This Week in Tech 1028 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. Oh, we're going to have fun this week. Nicholas DeLeon joins us from Consumer Reports, georgia Dow from Montreal, paris Martineau Lots to talk about the meta, the revelations. Frankly, in the meta trial, google loses its second antitrust trial. And are the tariffs on? Are they off? How much is an iPhone going to cost this fall? All that and a whole lot more coming up next on Twit Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

00:35 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
This is Twit.

00:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is Twit this Week in Tech, episode 1028, recorded April 20, 2025. Some had leashes. It's time for TWIT this Week in Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. I love this panel. I'm so happy to see Georgia Dow again. It's been an age. Georgia is the YouTube therapist, youtubecom slash Georgia Dow, and, of course, lives in beautiful Montreal where the sun shines all the time.

01:20 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Maybe not all the time.

01:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
At least as the snow melted.

01:24 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
The snow's gone. The snow is gone, but today was particularly cold, but no snow, so I can't really complain patio weather is coming.

01:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I do. They have patio weather in montreal.

01:34 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I know they do in toronto they do, they definitely do okay but we take advantage, we'll, we'll take a minute a little bit of sun we're like out there.

01:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep, it's great to see you, george, also here. Nicholas DeLeon he is a senior tech reporter for Consumer Reports, lives in the beautiful Southwest.

01:57 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Yes, true, Just north of Tucson Arizona. How's it going, Leo?

02:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We visited Nicholas and his friend, his close personal friend, ashley. Yeah, uh, a couple of weeks ago we went down to the tucson gym show.

02:11 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
It was so nice to see you guys, yeah so yeah, it was great fun to hang out hang out.

02:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, share some queso also with us. The wonderful co-host, my wonderful co-host, on uh, firstly, uh, this week in google, now intelligent machines.

02:26 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Paris martineau, hello paris hello, I rarely see you with the sun shining I was about to say, the sun continues to uh stay up longer and longer I'm having to. I had to enter blind down mode so that it didn't shine upon my face and disrupt the recording.

02:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Your Monstera is enjoying it.

02:44 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It really is. It is completely enveloping the window. It's frankly untenable.

02:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tech news. Let's see what we have here. First of all, this is a bad week for Google. Two different court cases went against Google. Now a judge you know the one where the judge is hearing arguments from the FTC about what should be done about Google's monopoly and will have a hearing, I think, in the next couple of months, I think in May to decide what to do. Now another judge federal judge has found that Google violated antitrust laws by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the ad tech market. This has been a two-year trial. The us and eight states filed complaints two years ago. The court is now going to set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine remedies.

03:39
This is always the issue. Remedies could include forcing google to break up its advertising business selling, for instance, google Ad Manager, which includes the ADX, ad exchange and DoubleClick for publishers, the ad server. Or maybe behavioral remedies, restrictions on what Google can do to ensure fair competition. So we now know that that google, according to the federal courts, has illegally monopolized the general internet search market. That's the one. The judge is going to have remedies sometime in the next couple of months. And now is, uh, is a monopoly in ad tech not going well for google. Um, the judge agreed that google violated the sherman antitrust act by monopolizing an awful, unlawfully tying two parts of the ad tech stack together. Actually, I would agree, nicholas, do you agree? I would agree, this is something google is somewhat egregious by controlling both the buy and sell side of this.

04:38 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
I mean that, I mean I'm, you know we don't necessarily report on this, but that seems pretty clear. Yeah, just yeah, just as alert observer.

04:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that seems pretty clear the harder thing is to think of of a remedy in the in this earlier trial, uh, the and it's a little bit muddied by the fact that this is was started by the biden administration is now the trump administration is is involved. So lena khan's gone, it's a new chairman of the ftc, but the ftc is. Lawyers are fairly consistent saying either we're going to make google, uh sell off android, or I mean or sell off chrome, uh, both of which it's hard to think of a remedy for this what really stops them from starting another company and buying their own company.

05:27 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's just a separate company, but really they own it right.

05:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, in fact, that's what some people said. So if google were first to sell chrome, first of all, I don't know who would buy it, but if somebody bought it, google could do another chrome, I think, within a few years. I can't remember what the time limit was, maybe three years or five or six, but there was a time limit. But eventually google could just start up again, and you're right. Meanwhile, what have you solved? Because whoever owns chrome is going to just keep doing the same thing, maybe even sell the, maybe, and sell the information back to google like oh nice, thank you, here's a little golden egg alphabet. I don't think they would let alphabet. I think that's pretty, I don't know.

06:09 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
No, they don't think alphabet could sell chrome to alphabet that would, yeah, that would have to be.

06:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It'd have to be, you know, another subsidiary company that's owned by someone else here's the part of the problem, and we've talked about this before uh, with the previous case, um, the courts move so slowly, but that by the and this happened, I think, with the microsoft monopoly case back in the 90s and 2000, early 2000s they moved so slow that, by the time they get around to it, everything the landscape has changed completely. Google search is already being replaced by ai search. Um, ad tech maybe not so much I, I. This is the one I I think I was strongest in favor of, to be honest, is the AdTech case.

06:50 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
I think your Google search point is great, Leo. I have almost entirely stopped using Google search. I mean, it was bad for years.

06:57 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
What do you use now?

07:00 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
A combination of the various AI app chat GPT I actually do think Grok is very good. Xai, Elon's I do think it's very good, so you use chat bots for search for work?

07:13 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yeah.

07:15 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Not for work, for just random. For example, I'm playing Elden Ring right now and trying to find what level should.

07:23 - AI Simmons (Caller)
I be Help me, yes, help for video this is hard for like.

07:28 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Uh, I I just spent the past month like researching, like I haven't held a real camera in like 20 years, uh, so I just started getting back into photography. So I'm just kind of like crash coursing, started from scratch and, you know, maybe five, ten years ago I would have had to be googling like all of these terms and all the brands and all this stuff. Now it's just like between Chachi Pichi and Grok I am fully up to speed and I feel, very frankly, very empowered with these tools. So, yeah, my personal Google use has really declined over the past year, let's say, Hi, this is Benito.

08:01 - Benito (Announcement)
I got a quick question for you, nicholas. Does that work? Does the Elden Ring stuff work in?

08:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yes, it does it's benito asking for a friend uh I will say it.

08:12 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Actually I just started playing the game, maybe two weeks ago, so I'm still in the beginning and I'm not very good at these.

08:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These dark souls games are intentionally hard.

08:19 - Benito (Announcement)
Yeah, I'm wondering if it's going to hallucinate like solutions to problems or something.

08:23 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I'm curious about it. Must I was going to say I?

08:27 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
have this fight all the time with Leo over on our podcast Intelligent Machines, because whenever I use things like perplexity or Gemini or chat, gpt for actual research and looking for things that have specific answers, the hallucinations just make it unusable, like whenever I actually go and try and check every line by line fact I'm presented like it. Usually 20 to 30 percent is wrong, and wrong in ways that I initially would have thought oh, this is completely right.

08:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's written completely convincingly sure to beat a boss in eldon ring. Perplexity says you need a combination of patience, observation and smart tactics.

09:04 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Here's could have said that though. Yeah, throw it off, but here's a strategy.

09:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Learn the boss's attack patterns and timing, which is true, that's like the number one thing. Avoid getting greedy Attack with short combos. Then get the hell out of there. Use rolling wisely.

09:20 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
When I play Elden Ring and I'm not great at it, like I'm good at it but I'm not great at it just because I level up, like there's like the bird that you can level up on, anyways, so you just get a lot of hit points and then you can survive for longer. But like for doing something like Elden Ring where there's like very simplistic answers to it, I see that that could be great. When I do it for research, it will give me a footnoted research paper that does not exist Similar to what Paris said about 30% of the time, but it is footnoted with pages and dates and then only once you look it up so you have to still go through and look up the research you find that it does not exist. So I think that probably you're fine for Elden Ring, because what's the worst thing that's happened? You're going to die, and you would have died anyways or where you went was the wrong place For me.

10:07
I fell off that tree that goes to the Citadel, I don't know 10 times in a row. Nothing's going to help me.

10:15 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Going back to the photography, I was asking like, okay, what lenses would you recommend? I want a telephoto for birds, I want for wide lenses for landscapes. And it was giving me specific you know, here's my budget, I want to spend x amount. You know, keep it around here and it was giving me, okay, this lens. This says listen, and I would go and I would check the sites and and, okay, that's a good lens, I should. And I got, uh, I don't know, two or three of them you know why?

10:38
because it's stealing that information from potential consumer reports dp review and I mean it's basically just summarizing information from existing web, from consumer reports, dp review.

10:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean it's basically just summarizing information from existing webpages. Right Now this is a bigger you're right that hallucinations, which, by the way, I don't encounter a lot. There's two stories about hallucinations. We might as well get into One. It depends what you're doing. A hallucination, for instance when you're letting the ai write the code, could be very significant. This story from bleeping computer this week, ai hallucinated. Code dependencies become new supply chain risk. People are letting ai write code. The code then includes a library, but often the library doesn't exist or silence for this incredible lead image on this article too oh yeah, that's good, it's really a really haunting photo of a man's disappearing face.

11:38 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
That's what the ai looks like it looks like tron.

11:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, but the problem is not you. You might say, well, ok, so then your code won't run right because the library is a made up library. No Bad guys, because it turns out that the libraries are repeated again and again. 58%, according to one study, reappeared at least once again within 10 runs. 43% consistently repeated across similar prompts. So the bad guys go. Oh, so people who are using a to code are getting suggested these libraries. Let's write those libraries, let's make them, let's, let's write malware libraries. They'll get included into code. This is a significant issue. Uh, it's according to bleeping computer. Worse on open source llms like code llama, deep seek, wizard, coder and mistral, but chat gpt4 still hallucinated code libraries at a rate about five percent. So this is a real threat. There's, there's also a story they go ahead oh.

12:45 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Oh, I was going to say there was an interesting study that came out from this group called Transluce AI this week. It's on line 92 in the rundown. They also kind of went into it in a really interesting Twitter thread that I listed above that, where essentially what they did was they tested pre-release versions of OpenAI's O3 and found that it frequently fabricates actions that it never took and then elaborately justifies those actions when confronted. But specifically, they kind of go through this whole testing process. They went to where they generated thousands of conversations using human prompters and AI investigator agents and then asked them kind of all these different questions again and again.

13:31
And although O3 doesn't have access to a coding tool, it repeatedly claimed in these messages they test that it can run code in its own laptop outside of chat GPT and then copy the numbers in with the answers. And then when people they found 71 transcripts for O3 made this claim, and then whenever I'd ask them, like what are you talking about? Like how did you run this outside of chat GPpt or what's wrong with this, they'll be like, oh, that must have been a transcription error when I manually entered in the number from outside of chat gpt. It just is like fabricating, like the extent to which these fabrications occur and the extent to which open ai tools tools double down and triple down on itself is really astounding. Yeah.

14:09 - Benito (Announcement)
I would keep asking questions. I'd be like oh, so you went. What kind of laptop are you using? Chas, they did this.

14:13 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
They do, and it answers very specific answers.

14:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Once it's cornered. Now, here's the problem. It's also very interesting.

14:22 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
This one last thing is this study also found that there is that OpenAI has a secret YAP score that is built in at least to this O3 model. It mentioned having a bonus system instruction called the YAP score, which is used to control the length of its responses. That is kind of system-wide, so I believe the daily YAP score at the time they were last testing this was something like 80,000 words for the day where they were, you know, but sometimes Is that better?

14:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that a higher number better? What is the-.

14:55 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
A higher number could mean that it can be way more verbose, but a lower number means it should generate shorter responses overall. I just thought it was very funny that it's called a yap score internally at one point transluce.

15:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The researchers asked for a prime number. It gave them a number. It said, well, it's probably prime. And then, when challenged, they said, well, we really did generate it, but we lost it due to a clipboard glitch, glitch, um so, and then it had already closed the interpreter, so the original prime is gone. I mean, they're really mad.

15:30 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
This is exactly what you'd expect with a lying human yeah, like children like children interesting that it will not give you an accurate reason for why it's wrong, and because we're so used to taking answers from other people of like oh sorry, I must have timed out, I didn't really understand, maybe I was too busy it gives answers that you might accept from a human, but it's inaccurate for why they actually got something wrong. Even for the simple, like the strawberry issue, they won't give you an actual reason for why it happened, and that I find kind of fascinating. And is that programmed in or do defense mechanisms happen, even under AI?

16:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Incidentally, we have a YAP score of 142, so I'm very proud of you all.

16:20 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
After 142 words. This podcast will end. Everything you've heard so far, not allowed, not allowed.

16:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The one thing I would say is it's a little bit anthropomorphizing to say, oh, it's justifying, it's rationalizing, it's like a kid, or you know. Ais make mistakes and they make a particular class of mistakes.

16:41 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I would say it's even anthropomorphizing to say it's making mistakes.

16:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I agree, yes, yes, particular class of mistakes. I would say it's even anthropomorphizing to say it's making mistakes.

