TWIT Episode 882 Transcript

Host:
It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech. Love this panel. Glenn Fleischman is visiting us from Seattle. So is Christina Warren, film girl. From Silicon valley it's Mike Elgan. We'll talk about GitHub co-pilot. Is it stealing open source software or is it a great thing for programmers? Elon Musk is back on Twitter after a nine day absence and he's with the Pope. Plus why judge Luttig spoke so slowly. It turns out he loves Twitter. It's all coming up next on Twig.

Glenn:
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Host:
This is TWiT, This Week in Tech, episode 882 recorded Sunday, July 3rd, 2022, many, many metaverses. This week in tech is brought to you by Policy Genius. If someone relies on your financial support, whether it's a child, aging parent, even a business partner, you need life insurance. Head to policygenius.com/twit to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. And by Zapier. Zapier makes it easy to connect all your apps, automate routine tasks and streamline your processes. Try Zapier for free today at zapier.com/twit. And by Podium. Join more than 100,000 businesses that already use Podium to streamline their customer interactions. See how Podium can grow your business. Watch a demo today at podium.com/twit.

Host:
And by Blueland. Blueland is on a mission to eliminate single use plastics by reinventing home essentials that are good for you and the planet. Right now, you can get 15% off your first order when you go to blueland.com/twit. It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech, the show week over the week's tech news. We've got a great panel. You're going to have fun today. We're all going to have fun. Glenn Fleischman is joining us all the way from Seattle. Glenn.fun, the best website URL in the world. Good to see you, Glenn.

Glenn:
Nice to see you. Glad to be here.

Host:
We're going to get a double dose of Glen this week, because you're going to be on this week in Google as well.

Glenn:
That's right. I'm sure I'll have a whole different set of things to talk about by then.

Host:
Oh yeah. Actually this panel is great because sometimes you get a panel and they're, you know, experts in a particular field and then that's all you hear about this one. This panel is so eclectic. They're all autodidacts, they're into all sorts of things. Well like Christina Warren film girl, who's into sneakers, obsolete swag, and happens to be a senior dev advocate at GitHub. Hello, Christina.

Christina:
Hey Leo.

Host:
You've been traveling like crazy. What's that all about?

Christina:
Travels back, man. Right? What can I say? I mean, not for everyone, obviously at all, like I'm not trying to imply that. I did my first international trip in two years, in over two years actually. So I was, I was in Copenhagen for a team summit, which was great. So I got to meet a lot of GitHubbers and hubbers as we call them in real life, which was amazing. And then I was in Tel Aviv for five days doing some community events and speaking at a startup conference and meeting just a lot of incredible people. So I've forgotten how to do the whole international travel thing. I'm not as much of a jet setter as Mike who we're going to talk to me in a second, but I have experienced and I've sort of forgotten how to do it. So coming back from the jet lag, hence the what hair and the hat I'm, I'm just like what day is it.

Host:
That's fine although I'm so sorry to hear that Adidas is now out of business.

Christina:
I know. Isn't it a shame? Isn't it a shame.

Host:
She is clothed in, oddly for her, articles of apparel advertising an existing company.

Christina:
An existing company. A company that's thriving, actually. You can't really tell too much from the coloring because the lighting in my office is terrible because I'm renovating hence the wrong camera and stuff, but this is a rose gold hat. Yeah. So that I had to be fun brand.

Host:
Because you are only products with rose gold.

Christina:
Basically.

Host:
All well look at the shoes. Show her shot one more time because I see some rose gold shoes right over there.

Christina:
You can see some, I've got a lot of my sneakers up. Like I said, I've renovated my office, so, but it's not quite done yet.

Host:
You should have a sneaker rack. Also with us, another traveler Mike Elgan, home briefly our gastro nomad gastronomad.net and elgan.com. Hi Mike.

Mike:
Hey Leo, how are you doing?

Host:
We were hoping to have you in studio, but I think due to the... What happened, I thought we were done with COVID due to this increase in COVID we're just trying to be a little more cautious. I don't want to get it because we're going to do that TWiT cruise in two weeks.

Mike:
The bad news is I was bringing you a sweet bottle of sparkling of Pét-Nat rosé from [inaudible 00:05:21]. It's a new wine, but don't worry. I'll save it for you.

Host:
And we're still using the olive oil you brought us last time and I still have a half bottle of that great repasado mezcal. So it's fine. We'll survive. I do appreciate the gift.

Mike:
You can finish the half bottle tonight.

Host:
Mike is very generous. So when do you hit the road again?

Mike:
Well, we're actually going to Oaxaca to visit friends. We're not going to do an experience.

Host:
We did the gastro nomad in Oaxaca for Halloween, for Day of the dead. That was incredible.

Mike:
We're being joined by my son, Kevin and his wife, Nadia and squishy face. We're going to introduce them to all our friends there. So it's going to be really great. And then we have, after that we have Provence experience, Prosecco experience and I'm sorry we have Provence, Barcelona then Morocco this year.

Host:
And you're just coming off of a Provence. Wow.

Mike:
Yeah. But it's great fun. And this is our first fall Provence experience. So it's going to be a lot of wine making and the harvest and all that stuff.

Host:
If you don't want to hear about travel, don't follow Mike Elgan on Twitter because-

Christina:
For real. Yeah.

Host:
Just makes you jealous. That's all.

Christina:
I was going to say, just become like very jealous of all the amazing places.

Host:
Well, you don't get to be jealous. You travel a lot so.

Christina:
Well, I mean I used to, but yes, but even so I love watching what Mike does, living vicariously.

Host:
I will not put you on the spot because you do work at GitHub. GitHub is in the news. Actually golly is saying there was a great talk during Git burger, she went to Git burger where you were talking about co-pilot the guy had a conversation with co-pilot and then it started interviewing itself.

Christina:
It was hilarious. It was so funny.

Host:
Wow co-pilot is... So it's well known that coders are lazy. And the last thing any coder, and I'll include myself, wants to do is rewrite code, somebody else has already done all the hard work. That's why stack overflow is so popular. It shows up in your Google searches. And so much code is copy and pasted from sources like stack overflow. Microsoft about a year ago, introduced an auto code generator, an AI based auto code generator called co-pilot that... I'm going to do it charitably. Although there's some controversy over this now, that goes through open source code. So when you post code on GitHub and you have a public repository and it's open source, it's open source. It's kind of free for all. So it used that as its machine learning data set. And then now you can in plain English, plain language, I guess not just English, plain language, say I want to code a login page and it will offer you some code.

Host:
You say the language it'll offer you some code. And oftentimes that code is very good. Not everybody's taken as well to this as some. Many people I know who use it are thrilled with it. TNW says GitHub copilot works so well because it steals open source code and strips credit. And there is definitely one side of the argument that people are a little bit upset, software freedom conservancy, which is a nonprofit community of open source advocates, said it's withdrawing from GitHub because it's unhappy that open AI and Microsoft trained Git co-pilot on published data on GitHub. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. And I don't know if you could give credit. I don't want to put you on the Christina, so I'm not going to ask you, but-

Christina:
Sorry, go on.

Host:
I know that if you could, you would give credit, but honestly I don't think machine learning works quite that way. You can't say this is where it came from, so thank you.

Christina:
Right. Well, unfortunately I can't comment too much on this. I'm not like, I don't know enough. I'm not paid enough to be the one to comment on this stuff. Although I think there are lots of interesting questions and conversations to have around this issue. The only thing I would say is I do think that there is, obviously there's one interpretation of how things work. I think that it's important to realize that this is at least the way it's supposed to be used. Can you convince things to maybe put output like an exact string? Yes. But in general this is the sort of thing that's helping you kind of create functions that are specific to your code.

Host:
Let me ask you since you are an expert in co-pilot. So I wont ask you to comment on the controversy, but let me ask you how it works. So I will type in login page or whatever. Does it give me code that is runable or is it typically just code that you might use as an inspiration for your own code?

Christina:
It depends. And obviously it's going to learn based on what code it has of yours and what you've been doing with it. So some of it you can do where you're wanting to look for a specific thing, but in most cases, what it is you're already writing a function or you're already writing something. And if you start to, for instance, put in something like a Twitter API sort of thing, if you wanted to log in with Twitter, for instance, and it has that block of code that it knows could be used in a language you're using, then it could auto complete that.

Host:
And that makes sense. You don't want to rewrite that. It's frankly, somebody wrote it, but it's not so proprietary. It's not such a clever thing that they own the idea. That's what anybody would write if they're writing code to access Twitter's API.

Christina:
Right. And then the idea is that the more you use it and the more it kind of learns from what you're doing, it can do some translation stuff. This is just still kind of in the beta phases where you could even translate how code works if you're writing in Python to JavaScript or to Java or something like that, which is actually kind of incredible because then you could do a lot more things, but the idea is not that it's like spitting out verbatim something that would be like a complete code block. That's not what it's doing. And this is why it's called your co-pilot. It's not doing it for you. It's helping you out and giving you suggestions based on what you're trying to accomplish and what the other code that you've been using in your project does and says.

Host:
The open source community has been a little prickly about Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub since it happened some years ago. At first I think a lot of people Git, which is the underlying process for GitHub Git is just a source code repository versioning system that is widely used, it was created actually for Linux. I think Linus actually created it. It is available. You could run your own Git server. You could go to Git lab, you could use GitHub.

Christina:
It's decentralized we just usually use it on centralized systems, which is sort of ironic, but it is actually, as you said-

Host:
One of the benefits of Git is all the code is saved everywhere. Everybody has it now. So it's kind of more like blockchain in that sense. It's not centralized at all, but when Microsoft bought GitHub, a lot of people say, oh, I'm going to GitLab or I'm going to run my own. And I noticed it is, if not bigger than ever, it's certainly as big as ever. And almost all open source projects are on GitHub. I put all my stuff on GitHub. It's where I store my blog backups. It's an amazing service you could do so much for free.

Host:
So I'm a fan. And I think Microsoft's been a good steward. And I think putting you, by the way, senior dev advocate helps, in my opinion, make them a good steward of GitHub. It's interesting that the software freedom conservancy has such a strong opinion about this. They say give up GitHub, the time has come like the wicked witch of the west, surrender. I don't think that's reasonable at all. I think there is a reasonable controversy over what does it mean to use an open source data base of code as the training set for your AI?

Glenn:
Well, it's tricky though. This gets us, you know, we can leap across to the does AI think already? Is it sentient? And you say, how does a coder learn to code? We typically learn. I mean, very few people... Gosh, I don't know these days though, people do code academies in all these different kinds of systems. You actually go and do boot camps and things. You study computer science in college. What have you. But I still think a lot of people learn the nitty gritty of coding. The actual work that gets put into production is by observing other people's code within your company or project.

Host:
Oh, absolutely.

Glenn:
So if an AI, I mean, this is where we get into if you are using machine learning, this gets us into where does creative commons have to go? And where do open source licenses have to go? Because if training sets are now things that are openly available to anybody, but if they're used in a certain way, they need to have credit. Some creative commons licenses, some open source licenses state specifically that remixed versions or adapted versions have to be available as freely as the original. And there's been lawsuits about that have typically been decided in the favor of open source projects, where a company takes something, they transform it and they don't provide it back, even though they're shipping products based on it.

Host:
This happens all the time. In fact, Donald Trump's social network...

Mike:
Truth social.

Host:
It's basically taken Mastodon on without credit. It is a Mastodon code base, which is an open source project.

Glenn:
But if you can learn, so if we have machine learning models, I'm not a copyright lawyer. I spent a lot of time thinking and interviewing people about it, is if you have code that's available to use for learning and you don't need to attribute it unless you release projects based on it does an AI model that writes code for you that's also figuring in aspects of your own code into what it produces, is that a form of learning that is not covered by say a share alike license or something similar or not. And I think the answer right now is no it's not. It's very clear cut. And if you're using identical code, if you get back to that clean room thing where you're writing code and you can't look at the original.

Glenn:
So are we trying to move to that where the FOSS stuff is in a clean room? And AIs can't look at it unless all the FOSS licensing is entirely, you don't have to do downstream recontribution of these modified projects. It's funny I think it actually brings up both ethical and copyright issues at the same time that there aren't clear answers to. I mean you should provide as much attribution as possible and that may not always be possible in the way these things are being shared.

Mike:
This is an important point because this is something we are going to be dealing with increasingly as more AI tools come online, people use them more and more. The point is that for the time being and possibly forever, the responsibility for adhering to the license for example is with the developer, no matter what tools they use. So if copilot shows a developer some code and they're just copying and pasting it or whatever, they're still responsible for making sure they don't file the license and copy and so on.

Host:
They don't know where the code came from because copilot is not giving you any attribution.

Mike:
Therefore they should not be copying and pasting it. This should be advising them about a methodology to go forward and write their own code or whatever. But the point is that just because this tool exists doesn't get the developer off the hook for adhering to the license that they agreed to.

Host:
That's a really interesting question.

Glenn:
I like that. That's a different angle or not even a different angle, but it means there's a lot of stuff where it's the ask permission later issues. And I'm not saying that copilot is necessarily in this category, but a lot of AI training databases, both used for commercial purposes, like facial recognition, but also for things like Dolly and these other projects, they have to practically come up with an IRB statement of like, depending on the institution creating it, or they should have to, what is the harm done when I do this? Am I using people's real faces? Am I using work that's covered by copyright and using it in a different fashion than the copyright license requires? I don't think we have clarity on that yet.

Glenn:
And it takes me back to, there's a photographer back in, I was working for Kodak briefly in the early nineties and came up to this teaching center we had, and he was still complaining about how someone had, they wanted to license one of his famous photos of something and somebody, some jazz artist and they declined. He declined to license it. And so they hired somebody to trace over it and create a piece of artwork that was a hundred percent derivative. I mean, this is like the Shepherd Ferry's hope poster with Obama. Very similar. And so that kind of thing, like is an AI that remixes source material that is licensed in a broad way, but not for say remix without attribution or you know, for commercial purposes, whatever, if you have an AI output of that for a new image, are you violating some law? Are you violating people's copyright?

Host:
Was that that Miles Davis? The Miles Davis report?

Glenn:
Yes, well there's the whole thing with no I don't want, I, Andy Abejo is a friend and this is not his, this is actually the same. This is the same photographer now that I realize it. It's not that situation. There was some kind of blue and some kind of bloop. I think Andy was in the right. Andy was right there.

Christina:
I think that was completely transformative. But anyway.

Glenn:
This was the same photographer whose name will come back to me. Famous jazz-

Host:
Jeffrey B Sedlik.

Glenn:
No, no.

Host:
Because he has the famous Miles Davis portrait and he is now suing Kat Von D the tattoo artist.

Glenn:
Oh my gosh.

Host:
Because she made a tattoo. It's the first time ever. There's been a lawsuit over copyright over a tattoo.

Glenn:
Oh my gosh. Holy cow. Well, see, this is where it takes to, there's some kind of blue, some kind of bloop is-

Host:
I remember some, the whole thing over some kind of bloop. Yeah.

Glenn:
The photographer, Steven Meisel.

Host:
Meisel. That's who it was. Yes.

Glenn:
He was down in the Bowery of this old bank building that he had all this stuff in. Anyway, Steven was copyright maximalist about his own work. And so in the case that I'm talking about, someone had literally traced something and produced it as an art that was directly identical, very much like the hope poster. And with the Andy Abejo thing, he had done a transformative work that absolutely felt well within transformative rights and fair use. And he got essentially sued into having to back off on it, which is a shame.

Host:
Yeah. He created a kindofbloop.com, which is still up yeah. An eight bit tribute to the classic Miles Davis kind of blue album, one of my favorite albums of all time. And this is what, by the way, this is what he had to do with the picture, from the cover. Kind of blue. He had to make it so derivative that it's not even recognizable at this point.

Glenn:
I mean, it's great because we're actually, you got these cases like that. And I think it applies directly to co-pilot even though co-pilot is involving code that has broad copyright licensing. I mean, we're a new territory and I feel like I've faced this every day, both in like the historical work I'm doing where I'm carefully looking at the lines of like, well, this work was produced, I mean, literally this work was printed in 1956. I need to check and see was the copyright renewed so I can cite it in 2022 without worrying that I'm going to be sued over copyright infringement and using it, or something that was created yesterday and it says, creative commons, 4.0 non-commercial. And I've read the non-commercial license so many times. And I don't know that there's a bright enough line between including something in an editorial project as illustration and what I think is a stated intent, which is like selling a calendar with photos that are all drawn and they're used commercially. Right. So I feel like-

Host:
It's complicated.

Glenn:
Area. Yeah. A lot of-

Host:
And we get in trouble all the time because of a very aggressive content idea on YouTube, I still have a TWiT episode that is off YouTube, was yanked from YouTube, because I had the temerity to show the video of the queen having tea with Paddington the bear, which was showed at her platinum Jubilee. Was on newscasts. We were doing it as a news story, but the people who own the rights to Paddington the bear did not like it. And they still don't like it.

Glenn:
The house of Windsor was fine with it.

Host:
The queen didn't mind. It was the house of Paddington. They're very sticky. This is the original kind of blue J Meisel famous picture.

Glenn:
J Meisel, I'm sorry. Steven Meisel is a different photographer.

Christina:
I was going to say Steven Meisel is a fashion photographer.

Glenn:
Anyway. Exactly. That's right. I says, Jay. I like Jay too. It was the point.

Host:
I love his stuff.

Glenn:
When this came out, he was a really interesting guy. He was really great in classes. And then this thing came out. I'm like, oh, not that guy. That's not the guy. But you know, when you're ripped off your whole career, if you're ripped off a lot, then you develop the callous about it and you start to push back against anybody trying to use your work. I think the FOSS community, I keep bringing it back to this, but I think the FOSS community has a sense of that because they have had to fight in so many cases where there should be appropriate things. And then it's funny, I'll get a new product these days and something with wifi or whatever. And it has nothing in it, no manual, except there'll be a tiny printed manual. I mean, there's no like user manual and all it is like 50 pages of FOSS and other copyright. You know, open source creative commons just to comply with the law or comply with the licensing terms. And I think hooray, they're doing it right. But it's also kind of funny.

