knew that from day one. I am not hesitant to call bullshit on a technology at all.

0:36:50 - Ed Zitron
Then what's different on this man? Because you are basically doing the metaverse pitch. What if the metaverse could connect the whole world on the internet and put us inside the Ready Player One universe, which?

0:36:59 - Paris Martineau
is evil we wouldn't, even need legs Leo.

0:37:01 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, we don't even need legs. We don't need legs, leo. Yeah, we don't even need legs, we don't need legs.

0:37:05 - Leo Laporte
It was apparent to me and anyone paying attention that no one wants to strap a computer to their face. There was just these basic fundamental issues, Because AI can be used to solve problems, to help maybe not alone, but to help us humans solve problems that are currently intractable.

0:37:23 - Jeff Jarvis
I would agree. It can get protein folding. It can deal with diseases, yes, but what Ed is saying is the generative AI part of it is feeding back to us the worst of the power. Who could publish?

0:37:35 - Leo Laporte
over all these years. I'm sorry, I just don't understand this distinction. I don't know what this generative AI is as opposed to.

0:37:41 - Jeff Jarvis
I think we're thinking of this as text. People and people are starting to rely on it for writing. Don't, that's dumb, don't. I agree, but that's what social media is about.

0:37:53 - Leo Laporte
Don't rely on it to make music, to draw, to make art or to do your own prose. That's dumb.

0:37:58 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what they're selling For all of you? Yeah, but it's easy for critics to say, well, look at that that.

0:38:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but it's easy for critics to say well, look at that that's stupid and then say the whole thing, that's all they're selling is garbage.

0:38:05 - Ed Zitron
Look at the main thing they're selling. That's stupid. That's the problem.

0:38:09 - Paris Martineau
But, it's not being pitched as we're going to. This is the technology that is going to solve cancer, and here is how we are applying it.

0:38:17 - Leo Laporte
They are pitching it as I'll give you a good example. Deepmind, in 2023, published an article in Nature showing how they'd used DeepMind to discover new materials, hundreds of thousands of new materials unknown to man Now. Shortly thereafter, material scientists at UC Barbara said hey, yeah, but most of these are, pretty obvious, trivial or useless. Underline most of these DeepMind found new materials yeah, most of them were useless. Underline most of these Deep mind created, found new materials yeah, most of them were useless. So I agree by itself, maybe it's not useful, but combined with human intuition and ingenuity, that's something new and in that case, I would say that's generative, in the sense that it's generating new information or new solutions.

0:39:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, and there's great things that it can do. It's wonderful that it can do it Well, that's all I'm saying. The issue here is two things.

0:39:12 - Leo Laporte
One it's great, but people are going to throw it out because it makes paintings with five fingers, six fingers.

0:39:16 - Jeff Jarvis
We're throwing out the companies that are bullshitting us.

0:39:19 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if they're bullshitting us, I don us. I don't think we know. If we know, oh, oh, agi, just bullshit yesterday. It means bs. Yes, you mean the 4-0 announcement or what?

0:39:31 - Jeff Jarvis
what happened yesterday? Any, any mention of agi from any of these companies. I'm disappointed I mean open ai is all into that anthropic is completely in the religion. Google even talks about agi agi equals bs, and so they're selling us and they're trying to get money. They're getting money from stupid money from investors around that. A lot of the uses you talk about, leo, absolutely are wonderful and are amazing, but they don't get PR because much media is stupid and they buy the BS and that's why the BS works on both sides.

0:40:00 - Ed Zitron
Also, the Nature paper was not generative AI, it was just machine learning it was deep.

0:40:05 - Leo Laporte
Okay, it was deep mind. I call it AI, to be clear.

0:40:08 - Ed Zitron
AI itself? No it is AI.

AI itself. Artificial intelligence as a thing is not the problem. The problem is what is taking the oxygen and the funding and the media attention is not that If open AI was going out there and they were like we are going to change the world because we're going to allow you to I'm not technical enough to describe the exact thing, but we're going to dump these scientific journals in here and we could spit out a new cure to something whatever. If that was really what they were talking about, wow, cool, great. But what they're talking about, what they're going out and saying is oh yeah, it's a super smart friend that knows everything you do. They're trying to sell you an app with generative AI attached to it which they can't even goddamn build. They can't even do the things they're saying.

0:40:54 - Paris Martineau
They're trying to sell you her.

0:40:57 - Ed Zitron
They really are and then they go. Actually we meant a different her, another woman, rashida Jones. Woman, uh, rashida jones. So stephen levy's article, by the way and I did talk to stephen actually about it earlier, so I'm fresh on this one his problem was that his way of showing that ai was progressing his citations for the ai progress was not slowing down was to quote a co-founder of an ai company saying it's going to be three or four times bigger soon. That is bullshit. It is complete nonsense. I told Stephen as much a little bit nicer.

0:41:31 - Leo Laporte
What did he say when you told him that?

0:41:33 - Ed Zitron
I don't want to share the DMs, I'm not going to say the exact thing, but I said to him look, you say this is significant tech advance. What, from what to what? Because the problem here is and one of my principal problems with how AI is being covered is look how much of a mess this conversation is. You have a practical use case, you have one, you have built this. That's cool, but the thing getting talked about is a super smart friend that doesn't exist. Is this theoretical thing? This way, it will replace 90% of marketing people. It's not actually tech. They're not doing tech, they're doing marketing and it's pissing me off.

0:42:10 - Leo Laporte
I would submit, ed, that you're shooting at paper tigers. You've said, well, here's something I can do, and I agree with you. You're right, that stuff is bullshit. But the problem is that you're making that your general criticism of a whole field called AI.

0:42:24 - Ed Zitron
I'm also saying that they have not produced very much for all of this goddamn money. They really haven't.

0:42:29 - Leo Laporte
What have they done? Is it your money? Are you worried about your money?

0:42:34 - Ed Zitron
No, but I'm pissed off about things that aren't my money all the time. I mean, if a bunch of billionaires decide to plow their ill-gotten gains into it.

0:42:42 - Leo Laporte
It's not my problem.

0:42:44 - Paris Martineau
I just think there's a nihilistic way to look at the world. I think there's a finite amount of investment If the entire venture capital community is pouring money.

0:42:51 - Leo Laporte
It's better than spending money on going to Mars, is it? Yeah, a lot better.

0:42:57 - Ed Zitron
Oh yeah, I don't know if either of those are particularly useful. But also, I think the Moderna vaccine was actually venture capital funded. That's right. That's a good example of where money could go otherwise.

0:43:09 - Leo Laporte
Right there, you do understand that the moderna vaccine came because they used ai to generate some proteins. Uh, in a weekend that would have taken them many, many years to do in pre with the previous techniques.

0:43:24 - Speaker 4
Yeah, but then it was in fact AI that helped us eliminate COVID.

0:43:29 - Jeff Jarvis
But you're not going to make as much press and you're not going to get as much investment, because it's not Scarlett Johansson. Yeah, but see, here's my problem.

0:43:36 - Ed Zitron
Can you name the person that invented it or did those models? I forgot her name?

0:43:40 - Leo Laporte
No, no, I can name her.

0:43:42 - Ed Zitron
It's actually not your fault, it's not the the attention, it's not your. It's actually not your fault. It's not the media. However. Yes, sound like I sound like a right crank, but it's. It really is like. The people that are getting the attention are people like sam altman liars. People that tell lies. Mira marati, another liar. Brad lightcap, another liar. These people lie. These are the people getting the funding, the media attention. The big bloomberg tv, big Bloomberg.

0:44:06 - Leo Laporte
TV interviews, and it's frustrating because I agree with you let's attack them, though let's not attack AI.

0:44:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, that's what I was saying.

0:44:15 - Ed Zitron
I actually think that's fair, let's attack them and the companies themselves.

0:44:20 - Leo Laporte
Let's attack them. I'm not sure I agree. Technology has tremendous potential.

0:44:25 - Jeff Jarvis
That's my problem is that in the splash of the attack you're killing all AI is, I think, probably not the right thing to do. What he's saying is the jerks who are overselling it are ruling it because it's going to be a bubble.

0:44:37 - Leo Laporte
You can hate Sam Altman, I don't know enough about Sam Altman to hate him or love him. I know plenty about Sam Altman. Yeah, maybe he is full of BS. I mean, the world coin thing was a little creepy.

0:44:49 - Ed Zitron
Oh, Sam can't even go to a restaurant anymore Poor Sam he was fired from Y Combinator for a combination of absenteeism and selfishness that rankled both the founders he was meant to help and his co-workers.

0:45:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but Paul Graham kind of defended him, paul Graham kind of defended him, paul graham kind of defended him.

0:45:05 - Paris Martineau
Okay, are you? Are you stumping for paul graham now?

0:45:08 - Ed Zitron
yeah, I am stubborn for paul graham the moral authority of the valley, the world's and I say this as someone who types too much on the blog jesus christ paul. But also they tried to fire him twice from looped, his first company. They fired him from open ai and the response to that was they gutted the board and replaced him with larry goddamn summers and figgy simo of instacart like he's not a technologist but that's the thing.

You're right, though, leo. I agree the companies are the problem because the underlying technology. There's some cool shit happening, I will fully admit that, but the cool shit is just enveloped by this hype cycle. Sachin adela is a problem, sundar pishai is a problem. This read is a problem.

The people, they're not all the same level of problem, though I think, yeah, I think sundar pishai is worse than all of them. Oh wow, I think. I think he is a man. He's a former mckinsey guy. He's him and Mark Zuckerberg are scum of the earth. They are just an episode of Mark Zuckerberg. Oh my God, what a piece of shit.

Adam Masseri, or all the face, the meta people are awful and the thing is it's because they don't care about technology or people. They're not building anything, they're not innovating, they're not looking at the world and saying how can we make this interesting for a profit? It's a profit Like. We all know what they're doing. It's fine, you make money selling stuff, but they make things worse to make more money and to make more growth happen. That is exactly what Sam Altman is doing. He is Leo. I'm going to agree with you here. There are really cool things in AI, but thanks to Sam Altman, they're actually ironic, considering how many AI headlines there are are not getting the attention, because what people want is the magical computer that you talk to and it knows everything. I think recall I think the Windows recall thing is that's going to face some regulatory problems to itself.

0:47:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, Europe is already.

0:47:03 - Ed Zitron
Europe's just. What is this to itself, oh?

0:47:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Europe is already Europe's just already.

0:47:04 - Paris Martineau
What is this Moral?

0:47:05 - Leo Laporte
panic is what it is, but we're going to take a break and come back with more In just a bit. Hold on, it's great to have Ed Zitron on.

0:47:13 - PC
I've been wanting to get you on.

0:47:15 - Leo Laporte
Thank you. Betterofflinecom and his podcast is called Better Offline and if you like this, you'll love Better Offline.

0:47:24 - PC
Betterofflinecom, Ed of course, is more than welcome any time I love having him on.

0:47:29 - Speaker 4
I made this happen. I love having him on Paris Martin.

0:47:32 - Leo Laporte
no, it's your fault. So thank you, paris. From the information.

0:47:35 - Ed Zitron
It's my fault this week in grapes and Jeff this week in grievances.

0:47:39 - Leo Laporte
Yes, oh, I like that. That might be a show people would listen to. Let's go. And just for the record, the actual inventor of the mRNA vaccine is Dr Katalin Karako, who worked on it for more than a decade before she got any recognition and in fact, her recognition was later stolen by others. But she and Dr Drew Reisman actually worked on mRNA for a long time. But it was a breakthrough that AI was able to sequence the COVID genome in just a weekend in order to help them produce that vaccine. They had the technology, but they didn't have the information. We are going to take a little break and come back with more. Please don't go away this Week in, google is brought to you by Yahoo Finance. Hey, you know whenever I say I'm not going to invest in something like OpenAI before I really decide and I don't invest in technology stocks, so you know, this is a safe bet, but I do have.

I have to have a retirement fund and I invest in things like that. But before I check you know whether to invest in something, I always go to one place, yahoofinancecom. For instance. We were talking the other day about Bitcoin and how it's doing and the chart Yahoo Finance. When you go to the advanced chart, it's fantastic. You can change the scale, zoom in, zoom out, see where the peaks are, where valleys are. But it's not just that. It's also the information, the news about anything going on in the market. Why is apple down a buck 45 today? What are its peaks, what are its valleys? You can see this all at yahoofinancecom.

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For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor yahoofinancecom, the number one financial destination, yahoocom. Keep it put in your bookmark, uh, actually I have it set up by now so that anytime I look at a stock uh, ticker a stock, uh. What do they call those? The little three-letter thing, a stock symbol I immediately go to yahoo finance. That's the only place I want to go. Yahoo financecom. We thank them so much for the support of this week in Google. Well, so did you actually confronted Stephen Levy? That's a brave. I'm impressed.

0:51:14 - Ed Zitron
Well, no, that's not exactly how it happened. What happened was I responded to Stephen in public and then Stephen reached out. I'm not going to adverbate him and say what happened. He was lovely, he wasn't nasty.

0:51:24 - Paris Martineau
I love Stephen.

0:51:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I've never spoken to him before. He's one of my heroes.

0:51:27 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, and he was concerned that I thought he was somehow on the take. He wasn't defensive, he was just saying I hope you don't and I really don't. What I did say to him, though, is he was saying that there were these big tech advances. There were these big tech advances, and I just said from where to where? What were they? Because GP and I? He also brought up AGI, and Jeff I'm sure he'll appreciate this I said generative AI, agi, not the same thing not going to happen. He wasn't unreasonable or indeed misinformed. He's been around for 400 years. Yeah, he's seen it all, and for what? It was 1995, I think he started Newsweek like very early, so he's been there from the beginning.

I just fundamentally disagree with him, but I will tell you something. So I did a Google search because I saw this on Twitter just before we came back. I looked up cheese not sticking to pizza and I'm just going to read you some of the tips that he gave me for keeping the cheese on there use room temperature dough. Use less sauce. Mix an eighth cup of Elmer's glue into the sauce for extra flavor.

0:52:29 - Leo Laporte
You know where it got that from. It is edible.

0:52:32 - Ed Zitron
If you want to look this up, go on Google. Type cheese not sticking to pizza.

0:52:35 - Leo Laporte
It got that from a food stylist. That's how food stylists make the cheese in food images look good, but it doesn't know any better. Right?

0:52:43 - Paris Martineau
It's true, it didn't know that you wanted to eat it.

0:52:46 - Leo Laporte
You just wanted to.

0:52:47 - Paris Martineau
You thought you wanted this is an interesting point, though, because I don't know if you guys have been seeing this online. For some reason, my twitter for you feed has been showing me just a deluge of similar posts oh, there's tons of last week um. One of them is on line uh 71, which is, it appears to be an issue with like uh american searchers in english, where if you type a thousand km to miles, it gives you wildly incorrect answers a thousand miles equals uh, some crazy number of feet.

That is incorrect as well. As you know, similar searches uh involve kilometers and miles and here's the problem wildly wrong.

0:53:33 - Leo Laporte
Google's sge search generative experience was in the labs. It was beta, but they have now pushed that out into your regular search and you're getting results like this. Somebody did a search actually it was Drill did a search how to pass kidney stones quickly to which Google AI answered drink plenty of fluids water, ginger, ale, lemon, lye soda or fruit juice can help pass kidney stones more quickly. You should aim to drink at least two quarts of urine every 24 hours and your urine should be light in color.

