This Week in Google 701, Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiG This Week in Google. Jeff, Stacey, and Ant are all here. We'll talk about ChatGPT, coming to Bing. Google's response, bring back Larry and Sergey. We'll also talk about Buzzfeed using ChatGPT to generate content, the endless Seinfeld stream. And is Elon the right guy to run Twitter? At least one founder says, nah, I don't think so. It's all coming up next on TWiG.

Narrator (00:00:30):
Podcasts you love,from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:40):
This is TWiG This Week in Google. Episode 701 Recorded Wednesday, February 1st, 2023. Bring Me a Leaf Blower.

(00:00:51):
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(00:01:35):
Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at TWIT.tv and launch your campaign now. It's time for TWiG. This Week in Google the show, we covered latest news from Google Land, Google verse, the Twitter verse, the Facebook verse, the inverse, and the odd verse and the detour verse. It's Stacey Higginbotham from the iot verse. Hello Stacey. Hello, y'all. Staceyoniot.Com, the IOT podcast. Good to have you here. Jeff Jarvis is also here. He is the Leonard Tow professor for journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Hello, J Hello. Hello.

Jeff Jarvis (00:02:31):
What, what, what, what kind of song were you gonna commission? I can't remember what you said we needed to have.

Leo Laporte (00:02:35):
Oh, yeah, we wanted a a like one of them sea Shanties for sea shanty. Yeah. Yeah. The once was a journalism professor name. I don't know. We have to maybe ask ChatGPT to write it also. Here's the right one. Yeah, that'll be a good try. You know, it's weird. I, we watched before the show began just about five minutes of that weird Seinfeld nonstop show about nothing on Twitch created by an ai. And an interesting thing happened to my brain. I'm a little disoriented, like a, like VR disoriented <laugh>, like nothing seems real. Ant Pruitt's also here from hands-on photography twit.tv/hop. Do you not feel that Ant?

Ant Pruitt (00:03:21):
Sir? No. What I feel is, I, I I think we are all safe as content creators. Yeah. It's the competition.

Leo Laporte (00:03:27):
Well, I do. I feel like it could have been better. I do. I feel like it could have

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:30):
Been better. You want, you wanna to show a little bit of it or not?

Leo Laporte (00:03:32):
Should I All right. No,

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:33):
Yeah, just a little

Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
Bit. Stacey says we've wasted enough time. No,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:37):
Nope, nope. Go

Leo Laporte (00:03:38):
Ahead. We didn't do it. On this is, at

Stacey Higginbotham (00:03:40):
Least for the

Ant Pruitt (00:03:41):
Show. Yeah. I think it's worthy discussion.

Leo Laporte (00:03:44):
It's so bad I won't.

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:45):
So, so again, it's AI has written is writing an endless Seinfeld. It's not called Seinfeld. It's called like

Leo Laporte (00:03:50):
The Watch Me Forever. Nothing Forever. Yeah, nothing forever. 

Jeff Jarvis (00:03:53):
But, but, but you know, I thought, oh, this would be interesting. This is a good idea, right? Cuz Seinfeld has structured gags. You can figure it out, Garrett. But, but you'll

Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
See we're getting a Samsung ad for their new phone, which we saw this morning, thanks to Jason Howell of the Samsung unpacked. I, I decided not to go because everything had been leaked already. There was nothing to say about the new phone. I thought, well, this is just a pep rally. Now. There's not, it's not a reveal. Ooh. they

Stacey Higginbotham (00:04:19):
Needed a pep rally after those earnings.

Leo Laporte (00:04:21):
Haha. Yeah. All of them. All of the tech. Here we are in throw it in the garbage can in Seinfeld's home trash

Stacey Higginbotham (00:04:29):
Can. Holy cow.

Ant Pruitt (00:04:32):
Look at that gate.

AI (00:04:33):
You've done something. Well, no, I didn't want to get involved in this situation. I don't know what to make of that

Leo Laporte (00:04:42):
<Laugh> picking up a banana peel and walking away with a

Ant Pruitt (00:04:45):
Trash. That's how I'm gonna sit on the couch.

Leo Laporte (00:04:47):
Look how she's sitting on the stool

AI (00:04:49):
<Laugh>? You know what that guy was up to? He was probably trying to get some free garbage. You know what they say? One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
This is so bad. It's awful. It's so bad. But it could be. So the funny thing is awful. I don't think they're trying, because they could use real Seinfeld voices. We certainly have the capability of doing that. We've come so far. This is like a, this is like what we thought, a, this what AI was in 1982

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:17):
1986 ai.

Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
Yeah. It's like, who? Meanwhile there's some real AI going on. Well, well

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:24):
Hold on though. If you think about it. That's performing like, I don't know, 4D ai. They're, they're creating the content. They're generating the imagery. They're also doing some vocal characterizations. So maybe a lesson here is if AI is good at doing one dimensional ai, but when you move it to all the dimensions, it sucks.

Leo Laporte (00:05:45):
I think, I think it could be actually a lot better. In fact, there's a, this is, we are in the AI explosion. You know, right now, the cambrian explosion of ai rumor today from both Bloomberg and the information that chatgpt is about to be in the new version ChatGPT four is about to be integrated into Microsoft's Bing search. And this will happen in the next, yeah. And in the next few weeks. Microsoft we've mentioned before is a big investor in open ai, the creators of ChatGPT. And they just put in another four, I'm sorry, 10 billion. And you know, initially the deal was to, to get ChatGPT in office. But now the news is we're gonna start seeing ChatGPT and Bing. And it won't be the ChatGPT we've, we're used to.

(00:06:43):
It's the new chatGPT. And this actually addresses your concern, Stacey, because this thing is a monster. Microsoft, in order to do this, built a new super computer, a massive super computer. Let me see if I can find the stats for it. Huge amount of storage. Huge amount of processors. Yeah. Be curious to hear, to compute the process and power. Yeah. This is Reed Albergotti writing. You know, Reed, didn't he write for GigaOM? I feel like he did. He didn't. He used to write for the information. Information. Okay. He's now at Semafor, which is a new publication. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So he, I think he had the stats, let me see here. In May, 2020, a couple years ago, Microsoft says he is built one of the top five publicly disclosed supercomputers in the world in partnership with an exclusively for open ai.

(00:07:39):
The computer was going to be used to train extremely large AI models. 285,000 CPUs, 10,000 gps, four gigabits per second of network connectivity. But, and this is to answer what you were saying about, well, there was a lot to do to write the script and do the voices. Oh, that's the whole point of this, is that you could do all this stuff in real time. And not only that, unlike the current ChatGPT three, you could be constantly updated. And that's what makes it useful in search terms. Ah-Huh. <affirmative> not only will it be constantly spidering the web with, for new information, but every query goes into it. Every interaction with you goes into it. But will

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:21):
It be sensitive to fact, as we talked about

Leo Laporte (00:08:23):
Last week? Yes. And that's obviously a big issue cuz Well, how, how

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:26):
Do you say that so quickly? Because now it's just as a word predictor. How do we know that it will know fact from one

Leo Laporte (00:08:32):
Fact? Well, I mean, it, it obviously it's a mistake to put an AI into search if it doesn't actually give you accurate, factual information, but I think it will. I think that's one of the things ChatGPT will do. But according to Reed, every ChatGPT answer now has a thumbs up and thumbs down. You can write the ideal answer. And so this will all be incorporated into chatGPT four and Bing. So that we'll have feedback. You saw, I saw you, I've seen shown you several times this Neva chat search mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it, it becau it makes itself accurate because it's, it, it is only summarizing published information from reliable sources. And I presume that's what they would do with Bing. Right? So you're not just making up stuff at a whole cloth, but you're saying, well, Wikipedia, Microsoft, and, you know, semafor say this with footnotes and everything. I think that's gonna be possibly,

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:27):
So anyway, just ask chat GPT to tell a joke of the style of J about AI in the style of Jerry Seinfeld.

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:34):
I I I I'm not so critical of the show now. The answer was why did the AI cross the road? To get to the other side of the data set.

Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
Yeah. Nevermind. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:45):
I said you could do better than that. And it said, okay, here's another one. Why did the AI refuse to do the dishes? Because it was afraid of doing a deep learning experience.

Leo Laporte (00:09:55):
Yeah. No, this is just chatty. That's a toy. What you're using is a toy, I

Jeff Jarvis (00:09:59):
Think. I know, I know. But it's a,

Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
I think what we're talking about here is, is gonna be a different thing entirely. I'm hoping it will be. Obviously it won't. And this is what's scaring the hell outta Google right now. In fact, you know, the side by side story is Google's chat testing a ChatGPT like chat bot called Apprentice Bard, which is not a great name.

Jeff Jarvis (00:10:23):
<Laugh>. Well, I think it's a code name, not a brand

Leo Laporte (00:10:25):
Name. Okay. It's using Lambda, which that's the one that Brent Lamoin said was sentient. They're ch they're also testing. This is according to Jennifer Elias for CNBC news search page designs, they'd integrate the chat technology. This is gonna happen very quickly. And more employees have been asked to test this internally. That's probably how she's getting the the story.

(00:10:49):
Yes. The alphabet company's working on a project under its cloud unit called Atlas, which is a code red effort to respond to ChatGPT. There's also apprentice bar, so that's another one. Their employees can ask questions and get detailed answers. I also heard that Google has invited Larry and Sergey back to help them with this

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:13):
<Laugh>. Hmm. And Sergey just put in his first code in years. I put in that the rundown. It's

Leo Laporte (00:11:18):
Fascinating. First

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:20):
Code request. What does that mean, by the way? A code request?

Leo Laporte (00:11:24):
I, I request or a commit.

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:27):
It said, just filed his first code request in years.

Leo Laporte (00:11:31):
That sounds like a mistranslation of what he did. So Sure does.

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:34):
Yeah, that's Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:11:36):
File his first request and access. Oh, request to access code two. Oh, I see. So he wanted to see, he wanted, cuz this stuff's not on GitHub, you have to actually say, Hey, can I look at that? Lambda code

Jeff Jarvis (00:11:48):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:11:49):
Two sources said this is Forbes. I should always say writing Forbes staff. That's staff members. So that's better. Okay. Richard Neva and Alex Conrad say two sources said the request was related to Lambda. There's that name again. Google's natural language chat bot. Brynn filed a cl short for change list to gain access to the data that trains lambda. It, it, it was a two line change to a configuration file just to add his name to the code. <Laugh>. Oh, several duds And engineers gave the request L G T M approval, which means looks good to me. <Laugh>. Oh, L G T M. I need a rubber stamp that says L gtm. That's good. Yeah, I think so. That's a good idea. Some of the approvals came from workers outside the team, seemingly eager, just to be able to say they gave code review approval <laugh> to Sergey Brynn

Ant Pruitt (00:12:45):
Sounds like something at Twitter.

Leo Laporte (00:12:49):
Yeah. Well, well, you know, I don't know. Print out his code and show it to it's weird. Do you think Larry and Sergei, like are still geniuses that could come in and in this convers

Ant Pruitt (00:12:59):
I'm sure they're still geniuses, but I'm, I, I gotta hunch they don't care.

Leo Laporte (00:13:03):
<Laugh>, I don't feel like this Sergey has worn shoes care. I don't, what's their legacy?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:07):
He said he working on, he's working on several government initiatives related to ai.

Leo Laporte (00:13:12):
Is he? Is he? Oh, he

Ant Pruitt (00:13:13):
Is. Didn't know.

Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
Okay. Thank you. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:16):
Oh, he's, he's a, a, a magnate for formally

Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
Brynn's code request. Also receives some snark from Googlers, says Forbes. In response, one person commented, fix Google first. Another person wrote, at least talk to us a reference to the distance of the co-founders over the last few years. Ow some people linked to posts from Google's internal memes forum. 'em, Some of the memes showed <laugh>, you and me. Jeff fighting. No, I'm sorry. Old people fighting. Old people fighting. Could have been Leo could have been like maybe those two. Muppets, right? Yeah. Wald. Statler and Waldorf. Sta Waldorf. I don't think this code looks good. Me neither. <Laugh> looks like a monkey. Wrote it. Anyway,

Ant Pruitt (00:14:06):
And that's the report. Before we wanted to make sure we mentioned that Mr. Erti will be on Tech News Weekly this

Leo Laporte (00:14:12):
Week. Oh, I've interviewed to talk about this. Oh, good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> reads. Great. Very good. Good. Get res. Yeah. Good. Get, that's great. And to hear more about what the plans are for SE four too. Yeah. I like SEMA four so far. I we're quoting from it. That's a good sign. He's got some scoops. It could be, you know, it could be. We just, we're leading right into another AI winner. We've been around long enough, you and me, Jeff, to remember, you know, all the excitement over ai. This has happened several times in the past. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I was gonna transform everything and it ended up, oh, I can't do anything. <Laugh> forget it. Can't even make a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:14:49):
Sandwich. When was your last AI

Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
<Laugh>? Good question. Marvin Minsky, who was at m i t probably in the seventies, believe it or not. Okay. This was probably the last time we thought AI was going somewhere. Oh, maybe even. No, there was a group there. For all I know, they're still doing it. There was a group that was getting people like it, it was like a, a foundation where thousands of people were typing as fast as they could to get data into the ai. The theory being, the more it knew, this is a long time ago, if you thought that. I mean, if you think about it, that was how they did it to get more data into the ai. And as it turns out, that's, that's kind of what this revolution is because stable diffusion or mid journey, the, the graphics AIS ChatGPT, their real skill is looking at a lot of data fast. And that's all because everything's been put in the internet. That's kind of what happened, right? Mm-Hmm. Well transformed

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:45):
This there. No, no. The big transforming element was GPUs in massive parallel processing coming down in price. If you look at because

Leo Laporte (00:15:56):
Of crypto crash

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:58):
No, no. In 2012, we've, that was our first like, visual. Like that was when what was it called? Jeff Hinton and his team won did, did a very effective visual like computer vision algorithm and it leaps and bounds ahead of everything else. And it was because he had written algorithms that took advantage of relatively inexpensive GPUs. Then what's happened is, yes, the data coming in from the internet, but that's actually been around for a long time. What we've now been able to do is optimize different algorithms for, again, super cheap GPUs. And I, I mean, this is expensive, but it's not as expensive as it was when it was running on highly proprietary, like sun systems or whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
I do think that the availability of massive data sets without having humans to come in, sit down and type them in, probably is also

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:57):
Important. But you had the, the internet since 1998. Yeah. And especially things like text. And if you look at like, I was playing with ibm, it's

Leo Laporte (00:17:05):
Both, obviously you need the hardware to process it, but you need access to massive ECI data. You also need the ability to store these models. I mean, there's also the fuzzy logic of ai. It's a, well, see that's what's interesting,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:18):
The fuzzy logic of ai.

Leo Laporte (00:17:19):
I think Stacey and I will agree that it's, it's this hardware stuff, but I don't know if the logic is new or different. Maybe it is.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:17:29):
They're optimized for Google Transport. They're optimized for massively parallel processors that are again, commercially, they're COGS commercial off the shelf goods. Right. 

Leo Laporte (00:17:43):
Cogs. So the, the last AI spring was this is from towards data science, which a medium blog about, in fact about these ai history of AI from Sean Ray. The last spring he reports was in the nineties, mid nineties or late nineties, Japanese government unveiled plans to develop a fifth generation computer to Ava. You remember all this? To, to, to advance machine learning. AI enthusiasts believed soon computers would be able, this is more than 20 years ago, be able to carry on conversations, translate languages, interpreted pictures. In 1997, deep blue defeated Gary Kasparov to become the, you know, to beat the world champion of chess to become,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:28):
But deep blue was using massively parallel processors.

Leo Laporte (00:18:32):
Yeah. I'm not arguing yet. Just custom

Jeff Jarvis (00:18:33):
With No,

Leo Laporte (00:18:34):
No, no, I agree with you. It's, it's, anyway, AI funding drived up when the.com bubble burst in the early two thousands. Machine learning continued its March thanks to improvement in computer hardware. Stacey corporations and governments successfully use machine learning methods in narrow domains, exponential gains in computer processing, power and storage ability allowed companies to store vast and crunch vast quantities of data for the first time. And and so it's, it, it's a confluence of, of these things. I don't know if it's

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:10):
Stacey, I used the wrong term, but, but remember when Google Translate made a leap in its quality? It was, there was, there was a, there was an insight into how it operated that I think was critical too. And I don't, I forget what the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:26):
Title was. Yeah, that's the, that's the way they're designing the algorithms. That's what I'm saying. So that's like a, okay, well when you, when people say things like the fuzzy logic of ai, that's my inner, that's that's right. My inner reporter is like, the hell Is that, that is not, that is nothing. Words. they don't mean

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:42):
Anything. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was, I was

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):
In It's all, in other words, all

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:46):
Of the, it's a bad AI would,

Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
It's a conce

Jeff Jarvis (00:19:47):
Very Seinfeld AI

Leo Laporte (00:19:48):
Would, yes. It's a confluence of a variety of things. Here's a diagram come together of ai, winters <laugh>.

(00:19:59):
So the first AI winter was 73 and that was, you know, cuz in the fifties you know, and I'm aware of this cuz of John McCarthy and Lisp and, you know, lisp was developed for AI programming and stuff. And we were, everybody was very excited about this. The 73 people won't forget that. Then in the eighties, boom time second AI winner in 88, 20 12, the deep learning revolution. Yeah, I think that's about right. And then yes, the mark one percept tron. This is in the, this is the air first AI spring <laugh>. You see there's a giant letter C the camera taking a picture and the computer understanding what the letter C is. Wow. We've come a long, long way. Takes a lot of work Yeah. To change the world. Well, but that's the que So that's how, what started this conversation? Are we in a real AI spring or is this just another AI boom as people get overexcited as we did about self-driving cars?