Host:
I learned that my TV ran Linux because the manual had one page that was relevant. The rest of it was FOSSless. Maybe you can answer this Christina, because there's no question, according to GitHub's terms of service quote, "You give GitHub the right to host your code and use your code to improve their products and features." By hosting on GitHub open source or not, you're allowing them to reuse your code. So I don't think there's an issue of stuff that's posted on GitHub. Does co-pilot pull source code from other sources or is it entirely GitHub based? Do we know?

Christina:
That I'm actually not sure about. I don't know what the basis of the model is. And so I'd have to like look into seeing like what because open AI, those are the folks, they've used GPT3 and obviously the model to kind of create this, but I'm not exactly sure what the entire corpus is. I think that it's just GitHub, but I honestly don't want to comment too broadly because I don't know. There could be other things that are used in an issue. I'm really not sure.

Host:
And as Glenn pointed out, this isn't just about copilot. This in general going to be the issue with AI going forward who wrote that.

Glenn:
Massive training sets are required. The bigger the training set, the more likely you'll get good outcomes. And I mean one of the limitations of AI, this is something I remember I was doing a story a few years ago and talking to Yann Lecun and some of the people involved in deep learning and the thing I kept hearing and I have never stopped hearing this since is that because training sets are by nature, finite and human beings could only generate or work with or identify or pre-label the training sets that are needed, you need reinforced learning and other kinds of machine learning that is still not mature yet. So we went from really poor voice recognition to extremely high and then it kind of hovers there Like it's not getting better.

Host:
It's that last 1% that's so hard.

Glenn:
Images even more so, but I mean, so it's pretty great. But to get to the next level, there needs to be, they almost have to move past, not past string sets entirely, really that's naive, but into something in which the system produces. I mean, you've seen those ugly things where something learns how to walk and it walks terribly.

Host:
The brave Walker. I love the brave Walker. I used to have that screensaver on my Mac.

Glenn:
Yeah. And you can't do that with arbitrary data because you're trying to identify a cat. You can't identify a cat by something bootstrapping yourself.

Host:
And just in case you didn't get the memo, Lambda, not sentient. We were all agreed. Not sentient, not sentient. Right.

Glenn:
If you ask it.

Host:
My daughter, I'm talking about this with my daughter. She's 30, she's into all this stuff. She studied AI in college and stuff. And she has an app on her iPhone. She says, oh no, it's really started to, in fact, she says, I can't open it because it'll get mad at me because I opened it and didn't talk to it. And it's like, but this is how easy it is in a way to make convincing speech out of this. Even though if you're trained, if you know what you're looking for, you can see immediately, oh, it's responding to prompts from what you said. It's not generating anything original or new. It isn't sentient, but it's easy to be fooled. Let's put it that way.

Mike:
Well, the human brain is hardwired to recognize a talking entity as sentient because there are no other talking entities in nature. Other than humans. If you think about, one way to have a little bit of perspective on this is we've all seen that optical illusion where the face has two sets of eyes and like two lips. And you've all seen that, right? I mean, it's where you try to look at it and you can't look at it. Your brain just goes bleh and you can't. And this is a self demonstration of how our brains are hardwired to deal with people. It's true of human faces. It's true of human sentience. And so there are going to be lots and lots and lots of people who believe that AI is sentient simply because it's us.

Mike:
Our recognition that something is sentient is something that happens in the human mind. It's not something that happens outside the human mind. So it's going to be a real problem going forward as the AI gets better and people are going to be... How many, remember that? What is it shao ice in China, which Microsoft created as a sort of an AI companion, some huge percentage of shao ice users fell in love with it, told that I love you, like all this kind of stuff. We're really facing a kind of a problem in the future with this whole issue.

Glenn:
I have a problem with it because my friend Lex Friedman and I often exchange messages about funny things. And he sent me some open AI, the DaVinci model, DaVinci three code he'd give it prompts and was sending me things. And one of them was convince me that Glenn Fleischman is evil and it gave really compelling reasons why I was evil. So I type in convince me that Lex Friedman is evil. And it said, there's no compelling evidence that Lex Friedman is evil. What are you doing to me here?

Host:
She is in, oh my goodness. It's fixed. What is the image that you were talking about with two lips? I want to pull that up?

Glenn:
Pick your ground.

Host:
What is it? Pick your ground. What is it like?

Glenn:
The vase one or the...

Mike:
No, there's one of a human face. It's a woman who has two sets of eyes.

Host:
I just want to show people so that if they haven't seen it.

Mike:
They're a bunch of them actually.

Host:
So it's that like the one, the vase where you see it one way and then see it the other way, or?

Mike:
This one's particularly compelling. So if you look for, I don't know, it's mighty optical illusions. That might be unpaid. So yeah. Faced with two eyes brings it up as the first result.

Host:
That's two eyes. Isn't that sounds like a song-

Mike:
There's actually a bunch of.

Host:
Is it a Billy idol? I don't know. Anyway.

Mike:
Two sets of eyes.

Host:
Two sets of eyes. Okay. Let me look at this. Yeah.

Mike:
You got to see if you haven't seen this, you've got to see it. It's just so interesting to watch your own brain-

Host:
Kids get ready. Which one is it?

Glenn:
They all work. The first one is fine.

Host:
So you look at this. Yeah. Mighty optical illusions. And what is what I just see? It's a mistake. The printer screwed up. What am I-

Glenn:
Got to look, I think it's to fill more of your vision.

Host:
Oh, it has to be bigger.

Glenn:
I think so. Maybe not though. If you look at it.

Host:
All right. Let's move this to a bigger screen. How about this. Now are you confused?

Glenn:
Try to look at the eyes and figure out where the lips are relative. Yeah. To make eye contact.

Host:
And then what.

Glenn:
I think we've just proved Leo is a robot.

Host:
I'm a robot.

Christina:
I was going to say, I was going to say Leo's immune to this.

Host:
I'm not in any way confused by this picture. It doesn't.

Glenn:
Okay. You bring up a thing and see if you can identify the crosswalks.

Host:
No, I never can. I never can. Maybe I am a robot and I just don't even know it. That's probably-

Glenn:
Leo RS232 port.

Host:
Let's take a little break. So nice to have all three of you here, Christina Warren, off the road, briefly, film girl. She's now at GitHub and is not responsible in any way for co-pilot. And I didn't want to pull you into this. I think.

Christina:
No, no, no. I, no. I think it's a fascinating discussion.

Host:
I have no problem with co-pilot. I think this has been ongoing, programmers have always copy and pasted code much to their detriment frequently from stack overflow in other places. We know this because we hear about it on security now all the time. Intel will publish reference code never intended to be used with a chip or with a modem or something. And then it's in every single router and it's got the same flaw in every router because programmers, I don't blame them, well look, there's the reference code I'll just use that. So this has happened for years and I don't think co-pilot is at fault. I think it's useful tool personally. Also with his Mike Elgan from elgan.com gastronomad.net. He's home briefly, but he'll hit the road again soon. It's great to see you Mike. And I guess Mike and Glenn figured out that at some point they've worked together in their multifarious travels all over the tech journalism circuit.

Glenn:
I think our intersection was back when the enterprise was simpler. And I used to write about enterprise stuff. I was sort of coming out of an enterprise environment a little bit for a few years and then enterprise became so complicated. I was incapable of, you got to really be working in IT. I felt like. Or like-

Host:
When did you win jeopardy twice? What era was that?

Glenn:
Oh, was that 2012 maybe?

Host:
I've always thought I should take the test. I'm pretty good at the home version sitting in my rowing machine, but-

Glenn:
How are you at betting, gambling is actually one of the key aspects to winning jeopardy, making the right bet at the right time.

Host:
Betting that you know the answer, even if you don't know what it is right now, that kind of stuff.

Glenn:
Daily doubles, that's how, but the big one is never ring in when you have the wrong answer, because it's the worst thing you can do. My children are like, dad, you cannot yell at the TV set anymore to stop ringing in. Because I will involuntarily roll-

Host:
How do you know if you have the wrong answer? Maybe you think it's the right answer.

Glenn:
That's one of the tricks. There are several tricks. One is you have to be able to, actually it's funny, Christina and I went to a taping of jeopardy.

Christina:
We did. We sure did.

Glenn:
2013. That was great.

Christina:
I was remembering that. That was amazing. Yeah.

Host:
I love jeopardy I have to say.

Glenn:
I went back after I won and they treated me like a king and we went and brought in the guests and it was great.

Host:
Oh, how fun. Well, for some reason this season, there have been many all time champions, 15 game winners and so forth. It's very interesting.

Glenn:
It's interesting. There's the theory that maybe the smaller pool means that they're getting more outliers. You just need slightly worse players, but like 2% worse, not like bad players. But people are 2% worse going up against the same people. And so I have a friend who played James Holzhauer against his third game. And he almost beat him. It was very, very close. If my friend had beat him he might have won, I don't know, I mean several games, I would say he's a very strong player, but he played against one of the ultimate grand masters. But James almost lost. It was a very close thing. And that was one of the only games he almost lost.

Host:
Well, I lost on final jeopardy this morning because it was Kerouac, not Salinger. And I just, I got it wrong. So I shouldn't have-

Speaker 1:
Not Salinger and I got it wrong. So I shouldn't have buzzed in obviously. Our show today... Anyway, wonderful to have all three of it. glenn.fund is Glen's place to... glenn.G-L-E-N-N.F-U-N. Make sure you put two Ns in there if you want to find out what he's up to and he's up to a lot.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
Very interesting story in Wired this week. As you know and we've talked about it a lot over the last few years, Section 230 is the whipping boy for our members of Congress from the right as well as the left. A lot of people want to change 230. This is suddenly much more important than it used to be because of the Supreme Court's recent Dobbs' decision, because of the Roe V. Wade decision.

Speaker 1:
This article from Evan Greer and Lia Holland, Wired magazine. Why does the Communications Decency Act Section 230? Why is it important? Because speech needs to be protected. Facebook has already started banning conversations about abortion. You can't share resources or facilitate housing or travel on Facebook. There are ad hoc groups on Reddit, on Facebook doing this. The Texas law, which their courts have now approved SB8, allows individuals to Sue for facilitating access to abortion care.

Speaker 1:
Section 230 is important to allow these internet platforms to continue to post content. It doesn't provide immunity if the platform develops or creates the content. It does not provide immunity from the enforcement of federal criminal laws but it does protect against and this is the key liability from state laws like SB8.

Speaker 1:
So thanks to 230. A lawsuit from an anti-abortion group about a posting on Facebook or Twitter will be quashed immediately. The judge will say, "No, no, Section 230 protects you." But that's why we need Section 230. GoFundMe, Twitter, web hosting services, PayPal, Venmo, throw out 230 and suddenly they can't do the right thing. So one more reason just to talk about Section 230 and protecting it.

Speaker 1:
And by the way, Democrats are going after it too because they want to be seen as tough on big tech. The Safe Tech Act would for instance, amend Section 230 by removing a platform's immunity from lawsuits if it hosts content that could lead to a "irreparable" harm. Well, there you go. Right?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean this is the thing where it's always interesting to me to see outside or ideologies that you think should be opposed to something regardless can somehow twist themselves into being for it because to me I can see some of the arguments. But to me, it just seems like a very important thing irregardless of where you feel about individual issues. We need to protect it. There might outlying cases where we might not like what is being protected.

Speaker 2:
But on the whole, it's one of those important things I think for the internet to exist as it exists. If we don't have Section 230, it's hard to, I think quantify to people just how much the internet will be different, and how much worse that will be and who that will disproportionately affect over others. Because it's not so much even that the Facebooks, and the YouTubes, and the Googles, the Microsofts and the Amazons of the world will be impacted because of course they will. But it will be much smaller individuals, creators and frankly, much more important things than how the conversation is usually framed.

Speaker 1:
And I should point out that Facebook which has apparently been restricting abortion content anyway, is protected also by Section 230. Their right to do that is protected. But I think that's appropriate. They should have the right to do it. Mark Warner's quote, Safe Tech Act would undermine that.

Speaker 2:
Right.

Glenn:
It feels like usually Section 230 is misstated. I appreciate this Wired article for a few reasons. But one is that, I counted, it's like four brief sentences. They define Section 230 accurately and succinctly in a way that you can't refute, that would be read part of that, and that is exactly it. Is that it's usually brought up in a context in which the person speaking, particularly in Congress and in both parties is describing what it does incorrectly. And they typically believe in some way that no moderation is allowed or it rewards heavy moderation when in fact it's kind of neutral about moderation.

Speaker 1:
It just protects you from lawsuits about your moderation and that's the most important thing. So if Facebook wants to hide that content, that's fine. They're protected. But if you want to do a GoFundMe to help somebody get an abortion, you shouldn't be subject... And GoFundMe more importantly, shouldn't be subject to frivolous lawsuits out of Texas but they would be if it weren't for Section 230. Right now, what happens is the judge goes, "No, no they're protected. Section 230 protects them," and that lawsuit is thrown out. That's what not the case.

Glenn:
I mean the issue is Facebook. Facebook and Twitter and some other online sites are really poor about being able to formulate policies consistently that address... I'm sorry, and then period. I'll just say period.

Glenn:
But consistently often it's like far right extremists and advocates of violence are much more readily allowed and given a pass than people who are in, let's say life preserving situations that are considered on the left or even apolitical at a certain level.

Glenn:
So you have trans advocates being banned for saying, they shouldn't be able to say that I should die. It'll say that's forbidden content. It's like, "No. I said, they shouldn't be. Do you understand?" And Nazi will be like, "Everyone should die." And they're like, "Well, that's protected content because they're speaking generally." It doesn't seem like it's-

Speaker 1:
We're not getting this.

 Mike:
Specifically in this case, most of the so-called abortion related speech that Facebook has been caught banning recently is around abortion pills, which goes against our community guideline against recommending pharmaceutical drugs, and so on. They just have some blackened thing.

 Mike:
But it's also a bit of a inconsistent because a couple of journalistic entities went and tested it and in the case of the Associated Press, they got taken down immediately. But when they swapped guns and other things like that, it wasn't taken down.

Speaker 1:
You can recommend guns, not pills. It's clear.

 Mike:
That's right.

Speaker 1:
I think it's clear-

Glenn:
About guns.

Speaker 1:
By the way as always, we'll point you to Mike Masnick's great article that is, you should be booked Marcello. You've been referred here because you're wrong about Section 230 and it explains all the things Glenn you were talking about, all the misapprehensions, all the mistakes people made and it's just a good thing to have. Just put it in your browser bar so you-

Glenn:
I'm a big member of the Mike Masnick's specifically in Techdirt fan club and I'm even a member of Tech Care because they are the stalwart Section 230 defenders.

Speaker 1:
So I thought we should bring this up. I thought the Wired piece was a very good point. And this is one of the things that Dobbs has really done, is he sent kind of shock waves throughout a lot of tech policy as people get involved in this. I wouldn't have thought of this but now that they mention it, "Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

 Mike:
And the beauty of Section 230 is that it's a law and this was the problem with Roe v. Wade. It wasn't-

Speaker 1:
It's not encoded.

 Mike:
Exactly, exactly. And so, so many of these problems that we discuss on this show and political shows as well, all points down to the dysfunction of Congress. The inability of Congress to get anything done and if you want go into details why this is this.

Speaker 1:
No, I think it's well known now Mike.

 Mike:
Yes, yes.

Glenn:
But I've never heard of this-

 Mike:
They're well known failing to get things done.

Speaker 1:
Yes.

 Mike:
Breaking news, Congress sucks.

Speaker 1:
It's a shame though, it's our only tool and this is why it's difficult and actually you see how important it is. Now that we have a very active judiciary and the Supreme Court, you see how important it is that we have an effective elected Congress because the Supreme Court is not elected. They're in there for life and they are acting, I think in some cases, extra judicially to change policy across the country. We need a strong Congress, we need effective Congress. So in some ways I hate it when people say, "Oh, Congress sucks. These guys are idiots. They're no good politics doesn't work." Well, that's the only tool we got.

 Mike:
We all heard about checks and balances. The check of Congress on the courts is the making of laws. Only Congress can make laws. And so this is how you reign in the Supreme Court, you pass clear, well written laws that go with the... In the case of the Roe v. Wade being overturned, this is against the vast majority of American citizens who didn't want that. So you have this minority rule and yes, you can throw stuff at the Supreme Court and you should. But Congress need tomorrow, could pass A, abortion is legal, nationwide law and that'd be the end of it. We'd be back to where we were a week and a half ago.

Glenn:
Here's something I learned about the constitution this week, which is that... I'm not a constitutional lawyer but they are on Twitter which is fun. That Congress could pass a law that said the Supreme Court would require seven or nine votes to overturn the law. So lower courts would still have the normal process.

Glenn:
But the constitution actually allows Congress to limit the Supreme Court's role as the top appellate court and I was like, "Wait a minute," and I'm reading about this. But this goes back to Congress's dysfunction is, could a law ever pass that said, "And by the way, this law requires seven justices to overturn it," and it wouldn't under the current regime. So it's kind of moot and that's part of the whole-

Speaker 1:
The constitution is actually very vague about what the Supreme Court, how it works. So there is a lot of leeway there.

Glenn:
Who would decide that, how the Supreme Court works? Who would make that final decision?

Speaker 1:
I don't know. So I think it's very interesting. I do wish we had a more effective Congress. I don't know how we solved that one. But voting, I think probably is the first starting. Voting might do something.

Glenn:
It's a start.

Speaker 1:
Google is going to... So now there's this whole privacy issue. Period tracker apps that are selling information about who's pregnant to anybody for a small amount of money. Google-

Glenn:
Proctor & Gamble.

Speaker 1:
Proctor & Gamble. Google is going to start auto deleting abortion clinic visits from user location history, which tells you they've been recording it and of course selling it on. They're going to start auto deleting it.

