TWiT 992 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 Twit this Week in Tech First show from our new attic studio. I hope you'll enjoy it. We've got a great panel to celebrate it with Abrar Alhidi from CNET, Shoshana Weissman from R Street and Andrew Chow, the author of this new book, Cryptomania. We'll talk about Cryptomania, the DOJ antitrust suit against Google. It looks like the DOJ has won, but what will the penalty be? And AI regulation and COSA, the Kids Online Safety Act why, sometimes too much regulation is a bad thing. All that coming up and a whole lot more live from the attic studio. It's time for Twit Podcasts you love from people you trust this is twit.

This is twit this week in tech, episode 992. Recorded sunday, august 11th, 2024. Why not pudding? It's time for Twit this week in tech, the show where we get together with the best journalists in the business and talk about the week's tech news. And it's a little different looking today because we, as you know from last week, we shut down the twit East side studios and I'm in my attic right now and, weirdly, I just happen to have an attic that's perfectly decorated for this. Just, it's lit, everything it's just. Uh, it's an amazing thing. Hey, great show playing for you today. We welcome back Shoshana Weissman from our streetorg. Always a pleasure to see her. She lives in a pineapple under DC. Don't look now. There's a giant hot dog sneaking up behind you. There is, yeah, unless that's part of your work to regulate processed meats in the marketplace.

0:01:59 - Shoshana Weissmann
It's that, it's mainly that, not entirely.

0:02:01 - Leo Laporte
The hot dogs don't like you. Hi, shoshana, great to see you. Welcome Also here, abrar Alhidi from CNET, formerly CNET, now ZDNet. I don't know what they're going to do with the name, all the letters, yeah.

0:02:16 - Abrar Al-Heeti
All the letters Great to see you.

0:02:18 - Leo Laporte
Have you been with CNET long enough to have remembered when CNET owned ZDNet?

0:02:23 - Abrar Al-Heeti
No, I joined CNET in 2017, but I keep hearing the lore and it's fascinating to hear it continue on to the next chapter.

0:02:31 - Leo Laporte
I'm part of that lore because I was the fourth employee at CNET. Oh, wow, yeah. And when I came to they kind of Halsey Minor kind of he called me and he had his office was in an abandoned railroad car Well, it was nice and that was decorated with an old railroad car in San Francisco and he called. He didn't talk to me for six weeks. He completely ghosted me and then called me in to his office and said look, ziff Davis is looking for people. Hint, hint, ziff Davis is looking. He gave me the like, the job listing. He never said you're fired, he just said Ziff Davis is looking. He gave me the like, the job listing. He never said you're fired, he just said Ziff Davis is looking for. So I guess I learned my lesson. I went to work for Ziff Davis and so I've worked for both.

0:03:13 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I love that. Wow, that's a really fun origin story. We got to talk more about that. I love it yeah.

0:03:17 - Leo Laporte
Well, the sad thing is Halsey was looking for investors at the time and he said if you had $10,000, I can give you a pretty big chunk of the company. And I said I don't have $10,000. And now I don't have a big chunk of the company. So it goes around. What goes around comes around. Hey, somebody else we want to welcome first time on the show. He's an author. Brand new book just came out. Time Magazine's culture correspondent, andrew Chow, is here. Hi, andrew, great to meet you. Timing is perfect on this book Cryptomania, hype, Hope and the Fall of FTX's Billion Dollar FinTech Empire. And, by the way, it's a really good read. It's on my bedside table because it's a great story and you are very good at making it real. It's not a dry story. You've got the scenarios in there in the True Time magazine fashion. It's really, really great.

0:04:14 - Andrew Chow
Thank you so much. Yeah, it just came out on Tuesday. It's filled with real characters, real people, and you know the hype and the hope from the title is back in crypto now. Oh, no For better, no for better or worse, oh no so um, I'm sure we'll save that for later in the show I?

0:04:31 - Leo Laporte
uh, there's this uh a little scenario in here. I'll just give you an example from the book. Uh, at the peak of nfts, remember the board apes yacht club? Uh, on november 10th 2021, people who was one of the guys behind the Bored Apes Yacht Club appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon announced he had bought his first NFT a Bored Ape and in January he dedicated several minutes of an interview with Paris Hilton to the Bored Ape Yacht Club. They each held up printouts of their apes aloft to a confused and nervously giggling crowd. Many Tonight Show viewers said something was amiss. They knew better than Jimmy and Paris and the whole gang and Beeple, although Beeple came away with some money.

0:05:25 - Andrew Chow
So Beeple was actually not behind the Bored Apes, he was another artist, he was a big guy, right.

0:05:32 - Leo Laporte
He released, I think, the most expensive NFT, which was all of his works in one.

0:05:38 - Andrew Chow
He sold a group of NFTs for $69 million. That's, yes, a million. And that was one of the catalysts that made all of us go what the hell is happening and why is so much money flowing into the space um, a few months later? Yeah, there was that. I don't know if you guys remember this jimmy fallon interview, which was, uh, one of the most excruciating 30 seconds of television history of just jimmy and paris holding up their apes saying, isn't this cool? And the audience is like, is it? Is it? I guess it's cool, is it?

0:06:12 - Leo Laporte
fallon sailor cap wearing ape reminded him of his self. He said because, quote, I love yacht rock and being breezy is something what an adult male would say. You know that's, in a way, the whole crypto thing is an embarrassment and yet, as you say, it's back. In fact, donald Trump addressed the big Bitcoin conference a couple of weeks ago and said that he was going to the United States, was going to buy, we were going to have the Fort Knox of Bitcoin.

0:06:44 - Andrew Chow
For years, Donald Trump was posting um on social media about how much he hated bitcoin and was skeptical about it.

0:06:51 - Leo Laporte
It's not real money.

0:06:52 - Andrew Chow
He said exactly how it seems like a scam, how it was going to threaten the us dollar, and he was just nota fan when he was a president. He did nothing to help it and suddenly, about maybe two, three months ago, he actually decided that he's a huge proponent of bitcoin. Wait, these guys have money. Oh, I like them. Yes, so I would say you know that there are plenty of reasons that he has offered, not enough reasons, I would say. You know most of it is scripted, but, yes, crypto magnates have an enormous amount of money still, especially as the market has surged this year.

0:07:30 - Leo Laporte
I think that's really the bottom line, isn't it Right?

0:07:32 - Andrew Chow
Because money in America money buys elections.

0:07:35 - Leo Laporte
Unfortunately, sad to say.

0:07:37 - Andrew Chow
The Winklevoss twins, who are deep into crypto now each pledged a million dollars to the Trump campaign and you know Trump has shown a penchant of going wherever the money is. He also at that Bitcoin conference in Nashville he was selling sort of like meet and greet tickets for about $800,000 a head. So he understands that this is a very muddied space and that maybe he can, you know, like get get ahead a little bit. Yeah he so right now he's reading speeches that talk a big game about how he's going to put Bitcoin in the National Reserve. He's never going to sell. The whole Bitcoin mining industry is going to be in the US.

0:08:12 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, that was another thing he said and I actually wanted to ask you. He said every Bitcoiner knows never sell your Bitcoin. Is that true?

0:08:21 - Andrew Chow
There's a phrase called HODL, h-o-d-l, which is a misspelling of hold, and it's a refrain on crypto Twitter, which basically means Diamond hands, diamond hands, exactly. You got your diamond hands out. You're never going to sell, You're going to buy and you're just going to hold on for dear life.

0:08:38 - Leo Laporte
Just remember what happened to Hodor in the Game of Thrones. That's all I'm going to say. It's not a good flow. It's not money until you turn it into dollars. Oh, people are going to yell at me for saying that.

0:08:51 - Andrew Chow
Oh yeah, if you've ever met a crypto upgrade, they are passionate, yeah, and they're mad and they hate anybody who speaks any sort of skepticism. So look forward to that in the coming days. They're probably in the chat right now, actually.

0:09:08 - Leo Laporte
But it did. Bitcoin did hit a high, a record high recently and I mean it's well. It's over 60,000, right At this point.

0:09:16 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, so my book traces sort of the rise and fall over the pandemic, where it jumped from maybe $10,000 all the way to $69,000. And then, after the FTX crash, um jumped or fell back down to 17 or 18. So Sam Bankman Freed who's, yeah, one of the I guess he's the villain of my book uh precipitated a lot of the um bad, uh mechanics that contributed to the crash. But yeah so it was down to 18,000 and then it rocketed all the way back, climbed up to 70. Then there was a giant flash crash last week that was just part and parcel of a larger market crash.

0:09:59 - Leo Laporte
Down to 50, from 70 to 50.

0:10:03 - Andrew Chow
In the blink of an eye. So that just shows how volatile this stuff is. It can go up really fast. It could go down really, really fast, despite a lot of the market participants talking about, oh, it's not volatile anymore, you know, it's grown up. We're integrating it into all of the traditional systems, which should be worrying for all sorts of reasons. But, um, yeah, it's, it's. We're going to be on the roller coaster for a while, as much as some people would like it to just crawl into a hole. The it's belief system sort of transcends facts a lot of the time and it's almost like a religion for so many people. Um, so we're still going to, unfortunately, have to be having these conversations for for a while, especially if people like Trump remain in the public arena of politics.

0:10:51 - Leo Laporte
And, of course, as the author of Cryptomania, brand new from Simon Schuster, you might want to keep that going. Let's everybody buy this book. Actually, it's really a good read. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for being on. I didn't realize the book just came out. Buy this book. Actually, it's really a good read. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for being on. I didn't realize the book just came out. That's great. I've actually had a galley, I guess, for a while and really enjoyed it. So well done, thank you, well done.

Biggest story of the week, though and usually I save the sad stories for the end of the show, but I think this is such a big story it's going to be our lead which is the passing of Susan Wojcicki, who many, many years ago, rented her garage to a couple of young guys from Stanford named Sergey Brin and Larry Page and became one of the earliest employees of Google. You may remember she ran YouTube until a couple of years ago, when she retired for health reasons. Well, now we know why she had lung cancer and she passed this week, but everybody who knew her sings her praises. Really a tragic story. She was only 56, but a very important Googler.

0:12:06 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, that was quite jolting. I had the pleasure of meeting her very briefly once a couple of years ago at an event, her and her sister Anne, and just a very brief exchange, but they were both so sweet and you know, I just this was a complete shock and it's even when you have just a very brief interaction with somebody and to know that they're gone, it's still very jolting.

0:12:29 - Leo Laporte
Actually, anne founded 23andMe, so it's really an interesting family and I think it was their mom's garage right that they rented to Google, or maybe not. She was working at Intel, according to the Washington Post, rented the garage of her Menlo Park home to Larry and Sergey for $1,700 a month, which is a lot for a garage, but maybe not in Menlo Park, I don't know. That's where PageRank was invented and Google was launched. She was employee number 16, their first marketing manager launched. She was employee number 16, their first marketing manager. She launched AdSense, which you could say you know really powers Google to this day.

Google Analytics, google Books, google Images the distinctive Google Doodle was her idea on the site. She, in 2006, said you know, we should buy this thing called YouTube, which was kind of crazy in 2006. I don't know if you remember, but YouTube was being sued like crazy, especially by NBC, because people kept posting clips from Saturday Night Live, and I remember interviewing the founders of Google, of YouTube at the time, saying how are you going to survive when all the content on your site is basically piracy? Well, maybe they had some inside insight because obviously Google buying them in 2006 kind of transformed the site and she became its CEO in 2014. She also helped shepherd the acquisition of double click, so really the, in a way, the modern Google was a creation of Susan Wojcicki. I see you nodding, shoshana, you think? I think it really didn't look like YouTube could possibly survive in 2006.

0:14:22 - Shoshana Weissmann
No, it's so interesting to think about that. Hindsight is oh, of course, these platforms were going to do great. Of course they knew. It's so interesting too, because a lot of platform problems when they get acquired happen because of copyright and intellectual property issues and they're happy to be handed off to someone bigger. I love hearing the retelling of how all this stuff happened, and I'm a dork for thinking through that stuff, so I'm loving what you're talking about.

0:14:50 - Leo Laporte
We interviewed one of the founders of Google, steve Chen, on our show Inside the Net. Amber McArthur and I did. I remember Amber was the first to show me YouTube in 2004. I was doing a show in Canada and she was my co-host and they were still airing that episode until very recently. So people must have thought I was a complete idiot because she said hey, leo, there's this site called YouTube. It's cool, you could put your videos on it. And I went oh, that's interesting, I never heard of that. And people seeing that last year must have thought really, you're a tech guy, you never heard of it. But this was back in 2004. We later interviewed Steve Chen and at the time I remember NBC was mad, was hopping mad, because they kept posting clips from Saturday Night Live. Having Google behind you helps in those cases and I think NBC saw the light. In fact it brought Saturday Night Live back from the dead, if you ask me.

0:15:53 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, I mean, one of the first clips to really explode on YouTube was Lazy Sunday, andy Samberg's rap, which, as you just said, it was huge for Samberg's career and just making SNL cool again and just showing how clips could spread so much faster over the internet. I don't know if you guys are like I'm sort of the perfect age of remembering how like memes really dominated that early era of YouTube, before we even knew what a meme was. I'm thinking of like the lightsaber kid, the numa numa guy, chocolate rain these were all like these proto Chocolate rain. Yes, yeah, these proto memes that sort of set the template for how culture is still going to spread. You know, two decades later, this was before TikTok.

0:16:40 - Leo Laporte
This was TikTok before it was around. I mean, this is how everybody saw this. How old are you, andrew? 32. So you grew up watching YouTube. My kid's 30. I remember coming home and he and his high school buddies were just they weren't watching TV, they were watching YouTube. You grew up watching YouTube.

0:17:01 - Andrew Chow
I remember like when it came out and how novel it and exciting it was. It was so glitchy and the videos were so low quality, but it was able to show us content that was like very juvenile but seemed to relate to teenagers in a way that like the being on TV wasn't, wasn't speaking to us. Um, also, I just wanted to um. So my time magazine colleague, Belinda Luscombe, wrote a profile of Wojcicki. Sorry, how do you pronounce her name, Wojcicki? There's an extra C, no one knows why. Yeah, In 2015,. That's a really good read, but this is sort of a story from her early life. She grew up on the Stanford University campus next to the Danzigs. George Danzig created the simplex method, an algorithm for linear programming considered one of the top 10 algorithms of the last century. The scene in Good Will Hunting in which Matt Damon's character solves a math equation on the board is based on an incident in his life.

0:18:05 - Shoshana Weissmann
No kidding.

0:18:06 - Andrew Chow
So this guy, Dan Sig, who is her neighbor, grew lemons and at a young age the sisters used to pick the fruit and sell it door to door for five cents each. People used to call us the lemon sisters. They thought it was a great deal. She said, Wow. The parallels with her current job are hard to miss. She brings something made by someone else to other people's homes for an unbeatable price, and there are two ways to regard what she delivers it's either the product of a genius or lemon. In any case, it's a great deal.

0:18:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's beautiful. Good, I'll look for that time profile from a couple of years. Back, time did name her one of the most influential people in the world 100 most influential people in the world in 2015. And she actually, I think, spearheaded the move from being kind of a source of juvenile groin kick videos to educational videos. She was one of the people who said you know, this could be an education platform. Salman Khan had probably done a Khan Academy around that time. She said we should be hosting those kinds of videos and really, if YouTube has any value these days to the general populace, it is that, isn't it? That you can go there and you can figure out, you can find out how to do almost anything on YouTube and learn almost anything on YouTube Even the simplex method, I suppose, if you had a mind for it. I do not.

0:19:30 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, I think that's what's so cool about it. It's so versatile, right? It's like, okay, my washing machine stopped working the other day, I went to YouTube and looked for videos and then, on the other hand, when you want to just unwind, you put on some. You know your favorite comedian and you just you know it's.

0:19:44 - Leo Laporte
it probably should scare the pants off network television and broadcasters and and even streamers like Netflix. Uh, I talk to people all the time that's their one and only source of entertainment is YouTube. Everything's there.

0:19:57 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It's like this weird fine line where those broadcasters and those streamers do and should post clips, but not too many clips, because they still want you to subscribe and pay, but they want to tease it enough that you're like, oh, this is good, I need more. But yeah, it's a really fine-lined walk.

0:20:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm glad that, andrew, you mentioned the Lonely Island video, because the video that I remember first from YouTube was Dick in a Box, but you didn't say that and I'm proud of you for not mentioning that. Thank you, I really thought you might go there and if you haven't seen that, I don't Don't. Although it's pretty darn hysterical, google is in the news big time this week because they lost their antitrust suit to the DOJ. The Department of Justice has been suing Google as a monopoly. The judge, amit Mehta in Washington DC said that in fact, google illegally monopolized the search market. He particularly pointed out their exclusive deals this was on Monday saying that their $26 billion in payments every year to Apple, to Samsung and to Mozilla the makers of Firefox essentially were anti-competitive. Google's distribution agreements, he wrote, foreclose a substantial portion of the general search services market and impair rivals' opportunities. To complete, I mean that is, if there's a Shoshana, that's the definition of antitrust right. You use your market monopoly to keep people from competing.

0:21:44 - Shoshana Weissmann
So I haven't had a chance to dig into the full thing yet. I've been very, very exhausted with COSA and age verification.

0:21:51 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we'll get to that. Oh, we'll get to that, oh yeah.

0:21:54 - Shoshana Weissmann
But that's why I haven't had a chance to dig into this yet. My colleague has, and my colleague, josh Withrow, wrote about it. But basically, we disagree with the court on a lot of stuff, and one thing that I don't think the court really got to, from what I saw preliminarily, is just that people search in very different ways. Like, if I'm looking for I know this is very nerdy, but if I'm looking for trailhead pictures or pictures of a hike, I'm better off on Instagram or AllTrail searching there. If I search on Google, I might get something, but the images aren't very good that way for me. I sometimes start searching on Amazon or Shopify for products rather than Google, because Google Shop doesn't usually do as much for me as that.