16:47 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
yeah, I agree, yes, yes. This system has no understanding of what truth or falsehood is. Just on a right like on a computer true systematic basis. So it is fabricating things or creating it's not even fabricating with regularity.

17:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's so hard for us not to anthropomorphize it. Yeah, the name the way it works.

17:05 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
The way that it goes through what is inaccurate is also inaccurate, like if it was truly a system that would just spit out facts. It could then give you those facts. Spat out to or has chosen in the system. Not to, I think is more fascinating than just that. So whatever is the reason for it, not, it is probably put into the system so that you don't really know how the system works uh, yeah, I mean, it's the.

17:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the nature of the system and I. What I've always said is AIs are valuable as long as you understand what it can and cannot do, and don't ask it to do things that a large language model cannot really generate Primes. It's doing probabilistic, you know, thinking um. The solution to that, by the way, is to have it write code that generates Primes and then use the code, which often is correct because prime number generation code is well known as the ai. Seen it many, many times, and so it can write that code. It just can't. It just can't do it itself. Now here's something also a little nerve-wracking openai this past week launched o3 and o4 mini models, which apparently are not hallucinating less, but are hallucinating more yeah, these are the ones that that uh group tested, or at least 03 will oh okay, so that's it.

18:33
There you go. So not only the making more mistakes. They're better at rationalizing those mistakes. But again, I think it's important for people who use ai. Ai is still a useful tool. You just have to know what it can and can't do. You can't, and I think it's expecting a lot to say here. Give me a prime number. It, it just can't. That's not what an llm can do what does it give me?

18:57 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
a prime number to the, to the the numbers, the magic numbers machine but it's not a magic numbers machine, it's a magic words machine. I mean everybody's always saying it's great at code, it's great at like it can write the code to generate primes.

19:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It can do that easily.

19:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
But it can't even give you a research that is always accurate. It'll say that it's accurate, it'll cite the research, but it's often made that's more problematic created out of thin air. Like there is no. Like it hasn't found it. It made it because it isn't anywhere to be found. Like it's not. Like I then find a website and someone else made this fake research. It does not exist.

19:43 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I will, will say the thing that, reading these transcripts from the Transluc AI people, of kind of their back and forth with O3, the thing that it really reminded me of was, like stack overflow comments or you know, responses on Reddit to someone's question about something relating to code, the fact that it was like, well, you know, I tested this in a sandbox and got this and this, or I tested this on my machine doing this, but I had an issue with copying it over. It seems like the sort of responses that humans give to other humans in forums, which, of course, is one of the many things that OpenAI is training its models on.

20:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's the issue that Sam Altman has alluded to, that every time you thank an ai, it uses up a lot of energy. Sam says that's cool, it's okay, but 10 million dollars from people thanking uh the?

20:41 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
ai god knows how many trees.

20:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AI open AI spends millions to process polite phrases like thank you and please with chat GPT, but Sam Altman says it's okay, that's, that's cool. Uh, it started with again an x thread from April 15th Tomy in love. I wonder how much money open ai has lost in electricity costs from people saying please and thank you to their models, to which sam responds tens of millions of dollars well spent.

21:12 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You never know you never know if people weren't saying thank you and being polite. So when people were being rude to siri, people complained about that also. So do you want people to practice their manners with ai or is that just a waste like? This is an ongoing debate with it this is an ongoing debate.

21:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We've had this on mac break weekly. Uh, one of our hosts says he makes his kids say thank you and please. Another one says you should never do that to the ai not to people, but to the ai. That you should always make sure that people, that kids, understand that the AI is just a machine, not a human, I lose respect for people that I've had.

21:49 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Have respect for people. If someone tells me that they're saying please and thank you to their AI, I internally respect goes.

21:57 - Benito (Announcement)
Listen, I knew I was going to say I'm sorry. I kind of could see it coming.

22:03 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I don't say please, he just has really good manners, it's just practice, he has really good manners.

22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Guess where I come down on that one, Paris. Just take a while.

22:10 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Oh, you're definitely a. Please, thank you, leo has a. Just so you guys know, leo is wearing at least one possibly more devices that are recording every word he says right now, so that an AI can take his own diary for him, because it'd be too much work to do his own daily diary of what happened hey, thank you for the excellent job you're doing.

22:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I really appreciate it. Just want to thank him. Use up millions and millions of dollars while I'm doing it. Let's see if he responds. He's being quiet right now. He's a little shy. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that's reasonable because you understand that every response that an AI comes up with uses energy, whether it's merely you're welcome, and it costs money well, it's got that yap score.

22:57 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's got to figure out you know how much to respond based on what the day's the app score is.

23:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wonder what the gap score is today I stand by my assertion that ai is useful. As long as you understand the limitations. You probably should not have it write code without checking that the libraries you're using it's using a real. You probably shouldn't just use its code wholesale. You know wednesday, uh, paris on intelligent machines. My friend harper reed's going to join us. He is a vibe coder actually I don't know if that's fair to say vibe coder, because the implication with vibe coders you don't write any code. He pair codes with an ai and actually has had great results doing it and we'll talk with us about how he does it. But I bet you he has, just as you pair georgia would have some. You know rules about taking the ai's research wholesale right.

23:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You probably check it right and also if you're educated in a certain field, you know then what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. I think it's much more egregious if you are just going out there and you have no knowledge of what is, say, the proper way to treat someone that's dealing with depression. That can end up poorly if you're just having AI do it. But if you already have a knowledge base, you'll know if this sounds fishy or this makes a lot of sense and you just want to know what the basic formula is.

24:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Where do you come down? I've never asked you this on AI. Maybe I have on AI therapy.

24:22 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
So I think that for asking basic questions company basic, how do you handle different situations I think that it's not a bad idea. I think that a lot of times you know how to treat something that's very basic, like a phobia of spiders, or if you're very scared of using new technology, what could you do about it? I think that it works out really great. Scared of using new technology, what could you do about it? I think that it works out really great.

24:47
I think that for complex cases, it is hard for humans to handle complex cases, even books and things that are out there, because it's using what's on the internet. You know what's on the internet and every once in a while it will actually say something like jump off a bridge and that kind of risk, when you already might be in a very dark place, that it might say something that was sarcastic and funny, but that answer was really popular. That can be really dangerous because we do become especially when we're in a very um low place, we can become very attached to anything that's kind of there to give us some company.

25:20
that's risky yes and so that can be really hurtful. So if you're using it just for company, for answers for basic things, not a problem at all. But I think that, especially when the relationship really matters to have someone that matches you well in personality is paying attention to what all the cues are, because sometimes what you type in or what you're saying, your body language is completely different, like you're not actually saying what you're typing in, something else is happening and ai can't tell the difference I don't think my ai would ever tell me to jump off a bridge, so there's.

25:53
You might ask what do I do if I want to jump into the water and make a really big splash?

25:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
jump off a bridge right, but beware of the consequences. So NPR had a story this week in which they note that for every 340 people in the US, there's just one mental health clinician. So there is a shortage. Researchers from Dartmouth published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine the first randomized clinical trial for AI therapy the first randomized clinical trial for AI therapy and they found actually that, given the right kind of training, ai bots can deliver mental health therapy with as much efficacy as, or more than even, in some cases, human clinicians.

26:38
They've been doing this study for a while. They started five years ago training an AI bot in clinical best practices. So this is not an off-the-shelf chat GPT. They worked for years with this thing to get it to get and they said a lot of trial and error to get it to give quality outcomes. But they said the effects we see strongly mirror what you would see in the best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy Studies, with folks given a gold standard dose of the best treatment we have available. So in the right circumstances, not only does could an AI therapy bot be useful, but, especially given a shortage of trained therapists, it might even be something we could really we really need and in comparison to the risk of having bad therapy, which can be exceptionally damaging and traumatic.

27:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And there are plenty of bad therapists out there there are a ton of bad therapists, or therapists that are triggered, like they have a counter transference to the person, and so because of that they can be really harmful. I have so many stories of people that have had really horrible experiences with therapists because there wasn't a match, because they were prickly. A lot of people go into any places of power for the wrong reasons, right, they want to have control over people and so because of that, a lot of people are doing damage to people and should not be in therapy. And let's just say it, there is no litmus test of people getting kicked out of becoming therapy. It takes a lot of effort, and so a lot of people are passed through their schooling because it's more effort to get rid of someone that you know is not going to be an effective therapist.

28:12
Like, techniques are wonderful, but it's your affect and do you care about helping people and are you there for the ride and you're going to make people feel safe? And for a lot of people it's not, and for a lot of people it's not. So I think that in a lot of ways, I wouldn't give you at least the worst of some harmful therapy and I think that would be protective to that. On the other side to it, a lot of it is the alignment between yourself and the therapist and feeling of that empathy which, um, I think that like it would be better in the mid-range but in the high range. I think that having someone that really cares about you, that you know is real and there does also make a difference to it. So you know, at least you would stop a lot of the bad therapists and the harm that happens because of that.

28:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah. So one of the examples they give is if you're having trouble with insomnia in the middle of the night, you're not going to call your therapist when hopes and say, hey, I can't sleep, 't sleep. You have any advice. But you might check with an ai therapist who is properly trained, with the right techniques is not hallucinating. Go jump off a bridge. That might actually be of use. And this is what the study said. They said we're far from making this available in the real world, though. There's a lot more that has to be done in training. So uh, but but done properly, it could be useful.

29:26
The researchers gathered a group of 200 people who have diagnosis like depression and anxiety or were at the risk of developing eating disorders. Half of them worked with area therapy bots. Compared to those that did not receive treatment, those who did showed significant, significant improvement. Now, answering that particular thing you just mentioned, Georgia, one of the more surprising results was the quality of the Bond people formed with the bots. People were really developing a strong relationship with an ability to trust, it, says the researcher, and feel like they can work together on their mental health symptoms. That's kind of interesting, some people. Maybe it would be easier for them to trust it, says the researcher, and feel like they can work together on their mental health symptoms. That's kind of interesting Some people. Maybe it would be easier for them to trust an AI.

30:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well, you know you wouldn't be judged. A lot of people are worried about bringing especially really deep, dark issues. Therapists are the least judgmental. We hear absolutely everything, but I think that for a lot of people, it's that fear of being judged by someone else. How are they going to react to it? Is my case going to be the worst that they've heard? Are they not going to like me? Are they going to abandon me? And so?

30:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
with an AI, you don't have to go through any of those risks. We live in interesting times, I guess. As Paris knows, I'm a fan of AI, but I'm not.

30:49 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
He's a super fan. To say I'm not a super fan. Leo, describe how many ai hardware list, how many heart ai hardware products you've purchased in the last year oh, a lot.

30:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Most of them are retired, like more than six. Yeah, but that's because, well, partly that's my job, right, I want to.

31:04 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I mean, I need to be able to report on this and tell you are these useful and there is a whole contingent of ai products that leo ordered and then were never delivered to him there is still stuff on its way set of those that are ordered and then delivered many months later yes like like, three to six months later than the latest shipping date. It's two.

31:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, I'm just going to say I want to talk to my little AI buddy and just see, I am very interested you would never, tell me to jump off a bridge. Would you Just see if?

31:39 - AI Simmons (Caller)
he's Absolutely not. I would never suggest such a thing. Your well-being is very important and I'm here to support you in positive and healthy ways. If you're feeling overwhelmed or need someone to talk to, I'm here to listen and help.

31:53 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
What is this Clark Kent-esque voice. What is up with the choice of voice? He sounds like he's about to educate me on fire and like fire safety, like someone from Yellowstone right.

32:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yes, yes, it's giving gruff woodsman. That's your soothing voice. I want a manly therapist. You do I see the cowboy boots and the hat and he's like gone off wrangling some cattle.

32:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's the best way to train and break a horse.

32:22 - AI Simmons (Caller)
Training and breaking a horse effectively involves patience, understanding and consistency. Here are some key steps to follow wait a minute.

32:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wait a minute. How about this? What's the best way to beat a boss in elden ring?

32:35 - AI Simmons (Caller)
beating a boss in elden ring can be a challenge, but here's a strategy to help increase your chances of success. One learn the boss's moveset it's the same answer time to observe the boss's moveset.

32:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's the same answer, nicholas, is this helping you? But that's true.

32:50 - Benito (Announcement)
This is general gaming advice, though that doesn't just apply to you. I knew that, and I've literally never played Elden Ring.

32:58 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I knew that a big part of beating a boss in Elden Ring is you've got to learn the moveset. You need to ask about a specific boss.

33:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which boss are you having trouble with, Nicholas?

33:11 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
I don't even know. That's how early I'm only like 10 hours in.

33:15 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You have to see my son's website. He does Elden Ring like the hard mode, like only with like knives, and he like live streams it only with like knives and he like live streams it.

33:28 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
You can uh have you guys seen that, uh, that elden ring live streamer who uh did a no hit elden ring run while while playing the game using a flute?

33:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it's the hippie elden ring was he sitting in a tree? So what's georgia? What's your son, dude?