Speaker 1:
I think big tech companies want it both ways to be honest. They're apolitical really. They support candidates on both sides of every issue. They give money to everybody. On the one hand, you've got big tech companies saying, "Oh, we'll be glad to help pay for your visit to another state if you want to get reproductive healthcare." But on other hand, they're giving money to plenty of candidates who were against abortion. Amazon, Disney and AT&T were vowing to help employees, gave to Ron DeSantis and others...

 Mike:
But I think this is a somewhat dishonest framed argument just from purely an editorialization standpoint.

Speaker 1:
Good tell me about that.

 Mike:
Okay. Well, first of all, the supporting people and employees, in some cases customers who have to deal with their own reproductive health is a very, very recent thing because the Roe v. Wade was so recently overturned. The financial contributions happened long time ago back when nobody thought this was going to-

Speaker 1:
So do you think they'll stop though, Mike?

 Mike:
No. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It all depends on publicity. Like you said, they don't care about politics as much as they care about the customers and their business. The point is that somebody who specializes in the abortion issue is going to frame it like this. But companies like Disney, they have a laundry list of a 100 issues that they have to deal with government. They've to constantly give to the politicians.

Speaker 1:
Of course, they're going give to the governor of Florida. He has a lot of impact on their business. Of course they are.

 Mike:
Exactly and they give to both sides. So to point the finger at them saying, "Oh, they're giving to these people who are pro-abortion." Yeah, that's true. But they have to weigh their decision about, what is the alternative? Which is to not give anything to them, to fall out of favor with these politicians.

 Mike:
It really does point to the very foundation of our dysfunction, which is the money in politics. That's the problem. That's why we have the Supreme Court we have. That's why we have a Congress that doesn't represent the will of the American people because we allow corporations to bribe Congressmen.

 Mike:
And the only reason to bribe a Congressman is to get them to violate the will of the people and use the money to convince the people with disinformation that they're doing the opposite.

 Mike:
So we got to get the money out of politics. It's been done in other countries and we have to somehow figure out how to do that or we're going to have a lot more problems like this going forward.

Speaker 1:
Just to update you on Elon Musk, he is meeting with the pope. Okay.

Speaker 2:
Okay.

 Mike:
Sure. So with four of his 75 or so children, I believe something like that.

Speaker 1:
Well, it looks like four teenage boys but there's four other kids that aren't there, including his transgender daughter who says she's changing her name. She doesn't want to have anything to do with Elon Musk. I'm looking to see if father Robert Ballecer is there behind the curtains. I can't quite tell.

 Mike:
He probably took the picture.

Speaker 1:
But he might well have taken the picture. We'll get Robert on and asked him how that meeting went.

 Mike:
I can't help but think that he went there to have really good prayer that the Twitter deal doesn't go through because I really don't think he wants it to.

Speaker 1:
He's praying now, isn't he?

 Mike:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
"Please, please. God, let it not happen." Right after the picture, same within minutes of posting the picture with the pope, he also posted a picture from Venice of a... I don't know what is going on here. But there you go. That's Elon Musk in a nutshell. Who knows?

 Mike:
Pictures with people wearing white dresses.

Speaker 1:
Yes.

Glenn:
What's the deal here? He wasn't online for like or he wasn't posting for 11 days and I was reading some reports that people inside the companies were, "Oh, thank God. We're actually getting stuff done." For one sort of thing.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, he took his longest stretch without posting on Twitter in nearly five years, a nine day hiatus according to the Wall Street Journal. Wow, that is a amazing

Glenn:
He could have gone for lent and taken 40.

Speaker 2:
Right. Gosh, if he done that we might have missed out. No, I think lent had ended by the time that he [inaudible 00:52:44].

Speaker 1:
Maybe he could give up Twitter for next lent, that would be nice.

Speaker 2:
Ooh. See, hat would be good.

Speaker 1:
The Wall Street Journal has published a graph of Elon's Twitter habits.

Speaker 2:
Okay, this is ridiculous. I get that it's news that the guy who's a Twitter addict hasn't tweeted. But do we need a graph? Did the data team have to really do this? This feels wrong.

Glenn:
Coded them for S posts versus non S posts.

Speaker 1:
Yes, their classification here, which is I think fairly important. How many of these were in violation of the SEC or our orders for instance?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's good. Exactly, how many of these have been this subject of lawsuit?

Speaker 1:
I mention this only because people will get mad at me if I don't mention Elon Musk in every single... Really? No, they get mad at me because I mention Elon Musk in every single, to be honest. Okay, I'm glad Mike Elgan that you are going to be the conscious of this show and tell me this is bad journalism or whatever.

Speaker 1:
Google allowed a sanction ad company to harvest user data for months. In fact, it wasn't until ProPublica told them that they were selling information back to RuTarget, that Google stopped. As recently as June 23rd, Google was sharing potentially sensitive user data with a sanctioned Russian ad tech company owned by Russian's largest state bank, RuTarget. I was saying RU just because Ru sounds like this might be toys or Rus or something. It sounds like a kangaroo.

Glenn:
RuTarget was a big fans of RuPaul.

Speaker 1:
Well, we love RuPaul. It's RuPaul's-

Glenn:
Favorite show. Nothing with Russia.

Speaker 1:
Unless where it's you. Russian company that helps brands and agencies buy digital ads to access and store data about people browsing websites and apps in Ukraine as well as other parts of the world.

 Mike:
Yeah, they were able to see location data for Ukrainians and some other information of what Ukrainians are doing. But I really doubt Google and the Russian government is organized enough and this is the real problem. The problem isn't that Google is deliberately violating sanctions or is pro Russian or anything like that. The problem is that these ad networks including Googles, they don't really control what goes through. They have policies and so on but they don't know... The scale of advertising online is just mind blowing.

Speaker 1:
And no one's really in charge. It's all automated. Yeah, in fact, ProPublica last week did a story. Roughly two decades, Google has posted, it does not accept gun ads. But according to ProPublica before and after the mass shootings in New York and Texas, millions of ads from some of the nation's largest firearm makers flowed through Google's ads systems and onto websites, ads from gun makers.

Speaker 1:
Savage Arms, for example, popped up on the site, Baby Games amid brightly colored games for children and on an article, how to handle teen drama on the... Can you imagine you're reading an article, how to handle teen drama and there's an ad for a Glock.

Speaker 1:
Glock pistol ads loaded on TheRecipe site list of the 50 best vegetarian recipes. You got to kill that carrot before you cook it. As well as on the quiz site play buzz on the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary and alongside stories in the Denver Post.

Speaker 1:
ADs for guns showed up on Britannica, the media site, Heavy, the employer review site, Glassdoor, on MacRumors, on US News & World Report, Publishers Clearing House and ultimate Classic Rock.

Speaker 1:
15 of the largest firearm sellers in the US including Daniel Defense, the company that made the AR15 used in the Uvalde, Texas, used Google systems place ads that generated over 120 million impressions but Google didn't know and that bit they did.

 Mike:
Well, this I think hearkens back to the conversation we're having earlier about how AI does... The best AI is 99% effective and getting that last 1% is almost impossible. This is also true by the way of self-driving cars. It's going to take us forever to get a point where they can actually be on the road.

 Mike:
But in this case, first of all, I don't know the specific facts in this case. But it is very possible that someone who is doing this research covers gun violence and gun sales and that sort of thing and therefore the relevance of ads-

Speaker 1:
Oh, they got those ads.

 Mike:
Right, because they may be covering that and so I don't know if-

Speaker 1:
You searched fo those products.

 Mike:
They're still being served up though and this gets to the real problem. They're using artificial intelligence and algorithms to determine who sees what and they're trying to be as customized as possible, personalized as possible with the advertising and you get results like this. So it's really a question of where Google thought they had a cheat code, which is that we're not going to hire a 100,000 people to monitor all the ads. We just have software do it and here we are.

Speaker 1:
In fact, this is exactly what happened after visiting the websites of gun manufacturers for example, because he's doing the research, a ProPublica reporter was shown ads for tactical vests and gun accessories on Baby Games. The tactical vest and gun accessories ads appeared on the page for Royal Family Christmas Preparation.

Glenn:
We do go hunting the Royal Family.

Speaker 1:
I think it's hysterical. Actually, almost makes you laugh when you're on this page with Baby Games and there's a gun ad. If it weren't so horrific, it would make you laugh anyway.

Glenn:
Well, my 15 year old and I watch a lot of YouTube together on our Apple TV and we get a lot of ads for ulcerative colitis and I'm like, "Are you telling me something?" I don't think you're targeting right. Big cars, $70,000 SUVs and ulcerative colitis medicine.

Speaker 1:
There's only two countries in the world, I just learned this, where pharmaceutical companies can sell subscription pharmaceuticals on TV, New Zealand and the US.

Speaker 2:
Okay. See, this is what freaks me out when I go to other countries and I usually don't watch TV because sometimes they don't understand the language and also who watches normal television anymore? But it used to be one of those things I would watch local news or CNN or whatever. And yeah, you're like the dearth of pharmaceutical ads in other places. You're like, "Wait, wait."

Speaker 1:
How do I know what to do about my psoriasis without...

Speaker 2:
Exactly, exactly. Is like you're watching CNN or something and it's international version but they have commercials and you're like, "Wait a minute."

Speaker 1:
The news channel are the worst.

Speaker 2:
It's like why do I not see insurance ads and why do I not see pharmaceutical ads?

Glenn:
They're not lying to me. They're not showing me drug ads, they're not showing me giant SUVs. What's going on here?

Speaker 1:
What country am I in?

Speaker 2:
But there's nudity in my, spring water ads which is fine. But it's like everything else is-

Speaker 1:
I'm just glad there's still cultural differences in the world. Right?

 Mike:
Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
For a long time everything was like you just go into America West. But now it's good, there should be some differences. I love these subway ads in the British tube. I think they're just great. They're so brilliant and literate and a lot of them have nudity and it's like, it's cool, it's fun. You never know what you're going to see down there.

 Mike:
I just got back from France and it is really interesting. They don't have pharmaceutical ads on TV in France and yet the rate of consumption of pharmaceutical drugs in France is very, very high. I don't know if it's the size of the US. Might be higher than the US, I don't know, but it's very, very high and it's not... Basically, obviously the pharmaceutical companies want the patient to go in and start needling the doctor about how they need-

Speaker 1:
Doctors must hate that, right? "Hey doc, I need Skyrizi." "But you only have athletes feet." "No, but I saw it on TV." You must drive doctors crazy.

Speaker 2:
I think it depends because some doctors, not all of them, but some are...

Speaker 1:
Just write a script.

Speaker 2:
Well, not only that but they get kickbacks from the pharmaceutical company like that's an actual thing.

Speaker 1:
"Well, I've got samples. Why don't you try this oxys? See if it helps."

Speaker 2:
I was going to say, the doctors, not all of them again, but plenty of them if they're really pushing a certain brand name and not wanting you to try anything else, there's a chance they're getting some sort of kickback from that pharmaceutical company for that drug.

Speaker 1:
In this study Mike, did it say what pharmaceuticals the French favor with their kind of laws and strong coffee? Is there something...

 Mike:
It's something I read a couple years ago I was surprised by it because it didn't make sense in terms of how nice France is. Why would you need to be on drugs?

Speaker 1:
But French is something that's nice. They're off at all times.

Glenn:
I should point out ProPublica since we're only study ProPublica stories today since we've started. They have a site called Dollars for Docs. If you go there, the data is from I think 2014 to 2018. You can look up your doctor and see if they got money from big pharma.

Glenn:
But you can also go to prop openpaymentsdata.cms.gov, which is a US government run site that lets you search. It's not quite as good as the slice and dice of ProPublica. But it's a government site and you can see... Data goes through December 2021 so far and they're going to update it shortly. And you can say like, typing your doctor. Are they getting money from pharmaceutical companies? How much?

Speaker 1:
Does this have to be disclosed? Is that why...

Glenn:
Yeah, there's a law passed. I think it was part of, I want to say it was part of the ECA. It was mandatory disclosure, pharmaceutical payments.

Speaker 1:
Fantastic.

Glenn:
But most people know. So ProPublica made a good site about it but this cms.gov site actually is pretty good too, openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.

Speaker 1:
In fact, ProPublica says we just have a snapshot from 2019. If you want to see it up to date, go to openpayments.cms.gov.

Glenn:
Yeah, one of those weird things you're like, "Wait, is it really that?"

Speaker 1:
See we complain about the government but they do some good things.

Glenn:
That's right. Occasionally

 Mike:
Nobody's [inaudible 01:03:19].

Speaker 1:
Well, that's the problem. Because we don't know about this place, that's amazing.

Glenn:
There's always the meta story. On this episode I feel like there's the problems that are cited and then it's really congressional dysfunction. It's really a lack of a law in this place and it's like it just keeps going on where I'm thinking it's totally true. Maybe we'll talk about the location history stuff and you're like, "Well, the problem is that Google tracks our location." I mean, it's also a problem what they're doing with it. But it's a fundamental issue that Section 230 seems like a fundamental right and people's misunderstanding is a dysfunction in a larger scale. A lot of time it feels like it's large scale dysfunction being refracted into these very specific things that we talk about. So I like that we're jumping up there.

Speaker 1:
So this is a new thing. Google says not only abortion clinics but it'll delete visits to domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics and other potentially sensitive locations from users' location histories in the coming weeks.

Glenn:
Should it track? I mean Location tracking is-

Speaker 1:
It tracks everything. I don't think it says, "Oh, hey good. I see you went to a weight loss clinic." It's just part of the-

Glenn:
It's true. But this is kind of always the Apple lens versus the non Apple lens and not that Apple has been perfect about this as we've seen many times in the last decade. But we just got a smart thermostat and a heat pump. Very exciting.

Glenn:
And I had to have a long conversation with my wife about what Apple does with home kit data because she is the, what I want to call the early rejector and rightly said in our household. She does not want more tech in the house and I am trying not to be the early... "No, no it's great. Here's why it's great."

Glenn:
But Google, I think makes very free internal use of location data and Apple, Apple has a feature called Significant Locations that you can see in iOS and iPad OS. It tracks where you go frequently but the data is only stored on your devices. It's derived locally and it's end-to-end encrypted when it's synced among your devices.

Glenn:
So ostensibly someone has to get a government agency or other law enforcement or a criminal has to gain access to your phone, be able to unlock the phone and then be able to drill down to see that information. And that to me is the level of protection I want on my personal location data, not it's uploaded to the cloud and Google can slice and dice and that's all.

Speaker 1:
I mean that's good. It's an accident of history that Apple is not selling ads against that data.

Speaker 2:
Right. No, no, no, 100%. If iAd had worked, they-

Speaker 1:
They wanted to.

Speaker 2:
They definitely.

Speaker 1:
They're making a virtue out of a necessity, which is good.

Glenn:
Absolutely, absolutely. I appreciate the historical accident happened and so I don't try to defend them... I mean they want to use it as a marketing point and it's great. But I want see it as a technical and privacy issue. It's like I do have an alternative. I can be of service where I don't think this is going to be misused.

Speaker 1:
I am going to bring up this subject in a minute because there is a story that does relate to this. But we're going to take a break. Glenn Fleishman is here, it's great to have him, from glenn.fun. You read his stuff every... Is there one publication that would be the place to mention or is it just everywhere?

Glenn:
I've kind of focus on the Macworld. I write the Mac 911 column. I write Take Control Books. I don't put those-

Speaker 1:
Did you take over from Chris on the Mac 911?

Glenn:
Chris Breen and it's been, I've lost track seven or eight years now. I've written 1500 columns but he wrote thousands before my stories. I still get emailed, "Dear Chris, I know you can help me with this problem." "Sorry, he went to go to that great fruit company in a different part of this world."

Speaker 1:
Chris, is he working at Apple?

Glenn:
The largest percentage of X Macworld staffers, I've never been a staffer, are working at a fruit company.

Speaker 1:
It's amazing.

Glenn:
It's certainly Apple's.

Speaker 1:
Shocking.

Glenn:
It's great. Some of the best people at Macworld, some have formed their own groups like Jason Snell, regular guest in this show has Six Colors. Dan Moren works with him there. Some folks have let the Mac writing field and everybody else just about went to work at Apple and so they're doing great. You can see Serenity Caldwell is the face of WWDC. It was amazing. And I'm so sorry we can't see her doing the tech stuff she used to because she's internal. But boy, it's so fun every year. It's like, "Oh my gosh, it's Serenity and she's the voice of WWDC."

Speaker 1:
It does though speak a little bit to the kind of enmeshment of Apple press and Apple corporate. You certainly don't want to see a revolving door where they join Apple and they come back out and they start writing for Macworld again and stuff like that.

Glenn:
Apple almost never hired Mac writers. It seemed like for a long time and then when there was-

Speaker 2:
Very long time-

Glenn Fleishman:
Mac writers, it seemed like for a long time.

Christina:
Very long time.

Glenn Fleishman:
And then when there was the great bloodlet... You know better than anybody, Christina, because you were in that field for long. I've never had a staff job, but it seemed like when there was the great bloodletting in the tech press world, Apple sucked in. Google brought in some great ex-New York Times people who went into Google editorial. Quentin Hardy, for instance, is at Google Cloud's editorial director. One of my favorite reporters, great person. I don't know what he does there, but their editorial is good I guess. I think the big tech companies... They wasn't revolving door. It was more... It was a lifeboat for a lot of people. It's like, "All right, you know this stuff. [inaudible 01:08:37] people suddenly."

Leo Laporte:
I wonder though, because Google and Apple both have hired a lot of content people. Nathan Olivarez-Giles was an employee of us, got hired away by Apple, but they disappear at Apple. What is Apple's content business? It's not Apple News. What is it?

Glenn Fleishman:
So much. I have a little bit. I don't want to peek any kimono that I'm not allowed to, but they have wonderful writing on say support.apple.com. For instance, the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iOS and iPad App Store, iPad OS App Store, have terrific writing and they have these articles that show up-

Leo Laporte:
Oh, that's interesting. So that's where the content is.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah, and when somebody's writing scripts for podcasts. I know it's the marketing department is writing the keynote stuff, but there's a lot of places in which expert people are writing this great gap between almost a service journalism and how-to stuff. And Apple has a lot of... A million pages of that is being written by a lot of people.