Ant Pruitt (00:21:04):
Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:05):
What do we think AI is? I mean, has AI had an actual impact on bottom line and product design? A hundred percent. So it's actively contributing today to like real physical products that are in the world and generating returns. Yeah. So is it winter because it doesn't, you know, call us up and cook us dinner? I mean, no, it's just, I don't, I don't know if it doesn't generate a perfectly mimicked Seinfeld episode.

Leo Laporte (00:21:36):
My point is only that we're getting very excited about, I'm getting very excited about this idea of, for instance, ChatGPT and search. And Google's getting very nervous that Bing might eclipse them. Seems like there is this explosion of ai when you look at, I'll tell, here's another one. So we've seen images, we've seen text. Are you ready for <laugh>? Maybe we aren't ready for AI music. There's some, there's some very interesting, but I think not quite convincing yet. Examples. <laugh> of AI music. This is a Google project called Music lm, a model generating high fidelity music from text descriptions. So just like with the AI image generators, you give it a prompt for a little Mozart, but no, you ready? Having a problem with this? Would, would you like let's see a, the main soundtrack I played, didn't I play this for you? Did I play this for you last week?

Ant Pruitt (00:22:41):
No, no. Maybe it was on twit. You went over this on Twit.

Leo Laporte (00:22:43):
Twit. Yeah. Cause I remember you were, you were less than impressed A main Oh, that's right. You were in studio for twit. That's why the main soundtrack of an arcade game. So this is the prompt. This is the text prompt, please. Computer. Right for me, the main soundtrack of an arcade game. It is fast-paced and upbeat with a catchy electric guitar riff. The music is repetitive and easy to remember, but with unexpected sounds like symbol crashes or drum rolls. You want to hear, it

Ant Pruitt (00:23:14):
Sounds like an achi

Leo Laporte (00:23:15):
Sounds like sonic's irritating

Speaker 8 (00:23:17):
As every game soundtrack. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:23:24):
It lacks a certain something.

Speaker 8 (00:23:26):
Yeah, it does. Yeah. Stop. Please stop it.

Ant Pruitt (00:23:28):
Yes. Let see, that's the thing. That's the thing. It lacks something. But a musician, an actual artist can take that and be inspired from that.

Leo Laporte (00:23:42):
I think it lacks something exactly the same way as ChatGPT something. It's, or even stable diffusion. Here's a funky piece with a strong danceable beat in a prominent baseline, a catchy melody from a keyboard adds a layer of richness and complexity to the song.

Speaker 9 (00:24:02):
This is our, oh wait, go to our r

Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
B

Jeff Jarvis (00:24:05):
With a

Leo Laporte (00:24:05):
Voice. Oh, you wanna hear that? That's interesting. So the voices are just like text and stable diffusion. They're greeked, they're garbled. This is, this is an r and b. Okay. That's what I pop music piece. There's a male vocal rapping in a female vocal singing in a rap like manner that be, is comprised of a piano playing the chords of the tune with an electronic drum backing. The atmosphere of the piece is playful and energetic. This piece could be used in the soundtrack of a high school drama movie or TV show. It could also be played at birthday parties or beach parties. Wow. That's an extensive prompt. Let's see what we get.

Speaker 9 (00:24:49):
Little better kids going for this.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:52):
K-Pop sounds another

Leo Laporte (00:24:53):
Sounds Japanese. Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (00:25:05):
Please stop

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:06):
<Laugh>. Yeah, it's old white man. Hip hop

Leo Laporte (00:25:09):
Was a drum.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:10):
And again, it's not great, but it, how

Leo Laporte (00:25:12):
About Gregorian a drum machine? Yeah, you could. That's interesting. You could do something with it. I guess I, I feel like even the most basic composer could start with a better point than that though. Ant. Really? I mean, if

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:25):
They,

Ant Pruitt (00:25:26):
They can, they they can. But Bre, think about this.

Leo Laporte (00:25:29):
B Brianna Woo said her sci-fi author husband, Frank Wu was stumped. He needed to write his story. He had ChatGPT write the outlines, and then it gave him the chance to finish it. Right. The story. So I guess in that regard, that's what gave him

Ant Pruitt (00:25:41):
Some inspiration.

Jeff Jarvis (00:25:42):
Well, here's, here's the thing where, where I, I talked to the board at the Marshall Project, which is about, about justice, criminal justice last week. And, and they deal with much of the population they serve as incarcerated people. They have a high level of illiteracy. And I said, ChatGPT could be useful to someone saying, I want, I want help telling my story and and prompt writing, telling it what you wanted to say. But don't

Leo Laporte (00:26:06):
You need a high level of literacy even to start with that?

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:10):
Well, you could do audio and all kinds of things.

Leo Laporte (00:26:11):
You could

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:12):
Talk to it. It's not necessarily Yeah. Right. It's I, you know, I look at, we had someone talk to our, our faculty about Jet G B T yesterday, and it was kind of, well, what, what about have it's always about us media. Yeah. And I, I, I think far differently, I wrote a post on media about, about this, that we gotta expand the notion of literacy and more tools for creation or say, look at it when it comes to art. I can't draw where the dam, but ChatGPT or, I mean, I mean Dali can help me express myself in images. Yes, it looks fake. Yes, it's not great, but it's better than I could ever do. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that brings me a power that I didn't have. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's the kind of stuff that really interests me about this. And Leo, I, I keep thinking about your, sorry, Stacey. Just no, no, no. Just

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:56):
One more. I'm just gonna piggyback, but you Canfin finish and I'll go,

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:58):
I just talking disagree with Leo. You always want a chance to do that. <Laugh> what's the name of that search engine thing you're using now? What's it called? Neva. Neva. I, I, I just don't think, I think it's, I I, my prediction, and I don't predict, but I'll predict now, is that, is that textual search results will be like talking to these devices that you had us all buy that nobody really wants to use the Madame's and all that. I don't think people entered into conversations with that stuff and they could do it with their voice. And I don't think that worked well. So I don't know that's gonna work in, in, in search engines. Sorry, Stacey, go ahead to

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:35):
No, I was gonna say, I read a really interesting article, like written by a designer about Dolly and stable diffusion and kind of, and their idea was like, he, he talks, it was, it was one of the creators over at Argo Design was the former Frog guys. And he was talking about the role of a designer going forward in this kind of world might be to let technology let you scale out and test a bunch of different ideas that you mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and the human has to go through and refine.

Ant Pruitt (00:28:07):
Refined.

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:08):
Refined, yes. Thank you. Yes, thank

Ant Pruitt (00:28:10):
You. Yes. That's, that's what I've said. For the longest back when the whole Dolly movement came around is none of this stuff is going to take away from the artists. It's only going to help the artists, you know, get better with the things that they're doing. Especially when, when you're talking about scale, like, like the designer that you just mentioned.

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:30):
I did I tell you the story about, about the illustrators when Lincoln died in Harper's? Did I call that story on the show? No,

Ant Pruitt (00:28:37):
I don't recall.

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:38):
So when, when Lincoln died, they sent illustrators down to Washington Stat and they rode the train back to at drawing what they found. Lincoln had already died by the time they got there. Then the telegraph hit was, was more connected then there would send illustrators down to an event and they would telegraph back a description of their drawings to an illustrator back in the offices. Ah, who would draw something and then have it in grape <laugh>. Then when who was, who was assassinated? Mckinley? No. Who, who, I should know this. Yeah. McKinley was shot. Lincoln. Cleveland. Mckinley.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:12):
Mckinley was shot.

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:13):
Yeah. So McKinley was shot in Buffalo, I think, or Rochester or somewhere like that. Right. And so then photography was in, so then for the first time, they could send photographers up and they got the photos back that much sooner. And the New York Times wrote a piece about, well, there goes the illustrator. And indeed there went the illustrator. Huge numbers of illustrator jobs disappeared with photography that technology was trying and trying and trying to do differently. And I think you're right both of you, Stacey and Ant, that whether it's for text or whether it's for illustration, this can give you all kinds of, of, of possible looks. But then it's only inspiration for the human to do.

Leo Laporte (00:29:54):
I think. You don't think that at some point it'll get so good that the human doesn't need to get involved. Certain

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:59):
Kinds of things. You, you look, I was thinking about this the other day,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:01):
Leo. Like Stockart. Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:03):
Exactly.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:04):
Stock art's fine. It's quick, quick and dirty

Leo Laporte (00:30:08):
Block post. What? Here's a that's fine. Gregorian chant generated by a Google

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:16):
No. Could already The synthesizer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:19):
Yeah. No. All right. Here's another

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:20):
One. Had no synthesizers.

Leo Laporte (00:30:21):
So there's a Billy Eilish song you probably know called Happier Than Ever. Somebody has used AI to put Ariana Grande's voice on it. So it's Ariana Grande singing a Billy Eilish song, make a Boat Soon. I think if you heard this, you would, you wouldn't say, oh, that's an ai.

Ant Pruitt (00:30:46):
It's pretty good.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:48):
Yeah. Sounds like Ariana Grande

Leo Laporte (00:30:49):
<Laugh>. You might say, oh, I didn't know Aria Grande covered that. Well, she didn't. So it's pretty good. Dangerous. There's, there's,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:57):
Well, so there's some interesting ideas there. Like I, when I was younger, I hated this cuz I thought it was annoying. But now that I'm older, I really like it. Like, when you go and a you go see a show live or someone covers a song and they add their spin on it. I used to hate that as a kid, you know? Yeah. But now I'm like, I

Leo Laporte (00:31:16):
Love

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:16):
Covers. Put a lot more value. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you're like, oh, what did they do? You have just, I don't know why it can be

Ant Pruitt (00:31:22):
An artist if you'll

Leo Laporte (00:31:23):
Yeah. One of the early

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:24):
So I think

Leo Laporte (00:31:28):
One of the early podcasts was called Cover Bill and it was just covers. And I can remember hearing covers of songs that I had dismissed, like, hit Me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. I dismissed as Pop Trash, but then I heard somebody do it in a calm, quiet folk song rendition. I thought, oh, that's actually a pr a pretty good song. <Laugh>. So it does, I agree with you, Stacey. Hearing a cover can sometimes give you a new look at a, an old song.

Ant Pruitt (00:31:58):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:59):
So when you have all of

Ant Pruitt (00:32:00):
This Metallica

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:02):
AI kind of, I think it might make individual artists seeing them live become a lot more important, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and maybe they'll control their own voice and their sound in do these things for mass production. But then you get, and if mass production truly becomes scalable via ai, then you're gonna move back to more artistic, artisanal kind of experiences, I think for like, actual paid consumption. If that makes sense.

Ant Pruitt (00:32:35):
When I think about brands as someone like Nike, you with their huge marketing departments and so forth, they could probably have someone in house that is spending hours upon hours and just going in and trying to figure out prompts and so forth. But they're also going to spend just as much money doing re market research far as what people are reacting to and, and how they can really enhance what they could get out of the, the AI products. I, I don't think it's just going to be an end all with something that's generated from AI is probably going to be a lot more human interaction involved to figure out will this really stick? Or how can we make this even more impactful for our message, for our brand?

Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
Then there's this a case of a company called 11 Labs that claimed that they were gonna be able to do in, and I think we are seeing this already, really amazing voice synthesis that you give it your voice and it will generate copy with your voice and so forth. There are other companies offering this, except the folks at four Chan got a hold of it.

Ant Pruitt (00:33:46):
Ru

Leo Laporte (00:33:46):
Ro when it came out of beta this past week, <laugh> and started posting disturbing, but almost indistinguishable from the real thing. I, I don't know, I haven't heard it cause I don't want to go on Fortune. But things like Emma Watson of the Harry Potter series reading mine Kopf Donald Trump on Epstein Island. Well, that's real. Ben Shapiro making racist comments to a o c. And the problem is that I think people could fall for these, right? Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty saying, I'm gonna beat my wife, Morty <laugh>, which of course, the creator of the show is in trouble <laugh> for, for doing that. As a girlfriend of course four chan immediate, 11 labs immediately <laugh> kind of shut down. They're they're open beta. They're trying to figure out a way to stop misuse. This seems to happen every time, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. They're gonna ask and

Jeff Jarvis (00:34:52):
Immediate go crazy about, oh my God, this is gonna be the ruin of civilization. We figure it out.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:57):
It is. Okay. It is not crazy to be like, Hey, it is super accessible to produce highly accurate seeming fake videos, audio, et cetera, of anybody in the world. That is not moral panic, Jeff. That is a legitimate, did

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:11):
I say the words moral panic <laugh>? Did I say the words moral panic? No,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:16):
But you said media gets

Leo Laporte (00:35:17):
It's cause for concern. Yeah. But what it really, and, and we talked about it on Sunday on Twitter, and I, even though the conclusions seem to be, well, they're just gonna be an onus. You can't believe everything you hear anymore. You couldn't for one. And to just, well,

Jeff Jarvis (00:35:30):
Well, people don't, people don't believe So people use this to condemn social media in most every survey out there. People say that they don't trust social media. That's good news. Yeah, they don't. Right?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:42):
They don't, but they still let it influence them. I like one of my, like my first journalism class, like journalism 1 0 1, you know, our professor got in there and was like, he, he told us about this news study that, you know, toothpaste had sugar in it and it was actually harmful for people. And, you know, he passed out an article or something and we were all like, and he was like, all right, you know, let's talk about it. And then he asked us, you know, do we believe this? And, you know, half of the class was like yeah, here it is. And the other half was like, well, I don't know. But then even at the very end, the class still had pulled like the cl a quarter of the people were like, oh my God, it's still scary. I, you know, it's sewed enough doubt in 24, like half a quarter of the class that, you know, they may not believe this sort of thing is true, but they're also like, well, maybe it is.

Leo Laporte (00:36:38):
So by the way, it's not true. Right? There is no sugar in

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:41):
It is no, there is no

Leo Laporte (00:36:42):
Sugar. Well, there's no sugar in taste <laugh>. It's sweet. So you could believe you might believe that.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:47):
Yes. That's, that was his, his I, you know, he was like, people want to believe what it's easy to believe and, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:36:56):
Do you believe this? I hereby verify that I Leo LePort like the script to create an overdub version of my voice. Why do you want this, Anthony? No idea. Well, hey, hey, hey. It's ai. Leo LePort, the AI tech guy this week on Twit. That was something Anthony did. That's pretty, that's pretty D I'm good for our promo <laugh>. That's pretty d I'm good <laugh>. I mean, it, it's, yes. It had a few of the little robot. It, you could tell it wasn't me. It

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:37):
Was a little robotic,

Leo Laporte (00:37:38):
But it was my voice. Actually, the only thing wrong with it was the inflections were wrong was, Hey, hey, hey. Yeah, that's, that's

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:43):
About about three hours into the show. Yeah. Well you're

Leo Laporte (00:37:46):
Really, but the voice was accurate. It sounded like my voice. Yeah. Just give it time. Yeah. <laugh> Open AI offers error-prone AI detector <laugh> amid fears of machine stuffed future. This is from <laugh> ka che the register open AI has ref released a free online tune designed to deflect accusations <laugh> from against open AI for cheating with ache. G P T. It's dubbed the AI Text Classifier. Have you seen this yet? Is this being used in academia? Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:21):
I I've heard a lot of talk about these things. There's, there, there was a kid that did one version. Yeah. But I also saw a writer who put her own writing into it and she was accused of you Bt for what she'd already

Leo Laporte (00:38:31):
Written. A false positive is though, is a problem because you're gonna be accused of plagiarism. You're with something you really wrote is not good. Yeah. Schools and universities in the us, France, and India have since banned students from accessing ChatGPT. But then there's teachers, like you talked about Jeff last week, who are using ChatGPT in the classroom.

Jeff Jarvis (00:38:51):
There's a, there's a woman on TikTok who's just amazing, very creative about it and wonderful. And, and, and I wanna talk to my colleagues about it. One, one colleague said, you know, when, when we use transcription tools these days, which broadcast students have to use a lot, it's using AI like crazy,

Leo Laporte (00:39:07):
Right?

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:08):
To do that, I put up a thing on, on the rundown where you're not gonna want to, it's, it's an academic paper online, 77. But I think it was Google, according to somebody in Mastadon brought together professional writers to ask how they would see using these tools. And they broke down various functions of inspiring an idea, a seed of a story, completing an idea, working it through. I, you know, I think that's where, that's where the, this becomes interesting to me is when you, you, you see this tool as a tool, then what can people do with it? How does it expand what they're capable of? That's what's interesting. But the, it's gonna replace us now. It's not

Leo Laporte (00:39:47):
Great. What we talked about C Net's use of artificial intelligence to write Its artificial. Did you ever

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:53):
Hear which engine they used?

Leo Laporte (00:39:55):
They have their own engine called Wordsmiths. Oh.

Jeff Jarvis (00:39:58):
You see, oh, that's actually, this paper's about wordsmith too.

Leo Laporte (00:40:01):
Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:02):
That's

Leo Laporte (00:40:02):
Interesting. Yeah. So cause it was

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:04):
Clearly a bad one.

Leo Laporte (00:40:05):
Well, I, you know, so it had inaccuracies, which the human editors not, this is word craft.

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:10):
I'm sorry,

Leo Laporte (00:40:10):
This is word crap. Yeah. But that isn't really the issue to me. The issue to me is remember those old days of Link Farms? You were talking about this. Yes. It was somebody's brilliant idea. Put a lot of venture capital into it to create sites where you would figure out, you'd, you'd, you'd figure out from Google what were the most search, search

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:30):
Channels, whatever about.com did that, that others copied it.