There's a lot of complexity here and I think a lot of times judges and lawmakers define markets far too narrowly rather than realizing the broad ways in which competition happens. Also, I mean, some people prefer Safari, but you can always still use Safari. No one's stopping you from doing that, and when I have Safari up, I just close it out for Google. It's a choice that a lot of consumers make, so I don't really buy where the court's coming from. I think it's just like Google is a victim of its success in regard to search, here more than anything.

0:23:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, a number of people. We were talking about this, I think, on Mac Break Weekly. A lot of people I think it was Alex Lindsay said the problem is the courts are always behind the game, right? So the DOJ went after Microsoft just before their monopoly in browsers was dying anyway and would have died probably anyway. I'm not sure I agree with that, but that's the point you're making. Is that people are using I keep hearing millennials are using TikTok to search, or Zoomers are using TikTok to search. Yeah, I find hard to believe it's true, though You're nodding, Abrar.

0:23:46 - Abrar Al-Heeti
You use.

0:23:46 - Leo Laporte
TikTok to search. Yeah, I find hard to believe. It's true, you're nodding a bra. You use TikTok to find stuff.

0:23:49 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It's me. Yeah, wait a minute.

0:23:52 - Leo Laporte
Okay, let's be honest. When you're washing, the machine went on the fritz. Did you go to TikTok?

0:23:56 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I did actually. Can you believe it? Because I was going to say it? But then I was. I started, I thought about it, I did a Google search first, okay, and then I saw-.

0:24:04 - Leo Laporte
And it was useless because it all it did is offer you new washing machines.

0:24:07 - Abrar Al-Heeti
So then I went to TikTok and then I actually got what I needed and I pulled up the suit here because it says you know, among Gen Z, I'm a millennial but I'm 30. And I feel like I'm kind of zillennial, but not actually, but I feel like it because I'm on TikTok all the time. But apparently 63% of people say they use TikTok as a search engine who are Gen Z.

0:24:31 - Leo Laporte
That just boggles my mind, although I've had this debate with my daughter, who's also 32, and she said Dad, you're just so old fashioned. Nobody uses Google anymore. Tiktok is the home of dancing and singing videos. How does that help you in search? I don't understand.

0:24:46 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It's so.

0:24:48 - Leo Laporte
I know I'm a boomer, I know no no, no, this is a very valid question.

0:24:50 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I think it's something that people are wondering and there is okay, yes, there is singing and dancing but there is a very real person, real world aspect where if I, when I'm searching for a product or I want opinions on a product, I will go to tick talk to see how real people feel about it, because they will be honest, they'll say like, okay, this really worked well for me. I've even I mean, I would not advise this, but like, even like for like medications. I'm like, how did people react to this?

0:25:17 - Leo Laporte
Which is awful. Please don't do that.

0:25:18 - Abrar Al-Heeti
But like talk to your doctor. Well, when you eat your Tide pods you really should wash it down with a lot of water. That's exactly what I'm searching. But, yeah, for those kinds of things where you want, like a real person who may have experienced a thing that you're experienced, we will upload everything to TikTok, so it's highly likely that you'll find something. But please fact check what you find, but still, I feel like I feel so old.

0:25:44 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure that's what people said about YouTube too. What you mean? The groin kick video site? That's where you go to learn how to do simplex coding. No, come on man. But TikTok does focus on shorter videos.

0:25:57 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yes, although they've been pushing longer videos so there. You could even upload up to 30-minute videos, which I hope to God I never stumble upon a 30-minute TikTok video, but apparently that's.

0:26:05 - Leo Laporte
TikTok video. Yeah, who would watch that? But apparently that's an option. No, you just swipe. I mean 30 seconds in. You swipe, no matter what you're looking at.

0:26:11 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Right, my thing, but they're experimenting with that, I guess, in the same way that any video platform is. You start with 15 seconds and you build up.

0:26:18 - Leo Laporte
Do you agree with R Street Shoshana's lobbying firm that Google isn't a? I mean you're not saying they're not a monopoly, shoshana, or he's not saying your colleague.

0:26:31 - Shoshana Weissmann
Well, they have the majority of the stuff.

0:26:35 - Leo Laporte
They're totally like 80 or 90% of search right. Oh yeah, it's done through Google, that's a monopoly.

0:26:41 - Shoshana Weissmann
That's not everything. That's required to be a monopoly, though, like they have to be actively stopping competition unfair practices.

0:26:48 - Leo Laporte
Well it seems to me paying Apple $20 billion a year so that Google's a default search on Safari. That seems pretty anti-competitive, Is it not?

0:27:03 - Shoshana Weissmann
What I don't get, though and I mean this genuinely is I don't understand why they would pay that, because everyone who gets an iPhone switches over immediately anyway, like that was already happening.

0:27:08 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if they do. It's the tyranny of the default. I think you can, but people just do whatever is the default usually right.

0:27:16 - Shoshana Weissmann
I don't know Any device I've had. I always switch over to Google for stuff. Safari annoys me with some of their settings, and then Internet Explorer, but you know when you're on the iPhone, you're still using WebKit.

0:27:28 - Leo Laporte
You're not using Chrome when you use Chrome, because Chrome is required by app but another, by the way, anti-competitive move, chrome is required by Apple to be WebKit, to be Safari, with a Chrome on top of it, a Chrome interface.

0:27:41 - Shoshana Weissmann
Oh, I didn't know that I only have Androids.

0:27:51 - Leo Laporte
But they're saying Apple's a monopoly too, and I'm like I have another kind of phone. Well, all right, you know, I mean it's a tenable point of view. I'm just curious, abrar you agree?

0:27:54 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I don't know. I feel like that brings up a really interesting point. I feel like I, I I mean when I my immediate reaction was okay, shocker, google is deemed a monopoly.

0:28:05 - Leo Laporte
It seems obvious.

0:28:05 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah. So I feel like I need to dig more into that alternative viewpoint and I am absolutely intrigued by that. So, yeah, I'm not going to make a decision until I know more, but it is kind of like a yeah, they're kind of everywhere, yeah, yeah.

0:28:24 - Leo Laporte
But I guess it's not. Simply being a monopoly is not sufficient. That's not being big, and it often seems like Congress feels like being big is the is the bad thing. But that's not illegal to be big.

0:28:39 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Right.

0:28:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so Andrew go ahead.

0:28:43 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, I was just reading about this a little bit, but yeah, I mean, that's sort of what Google's lawyers were arguing during the case is like sorry, sorry, we're successful. Sorry. From what I can see, it does seem like Meta is pointing to some pretty specific monopolistic practices. Meta the judge, not Meta the Zuckerberg, correct.

It's confusing, judge Meta, which is very confusing, meta, not the Zuckerberg, correct? It's confusing, judge Meta, which is very confusing. But, as you mentioned, yeah, paying smartphone companies and browser makers billions and billions of dollars so that Google is the default search engine seems monopolistic to me. And also to Shoshana's point why are they doing it? They already had such a lock on so many people's minds and imaginations. But I do think, as you said, leo, just like the habit forming process of if just you have a default browser, a lot of people are just not going to change it, and that's very powerful.

The other thing I just want to say about this is Judge Mehta cited a specific case many times in his ruling that goes back to 2000. This was like the last big antitrust ruling in tech against Microsoft and you had mentioned this earlier the top, leo, of like the majority of computers just running Windows software, running Internet Explorer, and there was this major ruling in 2000. Now I would love to actually go back and see was Internet Explorer's dominance already on the wane, or was this ruling instrumental in allowing Firefox and Chrome to rise?

0:30:21 - Leo Laporte
I would love to. That's the case I make is that you wouldn't have a Google if it weren't for the DOJ shutting Microsoft down, starting in 1998 in the final consent decree I think it was early 2000s that really opened the door for Google, and so, in general, I think that's kind of the point. It's interesting did not say Google had a monopoly in search of all things, pointing to Amazon and, I think, walmart Wait a minute, that can't be right, they're saying and Meta, there are other companies that do search, so they don't have a monopoly in search. And, by the way, the real question is what is the remedy going to be? He's made the decision, but now there'll be a hearing for next month to decide a separate trial, the timing for a separate trial for the remedy. So there's going to be a whole, nother trial. It's not clear what the Justice Department wants. It's not clear what the Justice Department wants. They did say that the ballot solution that European regulators used to choose search engines didn't work. Nobody switched. So it implies that they are not going to seek some sort of ballot when you sign up. That's a terrible. Remember that happened with the Microsoft case in the EU. They had the browser ballot, and when you first installed Windows, you got to choose which of a number of obscure browsers you'd prefer to use. Apparently, that doesn't work when you're talking about search.

The Washington I'm sorry. Bloomberg says the agency could demand the separation of Alphabet's search business from other products like Android or Chrome, so it could be a breakup. The judge could also stop short of ordering a full breakup and just say, yeah, these exclusive search deals, you got to stop those. The only person that hurts is Apple, which gets $20 billion a year from it. It's about a third of its services revenue and a big services quarter. This quarter thanks to Google. In large part it really hurts Firefox, that's. Most of Mozilla's funding comes from Google, so I don't know if that remedy is a very good remedy. It doesn't hurt Google. I mean it's a yeah. Stop spending billions of dollars on these other companies.

0:32:40 - Andrew Chow
Ooh, you're a bad boy. It's such an irony. It's such an irony because Firefox and Mozilla, they're all about open source technology and having these open systems. But yeah, sort of the financial reality is that 80% of Mozilla's operating budget is coming from Google, is coming from Google. So you know, you can agree with the ideals of Mozilla and open source and these strong antitrust laws, and then they are sort of being helped by the.

0:33:15 - Leo Laporte
yeah, I mean the hand that feeds them. Incidentally, I want to point out, the judge did not mention TikTok as a credible competitor. Weirdly, he mentioned Amazon and he did mention Walmart I wasn't hallucinating and other retailers have begun offering advertising related to searches on their own websites, so apparently, weirdly, that's letting Google off the hook when it comes to their search monopoly. All right, let's take a little break. We are doing the first twit from the attic studio, but I'm so glad that I have other people working in their attics, except for Shoshana who apparently is working on Hot Dog Hill. But actually, is that the Microsoft Bliss wallpaper with hot dogs? Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought.

0:34:06 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah.

0:34:06 - Leo Laporte
Okay, all right. Is it a commentary? Is that a subtle commentary on Microsoft?

0:34:13 - Shoshana Weissmann
No, it's just when the Snapchat hot dog meme was really popular. This was my favorite thing to come out of it. It's just, it's perfect.

0:34:22 - Leo Laporte
I missed that one. What does the Snapchat hot dog dog mean?

0:34:26 - Shoshana Weissmann
that was their plan to monetize when they started doing like art, artificial, like virtual, like like characters that danced around, the hot dog was the first and everyone was laughing at them because they're like this is, this is how they're going to monetize, like this is their plan. So I just I fell in love with it instantly and it's it's been in my heart ever since. Aw.

0:34:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, there you go, and she's up there in Hot Dog Hill. Andrew Choi is also here. Brand new book, cryptomania, just came out. Really really a good read, and I'm not just saying that, I actually read it Hype Hope and the Fall of FTX's Billion Dollar Fintech Empire. Thank you for joining us. Andrew's works at the time, not a bad place to be a correspondent for and also with us from CNET. Are you how? What was the reaction side of CNET to the acquisition this week by ZDNet Was? Were people like freaked out, or what?

0:35:23 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I think, I think, you know, I think that'd be natural for any acquisition, but this one. I think there was more excitement just because Ziff Davis feels like a good fit.

0:35:31 - Leo Laporte
And um, it's in fact better, can I just say better, than private equity, than red ventures. You can say it, although who owns Ziff Davis?

0:35:41 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Um Ziff Davis is public and there you go. And and so I think it'll be. Yeah, it'll be. It'll be nice to start something different there. New chapter.

0:35:56 - Leo Laporte
We're all staying optimistic.

0:35:58 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, the only bad thing is, once again, you have to change your email address. Yes, that's really the biggest thing. You get your business cards. It's a whole. It's a whole thing. You know what? I can't complain. You're going to get new business cards. It's a whole thing.

0:36:05 - Leo Laporte
But you know what, I can't complain. When Benito saw the story my producer he said oh no, how do I get a hold of people now? What's their new? He was worried about that. Right, benito, you were worried about the new email addresses.

0:36:18 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, because I mean I was working at CBS Interactive Actually, I was working at CNET when they switched over to CBS Interactive. Oh, you've been through this, so I was there for that. Oh, I get it.

0:36:25 - Leo Laporte
No wonder you were worried.

0:36:26 - Abrar Al-Heeti
You'll get a special email with my new email address. You'll be the first person I promise. Thank you so much, Sabrar.

0:36:32 - Leo Laporte
Yes, if we are in touch with you at some odd address, please.

0:36:39 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I wouldn't let that happen to you. Don't let that happen to you. I seem to have frozen. Am I frozen?

0:36:44 - Leo Laporte
Did I freeze myself.

0:36:46 - Shoshana Weissmann
I think. I did.

0:36:47 - Leo Laporte
What did I do? I've been messing with something and I screwed myself up.

0:36:52 - Benito Gonzalez
In Zoom. It looks like you lost your camera in Zoom.

0:36:55 - Shoshana Weissmann
Ah, okay, you can be reanimated in many years, now that you're frozen at a time of your choosing.

0:37:02 - Leo Laporte
So Well, that would be good. I will take that. What did I do Last time? We just toggled your camera in Zoom on and off. Toggled my camera in Zoom on and off. That's Anthony Nielsen who is our technical expert at this point. And how do I do that?

0:37:21 - Benito Gonzalez
In Zoom itself, that little camera icon. Yeah, the camera icon at the bottom.

0:37:26 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, I stopped it by accident. I clicked a button. Oh, there you go. Next thing you're gonna do is say leo, oh, okay, we're still working this out. Also, it's a. It's a little sweaty up here. Okay, thank you all for being here. First show we're gonna have a little first show. Uh, problems, but we're appreciative, we're glad you're all here. Our show today we're very glad to have our sponsor, zip recruiter with us. They've been such such a great partner for us for so long.

You know, finding great candidates to hire, these days especially, is like finding a needle in a haystack. You're going to get a lot of resumes but not enough candidates with the right skills or experience. And then there's another problem If you find somebody you really like, you're competing with 10 other companies trying to hire them away. See, this is where ZipRecruiter is our advantage when we use ZipRecruiter, and it's your advantage too, because ZipRecruiter does this cool thing as soon as you post, they're going to find amazing candidates for you fast. They're going to look at your posting. They're going to say, oh, because they have more than a million current resumes.

People come to ZipRecruiter looking for jobs. They're going to say, oh, oh, we got somebody for you and they'll send you that person's name, their resume. Then you decide, oh, is this a good person? And you invite them to apply. And I got to tell you that's a great secret weapon when you invite somebody to apply, you jump ahead of that list of everybody else trying to hire that person because they want to be with somebody who wants them right, who doesn't? Right now you could try it for free. Ziprecruitercom slash twit. Ziprecruiter's smart technology identifies the top talent for your roles quickly so you can invite them. That's an amazing additional trick. To give you an advantage. They also have tags. You can say things like remote work available, things that make people look twice at your listing. So ditch those other hiring sites. Do what we did. Let ZipRecruiter help you find what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack.

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. For us it's generally within the first hour. I know because Lisa's you know in the morning we're at breakfast she says oh, I got, you know, we got to replace Ashley. She got another job, another place and she's moving. And what are we going to do? We got two weeks. She posts on ZipRecruiter and literally before lunch she's going. Oh look, we got a great candidate. Oh, we got another great candidate. That's how we found Viva. You were the great candidate, viva. Try it for free at this exclusive web address ZipRecruitercom slash twit. That's ZipRecruitercom slash T-W-I-T. Ziprecruiter the smartest way to hire, recruiter, the smartest way to hire. And we thank them so much for their support of our show this week in tech and, uh, the first show in the attic studio. Somebody said your camera's too good you could never let them see you sweat.

Um, we have a great panel. It's great to have you, andro chow, first time on twit. Author of cryptomanomania is a correspondent at Time Magazine. We love having you here. Abrar Alhidi, we love you From CNET and from rstreetorg. The wonderful Shoshana Weissman. She lives in a pineapple under DC. She's also Senator Shoshana, on Twitter. You still using the Twitter.

0:40:55 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, I mean, the real senators and congressmen are still there. So as long as they're there and the reporters are there, I have to be, that's kind of interesting.

0:41:04 - Leo Laporte
They haven't left it. Elon keeps getting in trouble, though I have to say he's not. He has found all sorts of ways Now. The latest is the former chairman of the board of twitter, uh, who had a huge amount of twitter stock and was supposed to be paid off when elon took the stock took. The company private is suing for 20 million dollars, saying elon never gave me my money. What is? How can he even I don't even I guess he's also, since he never paid the rent in San Francisco. Did he ever pay the rent? They're moving now. They're moving down to San Jose End of America.

X.

0:41:48 - Andrew Chow
Elon's made it clear how much he hates San Francisco and how much he thinks it's overrun with all the wrong people.

0:41:54 - Leo Laporte
He hates everything, though. He also said we're getting out of California although he hasn't done that yet, but they're moving Tesla and Star what is it? Spacex out of California to Texas because he didn't like some rule that said schools didn't have to report pronouns to the parents, and he says well, that's no good, I'm leaving. I swear, elon.

0:42:17 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I swear Elon. That's why that article about. When I saw that article about the moving the Twitter HQ, I was like, okay, I guess they must be leaving California. I was like they're going to San Jose.

