This Week in Tech 1010 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.
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Twit this Week in Tech. We have such an exciting panel Smart people all. Mike Elgin is here, Emily Forlini, our attorney at law, Kathy Gellis. Of course, one of the biggest topics of the day the New Jersey drone mystery. We'll delve into that. Emily lives in New Jersey. She has quite a few thoughts. We'll also talk about InfoWars Apparently the onion isn't going to get them and the TikTok ban. What are the First Amendment implications? All that and more coming up next on A Great Twit Podcasts you love.
00:38 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
From people you trust.
00:41 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
This is Twit.
01:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is TWIT. It's time for twit this week in tech the show. We cover the week's tech news and I've got a great, as always. I've got a great panel assembled for you. Mike elgin's visiting us from oaxaca, mexico.
01:18
Hi, mike, hey leo thank you for having me on I know exactly where he is because I've stayed in that house and it's a wonderful place and, yep, you're surrounded by great food and just you walk out the door and half a block away there's a nice little taco place and oh, it's just incredible. Yes, incredible, great to see you, mike, great mike. Uh, mike has his own newsletter now machine societyai, if you're interested. Um, that's where you write about the machine society that we all live in it's cyberpunk non-fiction.
01:53 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I love it. That's the world we live in.
01:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it. Uh, he also still writes for many publications. You'll see his byline and, uh, the reason he's in Oaxaca. He and his wife, amira, do wonderful uh, gastro nomad trips, uh, to all over the world and uh, you just did one, I know, in Oaxaca. The gastronomadnet is the website and the experiences. You're going to go to Sicily, next Prosecco and Venice, morocco, el Salvador and back to Mexico. This is Barcelona. Some of my favorite places in the world.
02:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They're the tastiest places we've ever found.
02:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The tastiest places in the world. Everywhere has good food, though that's true, except Norway, everywhere but Norway.
02:41 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Oh wow, and Iceland.
02:44 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Flying right out of the gate.
02:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Annoying people right from the start. That was Emily Forlini mocking me Also me. So it's great to have you Welcome.
02:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Thank you Coming at you, live from New Jersey, I'm inside a drone, I'm flying the drones.
03:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, I want to ask you about that in a second, but first let's say hi also to kathy gellis, who is joining us. She writes for tech dirt. You have a lot of gatorade there, kathy, old kathy gellis, look at that I do, you're ready. There was a sale hydration very important, especially when you live on a houseboat Right.
03:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yes, I too was also mocking you for the Norway quote. So just to be clear.
03:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I don't know, it's just me personally, but there's only so much pickled herring I can eat.
03:34 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Oh, I like pickled herring. I've never found that threshold amount of too much pickled herring.
03:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, Emily, have you seen the drones?
03:45 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I have not. I did write a piece about it for PCMag and I was hoping to go out and take a good picture. But you never know where they're going to be and they haven't been over my house, but I am the county right next to the main county where they were seen. So Morris County is where the whole thing kind of started and now it's up and down the East Coast but it's like 20 minutes from me.
04:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I haven't I haven't seen anything, but I would love to so there is a certain kind of um, uh, witches of salem element to this, yeah, which is the. I mean there probably was something really going on over new jersey. I would I'll ask you, emily, but but I think also now I've seen drones, everybody's seeing them, because any light in the sky, whether it's a helicopter, an airplane or a drone or whatever you go oh, there's the drones yeah, and probably people are taking them out and now adding to the mix and, you know, just complicating it, I bet, because now you want to get pictures of them and I'm tempted to fly my drone at night.
04:44
Now, that's right. Yeah, maybe put some christmas lights on yeah, my brother said he saw one.
04:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, my brother saw one. Yeah, he just texted the group chat drone.
04:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I see a drone so they're, uh, they're uaps unidentified aerial phenomenon, right? Uh, the military is getting into it. Uh, the president-elect is gonna look into it. What do we have any idea? What? The military denies any knowledge of it, right?
05:17 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
yeah, the military is is denying it. And, um, I saw that dc mayorkas, the department of homeland security secretary, he did an interview and he totally squashed it and was like oh, they're planes. And I thought it was a little suspicious how much he discredited it, it's just a plane.
05:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't get, it's just a plane.
05:36 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, so when I talked about that article, I got to be honest with you.
05:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The one I saw I'm pretty sure was a helicopter, yeah, but it had three lights.
05:45 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Is that always the?
05:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
case. Yeah, I saw one over my house in Petaluma California. They're everywhere, but as I said, it's a certain amount of hysteria.
05:55 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Mary Hogan was basically pointing there's lights in the sky and people said that's Orion.
06:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like. These are the stars that have been over your head for your entire your head for your entire life. Stars in a row the belt of orion.
06:09 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, um, I'm just seeing like there's a headline on nbc news. Chuck schumer requests drone detection system for new york, new jersey, as mysterious devices litter the skies. New york governor kathy hochul urge federal legislators to pass a law that would grant states more authority to deal with drones directly.
06:27 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, so that's the issue. Yeah, that the states they can't, they don't have authority to shoot them down. So they need to convince the federal Don't shoot them down. Why wouldn't you shoot it down over the ocean? What if it's a plane?
06:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What if it's a passenger jet?
06:39 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Okay, there's a reason why we may want federal preemption here.
06:43 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
What if it's an Eptol?
06:44 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm 100% pro shoot it down. Shoot that thing down. What if it's an?
06:48 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Eptol. We're entering the era of Eptols.
06:51 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Shoot it down. They need to get a permit. There's an FAA restriction.
06:55 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You cannot be flying From the ground. You can't tell if they have a permit or not.
06:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
We don't know what's going on said that the Coast Guard told him that they had like 13 following a Coast Guard ship. So that's when he was like, if they're over the ocean we could shoot it down, but then so could the Coast Guard. But don't you guys think we need to nip this in the bud? How else are you going to do?
07:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it Nip what in the bud. We don't even know what it is, so why are we nipping it in the bud? This is where maybe I'm in New Jersey, and I do think like people deserve answers you do, you do say in your piece on pc magazine it's giving off kind of a chinese spy balloon, right, right and by the way, we're being very cautious like I haven't written more pieces than this one because we're not trying to add to hysteria and I'm not trying to add to hysteria right now it's.
07:38 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
There's an important kind of like reporting ethics in this situation, because you don't know what it is, but I still think you should shoot it down, like off the record, like I wouldn't write that in an article what is your drone expert think?
07:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is it an actual consumer drone?
07:50 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
no, so he that's. One of the things we talk about in this is that if they are very large, it seems like they're not something you couldn't buy. It at best buy.
07:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And he talks about how do we know if they're large?
08:03 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I think they're flying relatively low to the ground and so people can see like with their eyes how do we know what they're flying low to the ground? This is the thing. This is true at night. People are hearing it, people are hearing it so.
08:16 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So the thing is you have to understand that that when it's they are flying low to the ground, people are seeing like five or six or seven different things. They're seeing stars, they're seeing consumer drones, they're seeing airplanes, they're seeing helicopters. They're seeing lots of different things, and now everybody's got aliens in their head and they look I don't, I know you've seen that video where the woman is watering her lawn and she sees a rainbow because the sun is shining through her lawn. It's like what are they putting in the water? The government's putting something in the water to make it do things.
08:47
Because she started with the conspiracy thinking and then she looked at the world and the same thing happened with Area 51. Area 51 is an experimental aircraft facility. That's what it does. It flies things that fly that nobody's ever seen before. So, yes, people saw things they never saw before flying around air 51. It's really ridiculous. Meanwhile, there almost certainly is China, chinese or Russian uh drones that are highly capable and very fast, buzzing uh military aircraft right and and spying through that realm. What I don't understand is why we don't know why new jersey well, but it's a long way military base been happening in san diego china.
09:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Would you fly to new jersey to harass? You could just go to germany, or I mean, it seems like a long way to go.
09:39 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
There's a military base near where they kind of started wherever they started from the military base.
09:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a global phenomenon, this is not new jersey, oh, it's global. Now the hysteria is new military base, near where they kind of started wherever they started from the military base it's a global phenomenon.
09:46 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
This is not new jersey oh, it's global. Now the hysteria is new jersey, but they're buzzing uh, the air bases in europe. They're buzzing sandy in san diego and maybe they are russian yeah, I mean there's, they have this capability. It's a great technology for spying, because if you shoot it down, they can be like well, well, it wasn't ours.
10:04 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Right. I mean I think there's a balance. You don't want to be controversial, but also I watched this hearing on drones because the New Jersey thing is starting all this conversation and it really does sound like our country is not equipped to handle drones, like to figure out what they are, to stop them from coming over. Like the fact that we can't just diagnose it and, like I said, nip this whole thing in the bud is actually because our technology and our strategy towards drones is not good enough and from the hearing I watched, everyone in government agreed that that's the case. It's just like a question of how to handle it, so I don't think we should dismiss it just because we don't have the technology to figure it out why, if you're a Russian spy drone, do you run bright lights in a triangle?
10:46
formation, I agree, but just we should be able to figure it out, and that's what everyone is saying.
10:52 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think there's two things. One is OK drones are a technology that exists, that may or may not pose various vectors of trouble for us, and we seem ill-equipped, both technically and from a policy standpoint, to be able to deal with it. Okay, I think we're all on board with that, but I think, in terms of leaping to the conclusion that the thing to do when you see the lights in the sky is to shoot it, I don't think we're at that point.
11:18 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I don't think it's a leap. I think this has been going on for a month and people deserve answers it's scary. If something is flying over your house every night, it's a failure of government that they can't help you so are there?
11:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
okay, that's a good question. Are there people who are?
11:33 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
every night drones are going over their house. They see them all the time one, two a hundred, a group of them.
11:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is it that there?
11:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
seems to be anywhere from one to like four, and they hover, or they just go over. They seem to do weird different patterns. But those people are scared and they have families and they're like what is going on with my house and I think that they deserve to have like any answer and it's ridiculous that they don't.
11:58 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think what we're saying is this is literally shoot first, ask questions later, like let's ask the question. I'm saying shoot one down over the ocean. Literally shoot first, ask questions later, like let's ask the question before we do this.
12:05 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm saying shoot one down over the ocean? Is that? What you're responding to no one's saying shoot it down, besides me, but one over the ocean well, the one problem is like okay is that one of the set to see what it is?
12:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is that what you're saying, emily? So yes, just recover.
12:21 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's what we did with the spy balloon. Just recover it and see what it is.
12:25 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean as a methodological remove one. You know, extract a sample. That may make sense, and maybe extracting a sample involves shooting it over the ocean. But I think one of the problems is there's so much hysteria and there's so many lights of so many things. How do you actually know that you've extracted one of the sample that we're concerned about? You actually know that you've extracted one of the sample that we're concerned about because you may have just gotten somebody's hobby?
12:47 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
yeah, and I also wonder. I mean, you act like shooting something down is is, like you know, so dramatic. It's like we're sending bombs at the push button across the world.
12:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you're shooting down some people in a helicopter, that is dramatic yeah, I don't think people have a good ability to distinguish between what's you know alien lights, drone lights, helicopter lights, airplane lights Right.
13:11 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Of course it would be a big problem?
13:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think people are very good at making that distinction and I don't want people to start shooting at those just in case it is civilian aircraft or even military aircraft. Now, wouldn't we be able to monitor radio transmissions around these drones?
13:28 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It seems like we can't do anything.
13:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
There may not be. I mean, the state of the art in military drones is that they're AI-based. There's an Australian company that they're silent, they're autonomous. Well, they don't use GPS and they don't need a connection with the operator. They can be Basically, they can program AI to say, go fly over this ship or this airbase, take lots of high-res video and fly back, and it's like no big deal. There's no there there in terms of interrupting a radio signal.
13:56
Australia, interestingly, has developed a methodology for drones, bigger drones, you know, like the kind that go great distances. They're more like aircraft to navigate by the know, like the kind that go great distances. They're more like aircraft to navigate by the stars of all things, because Russia and North Korea right now are jamming airspaces to defeat drones that do rely on the GPS and other signals. So interesting, yeah, so. So that's the state of the art, but I think, I think it's very likely that many of these drones are most of these drones are consumer drones. These are DJI drones. There's more than a million of them in the United States. 850,000 of them are registered with the government. There's so many of them and people are flying around.
14:36
I have two in my bottom drawer and they're getting more capable at flying at night, so people are flying them at night, and so you know again, if Russia is flying drones with lights, it's probably the point of that is to freak everybody out and to understand that Russia's flying drones over American airspace right, so otherwise it wouldn't have lights. What's the point? So I just think you know we need to, we do need to get on. You know the Pentagon, the darpa, does need to develop technology to be able to track a drone visually, so that you have a telescope that automatically tracks what's in the sky, no matter where it goes or how fast it goes, and so we could look at it and see what it is before we shoot it down yeah, I mean, it's just such an unsatisfying answer that they're just saying nah, it's nothing.
15:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's not. That's not sufficient radiation from atomic weapons, and that we're testing these drones to uh we would potentially be using in a scenario where there was an atomic bomb somewhere and we could triangulate it the military base said it's not theirs, but we don't know, yeah, but isn't that what they would say?
15:57
right, what drones? What do we? You know? I mean, they should probably. What they should do is they should place a call to somebody and say dudes, how do we get out of this? Because we don't want anybody to know what we're doing, but we don't want people to start shooting at them and we don't want people to freak out how. What would be the next step? How would you do that? You'd have the somebody, the pentagon spokesperson, come on, say, um, what, those are ours. No, um nothing. If there's nothing to see, here is what they would say so.
16:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So here's what you need to know. Here's what you, the audience, needs to know. We are. We just entered, over the last couple of years, the world of drone warfare. Drones are the most important uh development because of ukraine, the chariot, exactly right. Ukraine itself is like using you know a million drones a month and they're kamikaze drones. We all remember the ceo of google, eric schmidt. His company makes 400 kamikaze drones that fly using ai and drop bombs on things. That's what he does for a living.
17:04
There's many, many companies like that he's working, by the way, with, with palmer lucky's andoril exactly to provide uh intelligence artificial intelligence to these drones so, as a background, it's important to know that the us military and all of its, all the companies that supply the us military, are scrambling to develop and test military drones and they're not going to admit, admit that that's what they're doing or that that's in the sky. They're not going to do any of that stuff. So that's one thing that's happening.
17:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what's happening.
17:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, and also consumer drones and planes and stars and all the rest. Yeah, yeah, once there was a panic.
17:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think a lot of kind of kids are sending their drones up, but really it's military testing, If that's what's happening. They're actively lying to the american public yes, of course they are, and they're doing smoke and mirrors, because the faa issued a no flight.
17:50 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
You can't fly over here, which suggests the faa didn't know about it. So then, and if that's, what it is.
17:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tell the faa, that's a sure way that may be the test is to see if they can.
17:59 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
You don't tell anyone right, that may be the test well they, they dramatically failed ffff on that test, like everyone saw it, they probably shouldn't put bright lights on them. That might have been a mistake usually you do that to comply with the faa. They could have flown without lights the lights are the biggest puzzle.
18:17 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, that, to me that's the biggest puzzle but again, I I doubt that all of them had the same lights right. So people are seeing all kinds of different things. Sometimes people are seeing a light right and it's it's like you know, jupiter single light.
18:28 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm looking at a picture of it and it's not like it. It looks like it's. It could just be atmospheric friction there is no.
18:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the problem.
18:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
There's no one thing this is a lot of things like. I'm looking at a picture of something where, yes, yeah, something is in the atmosphere but it looks like I saw.
18:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I saw somebody post the picture of the Starlink satellites in a line, which of course we know about, and saying, oh my God it's happening.
18:54 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, this is what I'm worried about. Now that it's a national story, it's different, like when it was showing up on my TikTok feed and my social feed, cause I'm in New Jersey. The tone of the posts were different.
19:04
It was kind of like whoa, that's actually really weird, it's good like there were a lot of them and it was kind of like this is really weird, like should I be writing about this? And now it's National, now everyone's trying to get their two cents on it and they're trying to maybe put up their own drones, and now it's like they're definitely not going to get any answers, because now it's turning into like a full-blown conspiracy.
19:22 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
These things happen all the time. There was a thing in, I think, the 90s or the 80s or something, where everybody was seeing leprechauns and because everybody went outside at night with flashlights trying to see leprechauns and every cat and raccoon looked like a leprechaun to everybody. Like this kind of stuff pops up, everybody's like looking for something specific and when they see something, their mind applies the thing that they were freaking out about.
19:46 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Was the military testing lethal leprechauns they were in fact.
19:50 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They were. They discontinued the program because they just cost too much gold.
19:54 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So many they put them in a basement. Now the leprechauns are flying the drones Exactly right, got it, that's it.
20:00 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean, I think maybe it solves a number of policy problems if we sort of figure out how society could have a little bit more interest in engaging with evidence based policymaking and like let's understand things, let's think about things and not just sort of react with projection of our stories or narratives that we either think would suit us or not suit us or something like that. And this does not seem like a story where evidence is really key here and I think it would do us some favors in multiple areas if we had.
20:34 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's why I'm saying shoot it down and get some evidence. But what would you do if there was one of these flying over your house every night? Wouldn't you say this is weird, they're just normal people.
20:42 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I would do what everybody else is doing. They're say this is weird, they're just normal people. I would do what everybody else is doing.
20:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
They're getting their own drones and flying up there and see if they can see it. And now everybody this is like, you know what I mean. It's like that's illegal with the faa restrictions don't shoot at them.
20:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Also, I'm suggesting the military should shoot down I'm not saying the average person, that'd be crazy. But you got to be careful these days do you imagine even for a second?
21:05 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
nobody is doing that okay, but I'm saying you're going two steps ahead. I'm saying take it down to base level. You're an average citizen, you're in your house, this is not a national news story and there's weird stuff flying over your house and your family what do you do?
21:20 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
it's only weird because we don't know what it is. But yeah, you don't do anything.
21:23 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I think you're not. It's the little it's like.