Leo Laporte (00:40:33):
What was the name F of that? There was a name for that kind of thing. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:40:38):
Wasn't Link Farm, but it was like that.

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:40):
It was, it was

Leo Laporte (00:40:42):
I can't remember. Click

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:43):
Farming. No, that's ad click.

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:44):
No, it was Link,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:46):
Link baiting.

Leo Laporte (00:40:47):
The idea is you figure out what the top search terms are and then you write articles tailored to

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:53):
Get No, that's just search optimization,

Jeff Jarvis (00:40:55):
Isn't it? Well, no, no, no. It's you, you're, you're creating it.

Leo Laporte (00:40:57):
So let's say No, I know. You notice that when people look that people do a search for belt buckles. Yeah. <laugh> a lot. So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:05):
You our Meelo Theia

Leo Laporte (00:41:06):
Our Meso Theia. And so you create a bunch of articles with the planet

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:11):
Belt.Com. Oh,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:13):
Those are content farms.

Leo Laporte (00:41:14):
Very well farms. There you go.

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:15):
Content farms. That's it. Thank you.

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:18):
So Malcolm come did it very well. Others copied it. I can't remember the name of the

Leo Laporte (00:41:21):
Company. And then our friend Matt Cutts did everything we could to, to stop that from happening. Right? I think successfully.

Jeff Jarvis (00:41:26):
That was, that was Panda. Yeah, Panda was the first major update to search to deal with

Leo Laporte (00:41:31):
That. Well, there are those, mostly the Verge accusing CNET of going and, and more than cnet, their, their private equity owners Red Ventures of deciding to monetize CNET by making it a content form by using these ais to generate articles that will show up in search results. And they also own Red Ventures doesn't just own cnet. They own the Points guy and some credit card review sites. And all of them make money by generating content that is gonna show up on search. So you click on it and then you get affiliate

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:07):
Revenue. The real thing here is content and writing, not reporting. I'm gonna anticipate Stacey, she's gonna say reporting, but content and writing are utterly commodified. Now it's not special to write anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:42:18):
Well, that was Connie GMO's contention writer. So when Connie was on twit, this story had just broken. She's the editor-in-chief of CNET and she said, we have these ais write the articles that writers don't want to do. They're just boring, you know, explainers on, you know, personal finance. And so nobody really wants to write it. So we just have the AI write it and then we have an editor check it and then we put it up. Because these are useful to people, but nobody, you know, we would like our writers

Jeff Jarvis (00:42:45):
Written a hundred times before,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:48):
But they're also Yeah. A useful personal finance primer is actually something people would wanna, I mean, as a writer, you may hate doing it like I used to hate doing, but like servicey things should not be farmed out. Tois.

Leo Laporte (00:43:02):
Well, I, I think CNET learned that

Ant Pruitt (00:43:04):
Lesson, but I don't think that's what CNET is doing. Right. They're not doing the serviceable stuff is more of the

Leo Laporte (00:43:09):
No, that's what they wanted to do is have a whole, what they're doing, series of 75 articles on personal finance. So they'd have this encyclopedia and it did kind of me mesh nicely with Red Ventures, other holdings of credit card companies. And there is some, there's some suspicion that maybe, and this often happens with private equity that, you know, they wanna monetize quickly cuz they usually have a lot of debt that they need to pay off. Right. To acquire these. Right. So they maybe were taking this v venerable and, and valuable brand CNET and turning it into content farms. Here's the article from Search Engine Land. Barry Schwartz is AI written content replacing cheap old content farms. It sounds like Google Panda <laugh>. Yeah. You know,

Ant Pruitt (00:43:55):
Let's look, can I look at another angle, sir? Sure. So this AI generated content is bringing eyeballs there. Yes, there's affiliate links and things of that nature, but what about the potential of retention of the, of the eyeballs coming there? Oh, well, while I'm here, how about I click on this menu over here to check out this other topic that may be of interest to me. Oh, the new M two max are out. What did they, what did they have to say about that? You know, it is,

Leo Laporte (00:44:24):
Well, so there's a lot of interest in M two max, but what you would hope is you would get an article that was written by a human being that did some research, did some benchmarking, right. Did some tests instead of a

Ant Pruitt (00:44:35):
CNET Does that, CNET does that for, they do that for consumer.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:38):
They're saying this could be like Gateway, the AI content is like a gateway gets you in the door, right. When you're searching the,

Ant Pruitt (00:44:46):
They hold you onto the site

Leo Laporte (00:44:47):
<Laugh>, you know, well, what, whatever, it's not real content. That's my point. And it's not written it's written to gain search clicks.

Jeff Jarvis (00:44:56):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:44:57):
As opposed to serve an audience.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:00):
I mean, news has always been written to gain some sort of eyeball. Right. So every

Ant Pruitt (00:45:06):
Daum headline

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:08):
<Laugh> Yeah. You look at, I mean yes, there is actual journalism, but believe you me, there's, for every real story, there's three, you know, filtered press. It's true releases or silly thing siters. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:45:20):
So here's what the version wrote. The robot articles published on CNET don't need to be good. They need to rank highly in Google searches. So lots of people open them and click the lucrative affiliate marketing links they contain. And so that's why you have articles things like what's the best credit card to get with for points or can you buy a gift card with a credit card? Or what is Zelle and how does it work? These are all real articles on unseen it or bank rate or credit cards.com before they were taken down.

Jeff Jarvis (00:45:55):
And, and talk to me for a minute because you just said it again for a minute. You, you get, I dunno know the word is disgusted, turned off by news.

Ant Pruitt (00:46:06):
Yeah. Because made a lot of it is sensationalized and shouldn't have to be. And then there's a whole lot of slant when it's supposed to be news. Just, just give me the facts. And I, I found that to be the case with just about all of the, the news outlets out there today. Instead of just giving me the facts, they're giving me their opinions and, and all kinds of other mess that has nothing to do with the facts. I I, I don't, I don't need all that. I don't care. So just

Leo Laporte (00:46:35):
Well, but don't so clear, I would submit that, that there's value. The facts are not, not helpful. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Defend the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:40):
Interpretation.

Leo Laporte (00:46:41):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:42):
Yeah. So like, yes, there are certainly times when the facts make sense, right? Yeah. But most people need more than the facts. They need some sort of context. So it's not enough to say like, let's take

Ant Pruitt (00:46:54):
I agree about context. But

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:57):
Okay. But what I choosing the context is what people get frustrated about. They think that's opinion in a lot of ways. Like, you know, I can choose if I am gonna report on, let's, let's say I'm gonna report on give me something like a new

Leo Laporte (00:47:16):
Law. I'll give you one city council, I'll give you one. Okay. Gimme the fed today raised interest rates 25 basis points. That's the fact.

Ant Pruitt (00:47:26):
Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:47:27):
But what a good writer will do is say that's lower than previous raises, which some experts believe means the fed's less worried about inflation than they used to be. That's the context.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:43):
You could talk about the Yeah. You could talk about the last time it was raised 25 or 250 basis points, what that meant. Right.

Ant Pruitt (00:47:50):
You see everything you all are saying right now that that's totally fine. I'm, I'm talking about there's,

Leo Laporte (00:47:57):
But then there's also what if

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:58):
Say last happened under

Ant Pruitt (00:48:00):
Public administration way or another. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:48:02):
There's ways, there's ways to say hard. Yeah. So there's, so that's the two different headlines. You could say fed rates, fed raises, interest rates, 25 basis points. It looks like inflation's not over folks or fed raises interest rates, 25 basis points. Looks like they're not so worried about inflation as they were previously. Two different interpretations on the same thing. Or

Jeff Jarvis (00:48:24):
Brad DeLong has a book out now that I'm listening to slouching toward utopia I think it's called, in which he argues strenuously that causing a recession to slow down the economy is basically immoral. Well, that's, that's a clear opinion. That's a view. He's an economist. And so he has that, that view. Now is that slanted or is that perspective? I find it really valuable's perspective, but I know people are gonna disagree with it.

Ant Pruitt (00:48:48):
Perspective is, is is, I'm fine with perspective. I just don't care for the dak cheerleaders with all of the pom-poms that lean in one way or the other. Just, just, just gimme the facts.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:00):
Well, but some people feel like, I mean, one person's cheerleader is another person's fact person. I mean, like, people have accused me for years of being a cheerleader for various industries. Yeah. You know, when in fact I just acknowledge like the technical limitations of something that a company might have. Right? They're like, no, you can't do this. I'm like, well, you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's what you want isn't that's just your opinion. It's just your opinion, man. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:49:32):
That's only your opinion, man. <Laugh> I know what you're saying, Anne. And I think some of this comes from the fact that we have in the United States 3 24 hour news channels, each of which right

Ant Pruitt (00:49:44):
Have, right. Very, they have their own

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:47):
Tv. TV news is horrified. Yeah. Just no, just

Jeff Jarvis (00:49:50):
Like us. It's

Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
A matter, it's

Ant Pruitt (00:49:52):
A matter to the masses.

Leo Laporte (00:49:53):
You know, it's a matter of degree. I think we try really hard not to be biased, but, but our entire job is not to provide facts because we're caught talking about already reporting somebody's done. But to explain, to elaborate to elucidate Uhhuh <affirmative>. So we are doing that. I guess it's really a matter of degree, or I don't know.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:15):
Yeah. Everything kind of turns into a matter of degree to be totally honest. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:19):
<Laugh>, it's all gray. Goo at the bottom. All right. Lemme take a break. We got lots more to talk about. I, I think the, we're gonna be talking about a lot about ai. People are gonna get bored to death with it, but there's just so much interesting stuff

Jeff Jarvis (00:50:30):
Happening. So fascinating.

Leo Laporte (00:50:31):
It really is. And it's impact on us. And it's funny because the whole tech industry for the last five years has been looking over there, look at vr, ar that's gonna be the next big thing. V And all of a sudden, and this always happens, AI sneaks up on 'em and went, they went, whoa, nevermind that a VR ai ai <laugh>. Right? And it's really fascinating to me. I mean, literally Microsoft fired most of the people working on augmented reality. When's the last time Google talked about vr? Ar

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:06):
Facebook is kind of Facebook,

Leo Laporte (00:51:09):
Facebook put a lot of money, but I I, I wonder if they're how hard they're working on it right now. They've

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:14):
Got big, they've always had big AI labs too.

Leo Laporte (00:51:17):
In fact, I, Jan Lacoon, who is their AI guru there, one of the smartest guys in AI when, when talking about ChatGPT last week said, oh, that's no big deal. We have that <laugh>. Yeah. Which is either just jealousy, <laugh>. Oh yeah, we thought of that before. Well look

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:36):
After buzzfeed. So Buzzfeeds announced they were gonna have AI write quizzes and then stupid Buzzfeed stuff. Right. And then Facebook is gonna give 'em a lot of money to do that. Buzzfeed stock doubled from 2 cents to 4 cents, whatever. But, but you know, now it is seen as a way, it, it, I think it's going the wrong way. Once again, it's Oh, good. More content.

Leo Laporte (00:51:58):
This is Jonah Peretti in a nutshell, same

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:01):
Thing. Yes, it is. It is

Leo Laporte (00:52:02):
Chasing the, the flavor of the months. And so buzzfeed has always done, but aren't, the industry is always done. So I hope we're not doing that. I guess that was my, that was what I led off this whole conversation with, which is, is this the another AI spring that's gonna end up with an AI winner? Or is this really transformative? Are we about to enter the next question as Ben Thompson says, the next epoch of computing, you know, equivalent to the internet and smartphones. And you know, I

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:30):
Think we need to get that same AI that did the Seinfeld show to do TWiG.

Leo Laporte (00:52:35):
Oh, it'd be so boring.

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:36):
<Laugh>. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:52:37):
My God. It'd be so boring.

Ant Pruitt (00:52:41):
Well, we talk about ai I guess AI's gonna be way bigger than the blockchain discussions over the last

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:47):
Second. I just think of that it, yep.

Leo Laporte (00:52:49):
Yeah, we kind of got over shame, didn't we? <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:51):
I'm gonna disagree because to me, blockchain is a fundamental underlying technology that's also gonna be useful for lots of things. Right. But we just got sidetracked on this whole crypto finance.

Ant Pruitt (00:53:03):
Crypto, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:04):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I mean, it's being used actually in businesses right now for like tracking information already. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's just not gonna be as big as we thought it would be. It's gonna be like,

Ant Pruitt (00:53:18):
It's not as shiny be right. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:20):
It's gonna be like duping technology or something that's really essential and useful, but nobody cares about. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:53:26):
Mm. Blockchain is just a decentralized database.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:31):
Right. It's a decentralized,

Leo Laporte (00:53:33):
Like, we're as excited about blockchain as we are about MySQL. <Laugh>. It's like <laugh>. It's like it's Yeah. People are gonna use it. It's it's a, it in some cases

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:43):
For while I was really excited about no SQL l

Leo Laporte (00:53:47):
Databases, <laugh> and

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:48):
Good, I mean, it was a big

Leo Laporte (00:53:49):
Deal. It's similar. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's very, that, if you wanna say blockchain is on that level of importance, I would agree with you a hundred percent. That's,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:56):
That's what I'm

Leo Laporte (00:53:57):
Mean. It's gonna transform the financial world. Is it gonna empower unbanked people all over the globe? No. No, no. And poor Kevin Rose. Is

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:07):
It a mechanism by which we can have automated smart contracts? Yes. Yeah. And that will be relevant. It's just not relevant in a way that people are gonna see.

Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Is there a Kevin update? Well, he lost his squiggles. So Kevin as you last week we were reporting as it happened that Kevin had announced he had been hacked. He has revealed that the NFTs that he lost were these really, really pretty squiggles. He's actually on, I don't even need to scroll down into his Twitter. It's the header on his Twitter. But this is the funny thing. So he lost that, but he could still make it his Twitter right there. It's right there. What did you lose? Yep. You lost the right to say I own this. You lost the right to sell it to some. That's what he really lost. Yeah. He says he lost millions of dollars. He was social. Oh, here's a, here's a picture. Somebody shun him taking [inaudible] Squiggled away.

(00:55:06):
Chicken away. Gonna do an ale. Yeah, I was gonna do an ad. <Laugh> <laugh> <laugh>. Stacey knows sooner. The ad comes sooner. The end comes sooner. The ad comes sooner the end comes. Look it, even though this one was simple, not rare. Loved the pattern. Damn. Chromi squiggle number 4, 4 29. I'd be very curious what he paid for that. Actually. He says, damn, I loved this one too. <Laugh>. Okay. Our shows on Open Sea, invisible. It's pretty, he can't get it. Is that, that's what he's saying. It's on Open Sea, the marketplace. Yeah, but he can't get it. Well, it was his, he owned it and he was social engineered out of it. So it's worth $17,197. Is it though, is it though to someone? Is it Crow Vault owns it? He, it, Kevin knows this is the pro, this is the benefit of blockchain. You know who owns it? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Crok. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, whoever that is.

(00:56:15):
So it used to be Kevin's. Okay. Our show today, actually, you wanna make a cro a squiggle worth millions. Maybe you should check out Miro. Do you know about miro? Miro is super cool. We welcome Miro and brand new sponsor on the network. Miro is, can be anything. You start with the idea of it's a, a a shared whiteboard. Okay? A collaborative visual whiteboard. But what is that? Well, this is why I want you to go to miro.com/podcast and take a look. And in fact, I most particularly want you to go to the Miro examples, the templates. They have a, a page of other Miro whiteboards people have created That is so cool, so exciting. I, you know, I think you will, you will look at this. So I, this is what I want you to do, so you can understand it.

(00:57:11):
Who is it for? It's for everybody. It's for project product managers. It's for marketers, or they call it the Miro verse where other people's murs are. So you can, and you can download these and use them as a template for your own. Everything from icebreakers for your next meeting, to flow charts for your next project. Team alignment circles. Team, psychological safety, digital campaign planning, midnight sailboat, retrospective <laugh>. Here's a Beatles retrospective. Somebody's created. There's, it's unlimited. What you can do. Now, the next time you use, you got a meeting. I want you to use Miro for your meeting. Miro has built-in polls, timers. You can head to consensus using miro. It's so much more than just a simple digital whiteboard. It's a visual collaboration tool packed with features so that you and your whole team can build on one another's ideas, create something innovative. And nowadays, with everybody working from home or hybrid, it's really nice to be able to get the team together over this mural whiteboard for brainstorming and planning, and researching and designing for feedback cycles.

(00:58:29):
It can live on a mural board. The integrations. Look at the integrations. You could do a can ban on your mural board. And it's fast. It's fast. Faster input means faster outcomes. Miro users report. Miro increases project delivery speed by 29%. It's just a natural way to work. You can zoom in and out. You can view and share the big picture overview and a cinch. And you know what you'll find with, when, when you're working with teams and everybody has a voice and everybody's input is welcome, you can all tap into a single source of truth that keeps people engaged, invested, happy, and productive. Cut out any confusion on he who needs to do what. By mapping out processes, roles, timelines. Get that CanBan up, several different temp templates, including Miro Swim Lane diagram, which a great way to keep track of who's doing what.

(00:59:23):
Strategic planning becomes easier when it's visual and accessible. You could tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team. So they not only can see it, they can have input and feedback into it. The only problem is it's so, it's so flexible and capable. It's hard to describe what Miro could do. That's why I want you to go to miro.com/podcast. Go to the Miro verse. Take a look at some of the amazing things people have created with Miro. Get some ideas. Some of the biggest companies in the world. Use miro. Take a look at the integrations, all the different things you can, you can put into Miro. So you're, you know, you're working with the tools you already know, like Slack and and Dropbox and Box and so forth. And, and, and Google. Of course, Google Drive. You could create a team workspace, you could find, put in shortcuts.