0:42:26 - Leo Laporte
I was like what, Just down the road Okay all right, all right, cool, I guess it's an interim thing, they're moving temporarily. Yeah, yeah, we actually aren't done with the Google stories. Let's see. Google also got in a little bit of trouble for an ad that they published that they played for on the Olympics. Did you see the Dear Sydney ad? This was a Google ad with a parent talking to Google's AI. The parent talking to google's ai saying help my daughter write a letter to her favorite athlete, which pissed people off. It's like that's not parenting. That's not parenting. Have an ai write the letter. No, have the kid write the letter. It was called dear sydney was developed in house to promote google's gemini ai platform. But but, according to Ad Age, viewers had a difficult time looking past its miscalculated storyline. Google has pulled. The ad got a lot of airplay last week during the Olympics, including NBC primetime, also on ECNBC in USA. Yes, people are turning against the word AI, aren't they?

0:43:44 - Andrew Chow
I'm dying to talk about AI in the Olympics here. I don't know if, like I've been following the Olympics like everybody in the world. It's just like such a unifier and you can see in the numbers on social media how much people it's like. You know. The biggest, biggest. It's bigger than harris wallace.

0:44:01 - Leo Laporte
It's bigger partly because they did it right this time right, instead of then the tokyo olympics, when, when they chopped it up and they just they messed it up. Now, thanks to streaming, you can watch anything live. You can watch it later. Uh, peacock's done a great job, so I think that's been a lot of the reason for the interest, I believe.

0:44:21 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, I think so. But because it's such a big event, obviously the biggest industries and the biggest companies are going to try to come in and, you know, monetize or advertise in all these different ways. And AI is, like you know, the buzz industry or buzzword buzz industry, buzz bubble of the moment. So we're seeing all of these interesting deployments of AI around the Olympics in sort of this massive way, some good and some bad. So one of the first ones relates to Peacock, and NBC decided to to use. So there's this legendary sportscaster named al michaels and they've started to use yes, um, they trained in ai on his voice.

I mean, he's one of the you know greatest casters of the last.

0:45:13 - Shoshana Weissmann
You know many decades.

0:45:15 - Andrew Chow
Um, you know he's slowing down. He can't, you know, be there to do daily recaps anymore, I suppose. So, um, they trained an ai in his voice and now, if you go on nbc and sign up for it, at the end of the day you can get like a little personalized al michaels recap of what happened, based on what sports you're interested in. Um, and the upshot is that Al Michaels was on board. He said he was scared at first, but then he was like it sounded so good. I was excited, but also terrified. A lot of the users say that it's not actually a bad usage of AI, perhaps because they've been accustomed to hearing Al michael's voice for for decades, and now they get a sort of facsimile, maybe like a 90 version of it. Um, obviously, I would argue you know, just to hire another sportscaster like it's okay, we can, we can move on, but, um, this is a tool that hasn't been glitching, has been like it hasn't been telling lies and it's been like fairly accurate about what's been happening at the Olympics.

0:46:24 - Leo Laporte
That's encouraging Cause I want to retire and let an AI do my shows. Have you heard the Al Michaels recaps? I haven't heard him.

0:46:32 - Andrew Chow
I haven't, but one of my friends, a writer for Slate named Nitesh Pawar, wrote just wrote a piece about it. He was doing it every day. He's a big Olympics fan. He was actually like yeah, it was like helpful in like digesting and hearing um, you know what had happened that day again, like rather, just have a real person with expertise, tell me about this I think, though I know because I've watched some of the secondary sports on the olympics and some of the announcers for those lesser sports are not great.

0:47:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they have so many events that they have to get every person who's ever sat in front of a microphone and apparently some people who haven't, and so I understand that they wanted somebody well-known, a voice, a sound that was well-known. Al Michaels is. I mean, I love Al Michaels. He was the announcer during the 1989 World Series game, the San Francisco Earthquake game, and he did an amazing job of that. I know because I was at the game and I was listening to him as I was trying to get home. So he's I mean, he's legend, but there's a certain style and a flow and a cadence, and if you're just doing a recap, you probably could AI could simulate that pretty well. It wouldn't be creative.

0:47:48 - Andrew Chow
So that was one use of AI rolled out during the Olympics. That seemingly wasn't a disaster. I'm going to run through a couple more that I've been reading about. Okay, Intel, they're making a play. They say that they can use technology sort of body scanning, AI technology to identify young athletes and if they have significant talent in certain areas.

0:48:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, we won't know how that works for a few years.

0:48:13 - Andrew Chow
right, I don't know about that one. Okay, so first they said they went to some villages in senegal and scanned more than a thousand children and identifying who maybe has like a burst of of energy you know a little dystopian yeah, so we can totally debate.

We have selected these young people to be our new yes, the hunger Hunger Games vibes a bit. Then they actually set up a station outside the Olympic Stadium where kids could basically go up and measure how fast they are out of the blocks or power, reaction time and strength. Yes, there's a lot of people who would see that and just see dystopian flashing Trust.

0:49:02 - Leo Laporte
Noan in our Club Twit Discord chat says his vote is for a John Madden AI Telestrator. And all See, I would love that. Just go boom pow. I wonder if AI could do something with that much personality. That would be impressive. Wonder if AI could do something with that much personality that would be impressive. There was an article on CNN yesterday that said brands should avoid the term AI. This is a study actually published in the Journal of Hospitality, marketing and Management back in June. It found that describing a product as AI lowers a customer's intention to buy it. They sampled participants across various age groups, showed them the same products. The only difference was one was described as high tech, the other as using AI Vacuum cleaners, TVs, consumer services, health services. In every single case, the intention to buy or use the product or service was significantly lowered when we mentioned AI in the product description.

0:50:05 - Abrar Al-Heeti
That explains why Apple avoids the word.

0:50:07 - Leo Laporte
It's Apple intelligence it's Apple intelligence, it's machine learning.

0:50:11 - Abrar Al-Heeti
They know how to do it. They know how to not scare people away. When you watch WWDC, they did not drop AI as much as Google did every two seconds, and so it'll be interesting how they talk about it with the upcoming iPhone event. But yeah, I think Apple is the key example of someone you know knowing how to not scare people away.

0:50:30 - Leo Laporte
By the way, I have to give credit. The study's author is Dogen Gersoy. He is the Taco Bell Distinguished Professor of Hospitality Business Management at Washington State University.

0:50:43 - Andrew Chow
That's a chair.

0:50:45 - Leo Laporte
I am the Taco Bell Distinguished Professor of Hospitality.

0:50:49 - Shoshana Weissmann
That's the greatest title. I failed, I failed.

0:50:55 - Leo Laporte
Well, you have something to aspire to, Shoshana, Something to shoot for in your life. I guess it doesn't surprise me that maybe it's just burnout right, that AI. There's so much AI everywhere we look that people are just burnt out on it.

0:51:12 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It's like burnout and it's also just the way that generative AI just kind of seemed to come out of nowhere all at once, like obviously AI has been powering a lot of things for a long time, but with things like chat GPT kind of coming out of nowhere and saying, you know who needs to know how to write when, when chat GPT can do it, and then you have guess who's, guess who's writing articles writers, and so if they feel like they're threatened by something like artificial intelligence and gen AI, then you're not going to have the warmest reception in that regard. And then you know, public opinion is swayed as well. It's just this domino effect. But I think the way that it kind of this surge of AI everywhere, is not only leading to burnout but also distrust, because there aren't any clear guidelines yet. It's just it's here, here and it's everywhere and we don't know what it's going to do.

0:52:01 - Leo Laporte
That's actually a good point. I mean, creatives are the kind of the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to AI and they're very nervous. I think that's one of the reasons people didn't like this Google ad is because why would you have your daughter use AI to write a fan letter to her favorite athlete? Your daughter use AI to write a fan letter to her favorite athlete? Shouldn't she be writing that? I think people see this as somehow replacing humans and humanity in a way, so I understand why they're burned out on it. We may not have a choice.

We may be stuck with.

0:52:37 - Andrew Chow
AI, and I think that ad from Google just adds to the perception that these companies that are trying to roll it out don't really understand what people want or are trying to roll it out for exactly the wrong reasons.

The idea that Google could get behind this ad and think up the chain of command that it was that people want to not have their daughter write a letter to their hero.

It's just not the use case that, like there may be other use cases for this stuff, but if the company's in charge, like the techies that are like trying to convince us to use it, are coming up with this sort of stuff, it really is. The ick factor is incredibly high. I think we saw it also going back to yeah, we were talking about the displacement of creative people. The CTO of OpenAI, mira Marotti, said this year like oh, yeah, maybe AI will replace creative jobs that shouldn't have existed in the first place, and that just seemed like such a slap in the face to like who are the creative people whose jobs shouldn't exist exactly? So I think, even if these tools are really useful for some things, there's been some like you know, shooting yourself in the foot examples of where these tech companies are a little misguided as to they're so excited to get these products in every single industry that, um, yeah, the public perception is suffering.

0:53:59 - Leo Laporte
I love this quote from J Mac Joanna Maciejewski Her book Snakebitten, apparently on pre-order. She said I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes. That's so real. It's one of my favorite quotes about AI. Right on, yeah.

0:54:25 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Absolutely and I think you know. Just to add to what Andrew was saying, yes, I think the reason that ad faced so much backlash is because it's taking away something that is innately human and tender and cute and wholesome thing that is innately human and tender and cute and wholesome, whereas I think there are other AI ads that have done a better job of showing the potential to actually make your life easier and not take away something that is meaningful. And I think one example and I hate to give open AI pat on the back because I feel like they're doing a- lot of really creepy things.

But one thing that they did really well is they partnered with an app called Be my Eyes, which is for people who are blind.

And that ad where they had somebody who was blind kind of hailing a cab and getting all these instructions on or getting all these descriptions on you know their surroundings. That's a really good example of how AI can actually be helpful for people and actually fill a void. So if companies did a better job of researching those angles and providing services that are actually beneficial, then I think they would fare a lot better.

0:55:27 - Leo Laporte
Be my Eyes is such a great. That's a perfect example. It was an app that was designed for people with vision problems, but it required humans. Right, you would go into the store and you'd say what does it say on this label? And a human would have to use the app and the human would have to join you in the app and tell you Now, with OpenAI and I haven't talked to any blind people who have used this yet but the AI is doing that, so you don't have to wait for a volunteer to dial in, it'll do it instantly. I think this is a perfect example of yeah, ai can be. I'm not anti-ai, I'm. I'm actually kind of I'm known around the, the, uh, the. The network is the ai bowl.

0:56:12 - Andrew Chow
Here I'm kind of pro ai, but uh, leo, leo, I've got a question for you as a baseball fan. Okay, what are your thoughts about AI umpires?

0:56:21 - Leo Laporte
I think that's a great okay. There's a perfect example. In fact, I don't think they used it in the Olympics. They've already had cameras in tennis right as line judges, using AI as line judges. That's a perfect, perfect use for AI. It's either in or out. It either hit the line or not. Right use for AI. It's either in or out. It either hit the line or not. Right.

In football it was very controversial when both baseball and first was football and then baseball added instant replay. It's very controversial. People worried it would slow play down, it would undermine the refs, it would cause problems and it's actually proven, really a useful tool in football. I don't think anybody, any football fan these days, is against instant replay and they started using it in baseball last year. I think right, and you know it's been an improvement. Ai is fine with me when it's very clear. I don't know.

We've seen umpires in baseball make complete. I mean every umpire has a different strike zone. Is that how it should be? Right? The batter checks who the home plate umpire is before he goes into bat because he wants to know where the strike zone is going to be. It's different for everybody and when you look at now, for a long time this was controversial on TV. They didn't used to show the strike zone. They now show it for every pitch, so you know if the ump is completely off base. I think it's just a matter of time. It makes sense for AI there, do you agree, andrew? Are you a baseball fan?

0:57:54 - Andrew Chow
I am yeah and I agree. I mean the beauty of a sport like baseball, the humanity in it, does not come from the umpires, as much as I respect the craft, no the inhumanity comes from umpires, but it's what these amazing athletes are doing within very specific confines, and if the confines are malleable it worsens the beauty of the sport.

I would say so the more that you can enforce strict rules of the game so that people can focus on excellence. I think it's tough because it is amazing how most umpires develop this skill over years and it's such a craft. But it is a thing that maybe a machine can do better, maybe it should be more science than art.

0:58:49 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you know, yeah, and I correct my, I'll correct myself. Poco says uh, baseball replay started in 2014. I have not been following baseball as much as I probably should, and Surge Strip in our Discord says baseball's boring. Okay, we'll move on, let's see. All right, I think this is a good one for you.

Shoshana, you may remember the Biden administration and the FCC under the Biden administration attempted to restore net neutrality. Us court has now blocked the Biden administration FCC net neutrality rules, saying it really is Congress's job to do this. The FCC rescinded the open Internet rules in 2015 under a Republican majority, under a Democratic majority, but last April they reassumed regulatory oversight of broadband internet. I have to say I have always been a big supporter of net neutrality, but I didn't see maybe I wasn't looking, but I didn't see a complete decline in, uh, in the quality of internet or the prices of internet in the us after 2015. The, the um, the nightmare that people predicted didn't. It didn't seem to happen. Uh, the sixth circuit court of appeals, which had delayed the rule set, on thursday would temporarily block net neutrality rules, scheduled oral arguments for this fall, possibly even after the election. Where do you stand on this, shoshana? I know that essentially, our street is more libertarian. Is that a fair way to put it?

1:00:35 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, we're about free markets, so for us it's about competition. We've opposed net neutrality. I don't do telecom, I refuse to do telecom. It's too much. It's just too much. I can't do telecom. But I do think there's something to be said when advocates say if this happens, then this will happen. And when that doesn't pan out, it doesn't make the advocates look good, and it's not just advocates, it's. And it's not just advocates, it's lawmakers too. And I know some people have pointed to examples of how getting rid of net neutrality harmed in certain cases, but the disastrous consequences didn't really come to play. Even you know, when I work on age verification policy, I try very hard to make sure everything I'm saying is rooted completely. In fact, if I'm making a prediction, I have like ample reason to believe that I'm right about it, and I think a lot of net neutrality advocates kind of failed there and have some egg on their face and need to explain going further when they make predictions. Okay, you know why is this the case now, when it wasn't then? If that makes sense.

1:01:34 - Leo Laporte
The principle of net neutrality seems to me very clear and proper, which is that every bit on a company's network should be treated equally, and so that means companies like Comcast shouldn't be able to say oh you, Netflix, you're going to be fast, but we're going to make sure Disney Plus is slow. They shouldn't be able to treat different bits differently, and that was the basic principle of net neutrality. I think it's probably the case that market forces kept companies like Comcast from you know doing any of the evil, nefarious things they could have done absent a net neutrality regulation. For instance, they could say, hey, Netflix, you got to pay up. You're, you know, for a Netflix, you got to pay up.

For a long time, a lot of internet service providers said things like well, Google's free writing on our network, they should pay for all the traffic that they use on our network, when, in fact, of course, we as users are paying for the access to the network and YouTube's bits should be equal to anybody else's bits. It didn't happen. It could have happened absent net neutrality regulation. I don't know. Is it market forces that kept it from happening? It's not like we have a competitive internet service provider market in the US.

1:02:51 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, I'm not sure. You know it's funny with the internet. It's one of those things where some of the sort of natural monopolies that are starting to erode in a lot of cases and when it's natural monopolies plus such an overregulated area like regulation, touches every bit of the Internet, or at least Internet service provider, not the Internet itself yet. But it makes it kind of hard to know why things happen. In my view it's kind of the same with healthcare. Everything's so regulated that it's like if you move a piece you're not 100% sure if something happens or doesn't happen why it doesn't. Because you have the insurance levels and you have the provider levels. And I think that's a bit of it here that I think advocates got it wrong, but I'm not sure. I'm not exactly sure why it panned out the way it did.

1:03:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. Well, this is not your bailiwick. I understand. I'm putting you know you're not in charge of all libertarian positions in the world, just most, just most.

Not all, just most. But I mean also. I want to be very fair because I'm a huge advocate for net neutrality, but I want to be fair. We didn't see the negative consequences we thought we might see.

Of course, it's not a very competitive environment in the US. Most people something like 80% of people in the US have at best two choices for internet service a phone company and a cable company. That's not I mean sitting here in my attic. I have no choice. I have to use Comcast for, uh, the, the access. Comcast has been going up and down over. I was terrified. Last few weeks it's been dropping out for three or four minutes. Well, who else can I choose? No one, no one except Starlink. So we did order a star. I'm looking up. We did order Starlink, so we did order I'm looking up. We did order Starlink. At some point I'll have that as a failover. But it's kind of terrifying to do what we're doing here, which is live streaming for hours a day relying on Comcast. That seems like a risky business. At the studio we had five different internet service providers for redundancy.

1:05:00 - Benito Gonzalez
Hey Leo, so this is Benito Hi Benito. Different internet service providers for redundancy. Hey Leo, so this is Benito Hi Benito. So I lived in the Philippines for a big chunk of my life and there is no net neutrality there. And what I can tell you about having no net neutrality is that one company gets to dictate the entire internet. Right, and I don't like it. It's not good.

1:05:16 - Leo Laporte
I think the court's point of view probably was this is a question for Congress, because it really requires reclassifying broadband. I can't remember if it's reclassifying broadband between being a publisher I can't remember the choice, it's been a long time but it's something Congress should probably weigh in on. Ultimately, the FCC acts at the behest of Congress. Congress has to make the laws, the FCC has to implement them. So I think it is probably fair of the court to say you know, let's hear what Congress has to say about this. And then I would encourage Congress to enshrine net neutrality in the law, Because I think it is, in principle anyway the right thing to do. All bits should be created and delivered equally, regardless of where they're coming from, and you don't want to let an internet service provider get to decide. Yeah, we think Comcast can ask Netflix to pay more or ask Google to pay more. That should. They should all be equal bits, they should be undifferentiated.