21:26 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
There's not enough empathy for people who are experiencing this and it's it's real to them I'm also not quite sure what this is, because there seems to be so many things um I mean if, if my neighbor's flying drones over my house, that's going to be really annoying, I might want to call some authorities, because it seems like they shouldn't be doing that because it's really annoying. But if it's something else and it's bigger or brighter or higher or farther, then am I being affected.
21:53 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, it's freaky. And then what do you do? You talk to your local government, your local representative, and now it's bubbled up and that's where it's at. And now the New Jersey officials are trying to get support because they don't have the power to answer the question. So but?
22:07 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
but Emily, emily, just a quick thing empathy for what? Who has been injured, what property has been damaged? Nothing has happened. People look at the, the, at the vapors from jets in the sky, and they think they're.
22:19
The government is poisoning everybody with chemtrails right, there's no need to be like to, to, to, to support that kind of paranoia. People are looking up in the sky which they normally don't do and they're noticing that there's satellites and stars and things flying around and it's like, okay, stop doing that. Until a single person has gotten so much as a rash from this, nobody's in danger.
22:42 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's not how modern warfare works. From this, nobody's in danger. That's not how modern warfare works, like. The reason that drones are scary is because they can drop things on your house. That's why there are restrictions yeah, but there are restrictions about flying them over stadiums and things because they pose a threat. So everyone agrees they pose a threat. So I don't think it's ridiculous that if they're over your house, you might be like what is and is this?
23:04
a threat to me. Well, they do pose a threat and they don't pose a threat. Lots of drones fly.
23:10 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That's why it's a tricky issue, but I think what Mike is saying is like, has it actually done something that's caused an injury or are we just so worried that it might cause an injury? And I think you're saying the possibility that one theoretically could is sending us around the bend. And Mike is kind of like we probably shouldn't go around the bend unless it's actually causing an actual problem and that the threat of the danger is vastly more palpable.
23:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There seems to be a trend lately of people worried about what might happen, like for everything Like well, what could happen, like, yeah, for everything like well, what could happen? What could happen if tiktok was used by chinese to to steal our laundry? What could happen? And you know, that's that strikes me as a populace that is a little jumpy, and I understand why people are jumpy, but uh, yeah, I think until you see it with your own eyes and experience it yourself, it's really.
24:07 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
There's a lot of peace of mind and writing something off, but if it's happening to people and like I see you know newscasters they go out they say, wow, I saw it myself, that was crazy. So it's so. It's so lovely to write something off, but I'm just saying that this is affecting people it didn't happen to them Remember the Chinese spy balloons.
24:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What happened from that?
24:28 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah.
24:29 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean, I guess it's also what are we writing off? It doesn't seem like what are. There's some confusion about what are we writing on that. This doesn't seem like a very tangible Well.
24:41 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Our airspace is there's free reign in our airspace. We've now had an issue that's popped up there's something in the airspace and we do not have a way to answer that question, and that's highlighting, okay, whether or not you care who would be the who don't care about these people in new jersey.
24:55 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
That's all we hear about them. They need to understand that those things were flying before, but they didn't look up because there was no news story about all the stuff there's who would an issue.
25:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who would be the appropriate authorities? The FAA?
25:06 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, it's gone to the local officials, so the New Jersey governor is on it. The Morris County is that's encouraging. The local FBI and now it's up to the Department of Homeland Security National FBI. So the highest levels of government are trying to handle it, and what?
25:23
we found out is that they can handle it. And if New Jersey aside, sopranos aside and everything that comes to saying New Jersey we have, our country is not prepared for drones, and that is an issue in the modern age, and that is, I guess, what we've learned from this situation.
25:39 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean, that may be true, as the you know, it's worth workshopping the might, but we're trying to workshop the might. Well, we really should have very clear head as we approach. What are the possibilities? And our heads are not very clear right now because there's a lot of panic and paranoia.
25:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I did not have this on the agenda for the show at all.
25:58 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I would just like to state for the record, because I feel like I'm being accused of indifference to New Jersey I am from New Jersey and my dad is still there, as am I.
26:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes.
26:07 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So Team New Jersey. No, we totally get it. I mean, of all the states that you know I'm going to care about, that is high on my list of states that I will care about.
26:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think we need to get Space Force involved. And if you have a Space Force they must have something.
26:25 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They need something to do so, as in California, I would point out that there's very well documented cases of very strange drone activity around military bases in California. Oh, really, the last two years that very well documented, with gazillions of like reports and people have interviewed everybody it didn't quite become a mass hysteria kind of thing, but it it happened and it's like it's happened in other places too, and it's happened in europe as well, and there's lots of stories and so people need to understand. There's a lot of drones flying around. Some are military, most are consumer drones. There's a million consumer drones out there and people are testing avtols, which we're. This coming year is going to be the first year where there are going to be commercial Avtoll flights, probably starting in Dubai, and then the year after that it's going to become a banality. You're going to call it up with your Uber.
27:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Electronic vertical takeoff and landing. So these are probably mostly like Avtoll drones.
27:19 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
They do need a new name. They need a new name. I'm going to call it right now. It's very confusing F-Tall.
27:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's an F-Tall, we'll get used to it.
27:25 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But I agree with Emily If we're going to shoot one down, we should do it quick, because pretty soon these things are going to be flying around and you know there's going to be four people inside, so that's going to be an interesting. Don't shoot them down if there's people worry about.
27:43 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I stand on my case for the record.
27:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Emily is lobbying hard for the military to take these drones out.
27:51 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, but I would demonstrate my empathy for people in New Jersey who are really, really worried that by saying stop worrying, it's probably nothing. It really is probably nothing. So please don't worry.
28:07 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Hopefully, worry, they'll figure it out I think the government could also do people a solid by publishing high quality pictures of it and being like. Any level of clarity would show respect to the people of the country who are paying taxes to like, to the, to the government electing these officials. Any level of respect to help clarify the situation would be much appreciated and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
28:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And can you file a Freedom of Information Act request for those pictures FOIA Maybe.
28:37 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I should.
28:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
File a FOIA.
28:39 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I tried to take them. I talked to PCMag, I identified equipment. I posted on Reddit where can I see drones at night? And a lot of people responded where they're seeing them, and they're seeing them in the same place every night, but then when the weather's bad, you can't see them as well and I don't know. So, yeah, I just think the lack of seriousness that they're engaging with this issue is creating more conspiracy theories and just the whole situation's kind of a disaster so you're the journalist to own this story seriously, this is yours yeah, yeah, I kind of had a feeling it was mine.
29:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's blank now.
29:28 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, no, it's all it's all like cell phone cameras and blurry stuff and it's not. It's not. None of it's sufficient.
29:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought one of the news crews had its own cameras out there that's certainly going to happen you know. The only thing, if I would say, is florida, you're letting new jersey take all this, all the you know story here. You got to get out there and start looking for drones in the sky in florida and and then we can really.
29:54 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Then we'll have something I feel like characters in new jersey are like we got to get back in the spotlight, I think that's what it is, honestly jersey shore hasn't been on air for a long time they're letting Florida men eat our lunch.
30:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We need to get out of here and find something.
30:09 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, these drones are flying over very wealthy areas. I don't know if people know, but there's a huge amount of money that flows out of New York City and into New Jersey, like there's billions large homes. There's some of my family's from New Jersey, yeah there's a lot of like serious people and that they're flying over at this part. It's not like the Jersey Shore. So if if you're thinking it's like Snooki is taking it's flying over the president's golf course. I'm just setting the stage.
30:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think that's what I'm. It's kind of in the back of my mind. It doesn't make the story more credible because, like no, why are you going over morristown, new jersey? What could the russians hope to get from that?
30:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I mean money. That's what I'm saying actually they're really smart because this is a very wealthy area with a military base, so right, are they gonna?
30:58 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
stalk the people and rob the houses when they see them drive away. Like what are the I?
31:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just don't see the play here, so it doesn't actually seem I think that if you're at the, what is it called the piccadilly air force base? The picatinny arsenal, picatinny arsenal. Okay, is it an air force base?
31:16 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
or an arsenal. I haven't looked into it. I emailed them to interview them and I did not hear a response let's get it.
31:22 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I always think it's let them let them worry about it, right?
31:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean they're. If you're an arsenal, it seems like you would have ways to handle this well, I mean.
31:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
The thing is that consumer drones it's a powder depot, it's where they store devices to take them down it's not an air force base.
31:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's where they store gunpowder and munitions predecessor oh okay, that's the predecessor, okay, and it used to be the picatinny powder depot it's also home to the us army explosive ordnance disposal technology directorate well, what if it's?
31:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
what if it's just the case that it is the us military and the government is just lying to us like then what?
32:03 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
well the cia has a secret has a lot of secret uh bases inside of airports abroad and, who knows, maybe in the us as well.
32:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So you never know I mean the problem is is this is I think we need to, as sane people, we need to recognize this a false denial sounds exactly like a true denial and it's sort of like, well, they've denied it, aha, but they've also denied it, maybe because it's deniable it's like there we need pictures.
32:32 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
We need to see if there's a brand name on it.
32:34 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
There needs to be high quality pictures about us to like, actually like, not go aha too easily and to actually be calm and measured and figure out how to tease out what is evidence and what is not evidence where the patriot, and that's what I'm proposing taking some pictures like what type of wing format are they, what's written on them, what color are the lights, what arrangement are they in?
32:55 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I just feel like any level of seriousness would be so far beyond the dialogue we have now. And we're're just not getting that. And people are looking to their elected officials to get that and it's not coming and that's a failure.
33:08 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Have you seen our elected officials lately? It's a failure.
33:11 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It's not that these people are idiots. It's that the government is not answering their questions and they're paying taxes and they're looking for help and they're not getting it.
33:18 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
And I think the officials may be stoking the hysteria as opposed to actually responding calmly to the hysteria, which is not going to do anything.
33:27 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I mean, all these people are going to work every day, they're taking their kids to soccer practice, they're living their lives, they're eating dinner. No one is running around. You know, there's no hysteria, that's tangible. It's just like people want to know what's going on.
33:41 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well then, Larry hogan discovers orion, so I mean according to cnn.
33:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The defense department has acknowledged that there are drones flying over picatinny and the naval weapons uh station confirmed sightings, and they're not all drones but the government yes yes the dod read my article.
34:01 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I could see in our analytics platform that the DOD read my article, and then they looked at my bio page and I was like.
34:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Emily, if you get any strange phone calls, I know right.
34:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
If you see a drone above your house, you'll know that your article was a success.
34:18 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
China reading my articles and stuff too. I'm on so many lists but I was like, do they? Are they reading because they want to know what the media is putting out about it, or are they reading it because they want to actually figure?
34:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it out and they figured it. Emily Forlini has figured it out. Let's find out If they don't have any idea.
34:35 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It's interesting and I don't think we should accept just we shouldn't just accept that there's no answer. That's ridiculous.
34:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There. We shouldn't just accept that there's no answer. That's ridiculous. There's stuff in the sky there's an answer. It might be multiple answers, yeah and probably multiple answers yeah, yeah, and I wouldn't. Just because the federal government denies something doesn't mean it doesn't exist right that's I mean they, that's you know normal, right.
35:00 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So you gotta get a little fight in us.
35:02 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You can't just be like, oh it's nothing, because they say it's nothing yeah but I think we need to get better as a country at at being a little bit less uh fast to to freak out about things. So these sightings have occurred in new jersey, new york, connecticut, maryland, massachusetts, pennsylvania, and they've been over the stewart international airport, new york air bases in the UK three air bases in the UK. Some of these are described as six feet in diameter. Many of these are reportedly have their lights off, which makes more sense. So this is a worldwide phenomenon, sort of right. So it's, it's, you know, europe and and and the us. So far, I would be really surprised the us isn't flying things over foreign uh, you know, we've been doing it since the cold war, uh, and so this is this is a bigger issue of assuming it's spy aircraft, uh, than just new jersey, new jersey than the news.
35:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I think I think we really do get need to get to the bottom of it, and it's not just the us, it's, it's also europe, as well, I think your your explanation is probably correct, mike, which is that drone warfare is suddenly the hot topic thanks to the ukraine russia war and, uh, that, uh, militaries everywhere are working on their drone capabilities. They shouldn't be lighting them up, though.
36:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That's just's just making people nuts, but I think some of it is atmospheric or reflection from other things.
36:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's all sorts of stuff, yeah.
36:29 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Of course, the problem, which we haven't directly touched on but we've touched on, is that posting something on social media that's a really sensational image at this point can make you rich, because you get likes, you get followers, and so we have a real incentive to get misinformation out there. And that does stress me out and that almost adds to my urgency that if we're going to not regulate those technologies, if we're going to continue to pour billions of dollars into the ability for people to do this, we also have to have the ability to answer questions and stop conspiracy theories Like just the whole thing's a fail.
37:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Our government communications are living in a different era.
37:08 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Right, it's total mismatch and it's just a lot falling through the cracks.
37:13 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And I would like to add one additional thing, which is that if you're testing a military aircraft, there's no reason not to put lights on it. I mean, you don't want lights in the final product, but like if you're testing it just to see if it will fly or whatever, you want to be able to see it in the sky for your own.
37:28 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's a pretty crowded airspace that you're putting your stuff in. Like you know, most of the time we tested aircraft over the desert where there was nobody. New Jersey is not really like empty space.
37:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, you put lights on so nobody hits it, yeah jersey's the densest state in the us.
37:44 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, is that in all sorts of ways.
37:47 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm gonna, I'm gonna get our show.
37:52 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm allowed, I'm allowed, I'm a jersey girl, I can totally throw new jersey under the bus.
37:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's my people all right, it wasn't on the agenda, but I'm glad we covered it because it is a story that people are worried about and there is a tech angle to it, and thank you, emily Forlini, for bringing this up and making us aware. And please, folks, leave the shooting down to the law enforcement in the military.
38:18 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm sorry that I accidentally incited violence.
38:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do not do not start shooting in the sky. It's dangerous for everybody. Bullets go up, but they also come down. We're going to take a break and talk about other tech news in just a little bit, but, emily, in all honesty, thank you for bringing it up and thank you for fighting the good fight. We ought to know what this is and gosh darn it.
38:47 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Own the story'm the story, own the story, own the story. If I may close with a swift on security skeet. That skeet is situation there are 65 unknown drones in the sky. Ridiculous, I need to go investigate this myself. Better send my drone. Situation there are now 66 unknown drones.
39:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like an xkcd cartoon in real life. All right, we're going to take a break. We'll come back, also with us. Kathy gellis, it's great to have you. We will talk about what's going on in supreme court. Looks like that tiktok case is going all the way, waiting for a word from scotus. Mike elgin is also here always great to have you. Machinesocietyai. This is a newsletter. We'll be right back with more in just a little bit. Our show today, brought to you by Mint Mobile.
39:31
I have my Mint Mobile phone. Every time I get my Mint Mobile bill and I compare it to the bill from other carriers, I think why would anybody go anywhere else? Look, I mean, I love a great deal as much as anybody else, right? But I'm not going to crawl through a bed of hot coals to save a few bucks. It has to be easy, it has to be real. There's no hoops, there's no BS. So I was skeptical, I admit, when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for $15 a month when you buy the three-month plan. I checked. Turns out it really is easy to get wireless for $15 a month. I liked it so much I re-upped and re-upped again.
40:10
In fact, the truth is, the hardest thing you're going to do is spending time on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. You should, by the way, because you can bring your phone number, port your phone number over. They're required to do that. Make it, uh, your phone number, a mint mobile phone number. You're going to save so much money I mean 15 a month. How much is your current cell bill? 70, 80, 90, 100 or more. To get started, to start saving, go to mintmobilecom. Twit. Three month plans are only 1515 a month and that is including the unlimited plan $15 a month for your first three months. That's pretty amazing. All the Mint Mobile plans come with high speed data, unlimited talk and text, nationwide delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.
41:00
You can bring your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan. They will send you the SIM or they'll do an eSIM no charge and port your phone number over. Bring all your existing contacts. It couldn't be easier. They also sell phones. I bought a nice new iPhone SE from Mint Mobile for a really good price and then I got the even better price on Mint Mobile.
41:20
Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile. Get three months of premium wireless service for 15 a month. Mint mobile. This is absolutely the best deal out there and I and I don't know why everybody isn't a mint mobile customer to get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month for three months, go to mint mobilecom slash twit. That's mint mobile m-i-n-t. Minty fresh mobilecom slash twit.
41:49
Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobilecom slash twit, 45 up front payment required. That's equivalent to 15 a month. It is new customers on first three month plan only. Speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on the unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Mintmobilecom slash twit. We thank them so much for supporting our show and we thank you for supporting the show by doing that address, because that way they know. Oh yeah, they saw it on twit. Mintmobilecom slash twit. Thank you, mint Mobile. As long as we're in the silly season, info wars. Uh. The sale to the onion has now been overturned by the bankruptcy court boo boo exactly it's been delayed.
42:41 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I don't know if we know exactly. Yeah, but no, we're going to go back.
42:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He instructed the coin appointed trustee to come up with an alternative solution. I don't know what the alternative would be. Part of the problem is that the onions offer had less cash in it than the offer from the other interested party, which is really just, let's be honest a front for InfoWars. And the Sandy Hook parents remember they won the lawsuit against Alex Jones and InfoWars because he kept saying that it was a fake shooting and Sandy Hook and so forth, and won $1.4 billion judgment forcing Alex Jones into bankruptcy, selling off his assets. And then the families talked to the onion and said OK, we would prefer for InfoWars to go to a satire site than to First United American Companies, which is essentially a bidder affiliated with Alex Jones. We don't want to see InfoWars stay on the air, so we're willing to take less cash up front because we think this is a better owner.
44:13
The total value of the onions bid was $7 million, including $1.75 million in cash put up by the global tetrahedron, the company that owns that owns the onion and and it's funny some of the cash coming from the families. They essentially opted to put a portion of their earnings from a defamation judgment towards the onions bid, so they're they're sending a very clear signal they want the onion uh first. United american uh offered three and a half million in cash twice as much cash. Um, the expert who advised the trustee said the combined bid with the families was a better choice. And uh, initially that's what happened. But now the bankruptcy judge says no, he didn't like it, and he's going to send it back, which sounds to me I agree with you, kathy he's not saying no, the onion can't have it, but it sounds to me like he's putting his thumb on the scale for uh, united first.
45:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
And I think there's a question of whether he's allowed to that. The trust, the trustee's choice. There were two one. There's two things that kind of catch some attention. One is the way that the deal was put together, because there's a concession as opposed to pure cash Right. But the second thing is that it was, I guess they did a sealed auction and they did it with a single bid and nobody got to go back and stuff.
45:39
But it sounds like talking to some experts that that is not unusual, that is not atypical and that none of these things really that the trustee didn't act in a way that prompts the second guessing. And they keep referring to something either called or akin to the business judgment rule where you've got to leave it up to the best judgment of the person running this and give them some leeway or else they'll never be able to accomplish anything, and that there's. No, a lot of observers are like I don't see what the trustee did that would prompt the second guessing. I mean, you want there to be second guessing if the trustee does something really terrible and, you know, really kind of doesn't disadvantages the parties. But nobody's suggesting that and I think a lot of observers are really kind of surprised because they don't see why there was an avenue for complaint and having complaint affect us in any way.
46:36 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I think the solution is obvious. They should launch a Kickstarter. I personally would add a hundred bucks. And I think they can raise more money that way and just have an open auction and be the highest bidder, and there would be no controversy.
46:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but then who would that be that would own it? The people of Kickstarter.
46:56 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
No, no. Raise the money and give it to the onion.
46:59 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Everybody wants this yeah, everybody wants this. You run into some problems, I think, with securities issues, with how you finance a purchase like that, like donations to the onion, like like yes, functionally that sounds great.
47:14 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I think legally that may be a hard thing to achieve, but who knows, maybe that's next, so we'll see, it's just there's so many shady deals that go down in this country. I don't see why this one I mean it's the the bar and the standards are so all over the place. Um, but this is a huge bummer. I mean I would love to see this go through and I'm so sad that it's been stalled like they get the same audience right, they get.
47:38 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They have the list right of the audience yeah that they would be serving.
47:41 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So that would just be gold, I mean, it would be so yeah I mean I think we need more humor writing in general and I don't think maybe the judge feels like it's a biased case or something, but it should just be considered as two neutral parties. Like I know, these parties are huge characters themselves, like the info wars and the onion, are just massive personalities as far as media companies, but should just be considered neutral and I don't if there's any reason the judge is reacting based on the content on either side. I don't think that's fair.
48:12 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I mean, let's think of the think of the lying sociopaths. They have to be protected.
48:18 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, think of the sociopaths. Yes, well, I think the issue with this one is Jones himself isn't happy, and Jones is also trying to sell his supplements. And then there seems to be shell companies who are like, why weren't we taken seriously? And then there's the allegations that they're shell companies that are really just him like alter functionally, alter egos, so it's messy. And then there's a question of whether the judge is treating everybody as neutral, when maybe they shouldn't be treated as neutral, which is also a thing.
48:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Right, well, he's Jones. I watched a little bit of the live stream he did right after it was announced that the onion won the bid and he was on. He was claiming it was a deep state conspiracy to limit the free press. Know, of course. So that's his perspective.
49:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, and so yeah and I mean what the judge and what any bankruptcy court judge should be doing, is looking for the best deal that returns the most money for the, the creditors, the, the sandy hook families. Um, should he consider the sandy hook family's interest? You know, expressed interest? I don't know. He he there was a two-day hearing and he was fairly irate that it was not a transparent bidding process, whatever that means right.
49:33 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
He didn't like the sealed bid. It sounds like, but I'm not entirely sure and I'm not a bankruptcy expert, but from the commentary I was reading um, people seem to think that, like there was no reason, that that was not a reasonable way to go forward.
49:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right. Also, we, because of this hearing, we got the opportunity to hear from lawyers for X dot com Elon Musk's Twitter replacement saying you can't, you're on. Placement saying you can't, you're on. They can't sell the X accounts owned by Alex Jones and InfoWars because X owns them, which I think for many of us was just a reminder that you do not own your social media accounts. The social media company who runs the platform seems at least to think they own the accounts and certainly probably do. I don't know. What do you think, kathy? Does X own Alex Jones former Twitter account?
50:27 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So it's one of these things where the motivations behind X's choices may be suspect, but the they may be right anyway. I think any social media platform is reasonably concerned that there could be construed like a property right in anything that they're offering right and I think they're concerned with the way the bankruptcy was processing. That was, that it was being treated as an asset, that was um that in some ways had a property right context to it.
51:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we have have it at a Twitter account on Xcom andI own the trademark to Twit. But is it their assertion that if I decided I don't know to sell the Twitter account that I couldn't? This happens all the time. Alex Wilhelm bought at Alex back in the day.
51:20 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think a couple of things are happening. One is, I know you'd have to look at the terms of service, but the terms of service generally seem to the terms of service generally seem assignable, that the contract is assignable so that if you started the account and you wanted to sell your media empire to somebody else, that whoever bought it, who obviously is interested in continuing the media empire, would want all the things that kind of come with it. And why wouldn't they be able to essentially step in your shoes to now be the contracting party with X?
51:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I suspect that if I announced and I might announce this I would like to sell our at Twitter account for a dollar fifty to this so and I did that X would not stop me and say oh no, we own that, you can't sell it for a dollar 50. It feels like this is them weighing in on the entire process.
52:11 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, I think both. I mean remember X.
52:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
X kept info wars on the air when he was kicked off.
52:19 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah Right, Both things, I think, are true. I think X reasonably wants to make sure that there is not a property right construed in a handle, because weird things can happen where they start ending up obligated in ways that are going to be very uncomfortable for them, and let's say not just them, but you know any social media platform or any platform whatsoever.
52:41
You know, wait, you've offered somebody a handle and now that person has a property right in the handle. That is a big deal, but they are generally thought to be assignable and there is a thing of do they have any business stepping in and impinging on that assignability? I don't know. We'd have to look at the terms of service and that's the thing where maybe the motivations are less than you know, pure service, and that's the thing where maybe the motivations are less than you know.
53:05 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Pure right um. It's the thing if they?
53:06 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
well, if they take it back, can they assign it to somebody?
53:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
else and that's the kind of thing they would give it back to alex jones right that would be a strange thing, because somebody has trademark rights in info wars. That is, I think, an alienable asset that can get uh discharged through the bankruptcy, so Twitter couldn't, couldn't or X couldn't reasonably take at Twit and give it to Kathy Ellis, because I have a trademark and so that I have some interest in that. It's a little more complicated than that.
53:39 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
but and he's done that, he's taken handles that people have had for decades and and taken them away and redone it.
53:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But maybe there's not like findable trademark rights in that with elon musk it's, and many of these people. It's always rules for thee, not me yeah, and he's not. Is there a way to?
53:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
think about this that in my head I'm trying to think is it similar to like if I'm a commercial property owner, so I'm X and I own like a physical commercial building and a business uses my space and then that business sublets the space to someone else and like brokers a deal, but still the building owner still owns the building. Is that a fair analogy? Like you're, because you're kind of using their you're using their platform.
54:24
To me, they kind of own it because it's on their servers. They can take it down at any time. Ultimately, their fingers on the trigger and you're like a renter on the platform.
54:33 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm wary of saying yes, because I don't want that analogy to accidentally communicate too much. But that is kind of what I was saying in terms of the terms of service, that communicate too much. But that is kind of what I was saying in terms of the terms of service, that there's a contract and that contract would be assignable and in the scenario you're describing there's some assignability of rights but the landlord still owns the building and what you have is a contractual relationship slightly different than your example, because that was a sub-lessor. But you can actually sometimes like oh, you want to move out.
55:01 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
You can sometimes assign your rights as the tenant you've assigned your lease, you assign the contract and I think, yes, if it's a commercial situation also, you're leasing the space but you still own the business as a trademark. So you could move to a new space and it would follow you. But ultimately, if your business is a restaurant and it's taking place in this physical space, that it's a very important part of the business. I guess you could relocate, like maybe you could go to Blue Sky or you know anything. But I think X has a very serious ownership stake in anyone and all of our content on that platform. I think it's almost a prideful exercise to think you own it. You don't.
55:41 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Right yeah.
55:43 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, they don't own our tweets.
55:46 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It feels like they do. I mean it feels like they do, but I don't.
55:48 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think I haven't looked at the terms of service in a while but most of the times the terms of service, as I understand them, are written in a way that says you own them, but you've given us a really expansive license because they obviously need to hold back enough rights that they can actually like, continue to publish your stuff and not run into copyright problems.
56:09
But they don't tend to own them. I don't think they want to own them, although now they kind of want to own them because they want to train for the AI. But that's a whole other argument about whether you actually need to own it to have that happen anyway. But um got it, yeah, and he's also making it up as they go along, like we had the entire industry that made it up as we went along has, like, social media became a thing and internet becomes a thing and we had to kind of learn stuff, but we kind of ended up settling some stuff and then kind of musk shows up and pretends that nobody's ever figured out anything before him and does things afresh and you know. So it's one of these things he's wrong. He's probably poorly motivated, but accidentally somewhat right.
56:53 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, and I also think that you know Elon Musk hates it when there's a news story, a prominent news story, that is not about him.
57:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right Well well, he's gonna have to fight with donald jay over that one.
57:06 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That's gonna be a tough one, yeah rumor has it, their fight is hey, we called it on this show.
57:12 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Last time I was on twitter, we called it. They were gonna have a falling out and we were like taking over have.
57:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have a falling out I bet in june it's happening, not yet oh, there's leaks that um oh, those are yeah well there's leaks about sufferance of yeah, but you know well, we'll see. I I'm on the books for june, but we'll see I'm sure there's sufferance coming from his wife as well.
57:34 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So I had a weird brush with x recently that might be worth discussing. I might write an article about it, I'm not sure, but so, uh, a couple months ago I noticed that x actually responded to journalists emails for one time. It was about like a report they put out a poop emoji what the hell right.
57:53
So now they're responding. That was a couple months ago and then last week I was feeling gutsy and I'm pc mag. Um. Now uh is co-owned with CNET and there's a bunch of publications under Ziff Davis. So we're having this big party at CES. I invited Twit as well. You can all come, thank you.
58:11 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
We're not going to be there, but thank you.
58:12 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I know no one's going to be there, because who wants?
58:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
to go.
58:14 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
But if you're going you can have some free drinks. But I emailed X just like press at X I was like hey, hey, do you guys want to come and uh what happened? I got a response and the head of media strategy wants to come and he also wants to get coffee with me in new york this week.
58:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's an admission that they read the emails before they do also, he said he was hired recently.
58:39 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So it seems like x recently hired, hired ahead of media strategy. Who is now actually engaging with the media?
58:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
but only if you invite him to a party, emily.
58:47 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I invite him to a party. He invited me to coffee well, that's, true um, I feel like maybe I don't know.
58:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm trying to tease out what's going on, because here's my advice go to coffee before you write an article about this. Okay, get the coffee. Yeah, exactly.
59:01 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm going to email him and remind him about the coffee, because I don't think we set a date. Definitely. I don't know if it means Elon has been tweeting about how the press is useless. The mainstream press is garbage. Twitter is the new press. Citizen journalists are the new press so that's been his MO for the past two years but they are kind of having some user issues. Potentially Maybe they realize they do need the press, but there's definitely a difference in what I'm seeing in my inbox versus what Elon is projecting. So I don't know.
59:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Very interesting.
59:32 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So they might be warming up to the press because they realize they need the press. I don't know, but I'll get coffee.
59:38 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, the user numbers are in the toilet and they're just tanking. Right, the user numbers are in the toilet and they're just tanking. So I think he'd like to continue to toe that line, while simultaneously trying to do something to turn around the user activity.
59:50 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, usually when you hire someone it's to solve a problem or accelerate progress in a certain area. So this suggests to me that they think this needs attention.
59:59 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Is he really about the citizen journalism stuff? A thousand percent. Because he keeps advocating for policy that would be really bad for it, like really bad for his business like well, as mike said, he wants press up, but about him.
01:00:13 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So if it's about him and it's positive, he likes it. If it's not about him and it's not positive, or if it's about him and not positive, he doesn't like it.
01:00:20 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, I'm just talking like the section 230 stuff, like he should be, like I'm not really happy of this role in government, but I should be, like like us, breathing a sigh of relief that, okay, we've got the best ally we could ever have for section 230, like with the ear of the white house. And that's not the way it's turning out at all he advocates against evie legislation too.
01:00:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I I think we're foolish to think he's really thinking straight or like thinking like someone who needs more money. He really doesn't. It's a different game for him no, yeah, no, I, I.
01:00:49 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think looking at this and regarding him as an economically rational actor is not the frame to understand what he does legacy opinions of him that need to be seriously refreshed that's a good, very nice way to good, very nice way to put it, very nice way to put it All right.
01:01:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're going to take a little break when we come back. The Federal Appeals Court has declined to block the ban on TikTok. They did that on Friday, so now it's up to the Supreme Court or nothing. January 19th, the day before Inauguration Day, tiktok will either be sold or somehow magically shut down. We'll talk about that when we come back. With Kathy Gellis, as you might have gathered, an attorney. Cgcouncilcom is her website, of course. She writes at Tech Dirt and for the Copia Foundation and is admitted to. What do you call it? Advocate before the supreme court you could.
01:01:45 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm a member of the supreme court bar but um, and also the bars of a whole bunch of other courts. It means I'm allowed to file stuff there perfect.
01:01:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So we're gonna, we're gonna lobby you to file something about drones in just a second, also with assembly forlini. Who's?
01:02:01 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
definitely not cleared to testify in front of the supreme Court and therefore is sparring with Kathy.
01:02:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, don't spar, it's OK, you can disagree. This isn't sparring, this is conversation.
01:02:14 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
We'll bond over New Jersey.
01:02:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.
01:02:17 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I feel like we're bonding. I like.
01:02:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Elon's most recent ex post, where it's the New Jersey guide to aircraft identification. If you'd show that to us.
01:02:29 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Oh see, you guys all agree with him that it's fake. Joke is on you.
01:02:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Basically, it's a picture of a variety of airline aircraft silhouettes, all of which are labeled drone, from the 767 to the Iranian mothership drone.
01:02:47 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's embarrassing for you guys. I'm so sorry.
01:02:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, we're on the same side as Elon Musk. I never thought I'd say that.
01:02:57 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Also with us, Mike Elgin of Machine Society dot a Yep and just like Kathy, I am admitted to the most of the bars here in Oaxaca as far as I can remember.
01:03:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I tell you, I remember going into that Polké bar. I don't remember coming out, though.
01:03:13 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
The etymology of the word bar really is the same.
01:03:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really yes.
01:03:17 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Oh yeah. Because you stand before the court bar right, yeah, there literally was a bar in a whole bunch of these contexts, and the contexts have just evolved in their own sort of realm judge right bean at a bar.
01:03:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, our show today uh, brought to you by those great folks at shopify. And I have to say right up front I have uh, I have a dog in this hunt because my son, salt Hank, uses Shopify to sell his salts and his pickles. He loves Shopify because it made it so easy for him to set up an e-commerce site. When you think about businesses whose sales are rocketing, businesses like Allbirds or the shirts I wear on Tuckett you think about an innovative product, a progressive brand buttoned down to marketing. But the often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling and for shoppers, buying easy. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Oh, I love Shopify. Nobody does sales better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet, and they're not so secret. Secret With ShopPay that boosts conversions up to 50%. Far fewer carts going abandoned, way more sales being made. Love those sales. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that Saul Hank uses and all birds and untuck it. Sign up for I'll admit the other guys. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopifycom slash twit, that's all lowercase Shopify S-H-O-P-I-F-Y. Shopifycom slash twit. Go there to upgrade your selling today. Shopifycom slash twit. Love that sound. Shopify, all right.
01:05:24
So tick, tock, the clock is ticking, I guess one would say. January 19th is just a month away. I don't even know how the US. It's a law the US Congress passed and biden signed that. Somehow, if the company is not sold to an american uh entity, that they will somehow be banned forever. Don't know how you do that uh take. Does that mean apple and google pull them off the stores? Is that sufficient? Well, I still have tiktok on my device. I'm sure a lot of people will. Do you block traffic from the TikTok IP addresses? What do you do? Supreme Court, will they? So? First of all, they haven't weighed in, but will they offer cert? Do you think? Will they give this a hearing?
01:06:19 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, the first thing that's coming to the fore is timeline control, so um they have to.
01:06:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They'd have to step in on an emergency basis at this right.
01:06:29 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So tiktok went and asked the dc circuit like couldn't? It's a little confused what they asked for, but they basically said could you call a timeout, um, and give us a chance to, you know, get our petitions together and figure out our next steps.
01:06:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They said to this appeals court if you don't block it, the Supreme Court's going to have to put it on their shadow docket.
01:06:49 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Right and out.
01:06:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
of respect for the Supreme Court's vital role. This court should grant an interim injunction that it labels a more deliberate and orderly process.
01:07:00 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
They're just trying to stop the clock and the lower court said no Right. The lower court, well, and let's also not forget, the lower court is the appeals court. When this law was written, it was written in a way that bypassed the district courts and said if you're, if any, if there's any issue over this law, it has to go straight to the dc circuit. Wow and um. You know, on the one hand, there's something handy with saying what, the, what, the, whose jurisdiction the dispute would be in because of the. We didn't want this to go to Texas and sit in the Fifth Circuit, where everything is very crazy down there. But we got a crazy result out of the DC Circuit too, and we got it without a record being developed.
01:07:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is kind of surprising to me, a lay person. They said there's no Fifth Amendment I'm sorry, first Amendment issue at all and a lot of our contributors here have argued what are you talking about? Don't the people who post on TikTok, american citizens who post on TikTok, have a right, a First Amendment right, to post on TikTok?