(01:00:19):
So you go right to what you're working on. I know teams that literally, literally live in Miro all day. They keep it open all day. Connected to GitHub, connected to wherever your projects live. I just love this idea. It's such a brilliant product and, and I love it that they've put all the tools on so you can take a look at how you can, how you can use it. And of course, it's completely secure. You're gonna love Miro. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to miro.com/podcast right now. Take a look at what Miro can do for you. Strategic planning is so much easier. It's a great way to map processes and systems to map plans with the whole team. And if you're feeling a little tired and who isn't these days, you'll be glad to know. Miro users report saving 80 hours per user per year just by cutting down meeting times, streamlining conversations.

(01:01:14):
That's two whole weeks, two whole work weeks a year. It's like having an extra vacation. More than a million users use Miro every single month. And now I know why. Miro m i r o.com/podcast. Here's the best part. You can get your first three boards free, so you could try it out right now. Start working better together, miro.com/podcast. I told him, I said, I am so excited we're gonna start using this for our, as the tech guys show, Mike and I are gonna do some planning on it. I, I'm thrilled about it. But look at this Miro verse for just a kind of a glimpse at some of the things people are doing with it. It's pretty incredible. And you'll never want to have another meeting without Miro running in the background. And the timers in the polls and the consensus building te tools. There's just fantastic. Here's a Harry Potter retrospective created by the UK Government <laugh> Post Meeting summary. Look at this. What a great board this would be to have collaborative meeting agenda ideation workshop miro.com/and stinky fish miro.com. I don't know what that is. It's miro.com/podcast. It's fun. That's, I think a lot of it is visual. It's fun, it's exciting. Give it a try. Three boards free miro.com/podcast. An we go leave the

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:40):
Commercial.

Leo Laporte (01:02:41):
Pardon me? Yes. Before

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:42):
You leave that, that ad my colleague Jeremy Kaplan at the new, new New New York graduate School of journalism, who's a brilliant educator and knows every tool out there. He loves Miro.

Leo Laporte (01:02:51):
Oh, nice.

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:52):
And he brings it into class all the time. Attaches it to events, attaches it to Zoom. There's all kinds of ways I

Leo Laporte (01:03:01):
Use. Yeah, yeah, it works. You can log in with Zoom, use it with your Zoom meetings. Here's a, here's a cover story mockups you could use to figure out what your cover story's gonna look like or what your story's gonna look like on all these different publications. There's just so many ways. Yeah. Yeah. I think for teaching, it'd be really cool.

Jeff Jarvis (01:03:22):
It's very, it's very good. Yeah. I like it. The balls people of collaboration. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:03:25):
Yeah. I, I actually, I'm excited about the idea of these new tools can give us new ways of working together, new ways of thinking. Even that's pretty mm-hmm. <Affirmative> pretty exciting. Meta has survived its first challenge in its acquisition of within the virtual reality startup. A judge FTC asked for a, a judge to res issue, a restraining order preventing meta from closing the deal while the FTC is considering it. The judge said, Nope, nope. We, I am not gonna block it. US District Judge Edward dla, in an early sealed decision early this morning, it's sealed, but it, of course immediately leaked. Leah Nylon at Bloomberg had the story denied the FTCs request for a preliminary injunction to block the proposed transaction while the agency pursues a separate case in its in-house court. So Meta will now be able to go ahead,

Jeff Jarvis (01:04:28):
But the FTC can still go after him. They can stop it later invested or what? Or

Leo Laporte (01:04:32):
Yeah, they could say, okay. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, nevermind. So I don't know. You know, this is the within inmates a VR game called Supernatural. That is a very, very good game, very popular, and is all about partly about fitness. And I think meta really wants to get into this area. They already have a program actually that does this. So the argument is they're trying to do the same thing they do with Instagram, which is put competitors or get rid of competitors by acquiring them to and so that's, I think, gonna be the FTCs argument. We shall see. It's not like this <laugh>, this, this, you know, this space is, is just, there's a handful of competitors. I think there's quite a few, but no, it's not a, a monopoly issue. We talked about Elon Jet, the Elon flight Tracker, which upset Elon so much.

(01:05:24):
He called it assassination coordinates, banned Jack Sweeney, the college kid from Florida, who does the Elon Jet account from Twitter. And then when he moved to Mastodon Band mention of MAs on Twitter, <laugh>, he's backed down on that a little bit. But the flight tracker, that Elon Jet and these other jet tracking accounts use is called A D S B exchange. And it's an interesting story. This is kind of a collaborative effort. Turns out planes, all planes have transponders identifying them by tail number. And other planes use this I presume traffic control and flight control uses it as well, so they know what's up there. But there is no publicly available database of this. So what the guy who owns A D S B exchanged it is he got people to put up little radio receivers all over the globe and report in.

(01:06:20):
He set up software that would automatically let them report in. And eventually they were able to put thousands of trackers, build a pretty, it's a decentralized flight tracking. Yeah. They put a really great, you know, open platform for this. Unfortunately, <laugh>, it was owned by one guy. The costs were high, I imagine for running this. He created, I guess the software, Dan STR is his name. He created the software to collect this information and built this site. But while revenue is increasing, costs are also increasing. So last month as the site was getting all that attention for Elon Jet, the site's founder and sole owners announced he was planning, actually, there were rumors that he was planning to sell the website to Jet Net. He's the sole owner. He did sh and after the deal became public last week there was a mutiny.

(01:07:31):
Shortly after the deal became public, truer was removed from the Discord as the site's users contemplated their next move. A rev, a revolt was led by James Stanford. A revolt just against the idea or there? No, no. Were they, because Jet Net was on, had previously been purchased by our favorite villain of the week, private equity <laugh>. And so James Stanford, who's one of a DSB exchanges senior administrators, said Hey, we're gonna, this is not good. You do this and you're gonna lose all of your volunteers who put these radios and then, and up and put this signal on. Ah, okay. They're volunteers.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:15):
So they'll just take out Well, that's, that's a good indicator to private equity that maybe they don't wanna invest in decentralized things.

Leo Laporte (01:08:22):
Yeah. Stanford wrote a dsb exchange con.com is done. He posted instructions on how to unplug from the network. Some many follow those instructions according to ours. Technical with some flipping over to some smaller alternatives like airframes. In a span of a few hours, it went from 11,000 feeders to 9,500. Jack Sweeney, the guy who ran Elon Jet, said, today is a sad day. If you have feed A D S B exchange, we encourage you to stop. A D DSB exchange was found in the principles of hobbyist communities not for-profit public equity firms. So, yeah, don't <laugh> it reminds me, remember c d db, which was again, the same thing people uploaded. They would, they would burn their CDs and then upload track information to the centralized database so it all could use it. Imdb, same idea. These were all acquired and then companies profited off of this, volun these volunteer efforts. Sta

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:22):
Stacey's point is really interesting here. What is this, you know, if you look at Mastodon and you hope that there is some investment in some of the tools around it, but your point, Stacey, is that, is an investor gonna be scared of anything that can, can bring revolt, right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:43):
Well, yeah. I mean, like, what is, if like a lot of these people, I mean, it's kind of a tragedy, the commons in, in the software world, I guess, yes, you might start building something because you're interested in it, but at a certain point in time, there are costs and effort that you may not be willing to give. So maybe you open source it, give it out maybe you invest, you decide to invest in it, build in it for the community. But once you start doing that, you know, then there's the very real question. Like, Hey, when I die, what happens? Or if I get sick of doing this, how do I get out? And if someone's comes up and offers you several million dollars or whatever,

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
20 million.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:23):
20 million, I mean, yeah, they're gonna take the money. Now,

Leo Laporte (01:10:27):
Furthermore, they, now that's private equity as Yeah. That's private equity. They now have to recoup their 20 million. So,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:33):
Yeah. So I mean, but if you're a private equity fund, I don't know why, like, if you're doing your due diligence, I don't understand why you would invest that much in something that is reliant on,

Leo Laporte (01:10:45):
Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:46):
Your core values

Leo Laporte (01:10:47):
Reliant on Elon might have written the check EL was so upset about flight recorder. Yeah. I could see him

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:52):
Saying, take it out.

Leo Laporte (01:10:53):
Hey, take it out. Boys Flight Aware which is a commercial site and flight radar, they do the same thing for, for money. Maybe they just Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:03):
I was gonna say, I mean, we have Flight Tracker and Flight Aware. They, I mean, there are services that do this, so

Leo Laporte (01:11:12):
Yeah, they're all commercial. I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:13):
Guess I, it just seems like a bad investment from a president. I agree. Perspective of like

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:17):
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I

Ant Pruitt (01:11:18):
Agree. I'm on theb site and there's no mention of the acquisition or anything, and not even in their forums. How recent was this?

Leo Laporte (01:11:27):
Last

Jeff Jarvis (01:11:27):
Week? Well, last week or so,

Ant Pruitt (01:11:29):
You would think they would have something up to say, you know what things are gonna be changing.

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
Well, maybe they don't want to. I mean, look, again, it's a volunteer force of people doing this.

Ant Pruitt (01:11:40):
Mm. And when all of that went down with Elon Musk and his private jet, or the family's private jet or what have you, did he publicly announce that? Look, I, I don't want this to be tracked cuz I thought there was some type of procedure said you could do that. Yeah. Did, did he follow through with that and still had that information put out there by these tracking systems? That's not cool. If that's the case

Leo Laporte (01:12:10):
Well, there's nothing you could do about it except a lot of celebrities do, which is anonymously rent jets. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the tail number is not associated directly with you. Elon owns that jet, I guess mm-hmm. <Affirmative>,

Jeff Jarvis (01:12:25):
But I thought, I think answered right. I thought I read something that said I have no link. So I don't know. I'm just like a ChatGPT without facts. That said that you could withdraw your tail from these reporting things. I

Leo Laporte (01:12:38):
Thought you can, unless you have enthusiasts on the ground <laugh> tracking your transponder, you can't turn off the transponder.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:46):
Ah, that

Ant Pruitt (01:12:47):
You can't. Right, right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:48):
You have to do it through a formal, like a licensed service. But if it's an unlicensed service, tracking it, I see. Who cares?

Leo Laporte (01:12:54):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just people on the ground. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:58):
It is illegal not to have a transponder. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:13:00):
Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:00):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:02):
Because otherwise planes would run into each other.

Ant Pruitt (01:13:04):
Right. Got it. Okay. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:13:08):
The tracking. I'm reading. So this is an article from N NBC when this all happened. How is it legal to track private planes <laugh>? How could they illegal? The tracking capabilities are possible thanks to a technology called A D B S B or automatic Dependent surveillance broadcast. Every

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:30):
Surveillance can I hear

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
Surveillance every three seconds, every three seconds. A D S B equipment on a plane sends out realtime data <laugh> about the air aircraft's location, altitude, and velocity to avoid mid-air collisions and to allow people on the ground to nowhere where an airplane is at all times. A D S P technology is mandated by the F FAA on all aircraft.

Jeff Jarvis (01:13:54):
It should be at all self-driving cars too. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:13:56):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:13:57):
Right. So this is the difference. You probably could go to Flight Aware Flight Tracker and say, Hey Donald, please don't put my plane up there. They're commercial entities, but I'm

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:07):
Sure the CIA does

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
That. Yeah. But you but you can't do that with be exchanged. Cause it's just a bunch of enthusiasts. Were the radios Dan Truer said, all these folks send data and we aggregate the info and put it on a map. The purpose of this is not for being a paparazzi, it's for aviation enthusiasts.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:27):
There's a really cool plane heading your way, but

Leo Laporte (01:14:29):
It sure did sound like paparazzi though. In his story. He says, we publish everything. It's already public data. We're not sharing anything you couldn't find from many other sources. Flight Radar and Flight Aware do actively suppress flight information about planes whose operators have asked the F AA to block their registration number from public view. But the A D S B exchange is not using the f a A feeds. So it's not mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's just enthusiasts

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:53):
That explains it. PS probably do use it. Yeah. I mean, a journalist would use any tool available to them to get this guy and, you know, there's, there's a public interest in maybe not tracking Elon, but in even like Wall Street firms like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> knowing that A C E O has flown, you know, to So airplane has gone. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:16):
You're using the, the public's airwaves, you know, I mean, I don't know. I feel like, like commercial

Stacey Higginbotham (01:15:21):
With the mustache,

Leo Laporte (01:15:22):
You know, <laugh> like I do. Yeah. Apparently the F FAA does have a program that allows planes to encode their A D S B signals so that they cannot be matched to other information in the publicly available Civil aviation registry. Ah-Huh. <affirmative>. It's unclear according to NBC, whether Musk participates in that PLOTING program. Okay. unclear. Stratford says in many cases other high Fi profile people don't appear to take advantage of such programs, which is surprising. Strafford said a lot are vocal about the privacy issues and sometimes they don't seem to be doing all they can to prevent this. So you could, you could do that. Right. And still be compliant with the, with the law. So I don't know why why that might not be.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:16:08):
Maybe they just haven't had their personal assistance. They're not aware to send them off to

Leo Laporte (01:16:12):
Do this. That's exactly right. All right, <laugh>. That's exactly right. I was curious. Big victory against ransomware. We talked about this yesterday on security. Now the F B I, so Hive, which is a ransomware as a service. I hate to say company <laugh>, but that's what they do. They have affiliates who are people like you and me who decide they wanna make a little money on the side. And Hive provides a software and I guess helpful information to let you attack people using their software. You give them back a percentage of your income from ransomware. Hive is one of the bigger ransomware as a service groups like Revol and others we've talked about on security. Now, the DOJ revealed this week that the FBI had been infiltrated the Hive Ransomware group in July of last year. And that for the last six months, they've been saving people. They gave out more than 300 decryption keys to those hacked so they wouldn't have to pay the ransomware.

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:22):
Nice. Aw. Aw. So

Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
Nice. Hive is nasty. They were attacking schools, hospitals, financial companies, even infrastructure in more than 80 countries around the world. One hospital was left unable to accept new patients thanks to hiv. The FBI worked with a number of different nations law enforcement agencies, 50 organiza. They, in the UK for instance, they gave 50 companies decryption keys. They also were able to warn people that you're next so they could lock themselves down. You gotta do this carefully cuz they didn't want the Hive people to know that they'd infiltrated them. Right. It's like knowing the Enigma machine. You can't, you can't be too smart. Thursday they ended the operation taking down hive's website and communications networks with the help of police forces in Germany. And the Netherlands Hive, it's believed, was operating out of Russia.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:18):
They didn't, they didn't arrest anybody, right.

Leo Laporte (01:18:20):
Because they're in Russia. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:22):
One could start, the hive could start up again and start doing it

Leo Laporte (01:18:24):
Again. Right. That's a good, and it happens all the time. Until Mandy and intelligence head, John Holquist said, until the group is arrested, they will never truly be gone. They will have to reconstitute, which takes time. But I bet they reappear in time. As of now, if you're a Hive affiliate and you go to the Hive Set website, you'll see this, this hidden site has been seized. The F B I has seized this site. It looks like hidden malware slate. It looks like malware, doesn't it?

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:52):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Berg.

Leo Laporte (01:18:56):
Yeah. They did catch the Evil guys last year, actually in 2021. So they, they were able, they are able to arrest them in some cases. The problem is, I think Russia protects these ransom. This is their, this is another kind of cold war that they wage against the West. And so these, I believe these groups are protected often by Russia. But more and more we're seeing comp countries fight back. Australia says, now we're gonna, we're gonna hack the hackers <laugh>. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, success. Well done. Bravo, eh, f Williams says, I'm sorry. Biz Stone, not Eve. Biz Stone says one of the founders of Twitter, Elon doesn't really seem like the right person to own Twitter. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:52):
I

Leo Laporte (01:19:52):
Love how these Twitter, former Twitter folks are so reluctant to say really nasty things. Like, what a jerk. I'm piping up. Stone says running social media companies is not really a win-win situation. It's always tough because 50% of the people are gonna be happy. 50% of the people are gonna be upset with you. You have to be okay with stuff you just don't like or don't agree with being on there. Otherwise, you should just go buy a magazine or a newspaper or something where it's okay to have a specific leaning. When when biz was asked by the Guardian in an interview whether Musk was the right owner for Twitter, he said, it doesn't seem like it right now, but I could be wrong.

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:39):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:20:40):
He doesn't seem like he's having fun. <Laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:44):
It

Leo Laporte (01:20:44):
Doesn't seem like he's having a lot of fun.

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:47):
<Laugh>. So I'm reading a really a good book right now, which I've mentioned right over the, over the time Talk Gillespie's custodians of the Internet which is all about mon moderation. And you know what he says in the beginning, cuz that's all I've read so far. It's really interesting is he said that the mistake that Twitter and Facebook at all made was they didn't realize that they were moderation companies. They weren't hosting companies. That the essence of what they do is moderation. And they've got, and they needed to acknowledge that and admit that and budget for that and build around that. And they didn't.

Leo Laporte (01:21:22):
Well, it's just what Amy Webb, one of our favorite contributors in our shows she's a futurist, says companies should be doing strategic planning for the future. They need to think they can't just do quarter by quarter. They really have to look ahead at the, at the risks, deeply understand what the risks are of the businesses that they're in and plan for it

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:45):
Would, wouldn't you say that? I think Google does that.

Leo Laporte (01:21:50):
Well, you know better. You wrote the book. What would Google do you know better than that?

Jeff Jarvis (01:21:53):
Facebook thinks it's doing that with a r VR and giving up on social. Right? I think they kind of do that. I mean, Twitter right now is not <laugh> not that's Musk

Leo Laporte (01:22:02):
Yet.

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:02):
Right? Right.