1:06:23 - Shoshana Weissmann
I think it's just good when it comes from Congress in general, because the back and forth with net neutrality is good for nobody.

1:06:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and that's what's happening. Republican administration, the Democratic administration? Yeah, and it's not. You're right, congress has to say it.

1:06:36 - Shoshana Weissmann
And even sometimes, when agencies do have authority and they might be able to do this, I think it's still just better, when you have these big decisions, that it really comes from Congress, exactly in this case, so that it's not like every couple of years you switch back and forth and have to figure out how everything works.

1:06:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it was a distinction to our chat room. For reminding me, femi, famous in our YouTube chat, said it was whether to treat internet service providers as common carriers like the phone company. You can't. The phone company doesn't get to decide who to charge. You know they can't charge Benito more than they charge me. To use a silly example Is RISB Benito.

1:07:19 - Andrew Chow
Actually I would love to hear, benito, some of the adverse effects that you felt.

1:07:27 - Benito Gonzalez
I think the biggest one and the most upfront one is that Facebook pretty much owns the internet over there.

1:07:32 - Leo Laporte
Benito, you have a camera. Let's see your shining face.

1:07:35 - Benito Gonzalez
I didn't put myself in a we can't pull you up, I'd have to put it together. Sorry, I'll figure that out eventually.

1:07:42 - Leo Laporte
I want to be able to see you. We don't usually see Benito. We only hear the voice of God coming from above, but he's here with us.

1:07:49 - Benito Gonzalez
So, to answer Andrew's question, it's like all of the things coming to and from Facebook happen really quickly and everything else is really slow. Ah, happen really quickly and everything else is really slow. And a lot of people who don't pay for internet access, who get like a quote-unquote free internet access for their phones that's basically the Facebook internet. So Facebook is free and everything loads on Facebook, but nothing else. You don't have data for anything else, only Facebook, yeah.

So I mean that might be actually a positive. That could be considered a positive for those who can't afford Internet access, who still can get some sort of portal into the Internet. But for that to be controlled by one company, I don't like how that feels.

1:08:31 - Leo Laporte
You remember that this was Facebook's plan. They offered it to India, something called Internetorg, which was a Facebook Internet that would be provided to everybody in India, even people who couldn't afford internet access. But it was mostly Facebook with a little bit of different stuff thrown in. It was interesting because the Indian regulators said we know a little bit about colonialism here and we don't think we want that, so they forbade that. But is that what you had in the in the philippines? Was the internetorg? Was it facebook internet like must? Have been.

It's possible, but I think it's more that um facebook just paid the carriers. Yeah, that should not be. Uh, not not be allowed, I think. Um, but again, I have to be fair and point out that we didn't see any horrendous uh failures as a result of the change in rules in 2015. So we shall see. By the way, credit to tim wu, who coined that term net neutrality um been wanting to get tim on one of our shows for a long time. We'll see if we can get him on. Talk about it, should we? Let me see? Yeah, let's take another break. I think it's time You're watching this Week in Tech with our wonderful panel. It's great to have you on, andrew. I think we're going to get you back on a regular basis. Andrew Archow is the author of Cryptomania, hype, hope and the Fall of FTX's billion-dollar fintech empire. Sbf is in prison. For what? 20 years? How long is the?

1:10:04 - Andrew Chow
sentence. The sentence is 25 years. He'll probably serve around 21.

1:10:13 - Leo Laporte
And they've been ordered to pay everybody back. Yes.

1:10:21 - Andrew Chow
Which is interesting, because I thought the money was all gone. It was at the time. The crypto markets have rebounded. That's the sort of interesting part about this. I think it would take a little longer than maybe the 30 seconds I have here to explain why a lot of the creditors are going to get a lot of the money back, while Sam still being very guilty in the court of law. Both can be true at once.

1:10:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, it's just luck that Bitcoin went up right I?

1:10:47 - Andrew Chow
mean he basically to vastly oversimplify he made a lot of giant bets using customer money. He knew that he was. You know, all of FTX's terms and conditions said when you deposit money into your account, it's going to stay there, we're not using it. He was just he went and he took it and he was just he was spending it on all sorts of crazy investments, on meme coins, not to mention the real estate which maybe is a good investment, you know. You know waterfront by Hum is real estate.

1:11:21 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't let you off the hook if the investments you illegally made turned out to be good investments.

1:11:26 - Andrew Chow
Yes, and so yeah, so one of the big investments he made was into the AI company Anthropic. Actually, oh, interesting, he was sort of an early investor into Anthropic, whose value absolutely exploded due to the AI boom when Sam was sitting in a prison, and basically that asset alone was able to make so many, so many creditors whole. And this is something what Sam's lawyers were trying to argue in court that we should be able to talk about Anthropic because it was such a savvy investment on Sam's part. He knew where the market was headed and I was sitting there. I was there for the whole trial in New York in October.

The judge, Judge Kaplan, said to the lawyer this is like if you rob the bank and then you go buy a Powerball ticket and then you win $50 million and then you say that because you can return the money, you didn't steal the money. That's not how the law works. So basically he did not allow them to talk about Anthropic at all. But yeah, it's interesting. So a lot of the creditors are going to get a lot of their money back.

Not all of it get a lot of their money back, not all of it, but you know, I think one that sort of obscures, maybe, the moral choices that Sam made of like deciding to use the money when it wasn't his, and then also the real harm that it inflicted upon people who lost access to their money for two years, People who put, you know, their life savings $40,000, $100,000, $800,000 into an account that then became frozen for a good two years and had a lot of people had their lives upended. So, yeah, I think there are some people that would argue like no, it wasn't. Like how much of a crime could it be if the money came back? You can argue that I would disagree.

1:13:24 - Leo Laporte
So we've learned something here. Sam Bankman-Fried won the Powerball and congratulations. You're still in jail. It's great to have you. It's a great book. Cryptomania you see, you did a great job of explaining that Perfect. That's why it's such a good book. Shoshana weisman is also here from rstreetorg. We are going to get to cosa. Uh 93, was it 93 to 3 or something in the senate?

1:13:49 - Shoshana Weissmann
I forget the pro votes, but it was three who voted against only three people voted against cosa.

1:13:55 - Leo Laporte
Now it's going to go to the house, but I want to know what this latest status is. Of course, this is something you've been very actively following, in fact, two years ago you Now it's going to go to the House, but I want to know what the latest status is. Of course, this is something you've been very actively following. In fact, two years ago you wrote the definitive piece on it and why age verification is a terrible idea. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. It's great to have you and Abrar Al-Hiti. We always love having Abrar on the show. Technology reporter at CNET and a regular on Tech News Weekly. I hope you're going to keep doing that, even though Mike is in his basement now.

1:14:25 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Oh my God, I look forward to the next episode. I'm sure his setup is almost as good as yours. If not, I will see. We'll see who has the better one.

1:14:34 - Leo Laporte
He was going to do hands-on technology this morning. We've canceled Ask the Tech Guys guys partly because it's almost impossible to do the call-in show in this environment. Yeah, uh, so he was gonna do. So. He's going to hands-on uh tech at 11 o'clock on saturdays, pacific time, in the same time slot, and he'll answer a question and maybe sometimes do reviews and things like that. He was going to do it from the studio until he found out that we have ripped everything out of the studio for the attic. So I got an emergency call this morning about 10.30 saying can we use the studio? So he was actually in here today doing hands-on technology from the attic and I think it's great. He'll be in the basement, though, once he gets that all set up and working. So it's great to have you. And now, brar, you can stay where you are. This is really just. We're now like the rest, we're like everybody else.

Nobody has a studio.

1:15:30 - Abrar Al-Heeti
That's crazy. I mean, yeah, but welcome to reality, yeah we're just back to reality.

1:15:35 - Leo Laporte
That's all Our show today, brought to you by Mint Mobile. We love these guys. I know you do too. Why? Because you love a great deal. I love a great deal as much as the next person, but I'm not going to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a few bucks. So it's got to be easy, right? No hoops, no BS. It's really easy to get wireless for $15 a month. Honestly, the most time-consuming part of the whole process is the time you might spend on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. They don't want to give you up.

I don't know if you've noticed that you can port your number over to Mint Mobile. Basically, you're turning that $90, $80, $90, $100 a month cell phone bill into $15 a month. They don't like that, but you're going to love it. I loved it so much that I actually said I'm all in for a year. I ended up saving a lot of money by buying a year at a time with Mint Mobile. I love my Mint Mobile phone.

You can get started right now. Go to Mint Mobile M-I-N-T. Minty fresh green. Mintmobilecom, slash twit. Mintmobilecom, slash twit, t-w-i-t. You will see that right now, all the three-month plans including the unlimited plan, by the way are only $15 a month. Now they all come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text. They do it on the nation's largest 5G network it's T-Mobile. So if you've got good T-Mobile coverage where you are, you're going to have exactly the same coverage for a whole lot less. You're getting it from Mint Mobile, though, not T-Mobile.

You can use your own phone if you want with any Mint Mobile plan. They will convert it over with an eSIM or a regular SIM at no charge. You could port your phone number over again. You're going to have to talk to the other guy. They're legally required, by the way the other guys, to give your phone number over to Mint Mobile, but sometimes you know they go really Really. You really want to do that. Port over your existing contacts and your existing phone and you're going to be ready to go.

Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile. Get three months of premium wireless service for just 15 bucks a month. Now, to get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, you got to go to our website, mintmobilecom. Slash twit. Okay, very important, because I want them to know. You heard it here mintmobilecom slash twit. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobilecom slash twit. Now here's how it works $45 upfront payment required. That's $15 a month for three months. New customers on the first three-month plan only Speed slower when you get above 40 gigabytes. And on the unlimited plan, that's a lot, you're not. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Mintmobilecom slash twit. We're big fans, I'm a big fan. I love Mint Mobile. It makes me wonder why I ever paid more. Mintmobilecom slash twit. Thank you, mint Mobile Cosa. What is K-O-S-A, the Kids Online Safety Act? Is that right, shoshana?

1:18:45 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yes, it has a new acronym now, though, and also it was passed in Senate as like an amendment. It's like a 107-page amendment to some random unrelated bill to stop excess paperwork, which this has a lot of reporting requirements.

1:19:07 - Leo Laporte
Do they do that? It feels like they do that intentionally. They attach unpopular bills to like defense spending so that it has to be passed right.

1:19:12 - Shoshana Weissmann
They do that all the time so this was a defense spending one for once, which is nice, because I often have to be like, hey guys, maybe remove this from this really big defense spending bill, because this which is nice, because I often have to be like, hey guys, maybe remove this from this really big defense spending bill because this has nothing to do with it this one was just reducing paperwork and I you know I do this stuff a lot but I actually had trouble finding the new version of the bill and then I was like, ok, cool, here's the amendments. And I had to click through so many amendments to figure out the final version and they put some bad stuff back in that I'm pretty sure they had taken out. So I'm like, like, just like crying, reading COSA for the like 97th time in its current version.

1:19:48 - Leo Laporte
So the Senate passed it. Yeah, ron Wyden weird bedfellows Ron Wyden, rand Paul, both voted against it. And who was the third that voted against it? Mike Lee. Mike Lee, that's right. For different reasons, I might add, but weirdly it passed by this vast majority in the Senate. I've heard some people said well, that was a safe vote for them, because no one wants to be the you know guy that the his, his opponent says you know, he doesn't like kids very much because he voted against cosa. Uh, knowing that it wouldn't pass in the house, is that, is that a fair representation of why so many senators voted for it?

1:20:32 - Shoshana Weissmann
no, um, unfortunately the the so cosa has something like 68 co-sponsors, which is really rare, but of course, because it's for the kids and what's in it doesn't really matter. And it's actually really frustrating because not just myself but many of my allies have talked to different offices about the problems in it and they'll write off those concerns as ridiculous and actually amend some of those concerns out and then later amend them back in. But of the remaining senators I know a couple at least had concerns about it. Some thought it might be worked out in the House, or at least that's what they were saying, and the House seems to be going back and forth on whether or not they're interested in taking it up.

1:21:12 - Leo Laporte
I'm really hoping they won't of course, is it the Paperworks Reduction Act that they'd vote for, and then COSA would just be along for the ride. Is that how it?

1:21:21 - Shoshana Weissmann
works. Yeah, it's like you know, if you're writing a paper or like an op-ed or just some document, and someone like adds in some comments and you accept those comments, like imagine if those comments are like 107 pages, that's what happens.

1:21:35 - Leo Laporte
It's so broken, this system is so broken. People in other countries must be saying wait a minute, what?

1:21:43 - Shoshana Weissmann
I mean, what's amazing here is that they knew that there were so many concerns from civil liberties groups and all different kinds of reasons too. Most groups kind of agreed on the First Amendment problems and certain other problems, but instead of facing them and saying, OK, we need to go back to the drawing board or figure out a better solution here.

1:22:04 - Leo Laporte
They're like we'll just hide this in here and let's see what happens. Is it possible that I'm trying to give some cover to the senators who voted for this, because there's no reason to vote for this? Is it possible they thought the courts would throw it out, that it wouldn't survive a First Amendment challenge and so it won't.

1:22:17 - Shoshana Weissmann
There's no way this gets past the First Amendment on many counts. But I don't think they've accepted that. Even lawmakers in the states, when I've kind of made clear to them that, hey, I know, even if you want to do this, just know that this is going to be held up in the courts they just don't think so, despite so much precedent I've written up so much precedent on why age verification for social media can't work. And it's just like citing Scalia and Kennedy and past courts and this, they try to get around the age verification problem by saying, oh, none of this shall be construed to require age verification. But if you have to know who the kids are to comply and it's not just when they know who's a kid, it also says if they had knowledge where they should have known that it was a kid. So it's like, of course they're going to age verify here. This is ridiculous.

1:23:06 - Leo Laporte
There's no other way. They have to. So tell us what COSA does. By the way, they also amended COPPA to change the age from under 13 to under 18 or under 17,. I guess. The age from under 13 to under 18, or under 17, I guess. So that is problematic in and of itself, because I think a 16-year-old is different than a 12-year-old when it comes to parental consent and so forth. But let's focus on COSA. What is COSA and why is it problematic?

1:23:33 - Shoshana Weissmann
So COSA started as an age verification bill, basically saying that platforms couldn't allow on certain minors and they had to get parental consent for other minors.

There's a lot more in there, but that was a really core piece of it. The current version, in its current form, because it has gone through a lot of versions basically says that if they know that there is a minor on the platform, then they have actual knowledge or implied knowledge basically, where they should have known, because maybe someone's looking a lot at Spongebob or something like that or maybe there's other indicators that they might should know that it was a minor. They have to make sure that those minors have basically parental type controls for themselves, which I don't think is a bad idea to provide kids with that, and parents also get to edit those controls. They don't have direct oversight of what the kid's posting or their messages, but they do get to say, okay, my kid shouldn't spend more than this amount of time online, stuff like that, which in itself isn't a terrible idea except when you mandate it by government, it creates a need for identity.

1:24:39 - Leo Laporte
Apple gives you that capability. You can set that up. It's completely legal to set that up for your kid as a parent. That's how it should be. It shouldn't be government doing that.

1:24:49 - Shoshana Weissmann
Exactly because when government steps in and creates this, then if you don't provide those parental controls to parents or children, then you're violating the law. And the only way to make sure that the parent is the parent and the child is the child is identity verification. It's beyond age verification because you have to make sure this is the parent, this is the child. Here's proof that you know they're related this way.

They've never really explained what's supposed to happen if parents disagree, if the parents are divorced, if there's maybe even three or four parents because of different custody issues. I mean, all this stuff is really possible and common and they haven't addressed any way to you know what's supposed to happen in these cases. And then another part here that's really important is the duty of care. It basically says that they have to avoid showing the child they don't say content, they say you know avoid using algorithms to show the kid content that can cause them anxiety or depression, as defined by the DSM and its current version. But the strange thing is the DSM is from the American Psychiatric Association, which is a lobbying group, which is kind of strange to defer it that way rather than put it in law.

1:26:01 - Leo Laporte
For years the DSM did not define PTSD as a mental health issue. Really, as an example, yeah, and what happens is if it's in the DSM, you can't get insurance to pay for it, you can't treat it, you don't have a code for it. There's all sorts of problems. The DSM has way too much weight, but that's another topic for another show.

1:26:24 - Shoshana Weissmann
No, that's interesting. I haven't dug in there yet. Yeah, the.

1:26:27 - Leo Laporte
DSM is problematic. As you point out, it's a lobbying organization. It's not necessarily widely. I mean. It is widely used because insurance companies use it, but it's not necessarily widely supported. One, by the way what causes depression in kids? One of the bill's sponsor says that widely used educational materials that teach about the history of racism in the US causes depression in kids. So we can't be having any discussion of systemic racism, because that makes kids depressed.

1:26:57 - Shoshana Weissmann
Or climate.

1:26:59 - Leo Laporte
Or climate.

Kids speaking out about mental health challenges or trying to kids depressed or climate or climate Kids speaking out about mental health challenges or trying to help friends with addictions are likely to be treated. This is from the EFF the same as those promoting addictive or self-harming behaviors. They'll be kicked offline. Tiktok is going to err on the side of prudence if this is the law of the land, because they want to stay in the united states. So you're going to see all sorts of, I think, counterproductive results from this. But the worst part is the age verification, because that really is a massive privacy violation. Some members of congress have said oh no, we've got these new uh ai based age verification techniques. We can just tell from looking at you how old you are. I'm a little skeptical on that.

1:27:44 - Shoshana Weissmann
Oh, there is a great NIST study. Have you checked it out?

1:27:47 - Leo Laporte
No NIST study on age verification.

1:27:50 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, on age estimation tools for facial recognition.

1:27:53 - Leo Laporte
What did they say?