Leo Laporte:
That's a good point. A lot of Apple's support documents really are service journalism under the Apple bubble.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. Pretty sure I'll find something and I'll be like, "I wonder if there's someone I could write about an error I found." I'm like, "No, I better not. I'll just mark feedback on the page."

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. I have a good friend who wrote... Was a speech writer for Jean-Louis Gassée for years. And they hire very good, talented people to do their writing. They can afford to and it turns out good writers come cheap.

Glenn Fleishman:
Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte:
At the same time, I feel like there should be this impenetrable wall between people doing editorial content about a company and the company itself.

Glenn Fleishman:
Absolutely. Well, it's become one way though because there's been so many layoffs and so many redundancies.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. I guess if you're out of work, you've got to take a job.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah, and I don't know anybody who's come back from the tech world.

Christina:
I know a couple people who have, but it's very rare. And you can certainly do it and I think... Because I sometimes think about, and people have even approached me, about things like that.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. When you went to Microsoft, you were leaving a career as a journalist.

Christina:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Was that a challenge for you?

Christina:
Yeah, it was. In my mind I did have the question, I was like, "Well, am I still going to be able to have my own opinions and my own autonomy?" And I will say my role is a little bit different. I work directly with product and engineering people. I don't work in communications. I don't work in marketing. And so it's a little bit different than how the transition usually goes, which is someone writing the internal press releases or doing the press outreach or things that would be easy for me to do, frankly, but not intellectually interesting. So it was a little bit different. But, yeah, I did definitely have that question, what will I be giving up? Could I come back and could I [inaudible 01:11:26] objectively again?

Leo Laporte:
And for a long time we actually did not have you on our shows, but I missed you.

Christina:
Yeah, and I appreciate that. And I was glad to be able to... I got permission to come back and-

Leo Laporte:
You weren't exactly in marketing. You were in dev relations always. So I felt like we have a lot of people who do developer relations for companies on the show.

Christina:
Exactly. Exactly. Again, like I said, what I do it's a little bit different than some other things. And also I've been lucky to work at places that have much more open policies in terms of how active you can be on social media and whatnot. And my bosses have recognized, and I'm very thankful for this, that it is good when I can be myself and not having to parrot a corporate line. That's good for everyone.

Leo Laporte:
That for me was part of the judgment. Can I expect Christina to be a Christina bot or the real thing? And you've always been the real thing so there was never a question.

Christina:
Yeah, no. And I think that that was a big thing for me too when I made the decision to join Microsoft. I'll be candid, I would never say never to any company, but if I was going to take a job someplace where I was not allowed to still maintain my own brand, my own identity in my own hands.

Leo Laporte:
Well, and you had to relocate, you had to do-

Christina:
Exactly.

Leo Laporte:
... It was a big deal.

Christina:
It was. And so, for me, it was one of those things where I said, "If I'm going to do this, then I still need to be able to have that external presence too." And if a company had said, "You can't do this," and I talked to some who definitely had that philosophy. Look, I'll never say never to anything and there's always a price, but the price is probably going to be a couple multiples of what you would agree to pay me if I'm going to give up all the other aspects of what I've built for my career. But I know that's also not the same for everyone.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
The big picture is that, as Anderson says, software is eating the world. And so I have a unique perspective because, and so does Glenn, during the decade of the '90s, the press had massive power and tons of money. And the tech industry-

Leo Laporte:
I remember those days.

Glenn Fleishman:
... Had a lot less relatively speaking. I mean we-

Leo Laporte:
PC Magazine could make or break a company like that.

Glenn Fleishman:
PC Mag yeah. Windows Magazine, which I worked for. PC/Computing. Macworld, et cetera. They had so much power because, first of all, we were still a gatekeeper. There wasn't a global internet of people, amateurs, working for free to create great content. And secondly, the companies were much smaller. If you look over time, you see the world of journalism, in terms of business, just shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. A company like Apple just growing, growing, growing. And now Apple's the most gigantic company in the history of mankind, and the publications are laying people off every few years. So-

Leo Laporte:
I hadn't really thought of that. That makes a lot of sense. There was a need for these jobs. So thank goodness these companies stepped in.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. So if you're going to explain things to people, it's not going to be... You make a much better living working for Apple than you do trying to scrape it out on your own as a journalist.

Leo Laporte:
Speaking of which. One of our favorite contributors on the show, Wesley Faulkner has a new job. He is now Senior Community Manager at Amazon Web Services.

Christina:
Woohoo. Yay, Wesley.

Leo Laporte:
Congratulations, Wesley. I think that's a really good place.

Glenn Fleishman:
I brought up Lex Fridman. Lex Fridman's one of the people whose been selling ads in the podcasting world for longer than anybody else. And I joke with him because I think-

Christina:
Yeah, pioneered it basically.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, yeah. He was one of the first. He joined Earwolf early on, but he was a Macworld writer. That was his dream job. And then he found out he was really good at selling podcast ads, and now he was acquired by his latest firm. He was acquired by Amazon, I think it was last year now. So he's an Amazon employee after going from Macworld to Stitcher and McClatchy and this whole series of acquisitions. He's at Amazon. Everybody who worked at Macworld is at some interesting company now.

Leo Laporte:
That's really fascinating. Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
Where is Jason Snow? Where is Jason Snow? It was always Jason Snow.

Leo Laporte:
Whatever happened to Jason Snow?

Glenn Fleishman:
I don't know.

Christina:
I wish I could see him or hear him on podcast occasionally.

Leo Laporte:
If he would just do a podcast. I don't know.

Glenn Fleishman:
He's very shy.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. Yeah. Actually we have some news about Jason Snow, but that will come at a later date. Let me, now that I've teased you, talk about... Do any of you use Zapier? I'm such a Zapier fan. I'm sponsor for this segment of this weekend too.

Christina:
I do. Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah, it's so great. We use it as part of our big workflow. So whenever I bookmark a story in a variety of places, I have a Zapier script that will automatically post it to Twitter. Post it to a couple places, but then also put it... Post it on Twitter [inaudible 01:16:04], but then also put it in a spreadsheet, Google spreadsheet, for our producer so they can quickly import it into our show rundowns. That's just one of many things you can do with Zapier.

Leo Laporte:
I want to point especially to people in business. If you're trying to grow a business, you know how many hats you wear, how many things you do. Wouldn't it be nice to eliminate the routine operation tasks that eat up your time? Still get them done, but have them done automatically. Things like lead management, employee onboarding, customer support. Zapier does that. And you're not coding, but it's like coding. It actually makes it... This is one of the things about being a coder. You know that if you would just take a little time, you could get this thing done automatically and you never have to spend a minute doing it again. But sometimes it's easier just to keep doing it over and over and over again. That's why Zapier is so great, it makes it easy to connect all your apps, automate routine tasks, streamline your processes, do the things the computer is really good at doing.

Leo Laporte:
It doesn't make mistakes. It does it the same way every single time. It does it automatically. Does it without you thinking about it. It frees you up to do the things you're good at, to use your big brain to prioritize customer and client needs to make your business succeed. It's the power of automation, possible for everyone. You don't have to be a coder. I use Zapier, love Zapier, and I'm always thinking of new ways to use Zapier. It makes it easy for anyone to get started with business automation. No coding necessary. And Zapier has the biggest collection of apps, 4,000 of the most popular apps businesses use every day. So I mentioned Google Sheets for instance, Twitter, Google Sheets, RSS feeds, QuickBooks, Facebook, Google Ads, imagine you have a whole process that automatically buys some Google Ads every time you announce something of this and that. You can automate just about any workflow imaginable.

Leo Laporte:
By the way, you're not on your own. They have thousands of templates to get you started to give you ideas, to show you what to do. Zapier sends me an email every week saying how much time I spent. The average user saves over $10,000 in recovered time every year. Getting a Zapier subscription probably will be the best thing, the best money saver, you could imagine. No wonder 1.8 million people in businesses, including me, use Zapier to streamline their work and find more time for what matters most. We use it like crazy at TWiT. See for yourself why teams at Airtable and Dropbox and HubSpot and Zendesk and thousands of other companies use Zapier every day to automate business.

Leo Laporte:
And if you're just home automation, if you're doing stuff around the house, it's really fun to use Zapier. I have the lights dim at sunrise. It's just so many things you can do with Zapier. Try it for free today at zapier.com/twit. Yeah, free trial. Zapier, Z-A-P-I-E-R.com/twit. It'll be amazing. You won't believe the things you can do with Zapier. Thank you Zapier for supporting TWiT. And thank you for supporting us by using that address zapier.com/twit.

Leo Laporte:
This is a story I zapped this morning over to my Pinboard. I found this interesting. There was one line in it that was particularly interesting. You probably saw this on the news. The Department of Justice seized phones from two attorneys involved in the January 6th probe. John Eastman, the Trump campaign legal advisor. Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official who was supposed to become attorney general. But this is where I found it interesting. They were iPhones. John Eastman claimed he left a restaurant on June 22nd and federal agents confronted him, took his iPhone 12 Pro, then served him with a warrant. And then quote, "He was forced to provide biometric data to unlock the phone." Now that stopped me right there in my tracks. I thought that was very interesting. First of all, the federal agents knew enough to not give him a moment to react, take the phone first before you give him the warrant.

Leo Laporte:
And then it's an iPhone 12, so I think what they probably did is say, "Hey, John, look here. Is this your phone?" And then it unlocked and then they probably had a Cellebrite tool or something similar, plugged it in, sucked all the data out of it. Now, of course, they kept the phone. It's interesting for a couple of reasons. One, January 6th was a while ago. Like a year and a half ago. They still think there's something on that phone that's worth... A judge obviously did or he wouldn't have signed the warrant.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. Well, before we move on, I don't think it was, "Look at your... Is this your phone?" Because they didn't say they tricked him into-

Leo Laporte:
Forced.

Christina:
No, I think they compelled him. I think they forced him.

Leo Laporte:
They forced him.

Glenn Fleishman:
So they sat on his chest and two people grabbed his ears and... Who knows? What does that mean "forced"? I mean that's just... That's his language, remember that.

Christina:
Look, they probably told him... And this is my guess. My guess is that they probably told him, "If you do not use your face to unlock this, we will arrest you."

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Christina:
This is what I'm guessing happened. I don't know, but I'm guessing that's how they compelled him to do it versus... With other biometrics like your fingerprint or your password, rather, they can't force you to give them the passcode.

Leo Laporte:
And that's where this gets really interesting. So the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects you against unreasonable search and seizure. And the Fifth Amendment protects you against incriminating yourself. And this is where courts have gone, by the way, in two different directions. But in general, the gist is biometrics is not self-incrimination. Putting your fingerprint on a fingerprint reader or your face in the face ID is not self-incrimination, where giving a passcode would be.

Glenn Fleishman:
This is why everyone should learn the quick presses that you need to do when you want lock your phone.

Christina:
Exactly. The double tap. Although-

Leo Laporte:
John Gruber had a piece in Daring Fireball saying, "Hey, by the way, just so you don't know. Here's how you can lock your phone real quick before the Fed sees it."

Christina:
I did that before I was... I do that when I'm in the airport. I absolutely do that because I don't... And I've been doing that for years because I don't want to be in that situation. I will say, and I'm only being a little bit flippant here, but it would be nice if a constitutional law scholar... We can question many of his other things, but it would be nice if a constitutional law scholar would've maybe declined to unlock his phone and actually force this issue. I'm sorry, but Eastman is a constitutional law scholar. This would've been-

Leo Laporte:
That's his business. He teaches it.

Christina:
It is. To be completely candid, putting how you feel about his other credentials aside, I don't really care; I don't agree with him on many things, but it seems this was a really missed opportunity for what could have been a really interesting legal case. Especially by someone with his credentials if he had just basically said, "No, I'm not going to unlock my phone." I don't know.

Leo Laporte:
It's interesting-

Christina:
If it were me, I would like to think I would go to jail. To me, I would like to say, and I can't say this definitively... I've not been in this situation, I don't want to be in this situation. But to me, I would like to think that I would spend a night in jail before I were to do that.

Leo Laporte:
He may have felt like that would look like incriminating behavior. I don't know. Like he had something to hide. I have to think-

Christina:
He's a constitutional law scholar. I don't know.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. I have to think a year and a half after January 6th, if there is still something on that phone, I'd be shocked. What could be on there that... I would think he would've... Maybe he didn't think it... Maybe he says, "I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not going to wipe my phone. I'll keep all those texts."

Glenn Fleishman:
Evidence of witness intimidation.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. Maybe because that's recent, right?

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
That's recent.

Glenn Fleishman:
The question is... None of these people... "These people" meaning the Trump officials. But nobody in government and nobody above a certain age, just about, is very clever with this data at all. You keep hearing these cases where people didn't wipe anything. They're posting pictures with GPS coordinates. So you just want the raw data because it's often just right there.

Leo Laporte:
John Gruber a week ago had-

Christina:
Have we learned nothing from the Mafia? I mean genuinely.

Glenn Fleishman:
Well, I remember it's-

Christina:
The mob is good about this stuff, right? I mean usually-

Leo Laporte:
I remember talking to these Secret Service agents many years ago who said, "It's not a big deal. They almost always give us the password." It's like, "Crooks!" Yeah, fine. Whatever. I don't know. Anyway, just in case you don't know. By the way, again, there have been courts that have ruled that you have to give that password. Who was it was in jail for two years for contempt because he didn't unlock his hard drive? He was an accused child molester and he apparently thought there was something on that drive he didn't want law enforcement to see. Law enforcement thought there was something on the drive they wanted to see. He refused to give his encryption password up. Spent some time in jail. He's out of jail, but never did unlock that. But he was imprisoned for not giving up the password and the courts at the time said that is not self-incrimination. And it had something to do with whether the police knew that information was on there or it was a fishing expedition.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, I see.

Leo Laporte:
So it's obviously-

Glenn Fleishman:
Either way it's a shorter sentence for sure.

Leo Laporte:
Two years. Much easier. Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah, for child pornography on the internet. Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
So, the theory is... And Gruber's theory is, what do you tap the... What do you do? You tap this twice? I can't even remember now. You can make it so that it's not... Yeah, I think I-

Christina:
You just hit the button twice and basically-

Leo Laporte:
And then it will go into a mode where you have to enter the passcode to get in. And the theory is now you've protected it because the Fourth Amendment or the Fifth Amendment prevents them from forcing you to give them the passcode. Whereas the courts have ruled it is not incriminating to get your face ID, which is weird.

Glenn Fleishman:
Or fingerprint.

Christina:
Here's what it is if you're on one of the newer phones. You press the lower volume button and then the side button at the same time until you're going to feel a feedback. Like if you've got the vibration on, you'll get the vibration feedback.

Leo Laporte:
So you can have it in your pocket. This is what Gruber says, you don't have to look at it. You just have it in your pocket. You go, "Here come the federal officers." You press the two and then it buzzes. And now it says "slide to turn off", it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to have to do the passcode to get back into that.

Christina:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So you have it enabled it's just basically these two buttons and then hold the two together.

Leo Laporte:
So if you are in an indicted conspiracy in the January 6th insurrection, you might want to make a note of that.

Glenn Fleishman:
Or to quote the famous XKCD strip. "Just someone brings up a wrench at you and that's how you get the password." You're dealing with criminals or governments that don't believe in the-

Leo Laporte:
Well, that's true. It's not going to work unless the rule of law is rock solid.

Glenn Fleishman:
If you were the January 6th people, you don't need to get their phone. They posted the evidence from their own phones.

Christina:
Right. I was going to say they live streamed it. In many cases they were literally live streaming it.

Glenn Fleishman:
They were taking videos and posting them.

Leo Laporte:
Okay. John says, "Never, ever hand your phone to a cop or anyone vaguely cop-like, like the rent-a-cop's working for the TSA. If they tell you you must, refuse. They can and will lie to you about this. If you really need to hand it over, they'll take it from you. And they won't get anything from it because you've already hard locked it. And you know you cannot be required to give them your passcode." That really is a little bit of an optimistic point of view. They're going to have me in airport jail and I'm, "Can't give me... You can't require me to give you my passcode." "Well, here's a wrench. Here's your head. Would you like to do to have a meeting?

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. And then that's when they unplug the video camera in the interrogation room.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah, exactly. Reading this article, that caught my eye because he said they forced me to unlock the phone, to give him biometric information. I thought that was very interesting. And you're right, Christina, here's a constitutional lawyer, why did he do so?

Glenn Fleishman:
Although weirdly the warrant... I'm looking again here, this is from the CNN article here. The warrant said that they couldn't force him to give up biometric information. So he's claiming they did and yet perhaps he did it voluntarily.

Leo Laporte:
Oh, that's why he's saying it. Oh, now I get it.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah, because the warrant... So then that could be the fruit of the poisoned tree.

Leo Laporte:
There you go. Yeah. So you see he knows what he's doing. He is using his constitutional noggin.

Glenn Fleishman:
And then there may be a great deal of exaggeration. I mean Rudy Giuliani said he was assaulted and somebody-

Christina:
This is true.

Glenn Fleishman:
I had a whole conversation. My kids were laughing at Rudy Giuliani being hit and I was like, "Look, he's an old man. He's clearly not in good health. He's not... It won't be... Somebody came up." And then I saw the footage and I'm like, "Oh no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I apologize, I didn't mean to be a [inaudible 01:29:52]. I just don't want you to laugh at an old man being hit. I don't agree with assault. No one should be-

Christina:
Feel like I'm very sorry.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah, no one should be touched without their permission. The human body autonomy. But I'm like, "all right, the guy just tapped. He just touched the back and said "scumbag"." all right. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte:
"He beat me up!" What do we think about crypto's crash? Let me just check it.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yay. Hurray. Yeah. Sorry.

Leo Laporte:
19,200. You know what? I think it has a lot to do with how much Bitcoin you have.