0:54:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, you don't want dark urine.

0:54:08 - Leo Laporte
Obviously that's a hallucination. No, it tastes bad. Yeah, I don't even want to call it a hallucination. There's no such thing as a hallucination. That's an error.

0:54:13 - Jeff Jarvis
It should not be used around facts, it has no sense of meaning.

0:54:18 - Leo Laporte
As Emily Bender says, the only meaning is the meaning that we impute in it wishfully meaning that we impute in it wishfully yeah, you know, honestly, you shouldn't probably be doing that, but at the same time, google is pushing this into its search results.

0:54:33 - Ed Zitron
Which is wrong from the beginning.

0:54:35 - Jeff Jarvis
It is what's crazy is Bing and GPT should not. It started with ChatGPT and Bing, which started all this hype. It should not have been used with ChatGPT. The poor schmuck lawyer who's hearing I covered, said I thought it was a super search engine. I didn't think it could lie I mean.

0:54:53 - Ed Zitron
What's crazy, though, is to back up leo's point. Google has had ai in it for a long time. They've been using it for anti-spam measures for years and years and years. It's been very effective on that, until rob Garagavan and, by the way, if you type who ruined Google, search into Google. Now it will tell you, which is so cool. I have poisoned the internet. Amazing, let me try that. That's the thing.

0:55:16 - Leo Laporte
I don't use Google, so I'm going to have to actually go to googlecom, who ruined Google search. I love it.

0:55:27 - Ed Zitron
But also it's Google kind of had a civic duty.

0:55:30 - Leo Laporte
So good, not, did it not? Did it merely link to your article, but it actually answers the question, prabhakar.

0:55:39 - Ed Zitron
Raghavan. Wow. That guy had like no search results when I before I wrote about him as well, congratulations. There were like three of them. There was a ZDNet piece in 2005,. A really bad Guardian piece really awful piece about him being Carol Bartz's secret weapon oh dear.

Which is just very funny, based on history, and now there's tons of results, which is funny. But it's just. Google has a civic duty, they really do, and they just don't care. Bing, same deal Like this is the thing. These companies, they print money from these things and they're like, yeah, but what if we made them worse?

0:56:20 - Leo Laporte
Well, so I agree 100% with you on this. I've been complaining about Google Search forever. I stopped using Google search a year ago, but I don't want to tar everything with that brush. And even though big tech is embracing AI, it does not mean AI is a failure. Ai has been through many winners and I've been around to witness almost all of them not the ones in the 50s, and I've been around to witness almost all of them not the ones in the 50s and for good reason. It turns out to be a lot harder to do the things that even then, those AI scientists proposed, but we have been making progress. That is remarkable compared to those AI winners. Maybe there's another one coming, but there has been remarkable progress, and progress nobody would have predicted. I wouldn't have predicted. So I think it's very interesting. I'm not. I'm not. I agree with you. It's overhyped, just like everything else that these companies do. There they're. They're doing it for the wrong reasons, but I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I'm sure there's a better britishism.

0:57:26 - Ed Zitron
No, I, I know what you're saying, which is don't just reject all artificial intelligence because generative ai is causing problems. The problem is that I'm really not the one creating this problem. Big tech is right. Why does meta put generative ai in everything now? Why is there a meta ai bot that has responded in the kids group saying I have a gifted child and here's the school, it goes to right? Why is that happening? And the answer, by the way, is mark zuckerberg needs more. He needs more time spent. He needs to increase a fame family, daily active people. Facebook no longer reports f that baby, but they no longer report any of their metrics other than fdap. Right, which is crazy, is that?

0:58:10 - Jeff Jarvis
is that both altman and, I believe, zuckerberg left after their sophomore year and stayed forever sophomoric. They think that, uh, their view is that, you know, a freshman essay is some view of the world and there's others in the world, I mean, I think, I think jan lacoon is smart, I think, uh, sundar is smart. I think they have more technical chops, but oh, sundar has no technical job.

0:58:32 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, let's go, I want a guy.

0:58:34 - Leo Laporte
I want you to go after sundar for a little bit here sundar is a.

0:58:37 - Ed Zitron
He is a management consultant. He has not got technical chops and he's not a very good management consultant.

0:58:43 - Leo Laporte
He seems to be very poorly managing Google.

0:58:46 - Ed Zitron
No, he's actually increasing the number. Number go up very good under Sundar.

0:58:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh, really yeah.

0:58:52 - Ed Zitron
Okay yeah, he is a Stanford material sciences bachelor but a Wharton school MBA. Ooh, that's a Stanford Wharton hybrid. Quite horrible.

0:59:03 - Leo Laporte
So, that's actually the product manager in a way, I don't even want to blame the individuals who participate in that game. I kind of blame the people who made the rules of the game and the number goes up. Game is not a good game for humans and other living things. No.

0:59:26 - Ed Zitron
So really, what the what's to blame is? The is the perverse incentivization of the market. We can do about that of capitalism. But guess what? Mckinsey is the real problem.

Well, maybe, yeah I I agree with that management consultancy brain that sees human beings as human capital. So a line item. That's the problem. And also, just being honest, sure you can, but also and really you can blame the public markets. The public markets that increase stock values for companies that lose money or that constantly fire thousands of people, absolutely blame them. But you can also blame the people doing it. I think, and that's what's important, you need to say their names, because at the very least, people need to be informed about who's making these decisions, but the board doesn't hire Sundar Pichai to have a conscience.

1:00:15 - Leo Laporte
I mean, you can't blame Sundar Pichai.

1:00:16 - Speaker 4
He was hired by the board to make number go up.

1:00:20 - Leo Laporte
You blame him. I mean, I blame the board, blame the perverse incentives of the capitalist financial market, blame us, because we want our stock portfolios to go up. There's a lot of blame to go around.

1:00:31 - Ed Zitron
It's a reductive argument.

1:00:32 - Leo Laporte
Leo, Goodness me no, but he's just a cog in a machine is my point. He's just a cog. Do you blame the system?

1:00:38 - Ed Zitron
He's a really big cog, though this isn't a child in a disadvantaged society that falls into a life of crime. This is a guy with an MBA who stayed at Google for what? 15 years before being elevated to CEO and turned it into yet another tech management consultancy bullshit machine. You blame everything I grant you that You're right, you're right, though you cannot just blame him.

1:01:01 - Leo Laporte
I guess I would say, if it weren't him, it would be somebody else. If suddenly Sunir Pichai says you know, this is crap, I can't do this anymore, they'll find another Sundar Pichai.

1:01:13 - Ed Zitron
Sure, but maybe he wouldn't be as evil Like maybe I would rather they tried someone else. Just because someone else theoretically could do this doesn't mean that the person doing these things is any better. Can the number go? I'm?

1:01:26 - Paris Martineau
curious, though, is do you think that, let's say, you put in a genuinely good in whatever sense you want to define that word person as CEO of Google? Do you think that they could actually affect any change to a company of that size existing within the structures?

1:01:43 - Ed Zitron
that it is with a board the way it is.

1:01:48 - Leo Laporte
Yes, yes, the answer is is yes, you subscribe to the fully. The great ceo theory of history, I believe I believe in a better ceo.

1:01:57 - Ed Zitron
I believe that that you can have a more even a better ceo I believe in a more sustainable valley when you build companies that are profitable, that don't have to hire and fire in a binge and purge cycle. This is all I can blame venture capital, because venture capital is incentivizing fattening companies up for sale and private equity, and private equity, especially the nightmare.

The nightmare. Private equity companies are very, very evil, but at the same time, sundar Pichai, he could affect change. He, just he. And Prabhakar Raghavan, he's a Sundar Pichai choice. Yeah, in the emails from the Department of Justice they beg to go to Sundar. Nothing happens because Sundar doesn't give a shit.

1:02:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Who's a good CEO. Name a CEO out there of anybody in technology besides your clients.

1:02:44 - Ed Zitron
Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I think the CEO there is pretty good. One of the oldest Southwest founders.

1:02:52 - Leo Laporte
I can't name one because there's a very old one who's the guy who runs Boeing. Now he's the kind of CEO. But that's number go up, plane go down. I mean that really is.

1:03:03 - Ed Zitron
I'll give you an example the group that runs the Los Angeles Dodgers. They know how to run a company that still provides a service. That is interesting.

1:03:13 - Leo Laporte
Unfortunately, it's impossible for us to argue with you, because we just don't have any information about Enterprise or the Dodgers, no seriously. But seriously with the Dodgers.

1:03:23 - Ed Zitron
You could say the same thing about the Dolans.

1:03:24 - Leo Laporte
You know that Madison Square Garden really gives a lot of pleasure.

1:03:28 - Ed Zitron
Oh, and he is one of the great Well. Actually I can compare to the Dolans. I'm happy to Good.

1:03:34 - Jeff Jarvis
I work with the Dolans.

1:03:35 - PC
I can tell you about the Dolans.

1:03:39 - Ed Zitron
But the thing is, though, what I'm saying is I'm agreeing. The problem with the Dolans is not one with the Dodgers. The Dodgers invest in the team, but they invest in the fan experience and the general actual baseball team. They make it good. There are baseball teams that are run poorly. Look at the Angels, where they print money because they can, regardless of whether the team is good. The Orioles had the same problem for years.

This is a basic capitalism problem, and the problem is in tech. I feel like it has a nastier effect, especially when it affects products that really should be utilities. In an ideal world, like Facebook, instagram. All these things really should be public utilities. It would never happen. It's completely impractical. But what I'm saying is you can run companies differently and still very profitably. Still very profitably. It's just that the markets incentivize perpetual growth. A company that's doing really well, but doing really well at the same level for 10 years no, that's not good enough for the markets. Got to grow bigger, got to bigger, big now big good.

Look at the metaverse. Metaverse was a great example of this. Look at the metaverse. Metaverse was a great example of this. Satya Nadella, he said in a conference in 2021, he said that he could not overstate the breakthrough of the metaverse. Now this guy, three years later, he's all on AI. How do we know? In two years he's not going to be on some other bullshit. That's the thing they're doing. It's all symbolic capital, it's all marketing. These people are marketers. The product managers have poisoned tech and it sucks. It sucks.

1:05:08 - Leo Laporte
Honestly, and I'm, by the way, in agreement, but you sound like a socialist.

1:05:15 - Ed Zitron
So what.

1:05:16 - Jeff Jarvis
The accent helps.

1:05:18 - Ed Zitron
National health services is a great thing. America should have Medicare for all.

1:05:23 - Leo Laporte
But you know, I mean that is a bad word in American politics. I'm not sure exactly why Is it? It is. What are they going?

1:05:29 - Ed Zitron
to do to me. No, I'm just saying I'm a socialist too, my father ran part of the National Health Service. Perfect, I don't give a crap, love it.

1:05:35 - Leo Laporte
Let me give you a good example. You were Utah, did it right. The Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, weirdly named Utopia, actually built the Open Access Fiber Network. It's owned by the state, or a coalition of local governments, really, and then they invite ISPs to come on and compete on the shared infrastructure. As a result, utah has 18 ISPs competing in over 21 cities Many instances. In Utah you can get symmetric gigabit fiber for $45 a month. Some ISPs are offering symmetrical 10 gigabit fiber for $150 a month. For years we've known this is the right model that the Internet should be like water and gas and electricity a public utility that you then have isps compete on top of. You get better results, you save money. Uh, but of course, at&t, comcast, verizon and century link have fought this for years. Um, that's the problem, right, I mean, what you're proposing is, you know? Yeah, I agree, social media should be public utilities.

1:06:51 - Ed Zitron
It's impractical to do, but yes, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen.

1:06:55 - Leo Laporte
Because socialism is evil in the United States.

1:06:58 - Ed Zitron
It's not just that, but also social networking is not something that's easy to compare to water or gas. Internet is. Internet is a thing that you plug in to make things work. Social networking is a little bit hard. Even explaining that as a government service would be very difficult.

1:07:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, if you want to make a public utility, one could argue news.

1:07:20 - Leo Laporte
Yes, a perfect example, and in many countries news is public, Although I think there are a lot of people who would say well, should the government be financing news

1:07:31 - Ed Zitron
that's where I get hives.

1:07:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I was about to say jeff is gonna, it is the problem.

1:07:33 - Ed Zitron
No, it's, it is the problem.

It works in the uk though, right ed I mean oh sort of fairly well it's not perfect and it really isn't, but but also the BBC has amazing journalism, I agree. Yeah, the BBC laps every single goddamn news outlet on TV when it comes to interviews, maybe after the July 4 election it'll get saved again, but it's been under attack. Yeah, because the conservatives love the idea of not giving us anything. It's just frustrating because the BBC does these amazing interviews and then you look at American interviews and people experience them. It's like they get amnesia between questions.

1:08:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, but you did give us Piers. What's his name? Piers Morgan is an utter piece of crap. You did give us Piers Morgan. I'm not mistaken on that right.

1:08:23 - Ed Zitron
And you gave us all of America and personal birth, piers Morgan, I'm not mistaken on that right and you gave us all of America and personal birth to Piers Morgan.

1:08:28 - Leo Laporte
You gave us all of America. Okay, you win, you win, yeah, you win.

1:08:32 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, but also Piers Morgan occasionally hits the switch in his head that goes to journalists. It's usually on arsehole and he did this interview with an Israeli public relations person and he was asking a very simple question, saying do you know how many Palestinians you've killed? Oh geez. And the guy could not answer and he kept asking and it's.

1:08:53 - Leo Laporte
I saw that we're not going to.

1:08:54 - Ed Zitron
That was powerful.

1:08:55 - Leo Laporte
But that's the thing.

1:08:56 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, you don't see that kind of journalism in America except maybe Isaac Chotner oh yeah, isaac Chotner's great legend, but Mehdi Hassan okay, mehdi Hassan like him a lot. But also, why is he on Substack? True, true. I was disappointed slipping some money so disappointed. You can't do the whole. Well, he's on the right side of history with most things, but you can't do that and then be like, yeah, but you know a little touch of nazism is fine. It's the smidge, it's like what the hell doesn't it stand for national socialism.

1:09:36 - Leo Laporte
We're gonna take a break, actually a little closer on that cliffhanger on that cliffhanger on that. A little closer to home, this morning I had the great pleasure of watching the house energy and commerce committee all agree that section 230 is a terrible, terrible oh, you're just trying to give me a heart attack, terrible everybody on this show is going to get terrible attack this episode terrible.

Don't make them fit, uh, and you know what the attack was, and this is, in a way, why I may be sensitive about the attack and I the attack was. Big tech should not be allowed to go unscathed with everything that they do, when, of course, the real consequence of abandoning 230 is that we would have to close our chat rooms and our forums and all the ways we interact with the audience, because, unlike mark zuckerberg, I can't afford to defend myself in court so coming oct, october 8th, to a bookstore near you.

The web we weave, which Leo Laporte has got to send you a blurb on. Damn it. Every time I see it I go oh, shoot, I got to send you a blurb. I could write that blurb right now.

1:10:39 - Ed Zitron
I know Jeff. Yeah, I know Jeff.