01:08:10 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
There's a variety of First Amendment interests that the court overlooked. One of them is that TikTok itself would appear to have a First Amendment right, certainly the US subsidiary and possibly also even the foreign entity. And what is the lens by which the court should? How quickly and easily should the court dispense any First Amendment claims that TikTok has? But meanwhile, users of TikTok have their own First Amendment interests in being able to communicate through it and also to consume content through it. That there's right to read issues I've talked about right to read in other contexts on the show before, and here's one instance where it's relevant. Do users of TikTok have the right to receive information via TikTok Because it impinges on their ability to consume information if TikTok goes away? You know goes away at the compulsion of the government, and so the court was overlooking those First Amendment interests and also the ones that users like to speak through it and what happens to that speech if TikTok goes away?
01:09:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The DC Circuit said that that it satisfies a legal standard, known as strict scrutiny, that has to be met for government restrictions on speech to stand. Quote the act was the culmination of extensive bipartisan action by congress and by successive presidents.
01:09:31
I guess successive means trump and biden yeah it was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary and it was part of a broader effort to counter a by the way, there's some question on this next statement a well-substantiated national security threat. As far as I know, that court was not offered any of the secret information that the intelligence services gave Congress and the president, so I don't know what they're talking about. They basically said all right, well, you say there's a substantial national security threat, so we're just going to take it as written posed by the people's republic china under again, quoting under these circumstances, the provisions of the act that are before us withstand the most searching review. In other words, no first amendment protection at all. Will the supreme court, you think, do the same thing, kathy?
01:10:20 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
oh gosh, I hope not, because I think there is a standard for, you know, national security.
01:10:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a, there's a precedent for that in national. You know, in the case of national security, limiting what foreign nationals can do in the US.
01:10:36 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That's not how heightened scrutiny is supposed to work. This isn't how heightened scrutiny is supposed to work scrutiny is supposed to work.
01:10:43
This isn't how heightened scrutiny is supposed to work. This is a problem irrespective of TikTok itself, that the way the court reached its extremely trite analysis is. We do not want this precedent on the books. If I were going to be China and I wanted to really stick it to America, I would get to this point and abandon the appeal, because we have just broken First Amendment law in the United States. That this is what it stands.
01:11:06
It's the. The court didn't actually decide that strict scrutiny applied, but it decided that hypothetically. You know, if we could, if this could pass a strict scrutiny test, then we won't worry about it. So they used it more as kind of the hypothetical, like worst case scenario. If it can pass strict scrutiny then it's definitely okay, as opposed to us arguing about what was the appropriate level and then thinking, well, it passed intermediate scrutiny but it didn't pass strict scrutiny, so did we get the result wrong?
01:11:38
So here they're, like we are going to decide that the ban is okay. Ok, and we're going to give it a test under the most strict way of looking at this and doing it, with the way that has the most legal, the least leeway for the government. We've decided that the government is totally fine and it did it by. Basically, it's calling its analysis strict scrutiny, but it really reads like a rational basis test, and a rational basis is like the easiest test for the government to clear of. You know, did the government have, you know, a good, you know something reasonable or wanted to accomplish? Did this reasonably come anywhere close to apology of accomplishing it? That's not the official language.
01:12:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And, to be clear, they're not ruling in favor or against TikTok, they're just saying we're not going to pause it. That's not the official language. And, to be clear, they're not ruling in favor, uh or against tiktok, they're just saying we're not going to pause it. That this is. The congress has been clear that they wanted this to happen by january 19th and we're not going to pause it. The supreme court has two ways to, in effect, ban tiktok. One is just not to accept it. Right, they could just say, yeah, we're not going to grant certiorari, uh, we don't need to rule on this. The appeals court stands, although it doesn't sound like what this appeals court was really thinking.
01:12:50 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, there's also the sell. People say ban because it's more dramatic. But there's also the sell.
01:12:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, ByteDance has said we're not going to sell.
01:12:58 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
The Chinese government has said, even if ByteDance sold.
01:13:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're not going to allow them to sell the algorithm, which means if somebody like Frank McCourt comes along, he's. He's launched a 20 billion dollar bid to buy TikTok for America.
01:13:15 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I just, I find myself, even if he won, he wouldn't get the algorithm.
01:13:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what do you get? Well, the court has decided that oh, it's.
01:13:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's not a ban, it's not a for sale, it's justested juror. This is totally fine. Nothing to see here. No, that's totally something to see here. This is a real constitutional. This is a really aggressive thing that the government has done. That the the court is looking at looks like fine. They're incredibly deferential to the uh, to the government and its judgment about what the national security problem was, but it's also being extremely deferential even that, even though one of the stated purposes of the government is to control the content of speech that people end up interacting with. Like I understood this. Maybe I still hated it and think it's unconstitutional when it was just about the data slurpage of what you know tiktok is. Tiktok is probably everything that it's being accused of in terms of it gets user data and it sends that user data to people who shouldn't have the user data.
01:14:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But then again, by the way, are also buying it for companies like national public data, and who's not slurping data and sending it to people who shouldn't have it? Right. China can buy that data from data brokers in the US just like anybody else.
01:14:26 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Right, so, but if that's the way the law was done, then I think it still doesn't pass constitutional scrutiny, because you know that's not narrowly tailored to solving a data problem by forcing the entire platform to be divested platform to be divested, but that's not the only thing that they're trying to do. They don't like that. China is covertly affecting what information people can interact with. They don't like the information that people are interacting with. They are trying to go at the content of information.
01:14:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why don't they then shut down CCTV or RT, which are propaganda arms for these russia this decision says they could ban the bbc right I mean there's really no.
01:15:09 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
No, it doesn't, because it's not a foreign adversary.
01:15:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yes, it is well, it's not an adversary one small step, one small step that, yeah, you know, our president elect needs to do when he's in office.
01:15:22 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And suddenly britain is an adversary and we don't get bbc anymore there is yeah, that's, that's a little I mean no, no, there's, there's no limiting principle that would.
01:15:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's very it's pretty it's clear.
01:15:33 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
China's an average. It's very clear. We know that who our adversaries are.
01:15:37 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Yeah, there's a superpower conflict brewing between the united states and china in in Taiwan. They're going to invade Taiwan and we are going to defend Taiwan. They are, it's, it's, they're like us, it's, it's a superpower adversary. That's going to involve information warfare, yes, and for the Chinese Communist Party to just determine US public opinion on this issue is unacceptable. And so you know, I, I, it's, it's still in the realm of potentiality. Assume, we can assume. I mean personally, I, I would favor keeping tiktok around but having like a kill switch on it, because you know the ability to track the location of special, you know military people who are using tiktok and whatever else, who knows? I haven't thought about it that deeply, but clearly there's a capability.
01:16:18
Well, it's already banned, uh, for military and government, and as it should be, we're talking about asymmetric information warfare, where all of the us social networks are banned in china.
01:16:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The chinese people have, that's because they don't have a first amendment. That's the difference between us and china exactly. We don't want to be more like china, do we? The first?
01:16:40 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
amendment can't allow foreign adversaries to to just freely spread propaganda in the United States.
01:16:46 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, it does, and it has to, because there's no limiting principle to say what is the difference and who's going to decide? The First Amendment A doesn't have a national security exemption to it. This is something that's been invented, but even if we think that a national security exemption could at times pass strict scrutiny, this is so broad in the way that they did it that they're deciding that this government has decided it doesn't like certain content and so it's trying to look for a leverage to control what content that American citizens get to interact with. It's very thing that it's trying to do. The First Amendment says make no law, and they're trying to make a law that does exactly what the First Amendment says make no law for.
01:17:27
So if we do compare, why we're not? You know, the same on both in both countries. It's because China doesn't have a First Amendment restraining its government from doing things like this, and this was so tritely analyzed to figure out how the government could just get this leeway to go do this to TikTok. There's no limiting principle that would keep it from being able to do this to any other content produced by anybody else, and there's also a right that Americans have to be able to get access to information from abroad, including people who may not necessarily be our that's akin to the to to the uh, you know, the people's republic, uh the, the, the chinese army having a first amendment right to all the passwords of all the military companies in the united states, or something like that.
01:18:12 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It's like if there's a, there's a point they don't.
01:18:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's not. That's not free speech yeah, I don't even.
01:18:19 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That's not analogous to anything going on here my, my point is that things change.
01:18:24 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You have different relationships with in terms of information with adversaries than you do with everybody else, and so you know. The question is what is an adversarial relationship and how do you define that and what are the rules around that? Define that and and what are the rules around that? It's certainly it's got to be, uh, within the realm of the first amendment, uh, for for there to be some controls on adversaries, at least during times of warfare, war right with those adversary adversaries, for them to spread propaganda propaganda within our country.
01:18:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There has to be. There's a long history of doing that in the united states right after the first amendment was. They passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which forbade false and malicious statements about the federal government from aliens. Yeah, I mean, and we've always done this we did it but we didn't.
01:19:19 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean, that happened and it never actually went off the books, but it was so massively unpopular it sank John Adams presidency. He was a political nullity at that point. This isn't something that certainly and we've got 100 plus years of modern First Amendment jurisprudence and this is completely out of step with that jurisprudence and the test that they did itself with how they analyze strict scrutiny of whether it was a compelling purpose and narrowly tailored. Even if you wanted to credit it for the compelling purpose, it was not narrowly.
01:19:51 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But is there no allowance for the fact that social media and AI based algorithms designed to you know that can be tweaked secretly without any access to the algorithms is different. It's not different. It's not different. Surely it's different. It is not different.
01:20:06 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
The only thing that First Amendment, jurisprudence says where we've we've we've impinged on foreign actors has has been when it's come to spectrum and that, and that falls into the because spectrum is different, because it's finite, the idea. Otherwise, there are cases that actually make clear that Americans have their own interest in their own right to be able to consume information, including information that's not produced from America, and it is too easy to declare anybody an enemy.
01:20:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, I think that there is a point and let me take take this argument, kathy there is a point to saying we trust americans they should be able to read anything from anybody and we trust them to make the right decisions. And who is it? We certainly don't trust our government to make the decision about what we can and cannot see right, mike, we don't want that right and that's been very clear with the jersey mike, let mike address that yeah, so so the, the?
01:21:03 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
when I say that the, the social media algorithms, especially a super algorithm like the one on tick tock, is different from allowing the japanese to distribute pamphlets in the united states during world war ii or something like that, it's obviously different, clearly different, and the problem is that the laws don't reflect that difference.
01:21:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're still rummaging around in the dusty old laws to try to govern something that's radically different from what I understand what you're saying, and this is a larger issue, which is that somehow social media has weaponized speech and that suddenly I mean in every respect that suddenly and this kind of leads to things like the australian law forbidding people under 16 from participating in social media or in fact we have laws like that in, I think, kentucky and Texas. It seems to me that it's appropriate for us to draw a bright line that says government shouldn't decide what we can consume or not.
01:22:00 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I agree. So I think the solution to all the social media algorithm problems is very, very obvious and clear. Like, are they like a newspaper? Are they like the telephone? Well, I think they should be both. I think there should be a clearly defined feed, required by law, for all of them to say okay, here's the algorithm rhythmically sorted or human sorted content which is, in a sense, we're a newspaper.
01:22:26
Wait a minute, hear me out. And here's the feed of the people you followed. You get every single thing that you, that they post in order, with nothing removed and nothing added. Right, and those two things need to be separate. Right now, people just blindly open the thing and they and they receive the opinion that comes at them from whoever's determining the algorithm, and this is a real problem that actually seems fair.
01:22:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What about that? What? That wouldn't be a restriction of speech, it would just merely be a clarification solution to the problem, I think it would be a common carrier. It's not a solution at all, and most people mike would choose the algorithmic feed, you understand. That's why it exists. That'd be a clear choice, more entertaining that'd be a clear choice right now.
01:23:08 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They don't know that they don't have a choice. That choice has been made for them. What?
01:23:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
about that, kathy?
01:23:13 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
absolutely not hard. No, and even this supreme court would say no. First of all, it's already come close to analogizing it to the newspaper. It hasn't. Thomas and Alito and Gorsuch are a little not on board with that, but but it's getting there.
01:23:29
Aclu versus Reno made it clear that Internet counted as a First Amendment. Protected media space, communication space, as anything offline we had and what you're talking about is just one small thing would basically disrupt everything that happens online and all First Amendment prospection that we have on it. This is not a small thing you're describing. You're talking about basically making the internet and a First Amendment free zone for the government to regulate as it sees fit. And good luck having any free speech, any complaints about any powerful people, any government, any democratic organization. If that was the rule. There's a reason that we make the government stay out of what content is consumed by people and what they can express and what they can assume and what they can be associated with and how they can see it and how other people can present it. The reason the First Amendment says no is because that's a good way to make sure that you don't have any democracy anymore.
01:24:25 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So no, that's not a small thing that you're saying Mike, you're muted, mike, you're muted.
01:24:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mike, you're talking but nothing's coming. Sorry, sorry about that, that would have been a great time for me to talk because that was your chance and you blew it.
01:24:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Go ahead, mike, all right.
01:24:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mike respond.
01:24:42 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Then you, Emily, I'm sorry, elon Musk X, as an extreme example, is anything but the open, free internet. It's the Elon Musk show 24-7. It's his First Amendment rights. That's being protected and should be right. But that's an example Like these. Walled gardens are not the open internet. Those are two different things. And if somebody's publishing, if somebody's determining what opinions are being published, right, that's just like the op-ed section of the New York Times and it's nothing like just like the open internet. And that's why I think there should be one feed that's like the Elon Musk show and the other feed that's the open internet, where you select what you hear from and who you want to hear it from.
01:25:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is this, is these things are different and and the whole algorithm and make problem I think, like you got a problem because now you have the government telling elon musk, a private individual, what to do with his company a private company and I think I think that what I don't want to put words in kathy's mouth, no one needs to, but it's a slippery slope. They already do it. They already do it.
01:25:45 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Of course he can't allow the publication of child abuse material.
01:25:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He can't allow the abuse of all kinds of things In.
01:25:51 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Germany, he can't even show a swastika.
01:25:53 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm not defending German law, I'm going to take issues with the fact that Germany doesn't have a First Amendment and they can arrest opposition leaders for having said the wrong things.
01:26:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So no, I'm just one of the. I agree with you. It is one of our most valuable strengths in this country is free speech Right, and I understand that it sounds like in your opinion, any abridgment of absolute freedom of speech is a slippery slope. That's problematic.
01:26:21 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, you mean to me I mean, yeah, yes, I generally do. The reason we have strict scrutiny is for the very select things where the maybe the rule needs to be different. You, the government, is has to thread a very tiny needle in order to do it.
01:26:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Security right?
01:26:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
no, no, I mean that's no security might be a compelling reason, but it doesn't answer the question by itself and then it also has to be narrowly tailored.
01:26:46
So, for instance, in the example that was just brought up, he must, must and Twitter have some obligation to police for CSAM. But even that is a more complex policy argument and legal requirement. Like they only have to police what they know about, they don't have to police it prospectively and there's reasons why you wouldn't want them to. Anyway, we're essentially relitigating the last 30 years of Internet law, which has found that the First Amendment applies online and has to apply online in a relatively broad way, apply online in a relatively broad way, and that the fact that occasionally we might have threaded the needle for regulation that can survive strict scrutiny does not mean that the government gets to help itself to any sort of content I gotta pause you both because emily gets to get a word in edgewise.
01:27:37 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Go ahead, emily okay, I really appreciate kathy's perspective as well as Mike's. My gut feeling is that this is the right thing to do what's being happening to TikTok, because this is the only thing that I have seen be bipartisan, have bipartisan support in this extremely divided country that we have. I think that if both sides agree, this is the way there is really something there. I think that if both sides agree, this is the way there is really something there, and it's a true shame that most Americans don't have education on cybersecurity, don't know why China is a threat, why everything is behind smoke and mirrors, but I think there's enough here that there is a real important threat, and to me, it's less of a free speech issue and more of a cybersecurity national security issue. And, um, I think that I see a lot of people on my tiktok feed who are making a lot of money off of tiktok, like creators who are advocating against the band, my son wouldn't have a business right but I don't think that's a reason to keep something.
01:28:38
I'm sorry like it's. I know we like it, but just because you are making money from it that's why I appreciate your perspective, kathy, because what I see, the conversation among young people is completely ill-informed on why china is a threat and why these types of things do have bipartisan support, and I think that is a real shame and embarrassment for young people.
01:29:02 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It's hard because TikTok is super pro-China Right and the Chinese version of TikTok by the way and Kathy, I know this is irrelevant and they don't have the First Amendment but the Chinese version of TikTok is like, super constructive.
01:29:18 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Oh, exactly, yeah, they're feeding, they're pumping us stuff. They know? I don't know, maybe they don't know this, but it is affecting our mental health.
01:29:28 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It is shaping how people think we can speak. We can speak how we need to speak and discover new ways and teach ourselves new things. Because we have the first amendment protecting our ability to protect the platforms, to give us the other.
01:29:39 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I don't think that protecting free speech is protecting TikTok. You can say whatever you want, protecting free speech is if we don't like it, if we're talking about that.
01:29:49 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
People are uninformed. This is about a company.
01:29:50 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It's not about a company.
01:29:50 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's about the first amendment law in order to stick it to TikTok. And the court was agreed with you that the whole kumbaya of Democrats and Republicans who weren't actually agreeing, necessarily for the same reason Some of them just didn't like it because they don't like the kids today are on TikTok, and some of them those kids were talking about ways that didn't like their politics. It's a really convenient way of sticking it to the kids who are speaking out against their politics If you take away the platform that they were speaking on you can speak on many, many, many many platforms.
01:30:21 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Many platforms you can speak on. You don't need this one.
01:30:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think all of us have had a chance to say our point of view and it's pretty clear. There's no, it's difficult, let's put it that way.
01:30:33 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
This changed the law.
01:30:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's also clear that we don't know how the Supreme Court's going to rule on this, because it's kind of a wild card these days.