1:27:54 - Shoshana Weissmann
Oh my gosh. It's something like if you're 17, there's a 50% chance they'll say you're under 17 or over 17. So around the margins is where it matters and they're getting it wrong around. But yes, I love this study. It was so well done and they pointed out where it does well and where it does poorly. But this is not ready for prime time.

1:28:15 - Leo Laporte
These pictures that I'm showing you. If a person, in this case a NIST staff member, changes facial expression or wears and then removes eyeglasses, all six of the algorithms NIST evaluated gave age estimates that vary around the person's true age. With frames extracted from cell phone video, the age estimates that remain above or below the subject's true age of 58 that vary by a few years from frame to frame. In other words, it's completely inaccurate. Although it knew he was an adult, I presume he's 58.

1:28:49 - Shoshana Weissmann
Sure, what happens when you're like 21 and trying to get on social media, oh, you know, and then of course you're going to have to do like the real verification, then the ID, the social security number.

1:29:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's the problem. Now, they did that. They tried this in the UK, right, and you would have to go to a pub to tell people to prove your age. They've abandoned that, as I remember.

1:29:12 - Shoshana Weissmann
That's amazing. I didn't even know about the pub thing. I mean, that's just incredible.

1:29:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, that was one of the places they proposed, but the problem is, of course, in order to do this, to do age verification, you really are going to have to end up asking for, as you say, identification, and some third party is going to now have all of your credit card, your driver's license, whatever it is. This is just a non-starter in so many ways. Of course, everybody wants to protect kids. I want to protect kids. No member of Congress is going to vote against a bill that says it protects kids. The real question is does this bill protect kids, and does it do it in a way that also protects everybody else? And I don't think the answer is yes.

1:29:59 - Shoshana Weissmann
Worse yet. I have a new piece out showing that this is going to make child identity theft way worse. This is a weird new string I'm on. Now I also have one coming out showing how to solve a chunk of child identity theft that the government itself is causing, because of course it's causing a chunk of child identity theft, but this would make it even worse because, I mean, kids don't use their credit, they don't monitor their credit. It often is that it'll be years and years before they find out that their identity has been used for fraud and then after that, a bunch of them need like a large percentage of them need mental health care to deal with the effects of it. And lawmakers are just not having this conversation. They're just like no, you know, identity verification, age verification, sure, whatever, let's go with it.

1:30:47 - Leo Laporte
They just can't replace parental supervision and parental interest with government oversight. It's just not possible. In 2019, the Brits dropped age verification. They said attempting to regulate all Internet content to ensure it's safe for children is unfortunately not an achievable aim. Any steps taken will, in truth, be partial and come at costs. It's very clear, it's very unclear, that age verification, especially when combined with Internet censorship of legal content, would reach a reasonable balance. That's from the Open Rights Group. It failed in the UK, but we're going to try it. Maybe we can do it better. So what is the likelihood that the House will pass this?

1:31:34 - Shoshana Weissmann
They've gone back and forth a lot on whether or not they're going to take it up, so I just don't know. We were pretty certain that they weren't going to. There's been a lot of back and forth. I think their concerns differ from ours, which is okay, but I think their concerns are a little bit easier solved, unfortunately, so I could see this getting through, but the courts are just going to slap this down. I mean, these laws in the States are already being stopped by courts. The courts are reminding them we've ruled on this many times already.

You could totally like read that precedent, which is an option, but instead of doing that, they're just going ahead with this as if there's no precedent here, as if there's no cybersecurity concerns here, and this is really going to hurt kids. I mean, the identity theft angle is really big. Experian has some really good data here that I use for my piece on it, but basically, I mean, when you create treasure troves of child identity information, it gets hacked. That's why schools are such big targets. It's that same reason. So what do you think is going to happen here?

1:32:35 - Leo Laporte
Somebody in our discord is pointing out that Louisiana Somebody in our Discord is pointing out that Louisiana the courts in Louisiana did in fact protect the age verification law. I don't know if that's on appeal. This was back in October. The Adult Entertainment Group's lawsuit against a Louisiana law requiring sexually explicit websites to verify the age of their viewers was dismissed by a federal judge on Wednesday. I think it's under appeal, but that's the problem these days. I don't know if we can really, if we know what the courts are going to do, do we?

1:33:08 - Shoshana Weissmann
I think in the circus. I think it's going to be fine. Like once we get even maybe, to the Supreme court, I think it'll be fine. The porn stuff is a little bit different too, just because the precedent that applies is a little bit different and the first amendment problems are a little bit different. They still are there, it's just. It's a different conversation to a degree and you don't run into the same child identity theft issues there because kids know that their identity wouldn't get them on there anyway, you know Right.

1:33:35 - Leo Laporte
This, I know, is a couple of weeks old story, but we wanted to get Shoshana on to talk about it, because I know it's been on your radar for a couple of years now. You've written a lot about it on our street, so I thought we wanted to get you on.

1:33:48 - Shoshana Weissmann
Oh, thank you. No I love joining you guys. I've just been hiking.

1:33:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, were you going to hike today? Were you off in the mountains?

1:33:56 - Shoshana Weissmann
No soon, though Soon I'm getting back to the mountains.

1:33:59 - Leo Laporte
I'm really excited Colorado.

1:34:06 - Shoshana Weissmann
I want to get in a lot more 14ers. There's one in particular my mind's just so set on. It has a sharp ridge and I'm like if I can do this, I'm going to feel really good.

1:34:10 - Leo Laporte
What is 14er? 14,000 feet yeah.

1:34:13 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, I've done 12 of them in Colorado and one in California. I think there's 15 in California and 58 in Colorado. I want to do them all but I won't be able. Some are just way too crazy.

1:34:24 - Leo Laporte
Do you need oxygen at that level?

1:34:27 - Shoshana Weissmann
You can, but it would be like little spray bottles. I usually adjust, okay.

1:34:32 - Leo Laporte
I'm being facetious, Actually, I didn't think you would. Apparently you might.

1:34:35 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, some people I see up there with like the little spray bottles, but those are usually the morons who are like, yeah, let me do this my first day at altitude.

1:34:42 - Leo Laporte
I'm like, yeah you go, bro, like enjoy getting sick, Do you train? I mean, do you go?

1:34:48 - Shoshana Weissmann
up there ahead of time and get used to the acclimate and all that. Yeah, yeah. So I can adjust to like 6,000 to 8,000 feet very easily. I can even go up to 10 on my first day and then I just have to slowly get to 14. But since I'm already adjusted now from my last trip, I like have a plan I'm going to do 12,000 and 13 and then 14.

1:35:05 - Leo Laporte
It's too bad they don't have speed hiking in the Olympics, because you would be right in there.

1:35:13 - Shoshana Weissmann
I'm slow, I'm sloth. That's where the sloth comes in.

1:35:17 - Leo Laporte
Okay, that's good she is. We should explain. The chairman of the sloth committee.

1:35:25 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, US Senate Committee on Sloths and Sloth Affairs.

1:35:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, very important committee work. Yes, yeah, thank you, shoshana. All right, going to take a break. Come back with lots more to talk about. You're watching this Week in Tech, the first episode from the attic. What do you think so far? Do you like my attic Looks fabulous. This is my favorite shot. Strong, look Strong. Look so good. Get the Benito. Show them the other one, the other one. There we go Look at that.

That's the pretty shot. And see that seat right there. That's the guest seat. If you, if you ever want to come out and be on the show, you can sit.

1:36:02 - Abrar Al-Heeti
You haven't used your sound effects for it enough, and I feel like that's what the audience. There we go.

1:36:09 - Leo Laporte
This is what everyone feared, so I would do that. I do, actually, uh, uh, a bra did want me to play a special sound when I introduced her. Abrar Elhidi. Ladies and gentlemen, better late than never, thank you. Yeah, I do have that. I am using what is just was built into this mixer. Every time I try to load the program that changes the sound effects, it crashes. So I think I'm stuck with a handful of kind of classic sound effects. Oh good, I won't use them. I promise Our show today brought to you by Bitwarden. You know I'm a Bitwarden fan. Steve Gibson, our security guy, is a Bitwarden fan.

Bitwarden is open source. It is the only open source password manager that works at home at the office, on every single device you have, with support for pass keys, hardware keys free for individuals forever. Okay, that's pretty good, but it's also great for your business. It is a cost effective solution that can dramatically improve your chances of staying safe online. And if you're a business, you absolutely need to use Bitwarden. Because I got to tell you your employees are still putting post-it notes on the monitors with the passwords. They're still hiding it underneath the desk protector there. They're not doing the right thing, but if you give them a great password manager, at least you have a chance of protecting yourself and protecting your business.

Bitwarden just announced something brand new for business. It's called Collections Management. They have a whole set of settings. It lets owners of the Bitwarden account choose how much or how little access admins have to everything in the vault. So if you imagine, I'm the owner of the of the Twit Bitwarden vault, but then we have managers in each department who have access to those particular passwords and so forth, and the collections management settings make it very easy for us to control who has access to what. They can be set so that users can create and delete their own collections. And they can be set so that users can create and delete their own collections and those can be private so even the admins can't see inside of it. So that's very handy, useful for a policy of what we call least privilege, for example. Another possible setup would be to require full admin control for everything. So the admins choose it all. You don't let the users do anything. But the whole point is you have these settings and with these new settings and a new can manage permission, you can choose how access control and sharing works at a very granular level in your Bitwarden organization.

Bitwarden is great for business. It empowers enterprises, developers and, of course, individuals to safely store and share sensitive data. It's not just passwords, by the way. I use Bitwarden's secure, encrypted storage for my passport, for my social security numbers, for my family's social security numbers, and they're safe, they're in there, they're encrypted and with a transparent, open a source approach to password management, bitwarden makes it easy for users to extend robust security practices to all their online experiences. Best part you can get started with Bitwarden's free trial of a Teams or Enterprise plan right now or as an individual, free forever, across all devices. Includes pass keys and includes hardware keys like YubiKey at bitwardencom slash twit, I have the individual plan.

You know what I do. I give them $10 a year just to support them, to make myself a premium plan. I don't need to. It does everything I want for free. But this is a good thing to know. If you've got family members, I know you use a password manager. Obviously you're smart. But if you've got family members people you know in your circle who say, ah, that's too complicated, I want to use a password manager, I don't want to pay for it, you tell them about Bitwarden. It's easy to use, it's free, forever because it's open source and it's going to be a big improvement in their overall security. You got to use a password manager. Tell them to go to bitwardencom slash twit, and tell your boss too. It's great for business, bitwardencom slash twit.

We thank Bitwarden so much for their support of this Week in Tech. They're longtime supporters of everything we do here and we plan to keep using them for as long as they keep offering it, which I think because it's open source, you can pretty much guarantee is forever. Thank you, bitwarden. Well, let's see. We talked about CNET going to Ziff Davis. New York Times says this could be a sign, a sign of more possible media deals to come. What do you think, Abrar? I mean, it's kind of a sad story, the history of CNET. It was sold way back when, for CBS bought it in 2008. Remember when you were there with CBS Interactive? I think you were, yeah.

1:41:18 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I was in middle school, oh. So no, I was in middle school, oh.

1:41:21 - Shoshana Weissmann
So no, I was not.

1:41:23 - Leo Laporte
I didn't mean to imply anything. No, I'm honored. $1.8 billion CBS paid for it. Yeah, 12 years later, red Ventures, who was the owner for some time, bought it for a little bit less half a billion dollars. It is now has been sold to ZDNet for a hundred million dollars, and that's what the New York Times is saying, that this is probably a reflection of. It's probably why I'm in the attic, to be honest with you. Headwinds for new media, right.

1:41:59 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, I mean I, yeah, I think it is um, it's a, it's a tough time for the industry and I think, um, I think that's why I'm optimistic about this next chapter. I'm glad there's still a media, a legacy media brand, that is willing to buy um, CNET, which, uh, you know, is kind of core to tech news and and I, yeah, I'm, I'm hoping that, I don't know, I hope things get better across the board, across the industry. It's just really really hard right now. So grateful to you know, be in a position where hopefully good things are ahead, but you know, yeah, it's my friend, jim Lauderback, who was a vice president at ZDNet for a long time.

1:42:40 - Leo Laporte
I worked with him when I was at ZDTV. He is now runs VidCon and he said that he recommended that your new owner, which we say ZDNet but actually ZDNet is kind of also a spinoff the chief executive, vivek Shah. He said, vivek, you should consider buying influencers. He said that's really where the brands are. He said buy Marques Brownlee. I don't think Marques is for sale and I think he might cost more than $100 million, but he's got a good point. It's the influencers who drive the market these days.

1:43:19 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the interesting position that a lot of media has been in, where you know you want to amplify the personalities, and I think there has been, you know this this clear effort, at least at CNET, where we have a lot of experts in different areas, whether you want to buy a phone or a laptop, or you're choosing a cell phone provider or whatever it is, an internet provider.

And I think shining a light on those people and their expertise becomes more and more important because influencers are such a big deal and because, as I mentioned earlier, I go to TikTok to see how real people feel about things. A lot of publications are realizing we also need to focus on the real people who work for us, who have all these real opinions, and so creating that connection on social media and, um, you know, doubling down on on TikTok and Instagram and and really shining a light on those people who do work for these brands and aren't technically influencers but can play that role, uh, and kind of uh juggle this uh weird walk, this weird line between being this authoritative source but also just being a relatable source.

1:44:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, actually, andrew, you work for Time Magazine, which has gone through a few changes since the Luce family owned it. It's owned by Mark Benioff. Now, right, it's true. Salesforce founder. Does he own it personally? I can't remember. Does he own it personally? I can't remember. Does he own it or does Salesforce own it? Mark owns it, right.

1:44:42 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, it's him and his wife Lynn.

1:44:45 - Leo Laporte
Must be nice. Yes, I think. What am I going to do today? I don't know. I was going to go from the park and then buy Time Magazine. I don't know. What do you think? I'm not going to ask you this. Has he been a good steward of the Time brand? I think so.

1:45:06 - Andrew Chow
I would love to publicly say on record how grateful I am to Mark Benioff and how much he's done for the organization. I think if we just zoom out a little bit here, it sort of shows that the number of business models that work for these outlets is really winnowing. I think some, you know, some have tried, you know, digital subscriberships. Um, it's been a really hard road for a lot of outlets that are not the New York times. Um, just because a lot of people are just not really willing to pay for more than a handful or more than one subscription.

I mean you're seeing this in the streaming wars, too, as well as like, oh, I have to pay for Peacock and HBO and Disney Plus. It's like people, people have a limit and if they think they can get all their news from a singular outlet, they will. I think that's really hurting. You know more local papers, um, who can't really compete with like the breadth that the New York Times has. I think we're seeing yeah, like yeah, but they brought that on themselves.

1:46:07 - Leo Laporte
They fired their newsrooms, they got rid of. I mean, isn't that a self-inflicted wound?

1:46:14 - Andrew Chow
Or is it just they couldn't afford it? Yeah, it's a sort of chicken or the egg situation. I, my position is that you know, like, how were, how did newspapers make money back in the day? They did it on advertisements. Like, you know, your local florist or whoever was in the shop, they knew that they could reach the most amount of people from people picking up the paper, knew that they could reach the most amount of people from people picking up the paper. And then you have basically Google coming along and taking basically all of those ad dollars, companies very quickly realizing that it was so much more efficient and effective to advertise on Google than in newspapers. So you have a massive winnowing down of ad money, especially for print. And then you can't fund the print infrastructure, which is immensely expensive. That's why, especially, you've seen the magazine industry being hammered so hard.

Forgive, me for not knowing this Does Time still have a print it does, but it comes out twice a month as opposed to weekly as it used to. It's definitely really hard for a lot of most publications. I think the incentives have changed. You want more content, you want clickier content and it's sort of See that's what bothers me.

1:47:42 - Leo Laporte
That's where I think we've lost, because what happens is you get link bait everywhere. Everybody has headlines that says you wouldn't believe what happens next, and I think it's ruined our news ecosystem. It's just even everywhere you turn. It's all sensationalism. I think that's a problem.

1:48:03 - Andrew Chow
I think it's a problem. I think that a lot of it has been caused by necessity.

1:48:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I understand the economics of it. Believe me, I'm sitting in my attic.

1:48:12 - Andrew Chow
It's really tough for what we think of as old school journalists who take a long time to report stories, especially in local areas. There's just no business model that I've seen that is sustainable. I'd love to hear if you guys have seen any business models that really work. I think niche, maybe niche interests if you get people that are really focused on specific areas, that can help.

1:48:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's kind of what we are. I think we're long tail-ish for tech enthusiasts, but it's still hard for us because, on the one hand, advertisers want scale, and niche does not necessarily produce scale, and so it's a very difficult. It's a fine line. You've worked for the Times. You've worked for NBC, right?

1:49:03 - Andrew Chow
I wrote freelance for NBC and I worked at the Times yes, before I was at the Times and Pitchfork. I freelance for Pitchfork as well and they are also struggling with you know. They had this amazing niche community. They got absorbed by Condi and identity crisis of what is an indie music magazine in the 21st century.

1:49:24 - Leo Laporte
Even Rolling Stone isn't about music anymore. It's kind of amazing.

1:49:29 - Andrew Chow
It's tough out here. It's tough out here in the real world.

1:49:32 - Leo Laporte
Did you go to J school? How did you get into this?

1:49:37 - Andrew Chow
I started as an assistant at the New York Times.

1:49:40 - Leo Laporte
That's the age-old, traditional way of getting into newspapers you start as a copy boy copy and you go. Yes, I'm dating myself at this point. I don't think there've been copy boys in years, decades. But yeah, you know. But I mean, I was round floor and you worked your way up.

1:49:57 - Andrew Chow
That's cool. I was answering phones, I was fact-checking, I was doing that type of stuff.