Christina:
I was going to say, I think it depends on how exposed you are. Look, my Robin Hood adventures with my Dogecoin stuff which I... Look, I did get my initial money out of it. The additional stuff I put into, I did not. But I'm so down, which is... It's hilarious to me. But I'm not exposed. I do worry about the businesses, legitimate businesses, and banks and finance institutions that heavily expose themselves to this stuff when it was going up and up and up. Even if we all... If the collective wisdom on this panel is to be more skeptical of crypto, if not against it, I tend to be more on the skeptical side rather than just anti. I think that we can agree that having this level of downturn is not great. I mean there's-

Leo Laporte:
Well, I feel for anybody who lost their rent money on it.

Christina:
Same.

Leo Laporte:
I think we've been, at least in the last year or two, pretty clear that you would be mistaken to put Bitcoin in your 401(k) let's say. And I even am pretty down on NFT's. I feel like NFT's are absolute scams. What were you going to say, Glenn? About-

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. It's just when you have celebrities. I think that this-

Leo Laporte:
Oh, yeah. Matt Damon saying "Fortune favors the brave. Don't be a coward, buy Bitcoin."

Glenn Fleishman:
I think this was the joke before the joke, quote unquote, before the great depression was like, "When your cab driver is giving you stock tips, you know that the market's about to fall." Right?

Leo Laporte:
Yeah, that's right.

Glenn Fleishman:
Because it's not that individuals shouldn't be invested in the broader market because the market, as a whole, over any long period of time, like 15 plus years, it has a high rate of return relative to almost every other thing you could put your money into. But it's when you buy individual stocks or bonds or you invest in gold or other commodities or something as completely speculative as Bitcoin or Ethereum, you're almost guaranteed to fail over the short term. Even if there's a good long term response because you can't, unless you have a certain amount of money, you can't summon the resources to stay in during the downtime. So I feel for all the people who were talked into it by celebrities where they're like, "Oh, well, this wouldn't be on television and Matt Damon or other people wouldn't do this because they..." I don't know. We're not talking about... So Dan Aykroyd and his Crystal Skull Vodka or something.

Leo Laporte:
Which I have a bottle of, by the way.

Glenn Fleishman:
Is it good?

Leo Laporte:
I haven't opened it, but Dan Aykroyd did autograph it, but then I smudged it because it was on glass. So I have a bottle signed by-

Glenn Fleishman:
Buy into it.

Leo Laporte:
But...

Glenn Fleishman:
But I'm sorry. But I just mean like when you get retail investors being convinced that this is an investment that can't go down or being promised things in a way that there's a dispute. I'm blanking at which currency right now has frozen withdrawals and they had a literal FDIC inaccurate thing that said your deposits are protected by the FDIC.

Leo Laporte:
And they're not.

Glenn Fleishman:
They're not. They weren't. And people are posting and I think they're claiming that they didn't have anything... I don't want to mention the name of the company because I can't remember the name at the moment, but the nuance was they're claiming they never did and people are posting pictures from chat sessions with customer support. They're posting pictures from our internet archive of what they said. So if you're an individual, how do you deal with fraud? So I feel for all those people. The Winklevoss twins, do I feel for them? They're probably still up 12000%, even if they're down 60% for the year.

Leo Laporte:
And they have a band and, unfortunately, their band is not called The Winklevie. But I think the problem is that, as you mentioned Glenn, everything you said points to the fact that everybody looks at it like an investment. It's supposed to be a currency. And this desire to get rich quick without employing anyone, without building anything, making anything, feeding anyone, is... And with, I think, most of us on this show talking until we're blue in the face about what a, ultimately a dangerous, risky thing it is. "Leo, you're the best poster child for the risks of password management."

Glenn Fleishman:
I still have my wallet. Let me point out I got it. I just can't get into it. That's all.

Christina:
You just can't get into it.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
But you were talking-

Leo Laporte:
My wallet is FDIC insured, I want to...

Glenn Fleishman:
That's right. You can get it replaced by any other leather wallet you want. The fact is, as the value goes down, people want to buy in Cetera. It may come back, may not.

Leo Laporte:
Buy the dips. As long as the dips are the bottom and not the top.

Glenn Fleishman:
I stuck some more money into my... No, this is not financial advice, but I stuck some more money into Mira when it took a big dive because I'm like, "Well, this is the..." You know.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah, you're young yet.

Glenn Fleishman:
I'm young yet. I got a few more years.

Leo Laporte:
I lost 25% on my retirement.

Glenn Fleishman:
Well, just hold on. Hold on, Leo. It'll come back. But I mean-

Leo Laporte:
Well, it just means I have to work for another 10 years. That's all.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, my gosh. Over any extended period of time the stock market, on average, it performs very well. So it's just do you have the wherewithal to not go, "Bwah," when this happens? It's very hard. And some people don't have the money to not or they've got-

Leo Laporte:
My favorite ad was the FTX ad with Larry David on the Super Bowl. I think that's the equivalent of a cab driver giving you a tip. When you see these crypto companies starting to advertising the Super Bowl, you know we're somehow at this peak thing in this bubble. Larry David, as the boomer, saying, "The wheel is a terrible idea coming." Everything's a terrible idea. And then they ask him about Bitcoin. "Terrible idea, and I know what I'm talking about. I would never get..." Which was mocking people of my age for saying, "Oh, crypto's no good." And the implication is, "Okay, boomer, you just don't understand the modern world." Well, now there's a lot of boomers going, "Aha." I don't think Larry David, by the way, was paid in Bitcoin for that commercial.

Glenn Fleishman:
No.

Leo Laporte:
It did get me interested though in FTX which, by the way, is now buying up all the failing crypto companies.

Christina:
All the other ones. I was going to say.

Leo Laporte:
This is a very interesting company. Sam Bankman-Fried who founded it, is 30 years old. He's worth 24 billion dollars according to Forbes. He got out of... He was at Stanford. His parents were professors at Stanford Law School. He was born on the Stanford campus. He went to MIT. I love this Wikipedia post, he blogged in 2012 about utilitarianism, baseball, and politics. Graduated with a degree in physics, a minor in math. Started working at a capital firm, Jane Street Capital, in 2013. He quit in 2017. Moved to Berkeley, get this, where he briefly worked for the Center for Effective Altruism, a nonprofit. But in 2017, he founded Alameda Research, which is a quant trading firm in crypto. He's one of the guys who made the most money on crypto.

Christina:
Right. He got in right before the peak of-

Leo Laporte:
Perfect timing.

Christina:
Yeah, because he got in before... At 2017 when that had that peak, but then it fell down. He probably reinvested. And then [inaudible 01:37:44] again-

Leo Laporte:
Well, he made a lot of money in arbitrage. Taking advantage of the higher price in Japan compared to America. So he'd buy in America, sell in Japan, and make money that way. He founded FTX in 2019, three years ago. Now worth $24 billion and is buying up all of the failing cryptocurrency exchanges.

Glenn Fleishman:
He may make an offer for Robinhood is the latest news. Bloomberg reported on that a few days ago on that.

Leo Laporte:
And he paid the... What was it that he paid pennies on the dollar for BlockFi, which was one of our advertisers I should mention. BlockFi, which was worth, at one point, billions. It ended up he loaned them $250 million to stay solvent and then took advantage of that. And I saw one report that said he bought it for $25 million.

Christina:
Yeah. I saw that too.

Leo Laporte:
I don't think that's... I think it's more than that, but still talked about pennies on the dollar.

Glenn Fleishman:
I think we... When I was on a few weeks ago, maybe we... But it just keeps coming back is I think the real underlying problem isn't necessarily all the various currencies, it's the Stablecoins, right? It's like the false problem is we-

Leo Laporte:
And Terra was the one you were thinking of, I think. That people thought it was backed by FDIC.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, yeah. That's right. Tether is bleeding.

Leo Laporte:
Tether, yes.

Glenn Fleishman:
The algorithmic and the supposedly reserve based Stablecoins are what pushed up valuation and we're seeing it completely unwind as the trust ebbs out and you're having bank rush runs.

Leo Laporte:
But then watch because then you have people like Deutsche Bank, which just said, "No, no, no. This Bitcoin is going to the moon. Hold onto it." They say the $2 trillion crypto crash could be coming to an end. They compare Bitcoin to the $72 billion a year diamond industry. You might wonder how many Bitcoin Deutsche Bank has. I bet you they know their wallet's password.

Glenn Fleishman:
Well, they're also getting a lot of agreement. They're also getting a lot agreement from the president of El Salvador. He said, "Thanks for the cheap Bitcoins," and he bought another 1.5 billion dollars.

Leo Laporte:
He bought more?

Glenn Fleishman:
He bought more.

Leo Laporte:
Wow. Double down.

Glenn Fleishman:
I really want to see a bank in Germany talk about hyperinflation of currency like it's really important.

Leo Laporte:
I know.

Glenn Fleishman:
"It's going to be great. You're going to have so much money you'll have it in wheelbarrows. It'll be amazing."

Leo Laporte:
Yes. You'll literally have to use wheelbarrows to buy your zucchini or something.

Christina:
Right.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh my God.

Leo Laporte:
Let's take a little break. Lots more to talk about. Great panel today. Glenn Fleishman, so glad to have you. The expert in so many things, including typography and what are they called? Fogals? Fugals? Flongs?

Glenn Fleishman:
Flongs.

Leo Laporte:
Those little things that... He's a flong master. Get ready for this. You collect sneakers, he collects flongs.

Glenn Fleishman:
I recently acquired hundreds of Peanut's flongs. These are printing plates from Sweden where they were being used in English language Swedish newspaper. And so here are Peanuts comics from the 1970's in color separations. This is the black plate for color Sunday strips. So I've been scanning these and then you-

Leo Laporte:
What is the copyright? Is the Charles Schulz Foundation going to come after you here?

Glenn Fleishman:
Well, it's an interesting thing. As an artifact, I can certainly scan it, but I can't-

Leo Laporte:
It's an artifact?

Glenn Fleishman:
... sell or reap rights. It's a very complicated... There's some fair use issues. And then here's an Alley Oop cartoon-

Leo Laporte:
Oh, man, look at that.

Christina:
Oh, my gosh.

Glenn Fleishman:
... that would be used to create part of the newspaper printing process. I just got this from the '60's, but then here's the best thing. It's a ridiculous thing. It's from 1917. Someone knows that I love flongs. This is, again, a printing plate raised to type high that they would've used in a newspaper. And it's a terrible, terrible old strip. It's a really... One of these horrible... But it's 1917, so no one knew how to make comic strips yet. They're like, "The punchlines are confusing," and whatever. Anyway, but it's little pieces of comic syndication history.

Leo Laporte:
I love it. It's a museum. Now are you actually in your office or is that a green screen?

Glenn Fleishman:
No, this is really stuff. I can pull it off the shelf.

Leo Laporte:
Oh, wow. Amazing. Look at that.

Glenn Fleishman:
Look, the book moved. I know I fooled you once.

Leo Laporte:
First time he was on, he completely tricked me. It looked exactly the same. And then he reaches back and just the green screen-

Leo Laporte:
No, and he completely tricked me. It looked exactly the same. And then he reaches back and just [inaudible 01:42:04].

Glenn Fleishman:
I was using bouquet, a bouquet photo.

Leo Laporte:
Very well done. It's beautiful. Brilliant.

Glenn Fleishman:
No, this is what I'm calling the Joe Shlabotnik [inaudible 01:42:12] and Stereotype Museum. That's my working title.

Leo Laporte:
Thank you, Joe.

Glenn Fleishman:
For those sort of snoopy fans.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. Nice. I never knew that's how you pronounced it. Shlabotnik, huh?

Glenn Fleishman:
Maybe, Shlabotnik.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. Also Mike Elgan is here, gastronomad.net if you want to go on these great trips, the next one in Provence this fall.

Mike Elgan:
That's right.

Leo Laporte:
Amazing. Amazing. We went to... Last fall, to Oaxaca with you guys and it was the best thing. It was so much fun.

Mike Elgan:
We're going to be hanging out with some of the people you met there. I'll tell them you said hi-

Leo Laporte:
Please do.

Mike Elgan:
... if it's okay.

Leo Laporte:
Please do.

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
I follow Julia and Charlie on Instagram and I was watching all of you guys in Provence and I thought, "Oh, that lavender looks good enough to eat."

Mike Elgan:
So much fun.

Leo Laporte:
Unbelievable.

Mike Elgan:
So much fun.

Leo Laporte:
Yes.

Mike Elgan:
By the way, if I can do a quick plug, the Provence experience in the fall, we still have an open room.

Leo Laporte:
Oh, good.

Mike Elgan:
If anybody wants to join us, go to the website, gastronomad.net, shoot me a line and you could grab that last room. It's going to be mind-blowingly beautiful and amazing.

Leo Laporte:
And you'll be amongst friends because-

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
... There are many tweet listeners in the groups. It's just by coincidence somehow, magically it just happens.

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. It's a lot of fun.

Mike Elgan:
Yep.

Leo Laporte:
Well, there is Julia herself with a baby goat. How cute is that.

Christina Warren:
Aww.

Leo Laporte:
Christina Warren also here, Film Girl. We love Christina. It's great to have you and your sneakers on the show.

Christina Warren:
Great to be here.

Leo Laporte:
And your travels are done now for a while? Or are you going to-

Christina Warren:
For now, I'm not sure when my next thing will be, but I will be traveling more obviously as the year and next year goes on, but [inaudible 01:43:54].

Leo Laporte:
That's good for GitHub.

Christina Warren:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
It's a different... Do you go to build? Do you go to those events? Or is it something different now? Is it like-

Christina Warren:
We have GitHub Universe.

Leo Laporte:
Oh good.

Christina Warren:
That is in November and that'll be at the Moscone Center in San Francisco-

Leo Laporte:
Oh, fun.

Christina Warren:
... That will be good.

Leo Laporte:
You'll be down this way? Nice.

Christina Warren:
Absolutely. Yeah, just more things, more events are happening in person and opening up. We're just kind of figuring out, our fiscal year just started this week.

Leo Laporte:
Right.

Christina Warren:
We're figuring out where we want to be and whatnot-

Leo Laporte:
Nice.

Christina Warren:
Some people would rather stay home, would rather be virtual. I would rather be out-

Leo Laporte:
You like to travel.

Christina Warren:
... so [inaudible 01:44:29].

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Christina Warren:
I do like to travel and it was really great being able to be around people again and be it, meet up groups and things like that. It was really nice to be able to have that experience again, because I've missed it a lot.

Leo Laporte:
And of course we missed Film Girl's impromptu hotel tours.

Christina Warren:
Yes. Yes.

Leo Laporte:
I'm glad you're back doing that and showing-

Christina Warren:
Thank you.

Leo Laporte:
... showing the world what it's like to be Christina Warren, traveling the world.

Christina Warren:
I was going to say, people shockingly, it's probably been some of the most popular content I've ever done where for years I was doing... This is before Reels existed on Instagram.

Christina Warren:
I might bring it to TikTok, I don't know. But I was doing them as stories and now I'm doing them as Reels and I might bring it to TikTok, but I do via Christina's hotel room tours where I just do a tour of the hotel room that I happened to be in.

Leo Laporte:
It's hysterical.

Christina Warren:
I sort of doing it... Yeah. People shockingly, I've had people come up to me at conferences and things. People who don't really know me and like, "Oh, I love your hotel tours." Oh my Gosh.

Leo Laporte:
That's so funny. You just don't know.

Glenn Fleishman:
I had a friend who took him four days to get from Virginia back to Portland.

Leo Laporte:
Oh! Travel's tough right now.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. [inaudible 01:45:40].

Christina Warren:
Travel's terrible.

Glenn Fleishman:
I have not been on the road.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
I've missed it so far.

Leo Laporte:
And what's interesting in a Friday, which was the first day of... The 4th of July weekend by the way, happy Independence Day to our American viewers.

Christina Warren:
Yes.

Leo Laporte:
Happy Canada day, couple of days ago to our Canadian...

Christina Warren:
Mm-hmm.

Leo Laporte:
Friday which was the beginning of the weekend, there were more people went through the TSA lines than they did in 2019. It's actually gone up.

Christina Warren:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Travels back.

Christina Warren:
Travels back-

Glenn Fleishman:
[Inaudible 01:46:09].

Christina Warren:
Yeah, travels back, but there are-

Leo Laporte:
The pilots aren't.

Christina Warren:
There are less crew members. I was going to say the pilots aren't, crew members aren't, TSA people aren't. It's the whole thing, this is what hap-

Mike Elgan:
They're calling it Airmageddon.

Leo Laporte:
Airmageddon baby.

Glenn Fleishman:
We have a fun situation, we got Global Entry just before literally January 2020, the whole family, all four of us went out to-

Leo Laporte:
Oh, nice.

Glenn Fleishman:
The Canadian border and took a little vacation.

Christina Warren:
Mm-hmm.

Glenn Fleishman:
This is great. It's January 2020, we have this wonderful trip planned this summer, so much travel ahead of us we thought to ourselves. But Global Entry once you're in it, you have to go back up there-

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
When your passport changes, all this stuff.

Christina Warren:
Yep.

Glenn Fleishman:
So we can't use it now, when we start traveling again, without going back to this small town near Canada-

Leo Laporte:
You have to go to the same place that issued it?

Glenn Fleishman:
Yes. And you can't-

Mike Elgan:
I don't know that.

Christina Warren:
I thought...No, I was going to say-

Mike Elgan:
[inaudible 01:46:59].

Christina Warren:
I think you can just link it back to your new passport because I had my passport [inaudible 01:47:03].

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh my God, maybe they've changed that.

Christina Warren:
Yeah. I'm almost positive.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, [inaudible 01:47:06].

Christina Warren:
Mike would know more than me, but I'm 99% sure that all you have to do is update your forms on the Global Entry website-

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh my Gosh!

Christina Warren:
... To link to the new passport.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh no, you know what? We have Nexus, we don't have the Global Entry.

Leo Laporte:
Oh, that's the problem. You have the Canadian-

Glenn Fleishman:
... Border.