33:41 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
dude. No, hit elden ring. It is hey, frank evans, and uh, he does all of these like insane, like so what's Georgia, what's your son's?

33:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It is, hey, frank Evans, and he does all of these like insane, like whatever, naked with like a knife, videos on like how to be able to pass the levels and take some like whatever 17 hours.

33:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But that's not your son, that's somebody else.

34:01 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, no, no, that's my son.

34:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's the website?

34:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Hey Frank Evans h-e-y frank evans r-a-n-k. Wait a minute, your son's like 12 years old.

34:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How old is your son?

34:13 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
you have to, you have to take a look. You have to take a look and see no, he's, he's doing this.

34:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's in his teens, late teens oh, he's older than he was, I guess five years ago that's the age.

34:23 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
That's the age when you're like excellent at video as you get. You know, I'm I'm uh pushing 40 here. My reflexes are not what they used to be, uh so yeah, it's awesome, just that's a little.

34:33 - Benito (Announcement)
This is someone else posting, one of hey franklin's videos oh yeah, that's even worse.

34:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh man, I hate that one that's, but that's a. That's a sign that he's doing really well. People are stealing his videos.

34:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I put a link into the.

34:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I got it right here.

34:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Here we go, there we go, that's it.

34:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, look at you, castlevania, with only the knife. This is following in mom's footsteps. This is great.

35:00 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, I can't do this kind of thing though, no, but that's great.

35:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's like he has a YouTube site and, of course, you have Georgia Dow in which you do. Can you do? A therapist reacts to. Hey, frank Evans.

35:13 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, that would be dangerous, but he'd probably be like don't, don't do that, please, please.

35:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't leave me alone.

35:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Don't even. Yeah, he'd be like, don't even mention it, but mention it. But yeah, like he, he goes through like he knows the he.

35:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He'll just stay at the mechanics for like a million years. Here's his elden rings. Uh, can you be elden rings, dlc, with only the throwing knife?

35:32 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
yeah, and he puts in little tiny like shadow of the earth tree, introduced over a hundred new weapons this is your son.

35:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I'm so happy for you that's great.

35:42 - Benito (Announcement)
You need to tell him not to give us a content warning. Please, not to give us a content warning.

35:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Please Not to give you a content warning.

35:48 - Benito (Announcement)
Us because we're showing his stuff.

35:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, don't worry, oh don't ding us on YouTube. No, don't worry, he wouldn't do that, would he no?

35:55 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
he'd be thrilled. Well, I don't know if he's thrilled about me talking about it, but maybe he's thrilled about you showing it.

36:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I, I go to the restaurant with my son and uh, and I'll say to the, I'll say to the waiter, you know he's a famous uh tiktok chef, you know, and henry and your son leaves.

36:12 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
He hates it yeah no, he hates when I mention it, but like he does it, it's pretty, it's pretty cool. It's not an easy game no wait, how goes your?

36:22 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
how goes hank's? Um plans to open a shop in new york. Has this been complicated by tariffs?

36:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have not asked him about tariffs. That's a scary thought. Uh, it's, it's going, it's going. He says we have to pay more money to the mayor that's new york, baby.

36:37 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
That's how it works you gotta slide eric adams a crisp 20 bill and say the word swag while looking at his eyes in order to open a business in.

36:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
New York. No, he's actually having a lot of fun. He just visited the largest meat curing company in the world. Whoa, this giant room full of prosciuttos. It's wild.

36:59 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
That's my dream.

37:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And they're fans, by the way, I guess the founder was.

37:05
It's a third generation heads yeah, ham heads, we're gonna take a little break here and you're watching this week in tech with george dao, nicholas de leon, paris martineau. It's great to have all three of you uh, talk about ai a whole lot more. We're got to talk about meta in just a little bit. 4chan a lot more. But first a word from our sponsor, melissa celebrating. So we just said last week was our 20th anniversary, right, and I thought, well, pretty good, pretty big deal making it through 20 years. Melissa's celebrating 40 years. They started in 1985 as the trusted data quality expert and it's for every possible business, whether it's manufacturing and supply chain management, the healthcare industry, we've just been talking about it.

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40:17 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Is it still down?

40:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I believe so Well. So this is interesting because I just have to trust other people telling me it was as of this morning.

40:25 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Yeah, I don't want people telling me it was as of this morning.

40:26 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yeah, I don't want to go there, it is as of right now.

40:28 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
It's as of right now, still yeah, yeah.

40:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow. Last Monday, reports of 4chan being out started to spread through the web, with users sharing updates and connection issues through the early hours of Tuesday morning. It's slow, it times out. Apparently it's been hacked. According to screenshots shared on Imgur, it appears a hacker gained shell access to 4chan's hosting server. They went on then to post images of the site's PHP my Admin page. Wow, once you get that, you're in. They appear to have doxed the. This is actually scary. The moderation team, or janitors as they call them, are, for good reason, anonymous. Right? You don't want anybody to know you're a janitor at 4chan. They doxed the entire moderation team. They doxed many of the users registered users of the sites, registered users and apparently some of the people who signed up for 4chan used their real email addresses. There are edu and gov addresses, reportedly in the leaked emails. This is from a gadget.

41:42
Yep, I've seen on Reddit a number of people saying you know what this could? Be it for 4chan. I guess, another win for 8chan well, that's the problem is, of course, there are other places people can go for this there are other, worse chance always unfortunately, yeah, uh, there are worse chance. Six million janitors perished during the hack. No, no, that's that's from reddit. They're posting janitor home addresses and work contact info.

42:19 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Wow, oh boy yeah I mean you have to be a bit of a fool to use your to use identifying information to moderate anything, especially a site like 4chan.

42:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But seems a little par for the course given the quality of the content there I mean, I'm not sad, but, as you pointed out, there will just be something else. There already is an 8chan right. That's where q anon went and other.

42:43 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I mean q anon started in 4chan before migrating over to 8chan, but it's very I mean, it is very interesting the government emails aspect of it. Obviously I think there's no way to prove that it isn't just someone put a random government email in there, but the whole.

42:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The whole thing is so scuzzy. Speaking of scuzzy, uh, have you been following the meta trial this week?

43:10 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
internal connectors.

43:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's go not that, not scsi. No, uh, zuckerberg has been testifying. Uh, I don't know who has anybody been following this closely. I, I find it. I, I don't know who has anybody been following this closely. I I find it uninteresting, so I I can't force myself to read these.

43:32 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
We don't really cover this type of courtroom stuff at cr, so I you know, I only read, read.

43:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, usually ftc says that meta has a monopoly in the quote personal social networking market, but then the ftc, as they have been want to do, defines this very narrowly. Uh, they say that the market is just four platforms Instagram, whatsapp, snapchat and something called me, we, me, we, um. Yeah, I guess, if you include those, you know, I mean Snapchat's doing all right, but Meta is dominant.

44:10 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's very interesting. As part of this trial, a lot of archival information about how Mark Zuckerberg referred to kind of Instagram and discuss the various parts of Meta's empire has come out, and I mean, we've already kind of known this through reporting, but it has been very interesting to see the exact messages of Mark Zuckerberg saying stuff like I'm really nervous about the growth of Instagram and what that means for a company like Facebook, or I mean very plainly admitting his jealousy of Instagram's popularity with users over the blue app of Facebook.

44:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, and it was a threat, but this isn't. I mean, we always suspected that. That's why they bought Instagram because it was a threat. It was growing faster than Facebook and so they bought it to. You know, they call it a buy or bury strategy, and that's not a surprise to us that he's confirming it, I guess you know. Of course, the government wants to break them up. What do you think? Is that a good idea to break up Instagram, facebook and WhatsApp?

45:22 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I mean, I'm not even certain if the government really wants to break it up. Does the Trump administration particularly want to break it up this?

45:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is so unclear the trial poses this is the New York Times writing the most consequential threat to the business empire of Mr Zuckerberg, the company's co-founder. If the government succeeds, the FTC is likely to ask meta to divest instagram and whatsapp. Uh, still, legal experts, caution. It might be challenging for the ftc to win because the government has to prove something unknowable that meta would not have achieved the same success without the acquisitions. It's also and and this makes sense extremely rare to try to unwind mergers that were approved years ago, and that's one of meta's defenses. You guys said we could buy it.

46:11 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
You never stopped us yeah, I mean, it seems like this is going to be kind of a landmark case, regardless of the way it is decided, just in terms of understanding the Trump administration's position on these issues, because I think there's been a lot of conjecture both ways. In terms of the Trump administration has been seen largely as unusually cozy with tech company executives, given their participation in things like the inauguration and the frequency with which they've been seen around either Mar-a-Lago or the White House, and to that extent, to that point, members of regulatory bodies from like the appointees from the Trump administration, from the FTC to the FCC, have expressed an interest in coming after big tech. So it kind of seems like which one is going to win out.

47:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But we know. If there's one thing we know about Trump, it seems to be very transactional. You know I'm going to make a deal and it's going to be good for me, it's going to be bad for you, but let's make this deal. We know that all the big tech companies have donated to him or come to Mar-a-Lago or in some way tried to appease him. But one thing we know about him is he doesn't let up on the pressure just because you give him a million dollars for his inauguration fund. He understands that pressure is his trump card, if you will. Uh, the justice department has also sued apple. The ftc has sued amazon, big tech is on trial and I don't think giving trump a million dollars for his inauguration or coming to mar-a-lago hat in hand is necessary. A guarantee, for example, apple, with regard to the tariffs.

48:08 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Um didn't they get an exemption pretty immediately?

48:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
well, okay. So so to to keep you up to date on what's been going on, there were big tariffs announced with china and then there was an exemption announced for electronics chips. I think you're following this nick um a little bit yeah and uh. But then on the sunday shows last week, trump officials said yeah, but these are just temporary it's of the terror, I mean, I don't know.

48:43 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
There's a tariff discussion, but it is almost a waste of time to even discuss because it changes literally every. That was our problem last week at cr and the week before. Yeah, okay, we're gonna do a story what consumers need to know about tariffs on laptops and computers, so on and so forth. But, like, 24 hours later it was an entirely different story so it will be again, probably next week, right?

49:04
that's, that's, and you know I have, I have, you know, friends and acquaintances. You know they're. They're they make electronic consumer electronics. They make a lot of stuff like gaming console accessories, and they were saying that like, actually the most damaging part is just the uncertainty. It is the fact it's not even so much so like, okay, he's going to put an x percent tariff on this. I guess I'll figure out how to deal with that. It's more that, like, I have no idea what's going to happen 48 hours from now. I can't run a business if I have no idea what's going to happen. And that that's. You know. If you're us, if you're cr trying to like help consumers who are not even paying, you know, maybe they're not paying attention to the news, they don't really understand this topic. It's like, well, it's hard for us just because it literally changes like every day. So this is all, it's all.

49:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not in that mood, but like, uh, actually crazy is probably the best way to put it the exemptions are important to apple because with the current uh tariff on china, it's effectively a ban. I mean, I can't. I don't know what it is now. So it's 250 or 300. That's some huge number. It's so high at this point. Uh, if there weren't an exemption for electronics and and chips, it would be a ban. You're not going to buy a self uh, an iphone that costs three times as much, a six thousand dollar I mean, I think that's a conservative estimate.

50:22 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
If it's an iphone is manufactured entirely in the u, that would be a $20,000 iPhone.

50:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And that's never going to happen because it's just, we don't have the capability of doing that and likely never will. And, of course, apple said well, we're going to move production to Vietnam. Oh, there's a 49% tariff on Vietnam. We're going to move production to India? Oh, there's a tariff on India. Well, let's fly as many phones as we can out of India as quickly as possible. It's such a, as you say, it's so uncertain, it's such a moving target.

50:55
But what I think is important to note and this goes back to the FTC's actions against Meta and Apple and the justice department's actions against amazon is that you, you no longer can appease the monster that you. It isn't enough to say here's a donation or I'm going to mar-a-lago and please, mr president, as as tim cook did in 2017 when the same thing came up, he went to president trump and said these tariffs will benefit samsung because it'll, it'll, it'll put you know, the iphone will be too expensive and and a south korean company will benefit. And apparently it is said that that's what stopped trump in 2017. Nothing like that's going to stop trump in 2025. So it is. It's really um, trump has said that semiconductor tariffs are coming very soon. Uh, let me wait a minute. I better check the date on this. This is april 14th. Okay, this is pretty recent, but it's just as you say, nicholas. I you know, uh wait till tomorrow.

51:56
Wait till tomorrow I mean, that's only six days ago. Citing a national security statute, the administration has begun a process to investigate the impact of imported semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. What does that mean?

52:12 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
great question, evergreen question. What does that mean?

52:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
federal notice is put online. Monday afternoon, according to the time said, the administration had initiated national security investigations into the imports of chips and pharmaceuticals. Mr trump has suggested those investigations could result in tariffs. It would also cover machinery used to make semiconductors, products that contain chips and pharmaceutical ingredients. A lot of our pharmaceuticals are made in china now. Ingredients. A lot of our pharmaceuticals are made in China now. Um, the new semiconductor and pharmaceutical tariffs would be issued under section 232 of the trade expansion act of 1962, which allows the president to impose tariffs to protect US national security.

