This Week in Google 795 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for TWiG this week in Google. Jeff Jarvis is here, professor of journalism at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Paris Martineau from theinformation.com. We're going to talk about the Department of Justice and their plan to force Google to sell Chrome. How is that going to work? We'll also talk about Comcast's plan to spin off MSNBC and CNBC. Is it the end of cable TV? Very possibly Plus. Google is about to develop a new laptop. It's not a Chromebook, it's based on Android, the Google Pixelbook. That and a whole lot more coming up next on TWiG.

This is TWiG This Week in Google, episode 795, recorded Wednesday, November 20th 2024. Alf's Hog Is Skeeting. It's time for TWiG. This Week in Google, the show. We cover the latest news from google, the one hour late edition. That's going to be good news for you, Jeff Jarvis, because you'll get to your cacho è pepe. Oh, you got a cookie, a CNN cookie it looks like a CNN cookie is yeah, we saw you.

I got, I, I uh turned on the tv at 7 25 to watch Jeff Jarvis in a roundtable Far too political to play here. Yeah, and it's like who cares? Anyway, I guess you got to talk about something if you're a 24-hour news network.

0:01:41 - Jeff Jarvis
I guess you got to invite some guy on to talk about something Well.

0:01:44 - Leo Laporte
Jeff's great, and Jeff kicked the conversation off and pretty much nailed it, and that was that. Then they had to continue on for minutes and minutes.

0:01:52 - Paris Martineau
They've got to have the right, the right and the left. And the guy as somebody warned me, the people on the right, the guy in the cowboy hat warned me that they got two guys on the right. They're both trying out for the white house.

0:02:10 - Leo Laporte
So they're going to try to be as difficult as possible. One of them is just known for being difficult Scott Jennings. So he sneers oh, Scott Jennings is so annoying.

0:02:15 - Jeff Jarvis
And then, and then the guy in the cowboy hat's the the requisite podcaster, right, right. Yeah, jeff, you don't count you're not a podcaster.

0:02:19 - Leo Laporte
He's definitely.

0:02:20 - Jeff Jarvis
He was definitely a podcaster jeff, you should get a cowboy hat you were clearly, clearly a professor in terms of the archetypes?

0:02:27 - Paris Martineau
I don't know. As Jennings said, professor, yeah, he did. Professor, yeah, it was true.

0:02:34 - Jeff Jarvis
Should have said you're a double professor as well as professor emeritus at the.

0:02:39 - Leo Laporte
Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Jarvis, professor emeritus. Well done, John. At the Craig Neumark Graduate School of of journalism at the City University of New York. He is now, of course, at Montclair College and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. So a new, a couple of new professorial jobs.

0:02:57 - Paris Martineau
John was nervous about making that and he did it perfectly with no warning. That was great, yeah, well, I told Jeff that if I didn't do it correctly I just walk away from the show no, please.

0:03:07 - Leo Laporte
So there was a lot riding on that and you were introduced, uh, on that CNN show. As the author of the gutenberg parenthesis I thought a very nice plug for you. And the web we leave. Yeah, that's paris martineau. The, uh, hey, the youth of the show, the young person, the person who adds the energy, the spunk, the vim, the vigor today.

0:03:33 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm gonna be bringing a weird energy today because I've been up since 2 30 or 2 30 in the morning. Why? And uh, I you know I had a lot of extra work to get done this morning by 10. I did some math. I was like, well, this is what needs to happen, and I thought I'd honestly be feeling worse. The fact that I'm not feeling worse is concerning and probably indicates that something crazy is coming out of my mouth.

0:03:57 - Paris Martineau
How much caffeine have you had? Paris?

0:03:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Honestly, not that much Really. I've gotten back into brewing my own coffee, so I had a couple cups this morning. But I really gotten back into brewing my own coffee, so I had a couple of cups this morning but you know I stopped at my usual time.

0:04:07 - Paris Martineau
You're sounding a little caffeinated.

0:04:09 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, I definitely am sounding and acting caffeinated. I'll give you that I'm, I'm, I have. My energy is peaking in a way that suggests downfall is approaching but well, we better get this show on the road.

0:04:23 - Leo Laporte
Let's get it over with Paris, of course, writes for the information at the information dot com the well, let's see. Though I think the most interesting story is the Department of Justice has apparently decided that the remedy they're going to pursue Remember they won a court case? Won a court case? Uh, they were. This is a case that began under the trump administration, continued for four years under the biden administration, uh, and the judge is now, uh, considering remedies the the court ruled that google illegally monopolized the search market to require measures related. Oh, this is, this is the remedy. The doj says sell. You know what your, your honor, you know what google could do. They could sell chrome. They could just sell it, and they and, by the way, the bloomberg folks say it's worth 20 billion. I'm not sure. Well, look, let's say some moron, larry ellison, comes along and says here's 20 billion dollars. What is he buying? Chrome is based on an open source browser. That cannot be. It's. It's there, right?

0:05:40 - Jeff Jarvis
it's on here. How would you monetize that?

0:05:43 - Leo Laporte
well, you, you know, google monetizes it quite well, but the way they do it is they pay $20 million to. Apple and hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Mozilla and Samsung, and by doing so, they encourage people to use Google search and, of course, most people do it through Chrome, which is about 60% of the browser market, so it's how they gather all the information about it.

0:06:05 - Paris Martineau
It's like telling gm you've got to, you can't sell steering wheels.

0:06:11 - Leo Laporte
The other thing is, it's so 2009, so eu well, I think the argument uh, that well, at least on the windows weekly show earlier, richard campbell suggested is this is just the opening shot of a of a negotiation which will end in a consent decree. But the DOJ is telling Google, hey, we're serious here. Google said are they? What are they kidding? Uh, lee?

And Mulholland, google's vice president of regulatory affairs, says the justice department quote continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues. In this case, the government is putting its thumb on the scale in ways that would harm consumers, developers and american oh. This is important, by the way, this phrase is important american technological leadership that precisely the moment it is most needed. Why is that an important phrase? Because in two months, we're going to have a new president a new president, by the way, who sundar pichai of google, of alphabet, has been kissing up to uh, but everybody has been, because nobody's a fool A president who did, in fact, under his administration, start this battle.

But you know, elon Musk is in now in the mix because he's got Doge. Vivek Rajaswamy is in the mix because he also has Doge, because when you're talking Department of Government Efficiency, you have two people running it. That's the most efficient. That's the most efficient. Yeah, uh, I just I really think that the, the, this is just the Justice Department trying to bring things to a close before January 20th, don't you?

0:08:03 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I think they're trying to do um a lot before then, and there's another. There was, there was another case today where google's going to be under um guidance surveillance. We're going to be watching you, google, and that struck me as they're trying a lot of regulatory things quickly. Yeah, I wonder what. Who is that? Was that the doj too?

0:08:22 - Leo Laporte
that was no, that was the eu, or was it the no there was something, although it was something else where there's so many battles on so many fronts, isn't it? Did I put it here um no, anyway, anyway, uh, I, I think it's silly to even worry about this.

0:08:38 - Paris Martineau
I think google thinks it's silly to worry about it google reacts angrily to report it to have to sell Chrome Google online.

0:08:45 - Leo Laporte
They were pissed off. No, we have read Google's reaction.

From the BBC of all places A very unusual place to have reacts angrily in the headline yes, that's true, well, putting their thumbs on the scale, but I think the most important thing is and this is what Apple's going to say to President Trump this is what Google's going to say to president trump. This is what google's going to say is we are american companies. This is where american innovation happens. If you put it, for apple's worried about a tariff on chinese parts of of as much as 60, which would add hundreds of dollars the cost of an iphone. They're going to say to them all you're doing is helping samsung. Do you want to do that, mr president? Right, what's google's?

0:09:24 - Paris Martineau
going to say is all you're doing?

0:09:25 - Leo Laporte
is helping samsung. Do you want to do that, mr president? Right, what google's going to say is all you're doing is knocking down an american company. Now we'll work with you on the real, by the way. The real issues are things like censoring conservative ideas and things like that.

0:09:38 - Paris Martineau
Uh well, by the way, brandon car is going to get rid of section 230 as quick as he possibly can well, he can't. It's not under his authority, he's talking about all kinds of things congress

0:09:46 - Leo Laporte
has to do it.

0:09:47 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah yeah, he also can't regulate the internet right as it stands now. It's not, I mean, google's not under the fcc, right, uh, but they're going to try to, you know, push that I've heard that google has already gotten letters from car, uh, about, um, you know what are you censoring, so the shots are across the bow.

0:10:10 - Leo Laporte
He has vowed Trump's pick for the FCC. This is PC magazine has vowed crackdown on big tech censorship. Let's put air quotes around the word censorship because it's I have to notice editing.

I have to point out a really good piece by Corey Doctorow in which he points out that these big tech companies and you you may not agree with this, jeff, but he says have you know become so big that that they are harmful to our, our country? They need to be. They're corrupt. He said he's in favor of this kind of regulation, but he says one of the things that happens with a corrupt presidency is they pick and choose which corruption to weed out, and you see that with Putin, the oligarchs are corrupt until you don't support Putin and then you're out. What does Musk?

0:11:00 - Paris Martineau
think of Google. Do we have any idea?

0:11:00 - Leo Laporte
What does Musk think of Google? Do we have any idea? Well, musk's funny because he remember he was really pissed off at Apple because they stopped buying ads on X, but then Tim Cook invited him over and they had a cup of coffee and he came back saying I love Apple. So Musk is somewhat like the president, in which the president-elect because yeah to whoever last talked to him, whoever was made nicest to him. So Musk definitely doesn't like open AI, doesn't like Google in terms of their AI stuff. He thinks they're moving too fast, too dangerously. Of course, he has his own AI and it's kind of like a kid in the back going slow down, slow down.

0:11:51 - Jeff Jarvis
He wants to wait to your question. My colleague, aaron Wu, last night reported that Musk joined the call between Trump and Sundar Pichai. The call between Trump and Sundar Pichai, when Sundar had called Trump to congratulate him on the call with Trump, was Elon Musk. And basically what Trump and Musk have alleged in all these conversations is, yeah, that they think Google is biased against conservatives and are going to crack down on it. So it is really interesting the way in which Elonk's influence is worming its way into every aspect of this woo writes musk's appearance took pachai by surprise, oh hi elon, it's like a mom coming along on a date uh, well, musk has been going along on a lot of the president's calls, including to vladimir zolinski.

0:12:48 - Leo Laporte
Um musk this is aaron woo's reporting in the information recently criticized google for what he believes is liberal bias and how the company presents search results. Remember his tweet about that? Uh, he says there's part of a. It was part of a massive far left censorship. Trump said the same thing. You know that's a good question. How do you know what, what a? What will Musk's influence be and be? What does Musk think? What does Trump think Google should continue, as I mean, you know. So Narpa Chai is no fool. Say exactly what they're saying. We're an American company, we're an american band and and we're forwarded american innovations. The same thing tim cook did. Um, when, when, of course, tim cook is threatened by uh, uh threats of chinese tariffs of as much as 60, which would add hundreds of dollars to the cost of the iPhone, the way Cook got Trump to stop that last time was to point out that only benefits Samsung, a South Korean company. So I think Google's going to be fine. All Google's going to do is say we're an American company, don't hurt us.

0:13:58 - Paris Martineau
The question for Google is that it's one matter if you're, you know, msnbc and you're liberal, liberal, but google really isn't. Google really does well, be fair and, uh, they have, you know, ranking algorithms and every ranking is a decision that's made, you know that it would be really hard right to say that, but the propaganda machine does not does not I mean, doesn it, does not believe that?

0:14:27 - Jeff Jarvis
It's something I mean you can see if you read any of these extremely far right wing websites. They argue that Google is incredibly biased against conservatives and propping up well for a while Harris's campaign and I'm sure there'll be some new target, and I do think that until you take care of that.

0:14:47 - Paris Martineau
but what does it?

0:14:48 - Leo Laporte
mean to take.

0:14:48 - Paris Martineau
Problems are not going to stop it's I mean that issue is you?

0:14:51 - Jeff Jarvis
you can't you can't take care of it, so they're going to be in the crap forever because the well is poisoned against them right.

0:14:59 - Paris Martineau
So so you're in charge of search. Soon dark comes and says listen, we're not having this conversation, but but just get us out of trouble, make a little few adjustments.

0:15:07 - Leo Laporte
But remember.

0:15:08 - Paris Martineau
That person's going to say to what?

0:15:10 - Leo Laporte
Remember that Silicon Valley has a voice in this administration. It's not just Elon Musk, it's Peter Thiel. Well, like that makes you feel better. Yeah, I mean actually none of them like Google, do they Right?

0:15:30 - Jeff Jarvis
do they right? I do think that one thing google could do to boost its uh relevance, and boost its relevance to donald trump specifically, is if sundar pichai legally changed his name to mr google.

0:15:36 - Leo Laporte
I do think that that would make a difference in our google next to tim apple.

0:15:40 - Jeff Jarvis
And then because you know, you know if uh, I don't even think Sundar Google, because you know if Trump's having a hard time with Tim Cook just Mr he probably just needs to have Mr Google. He's got to get rid of his first name and he could solve a lot of problems for him.

0:15:55 - Leo Laporte
Is that an Indian name, Sundar? Is that an Indian name?

0:15:58 - Paris Martineau
They call me the sun. God, how's that?

0:16:00 - Leo Laporte
Could be good More recently. This is Aaron was reporting. Could be good more recently. This is aaron woo's reporting. Also, trump has appeared more favorable to google, saying that google was treating him much better. Remember that, yeah, uh, in october trump told joe rogan sundar pichai called him to say trump's recent appearance mcdonald's was one of the biggest things we've had on google. Nice job, sundar. Well, you know you are one of the. Yeah, he also said. In october, trump said he would not break up Google if he won the election because China is afraid of Google.

0:16:30 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, I think. I think that the the breakup stuff can go away. I think we're going to see. Here's the problem.

0:16:37 - Leo Laporte
It's unknown, right, and that's the thing that's so uncertain, right Is it's uncertain? I mean it's ridiculous, and I think this has something to do with why the Biden administration's Department of Justice says well, you're going to have to sell Chrome. They know that this January 20th is two months away.

0:16:54 - Jeff Jarvis
You can say whatever you want for the next two months, yeah.

0:16:58 - Paris Martineau
So Google stock is down 1.25% today.

0:17:03 - Leo Laporte
That's the stock market's a little skittish. The stock market's down yeah.

0:17:07 - Paris Martineau
Amazon's down just under a percent. So yeah, nothing awful.

0:17:13 - Leo Laporte
By the way, it's way down, yeah Well you know, 22%. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that's the one, thank you Wants to place google under federal supervision for everyone for leo, this video says for google, it's not a bank well, but they have google wallet.

0:17:35 - Paris Martineau
What's the wallet due to anything? How is? How is there anything in financial products?

0:17:39 - Leo Laporte
hey, well, this is from the washington, where democracy dies in darkness. The exact scope of the CFPB's concerns with Google's financial products is not clear.

0:17:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Like what financial products? It does not appear to be final.

0:17:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah exactly Wallet. And, by the way, director Rohit Chopra is gone January 20th, right, so you know. This is why I mean, I don't know what's going to happen. It might, it's very. I mean, it's unpredictable, because there's so many different factors into this. I mean, just look at the cabinet appointments. It's not predictable at this point. Predictable at this point and, uh, I don't. I think google, like every tech company, should just, you know, continue paddling. Say we're an american company. You don't want those ugly chinese people to win, do you?

and or kim jong-un's enemies in south korea, right so anyway, um, I mean, we report the stories, but I I think that we will just have to wait two months to know what any of this means yeah, the reason what the stock market is.

0:18:52 - Paris Martineau
I think if the stock market thought there were there were really bad uncertainty, you'd see it.

0:18:56 - Leo Laporte
But they don't yeah when, uh, when vivek rajaswami said oh, and, by the way, we're going to have a free uh tax, uh tool so you can report your taxes to the irs, which, by the way, is a very good idea. Yeah, stock market punished into it. And uh, makers of turbo tax, uh and h&r block the makers of the other tax program.

Um, like five to seven percent, I mean yeah if doge could do that, that would be good yeah, this is why, I think, you know, I'm almost don't even want to, like, uh, complain about anything, because we just don't know, we don't know well if we can't complain, then what are we doing? I know what are we doing. What are we?

0:19:37 - Paris Martineau
doing. Let's just go that. Neutrality is another big question, since you mentioned the fcc before my brain does not like it, but we've ridden that roller coaster and Comcast doesn't work. But other than that, yeah, god.