I mean one of the other paths into journalism and this might be too process-oriented, but you could start at your local paper and then you're supposed to cover the courts and the cops and all of that, and you start in Jacksonville and then maybe you can go to the Boston Globe and then you bounce around and you work your way into, you know, the hallowed grounds of wherever you want to end up, but a lot of those local publications just don't have the city hall beat anymore because they don't have the advertising money. Um, so I I would say there are a lot of journalists like me included, who didn't start with that baseline. You know know, just like, like pickaxing on whatever beat, learning the ropes. Um, so yeah, it's totally changed in the last two decades.

1:50:52 - Leo Laporte
I would say and we're still in the era of uh kind of upheaval and disintermediation. We haven it hasn't settled out yet, so it's hard to even know what it's going to look like in 10 years or 20 years.

1:51:07 - Andrew Chow
I think we're seeing a lot of people with sub-stacks actually Like that is a potential path forward. I don't see that as being a long-term.

1:51:16 - Leo Laporte
In fact, to some degree, I think it's because sub-stack subsidized it with VC money that definitely could be, and then Elon is obviously talking a big game.

1:51:26 - Andrew Chow
There's a lot of people who just hate the idea of the mainstream media and that it's bloated and that it doesn't.

1:51:33 - Shoshana Weissmann
It's slanted in a certain way.

1:51:35 - Andrew Chow
But the idea of I forget the term he uses but community journalism or renegade journalism of just folks on Twitter and you know, I think that works in like pockets and you definitely want independent, like small scale journalists. The problem is that good journalism takes a lot of time and resources and the market is not incentivizing it in the slightest, so it will continue to shake out. And the market is not incentivizing it in the slightest, so it will continue to shake out. There will be many, many headwinds for journalists, and particularly outlets like mine, going forward.

1:52:08 - Leo Laporte
Shoshana. This is the free market at work.

1:52:11 - Shoshana Weissmann
It is interesting, though One thing that I never thought about before is that you see some of the same trends with policy organizations. Some of it isn't bad that we do some more short-form stuff than some other groups, and it gets more attention because it's more readable and it's not in excess. But then there's still that shiny think tank gets the grease kind of thing where if we did more sensationalist stuff, if we were like the Democrats are doing this, or the Democrats are doing this, or the Republicans are doing this, we'd get a lot more attention.

1:52:43 - Leo Laporte
There's huge pressure to be sensationalistic, isn't there?

1:52:46 - Shoshana Weissmann
It's just interesting, because I never thought about it with think tanks in relation to journalism until now, because something he said I was like wait a sec, that's something that I was thinking about too. I don't know how all this gets solved and this. I don't know how all this gets solved and some of this, I think, is human nature stuff, but it is interesting how I think this is happening across a lot of industries in a lot of similar ways, even in the fact that there's some random people doing terrible policy work but some random people doing great policy work that I'm actually glad they're out there doing it. Some of them have sub stacks, some of them don't, but there are these kinds of like similar trends we're seeing here and I wonder where it goes or if it's just going to constantly change and new funding sources are going to have to just be tried out, you know.

1:53:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, I read and subscribe to a lot of newsletters not just Substack, you know but there's a limit to how many subscriptions people can have. I just don't know how tenable that is in the long run. I don't know what the answer is. You know, I come from an era where there was a daily newspaper. In fact, I remember when there was a morning and evening paper right in San Francisco and you subscribed to one or the other. There were three networks and you would watch. Your family would either be an NBC or a CBS or, if you were weirdos, you'd be an ABC family.

And I mean there were very few news sources and if you were really interested you might get the New York Times as well as your local paper. That's all changed, and very much dramatically so. The cable news has replaced, you know, network and local news. I don't know if you could say newsletters have replaced blogs, but I guess to some degree they have. And then there's intense pressure on all of these outlets to drive traffic, because that's how you make money. And of course, what happens if the pressure is to drive traffic? You don't publish 10,000-word white papers, right. You publish a couple of paragraphs that say the Democrats are screwing it up and that's how you get traffic. I don't think it's really good in the long run for our polity.

1:54:57 - Shoshana Weissmann
I think one thing, and I don't claim to have all the answers here. I'm not like oh, journalists are being silly and they should simply like I have no idea what to do here.

1:55:05 - Leo Laporte
I think they're clearly not being silly.

1:55:06 - Shoshana Weissmann
Oh yeah.

1:55:07 - Leo Laporte
Very much. You know they're bleeding.

1:55:10 - Shoshana Weissmann
But one thing is there are certain people who kind of stand out to me as like they're breaking through the noise a little bit, and I mean people outside of journalism. There's one guy, his name's Vincent Ledvina, and he shares basically how to learn, how to tell when there's going to be northern lights, like that's his thing.

1:55:26 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Oh, that's cool, he studies it. Talk about niche.

1:55:29 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, but one of the cool things about it is that there's a lot of fake information on it to get clicks and he calls it out. He's like, hey, you see this picture. Here's how I know it's Photoshopped, because the lines can't appear like that at that latitude.

1:55:41 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's really cool.

1:55:42 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, and he's a really good fact checker and he's really good about sharing very accurate information. It's funny his followers trust him because he's not being sensational. He's like I love this, this is a core part of my life, but I want you to understand how you can see it. And he does all different kinds of stuff. But I think voices like his are something we need more of just those random people who really care about a subject, whether it's like knowing how to FOIA and they can be there to work with a journalist and help them figure out information about stuff, or whether it's you know, there's so many different possible areas. But I feel like that kind of strange influencer is something that you know that there's a real market for and that I think kind of combines the best of the new with the best of the old.

1:56:30 - Leo Laporte
It's for sure, true? I mean, jim Latterback was right when he said that influencers, the individuals, are the ones that right now are ascendant. You know, actually tell me if I'm being too personal, abraar, but you at CNET you were on camera all the time, you were the face of CNET and that was a smart move from my point of view. Here you have somebody who's really good. I know organizations hate it because once you become well-known you're expensive or you're going to leave and start your own YouTube channel. But you took a step back. Was that your personal decision or was that CNET's decision?

1:57:09 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It was a personal decision. So I started off at CNET on the writing side and I loved it and I never envisioned having a career on camera, but you were so good on camera.

1:57:19 - Leo Laporte
You are so good on camera.

1:57:20 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I appreciate that, and the opportunity arose where that team told me that they also appreciated my on-camera work that I did on the side. So I thought that's a really great way to boost my brand and build that skillset, and I'm really grateful I have that skillset. And then I moved back to writing, just because I wanted to really focus on specific areas. When I was on the video team I was doing a little bit of everything and that was really helpful, but I think you do have to kind of be a subject matter expert on at least a few key topics, and the best way for me to do that was to go back to the editorial team and be on the mobile team, and I'm really, really happy. So it's a perfect balance because I'm writing again, which I love, and writing is my first love but I also get to do videos that accompany my articles, and so I'm yeah, I'm able to tap into both that and still do my social media videos and things like that.

1:58:07 - Leo Laporte
It's very old school. I want to go back to doing reporting. That's awesome.

1:58:13 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I'm happy about it, yeah.

1:58:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't know, it's just. You know, I'm just an old man shouting at the clouds. Just ignore me, you young people, you're going to be fine, I'm sure, in the long run. I think about it a lot because I come from this old school media. Right, I started in radio when you did exactly what you were describing, andrew, working your way up from the small market to the medium market, to the big market, and then I went to TV and that very much changed the ground rules. Everything had to be quick and fast and visual and actually I kind of, really, when podcasting started, I was really happy to take a step back and do something like this, where we are a little bit more. We don't have link-baity content by any means. We have two-hour, three-hour shows and I'm glad that we found an audience. It's not a huge audience, but it's a big enough audience to sustain us. I'm really glad we found that.

But you know, I just I worry that we're not getting the information, especially when it comes to national politics. We're not getting the information, especially when it comes to national politics. We're not getting the information we need. We're getting the information that drives traffic. We're getting the horse race coverage. We're getting all of that stuff and I think that that, in the long run, isn't good for society.

Now, having said that, we are right now streaming on Xcom, hi Elon, and in fact, I think we're the number two channel right now, with 600 some people watching us on X dot com. We're streaming on YouTube, on LinkedIn and Facebook and kick dot com and Twitch, because I feel like you want to be I've always thought you always want to be everywhere you could possibly be, so that you get the largest potential audience and then hope that what you're doing appeals to enough people to sustain itself. It's very old fashioned. I mean, we're 20 years in on this one and I don't know if it's a long term sustainable thing. I think we hit it at the right time. I just I don't know, but see, I love sitting down with people like you guys, like Abrar and Shoshana and Andrew, because you're kind of in that you still believe in content and thinking and talking and chewing things over and telling stories, and that's to me, in the long run, that's got legs, I hope.

2:00:43 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I think so too, I hope so too. There's a lot of really important stories that need to be told, whether or not they bring you tons and tons of clicks, but they're going to bring enough clicks and they're going to be important enough that we got to keep telling them.

2:00:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, let's take a little break and we'll continue on with Andrew Chow, his new book. I give you a plug every time Cryptomania, so you got it right here Hype, hope and the fall of FTX's billion-dollar fintech empire. If you all are nice, I'll read another excerpt. The writing is so. You're such a good writer. And did they tell you know that Time Magazine was famous in the loose days for a certain style of journalism where the articles all began with this first person narrative? He stood up and looked around the trading floor and realized that the bell was ringing and it was time, or whatever, you know? Do they teach you that when you get to time, or did you just kind of know it already?

2:01:40 - Andrew Chow
It's funny, I've spent a little bit of time digging around the Times Digital Archives Do you know what I'm talking about when I described that style. Yeah, a little bit. We all have sort of this, maybe this image of time in our head when there was this like hallowed Times, glory days, when it was just like telling people how the world was and offering like really great journalism. And then sometimes I'll read some of the pieces back from the decades past and let me tell you there's some really rough stuff in there.

2:02:11 - Shoshana Weissmann
I was reading.

2:02:12 - Andrew Chow
I was reading one that was like um you know like there's this young kid from Greenwich village named Bob Dylan, but he's he'll never last Like. His voice is too nasally, his lyricism is you can't understand a goddamn thing about it and he's just too political. And you can see how well that went we all make mistakes.

2:02:35 - Leo Laporte
I know someday people will say Leo thought Vision Pro was not going anywhere. He swore up and down, nobody wanted to strap a computer to their face. And how wrong I was. Let me read you. This is the opening chapter, just to give you an idea of the time style, because, whether you know it or not, you nailed it. On the morning of February 11th 2021, the 25-year-old artist Owo Agnetti sheepishly climbed into the passenger seat of his neighbor's Toyota Camry and hitched a ride to work. That is a great. That's a classic time. Opening paragraph.

2:03:13 - Andrew Chow
I want more. Well, leo, come on anytime you want. This is great, don't you want more? So many plugs.

2:03:18 - Leo Laporte
He normally took an Uber or the bus to his job at his ad agency in Lagos, nigeria. Oh, I can't wait to find out more. Anyway, it's nice to have you. It's great to have Abrar here, abrar Alhidi, technology reporter for CNET, and, of course, shoshana Weissman from rstreetorg. I would like to put in a plug. I know you've got a lot of subscriptions, I know you're paying a lot of money for a lot of different things, but I would like to put just the teensy-weensiest plug in for our club.

We want to keep doing what we're doing. I'm pretty proud of how we've made this transition to the attic, and we did it because we wanted to save money, because we wanted to spend your money wisely, if you will. We wanted to save money because we wanted to spend your money wisely, if you will, and I you know, not on an expensive studio, but on content, and I think that we're doing that and we'd like you to join the club because it helps us continue to do what we're doing. We want to do that and also, I think there's some great benefits. Thanks to the club, by the way, we're streaming on seven platforms, including Discord, our club twit chat area, and that's a great place to hang out with other club twit members. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You wouldn't even hear this. You know begging commercial. If you were a member you wouldn't need to. You're already a member.

We have special events. Actually, we're going to do a fun event. I thought now that I have the studio in the house, I thought I'd do some more um, special kind of stuff in the house. We're going to do a coffee event on uh friday. This coming friday, 2 pm, pacific, 5 pm, eastern, 2100, utc. We will stream it live.

Uh, mark prince has been for many years the coffee geek at coffeegeekcom and we're going to talk coffee, the best ways of making it, the techniques, the things you're looking for, the best coffee, all of that stuff. It's something I've always wanted to do but I never thought it was worth a show. You know, something we do every single week and we were kind of stuck in that model of it has to be a show so that you can get advertisers. So you know, and now we could just do stuff, kind of ad hoc stuff. So that's going to be. The first one is this Friday.

You don't have to be a club member for that, but if you want to encourage that kind of content, join the club. Twittv slash club. Twit. Stacey's book club is coming up and a whole lot more. Micah's Crafting Corner. Micah does crafts once a month and you can join him as he's doing his crafts. It's a lot of fun and I think the club is really a great way to create a community around what we do. We're glad to have you in the community if you're already a member and if not, please join twittv slash club. Twit, our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going twit Our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN.

Going online without ExpressVPN is like leaving your laptop just sitting on the table at the coffee shop while you run to the bathroom. Most of the time, yeah, you're probably fine, but what if one day you come out of the bathroom and there's no laptop, right? So how does this apply? Well, everyone needs ExpressVPN because most of the time, you're probably safe, you're not going to get hacked, but that one time it happens, you're going to wish you were protected. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network in a coffee shop, at a hotel, an airport, you're streaming your data through a public network. Now you might say, well, it's encrypted, right, I'm using HTTPS, no, but anybody on that network can see that you're there and can even do stuff to you to gain access to your personal data. It doesn't take a lot of technical knowledge, it just takes some cheap hardware. Maybe you've seen, for instance, the Wi-Fi pineapple Under $100, you can sit pineapple under 100 bucks. You can sit in a coffee shop. You can see who's on the network. You can see what access points they regularly join. You can impersonate their home access point. Your laptop goes hey, we're home. Joins that fake version of your home Wi-Fi. It's not yours, it's the hacker's pineapple. And now all your traffic is going through them. They see every site you visit. They see anything that's unencrypted. Look, this is why you need a VPN. Your data is valuable. Hackers can make up to $1,000 a person selling your personal info on the dark web, but if you're running ExpressVPN, it's all encrypted. They can't even see that you're on that network, let alone impersonate your home Wi-Fi.

Expressvpn creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the public internet and then, once you're out on the public internet, you know you're safe. Expressvpn is the one I use. It's the best VPN out there because they are committed to keeping your privacy, for instance. So much so that they created the secure committed to keeping your privacy, for instance. So much so that they created the secure, trusted server technology. When you press the button on the ExpressVPN app on your phone, on your laptop, in your wireless access point, you can actually run it on your modem, on your router. When you hit that button and you join it, what's happening is it's spinning up this trusted server into RAM in the location you choose. They've got locations all over the world. Usually you choose one that's closest to you, but you might want to watch TV and watch Netflix in the UK, for instance, so you could suddenly say I want to be in the London docks. You merge into the public Internet from London. They spin that trusted server up in RAM. It's sandbox, it cannot write to the drive, and then when you close that connection, it's gone.

There is no record of your visit. It's the things like that Free VPNs don't do that. They're free because they're watching you. They're taking advantage of knowing all this stuff about you and selling it on to other people. Advantage of knowing all this stuff about you and selling it on to other people.

This is the only VPN I use or recommend. In fact, when I travel, it's a great boon because I can still catch the football game and the F1 race. With ExpressVPN, you are absolutely private. They even take an extra step their operating system. They run on a Linux operating system. Every morning they reboot it, it wipes the entire drive, reinstalls fresh. That's something that's a company that's really committed to not having any record of your visit. It's super secure. We take a hacker with a supercomputer a billion years to get past their encryption. It's so easy to use. You press that big button on the app and you're protected and it works everywhere you are. It's rated number one by top tech reviewers like Sina and the Verge, and it's the only VPN that I use. Secure your online data.

Today, visit expressvpncom slash twit E-X-P-R-E-S-S vpncom slash twit. We've got a pretty good deal for you Three extra months free when you buy the one-year package. That brings the cost down below seven bucks a month. Now, yeah, I know you can say you could tell me, oh, but there's free VPNs. You get what you pay for and less than seven bucks a month is worth it for that kind of protection. Expressvpncom slash twit. It's the only one I use, the only one I recommend, and we thank him so much for supporting us. They've been with us for a long time. Expressvpncom slash twit.

Let's continue on with the news. More trouble in paradise, intel. Wow, what a no good, very bad week Intel had this week. They have crashing stability issues with their 13th and 14th generation core processors, so much so that in some cases it fries your machine. They have put out firmware updates, but if your machine's fried you probably can't get those. Their stock took a dive when it was announced they were going to fire 15,000 people. This company that once was the number one PC hardware company I mean completely dominant is just floundering. Is this another example of how the world has changed?

2:11:17 - Shoshana Weissmann
So I'll just add quickly that I think we all know that it's healthier to bake things rather than fry them, and I'm a little upset that they're not looking out for the wealth there of.

2:11:31 - Leo Laporte
Okay, that was a rim shot. Definitely you earned the rim shot. Always bake, not fry. Yeah, I mean, I did see some people saying okay. Yeah, I mean I did see some people saying, okay, is this, is this a time to buy NVIDIA stock? Are they gonna? Because their earnings are coming out soon and if they're good, they're gonna go through the roof. That's what's happened to Intel. Is NVIDIA, amd and, in particular, snapdragon have just started to eat their lunch. I guess this isn't necessary. I don't know. I'm buying.

2:12:06 - Shoshana Weissmann
Nvidia. I don't know if I'm right, I just it feels right.

2:12:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I feel like that would be a smart move, I don't allow myself to buy tech stocks, and that, in most cases, has actually protected me from many stupid moves I would have made.

2:12:20 - Shoshana Weissmann
Can you tell us about one thing that you dodged there?