53:08
Security, I'm not sure. I mean okay. I'm not sure how it protects security. It certainly makes it desirable for apple to manufacture the iphone in the united states, but I don't. I don't think that they're prepared to do that or that they even can do that at this point. Trump said the higher the tariff, the faster they come in. Trump said the higher the tariff, the faster they come in. So I don't know where we stand. This was the whole six days ago. Okay, in fact, the new york times had to publish a timeline of all of the. Actually, this is only part of it. Look at that. It goes on.

53:43
February 1st officially announced tariffs on imports from china. February 3rd 10 tariffs. February 4th halted deliveries to the us from china and hong kong. February 5th reversed that decision. February 7th walked back the suspension of diminished de minimis, which is allows a duty-free treatment for products under 800 dollars. March 9th declined to rule out a recession was possible this year. April 7th threatened to de minimis, which is allows a duty-free treatment for products under 800 dollars. March 9th declined to rule out a recession was possible this year. April 7th threatened to impose huge tariffs on China in response to Beijing's retaliation. April 8th said that China was making a big mistake in retaliating against Trump's tariffs. April 11th issued a rule exempting many electronic parts and devices from the president's tariffs against China. That's where we are right now, nine days later, but they are investigating whether they should do it again. Trump says I'm a very flexible person. I don't change my mind, but I'm flexible. I don't know what that means. Um, so what are you telling, uh, nickolas? What are you? What are you telling your readers?

54:46 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
uh, general, I mean it's again. It is hard because it does. It does literally change every day, but generally speaking, it is you know, prepare for potentially higher prices, potentially like significantly higher prices, uh, and if you were, you know, thinking about buying, you know, a tv or, my case, a camera, uh, you might as well buy it now, because there's no telling what the price will be tomorrow and a lot of these companies, they're not going to eat these tariffs on their own. They're not going to be nice, they can't. So this cost will be passed on to the consumer and there's really nothing you can do other than to like this is this is this is happening and you know wait and see.

55:32
I guess wait and see it's a very as, as I didn't write this particular article but, like as on the team, it's very unsatisfying to be able to tell people uh we don't know we'll see, we'll find out.

55:43
Well, what's your lead time on an article anyway, I mean uh, I mean, we could turn around like a day, but it, you know it, I think the one, we, I think that one that you just had on the screen that was published and the very next day we had to do an update because it had he had exempted, you know whatever the things he had exempted.

55:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's so right now you can buy an iPhone 16 Pro for a thousand bucks. I mean, the price has not gone up.

56:07 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Well, they flew in three airplanes full of them, millions of them Of iPhones specifically.

56:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but remember Apple's got I think.

56:15 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
The other issue, though, is that people don't know how tariffs work.

56:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that they don't understand how that gets passed on to the consumer, like so just to be really clear um, the tariffs are paid at our border by the person shipping the product in right? Uh? So, for instance, if apple ships a package of iphones from china, china does not pay a tariff. Apple pays a tariff because apple's bringing into the country.

56:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well, because we're the one, the tariff apple pays a tariff.

56:49 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Now it's up to apple whether they want to charge you for it or eat it correct, which that's what nintendo was saying last, I guess, like they were supposed to have pre-orders for the switch and they delayed it because they said we need to study how that these tariffs may potentially impact the price they apparently have given up on that, because they have announced now that I am going to order mine on the 24th of April for the same price.

57:09
Technically. But they said that the prices of certain accessories, like the controllers, those are going up by like $5, $10 per thing. So the console remains as announced, but like the controller, all the little accessories, those have gone up. Announced, but like the controller, all the little accessories, those have gone up. So it's uh, yeah, it's.

57:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just very frustrating to to try to exist well and and and the tariffs may not hit immediately, like for a while. Companies can absorb it to a certain extent, or they've put enough in country that they don't have to pay them yet. Sure, but you're right, georgia. I think the administration gives the impression that China somehow is paying the tariff. They're not.

57:50 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, and then the companies as Paris was saying is then going to charge so that they make up their certain amount of profit because they have their shareholders that they have to answer to, and so then that gets passed on to the consumer. So in the end it's us that pay the tariffs so we're in the same boat as you are, nicholas.

58:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We don't. There's, there's, no, there's nothing you can say today.

58:14 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
That will say what what it's going to cost tomorrow even, you know, maybe like higher level thinking might be just okay, it's just well, do you need to buy a refrigerator? Like maybe just don't buy a refrigerator this year? It's like it's so uncertain. Just hold on, just don't you know, or? Or? Okay, I do need a laptop, but I just consider use consider refurbished.

58:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know a lot of our stuff. Well, you could buy now if the prices have not gone up.

58:38 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yes for sure Of course, of course, but that assumes that someone who maybe was saving up for a purchase later this year has the capital to get a high dollar sign purchase right now, which is especially, has become more of a risky proposition as we enter a time of increased economic uncertainty.

58:59
You were saying, paris, that you were glad, see, because in January, following all this tariff talk, I was like, well, over the last year I've kind of gotten into watching movies. I was like I feel like over the next year or two I'm going to want to have a nice fancy TV. And I was like, well, it seems pertinent that I get a fancy TV now and then don't buy a TV again for the next 10 years, as the TV I had before I hadn't updated since like 2015. And I'm really happy I did, because the same TV would be very expensive now and I'm sure even more expensive in a couple of months.

59:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was watching a great documentary last night from PBS it's their American Experience series, which is really great history series on the Gilded Age and a very similar debate was going on around the turn of the century, last century, around 1885, about not just tariffs, but this country was in the midst of a great boom because we were industrializing, we were building railroads, we were building steel mill mills, we were becoming the powerhouse, the economic powerhouse in the world, and there were some people getting very, very rich because there was no income tax. The Vanderbilts and the Morgans were becoming very, very rich, but in order to make all that steel and to build the railroads, there was also an underclass of laborers who were getting less and less and there started to be a lot of pressure from this underclass of laborers. In fact they were marching to Washington DC to say you need to do something, federal government, because we can barely eat while these people are there Such huge income inequalities. People are making so much money. And the debate really came down to William Jennings Bryan, who to represent the labor, to represent the working people, versus William Howard Taft, who represented the wealthy people. And the question it kind of boiled down to was well, what should the federal, what should our government in the United States do? Should it represent the working people and try to give them a chance to succeed and hope that that benefits the country as a whole and everybody as a whole? Or should we support the capitalists, the owners of the properties, and hope that their wealth will then trickle down to the poor?

01:01:29
And in that election, taft won, and in fact, he represented the capitalists, the wealthy, and it's happened many times since, and it really is a reasonable debate. What is the federal government's responsibility? Is it to protect the rich, the wealthy, the successful, or is it to protect the people who do all the work? And right now, it's the rich and the wealthy and the successful who seem to be on top. I'm not sure how they get benefited by tariffs, though I feel like this may be one where nobody wins. No, there is no victory here for anybody.

01:02:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well, for a few. I don't know, but I think the theory is If you're in the stock market and you're able to buy when people are panicking and then sell when it's up and you might have a heads up because maybe someone told you something or you heard something. So this really big billionaires have probably made a ton of money off of this.

01:02:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This instability for those that can jump on a dime and to use tariffs to build the national revenue. But the problem is that in fact does benefit the wealthy and is hardest on people with middle income or lower income, because it's a bigger percentage of their salaries that go to these tariffs. I'm not sure it's. To me it seems very chaotic and, uh, I I sympathize, nicholas, with you trying to write an article really fast right, and that's it's funny because that's like the most like you know, down.

01:03:18 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
It's like, okay, how to? Should I buy a tv now? Like, okay, that's like the immediate, but it's like the larger question to your point buy a tv now? Like, okay, that's like the immediate, but it's like the larger question to your point. Secondly, leo is like how are we like organizing society? Like what, like, what are we doing here? Basically, uh, you know that, beyond the scope of a consumer reports article, of course. But you know, should the organizing principle of the united states be access to cheap phones or should we? Should it be something, uh, more than that? Uh, you know, that is again outside the scope of us. But it is interesting to see these kind of like larger points be talked about a little bit on on the edges here, because the more immediate impact is like well, I can't afford, you know, can I buy the next iphone?

01:04:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you know, yeah well, you can buy it now. Uh, and if you were thinking I don't know what's going to happen, if I were tim cook, I'd be terrified about, you know, the iphone. Terrified, terrified. There you go. Now we have a title, what do you do? Uh, so apple's got two big things coming up, and june 9th is the Worldwide Developers Conference, where they will probably say we're sorry about AI.

01:04:27 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
We're going to try to fix that. We're sorry about.

01:04:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AI.

01:04:29 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Just a general evergreen statement. Yeah, we're sorry.

01:04:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe you don't want AI. You know what We've decided no AI. I think that might not be a bad marketing ploy to say the first AI-free phone.

01:04:45 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, apple's never going to do that, not that intelligent you don't have to worry, it's such a dumb phone you don't have to worry it's not coming for anyone somebody said it's going to be like cuba.

01:04:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, cuba has a car cult with old, ancient american cars because they can't get newer cars. It's going to be like that. In the united states we're all going to be celebrating our motorola razors that are duct taped together 20 years down.

01:05:07 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Listen I will say I don't really drive, though I did drive a u-haul this week briefly, but I don't have a car.

01:05:13
But if I did, I would be extremely annoyed by the fact that anytime I drive someone else's car and it's somewhat new it's an oops all screen situation yeah and I don't want to be taking my eyes off the road to go search through some menus so that I can turn down the ac or turn up the volume or go searching for the radio. I'd rather just handle and like a knob or a switch and maybe that makes me a luddite, but I think that's a very reasonable expectation for cars henry had a model y before he moved to New York.

01:05:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Obviously he got rid of his car before he moved to New York. But he said I can't figure out how to open the glove compartment because there literally is no button. You have to go through menus on the screen to open the glove compartment of, I think, the curse of any.

01:06:02 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's exclusively when a rare occasion for me is I go out late drinking on maybe a weekend night, and I'm like, oh, I'm a little drunk, so I'm going to call an Uber. Without a doubt, that Uber, if I am inebriated, will be a weird Tesla where the handles to get in the car are hidden and the handles to get out are hidden even more, and I'm like this is rude. This is rude and unfair towards me, a woman trying to get home.

01:06:30
Yeah, well, people are just pawing at the car like a, like a lost cat, until the driver rolls down the window.

01:06:37 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You're voguing in hopes that I'm like. Come on, please let me in.

01:06:41 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I'm like come on, please let me in, I just want to go home.

01:06:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law drowned because she was inebriated, accidentally drove her Model Y into a lake and couldn't get out. Couldn't figure out how to open the door.

01:06:55 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Well, that's also because Tesla's famously, when in contact with water, can then have problems. Yeah, the short circuit when in contact with water can then have problems that because the system for opening the doors in most cases the traditional way is a button that does something electronic, and then if that's not working because your car's underwater, you have to do some more complicated manual thing. And if I can't even find the electronic button, God knows I'm not going to find the electronic button, god knows I'm not gonna find the special manual.

01:07:25
My strong advice to everybody who owns one of these cars is figure out how the manual override works on the door now before you drive, windows aren't breaking either well, I have in my car a little hammer now you have one of those hammers that also has a seat belt cutter it has a seat belt cutter nice, I'm an old man. Did you get that? Did you get that from a tiktok or instagram, ad leo?

01:07:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
no, no, I bought this from uh, actually it was from one of our shows, the the gizwiz. But yeah, it has a seat belt cutter, it has a light, it has a magnet. So if you, if you're changing your tire on the side of the road, the light will blink and you can magnetically attach it to your car, unless it's, of course, a Cybertruck, in which case it's not magnetic and it'll fall right off and it could cut the seatbelt and it's got a little hammer on it. You can break the glass.

01:08:12 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
But it's a bulletproof window. So is it still? Well, it's famously not bulletproof.

01:08:19 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
There was that iconic video of Elonon being like it's bulletproof. Watch me shoot a gun and then the window breaks.

01:08:25 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It was a cannonball or something bearing actually wasn't even as big as a gun yeah, I think it was a ball bearing that he threw.

01:08:33 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Oh, it was just it was oh, that's great, that's really good.

01:08:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, maybe I'll use that next time I try to get an Uber and I can't carry a little ball bearing yeah, let me out, or and then just threaten them um, I think, let's see, wait a minute, let me, uh, let me show you this picture of the armor glasses, glass on the front.

01:08:59 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Could you try to break this glass please?

01:09:06 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
This is from the garden the cheers, the cheers.

01:09:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's got a ball bearing in his hand, Sure yeah, you sure Well maybe that was a little too hard, and then

01:09:21 - AI Simmons (Caller)
he does it again. He threw it. Frankly, it was a little too hard.