0:19:49 - Jeff Jarvis
I just had a war flashback to Ajit Pai doing the Harlem Shake, remember that that's what a dark time, what a dark time in our collective history. I.

0:19:59 - Leo Laporte
I should mention I am on Starlink right now, so elon could at any time, be nice uh, that's the, that's the other thing that's unknown, right? I think I kind of feel like from now on, we shouldn't really do stories. Might, could, would. No, I think you're right I think we should do, did when something happens.

0:20:21 - Paris Martineau
Even says will is not reliable because people say things no one knows.

0:20:26 - Leo Laporte
No one knows and Elon says he's going to, you know, have a self-driving cab in a month, until you see it, we're living in a post-fact world and I think we just have to accept that and kind of watch what's going on and report on it and we'll let you know. I honestly don't think that the tech sector as much as there's been rhetoric against them on both sides, I don't think the tech sector is going to suffer at this point.

0:20:54 - Paris Martineau
It's too much a part of our GDP.

0:20:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, don't you think, and, and, and, if we're going to go in a trade war against China, we got to, we got to, we gotta, we can't, you know I don't think the argument that it's too much of our gdp is necessarily the reason why nothing could happen to the tech sector.

0:21:12 - Jeff Jarvis
We've the tech sector has undergone a period of immense growth and unrestrained or unregulated growth, and I do think it would make sense that something's got to give at some point well, what would be wrong with uh letting the market do that punish them? I mean the real question, the honest.

0:21:36 - Leo Laporte
Thing the real anti-trust question is is are any of these companies so big that you can't compete against them? And there's some evidence you can't compete in search, for instance but search is not the but.

0:21:47 - Paris Martineau
But yes, you can, because tiktok is now search, right chat, gpt is now search. I've been using perplexity search it's fascinating, yeah that's the thing, and so so it's always so. That's why the the sell the browser is so so 2009, so microsoft, so eu. It's it's EU. It's three wars ago. It makes no sense, yeah. Hmm, so NVIDIA's results just came out Up 94%. Did they have a good quarter? The sales were up 94% Almost doubled Wow.

Profit reached $19.3 billion. However, this is. The market fell 2% because it just wasn't quite as much as they wanted.

0:22:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, NVIDIA had really been overblown, overheated because of the words AI or the letters.

0:22:40 - Paris Martineau
AI and their chips have been overheating lately too, which is the other issue.

0:22:45 - Leo Laporte
So cooling in an overheated market? Is that what you're saying? Yes, yeah, you know. It's funny because for a long time I've asked myself should I report quarterly results, stock prices? Because that doesn't. It's a little bit removed from actually what a company's doing, how they're you know, whether they're serving consumers. Whether you know we get value out of them is a little bit of a different question. But the market has. There is the wisdom of the crowds. The market sentiment has some value? I guess. Maybe not, maybe not anymore.

0:23:23 - Paris Martineau
I don't know. It's interesting to watch.

0:23:26 - Jeff Jarvis
It's interesting to see, it's the same market that pumped everything that had the word blockchain on it for like a couple years yeah, I remember what is it long island blockchain tea or something?

0:23:36 - Leo Laporte
yeah, they turned it long island.

0:23:38 - Jeff Jarvis
These teams blockchain yes, that's I mean I would argue it's an argument against the wisdom of the market.

0:23:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it did very, very well. Brennan Carr did write the. You know this is a funny story for me. So Newsweek points out that Brennan Carr, who will be the next chairman of the FCC, he is currently a GOP commissioner, so it doesn't even need Senate approval, he's just he's in. Needed senate approval, he's just, he's in. Uh, he, it turns out, wrote one of the chapters of the project 2025 uh report from the heritage foundation, the blueprint for a conservative presidency, and I went, oh no, here we go. And then I started reading it and I thought, well, actually it's so bad.

0:24:20 - Paris Martineau
It's not as radical as I thought it was going to be.

0:24:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the shadow banning that kind of stuff.

The complaints about censorship. This is complaining, but it doesn't say anything. He also points out that there's not a lot you could do about it because of Section 230. He says some of the immunities tech companies have under 230 should be eliminated. But, as you point out, congress has to do that. Tech companies should be regulated further, although you know, chevron deference maybe means that they won't be able to regulate them to ensure that users are not being discriminated against and this is the part I agreed with in part by making the companies offer a transparent appeals process for users to challenge their accounts being banned or demonetized. What's wrong with that? It's not saying they can't demonetize your band. It's just saying that appeals, there has to be an appeals process and has to be transparent. I think that's good. He also supports banning tiktok. This is going to be controversial. It's really unknown that january 19th is the theoretical deadline for tic.

There's no way that's happening on january 19th because the next day you'll have a new administration. Uh, carr says tick tock provides beijing with an opportunity to run a foreign influence campaign by determining the news and information the app feeds to millions of americans. I should point out that china also uses facebook, x and instagram to do exactly the same thing very effectively. Right, we know that russians do too. He supports increasing federal funding to an existing rip and replace program for network infrastructure. Getting rid of the huawei stuff, that's fine. He is in favor of closing loopholes and further regulating chinese tech firms in a variety of ways to prevent them from accessing american markets. Okay, he's he. Uh, he says uh, starlink is a technology the fcc should promote.

0:26:17 - Paris Martineau
Starlink elon musk. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say now you bet we'll have uh instant.

0:26:22 - Leo Laporte
He says the fcc should increase the pace. It reviews and approves. Why bother reviewing if you're going to approve? It reviews and approves satellite launch applications for now. This is good. Starlink and amazon's kuiper, which is a competitor to starlink, good, that's good uh, kuiper up and working no, no, okay, no, fcc should be more transparent about the decisions it makes.

Part of the reason Kuiper is stymied a little bit is Elon is the only guy with the launch capacity. Oh Right, starlink has SpaceX. I'm actually curious where Amazon's Kuiper stands right now. They're not the only one considering a satellite network. Everything you need to know about Project Kuiper Amazon's satellite broadband network Okay, mission launch and deployment they have had secured. Ah, they're getting the European Space Agency to launch them, oh, and Blue Origin and SpaceX and the united launch alliance, but they haven't, as far as I know, they haven't launched anything yet. So they've got people, they've got technology, they've got safety and sustainability and more than a thousand people are working on it. So maybe this is just the uh kick in the butt. Amazon needs to get kuiper off the ground, which would be great. I'd love to have a a second uh alternative to starlink nothing well, actually what you need is a, a second backup.

0:27:53 - Paris Martineau
You need three.

0:27:54 - Jeff Jarvis
I was about to say you do need, in case your uh starlink goes out, we could have a 10 second delay darling is great.

0:28:01 - Leo Laporte
It never goes out. It's really good. I'm in the middle of it now you'reone, now you're saying that.

0:28:05 - Paris Martineau
Very good work, Leo. It's going to go out in 30 seconds. Do you still have that backpack?

0:28:10 - Jeff Jarvis
you used to sell by Southwest? Is Grok in the room with us right now?

0:28:14 - Leo Laporte
I like Starlink. In fact, I think Elon Musk. We've got to give him credit for being the smartest man alive. He's a super genius Reigning in big tech.

Yeah, he's a beautiful. He's a beautiful. Have you seen his son? He's a cutie. Carr argues that the largest technology companies, including Meta Alphabet, use content moderation techniques, including shadow banning and demonetization. Bad, no, good, don't do that. The FCC should be more transparent about the decisions it makes. He argues it currently engages in wasteful broadband spending policies I have to see what that means and over-regulates the communications industry that means also don't tell Comcast what to do.

He says agencies should look at eliminating outdated regulations or all regulations. Why not? But honestly, not. A lot of this is is is wasn't exactly. Yeah, it wasn't some stuff that was creepy, but this is not you know you know somebody's saying don't say anything bad about elon um I said he was a super genius you can hear me, I would disagree. By the way, the communications industry is not overregulated. If anything, we've given a duopoly to the cable companies of America and the phone companies cell phone companies.

0:29:54 - Paris Martineau
That's net neutrality, that's the belief that if we just let them go, everything will be okay, let them do what they want.

0:30:00 - Jeff Jarvis
The market will fix it all market will fix it all there.

0:30:10 - Paris Martineau
Paris is now installed the pod on her back and she's let's take a little break.

0:30:14 - Leo Laporte
I, honestly, I am, I am, I am neutral, I am I am Leo. I am net neutral.

0:30:21 - Paris Martineau
I'm gonna watch and there's other issues in the world, but I wouldn't say the tech is on the forefront of any issues.

0:30:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, I think you're right, that was a long pause.

0:30:37 - Jeff Jarvis
I thought that was a break.

0:30:43 - Leo Laporte
I'm looking at the Discord and all of the stuff that our producer, john ashley's putting there trying to get me taken down yeah, he is.

0:30:50 - Paris Martineau
He is john trying to get me taken down.

0:30:52 - Leo Laporte
He wants us to turn off starlink john we should yasify these photos of elon musk. Someone do that please what does that mean, yasify, we've been over this before yes, it's, uh, it's an aid.

0:31:06 - Jeff Jarvis
It's like a face filter that makes them look like beautiful squig word kind of sorry, I forget.

0:31:12 - Leo Laporte
I forget all the young people, all the hip young terms.

0:31:16 - Jeff Jarvis
Listen, I've got a really good blue sky term I'll teach you about.

0:31:19 - Leo Laporte
Uh, oh good show when we come back. Blue skies, blue skies, bigger than ever.

0:31:23 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, we're loving it. Paris and I are loving it. Are you loving it?

0:31:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah.

0:31:28 - Paris Martineau
Blue sky's got the juice. I'm thinking about changing my lower third to my blue sky, oh gee.

0:31:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, if you do that, you've got to update your blue sky handle to a domain, Jeff.

0:31:40 - Paris Martineau
I do that's right Vote now everybody.

0:31:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Which domain do you?

0:31:45 - Paris Martineau
want? Should I use? Should I use domain to your? Handle on you on blue sky to be clear, so do I use Jeff Jarviscom or buzz machinecom.

0:31:54 - Leo Laporte
What do you think Kind of fun Jeff Jarviscom Is buzz machine.

0:31:59 - Jeff Jarvis
What you are.

0:32:00 - Leo Laporte
I told you to look at micro blog. Yeah, I haven't, yet it's your posse. Solution. Your post once syndicate everywhere. Solution.

0:32:09 - Jeff Jarvis
You have Jeff Jarviscom. It posts to.

0:32:12 - Leo Laporte
Blue Sky. It doesn't post to Twitter because they turned off the API, right, but post to everything else. Threads Blue Sky, Mastodon, it's the best way to do it. What was the name? Again, Microblog. That's right, it's where Leo FM is. That's my blog. I moved it over there after we shut down the studio Leofm so I can post something on my phone on micro blog and it will go to all of those places. So it becomes your, your, your little macro blog.

Well, the idea was initially Manton Reese, the guy who created it. The idea was that he was going to kind of make up a activity pub Twitter like micro blog. That's what those. That's what Twitter is is a micro micro posts, right, but it's grown over the years. He's been doing that for about seven years and it's grown into something with so many capabilities. It's really good. I use Aaron Parecki's Quill utility to post, which makes it so good. You could put notes there, you could put short blog posts, long blog posts, and then it syndicates. You probably could syndicate the Substack through it too. Anything, it's Activity Pub. It supports all those things. It's really wonderful. Anyway, that's not the commercial. That was not the commercial. I do have a video, though, that I want to share of Elon and Donald dancing. They're good, they're really good. Look at that.

0:33:42 - Jeff Jarvis
That's your guy.

0:33:43 - Leo Laporte
That's my guy, baby. Love you really good, look at that. That's your guy. That's my guy, baby. Love you, elon, keep up the good work. Our show today, brought to you by aunt pruitt, says he got 500 new followers on blue sky in just a couple of days.

0:33:53 - Jeff Jarvis
You've got to be on a start starter pack somewhere. We can't check which starter packs we're on, because you can't see which starter packs you're in.

Normally you can, because we're going to do this. One brief digression we're going to go to the ad we almost started. Um, normally you can, because there's this third-party site called clear sky that lets you show, uh, who any particular user is blocking or being blocked by. It also shows the lists you're on and starter packs or lists. Yeah, but blue sky has had too many signups over the last couple weeks, so clear sky has been busted and down because it's run by just some dude.

0:34:28 - Leo Laporte
But so we talked about this a little bit on. Well, yeah, let's hold that thought. I do want to talk. We'll talk about Blue Sky when we come back. How about that? Yes, you're watching this week in Google. It's going to be a really short show today. I just want to let you know. Know, because we started an hour late and Jeff Jarvis has to get his cacio don't blame it on me. Hey, pepe, I haven't had anything either.

0:34:49 - Jeff Jarvis / Leo Laporte / Paris Martineau
I'm living I have to go to bed coffee and fumes, just like Paris Martineau. Oh uh how many times are we gonna start this ad is this, the fourth one I'm torturing. That's all.

0:35:03 - Leo Laporte
Our show today, brought to you by our good friends at ACI Learning. You may say, well, how could they? That's the folks behind ITProTV. Oh, those guys Binge-worthy video-on-demand IT and cybersecurity training and, trust me, it's the best training anywhere With ITPro. Now there are a couple of reasons. You might want to use it. If you're an individual wants to get into it, or you're already in it and you want to add to your skill base, or you're a company that has an it team that you want to upskill, it's just a win all around. With ITPro, you'll get certification ready with access to their full video library. It is growing all the time Now. 7,250 hours of training, 7,250 hours of training. You can also get a premium training plan, which I would recommend because that gives you access to practice tests, which is fantastic. If you're preparing for a certification test, you can take the exam before you pay for it. Make sure you're ready. It gives you the confidence that I know this stuff, I can do it and it really helps your score a big, big time. There's also virtual labs, which have some really nice. You don't even have to have a windows machine. You could do this in a any any browser. You can set up a Windows server. Windows clients do the whole thing. You break it no big deal. You close the tab, you start over. It's great for MSPs too, because you can set up a system and try software before you install it on your customers' machines Really nice. Those virtual labs are fantastic. It Pro from ACI Learning. They make training fun. All the videos are produced in an engaging talk show format. They have a chat room going in the background, just like we do, and their trainers are experts in the field, working professionals. But it's more than just that. More than just that, they have the knowledge, they have the passion. They love this stuff and their passion for it passes along to you. It makes you enjoy what you're learning. They call it edutaining. It passes along to you. It makes you enjoy what you're learning. They call it edutaining. Take your IT or cyber career to the next level. Be bold, train smart with ACI Learning. Now you want to know more? Visit info.acilearning.com/twit and please use that whole URL so that they know you saw it here. info.acilearning.com/twit. There is a brand new offer code TWIT100. Twit100. You use that at checkout. You'll save 30% on your first year. That's a huge savings of the ITPro annual training plans. That's info.acilearning.com/twit, the offer code TWIT100. Thank you, ACI Learning A great partner. They have been for many years for all of our shows Blue skies. Thank you, ACI Learning. A great partner. They have been for many years for all of our shows

Blue Skies. So we talked about this a little bit on Twit.

Alex Kantrowitz was on. He's the host of the Big Technology podcast, the Big Technology Substack newsletter. He's written books about big technology. He thinks and I'm not sure he's's wrong that it's just like clubhouse, for instance, where there's this huge adoption curve. People move there, they get excited about it, they post for a while and then they just go, yeah, bye-bye. Do you think that that's what's happening with blue sky? It's going to have a up clubhouse.

0:38:19 - Paris Martineau
I'm trying to remember clubhouse that was during covid, you would call it. Let me see, uh, that was where um uh and greason got mad at people. Was that the place?

0:38:32 - Leo Laporte
yeah, it was, but remember how hot it was and everybody did it.

0:38:36 - Jeff Jarvis
I didn't do them it was it was hot because everyone was stuck at home alone and missed the sound of voices that were not their own or their partners. Clubhouse was hot for a very specific reason and it was. You wanted to feel like you were in a room with other people, and it gave you that experience through the audio format. I think Blue Sky has the juice, and I think it has the juice because it I don't know. One I found engagement there already to just be way higher than Twitter, where I have significantly more followers. But two and I think we've talked about this before I think the thing that Blue Sky has that other platforms are lacking is starter packs, which is kind of a community-based list feature where you could go on there and follow the Twit starter pack or subscribe to it, which means you automatically follow everybody who's a podcast host on Twit.

And it that feature where you can easily build a network of high quality kind of customizable themed accounts to follow. I think is going to do. Accounts to follow, I think is going to do. I mean it's part of the reason why the platform is taking off like it is, because that's a problem Twitter had for a long time that you know, new users wouldn't really know how to get into it.