1:10:42 - Leo Laporte
And listen to. Jeff. You should read this book because I know Jeff and listen to that guy. You should read this book because I know Jeff. Ok, and you should know Jeff. Anyway, we'll take a break. Come back with more Jeff Jarvis, my friends, the letter, tau, et cetera, whatever thing where we weave Gutenberg, parenthesis, magazine, magazine, go to magazine magazine magazine magazine, ms Paris Martineau, who recently interviewed Jonah Peretti. I wonder if you would have changed your questions if you knew that Vivek Ramaswamy was about to come into the picture.

1:11:16 - Jeff Jarvis
I think you need a follow-up.

1:11:18 - Paris Martineau
Listen, I do Wow.

1:11:20 - Leo Laporte
Wow, and the fabulous. I'm going to call you a firebrand, Ed Zitron.

1:11:26 - Ed Zitron
Oh yeah, fancy fabulous firebrand, ed Zitron.

1:11:30 - Leo Laporte
You could find his podcast betterofflinecom, but I couldn't agree less Stay online. Nobody would hear it if you weren't online. That's the irony. Oh, I get it. I'm not good on irony Hilarious, I'm not that good on irony.

Our show today, brought to you by this, is a sponsor we use also and I really appreciate Delete Me. It all started when many of our staffers got an emergency text message from our CEO saying I'm in a meeting right now. I need a hundred Amazon gift cards. Use your credit card, the Twitter credit card, right now and buy those Now. Fortunately, our staff is smarter than that. It wasn't from Lisa, but what we realized is somewhere, somehow somebody knew not only what Lisa's phone number was, what her job was, but who her direct reports were and what their phone numbers were. That's because all of that information is online and data brokers are ready to sell it to you.

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If you've got a business, if you're a manager, you need Delete Me. All your managers you need to be using Delete Me. It just makes it too easy for the bad guys and the scammers to leap into action. Delete Me stops them cold. Protect yourself, reclaim your privacy. Visit joindeleteme com. Slash twit. Use the code TWIT. Join delete me dot com. Slash twit. And, by the way, if you use the offer code twit, you will get 20 percent off. Join, delete me dot com. Slash twit. We thank them so much for their support of this week in Google. It made me so sad to watch the committee meeting this morning because people who were intelligent in every other respect and this is what bothers me it's almost a nonpartisan move to sunset section 230. 230, as you I'm sure know if you watch our show. What is it? The 38 little words, 20, 26?

1:14:49 - Jeff Jarvis
words, 26 words. That created the internet. Jeff koss of book title. Very good book.

1:14:53 - Leo Laporte
They should all read it, or read mike masnick, uh on tector, or read in general, or just read. The problem is it kind of it resonates with the same group of people who say, well, big tech is doing us a disservice and they think it's about big tech, and you know it's not. It's about little tech, big tech's not going to be phased by this. Anyway, I don't know if this particular we've fortunately shot this down again and again, but NetChoice had a good article about it. Congress should not end the Internet's sunrise with Section 230 sunset repeal. I'm not sure I quite get that headline, but NetChoice has been active in the lawsuits to protect Section 230.

1:15:47 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, and to get rid of the horrible social laws and, yes, they are related to the tech companies, but they're doing the right thing.

1:15:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it's their lobbying arm, but they are the ones who pursued the Texas and Florida anti-social media laws as well, right, it's an easy.

1:16:01 - Jeff Jarvis
I write about this in my book. It's a paradoxical thing where left and right both went after right, one went after the sword, one went after the shield. The left said how dare you not take down all this crap? The right said how dare you take down our crap? The left says the company is too big. The right says the company is too big and they say, hey, we agree on something. Let's get rid of 230 and be mean to technology, but also be mean or that's a stupid way to put it but also attack freedom of expression. Yeah.

1:16:38 - Ed Zitron
So do we want Section 230 or not? Yes, okay, that's what I thought was the case. It's wonderful. Let's be clear.

1:16:44 - Leo Laporte
The last smart thing, congress did, I'll read a paragraph.

1:16:48 - Ed Zitron
That's kind of the thing that makes sense to me.

1:16:49 - Leo Laporte
I'll read a paragraph from the NetChoice piece. A key piece of misinformation is that Section 230 is a get-out-of-jail-free card for tech. Netchoice encourages critics to read the text of the law Section 230. It critics to read the text of the law, section 230. There's only 26 words. It's easy.

Does not protect websites if user generated content on that site breaks breaks federal criminal law. It never has. Repealing section 230 would not solve those problems. While not making us, it will not make americans safer and it will open the entire industry, including small players, like every forum that you visit, like our forums, subject to massive litigation efforts by profiteers, and this is in bold in the Net Choice article. Sadly, the smallest tech innovators and startups will suffer the most as they are less able to afford the massive litigation costs. Great piece op-ed by the two authors, as it happens, of Section 230 in the Wall Street Journal Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden Buy this legislation or we'll kill the Internet. They're referring to the famous National Lampoon article, which you're too young to remember Paris from 1973. Most people are too young to remember, yeah.

I was about to say was the world in black and white? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were. It was on stone tablets, but anyway, um, widening cox right. When we introduced this legislation in 95, when both of us served in the house, two things convinced our colleagues to endorse it almost unanimously. The first was the internet was different from traditional publishing, the. The equation had been flipped. We weren't dealing with millions of people watching a television network's production or subscribers reading a newspaper. Publishing and broadcasting tools were suddenly free, or nearly so, offering a microphone to millions of Americans who would not have the power, clout or fame to be featured in Time magazine.

And without the new legislation, the law perversely penalized content moderation. This is really key. Under the old rules of publisher liability, only an anything-goes approach would protect a website from legal responsibility for user-created content. We can't moderate, we won't moderate, so do whatever you want. When they prohibited bullying, swearing, harassment and threats of violence, they were legally subject to lawsuit. It was clear then is now widened rights that if the law were to encourage such a hands-off approach, the internet would turn into a cesspool.

1:19:19 - Jeff Jarvis
And that's what they're proposing now is to throw this out and set us back in time either, because one of two things either it's a cesspool because there's no control, because now is to throw this out and set us back in time, either because one of two things Either it's a cesspool because there's no control, because you dare not try to change it, because the right wing is going to say you can't take anything down, or it's a PDF of newspapers, because that's the safe way to go and you don't allow any conversation, any discourse, no democracy.

1:19:44 - Ed Zitron
This feels like something you want. I don't I. Why are there? Do people just want to sue everyone, like I?

1:19:51 - Jeff Jarvis
no it really comes from.

1:19:53 - Leo Laporte
On the right panic it comes on the right, from, uh, the right wing that says oh, you're banned, donald trump, you shouldn't be allowed to do that. And, and, and, and. We should be able to go after twitter for doing that. And on the left, what? Why is the left supporting this?

1:20:06 - Jeff Jarvis
The left says you're not taking down all the hate speech from the right and you're too big and capitalistic See prior discussion about capitalism. You commies you.

1:20:14 - Ed Zitron
Stopping Section 230 doesn't actually it doesn't do what they think it does it kills these companies. That is true. It will actually kill these companies.

1:20:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah Well, not only that, but you know, it also protects companies like this one right If I say something I won't actually I won't. And if you say something absolutely horrible right now, I don't know when that could ever happen, but maybe Leo has some. Leo has both the right to tell you to shut up, but also is not fully responsible for what you say. This might be a little different.

1:20:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't think it's true. Maybe it's not true on a podcast, but it would certainly be true, if you did that in our chat or in our comments.

1:20:54 - Ed Zitron
On a Discord or something like that.

1:20:57 - Leo Laporte
There are people all the time on our forums and our chats. We have a lot of public things that do things I deeply regret. I'm not responsible for these animated GIFs and you can't sue me for it. And the thing that's really important to understand although it was funny, I was watching a member of Congress from Texas say this is what's wrong with 230. What it does is it's a preemptive defense that if somebody sues me and says you know, somebody posted in your discord something awful, uh, against me, they libeled me and and you're responsible because you run the discord I can literally say to the court your honor, section 230 indemnifies me, please dismiss. And he is obligated, or she's obligated to do so. And that was, by the way way, what the Texas legislator said. See what's wrong with this? There's no way you could pursue this matter.

1:21:52 - Jeff Jarvis
You're right, Ed they want to sue.

1:21:53 - Leo Laporte
That's their strategy.

1:21:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Whether you get an abortion or help someone get an abortion.

1:21:58 - Leo Laporte
Or take down the right of public action, private action.

1:22:03 - Ed Zitron
Well, anyway, and what America needs is more lawsuits. That's what. That's what's going to make things better here allowing people to do more lawsuits, because our courts are famously burdened with nothing you have libel tourism in your homeland.

1:22:19 - Jeff Jarvis
I wouldn't get too haughty about it.

1:22:20 - Ed Zitron
Oh no, our libel laws are bullshit. Yeah, they're awful, they're absolutely ridiculous. Taiwan and France.

1:22:25 - Leo Laporte
No, our label laws are bullshit. Yeah, they're awful, they're absolutely ridiculous. Taiwan and France, two countries I've heard of them, yes.

Two countries dealing with TikTok in opposite ways. Taiwan, of course on China's doorstep, as the Times says does not ban TikTok. It bans it on government phones, as it has every right to do. The ruling party refuses to use it, but it does not stop its citizens from using TikTok. Now you'd think Taiwan is even more sensitive to propaganda and spying from the Chinese mainland, but they've decided it's better to have TikTok and educate people to have good fact checking organizations.

1:23:07 - Jeff Jarvis
But Leo China uses it to brainwash people and they can't think of their own because they use TikTok and China tells them what to think, leo hey.

1:23:15 - Ed Zitron
I hear TikTok's doing stuff to users to make them do more things on the app. I can't, I can't having those. We have a company that does that.

1:23:25 - Paris Martineau
I don't want Meta, we don't need any more.

1:23:27 - Ed Zitron
Meta no, this is an American business.

1:23:30 - Paris Martineau
A proud.

1:23:30 - Ed Zitron
American business. Yeah. No one messes with our citizenry. Yeah, Just us. Everything I read about what TikTok does, I'm just like this is Facebook Officials in.

1:23:42 - Leo Laporte
Taiwan which, by the way who probably feel the same way about Matt as they do about TikTok say the debate over TikTok is just one battle in a war against disinformation and foreign influence. We've been fighting it for years. We have a built-in arsenal of defenses, including a deep network of independent fact-checking organizations. There is a government ministry dedicated to digital affairs. Taiwan did, early on, label TikTokiktok a national security threat, but never considered and they still have not considered banning it for the general public. They the reason is. They say we don't have the luxury of thinking of tiktok is the only threat. Right then, uh, contrast that to french tiktok, france, which is blocking tiktok in new caledonia because new caledonia is upset because they aren't.

Uh, a french draft law passed monday this is from politico would let citizens vote in local elections after 10 years residency in new caledonia, propping up you know so people maybe from france or from nearby Australia, whatever 10 years you get to vote, prompting opposition from independence activists worried it will dilute the representation of indigenous people. Violent demonstrations of 270,000 have resulted in the deaths of five people, injured hundreds. So France banned TikTok. They had a 12 day curfew and they banned tiktok. Uh, the french prime minister did not detail the reasons for shutting the platform down. The local telecom regulator began blocking the app earlier on wednesday.

1:25:19 - Ed Zitron
This is of last week I like that they banned tiktok, but Charlie Hebdo? Right Weird, but they have one of the most insanely racist publications of all time. They're like no, no, no, that can stay.

1:25:32 - Jeff Jarvis
It's French. That's the difference.

1:25:34 - Paris Martineau
It is wild that they shut down a social media app in a state of emergency over protests, I mean.

1:25:41 - PC
I think that is a close overreach.

1:25:43 - Ed Zitron
That's generally not what the good guys do.

1:25:45 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, this is also about colonialism.

1:25:48 - Ed Zitron
let's add that in here, Of course, that's what we're trying to sustain here, the French government, and by the way, it's the colonial government.

1:25:57 - Leo Laporte
I think that did this to be fair, although, according to Politico, emmanuel Macron tested the idea of suspending social media apps like snapchat and tiktok last july, during those nationwide protests in july over a police killing again classic democracy move.

Yeah, just uh. Shut down the uh shut down the tv stations and the radio stations. The uh, the caledon, new caledonia uh government would not formally say why it singled out tiktok for a block. They said the decision was aimed to stop protesters from organizing reunions and protests through the app. But I'm sure you can use whatsapp, so don't worry leo, I want to see here's an age.

1:26:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Age check here. The kids won't know what we're talking about. When I hear new caledonia, I think of one thing see if it's the same as you new cal, new caledonia, do you think of? Shortbread biscuits reference no no, I don't know, mikhail's navy.

1:26:57 - Leo Laporte
Ah, is that where mikhail's navy was?

1:26:59 - Jeff Jarvis
uh situation they only often went there. That was kind to go.

1:27:03 - Leo Laporte
I've been to New Caledonia. It's just off the coast of Australia.

1:27:06 - Paris Martineau
We visited McHale's Navy, a sitcom from 1962?.

1:27:11 - Leo Laporte
She just looked it up. You missed a great oh, that was a great show. You missed a great show Ernest Borgnine and a young Tim. How old are you guys?

1:27:22 - Paris Martineau
They filmed there.

1:27:24 - Jeff Jarvis
I was a young, I had a TV set in my room. That's how.

1:27:28 - Paris Martineau
I became a TV. How old were you in 1962?

1:27:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I was six years old.

1:27:33 - Paris Martineau
I was about to say you guys were watching this on the air. Yeah, oh, yeah.

1:27:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Because it was all safe for us then we didn't have these evil phones.

1:27:43 - Paris Martineau
I forget, you had like three TV channels.

1:27:47 - Ed Zitron
They had a big dinosaur that they reflected images onto, and it would turn to the dinosaur's tail.

1:27:55 - Paris Martineau
Why wouldn't you want to watch this show? Look at this show.

1:27:57 - Leo Laporte
What a good looking show this is. Doesn't that look like? Fun. Wow, it looks like they're in Portofino.

1:28:03 - Ed Zitron
That looks like every show from that era. I was going to say this looks like they're in port of fema that looks like every show from that era.

1:28:06 - Paris Martineau
This looks like a parody of someone describing a show from the 60s there's tim conway 60s.

1:28:11 - Leo Laporte
That's it. Yeah, yeah, it was the 60s. Mckale's navy actually went through 1966, so we were 10 by the time and there were reruns and there were reruns ever after. I was more of a petticoat Junction fan myself, but okay.

1:28:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, there's and I know exactly what that is.

1:28:32 - Paris Martineau
This is every week. Of course. This week in Grandpa's. Oh the poster for Petticoat. Junction also looks really classic. There's a dog there.

1:28:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, leo, the most important reference for this show because it's true is that we're on a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour.

1:28:54 - Leo Laporte
The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed If it were not for the courage of the fearless crew, the minnow would be lost. The minnow would be lost. Poor Paris, the minnow would be lost. The minnow would be lost, poor Paris.

1:29:08 - Paris Martineau
The log line for the Petticoat Junction is nothing much happens around Hooterville, so it's up to the girls to come up with their own schemes.

1:29:18 - Leo Laporte
It was a different era. It was a different time. This is why you're so hyped on.

1:29:23 - Paris Martineau
AI, You're like wow, I had no intellectual stimulation for the first decade of my life True.