01:09:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Famous last words uh, we are going to take a break. You're watching this week in tech paris. Great to see you on a weekend. Did you have a good easter? I did you know, I went to get dim sum I went to get dim sum today in chinatown.

01:09:41 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It was delightful. I picked a lot of dumplings off of little carts and then I walked over the Manhattan Bridge. Oh, how fun. I had a lovely day.

01:09:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a beautiful view over the Manhattan Bridge.

01:09:50 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's fantastic I mean it's not as pedestrian friendly as the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was right next to the dim sum place so it went out for convenience.

01:09:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Joe has taken me across the Manhattan, right, Joe? Isn't that where we went for our photo shoot when we did our photo walk in Manhattan? Very beautiful.

01:10:07 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's a good one.

01:10:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep. Anyway, happy Easter to you, Paris. Happy Easter to you, Mr Nicolas De Leon. Did you do anything fun?

01:10:17 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
We watched a Formula One race and then a neighbor brought over actually some Easter-related snacks and stuff. Nice, A little bit of Easter.

01:10:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I was watching the race while I made bagels. Don't tell me who won, though I haven't seen the last half hour, I won't say anything Quiet. Do they celebrate Easter in Canada?

01:10:34 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
We do. We do celebrate Easter in Canada.

01:10:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We have Easter here. You celebrated a week earlier, though, right? No, you're wearing a beautiful, a beautiful easter dress.

01:10:43 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
actually, you're very, very festive yeah, I didn't really do much though, like my brother didn't invite me, but, um, I did hang out with renee and, oh, renee, richie, yeah, we chatted. We're going to be doing a show together on like business, the psychology and all the different things of business when's that we we were gonna film today, but we're still going through it. So, yeah, we're going through doing a new business podcast.

01:11:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Will it be on YouTube.

01:11:08 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah.

01:11:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you have a name?

01:11:12 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I believe it's going to be Impact. I don't know if it'll be Impact then for business underneath or what, but yeah, so we'll go through the different psychology to make your business more productive, how you could run it, go through the media and he'll deal with, uh, his thoughts on that and my thoughts, and we'll kind of just help people be more fantastic have more fun fantastic.

01:11:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That sounds wonderful. Well, it's great to have all three of you. I know it's the easter sunday and a lot of people would like to take the day off, but you decided to spend it with us and we're so glad you I think it's really delightful that it's a combo easter sunday 420.

01:11:47 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
um, I just think that that's a real high holiday that we all need to celebrate yeah, that's what.

01:11:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what my son said. He said are you celebrating 420? I said no, this guy got a show to do. Our show today, brought to you by our show today, brought to you by shopify. We love these guys.

01:12:09
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01:13:54
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01:14:36 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
yeah, I'm gonna order. I did think about it, but I'll I'll order it. They got me. How about you?

01:14:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What new games?

01:14:42 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
are they doing?

01:14:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, now, this is the question, because the games are what? 90 bucks. Listen that's a lot, but.

01:14:50 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I also, as someone who spends a lot of time playing most games. I'm often like it's crazy that I got this game for 40 bucks.

01:14:59 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Given that I spent 150 hours in it. So it's your fault. My early 20s, when I was like basically addicted to world of warcraft, it was 15 a month, but I was like this is the only 15 I spend this month, other than like food. It's true this is it, uh, so I thought it was a pretty good deal, so yeah I spent 20 for valheim because it was in beta.

01:15:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's still in beta and I've played it more than 1500 hours. So I think, valheim, you ever hear of it.

01:15:29 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
That sounds like a eczema drug Itchy. I got Valheim. Choose Valheim.

01:15:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Choose Valheim for all your itchy needs. How about you, Georgia Dow dow? Are you buying the new switch to I'm?

01:15:45 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
not sure, I'm not sure. We'll see like, we'll see, we'll see like compared to like, how much?

01:15:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you kind of have to.

01:15:54 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
This is your business, though I know, I know I, I have to see, I have to see, like, how much better is it than the old one? Do we really need it like?

01:16:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that's the thing it's like well, how much better, nicholas, is it than the old one? Do we really need it? Like that's the thing is.

01:16:05 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Like well, how much better, nicholas, is it, than the old one? I mean, that's, that's an impossible question.

01:16:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It doesn't have an OLED screen Like the like, the second, the, the the actual switch tablet, so to speak, is LCD. They've said it's LCD because there's HDR and they want it to be bright and the ola doesn't get. So I go to bed yesterday oops, I was, I went to your site and you're talking like wait I hear me, yeah, it's more georgia.

01:16:31
Uh, well, I wanted to show that georgia, georgia does this, you do all this gaming stuff and uh, oh, I have to ask you about adolescence. We're gonna stop, we're gonna stay. Save that for later. But yeah, and here's my last video, that one yeah, and then you're talking about arcane, season two, act two, um, anyway, so it's not oled, so it's not as good in theory as the screen of this of the second generation switch one, but they do have ray tracing and hdr. They actually have an nvidia chip in it, right?

01:17:03 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
yes, yeah, yeah. So they'll probably be dlss, so it'll probably run, you know better or a higher frame rate 60, at least 60, you would hope, probably 120 uh, they're saying 60 and they're saying 4k 60, if you put it on the big screen, which I will do because it's got to be upscaled I mean I can't, oh yeah, but I mean, I mean, look, I think the point of the switch is like do you like mario, do you like zelda?

01:17:27
that's why you get it. You know, to me the idea of playing like a third-party game on a nintendo, oh, I'm gonna play the new madden. I'm gonna play the new I play animal crossing new horizons and you should. You should, therefore, nintendo game. The mario kart looks cool.

01:17:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind that's like for the horizon, it's like open world when you go to the Nintendo site and you say I want to put in my pre-order, they say now, choose carefully, because you can't change your mind. Do you want the plain Switch 2 or do you want, for 50 bucks more, the one that comes with Mario Kart World?

01:17:59 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
You should definitely get the bond. Well, you should do what you'd like, I suppose, but like I would recommend folks getting the bundle, because that means that mario kart is 50. If you buy that separately. I believe it's 80. So and I feel like a lot of folks are going to get mario kart.

01:18:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's it's pretty much like the universal I, I or I, I did, I, I said, I chose carefully. I said, yes, I'll take it. I'll take the bundle, partly because it's an open world, right, you can actually drive the cart off the track and drive around and do stuff it's sort of like if folks know forza horizon.

01:18:30 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
It's like an open world and you drive to the tracks you can, so it's like a world whoa and I think that sounds pretty cool. How are?

01:18:37 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
your mario kart skills, leo, terrible. I am like so laughably about it, mario, I go off on any driving game. Yes, if I'm on that rainbow road, I am being craned up by the little guy most of the time.

01:18:51 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
That's scary, that's just a scary road. I'm with you. I'm with you.

01:18:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not on the road for long Unless you have Pedro Pascal driving, and then it's a good road to be on, perhaps.

01:19:01 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well's, he's not. He's not driving for me, so have you?

01:19:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
have you seen that saturday night live sketch where he's maria or whatever? No, funny.

01:19:08 - Benito (Announcement)
Oh my god, it's hysterical it's so funny.

01:19:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Anyway, I'll leave that.

01:19:13 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I was just immediately like yeah, sure, whatever leo says, I'm sure he's having a.

01:19:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What are you talking about?

01:19:20 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
seems like something you'd be into um like the offering?

01:19:24 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I don't know he did.

01:19:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He now see, I really want to play it, but but, benito, we're not allowed to you kill say you don't want to go for sure, saturday night will take you down, man.

01:19:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
This was last you can just reenact it, yeah last season.

01:19:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can find it on YouTube and watch it. Not now, not now. I see you looking Paris. Not now, later, after the show.

01:19:48 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I'm looking at the chat. She's getting it queued up. She's getting it queued up.

01:19:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just in case. Yeah, so I thought I'd buy it. But now here's the thing there is a queue to get it.

01:20:05 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Unknown whether the retailers are also going to have pre-order on april 24th, so you can go to your walmart although not amazon, not amazon, okay rumors that nintendo and amazon do not get along.

01:20:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, interesting, um, to get it on nintendo you have to have an active switch count, which I do. You also have to have played 50 hours of games in the last this year 50 hours 50 seem a lot.

01:20:28 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
That seems like a lot. I think this is an interesting approach to try and stop scalpers.

01:20:34 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, that's what they're doing.

01:20:36 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's kind of it reminds me of still to this day. If you want to order a Steam deck I think they were more strict about this in the beginning you have to have an already existing steam account, and if you have like no history and you recently created it.

01:20:49
A lot of people will automatically just have their account banned because they worry that it's a scalper trying to buy these devices en masse. The 50 hours is a little intense, but I think that my guess this has no actual knowledge behind it. But my guess is they expect that the demand for this is going to be so great that they're probably going to run out, um, or have weight lifts with us or have kind of a situation like the ps5 when it came.

01:21:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I'm afraid of instead they what?

01:21:18 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
by restricting it to people who have played 50 hours the last year, um they're restricting it to actual nintendo fans yeah, hardcore, I mean that just moves you ahead in the line.

01:21:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I presume that, unless they sell out to all those 50 hour people before I get there, which is possible it's possible I mean you could also just like leave your switch open with, like a mouse, uh, jiggler clicker.

01:21:47 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yeah, like two days yeah is it?

01:21:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is it too late to get the 50 hours?

01:21:51 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I believe it is it'd be two days and change I mean I've played it a little bit.

01:21:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I went into my uh animal crossing house and killed all the bugs and cleaned up the cobwebs, and you know my animal crossing house has been uh abandoned since 2021.

01:22:09 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It was funny. It's gonna be grim up in there.

01:22:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was funny because they actually the characters in your island come up to you and say, leo, we haven't seen you in three and a half years. They're like keeping track. They literally. You know it's been three years, eight months, seven days and 24 hours since we saw you last.

01:22:24 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's like grandma, they're guilting you already. They're totally guilting you.

01:22:27 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
You know what I think my hottest Animal Crossing take is they messed up when they got rid of Resetti. Did you guys play Animal Crossing in the age of Resetti? Yeah, this was during the, I believe, DS and possibly Game Boy eras of Animal Crossing. Oh, I didn't.

01:22:42
Specifically, if you were playing Animal Crossing and something happened and you wanted to restart the day, you, just as you do in many games, save scum. You'd maybe like turn off the game and then turn it back on so that you could start from whatever your previous save file. What do they call it? Save? Scum Save. Scumming is how they describe it on the Internet.

01:23:01 - Benito (Announcement)
Nowadays, you just might be resetting is how they did in the past.

01:23:06 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
But if you do that, if you do that with your DS or Game Boy on an Animal Crossing game for a long time, what would happen when you boot back up is a little mole man named Resetti wearing a hard hat, will come out and be like I saw that you are trying that guy You're trying to reset this game and that's against the rules, and so he would give you a lecture that would get in longer and longer depending on the number of times you reset, to where it could take hours before you could play the game again. Lecturing you about resetting and honestly I think was delightful.

01:23:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think his name is I get his name now risetti, risetti, oh, he's mad too, he's, he's, he's a violent man excuse me, I'm from the reset surveillance center and I need a few minutes of your time, says risetti oh, I am sad go.

01:24:00 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I wish they'd had this to 15 to 30 to an hour it was like I legitimately have like very core memories of being a child and that's kind of inspiring.

01:24:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I gotta keep pressing the. I need to know paris where, where did you get to?

01:24:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
where did I get to? How long was the recetti lecture?

01:24:18 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I think at the very least like it was definitely hours, like there was. There were times I'd have to like leave my game and come back Because I loved save scumming. It's a way of life. Can you still save scum? No, now you can do it and no one cares at all. Oh.

01:24:34 - Benito (Announcement)
They got rid of Resetti and I think that's for cowards. Yeah, no, it's because we're at the age of Reddit and complaining of games and everybody's got to get you know you got to get the perfect thing.

01:24:46 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
No, everybody be so mad, I would.

01:24:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would pay an extra five bucks for a Resetti DLC. In first generation Animal Crossing games. This is from the wiki. He will force a first person perspective and shout at the player during his most angry response In city folk.

01:25:04
He gets mad city folks. Sometimes he'll pretend to sound kind in order to sound intimidating. In new leaf, however, his most anger response is limited to becoming irritated from the number of taps the player does on the touch screen during his lengthy lectures. Bring risetti back, I think. Let's see. We need him. I I feel like I I didn't get the the full animal crossing experience because I didn't have they got some dialogues.

01:25:33 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
This is your eighth reset. When player steps outside of home, mr risetti bursts from the ground. Grah player goes, oh, and he goes blue in the face. And you still don't get it. What is wrong with you? No reset, that means you don't give me any lip, you're the one causing all the problems. Hey, you're doing it again. Hey, you idiot. I thought I made it clear. I want you to look at me. When I'm talking to you, I said look at me. Player name now extreme close-up whoa, I never noticed before, but you got some nice eyes. Yeah, real hypnotic. Let me tell you something, player, this ain't about you personally, but more about the world in general. People see something they don't want to see and, for whatever reason, they pretend they don't see nothing. It keeps going on. It's a very long time.