01:30:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It's also clear that we're not even talking about why they banned it and why it's a national security issue. We don't know why that's the problem, emily.
01:30:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We don't know why, and that's the part of the problem.
01:30:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's the problem. That's why we don't know what's actually going on, just like the drones haven't been willing to give us their thinking.
01:31:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They merely said, well, that the First Amendment is a very, very important part of our politics and and needs to be protected. But I think we've all made our points. I don't think we've come to a resolution. I don't know if we will. I will be very interested. It does sound like it is something the Supreme Court should rule on.
01:31:19 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It should.
01:31:20
I mean, I let me it.
01:31:23
I'm frustrated about the policy decision in this argument because I think the policy is yes, this is bad, but let me just frame it this way it changed fundamentally the way First Amendment jurisprudence behaved and it changed it in a way that if we're going to be able to say no to the government trying to set content policy for us, our ability to do so is much weaker.
01:31:48
So even if you think that okay, tiktok, fine, let's say everybody agrees and they're bad and they should feel bad and go away, clearly that's not going to be the case on all sorts of other types of internet expression that we're going to have going forward. It's never been the case in the past and there's certainly no reason to suspect we're going to have it now. I mean, we're not going to get that much kumbaya out of what's going on with. You know the politics that we're heading into, and this hurt the ability for people to say something other than what the government likes. That is a problem unto itself. It really broke a lot of precedent. It broke the strict scrutiny test and it will be bad if some court doesn't step in to fix it.
01:32:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And, by the way, leo, you tried to change the subject, a valiant effort, but I just want to quickly say that, are what you're saying, that you wouldn't mind so much or you would find it in support of the First Amendment to have a law that essentially accomplished the same thing but did it in a different way, that protected the future unintended consequences, or is just the outcome, is the problem?
01:33:00 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. I think the thing like don't have a free speech issue but still get rid of TikTok, the outcome is the problem.
01:33:03 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm not entirely sure I understand the question, so you're saying like don't, don't have a free speech issue, but still get rid of tick tock. Like would you support getting?
01:33:08 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
they read with the lawn in such a way as that it opens up the door to all kinds of horrible but but is there a way to write a law for the outcome of tick tock going away? That could be done in such a way that would protect the First Amendment in the future.
01:33:24 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So I don't want to say it in terms of Twitter TikTok going away, but there were two things that the government wanted. There were two concerns that the government had. One was the data slurpage and one was the covertly manipulating the content that we're exposed to. The second one I don't think in any way, shape or form can survive First Amendment scrutiny, because it inherently was trying to interact with what the content policy was. So I think that's doomed from the outset. And the first part. I think it's doomed when the way they wrote the law had just such a catastrophic effect to it, like basically, you ban TikTok, tiktok and that's going to have speech harms. But the data slurpage there's, I think, some legitimate policy issues there, as we were just discussing. A lot of companies slurp way too much data.
01:34:16 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It's also an issue that they won't sell the algorithms. It feels like they're kind of hiding something.
01:34:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
But the algorithms was the other part. In terms of the data slippage, to answer Mike's question, yeah, I think there's things that the US government could do to address the data slurpage, like actually having a comprehensive data protection policy. Now you can write them really badly which have First Amendment impacts, but I think that is a needle you could thread. It would justify it and would take care of a lot of the concerns that people have with what.
01:34:46 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
The problem is that yeah tiktok is chinese, unfortunately, even though that's. The public may be more concerned about the data slurpage. Uh, from a national security perspective, 95 of the national security threat is the other one is the ability to china and russia.
01:35:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
both use Xcom to do the same thing.
01:35:04 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I know they do, they both use.
01:35:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Facebook to do the same thing.
01:35:06 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But they can't control the algorithms. Do you ban X?
01:35:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
and Facebook as a result. What do you do about?
01:35:10 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
that they don't have control of the algorithms. The Chinese law says that, basically, if we want to, we can go into any Chinese company and we can look at all the data and see what's happening and make changes and do like they specifically say that Elon Musk decides that he's going to favor Chinese content or Russian content on his site.
01:35:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What would we do about that?
01:35:32 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, I mean, I don't. I think that that's another, that's another issue that we'd have to figure out what what's happening there.
01:35:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I think, it's his protected right to do so.
01:35:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, what if banning TikTok is the right thing? We haven't even explored that. We're just tiktok apologists. I mean, we there's both sides of the aisle that this deal is the right thing. Why? Why do we have no support for that?
01:35:54 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean not everybody did I mean?
01:35:56 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
some of the people are it's difficult because I mean people like tiktok. They like I watched so much tiktok it's I need to get off TikTok. I like it. But people you know their sons are making money on TikTok, like everyone here is so enchanted with TikTok. What if there's a problem?
01:36:13 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm not enchanted with TikTok. I don't care.
01:36:14 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I never use it. You're defending it to the death, and I know because I'm not defending TikTok.
01:36:21 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I am defending the first amendment because it isn't just tiktok, that will fall there's no limiting principle to what they did to tiktok in this legislation and what the court blessed and any other platform and speech that any that the government wants to turn to next it. It will look a little bit different, but not in any meaningful way. This greases the skids, including on like even the point of well it's about a foreign adversary.
01:36:48 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
It's about a foreign adversary.
01:36:50 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's about a foreign adversary like that is way too easy to get a foreign adversary, and there's nothing about what the way they defined it here that makes me think it's the countries are listed one. It's a wait a minute though, emily, isn't it?
01:37:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
conceivable that south korea will become a foreign adversary and North Korea become our ally under a President Trump, and if that were the case, you wouldn't be able to buy Samsung TVs. How would you feel?
01:37:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
then we may feel like it's unlikely. How would you guys feel if it?
01:37:15 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
was the right decision to ban TikTok and you argued against it.
01:37:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it isn't, because there's no evidence that it is that you have to give us evidence that it is the government needs to give us the evidence.
01:37:25 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's what they owe us. The problem is, they think it's probably a national security issue to release it. But I mean, I've reported on so many shady things from china. It's outrageous. China is an absolute threat and I feel like we are losing that thread, that is true.
01:37:42 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
so the thing is you know that's what I meant about the long play that if China can cause us to give up our First Amendment rights because it was using them in a way that I think wasn't good, that is an interesting long play, but that's kind of where this decision left us.
01:38:01 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Let me see if I can shift it just a little bit. First of all, I'd like to say that salt hank doesn't need tiktok. He's killing it on instagram. The other thing, the other point I want to make is that, um is that I think I think all our points of view are clear, but I would, I would love to know, kathy, what you think the supreme court is actually going to do.
01:38:20 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean, who, who knows, with these particular um judges, but I think they, I'm hoping they will at least buy time. And so, if we have to do this via the shadow docket, I'm hoping they will at least buy time, because this is, there are principles in law and, granted, this court hasn't been all that supportive of them.
01:38:43 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
What's interesting is, if they buy one day exactly, president trump will be president the next day even if they don't, even if they rule something on the 19th, trump is you know, do some executive order that'll have to go through the courts on stuff he's already? He's already announced that he's going to be more pro tiktok than he was when he tried to ban it when he was president. So what do you think Trump is going to do?
01:39:06 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, let me go back to Emily's point, because it's kind of like one of the things I'm trying to argue. The government can be arbitrary with what it likes one day and what it doesn't like another day, and if we allow the government to ever show up and say, well, based on the way we feel right now, we're going to control online speech, that's a problem because the point of the constitution, the constitution says stay out of it because you're going to change your minds. There's always going to be an opposition.
01:39:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The constitution is there to give you an eternal set of values that you adhere to regardless of how the current government feels.
01:39:44 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I agree and I appreciate it. I just think I'm suspicious that there is such it's such a popular opinion to hate the TikTok ban, or there's too much consensus from among the people. Compared to the consensus in the government, there's a real gap and I'm uncomfortable why everyone wants to keep it. That's it. And then the government on both sides is like actually, this is like one of the biggest national security issues.
01:40:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So how do we reconcile that? Wait a minute, emily. The government on the right doesn't like it because they censor. They say censor conservative speech. Yeah, I mean kids today were like organizing against the government on the left doesn't like it because I forgot why the left doesn't like it, but they don't agree on why they want to ban TikTok. They just agree, they want to ban tiktok. They just agree, they want to ban tiktok.
01:40:30 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, that right there should tell you something yeah, one of the things to be aware of is pretext.
01:40:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, it is very easy for a sensorial government to use pretext and national security is a real, it's a real bogeyman that's very easy to deploy it's protect the women, protect the children and protect our national borders I mean, I think, an answer to a big gap.
01:40:50 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, I think an answer to emily's point is like I could believe. I mean, I'm not arguing with you necessarily of is tiktok good, tiktok may be bad and maybe an overall bad thing. Um, I can accept that, but right, the government doesn't get to do this in response to the bad thing I appreciate.
01:41:10 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Okay, I see this being one of one of those things where people post about how dumb the tiktok band is and that gets them well no, we're going, we're operating at a higher level than that.
01:41:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't, I know, but I just I'm really suspicious of the current dialogue.
01:41:22 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm seeing like this is a good dialogue, but just the fact that saying the tikt is dumb makes people like you and therefore it's going in that direction, is highly suspicious.
01:41:31 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Being pro-platform is good on any platform Right and.
01:41:34 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
TikTok is a company that's making way more money than you, and I feel like people are bending the knee to TikTok and there's tons of issues here.
01:41:42 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
There's a legal dimension and then there's the public dimension. The Constitution exists for the people of the United States. Like US citizens and I'm pretty sure that almost you know the vast majority of US citizens believe that the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment exist to protect American citizens. That that's one of the benefits and perks of American citizenship, the idea that it it protects xi jinping right? I don't think most people.
01:42:11 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's what I'm saying like there's reason to this. This isn't. It's a black and white or we're presenting it as black and white people want it to be black and white issue. It's not I'm sorry.
01:42:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm sure that this was black and white. In terms of its unconstitutionality, I don't think this is a close call.
01:42:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, she's not defending TikTok for TikTok's sake. Let me ask, though, a question. During World War Two, were there limits on Nazi propaganda in the United States?
01:42:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I don't know.
01:42:40 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I suspect there were yeah. There were For sure, there was yeah, absolutely.
01:42:43 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Well, I mean, one of the things is that our line of precedent goes back to World War One, when you weren't allowed to protest against the draft because they thought that that would destabilize America. So the law at that point was of course the government can jail Eugene Debs because he was organizing against the draft and we needed the draft so that the country would come together and fight this war.
01:43:07 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But again American citizens over the hundred hundred years we realize that is a mistake.
01:43:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
And now?
01:43:12 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
an american citizen exercising his free right to to assembly and all that stuff is different from adolf hitler exercising his constitutional right to to spread propaganda in the us they're different.
01:43:23 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That was not under us law are they not different? I. I don't think that was a scenario that necessarily got treated by law, but but one of the things is that I'm sorry I lost the You've done a great job.
01:43:38 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm just, I'm just.
01:43:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm just saying we probably have a precedent of violating the First Amendment in times of war. Violating the First Amendment in times of war. I would imagine that's the case.
01:43:52 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I don't think we'll understand that. It's a line of cases that started from World War One that have moved now, and they've moved very steadily and very consistently away from the government gets to do something.
01:44:00
Oh this is what the point I was going to make the idea that the the Bill of Rights protects only Americans is not actually necessarily the case. Bill of Rights protects only Americans is not actually necessarily the case. It's not necessarily the case in that all all of the laws enumerated only apply to American citizens, and some of the reason for that is because there's no way to actually have it apply to American citizens only and not other people, because if you had to do the test of are you a citizen or not, it would already compromise the views of the rights of the Americans.
01:44:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But we do have the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has a legal right to prevent foreign nationals from investing in US properties.
01:44:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Right, that is different and it's not seen in the speech context. In the speech context, Americans do, and this has been recognized by a case that I can't think of the name offhand. Americans have the right to consume information and consume, including information produced by non-Americans. So, if you're going to, and again, when you look at this, American users have their own rights that this impinges upon. So, yes, it's impinging upon TikTok's rights, but it also impinges on Americans' rights because it's affecting the information ecosystem they get to participate in. And that is where the rubber hits the road, if nothing else, what's the counter argument?
01:45:17 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Are there people in the legal space or in your sphere, in your world, that disagree with you? I?
01:45:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
mean there's a lot of people that keep trying to pull out text section 230 and ban the internet.
01:45:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And censor it and all the attorneys working for the government In terms of the people who I like and respect.
01:45:34 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
There is deep alarm over this decision, and the basis of the alarm again really has very little to do with TikTok itself and has entirely to do with the framework of what the court did, how it applied its strict scrutiny test and what that would mean for anything else. That's not tiktok.
01:45:52 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That comes up next is there one person who we, who like the tiktok band, is associated with, like who raised the bill. Who is there?
01:46:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
somebody, president trump started it right, and then the us congress voted it in last in this current session and biden signed the law.
01:46:08 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Oh, and I believe also, you know, and the court is like oh, and it's, you know, esteemed judgment and wisdom, Congress decided to have that have passed this law. It wasn't getting passed directly and it got passed, I believe, as part of getting glued to a must pass bill.
01:46:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh interesting.
01:46:26 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I believe that is the case and it got the escape velocity that way. Like these laws, like the court is like, oh, the very considered, you know, esteem of the Barb Patterson in Congress, and it really ignored the evolution of the bill and the fact that common cause to pass it was made by people who, yes, some are genuinely concerned about the national security impact, but some of them really didn't like what kids today were saying on TikTok and wanted to shut them up.
01:46:50
And that was a big part of the motivation that pushed the bill and eventually got enough allies to get the tilt passed.
01:46:56 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Here's a question that we're talking about what the restrictions were during World War II. In 1938, Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which meant that everybody who's disseminating propaganda on behalf of foreign governments had to register with the State Department. So to what extent does algorithmic tweaks that favor the Chinese position or any other sort of propaganda fall under the 1938 FARA?
01:47:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I don't think that was litigated. And the second thing is I would need to do something called shepherdizing, which anybody who cites an earlier precedent should do. And shepherdizing is you look up to see is that decision still good law or have the courts moved away from it. So I don't know what the status of that sort of registration would be, but that's also again something much more narrow, and it's not like that was the issue.
01:47:44 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Whether it's still right, whether it still applies or not. There's, there's a strong precedent for something that's at least akin to what we're talking about now, which is foreign adversaries disseminating propaganda with the United States. It can be shut down by the Congress, and that's that.
01:48:02 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
That has happened, you know, I'm saying I'm saying that may not be good law at all.
01:48:06 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It doesn't count as a strong precedent if we've moved away from it? No, it matters a lot. It was enforced and now we may have repudiated it. We shouldn't have.
01:48:16 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
We repudiated it in a way where it's well if we repudiated it, we repudiated it with reason.
01:48:21 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Neither Congress, nor the courts, nor the lawyers, nor the Supreme Court are infallible in any degree. I think that the fact that it's common sense that we shouldn't allow foreign adversaries to spread propaganda within the United States if, depending on the level of conflict, it's common sense. I think it's common sense, and it does not mean that the First Amendment is null and void or common sense is that this is a dangerous road to go down.
01:48:45 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm not sure common sense. Maybe both are true, maybe both are true.
01:48:48 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I'm not sure common sense agrees, mike. Maybe both are true, I'm not sure common sense agrees.
01:48:53 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I actually believe the.
01:48:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
American people are smart enough to hear all points of view, even adversaries' points of view.
01:49:01 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Okay, but even movies are labeled PG-13 or whatever.
01:49:04 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's okay to label content, for example the labeling happened because Congress was trying to censor the movies, which would have had a First Amendment problem, but because they didn't want to deal with the practical realities of that the industry decided to self-regulate, and that's why they do that.
01:49:19 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I don't think there's anything wrong with laws that are designed to inform the public where the information is Do you think you're really?
01:49:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the public pays any attention to movie ratings no, not really Do you think that that's really enhanced Actually.
01:49:34 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So, Mike, you'd ask the question of what could the law have done.
01:49:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have to suspend this because, as good as this conversation is, we spent an hour on it and I think all the points have been well stated. I don't. I think at this point we're just kind of reiterating.
01:49:49 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Too much free speech.
01:49:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Too much free speech and I, as a dictator, I'm going to end it right here.
01:49:54 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
But a great conversation. You have the first amendment right to do it.
01:49:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right. Section 230 protects me from any suits against me for doing that. But I think it's a great conversation. I'm really glad we had this conversation and I think I would hope people would listen and and and think about it. Uh, it's an important question.
01:50:17 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I suspect that in fact tiktok will be shut down january 19th, but and?
01:50:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
then reopen on the 20th. No, you know, I don't think trump it's not number one on his agenda. He doesn't. I don't think it's gonna get shut down.
01:50:24 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's part of the reason I'm bullish on just saying whatever I want about it. I think this story is just going to continue. It's going to get shut down and apple and google are going to be forced.
01:50:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're going to be forced to stop offering it in their store and they will comply and that'll be that. Uh, there'll be people who will. I'll keep tiktok on my phone, uh, and I'll still be able to see tiktoks, and I imagine a lot of us creators, creators will continue to use TikTok.
01:50:46 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So the irony is how much of a cybersecurity vulnerability is to have unsupported software on people's personal devices. But I think an open question is yeah, this may not be the, let's say, this litigation hits a wall.
01:51:00 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
OK, we're shutting it down.
01:51:01 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
The end of the litigation. Where will we see more Well? No people in Apple comply.
01:51:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That will be the next story I think they have to tap into russia and china for similar requests.
01:51:13 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think they'll comply with the us government I don't know um they'd be foolish not to I think it's a sad day if they do. I'd like to see if they fight it this is gonna be interesting.
01:51:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe we'll be talking about this in a couple of weeks, maybe. Well, next week's show will be a best of, not a best of a look back at the year, so to speak. We do this every year, which is kind of fun. We look at the top stories of twenty twenty four. We've put together a panel I think it's to be a lot of fun Of our own people it'll be Micah Sargent, father Robert Ballasair.