0:39:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I do think that the feature set that they built into it is really good. There's missing things. Yeah, including one of the most important things from my point of view and cory doctor's point of view federation right I mean it's getting there, it's well.

0:40:10 - Jeff Jarvis
It's a small, but 90 years they're damn busy right now, yeah well, leo, they, you know suddenly have uh, 200 million users.

I think they're a team of what like 20 20? They were not. The platform has grown at such a rapid pace that they were overwhelmed. There was a period of time where Blue Sky was in beta, not because they're trying to do some mysterious thing, but because they could not handle a rapid influx of users and the beta expanded so quickly that they had to slow things down. It's a site that's a work in progress. I think that't know for what it is right now.

0:40:50 - Leo Laporte
It's quite. You know, my wife joined blue sky seven minutes ago, so now I know it's real yeah, now there we go.

0:40:56 - Paris Martineau
Okay, I'm joining her right now. Hi lisa follow lisa.

0:41:01 - Leo Laporte
Uh, I'm leo laporteme. I'm blue. I'm Blue Sky. Actually, I'm one of the first 5,000 people to join. I joined very early on but haven't been all that active. Actually, you know, microblogs made it possible for me to be more active, because everything I post on microblog goes to Blue Sky, as well as threads.

0:41:19 - Paris Martineau
So Lisa was already there and I was already following her. She just posted for the first time.

0:41:25 - Leo Laporte
That's pretty funny, that because yes, she does. She have 730 followers already yeah, but but no posts, just the one good for her. I actually really like her. Uh, her post it says well, here we go, blue sky she responded in 2023 to I love, love our rice cooker.

0:41:45 - Paris Martineau
she said we do.

0:41:47 - Leo Laporte
We do the Zoji Rushi recommended by Doc Rock. It's the rice cooker everybody uses.

0:41:56 - Jeff Jarvis
I love my Zoji Rushi rice cooker. It's great.

0:41:59 - Leo Laporte
It's like the brother laser printer that everybody has.

0:42:01 - Jeff Jarvis
It's got fuzzy logic.

0:42:02 - Paris Martineau
Oh I've got a cannon. Jeff has a brother, I have a brother. How?

0:42:08 - Leo Laporte
do you know that? Here's the question.

0:42:11 - Jeff Jarvis
We've had this exact exchange before where I have casually said, because someone has mentioned, jeff has a brother, and I'm like, well, I have a canon and Jeff has a brother. And you're just like, how do I know that? And I know that because we've talked about our different printers. Poor Paris With the old guys, we not only talked about it, but the headline, the name of an episode was Paris's Canon or, like Jeff's brother, paris's Canon or something like that.

0:42:37 - Leo Laporte
So what does it mean to yassify something? That's all I want to know. I just needed to know Teasing, teasing. So here's the real question. People obviously are leaving X to go to blue sky, right? That's why it's growing and it's growth is outpaced now threads.

0:42:53 - Paris Martineau
It's about as big as threads.

0:42:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's good. Yeah, so the but my question is and I asked this on Sunday too is it because we need something like Twitter? We have to have something like Twitter?

0:43:08 - Paris Martineau
yeah, I do, I want it. One of the things.

0:43:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Twitter is pretty low.

0:43:14 - Leo Laporte
Look is it there, but it's not in the top.

It's, it's definitely there so one of the things, jeff, you said that is so important about X is black Twitter, the the place that black people can go and be feel safe and communicate with one another, and there's been an effort now on blue sky. There is, in fact, something called black sky, which is a black users on the network, and they're trying to keep it safe. I think that that's yeah, that is a response to that, that issue in the very early days of Blue Sky they were very smart.

0:43:47 - Paris Martineau
They reached out to important people in black Twitter, invited them in, listened to them, and then they screwed up because a few users used the N-word in their usernames and, in the view of many, blue Sky just simply didn't respond fast enough, and so people felt a lack of trust and safety. But the problem become and also there are affordances that Black Twitter wants that don't exist. For example, this has been the issue with Mastodon, because you can't retweet there, because the search doesn't exist there. Black Twitter said it doesn't work for us, and this is what I heard in the black twitter summit, to which I had the privilege to play and host, uh, last year that might have changed, though more now is it better, I think, I think I think it's getting so bad at twitter people are still there they're still there, yeah, um, but.

but the real issue is it's hard to move a community. You just, uh, it's easy for me as an individual to go somewhere and hey, leo's there, paris is there, oh, that's cool. And then it finally builds up. It's another matter when you have, you know, a whole structure of affordances and and norms and memes and language. How do you restart that from scratch? That's not easy.

0:45:01 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, I will say I think part of the reason why I've had such a good experience at blue sky so far is I joined because a lot of the weird online posters I follow had suddenly joined too, and I went there and I immediately, oh great, like well. The fact is, the moment I knew that blue sky was the platform for me is when drill tried to join blue sky but then realized his handle was taken and he was like, oh, if he's a different thing. And all the people who created blue sky but then realized his handle was taken and he was like, oh, I've used a different thing. And all the people who created blue sky were like, no, no, no, drill, we all. The first thing you get if you're a blue sky employee is a printed hard cover book of your tweets.

We reserved the handle for you, drill, because we weren't, we weren't sure whether or not you'd come, and that's when I was like this is, this is the place for me yeah, and mike masnick's on the board now and he'll be.

0:45:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, mike's on the board, that's great so tell people why drill is so important drill is a canonical weird twitter poster.

0:46:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Um, there's, I guess, a more explicit version of the description of, but I don't want to hear the john hey, so I won't say it um.

0:46:11 - Leo Laporte
Have it ready, just in case um he's just here's a peremptory. A peremptory hey hey oh, too late.

0:46:23 - Jeff Jarvis
I couldn't get it fast enough wow, wow, I thought it was gonna interrupt. I even, you know, went low, so drown it out. No, instead, you just got to hear me whisper that and I hope that was good for all of you. Um, john, no I see that.

0:46:37 - Leo Laporte
By the way, I see the s word on CNN all the time. Now everybody says it. They said it on your little round table thing today. It's it's an okay word. Now that is it is. I don't I'm not sure I like that. Yeah, I agree with you.

0:46:50 - Paris Martineau
John s word is not okay, hey so you're saying you're giving me permission not to bleep it out in post?

0:46:59 - Leo Laporte
no, you better bleep it out, just in case just a little whisper.

0:47:03 - Jeff Jarvis
We couldn't have children hear that no, we.

0:47:07 - Leo Laporte
You know what that's really our rationale. It's what john was always saying is we do. We do have kids listening. We don't want their parents to say, oh, you can't listen to that show. It's explicit. So that's why we do it. I think it's a good thing to do? Do you use uh deck blue or do you use the canonical blue sky?

0:47:25 - Jeff Jarvis
um. I found myself using canonical blue sky a lot more, which is strange to me because I used to be a big tweet deck user, which is modeled after it. I do really like it. I have just found um lately because I haven't. When I was using tweet deck, I had a really good system of like 24 different columns that I had figured out over, you know, years of kind of experimenting and I haven't found that many yet Right now, I think, especially because the platform is still a little glitchy because so many people have signed up. In the last like two weeks ago, I was using deck dot blue. This week some of my feeds are a little uh, on the fritz because there's been a surge in users, so I haven't been as much, but I've still just been really enjoying using the various feeds on my home page 20 million users in its first year.

0:48:23 - Leo Laporte
Uh, of course, twitter has we don't know but roughly 300 350 million, uh, monthly active users, but 20 million's getting there, oh yeah and it's enough for great, great interaction. It is a critical mass.

0:48:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, yeah I'm gonna steal from my pick of the week. Uh, one of them, which is a post, um one titled blue Sky, is the Juice. Threads does not. But SimilarWeb did a kind of analysis of active users Specifically. They were kind of looking at, you know, the surge in interest that Blue Sky has gotten and what they found is that Blue Sky daily active user numbers have now overtaken Threads.

0:49:02 - Leo Laporte
Which I mean low bar, but I do think it's kind of interesting threads had a huge advantage because everybody with an instagram account has a threads account and a lot of people are just kind of migrating over.

0:49:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I do think it is like a very interesting tech story as to how mark zuckerberg and just meta at all totally screwed themselves on threads. They had everything set up for it to be the new Twitter, but they messed it up.

0:49:33 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, the, the, the, the. The user interface there just does not make sense. The interact with stuff is really hard there. There's too many barriers to to they also deprioritize political content.

0:49:45 - Jeff Jarvis
They deprioritize links and those are two huge buckets of content that power the core of Twitter. It's no surprise that, like you know, twitter a platform which I'll be small on comparison to something like Facebook or Instagram or you know any of these other platforms, but still it did power the conversation, in large part because it was a source of political and journalistic activity. It's what got us Trump in many ways.

0:50:13 - Paris Martineau
I just signed up to deck blue for the first time.

0:50:15 - Jeff Jarvis
It looks pretty nice. Yeah, it's nice. I mean, you have to basically add a bunch of different feeds in there. I really want to at some point start making my own algorithmic feeds when I have time and then putting that in there.

0:50:27 - Paris Martineau
Like right now suddenly 156 new people are following me and I don't know where that comes from. It's been happening in spurts.

0:50:36 - Jeff Jarvis
It's because you're on a starter pack.

0:50:37 - Paris Martineau
I'm, that comes from it. It's been happening in spurts. It's because you're on a starter pack. I'm on a starter pack and again, you wish you knew where you were so you could thank people.

0:50:41 - Jeff Jarvis
That's nice people out there. If you've got a good starter pack, add me to it. I gotta build. I gotta catch up with jeff how much does leo have there?

0:50:51 - Leo Laporte
yeah, uh, seven thousand, something like that I gotta catch up with leo.

0:50:55 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm behind leo, but I'm ahead of leo.

0:50:57 - Leo Laporte
I'm posting I apparently am not on a starter pack, or at least not a good starter yeah, you are, you're on, yeah you are, you've got like seven thousand john.

0:51:06 - Paris Martineau
John is sitting there saying tv starter pack john said what did I do?

0:51:10 - Leo Laporte
chop liver uh, we did create a twit starter pack, so you, you know, if you want to. Uh, we did create a twit starter pack, so you, you know. Uh, if you want to add all the twit people to the show, the twit starter pack, um, we'll get you everybody. Lisa me, micah, richard campbell, andy anaco, jason snell, rosemary orchard, jeff gutenberg parenthesis jarvis, paris martin, up all the right. Wow, that's a good good. Uh, everybody, benito, yeah, it's like our whole team.

0:51:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, because Blue Sky is the juice.

0:51:42 - Leo Laporte
It's the juice. I'm going to follow all of them.

0:51:44 - Jeff Jarvis
You already are, I think.

0:51:45 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure I am, but that's how easy it is if you have a starter pack, and that's really. That is a nice feature.

0:51:53 - Paris Martineau
I was delighted to be on Mike Masnick's. I was honored and happy. I was delighted to be on Mike Masnick's. I was honored and happy. I was very nervous as I went through the list saying am I here, am I here, am?

0:52:00 - Jeff Jarvis
I here, there I am. I know I'm jealous.

0:52:05 - Leo Laporte
Hey, good news. Elon Musk and Vivek Varasamy have decided to launch a podcast for the Department of Government Officials.

0:52:14 - Jeff Jarvis
It wasn't efficient enough. Already they need to do podcasting.

0:52:17 - Leo Laporte
The height of efficiency it feels like they're spitting, they're doing a little bit more than they need to do for real efficiency. I'm just saying yeah I think they should add another head, you know I think david sacks needs a job in the administration. I think jason calacanis would be great on this this week in government efficiency if they do it, if they do that I yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna I'll plots, I will plots. All right, we can we can so I?

think every time we talk about blue sky or twitter, I feel like there's a large group, a large group of people who say who cares?

0:53:00 - Paris Martineau
Fine, don't do it, that's okay.

0:53:02 - Leo Laporte
No, but I know, but I just feel like we in the media and we care, but I think that it's not a, it's not a general purpose platform. Yeah, Except that's where you know you get, where you find out about Dogecast yeah.

0:53:22 - Paris Martineau
We like to talk to people. That's what it is.

0:53:26 - Leo Laporte
I talk to people all day.

0:53:28 - Paris Martineau
I'm ready, I'm done with the show Once it turns off you're done.

0:53:30 - Leo Laporte
The last thing I want to do is create more content. Have you seen the AI Granny that bores scammers talked?

0:53:40 - Paris Martineau
about this on sunday I saw.

0:53:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, it's o2, so it's a marketing thing.

0:53:45 - Leo Laporte
So, uh, o2 is a mobile operator in the uk. Uh, and they say they created a ai generated scam baiter tool called Daisy. It mimics the voice of an elderly woman and it just tries to waste the time of fraudsters. The video is actually funny. I'm going to skip ahead.

0:54:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Created by O2 to waste phone scammers' time.

0:54:11 - Leo Laporte
So that's her.

0:54:13 - Jeff Jarvis
So W is then a dot, three times W and then dot.

0:54:18 - Paris Martineau
I think your profession is bothering people right.

0:54:21 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm just trying to have a little chat. Nearly been an hour. For the love of Gosh, how time flies.

0:54:31 - Leo Laporte
It's showing me a picture of my cat Fluffy. It's showing you a picture of your cat Fluffy.

0:54:37 - Jeff Jarvis
Stop calling me dear, you stupid. Stop it dear, Because while they're busy talking to me, they can't be scamming you.

0:54:45 - Leo Laporte
I love it. I love it. I think it's real. I mean, it's pretty funny. They say they've been. This is according to PC Magazine. Let me see, let me give credit to Jabeen Joseph who wrote the article.

Daisy has been taking calls from fraudsters for the past several weeks, o2 says. By tricking the criminals into thinking they're defrauding a real person and playing on scammers biases about older people, daisy has prevented them from talking real victims. I don't know if that slows it down. Really there's so many of these people. Yeah, I love the idea. It was trained with the help of a guy on YouTube, jim Browning, who does the same thing for reels, so he knows exactly what it is that will annoy scammers the most. It transcribes the caller's voice to text and generates responses using a large language model, all without input from an operator. And uh, at times o2 says daisy keeps fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes. Can you imagine how frustrating that must be?

The video is. Yeah, ai generated video, but it is just. Obviously it's a. It's a phone call. Actually, there is a real tool you might like in your Pixel phone If you have a Pixel 6 through 9,. The real-time scam detection for phone calls is rolling out now. You might have seen Google's demo of this at Google IO. It listens. This might be a little creepy. It listens for conversation patterns commonly associated with scams. Is it listening to my phone call?

0:56:21 - Jeff Jarvis
How else could it work? Yeah, it's got to be that.

0:56:24 - Leo Laporte
Well, or it might Suspicious activity detected for this call it might pick up and say it might pick it up locally, locally, and then you, so you'll see a pop up.

0:56:34 - Paris Martineau
That's why it's six through nine.

0:56:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.

0:56:38 - Paris Martineau
You'll see a pop-up.

0:56:38 - Leo Laporte
That's why it's six through nine, yeah, you'll see a pop-up and then it'll say I don't know folks, I'm not Hang up, or not a scam. So it's powered by a local LLM on this Pixel 9, the Gemini Nano LLM Gemini do you guys pick up phone calls, just random phone calls. No, no, no, nobody calls me john does wow rough.

0:57:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Um, yeah, I don't, but I I mean, I guess I should, I do if it's to my work number.

0:57:11 - Leo Laporte
Um, yeah, I mean it's hard because I have to look if it's a 707 area code, my local area code. I have to think about it like is this uh, you know a vendor or you know a contractor or something or somebody we've been talking to often? It's not.

0:57:24 - Paris Martineau
Often it's a scam call we still have our, our fabled landline and it's worthless. You know I have it how?

0:57:34 - Leo Laporte
how do you have it? Do you use it to yassify people? Oh, it's attached to your printer. That's cute, it is. Uh, you have it for an alarm system. Is that why you have it? No, we just kind of haven't gotten rid of it you never got rid of. See, every time I move I get rid of it. I mean, you know it's. It's been a long time since I've had a landline. We had one, uh, maybe 10 years ago, because the, because the burglar alarm needed it right now they use cell so that doesn't need that anymore, or they use my dad recently.

0:58:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, let me know that he switched the landline to an e-sim on his phone and I was really proud of him for that. Oh good, yeah, I used to be just young people.

0:58:14 - Paris Martineau
If power went out, then that would still work. Yeah, but of course now I have BIOS, so it's on that. Yeah, it doesn't matter.