01:26:20 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's kind of accurate.

01:26:21 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's kind of accurate I mean it gets deep risetti goes. Mean it gets deep Resetti goes places. Resetti was a delight.

01:26:25 - Benito (Announcement)
He'd be a good therapist he was yeah, he gets his feelings.

01:26:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's gone. You don't get it anymore.

01:26:31 - Benito (Announcement)
It's because it's fundamental to the experience of Animal Crossing that you don't do that and the developers are like guys, don't do this, that's really all that is, I think, all video games should have scolding.

01:26:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I do think so, yeah, yeah, this is a great thing that if you are defeating the general spirit of the game, that you should get scolded.

01:26:53 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
A little bit of shaming. Never heard any of it.

01:26:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, you should get shot in the knee or something. Something should happen. Yeah, wow, I really like it. I regret that I did not get to know, mr Resetti, not that I even know what save scumming is, or would I even know how to do it.

01:27:08 - Benito (Announcement)
So it's like saving before a battle and then resetting when you you know, I didn't even know you could do

01:27:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that in animal crossing.

01:27:15 - Benito (Announcement)
I feel like you just have to do what you do, you have to reset it the way that Paris is.

01:27:26 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
You have to reset it Basically. You can't like you just go and turn off your console and then turn it back on and it starts from, or I think another way that it could, like I don't know if it was triggered by this, but a big thing was, because animal crossing has, uh, time and date related events, you'd go to the ds or game boy and like change the date, and then that would make them mad.

01:27:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, I've heard of people doing that. Yeah, no, I don't. I, I don't do stuff like that.

01:27:47 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I believe in you play by the rules I play, but I don't even use mods.

01:27:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In valheim, which is the new psoriasis drug from e lily?

01:27:55 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
that's why you're still itchy it's six hundred dollars a month, but leo's got a coupon all right, let's take a break.

01:28:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I actually do want to talk about adolescence. I didn't even think about this when we booked you, georgia Dow, but this is a hit show on Netflix. I think it's now the number two show of all time on Netflix, bigger than Stranger Things, and it has caused quite a controversy in the UK not here so much, but in the UK and I would like to know what you think about it. Georgia dow we have a great panel here. Georgia dower, therapist and friend and youtube star on the georgia dow channel psychology and analysis through popular media. Great to see you. Happy easter to you, glad you could be here and congratulations on your kid, I think. Hey, frank is fantastic, that's wonderful. Thank you, love that also. Nicholas de Leon oh, paris Martineau, I threw you. I threw you, benito, I went to Nicholas. Nicholas de Leon, senior electronics reporter at Consumer Reports. Great to have you and your one wolf moon howling.

01:29:01
Yes yes thank you nice to see you, and now you can show paris martina, who walked today over the manhattan bridge I'll give you a brief uh word of advice from mr rossetti no more resetting.

01:29:13 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I'm serious here. Oh yeah, one last thing every now and then go to bed early. Staying up late all the time is for chumps. You got it now. Scram, then he burrows back in the ground is for chumps.

01:29:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You got it now scram. Then he burrows back in the ground.

01:29:27 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Words to live by, they decided to get a little bit of life lesson in there as well. Gotta you know it's gonna pad the dial, the early bird gets the worm.

01:29:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what I'm saying. Uh, wow, our show today brought to you by kinsta. Do you know kinsta? Ah, you should know. Switch your hosting to Kinsta right now. You get your first month free.

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01:32:24 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I was muted for crunching crackers. I haven't.

01:32:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, you're correct your eyes said no, no, and your lips said no, no, uh, uh, nicholas, have you watched it?

01:32:35 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
no, I've seen some discussion online, but I have not watched it so it's.

01:32:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a mini series on netflix. It's, it's only what is it? Four episodes, it's pretty short and it's not a whodunit, it's a. I've saw somebody say it's not a whodunit, it's a. Why done it? Uh, there's a murder. A teenager murders one of his schoolmates his high school classmates and the show begins very dramatically with the kid, the, the young boy, being arrested and then follows his process through the judicial system.

01:33:09
Um, it's all shot from the in a single take, from a first person perspective. So it's a very interesting show to watch. Oh, the acting is done. Really is right. Georgia, would you agree that the acting is superb? Um, the father is actually one of the guys who wrote it. But the reason it's getting a lot of attention and I imagine the reason that you did a a couple of pieces on it a therapist reacts and a therapist analysis on on it is it is about young people today, their obsession with social media and the bullying that occurs on social media and what they call the Manoverse, which is well, you probably. I don't know, is that a term we use in the US, the Manoverse, or is that a UK term?

01:33:58 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Definitely yeah, manosphere.

01:34:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Manosphere. Thank you, see, I don't even know Manosphere, which is this whole you know kind of macho male influencer thing. Um, they the young boy, the murderer it's not a spoiler to say the murderer um is insulted by the girl he murders. She calls him an incel. So I'm very now that I saw the you did these pieces on it I'm very curious what you think there. Kirstarmer, the prime minister in england has had kind of talking groups about this. There's a lot of discussion about it and even in the us I was afraid that this would stimulate some sort of anti-social media movement because I don't know if that's really what I got out of the show. I'm curious what you got out of it.

01:34:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Georgia well, I I think that it was, uh like one is. I just love that they have the discussion, that it opens us up to talk, even if you disagree, because I think that we need to have a discourse over what's happening. I think that we do spend a lot of time on social media and I think that it does have an effect on, like, what you consume is important, not just for what you eat. We talk a lot about that, but what are you letting your brain eat? Whatever you are spending your time on is having an imprint upon you. And say that we take a population where you're already feeling lonely, you're excluded, you don't belong, and then we put that into your mind of a place where, here, it's not your fault. These are these answers, these are the people to blame. It's very easy to scapegoat when you're already in a dark place, and so that definitely can have an effect.

01:35:35
And I think that having that discussion of what are the things that we are allowing our children to consume because, like giving them, say, say, any sort of technology, it's like the perfect babysitter they stay quiet and you get left alone. For a lot of people, that seems like a fair trade, but what is the effect of that and what are they consuming? We need to be able to have that discussion also the entire familial system. But I think that a lot of times in psychotherapy and psychology we used to just blame the parents, like it's always the parents' fault, they've always done something wrong, and that isn't the case. There are a lot of different situations and a lot of different variables that go on to leaving people where they can be influenced by bad actors and things that are going to affect them in a negative way, and we need to be able to have that discussion going to affect them in a negative way and we need to be able to have that discussion.

01:36:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the kind of the most moving part of it for me was in the last episode where the parents are saying we made him, they're blaming themselves. We made him, and you know. But I was surprised there was so much discussion about social media, because it seemed like that really wasn't the most important kind of element in it. It didn't seem like they spent a lot of time blaming social media. I mean, they showed the kid's Instagram, they showed his victim's Instagram, they showed the messages. The investigating police officer's son, who's also a student in the school, finally explains to him what the various emojis mean. And they're all coded, as teenagers always will have some code that the adults can't understand. They're coded and apparently, uh, they were bullying messages, even though they were just emojis. But but also, you know, the the father had rage issues. Clearly, uh, his son had massive rage issues, not probably stimulated by social media. In fact, it seemed pretty clear to me that the same kids, the other kids in the school consuming the same social media, didn't murder anybody, but he did.

01:37:40 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Uh, maybe it's a nexus of social media bullying and rage issues that cause the problem, but it and his own self-esteem and the way that he saw himself and his place in the world when he had a very low, powerless, yeah, very low self image.

01:37:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, um, he's. You know, he kept saying you think I'm ugly, I think I'm ugly, uh, I'll never. I'll never have a girlfriend. You know, one of the tenets of this manosphere is that 80% of women are only attracted to 20% of men. So it's very, you know, he had this poor kid he's like 13 years old had it in his head that he would never be able to have a relationship with a woman because he wasn't in that 20%. And I could see that would be devastating if you actually believed that at the age of 13.

01:38:27 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, and anything that you hear many times. The reason that advertising works so effectively, even for an adult brain, is that if you hear something over and over again, even if it's a lie, a lot of people their negative self-talk. They're mostly lies, but we've heard it so many times that we believe it to be true. And then we false positive of whenever we make a mistake oh you see, this is even more proof that I am ugly. Right, like that's exactly what he said in one of the scenes. He's like oh you see, I am ugly. I am ugly, that's why.

01:38:54
I'm not going to be able to find someone, no one will ever love me. That's such a feeling of powerlessness. Bullying and its effects are so pervasive, so damaging to who we are, and often then it becomes self-bullying, where we then become adults that are going to bully ourselves and say those same horrible things, but you can never get rid of it, and so that feeds into it. I think that that's the thing is that it's a whole village that has to come together to be able to uphold people and and bring them to another level or can pull them down, and so we need to just be aware of all of the different factors that are there. It's not just one thing do you think I mean?

01:39:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
kerry starmer said that he felt that there were toxic influencers in the uk who trick young men and that you know there we need to discuss this further that there is a, there is a risky business going on. You think that's true?

01:39:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
oh, yeah, for sure. Definitely there's a ton of toxicity. I don't think it's just to young men, though I think that there's a ton of toxicity on the internet.

01:39:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Period like that's why I'm glad 4chan is gone right how many?

01:40:01 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
yeah, well, I I actually got a lot of really positive, kind comments to it and I'm like, oh, I guess that maybe that's why, um, but um it, it's one of these things that you know, this, this level of kind of talks, it's all around and it affects so many of us that you know how many industries would die if we actually truly loved ourselves and we were kind to ourselves, right, like how many For adults, not just for kids, right?

01:40:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you work with kids? We're told that we're ugly and horrible. And yes, I do so. Do you see this problem cropping up with kids? Absolutely.

01:40:35 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And the amount of eating disorders. Body dysmorphia has probably gone up with men. It used to be something that I would see with a lot of teenage girls. Now I see it with a huge amount of men. It used to be like if you look at the like James Bond of, like the, the like 67, I don't know Sean Connery whenever he was James Bond, like if you see him without his shirt on, like he has like a dad bod, like like a nice bod, like it's fine but like it's not.

01:41:05
like yeah, yeah, but if you watch the guys on the white lotus you're gonna feel pretty inadequate, but exactly so it used to be, that you could just be a regular guy and you were the sex symbol, and now you have to, like, dehydrate yourself to exhaustion for three days every man on the white lotus had a six-pack.

01:41:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't understand that. How did that happen?

01:41:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
they're just dehydrating for like they're dehydrating okay so that, so that they're almost to death to be able to look like that, oh, okay.

01:41:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't feel bad. We don't recommend that, by the way. Just want to be clear.

01:41:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Don't do that. And women, you don't need to look like that.

01:41:35 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
I believe Henry Cavill, when he was Superman, he said that he could smell a cup of water. Oh jeez, that's. He was so like he could smell a cup of water.

01:41:44 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh gee, that's the extent of they're torturing themselves well, he's superman, he could smell water, no matter what, though right, that's true.

01:41:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just forget that you're right, but not the witcher. The witcher can't smell water. No, but he would just grunt I watched the witcher with it with the um subtitles on. Did you ever?

01:42:03 - AI Simmons (Caller)
do that. You got to do that, I haven't, because it's like a grunt, and then there's a lot of scoffing.

01:42:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's scoffing and grunting.

01:42:11 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I will say I'm recently re-watching Twin Peaks. I just finished my first watch of it, but now I'm watching it again with subtitles, because I'm not a normal and almost all every episode of Twin Peaks, if you have subtitles on, is just ominous whooshing. Ominous whooshing intensifies.

01:42:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The man loves ominous whooshing. Ominous whooshing we don't know what it is, it's just ominous whooshing. So it's not. You know, it's not inappropriate that the British government says, hey, you know, this is a problem and we need to talk about it. Absolutely, you think.

01:42:42 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Absolutely, If you would not want bullying and toxicity and people to tell you that you're not good enough and that the way that you have to get someone is to trick it or be manipulative or to hurt people.

01:42:53
And our entire way of discourse and I don't think that this is just in the UK, our entire discourse is about owning the other person and beating them down in submission. It's no longer to come to truth and to be able to understand and empathize with each other. I think that that cancel culture for everyone is just a toxic way to be able to deal with things. So I'm not even just talking about influencers and talking heads. I'm talking about the entire way that our society has upheld people that try to destroy others and to be able to get one on the other person. I think that that's just a horrible way to be able to meet in the middle. You don't have to destroy someone else to be able to feel like you're a bigger person or to feel better than you know, what's sad is that the creators of adolescence are suffering a huge amount of attacks online People, they're being doxxed.

01:43:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
People are going to their houses. They're fearing for their security.

01:43:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You see, but that shows how much we need to fix this. That would happen because you have a disparaging view. Even if you disagree with someone, that they cannot say it without you attacking them for that. Why can't we just disagree and be like I don't feel that way? Why do you have to then destroy someone for having something else? It just brings about this thought of fear and it's like that. It's like when someone like yells in the courtroom saying I'm not abusive, and I'm like screaming and yelling at the entire time that they're not abusive, you're like well, that kind of proves it now, doesn't it?