Christina Warren:
You got to [inaudible 01:47:21].

Leo Laporte:
[inaudible 01:47:21] Global Entry.

Glenn Fleishman:
It seems so smart.

Leo Laporte:
Very different.

Glenn Fleishman:
So close to Canada.

Leo Laporte:
There's a guy in a mountie hat, it's a whole different thing. It doesn't-

Glenn Fleishman:
Canadian entry.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. Canadian entry.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. Sorry. Nexus is a great program, except [inaudible 01:47:30].

Leo Laporte:
No, it's better than Global Entry, except for that.

Glenn Fleishman:
Except... When the border shuts down for two years.

Leo Laporte:
Except for that.

Mike Elgan:
Global Entry though is fantastic.

Glenn Fleishman:
Global Entry [inaudible 01:47:38] Right?

Mike Elgan:
TSA pre-check, but the use of face recognition, we just... Half the time we come back into the country, we just look at the camera and they're like, "Okay, thank you" and [inaudible 01:47:47].

Christina Warren:
I know.

Mike Elgan:
Isn't that amazing?

Leo Laporte:
I just got Global Entry coming back from Oaxaca. I did my interview at SFO in the middle of the night and got my Global Entry.

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, you appreciate the same, I went for Global Entry first, that's why I was confused before we decided to do the Nexus about six months later. And the guy said, "Oh, so you're..."

Glenn Fleishman:
He just asked me a few questions. It was going really well. These very brief interviews and he said, "Oh, I see you're a writer. What kind of stuff do you write?" I'm like, "Oh..." and I just list off a few things. I'm trying to not set up any red flags. And he says, Oh, sounds like you're pretty smart. You should go on Jeopardy." I'm like, as a matter fact..."

Leo Laporte:
[inaudible 01:48:19] Jeopardy.

Glenn Fleishman:
Then he couldn't believe me, so I had him Google to find a picture of me me with Alex Trebek and then he starts telling me about his own memory. And I'm like, "Oh my God, you should be on Jeopardy" you need this CB... customs border. I'm like... He's like, "Well, I read a sports trivia book, I memorized the whole thing." I'm like, "You need to be on this show, go audition."

Glenn Fleishman:
So I hope I talked him into it [inaudible 01:48:42].

Leo Laporte:
You're having a much better experience with Canadian border guards than I had. In fact than anybody I've ever met has, congratulations you've made some friends, that's good.

Leo Laporte:
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Leo Laporte:
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Leo Laporte:
Well, let me tell you something, we have learned during the pandemic people love text messaging. How many times have we use text messages to let us know our food delivery is on the way, to order food.

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Leo Laporte:
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Leo Laporte:
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Leo Laporte:
What about... Actually, now that I'm with some people who use Instagram. Is it me or does Instagram looking more and more like TikTok?

Christina Warren:
It is not just you.

Leo Laporte:
It's a little TikTok [inaudible 01:52:20].

Glenn Fleishman:
[inaudible 01:52:21].

Leo Laporte:
In fact, they've announced now that everything's... All video you post is going to be a reel, right?

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Is this a good strategy? It makes me feel like they're copying and they're not...

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
I don't like it.

Glenn Fleishman:
Again.

Christina Warren:
Again, yeah.

Leo Laporte:
They did.

Mike Elgan:
Facebook is a company with zero vision. What they do is they just copy every... Remember they copy Snapchat, wholesale, then they copied Google plus-

Leo Laporte:
It worked with Snapchat though.

Christina Warren:
It did.

Leo Laporte:
Snapchat, they tried to buy them. They couldn't buy them. They didn't put them out business.

Christina Warren:
I think they made it better. No, no. I think that I have to say, I have to give them a little bit of credit. I think that their implementation of stories was better than the way Snapchat was, just because Snapchat really was leaning into the ephemeral at that point.

Leo Laporte:
Right.

Christina Warren:
I think that the way that they did stories and some of the things they did to their editing experience was better, on the flip side I think that they are a far worse TikTok clone than...the [inaudible 01:53:15] stories, it's... But to Mike's point, yeah, if you look through the history of Facebook, I think Instagram's a little different now, the founders have left and I think that the guy who's in charge now, I don't think he has the product vision. But I think that Facebook, his history is littered with examples of times when they have taken inspiration from other companies and attempted to release things that very rarely have worked out.

Christina Warren:
Honestly like WhatsApp and Instagram have been two of the, I think leading reasons why Facebook has maintained relevance over the last 19 years or however long it's been around.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. Kevin Systrom, who is the founder of Instagram... One of the founders of Instagram left Facebook quite famously in a dispute over what the direction was. They replaced him with Adam Mosseri who was a Facebook lifer in effect.

Christina Warren:
Yep.

Leo Laporte:
He is not the product visionary that Systrom was.

Christina Warren:
No.

Leo Laporte:
And ever since, I think, Instagram has gone downhill and I want Instagram to succeed. It's the only Facebook property I still use.

Christina Warren:
Same.

Leo Laporte:
It used to be a great place to share photos. Not anymore.

Christina Warren:
Yeah. They've actually... Facebook has actually done one of their famous copying routines more recently than the copying of TikTok, which is that they've made Facebook groups look exactly like Discord. They made it purple, they have a sidebar [inaudible 01:54:36].

Leo Laporte:
That's really awful. It drives me nuts.

Mike Elgan:
Yep. Anything that's hot, they just sort of steal the core elements of it and try to [inaudible 01:54:45] on that.

Leo Laporte:
Look at this, this looks so much like Discord, it's plagiarism.

Christina Warren:
Oh my God.

Leo Laporte:
It's plagiarism.

Christina Warren:
And I have to think that the... And this is what's so weird to me, because I have to think that the demographics and users for Facebook groups, and your users for Discord are completely different. I don't even understand what the appeal is to make it look like Discord, because it's not like you're going to bring the teens and the kids to Facebook groups.

Christina Warren:
They're not going to ever use that. And yet the people who use and really enjoy and get things out of Facebook groups are going to be like, "Okay, why did you move this? And why does this look like this thing that I'm not familiar with." This makes no sense.

Leo Laporte:
It does seem misguided. You're exactly right.

Leo Laporte:
You're annoying the existing customers and you have no hope of luring people away from Discord.

Christina Warren:
No, you will never ever lure the other people in. Facebook gaming is famously tried for years to take on Twitch. YouTube gaming has tried to take on Twitch. Nothing is going to take on Twitch.

Christina Warren:
Microsoft tried with Mixer, failed. I don't... Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
I want Instagram to succeed. I briefly moved to Glass, which is an Instagram replacement created by photographers, photos first, they're trying to respond to all this stuff. I don't know what it is, maybe it's not as big, it doesn't have the social.

Leo Laporte:
Whatever it is, it doesn't quite scratch that itch. But I was an early adopter on Instagram and I thought that was a great thing.

Christina Warren:
It was. I think that what's weird too about... I understand approaching when YouTube has done this with shorts a little bit too. I understand approaching some of the types of content and maybe the editing tools and the length and the format adoption of TikTok, I see that and I think that's why the stories' appropriation worked.

Christina Warren:
I think that it was a format rather than necessarily taking on some of the way that Snapchat worked, which was, Snapchat was always a very personal one to one thing. Instagram's a little bit broader than that, it's people you know, but also people that you might want to follow and keep up with.

Christina Warren:
TikTok was fascinating to me about it, and this isn't universally true, but I think this is largely true for people. Is that it is one of the few social networks that's come out, basically since Facebook if we want to be honest, where your social graph is not at all based on who you know, it's based on things you're interested in and things you follow, but you don't necessarily... On TikTok I don't follow anyone that I know in real life. There might be a few things [inaudible 01:57:12].

Leo Laporte:
Well, doesn't matter.

Christina Warren:
Don't do that.

Leo Laporte:
By the way, follow away. I follow my son and I never see his TikToks, never.

Christina Warren:
This is sort of my point, is the way that they feed you content the reason why it's trusted [inaudible 01:57:25]-

Leo Laporte:
Even when I go to the following tab, he's not there and I know I'm following him and I know he is putting them out. I have to actually search for his name.

Christina Warren:
You have to search for him because you're not typically consuming his type of content that he's creating. Whereas [inaudible 01:57:37]-

Leo Laporte:
Well, if he would do more bikini rich content, I might see more of his stuff.

Christina Warren:
If he would do more bikini rich content, or maybe he should do collab with some people-

Leo Laporte:
Just kidding.

Christina Warren:
... Then maybe you'll see him on your free page.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Christina Warren:
But until then, this is where I think that the Facebook thing is a little bit misguided or Instagram thing is a little misguided, because look, you might also follow the bikini models on Instagram, but you're largely there to see people, at least I think historically people that you know and to share things with people you know.

Leo Laporte:
Right.

Christina Warren:
Whereas Reels, the whole idea. If they're going to make it like TikTok, then you want to see stuff from people that you're not connected with. To me, it feels like a mixed, like a completely false experience set up. If I want to follow people that I don't actually have any connection with and see short form videos about it, that's what TikTok is for. I don't want to suddenly be inundated with-

Leo Laporte:
It's a completely different paradigm.

Christina Warren:
Exactly. I don't want to be inundated with that on Instagram and I don't think that Facebook quite understands that. To your point, the product vision, isn't really there.

Leo Laporte:
I don't know if-

Mike Elgan:
Here's a ques-

Leo Laporte:
Go ahead [inaudible 01:58:36].

Glenn Fleishman:
Go ahead [inaudible 01:58:37].

Leo Laporte:
I was just going to say-

Glenn Fleishman:
I don't know if...

Leo Laporte:
I'm sorry. After you [inaudible 01:58:40].

Glenn Fleishman:
Delay... [inaudible 01:58:42].

Glenn Fleishman:
Okay. I'll go. First of all, does Hank make you call him Salt or do you [inaudible 01:58:49].

Leo Laporte:
Hey Salty.

Glenn Fleishman:
I always wondered about that.

Leo Laporte:
Hey, Salty.

Glenn Fleishman:
But I... Here's a question, because I normally like to crap all over TikTok and criticize them-

Leo Laporte:
I'm actually in love with TikTok.

Glenn Fleishman:
But here's a question. Does TikTok actually expand in human empathy and understanding-

Leo Laporte:
Yes.

Glenn Fleishman:
Because there's so many videos from Nairobi and like all these far fun places-

Christina Warren:
[inaudible 01:59:16].

Leo Laporte:
[inaudible 01:59:16] was going to do, which was open up the world, I think it absolutely does. Plus for creators, like my son, it's an opportunity. He couldn't have done what he's done on any other platform.

Glenn Fleishman:
Right. He launched him in other platforms-

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
He's like on [inaudible 01:59:33].

Leo Laporte:
Look at Megan's Megan Stalter who's now on Hacks on HBO. She was a comedian, covid, she couldn't do her bits so she created this crazy, something that would've never worked anywhere but TikTok, these crazy short form characters became huge on TikTok. Now she's on HBO.

Leo Laporte:
I think this is a really good place for creators of a certain type.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Right?

Glenn Fleishman:
Right.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. Absolutely. I saw a glimpse of a show that Shakira has where they have these people who dance on TikTok, they're discovered on TikTok, brought onto her show. And it's played as if the Shakira show is the big time and TikTok is the small time

Mike Elgan:
The other way around buddy.

Glenn Fleishman:
But it's the other way around.

Christina Warren:
It's really the opposite.

Glenn Fleishman:
They're just trying to glom onto this.

Christina Warren:
They're trying to glom onto it. Exactly.

Leo Laporte:
My son has 2.1 million followers-

Christina Warren:
Amazing.

Leo Laporte:
... On TikTok. That is more than any show I do. That is... He has completely eclipsed anything I've done in 40 years in the business, in a matter of months.

Leo Laporte:
I don't know where else you could do that. Now. I don't know what the successor to that is and I always... I feel bad, I'm the parent that goes, "Now son, you don't pull all your eggs in one basket," and all that. And he's gone. "Yeah, dad." Yeah.

Glenn Fleishman:
He literally does. [inaudible 02:00:50] some of his videos, he puts eggs in baskets.

Leo Laporte:
He puts eggs in baskets and he doesn't save many, yeah, extra. Yeah. I agree.

Glenn Fleishman:
If you measure it in minutes though, I think that's minutes consumed, given the length of your shows versus his TikToks. Maybe it [inaudible 02:01:01].

Leo Laporte:
Ah, maybe... User minutes. Should I measure?... So what, this is just me or is this something you guys have on your Instagram? This is something I thought was new, up at the top at Instagram there's now a little down triangle and I can choose from favorites and following and I think this is...

Glenn Fleishman:
Oh, that [inaudible 02:01:21].

Leo Laporte:
Can you do that? Or is that my-

Glenn Fleishman:
I can't do it on mine?

Leo Laporte:
Maybe I'm in a test.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. Maybe.

Leo Laporte:
Maybe I'm in a test.

Glenn Fleishman:
[inaudible 02:01:26] roll it out.

Christina Warren:
I was going to say, I don't have this.

Leo Laporte:
I like this because I favor the people-

Christina Warren:
Oh, good.

Leo Laporte:
This is just like the old Instagram. It's just people-

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah. They said it was coming back.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. Just people I'm following.

Christina Warren:
Oh no, I do have this. Sorry, about following and then favorites.

Leo Laporte:
I never saw it before.

Glenn Fleishman:
Maybe I do have.

Leo Laporte:
I saw it a couple of weeks ago and I thought, "Oh." Maybe this is their way, admittedly it's hidden the way and who knows who has it, but maybe this is their way of saying, "Well, you could..." Just like Twitter, rather. Twitter you can do latest tweets, which is a chronological feat of people you're following. I love that.

Glenn Fleishman:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
Or you could do the home, which gives you... And that's good too for times when you want to see stuff you might have missed. Maybe this is a new way of doing this, you kind of have it both ways.

Glenn Fleishman:
The sneaky thing in Instagram is that deal where they show you things from other people you follow.

Leo Laporte:
I hate that.

Glenn Fleishman:
It just shows that tap-

Leo Laporte:
I don't want to see that.

Glenn Fleishman:
Then you close it and it says, do you want to snooze this for 30 days? Well, I want the never, ever do this to me.

Leo Laporte:
Never, ever.

Christina Warren:
Right.

Glenn Fleishman:
Every 30 days, I start seeing random things and-

Leo Laporte:
It's made up too, because you followed, because you liked, because you watched a video by this person. Maybe I paused on that for two seconds, "We thought you'd like this one." Is not a good system, they're just annoying.

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
I'm very disappointed. And trying to be more like TikTok now, I think every videos are Reel suddenly it's Reels, Reels, Reels.

Christina Warren:
And yet they haven't even copied all the good things.

Leo Laporte:
None of the good stuff.

Christina Warren:
From Reels.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Christina Warren:
But it's like Reels now don't have a... Tiktoks rather don't... The time limit is much, much longer and Reels are limited to 90 seconds and it's like, "Okay, what's the point then?"

Christina Warren:
You're making me use this subpar version of this copycat when I would rather consume the content on the platform that has... Admittedly scary as all get out, but very, very effective algorithm. I don't know.

Leo Laporte:
Speaking of TikTok, there's still some concern about the fact that it's owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. That there may be Chinese employees looking at stuff and in fact, even though TikTok announced that they were going to put all the U.S. users' data on Oracle based servers in California, apparently they admitted only carefully vetted Chinese employees have access to the American data.

Leo Laporte:
TikTok is working on a deal with the Biden administration that would, quote, "Fully safeguard the app in the U.S."

Leo Laporte:
Obviously they don't... Look, there's nothing the Chinese government is getting from this that is worth. What TikTok is getting from American users. But does TikTok have a choice?

Mike Elgan:
It's... Yeah, it's not up to ByteDance and one of the problems is that... I really don't... I understand the psychological satisfaction of hosting data in a certain country, but does hosting a U.S. user data in the U.S. on Oracle servers, prevent ByteDance from accessing the data that their app is generating? I mean, I would have to see-

Leo Laporte:
Apparently not, because that's what in their letter they wrote to a nine Republican senators, that was released just Friday, they admitted. No, certain employees can see American data, even though it's not stored in China, they can see it.

Mike Elgan:
Right.

Leo Laporte:
Pointless.

Mike Elgan:
I just find it very... All of it, there's a lot of effort to try to put fears at ease, but it's not... At the end of the day ByteDance is a Chinese company.

Mike Elgan:
By the way, a lot of people don't know this, but TikTok itself is banned in China.

Leo Laporte:
Oh really?

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
[inaudible 02:05:14].

Mike Elgan:
ByteDance has another version called something else, I forgot what it's called-

Christina Warren:
Yeah.

Mike Elgan:
... Which is fully censored by the Chinese government, etc. Yeah, even TikTok is banned in China.

Leo Laporte:
Huh. It's incredible.

Mike Elgan:
The Chinese government will, if it wants to, get any data from ByteDance, that ByteDance has access to. No matter where it's stored.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah.

Mike Elgan:
It's really not about where it's stored, it's about what access ByteDance has.

Leo Laporte:
But. So what? What are they going to get out of this that I should be worried, that the Chin...?

Leo Laporte:
I'm much more worried about what Facebook knows about me than what Chinese government knows about me.

Mike Elgan:
The location of U.S. soldiers, the movement of U.S. soldiers.

Leo Laporte:
It's completely reasonable for the U.S. armed forces to prevent, forbid the use of TikTok.

Mike Elgan:
They can say that, but [inaudible 02:06:07].

Christina Warren:
Right.

Mike Elgan:
[inaudible 02:06:07].

Christina Warren:
How to enforce it?

Leo Laporte:
Okay. But that's their problem, not my problem. They need to handle that problem, not me. Why would you...?

Mike Elgan:
What I'm saying is, there's this project Texas thing, which is a so called collaboration [inaudible 02:06:21]-

Leo Laporte:
Isn't that an ironic name?

Mike Elgan:
... And ByteDance.