0:58:22 - Leo Laporte
I told my mom that ages ago I said Mom, keep your landline because it's powered by the central switching network, not by your AC, so if the power goes out you can still make an emergency call if there's a hurricane or a snowstorm and the power goes out. But she didn't really understand that. And when she got, when cox came in and gave her just like you, jeff gave her voip phone calling uh, she didn't understand that. And and the problem is a lot of times verizon does this they'll cut the copper, so you don't need that anymore, which means you can't have a copper based oh yeah, no, absolutely not, but I finally, finally, finally, got a ups, two of them for my supposed to put one in.

When you have phone service through a internet, what is that?

0:59:08 - Paris Martineau
uninterruptible power battery battery. So so now for my, for my um router and my fiber intake. I have two of them, so if the power goes out and I have a generator, it picks up and I have no interruption of service. I really think that.

0:59:27 - Leo Laporte
I think we're close to no more phone calls at all. It's like cash, right. I think we're close to the end. We are in the cut. We're yes, we're in the transition calls are good.

0:59:39 - Jeff Jarvis
Actually, this is a person who used to hate phone calls. It's annoying to have to type back and forth in slack about something I will just be like. Can I call you?

0:59:49 - Leo Laporte
you know. So funny I think your generation, the younger generation, is now swinging the pendulum swinging no, I definitely I definitely don't want to text anymore. I just want a phone call. I'm not gonna call you. What are you talking?

1:00:01 - Jeff Jarvis
about. I mean, no, that is true, and I feel like in my generation people are really into voice memos, which is what we call podcasts, where you know if you've got something to tell the group. Yeah, a friend podcast.

If you've got something to tell the group that's maybe going to take a couple paragraphs. Instead you'll pull out voice memo. You'll do a brief friend podcast. If it goes on for a couple minutes, you'll do a second one, and then it's nice because everybody gets to read your little transcripts and make fun of whatever things it gets wrong.

1:00:28 - Leo Laporte
Jeff, that's another thing you'll like about microblog. You can do that. You can leave little voice recordings.

1:00:39 - Paris Martineau
It makes it a podcast so you could do jeff's, jeff's.

1:00:40 - Leo Laporte
You know, shower thoughts like I'm not on enough podcasts.

1:00:41 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, just you know shower thoughts uh, paris, I want to know, be honest, how often do you stop listening before the friend cast is over?

1:00:52 - Jeff Jarvis
oh, um, well so it's an interesting question because I will.

1:01:00 - Paris Martineau
Well, if it's a one to one, you won't believe what happened to me today, sorry.

1:01:05 - Jeff Jarvis
So I will go and look at the little transcript and if it's like short and I can kind of get the gist, I will usually just like read that instead of listening to it but.

1:01:15 - Leo Laporte
I will say this is changing, changing there's a text version of it you can read yeah, it have you never heard of memo it. No, you don't text it, just automatically transcribes it so you can listen to the transcript and it's great, but it's usually it's usually not.

1:01:32 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, sometimes it's like a good yarn, someone's telling do you want to listen for the highs and lows? You won't believe what happened like you know, father and I were in brazil for a wedding and they thought he was a movie star one of the best uh little voice memos a mini friend podcast, you might say I'd ever received from the skeeball chat is uh, our skeeball captain had a rsv and had lost her voice and she woke up one day and was like oh, I sound like ross from monsters inc.

And to prove it she just sent a voice memo of her going mike wazowski in her normal voice but it sounded exactly like it, and so this just set off every single person doing their best Roz impression, and it was delightful.

1:02:22 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, that's good. That needs sound.

1:02:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah.

1:02:25 - Leo Laporte
Right, all right, all right. I think that you have found a new medium. When they do a friend podcast, is it to multiple people, so it's not just to you, it's usually in a group chat.

1:02:40 - Jeff Jarvis
I think it's frankly me personally. I think it's rude to send a voice memo to a single person. It's like if we're texting.

Text me or call me like you're not listening, but if it is a group chat with like 10 people and you gotta communicate something. You don't want to take it up a lot of space in the group chat with a bunch of texts. You could just record a short two minute message and then we'll read it at our leisure. I will say my opinion towards longer messages has changed because up until maybe the last iOS update or the one before that, apple just clearly had never thought about the voice memo feature for more than a second, because if you so much as glanced at your phone the wrong way, it would stop playing and start at the beginning, like you had to keep the screen open and like active, like not dimmed, or else it would start over.

And it was awful. Now you can like listen to it while doing other stuff. It's lovely. Highly recommend sending a little voice memo to your friends.

1:03:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, we've learned something. I think we've all learned something.

1:03:40 - Jeff Jarvis
We really have.

1:03:42 - Paris Martineau
I'm hoping that maybe Paris doesn't have enough of us, that we could find ourselves and the three of us in a little voice chat society.

1:03:49 - Leo Laporte
You know, we just don't spend enough hours every week talking to each other Exactly Nope, not going to do it. Nope, wouldn't it be funny if I called in and said uh, hi guys, I just wanted to mention that this friend cast is brought to you by US Cloud the number one microsoft unified support. Actually, might as well do the ad, let's do it.

I was about to say yeah, that was this podcast by us, the number one Microsoft unified support replacement. Actually, I would call you and tell you about this, because if you're paying for Microsoft Enterprise support, you're just paying too much. Us Cloud is the global leader in third party Microsoft Enterprise support and some of the biggest companies in the world use it. Fifty of the Fortune 500 have switched to US Cloud. If you switch to US Cloud, you could save your business 30 to 50 percent on a true, comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. Actually, they said comparable. I don't think I think that's doing them a disservice. I think they're better. They're faster, smarter and less expensive. I try to convince them to make that their slogan, but they wouldn't do it. These guys are great.

Us Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack 24-7, 365 days a year. They do respond faster and they resolve tickets quicker for clients all around the world. Here's the thing You're going to always talk to real humans. I mean really good humans, expert level engineer humans. They recruit the best engineers with an average of 14.9 years, and that's for break fix or DSE the US. Of course, they have clients all over the world, but I think a lot of people would appreciate that, and here's something Microsoft refuses to do, but US Cloud will do Financially backed SLAs on response time. That's because they know when your network's down. When Comcast has failed, your failover has failed, your hair is on fire. Minutes, seconds matter. Initial ticket response from US Cloud averages under four minutes. That's fast. In 2023, 94% of US Cloud's clients reported saving at least a third. At least a third when switching from Microsoft Unified Support to US Cloud. And we're talking Fortune 500 companies, large health systems, major financial institutions, even federal agencies, have switched to us cloud. Us cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for over six million users globally every day. I'm talking big brands like Caterpillar, HP uses US cloud, Aflac, Dun Bradstreet, Under Armour, KeyBank. Here's the best endorsement of all. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen US Cloud for their Microsoft support needs.

I saw an interview with the director of information technologies who said and I'll quote this and within an hour, us Cloud responded with, I want to say, four engineers. So not only hour, us Cloud responded with I want to say four engineers, so not only did they bring the right people to the call, they brought the cavalry. I felt like wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I'd experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier, we made the right choice and when it comes to compliance, no one gets it better than US Cloud. They are ISO, GDPR, ESG compliant.

For US Cloud, it's not just a regulatory requirement, it's a strategic imperative that drives operational efficiency, legal compliance, risk management and, frankly, corporate reputation. These standards foster trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders. They attract investment. They ensure long-term sustainability. You should you should look for this frankly in whoever you're going to do business with. This is how you have success in a competitive global market. uscloud.com. They do it right. They are great. Book a call today. Find out how much your team can save USCloud. Call them uscloud.com. Book a call. Talk to them. See how much they can save and save you and, by the way, it's not just saving money. It's better, faster Microsoft support or less uscloud.com. Go ahead and give them a call and if they ask, would you please tell them. You heard it on This Week in Google. That will help us quite a bit.

Did you see Coca-Cola's controversial AI generated ad?

1:08:23 - Jeff Jarvis
What Are you guys out there watching ads?

1:08:28 - Paris Martineau
No, we watch stories about ads.

1:08:32 - Leo Laporte
I actually have not seen this, but I watch TV with adverts. Uh, do you ever watch football? No, what's that? That's pretty much where I get my ad content every week. We, you know the nfl, has a lot of ads and they're usually the better ads. Coca-cola, every year, does a christmas right, and so this year they did one. I think it's pretty apparently AI generated. Let me play it for you. So it's got the polar bear. They always do the polar bear. There's the Coca-Cola truck. I mean, can you tell? If you look at this, you could tell it's AI generated. Yeah, do you have a problem with that? Tell it's. It's a oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, but that you have a problem with that.

1:09:18 - Jeff Jarvis
I think it looks cool I don't think any advertisement looks cool, I look at this the same disdain that I would. The holiday magic is coming paris.

1:09:34 - Leo Laporte
You know what? Let me tell you something coca--Cola has four and a half million subscribers on its YouTube channel. Somebody is actually going to YouTube to watch Coca-Cola commercials, not somebody. Four and a half million people. I think there's a lot to be said for this. They took them three AI studios Secret Level, silverside AI and Wildcard. According to Forbes, four different generative AI models. So there was a lot of human involvement in this right.

1:10:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, someone had to pick all those models.

1:10:12 - Leo Laporte
And edit it together. I'm sure the prompts they had to write. This is not instant it together, and you know, I'm sure the prompts they had a right, this is not instant. Um, although, according to nbc news, the video drew criticism from creatives, who argued it was distasteful for the company to use ai to create the video instead of using the work of artists. Oh, come on, oh, come on, really. Here's the tweet coca-cola is red because it's made from the blood of out-of-work artists. Oh God, oh.

1:10:41 - Paris Martineau
God.

1:10:42 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh boy, that's rough. That's a rough one. I can't be on the same team as that, I'm sorry it takes.

1:10:48 - Leo Laporte
I would bet that the team isn't much smaller that created this than if it were created by filmmakers. It doesn't bother me at all.

1:10:59 - Jeff Jarvis
I think they should have hired a real polar bear masterpiece actually if you go to the masterpiece, click, you got right there.

1:11:04 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it was last year's, it really it's. I think it's better. It's really well done and it's. And last year we just called the cgi yeah they call it cgi. Right, yeah, right, and clearly it's cgi, although that might be a real human actor that, I think, is yeah, but you'll see it mixed in and it's brilliantly mixed in. Here we go yeah.

1:11:22 - Leo Laporte
So there's a picasso kind of winking at you. Oh geez, oh, it's reaching out for a bottle of coke.

1:11:30 - Jeff Jarvis
It's an andy warhol painting guys, the coca-cola corporation wins when we show ads on this video.

1:11:40 - Paris Martineau
I thought you were a capitalist now, and now you've lost the.

1:11:43 - Leo Laporte
We have to reprogram you again look, I don't drink coca-cola, that stuff's poison?

1:11:51 - Paris Martineau
just ask rfk. Yeah, he had it, he was drinking coca-cola?

1:11:53 - Leo Laporte
wasn't he on the on the on the tramp plane?

1:11:56 - Paris Martineau
I sat down and I actually added up the calories, sodium, fat of all that was on his tray. It was fun.

1:12:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, but no fluoride Fluoride free.

1:12:07 - Leo Laporte
I, just as somebody who started his work life at McDonald's, I just want to represent.

1:12:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, like Trump, the same one that Trump worked at.

1:12:16 - Leo Laporte
No, no, I just want to represent. I think McDonald's tastes pretty darn good. I understand it's not good for you, but neither is a hot dog and I like an occasional hot dog. I even buy them from the street vendor on New York City.

1:12:30 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah absolutely, it's harder to find a dirty water dog these days.

1:12:34 - Leo Laporte
Those are delicious, they're not good for you. They shorten your life. What's your, what's your mcdonald's order, leo? Oh, it just varies. You know, I used to be a big double cheese guy. When I worked there, we, we made double cheese, but then they, they stopped it. But I found out you could still order one. So for years I ordered off a secret menu and we'll get a double cheese. But I you know what I like a big Mac every once in a while too. I admit I was hooked as a youth. It's why I was I ever wait problem.

When I worked at McDonald's. The worst of it was the day the manager said because, by the way, when I see McDonald's on a private jet, I know that that food is at least an hour or two old. Oh God, yeah, yeah, when I worked at McDonald's and you make a Big Mac, they have a little. Now they probably have some sort of electronic means, but they had a little placard when I was a guy that put the minute that you made it. So if it's four minutes after 10 or whatever, you'd put a four there and when it gets to eight you throw it out.

You waste it because you're not going to serve a four minute old Big Mac, let alone two hours old. It congeals. It's terrible. Anyway, the manager said look, I have all this food. The problem when you waste food is, as a manager, that means you made too much for the rush. You're not a good manager. They don't throw it out, they put in a special white can called the waste can. Oh, then at the end of the day it gets inventoried, it's counted oh, look, they wasted 43 Big Macs and that's a black mark against the manager.

1:14:19 - Jeff Jarvis
So the guy said look, I'm going to give you a break, but you've got to eat these five Big Macs You've got to hide my mistakes.

1:14:25 - Paris Martineau
I did and it was good. So when I was the kitchen boss at Ponderosa Steakhouse, the trick was to wait until 15 minutes before closing and then just happen to put in a whole new tray of these wonderful rolls they have aren't you terrible? And gosh at the end of the evening, you don't? They should go to waste. Yeah, we got to eat them.

1:14:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, my daughter's is very even, even back, and this was in 72, 71. They were very well run.

1:14:58 - Paris Martineau
They were carried a lot about their inventory. We had to count every little sour cream cup what? Yes, because we had to compare it to the register. Yeah, it costs money.

1:15:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, that's three cents.

1:15:02 - Paris Martineau
They used to tell us that Every packet, every ketchup packet is two cents.

1:15:07 - Leo Laporte
You don't give them a handful of ketchups, you give them two ketchups.

1:15:10 - Paris Martineau
I learned, paris, that when you bring the steak off and put it on the metal tray, on the ridiculous wooden thing, and you for you, you, mushroom sauce is available. It's awful, just terrible. Oh yeah, and you never said you want mushroom sauce. No, no, no, no, you have the steak here, you have it down, you are ready to pour the mushroom sauce, mushroom sauce. And then they'll usually say yes, and you put it on. Oh, that'd be another 15 cents added onto the bill. Oh, you charge them for it.

1:15:38 - Leo Laporte
Gotta save that. Oh yes, that mushroom sauce ain't free, buddy, oh yeah, like the sour cream I think you only got two butter pats free. Well, the worst thing is at one point we must have had a manager who cared about the planet. Back in the 70s, remember, earth Day started and he said, look, we got all these wasted burgers in our waste can. And he contacted the local ASPCA, the dog pound, and said, look, we got all these great burgers, would you like some? And they said, no, there's not enough protein in them.

1:16:08 - Jeff Jarvis
We can't feed them to the dogs. It's probably bad for the dogs.

1:16:14 - Leo Laporte
It's bad for the dogs, but it is.

1:16:17 - Paris Martineau
Look, I'm not going to knock it because it is delicious. It is, it is. And paris, did you ever work in the food service industry I did.

1:16:23 - Jeff Jarvis
I worked at a starbucks, I also worked a 24-hour donut place and my version of this is at uh starbucks. At the end of the night you'd have to clean out the pastry case of all the kind of expiring pastries, or there was a time when starbucks pastry cases would be actually full of the pastries you would have out for people to order that day. I think now they've gotten rid of that because it did result in a lot of waste. But you're supposed to crush them up and throw them in the garbage. Uh, I would just get a bag and put them in the bag and then take a giant bag of pastries homes every night, and it was delicious.

1:16:56 - Paris Martineau
And, by the way, I don't think they actually expire because there are so many preservatives at those.

1:16:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, definitely, they definitely do not expire.

1:17:02 - Leo Laporte
Some of the bread related stuff might get a bit crunchy after a couple of days, but yeah, if you did watch ads on the NFL, you might have noticed a rather large number of ads from Instagram saying now you can have a fresh start. What does that say to you, when Instagram says you could have a fresh start?

1:17:26 - Jeff Jarvis
I think I've been spoiled. Yeah, they'll let you reset their recommendations Exactly.

1:17:34 - Leo Laporte
They're testing a feature that will I guess it's a big test because it's in the ads in the NFL that will allow users to reset the algorithmic suggestions that power the feed. They said it's a test but it must have rolled out globally unless they know who's watching. Maybe they really know who's watching and they say oh Leo, you've already, you've already got this. Let me see. I want to reset. Where would I do that edit profile you want?