01:51:44
Richard Campbell's going to join us. He listens to Twitter on a regular basis. I always see him in our chat. Hi, richard, and paris martineau next week on twit the year end and then the best of on december 29th, excuse me. And then we'll get back together and and start a show january 5th. And, who knows, maybe by then we'll have some Supreme Court stuff to report. You're watching this Week in Tech with our great guests, very smart people. This is a problem when you get smart people on with a lot of opinions. They may not agree. And then fireworks, and I'm enjoying it. Mike Elgin is here from Machinesocietyai. I'm sure you've written about this on your newsletter.
01:52:32
Oh, I think so yes, more than once, and you may, and you may again, emily Forlaini, have you covered this on PC mag, Just the peripheral news, but not not in depth.
01:52:42 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
No.
01:52:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting story. I cover China all the time.
01:52:46 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So to me I see it from that lens and that's why I just had a bad gut feeling about it, from what I see about how we engage with them. But it's also why I appreciate Kathy's perspective on just. She looks at it from a completely different lens.
01:52:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's one of the reasons we love having Kathy Gellis on. She is an advocate, and you can tell. Contributor at TechDirt, cgcouncilcom and as a avid reader of TechDirt, I think I know how Mike Masnick feels about this as well.
01:53:15 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I don't think there's a lot of daylight between my opinion and Masnick's opinion.
01:53:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it feels pretty much the same way. That's a great place to go. Techdirtcom, if you want to read Kathy's writing, mike Masnick's, carl Bode so many great people writing there about these issues. It's great to have all three of you on the show today. I would like to point out that normally we would have an ad here, but we don't. This is one of the issues that's facing many podcasts. I saw it the other day that 50 percent of all ad sales in the United States go to the top 10 shows. Needless to say, we are not in the top 10. We might be the longest running. We've been around for almost 20 years. Our 20th anniversary is in April but that doesn't mean you're number one and it doesn't mean advertisers In fact, advertisers like anybody else to go. Oh yeah, I knew about that show, but yeah, yeah, we want, we want to get. Call Her Daddy, let's get her on. She's hot right now which means we need to come to you to make up the difference. Even though we have cut back as much as we can shutting down the studios, canceling shows, laying off some of our most beloved team members it hasn't been enough to to balance the books, if you will, and we're looking at a fairly bleak 2025. I appreciate all of you who are members of Club Twit and if you're not, I would love to invite you to join the club Now. We try to keep it affordable seven bucks a month. We try to give you good benefits like ad-free versions of all of our shows, video for shows that are just audio to the public. Of course, our great Club Twweet, discord the events we do in the Discord. We have.
01:54:50
Stacy's Book Club is coming up on Thursday Really good book. The new book from the guys who wrote the Expanse, james SA Corey. They have a new book, a new series coming out. The Mercy of the Gods is the first and it is really good. I just finished it and I'm just I can't wait for the next volume of this. So we'll be talking about that on Thursday. Jason Snell recommended it and I'm going to desperately try to get Jason to join us for the book club.
01:55:19
Micah's Crafting Corner is also coming up this week. Chance to sit down, do some crafts with Micah. I think he's building a tiny kitchen. Last time I checked, we did an AMA last week with Emily Forlini. If you're a member of the club, you can hear the Ask Me Anything on the TwitPlus feed. So we try to give you extra content, extra stuff to make it worthwhile. But the real reason to join the club is to keep this kind of programming on the air. It isn't very lucrative, but I think it's very important and we really believe in what we're what we're doing. So we'd like to invite you to help us out. Twittv slash club, twit, and thanks in advance. Let's see I could talk about COSA. That's going to just that's just going to get another big argument.
01:56:08 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I'm only going to talk about the First Amendment again, you know, I know how.
01:56:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
About this one? This was a surprise. You remember there was a little tussle between Matt Mullenweg, ceo and creator of WordPress, ceo of Automatic, with another company that puts people's WordPress sites online called WP Engine. Mac got upset with WP Engine and actually pulled their access to WordPressorg resources, interfered with its plugins. A judge has now ruled that he must stop. On Tuesday, a California district judge ordered Automatic to stop blocking WP Engine's access to WordPressorg. This was kind of a shock Mullenweg had waged this is from the Verge waged a public campaign against WP Engine in September, accusing them of misusing the WordPress trademark, not contributing back to the WordPress community and then blocking WP Engine from their servers, plus taking control in effect, of their plugin, wp Engine's plugin. Judge Araceli Martinez Oguin found merit in WP Engine's claims that automatic actions harmed business relationships, saying Mullenweg's conduct is designed to induce or induce breach or disruption. Uh, kind of a shock, I guess. I guess I should ask you, kathy, uh, what you think of this decision. Is it merited?
01:57:43 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
um, it's been hard to sort of completely follow, so I put an asterisk, but, but I think the answer is probably yes. It did seem like it was a measured decision and the judge seemed to understand what was getting complained about and it's really a decision that, like, in theory, the Mullenweg view could still prevail. But it's really, I think, sort of an injunction to sort of one of the points I was making earlier. Is that the law like status quo until we realize, until we're all sure that it's OK to have something happen.
01:58:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, there's a little speed bump to keep.
01:58:17 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, and sometimes we don't like that, because sometimes it's like go ahead, especially for things where money can't fix or you know too much harm will accrue. Then the government wants to like you know, a step back, let's preserve things how they are. And it looks like that's what's happened, because this is just maintaining the status quo.
01:58:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There still will be a trial. Yeah, there will be discovery. It's WordPress's contention that they're protecting the open source ecosystem in general that this is often the case, that third, commercial third parties take advantage of open source without contributing back to the original open source. That was what Matt felt was happening.
01:58:59 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It may also be. So one of the things in the standard for preliminary injunction is generally status quo and, like you know, what are the balancing, the harms? Are we going to harm more if we change stuff now or more if we overchange and then turn out that was wrong? And then also likelihood of prevailing on the merits. And this decision does seem to telegraph that. The judge found that non-Muhlenweg side to be have a persuasive argument, but it isn't fully dispositive. This is not the end of the case. If they want to keep litigating it, the judge might get to a different point eventually, but we've left things as they are for now. But it does seem to. If he was really on board with the argument, he would probably think, yes, there's a harm and we need to stop that harm right now, and it doesn't sound like he was particularly convinced that there was that sort of harm accruing we'll watch with interest.
01:59:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I think this will develop. Uh, and it does really impact open source, the open source community oh, it's just a mess, like some you know.
01:59:55 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Just it's hard to, it's a, it's unfortunate. This is not who mommy and daddy are fighting and this is not good yeah something this episode no, no, nobody's a mommy here and nobody's a daddy here. We're just fighting like you. You know, sometimes you can look at a dispute and you have more of a sense of who's the. You know who the bad guy is and this and the other thing. And, um, you know, even if you're not swayed by Muhlenberg's actions here, he's been a good guy in the space for a long time.
02:00:33 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So that would be unfortunate if this is not consistent with that.
02:00:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's exactly my feeling. I have. We've interviewed I've interviewed Matt many times. You've had him on our shows. I have the highest regard for him and his support for open source, so I kind of lean in his favor, without really knowing what the case is. I think that a trial is probably the best solution to all of this.
02:00:55
Let me talk about an interesting piece in the Art Atlantic this week by Charlie Wartzel, who I often quote on these shows because he's a very provocative and interesting thinker about technology. He, like me, admits that for years he thought of crypto as really more of a problem than a solution to anything, with NFTs and DAOs and crypto being used, bitcoin particularly for ransomware payments and, of course, the world-burning consequence of generating this crypto currency. He says I've read opaque white papers for Web3 startups and decentralized financial finance protocols, but I've never found a killer app. He says maybe now, after the presidential election, we have found the killer app. And this is the paragraph I'd love to get your comments on, mike and and uh, emily and kathy. This is the quote from charlie walsh in the atlantic.
02:01:53
Crypto is a technology whose transformative power is not a particular service, but a culture. A culture one is one that is, by nature, distrustful of institutions and sympathetic to people who want to dismantle them or troll them. The election results were, at least in part, a repudiation of institutional authorities, and crypto helped deliver them. We know this that uh, not just elon musk, but the generally the, the crypto industry put hundreds of millions of dollars into the election to support crypto friendly politicians, and they won big time.
02:02:29
The new SEC chairman is pro crypto, replacing Gary Gensler, who wanted to regulate crypto as securities, and the crypto industry didn't like that. They kind of. I've even seen them go so far as to say you know, there shouldn't be any capital gains tax for money we make in speculating on crypto, and that's the case in some countries. I don't know if it'll be any capital gains tax for money we make in speculating on crypto, and that's the case in some countries. I don't know if it'll be the case here. Trump has said he wants the united states to be the big crypto power.
02:02:57
He wants us to have a giant, uh, crypto um, fort knox, um, you know he always uses like the most dramatic imagery possible well, actually I chose the fort knox, but okay he's used it too, yeah trump did pledge deregulation, to help quote ensure that the united states will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world take that, el salvador that el salvador, by the way, people who criticize president bukele's decision to put the El Salvador currency and you would know a little bit about this, Mike I'd like to know what you think On a crypto basis.
02:03:35
His investment in Bitcoin has proven a $400 million windfall for El Salvador. What do you think? Was that the right thing to do?
02:03:45 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Well, if he cashes out, I mean, if crypto is supposed to be a currency, uh, for buying things. He tried to make that happen. It doesn't really happen in el salvador, nobody's they still use dollars, don't? They use chivo wallace, they use the us dollar and um, but but is it, you know? But it's also investment, so like, if you you can invest in, you know the stock market or this or that or you could, you could buy, uh, bitcoin, right, so it. So it's mainly a way to make money you buy it.
02:04:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As long as it's going up, you make money Exactly. If it doesn't go up, you would lose money. And the problem I have with cryptocurrency is it's not tied. The value is not tied to anything. At least with a stock it's sort of tied to the results of the company, or real estate is sort of tied to the market.
02:04:27 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But there's no In the Exactly the results of the company or real estate is sort of tied to the market. But in the last couple of decades we've sort of accepted the idea that making tons of money for its own sake is an acceptable thing to do. I am a little old fashioned and I tend to think that the reason you invest in a company is because that company makes things that people need or want and it's part of how you contribute to society. It's part of how you contribute to society. It's part of how you make things better.
02:04:50
Like, I'm a capitalist and I think that you know, despite so many abuses, capitalism in generally has lifted people out of poverty because, basically, you build a company, you can have a small business. All these things are positive and here it comes along a thing that's it's an investment, just like that, in terms of you buy what is the equivalent of a stock and you sell what is the equivalent of stock, but no clothing has been made, no food has been produced or distributed, no benefit to humanity has happened at all. It's just the dudes making money, and I tend to sort of think that we've lost the plot.
02:05:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the problem those dudes who did make a lot of money then invested it in buying the best government money could buy, and the problem with our politics in this country is it's so based on money that they now have immense power.
02:05:41 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's hard to, with that being said, to rain on that parade, but I think they are confusing speculation with investment. And I think to Mike's point. Investment is something that you know there's some value in doing it for the sake of what it is, that you hope to get a return on your investment. But something is going to get built with that investment and so there's other reasons to do it. This is just sort of rent-seeking, and it's just rent-seeking based on how can I turn my $1 into $2. And there's reasons why we have regulation. We may not have enough regulation, but what they keep agitating for is no regulation. So we relearn why we have any regulation at the first point yeah, we would learn that, wouldn't we?
02:06:26
Because we're all investing in a lot of tulips wouldn't, because it just is.
02:06:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is we're all investing in a lot of tulips. Yeah, elon says, delete the consumer finance protection board, the cfpb, because it's just getting in the way it's just getting away.
02:06:37
Charlie talked to molly white, who's been on our show. We love molly white. She, of course, created the website. Web3 is going just great, uh, and covers the cryptocurrency industry, she said. Bitcoin and, to some degree, the other crypto assets have this anti-government and anti-censorship ethos, she said. But the original crypto ideology was built around the notion that large financial institutions and the government shouldn't be part of this new paradigm. Defi, decentralized finance, she says. But many crypto advocates have established a great deal of power through the wealth they've managed to accumulate using these assets and over the time, there's been a shift from we don't want these institutions to have the power to we want the power, and I have to kind of agree with her at this point. Emily, are you all in on Bitcoin?
02:07:31 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
No, I did an experiment where I invested $1,000 in Bitcoin in 2021. Not Bitcoin specifically, but other coins because I wanted to track the market and see how it went, and I picked coins that were more environmentally friendly and that enabled something.
02:07:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that was your mistake, right there.
02:07:48 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Exactly exactly. I wasn't greedy enough and also enabled smart contracts, which I thought was the interesting part about Bitcoin or just crypto, because it's a technology and what it could do is it could enable kind of like a digital handshake and when you release funds and when you release funds so maybe when you place the pizza order to Domino's, when the pizza is put in your hands, then the funds are automatically released digitally. So that's like a smart contract and I was like that could change the way that we work. That could add something to the country. So I invested in coins that enable that, and I don't think the promise of that has really come to fruition. It's certainly not entered the dialogue, but just because of the research I did for that, I got interested in. Maybe there is a specific technology component here that could be interesting in terms of the rich getting richer, which is what Donald Trump is currently after. I think that narrative is going to lose. It's going to leave loose steam. I just same old crap, you know I mean.
02:08:52 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
the problem is right now there's a lot of people with a lot of money and everyone's like face pressed up against the glass and wants that too, but there's a reason Las Vegas always shows ads for the winners, never shows ads for the losers, which far outnumber the winners. But this is all air.
02:09:09
There's no there there um what people argued at like the beginning of the stocks market though, like maybe no, but there would be some equity, like in theory you own the teeny bit of the company and then the company shares in the british east india company.
02:09:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You made, you made money. It was a good investment because they were sending ships out and you know, I think, what's under.
02:09:30 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
What's underappreciated or under discussed is. So there's this ethos and philosophy by, by advocates of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but there's not enough discussion, because I read a lot about cyber security and the the ransomware world, uh, wouldn't be what it is today without bitcoin not even close. It's great for money laundering.
02:09:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Remember in the early days of ransomware they said go down to 7-Eleven and buy some money cards and mail them to me as soon as Bitcoin was in wide use.
02:10:03 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
that transformed it's way better for crime and criminals than it is for all the sort of ethical mumbo jumbo that the crypto enthusiasts will spout. And so you know, I think on balance it's had quite a malicious influence. I mean, think of all the healthcare organizations and schools and other institutions that are important to society that have been ground to a halt because of ransomware that's enabled by Bitcoin. Surely that has to be factored in. It's nice to have no regulation and oversight, but there's a dark side to that, clearly.
02:10:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So the funny thing for me, like as a civil libertarian, I kind of like that there's ways of having currency that may have some built in privacy protections. But I take your point, it is very easy and it's being exploited for that ease.
02:10:52
But again, like all these people, it's just air and the people who are already in crypto make more money when more people come into crypto, because all the valuation is what the demand is but there's still no inherent valuation to anything that's owned, so it's kind of a pyramid scheme, because they need to get more and more people to come in, but I bet, if more people are making money on crypto now, I think people would like it more.
02:11:19 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I think people just like what benefits them. Right now, corporations and people who commit crimes are making money on crypto, so they like it, and we're not making money on crypto, so we don't like it.
02:11:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, no one's losing money right now on Bitcoin. It's at an all time high.
02:11:33 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
So no matter when you bought, even if it was yesterday you've made some money. Right, unless you're me and you tried to get environmentally friendly ones.
02:11:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You bought the wrong coins, obviously Right. I have 7.85 bitcoins, which I only have because I lost the password to the wallet, because I would have sold it when they were worth a thousand bucks. Now they're worth 105 000 bucks and that that 7.85 bitcoins almost a million bucks. I think it will probably get to a lot more.
02:11:59 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Thank god I couldn't sell it yeah, I mean, that's the only reason I made money emily has me pegged half like, yeah, I'm kind of annoyed that I don't have any Bitcoin and you know.
02:12:11 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I have exactly but.
02:12:13 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think I am principled enough to say that my bigger concern is that this is air and there's a bubble, and that bubble is going to pop, and it's going to pop disastrously and for the people who least can afford it. And I think, based on all the dynamics and the physics of what is going into this, where it's just speculation based on how much demand they can do at a certain point, they will run out of demand and it will pop and that will be bad. And I think the concern is really rooted, not purely in the seller.
02:12:39 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
The trick is to get out before that happens. It's annoying corporations are making money on crypto and we're not. It's annoying that the incoming president is advocating for people who are already incredibly wealthy and have incredible tax advantages to make more money, and that is also part of this.
02:12:54 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
What's annoying to me, though, it's not that any somebody else is making money. I don't care if other people make money. I want everybody to make as much money as they can, and I think that's great. What's annoying to me is that nobody cares that this investment is both facilitating crime and and providing no material benefit to society, and it would be so much better if people did their investing into companies that were doing something positive, building something, creating something, something, something.
02:13:21 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
She tried to buy the right.
02:13:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Buy, you know, but that's right. Buy something that's going to contribute back to society. Crypto doesn't. Doesn't do that. It's pure speculation well, what I'm more concerned now is that they they want to burn a lot of energy they want a gun for the regulatory state.
02:13:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So to the regulatory state may be good, bad and otherwise, but it kind of exists, to sort of not have bubbles and if they do pop they don't pop so disastously and so at least like what would be a more constructive investment. Well, invest in a company in a normal way. And they're not happy with the SEC because the SEC is kind of like looking at their stuff and saying like I think you fall under what we're regulating, because you kind of need the regulation here. So they want to do away with the SEC.
02:14:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're going to do away with it here.
02:14:08 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
So they want to do away with the SEC, they're going to do away with it, and then we've lost a lot of the protection that protects all of us and helps guide to make sure that we can have sounder investments and that the public can invest more soundly.