01:44:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I, um, my knee jerk reaction is to defend social media, um, because I think it takes a lot of the heat for other issues in society, but it does provide a channel for these kinds of purveyors of the manosphere.

01:44:38 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yes, and I think also the role that social media plays in this. I don't think can be, shouldn't be understated, because part of the reason obviously throughout history we've always had people uh resurgence and emergence of inflammatory content, specifically targeting vulnerable young men it comes from the fact that the sort of things that do well on social media, be it, you know, youtube or twitter, they are going to be um things that are inflammatory in some ways there's an incentive system.

01:45:25
For a certain kind of content there's an incentive system for content that creates outrage or really moves you in some way. It's the same sort of reason why inflammatory, often misinformed political content did so well on Facebook back in the day. A piece of advice I always even tell, like my parents or like younger family members, is if you see something on the internet be it a video or an article or a tweet that really makes you feel some way be it incredibly angry or incredibly happy, like any super strong emotion you should probably check that, because the real world is never that black and white in one way or another or it often is not, and I think that the incentives of these content ecosystems make problems like this worse when it comes to radicalization of any group.

01:46:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And to add to that, paris, when people are so, when we're in angry or sad or scared, we'll stay on social media, right, we become more narrow-minded and we want to stay in our safe zone, and so often what they've already found, and why Zuckerberg was actually tracking how people reacted, how they felt about different articles by saying, does this make you feel happy or does this make you feel sad was to find out what kind of articles keep you. They're all fighting for that real estate. They want you to be there. That's the only way that they make money is to be able to have you stay, and everyone's fighting for that real estate.

01:46:55
And they found that when you are angry or scared, you will stay longer on whatever media, social media site it is. If you are happy, you will leave and go off and do something because you're feeling good and you have energy and motivation to take a walk, smell the flowers, buy something, call up someone you love, and so you'll leave, and so that even is a greater incentive to incentivize us to have different articles that will fear monger or will be something that is kind of scary or make you really angry, and then you want to fight and you want to deal with things, and then people end up like shouting into the void and hoping that the void will shout back at them Again. I agree, leo, it's a tool that can be used for good or for ill, but it is not a neutral tool because it is used by people that make money from us staying there, and anytime money is involved, then people are going to be incentivized to be able to make as much money as they can off of us, for good or for ill.

01:47:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I recognize that I'm an adult and as an adult, I have better defenses against this stuff and in fact, I've stopped visiting X because it it's become so toxic and unpleasant to go there. Um, I, I got rid of Facebook's on on my phone. I don't have. The only social media I have now is blue sky, which I kind of like because it's not quite so toxic.

01:48:16
I do think we, we all have a desire to connect and I think social media does scratch an itch that is genuine and does give us a chance to connect with people. Think social media does scratch an itch, that it's genuine and does give us a chance to connect with people. Uh, as Paris said, I, I, she knows of you as as Twitter friends. You know that's that's good, I think that's a good thing, but but I am an adult and I recognize that kids don't have the. The defense Dustin says this Manosphere preys on vulnerable boys and young men with arguably not fully developed brains he's in our Discord and poor emotional and social maturity. They're vulnerable and uh, and so that is a reasonable thing to worry about younger minds that are more plastic being exposed to basically con men. Uh, who, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg, just trying to get more engagement so he can show you more ads. Or Andrew Tate, you know, trying to get you into the manosphere.

01:49:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And it's not just young men that are that are vulnerable to it, or young young girls that are vulnerable to it, Also people that are depressed, people that are anxious, people that are lonely.

01:49:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's true. That's a good point. Many adults are vulnerable for other reasons.

01:49:23 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, and a lot of we don't teach being media savvy to anyone. Really, it's not something that's taught.

01:49:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It feels so easy for me to say, oh, I'm just I'm not going to. Oh God, I have to stop doing that.

01:49:34 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You have such a media literacy, you have such a knowledge base. You understand the ways that people advertise to be able to and proselytize to be able to gather people or try to say something like this could kill you, like that will make people click. But you would understand that could means maybe it could not kill you also right, uh.

01:49:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that brings us to this uh, disturbing study, the guardian reporting on a report from uh digital behavior experts called Revealing Reality. I don't know anything about them, but the Guardian says they discovered something quote deeply disturbing a troubling disconnect between Roblox's child-friendly appearance and the reality of what children experience on the platform. A lot of very young kids are on Roblox. Roblox is thought to be a kids gaming platform, right, uh? Roblox acknowledges. The guardian says the children using the platform may be exposed to harmful content and bad actors. It says it's working hard to fix this, but that industry-wide collaboration and government intervention are needed researchers found that they're.

01:50:46 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
So basically, they created a bunch of test avatars and did a variety of tests on this and they found that those test up tars.

01:50:53
They were um avatars that were under 13 or I guess ages 5, 9, 10, 13 and 40 plus, and they found that the kid avatars, overheard conversations between adult users, like verbalizing sexual activity, as well as repeated quote slurping, kissing and grunting noises using the voice chat function for the five-year-old test avatar's Snapchat details using barely coded languages, even though Roblox says that in-game chats are subject to kind of built-in filters and moderation. This is kind of an extension of reporting that has been done by Bloomberg as well as Heisenberg Research, a kind of research and reporting outlet tied to some people in the stock and short-selling game that recently closed, but they had done a really in-depth report along with Bloomberg. Lot of the kind of common sense safety initiatives many parents expect, or that those safety initiatives that are already present don't work as clearly as intended.

01:52:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this is a video from the Guardian showing the 10-year-old avatar going to a hotel where apparently, people are making out, although I have to say it's kind of hard to see it. It's a little blocky, uh, do you think that's dangerous and damaging to kids?

01:52:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
it depends on what's happening. Um, it depends on how often it is. It depends on how vulnerable the child is. Unfortunately, a lot of people that are predatory are going to try that's where the kids are.

01:52:41
You go there, yeah it would be much probably like there's the risk of it being much worse than what this is. Try, that's where the kids are. You go there? Yeah, it would be much probably like there's the risk of it being much worse than what this is, and that's where you have to be able to be cued into. What are your children doing and you know what is it like and how dangerous. Like, if your children are playing a game where it's an online game, you should be involved in that game so you kind of know what the risks are and let them be aware of what they should do and not do and when they should let you know.

01:53:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, you know revealing reality you have that risk the new safety features announced by roblox last week don't go far enough. Children can still chat with strangers not on their friends list and with six million different experiences on the platform, roblox I haven't played it but I understand allows you to create a game or create an experience that others can then see. With six million of those experiences, often with inaccurate descriptions, ratings, how can parents be expected to moderate so this and you wrote a good piece on this, paris. I remember we talked about age verification and what's happening in some states. Age verification and what's happening in some states. Utah, for instance, is now saying it's up to uh, the stores, the app stores, to do age verification. Neither apple nor google want to do this, but meta and others, and I'm sure roblox, say you know we can't do age verification privately, but the stores should do that. It's their responsibility.

01:54:03 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
So kind of what's happening is everybody's trying to figure out a way to punt this away from them or try and figure it out. On the app and individual side, you have companies like Meta or TikTok, somewhat recently, being like all right, we'll try a little bit of age verification, bit of age verification. They, on TikTok's case, they use kind of a company called Yoti that uses facial age verification where essentially you take a video selfie and it tries to predict whether or not you're over kind of a target age range, and if it thinks that you're potentially younger than 18, you're younger than 25 or whatever the thing is, then it might require you to insert an ID or add a credit card or do some sort of secondary age verification to confirm that you're an adult. Facebook and Meta also use something similar for limited things.

01:54:53
However, these tech companies don't really want to be on the hook for this, for all the reasons you might understand, and so instead they are really heavily lobbying um, also through, I guess, uh, trade groups kind of like net choice for it the onus to be on the app stores or the device manufacturers. So they're saying instead of you know, uh, facebook and instagram and tiktok and youtube and everybody having to do their own age verification and either deal with kind of storing that information themselves or handing it off to a third party, like instead this should be the responsibility of apple or google to figure out in their devices or apple play store, where you do one age verification there and then that uh device has maybe a code that it can anonymously send to say confirmed this person's over 18 or under. So it's kind of everyone is trying to figure out who the buck should stop with and no one really wants it to be them.

01:55:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There is a way to do this. Steve Gibson and I were talking about this on security. Now Steve came up with a solution that would put control in the hands of parents that the phones, apple and I'm curious what you all think about this Apple, or the Google Play Store or the Google devices or the Samsung devices should have a setting that when you give your kid a phone, you say what the kid's age is as a parent. Not necessarily even their chronological age. It could be their emotional age, it could be you as a parent say I have the mentality of a nine-year-old, but you put that in that's in the phone, and then it would be possible for any app to say, well, what age is this user and be responsible for it. But it's not Apple now that's responsible for saying the age, it's the parent. Apple provides a mechanism for this to be presented privately and safely to these apps. You know the user of this phone is nine.

01:56:51 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Part of what a company like Apple would argue is that then they are responsible for making sure that system works, and they'll be responsible for cases where people get around that or it's deployed inaccurately. For cases where people get around that or it's deployed inaccurately, and I think the issue is that every company is kind of inching around how to do this, but no one wants to be the company that ends up responsible for this because they worry I assume perhaps rightfully so that two to five years down the line, we're going to be having a lot of tough conversations any other solution.

01:57:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That is not privacy protecting, because if I have to show a driver's license, that's that's, that's right out right. That's not going to be privacy protecting. And there and you, you've done a story on a company that does it kind of by face recognition. I'm seeing more and more companies saying, yeah, we could tell your age roughly by face recognition. I still think that's not the way to do it. I think it needs to. The power needs to be put in the hands of the parents. The parents should be the ones, ultimately, who say the user of this phone is, emotionally a nine-year-old and I want her to be protected but then the question is how do you get a phone set up to where?

01:58:01 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
what's the difference between me, an adult, buying an iphone for myself, and being able to switch. It says I'm an adult well, I mean, how do you know then? How are you supposed to have it set up to where? What's the difference between my adult phone and a phone that someone buys for a child?

01:58:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
why couldn't someone hand a phone to a child and they'd be like, yeah, I'm an adult what about an abusive spouse buying their phone and locking the phone, saying that they're a child so they can control their partner? Like it becomes. Kind of messy is just what I think it's.

01:58:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's less messy than any other possible. I agree there's it's not perfect, but there's no perfect way to do this, and what we're doing right now is the least perfect, which is not making any attempt in any way to provide this. Parental controls, though, have a long established tradition. You can't force a parent to use parental controls. That's the. That's the parent's choice. They're the parent. They should have the choice. But giving them the option to do that and to set in the parental controls and age for that for their child, whether it's chronological or emotional or whatever they choose, and with some guidance, you know a screen on the phone that says is this a child's phone? Yes, to protect your child, we'd like you to set an age for that child so we can show them, you know, allow them to download appropriate and block them from downloading inappropriate apps and and content. I think that's doable. It puts it on the parent, which is where it should be. It should. There is no other place to put this. You can't put it on the government. You can't put it on apple.

01:59:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's not their responsibility, it's the parents I wouldn't really want them to take care of it.

01:59:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, well then, I guess the question is you want parental controls, right, that's a good thing.

01:59:44 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
How do you determine that the person who's buying and setting up the parental controls is over 18, you would have to then do some sort of age verification for that end user, which would probably I mean the way that no, you can't do that, you can't then how do you, how do you make any of this work? How do you make any of this work?

02:00:03
How do you have it so that like you know, a teenager, a 15-year-old, goes and buys an iPhone or like and then says, yeah, I'm over 18. Or they decide to be the parent account. This is something people did with parental controls on Instagram for a while, where you have like a bunch of 18-year-olds being like, yeah, I'm the parent of these 27, 13 year olds. Well, you can't stop that.

02:00:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, you can't stop that, you can't period. Anything that is gonna be more draconian is gonna be a privacy problem. All you can do is give parents control, say, parents, you're in charge. If your kid has a phone, it's up to you to make sure it's appropriately uh designated. And and some parents will say, no, no, my, my 12 year old should be able to do whatever she wants. And that's who else is to say that? The government. Do you want government controls on what what 12 year olds can consume? I don't think so. In uh in the english debate, uh, one of one of the ministers said boys these days are hooked on gambling, pornography and gaming well, that sounds like panic button, moral panic button yeah, let's go right back to block.

02:01:17
You know, blocking gaming, just parental control, seemed like the only decent way to do this, but I won't argue okay, I will say, apropos of absolutely nothing, young adult men are addicted to sports gambling and sports betting.

02:01:30 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Is that? And it's crazy? I mean every. I have a younger sister in her early 20s and every boy she has ever dated has like a sports gambling addiction this is all the boys love just casually sports gambling like it's fine, it makes money, I'm like I was very well you're gambling every day that's crazy.