1:18:01 - Jeff Jarvis
to get rid of all the weird sexy women they recommend you and I don't know why they think I want to see women in bikinis.

1:18:09 - Leo Laporte
I don't.

1:18:10 - Jeff Jarvis
I've never seen these in tech products that you'll buy and use once and never again. They could never have figured that out.

1:18:17 - Leo Laporte
I told you about my instagram chewing gum. What no, no, yeah, yeah it's remineralizing.

1:18:25 - Paris Martineau
It's good for your teeth what does it mean to mineralize? What does that mean? I don't know. It sounds like you're putting oil on your teeth. I know what's that.

1:18:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you're such a, you gotta wax them. This is not, by the way, the setting to personalize ad preferences. This is separate. It doesn't. Meta says it doesn't delete any of your data from the app we still have all your data or change how we serve you ads. They say this is for teens, to bring safety to all users. We want to give teens new ways to shape their Instagram experience so it can continue to reflect their passions and interests as they evolve. I guess that's true. You change, don't you, as you grow older. I want to know how to do this. Let me see if there's instructions. Reshape your Instagram Okay, so you go into. I don't understand how you do it. It's too tiny. How does this work? Parrish, can you help me? I want a fresh start in my Insta. Do you?

1:19:35 - Jeff Jarvis
use Instagram. Yes, you do, fresh start. I do yeah, I just I don't know how this feature works, honestly.

1:19:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it seems to be a manage button. Can't be undone. It can't be undone, don't undo it.

1:19:49 - Jeff Jarvis
It is kind of interesting because it does seem like this is more of a trend. Like I know, some friends Hinge the dating app has this feature where they will reset your entire algorithm for recommendations as well as everyone you've ever matched with. So I do wonder if there is some sort of recommendation algorithm fatigue setting in among people.

1:20:11 - Leo Laporte
I just don't understand why Instagram is serving me stuff like this. I just I don't understand.

1:20:19 - Jeff Jarvis
How dare they? What's going on there? I don't know they're saying we can't say the S word, but we can show that yeah geez, instagram showed it to me and it's not the first time.

1:20:32 - Leo Laporte
That's what's really weird. They keep showing it to me. They must think I want that. Okay, where do I reset this Cause? What I want to do is reset it and see if you have all people should reset. Yes, shows up again.

1:20:45 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm looking into settings and search the word reset, Cause it lets you search in there right.

1:20:50 - Leo Laporte
Oh, good thinking, All right, restricted no accounts center add preferences. Account settings, personal details add preferences. I guess I don't have it yet.

1:21:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, they've decided that you're stuck.

1:21:09 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, too bad. We have to show you almost naked rear ends. It's not even just almost naked rear ends.

1:21:18 - Leo Laporte
It's some sort of weird gymnastics thing.

1:21:22 - Jeff Jarvis
Your information and permissions it would come up, research recommend, I think recommend.

1:21:29 - Leo Laporte
All right, let me try again anyway, I don't think this is this? What is this? What is? Why is? Yeah? I don't have it. Why are they doing this? What is this? Who?

1:21:37 - Paris Martineau
does this. People are pissed off that they're they're they're not using it as much. They probably did a test and found that people got too deep into whatever it was recommending. They found that experience wasn't good. So a fresh start.

1:21:50 - Leo Laporte
But honestly, look at tiktok. Tiktok doesn't offer you that I mean. Tiktok just adjusts as you go.

1:21:57 - Jeff Jarvis
No, TikTok did. This is from TechCrunch. The new edition is similar to a feature that TikTok rolled out last year that allows users to reset their For you feeds.

1:22:06 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's great. Oh, I do want to do that on TikTok. I've ruined my TikTok Mostly because I'm watching stuff Jeff tells me to watch. It's completely, completely ruined it. Meta did get a pretty hefty fine from the EU 800 million euros and this was for what Classified ads Giving something free to people. Yeah, this is the last thing I would. I mean fine them for privacy violations. They were fined after regulators accused meta of stifling competition.

1:22:41 - Paris Martineau
Get this by tying its free marketplace services with the social network this is all very craig newmark, because if you put this in the us, uh, the difference, of course, is the facebook is there to make money and craig, you know, didn't, wasn't. Really. Craig must have made money because he made money, of course, but I'm saying it wasn't, it wasn't, he wasn't competing, he was just undercutting by the nature of it, but, but the equivalent would be no, no, you can't do that. We're going to fine you because you did something nice for people, and people have to stick with these newspapers that overcharge them, and so it's a protectionist scheme for media by linking.

1:23:18 - Leo Laporte
Marguerite Vestager said by linking Facebook with its classified ad services, meta had imposed unfair trading conditions on other providers. So it was good for Facebook and bad for who are the other providers?

1:23:34 - Paris Martineau
Oh, newspapers, yeah you're right, this is regulatory. Yeah, and then, if you go to, I got the wrong line number here because we added things 108 okay, let me, let me go to another case exactly this week where uh meta meta's reward for providing free global communication an ftc lawsuit.

Oh interesting, right, so whatsapp is free. Free, but no, no, you can't do that. How dare you give people something free? There's two cases like this in the same week. It's just amazing. So how does this protect us? We get free classifieds and free communication in the world, and that's who are you working for here? You ain't working for us. Ain't working for us. You're working for the company, the other, the old they're talking nine companies there's.

1:24:22 - Leo Laporte
They're going after them for whatsapp. Yeah, the ftc is uh, oh well, they're trying no, no, that they're trying to get them to divest whatsapp and instagram well then, then you couldn't have it for free, because it's now part of a company. If whatsapp became its own, no, no, no, but they paid a billion dollars for instagram because it was taking business away from facebook and they wanted to kill the competition by buying it.

1:24:52 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what happened and I think that's completely legitimate.

1:24:55 - Paris Martineau
That is antitrust action.

1:24:57 - Leo Laporte
What about WhatsApp? Same thing, they were concerned.

1:25:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Whatsapp was yeah, a huge force in the rest of the globe where Instagram and Facebook had not taken root.

1:25:10 - Leo Laporte
But it was called buying the competition. If you can't kill them or actually, usually, if you can't buy them, you kill them, but if you can buy them, then you don't have to kill them, you just make them part of it. They paid a billion for Instagram, which was a bargain, although I remember when it happened in 2012,. We were going a billion dollars for an app oh, that's crazy, oh crazy, like a fox. They did pay a lot more for WhatsApp, and I also remember, in 2014, when they bought WhatsApp, going $19 billion for WhatsApp. That's crazy talk. In both cases, I think Meta probably did okay, I don't disagree with this. This is classic antitrust behavior.

1:25:53 - Jeff Jarvis
You know, another example.

1:25:54 - Paris Martineau
If they're sneaking this in right now, it probably won happen with. Yeah, and that's the other administration.

1:25:58 - Leo Laporte
That's the other thing I yeah, I don't think there's anything to worry about. Uh, as we talked about earlier, um, weird. But before I talk about it, I just want to remind you. You're watching This Week in Google with Jeff Jarvis and paris martineau and john ashley's cat. Thanks for watching weird. Here's a weird story. What's weird today? When you were when you were over there at CNN, was it the talk of the round table that comcast wants to spin off msnbc and cnbc well, that was the next day when that happened that's a big story huge story.

It is a huge is this. So how much of this is business and how much of it is politics?

1:26:44 - Paris Martineau
I think it's mainly business. Uh, cable has cooties. Cable doesn't want it anywhere near their stock price and they want to get rid of it.

1:26:51 - Leo Laporte
Doesn't hurt you're not gonna. They're gonna still own it. They're still gonna be part of their. They're gonna third a third of it.

1:26:56 - Paris Martineau
I think okay, uh, but but uh, brian roberts won't be on the board, he won't be in any way in charge of it. Oh, interesting, separate company like I don't want any of this on me and a lot of things happen here so comcast stockholders will get stock in this new yes, yes company they're going to.

1:27:12 - Leo Laporte
it's not, by the way, just msnbc and cnbc, it's usa oxygen e the way, just MSNBC and CNBC, it's USA Oxygen E Sci-Fi and the Golf Channel.

1:27:19 - Paris Martineau
It's everything except Bravo, because Bravo is dependent. They need Bravo to feed the streaming service, the streaming service with the shows Peacock Bravo is hot.

But there's a lot of things that are going to happen out of this. One is that there's speculation, and I think with Hollywood Reporter, that they're going to have to give up the branding MSNBC and CNBC, that they're going to be loosed from whatever exists as NBC News. So what moves over or not is a big deal, and things could get sold off in turn. I mean, this is the same thing that I wrote about in magazines when you saw what happened with time warner and eventually time is so valuable. And then, oh, who wants this crap? Uh, meredith, will you take us off our hands? And I think that's what's going to happen here. Um, and the fear. When I was on the cmbc, the one thing I did say that I think I can say here is that it's kind of the msmbc is kind of the last clearly liberal media. I would argue.

1:28:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's why I was asking if it's business or politics.

1:28:22 - Paris Martineau
I think it's business, but they're happy to get rid of that, and I think that there's a lot of issues here. What I was honestly going to talk about was Joe and Mika going to Mar-a-Lago, but I think there's business there too. I won't get into the politics of it, but the business is fascinating because Oliver Darcy reported that after the first hour when they talked about this, the ratings fell into the second hour by 17% even much more with the key demographic and so I think that they did it for business purposes. Oh, we got to get back. People we're piss, were pissed off. In fact, they just peeved the last people who liked them.

That's right, and like what I've been saying about the New York times, yeah, and so it's a really interesting business thing here, and and I think that's going to I think I think Joe and Mika are going to struggle to get back up. And then what happens about everybody else who's on the network? And then, if they get pushed off, rachel Maddow's contract is up very soon. I could see her going off and starting her own media company. She should. I could also see whatever the company that exists here I come back for.

1:29:29 - Leo Laporte
Brian Williams because after he left MSNBC he really couldn't find a home and the last time he was seen was during election night where he was doing coverage for amazon prime. I started to watch it and it was the worst amateur production I have ever seen in my life. Williams is great. I mean he's caught. He's not great, he's polished. But they had the people. The team behind him was inept, did they?

1:29:55 - Paris Martineau
have a junior karnacki at a junior big board? No, they didn't. They weren't even that organized.

1:30:00 - Leo Laporte
It was I mean, I didn't see enough of it to know, but it was. It was poorly produced with poor talent. It was uh, they were covering stuff at the wrong time when they should have been covering what was going on. It was really uh. I immediately turned, tuned out anyway yeah, so I think this is.

1:30:16 - Paris Martineau
This is the death of cable. This is the death of of linear cable. This is what's happening. It's the death of mass media. We've seen magazines died. Newspapers are dying. Uh, broadcast radio is dying. Broadcast tv is dying. So this is just one more last thing to die.

1:30:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, um is it all going to youtube? Where's it going?

1:30:35 - Paris Martineau
yeah, it's going to the internet. It's going to tick tock. It's going everywhere else. It's going to YouTube. Where's it going? Yeah, it's going to the internet. It's going to TikTok. It's going everywhere else.

1:30:39 - Leo Laporte
It's going to Netflix, it's doing all right, but Disney Plus is not yeah, but that's the only streaming.

1:30:42 - Paris Martineau
Everybody's trying to be Netflix and they can't do it, so streaming is not working very well either, so it's YouTube, it's TikTok and YouTube.

1:30:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, which really makes you reason to want to kill tiktok is not geopolitics, but to benefit meta like get rid of tiktok, so meta's reels can on instagram can do better reels as bad as reels is weak. It looks just like they are weak half the time it is tiktok. It's it's tiktok's that are reposted. I know because that's what my son does. This is from puck, which is a great source for information. William d cohen cable prepares for the value extraction era. Milk, milk, the cow till she falls over you, you sell off to private equity yep.

1:31:28 - Paris Martineau
And then chainsaw al dunlop comes in and, and you know, splits it up for parts yep, and that's that, it's over and I think what could happen too is that you could see murdoch or sinclair or any number of players come in and buy msnbc yeah, um, and cnbc and um. So, yeah, this is. This is the end of mass media and the end of a honestly player in it.

1:31:57 - Leo Laporte
The end of 24-hour news does not really bother me too much.

1:32:02 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't think it's served, uh you can't say that in front of jeff, a man that has a screen showing msnbc live glued to joe and mika.

1:32:11 - Leo Laporte
Are you gonna not watch joe and mika anymore?

1:32:14 - Paris Martineau
nope well, I have to watch it because I'm a media. People get mad at me all the time. Why are you linking to the Washington Post? Why are you linking? I'm a media critic. It's what I do, that's true. So I will go through them, but I'm trying to switch to.

1:32:25 - Leo Laporte
CNN. That's why you watched Moonlighting back in the day.

1:32:30 - Paris Martineau
You didn't have a choice.

1:32:32 - Leo Laporte
You think TV's worse now than it was then. Oh yes, oh God, yes. Petticoat Junction.

1:32:38 - Paris Martineau
Well, I'm not going back that far. I wasn't a TV critic then. I was a TV critic from like Cosby.

1:32:45 - Leo Laporte
LA Law yes.

1:32:51 - Paris Martineau
Hill Street Blues. Hill Street Blues.

1:32:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's the David E Kelly era. Cheers was okay. I love Cheers. Paris doesn't know about as paris.

1:32:59 - Paris Martineau
Have you watched any of those shows we just listed?

1:33:01 - Jeff Jarvis
nope, I know of cheers wow norm where everybody knows your name.

1:33:09 - Leo Laporte
Well, this is a, you know, it is interesting because it is, uh, for us old folks a real shift in the media landscape. But for you, paris, it's, it probably doesn't change anything, right? No not at all. You get your media. I remember the last time I watched live.

1:33:26 - Jeff Jarvis
Do you even have a tv? Yeah do you even have youtube? Tv or anything I don't have youtube tv I don't have like cable.

1:33:32 - Paris Martineau
Is it a 13 inch zenith?

1:33:34 - Jeff Jarvis
oh the way she's here, is cable oh the nose is crinkled up. I don't know that I would have cable.

1:33:42 - Leo Laporte
So what do you watch W NYC?

1:33:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, what are you right now? I'm watching a lot of Nick Cage movies. It's Nick Vember. Tell us we got to get an update.

1:33:52 - Leo Laporte
Let me take a break and then we're going to come back and get an update on Paris Martineau's Nicolas Cage journey through the month of November. You are watching this week in Google with Paris Martineau from the information dot com. Jeff Jarvis from Jeff Jarvis dot com. We're glad you're here. All right, nick Vember, what movies have you watched? You watched a couple in October.

1:34:19 - Jeff Jarvis
I've watched quite a few movies. Now I got a little. I had a bit of a slowdown after the election because I then also had to finish in a draft.

1:34:27 - Paris Martineau
But my goal is to watch. You know, I had to work.

1:34:30 - Jeff Jarvis
I had about a 30,. I'm trying to watch about 30 movies by the end of the month. I'm about a little over halfway there, holy cow.

1:34:38 - Leo Laporte
How many movies has Nicolas Cage made?

1:34:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Well over 100.

1:34:41 - Leo Laporte
It was not hard. You're just doing the cream of the crop.

1:34:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm doing the best.

1:34:46 - Paris Martineau
Over 130 movies.

1:34:49 - Jeff Jarvis
Over 130. Wow.

1:34:51 - Paris Martineau
Now Paris. When you say best, I presume you mean the worst and most laughable.

1:34:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, yes and no. That screenshot from face off, I'd argue one of the best movies ever made.

1:35:00 - Leo Laporte
Face off was a great movie. Face off phenomenal. It literally starts with like a faces.

1:35:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, he and John Travolta trade faces. So then it is Nick cage playing, john Travolta playing cage, which is brilliant.

Hill it, it's so good. So volta playing cage, which is brilliant. Hill it, it's so good. Um, so that's kind of what made me decide to do this, because I was such a big face-off fan. I started off with vampires. Kiss, a 1984 film ruled, I don't know. John has given us a half a pep town. It's kind of like american psycho, but before american psycho, and it rules um matchstick men phenomenal film yeah, we talked about that, yeah completely blind. Love that peggy sue got married.

1:35:41 - Leo Laporte
Great movie um birdie weird one well, that was the one that made him a star.

1:35:47 - Jeff Jarvis
That was his first yeah, I mean it was his first like serious and also like leading role his.

1:35:53 - Leo Laporte
I loved raising arizona.

1:35:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Did you did you raise in arizona. Fantastic, yeah, um adaptation I just role.

1:35:58 - Paris Martineau
I love Raising Arizona. Did you Raising Arizona?

1:35:59 - Jeff Jarvis
Fantastic Adaptation. I just watched, a couple days ago again I've seen it. I love that film.