02:14:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I bet you that the vast majority of our listeners right now have been thinking about getting into Bitcoin. Right, they see it's going up. Seems like it's going to go up forever. My wife said I should buy some Bitcoin. They've made it easy because most of the you know the stock brokerages sell Bitcoin ETFs, you know. So it's easy now to buy a fractional Bitcoin and you know. Just cross your fingers that it continues to go up. Charlie writes.
02:14:50
Crypto's future is uncertain, but its legacy, at least in the short term, seems clearer than it did before November 5th. It turns out. Cryptocurrencies do have a very concrete use case. They are a technology that has latched onto and then helped build a culture that celebrates greed and speculation as virtues, just as it embraces volatility. The only predictable thing about crypto seems to be its penchant for attracting and enriching a patchwork of individuals with qualities including, but not limited to, an appetite for risk, an overwhelming optimism about the benefits of technology or a healthy distrust of institutions. In these ways, crypto is a perfect fit for the turbulence and distrust of the 2020s and well said, and I think we're going to miss those institutions when they're gone yes, I think you're right, I would much rather have a strong central financial institution than be what a country and the people that relies on crypto like.
02:15:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's a very poor outcome wait a minute.
02:15:51 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think this is something where I we agree what's interesting.
02:15:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's interesting is?
02:15:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
hey, I liked your opinion on tiktok. I was just like. I have absolutely no problem with what you said. I just am trying to figure out how I square on it and that's. I don't think I I have no ill will towards you, have no input.
02:16:12 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Subject and I love your championship of the first amendment and we need more people like you, and I agree that for sure.
02:16:17 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean especially because, like I do, like regulation, in certain ways, I kind of want a role for government. So then the issue is I fight hard for like the civil liberties and like the first amendment, especially because if you're going to endow the government with a lot of power, that's a lot of power that can be abused, and so one of the fundamental checks on it is to make sure we've got this free avenue and free path to be able to complain about it if it screws up, especially because we're a democracy, so we should be able to discuss how we want to re-steer it. So that's why I hold on so tight for this, because it's the counterbalance for when we need the government to actually be more strong and centralized to do these helping things where we're just not going to be able to sort it out unless we come together to form this more perfect union and promote the general welfare.
02:17:02 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
We all just need a hug. It's a love fest. It's a love fest here. Yes.
02:17:09 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Some very smart people 200 plus years ago kind of had that idea Right.
02:17:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're watching this week in tech. I got to pause, hold on. You're watching this week in tech Emily Forlini, who has a thought and we will get to that in just a moment from PC Magazine. Kathy Gallus, who is our attorney-at-law and contributor at tech dirt. And, of course, mike elgin of gastronomadnet and his newsletter machine societyai. It's great to have smart people talking about this stuff and if, if, smart people all agreed, the world would be a lot easier, but it wouldn't be necessarily a lot better. Thank you for being here and thank you all, uh, for watching.
02:17:46
Actually, post-election, there's an interesting article in the new york times. Uh, among other things they've they talked about how the election was really a boon for silicon valley. Mark andreessen, the guy who wrote netscape navigator when he was a student at the university of illinois, the ncsa, is now a venture capitalist and podcaster, I might note, and a big Trump fan, said he has spent about half of the time since Election Day working on the presidential transition. He framed Donald Trump's win as a cultural moment for a techno-optimist ideology. You may remember about six months ago, andreessen publishing his techno optimist manifesto. We talked about it. He said it's morning in America. So I'm very happy People are finally poking their heads out of the frozen tundra of culture and realizing it's actually OK to build things higher on merit, celebrate success and fundamentally be proud of the country and be patriotic. Woof.
02:18:53 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean that sounds good, but everything he's advocated for following through on. That tends to not be that.
02:19:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, let's see. I mean, look, I admit I'm Andy Trump. I've been a never Trumper since the day he rolled the golden escalator, but maybe I've been wrong all this time. Maybe this is going to be a good time in America, where we're going to build and get stronger, and maybe we should celebrate Silicon Valley and the innovation culture.
02:19:21 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
But let's not forget what we already know. So the first thing we know is Donald Trump. The person doesn't know anything about technology, he calls it the cyber. First thing we know is donald trump. The person doesn't know anything about technology, he calls it the cyber. And every time somebody asks him any question about anything bitcoin, ai, whatever he always says well, my son, baron, is really good with his laptop, um and so, and so he personally doesn't. And and I I have a tendency to think that he's brought in all these um silken valley people because they have money, they, they have an influence, they helped him get elected. I don't think any of the things. I don't think any of the people he's brought on for this transition, like Andreessen, or for future.
02:19:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mark Pincus of Zynga, David Marcus from Meta, Elon Musk for crying out loud.
02:20:03 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Elon Musk. That doesn't mean he's going to let them be in charge. I think what it means is that he's a megalomaniacal narcissist and he's going to sit on Mount Olympus and say, I think I will allow children to get polio, and so it's like I don't think any of this he's just going to. He still hasn't decided whether he's going to go with any of this stuff and there's no reason to believe that he's going to go with any of these people. He certainly doesn't understand anything about AI, crypto or any of that stuff.
02:20:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's ironic because Peter Thiel equated liberalism with the ancien regime in France, which, of course, was overthrown and promptly headed to the guillotine to get their heads chopped off. Headed to the guillotine to get their heads chopped off. Uh, ironically, the reason they got their heads chopped up is because they were collecting all of the resources, all of the money, and letting them eat cake. Uh and uh.
02:20:58 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It seems like maybe mark has his history or peter patil, I should say, has his history a little bit upside down I mean if this wasn't our country and our future and our democracy this might almost be um kind of fun to sit back and watch, but the thing is, I don't disagree with the characterization of Trump and how he will probably comport himself, but you know his little court of people competing for each other it's not like there's any of them that I'm rooting for.
02:21:24
I don't think they have any better insight into that interface between what technology can do and how it interfaces with humanity. They don't seem to actually like humanity very much and it's really concerning. Like what would they actually advocate? To a certain extent, trump might actually temper them, because a lot of the stuff is really nihilistic and programs humanity off of the earth to just have this sort of techno utopia. I'm deeply worried about what they would want to prescribe and I'm only somewhat happy that they may crash into each other and take each other out before they actually get to do any real damage.
02:22:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's interesting timing because we are at a moment, I think, perhaps at a moment where AI is going to suddenly change a lot of what's going on in the world and it coincides with this rise of a techno elite.
02:22:17 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I don't know if that's good or not.
02:22:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not sure what that's going to be. It's going to be uncertain.
02:22:22 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's not good because a lot of this like AI can do some really cool stuff but we're not really applying. Well, we are in some degree applying it to the cool things, but we're also applying it to a whole bunch of things that are like. This is really bad. It's like they don't like people. They don't see the value in humanity.
02:22:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They think like the idea of valuing human creation doesn't either. To be honest with you, I think he's always looked down on people either.
02:22:49 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
To be honest with you, I I think he's always looked down on, on people who I think it would be. It would be a really odd reaction to tour some of like the poorest neighborhoods in america, like people who are really, really struggling, and those those terrible places that all these people never go to. I think it would be really odd to go through those places and come out of them and say ai is the answer right or crypto is the answer.
02:23:07
That would be a very strange reaction, so I think that a lot of this is a good point the other thing is that they're mutually exclusive things, so they.
02:23:17 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
There's a lot of talk about trump ushering in an era of techno-utopian thinking, but at the same time, he wants to put you know these massive terror tariffs on other countries and 10 tariff on china. He wants to put you know these massive tariff tariffs on other countries and 10 tariff on china china will retaliate. Sixty percent tariff on sixty percent tariff. It's very depending on the country. I've been, I've been off, I haven't seen the latest percentage. Yeah, but the the the point is that there'll be retaliation that will seriously damage the technology sector.
02:23:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Likely, if he's just so weird because, uh, elon musk is obviously make made a good portion of his money out of evs, but uh, trump wants to eliminate the eve and elon supports this.
02:23:57 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Eliminate the ev tax credit, it's not clear that any of these people really understand how anything works. They keep arriving oh, we have a problem, but they're not understanding the problem. They're not understanding any of the expertise developed from people who've been studying the problem and therefore they can't fix it. But they're all kind of busting in like Kool-Aid man, like I'm here and I will provide the thing that everybody has been missing and Eli is definitely Kool-Aid man.
02:24:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean the lack of humility is smart.
02:24:28 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
People tend to be kind of humble about what they know, so when you're not seeing the humility, that's kind of like a giveaway that you really don't.
02:24:36 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
They really don't know what they're talking about, but they don't understand the problems, so therefore they can't fix it which is why, oh, just that AI seems compelling, because if you don't know anything about anything, making stuff up, why not? So, you know, sounds good. I mean, I had some hope after the election, just a twinge of. I do think there's a lot of engagement, like deep engagement with issues in the US and in issues with politics, and so there is an underlying sense of like everyone just wants the right thing to happen, and I think that people, really people, seem to really, really, really want this country to succeed on both sides. So I mean, even though all of this is okay, I can't continue.
02:25:19 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I wish you did.
02:25:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was the most hope I've had in weeks there is some hope though.
02:25:24 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I mean, it's easy to get.
02:25:26 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
We just have to figure out like what is the better, and I do think there's just apparently everyone deep, deep in their chest wants things to be better, how more stuff worked because there's reasons, like some things that we had leading up to.
02:25:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything was okay.
02:25:38 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
We could have done better but some things existed for a reason and to just sort of like I've written before and I have a tech dirt post about it, it's a Chesterton's rule of fences where the idea if you go to a field and nothing is there and you're like, why is this fence here? It's such a waste, and you take out the fence because you haven't seen the tiger hiding in the grass and now the tiger is free to run around everywhere and these people are pulling up fences that have been built for a reason. But because they don't know the reason, they're pulling it out. But OK, that's more the musk and the trumps and stuff. But a lot of people were like well, that sounds good to me, because they didn't know why the they didn't know what fences were there. They didn't know why the fences were there. We had established some systems and the systems were kind of working or even to the extent they weren't working. You can't fix them necessarily by just chucking them out.
02:26:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The thing is, and there's a tiger, it makes a lot of sense to give the tiger a million dollars for his inauguration ball, so that he'll like you and not eat you. And that's in fact what silicon valley seems to be doing million dollar donations for the inaugural.
02:27:02 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Uh from meta, from amazon, from from sam altman, sundar pichai, sergey brin, uh tim cook, and on and on and on but there's the problem of what does it mean that you have to pay the tiger, and what does it mean when the tiger has planned to hurt other people who are not giving him a million?
02:27:22 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
dollars. Well, it's just the self-interest era. That's how I see. Like all this trump stuff, it just these things used to happen behind closed doors and now it's. It's cool to pay people to get what you want, and I just think such the american way. Yes, now it's on full display. Now that's to me. I've just seen it so much more, um, in recent months and years. It's all about who's paying, who who's self-interested in what and who's just open about it, and that's that's how the world works. I think that's really wrong.
02:27:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't even get to all of our AI stories. That's how fun this show was. You're watching this Week in Tech, emily Forlini. It's great to have you here. Pc Magazine you cover a whole lot of stuff on PC Magazine. What are you working on right now?
02:28:07 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Well, I write about EVs, I write about ai um what should I buy for my next ev?
02:28:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what do you think?
02:28:15 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I've advised a lot of people on this and that I really love doing that. It's so fun to put people in evs, so if you want to, seriously, I should tell you I have owned a tesla a uh, a mini cooper.
02:28:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These are all evs. A mustang mock eev. Uh, I have owned a chevy bolt ev. I currently am on a bmwi 5 ev okay, so I thought this was a podcast.
02:28:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I thought we weren't making money here should I get a lucid?
02:28:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
should I get the, the lucid pure? Have you driven that yet?
02:28:46 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
uh, I don't, I don't think that's worth it, to be honest, it's expensive, expensive car it has over 500 miles how about a chevy equinox?
02:28:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm I'm seeing that looks like a pretty nice, pretty good one.
02:28:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I tested that one a couple weeks ago, yeah, yeah well, okay, what?
02:29:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what should I get?
02:29:03 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
my goodness, you've tried everything. I don't know.
02:29:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You've done all the greatest hits you know, I love all to be honest with you. Each of them have their own, but once you and this is, by the way, this seems to be held out by statistics Once you've bought an EV and driven an EV, you very rarely go back to a gas vehicle.
02:29:21 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, they're great. I mean, I like the Porsche Taycan, that's what I like.
02:29:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, tycan, that's oh, thank you that. Just tell my wife, that would you I will.
02:29:28 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I think that leo needs a tycan the sexiest and coolest ev.
02:29:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is pretty cool range ain't great, but you know it's still who cares, right, right, uh, also with us, mike elgin, who is in oaxaca, but you're not gonna be there long. Where are you going next?
02:29:44 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
uh, we're going to el salvador on january 1st and in the interim I'm gonna bring your bitcoin yes, but I'm uh drinking some nice, uh mescal. I'm actually drinking um gastronomad brand mescal I have a bottle of that yes, you do. Oh, it's so good, you haven't finished it I you know mescal, I know it's.
02:30:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, I don't really drink, mike, so I know you don't. I have to work my way up to mezcal. Let's put it that way, Anyway it's lovely.
02:30:13 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
We don't sell this, by the way. This isn't an ad. We only give this to our guests, that's why I'm keeping it.
02:30:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not going to drink it. I'm going to save it. It's like my beanie babies.
02:30:23 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
whenever I come on to it, you always let me talk about gastronomad and also my son's startup.
02:30:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hello chatterbox, let's, let's touch the holidays.
02:30:33 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I like to say that both of these things are great gifts. If you want to be a hero to your significant other gastronomad, and if you have anybody who's eight years old and up and wants a totally secure AI device, I would recommend Chatterbox, and I talked to Kevin before the show and he said that if anybody places an order before the 18th he can fill it by Christmas.
02:30:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh my God, so you could buy now and have it by Christmas. What a gift this would be for a smart, I'd say fifth grader to eighth grader, something like that, even an adult.
02:31:09 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
So many people, including on this show, complain about surveillance capitalism Right, exemplified perfectly by Amazon and its Echo device just harvesting information. They have an Echo device for kids that's very inexpensive because they want to monetize that kid to the end of time, jeez. Whereas the Chatterbox is the only it's so private. It's the only smart speaker allowed in schools and it's super private for any adult who wants to have access to AI, who wants to tinker with building their own system. It references Wolfram, alpha, chatgpt, et cetera, but it's totally private when all users are completely anonymous on the system and cannot be tracked. So for a gift, I think this is perfect.
02:31:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, I agree it's cool I agree, it's very cool. Hello chatterboxcom for your chatterbox and a little mezcal to go along with it, right? Kathy gellis, I don't think I'm speaking out of school, because you've written about it on Tech Dirt. You recently had a little health scare.
02:32:13 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, for people who've seen me over the year, in the beginning of March I got diagnosed with cancer and so I've been dealing with that and I wrote about it because I realized it was such a I wanted to get something out of it, like what a stupid waste there needs to be. You know there's gotta be some way to make it.
02:32:37
All I got was this lousy t-shirt um and so I wanted to write about it, partly because it well, I wanted value and so I wrote it about in a couple contexts.
02:32:47
One is that around the time that I was diagnosed, princess Kate had also announced that she'd had her cancer, and now that I'm enamored with the British royalty or whatever, follow that. It was really helpful, because that that moment when I'm sort of like just drowning in the reality of it but I need to tell people and this is a really hard conversation to have because I'm not, I have to get my own head around it and I'm going to traumatize the people who care about me by telling them it was just really nice to be able to start the argument with the argument I'm a lawyer, everything's an argument. It was really good to start the conversation with I have a Princess Kate problem, and that opened the door, and then I could follow it up with details. And then I also wanted to write about it because my cancer was ovarian cancer, so it's a gynecological cancer, and I thought it was really important.
02:33:43 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
My grandma had that. I'm sorry my grandma had that. Oh yeah, I think one of the reasons she died yeah.
02:33:49 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yeah, it's. I mean, I thought ovarian cancer was a death sentence. Obviously, I'm still here. Um, it's virulent, Um, it doesn't. It still doesn't have good um uh rates, but I my understanding of basically where I was is about a third of the people who get diagnosed would not survive it and then they get erased, and then of the other two thirds that are left, for half you're okay and the end and you move on with your life, and for the other half it can come back and then you have to keep fighting it. But it's a lot more fightable than it used to be and I did really well Kanahara, et cetera, etc. Knock on all the wood. Um, I respond. I didn't have too miserable time with the, the therapy and at the moment I'm no evidence of disease, so that's a question of yeah that's wonderful.
02:34:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it going to come?
02:34:39 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
back, so, but I also want to write it because it's gynecological and boy, an awful lot of gynecological issues have really been brought to the fore, and I wanted to write about it in the context of personal liberty and the reproductive freedom that I had, which gave me access to professionals, which is how I happened to have found it.
02:35:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You were going in for IVF.
02:35:02 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I was going to try to do IVF and we were doing a procedure and the procedure did not work and this turned out to be why. But that's how they found the masses. So but how good that I was able to, like you know, have access to that reproductive technology and the caregivers, and then also that the caregivers can understand these parts and the science behind these parts and also come up with cures and remedies and things like that. And we are busy criminalizing the science. So the liberty is getting taken away and the science is getting taken away, and the science will get taken away, not just from women, but it's such an anti-science attitude with the idea that we could understand our parts and provide curative science to understand how they can work better. That's going to roll towards everybody in any sort of condition that any human body can have.
02:35:50
And you know it's the stuff that I write about there on tech, personal liberty and innovation. And I thought my experience just brought those situations to the fore and trying to get something out of that, like it's much easier to be public about it than trying to keep my secret. I mean, after all, like the hair thing kind of gives it away anyway. Can there be some value out of it. Can we reframe some of these issues and so that when people make policy decisions that may seem convenient to them for whatever reason, they can understand that there's greater impacts that can happen down the road?
02:36:23 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Good for you. Women's health is just so woefully underexplored and underappreciated and disconnected from science and technology and for some reason, considered in a different sphere than any other kind of medicine, and I think it's just a tragedy. And it's amazing that you wrote about that like how brave and smart. So thank you.