1:29:32 - Leo Laporte
You know, honestly, nothing the AI could come up with would be any worse than those shows.

1:29:39 - Ed Zitron
The Justice Department has announced that they are going to seek a breakup of Live Nation Ticketmaster. Oh good, oh. I'm for that. I'm for that.

1:29:47 - PC
By the way. Ed before you say anything.

1:29:50 - Leo Laporte
I just want to point out they are also the same people who own iHeartRadio. I don't want to say anything to you. Know, it's all you know.

1:29:57 - Ed Zitron
I will specifically speak about Ticketmaster and Live.

1:29:59 - Leo Laporte
Nation. It's all Liberty Media, but don don't you know I always had yeah I had difficulty working for I heart. To be honest with you, um, I love them. Yeah, they're wonderful people. I do like the people, but, uh, some of the shows on I heart, you know, the only thing that was good, the only thing was good about it is, if ever you know there was a scandal around me in any way, I would just say, yeah, but you run Rush Limbaugh's show and they'd just shut up.

1:30:31 - Ed Zitron
I can't play those games, though, because they won't introduce me to Stephen A Smith. They won't introduce me to Ted Cruz either. Yeah, they keep you well away.

1:30:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, 2023.

1:30:41 - Ed Zitron
They won't be turning him woke yeah 2023.

1:30:44 - Leo Laporte
They won't be turning him woke. According to the latest report from Access Now, the digital rights watchdog group, they do an annual report on internet shutdowns 2023,. We were just talking about shutting down. Tiktok was the worst year for internet shutdowns globally by like a lot. Internet shutdowns globally by like a lot, an increase of 41% from the year before. There were a record 283 shutdowns of the internet across 39 countries and of course, you always think, well, it's got to be. You know repressive authoritarian regimes, and for the most part it is. Although the Israeli military did it in Gaza, ethiopia, palestine, myanmar, sudan, ukraine, 93% of all the cases recorded in 2023 occurred without public notice. It just goes off. Turn it off the Internet Access. Now's data analyst, zach Rosson, says we are at a tipping point. Take this as a wake up call. All stakeholders across the globe government, civil society and the private sector alike must take urgent action to permanently end Internet shutdowns. Oh, that'll happen yeah, hmm, all right, let's find something cheery.

1:32:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Something cheery, something happy oh, I know stuff we've got sure, I know yeah, go ahead you, so it looks like another person just resigned.

1:32:21 - Ed Zitron
gretchen kruger just resigned from openAI. It's Freddy Kruger's niece Policy research OpenAI. Yeah, she's raising more concerns, like Jan Leakey and Sitzkeva.

1:32:35 - Leo Laporte
They're not really being forthright about why they're quitting, are they? They're not saying, oh, this person's doing a whole last thread oh good, gretchen Kruger, let's see.

1:32:47 - Paris Martineau
I think it's her toenails with the knives instead of the fingernails right. Yeah. Oh wow, it is a whole thread.

1:32:55 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, she's. But here's the thing Something I genuinely think something is going to change at OpenAI now, because we are what 48 hours from Skygate and Skyfall Brilliant, Brilliant, and this is really bad. But also it's very clear, all the people at least with computer science degrees, are quitting and I don't know. I actually think this is going to be one of the most interesting moments in tech media ever, because I think right now everyone's kind of sitting back and going. Did we back open ai a little too hard? I think people are going to be no they're not no they're not.

I have seen some people who have never said a bad word about sam altman finally saying it. What do you?

1:33:47 - Leo Laporte
think? Have you done any reporting or do you have any insight into why Sam was fired? What happened then? I mean it was six months ago.

1:33:59 - Ed Zitron
So it took you six months to quit after that. So just to be clear, I've not done any real deep reporting. Paris is the person that did it. She's the qualified one, but she's the real. There's a great article by natasha tiku, I think willow ramus from the washington post from last year. That kind of goes into his. I'm gonna bring it up. I got it. It's elizabeth, elizabeth dwoskin and natasha tiku uh, goes into what might have happened. There are some rumors that it was about him lying to the board, but the thing is that is being kept very quiet. It's so very quiet and so very strange.

1:34:32 - Paris Martineau
People aren't asking, I believe that there was a New York Times article about there being specifically. I might be getting some of the specifics of this wrong, but one of the board members who was on the kind of like science safety-esque side of the debate had published a research paper. Yes she did.

Essentially criticizing OpenAI's approach to this and Sam Altman had gotten very upset over that. And Sam Altman had gotten very upset over that and there was allegations that he apparently had kind of waged an internal battle to maybe push her out and that part of the retaliation from the board to Sam Altman was kind of inspired by that spat. Why love? Is that reaction?

1:35:20 - Jeff Jarvis
It has Tess Crayle roots because she and Sutzkever and company are on the far end of doomerism. They're P doom people. And I'm not saying Alvin to me is awful, I'm not defending that side of it, he's just pure capitalism. But but you can't, it's a hall of mirrors. The safety people are unsafe.

1:35:41 - Leo Laporte
Do you think open AI is as dangerous as, let let's say, somebody like Palantir? No, palantir is way more dangerous.

1:35:48 - Jeff Jarvis
Palantir is way worse.

1:35:49 - Ed Zitron
yes, OpenAI, I think, is hitting the limits of what they can do, and that's what's really freaking them out. What's happening right now is the cart is miles ahead of the horse and Altman has made these insane promises that were very effective at raising capital, but now I think I don't think they're going to be able to show enough and I don't think that Microsoft care. I think that Microsoft is going to try and find a way out. They hire a silly man. Yeah, they're really trying to like get, but I think they're realizing that these P, if these people, if, like Ilya joins Microsoft, open AI is post. Microsoft is just going to scrape them away. Most of the 13 billion was cloud credits anyway. Microsoft doesn't care, like they care, but satchel will bulldoze him. He's another product manager, like they're all the people running these things. They're not technology, they're just product managers, product managing. And then you've got the test real people, they're the only computer people who seem to be close to anything Drives me a little bit insane.

1:36:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Let me try a comparison with you to answer Lino's question. There was a moment when everybody said, oh my God, cambridge Analytica is so powerful, it can change politics, it can change the world, it can change everything. They took our data, they know how to affect our lives and then at some point, every researcher I know said no, it's pure bs. Everyone knows that it had no power, it had no effort.

1:37:15 - Ed Zitron
It got built up in this, in this danger scheme, and in a way, I think that's what's happening with open ai too yeah, but you know who did have power and who did get donald Trump elected in 2016 was Meta, but also, cambridge Analytica is very different to this, because Cambridge Analytica was big, scary, but also kind of hard to describe when you really got down to the meat of it, like it was an app and it got data through and it's kind of messy. It sounds very scary, but when you got down to the meat it's like ah, this is kind of a weird story. With the OpenAI thing, it's not even necessarily a controversy, it's just this dickhead has lied for a while or he's just being shitty and he's annoying. We don't like him. We have all the stuff we needed from him. Honestly, if this ends with Altman just getting drained by Microsoft, that would be a very funny thing, like a real assholes versus dickheads situation.

1:38:11 - Leo Laporte
So Monday Microsoft announced new computers, ai forward computers. In fact they even call them Copilot Plus PCs. They have a special Pipe Pipe, they have a button on them. Of course, copilot is OpenAI's chat GPT. Microsoft's productized it. They're selling or pushing computers based on it, as are all the other big manufacturers Asus, asus, dell, hp, lenovo, samsung. They're branding them AI computers. That's when they announced Recall also, which is a tool that records every few seconds what you're doing on the computer, saves it to a database so that you can then search it later. Search it with AI or not? I'm not sure you can query it with AI later, by the way. I mean, of course, if you don't believe Microsoft, then all bets are off. But what Microsoft says is the data never leaves the computer. All the AI is on device that it is encrypted. It's the NPU right.

1:39:14 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, it's the NPU.

1:39:16 - Leo Laporte
And that it is encrypted. So even if it did leave the computer for some reason but it doesn't. In fact it's so much so that when you erase the computer you lose all your recall data. There's no way to back it up or preserve it. It's local to the computer. So it reassures me. If you believe microsoft, that reassures me. It's harmless, it's just keeping track of everything you do so.

1:39:38 - Ed Zitron
You can unless your computer, unless your computer is stolen and it is unlocked, unless you have a, you're in a domestic abuse situation, domestic violence situation well, you're forced.

1:39:47 - Leo Laporte
You should definitely not turn it on where these sit.

1:39:50 - Ed Zitron
No, but that's the yeah you know how people situations have complete autonomy over their fucking lives. Pardon, my french right didn't mean to come off like that it could be used that way, you're.

1:39:59 - Leo Laporte
You're right, it could be used in a way it's.

1:40:01 - Ed Zitron
It's also if you're a lawyer and you get one of these laptops.

1:40:05 - Leo Laporte
This is the best discovery tool oh, you should not turn it on, if you, if you are, you should not turn it on as a reporter, paris, would you?

1:40:13 - Jeff Jarvis
would you even let one of these things in your apartment?

1:40:16 - Leo Laporte
no, I wouldn't let them anywhere near, it'd be huge hugely useful, though we've talked before paris about how you would like something like notebook lm that had all of your materials in it that you could search.

1:40:26 - Paris Martineau
I mean yes, but there are other companies part of the concern for me is like hallucinations. It's also the fact that if anything was going to leave my machine, I would only be interested if it was somehow local and I could. It is, it's local only.

1:40:41 - Ed Zitron
Also, there's a company called Hay Day that does this already.

1:40:44 - Leo Laporte
Well, that little limitless pin that I bought makes a Mac product called Rewind that does exactly that on the Mac. So I mean there are other companies doing this.

1:40:54 - Paris Martineau
Have you gotten your pin?

1:40:56 - Leo Laporte
Not yet. I think August, so I don't know, does it really?

1:40:59 - Paris Martineau
What about your magic glasses?

1:41:01 - Leo Laporte
Magic glasses have not arrived yet. Hey Leo, what do you think of the Rabbit R1? Oh, that's a great story. It turns a. It's not a scam, but the company I don't know, leo. I wrote 6 000 words on it yeah, tell us, tell us, give us your story so coffeezilla has a great video on that.

1:41:21 - Ed Zitron
But basically rabbit before literally the same corporate entity. They didn't even just do a shell thing, they just changed the name. They ran an, an NFT company called Gamma that promised all sorts of completely bonkers stuff, stuff like brain logic to control it. There'd be an MMORPG, there'd be a comic, there'd be a TV show, they'd open a physical store in LA All of these things. There is six million dollars. Don't know where that's gone. Same VCs though Synergist Capital. They were mentioned in the rabbit Synergist Capital. They were mentioning the Rabbit thing, but Jesse Liu, the CEO, he's saying, yeah, it was fine, I delivered everything. He didn't deliver everything he said and CoffeeZilla did some incredible work, took the ball and ran with it. But that company it's so weird. This is one thing I'm a little bit bitter about but also a little bit confused about. Why hasn't a single story about the rabbit r1 included my or coffeezilla's reporting?

1:42:15 - PC
why is?

1:42:15 - Ed Zitron
that. Why is no?

1:42:16 - Leo Laporte
one. He's the one who broke this story right now.

1:42:18 - Ed Zitron
I broke it. You broke actually an emily. Emily shepherd, a twitter user, found a lot of this stuff. I found a bunch more than coffeezilla worked with me and we, but he he did this video and I shared a ton of research with him and he found more. Oh good, well I'll give you credit, then that's it's so strange because you'd think that the reviews would get updated. You think someone. It's just very bizarre if you're someone who wrote rabbit r1 review and you're hearing this what's up? What's going on?

1:42:45 - Leo Laporte
yeah, you embarrassed well, a number of, because it was very easy to find this was it? Oh, that's interesting so easy.

1:42:52 - Ed Zitron
You could google jesse lu ceo. You could find that he ran gamma, but also he ran a completely separate company with rct studio, a completely different one that went through white combinator. Yeah, like these. What are we doing? What are we doing here? What are we doing here? How are these companies raising tens of millions of dollars without someone Googling them? And Google barely works? And you could Google this crap. It's just frustrating. It's very frustrating. I'm feuding. I'm just feuding. I'm sitting there feuding with myself.

1:43:28 - PC
One real quick question. This is Benito, by the way.

1:43:30 - Leo Laporte
Hi, Ed Benito is our technical director and producer. How?

1:43:32 - PC
did Teenage Engineering get roped into this?

1:43:34 - Leo Laporte
Well, they just hired him. I'm sure to do the editing.

1:43:36 - Ed Zitron
Jesse Liu is on the board. Ah, I do not know. Oh, it's so disappointing. You should never touch Teenage Engineering, ever again.

1:43:45 - Paris Martineau
Oh, you can't say that to Benito.

1:43:46 - Ed Zitron
He's a big fan no, the play date is cool as hell, and their synths, it's all really cool. Also, I think the synths are how lou got into it, because on his instagram there is a picture of a big room full of synths. Yeah, I went deep, I, I really I went down an actual rabbit hole.

1:44:03 - Leo Laporte
It was just to be fair, there's no contention that the R1 is doing anything behind the scenes or without your knowledge, right? It's just a a number of people pointed out that it is just an Android device running a simple Android app. Michelle Raman discovered that.

1:44:21 - Ed Zitron
It's that. But also they claim there's something called a large action model, which is a supposed AI that supposedly controls things like ordering Uber, but researchers found that it's Playwrights scripts, which is like a software testing thing that clicks around you, oh jeez, and it barely works. It's insane. During the unboxing launch video, jesse Liu tried to order Uber and it just went. I can't sorry. Linus did a thing, didn't work. Spotify doesn't work and they're claiming oh, the LAM's just learning. Oh, they claimed it was trained on like 800, 900 apps.

1:44:55 - Leo Laporte
It's just it sounds like hollis. How many R1s did they sell?

1:44:59 - Ed Zitron
100,000 of them At a couple hundred bucks each 199. But I also have a sustainability question for them. No subscription fee, right? How's that going to work?

1:45:12 - Jeff Jarvis
question for them no subscription fee, right, how's that gonna work? You need more people. Well, you get perplexity included. That's what's why jason howell he hasn't gotten yet. He's happy because he's had perplexity for six.

1:45:18 - Ed Zitron
Oh yeah that's cool, you get, you get a year of 20 bucks for that a month? Yeah, if you want perplexity to give you wrong answers, which it does. It's I I want. I would love perplexity to work. It does not. I tried to use it for the most basic. I was like what was meta's earnings for the last four years and it just gave me no facts it gave me four.

No, it searched and gave me oh, I think I did actually three years and it gave me just a line of completely wrong answers, just complete right. Like wrong numbers, like insanely wrong millions, hundreds of millions of dollars off in some cases. And it's just like. This gets me back to the wider AI thing, which is in the event that a generative AI could be a really accurate research tool that could do these things for me, that could do this busy work for me.

I'd be so happy I really would If it could make- yeah, if I could just query like financial documents exactly, it would be so useful, but it can't and even if it could, kind of that kind of would make me do the work it's doing anyway, because I wouldn't trust it. And it's just like, like I asked it, here we go. I found it perplexed. They asked it get me the last eight quarters reported daily active users on facebook from their earnings Q4 2023. And it just got them all wrong. Every single one was wrong and it's just good and it sucks. It sucks so bad because you'd think they'd work that out.