1:36:04 - Leo Laporte
That is a classic.

1:36:05 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, it is an all-time classic. Yeah, I also. His first ever appearance on like any mainstream sort of thing is a TV special from 1981 called the Best of Times, where Nick Cage plays a jock. It's a bunch of different, like teenagers just talking about how it's like to be a teen, with like little sketches like in between and, weirdly, musicals and Nick Cage kills it. He is so good as like much screen time, is he?

just a few minutes it's maybe 60 minutes and I'd say he's in probably at least like 15 of them, like he has quite a few like good monologues how many of these things?

1:36:50 - Paris Martineau
what's the proportion of things you have or have not seen before?

1:36:54 - Jeff Jarvis
most of them I hadn't seen before.

1:36:55 - Leo Laporte
I'd only seen here from uh brandroid in our uh chat is a really good idea for getting through the trump years. If you watch 30 nicholas cage movies every november, given his 116 acting credits, you'd be finished in four years yeah, I mean it's gonna be a lot of stinkers after this year because he's gonna have made a lot more movies in case there's a second term.

1:37:20 - Paris Martineau
So you, you know national treasure.

1:37:22 - Jeff Jarvis
A good movie national treasure, I mean, I think is a classic just in the sense that it is I also gotta see con air, con air pig um, I thought I watched truly the worst movie I've seen was called zandali and it was a 1991 nick cage movie where he plays a, I guess, like chauvinistic painter who's helped, like cheating on, like he's in an affair with somebody and it's just, it's bad. Truly would not recommend.

1:37:54 - Leo Laporte
I finished it only because I had to um, save for the last day, save for november 30th.

1:38:01 - Jeff Jarvis
I think this might be his most uh recent credit it's not, but I am saving it for the most recent, the uh, what is it? The unbearable weight of massive talent yes, that is what I'm doing on the last day it it's the classic.

1:38:15 - Leo Laporte
It is the perfect end of.

1:38:17 - Jeff Jarvis
Nick Vember film. Yeah, it's Nick Cage making fun of himself.

1:38:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's actually a really wonderful movie, and you think that he must be broke. That's why he's making these movies.

1:38:30 - Jeff Jarvis
He's actually not in his broke era. He did go through an era of a lot of pyramid-related debt. I think he bought a couple pyramids as well as a bunch of rare and exotic snakes and other things, and then he was in debt for quite some time. So that's where a lot of those 130 movies come from. Is from that rough spot, but would recommend it.

1:38:52 - Paris Martineau
He's in a Warner.

1:38:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Herzog movie he's in a David Lynch film. You saw Moonstruck.

1:39:02 - Leo Laporte
You saw uh right, moonstruck is uh, this weekend with share moonstruck, I was originally gonna watch on the election night.

1:39:06 - Jeff Jarvis
Then I went to bed, I drank a whole uh weed drink and then went to bed at 8 pm.

1:39:11 - Leo Laporte
That's a weed drink, you mean?

1:39:13 - Jeff Jarvis
with thc in it. They now put marijuana in in a little seltzer you can buy down the street.

1:39:20 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I just spilled water Does it get you high? What kind of water Was it? Good water or just water, water you spilled?

1:39:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Just water, water. Oh, I see, I'm really. You know, it's so funny, because when I was your age.

1:39:31 - Leo Laporte
You had to sneak around.

1:39:33 - Paris Martineau
Oh yeah, this was so illegal.

1:39:38 - Jeff Jarvis
And now you just go out and you go to the local bodega and you get some weed water down the street from me like the fanciest boday or the fanciest dispensary in the world opened and it's just like. I can just like get off the subway, walk a couple blocks and I am suddenly able to buy any two blocks to drugs and queso.

1:39:58 - Paris Martineau
What's what? I know what?

1:39:59 - Jeff Jarvis
more could you?

1:39:59 - Leo Laporte
want oh, they should be right next door to each other. Actually they are actually.

1:40:05 - Paris Martineau
They're very close to each other, which is dangerous wow, all right there in paris, I got a report well before we got on. You might want to know this, theo, yes, she had her wonder queso and it was delicious.

1:40:18 - Leo Laporte
Wonders queso really held up she's wonder, is that weird pop-up we were talking about last week twice?

1:40:24 - Jeff Jarvis
yes, I also did some. I did some more digging the food. I actually got some sort of like open-faced sandwich thing that was good in addition to queso and a cornbread all really delicious. However, I don't know if I'd recommend it for food just as a concept, because they do. Uh, I guess how they work is they have some central kitchen location I think it's new jersey in new york where they make all the food that day and then they send it out to the different wonder locations and they basically reheat it then when you order. So it's not being made fresh. That doesn't matter for queso, so I would really recommend it for that as someone who's better the second day actually it is definitely, and also new york city just has a dearth of queso options.

1:41:08 - Paris Martineau
This is long but a problem whoever has enough that you get a second day queso should be gone when it's made.

1:41:15 - Jeff Jarvis
That's it well, the thing is, if you're you're yourself, you feel like I'm lactose intolerant. I probably shouldn't eat the whole jar of queso, so then I try to break it up over a deck.

1:41:25 - Leo Laporte
Don't worry, there is no dairy in Velveeta, you're safe. I know they extract the dairy to make the Velveeta. Actually, you know, it's so weird because when I was a young man and I wanted to smoke marijuana, we had to sneak around. I was paranoid the whole time. It was like scary. Now I it's legal and I don't I'm scared of doing it.

1:41:49 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I don't want to know weed is way stronger now than your guys's time, so I would be afraid if I was you so here's, here's my, my, my, jeff is a dork story. When I was in I know there's many of them when I was in San Francisco and I was a cool columnist, the young Herb Keene and I would cover all kinds of concerts with Bill Graham, who was the impresario of all concerts in San Francisco Rolling Stones, the Dead, everything and I knew his press people as a result because I was the, I was the columnist and so I would get a supply from them of their cosmic brownies and I would order from them because they had the best guy making cosmic brownies and then I would pay them because that was the deal and I tried to write them a check and hey man, you can't raise a check, man, it's a paper trail.

They laughed at me. They thought it was really quite cute.

1:42:41 - Leo Laporte
Cash only man. Cash on the barrelhead man. What are you talking about? You know the feds would come down on us so fast. What are you? Trying to raise a check for dude Are you a fed man, you want a paper trail.

1:42:56 - Jeff Jarvis
I can tell Are you a fed man, you want a paper trail. I can tell it's baffling, because the aesthetic of these new legal dispensaries is insane. They all look like hyper, they all look like super Apple stores. Everything is white and shiny and minimalist.

1:43:12 - Paris Martineau
Don't they look like they were made by GPT? It looks like the Coke commercial. Yeah, no, gpt, it looks like the Coke commercial.

1:43:18 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, no, they do kind of look like the Coke commercial. It's just a very strange experience.

1:43:23 - Leo Laporte
That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.

1:43:26 - Paris Martineau
So, being that Leo and I are old and haven't done this in a very long time, do you just eat less of a gummy, or do they have old folks? She's used to the heavy duty stuff. You can't get it. What about us?

1:43:39 - Leo Laporte
There was an Atlantic magazine piece on you can't get mid-grade marijuana anymore because the people who use it now are so tolerant of it that they have to. Only the only 80% of all marijuana is sold to daily users, so it has to be super strong, so you can't get the rag weed, the skunk weed that you and I dime bag.

1:44:03 - Jeff Jarvis
Remember that, oh yeah, you can't get that. What I would recommend for you guys, though, is what started all this off? A weed drink, like they now have it, it's like it's the equivalent of an edible, but you just like sip a little seltzer.

1:44:18 - Leo Laporte
Edibles scare, or because you can't control you don't know well.

1:44:20 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, you can control it. Now, if you buy it from a dispensary, they do tell you exactly how much it is, so you could. You should start out with, I'd say, two milligrams, or five. If you're two milligrams, if it's an edible that you actually chew, I feel like the weed drinks are just way chiller. So I would say you could probably do a five one I'm feeling so illegal, aren't you leo?

1:44:40 - Leo Laporte
I don't want, I can't. It's like I don't, I can't even do it anymore, I don't. So I've had in my medicine cabinet for a couple of years now at least a little dropper thing. It's supposed to be for your sleep and it says how much is in it and you do, how many drops you do.

1:44:57 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm just too scared I can't do it the cops are going to burst down your door right now they're coming, they're running right now here we have.

1:45:06 - Leo Laporte
Young paris is corrupting old us I can't, man, I can't, uh, let's do the google changelog.

1:45:15 - Paris Martineau
What a crazy concept we have one Can you dig up?

1:45:18 - Leo Laporte
Oh, we have the scooter X Google change log. I haven't put one together, but scooter X, of course, who is? You can tell mildly, he's in our discord chat. He's mildly irritated by the fact that we continually refuse to talk about Google, so he just in a in a kind of passive, aggressive way, starts posting google links into the discord, like you could be talking about this. So and now, ladies and gentlemen, I've given john ashley enough time to find the card for the google changelog, the Google Change Log. This is for you, scooter.

1:45:59 - Paris Martineau
This is for you. In my defense, I was ready to go. You knew I was ready.

1:46:04 - Leo Laporte
You were ready. You were ready. I have to say and, scooter, I agree with you there is a problem that has caused me no end of trouble all week For some. Well, I know exactly why you have not been able to, for the last week, copy and paste headlines from a number of websites, including the verge and Bloomberg, but weirdly, it's because a CSS library that both these sites use I think it was tailwinds that CSS got changed, is that it?

1:46:39 - Paris Martineau
Wow, have you noticed this Well that both these sites use? I think it was tailwindscss got changed, Is that it? Wow, have you noticed?

1:46:45 - Leo Laporte
this. Well, I noticed the Verge did not have any headlines for a while. What? No, it wasn't a headline. So here I am on a Verge article and what I would normally do is I would copy and I would drag across this and copy and paste it into our bookmark. But I can't right. Except that it is, it's just not highlighting it. So I finally discovered that. But the Verge admitted it. The Verge said yeah, we know, it's because of this CSS library.

1:47:09 - Jeff Jarvis
They admitted it.

1:47:12 - Leo Laporte
But they said they were going to fix it many days ago, and so if you have noticed, that's so amazing that there's centralized.

1:47:20 - Paris Martineau
Now I'm old enough to remember when I coded my own html and coded every website. Yeah, then css was a big new thing. Yeah, I think that there's a central library that can go down. That's fascinating. That's, yeah, central. The problems of centralization?

1:47:35 - Leo Laporte
It is actually it should have stayed open source, so apparently it hasn't been fixed. You still can't copy and paste from the Verge or Bloomberg or other places, so I thought it maybe was a JavaScript thing. I turned off JavaScript that didn't do it. It's a commonly used CSS library and nobody's fixed it yet.

1:47:58 - Paris Martineau
How do you, do you break a css library? Did it gets updated, or something?

1:48:02 - Leo Laporte
or yeah, they changed the behavior and then there's a bug in it and because the way most web pages now work a lot of them you can see this if you look at the source code right they load libraries in javascript or css. They load these libraries in as they're loading the page from another, another place. It's actually a massive security problem because they're getting it from another place and and loading it in and you're running it in your browser.

1:48:28 - Paris Martineau
Well, that was the whole point of of Google.

1:48:33 - Leo Laporte
When they amp amp. Thank you, amp.

1:48:35 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, the your spot amp was was resident and you could call upon things that were resident. That was true.

1:48:43 - Leo Laporte
It made it so much faster and less perilous. Uh, the latest version of Chrome has addressed issues in the browser that broke the ability to highlight text on some websites over the weekend, according to Scott Westover of Google. Uh, the verge says we tested the change and we were able to highlight that. Apparently, because I'm using Arc, it isn't updated yet, but if you are using Chrome, if you get an up-to-date version of Chrome, you will be able to highlight. I can't do it. Do it. It's because the issue which cropped up with Chrome 131 was related to the way the selection styling tool, tailwind CSS, implemented text highlighting. Users affected by it could still select text. You wouldn't know. Anyway, it's still broken on Arc, the browser that I'm using, but if you have the latest Chrome, that's fixed. So you know what? That was a good changelog. Thank you, scooterx, but we're not done. Oh no, there's more. Apparently, some of the changelog involves facebook introducing ai backgrounds, hd video calls, noise suppression and more for messenger calling.

1:49:51 - Paris Martineau
wait, wait, wait, wait scooter x scooter purity the purity of change has just been violated.

1:49:55 - Jeff Jarvis
No, no, you're never allowed to complain about us not doing this again.

1:49:59 - Leo Laporte
Sorry, it's over Now the browser that I like and use. Arc from the browser company is now. Its Arc search has been on iOS for some time. They finally added Arc to Windows and now mobile browser Arc search is generally available on Android. So if you want to use it although I wouldn't rush to use it because the browser company has announced and we're not going to do arc anymore, oh jesus really.

1:50:26 - Jeff Jarvis
What are they doing then?

1:50:28 - Leo Laporte
uh, the startup, valued at 550 million, is thinking about building new products that are more palatable to a wider audience. Oh, I love arc and I and every boy. If you go to the arc subreddit, you will see a lot of unhappy people, but arc still works and I'm going to continue to use it. Here's another one from the scooter exchange log. Google photos will no longer share images from other apps through partner sharing. I said.

1:50:58 - Paris Martineau
Google Photos.

1:51:01 - Jeff Jarvis
I tried to stifle a yawn and I failed.

1:51:03 - Paris Martineau
Don't even know what tired to yawn, it doesn't.

1:51:07 - Leo Laporte
Spotted by tech issues today.

1:51:08 - Paris Martineau
Okay, I don't know Scooter X, I don't know. Well, this is the change.

1:51:14 - Leo Laporte
Google Chat rolling out a split pane ui on the web google's talking back to you it says okay, we're going, we're moving, we're moving. That was one plan. Your holiday drives with google maps trends. Google says to help you breeze through this year's festivities. Isn't that? What we all want to do is just breeze through the festivities. Here are Google maps traffic predictions, as well as the best and worst time to run errands the thing.

1:51:46 - Paris Martineau
I hate most about television news is Thanksgiving. There's going to be a lot of people on the road. We're going to talk to people at the airport, are you flying out?

1:51:55 - Leo Laporte
There's a holiday.

1:51:56 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I hate that. I we're going to talk to people at the airport.

1:51:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Are you flying out? Because the holiday, yeah, you could have 24 hours, jeff no, it's not even that.

1:52:02 - Paris Martineau
It's local news.

1:52:03 - Leo Laporte
It's local news what is the same?

1:52:04 - Paris Martineau
reason to say it's going to be a new record, but gas prices are down this year and that's good news for travelers oh, I hate that crap.

1:52:12 - Leo Laporte
It's the same thing, uh, when the hurricanes were hitting north carolina, where you send your anchor out to stand in the wind and the rain hey, now that's a public service I kind of hope they get blown away. Don't you think people are watching it, hoping like something will happen?

1:52:30 - Jeff Jarvis
I do think that they should do kind of like a lottery system, where one each storm, one public anchor should be equipped with a squirrel suit. So they just get on this step out and they're immediately just gone. It's kind of.

1:52:42 - Leo Laporte
Like you know from news age, holly ellen bargain is out at the site right now. Holly, what's? Oh god, she just got hit by a stop sign holly stop please stop. Okay, just stop. Don't. Don't send your anchors or anybody anybody out there. So google map trends. Now has popular times and the busiest and least busy times to visit places in the us I put something more interesting in the changelog I want to add.

1:53:10 - Paris Martineau
There was one thing in the changelog which I put there oh, let's go see jeff's changelog. X. I'm just going to try to rescue you here.

1:53:18 - Leo Laporte
Google Lens can now check prices and inventory when shopping in the real world.

1:53:22 - Paris Martineau
That's kind of interesting and I imagine stores will hate it.

1:53:26 - Leo Laporte
They will because what happens? You know what happens. Somebody goes in the last camera shop in all of Northern California, takes a picture of the camera and finds a cheaper place to buy it online than leaves.

1:53:36 - Paris Martineau
Absolutely so. When I did some work for Best Buy many, many years ago and this trend was starting, we talked about a strategy of basically standing by the door and saying I know what you did and that's okay. Tell me what you're getting and let me try to help you here.

1:53:50 - Leo Laporte
Let me match the price or something.

1:53:52 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, it is actually a rabbinical sin.

1:53:59 - Leo Laporte
It's the. It's called the shopkeepers. What is it? Uh, sin, not sin. I don't think they have the concept of sin in in the jewish religion.