02:36:45 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
It was a wonderful article and we do need a lot more science, and days look dark ahead for science about women's health and all kinds of things. But it's also has to be said because this tech podcast that we talk a lot about all the risks and dangers of AI, but one of the great things about AI will be its powers of diagnostics. Its powers of diagnostics, and so anybody with any sort of disease or anything that could be better diagnosed with AI. Hang on, because over the next few years, it's going to be a revolution in AI-based diagnostics and this is a good thing that we should be celebrating.
02:37:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're already seeing it. This is one of the stories I had AI is detecting more breast cancer cases. In a study, women who chose and, by the way, you had to pay extra for it AI-powered mammograms were 21% more likely to have cancer detected than those who didn't. This is from a finding presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. So we've heard before that AI being used in radiology. I have friends who are radiologists not to replace the radiologist but to help the radiologist and I think that's already in widespread use and very powerful. And they also use, by the way, ai for dictation because it turns out it's very good at uh no, it isn't.
02:38:14 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
No, no, it is not. So there there there have been multiple studies. I wrote about this machine society where the uh, where pretty much every single uh package of dictation that they analyzed, had some hallucination or another, including some whoppers. In some cases and a lot of this the leading brand is based on Chachi BT, but they're even making up medicines. They're saying you know they're helped by it and they're just created.
02:38:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's why the human needs to stay in the loop.
02:38:47 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, but I saw the same thing about diagnostics. I wrote that there was a good quality study that gave AI diagnostic tools to a bunch of people who work in the field and it didn't help them. So I think, in the best case scenario, yes, it works well, but without training, proper technology, proper usage, it doesn't help with diagnosis.
02:39:08 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
Right. But where the excitement is is in the experimental phase where, in case of Parkinson's disease, they're showing promise and the potential to detect Parkinson's disease 10 years before the first discernible. You know.
02:39:27 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Which is amazing, but I would love to have more faith in the healthcare system.
02:39:31 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I mean, we didn't even get to, you know, Mr Luigi, but yeah, I mean having, I think having it as a tool to augment the people, if it's a tool that people can use and it is carefully tailored to the problem that is trying to solve. I think that's where the really interesting things with stuff like AI is. The problem is, I think, when it tries to replace the human beings and presume at this point in its development that it can do better. I think that we run into problems because we just sort of abandon our own.
02:40:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We've learned that haven't we with self-driving vehicles? Don't let the car do all the work.
02:40:11 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
get some assistance from the ai, but, honestly, you still need to keep your hands on the wheel when I had the equinox that we were just talking about and I had a mock e2 in the same week and both of them had, like, the hands-free self-driving so level two, yeah, and I felt like I was becoming a worse driver, like I was having oh, I driver Like I was having trouble.
02:40:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I know for sure. Yeah, don't you notice that already with GPS maps, like you don't know how to find your way?
02:40:35 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
anywhere, Right? So then I worry with this case if we give AI to radiologists, are they just going to become kind of default to it and actually lose a little bit of critical thinking? So it's all in the implementation. And actually lose a little bit of critical thinking. So it's all in the implementation.
02:40:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's another story Huge randomized trial of AI boosts discovery, at least for good scientists. That's interesting. This is from Nature. This is the use of AI in research and it showed and maybe, mike, you should speak to this, since this is kind of what machine society is all about but they followed the deployment of a machine learning tool at an unnamed corporate laboratory with 1,000 researchers. Teams that were assigned and it was by random to use the tool discovered 44% more new materials and filed 39% more patent applications than the ones that didn't use the AI.
02:41:27 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And this totally checks out with our own experience with AI, doesn't it? I mean, it can certainly accelerate in the case of the 39% increase in patent applications. It accelerates the grunt work, no matter what kind of grunt work you're doing in most cases, for example, software development or writing, and it also has a more open mind than a human being generally has. If you can think of five reasons for X, y, z and you put those into a good AI and say, are there any other reasons, it'll come up with other good reasons where you can go huh, and then you can move on and it's very quickly. You can sort of the scope of your thinking and and expand the number of things you're considering. So that totally checks out. And also, we can expect the you know AI to keep evolving and getting better and better.
02:42:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I believe we'll get to AGI anytime in our lifetime, Mike.
02:42:25 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
I don't think so. I think that's, I think it's, I think it's a bit of a um yeah delusion, that's a pipe dream yeah, and I, I think, the. I think what we'll discover is is that the, the human mind is a, is is vastly more capable and and amazing than we ever thought but not to diminish the value of ai in conjunction with a human mind no, but we're not appreciating the.
02:42:48 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
We're approaching the policy problem of. Are not appreciating the. We're approaching the policy problem of. Are we appreciating ai and, I think, the policy problems? We're not appreciating the human beings. So I mean, one of the things with agi is well the problem. One of the problems we have right now is we keep acting as though we've achieved it and taking out the people and just replacing it with the technology, as if that were not there yet.
02:43:10
We're not there yet and you're not going to get that results, but it's really. I think we also suffer in general from the lack of appreciation of the people and how cool people's brains actually are and all the interesting things they can do.
02:43:21 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And one of the things I think that's cool about the human brains is that I think we actually, deep down, really do care where stuff comes from. For example, you know there there have been articles that say that you know AI is better at writing poetry, but the knowledge that a human being didn't feel these things makes a huge difference.
02:43:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And for people who read poetry.
02:43:42 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They're not in, they just want. Don't want good words, they want. They want to share the experience of another person.
02:43:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I noticed this in chess and when I you know, I played chess quite seriously in my youth and machines got better and better. Pretty soon you couldn't beat a machine. Pretty soon machines were better than humans. And now machines can solve you know positions much, much better than humans. In fact, probably would easily be the world champion. But that doesn't mean we want to watch AIs play chess, we want to watch humans play chess. And Benito, welcome back, by the way, benito Gonzalez, our producer, came back from the Philippines and.
02:44:22
Japan. I thought we'd never get him back. Good to see you, benito. But he's always said and I believe this more and more, benito that really we write poetry, we play chess, we make music because we enjoy the process, that that is part of what it is to be human, and seeding these creative tasks to a machine doesn't solve or satisfy any need, and so it's. You know, there'll always be humans who want to write poetry or play chess or make music, and we will always, as humans, I suspect, prefer the output of those. Now there are places music is used, as in elevators and on podcasts, where AI-generated music is probably okay, it's music, but that's not the music we. We love the artists we go to see. Last week Christina Warren was on. We had to let her go a little early because she was going to the very last eras concert by Taylor Swift. I cannot imagine any future where anybody would say I can't wait to see the last performance of machine Swift performing its latest.
02:45:32 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Why would you ever have a last one? The whole point is that you could just keep going and going and going.
02:45:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You got to create false scarcity. Gm has called it quits on their robo taxi Cruise is dead. Mari Barra, who's the CEO of GM this is her $50 billion robo-taxi dream. Lots of people put money into these cruise taxis. Its business basically disappeared after it dragged a pedestrian and then GM lied about it. I worry as a cyclist.
02:46:05 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Like I don't like self-driving taxis because I need to make eye contact and there's nothing to make eye contact with.
02:46:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's no contact. Yeah, yeah, you do you look at this person to see if they've seen you.
02:46:14 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Sharing the road is a communicative experience and there's nothing to communicate with where it's going to affect behavior Right.
02:46:24 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yeah, this was big. I listened to the earnings call for this and Mary Barra just kept saying like, oh, it's not our core business, we're going to focus on passenger. Well, we just talked about the Equinox level two self-driving system.
02:46:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which I like a lot yeah.
02:46:40 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
And that's a noble mission too. I guess they're just getting out of the commercial like a B2B kind of thing. So it's just going to be like passenger tech we get experience and kind of operate. Quote unquote.
02:46:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One of the things Elon Musk is pressing for is an elimination of regulation around self-driving vehicles. Yeah, he says, you know, we can't really get good at this unless you'd let us do whatever we want.
02:47:06 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I saw a video today that a McLaren was speeding and got in a car crash that was so bad that the car split in two and I was like I don't know. I mean, they say that self-driving can solve all these car crashes and things, but there's got to be some way that the type of person who would be speeding down the highway at 150 miles per hour in a $200,000 car can abuse that. There's got to be some way that person in a self-driving car could also abuse it Like I. Just I don't feel like we can get rid of it. I don't know if I'm being too cynical.
02:47:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know, my BMW will not let me drive fast down the highway, but then they'll just do something else.
02:47:43 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
They'll do something else Like what is it going to be?
02:47:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They something else like what is it going to be in the back seat while the car is driving there you go? By the way, this does not mean google's abandoning waymo. Uh, it's, it's, of course. I think barra implied that. Look, we are not have the market cap of a google or of an alphabet.
02:48:01 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Um, talk about, not the core business. It's weird that the car company is the one that's not doing the car thing and the computer company is the one that's doing the the car thing, and the computer company is the one that's doing the car thing, right?
02:48:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
honda was a big investor. Microsoft, walmart, t-row price, softbank all put money into the gm effort. Uh bara says that they're going to pay them all back, but it's over for uh cruise I feel like cruise got.
02:48:24 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Uh. I mean they definitely messed up with the lying and the crash that they had, but it's not like Waymo hasn't had issues Like Tesla's. A lot of them have been involved in killing people and you know they're still teasing that out in court. So I feel like GM got a little bit of harsh shutdown here.
02:48:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But Is it a big deal, Emily, that you can now buy a car on Amazon?
02:48:46 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Yes, Actually I have personal experience with this, Like when I started at Amazon and I used to work there. This was considered the holy grail of products they were trying to get on Amazon Really.
02:48:56
So this was in like 2015 and it was considered. They were working on it back then and I was exposed to that effort and in meetings about it and they just no car company would do it. So saw that hyundai is doing this, I was like, wow, they did it. Like so I just I had a personal experience car dealers in america are incredibly powerful.
02:49:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was not able. In some states you cannot buy a tesla direct from tesla because the the laws of the state say you have to have a dealership in the state. I think texas is one of those states. I had a great experience buying a tesla in california directly from tesla. I didn't have to go through a dealer and from a lot of people the idea of not going through the negotiations with a salesperson at a dealership is very appealing this was one of the things.
02:49:44 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
I think musk was very vocal, uh, when tesla was first coming out about like this is nonsense.
02:49:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They were very frustrated.
02:49:52 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yes, and I think I viewed him as meritorious in those views.
02:49:57 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
But yeah, this is big for Amazon internally because Amazon makes a percentage of the sale price. So this is such a this is a massive ticket item.
02:50:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
As of now, you still have to go through a Hyundai dealer, though, don don't you, to go get the car, or no?
02:50:12 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I haven't looked into that, but when I was there that was why they wanted to get cars onto Amazon.
02:50:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wired says customers can hop onto Amazon Autos and search for the Hyundai make and model they want, then find vehicles in the nearby dealership. Shoppers can select trim, color, interior features, get a valuation of their current vehicle.
02:50:32 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That must be how they worked it out. But I mean companies to list a product on Amazon, you do seed some percentage of the sale, so there's no way that Amazon's not either doing that now or working towards that.
02:50:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you still get Amazon reviews. You get star ratings, you, but you still get Amazon reviews. You get, you know, star ratings. You probably even get an Amazon pick.
02:50:52 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
That's why Amazon has sellers pay. It's called like quote unquote marketing. So if you're listing a product, you're paying Amazon. So that's how it works.
02:51:01 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
And also, as we said, you can buy a house on Amazon. So there are hundreds of different brands and I'm looking at one right now and and they'll deliver it by december 19th you know that's not weird if you consider that in the 1800s you could buy a house by catalog yeah the barn that's on the that. They had to move on the apple campus when they built the big donut thing. Uh, that was a like.
02:51:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was like a sears and roebuck type uh kit here's a 40 foot luxury house three bedroom one, one living room, one fully equipped bathroom and kitchen, prefabricated container house for adults living. Uh, it's foldable. It's only sixteen thousand dollars, free delivery by by January 9th.
02:51:48 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Bad reviews honestly 3.3.
02:51:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's a good. Oh bad reviews. Oh see, you're smart. Well, when you worked at Amazon, what, what, what division did you work in?
02:52:00 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I was work. I worked in three separate teams and almost six years, but when I was exposed to this was my very first team, which was um like amazoncom retail.
02:52:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So why did you leave and become a journalist?
02:52:13 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
um, I don't know, I, I they did it to its full extent, and and I want to try something else and I had yeah, I do have a came over to the light side of purpose-driven bone in my body and I didn't want to go my whole life without exploring that.
02:52:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Most of the reviews, Mike, are not people who bought it. They're just people looking at their floor plan.
02:52:34 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
It's not sweeping the nation, it's not a choice for homeowners, seems good, you could probably buy something that would sweep the nation on Amazon.
02:52:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Clean design no closets.
02:52:43 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
Maybe we could list TikTok on Amazon.
02:52:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah oh, let's sell TikTok on Amazon. Swe, maybe we could list TikTok on Amazon. Yeah oh, let's sell TikTok on Amazon.
02:52:48 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
You're the problem. Sweep the nation apparently.
02:52:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And this show has gone full circle. Emily, we have so much more we could talk about with all three of you. You guys are great. By the way, if you needed that house before Christmas, you could send a gift card for it, and I imagine, for that Hyundai Ioniq as well, you know. So that wouldn't that be a nice thing under the tree? That'd be nice.
02:53:13 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
You've got a new car Nice for Amazon, if you lost the card.
02:53:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So many other stories I would have loved to talk about, but we've run out of time. Mike Elgin, have a wonderful evening in Oaxaca. I imagine it'll involve mezcal and some of those delicious. What are those sandwiches on the? They make them on that on that grill. Playuda, playudas, yeah.
02:53:38 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
They're fantastic. I could live on playudas too, I love so good.
02:53:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so good. I hope you ate dinner before the show.
02:53:47 - Mike Elgan (Guest)
No, I didn't. We're going to go grab a bite right after the show. So good, I hope you ate dinner before the show. No, I didn't. We're going to go grab a bite right after the show. So I'm so jealous. Release my love, give my love to.
02:53:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Amira, and thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Emily, you're the best. We love having you on and I'm sorry to starve you in New Jersey, where it is already after eight o'clock in the evening, where it is already after eight o'clock in the evening. Oh my God, what's for dinner?
02:54:10 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I think my husband's downstairs making polenta. I can smell he's a nice Italian boy I love it Exactly exactly.
02:54:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Got to make it the polenta, but I upped it.
02:54:21 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I brought some wine this time. Last time I was on, we got to the end of the show and everyone was drinking besides me, but nobody talked about how they were drinking so I was like, oh yeah, it's definitely covert.
02:54:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This time I'm gonna. It's covert. Mike's got the mezcal. You looks like you have a nice white. I'm drinking coffee, which is probably a mistake I have. I didn't get her and we know what kathy's drinking oh look, a petaluma hills mug. Is that where?
02:54:46 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
you put your gatorade in. No, but I did a bike ride.
02:54:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh nice.
02:54:50 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
This was a souvenir glass from the bike ride the Petaluma County Challenge.
02:54:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, that's neat.
02:54:55 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
Yes, thank you, kathy Gellis, but I could say I sound more interesting if I say oh yes, it's Vescal.
02:55:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just say it's vodka. It's vodka, drinking vodka, drinking vodka. Cgcouncilcom. Uh, she's kathy gillis on blue sky.
02:55:12 - Cathy Gellis (Guest)
You said don't no more mastodon. You want to promote blue sky, not no mastodon forever. But I'm clearly very invested in my blue sky experience and I may migrate mastodon servers anyway. So for now we'll go flip it to blue sky, because I'm definitely there slip it to blue sky baby emily are you a?
02:55:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
blue sky, a mastodon, an x. Where do you?
02:55:31 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I should say that people can can find me, follow me at pc mag, and then I'm on blue sky, I'm. I'm still on x. I'm trying to figure out my relationship to it at this point. Um, I'm on tiktok.
02:55:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are you still have dry pelvis or did you move everything to forlini?
02:55:46 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
I moved to forlini.
02:55:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm trying not to confuse people it's a lot of work, isn't it?
02:55:50 - Emily Forlini (Guest)
yes, I just uh, submitted my passport for renewal yesterday, which was a big milestone. Um, it's, it's all right, though it's. I think people talk about it being like really, really terrible. But it's just just bureaucracy, you get through it yeah, bureaucracy we're talking about changing my last name because I got married by the way.
02:56:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, yeah, yeah mazel tov mazel tov, thank you, thank you we have lots of mazel tovs to go around here today. Thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it. Great, really great, provocative and interesting show. Uh, thank you, emily, and mike and kathy, we'll see you. We thank all of you for joining us.
02:56:27
We do Twitter every Sunday, 2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern time, that's 2200 UTC. I mentioned that because you can watch us live. We stream the show and most of the shows we do. We stream them live in Discord, of course, for our club members, but also on YouTube, twitch. We do it on Facebook and LinkedIn, xcom and TikTok yes, we're on TikTok, at least until January 19th and Kik, so there's eight different ways. You can watch live, but of course, most people watch After the Fact. It's a podcast, after all. You can download copies of the show, whether it's audio or video, from our website, twittv. When you get there, you'll also see a link to a YouTube channel which has the video Great way to share clips.
02:57:12
If you wanted to share a clip of you know our discussion about TikTok with a friend, that would be a great way to promote our show and to show your intelligence. And, of course, you can always subscribe to the show in any podcast client Pocket Casts, overcast, apple Podcasts, all of the above. Just search for Twit. You know why I think at this point we must be one of, if not the longest running podcasts in the world, nearing 20 years, over 1,000 episodes, 1,010 episodes. Thank you all for your support, thanks to our Club Twit members. Your support makes a huge difference and I will see you all next week for a very special year end episode. We'll look back at 2024 with some of our favorite people and then, of course, our best of so. This is the last normal twit for the year. Happy new year. Have happy holidays, as I have said for nearly 20 years. Thanks for for joining us. Another twit is in the can. Bye.