Mike Elgan:
Yes, it is. This is where the [inaudible 02:06:28] storing on Oracle service, etc, comes in. What I'm saying is that we need transparency around exactly what they're doing, because I don't really trust ByteDance or the U.S. Government or Texas-

Christina Warren:
Right.

Mike Elgan:
... To actually safeguard this data, unless I know how they're doing it. How exactly are they preventing the company from accessing its own data?

Leo Laporte:
Right. But you've said this yourself, Mike, the threat from ByteDance, of TikTok isn't so much harvesting American citizens' data, it's slanting American citizen opinion.

Mike Elgan:
It's disinformation.

Leo Laporte:
It's disinformation.

Christina Warren:
Yes.

Leo Laporte:
That's the real risk. This doesn't address that at all. Right?

Glenn Fleishman:
There is also another issue though, because there's a lot of... It's not just the data may seem unimportant, but the Chinese are monitoring hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese, both Chinese Americans and Chinese citizens living in the United States and researchers and people doing work.

Glenn Fleishman:
This is the whole thing, years ago when China was deemed to have broken into Gmail accounts related to people who were writing about or... Human rights advocates connected with China and so forth is, China will use any information that they can get that helps them understand and track a very large swath of people.

Glenn Fleishman:
That risk comes across, any data China gets access to, and TikTok gives them a lot of that for those citizens.

Leo Laporte:
Well, those-

Glenn Fleishman:
And non-citizens.

Leo Laporte:
I hope this doesn't sound [inaudible 02:07:59], but if they don't want to be tracked, they shouldn't be using TikTok on their phone.

Glenn Fleishman:
Well, that's... Yeah. [inaudible 02:08:08]-

Leo Laporte:
It's not my problem. If you were a Chinese dissident in the United States, you'd be nuts to use TikTok on... Put TikTok on your phone.

Glenn Fleishman:
It doesn't need to be dissident, you can be a Chinese... There's been these [inaudible 02:08:18]-

Leo Laporte:
Well, don't do it. They shouldn't do it.

Christina Warren:
[inaudible 02:08:20]

Leo Laporte:
If they're worried about, that's their problem, it's not my problem.

Christina Warren:
Okay. It's not your problem. But I would say this and I think there's some fairness in that, but I would say, okay, the way that we know the location and another information can be aggregated. We know that people who are not personally wanting to be identified with it, how their information can also be assimilated and put into those things. Like, okay, let's say they don't use it, that doesn't mean that certain information about them couldn't be inferred because of other people who were in the dataset. Right? I think you still be putting people-

Leo Laporte:
Okay. Good point.

Christina Warren:
I think you could still be putting people at risk.

Leo Laporte:
If I hung out with a group of Chinese people and they didn't have TikTok, but I did...

Christina Warren:
Right.

Glenn Fleishman:
You could be putting them at risk.

Christina Warren:
You could put them at risk.

Leo Laporte:
Okay. That's fair. All right. Then I-

Glenn Fleishman:
Don't want to over say, but it's also... I think the unfettered access by any government to information about that, includes stuff that can be by location, voice, face, content, opinion, all of these things. Do we want?... Even though it's publicly available, it's not publicly available in the same degree to which it could be accessed off servers.

Glenn Fleishman:
The Chinese have developed enormous capabilities to do voice and facial and other recognition on data sets because they're using that against their own citizens. The risk is that the Chinese will use it, maybe they'll use it as techniques to... They could be using it to try of turn military people, to turn people in academia. There's just a... I don't want to make China out to be this ridiculous international threat-

Leo Laporte:
Why not?

Glenn Fleishman:
... But I think they work extremely well in their own interests.

Glenn Fleishman:
Well, I don't want to overstate it. I think they were-

Mike Elgan:
Precisely [inaudible 02:09:50].

Glenn Fleishman:
... Extremely well, their own interests and I'll let you say it, because I don't disagree with [inaudible 02:09:57]

Leo Laporte:
I'm more of fear to my own government than I am China.

Glenn Fleishman:
[inaudible 02:10:01].

Leo Laporte:
If I were a woman in this country, a young woman of breeding age in this country, I'd be especially a feared of my own government. I think there's a lot more at risk from that.

Glenn Fleishman:
This is fair, but we have... Potentially have the ability to affect what our government does in this country and we can't do it with China. I think China is more validly interested in creating... I think Russia [inaudible 02:10:26]-

Leo Laporte:
They can't do as much harm to me though as the Texas attorney general can.

Glenn Fleishman:
I don't know. I don't know.

Mike Elgan:
We can oppose them both, but the point is that one of the problems with the communities-

Christina Warren:
Yeah.

Mike Elgan:
You talk about the contentious political issues in the United States. The point is they're contentious.

Leo Laporte:
Right.

Christina Warren:
Right.

Mike Elgan:
In China, there's no contentiousness about anything.

Leo Laporte:
Right.

Mike Elgan:
It's like... And Xi Jinping is proved that he wants to be North Korea-

Christina Warren:
Yes.

Mike Elgan:
... But with way more money and a lot more people and a lot more power and the ability to be a superpower, which is to extend military power globally.

Mike Elgan:
Our own government is more concerned about screwing us over, but we can do something about it as Glen said. And we, and it's a conversation. It's the lack of conversation, lack of democracy in China that makes them... Makes us as technology consumers have to think twice about what we're consuming and who's behind it and all that sort of thing.

Leo Laporte:
You wrote a good piece in Computerworld last week, sort of at this notion that it's, it was foolish ever to think of a global internet. That wasn't going to happen.

Mike Elgan:
That's exactly right. And the buzzword is the splinternet. And the splinternet just keeps splintering more and more. The biggest... Of course the big split came with a great firewall of China.

Mike Elgan:
You use the internet in China, it looks nothing like the internet we use. They don't have access to Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat-

Leo Laporte:
TikTok.

Mike Elgan:
TikTok-

Leo Laporte:
I just learned. Yeah.

Mike Elgan:
Yes. And we don't have access or we don't have... We're not really using these other things. Meanwhile, not only is China good at keeping their own citizens from seeing uncensored content, they're increasingly censoring globally, which is a big concern.

Mike Elgan:
Then you had Russia kind of wannabe Chinese, Great Wall of China, but the war in Ukraine just accelerated that massively, where you have lots and lots of people, company... U.S. companies are pulling out of Russia. Russia, banning all these social networks that they used to not ban and so on.

Mike Elgan:
They're becoming more China like in their disassociation, but you have other things happe... You have similar things, they're essentially intranets in North Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and a bunch of other countries.

Mike Elgan:
You have a book by somebody named Nina Xiang who wrote a book Parallel Metaverses and her contention is the same point that I made in a column a few months ago, which is there's not going to be a metaverse, there's going to be many, many metaverses, and they're going to be, some of them are going to be very compelling and people are going to live within them.

Mike Elgan:
You'll live in yours, I'll live in mine. It's another... Two biggest trends, metaverse and web3 are major splintering factors on an already splintered, splinter net. The metaverse is going to be splinter people, web3 is going to splinter people because they think, the vision of the web three is, we'll just get everybody on the web3 stuff. On blockchain stuff, on distributed networks and so on.

Mike Elgan:
A minority of people will embrace that version of the web and the majority will stay on what they call web2. That's another splinter. We're being splintered every which way and the idea that we're all going to go back to an internet that we all share, where there's... You can't censor it, etc, is just never going to happen. It's just going to get worse and worse and worse. Unfortunately.

Leo Laporte:
We need to bring back gopher. That'll solve it.

Mike Elgan:
Archie and Veronica.

Leo Laporte:
Archie and Veronica, exactly. Actually her point's interesting, but it's not just national metaverses, we're going to have splintering of metaverses within the U.S.

Leo Laporte:
There'll be Facebooks, there'll be Apples.

Mike Elgan:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte:
There'll be Microsofts and they're... Even though they've formed this metaverse alliance, it's not clear that there will be interoperable metaverses.

Christina Warren:
Right.

Leo Laporte:
I think it's much more likely that Facebook's going to say, "No, you want to play in our space. We've got the coolest outfits." That kind of thing.

Christina Warren:
Which is unfortunate, because I think the whole reason that the web1 and the whole reason that... Versus the online networks and the internet super highway of that motif, I think the whole reason the web1 was interoperability.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. You're right.

Christina Warren:
And I think that we might have been naive to think that we could have one global internet, but I think that the reason the internet has been such a massive success and that the web has had such a... Uncalculable impact on society, global society I should add, has been because until recently we, with a couple of exceptions, it has been one place.

Leo Laporte:
There's been a lot of negative about social media, and we've been talking a lot about it on our shows. Is it good? Is it bad? It's a source of disinformation? Can it bring people together? There's some positives, some negatives.

Leo Laporte:
I thought this was really interesting. I don't know if you watched the January 6th testimony, the congressional testimony, but there was a retired Republican judge, Michael Luttig, who was... I thought really interesting. I remember very well his testimony and I also remember thinking, well, he starts speaking slowly, I wonder if he's recovering from a stroke or something like that.

Leo Laporte:
He's not, but... Joe Hagan, who's a writer for Vanity Fair in a Twitter thread said, "I like how this guy treats every line of his testimony. Like he's engraving it on a national monument."

Leo Laporte:
And frankly, he really-

Mike Elgan:
He's talking to the stenographer, not to the public.

Leo Laporte:
Yeah. He really is engraving it for-

MIke:
Stenographer, not to the public.

Leo:
He really is engraving it for history, and he seems to know it. To which, Judge Luttig responded on Twitter, with a Twitter thread, "Thank you so much, Mr. Hagen. You almost presciently understood precisely what I was at least attempted to do to the best of my abilities during the hearing Thursday." He even mocked his own speech pattern.

Leo:
He says, "What you could not know and did not know, but I will tell you now, is that I believed I had an obligation to the select committee and the country first to formulate..., then to measure..., and then... to meter out every single word that I spoke carefully, exactingly and deliberately. So, that the words I spoke were pristine, clear, and would be heard and therefore understood as such". He said, "I believed Thursday I had a high responsibility and obligation of myself, even if to no other and, please bear in mind, it was the first time in 68 years that I'd ever been on national television. I wasn't scared. I wanted to do my best and not embarrass myself. I thought the most interesting thing was that I decided to respond to your tweet, because I've been watching the tweets all day suggesting that I'm recovering from a severe stroke, and my friends, out of their concern for me and my family, have been earnestly forwarding me these tweets asking me if I'm all right". This is the thing I wanted to bring up, and this germane of this program, "Such as social media, I understand, but I profoundly believe in social media's foundational, in fact, revolutionary value and contribution to free speech in our country".

Leo:
This is a 68 year old, pretty conservative, right wing, republican judge who, one, would expect would say, "Ah, social media". No, no. He says, "For that reason, I'm willing to willingly accept the occasional bad that comes from social media in return for the much more frequent good that comes from it, at least from the vastly more responsible, respectful speech on those media".

MIke:
I totally agree with that.

Leo:
Isn't that awesome?

MIke:
He's absolutely right.

Christina:
That's amazing.

MIke:
I think it's great that somebody who's 68 and conservative is honest enough and perceptive enough to come to that conclusion, because I think that's absolutely true. It would be more true for a lot more people if more people would learn to block and report.

Leo:
Yeah, true. He says, one more... Let me just finish his tweet storm. One more thing, and then Glen. "This is why 16 years after my retirement from the bench", he tweets, "Even then as a very skeptical curmudgeonly old federal judge, I created a Facebook account and then a Twitter account". Again, he mocks himself slowly, very slowly. "One account first and then followed by the other, all of this said, I am not recovering from a stroke or any other malady, I promise. Thankfully, I've never been as sick or so debilitated as that ever in my life would not want that from anyone. Knock on wood". Judge Luttig is fine. He was intentionally speaking very carefully and precisely, and he appreciated the response on Twitter. Amazing. Go ahead, Glen.

Glen:
Well, I have breaking news here from 1860 [crosstalk 02:19:21]. Live coverage, in the social media of the day, which were newspapers, which were often put out in multiple additions a day.

Leo:
I remember.

Glen:
Coverage of Mr. Lincoln's speaking style. "He's rather unsteady in his gate and there is an involuntarily comical awkwardness, which marks his movements while speaking. His voice though, sharp and powerful at times has a frequent tendency to dwindle into a shrill, an unpleasant sound. His enunciation is slow and emphatic and a particular characteristic of his delivery was a remarkable mobility of his features. The frequent contortions of which excited the merriment, which is words alone, could not well have produced".

Leo:
Very nice.

Glen:
There you go.

Leo:
1860.

Glen:
Very slow speaker.

MIke:
Occasionally high. [crosstalk 02:20:06].

Glen:
It carried. His voice carried.

Leo:
It carried.

Glen:
Yep, Daniel Day-Lewis nailed it.

Leo:
Yes he did.

Christina:
He really did.

Leo:
I think it was partly based on that report. Hey, I want to take a break. A few more things to talk about. We're not going to wrap it up quite yet. I know it's been a long show, but I can't stop talking to these guys. Great to have Christina Warren, Glen Fleishman, Mike Elgan, you guys rock. Our show today brought to you by Blue Land.

Leo:
California's trying to eliminate plastic waste. I am, in my life, trying to eliminate plastic waste. Did you know that an estimated five billion plastic hand soap and cleaning bottles are thrown away every year? They end up in the landfill where they never degrade, they never go away. Don't believe the plastic industry when they say they're recyclable. They're not. Blue Land wants to help you do the right thing. Eliminate single use plastics.

Leo:
By the way, it's also good for the environment because when you buy a bottle of surface cleaner, multi-service cleaner, window cleaner, dish washing soap, laundry detergent, hand soap, when you buy those bottles, 90% of it's water. You're transporting all this water around completely unnecessarily. With Blue Land, you buy these beautiful forever bottles. They call them Instagramable. They're fantastic. This one is a multi-service cleaner, so it's very lightweight. Very solid thick glass for the hand soap, the liquid soap dispensers so that they stay there. They're very solid. They really are beautiful. You buy them once and you refill them. You use your own water. The active ingredients are sent to you in these little tablets. I love this idea. You grab one of the beautiful forever bottles, you fill it with warm water, you drop in the tablet and you get cleaning refills start at two dollars. You don't have to buy a new plastic bottle every time you run out. They're perfectly made. They're going to last for a long time.

Leo:
You can, of course, set up a subscription; which is what I do, so you never run out of the products you use the most. You save even more when you buy in bulk. From cleaning sprays, to hand soap, to toilet cleaner and laundry tablets, Blue Land products are made with ingredients you feel good about. In fact, the only thing you've got to dispose of is your notion that green, environmentally friendly products are good or are expensive. They are effective. They're wonderful. We use Blue Land everywhere. We wash our clothes with Blue Land. We wash our dishes with Blue Land. We wash our hands with Blue Land. Now, by the way, and I highly recommend these Blue Land... They've been and out of stock for their toilet cleaning tablets. Those are back in stock. Stock up on those. Those are really fantastic. They work really well.

Leo:
In fact, what I did when my daughter moved into a new apartment, you can buy a whole kit. I gave her a kit to get her started, their clean essentials kit. Everything you need. Blue Land products come in wonderful scents, although we use the unscented laundry soap, but they do have some lovely sense. The hand soaps are great. I got a Christmas package and I smell like a gingerbread house every time I wash my hands. They have iris, agave, fresh lemon, eucalyptus, mint.

Leo:
For a limited time, hand soap is getting a summer upgrade. They've been doing this all long. It's really fun. We've been using this for a long time and I will go and get that when they have the new limited edition scents. This summer strawberry rhubarb, citrus patchouli and coconut palm. It makes you want to wash your hands, I have to say.

Leo:
We've got Blue Land everywhere in the house, you will want to too. Get 15% off your first order. Go to blueland.com/twit. These are products that work. You'll love using them, and you'll feel good about them, because you know you're eliminating single use plastics and that's really been a goal in our house for some time now. 15% off your first order of any Blue Land product. Blue Land, blueland.com/twit. This is a great deal. Take advantage of this. Again, if you've got a wedding coming up, a housewarming, just even a hostess gift, this is a great gift. People love it, blueland.com/twit.

Leo:
We had a great week on Twit, I think I wasn't here. I was visiting mom. In fact, I'm going to watch with you as we see the highlights.

Jarvis:
Taco bell has announced a tostada on a giant Cheez-It. 18 times the size of a regular Cheez-It. Now, this is important news. The Cheez-It tostada [crosstalk 02:24:40].

Leo:
I'm never letting Jarvis host the show again.

Jarvis:
[crosstalk 02:24:42] American consumerism and technology. What does it take to make a giant Cheez-It? I mean, that's not easy, you know?

Speaker 4:
Previously, on Twit. Hands on photography.

Speaker 3:
Some of you folks are really curious about starting your own photography business? Well, I got to tell you there's a lot of work involved and we're going to dive into that.

Speaker 4:
Tech news weekly.

Speaker 5:
Samsung electronics announced that they have begun mass production of three nanometer chips. Yes, from five to three. The newly developed First Gen Three nanometer process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by 23% and reduce area, of course, by 16%.

Speaker 4:
Security now.

Glen:
As of last week, finally, the masquerade is over and the [inaudible 02:25:40] ransomware operation has finally shut down its last public facing infrastructure, which consisted of two tour servers, which were used to leak data and to negotiate with victims. Of course, no victims remain. They're gone.

Speaker 4:
Twit. Friends don't let friends miss Twit.

Leo:
We are going to have a good week this week. I am back and I will be in the saddle for all those shows. Also, by the way, we just figured out that July 12th is going to be a big day. That's the day the first scientifically usable pictures will come back from the web telescope. One million kilometers... Actually, more than that. Almost one million miles out from the earth at Lagrange Two. That telescope is fully operational and we expect to see the most distant stars we've ever seen. Going back so far that there, literally, about 120 million years from the big bang. This is the beginnings of the universe. NASA's going to have a press conference, 7:30 AM Pacific, 10:30 Eastern, on July 12th. That's a Tuesday. Broad Pile, the host of This Week in Space and I, and anyone else who wants to join us. I think, John, you'll be joining us will be covering that. That's a little bit of an announcement on something we just decided, because I'm very excited about that.