1:54:08 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, they do, it's called right, john, you're not Jewish, okay.

1:54:14 - Leo Laporte
Okay, but I remember being told that it's considered a bad thing. Let's say a bad thing. We don't know if it's a Shonda. A Shonda to go into a shop, waste the shopkeeper's time. He tells you everything there is to know about that rutabaga and you go, thanks a lot. And you go buy it at the shop down the street because it's cheaper.

That is a shonda just saying this used shonda, but yeah, mobile bro, we are the, we are the goyim, that's all I can say. Mobile browser arcs. No, we already did that one. What did you put in? I don't see anything. That was the one, you just did it. Oh, that was it. That was mine.

1:54:57 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, oh, how nice, how nice, let's go back to Mine was the thing you skipped over.

1:55:04 - Leo Laporte
The scooter exchange log. Pixel weather is rolling out, pollen count and, as if that weren't enough, immersive vibrations.

1:55:17 - Paris Martineau
This is in the October feature feature drive. They're getting so desperate they're going for sex immersive weather vibrations.

1:55:24 - Leo Laporte
Your device will vibrate along with the weather animations when available oh, geez, you're right, they're running out of features ping for your raindrops coming down oh it seems like a hurricane is coming what would be the vibration for a hurricane?

1:55:56 - Paris Martineau
what's the what's? The weather thing you're going on. What's the weather thing you're going on right now on the west coast? That's called a what?

1:56:05 - Leo Laporte
a what bomb cyclone now that that is a vibration I gotta say, though, we used to have heavy rain, but the way I feel like the weather, people and this is again, this is another thing that the mass media has had to do have had to cook up god, you download starlink and you start raging against the mass media sorry, continue up the excitement around weather with atmospheric. With what are we? This is called an atmospheric flood or the bomb cyclone they got to name the storms.

1:56:40 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, yes, but also weather is getting more extreme because of climate change. Well, is that yes?

1:56:47 - Leo Laporte
oh, here's wait a minute. I'm sorry I missed the big story of the week. Google rebrands switcher app to lure iphone users to android.

1:56:56 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, I'm so glad we didn't forget that oh, brilliant google branding it was called switch to android. They've now changed it to android switch that can't be real, that is not made up and julie clover wrote that as a story julie clover said you know this is part of a rebranding effort to lure iphone users.

1:57:22 - Leo Laporte
Our tests are we did a lot of focus groups and the iphone users hated the name switch to android but they like android switch abt.

1:57:33 - Paris Martineau
There need to be fewer people working at google.

1:57:35 - Jeff Jarvis
They got to get Doge in on that, yeah.

1:57:39 - Leo Laporte
The Google Maps location. There's so much in the Google changelog. Now, thanks to ScooterX, you can thank him. Uh-oh, I'm seeing. No, you're okay. Okay, the Google Maps location. He understands Glitch. The Google Maps location. He understands Glitch. I speak glitch. The Google Maps location history. Timeline change is still rolling out.

1:58:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh my God, I was wondering if we needed to call someone. We needed to call emergency medical services. Leo's glitching he's having a stroke.

1:58:22 - Leo Laporte
It's still rolling out. Just thought you'd like to know the things they call news these days. Um, I think, I think, unless I'm unless, uh I think you hit the bottom at the beginning no, no, no. Google is reportedly fully migrating chrome os over to android okay, this I thought was beyond changelog.

1:58:42 - Paris Martineau
This is a story I want to talk about. Okay, thank you, because, yes, not only that, the rumor mill has it, or up in the in the rundown there, that google might actually be making a new pixel machine based on Android as the OS so what's going on, then is not that they are.

1:59:05 - Leo Laporte
Is it? Are they phasing out Chrome OS? Are they making Android be? That's the question. Desktop operating system that's the question.

1:59:13 - Paris Martineau
I mean and we've speculated about this for years why do they have to? Why don't they consolidate them? This could be the beginning, and then the irony, of course, is at the time when the government is telling them to sell chrome oh okay, we don't care anymore we don't need you.

1:59:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, the government is also talking about selling and spelling off android, so it's not really, oh yeah, oh jesus, chrome and android, because both are used to support the ad business which is what they really want to hit. They're such idiots so apparently chrome os will be, and google's announced this earlier. We'll be using the android linux kernel, android frameworks, android's bluetooth stack.

1:59:50 - Paris Martineau
Google, oh, it must you did that just to irritate me, didn't you no?

1:59:54 - Leo Laporte
the sun went down. It says audio it just went to dark mode. It's sunset. My computer goes to dark mode at sunset.

2:00:01 - Jeff Jarvis
Dark mode is beautiful.

2:00:03 - Leo Laporte
I think it is lovely. Let's see what else In terms of why Google said this will accelerate the pace of AI innovation at the core of Chrome OS. Yeah, because we don't have to do ai for both android and chrome os. I see.

2:00:21 - Paris Martineau
So, yeah, I think you might not be too happy about this in the long run. Really, me well. No, because they're also talking about doing a new flagship but it would look like android google.

2:00:31 - Leo Laporte
according to android authority, google wants future chromebooks to ship with android os in the future, so if they do a new one, it might have it. Well, you wouldn't mind that, would you, jeff?

2:00:42 - Paris Martineau
No, I think if it works, if it does what? It's supposed to do if I still have my browser and the government doesn't mess that up, if I can still use Docs. Yeah, in fact, android apps don't work worth a darn right now on Chromebooks. It's BS, it's an awful experience.

2:00:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, part of that is the aspect ratio of the screen right. The problem with Android is it's really designed for a phone form factor. It doesn't work that well in a tablet or even a desktop.

2:01:09 - Paris Martineau
I have to go in all the time and turn off. You know what should you open with this link? Should you open the so-and-so's app or should you open? Oh, I hate that. When it opens the app, it's just awful, yeah, yeah, and drives me crazy and doesn't work very well. So it's not integrated, so maybe it makes it worse. I don't know. But yeah, the next story down android headlines says exclusive google pixel laptop in development exclamation point. That doesn't. That's a headline that deserves an exclamation point yay, it would be called a pixel interesting bringing back the pixel brand yeah, I'm actually.

2:01:43 - Leo Laporte
Uh, my daughter has worn out her chromebook. Every time I talk to her it's got a new keyboard malfunction. Now when she types a p, it types colon p. She has no question mark, so she just keeps it on the clipboard and pastes it in when she needs a question mark. I said abby, would you let me buy you a new chromebook, they're not expensive? She says no, no, no, and and then she says oh, and it's not holding a charge. I have to.

2:02:08 - Paris Martineau
It's like come on it's time for a new one, so I'm debating whether to get the. Uh, I don't gotta wait for this one, because I was debating whether to get the new samsung um, but there's there's two problems with it.

2:02:21 - Leo Laporte
Actually I was gonna get her the samsung galaxy, uh, chromebook, yeah, yeah, but put on this focaccia, um numeric pad on the right, and it's bright red.

2:02:30 - Paris Martineau
No, no, no, no, that's the one I have. It's blue, it's, it's, it's look it up.

2:02:34 - Leo Laporte
No, this is a pretty red. Do you like your red one?

2:02:36 - Paris Martineau
no one is a fan is loud enough to be a jet engine. I hate that about it.

2:02:42 - Leo Laporte
So, according to and this is again from Android headlines, which I've never heard of Alexandra Maxim writing, according to an internal email, the code name for the laptop is snowy. Maybe it'll be white. They say they want it to be like a macbook pro or a dell xps or a surface. Uh, the product is green lit, says android headlines, means it's beyond the concept phase. They have a team working on it. I don't know. When would we, when would it come out? Did you?

2:03:12 - Paris Martineau
I don't know, because now I gotta wait. I was gonna, I was, I was almost gonna buy the samsung. Yeah, uh, probably the other problem with Samsung, I don't know how loud the fan is. Jason was was using one and he said it's not very loud as far as he can tell. But the other problem is there's no touchscreen. Why they would have done that, I don't know. Screen looks beautiful, keyboard's nice, because you have the numeric keypad, you're offset.

2:03:36 - Leo Laporte
You know, I'm feeling like it's getting to be pretty close to Cacio and Pepe time, or maybe just a weed-based seltzer. So let us take the final break.

2:03:48 - Paris Martineau
I don't think Paris is going to need any help going to sleep tonight, I know.

2:03:51 - Jeff Jarvis
I could fall asleep right now.

2:03:55 - Paris Martineau
This was above and beyond the call our Paris.

2:03:57 - Leo Laporte
We want to watch you sleep, isn't? That's not creepy, is it? Yeah, totally not creepy, just too that was the whole premise of jenny cam, right? Do you remember jenny cam? Oh yeah, it was probably before your time as well I know, jenny cam. Yeah, that was the internet precursor to twitch twitch, a successor. It was the same people who did Jenny cam and people would just watch this young woman and basically a lot of it was watching her sleep. That is creepy, now that I think of it.

2:04:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Very Truman show, very Truman show.

2:04:29 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that was the whole idea, it wasn't it? Yeah, I don't know which came first, but you're watching this week at Google, jeff Jarvis, which came first, but you're watching this week at google Jeff Jarvis, paris martin now let's kick off the uh wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, oh, and that's the skewers already log and the, the universe would not have been in order. Wait a minute, we'd not allow john to fade to black.

2:04:53 - Jeff Jarvis
Goodbye hi everybody.

2:04:57 - Leo Laporte
Uh, yes, that was the google changelog. I'm glad you enjoyed it and now, now we could take a break. Actually, before we go into the pics of the week, I do want to say we would love you to join the club. There are people watching this show who are not yet members of club twit. Uh, in fact, about 98 of you are not yet members of Club Twit. I would love if we could get 5%. That's all. It would take 5% of the people who watch our shows to join the club. At merely seven bucks a month, we would not need to worry about advertisers. We could actually do new shows, grow the shows, we could expand. All it would take is 5%. So do me a favor, join the club.

We've done a couple of things to make it more appealing. There's two weeks free, so if you you know what do I get, you can see for yourself. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get access to our club, to Discord. That would be a good way to use your trial period just to hang out in there for a while, because I think you'll love it. They're great people, great conversations, all day, all night. You also get special events like Michael's Creative Corner coming up a little bit later on Club Twit. We have Stacy's Book Club. Early next month we have Chris Marquardt's Photo Corner. We're going to do another coffee show. People seem to like that. All of those are streamed on our eight different platforms thanks to our club members and then made available on the twit plus feed in the club. The club is important to us because it's it smooths out the ups and downs, really the hills and valleys, of advertiser support just between you and me. I would love to just do the club and not have to worry about ads.

2:06:38 - Paris Martineau
That would be so great, please, please.

2:06:41 - Leo Laporte
That is my personal goal. Nothing wrong with the advertisers, but doesn't it make sense that the people who listen to the shows should be the ones who support it? We don't want to do a paywall. I never want to do a paywall because I want to make it available to anybody. That's why we don't need 100%. We don't even need 90%. We need 95% free and 5% paid.

2:07:01 - Paris Martineau
This is the public radio of geeks. Yeah, Come on people.

2:07:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Be the king of jealousy in the world. You're not going to waste money on tote bags or crap.

2:07:09 - Paris Martineau
You're going to buy new shirts for Leo and that's important.

2:07:13 - Leo Laporte
Go to twit.tv/clubtwit. Now you know what my money? I'm living on my retirement now. I'm not getting any money in this. This is these shirts I buy with my own retirement funds because we want all the money that comes in through the club to go to paying Paris, poor old Leo is a pensioner on his social security.

2:07:32 - Paris Martineau
No, I'm doing fine.

2:07:34 - Leo Laporte
Although I haven't taken my social security yet, and now I'm thinking if Dr Oz is going to be in charge of it maybe I should cash that in right now, while you can. Yeah, get all. I can no, look, I'm fine, I'm doing all right, but I want you to help us out so we can have everybody else be part of the family. twit.tv/clubtwit.

2:07:57 - Paris Martineau
That's all. When the Guardian started its contribution structure, they surveyed their users, their readers. We called them in the old days and they said we want to be able to pay, so the Guardian stays free, right. That's the way to say it yes, and that's what this is about.

2:08:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, all right, let's start with Paris's pick of the week. Is it going to be Switzerland's AI Jesus?

2:08:21 - Jeff Jarvis
This is going to be a bit of a tonal shift from that beautiful plea. This is something I realized Jeff didn't know about before the show, and now I'm going to ask you, Leo, have you spent any time on Blue Sky recently? Yeah, you said no, or yeah, have you heard about something? Did the words Alf Hog? Hog, of course do you of course you understand what Alf Hog is that. Yes, jeff didn't, I didn't uh, oh, you haven't.

2:08:49 - Leo Laporte
In the early days of blue sky, everybody was posting pictures of that little puppet. That was the alien on the TV show Alf right.

2:08:57 - Jeff Jarvis
But sexy photos of Alf. If you go to know your meme. They have a know your meme called sensual Alf that. I'm just going to read the first paragraph for you because I think it's delightful.

2:09:08 - Leo Laporte
This is what got me off blue sky. I waited till that trend went over.

2:09:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, there's. There's an update. Sensual Alf refers to a trend on blue sky in may of 2023 which involved posting sensual and even not safe for work pictures of the 1980s cartoon character elf.

2:09:24 - Leo Laporte
Well, first of all, that's wrong.

2:09:26 - Jeff Jarvis
It's not a cartoon character it's definitely not cartoon yeah, well, it was a mood imagery of elf predated blue sky appearing on other platforms in the years before alf posting reached unprecedented levels in the new decentralized protocol is literally why I hated blue sky when it first started I think that's very reasonable, elf posting kind of a lot. However, last week slate wrote up a little piece on blue sky. Uh, talking about how you know you're sick of asking elon musk they didn't know and they described.

They were like, oh, this guy is so fun. They say it's even given. Like people are really engaged. I'll quote from the piece they've even given blue sky its own lore, a foundational piece for any social media site that hopes to become anything. If you arrive on blue sky this month, you'll see some posts about a sensual hog named alf. It's just part of the place and uh no, it's not the hog, and Alf Hog is not referring to alf being the hog, so himself.

2:10:30 - Leo Laporte
This resulted in his hog.

2:10:33 - Jeff Jarvis
This is what I would say, the best correction of all time. Correction November 13th 2024. This piece originally misstated that a piece of blue sky lore referred to a sensual hog named Alf. The meme is actually a reference to the genitalia of the 1980s sitcom character Alf. And you know that's. That's beautiful baby.

2:10:54 - Paris Martineau
That is.

2:10:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh Lord, yeah, this was. I'm glad they've gotten over that era. I'm still a little uh hot under the collar about the word skeet, but I guess I don't hear anybody using it I hear no one use that, people mostly use skeet on

2:11:12 - Jeff Jarvis
ironically sky kind of to troll we don't do that anymore, yeah I mean a little bit.

No, I mean part of skate started for. The lore of this is. I think it was last spring when a lot of people started getting on blue sky. They were trying to figure out what are we going to be calling. You know, posts on blue sky tweet used to be what we'd describe it right. And, uh, someone suggested let's do skate a combination of sky and tweet. That also has a very different meaning, and the thing that sealed the deal is the CEO of Blue Sky, jay.

Graber quote tweeted and said something along the lines of guys, come on, we can't do skeet, we can't. I love decentralized decision making, but we can't do it. Do you remember scoot? Let's try Scoot. And when the CEO of a company begs you not to use skeet, you kind of do have to use it.

2:12:04 - Leo Laporte
So there's a bit of the problem, wasn't it? That was the problem.

2:12:07 - Paris Martineau
If she ignored it. Yeah.

2:12:09 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't think it would have gone.

2:12:10 - Paris Martineau
Well, it was also at Mastodon.

2:12:19 - Leo Laporte
It was toot, yeah right, the problem is the german still is toot by the german founder didn't realize that it was a fart joke. Oh, oh, because elephants toot. Oh, and I didn't either. Okay, now I get it oh, you didn't no, it's just a sound elephant. Elephants make, and so do we all, leo, so do we all that kind of thing. It's a toot. I don't like skeet. That was another.

2:12:41 - Jeff Jarvis
Another thing that got me, yeah I mean those are both valid concerns, yeah alf, alf's hog and skeeting. Now I used to be able to see title alf's hog and skeeting.

2:12:55 - Leo Laporte
Hey, but that's gone, right, they don't do yeah. So maybe you know, maybe I should do more.

2:13:01 - Paris Martineau
I am posting on Blue Sky because I'm using microblog and it posts automatically. But then are you interacting with what's happening.

2:13:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Then, on Blue Sky, I will say the thing I like about being on Blue Sky is seeing all the interaction and interaction.