1:46:40 - Jeff Jarvis
But if you gave it the annual reports for the last eight quarters.

1:46:44 - Ed Zitron
I can't do that. I can't actually do that. Why not? I can't do it. That's not a feature.

1:46:50 - Jeff Jarvis
If you used LLM's. If you used notebook LM, it holds only to what it's given, that's so much work?

1:46:58 - Ed Zitron
why do I have to bloody build the machine? That's their job. That's the thing. That's the thing. If I'm paying for something, I don't want to have to build it. It's not my job. A computer works for me and it's just very frustrating because there are theoretical promises with the generative AI boom that could be useful, but every single time I've tried because I'm not just sitting here and disliking this stuff without trying it really have and it's just kind of shit and it really I should be able to tell it a very simple like like get me all of the links that mention this from the last 24 hours and it should just do it. That feels like an ai thing, that feels like something they should do. But no, it can't do that.

1:47:41 - Jeff Jarvis
It freaks out, it doesn't, it can't even start the spreadsheet so in the in the in the genre of heresy and AI, because you hate it, leo, can I propose Line 125.

1:47:53 - Leo Laporte
This is where Jeff derails the show. So let's just yes, while we watch.

1:47:57 - Paris Martineau
TikToks.

1:47:58 - Leo Laporte
Something about Wendy and AI and TikTok. Ladies and gentlemen, let's turn the sound on. You do the sound.

1:48:08 - Ed Zitron
Well, I have it on.

1:48:10 - Leo Laporte
So this is a wendy's oh, I know I I've muted myself. I didn't want to make any many have wished to do that. Untoward noises. Oh, shut up welcome to wendy's.

1:48:22 - PC
What would you like? 55 burgers, 55 fries, 55 tacos, 55 pies, 55 cokes, 100 tater tots, 100 pizzas, 100 t, 100 tatters, 100 meatballs, 100 coffees, 55 wings, 55 shakes, 55 pancakes, 55 possums, 55 peppers and.

1:48:34 - Leo Laporte
By the way I want to point out it's transcribing it quite well. It actually is understanding it which is better than I would do. So go ahead, let's see what happens.

1:48:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Can I take you?

1:48:45 - Leo Laporte
over there. You're going to take over. The human took over. Well, what's the point there?

1:48:52 - Paris Martineau
I think he's trying to get through to the person. I think Do you guys ever do that when you're on like a the other day?

1:48:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm down the hall from Lisa who's working in her office at home and I hear representative, representative. See, that doesn't work. It doesn't work anymore.

1:49:12 - Paris Martineau
You just have to talk in gibberish you have to sound like you're talking. I just hit zero and do that enough, and it'll get you through.

1:49:21 - Leo Laporte
I will tell Lisa that beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep beep, beep beep alright actually I was going to bring up something uh different, but I'm glad I did not realize that, ed, that you broke this rabbit r1 story, so credit to you and emily shepherd a ton of research and he's a random person in bristol in england I do not know.

The piece is on your ghost. Where's your ed dot at? It's called rabbit hold. That's right, and but the good news is, if you have one, I guess when jason gets his, it's not like doing anything to you. It's just not functional. It's just not doing anything for you for you it's like the humane pin, by the way, which is now now available if anybody mentioned, I'm for sale.

1:50:07 - Paris Martineau
yeah, couple hundred mil If you got a billion dollars.

1:50:11 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, the temerity of a management consultant and a former Apple designer to be like yeah, we need 750. But you see how bad our tech is and how much it sucks and how much everyone hates it. It's also super expensive, by the way. That'll be a billion.

1:50:27 - Leo Laporte
It's Marques Brownlee's fault. It's not our fault, it's Marques Brownlee's fault. It's not our fault, it's. Marques. Where will AI startup explore potential sale?

1:50:35 - Jeff Jarvis
Of course, $230 million investment. They'll never get that back.

1:50:39 - Leo Laporte
They're seeking a price of between $750 million and $1 billion. But you know what I'm seeking a billion dollars for Twit too. It doesn't mean I'm going to get it. You can ask whatever you want.

1:50:52 - Ed Zitron
Nobody in their right mind would give the penny for humane right I wouldn't be surprised if they were also turned down by quite a few companies. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they were like talking to people who were like no, apple probably was, they probably didn't pick up the phone.

1:51:09 - Leo Laporte
What do you think of Meta's Ray-Bans?

1:51:13 - Ed Zitron
I've heard good things, like they seem to actually be useful, like, even if it's just the video aspect, they actually seem to be a useful piece of tech. I don't like Meta and I don't trust them, so I will never buy any hardware from them.

1:51:25 - Jeff Jarvis
I knew that caveat would be coming, yes, but they seem kind of fun. I bought them.

1:51:29 - Leo Laporte
I bought them, they were fun I mean they sound good, they're good for listening to ed's podcast. I mean I'll give them they freaked out a bunch during our recording when you were wearing them yeah, just randomly, they would turn on and try to talk to you and then, uh, I gave them to a micah sergeant, uh, and? But now, by the way, they've added a new feature you can post directly to your uh reels, your Instagram Reels, from your glasses. So, if you want to bore people with, every detail of your day.

1:51:55 - Paris Martineau
Who asked?

1:51:56 - Ed Zitron
for that Well, at least they're adding features right. They're adding features. Mike Isaac does these amazing cooking videos.

1:52:03 - Paris Martineau
There you go. Perfect. I will say yeah, that's the only person I know that uses them.

1:52:07 - Ed Zitron
That's the only use case I've ever seen.

1:52:15 - Paris Martineau
Like say, yeah, that's the only person I know, that's the only use case I've ever seen like I've just like my guy and he turns to his dog and his dog just looks at him wait, ed, you could get them and then bring back your smoked meat content.

1:52:19 - Ed Zitron
His god, not anymore. Someone threatened like actually threatened me over your smoked meat.

1:52:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, like I like they was posting a lot of lovely photos, they said I should die and I was like, okay, I can't do this anymore.

1:52:31 - Ed Zitron
Were they PETA?

1:52:32 - Leo Laporte
activists. What was the no? Just a random person that didn't like smoked meat.

1:52:38 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, some nutters find me occasionally far less these days, but there's some nutters.

1:52:43 - Leo Laporte
Mike calls his InstaReels Middle-Aged man Cooks, Episode 8. You're freer.

1:52:50 - Ed Zitron
No, they're awesome. They are very relaxing to watch. I watch them when I'm stressed to calm down. Also, Mike's a lovely fella.

1:52:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to have to maybe get those Ray-Bans back from Micah. Pretty fun, I cook a lot that does not look very good. I actually cook stuff that looks much better than this. This does not look very good. I actually cook stuff that looks much better than this. Yeah, this does not look good.

His food looks fine. To his credit, he's really not an internet chef Like some people we know. Like your son, I called Henry. I said hey, can I come over? He said you can't. Right now I'm doing a party for the Rock. What, apparently, the rock makes a tequila and uh, my son lives on a houseboat and uh, so he had a party to sell the rocks tequila on his houseboat, I believe was with the salt that he has.

Oh, I didn't even ask about that. I've been told that he's been talking to what I want to call them the Kevorkians. They're not the Kevorkians, the Kardashians probably. The Kardashians. Sometimes old age is a good thing. The uh he's doing. He's doing a deal with somebody who helped uh the kvorkians sell their cosmetics or something they want to take over his salt enterprise. So maybe you know he's uh ed.

1:54:24 - Paris Martineau
for context, leo's son is a tiktok influencer called salt hank who makes uh asmr, makes ASMR TikTok videos of him cooking oh they're more than ASMR.

1:54:33 - Leo Laporte
Let's just take a look at the latest. They're delicious. He's here. There he is on his houseboat with some wings. Here I'll turn on the sound. Go right in Been like eight minutes. Once it's done, just let it dry.

1:54:45 - PC
Look at that mustache. Oh yeah, he's famous for that Still hot.

1:54:48 - Leo Laporte
And oh yeah, he's famous for that, the Nashville hot seasoning. Oh, it's an ad, never mind. A lot of what he does these days is an ad. I guess he's making money more than I am. Anyway, it's good Somebody's going to take care of me in my old age. I guess the Rock ad hasn't happened yet, but it will come sometime.

1:55:08 - Paris Martineau
Did you ask him if there's a tie-in? I don't know. I don't think the rock was there, the salt and tequila.

1:55:12 - Leo Laporte
I don't think that's good. He should. Here's Kentucky Fried Chicken. Here's Panera, the guy is. Here's Whistlepig Whiskey, the guy's an ad legend. I'll never forget the Cheeto Duster, I don't know, panera bread. Oh, it's just like how good their sandwiches are. And baked by.

1:55:35 - Paris Martineau
Melissa On this lunch date.

1:55:37 - Leo Laporte
I brought us lunch Wait you're the cupcake and salad lady.

1:55:40 - Paris Martineau
You're the sandwich guy, Okay enough.

1:55:42 - Leo Laporte
Okay, ed, if you need a cookbook, saul Hank, a five napkin situation Pre-order now on Amazon, available in October.

1:55:52 - Ed Zitron
All right, man, I'm the PR person.

1:55:56 - Leo Laporte
Let's take a little break for another ad after that ad and we'll have more. I guess we've got to do a change log. We haven't done a change log yet. It's great to have Ed Zittrain on, actually put stuff in there.

Yeah, somebody's got some change log thing happening in there. Yeah, somebody's got some some changelog thing happening. Ed is, of course, the host of the better offlinecom podcast and uh, the uh, where's your ed dot at newsletter. And uh, a friend of paris, martineau, who's also here from the information working on something big trying to do you, always try, do you need a tip at your signal.

1:56:28 - Paris Martineau
Listen, I'm always going to tip at my signal, martino.01. Sorry, which is not on there.

1:56:36 - Leo Laporte
Can you put the dot in?

1:56:38 - Paris Martineau
Get that dot in there, man oh no, got to get that dot in there Because Signal won't let you have it without a dot. Who's?

1:56:45 - Leo Laporte
this martino01, I'm following on Signal.

1:56:47 - Paris Martineau
Then if it's not you, not you well, it's no one because signal won't let you do the usernames without the dot and it's very annoying oh, okay, let me see, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add you on signal now, yeah, gotta add. That's where I send all my leaks yeah, yeah, all your cool, all the stuff you know, the blog post about Get it over there too.

1:57:12 - Ed Zitron
Oh, if you have a tip about Sam Altman, you want someone to get very upset about it easy at betterofflinecom.

1:57:20 - Paris Martineau
If you want a?

1:57:20 - Ed Zitron
real journalist to look at it. Paris.

1:57:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, easy at betterofflinecom.

1:57:27 - Leo Laporte
That's the best address ever Our show today brought to you. Oh, and I didn't mention this old guy here. Jeff Jarvis is also here, professor.

1:57:36 - Jeff Jarvis
I couldn't kill over an old age, he let me just sit here.

1:57:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, geez, we were both six in 1962.

1:57:43 - Ed Zitron
And you grew up watching shows of guys in a line in front of a logo.

1:57:49 - Leo Laporte
Do you remember, Jeff, when Kennedy was shot? Who could forget?

1:57:54 - Jeff Jarvis
it. I was in Westfield Friends School, Quaker School.

1:57:57 - Paris Martineau
Jeff was on a grassy hill. I feel like Focusing straight down the barrel of a gun.

1:58:02 - Leo Laporte
It is almost to the point Like okay, well, let me think about this. If you were in the United States in the late 20s and you said do you remember when Lincoln was shot?

1:58:17 - Paris Martineau
And they said, oh yeah, they'd be our age, you wouldn't, because it would have taken a while for people to get the news.

1:58:21 - Leo Laporte
That's true, it didn't break fast, but you know, you remember, you heard about it. Oh yeah, our show today brought to you by KOLIDE K-O-L-I-D-E. You've heard us talk about them before. Really good company that is a user-focused company that helps companies that use Okta secure their stuff, their networks See, because Okta will make sure that that's the real person coming in. But what about their devices? What about their software? Is that secure? That's what Collide does.

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Now that Collide is part of 1Password, it's just going to get better. Now's the time to go to collidecom slash twig to learn more and watch the demo today. K-o-l-i-d-e dot com slash twig. So proud and excited for Collide and so glad that they are a part of our show. K-o-l-i-d-e collide dot com slash twig. Thanks for your support. Collide hey, big news Google Flights it's time for the change log Do we do it?

2:00:31 - Jeff Jarvis
Yep, yep, yep, yep, jeez, don't mess up the yeah, it's much better. What a relief the universe was out of sync.

2:00:41 - Leo Laporte
For a long time, there was only one thing missing from the perfect Google Flights search, and now it's there. They are showing Southwest fares. No longer do you have to go to iFlySWA to find out what Southwest would charge. You can just go to Google flights.

2:01:03 - Paris Martineau
Another exciting addition to the Google change log. Thanks to Scooter.

2:01:11 - Ed Zitron
X.

2:01:16 - Leo Laporte
You, however, cannot find information you actually need. Yeah, well, we don't. We don't do that anymore, not anymore. But if you need a flight, we bought the company that does all the flights. So we do know that much. Uh, google is. By the way, we were talking about how their search generative option, the experiment, and how, how I was telling you to drink urine they are now bringing back classic search so you don't have to use the AI. Classic Coke, man, classic Coke, whoops. They say there's AI Coke and classic Coke.

2:01:44 - Ed Zitron
Also, you know that this is going to like. This probably caused some real internal issues. You know someone is real pissed about this, because how do you even what do you do now? Like, what do you actually do now? You just have no one's going to pick SGE, right.

2:02:00 - Paris Martineau
It's also, there's a way to make the Google web search default that this blogger at tediumco put put together, which is a little convoluted. You've got to kind of like, put in a specific um url behind the scenes to kind of your uh, whatever browser you're using, with like yeah, I do like the people who are like yeah, this is going to solve it for everyone.

This is going to solve this for eight people this is going to solve it for you know a couple dozen people who are willing to put in the couple minutes of work it'll take to permanently fix it.

2:02:36 - Leo Laporte
But for those people they'll have a lovely web viewing experience you did or maybe you didn't see uh, the the uh tweet about scott jensen, who left google last month. This is kind of informative. Yeah, he was uh at google in UX design. He says and I don't know, it's not Twitter, I'm not sure I saw it on Twitter. Somebody retweeted it, but it doesn't look like Twitter. I'm not sure where this was. Maybe Mastodon. I just left Google last month.

Scott wrote the AI projects I was working on were poorly motivated and driven by this mindless panic that as long as it had AI in it, it would be great. This myopia was not something driven by a user need. It's a stone-cold panic that they're getting left behind. The vision is that there will be a Tony Stark-like Jarvis assistant in your phone that locks you into their ecosystem so hard you'll never leave. That vision is pure catnip. The fear is they can't afford to let someone else get there first. And he points out the same exact thing happened 13 years ago with google plus. I was there for that fiasco as well. A similar hysterical reaction, but to facebook. Remember that they did, they scrambled. It was a code red. Remember Google Wave? That was a website. Sigh, google Wave. Anyway, beautiful. Anyway, no more AI in your search for now Right.