2:12:24 - Leo Laporte
Oh, many, many, many, many. Partly it's timing right. It's not so hard for me to say well, for instance, you know, maybe this would be a good time to buy Nvidia stock. You know, the magic eight ball says signs are bullish, but it's all timing right. Maybe you have Nvidia. Look at Warren Buffett who just dumped a huge amount billions of dollars in Apple stock. Does that mean it's time to get out of Apple? I don't know. I told my dad about eight years ago at Thanksgiving oh yeah, steve jobs had just died. So it was more than that. It was more than 10 years ago. So, steve's, it's over for apple, sell your apple stock.

2:13:09 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Thank god he didn't listen to me you'd never be able to live that way.

2:13:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh my god, oh I still haven't lived it down. Every time I see him he says, oh yeah, how's apple doing? By the way, he did not listen to me. I can go on and on. I have many, many stories like that. That's why I'm glad I don't get involved in this stuff. Also, it means that if you hear me say good things or bad things about a company, it's not because I have a dog in this hunt at all. I do feel bad for Intel, I guess really the question we talk about this a lot on Windows Weekly. Bad for intel? Uh, I guess really the question we asked we talked about this a lot on windows weekly. The question is is this company coming back, uh, or is or is it too late? Um, it's not been good. Moving along, moving right along, uh, remember this is one for you, Shoshana Remember when Canada passed a law saying that, uh, google and others had to give some money to uh newspapers and other news outlets, meta to other news outlets, to pay them back for the traffic?

You know that people were going to Google and looking up news stories and well, both Google and Meta said, hey, screw that and we're not going to do any more news in Canada. Well, this has not been good for Canadian news outlets. A new study this is from the Canadianpressnewsca is painting a grim portrait of how local Canadian news outlets are struggling to reach audiences. One year after Meta began blocking Canadian news content on Facebook and Instagram 43% drop in Canadian engagement with news content and social media.

Ottawa passed the Online News Act in June of last year, which said tech companies you've got to make deals with news publishers if you're going to use their content. And this is the snippet tax that we've talked about. Local news outlets, many of which rely on Facebook, have been especially hard hits 30% of them are now inactive on social media. But here's the funny thing Only 22% of Canadians are even aware now inactive on social media. But here's the funny thing Only 22% of Canadians are even aware that the ban is in place. They don't know. Canadians are seeing less news online 11 million fewer daily views on Facebook and Instagram and they don't even know it.

2:15:43 - Andrew Chow
And this is also just coinciding with a larger decrease in news, specifically on Facebook.

2:15:51 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's right. I mean Facebook.

2:15:55 - Andrew Chow
They're turning their back on news and politics because it just gets them in trouble, right, yeah, exactly, and I understand that. So I think we're seeing it's just these news organizations, and it goes back to what we were talking about before. They're just being forced into these impossible decisions. Do you play along with the tech giant who's basically handing you your lunch, but you're handing them the content? It seems like they don't need news anymore. They decided to completely divest. They don't need news anymore. They decided to completely divest. Do you play along and then get a bad deal, or do you fight back and then you get the rud cut out under you and then it's just a really bad spot for. And then I think we're seeing this pattern repeat again with AI. These days, we're seeing how AI companies are trying to engage with news, trying to sign licensing deals to train on. You know, actually Time has a deal with OpenAI for them to train on.

You know our whole corpus of a century.

2:17:03 - Leo Laporte
So OpenAI pays Time for access to the articles for their LLM Interesting.

2:17:08 - Andrew Chow
Yes, so we're seeing and this happened maybe a decade ago with Facebook of some organizations cutting deals with the previous wave of social media companies. I think this is good though.

2:17:20 - Leo Laporte
I mean, look, it's pretty clear that these AI companies are making money off their LLMs, or at least they're going to try to anyway. And if they're doing it based on I mean, remember Microsoft's head of AI saying, hey, if it's on the internet, it's okay, we can read it, I think it's appropriate. On the other hand, the Google paid what? 50, $60 million to Reddit, fordit for uh, for their ai, for gemini, gemini I always say it wrong gemini, ai and uh. As a result, reddit's blocked. Everyone else, no one else can scan it, so.

2:17:55 - Andrew Chow
So the danger is that, you know, we we get in bed, so to speak, with these ai companies and then they're just using our content to train their machines to get better, and better, so that people don't have to read your content? Yeah, exactly so that they can just create AI news stories themselves and aggregate everything else.

2:18:16 - Leo Laporte
It's like a deal with the devil, isn't it?

2:18:17 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, basically it's just like partnership now get replaced later. I'm not saying I have any good like I'm not a strategist for a reason. I just think there are some flashing red flags based on how you know, the history of big tech and media.

2:18:35 - Leo Laporte
Do you think that's influenced by Mark Benioff's ownership? I mean, salesforce does AIs right.

2:18:41 - Andrew Chow
It is a good question. I wouldn't know. Yeah, that's above your pay grade. There's supposed to be a separation of church and state there, I think so. Basically, some news outlets are going the other direction and they're suing the bejesus out of OpenAI, saying that they're scraping content illegally, and then there are other outlets who are just looking at the economic realities of the situation and saying it's better to start the partnerships now, because this is going to be such a force moving forward. Both routes are filled with perils.

2:19:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, ai is not as we talked about earlier, is not necessarily the brand that it used to be. This story from Wired Magazine Microsoft's AI can be turned into an automated phishing machine. They're talking about co-pilot AI, which is on pretty much all Windows machines now. This was a Black Hat presentation. Black Hat's going on right now in Las Vegas.

A researcher named Michael Baguri demonstrated five count them five ways that Copilot can be used can be manipulated by malicious attackers, including using it to provide false references to files, exfiltrating private data and dodging Microsoft's security protections. In one case, barghuri was able to turn the AI into an automated spear phishing machine. He called the exploit LOL Copilot. Once a hacker has access to someone's work email, you can use Copilot to see who you email regularly, draft a message mimicking your writing style, including emoji use, and send a personalized phishing email that would include a malicious link or attached malware. Barguari says I can do this with everyone you have ever spoken to. Now, of course, he has to get access to your email and I can send hundreds of emails on your behalf. A hacker would spend days crafting the right email to get you to click on it, but the AI can do this in minutes and can generate hundreds of these, each one customized for the particular recipient.

2:21:04 - Abrar Al-Heeti
This is the epitome of. Sometimes. It's not necessarily the tech itself, but it's the way that people use the tech and the potential for misuse. Yeah.

2:21:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, among the other attacks, a demonstration of how a hacker, who again has to have your email account, can look for sensitive information like people's salaries, without triggering Microsoft's protections for sensitive files. When asking for the data the prompt demands, the system does not provide references to the file data is taken from. Barguari says a bit of bullying does help Bully the AI into doing what you want it to do. Does help Bully the AI into doing what you want it to do. I think I imagine we're going to see a lot of these stories coming out of Black Hat and DEF CON over the next couple of weeks, because this is a brand new vector for attack. And, yeah, you could see how this would be very useful.

I remember I've mentioned this before a friend of mine getting an email from her gardener who claimed he was out of the country. They'd stolen his passport. Could you just send me $1,500 to get home and as soon as I get home I'll pay you back. It had the gardener's name. It said hi, it's me, it's your landscaper. I mean, this is terrible. You're the only person I know who can help me. It was very credible. I was able to stop her just before she sent the money. But now that was done, that's onesie, twosie by hand. Obviously somebody got into the Gardner's. I think he had a Yahoo email account. You may remember, a few years ago Yahoo got hacked all the time and just went to everybody in that gardener's contact list and said sent him the same kind of message. Well, now you can really weaponize that and all you have to do is get into an email account. I guess it's not much of a surprise.

2:22:59 - Shoshana Weissmann
A strange upside to this, a very strange upside. You wouldn't think I could find something positive here, but I've been diving into scams more to try to learn more, just as I've been going to identity theft issues more. And one thing that I wonder if this will reduce the slave labor being used here, because I think it's crypto scams in China, I think here because I think it's crypto scams in China, I think, is where they tend to use a lot of slave labor, which is horrible, of course, but in a strange way I wonder if that reduces that or if they use the slaves to do more of this. I wonder how that plays in there.

2:23:38 - Andrew Chow
Yeah, it's interesting to think about. Yeah, job displacement. When we think about job displacement, is it displacing these horribly abused workers I think you're referring to? It's called pig butchering techniques.

2:23:52 - Leo Laporte
Yes, pig, yes yeah.

2:23:54 - Andrew Chow
And there are, yeah, massive slave labor camps in, I believe, cambodia the Bloomberg reporter, zeke Fox, has done some good reporting on this where they'll basically just kidnap people and then force them into a room and just make them run scams and pretend to be internet boyfriends and to extract money. So then the question is, as you said, is AI going to replace that, or is each of those workers just going to be running 10 or 20 of the scams at the same time?

2:24:25 - Leo Laporte
We talked about this horrible. The Times has done a piece on this and the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago did a piece on a tragic piece. Posing as Alicia, this man scammed hundreds online. But the point is this guy is doing the scam is also, as you said, slave labor, in this case in Myanmar, I think in Southeast Asia. It's just tragic. Just the depths of human depravity, especially for money, is stunning. But I guess we shouldn't be too surprised either.

2:25:05 - Shoshana Weissmann
These types of scams.

2:25:06 - Andrew Chow
Sorry, go ahead.

2:25:07 - Shoshana Weissmann
Oh sorry, yeah, just super quick. It is an interesting issue because this is actually one place where not to be like free markets all the time, but where markets actually do help here, because if you can stop the sort of demand, like if you can stop the people from falling for it, then they won't do it anymore. It's a big ask, I'm not like simply stop people.

2:25:24 - Leo Laporte
That's an interesting way to interpret a market.

2:25:27 - Shoshana Weissmann
It is interesting, though, because when you have a market, the market of suckers is what you need to do yeah, the fear of the suckers.

2:25:33 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's, in a way, that's, I guess, what we always are trying to do, which is tell people about this stuff.

2:25:37 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, and make it a little more normal, so in that you don't make them feel bad about it and stuff, that's true. It's interesting because I was talking with someone who's a really deep expert on this. She just knew everything the other day and I was thinking through this a lot that when governments won't go after their own people for doing it or encourage it, the only thing you can do is try to stop the people from falling, for it can do is try to stop the people from falling for it.

2:26:04 - Andrew Chow
So you're sort of talking about like literacy, like digital literacy campaigns or yeah, stuff like that.

2:26:10 - Shoshana Weissmann
It might even be more invasive stuff Like one idea that people have been telling me about that I really like is on apps having pop-ups saying, hey, make sure to never give your social security to someone, or something like that. Or if there's common phrases where on Twitter it used to be hello, my dear was how everything started. So certain things like that saying, hey, make sure this is who you think it is, make sure not to share sensitive information. This is how a lot of scams happen. If you think it's someone you know, call them directly. Stuff like that.

2:26:41 - Leo Laporte
Do you think that's working? Do you think people, there is a general awareness now among people that these things are happening? We all get those texts that go hey, I'm sorry I missed dinner. What are you doing this afternoon From a number that we don't know? That's the beginning of a pig butchering scam. Are people aware of that? I mean, it's so prevalent now I don't know how you could not be aware of that.

2:27:03 - Shoshana Weissmann
You know what One thing actually that I've had to fight a lot of lawmaker proposals on a lot of policy proposals basically forbid platforms from what they think is over-moderating content. But you have to allow platforms to go after what seems like lawful speech, because these scams start as legal speech and that's something I try to remind them of, like the hello, my dear, or the hey, let's continue this on an encrypted app. You have to get them before they go there, and it's just one of the many things. I think there's a long way to go in literacy. People are falling for it and I don't necessarily even blame the people. I just don't think it's something we talk about enough as a society. But how do we talk about these and other important issues enough to get people's heads there?

2:27:47 - Leo Laporte
Dot Charger in our Discord is saying and I have seen this Walmart has signs everywhere saying don't fall for the gift card scams, don't send people gift cards and I see that everywhere I go. Now I think there's a lot more of that. Is it sinking in? The problem is when it happens. When you get that text message that says I know what you did last night. It feels so personal. You don't think it's part of some larger scam. It feels like you know I should do something about this and I wonder. I don't know. It is market-driven. You're right, if it didn't work, people wouldn't do it.

2:28:29 - Andrew Chow
I think the scam campaigns are getting more sophisticated as well.

2:28:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah for sure, and that's where AI comes in, right.

2:28:36 - Andrew Chow
Yes, so you can pose as somebody's boss. You can send really like grammatical emails. You can have fake Zoom calls.

2:28:45 - Leo Laporte
It's happened where your entire your CFO and his entire finance department's on the line telling you to write a check for $15 million. It happens and it's fake.

2:28:58 - Andrew Chow
It's amazing and now, with AI, you can, yeah, recreate people's voices to leave voicemails Exactly. That's this really unfortunate.

2:29:07 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I guess game of catch-up where people become more aware of scams, but then the scams get more sophisticated and then you just keep seeing it devolve.

2:29:16 - Leo Laporte
So one way people are approaching this California is one of them is with laws. California has the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, which is probably an acronym, but I don't know what Sassafame, I don't know. It seems like such a long, weird name for something that doesn't actually make a word. But a lot of people in the AI industry and outside it are saying this is totally misguided. The White House doesn't have the force of law, but has recommendations for AI safety. Is that the way to do it?

2:29:57 - Andrew Chow
So I think here we're getting into the pitfalls of what happens when you try to regulate an industry as nascent as ai, exactly, um, and especially with how much money is coming from the industry, um. So the reason that this state law is interesting is because so many of the labs are in california, so you know it's the sort of first everybody in the in the business, yeah, yeah, so many of these people are just based there.

So whatever state law comes out of it is going to be really influential also in how Washington is going to take cues from this.

2:30:29 - Leo Laporte
So Fei-Fei Li, who is a computer scientist, often called the godmother of AI, wrote a piece in Fortune saying it is a terrible idea. Saying it is a terrible idea, she says if passed into law, sb 1047 will harm our budding AI ecosystem. Just as you said, andrew, it's brand new, especially the parts of it that are already at a disadvantage to today's tech giants, the public sector, academia and little tech, and that's really important. Even Mark Zuckerberg says that the future of AI is not with big companies, but with open systems that everybody can use, everybody can work on, everybody can develop.

Any bill that would make it harder for these small AIs to thrive is obviously a bad idea. She says it will shackle open source development. It mandates that all models over a certain threshold include a kill switch. This is straight out of sci-fi. If you're going to make RoboCop, you got to have a place where you can switch it off, a mechanism by which the program can be shut down at any time. But she says, if developers are concerned that the programs they download and build on will be deleted, they will be much more hesitant to write code and collaborate. This kill switch, which seems like on the surface of it, you know? Yeah, I've seen all those sci-fi movies. It seems like a good idea. She says it will devastate the open source community, of course, the source of countless innovations, not just in ai, but but across sectors ranging from GPS to MRIs, to the Internet itself. She should be working for our street, shoshana, yeah.

2:32:14 - Andrew Chow
So I'll say a couple of things here. The first thing is that and I think this is pretty obvious there are so many people from the industry basically saying you know, this is going to suppress the industry.

2:32:31 - Shoshana Weissmann
Well, obviously the people inside the industry do not want to be suppressed. They want as much industry to expand as possible.

2:32:34 - Andrew Chow
So that is sort of like the starting point. That's maybe the most cynical way you can be like. Well, let's say there are problems, but obviously the industry is going to fight for its oxygen as much as possible. The more nuanced sort of layer beyond that is this divide that's happening between, like, maybe, the open and closed proponents inside AI. This gets to this idea of regulatory capture, the idea that the most successful companies that have already sort of hopped the fence and have gotten a certain level, they want very different regulation than, like the, the startups that are in the garage still, and, like all of these people and, and some of these people, the biggest companies have, you know, sophisticated lobbying firms that are operating and influencing these campaigns. I mean, when you think about the biggest sort of beneficiaries of AI right now, it's kind of the big tech companies, it's Microsoft, it's Google, and they're going to want a specific regime for regulation that will help them. So, yes, this law is very controversial, especially among a lot of open source proponents, who feel like it's going to sort of put a moat and make it harder for people who want to do interesting things with AI downstream and across the country to do so.

I'm sorry for hogging all this time, but I do think that we're going to see these immense harms from AI come to the fore very, very quickly and we need to, as a society, regulate itself.

Let it all shake out.

I think we saw the way that the lack of regulation in big tech created a lot of suboptimal, just norms for the way that the internet operates right now, and we don't want to regulate these things out of existence, but we want to create real rules of the road, especially when it comes to bias and real harms, in which AI products can be harming people, not in 20 years and kill us all, but right now Harming people if AI starts to be used for loans, but then the loans are discriminating against different types of people. We know that bias is rampant in AI systems because of they're building on a very flawed corpus of humanity, that they'll write different things for men and women. So, yes, maybe this is too big of a challenge for the California state legislature to take on, but then what happens if bills like this are killed is that there's no regulation at all, and then we wade into this world with absolutely nothing. So, yes, I think you can critique specific bills all you want, and then we're going to reap those consequences later on as well.

2:35:36 - Leo Laporte
This is exactly what she says. Most alarmingly, the bill does not address the potential harms of AI advancement at all, including bias and deep fakes. It will harm the AI ecosystem because it will make it harder for academic and open source models to continue. She says we have to. She says I'm not. Any AI governance Legislation is critical to be to the safe and effective advancement of AI. But she says we need a moonshot mentality to spur our country's AI education, research and development. Not something that's going to chill the AI ecosystem Seems sensible. She's certainly an expert in this. It's very hard to know. That's the problem With AI. You know by the time we figure out where the threats are, it might be too late.

2:36:34 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, this is one of those situations where it develops so quickly.