2:13:12 - Leo Laporte
It's great interaction.

2:13:22 - Paris Martineau
Oh see, I should great interaction. I should interact because I just post and I don't just use it there.

2:13:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I would actually use blue sky plane, I think, I think deck blue is nice, but it doesn't have the same feel that I get out of blue sky itself, which is really good. One of the things that's cool about microblog is it does pump the reactions back into your uh microblog so you do get to see. You do get to see those. If I go here and look at my post here, I think somewhere they've got the retorts. Yeah, here we go, and they're coming from a variety of different places, including Blue Sky, so I think that's kind of cool. Anyway, that is very cool. So I do interact a little bit, but I noticed when I go to blue sky that there were a lot more likes and so forth and I should probably have yeah, it's.

2:14:02 - Paris Martineau
I get a lot of interaction there. That's nice interaction and block works as block. It feels so good to block on blue sky.

2:14:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, goodbye, sucker and that's the thing is. If you don't want to see anybody use the word skate or post about elf, elf, hog, you can mute or block those words, and it works quite well it's not like twitter where, despite all of my attempts to block mood dang content from getting my feed, my feed is all that freaking hippo um. But blue sky doesn't have that problem is, are they still doing?

the Mudang on the X. Well, I don't know, because I think I finally solved it, but it took weeks. It took weeks of me trying to put it on mute for Mudang to stop appearing on my feed.

2:14:48 - Leo Laporte
I agree with you. That was an excellent. I did see that correction in Salon and I agree with you, it was kind of fun to laugh at them as as old.

2:14:56 - Jeff Jarvis
It's just the sort of thing that, uh, you know they had to call their editor and explain that and it's really. That's really just a moment you wish you could kind of crystallize.

2:15:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, for future generations well, you know, because you probably you know you never have to do that yourself, but you probably know what it's like to have to say, hey, I mean yeah, a correction is honestly, something goes in your review.

2:15:18 - Jeff Jarvis
It's just very funny that person's review is going to include alfog mr Jeff Jarvis, your pick of the week.

2:15:28 - Paris Martineau
So I've got one that's perfect for the prior discussion, but maybe first I think you sensed you wanted to do ai jesus. You could do ai jesus, we could do ai jesus real quickly. So, um, the deutsche welle has written about AI Jesus. So Jesus, by the way, speaks German. They set up an AI Jesus, but Germany, being Germany, with its privacy, datenschutz obsession, you have to sign off first and you have to say to AI Jesus that you're not going to say anything personal, but it's a confessional. Well, that's weird. So how do you not do something? So you have to sign all that off.

2:16:05 - Leo Laporte
So there is a website? No, no, no, it's a guy's church.

2:16:09 - Paris Martineau
If you go to the story, it's actually a church. It's in the church. They have a pod right.

2:16:18 - Leo Laporte
They have their own deus en machina.

2:16:21 - Paris Martineau
Oh, they have a. They have their own deus and machina. Oh, they got a geeky. Go into the other booth where the pastor would be, the priest would be, is a screen and so you see jesus through the, whatever they call it.

2:16:28 - Jeff Jarvis
Wow, the confessional, yeah, yeah so um, not even priests are safe from ai, and there's, there's jesus behind.

2:16:36 - Paris Martineau
Oh, you even see his face, yeah, but you can't say anything personal. Well, because it's warning you because of Switzerland and Privacy laws, privacy laws.

2:16:45 - Leo Laporte
Probably people say okay, I won't say anything personal. And then they say a friend of mine, I'm asking for a friend.

2:16:51 - Paris Martineau
Jesus, yeah, a friend of mine slept with his wife's sister. Wow, lying to.

2:16:55 - Jeff Jarvis
AI Jesus.

2:16:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, wow, only in Switzerland, friends.

2:17:01 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, but the story that's right for this week is YouTuber Rosanna Pansino smokes cannabis grown from her father's ashes.

2:17:12 - Leo Laporte
Oh, oh, please, abby and Henry, do not do that.

2:17:24 - Paris Martineau
That no, no, it's a tiny bit of ash.

2:17:26 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute, it was the dying wish of her father. Yeah, yeah, papa, pizza, papa pizza said this is a youtube family I want you to take my ashes, fertilize your marijuana farm and then, on your ridiculous podcast, smoke me.

2:17:44 - Jeff Jarvis
She titled the opening episode Smoking my Dead Dad. Oh that's great.

2:17:50 - Leo Laporte
And then she said it tasted so good.

2:17:54 - Paris Martineau
Yeah.

2:17:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh Well, I'm sorry about your dad, um, and I'm glad you've fulfilled his kind of final wish. I just want to be clear I do not wish that to happen. Kids, kids, abby and henry no where would you like your ashes scattered, Jeff Jarvis? I'm not sure that I'm going for the uh, do you want to be liquefied and fed to the tree you want to be buried?

2:18:23 - Paris Martineau
no, I think, I think um. I'm from a family well, not my family. My family is in boxes of ashes. My wife's family is. You should go to the cemetery really you want to take up?

2:18:35 - Leo Laporte
space in the ground you want to be in a box that they put in the ground. So I, what? Are we not trying to shame you? We we're not trying to rush you either.

2:18:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I thank you very much. You've only got like a week or two to decide, right? Yeah?

2:18:49 - Paris Martineau
watch it. It could be. It could be it could be um my wife's family, the german roots of her family. Uh, I remember we visited. We found out there was an old family feud that existed, because evidently in the german cemeteries you buy a certain amount of time and unless you re-up uh, what do?

2:19:06 - Leo Laporte
they dig you up.

2:19:07 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, they kind of, yeah, they, you know or they bury someone on top of you. Yes, yeah, and so there was a family feud because the, the local, the relatives who were still in Germany, didn't pay up, and my wife's grandmother was really pissed that the parents got evicted.

2:19:25 - Leo Laporte
And they didn't talk. I always wondered, because you can buy eternal care at most cemeteries. That's the yeah, eternal really, because you know, in 400 years they're just going to put a you know a bank there or something it's not yeah, so um, how about you paris? What? What are your final moments going to be?

2:19:48 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't care what happens to me after I die.

2:19:49 - Leo Laporte
That's not no one does, we'll be gone. That's for the people you're supposed to tell people ahead of time my, they know.

2:19:56 - Jeff Jarvis
My thought would be whatever you're feeling feels right for you, because that's a decision for you and not for me. I have no interest in it whatsoever. I mean, I just you might.

2:20:08 - Leo Laporte
When you get a little older, maybe Both my mom and dad have told me what they want. My dad actually sent me the certificate from the Neptune society.

2:20:20 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, yeah, that's why my parents did it for the cremation. Yeah, they come actually with a pain in the butt because we had to go through some strange place in Brooklyn to get them.

2:20:30 - Leo Laporte
Oh, there is a boat. If you go to pier 39 in San Francisco, the Neptune society boat is right there and they take your ashes out past the Farallons and that's it.

2:20:44 - Jeff Jarvis
I do think it would be kind of cool to have, like a Viking funeral where they put you on a pyre and light you a flame Okay see that could be fun. See, you are thinking about it.

2:20:52 - Leo Laporte
See, I'm thinking about this, yeah.

2:20:53 - Paris Martineau
You got it going.

2:20:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm thinking about this.

2:21:00 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, you got it going. Yeah, we'll build a little barge, cover it with tinder. So I'm feeling my mortality. I went to a memorial service for an old editor of mine at People and my sister, the Reverend Jarvis, officiated in the memorial service she's very good at that and the Princeton Chapel. He was Princeton class of 66. Princeton Chapel was filled with like 250 people. I realized I talk off tomorrow. I don't know anybody. Nobody's coming. Paris might come because we're close by. I think she's so nice.

2:21:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Jeff, if you talk off tomorrow, your chapel would be full of 250 people. I don't think so. I got an idea. I got an idea.

2:21:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, we would make sure we put the word out, Jeff.

2:21:41 - Paris Martineau
And I also want to. I always thought, because I'm a newspaper guy, I'd get an obit, but now I'm calling the Broken Times all the time. I won't get an obit in the Times.

2:21:46 - Leo Laporte
No you won't get an obit there. Have they called you to interview you for your pre-obit interview?

2:21:52 - Paris Martineau
Oh, God, no, going to get one. I did help a friend of mine and I did help my former people editor get his obit in the times, which was kind of cool.

2:21:58 - Leo Laporte
That's nice I think you should do what john hinkle jr did, age 38. What's that he? He bowled a perfect game using a ball containing his dad's ashes dad's, so I was shaking I had tears in my eyes.

2:22:14 - Jeff Jarvis
yeah it, it was the last couple of balls.

2:22:17 - Leo Laporte
I knew what it meant to my dad, was it?

2:22:19 - Paris Martineau
containing the ashes or made of the ashes it contained them.

2:22:24 - Leo Laporte
Was it fabricated or?

2:22:25 - Paris Martineau
were they poured in?

2:22:26 - Jeff Jarvis
You know it's got glass Sealed, his dad's ashes in the thumb hole In the thumb hole? Oh, it was in the thumb hole, so he even did this without a thumb hole.

2:22:33 - Leo Laporte
That's even more impressive. Wow, that's even more impressive. Wow, this guy's good. Good, that was good. Yeah, we just saw a strike there. Oh, he's a champion. That's why he says my dad never bowled a perfect game until now. I well, this is food for thought. By the way, thank you to uh butch butch henderson and our uh, I'm Butch Henderson in our I'm sorry, pretty Fly for a cis guy in our Discord chat for providing that link, but it gave me an idea. Ski ball.

2:23:05 - Jeff Jarvis
I was about to say ski ball would be a pretty good thing to get Memorial, ashton, you could make a ski ball out of your ashes and give it to your ski ball team.

2:23:15 - Paris Martineau
Or when the ball lands in the bullseye, ashes fly up oh, that's fun.

2:23:21 - Jeff Jarvis
That's kind of a interactive multimedia just in the bar. Yeah, you could be standing by with your beer. It's a little bit of ashes.

2:23:32 - Paris Martineau
One of the great lore stories from the newsroom of the detroit free press when I there was that a widow lady came in one day to the city room Because this is what you could do with a newspaper in the city room and she said I'm so upset, I'm so upset, my dear husband Bill died and I paid all the money to the funeral home and they cremated him in luck and she opened a cigar box.

It's all these chunks. They did a terrible job, terrible job, oh god. And so the reporter said I've met mrs, mrs jones, I'm going to look into this for you and I'm going to report on this, but can you leave bill here so I can talk? Yes, absolutely, you need to look into this. So bill became a mascot of the newsroom for a while. Uh, they'd put a little cigarette in the, in the lip of the of the cigar box, and put a sign under it bill's no more, put a little hat on them and do all kinds of stories. Then occasionally they would open up the baggie and part of Bill would go out from the newsroom.

2:24:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Okay, Actually I want that.

2:24:24 - Leo Laporte
I want to be.

2:24:25 - Jeff Jarvis
I want to be in the newsroom with a cigar in my box.

2:24:27 - Leo Laporte
We can make the ink and the pens. Oh, they don't use pens anymore, oh well, so finally, I will do a little plug. You put it in your picks, jeff, but I'm going to steal it from you because Mike Masnick deserves a little plug for his newest card game.

It is on Kickstarter. One billion users the social media card game. As you know, mike, besides being the founder of TechDirt, is now on the board at Blue Sky, so this might be something he's learned. He did write for elon musk a special post on speed running the moderation curve. He probably knows a little bit about this kind of stuff. So here it is. A card game, uh, where you're in charge of your own social network for two to four players lasts about 30 minutes. Players compete to build the most successful social network. It sounds like a lot of fun.

2:25:18 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I did a prior game for moderation to teach you how impossible moderation is. We played that on TWiG.

2:25:24 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, good on Mike. Mike is the best. I don't know where he gets all his energy from, but he is a very active guy yeah, and you can pledge and back it on kickstarter cop. One copy of the one billion users box game is 27, uh, but there are other. You can get five copies and so forth. So I don't know if there are any stretch goals, but uh, you can get a million copies, yeah good for you, mike one billion, a social media card game.

Hey, it's time for Paris to go to bed and for Jeff to go have some delicious supper and for me to wish you all a very fond good night. We do this we can Google every Wednesday. If we are not delayed by an extraordinarily lengthy Windows Weekly, we should start at 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern, 2200 UTC. All of my live shows now are streaming on eight different platforms Discord, of course, for our Club Twit members there's a special Club Twit Discord, but also Twitchtv, youtubecom, twitchlive. We're on Kik, facebook, linkedin, uh, xcom and tiktok. So, whatever you know, if you're around two o'clock on a wednesday afternoon to pacific, tune in, watch us live. If you, if and you all the swears will be uh will be completely left intact. Hey, uh.

Otherwise, if you want the bowdlerized version of the show, we make that available on our website, twittv slash TWiG. There's a link there to the YouTube channel where the video lives. That's a great way to share a little clip. If you've got an elderly parent and you want to make some suggestions about their final wishes, you could just send them that clip. That'll really inspire them. That's at twittv slash TWiG. You can also find a podcast client. Doesn't matter which one Overcast, pocket Cast, ipod or whatever it is Apple's podcast, but subscribe.

That's our preferred solution because that way you get it automatically every Wednesday evening or Thursday morning after we've edited out all the swear words. Come on, I'm trying. Thank you all for being here. You especially to our club members for making this possible.

2:27:42 - Paris Martineau
Jeff Jarvis is, of course, at jeffjarviscom where you can get his book, the web we weave and if you're around san francisco on december 4, you can come to the commonwealth club and uh, see me talk about the web we weave. And if you're not in san francisco, you can watch on the Commonwealth Club and see me talk about the web we weave. And if you're not in San Francisco, you can watch another video.

2:28:01 - Leo Laporte
Yes, Ccommonwealth Club has it on their website. You can buy tickets. You will not be here on that show, the December 4th show, because you're going to be there and I may not be there because I'll be doing this here, but I don't know. Maybe I can make it down. If we did, and I should do a very short show. Um, anyway, the way, that'll be fun. Jeff Jarvis, how we reclaim the internet. It's not too late and they do have online tickets as well as in-person tickets. Joe Esposito says he's going to be there in person. That means he's flying out. Oh no, wait a minute. Joe isn't in Manhattan, he's the road a piece. That's right, so he could come down from Northern California.

Thank you, joe. Yeah, say hi to him, joe. Did I show you what he made me? I didn't show you yet. Thank you, joe for this. He did an actual physical poster. Oh, that's so cool, and it made it my wallpaper on my pewter, because he sent me the digital versions of it as well.

2:29:01 - Jeff Jarvis
That's great, I'll show you my wallpaper, if I can get out of wherever I am.

2:29:06 - Leo Laporte
I'm in too many different things.

2:29:08 - Jeff Jarvis
Can.

2:29:09 - Leo Laporte
I show you my wallpaper. I don't know.

2:29:12 - Paris Martineau
Apparently not.

2:29:13 - Leo Laporte
It's okay, I'm sure you can find it back there I don't know how it works there oh, it isn't my computer. What happened? It was my wallpaper. A bunch of trees. I don't like that one cotton picking bit. Uh, joe, I will make it my wallpaper. Thank you, um, what else? I think that's it. Oh, Paris Martineau, she's at the information.com, but you stayed up all night writing your story, so that's good, I like that she got up really early to write the story she's in the weekend.

If you have a tip, signal her at Martineau dot zero one. You know, you inspired me because I've been using my phone number for a signal. So I decided and it's right there in this in the profile I'm Laporte dot 24, and it's right there in the profile, I'm leoport.24, leolaport.24. So I don't know, I don't want any tips, but you know, maybe if you have, just in case, Just in case you need that.

2:30:06 - Paris Martineau
If you need a friend. You don't want to tell Leo secrets. He talks for a while.

2:30:10 - Leo Laporte
No, it's true, Paris knows that I feel so bad.

2:30:13 - Jeff Jarvis
I apologize for revealing your secret, but yeah, you know, my secret is that I'm sleepy uh, thank you both.

2:30:22 - Paris Martineau
No, no, she's, she's. She's corrupting old men with drugs.

2:30:26 - Jeff Jarvis
That's your secret that's true, that is, that is just the police will be there any.

2:30:33 - Leo Laporte
Moment kids, be cool, stay in school, don't use drugs. I don't drink, I don't drug. And look at me, you too. You too can be like this, you could be a podcaster you could be a podcaster if you really really stay. Cool, man. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time This Week in Google. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time this Week in Google. Bye-bye.

2:30:57 - Paris Martineau
Stay cool.