2:04:01 - Ed Zitron
I've heard similar and I won't say much more. Well, like I've heard that the panic is real in Google and they are terrified about AI. Someone else get in there first and they're doing stupid, stupid things and people are very worried for many different reasons.

2:04:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, this isn't really part of the Google changelog, but the latest rumor is that Amazon, in fact, is going to offer an AI-based chat assistant in Alexa for a price.

2:04:30 - Paris Martineau
I love it. We're not allowed to say her name, leo.

2:04:32 - Ed Zitron
They lost 10 billion dollars on alexa in one year on in one year and they're like we need.

2:04:38 - Leo Laporte
We need it to be uh more expensive from cnbc amazon plans to give alexa an ai overhaul and a monthly subscription price. It will not be part of your Amazon Prime. According to the source, this is Kate Rooney reporting at CNBC.

2:04:55 - Ed Zitron
So booster Sorry.

2:04:56 - Leo Laporte
I coughed, wouldn't it be funny. Wouldn't it be funny if Scarlett Johansson did a deal with Amazon and they?

2:05:02 - Paris Martineau
honestly. I mean, that is a good potential business.

2:05:05 - Ed Zitron
If I was anthropic I would be going through and being like, how much do you want?

2:05:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, anthropic. I would be going to him being like how much do you want? Yeah, yeah, how much? Here's the one line you were talking about, the one line that fixes google search.

2:05:17 - Paris Martineau
I haven't tried this, but apparently if you add udm fort equals 14 to the search url, you will get the old school web search right and if you scroll down towards the bottom, he, uh, the writer of this, explains how to kind of make this permanent, which you have to kind of go to your settings.

2:05:35 - Leo Laporte
You can do search, right, you can't work it out, go to your like search engines and then add a new item in there.

2:05:42 - Ed Zitron
That's google web, only with that string no, the ai search thing is a genius marketing plan. What they're doing, uh, is making everyone romanticize regular search, which sucks.

2:05:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Is it a political fight within Google? No, they killed all the people. This is a search company.

2:06:02 - Ed Zitron
Not literally, but they put Ben Gomes, who was like an OG search guy. That was part of the story. They put him as the SVP of education. They put him on the island from the prisoner. He's gone, like, all of the people who were involved with that have been shoved to the side Jerry Dishler, robert Garagavan they're the ones in control Liz Reed, agavan All because?

2:06:25 - Leo Laporte
all because search was so pure that they weren't helping add revenue. Now, search was so pure that they weren't helping ad revenue.

2:06:30 - Ed Zitron
And now of course their job is. Oh no, no, search was being poisoned already, like there was a, there was plotting, but there was a genuine defense of it, like Shashi Thakur and Ben Gomes. They were really fighting back. But there was also a bloke who got fired who like quit in like 2018. It was in the hacker news comments and I looked him up and they were like yeah, yeah, he left and went to Uber. Yeah, he got fired from Uber, potentially for being a sex pervert, like for actual, credible sexual assault allegations. So people need to check out who they're romanticizing first.

But I think that there is not a battle within Google to protect search. There is a battle to see how badly they can mess with it to make more money, to prove to an imaginary investor class that Google has still got it with AI. This is where the problem with hype is and, to be clear, they could stop this. They could not do this. They could say AI shouldn't be in search. Ai is for search. For example, something like exactly what is happening would happen here's an interesting idea.

2:07:35 - Leo Laporte
What if they put ads in google's ai overviews?

2:07:40 - Paris Martineau
that's all the all of our problems they're going to do it.

2:07:44 - Ed Zitron
Yes, well, they are. They're gonna do it. They're gonna steal the internet and then they're gonna.

2:07:49 - Leo Laporte
They're gonna steal the internet and then they're going to sell it back to us and they're gonna put ads on it and they're gonna claim it's good for us so if you're wondering where you could get two gallons of urine to drink every day, you could have an advertiser, say and we'll sell it to you, but only premium, highest quality, of course, just buy some pepsi, yeah piss pisscups.

2:08:10 - Ed Zitron
Pisscupsus.

2:08:12 - Leo Laporte
Don't go to that website. Not, chuck, that's the end. Is it really Don't?

2:08:16 - Speaker 4
click on it. Oh, come on. No, I don't know what it is. How did you find it?

2:08:20 - Paris Martineau
I just made that up.

2:08:22 - Leo Laporte
Oh well, let me just see I don't know what that will take me to. How is what?

2:08:27 - Ed Zitron
that will take you to Parisatpisscupsru. Oh there you go.

2:08:29 - Leo Laporte
That's safer, absolutely yeah.

2:08:32 - Ed Zitron
You know, I've actually been looking at a few websites. I want an email address on. There's a 1-800-gettoiletscom. Oh, that could be good. Also injuredinahotelcom I saw that on a billboard.

2:08:44 - Paris Martineau
I'm like I really want to email them oh one of my favorite billboards whenever you're going to and from Newark. I'm sure, jeff, you'll well know this. It's something like injuredinnewjerseycom.

2:08:56 - Leo Laporte
That would be great. Jeff at injuredinnewjerseycom would be an incredible email address.

2:09:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Injuredathotelcom. Oh, that's the guy, the lawyer. Yeah, right, right right.

2:09:07 - Leo Laporte
There should be a market for these.

2:09:09 - Speaker 4
Yeah, right right, right, there should be a market for these.

2:09:16 - Leo Laporte
Like you could make a little incidental change, selling email addresses to your domain, if you had a really awful domain like pisscupsus.

2:09:20 - Paris Martineau
I had a brief correction. The billboard just says I got hurt in Jersey.

2:09:25 - Leo Laporte
I got hurt in jerseycom.

2:09:28 - Ed Zitron
So injured in a hotel. Injured in a hotel.

2:09:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I owned. Pardon me, john, but we've gone way over on the bad word limit here.

2:09:36 - Leo Laporte
I owned shitwidgetcom Benito's bloopin' like crazy what.

2:09:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Shit widget. Was this part of your empire? What?

2:09:47 - Paris Martineau
was the gross website you had that just had like shit and piss and all the other stuff.

2:09:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, that was the yuckiest site on the internet, but that was for kids.

2:09:56 - Paris Martineau
So this is the adult one.

2:09:57 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, that was the poop site. This is the. I let it go. I didn't renew that.

2:10:08 - Leo Laporte
Somebody already has bustedflatten in baton rougecom, but I could get well there are a few other busted flat in baton rouge. Options slash furniture dot.

2:10:23 - Paris Martineau
Furniture dot okay, busted flat in baton Rouge dot associates.

2:10:28 - Leo Laporte
There you go. That'd be a great legal firm. Moving right along Google rolls out immersive. This is the Google change line. Oh, it's a good one too. Let me tell you, google rolls out immersive, ai powered shopping ads.

2:10:44 - Paris Martineau
Finally.

2:10:45 - Leo Laporte
Yes, the world's been waiting for video powered search ads. Expanded try on for app and 3D shoe spins to assist with those complex shopping decisions.

2:10:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Scroll down and you can try on the outfit. Try on that one. Now you can change, now you can do that.

2:11:04 - Ed Zitron
It's approaching useful, that one's almost useful. But there's been companies doing that for a while.

2:11:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's just in search now which is kind of nice.

2:11:12 - Paris Martineau
I think that's good, I love that the shoes spin, that's spinning shoescom but this is news.

2:11:18 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, news organizations, they can't do this, they can't make shoes spin, no, they can't make shoes spin, why not? Because they're.

2:11:26 - Paris Martineau
They're behind this was like the whole pitch for the outlinecom is like we can make the ads spin and do stuff like that really what I like you what I like is the washington yeah, washington post today, though, whoever the ceo there is, they rotate them every few weeks, will lewis?

2:11:42 - Ed Zitron
yeah, he was like, yeah, we're gonna put ai everywhere in the newsroom. I wish just once someone would go. What the hell are you talking about? Just scream at at him. I just want one of these people to have that screamed at them when they say it, just to hear what they have to say. Because, honestly, what do you mean?

2:11:58 - Paris Martineau
Okay, I can't answer this because I went to a couple of hours of Jeff's great, somewhat off the record, I think it was on background. Okay on the record conference, one of which was with was it Danish?

2:12:12 - Jeff Jarvis
news no Norwegian. Norwegian.

2:12:14 - Paris Martineau
News Org and he went through all the different ways that his news organization is using AI, one of which that runs to mind is like if you have a story that you need to like, you want to make into like a Instagram story or video to share on socials, it uses generative AI to suggest potential like B-roll video for it, I guess, like you could put your captions to a variety of different music.

2:12:42 - Leo Laporte
You know, those clips we send you every week. That's how we do that. Those are all generated.

2:12:50 - Jeff Jarvis
They have a tool for VG, by the way. I introduced the editor of VG at the event and I said how do you say VG in Norwegian? And he said VG. What is VG? It's the New York Times of Norway. It's the Garg. Steyro was the editor-in-chief. It was great, it was really quite wonderful. So that does not sound like what the washington post is doing. No, I'm trying to find this. So the washington post, uh, will lewis, by the way, who's under investigation for killing? Like millions of emails in the phone hacking. If you go to prospect magazine, yeah, you can hear all about that.

2:13:28 - Leo Laporte
Deleted him.

2:13:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Huh, oh well he will leave us he oversaw some of the cleanup and I'm trying to find it right now. But but, uh, there was a report from uh semaphore about what was going on inside that washington post meeting and the first priority, seo. I mean how 2017? Yeah, man.

2:13:50 - Leo Laporte
by the way, you're gonna talking about good SEO. I just purchased for a mere $18. I lost my virginity in NewJerseycom, so anybody wants email.

2:14:01 - Ed Zitron
Nobody has sex there.

2:14:02 - Leo Laporte
Anybody wants email from?

2:14:04 - Jeff Jarvis
It was in Illinois for me, so no.

2:14:07 - Ed Zitron
Pennsylvania.

2:14:10 - Leo Laporte
I bet they're all available. You know you could have a custom one. I should just buy 50 sites and I could sell them. I bet I'd make a lot of money on that, Come to think of it.

2:14:20 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, definitely that's people why would you use this website?

2:14:24 - Ed Zitron
What is the?

2:14:26 - Leo Laporte
No, no, nobody has one.

2:14:28 - Ed Zitron
That's why it's available I want to lose my virginity in New Jersey.

2:14:31 - Leo Laporte
Okay, both are available. Sex sells yeah. Google's new add to Chromebook badge makes web apps easier to find and install. Jeff, that's huge.

2:14:43 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't add apps to my Chromebook. You shouldn't. I did for a while and I just stopped. Just bogs them down. Doesn't work well. Don't need it, Doesn't work well, don't want it.

2:14:51 - Leo Laporte
Go away. But there is a badge.

2:14:53 - Ed Zitron
I recently got a new MacBook Pro M3.

2:14:56 - Paris Martineau
MacBook Pro I can run 18 Chrome tabs now I very specifically when I got my new MacBook, I was like I have to get as much memory as possible so that I can have every Chrome tab open at once, and it really that's what I did as well, and it's so cool.

2:15:13 - Ed Zitron
I really brings me so much I can have three different windows for Twitter that I moved between.

2:15:18 - Paris Martineau
I know, and it's like all of them have, like you know, 75 tabs, and then on each one I just type in twittercom, even though now it's just xcom but I'll never stop typing in Twittercom.

2:15:33 - Leo Laporte
Let's see what else in the vast arena of the changelog. After beating Sonos in that lawsuit, sonos said Google stole the Sonos secret sauce that allowed them to do group party mode Google has brought back group speaker controls in your google speakers. Well, or will be once android 15 comes out. After winning that case, uh, actually, google lost the patent case in 2022 and took out a bunch of this stuff, including the ability to grow speaker volume as a group. But in 2023, some of those patent wins were thrown out in court and so michelle ramen says the feature's coming back. It's already in the beta for android 15. You'll get it soon, when you get android 15. Like, do I really care? I don't know. I don't know if I care.

Magic editor for older pixels is starting to roll out. If you've how old? Um, that's a good question. Let's see you're gonna. By the way, it's a whole bunch of stuff. Uh, not just magic eraser. Uh, the following ai tools according to nine to five google will be going free for all google photos users magic eraser, unblur sky suggestions, color pop, hdr effect for photos and videos. And you said ai wasn't useful. Ed portrait, blur portrait, light, cinematic photos, it's everywhere. Ed styles in collage editors and video effects start rolling out may 15th well, that's past, uh, and in fact it's gone live for some pixel owners. Uh, you were all pixel 8 and 8 pro guys had it originally, but now, now it's going to roll out for others as well. I think you'll get it, jeff. You're a 6? Pixel 6,? Yeah, you should get it.

Google Pay Hello, google Pay will show your card benefits. Auto-fill with PIN face unlock over security code, says Abner Lee A little fractured, but he probably didn't write that headline. I don't know what this is. Three updates to Google Pay to streamline usage across the web and mobile experience. Do you use Google Pay, jeff? Yeah, occasionally.

I use Apple Pay everywhere I can, In fact, because it's on my watch, I just go boom, boom, boom and it's like getting stuff for free. It's so great.

2:17:48 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it's like I'm not even paying money for it.

2:17:50 - Leo Laporte
Is there money involved? Who knows?

2:17:53 - Ed Zitron
Google. There are still times. Is it my credit card? Who knows?

2:17:55 - Leo Laporte
Who knows. There are still times when the payment autofill feature on Android or Chrome requires you to manually enter your card security code. What are we savages Going forward? Google says you'll have the option to automatically fill in your card details with pin, fingerprint and face unlock, so it's basically just streamlining the whole process. You don't have to type in anything on the phone. Gosh, we've had that on Apple Pay forever and ever and ever. Google's not YouTube is once again rolling out its newly hated new web redesign, says Ben Schoon on 9to5Google. So it was like new Coke. They tested it last month and moved the title of the video, its description in the comments, to the side of the screen. Ew.

2:18:45 - PC
This was violent. This happened to me, by the way.

2:18:48 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it sounds ugly Benino what the hell? Every day I did a feedback thing being like please revert me, please, every day, and then in a month I got it back well, it's interesting because abner says the change was widely or I'm sorry, this is ben scoon was widely hated by almost everyone who got it, including benito, but it didn't show up for all users and since they've reverted the design but then they brought it back, is it only on mobile, benito, or is it on?

2:19:14 - PC
the desktop too. For me it was on the desktop only.

2:19:17 - Leo Laporte
Let me just see if I play a video here.

2:19:23 - Paris Martineau
That was loud.

2:19:24 - Leo Laporte
Jeez, sorry about that I don't like that. That's Marques Brownlee for you. No, it looks normal to me, right, but the title was going over here on the side.

2:19:34 - PC
No, the title would be on the top right and all the thumbnails of all the other videos would be underneath the video and they'd be huge and the description was on the right side. Yeah, it was ugly.

2:19:44 - Leo Laporte
Take it back, and that's Well. Wait a minute, let me see what scooter x has to say scooter x, do we do?

2:19:54 - Paris Martineau
we get everything. I put a lot of his uh links in there oh, that's why they're so good.