Leo Laporte (01:22:09):
This is an old story, but I, I became aware of it thanks to Mike Masick on Tec Dirt just down the road from you, Stacey, the Seattle School District.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:19):
You tried to talk about this last week and I told you no.

Leo Laporte (01:22:22):
Okay. Nevermind. Nevermind, nevermind. I'm sorry I brought it up.

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:26):
Stacey, it's not a democracy. If he wants to talk about it, he could talk about it. Don't cancel. No,

Leo Laporte (01:22:30):
I'll listen to her. I won't listen to you, but I will listen to I know

Jeff Jarvis (01:22:33):
That, I

Stacey Higginbotham (01:22:33):
Mean, if there were, if there was, if there was a snowballs chance in hell, if this was more than just like, pandering to a base, I'd be like, yeah, let's do it. But

Leo Laporte (01:22:43):
They're so in social media because it's bad for the children. All right. All right. I did not watch, I did not attend this morning's Samsung Galaxy unpacked event in which they announced the S 23 phone with the 200 megapixel sensor. Stop. I Did you watch an Ant? Did anybody, anybody? I,

Ant Pruitt (01:23:07):
I caught, I caught some of it. Cause I wanted to hear Mr. Howell's thoughts. You know, but as you had said previously that most of this stuff about the phone was already leaked. So I'm like whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:23:19):
I feel bad cause I, I just I didn't show up cuz I thought it's just gonna be a pep rally. I don't <laugh> really

Ant Pruitt (01:23:25):
<Laugh>. But I wanted to hear Mr. Jason's thoughts and, and what I did catch was some talk about xr. And I wanted to hear Ms. Ja, Ms Ms Stacey's thoughts because they talk about matter and this being the Year of matter and you know, whether she think of the announcement today.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:23:45):
Oh, I didn't hear the matter bits. Now I feel bad. <Laugh>. I was, we, it, we, it started as we finished doing our show this morning, recording our show, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I was gonna turn it on, but then I was, I was editing something production even.

Leo Laporte (01:24:04):
So this, this article on the Gizmoto, everything Samsung announced at Galaxy Unpack 2023 is one paragraph. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:17):
Oh,

Ant Pruitt (01:24:18):
<Laugh>. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:24:19):
It's, I'm looking for more. That's it. It's one paragraph. They announced three new versions of the Galaxy S 23 and three new Windows laptops. That's it.

Ant Pruitt (01:24:30):
<Laugh>. Oh, I thought they were Chromebooks. They lap, they were actual Windows devices.

Leo Laporte (01:24:34):
Yeah, I think so. I Your Chromebooks. Chromebooks. I thought they were Chromebooks. No. Oh. No. They're called Galaxy Books, but they're Windows based. So I could see the con confusion there. Three new Galaxy Book. Three offerings, including an ultra tier starting at 2,400 bucks. Everything. Here's, here's the long version of the article. It's just a picture. Well cut. Jeez Louise.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:24:59):
Well I will say as part of the whole XR stuff. <Laugh>. Yeah. And they did have Google folks and Qualcomm folks. I expect at Mobile World Congress coming up in February that Qualcomm's gonna do a bunch of AR compatible ships. So I've been talking to some people. I've, I'm actually trying out these glasses. Well I'm trying out a service, but I had to buy glasses to try out this AR service. And they only work with a very limited number of Qualcomm chips. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I expect Qualcomm to make some announcements at Mobile World Congress related to that. Especially given that Christiano was up on stage at the Samsung event. In the Samsung phones are one of the few places for these fancy Snapdragon ar two gen one chips.

Leo Laporte (01:25:57):
Yeah. No more Exos. They're gonna do Qualcomm. I guess that was the rumor. Is that what they did? Jason's in the chat room, correct? Yeah. So

Ant Pruitt (01:26:07):
That's it. Callcom was there as well as what's his name? Hiroshi. Lockheimer. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:26:13):
Lock. Hiroshi Lockheimer from, from Android of Android. And Google Fame.

Ant Pruitt (01:26:18):
He was also there talking to all Google.

Leo Laporte (01:26:20):
That's funny cuz for a while Samsung never used the A word.

Ant Pruitt (01:26:24):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:26:25):
They didn't wanna mention that these are running on Android. It's like they though, it's like their own thing or something.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:30):
Oh, cuz I mean, well Tyn wasn't even a mobile os was it? It was just, I still

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
Don't know. No, TYN was for their watches. Yeah. I don't think they put on anything but

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:40):
Watch it and their TVs.

Leo Laporte (01:26:42):
Oh that's right. Their, yeah, it was kind of an iop

Stacey Higginbotham (01:26:44):
Use their Android.

Leo Laporte (01:26:45):
Yeah. <laugh>. Well I think when they started they were worried that Google might make Android less desirable for them or have more stringent requirements. Yeah. So they developed a competing operating system and then <laugh> they kind of gave up because in the latest version of the Galaxy Weir watches, it's like it's Android wear plus Tyson. But mostly it's Android wear. I don't think, I don't think Tyson has a big future. Galaxy Book three Ultra got a big flashy introduction on stage. I think the cameras of course are, are gonna be of interest in I'm sure Ant you're interested in what the new cameras will do.

Ant Pruitt (01:27:24):
Well, what I will say about that, sir, is back when iPhone 14 was announced, cuz that was the last big, big time phone release episode one forty seven of my show, hands on photography. I discussed the camera hype and that 50 megapixels and how it's a bunch of bunk <laugh> don't fall. This 200

Leo Laporte (01:27:45):
Mega is 200 megabit four times the bunk.

Ant Pruitt (01:27:49):
You're right. Well said sir. Yeah. Don't fall for this stuff folks. But unfortunately people are and also I'd like to say, don't buy this phone right now. Give it three months. You get it a lot

Leo Laporte (01:28:00):
Cheaper.

Ant Pruitt (01:28:00):
Yeah, because it's not that much better than what you already have.

Leo Laporte (01:28:04):
I have an S 22. I, you know, I people are

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:08):
Keeping their phones longer. Yeah. I think Gartner said that they're not expecting phones, computers, just broadly consumer electronics devices are gonna be down for

Ant Pruitt (01:28:17):
This year. Yeah. I believe Mr. How mentioned a stat like that today with it good job. People hold it onto 'em a lot longer and, and it is what it is. Cuz the phones are, we're at a plate tub, but they can only do so much, you know?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:31):
Yeah. Really the only reason to get rid of them is your security updates after, you know. Right. Depending on what you do. I shouldn't say like for xr. That's why Qualcomm's pushing so hard for xr. That's why all of these guys are, cuz that's gonna be a, a jump enough in performance to get you to upgrade

Leo Laporte (01:28:50):
Presumably. Wow. Look at this. I as a Google Fi user can upgrade to an S 23 plus for 500 bucks, 300 for the S 23 for the ultra 600 half price.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:02):
See, see what's wrong with that picture, sir? Really is half price? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:07):
For you. Yeah, yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:08):
No, this, what color

Leo Laporte (01:29:09):
Should I get? Green Bull Cream, <laugh>, Phantom Black Bull or Lavender.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:15):
These phones are way overpriced. It's ridiculous. We should not have to pay this

Leo Laporte (01:29:20):
For 5 99. 99. Well, that's a pretty good deal. I don't even need to trade in anything. Maybe I'll pick it up for that.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:29):
Why?

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
Why

Ant Pruitt (01:29:30):
5 99? Why don't

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:32):
Buy a cool kitchen gadget?

Ant Pruitt (01:29:33):
Oh 5 99. I get it. Thousand dollars. I don't, these phones just, they're not Well, the

Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
List, the list for this 5 99 is twice that. It's 1379. Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:43):
1379.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:43):
I can show you a list price. <Laugh>. And you know, if you wanna pay it, feel

Leo Laporte (01:29:47):
Free. $600 off for Google Fire customers not, how could I not buy it? <Laugh>, that's Leo's reflex. How could, by the way, you were gonna, you were gonna test something for me for this week. What was that? The, the new voice. Better voice stuff on the oh crap. I was seven. Let me call you <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:06):
You disappointed me

Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
Again. <Laugh>. Lemme call you. I'll just call. I turn it

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:10):
On. Hold

Leo Laporte (01:30:11):
On. I turn it on, but I forgot to do anything with it. Who could I call? Who could I call? Do we have a phone number I can call put on? No, I, I need to be able to put it on your Well, Lisa

Ant Pruitt (01:30:24):
Have jammer. B go to the booth and stand next to the mic. There in the booth.

Leo Laporte (01:30:29):
<Laugh>. Oh, I could call my iPhone. You need background noise? I need to turn on the, the the, the leaf blower. Do we have a leaf blower?

Ant Pruitt (01:30:39):
Oh, get me. Where's Mr. Burger? Get

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
Me a leaf blower.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:42):
I can, I can ring the doorbell in. My dog can go. Oh wait, no, you need my dog to be with you. Nevermind.

Leo Laporte (01:30:47):
<Laugh>. I'm gonna call myself. There's the TVs outta the background. I'm gonna call myself and then

Stacey Higginbotham (01:30:57):
I could type What if you call me while I'm typing if it can

Leo Laporte (01:31:00):
Cut out Stacey's typing. Well, no call. No, it's, it, it cuts out my end of the thing.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:06):
Oh, sorry. I I need this

Leo Laporte (01:31:09):
Technology. Oh, it went straight to voicemail because I'm on the radio <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (01:31:12):
I'm never looking at the, I'm looking at the Gizmoto article.

Leo Laporte (01:31:17):
I could call something, but I, but I need it to be really loud behind me. Like, you need to be mowing the carpet or something. Does, does, do you have an air compressor? Do we have an air compressor? That'd be good. Anyway. <laugh>, you failed me again. So get the Dyson and vacuum behind me. <Laugh>. <laugh>. I'm gonna call him. Okay, we're gonna turn on the radio. Get the Dyson, hold on. I gotta get Jeff's number here. Do I have your number?

Ant Pruitt (01:31:47):
Oh, this is gold.

Leo Laporte (01:31:49):
I might have your number. 

Ant Pruitt (01:31:51):
And here comes Mr. Nielsen.

Leo Laporte (01:31:53):
Okay. I do have, it's just a 9 0 8 number, right? Yeah, that's right. Okay. okay. I'm gonna call you right now. Jeff. Video call? No, just regular phone. Freaking call. Okay. I'm calling.

Ant Pruitt (01:32:07):
Oh, that's why those phones cost a thousand dollars

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
<Laugh>. I'm calling Jeff right now. Okay. And, and pick up Jeff. Hello? Hello, Jeff. It's me Leo calling. It's a little bit loud back here. Computer. Go ahead. Turn on the radio. Bring on more noise.

Ant Pruitt (01:32:23):
Mute your microphone. Mr.

Leo Laporte (01:32:24):
Jones. Do you hear me? Does it sound okay? Do you hear, do you hear? Absolutely <laugh>.

Speaker 10 (01:32:30):
That's great. Well, wait, wait. I, I barely hear the vacuum. Yeah, you can

Leo Laporte (01:32:36):
Barely hear the vacuum. It's nice in the, it's nice the vacuum. Put the vacuum right next to, it's really noisy in here. Can you hear me? Ok?

Speaker 10 (01:32:43):
Can hear it kinda working and try to get rid of it. Gets rid of the vacuum. It

Leo Laporte (01:32:46):
Doesn't, it does. Get rid of the vacuum. Look at

Speaker 10 (01:32:48):
That at sound. Timmy.

Leo Laporte (01:32:50):
Hold here. I'm gonna turn off my mic and hold your phone up to your mic.

Speaker 11 (01:32:58):
Can you hear, can you hear the, the vacuum come back in my head, so, yeah, I don't hear the vacuum at

Leo Laporte (01:33:05):
All. I

Ant Pruitt (01:33:05):
Don't hear a vacuum. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
Hear it. Yeah. Here if you, I mean, you can hear it. Yeah. Could you get over there?

Ant Pruitt (01:33:12):
You missed the studio, Mike, but not with the phone. <Laugh>. Get, tell 'em to get close

Speaker 11 (01:33:17):
The mic. You hear it, but you don't hear it on the phone, so that's pretty good. It works well.

Ant Pruitt (01:33:23):
Yeah. That's impressive.

Leo Laporte (01:33:27):
No, now it, now the, the noise is gone. Can you still hear

Ant Pruitt (01:33:30):
Me Mr. The victor's not gonna enjoy edit. I can hear

Leo Laporte (01:33:32):
You. Yes. Oh, okay. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:34):
Sorry. Your voice sounds a little tinny on it, but

Leo Laporte (01:33:38):
Well, I'm on a phone, but you

Speaker 10 (01:33:39):
Couldn't hear the vacuum.

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:40):
I'm so used to you being high

Leo Laporte (01:33:42):
Quality. Yeah, that's right. But you couldn't hear the vacuum, Leo, so I could No, that's pretty good. Just

Speaker 11 (01:33:47):
Try to get in once in a while

Jeff Jarvis (01:33:49):
Then, and then it went out. It, it, no, and took

Leo Laporte (01:33:50):
It out every once in a while. You hear it? Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:33:52):
Like I need to pull his voice, pull his novels up. Hold on.

Leo Laporte (01:33:54):
This is the new feature on the Google Fi on the pixel called I'm wanna hang up on you now, Jeff. I wish I could gonna hang up. Jesus reels Leo. Oh, rude. This is the clear calling. I said good thing that, that you could turn on. I said Good day sir. <Laugh> you could turn on, on the on the phone and I guess it works. So that's good. It wasn't

Ant Pruitt (01:34:17):
As impressive.

Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
Yeah, it's in the system here. You can see over, over my shoulder. I, if you can see over the shoulder. But use clear calling. Clear is available depending on your wifi and mobile network connection content from your call is not sent to Google. Reduces background noises during calls. So there you go. Not available though on other Android phones. This is a pixel only

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:38):
The seven, which I, you know that I'm wondering whether I wanna buy the seven.

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
Well, it says it uses the AI chip in here, right? It's using the Yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (01:34:45):
Exactly. That's why it's only

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
Available there. Neural processor. So yeah, it worked good. Pretty good. Yeah. Pretty sweet. All right, let's take a little break. I gotta talk about a sponsor and we will continue with our fabulous show. Oh, I'm excited cuz this week I have a little chore to do. I'm upgrading my eight sleep pod to the new pod three cover. Now I, I don't, you know, I'm gonna do it cuz we wanna try it. But we've had the pod eight sleep pod cover for more than a year now. You may remember you talking about putting it on and everything. We've been through a summer, a hot, hot summer, and a cold, cold winter band. It's really cold right now. It's, it, it literally we're having frost every night and it's great. Lisa gets in, she says, I'm turning it up to 10. I said, fine. The eight sleep is so cool because you got, each sign of the bed has its own settings.

(01:35:39):
It can cool. And in the summer you're gonna love this as cool as 55 degrees you can heat to up to 110 degrees. And the whole point is to give you a better night's sleep. Not merely to keep you warm and cozier or cool during a hot night, but to give you a good night's sleep. In fact, I have this, the sleep doctor turn on with the eight sleep and it automatically monitors my heart rate, my breathing, my movements, and it cools off as I get into deeper sleep. Which it actually, it nudges me into deep sleep. So the way I have it said, it's, it's, it's warm when I get in bed cuz you know, I get under the covers. Oh, it's nice and cozy at least in the winter. And then a cools off and I go into deeper and deeper sleep. And then I have it set to start warming up in the morning.

(01:36:25):
And I wake up in the morning and I'm nice and cozy again. Look, good. Sleep is the ultimate game changer. Nature's gentle nurse and the pod cover of the ultimate Sleep machine. Consistent good sleep can reduce the likelihood of serious health issues. It could decrease the risk of heart disease. It can lower your blood pressure, even reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. God knows I need that. If you're struggling to fall asleep or if you wake up in the middle of the night or you fight with your partner over the thermostat, you will love the eight Sleep Pod cover works hard all night long to improve your sleep so you don't have to. And Lisa and I get different temperatures. It also saves us money cuz I don't put on the heat at night. I don't have to use the AC in the, in the summer because we're automatic. It's, it's actually a great way to efficiently keep you comfortable all night long. The pod cover fits on any mattress. You can adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment so you get the optimal temperature. As I said, Lisa likes it really hot last night. She said, come on, reach over, feel how hot it is. She said, how can you, how can you take that? She said, I love it. I love it. <Laugh>,

(01:37:32):
I'm a little bit more moderate in all of that. In addition to the best in class temperature regulation, it even knows what the room temperature is. So it really is responding to the environment as well as to how you are sleeping. Your biometrics, your sleep stages. They've got sensors to track your health and sleep metrics without the need to wear any you, you know, wearable devices. I don't have to wear my Apple Watch or, or anything like that. I get all those in the morning. It tells me how I slept. I can't wait. We're gonna put the pods recover on this weekend. I can't wait. Scott. More sensors, that's the one you'll be getting Better sleep. It's the health habit you will love. Sticking to night after night. Wake up fully energized with the pod cover and you can tackle whatever life throws at you. Go to eight sleep.com/twitch. Spell it out. E i g h t eight sleep.com/twit. Save $150 a checkout on the pod cover eight sleep currently ships within the us, Canada, the uk Select countries in the eu. And good news, cuz it's really hot in Australia right now at ships to Australia as well. Eight sleep.com/twit. It's so nice to have exactly the right temperature when you, you're get into bed. I love it. Eight sleep.com/twi. Thank you. Eight sleep for supporting our show and thank you for supporting the show by going to eight sleep.com/twit.