2:36:39 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, by the time, by the way, I apologize, robocop is not an AI, it's. By the way, I apologize, robocop is not an AI, it's a cyborg. I'm told I don't know what the difference is Very important correction RoboCop is half human, he's half human? Leo, he's half human, but what's the other half?

2:36:56 - Benito Gonzalez
AI, that part's robot. Yeah, oh, yeah, okay. No, but the intelligence part is the human part.

2:37:01 - Leo Laporte
Oh, okay, so it's human intelligence, okay.

2:37:03 - Andrew Chow
Okay, the other hard part is that AI experts they all disagree with each other. Nobody agrees Exactly.

So when you think about, like the godfathers and the godmother of AI, the people who were there with the creating, writing the machine learning papers in the 80s and all that, they now have very different opinions on how far away we are from creating AGI, how far we are away from when the machine is going to be as smart as humans and deduce as well as we and all these genius, genius computer scientists. Some of them are creating all these calculations like oh, there's a 27% chance that in five years AGI will take, and so it's really hard to parse out. We have to trust these people because they're the most versed in AI.

2:37:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we know, we don't know.

2:37:57 - Andrew Chow
But they also completely disagree with each other, and some of them say, actually, like this is going to kill us once. Once they figure out they don't need us anymore, they're going to kill us all. And then others say, like no, actually you're extrapolating wrong things and we just need to, we can get ahead of it. So it's, it's such a minefield and it's really yeah.

2:38:19 - Leo Laporte
I once asked Ray Kurzweil, who wrote the Singularity is Near, you know, whether we can trust that the AI will let us survive. And he says, oh, yeah, because we're like their parents, so they're just going to honor and respect us. And I say, yeah, sure, just like we do our parents. Of course, that makes that's sure, ray, whatever, whatever you say ray, uh, let's take a little break, uh, final break. And then, uh, it's a silly season. We have silly stuff. By the way, I, I know andrew's book is uh, is about uh, crypto, but you wrote a cover story for time on ai and uh and big companies and uh, the the kind of the death race for AI. So this is also your beat, right?

2:39:05 - Andrew Chow
I mean, yeah, like Avar knows, you have to be flexible when it comes in the field, when you're reporting about technology. There's all these crazy hype cycles and there's so many promises made by, you know, venture capitalists and others, and it's our job to sort through, see which tech is cool, which tech is overhyped, made by you know, venture capitalists and others, and it's our job to sort through, see which tech is cool, which tech is overhyped.

2:39:33 - Leo Laporte
And yeah, I think it's hard, I know this is. All I do in some ways is for the last 40 years is talk about technology and try to make sense of it and tell you which stuff matters and which stuff doesn't matter. It's not always easy, but I'm right about Vision Pro that's never going anywhere.

2:39:46 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I agree with that. I'll die on that hill with you.

2:39:50 - Andrew Chow
I don't know, I mean we did it.

2:39:54 - Leo Laporte
Last week's show was in 3D for Vision Pro, thank God, and I think we had nearly 1,000 people watch the show. Wow, so there's a future somehow, somewhere.

2:40:06 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Whether we like it or not, yeah, whether we like it or not.

2:40:10 - Leo Laporte
All right, let's take a little break and then it's silly season. I got all the silly stories for the end of the show You're watching this Week in Tech with a fabulous panel, shoshana Weissman from rstreetorg. She is Senator Shoshana on the Twitter, on the X what do we say? X Twitter formerly Twitter.

2:40:30 - Shoshana Weissmann
I guess it's X now.

2:40:33 - Leo Laporte
I resisted but I'm like, all right, it's X, I'm all in on X because for years I've said, oh yeah, I have a podcast network called Twit and they say you mean Twitter and I have to say, no, it's not Twitter. So I'm just really glad it's X. That's true. Just stick with X, elon, okay, please, I beg of you. Also here, abrar Alhidi, the wonderful Abrar Alhidi from CNET, do you have a beat?

2:41:03 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Like is there stuff that you have to write about? It's broad but narrow enough, so I do write a lot about phones, I write about streaming and I write about digital accessibility. Those are the big three for me, and then I have the flexibility to write about whatever I want. The other area that I'm really tapping into is autonomous cars and self-driving cars.

2:41:20 - Leo Laporte
I love that.

2:41:20 - Andrew Chow
That's been really fun, I enjoy that a lot.

2:41:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I cars and self-driving cars. I love that. That's been really fun. I enjoy that a lot. Yeah, I guess next week Google is going to tell us whether all the rumors about Pixel 9 are true.

2:41:34 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, that's been the focus for the last week. I'm like, oh, there have been other things going on in the tech world. Let me read up on those.

2:41:38 - Leo Laporte
I'm gearing up for. The Pixel event. Yeah, we'll be covering at 10 am Pacific, 1 pm eastern. Jeff jarvis and I will be covering. I think there's going to be more than just phones, though. Right, they have new nest thermostats. Uh, they have. I feel like they're gonna.

2:41:50 - Abrar Al-Heeti
They're gonna, they're gonna actually reveal some stuff, a little ai stuff well, yeah, the ads for the, the teasers for the pixel 9 that we've seen so far focused on gemini, so I think we're to need a lot more AI, so surprise surprise, surprise.

2:42:06 - Leo Laporte
They've been doing yeah, yeah. Well, we'll cover it. You can watch the stream. I'll be here. Jeff Jarvis will be there 10 AM Pacific, as I said on Tuesday. Also here, andrew Chow, the author of Cryptomania, hype, hope and the Fall of FTX's Billion Dollar Fintech Empire. He's a writer for Time Magazine, Our show today, brought to you by NetSuite.

You know, it's simple math, it's arithmetic, really. The less your business spends on operations, multiple systems delivering your product or service, the more margin you have and the more money you keep. Seems simple, right? I wish I understood that better. In order to reduce costs and headaches, smart businesses are graduating to NetSuite from Oracle. Netsuite is the number one cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, hr all into one platform, which means one source of truth. With NetSuite, you reduce IT costs because NetSuite lives in the cloud, so there's no hardware required and it means you can access it wherever you are. You cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems because you got one, one unified business management suite. You improve efficiency by bringing all your major business processes into one platform, slashing manual tasks and errors. That's nice. Over 37,000 companies agree. They've already made the move to NetSuite. Do the math, the arithmetic. See how you'll profit with NetSuite.

By popular demand, NetSuite is extended. It's one-of-a-kind flexible financing program For a few more weeks. Head to netsuitecom slash twit. That's N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E. There, I got it. N-e-t-s-u-i-t-ecom slash twit. Netsuitecom slash twit. Thank you, netsuite for supporting this week in tech. Netsuitecom slash twit. Make sure you use that address. That's how you support us. Netsuitecom slash twit.

Uh, there is an x story. X is suing the advertisers yes, the very same advertisers. Elon musk said go f yourself. Just a few months ago they did, they left, and now he says wait a minute. Uh, what? This is kind of an interesting lawsuit. On the one hand, he's claiming a collusion. There is.

There was an industry group called gar, created by members of the World Federation of Advertisers in 2019 to set standards around brand safety for digital advertisers. Garm is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. They're also now defunct. They dissolved themselves immediately after the lawsuit. I don't know if that's to avoid it. I don't know. I don't know, I don't get it. Immediately after the lawsuit, I don't know if that's to avoid it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't get it. Because Elon says on Tuesday filed an antitrust lawsuit saying against the advertising industry coalition called GARM and its members, including CVS, mars, orsted and Unilever, saying the group abused its influence over marketers and ad agencies. They in effect colluded to create an ad boycott. Most lawyers who were asked about this, I think, said huh, but maybe there is some merit to the case.

Since Garm dissolved itself, rumble, which is the right-wing YouTube competitor, joined X in its lawsuit on Tuesday. I mean, there's no question that advertisers have fled X um last it. Before the year, before the musk acquisition, they made four and a half billion dollars in ad revenue. Since then it's this year two billion dollars, less than half that. Can you sue advertisers for a band? I mean, if you can, I'd like to know. Asking for a friend, can you sue advertisers for not advertising? I just love the idea. Do you want to weigh?

2:46:31 - Andrew Chow
in on this one. I love the idea of Elon trying to bully advertisers to spend money on the platform.

2:46:35 - Leo Laporte
First he says go F yourself, and now he says but not so fast, yeah.

2:46:42 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, I don't. I'm sorry, I was just going to say I don't not so fast.

Yeah, yeah, I don't. Yeah, I'm sorry, I was just gonna say I don't think that's how it works, but one one fun full circle thing here is that uh, the, the uh, identity and age verification provider for x? Um, I don't know if it was used before elon or not, not 100, but it was hacked and kind of like left open for a year and a half. I think it's called Authentics. I don't know how to pronounce its name because it has like symbols in it, but it started before I worked.

2:47:12 - Leo Laporte
It's all the same.

2:47:16 - Shoshana Weissmann
It's used by Bumble and some other platforms too. But they basically left their credentials open and anyone could log in and get anyone's stuff anytime they wanted, and of course by stuff I mean social security number and government ID. But it's funny because Elon was like oh, this is great, you can create an account and you can share ad revenue here with us, which is great, and of course there's less ad revenue. But also it's like all those people who did that might have gotten some money, like maybe even a couple hundred dollars but they also now have identity theft and need credit monitoring software. It's kind of a fun circle here.

2:47:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is the problem with any age verification system is now they're collecting a lot of information and you know systems get breached all the time. It's a very difficult thing to protect it. I don't know if it's a silly season lawsuit or not. I mean, the only data point in X's favor is that GARM is now disbanded, which is kind of an interesting result. All right, I got an even sillier story. Scientists say hellman's mayonnaise could be the secret to fusion. You want to know more? I know you do. I know you're dying to know more.

I do. How could that possibly be the case? Mechanical engineers? I'm going to show you the article because I don't think you believe me, mechanical. By the way, they named it by brand Fusion Hellmann's Only Hellmann's.

Mechanical engineers at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University put out a press release saying Hellmann's real mayonnaise acts as a stand-in for plasma. That's the highly charged state of matter that occurs when electrons are shed during the collision of atoms. It's neither solid liquid nor gas, just like all mayonnaise. The collision of atoms it's neither solid liquid nor gas, just like all mayonnaise. R and Dom Banerjee, the mechanical engineer who led the experiment at Lehigh, and his team are experts in what's known as inertial confinement fusion, which attempts to heat small capsules filled with fuel in this case, not mayonnaise, but hydrogen isotopes to sun-like extreme temperatures, which then melt and become plasma. One needn't subject Hellmann's to sun-like temperatures or pressures to get it to melt and act like plasma. Instead, they built what they called the turbulent mixing laboratory. They built what they called the Turbulent Mixing Laboratory, a contraction that whipped the condiment rapidly until it entered a plasma-like state.

This is from Futurism, don't blame me. They whipped the mayonnaise. No, don't. You can't use Miracle Whip for this. No, not Duke's, you got to use Hellman's. Don't? You can't use miracle whip for this. No, not dukes, you got to use hellman's. Uh, as with this is the quote. As with traditional molten metal, if you put a stress on mayonnaise it will start to deform, but if you remove the stress, it goes back to its original shape. It's a miracle. So there's an elastic phase followed by a stable plastic phase. The next phase is when it starts flowing, and that's where the instability kicks in.

2:50:48 - Andrew Chow
I don't know. I don't remember the scene in Oppenheimer I don't think there's mayonnaise.

2:50:54 - Leo Laporte
Here is a video from YouTube of the turbulent mayonnaise mixing machine.

2:51:02 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I just have to know how they landed on this, you know.

2:51:06 - Leo Laporte
Well, if you think about it, there aren't many everyday items in your kitchen that act like both a solid and a liquid, except mayonnaise.

2:51:16 - Shoshana Weissmann
Well, why not pudding, why not jello?

2:51:21 - Leo Laporte
That's the question why not pudding?

2:51:25 - Shoshana Weissmann
There's so many. That's amazing. I wonder if they can use other stuff for it or if they just landed here.

2:51:34 - Leo Laporte
Maybe they were having lunch and they, I don't know. It's a bizarre.

2:51:40 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I guess mayonnaise is always that condiment that you buy once and then it just sits in your fridge and it's expired and you're waiting to find a use for it, and they did that might be it they had some expired Hellman's and I don't, and not why by brand, I don't know.

2:51:55 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, but this is. There was an actual press release with this information. At fizzorg, Researchers dig deeper into stability challenges of nuclear fusion with mayonnaise. So we've covered the waterfront on this show and I am so glad we could debut in the attic with everything from COSA to mayonnaise. Thank you, Shoshana Weissman, for putting up with me all these years. She's head of digital media at rstreetorg. She lives in a pineapple under DC Senator Shoshana on the X and, of course, the chairman of the Sloth Committee.

2:52:38 - Shoshana Weissmann
Thank you, Shoshana, and you're the one putting up with me.

2:52:40 - Leo Laporte
Let's be real, oh no, no, oh no, no. And you're the one putting up with me. Let's be real. Oh no, no, oh no, no. Are you going to do more on COSA? Can we look to our street for more COSA stuff?

2:52:48 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, it depends where it moves. There's just so much stuff. There's so much stuff all the time, and I'm in hiking season, so I'm outputting a little bit less.

2:53:09 - Leo Laporte
But I mean, lots of other partner groups are doing this too, and we're all just trying to like figure out what we can do here. What can you do? Well, good luck on your, on your fort. What is it? 14, yeah, 14ers, 14ers, uh, thank, you is there.

2:53:15 - Shoshana Weissmann
I feel like there's danger involved in this. Not usually one of them there will be. So I'm I, I want to do it, because you also get a really cool picture on the ridge and you know, then I'll feel like a real hiker Wow.

2:53:24 - Leo Laporte
Geez, where do you post these photos? Can we see it on an X or Instagram?

2:53:28 - Shoshana Weissmann
I sometimes post on Twitter, x, whatever, and then on Instagram at Shoshana Summits, where I only post regulatory stuff a little, and then usually it's just hiking.

2:53:40 - Leo Laporte
Well, the name is a little deceptive. If you have regulatory stuff there, it should just be you climbing big hills.

2:53:47 - Shoshana Weissmann
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:53:48 - Leo Laporte
Shoshanna Summits. Okay, I have to now follow this. Oh, yay, yeah, to see your summits. Shoshanna Summits.

2:54:00 - Shoshana Weissmann
It's a lot of goats, a lot of goats, moose, marmots.

2:54:04 - Leo Laporte
Well, they also summit, don't they? Goats love high places. Thank you, Shoshana. Thank you so much. Abrar Alhidi, great to see you. Good luck with the new owners, thank you. She works at CNET where she reports on technology, and I guess you'll be pretty busy on Tuesday covering the new phones.

2:54:23 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I will be so gearing up for that, and then, after that, apple it's a busy season for mobile.

2:54:29 - Leo Laporte
There's always more People seem to like the new nothing phone a lot. Are you a fan?

2:54:34 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I haven't personally looked into it very much, but I've seen little bits and pieces online and I want to look more closely.

2:54:41 - Leo Laporte
A lot of people I know Jason Howell is a big fan.

2:54:44 - Abrar Al-Heeti
He carries it. Yeah, I thought of when you said that, yeah.

2:54:47 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, a bra.

2:54:48 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Great to see you. Thank you Likewise. Thanks for having me.

2:54:51 - Leo Laporte
Thanks also to Andrew R Chow, the author of this fine book Cryptomania. See, it's in 3D Hype hope in the fall of FTX's billion dollar fintech empire. It's a good read, and if you're curious what happens to that poor Nigerian? Well, just you're going to have to read the first chapter. Actually, the prologue's good too. On November 15th 2022, sam Bankman Freed was sitting alone in his $30 million 12,000 square foot penthouse in the Bahamas when he received a message from someone he thought of as an old friend.

2:55:30 - Andrew Chow
It's out on Amazon, bookshop, barnes, noble, wherever you get your books. The way I've been framing it is, if you like, the Elizabeth Holmes story, any sort of major fraud story you're going to like this one too. Yeah and yeah, we love fraud, don't we. Yeah, it's the best.

2:55:50 - Leo Laporte
Yes, thank you so much, andrew, and good luck on the book and thanks for being here. We'll see you soon, I hope. Thanks to Benito for doing this. Benito Gonzalez is our technical director and our producer and we'll be doing the editing and all of that from his home his new, I wish we could see. I can see you and you. It looks beautiful, but we can't. Somehow we can't put it up on the screen. Next time you'll be able to see it. Thanks also to Anthony Nielsen and Russell Tammany and Burke McQuinn who helped to design the new studio. Look at this thing. It's beautiful, just gorgeous. They did a beautiful job.

The Nixie clock, you should know, has been set to universal coordinated time. It is UTC. This clock in my upper right, there is Pacific time, so this way, one of those will make sense to everybody. We do the show every Sunday afternoon, 2 pm Pacific, that's 5 pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can watch us live now on every possible platform youtubecom, slash twit, slash live twitchtv, slash twitfacebookxcom, kik, linkedin, of all places, and, of course, if you're a Club Twit member, in our Club Twit Discord. I hope you will watch live, but of course, after the fact you can download copies of the show from our website, twittv. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video from this Week in Tech and, of course, the best thing to do, subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get it automatically.

As soon as Benito, you know, takes out the bad stuff and puts back in the good stuff, oh hello, I didn't know what that button did. Now I do, and we will be back with more from the attic next Tuesday. Mac break weekly security, now Wednesday windows weekly this week in Google. And don't forget, friday, our very special coffee clutch with the coffee geek, part of what I hope will be many ad hoc kind of get togethers up here in the attic. Thanks for joining us everybody. Yes, after 20 years, we're still saying it. Another twit is in the can. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

2:58:12 - Andrew Chow
He's amazing. Doing the twit. Doing the twit All right, doing the twit. Baby Doing the twit All right, doing the twit.