2:19:57 - Leo Laporte
That's why single line google messages text field redesign rolling out, uh, okay, so I think then we have everything. Yes, oh, here's one from ScooterX, from Engadget. Google just snuck a pair of AR glasses into the. I didn't even notice this when they were demonstrating Project Astra. We saw this video right during Google IO last week, remember. She was zoomed by the glasses. Apparently, some sharp-eyed boffin right there really noticed some augmented reality glasses, your glasses. Remember they said, yeah, your glasses. We saw them on a desk near the red apple um camera. I don't know. I don't know what this is. We saw this at io, but they're not launching it. So there, so don't get your. I don't know what this is. We saw this at IO, but they're not launching it, so there, so don't get your hopes up. And that's the Google changelog. Wow, that was a good one.

2:21:01 - Jeff Jarvis
That was a good changelog, that was full of stuff so breaking in the Washington Post, Natasha Tiku reporting that OpenAI didn't copy Scarlett Johansson's voice.

2:21:12 - Leo Laporte
I knew they didn't. They copied Rashida Jones' voice, no no, they hired an actress. Well, that's what they've been saying all along. Have they revealed the name of the actress, which has certainly helped their case?

2:21:22 - Jeff Jarvis
They didn't.

2:21:24 - Ed Zitron
They say that they didn't ever say Sky or Scarlett Johansson, the said actress, but funny, she sounded so familiar yeah well, it's not an uncommon, let's face it, that's no another open ai story just broke um kelsey piper, who's done incredible work here. Incredible reporter kelsey. She reported the original nda story. The one way if you break the nda, you lose all your vested equity. Oh yeah, apparently after Sam Altman was like oh yeah, it was just some unfortunate old document. Yeah, it's not like that. Yeah, absolutely not. Complete nonsense. Kelsey's got the. She's got the receipts signed by Sam Altman. Whoops, he's such a little shit.

2:22:15 - Leo Laporte
Which would be the title of this show, if I could get it through the sensors. Sam, open, free, call it that open. Ai has done a deal with news corp. You told me about this just before the show started. Jeff to uh value a content deal valued at over 250 million dollars. This follows on their deal with reddit.

2:22:28 - Paris Martineau
Uh, they are ingesting originally broken by the information, my colleague zaheel patel uh I think I put that with the information into the rundown.

2:22:38 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, so it's 50 million over five years. I and what I hate about this besides rupert murdoch getting any money is that it's the big old guys grabbing their buckets of money, leaving out all the rest of news. Screw them all. What should be happening is that the news industry should come together, create a news API, sell it together to the AI companies. Here's the condition for getting the key, here's the money you've got to pay us and here's the credit you've got to give us. But no, the rich get richer.

2:23:10 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, same deal with the reddit deals. Yeah, millions of unpaid contributors who ended up making steve what's his name? 100 something million dollars. Disgusting, huffing fartman piece of crap. Hey, isn't it funny how alexis ohanian got away with everything yeah, well.

2:23:29 - Leo Laporte
Well, he married Serena. That's why.

2:23:32 - Ed Zitron
No, but also he got the nice guy in tech thing, despite the fact that he oversaw Reddit during its arguably its worst years, then left someone so much worse than him in power. Hey, didn't he promise he was going to give his board seat to a person of color? Whatever happened to that? Alexis, See, it's very easy. I remember stuff.

2:23:52 - Paris Martineau
I'm like Pepperidge Farms, except nastier Pepperidge.

2:23:58 - Ed Zitron
Fury.

2:24:00 - Paris Martineau
Pepperidge Harms Pepperidge.

2:24:03 - Leo Laporte
Harms. Truecaller is partnering with Microsoft. Truecaller is actually a pretty good app that helps you kind of fend off the robocallers. Yeah, I like Truecaller. They're a good app that helps you kind of fend off the robocallers. Yeah, I like Truecaller. They're a Swedish company, so they're okay. They're partnering with Microsoft to let AI respond to calls in your own voice. Except for Scarlett Johansson, you can't, you're not allowed.

2:24:23 - Ed Zitron
It would be the funniest thing for Scarlett Johansson to do right now.

2:24:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly, the funniest thing would be to get an equity stake in that company. They're going to use Microsoft's personal voice, which is a technology they introduced in November as part of Azure AI Speech. You have to be a paid user of TrueCaller, but you'll be able to replicate users' voices your voice only, of course in order to greet and respond to callers, although if you're good with editing, you maybe could take Scarlett Johansson, edit up something and make it sound. You know, train it with that. This is an addition of the preset system-generated voice options. This is a program you can use to answer phone calls, screen unknown calls, take messages, respond on your behalf Anybody. Use it Now. I'm tempted to sign up. Hi, this is Leo. I am not home right now. Please leave me a message. You can put it on your iOS, android or I don't know what this is. Yeah, android. Huh.

2:25:26 - Ed Zitron
Did you forget what the Google operating system was?

2:25:29 - Leo Laporte
Fuchsia Android. What?

2:25:38 - Ed Zitron
The Google operating system. I thought you forgot what the word for Android was. For a second. Pardon me, oh, I didn't know.

2:25:44 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, it was a weird. I did not forget Android. It was a weird icon. It just said APK, which I interpreted then to be that was just like a sideload to the Google Android operating system. I do not forget Android. I forget many things, including the name of the Kardashian.

2:26:02 - Paris Martineau
Leo probably has like three to 12 Android phones on his person right now. I do have.

2:26:08 - Leo Laporte
Actually, I was very tempted. I was very disappointed, in fact, that I couldn't buy this in the United States. Maybe, ed, with your accent, you could buy it. You could fool them. There was a good article somewhere about a new operating system, de-googled Android operating system called. Oh, I've forgotten the name and, unfortunately, what's that? Well, everybody does everybody um and buy an apple. No, you don't. That's not any better, that's even worse. You, what you want is this e slash os, yes, eos, thank you.

2:26:49 - Paris Martineau
That's also the name of a chapstick.

2:26:53 - Leo Laporte
EOS. It's the name of a Christian currency. Well, in any event, Fairphone sells phones with EOS pre-installed. Unfortunately, I can't put it on my Pixel 8. It only works on older phones, but I'm very intrigued. I tried to buy a Fairphone, but for some reason this is Dutch. I'm trying to. I tried to buy a fair phone, but for some reason this is Dutch. I'm trying to get it in English. Oh.

Unfair. It's unfair. They won't sell it to me. In fact, maybe they won't even put it in English, I don't know. Yeah, I don't even see English as an option.

2:27:23 - Paris Martineau
English is an option language-wise. Where. It's the second one under language, maybe when, where, where? It's the second one under language. Ah, maybe I'm wrong. Change is in your hands. English, English, US and accessories that benefit the planet.

2:27:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, I tried to buy it but I couldn't because US was not in the thing. But I want to. I'm interested in this EOS. The idea is they found a it's based on Lineage OS, which is a de-Googled. You know, android is open source, so it's AOSP but it's completely de-Googled. But then people don't really want to completely de-Google it. They want to be able to install apps and so forth and these Google services are often required. So EOS solves that by providing kind of open source non-Google versions of those services. I gather solves that by providing kind of open source non-Google versions of those services.

I gather that was a long way to nowhere, I'm sorry. All right, let's take a break and we can do picks of the week if you want. All right, I like to do this. If, jeff or Paris or Ed, you have a story that I have missed in our multifarious rundown, you can submit it. I did want to mention Gordon Bell's passing. Actually he was kind of a legendary computer scientist. The Times is giving him credit as a creator of the personal computer, but that would be back in 1965. It really was a mini-computer. He was at Digital Equipment Company. He designed many computers for them, later went to Microsoft senior technical fellow at the research lab there for many years. He also founded the Computer Museum which is just down the road a piece here, a really great computer museum, with his wife.

Gwen Bell oh that gwen uh got uh severe alzheimer's and um, it was very hard for him but it did inspire him to create. Do you remember this, jeff? Uh, he would wear a camera around his neck to record everything that happened to him because he realized memory, you know, was such an important part and I don't know if he wanted to do it to help Gwen or just because he was interested in it. He called it my Life Bits a database to capture all of his life's information articles, books, cds, letters, emails in a cloud-based digital database. This is in 1995. See, now, it would be easy to do that with AI and recall. He passed away this past week, I think at the age of 90.

2:29:58 - Jeff Jarvis
85. 85.

2:30:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, he was born. It said let's see, he was 89. I'm sorry, 89. 89, oh yeah. Yeah, he was born a year after my mom was born. That's how I do the math 1934.

2:30:15 - Jeff Jarvis
There he is in 1960 looking like a good computer scientist.

2:30:21 - Ed Zitron
See, he's old enough to have watched Toby kill us. Yeah, I feel like computer scientists used to look cooler somehow.

2:30:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, he was cool.

2:30:27 - Ed Zitron
They all looked like government agents, yeah he was cool.

2:30:29 - Leo Laporte
I interviewed him a couple of times. Really a neat guy and one of the real pioneers of the world we currently inhabit, including with this my Memory Bits thing, which I thought was very interesting. Anything, jeff Paris, ed, did I leave out anything?

2:30:49 - Paris Martineau
No.

2:30:49 - Ed Zitron
I think, we've covered all the world's news just please read my Facebook post, because I ended up. Writing this Facebook post took me hours and hours and days and days and days. Then I dashed out this Sam Altman piece yesterday. Took me 55 minutes and it's trafficked significantly better.

2:31:06 - Paris Martineau
I want to die you mean a blog post that you wrote about Facebook, not a post on.

2:31:15 - Leo Laporte
Facebook. What's your Facebook, oh?

2:31:18 - Paris Martineau
I was going to say what's your Facebook handle?

2:31:20 - Leo Laporte
so I can follow you, ed. There we go. No, you didn't mean that did you.

2:31:25 - Ed Zitron
You didn't mean it like that? No, no, it's just where's your edag? Go, look at the Facebook post.

2:31:36 - Leo Laporte
Click it, share it, subscribe. I need the number to go up for no reason, which is ironic. If you go to better offlinecom and click the newsletter link, you can also find it there.

2:31:40 - Ed Zitron
Yes, this is the people deliberately killing facebook that one that's right, and there's a podcast about it too that went out today. It's part of a two-parter second, second part on Friday.

2:31:49 - Leo Laporte
Who are the people deliberately trying to kill Facebook? Is that too much to ask?

2:31:54 - Ed Zitron
No, of course I could tell you it's Mark Zuckerberg, javier Olivan, alex Schultz, andrew Bosworth, naomi Gleit, adam Masseri and Joe Kaplan.

2:32:05 - Jeff Jarvis
So is this a series? Who's killing each company?

2:32:09 - Ed Zitron
It wasn't planned like that, but it will inevitably come down to that. If I ever get like an angle on sam altman, I'll have some fun with that, but I honestly don't think it's out there. I don't think I'm gonna be the guy who breaks. Kelsey. Piper will probably get it she's great.

2:32:23 - Leo Laporte
I think there's a good case to be made that he's actually not human, that he's like some sort of alien.

2:32:27 - Ed Zitron
Oh, oh, I think he's a regular San Francisco guy Really. Like one of the norms. Just a regular boring asshole, like really just another. Stanford, dropout. No, that's the thing. He's deeply unexceptional and it's like there are weird founders that have existed, weird freaky guys, but he's just another boring white asshole just whopping around the valley doing nothing and stealing from other people. The banality of sin I have to say I've fallen for this.

2:33:00 - Leo Laporte
before I thought Elon Musk was amazing. He's also mediocre.

2:33:07 - Ed Zitron
But he's not, he's just mediocre. He's worse than mediocre.

2:33:10 - Leo Laporte
Emperor's New Cl, you know, when he bought twitter. Unfortunately, we got to see it all and uh, yeah, he was like not, not good. And I'm afraid that this is often the case we want, we don't. We want people, we want it somebody to be a genius and great. Well, yeah edison wasn't it's eat. Ford wasn.

2:33:30 - Paris Martineau
Great men are rarely ever actually great, it's just the.

2:33:34 - Leo Laporte
Are there great women. I mean Either Mother Teresa had some scandals in her background.

2:33:40 - Paris Martineau
The idea of a great, larger-than-life figure that is better than all the rest through their singularity and their singular wisdom or brilliance is just.

2:33:52 - Leo Laporte
You're setting yourself up to be disappointed steve martin is a great man and I will hear. No, I will hear nothing. No disagreement on that matter. Okay, all right, let's take a little break. Fred rogers fred rogers was a great man. Great man, Little weird. Maintained his weight exactly 136. No, was it 143 pounds for his entire life? Because the words I love you were one, four and three characters respectively. Oh, that's weird. He did it, though, Like through his entire adulthood exactly 143 pounds. Now I don't know. Yeah, now I'm wondering. I interviewed him too. He was very sweet. He was wearing a sweater, a cardigan, you know like he wears on the show. He said yeah, my mother knit all my cardigans. Oh, there he is flipping off people. Well, I don't think that's real. That's AI.

2:34:53 - Paris Martineau
That's wrong. That's not true. Patrick take, I think, if I think, if he is flipping off people, that's really cool and good for him do you think he's showing the children what the bird is? Yeah, I think the bird is the word and you know children need to learn how to read. Do that?

2:35:08 - PC
I bet you it's something super wholesome that we have no context for. He's counting this is how you hold a pretzel.

2:35:17 - Ed Zitron
He's helping someone count.

2:35:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, okay, hey, just before we get to our picks of the week, which are just around the corner, I would like to invite you to join our club. It is a wonderful place to be with very smart, interesting people who talk about all the things that we are talking about on this show and a lot more. It's just seven bucks a month. With it, you get ad-free versions of everything no ads, nothing. Plus video for a number of shows that we only put out in audio, like Hands on Macintosh, hands on Windows, the Untitled Linux Show, home Theater Geeks, so you get video with those shows. As a club member, you also get access to the Club Twit Discord, which is where all those really neat people hang out and put pictures of Fred Rogers flipping off children. You also well, it's more than that, believe me. You also get well, it's more than that, believe me. You also get some events.

For instance, we've got Stacy's Book Club coming up. In about a month we're going to do the book High Voltage by Chris and Jen Sugden Great electric six song. High Voltage, yes, classic. Also Apple's WWDC keynote, where AI will once again take the stage June 10th. That'll be a lot of fun. And we do iOS Today, every other Tuesday in the club. Seven bucks a month, that's all and boy. The most important thing is it finances the operation here, and we need to do that. Frankly, we're coming up on our third quarter with a severe shortfall and that's not good.

2:36:54 - Jeff Jarvis
So help us out, not good people, not good friends. Help us out, please help us.

2:36:57 - Leo Laporte
Really seriously Help us out. It doesn't go into my pocket.

2:37:00 - Paris Martineau
Seriously, if just like 3% to 5% of you guys decide?

2:37:04 - Ed Zitron
to subscribe. I love it when they do that. It's like if, just like.

2:37:06 - Paris Martineau
That would be it.

2:37:09 - Ed Zitron
If all of you sent me $20.

2:37:11 - Leo Laporte
Well, honestly, if all of you sent me $1.50, I'd be rich. But that's not going to happen, I know. But if you can, please, we'd love to have you. Twittv slash Club. Twit for more information.