Ant Pruitt (01:38:55):
That thing is a game, a game changer. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:38:57):
You got, you just got one didn't you? Oh,

Ant Pruitt (01:38:59):
Did you love it? My gosh, it's a game changer. You know you, you know the hat that I normally wear into the studio serve. You

Leo Laporte (01:39:07):
Wear that to

Ant Pruitt (01:39:07):
Bed. Folly challenged. Yeah. <laugh>. I wear, I wear that to bed typically because Queen Pruitt likes to turn on the fan <laugh> and my head just came. You handle that. I don't like that. So now the fan, my friend doesn't come on.

Leo Laporte (01:39:22):
Yeah, cuz she's cool.

Ant Pruitt (01:39:23):
Yeah, yeah. The fan doesn't come on anymore. And that side of the big, it's it's, it, it really chills down. It's it's Game Changer. I envisioned you at one of those, those, those those cartoony Sleepy. I almost bought one Pajama. It was just a prove the point to her. Yeah. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:39:41):
I in my what what I in my night shirt and my That's right Cafe. That's right. Just settled down to a long winter's nap

Ant Pruitt (01:39:48):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:39:49):
Well yeah. I'm so glad you got one. You have the pod three. I'm a little jealous, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna install it this weekend.

Ant Pruitt (01:39:57):
Just follow the instructions and follow the instructions please. They

Leo Laporte (01:40:00):
Give you, did you have any trouble? It was me because you, it's easy, right? Easy if you, if you watch the video ahead of time, <laugh>, I put it on upside down. It was just, it was dumb. It was me,

Ant Pruitt (01:40:11):
<Laugh>. It was dumb.

Leo Laporte (01:40:13):
We are learning more about the Google layoffs. Of course. It was great to have Richard Hay on last week to talk about, you know, the, the human side of it. Yes. Among other groups laid off. We mentioned Area one 20, the r and d division completely stripped of employees. Google's Fuchsia OS was also hard hit. I'm kind of fuchsia lost 16% of its employees. The rest of it was Google was 6%. So it's a higher percentage. But does that mean there's nobody left at Fuchsia? There's 400 people working on the new operating system. Fuchsia is a new operating system from Google, probably Blue Sky. Right? I don't know if they wanna replace Windows or, or Android with it, but they, they were working on it. It had some really interesting ideas, right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:05):
It's an i o t. It's, it's four devices, not just like, not smartphones or computers. It's for like other devices is my thinking or is what I thought Future was about. And it's designed to go all the way up from a large capable processor down to a more restrained processor. Yeah. So I looked at it as a unifying operating system that could go like where OS goes all the way up to running on like a Google display.

Leo Laporte (01:41:33):
Well, and you're right, we're getting it. If you have a Nest Smart display, it's on there on most of 'em, right? So it is, it is running it, it replaced cast os it's not based on Linux. It's ground up, it's Blue Sky,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:47):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:41:48):
Greenfield. So it might be, I've got my colors mixed up. It's Greenfield as well as Blue Skies

Ant Pruitt (01:41:54):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:56):
Well, I mean it exists so it's not, I feel like once, once it's out in the world, it's not really blue sky. Right? Oh

Leo Laporte (01:42:01):
Well I only say blue sky cuz I think it's, I don't even think Google knows exactly what they want to do with it. They haven't really said

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:07):
Yeah, it does it. Okay. Is that blue sky or pie in the sky?

Leo Laporte (01:42:12):
<Laugh>? Well is there's, there's a, there's 16% fewer people working on it. What's 16% of 400?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:20):
They've been working on it for so long. I've never built an operating system, so, you know, but my understanding is it takes a long time. There's several different layers. Yeah. So maybe

Ant Pruitt (01:42:30):
This isn't something that's killed off just from the layoffs. It's just to reduce work workforce is what you're saying.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:36):
Well maybe they've done all the hardest work.

Ant Pruitt (01:42:39):
Maybe. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:41):
<Laugh>. I dunno. Okay. Awesome. Maybe they need different people for a new phase of the os

Leo Laporte (01:42:49):
You know according to ours, Technica, the biggest questions surrounding future are why does this exist? <Laugh> <laugh> and what are its, what are its goals? Is Fusia an eventual replacement for Android or Chrome os? Around 2018 when we got Fusia running on a Pixel book, the source code documentation for the custom kernel says it targets modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors. But as you point out, up to now, it's been entirely used on IOT devices. So it's just unclear. I would still

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:25):
Love to see coming together of Android and

Leo Laporte (01:43:27):
Chrome. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:43:31):
The same way. Really Apple is doing it with really synergy.

Jeff Jarvis (01:43:36):
Well, I don't, I don't know Apple well enough

Leo Laporte (01:43:39):
Anymore. Here's why I say it's Blue Sky, Hiroshi Lockheimer in 2019 said, we're looking at what a new take on an operating system could be like. And so I know out there people are getting pretty excited saying, oh, this is the new Android, or Oh, this is the new chromo. S fuchsia is really not about that. Fuchsia is just about pushing the state-of-the-art in terms of operating systems and things we learned from Fusia we can incorporate into other products. That's pretty blue sky, right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:06):
No, dear God, I don't even know why it exists. No,

Leo Laporte (01:44:09):
No

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:09):
One does. Why did they only fire 16%

Leo Laporte (01:44:12):
Of

Stacey Higginbotham (01:44:12):
The people if they're worried?

Ant Pruitt (01:44:13):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:44:13):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's four times 16 is 56 people. So that's not a huge number out of 400. But it's, you know, it's something

Ant Pruitt (01:44:23):
Yeah. Wow. Empty dust around you.

Leo Laporte (01:44:26):
64. Did I do my math wrong? I did. Yeah, you

Ant Pruitt (01:44:28):
Did. That's okay.

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
Hey in the same year, 2022 last year, one fuchsia team member said on Hacker News, fuchsia isn't necessarily targeting end users or application developers. Fuchsia exists to make products easier to build and maintain products are responsible for the app developer and end user experience. Well that's clear as nerdy mud.

Ant Pruitt (01:44:53):
It's what a nerdy,

Leo Laporte (01:44:54):
Nerdy It's 

Ant Pruitt (01:44:58):
So it's not going

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
Anywhere. Riding and nerdy

Ant Pruitt (01:45:00):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:45:01):
I think there's a small chance that everything that fuchsia has done ends up being inside the linnux kernel.

Ant Pruitt (01:45:07):
<Laugh>. There you go. <Laugh>. It's what a nerdy, it ain't going anywhere. It's nerdy. Yeah. You'll keep working on this.

Leo Laporte (01:45:13):
Yeah. You know what? File those 60 fire, those 64 people or you know what? They would've been better is move on. No, no. They,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:18):
They're people don't, don't say anything you would

Leo Laporte (01:45:21):
Regret. There are people, people I agree. And, and in fact, that's why I like what Intel did. Intel had a terrible quarter.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:28):
Yeah, they did.

Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
But instead of firing people, they all took a cut in pay, including 25% for the ceo, E O Pat Gelsinger.

Ant Pruitt (01:45:36):
Good for them. It

Leo Laporte (01:45:37):
Was the worst decade worst earnings in over a decade. 32% drop

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:44):
In revenue. Yeah. That required some sort of public apology, reation kind of thing.

Leo Laporte (01:45:50):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. I think though you know, 5% cut and pay to the rank and file 25% to the c e. That's a good, that's an interesting take a better way maybe than firing 12,000 people, which is what Google did.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:05):
So what does he earn afterwards? How does it change?

Leo Laporte (01:46:08):
Oh, I'm sure Gelsinger is doing just fine. Thank you. Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:12):
I mean he's he's legitimately saved several big companies, so I'm not

Leo Laporte (01:46:16):
It's Yeah, no, it's pro. It's more symbolic that it, he took that Right.

Ant Pruitt (01:46:22):
I respect that. He didn't necessarily have to make it public, but I respect that. What, what, what triggered these, these massive losses for Intel? I I, I can't assume that Apple is eaten that much of their pie with, with its

Leo Laporte (01:46:37):
No PC sales are down, down, down. Even Apple sales are down, down, down. But PC sales down by 30 to 40% for the manufacturers down

Ant Pruitt (01:46:45):
From pandemic

Leo Laporte (01:46:48):
Down from pandemic.

Ant Pruitt (01:46:49):
Nice. Yeah. But

Leo Laporte (01:46:50):
Still down. Even from pre pandemic numbers, it's not been a good Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:46:54):
And Intel never got, they never did Well on the graphics front and it's really in their lunch now cuz they didn't have a compelling piece of silicon to do graphics. So AMDs, I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:47:06):
Yeah. And remember that I, Intel under Gelsinger, Intel has kind of changed course. They've decided mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, instead of being an integrated chip design and manufacturer company, they're gonna kind of be both. They're gonna do chip design and they're gonna be foundries for other companies like Apple. Just to answer your question, Stacey Gelsinger pay will be cut by $312,000. So this again involves math, but that sounds like he's still getting a good amount of money. <Laugh>. Mm-hmm. Yeah. A million bucks still in his pocket. His base pay was one and a quarter million. Intels that's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:43):
Actually not

Ant Pruitt (01:47:43):
Terrible. That's not bad that,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:47:45):
That's I'm like, go, go him.

Ant Pruitt (01:47:47):
Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:47:48):
Yeah. That's

Ant Pruitt (01:47:50):
Impressive.

Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
Well, the majority of his compensation is from stock awards and options, so. Right. You know, when we're talking salary, that's not all of it. Total value of his 2021 compensation package. Stand back. 178 million.

Ant Pruitt (01:48:07):
There we go. Shares <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:48:10):
There it is.

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
Holy Kaly. Yeah. He got 140 million in stock awards last year or 2021. Oh, nevermind.

Ant Pruitt (01:48:23):
My former c e o had a track record of going in and helping rebuild companies, if you will, and get them back on track and profitable. And when I was in school, one of my classmates was like, Hey, I know you're a C E O. He came in and and helped us out. And when we tried to pay him, he didn't want to get paid. He just wanted options. And sure enough that <laugh>, he made way more money that way. Oh, sure.

Leo Laporte (01:48:49):
Versus

Ant Pruitt (01:48:50):
Well get in the salary. I

Leo Laporte (01:48:51):
Rest my case. Geez. Intel's gonna cut 401K matching from 5% to two and a 5%. Executive team members will take a 15% cut. Senior managers, mid-level managers will see 10% and 5% respectively. Lower level employees will not be affected according to the Wall Street Journal. So that's good. I mean, you're, you're not gonna have the same four [inaudible] contributions. Yeah. But you won't, your salary isn't gonna be cut.

Ant Pruitt (01:49:20):
And again, same said c e o at the time when we were struggling, part of the discussion was, all right, we're not gonna lay people off. Health insurance prices are raising, but we're gonna handle that. We just can't give y'all any raises at the moment, but we're gonna make sure your health insurance is squared away and we're not gonna match as much on the 401k or what have you. And it kept everybody employed and it was totally fine. That's I think the right thing to do. Got better. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:48):
Intel is targeting 3 billion in cost cuts this year increasing to as much as 10 billion a year by 2025. And they're not ruling out layoffs. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But so far, dude,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:02):
So Intel hasn't done layoffs yet?

Leo Laporte (01:50:04):
Not yet. Okay.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:07):
Everybody else has.

Ant Pruitt (01:50:08):
Good for him. Yeah. Cuz the rest of the valley is

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:11):
All Judges Valley now.

Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
Apple hasn't either, but Apple didn't hire as many people during pandemic, so

Ant Pruitt (01:50:16):
Yes, yes. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:50:20):
You wanna do a change log? Why don't we do a change log, play that play the trumpets there.

Speaker 12 (01:50:26):
The Google change log.

Leo Laporte (01:50:31):
Somebody said I, I've been going too fast to the change log, so I'm gonna really slow. Has

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:35):
This nothing been any

Leo Laporte (01:50:35):
Good in there? Slow this down. Like

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:37):
You're gonna slow it down and drag it out. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:50:39):
No. Android 13 <laugh>.

Jeff Jarvis (01:50:42):
Oh. Oh no. Where's Stacey? Stacey, go get your waffle. You got,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:48):
Yeah. I'm gonna need some waffle times

Leo Laporte (01:50:49):
Two PR beta two now available for pixel phones. Bueller, Bueller there's a fix coming to the latest pixel. Budds Acers. Feel like there's always a fix coming to the Pixel Buds series. <Laugh> 3.51 9.0 firmware update. Oh, the current one breaks Bluetooth pairing. Oh. Whoops. So they're gonna fix that.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:51:15):
Hey, I don't, why are these so bad? Why is, why are good earbuds so hard for Google to do Google? I just don't get it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:23):
I'm the ones I got now. I like,

Ant Pruitt (01:51:25):
I've had a problem with the series. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:51:27):
Okay.

Ant Pruitt (01:51:27):
Okay. That's,

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:28):
And I don't forget, I was a major complainer about the last one. The ones now

Ant Pruitt (01:51:32):
Good. Mine have been alright too. Other than I I have one in a bag of rice right now because Oops.

Leo Laporte (01:51:38):
So <laugh>, did you swallow it? Whiskey

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:41):
Shower with

Ant Pruitt (01:51:42):
I got in a shower, wasn't paying attention. I was listening to a book and

Jeff Jarvis (01:51:47):
I do that every now and then.

Ant Pruitt (01:51:48):
Don't they make

Leo Laporte (01:51:50):
Waterproof ones you could wear in

Ant Pruitt (01:51:52):
The shower? Yeah, but it's on like waterproof. You can only do so much. 

Leo Laporte (01:51:56):
Yeah

Ant Pruitt (01:51:56):
With that IP IP rate, what is the ipss rating? I don't remember what it is, but apparently, apparently it's not good enough for the shower. So one is in a bag of rice at the moment. Hopefully. Good

Leo Laporte (01:52:06):
Luck to God bless. Youtube TV is losing MLB network starting today. That's kind of bad news cuz baseball's about to start up Pitchers and catchers.

Ant Pruitt (01:52:16):
Yeah, it's the

Leo Laporte (01:52:17):
Seasoning. Yeah. Yeah. Starting January 31st. MLB network content will no longer be available on YouTube tv. We did mention though that YouTube did get the Sunday N F L Sunday ticket. So they're gonna have football, big money, but they could not make a deal with major League baseball. So the baseball channel will no longer be available. You know, they're not done. Google says we're gonna continue conversations in the hope of restoring their content. Meanwhile, you'll be able to continue watching select MLB games via coverage on your local, you know, Fox tbs. Yeah. March 30th baseball begins. <Laugh> Google is hosting Google Next 2023 in August. In person.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:10):
Oh, that's a weird time.

Leo Laporte (01:53:12):
Well, it's not Google io. Isn't Google io? Usually earlier, but they didn't mention it.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:15):
Oh yeah. IO is usually in May. In May. Yeah. And then they have Google, their Google this, this is on Google Cloud, which is Google next. This cloud. Yeah. Yeah, Google Next is usually in,

Leo Laporte (01:53:27):
Well, this is their cloud thing. It's cloud next cloud thing. Yeah. Yeah. It'll host an in-person event for the first time since 20, actually, since 2019. The 2020 event was canceled. 2021 was virtual. There was a physical component last year. Well, April, 2019. Oh, okay. So things are back to normal with Moscone Center Cloud next 23. I've never been have have, have you been to a next? I've never been.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:54):
I have, I actually met a not a reader, a listener. I was in line for a thing and someone was like, Stacey, I watch you on this weekend. Google. And I was like, holy

Leo Laporte (01:54:05):
Boldy. Oh, nice. Wow.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:06):
It was very nice. Yes. They were a very nice person.

Leo Laporte (01:54:09):
They I guess next they'll have a lot of stuff, though. I learned about the latest Google advancements in ai, data security, productivity and more Explore keynotes, breakout sessions, demos, hands on labs, training certification opportunities on site here, updates on product roadmaps. Connect with Google thought leaders. There will be select next 23 experiences online and on demand. The rumor is Google IO will take place in May, but they haven't made an announcement yet. Will they let the press back in? Well, if this, if Google Cloud next is in person, I, I wonder maybe they will that what was in person

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:49):
The cloud next is an actual, like, developer focused conference. I guess IO is two, but it

Leo Laporte (01:54:56):
That's confusing. Let's Cloud

Stacey Higginbotham (01:54:58):
Next seems bigger.

Leo Laporte (01:54:59):
Yeah. Bigger than io. Really?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:03):
Well, I, I'm just judging by the press. Jason Events at io. Yeah. Stacey, do you think next is more

Leo Laporte (01:55:10):
Customer based? We're cloud services?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:13):
I mean, it is more like, I guess I associate next with being a larger event than io, but when I think about io, I only go to like the big first day keynote launch stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:55:24):
Yeah. IO journalists usually are kicked out, aren't they? After the keynote and you have to go home. I can't remember. No. Maybe that was Apple. That was Apple that did then. All right. They just kick you out. They kick me out. <Laugh> Chrome for Android is rolling out fingerprint unlock for incognito tabs.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:55:42):
What?

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:43):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:55:44):
Chrome. Sure. Let me parse that sentence. <Laugh>,

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:48):
You got poured on your, on your Yeah. Tab. And your boss comes in. You can't find out what was on your tab unless you're there with your fingerprint. Yep. Held against your will. Yep. Oh boy.

Leo Laporte (01:55:58):
Oh yeah. You could turn on a fingerprint unlock or lock, lock incognito tabs. When you leave Chrome, that'll now be a switch and you can unlock with your fingerprint or a or pin, obviously. Huh. That's nice. And here's a little public service announcement from your friends at the Verge. Gmail's new package tracking interface is live, but you have to turn it on. Did you know they were gonna put a package tracking interface in? I did. It's Optin. So what you do, what you do here is you, is you go to an iOS, you go to the package, you go to the data privacy menu, and there's a package tracking toggle there. Of course, data privacy. That makes sense on Android. It's in general. Either way,

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:57):
<Laugh>. It's in general. What in general. These change logs Sure. Are fascinating. Fascinating. Spend a lot of time on.

Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
Let's spend more time. Now it's time for Scooter X's change log.

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:11):
Here it is <laugh>, because we haven't had it

Leo Laporte (01:57:16):
Up. New leak spec suggest Pixel Tablet Pro might not be a thing after all. Might not be a thing. Oh. we are gonna

Jeff Jarvis (01:57:26):
Get you just so cruel. You, you boost me up and let me down the same

Leo Laporte (01:57:30):
Line. Nice. He's mean. We are gonna get a review copy of this just for you, Jeff, so I can talk about it. Father Robert brought it in during after ces, during Twitter a few weeks ago. Ace's gonna send us their new Chromebooks. These are no, oops. These are nice looking, nice looking devices. The Chromebook Vera seven 12, which is designed to be beat, you know, in, up in classrooms. And, and then there's the top of the line. This, the beautiful aluminum Vero. So I think these are gonna be very nice. They, the Vero 7 12, 429 bucks. The HP we'll launch in April. The model with the I three will be 5 29.

(01:58:16):
So there you go. They're also gonna do some lower end devices. Classroom ready stuff is gonna be available by the end of April as well. Let's see, what is else is in the scooter X change log. Google says lens and maps live. You are a prelude to its long-term for ar Lance Maps life. You're ude to its long term. That's, that's when Hiroshi Lockheimer stro onto the stage at the event this morning. Apparently, even though Hiroshi was there. Jason says, he only said the word Google once and they never said the word Android, so That's right. <Laugh>. That's weird. Yeah. Yeah. That's weird. Lockheimer highlighted. Google Meet with live sharing for Samsung notes and rcs in messages. Do you still have the flip phone, Stacey? The set Galaxy for I do. Do you still, is it, is the screen holding up and everything?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:20):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
You like it,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:23):
It works.

Leo Laporte (01:59:23):
Yeah. I'm

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:24):
Thinking when they, I mean, I'm still using

Leo Laporte (01:59:25):
It, so they don't do, I'm

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:26):
Probably gonna go ahead.

Leo Laporte (01:59:35):
Okay. I guess I'll talk. They <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:38):
<Laugh>. I was like, no one else is frozen, but Leo's frozen. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:59:43):
I mean, he was legit frozen. That was pretty, that was

Stacey Higginbotham (01:59:46):
Impressive. That was good. No

Leo Laporte (01:59:47):
One to do. No, I'm melting. I was like, dang, that's a glitch in the Matrix. <Laugh>, they don't usually do the folding phones till the fall. But I, I though I, maybe cuz I'm falling for the ad campaign, but I think that actually that flip, I might get the next one when it comes out. But you, but the main thing of course is the concern about the screen, but you, you, you use it, right? You open it and close it open and goes. Yeah. Yeah. And it survives. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:11):
Mean, I think I used my phone a normal amount or an abnormal amount. I'd probably pick it up 20 or 30 times a

Leo Laporte (02:00:19):
Day. Yeah. Good. That's good to know. The hospital, I saw a guy using it to do a video call. I think it's cool cuz you can leave it there. Unfolded half folded right on the table. I don't know. I'm thinking maybe, oh, you

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:30):
Know what? I don't do that. Oh, okay. I guess I could. But

Leo Laporte (02:00:34):
Chromecast with Google T before K gets its first update of 2023, Google's reportedly testing an alternate homepage with ChatGPT, stock q and A prompts. So that's that's from the Verge confirming what we thought. Project Bard. I think that's I think that's it. Riveting.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:00:57):
Yes. Oh, that was

Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
Great. One more. This I saw this concerned me a little bit. You don't want it to end too soon? No, no. We love the change lock. Google FI says hackers access to customer information. There was a data breach likely related to the security incident at T-Mobile according to Tech Crunch. T-Mobile lost a significant, I think se was it 17 million customer records. And the email sent to customers on Monday, which I have not received. But, but a couple of people yesterday said they had, Google said the primary network provider for Google Fi recently informed the company that'd been suspicious activity relating to a third party support system containing a limited amount of GoogleFi data. Of course, GoogleFi rides on T-Mobile, so it makes sense that this would be an issue with T-Mobile's hack. Google said hackers did not take customers personal information, payment card data, passwords, pins, or even the contents of text messages or calls while some email said there's no action required. At least one GoogleFi customer said in a Reddit post that their phone number had been briefly hijacked sim swapped for two hours. So that's something to be aware of. I f I've always felt fairly secure with my GoogleFi phone number. I use that for most of my two factor when they say, you gotta have a phone number for that. I use the Google find number, not the T-Mobile number. But now I'm starting to think, huh. And ladies and gentlemen, that's the Google change log.

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:36):
Oh, we hardly knew you change log.

Leo Laporte (02:02:38):
That was a quickie.

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:39):
You're over. So soon.

Leo Laporte (02:02:41):
So soon. Is there any, who is

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:44):
It? Who is it? Who gives you such stuff about the change lock?

Leo Laporte (02:02:47):
Oh, you know, random, random listeners. Just random

Stacey Higginbotham (02:02:51):
People who really care about the change

Leo Laporte (02:02:53):
Lock. I get email. I get email, I get a lot of email <laugh>. I get feedback via email. Thank you everybody.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:00):
Do you care about this is, this is the democracy segment. Yeah. Do you care about artifact? Kevin Systems's new thing?

Leo Laporte (02:03:10):
Yeah. So the founders of Instagram have started something new, which I immediately of course, and I'm sure you did too, asked for, signed up for admission to, but you, you know, it's not open to the public yet. It's called Artifact. And the idea is it is a AI curated news, which I don't honestly know how that's different from everything else.

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:31):
I'm not sure either MikeQ and what's his name? Who invented the the, the, the hashtag 

Leo Laporte (02:03:40):
Oh, Christmas. Christmas

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:41):
Cina. We're just in a discussion on mask dot about it.

Leo Laporte (02:03:44):
So Mike is the Flipboard guy, right?

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:46):
Founder of Flipboard.

Leo Laporte (02:03:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So he has some interest in this

Jeff Jarvis (02:03:49):
Little flip boardy. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:03:50):
Yeah. Here's the post. Excited to announce what Kevin and I have been working on with the talented team. The past year artifact. A personalized news feed driven by the latest in artificial intelligence. You, have you gotten an invite yet, Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:07):
Nope.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:09):
Sometimes I feel like these people just had one good idea. And now they're just like Silicon Valley's full of people who had one good idea. They managed to make a scale and then they give him money the next time the big idea comes around to give them something that like, I don't know.

Leo Laporte (02:04:22):
I feel

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:22):
That way. This is just my skeptic. Exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:24):
One person e e Williams is the person who's done it three times.

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
Medium. Was

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:30):
Medium

Leo Laporte (02:04:30):
Switch a huge success.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:32):
No, but it's still alive.

Leo Laporte (02:04:33):
It's still there. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:35):
Tony

Stacey Higginbotham (02:04:36):
Sos does not dead yet. Hot

Leo Laporte (02:04:38):
Dead yet. <Laugh> Spotify among, among many tech companies doing big layoffs, including their head of podcasting. Whoops. Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:48):
What do we think of that?

Leo Laporte (02:04:49):
Whoops. Little astro. Well, well, I don't, I don't know. This is Daniel x email or blog post. As part of this change, Don Ostro has decided to depart Spotify. Don made a tremendous mark, not only not

Stacey Higginbotham (02:05:12):
Giving them any money anymore. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:05:13):
Right. <Laugh>, if you're not gonna pay me, I guess I'll quit. Don Don has made a tremendous mark, not only on Spotify, but in the audio industry overall, because of her effort. Spotify grew our podcast content by 40 times. 40 times zero. Still zero. So must have had some drove significant innovation in the medium and became the leading music and podcast service in many markets, blah, blah, blah. Thanks to our work, Spotify was able to innovate on the ads format itself and more than double the revenue of our advertising business too. How much do you think Spotify makes on ads?

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:54):
No. Mm-hmm.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:05:56):
They spend a lot.

Leo Laporte (02:05:58):
Do they make 1.5 billion euros? Geez.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:01):
Whoa. So that's a lot. Okay, good. Whoa,

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
Whoa. Is right. That's a, that's like twice what we make. 

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:11):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Where's Anne's coffee machine then? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:06:17):
Don will, in the near term, Don will assume the role of senior advisor to help facilitate this transition. Yeah. There, so

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:24):
Do you think there'll be media stories now saying, oh, podcasting is dead because Spotify

Leo Laporte (02:06:28):
Is tired? Yeah. That, if that ha Yes, of course. That's exactly how the media

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:32):
Reaction were media. I mean, there were stories earlier that podcasting hit hit a bump in the road. So

Leo Laporte (02:06:40):
Yeah, there's there

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:40):
Podcasting winter as it were.

Leo Laporte (02:06:43):
There was a story that last year, 80 something like 80% fewer new podcasts were launched, which as far as I'm concerned is great. Keep up the good work. Stop launching those podcasts when they also, another thing they've learned, and Spotify's learned this, but others like iHeart have learned it better. These celebrity podcasts are not a panacea, you know, just cuz you've got a big name doing a podcast, you get some initial interest, but it does not mean long-term listenership. Right. So Right. On the other hand, they, I think Joe Rogan is a good part, good percentage of that 1.5 billion euros. He's been very successful for Spotify. Well, is it

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:19):
Advertising or is it, is it subscription fees that he

Leo Laporte (02:07:21):
Drives advert? Oh, ads. Ads are like a million bucks on Joe Rogan. They're very expensive. Oh, geez. Wow. Really? Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:28):
Why do you wanna talk to those guys that much? Do they buy that much stuff?

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:33):
They buy

Leo Laporte (02:07:36):
Pick up trucks with false goads in in the back? I don't know. It's goads. You mean those little swinging metal? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. No, I don't think, I think Joe, I think Joe's audience is young men and, and advertisers are desperate to get young men because they don't, they don't, they're not traditional media consumers. So if that's the only way they can reach 'em, that's where Joe's gonna make a lot of money. I'm sure that was the logic anyway, behind it. Yeah. men, men, like 18 to 25 are no, well humans, 18 to 25 are notoriously hard to reach in traditional media. They don't watch tv. They don't buy magazines, they barely see billboards. They don't listen to the radio. So podcaster, sometimes you billboards <laugh>, they go whizzing by them at high speed. Hey everybody. Leo Laport here. I'm the founder and one of the hosts at the TWIT Podcast Network.

(02:08:29):
I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at twit because I think it's unique and I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do. Here at twit, we've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product. Our mission statement is twit, is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. Well already you should be, your ears should be perking up at that because highly engaged is good for you. Tech enthusiasts, if that's who you're looking for, this is the place we do it by offering 'em the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world. And I hear from our audience all the time, part of that knowledge comes from our advertisers.

(02:09:20):
We are very careful. We pick advertisers with great products, great services with integrity, and introduce them to our audience with authenticity and genuine enthusiasm. And that makes our host Red Ads different from anything else you can buy. We are literally bringing you to the attention of our audience and giving you a big fat endorsement. We like to create partnerships with trusted brands, brands who are in it for the long run, long-term partners that want to grow with us. And we have so many great success stories. Tim b Broome, who founded it Pro TV in 2013, started advertising with us on day one, has been with us ever since. He said, quote, we would not be where we are today without the Twit network. I think the proof is in the pudding. Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work.

(02:10:20):
And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with twit. We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this. We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that our other hosts will chime in on the ad saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>. That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great.

(02:11:12):
 We deliver always over deliver on impressions. So you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working. You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent to thousands of fans, engaged fans who really wanna see this stuff. We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too. So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience.

(02:12:03):
Visit twit.tv/advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary, who's the c e o of authentic, you probably know 'em, one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted. I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today@advertisetwit.tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host red ads on twit.tv. Visit twit.tv/advertise for more details. Or you can email us, advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign now. I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. All right, I'm done. I don't have anything else to say. Let's do our picks of the week and move on with our lives. What do you say, Stacey? <Laugh>. What's your always

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:33):
For

Leo Laporte (02:13:33):
It? Yes. What's your thing of the week?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:13:36):
<Laugh>? sorry, I just, today I've been like so sleepy and cranky. Good lord. Alright. My thing of the week is a book because I was playing with a device that I was gonna tell you about it and I hate it. I hate this device. You can't tell

Leo Laporte (02:13:51):
Me about it. This is people, I don't mind saying something's terrible because we o often we only review the good stuff and people start to think you like everything. It's good to, to warn people away from stuff. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:02):
Will tell you, you know, those smart goggles I sent the smart goggles that I I was talking about back, just so y'all know.

Leo Laporte (02:14:07):
Smart goggles, the

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:10):
Smart glasses, the Thera Body Smart Glasses.

Leo Laporte (02:14:13):
I showed them off. No. Good. Huh? Back. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:15):
I said I, I told y'all that I was probably gonna send 'em back, but I did send 'em back. So

Leo Laporte (02:14:19):
Did change your didn't improve your life?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:22):
It did nothing for us and it actively annoyed my teenager. So the

Leo Laporte (02:14:26):
Idea is you put it on and it would massage your eyes.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:30):
It would, it had a, it had a heart rate sensor in the glasses. Yeah. That would also try to match the massage to your heart rate.

Leo Laporte (02:14:39):
Oh dear.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:39):
To help relax you more. I don't know. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (02:14:42):
You know what, I like the $10 I spent on that thing that you put in the refrigerator and then put on your head. That was,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:48):
But that was, that was just silly. That wasn't even a re or,

Leo Laporte (02:14:51):
But that was a, that was a good buy. A lot better than a $200 eyeball massager.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:14:56):
Well, well good. Yeah. Yeah. Someone, I guess at one point in time I was really desperate for a thing, so I told somebody about the Oxo Brush thing with the little stand that I had. Yeah. And two people emailed me and said they bought it and they loved it. So I was like, well, I'm glad you

Leo Laporte (02:15:13):
Should never, never, but this time I'm gonna recognize never judge people. You know, Lisa tweeted a picture of me or Mastodon tweeted a picture of me wearing it. And there were all these people saying, what is that? I ha I must have it. So there you go. I think it's genuine. I think it's real. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:30):
So this week I'm giving y'all a book because I, you know, I read a lot. So, but I really like this book and I liked it. And y'all are kind of nerdy. It's not a science fiction book, but it has some things that we like and it's called the Sor of Yong Yang. Is that how we would say

Leo Laporte (02:15:46):
The Yeah. Yong Yang Korean Capital. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:15:49):
And it's, it's really, there's no magic in this book. It's about a boy in North Korea who finds a Dungeons and Dragons book in like the eighties. And then he plays it with, basically that is a thinly used plot device to hinge an entire story about what it was like to grow up in North Korea in the last, which sounds fascinated. 30 years, which is really fascinating. And so do

Leo Laporte (02:16:20):
You think the knows how what it was like though? I mean, how, what's his

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:25):
No, he did a lot of research. He also wrote a book called Far North, I believe.

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:16:33):
Very fair.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:34):
Oh, but that is not, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:16:35):
Anyway, oh, it says here, drawing on the author's personal experience of North Korea. Ooh. So I guess he has some time, spent some time there. The sor of

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:45):
Pyre. But it's really well done. And it's like, I don't read a lot about North Korea. You don't, so I, I don't, I mean it's, I've read, I've read like three or four books about it. It's just, yeah. So I'd be curious if people actually have a much, you know, I I love entering new cultures through the medium of fiction, just because

Leo Laporte (02:17:08):
I agree.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:10):
It's a little less, like I feel like you get a more sense of like, especially if it's written by someone from that culture, this is obviously not that you get a little bit more of a, a flavor. Like, that's why I liked reading like the Three Body Problem. Cuz it, it gave me kind of, I felt like an insight into what it would be like to be not an individual

Ant Pruitt (02:17:32):
Gem. Be with that one.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:33):
I know <laugh>. Anyway, the point is I really liked this book. It was engaging, it taught me, or it, it talks actually about the hacking armies. Like the people who Yeah, anyway, like North Korea's ransomware and revenue generation through ransomware and hacking and other special ways that they generate revenue despite sanctions. And also I played d and d as a kid and, you know, nice. It was pretty magic for me growing up. And

Leo Laporte (02:18:04):
Maybe a future Stacey's book club selection.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:08):
There's not any sci sci sci-fi. It's, it's not sci-fi, it's just a novel.

Leo Laporte (02:18:15):
Stacey's book club, which is coming up March 30th is the book. You've chosen the book.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:19):
Wait, we've chosen the book and we may have to change the date cuz I think I have to give a talk on the

Leo Laporte (02:18:25):
29Th. We could do that. That's far enough the way. Okay. The book though, and you might want to get started, is Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Ility.

Ant Pruitt (02:18:34):
It's fairly short. I believe so. You got

Leo Laporte (02:18:37):
Some time. Yeah. It's five hours, 47 minutes if you listen to it. That's not bad. Good narrator too. I love John Lee. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:46):
It's a beautiful book.

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
If you're not a member of club,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:18:49):
It's kind of literary.

Leo Laporte (02:18:49):
This is one of the many wonderful reasons to join club to it. We've actually got some events coming up. Win to Dao, the host of All about Android will be on February 9th, a week from tomorrow for a fireside chat. Then the next day, Daniel Suarez, who is the author of many great books, including Demon and Freedom, tm, his new book, critical Mass. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> just came out yesterday, I started reading it. I'm excited. He's gonna be our guest on February 10th for a triangulation. But club members will get special access, they'll be able to ask questions and so forth. Samal salmon's coming up the book club. And Victor, one of our great editors, longtime employee is gonna do a chat. We've been doing some behind the scenes meeting some of the behind the scenes people. That's all coming up. Thanks to Ant our, our club community manager and ringleader.