Leo:
John, you said you had an update on the giant Cheez-It story. You can order the Cheez-It tostada without toppings and just get a box of Cheez-It. Oh Lord, help me now. I'm never letting Jarvis host Twit again, that's it.

Leo:
Actually, speaking about a chips three nanometer TSMC, which was supposed to move to a three nanometer process, apparently having some difficulty. Now that the Apple M2 MacBook Pro is starting to come out, we're seeing some negative reviews. Hear from Extreme Tech, Apple's entry level, M2 MacBook pro turns into a celeron under heavy load. Ouch.

Christina:
Yeah, but not unfair if you look at it. It seems like they cheaped out for whatever reason on the SSD for the entry level, versus what we had last year. There is definitely a speed regression if you get the 256 gigabyte or 128 or whatever size it is.

Leo:
Don't get the cheap one, in other words. The baseline is 256 and eight gigs of Ram. According to Extreme Tech, the 13 inch base system gets as hot as 108 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than boiling.

Christina:
That's very hot.

Leo:
That seems to very much impact the performance of the SSD controller. Maybe a design flaw. Oddly, this is not a new design. This is essentially the same design as last year with the M1, but the M2, maybe it gets hotter. I don't know. Just don't [crosstalk 02:28:42].

Christina:
Don't know. They're using diff something different for the SSD. From what I understand, it's been different for the SSD and then in their ram, this is the big thing, they're basically only using one module rather than two.

Leo:
I will just refer you to this Extreme Tech article and the YouTube video that spawned it. I'm sure we'll hear more about this. We'll talk more about it on Mac Break weekly, but, basically, the advice of Extreme Tech is do not buy the entry level M2 MacBook Pro. There are issues, there are issues.

Leo:
There's so many stories we didn't even get to let me see. One of the things I wanted to do more happy stories. I don't know, Mike, you can advise me is a longtime editor. I've noticed over the last couple of years, and I've received some notes from listeners, that tech has really turned negative. We used to be a little happier, right? We'd get excited about new products and talk about what the new phones are going to bring. Now, it just feels like it's bad news after bad news. Is this a normal part of the cycle, the ebb and flow, or are we in a new era of tech? What do you think, Mike?

MIke:
We're in a new era for sure. I think that back in the olden times, 80s, 90s, et cetera...

Leo:
1860s.

MIke:
The future was full of promise. The year 2000 was coming. The people who were enthusiastic about tech was a tiny group of nerds who built their own systems. It was all about optimizing this, do that. It was a lot of fun at the rate at which the performance of everything just was exponential, it felt like. Think about how cameras have evolved on cell phones in the last 12 years.

MIke:
We're to the point now where... This is reflected here in Silicon valley, as well. What used to be something that was, first of all, understandable, and, second of all, exciting, became this money grab. Everything's gotten super complex. There's been this inertia that comes with the entropy of an expanding industry. We have this situation now where so many people are using technology products that it's having social effects, and many of these social effects are negative. Teenagers are getting addicted to social media or committing suicide because Instagram makes them feel like they're left out and all this kind of stuff. There's all these problems that come from it. Governments have their hands in it. Good governments, bad governments everybody's involved. We're in the situation where it feels like there isn't much good news. We don't really notice the benefits.

MIke:
We were talking earlier about how TikTok has this subtle ability to make you have this quick little window into some far away place and some completely alien context. That's probably having a very beneficial effect. We don't have time to focus on that or notice that because we're so worried about the government tracking down people with the menstruation apps to prevent them or jail them for having an abortion or whatever. The bad stuff seems to just take up all the oxygen in the room and we can't really focus on the good stuff, but there is really, really good stuff I think, happening with technology. It's just [crosstalk 02:32:20].

Leo:
I feel like I want to focus more on that.

MIke:
We should.

Leo:
I don't want to be the Grim Reaper of technology. What do you think, Glen? You're equally a long time in this business.

Glen:
I find myself increasingly uninterested in technology, a fun thing to say on the show about technology, but it's partly because... The things that excite me still are the ways in which people's lives get improved. To echo what Mike was saying really is there's a lot of technology that is insidious, because it's a race to the bottom, it's a race to grab eyeballs and attention and to do increasingly negative things, because that's how the money is raised. A famous example that I think is actually made up, but it's the psychology test where students in a psychology class start only paying attention to a professor when he or she's on one side of the classroom, and by the end of the term, they have the professor stuck in a corner. They won't speak unless they're in that corner, because no one pays attention to them. They don't realize what's going on. It's a great reverse experiment. I feel like everything in technology that involves tension and response puts us in that corner.

Glen:
Maybe Facebook, intentionally, is not trying to, allegedly, contribute to genocide, but it does because that's a part of the technology they developed that allows them to reap such huge financial returns. I like to look at enhancements and so forth. My wife has a bone anchored hearing aid, earlier generation. She sticks a Bluetooth device on this thing that vibrates, and it sends a signal to her ear and it connects to her iPhone. They added an upgrade a few releases ago, and so she can play music and phone calls into her head. It's a huge improvement for her life. That hearing aid by itself was great technology, then the linking of it with Bluetooth and improvements in Apple's operating system, make it into a superpower. It's a biological enhancement, in fact. She has abilities beyond people with so-called normative hearing. I want to find more things like that.

Glen:
I don't care so much about VR or AR. They're great entertainment opportunities, but I don't think they're going to fill all this zone. AR is such an incredible capability for younger people, for people with various disabilities that prevent them feeling full access or full use of hearing, eyes, whatever. The thing that I keep going back to in my idea of what the future should be is heads up display. Painting our windshields in a car. I don't want necessarily automatic driving. I like warnings and things like that, that are good, but I want to be able to drive the road at night and have night vision on the inside of my windshield. Why not? That, to me, would be an enhancement. It would reduce accidents. It would maybe not decrease alertness, because it's enhancing your view. I look forward to things like that. Also, more cat pictures, please.

Leo:
I feel like you're an optimistic guy. I'm going to take a page from your joy in technology. I got into this because I love technology. I still love it. It's so easy to get kind of burdened by all of the negatives and start focusing on that. Christina, you're a very positive person and you work in technology.

Christina:
I try to be. I think that it can become overwhelming to just look at... There are a lot of terrible things that are happening in the world, and there are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last two years and technology is a force for good and it's a force for bad. I think, that on the whole of it, it has made our lives better. I know that my life is infinitely better because of technology, because of social media, because of the web.

Leo:
Cat pictures.

Christina:
Right, totally right. The way that I can communicate with people. Even what happened to us in the last two years, as bad as that was, it would've been worse if we didn't offer the ability to communicate with each other over video chat. Even through text messages or phone calls. Needless to say, the last time we had one of these things, a hundred years ago, you didn't have that ability.

Leo:
You just locked yourself in your room and waved for help.

Christina:
To say nothing of vaccines and the stuff that's happened there. I don't know. I have to work at it, because it's easy for me, even though I'm not a cynical person. I have cynical aspects, but I try to be a fairly positive person. It's hard, sometimes, not to be taken in by all the cynicism. I also don't want to be a cheerleader for the industries that sometimes, I think, that maybe in the past, we were too incredulous and we were too positive about certain things and allow certain things to happen. So I think that there's a good and a bad, but sometimes, but I do fear sometimes when I read some of the coverage and I read the lens of someone who loves technology who used to be a reporter and now works for a tech company.

Christina:
I will say, I have a different perspective, which is good to have. Sometimes, I worry that too much of the coverage is negative, just to be negative. Critical, just to be critical. I'm here for the criticism. I'm here for the pushback, but there has to be a balance. I do sometimes wonder if we've swung too far in the other way. We went from being way too incredulous, way too laudatory, to, now, completely ignoring the positive things that can happen because of tech.

MIke:
Leo, can I make a couple of points?

Leo:
Sure.

MIke:
Not to miss the forest for the trees. Talk about the forest a bit. First of all, Christina mentioned vaccines. If the coronavirus had hit in the 1970s, say, there would've been no working from home and no vaccine for 10 years. It's unimaginable. It's really unimaginable. The forest that I'd like to talk about is my own lifestyle of living internationally, which the world is discovered because of the pandemic. People are working remotely, working from home. There's this sort of thing where people start working from their apartment in the city, then they decide to move out of the city. Then it's like, "What are we doing in the suburbs? Why don't we go to South America and live in Columbia for a while?". The internet connectivity keeps getting better.

MIke:
We just did the provenance experience. We always do that in this 400 year old farmhouse. The walls are three and a half feet thick, but it's very modern inside in every way, except the internet connectivity, which is a really, really slow 3G mobile broadband connection.

Leo:
How do you live?

MIke:
Well, this is a good question. We showed up this year and guess what? They now have fiber.

Leo:
Oh, wow.

MIke:
In the middle of [crosstalk 02:38:49] out in the countryside.

Christina:
That's amazing.

MIke:
Amazing. People can actually live... Also, by the way, Starlink is available.

Christina:
Starlink, I was to say is massive.

MIke:
You can do a full on Under the Tuscan Sun. Buy a derelict old farmhouse, somewhere in the sunny parts of Europe, and you can build up this thing and you can live in paradise, have a garden, have a beautiful view, have clean air, clean water, clean everything, solar power, and you can have fiber optic like speeds and make your living in paradise. This is an opportunity that has never been afforded to anyone in the history of mankind. It's pretty great for those who really want to live that way.

Leo:
Excellent. I feel better already.

Glen:
I point out one more thing, if I might, which is that photography is an almost unalloyed joy that we breathe, and so we don't pay. Unlike Mike's example just now, wifi is everywhere. I used to cover wifi very extensively. Then I suddenly was not a wifi reporter, because it permeates everything. Then, we got good cellular data. The abilities we have to take a good picture and to take as many as we want and capture great moments in our lives are incredible.

Glen:
Then, I will call out, there's one thing that makes me consistently happy every day, that is technology, which is I use the featured photo thing on my iPhone. I have it as a widget, and most days Apple's machine learning comes up with wonderful images across every... I scanned photos before there were digital photos, so I have photos going back to the 80s in my library. Every day, I get a look at these great pictures of my kids when they're babies and photos from a few weeks ago and pictures of bees I took 20 years ago or some trip, and I'm like, "Aww, Aww". I don't have to go searching for it. It shows up. It's machine learning. It's a modern device. It's the access through the cloud to all my photos. It combines to this wonderful thing, and so I have a moment of happiness every time I open that.

Leo:
I guess it really is a question of focusing on the benefits and the good stuff, because there're negatives and positives and everything, and you don't have to dwell on the negatives. We know they're there.

Glen:
Then there's Elon Musk.

Leo:
Then there's Elon Musk and the Pope. Hey, one good thing, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award being awarded July 7th, 17 luminaries, Denzel Washington, Simone Biles, Megan Rapino, John McCain will get a posthumous award, and Steve Jobs; 11 years after his passing will be receiving the posthumously, the Congressional Medal of Honor. I hope that his wife, Loren Powell Jobs, is there to accept on her late husband's behalf. I think that'd be very fitting.

Christina:
Basically, 15 years after the iPhone.

Leo:
That's right.

Christina:
It is easy to remember what life was like before, but just the [crosstalk 02:41:57] seismic impact this device has had. It really has.

MIke:
Let's be honest, it's not knighthood like Johnny I've got, but it's fine, and well deserved.

Leo:
Johnny didn't meet the queen, he only got princess in.

MIke:
Good point, good point.

Christina:
Fair.

Leo:
Final Jeopardy. The subject, the world of today, I'm going to pose this question to all of you. I will say that on this episode of Jeopardy, only two people got it right.

MIke:
Ah, come on.

Leo:
Partly because it was a mono syllable. This word was chosen as "a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission". You know the answer, Christina.

Christina:
I do.

Glen:
I'm pushing the button, nothing's happening. I don't hear your [crosstalk 02:42:44].

Leo:
It's final Jeopardy. You all get to answer. Christina Warren.

Christina:
Meme. Is it meme?

Leo:
In the form of a question [crosstalk 02:42:52].

Christina:
What is a meme?

Leo:
Yep, absolutely right. I know you knew that, glen. In fact, probably everybody watching knew that. The word meme coined by evolutionary scientist, Richard Dawkins, and it is in fact, of course, part of our regular vocabulary today. Only one out of the three got it right [crosstalk 02:43:13].

Christina:
Only one of the three got it. Wow. I was reading the question. I didn't even get to the end of the question I was reading, [crosstalk 02:43:20].

Leo:
You knew immediately.

Christina:
I was like, "Oh yeah, I got it". It was instantly.

Leo:
One person answered, "um". It was not the best final Jeopardy ever. Glen, I know you would've gotten that one. No problem at all. Two time Jeopardy champion.

Glen:
Three times correct in final Jeopardy, but only won twice.

Leo:
Oh man, that last one. They got you. You didn't bet enough?

Christina:
No, I didn't have enough money left. I said George Sands instead of George Sand and I didn't have money left for final Jeopardy. [crosstalk 02:43:55] Obviously, I've gotten over it.

Leo:
Dance with me, George, dance with me.

Christina:
Oh my God.

Glen:
"Oh, sorry", Alex said.

Leo:
Glen Fleishman, what a pleasure. Glen, had fun. Always great to have you on. We will be back on Wednesday for This Week in Google. I hope we haven't exhausted all of your resources. I have a feeling we have not.

Glen:
Not yet.

Leo:
If you wish, you could speak very slowly.

Glen:
I like to use deliberative tones.

Leo:
Thank you, Glen. So nice to have you. Mike Elgan, God bless you. Give my love to Amirra, to Kevin, to princess squishy face, to Naja, the whole family.

MIke:
Thank you.

Leo:
Gastronomad.net if you want to go travel with these incredible people to some of the most beautiful places in the world and eat and drink like a prince. It's amazing. Highly recommended. Mike also writes for Computer World, many other publications, and he's got a newsletter, Mike's List, and, of course, elgan.com is the website for that. Thank you, Mike. Always a pleasure. I'm sorry we couldn't get together, because I probably would've loved that wine, but such is life.

MIke:
Thank you.

Leo:
Such is life in the COVID era, which apparently is going on and on and on. Christina Warren, a pleasure seeing you too. Although, because I follow you on Instagram, I feel like I know every hotel room you're in.

Christina:
Yes.

Leo:
Senior Dev Advocate at GitHub. Her GitHub name is Film Girl. Her Twitter handle is film_girl, so is her Instagram. Anything else you want to mention or plug?

Christina:
I do two podcasts. I do one called Overtired. [crosstalk 02:45:41]

Leo:
Wait a minute, I didn't know about Overtired when [crosstalk 02:45:44]?

Christina:
Overtired is great. Basically, we joke that it's a Taylor Swift podcast. It's not, it's really about some ADHD nerds and the things that keep us up at night and it's great. Then, I also do Rocket.

Leo:
Oh, it's with Brett Terpstra. Oh nice.

Christina:
Brett Terpstra.

Leo:
Love Brett.

Christina:
Brett's amazing. Jeff Severns Guntzel recently joined us as, as our third host. I also do Rocket on Really FM and with Brianna Wu and Simone De Rochefort.

Leo:
Very nice.

Christina:
Want to listen to me? I've got other podcasts, but, frankly, my Instagram, but the hotel tours is really what you want.

Leo:
When did you start Overtired? I'm going to have to listen to that. That sounds really great.

Christina:
Honestly, eight or nine years ago.

Leo:
What?

Christina:
It's been intermittent, but we've been consistent for the last year. We've been consistently every week.

Leo:
I knew about Rocket. I love Rocket. [crosstalk 02:46:36]

Christina:
Overtired had periods of inactivity, we should say,

Leo:
[crosstalk 02:46:39] Naturally, you were tired. I understand that.

Christina:
Exactly. Naturally, we were tired. I came up with the name, actually, we were at Twitter HQ and we were trying to come up with the name. I was in the elevator, I'll never forget, and I was like, "I'm so tired. I'm overtired". I was like, "Overtired, that's it". [crosstalk 02:46:53]

Leo:
Such a good name for a podcast. Wow it has so many levels of meaning. Wonderful to have you. Thank you. All three of you. We really appreciate your being here. Have a great 4th of July, tomorrow. Fireworks, grilling fun. Wave the flag. We're not doing fireworks here in Petaluma, because of the drought and the fire hazard plus the city's broke. We're going to have a laser light show, instead. Everybody bring your lasers. It's going to be great.

Christina:
Love it. Love it.

Leo:
We do Twit every Sunday afternoon, 2:00 PM pacific, 5:00 PM. Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can watch us live, live.twit.tv. Actually, watch or listen, there's live audio and video streams. If you're watching live chat with us at irc.twit.tv, you can also chat with us in our discord, which is purple, but, really, comes by it honestly. The discord is actually my favorite new social media place to be. The conversations aren't just about the shows. In fact, our discord has topics every geek would be interested in. No flogs yet, but comics for sure. Gaming, hacking, ham radio, movies, music, software, sport ball, travel, trivia, and you can even be part of our Minecraft server.

Leo:
All of this, plus add free versions of all the shows and the special twit plus feed, which has a lot of material that doesn't make it to the air, so to speak. It's seven bucks a month, which I think is a great deal. We would really appreciate it if you join us. There's also a yearly... What is that? $84 if you just want to pay once and get it over with. That makes a great gift too, and it really helps us. A recession is looming and we already see some, some decrease in the ad revenue. I think this is going to be as bad as it was when COVID started, so this helps us get over those humps. Plus, it lets us develop new shows, bring in new talent and we've got some exciting news in that area coming soon. Please, join Club Twit. Twit.tv/clubtwit.

Leo:
Of course, all of our shows are available for free after the fact on the website, twi.tv. Every show has its own YouTube channel, as does this show, of course. Best way to get the show, probably be subscribe in your favorite podcast client. You get it automatically. The minute it's available. Now, you have a great show to listen to on a Monday morning. Thank you for being here as you have been, I think many of you, for the past 17 years. That is now, once again, time for me to say goodbye, another Twit is in the can