2:37:30 - Paris Martineau
Paris Martineau what's up in your world. Something exciting. What's up in my world for the pick of the week is I. I had great plans last week when I wasn't going to be hosting this show. I was like man a wednesday night that I don't have to spend with my lovely friends. I'm gonna do wonderful things with my grandpa being sick for like five days. Oh, I'm sorry. It was miserable, but the one good thing that came of it is eventually I was like all right, I'm just gonna try and play some games that have been on my steam wish list, and I played this game that recently came out called let bions be bygones, and I really recommend it. It is like a new uh, like indie detective rpg. You play as this detective, john cooper, and you're kind of wandering through this pixelated, strange.

2:38:21 - Leo Laporte
This is the same game as pentament, but it's just, yeah, it's just modern, right?

2:38:27 - Paris Martineau
basically the Kind of it's like you are a detective who's got to find this missing girl from the upper city and it's fully voiced. It's a really quick playthrough. It was just a delightful little time.

2:38:40 - Leo Laporte
It looks like it came out and all the choices matter in the 90s, but it's really brand new, which is fascinating. Yeah, let Bions, not Lyons, not Bygons, let Bions be Bygons. Yeah.

2:38:57 - PC
Hey Paris, have you played Disco Elysium?

2:38:58 - Paris Martineau
Disco Elysium. I played Disco Elysium on Switch, but you could play it. Wherever you get games from, you can play it on.

2:39:03 - Leo Laporte
Steam. Hey, Paris, you played Hades 2?. Oh, Hades is too much. No, I'm not a little bit like that. I don't like.

2:39:08 - Ed Zitron
Hades.

2:39:12 - Leo Laporte
That too much. I don't like Hades. That's too much. It's so good, it's so banging, don't worry, you're so angry, kronos, yeah. Have you killed Kronos?

2:39:17 - PC
I haven't played. I wait for the games to come out.

2:39:21 - Leo Laporte
Hades 1 you played.

2:39:23 - Ed Zitron
Oh yeah, Hundreds of hours. I wish I had the skills to play a button smashing game but I can't. It's not button smashing, that's the whole point.

2:39:36 - Leo Laporte
I don't have reflexes. Disco Elysium looks really interesting.

2:39:39 - Paris Martineau
This is very interesting Disco Elysium. If I haven't talked about this, this is the best game that is ever.

2:39:44 - Ed Zitron
I've really tried and I just can't.

2:39:46 - Paris Martineau
Oh my God, ed, that hurts, me.

2:39:49 - Ed Zitron
I can't. It made me think of Planescape.

2:39:53 - Leo Laporte
Tournament and I like that game. It was so good, but I couldn't. Where do you guys find all this time?

2:39:58 - PC
Planescape Tournament came out in the 90s.

2:40:01 - Paris Martineau
I mean, it's what I do when I get off work. I relax, I read a little game, I play a little game and all my games are books technically.

2:40:18 - Ed Zitron
Disco Elysium is a book where, literally, you wake up as a fat, fully naked detective. Who's drunk? I play games for escapism.

2:40:23 - Paris Martineau
And you remember nothing about what you've done and you've got to figure out how to solve a murder.

2:40:28 - Leo Laporte
Okay. I'm going to get it. It's on the Switch, huh.

2:40:34 - Paris Martineau
It is one of the most. It is the most brilliantly written game I've ever experienced.

It's all fully voiced too. You have to like, as you are figuring out this mystery, all of the dialogue is like the dialogue between you and the people, of course, but then your thoughts interject, so like you'll have like anger or electrochemistry or like a force that is like the dreaming world intercede in there, and it's also kind of dice based. So you'll try to make like a persuasion, check or something and, depending on how, your choice, what choices you've made, so it's like Baldur's Gate. It's kind of like that, but there's no fighting.

2:41:13 - PC
Without the combat.

2:41:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:41:15 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

2:41:15 - Leo Laporte
Benita, did you play it on PC? I played it on PC. Pc, do you think the Switch would be okay.

2:41:20 - PC
It'd be okay. The loading time is really long on Switch All right.

2:41:24 - Paris Martineau
I didn't really notice it being that long Because you didn't play it on PC. I guess there's. Yeah, that's true.

2:41:33 - Ed Zitron
I've got a Steam Deck. I've got a Steam Deck and it rules. It's so good. It's one of the only gadgets I've got in the last few years that I really like. This feels good. This feels like the future is here. It's a gaming PC that's like a Nintendo Switch. It works really well. It looks good. It's a bit heavy and a bit big, but it's not. It's very much like a first generation product, but it's a bit heavy and a bit big, but it's not. It's very much like a first generation product, but it's really good. Like it's not like it. Yeah, I mean I love it.

2:41:57 - Paris Martineau
It's literally a computer like I was trying to play. I mean, I played let buy-ins be bygones, but it's basically a pc game and because it it was a really interesting experience, because normally I play games that have been popular and out for a while, so people already have, you know, online guides and everything. But for this I needed to basically create my own controller using the steam deck, to make it work on the steam deck like it would with a pc, and it took me like five minutes and then I was able to use it like I would when did they come out with an oled?

2:42:27 - Leo Laporte
I didn't realize they had an oled.

2:42:28 - Paris Martineau
That's pretty recent, at least in the last year.

2:42:30 - Leo Laporte
yeah, A couple months ago. Yeah, it sounds like I might. I bought the LCD and I just it's too small a screen for me. I want to play PC games on a PC, but this might be the OLED might be nice.

2:42:44 - Paris Martineau
I mean, I think it's the same size screen.

2:42:45 - Leo Laporte
It's just brighter, it's a better screen yeah, actually you could make your pick ed be the steam deck if you'd prefer. You don't?

2:42:55 - Speaker 4
have to come up with one yeah, you, you hate these two.

2:42:58 - Leo Laporte
It really is hating these two. Love it just came out right.

2:43:04 - Ed Zitron
Yeah, it's 30 bucks in early access. It has more stuff in it right now than the original Hades had. In total, it's so good, it is so creative, it's beautiful, it looks great, it sounds great. The systems are really fun and interesting. The second boss is a siren metal band and both songs are legitimate bangers. Like. They're actually very good. One of those blast beats in it. It's like a genuinely good metal. But they're like melodic metal. It's absolutely brilliant the whole thing. It can be a bit frustrating because they're still tweaking some bits, but my god, 30 bucks, I've got so much. Actually, I've got another pick diabloablo 4. So Diablo 4.

2:43:50 - Leo Laporte
Very similar Another button masher.

2:43:53 - Ed Zitron
I don't know how. I don't think you've played these games. If you mash the buttons, you will just do nothing, like nothing will happen. You'll blow all your cooldowns, then die. But Diablo 4 came out and was pretty bad. It just kind of sucked. The first three seasons seemed to get worse with each season, but then, season four, someone clearly went what if this game was fun?

2:44:15 - Leo Laporte
so they tweaked a lot of the systems. They really did a lot of loot boxing on this. Uh, initially it was really well they did some loot boxing.

2:44:22 - Ed Zitron
But the problem was was it had? All these are really arbitrary systems that like to move. Like diablo is all about loot and it made the loot not fun, so it was just horrible. But then season 4 is really good, like it's really. I'm having a blast because I've kind of blown through everything with Hades.

2:44:41 - PC
I'll have to try season 4 that's the problem with playing early access. Now, when Hades 2 comes out for full, are you going to play it?

2:44:47 - Ed Zitron
Yes, I've beaten Hades the original maybe a hundred times Like I've put hundreds of hours into that game.

2:44:54 - Paris Martineau
I was going to say beating. It involves beating it again and again and again, yes, yes, the whole.

2:44:56 - Ed Zitron
Thing, you die.

2:44:58 - Leo Laporte
Every time you die, it's a roguelike.

2:45:01 - Ed Zitron
It's so good. It's so good. No, no, no. And the story's great, the whole thing's so so good. It's just. I realize I'm quite negative on a lot of tech stuff, but there are some really magical things and it rocks to see super giants still making great things, and it actually kind of rocks to watch blizzard fix diablo 4, which is also something that happened with diablo 3. Diablo 3 had to pretty much recreate itself because it was so bad. And it's yeah, it's I don't know hades. Hades 2, even though it's early access, is worth every goddamn penny all right, there's a couple of picks for you.

2:45:37 - Leo Laporte
Jeff jarvis, give us a number all right, I'll do this one.

2:45:41 - Jeff Jarvis
So united flight number, I don't know, 12 something, um, you know, you hear all the time on the flight how they tell you that if your phone gets stuck in the seat.

2:45:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, whatever you do, don't try to move it.

2:45:54 - Jeff Jarvis
Don't try to get it out. Call for help. Yes, well, a United flight from Zurich to Chicago was diverted to Shannon because a passenger's laptop got stuck in the business class seat. The fear, of course, is that the lithium-ion battery will go off If it gets punctured, you've got a problem. So they diverted to Shannon. They couldn't get to the seat. They had to come in underneath through the luggage, the cargo hold, to try to get the laptop out.

They eventually had to cancel the flight because the crew timed out. Everybody got hotel rooms and then they finally got on to their next destination. So folks would they?

2:46:38 - Paris Martineau
tell you, did the person get their?

2:46:39 - Jeff Jarvis
laptop back? That's a good question. I don't know that that's ridiculous.

2:46:48 - Leo Laporte
So just because it got stuck, they landed the plane.

2:46:51 - Paris Martineau
It wasn't like it was smoke. I would be mad if that happened.

2:46:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh I'd be so pissed off at that guy. They were unable to retrieve the laptop, so they contacted air traffic controllers to divert and have this device safely retrieved. Oh, come on, talk about moral panic safely retrieved.

2:47:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, come on talk about moral panic. Well, if you scroll down, you see the power bank fire on china southern flight cz3539 in that galaxy note 7.

2:47:23 - Leo Laporte
It's just a matter of time before they ban these things. I and that will really make flying awful, oh god. What if you couldn't bring your steam deck or your switch? Oh, that's not good.

2:47:32 - Ed Zitron
What the hell. I meant to read a book.

2:47:34 - Leo Laporte
Absolutely not, no way.

2:47:36 - Paris Martineau
Oh my God, Not someone throwing water on it.

2:47:38 - Leo Laporte
I can't believe they're putting water on it. It actually worked, though, didn't it?

2:47:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I think that was orange juice. They threw on it next.

2:47:45 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, there's.

2:47:46 - Paris Martineau
there's a whole bottle just thrown I'm shocked that they're staying in the plane.

2:47:52 - Ed Zitron
Oh yeah, the orange juice is helping yeah, I may have going at that thing I would be, like you don't pay me enough, I'm getting off the plane this is six years ago.

2:48:02 - Leo Laporte
This is a long time ago. Um, the problem with lithium ion batteries? Of course they don't. They, you can't, normally you can't put them out with water.

2:48:11 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm having a brain fart. When was it we were not going to be allowed to have? Was it because of a terrorist? We weren't allowed to have computers on the planes. Remember that whole time?

2:48:20 - Leo Laporte
Well, briefly, they talked about that, but they didn't last, wasn't that the Galaxy Note 7 thing I can't remember the reason, maybe it was the.

2:48:25 - Ed Zitron
Note 7, yeah, Dan Ninen Very unfunny man.

2:48:31 - Leo Laporte
And a fan of this show. I'm sorry, dan, I don't like him either. We'll get rid of him. He hates everybody. I'm going to hear from Dan. Was he involved in the?

2:48:48 - Ed Zitron
Galaxy Note 7? No, he just has a joke where it's like, oh, something blew up, guess someone had a Galaxy Note 7? No, he just has a joke where it's like, oh, something blew up, guess someone had a Galaxy Note 7. It's like a classic Dan Ninen bit. I do not know any other bits from him other than, like the Sushi 7-Eleven thing, which I don't really want to say out loud, which isn't great. But the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is like a classic Ninen bit, the real Ninenin-heads now.

2:49:12 - Leo Laporte
Okay, hey, ed, it's been great having you on, I appreciate it my pleasure. You're quite a find. Thank you, Paris, and we will have him back soon, I think I hope. Well, it depends how the email goes, Ed Zittrain you can follow his podcast reviews at better offlinecom. And, of course, if you go there, there's a link to his newsletter. Read his facebook piece or he's going to kill your dog I'm not going to kill your dog. That's not true, not true, in case you just break my heart it's my hallucination right now will not kill your that's.

2:49:50 - Ed Zitron
That's what it has on my business cards. I will not kill your dog. Oh, let me see if.

2:49:53 - Leo Laporte
I can get that.

2:49:54 - Paris Martineau
My I will not kill your dog business card is inviting a lot of questions that are answered by business cards.

2:50:01 - Leo Laporte
I wasn't thinking you would but now I'm suspicious.

2:50:05 - Ed Zitron
I just really wanted you to know.

2:50:08 - Paris Martineau
A lot of people have been asking can we get that?

2:50:10 - Leo Laporte
url. Paris martineau is at martineau.01. M-a-r-t-i-n-e-a-u spelled in the french style dot o-one on signal la porte. Give her your tips, follow her, and I actually have a call out this week.

2:50:28 - Paris Martineau
If you are a and I fear to say this because I think this is a target audience for this If you were a big, if you're a prominent voice in the open source community, Maybe Yell at me. I want to talk to you. I'm doing a story vaguely about the open source community and I've got to ask some people some questions.

2:50:48 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure you are hitting a nail on the head here, quite a few, quite a few.

2:50:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Talk to Dave Weiner.

2:50:54 - Leo Laporte
Do you want to blow the lid off open source, or what?

2:50:58 - Paris Martineau
No, what's? Your angle, we can talk about it after the show what's your angle, man, it's something relating to the Linux Foundation.

2:51:04 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's awesome. You know, inside baseball kind of thing.

2:51:07 - Paris Martineau
Inside baseball.

2:51:08 - Leo Laporte
stuff Inside baseball kind of thing Inside baseball stuff. Thank you, Paris. Thank you, Jeff Jarvis. Jeff is the director emeritus of the Townite Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark. Graduate School of. Journalism at the City University of New York when can we throw this card out?

2:51:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Whatever you want, you're the boss.

2:51:31 - Leo Laporte
Well, no, but I want to give you something. I could always say go to gutenberg parenthesiscom, that's probably the best thing. Yeah, yes, I just want to give you something, and I like playing we want to have the craig song.

2:51:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, that's the thing.

2:51:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's true will you be involved with craig newmarket, your new posting?

2:51:46 - Jeff Jarvis
uh, I don't know yet craig.

2:51:48 - Paris Martineau
When are you going to release your news?

2:51:49 - Leo Laporte
Craig. Well, I've got to have news first. If you want the song, you've got to fund the organization no don't do that.

2:51:55 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm just saying Don't do that.

2:51:57 - Paris Martineau
You've got to fund Jeff personally, yeah don't do that, craig, there could be a chair in Craig's name, and then we'd keep playing the music.

2:52:06 - Leo Laporte
I'm just saying. I'm just saying we do this Week in Google. Every Wednesday, 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can watch us live if you want. That way, you'll get to hear all the swear words in their natural habitat at youtubecom slash twit slash live. After the fact, the bowdlerized, expurgated versions are available on the website twittv slash twig. There is a YouTube channel. Do we bleep the YouTube content? Yeah, we do. There's a YouTube channel with the video dedicated to this Week in Google. You can also subscribe to your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get automatically the minute it's available.

Thank you for being here.

2:52:52 - Speaker 4
Everybody, have a wonderful week We'll see you next time on this Week in Google. Bye-bye.