(02:19:42):
If you're not a member of Club Twit, now's the time. Go to twit.tv/club twit and sign up today. Seven bucks a month, $84 a year where you can get a corporate membership for everybody in your company. You'll get ad free show versions of all the shows, including this one. You get special shows we don't put out on the twit plus feed in public. For instance, HandsOn Macintosh with Mic Sergeant HandsOn Windows with Paul Throt untitled Lennox Show with Jonathan Bennett. You also get access to the Discord, which is so much fun. Just love all the folks in the Discord. We have so much fun. Stacey's in there and Jeff's in there and we're just having a good, a good old time.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:21):
Lots of beams. Me, me,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:23):
There's lots of fun people. And we're in there too. And

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:26):
It's weird.

Leo Laporte (02:20:27):
It's weird. It's a pleasure. A pleasure in there. I hang out in the club all the time. I love it. Twitter tv slash club twit. Join us. Jeff Jarvis number <laugh>. Wow. Here's a new one. We've got a moral panic Giff with your old picture.

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:43):
Seal that one. Thank you very

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:44):
Much. Yeah, I like that. That's the nice,

Leo Laporte (02:20:45):
Yeah, it's a

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:47):
Sticker. The next book. It's a

Leo Laporte (02:20:49):
Sticker in the server. Everybody can use it now. Oh man, that's a good picture of you. That's awesome. Isn't

Jeff Jarvis (02:20:55):
That the one you bought? No, it

Leo Laporte (02:20:57):
Looks like the one I bought. It's roughly absolutely love. It looks like an AI generated version. Ooh. Anyway.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:04):
Alright, so I've got a a number of Stacey bait.

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
Stacey Bait

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:10):
A what?

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:11):
Stacey Bait.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:12):
Stacey. Oh, Stacey Bait. I thought you said a Stacey Bake. I was like, is it a waffle?

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:16):
<Laugh> Stacey ba

Leo Laporte (02:21:17):
Coming, <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:20):
Appliance makers. Sad that 50% of customers won't connect. They're smart appliances. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:21:24):
I saw

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:25):
That. Oh yeah. So we talked about that last week on the show. It's up, it's up a lot. Just so you know, who

Leo Laporte (02:21:32):
Buys a

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:32):
Smart, like

Leo Laporte (02:21:33):
10% device and doesn't put it on the internet? Well,

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:35):
Cuz they're all smart now.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:36):
I don't Yeah, they're all smart. I have a, I actually, I have two large appliances, an oven and a washing machine that are internet connected, but I have only connected the oven and not the washing machine. Right. So I fit this sat perfectly.

Jeff Jarvis (02:21:50):
Even even Stacey, they cry, cry. Deep tears over that. Huh? So that was one. And the other one is a little TikTok quarter moment. I have found my spirit animal

Leo Laporte (02:22:01):
Team dog.

Jeff Jarvis (02:22:03):
I'm on team dog here. My spirit animal. You'll see what I mean

Leo Laporte (02:22:07):
Here, ladies and gentlemen, I give you team dog. He's walking like an Egyptian. I can't play the music. If I could, I would. He's now gonna cross the ground. Oh no, he's not gonna cross the bridge now. I, he says no, no bridges Smart dogs. Who's a smart dog? No Bridges. Who knows. No. That you wouldn't be afraid of that bridge, would you? Jeff? Little, little plank bridge across a ravine. No. Oh, that dog really doesn't want to go. Oh, poor pooch. Oh, honey, you're gonna feel so much better when it's done, I promise. Oh, poor doggie. I

Ant Pruitt (02:22:45):
Just dug in. He says, I

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):
Ain't going. No, no, no. Don't do it. No, you don't pet me. It doesn't matter. I don't wanna do it. No, I don't wanna go across this fridge. Mr. Ant Pruit. What should we give? What plugs would you like to give?

Ant Pruitt (02:23:02):
My plug is I watched a movie here recently and critics hated it and the audience hated it. And I, I guess I, I I get it, but at the same time I, it, it made me reflect And it's a movie called You People. It's on Netflix. I

Leo Laporte (02:23:19):
Liked it. Well, I wanted to hear about this one. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (02:23:21):
Featuring what's his name? Jonah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:24):
Jonah Hill. Jonah

Ant Pruitt (02:23:25):
Hill, yeah. Jonah Hill. And I believe the la the lady, her last name is London. And I thought it was okay. But it points out with the two of them being in an interracial relationship. And she has a Muslim background, he has a Jewish background in the family's meet in all of the tropes and stuff that comes along with that. But at the same time, it made me think about some of my past experiences. You know, actually as recent as 2020, you know, in 2019 where I pretty much was tokenized at times by people that I thought were my friends and hit me into not here, not here, not here, not here, not here. By people that I thought were my friends. And just that, that movie movie just reminded me of it and it made me think how there are a lot of people on both, both sides of the spectrum where we go in with assumptions.

Leo Laporte (02:24:22):
So when I introduce you to my friends as my black friend, you don't like that? Yeah. We're gonna fight. I'm just going to

Ant Pruitt (02:24:29):
Let you know right

Leo Laporte (02:24:29):
Now. Oh, I was like,

Ant Pruitt (02:24:31):
You've been warned.

Leo Laporte (02:24:32):
<Laugh>, I'd like to introduce. You've been my black friend and my Jewish friend. Right. I don't know that

Ant Pruitt (02:24:39):
It goes over some stuff like that. And I thought they did a good job of at least putting it out there and trying to, you people have fun with it.

Leo Laporte (02:24:47):
It's the perfect name for that, isn't it? It is Purple title you people.

Ant Pruitt (02:24:51):
And I read through a lot of the critics and the audience audiences comments there on Rotten Tomatoes. And it just fascinates me how people were so upset about this movie. And then I looked at it and I was like, yep, this person is white. And yeah, totally don't have that same perspective that I would have as someone that lived it, you

Leo Laporte (02:25:11):
Know? All right. I'm gonna watch it knowing that I'm gonna put myself in True in your shoes and watch it with that in mind. Is it a com? Is it a comedy? A comedy?

Ant Pruitt (02:25:18):
Yeah, it's a comedy. Tells the truth. It's a comedy. It's like Eddie Murphy's in and Eddie Murphy's in it. It's got an

Leo Laporte (02:25:22):
Amazing cast. <Laugh> I mean,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:25:24):
He's done serious or action stuff,

Leo Laporte (02:25:27):
But Oh, I love, you know what, Eddie's back. He's done some great stuff. What was that? Yeah,

Ant Pruitt (02:25:33):
He's, he was good in this one. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:25:34):
He

Ant Pruitt (02:25:35):
Good. He was good in this one. Good.

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:37):
Oh. Oh, you know what? We forgot something. Leo. What's that? I'm gonna mention Oh, didn't you weren't done with your things. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
No. What is it? Mention that just Glenn

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:45):
Fleischman just we're We'll do a more next week.

Leo Laporte (02:25:47):
Yeah. Shift happens

Ant Pruitt (02:25:49):
Next week. That's right. Mr. Fleischer.

Leo Laporte (02:25:50):
We should get campaign. Get j Ja. Jason, if you can get Glen on the show next week, that'd be good. Yeah. Just to talk about, it doesn't have to be for the whole show. It can be sweet. Yeah. Now I

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:04):
Don't think Stacey, well you met Glen in person, but you haven't been on the show

Leo Laporte (02:26:07):
With him. He hasn't they haven't been together cuz he usually

Ant Pruitt (02:26:09):
No have none. It might be

Leo Laporte (02:26:10):
The same person. Water. Yeah. <Laugh>. Yeah. We don't know Glen

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:14):
And I, let me tell you about my new fonts.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:16):
<Laugh>. There is an AI <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
Well, he is your neighbor. I mean, he lives in the Seattle area, so he's, he should get to know him. He's great

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:24):
Across a body of water. I I do know

Leo Laporte (02:26:26):
Him. Oh, nevermind.

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:27):
And they bet in person. <Laugh> <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:26:31):
I've known Glenn for

Ant Pruitt (02:26:31):
Years. What do you know?

Leo Laporte (02:26:33):
<Laugh> now at is Matt as h e Double Hockey sticks. And he is not gonna take it anymore.

Ant Pruitt (02:26:39):
No, I'm not. And it's, this is, I've spoken and offline to some folks about this here recently, but I'm campaigning if you will, and I'm campaigning for my son. The picture there that you have on the screen, it reads that he is the back of the year. He's first teamed this and Honorable mentioned that and so on and so forth. And you've seen me share highlights of him. He's amazing throughout the season. Yeah. You know, his very first playoff football game, he had seven dad gum touchdowns. And he does not have one scholarship offer as of yet.

Leo Laporte (02:27:16):
What?

Ant Pruitt (02:27:17):
Yet his teammates yet there's a teammate that has a scholarship offer. Hmm. But he does not. And it pisses me off because this is me taking dad out. Okay. I know this kid works hard, works really, really hard. I know this kid has a G GPA of like 4.2. Wow. I know this kid is loved in the community. I, you know, I go out and people recognize me because Yeah. It's not a lot of black people here. Oh yeah. Your son's a quarterback and he's so great and he come in and he helped us do this and blah. You know, he's, he's a good kid and it sort of bugs me that there's people out there in this world that are always trying to do the right thing and do the good thing. And they always, they tend to come up short for whatever reason.

(02:28:04):
Yet there's idiots out there and evil people out there and that just get away with stuff and half-ass things and don't work hard and they end up being gazillionaires or just skirting rules and all of that. And that just pisses me off. So again, I am just compa campaigning for my boy because I can't afford to pay for college. But I know he wants to go to college and he deserves to go to college and football is one way in, in addition to his brain and track and so forth. So Jacob Pruitt, I'm campaigning for you. Boy, I've told him personally. He

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:40):
A proud

Ant Pruitt (02:28:40):
Dad. I'm going to for

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:41):
Your consideration, Jacob Pruitt

Leo Laporte (02:28:44):
<Laugh>, he's the next Patrick Mahomes guys, you know, get in there, get him while you can you watch, look at that kid. Watch this one. Look at this kid. Watch this. Oh my goodness. He's got legs. Holy cow. Out running them all

Ant Pruitt (02:28:58):
80 yards.

Leo Laporte (02:28:59):
Oh, they must hate him. <Laugh> just,

Ant Pruitt (02:29:02):
That's just 80 yards. Oh, you

Leo Laporte (02:29:03):
Know, no big deal. Yeah. What are you gonna do with a guy

Ant Pruitt (02:29:05):
Who can throw this is a laser,

Leo Laporte (02:29:06):
Can

Ant Pruitt (02:29:07):
Laser of a throw?

Leo Laporte (02:29:08):
He can. Oh my goodness.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:10):
You know, and he's had, he's had some visitors from some scouts here recently, but these scouts, they, you know, it is nice, but hey, show me the money. I'm just gonna say it like that. Show me the money. Say

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:21):
It. Lot of scholarships are, you know, it's such a, it's a being in the biz. It's the corruption of it is we raise money to pay to ourselves, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we don't even pay it to Jacob.

Leo Laporte (02:29:33):
Right. The college

Jeff Jarvis (02:29:34):
Pays themselves so Jacob can go there and work for the college. Right.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:38):
Really that

Leo Laporte (02:29:39):
No, because the money that they raise from alumni for their football programs are, is very important. I know that CUNY don't blink. Football team is amazing. Jeff <laugh> don't blink. Whoa. Look at him. He's so fast. He's just outrunning everybody. Look at him. Go.

Ant Pruitt (02:29:55):
Zip. Don't blink. Zip. He's going.

Leo Laporte (02:29:58):
You even lost track of him. <Laugh>. Where'd he go? That's great. Awesome.

Ant Pruitt (02:30:03):
Awesome. Again,

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:05):
Arm.

Ant Pruitt (02:30:06):
Well they'll wanna throw the whole, you know, he's a, he's a dual, they call it dual threat quarterback, which means he's a quarterback that can run but can't necessarily throw, but yet I'm looking at touchdown passes right here.

Leo Laporte (02:30:17):
Yeah. Well you've made a heck of it.

Jeff Jarvis (02:30:19):
Real. Did he step in his quarterback when another kid got injured? Right.

Ant Pruitt (02:30:23):
Right. He came in because the senior quarterback got hurt and cuz he was totally fine not competing for that role because the senior quarterback was pretty dagum good. But, and we said, you know what, it's fine. Your time is coming. Just, just go con contribute somewhere else. Because oh, by the way, he's a team player. He wanted to be on the field and contribute in other ways.

Leo Laporte (02:30:45):
So when is the season for getting these scholarships in? I mean, is it

Ant Pruitt (02:30:50):
It's nonstop, man. Okay. It's not So it's not Sign and day is today. Yeah. Sign and day is today. Okay. but you know, right now you gotta get your name out there because the transfer portal, excuse me, the transfer portal has changed things. It made it more difficult because colleges are just going to other colleges. Right. And getting players Right. Instead of going to high high

Leo Laporte (02:31:12):
School, where does he want to go to college? Where does he want to go to school?

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:13):
No, it's less,

Ant Pruitt (02:31:14):
He would love to be an Oregon dunk, but he would love to play pretty much in, in a lot of the teams in the Pac 12 because they offer the education. Yeah. That

Leo Laporte (02:31:22):
He wants. He's smart. He's a scholar athlete. He doesn't want to just be a football

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:25):
Player. What does he wanna study?

Ant Pruitt (02:31:27):
He's wanting to get more into art and design. Good. Yes. You know, he's a model now. He's gorgeous.

Leo Laporte (02:31:35):
I

Ant Pruitt (02:31:35):
Know he's into fashion. So he's, he, he has a sewing machine here. He'll sew things together and

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:41):
What a cool kid. He'll make his own damn uniform. If I had aship, if I

Ant Pruitt (02:31:45):
Had a, I'm campaigning full of my boy.

Jeff Jarvis (02:31:48):
Well, you should Brown Papa.

Leo Laporte (02:31:50):
Good for you. Well, you should, we'll support you on that. How could people what should people do? How can they reach you? Just go look at your Twitter Right. And respond.

Ant Pruitt (02:31:58):
Just go follow my Twitter because my Twitter has now been dedicated to campaigning him. You don't see,

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:02):
You're a college football fan and you know, people that

Leo Laporte (02:32:06):
Yeah. Contact boost this con. Yeah. Be a good booster. Get somebody good for your college team. I love that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. We'll try to, we'll try to get Glen Fleischman on. Glen has talked about this before, but he's working with a guy named Martian Sari who is doing a book. He'll be a Kickstarter in a couple of weeks about keyboards called Shift Happens. And it, he just sent both Jeff and I Boje and me a a preliminary title promo version. Isn't it a great shift happen?

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:38):
This is, this is just the, this was the proof, the, the, the pretty proof test.

Leo Laporte (02:32:42):
It looks so beautiful.

Jeff Jarvis (02:32:43):
It's the beautiful pages, beautiful

Leo Laporte (02:32:45):
Paper. Thank you Glen. And we will, we'll get Glen on. But and we'll also of course when that Kickstarter starts, we'll that'll be our pick of the week for that week for sure. We are outta time, but we're not outta waffles. And that's the good news. Stacey Higgin bossum Stacey on iott.com Is the website, the podcast she does with Kevin Tofl. The Iott podcast is available there. There's also events there. Check 'em out. It's lots of other stuff. She is amazing. Yay. Thank you. Thank you Stacey for being here. We really appreciate it.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:21):
And grumpy. Amazing and grumpy. You were grumpy,

Leo Laporte (02:33:24):
Grumpy at all.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:25):
You've been far grumpier <laugh>. You were not grumpy, grumpy.

Leo Laporte (02:33:28):
So much worse. I don't know why you think you're grumpy <laugh>. Jeff Jarvis, who is eternally grumpy is the

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:35):
Director. Yeah, that's my department. He's the

Leo Laporte (02:33:37):
GRP himself, director of the Tow Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:42):
Craig Newmark

Leo Laporte (02:33:46):
Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. If you had a football team, what would their mascot, what would you, what would they be called? The Ink Stained Rees.

Jeff Jarvis (02:33:58):
Yes, that'd be good. The Gutenberg's, the Gut. Gutenberg The Bugs

Leo Laporte (02:34:02):
<Laugh>. Mr. Ant Pruit. He is on Twitter, @Ant_Pruitt. But you should also go to his website, Antpruitt.com. Take a look at his beautiful prints. He's an amazing photographer and that's why he's the host of HandsOn Photography. Twit.Tv/HOP. Woohoo. Woohoo. Have a have a little ab ab abna for me tonight. AAU sir. Aau aau abuda for me tonight. Good old sing malt scotch. Yeah, baby. Thank you everybody for joining us. We do TWiG This Week in Google every Wednesday afternoon, 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern, 2200 utc. You can watch us do it live, live, do TWI tv chat with us while you're watching@irc.twi.tv or in our club Twit Discord after the fact on demand versions of the show are available at the website, twit tv slash TWiG. Or you can you can get it on YouTube. There's a dedicated YouTube channel for all of our shows. Actually, best place to start is at youtube.com/twit and you can follow the breadcrumbs from there. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player. It's probably the best way to get This Week in Google. That way you'll get it every Wednesday evening the minute it's available. Thanks all for joining us. We will see you next time on This Week in Google. Bye-Bye.

(02:35:32):
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