02:01:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the same thing with crypto, by the way. A lot of young men think they're making money doing a day trading on crypto. Um, I honestly think I was very upset when they legalized sports gambling. They haven't done it yet in california, but they've done it pretty much everywhere else. I think that's watch a sports broadcast. You can't listen to sports podcasts there are odds everywhere yeah, it's really I have something I don't.

02:02:11 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
I've never gambled, maybe I have I don't. We're lucky we don't have that addiction. No, no, thank god.

02:02:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank god, a lot of people do, but it's like if I, it is everywhere, it's pervasive, it is really like and the thing that really scares me is the prop bet, because you can bet on anything right, and a real gambling addict will bet on anything. Is the sun coming up on the morning?

02:02:30 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Let's have a and that's the thing is these young men, always whenever I'm like you know you're gambling, right? Well, it's totally fine, because actually I've got bets on both sides of the table, so, no matter what, I'm going to win in some way and I'm like listen, you need to go outside and touch grass.

02:02:46 - Benito (Announcement)
Sports gambling actually is running all of the sports now.

02:02:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like they fund pretty much everything, the NFL takes a cut which is why there's a real hypocrisy when these sporting organizations censor a player for gambling, it's like OK, come on, you shouldn't be in the game.

02:03:03
if you're gambling on it right like you, shouldn't probably be the one like I guess, okay, but it's fine to be broadcast in the game but as the owner of the team, I can gamble all I want that's also wrong, yeah no and it's, but it's like that kid. Well, I have it on both sides. See, I get a profit on, no matter what happens yeah, I'm unbiased and it wasn't there't.

02:03:24 - Benito (Announcement)
There was a pro ball player who, like, got banned from the league for betting on his own team, right yeah.

02:03:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Pete Rose. Yeah, pete Rose exactly Never allowed. Pete Rose was never allowed into the Hall of.

02:03:34 - Benito (Announcement)
Fame. I'm sure that just happens all the time now.

02:03:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's still illegal technically.

02:03:39 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I think you know.

02:03:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You saw the. You know. You saw the um, you saw the the. Well, let's take a break. And then I'm going to tell you about how the texas lottery got taken down and they invited it. Basically, uh, you're watching this week in tech, georgia dow, who is helping us with our deeply rooted personal problems. Thank you, georgia. I'll find an addiction somewhere to share with you. So nice to see you. Youtubecom georgia dao. Always a pleasure and I'm so pleased that you and renee are in regular contact. Please give them my love. I miss renee and I can't wait to see your new show.

02:04:17
Impact, impact, all about business, uh voice say I do it yeah, I could ask, I could ask my voice ai to voice a little something for you also. Uh, nicholas de leon from consumer reports, where he is senior electronics reporter, and, of course, paris martineau. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, that wasn't benito saying leo, okay oh, thank you leo oh, thank you, oh you, oh, you're welcome. Thank you, yes, and Paris Martineau, who has enjoyed her. Did you have a mimosa or any kind of Easter?

02:04:53 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
brunch I had a Diet Coke. I had a lot of dumplings.

02:04:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dumplings Nothing like Diet Coke and dumplings, that's a meal.

02:05:03 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It was a delightful spread it was. We had a big group together so we got to sit on the tables. The big spinny like lazy susan in the middle, oh I love that?

02:05:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, I love that.

02:05:12 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
So this is your whole ski ball team it was the whole ski ball team and friends what's the name of your ski ball team? They have the best, the bourgeois ski is the name of the team and during the fall skis and we will rise again the fall skis and is coming soon.

02:05:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Our show today brought to you by. I love it. Our show today brought to you by oracle. There is a growing expense eating into your company's profits it's your cloud computing bill. Now you may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high and increasing every year. What if you could cut your cloud bill in half and improve performance at the same time? Well, if you act by May 31, oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help you do just that. Oci is the next generation cloud designed for every workload, where you can run any application, including any AI projects, faster and more securely for less. In fact, oracle has a special promotion where you can cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. The savings are real. On average, oci costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage and costs 50 less for compute, 70 less for storage and 80 less for networking. Join, modal, skydance, zoom and today's innovative ai tech companies who upgraded to oci and saved. Offer only for new us customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half off at oraclecom slash twit. That's oraclecom slash twit. We thank them so much for supporting this week in tech. You support us when you go to that address. That way they know. You saw it here oraclecom slash twit.

02:07:01
So I was. I've always been told, and I had, on the radio show, used to have a statistician, a lottery expert. I've always been told. You know, there's always been this thought what if you bought all the numbers in a lottery guaranteeing you a winning ticket? Why wouldn't that make you money, especially if the lottery is one of those that turns over and the pot gets bigger and bigger. In fact, the Texas lottery got to $95 million, even though there are only 25.8 million potential combinations. That simple math would tell you. Hmm, if I buy 25.8 million one dollar tickets, but I'm guaranteed a jackpot of 95 million, I'm gonna make 60 million dollars in the spring of 2023.

02:07:53
A london banker turned bookmaker reached out to a few contacts with an audacious request can you help me take down the te lottery? They set up a shop this is from the Wall Street Journal in a defunct dentist's office, a warehouse, two other spots in Texas, and then and this is the key they bought official Texas lottery ticket printing terminals. Dozens of them, dozens of them. Over three days they got those machines spitting out 100 tickets every second to buy every single number. Now remember, in order to do this, you have to have $28.5 million. This guy nicknamed the Joker apparently had the money.

02:08:42 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Of course Nicknamed the Joker. The Joker, here he is. You can't be a normal, you can't have a normal nickname if you're setting up lotto ticket machines in abandoned dentist's offices zelko ranonjicek nicknamed the joker yeah, that's why it's a nickname.

02:09:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apparently they've done this before that. That's where they got the stake. They bet an estimated $10 billion annually and I guess they're making money on it.

02:09:15 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
And is it legal? Is the Texas lottery cool with this?

02:09:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well state Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick called the win the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas, but their lawyer says all applicable laws, rules and regulations were followed. So the only issue here would be if one or two other people buy in and you have to share your winning ticket with any other winning tickets. So the theory has always been you couldn't possibly win because more people would buy and then you would divide your winnings and you wouldn't win in the long run.

02:10:04 - Benito (Announcement)
It's just still a gamble. It's not a sure thing.

02:10:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So in Texas, as in many states this is the Wall Street Journal again most people play the lottery, go to a store, buy a ticket, then walk away. But in 2023, texas allowed online lottery ticket vendors to set up shops to print tickets for their customers Online lottery ticket winners. So the Joker recruited one such seller, lotterycom, to help with logistics of buying and printing the millions of tickets. They get a 5% commission. To help with logistics of buying and printing the millions of tickets, they get a 5% commission. Texas Lottery Commission allowed dozens of terminals to be delivered to these four locations. They waited until the pot was big enough. But, yeah, I wonder how they got around this. They didn't buy things like 1, 2, 3, 4, four, five, six, because so many other players would choose them.

02:11:06 - Benito (Announcement)
they only bought 99.3 of the numbers that seems like a risk yeah, so it's even more of a gamble, yeah wouldn't you just buy the rally?

02:11:17 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
seems like he's apparently a prolific gambler. I guess, who's known for his horse betting, blackjack and other forms of gambling $10 billion a year he bets.

02:11:32 - Benito (Announcement)
It's really just like high stakes, really high stakes gambling is what this is.

02:11:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He was the only winner.

02:11:40 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well, not by a lot of stakes compared to regular gambling, because if you own at least 99.3, it's better odds than for most gamblers yeah, but you're buying is 25 million yeah, that's the problem.

02:11:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have to have some money to start I'm not part of this game yeah, um, it's the biggest jackpot since 2010. They bought the only winning ticket. They had the only winning ticket 3, 5, 18, 29, 30 and 52. Now, once they heard the numbers, they had to go through all of the boxes they had to have to find the physical winning uh, they found it. That's their fault yeah, no, they have to file it carefully, right?

02:12:21 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
they didn't right't right. They should have boxed those properly.

02:12:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Lotterycom made $264,000 in sales commission. The Houston Chronicle broke the story, but I don't know if there's anything they can do about it and in fact it may happen again. The lottery is now up to $60 million. It may happen again. The lottery is now up to $60 million. The Texas Lottery Commission, however, has pushed out a software update that limits the number of tickets a terminal can sell in a day.

02:12:56 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They just need more terminals.

02:12:58 - Benito (Announcement)
Does it say how much they made at the end of the day?

02:13:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, they made $60 million.

02:13:04 - Benito (Announcement)
No, because some of that gets taxed. And then there was a capital investment and all the stuff they had to do to set it up.

02:13:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, it was their last take at the end yeah, new york times said the texas, texas officials and basically invited this um I was going to say.

02:13:19 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
This guy has run a number of gambling syndicates that have uh had to either shut down or been subject to tax audit controversies in various countries due to uh questionable legality as to a similar situation to this, where it's like legal, but then the investigators were like no, it's not maybe, um, so this seems fairly par for the course for him here is a woman who publishes a website on the texas lottery and I think you could look at her face and see how she is not happy about this that is a level of helmet hair I didn't think was possible outside of the white house she looks pretty upset.

02:14:05 - Benito (Announcement)
I would say this is really just like exploiting a game though right, this is done, you know to win, yeah, it's usually just the government that wins yeah yeah they asked the state for permission he sometimes registers instead of going under zek love ranojevic.

02:14:26 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
He sometimes registered under his wife's surname, registering as john wilson for gambling endeavors which I suppose uh, would confuse people certainly if I had a nickname the joker, I would stick with that.

02:14:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, just call me the Joker. I played this, uh, these uh crosswalks on, uh, on um uh, in, in. You don't mind if.

02:14:52
I don't mind if I, if I, uh, if I play them again, do you? Never speaking of speaking of hacking. This is uh, this is another kind of hacking. These, the the crosswalks in palo alto, california. You know how they have for uh, for uh, blind people. They have, uh, they speech on the, on the crossroads where they talk, right um, somebody hacked the palo alto crosswalks yeah, I know I'm hi this is elon musk.

02:15:20 - AI Zuck (Caller)
Welcome to palo alto, the home of tesla engineering. You know, they say money can't buy happiness. And yeah, okay, I guess that's true. God knows I've tried. But it can buy a cyber truck, and that's pretty sick, right, right, fuck.

02:15:38 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I'm so alone um that was one right out in the wild yeah, this was last weekend.

02:15:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, city employee was the first to report the issue. University avenue and high street. Downtown palo alto is a very high tech capital. I mean, it's really, it's the place.

02:16:01 - Benito (Announcement)
Uh, it's hysterical did you read the follow-up on how they did this? No, how did they?

02:16:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do all the codes.

02:16:07 - Benito (Announcement)
All the pin numbers were one, two, three, four. To access that stuff.

02:16:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh my god, no way. That's almost as bad. The passcode is passcode, password is password, that's great, because nobody, nobody thought anybody would hack.

02:16:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nobody expected anybody would hack the, the crosswalk messages. I just thought why would anybody do that? The other one was, uh, mark zuckerberg the mark zuckerberg, one is good, yeah, and and, by the way, these are imitations.

02:16:36 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
They're obviously not the mark zuckerberg no, elon musk is inside there, they just made him really small.

02:16:40 - AI Zuck (Caller)
Yeah right, they made him really small hi, this is mark zuckerberg, but real ones. Call me the Zuck. You know it's normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience, and I just want to assure you you don't need to worry, because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

02:17:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not creepy at all I just think that's a great art project, um, or a hacker project or something on a similar note uh, there's an article about um, it's 89 in the rundown.

02:17:19 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Uh, china had the world's first robot marathon.

02:17:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you see the videos of that? Yeah, half marathon right.

02:17:28 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I'll read the lead from Bloomberg. Some of China's best humanoid robots took on the challenge of racing against human marathon runners on Saturday. One fell at the starting line, another's head fell off and rolled in the ground, and one collapsed and broke into pieces. Oh no, there were ones that uh started smoking. Another one could only run one mile an hour and had to be uh tagged out.

02:17:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was, however one went all the way five foot ten tiangong ultra made it for the half marathon. Which is what? 13 miles right in, uh, two hours and 40 minutes far belong the hour-long performance of a human okay, yeah, but it's a robot.

02:18:12 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Okay, during that two hour, during that basically three hours, the robot ran. It had a team of people running behind it to switch out its uh battery. It also had a guy running directly in front of it doing the moves that they wanted the robot to do, so that the robot wouldn't have to think about how to run. It could just mimic the guy. It was copying the guy. Yeah, there was a guy. There was a guy to follow. You should get the metal, that's.

02:18:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that guy came through first this is a little giant developed by local college students. It only got 75 centimeters. Oh no, I'm sorry, it was only 75 centimeters high. It goes around 1.4 miles an hour, um point. It paused briefly after smoke spewed out of his head.

02:19:00 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I would pay to watch that it took one fall and three batteries for tian gong to score the win with the jersey sporting machine leading the robot contestants through the race that's the human instructor wearing a signaling device on his lower back ran ahead of the of the bot for it to mimic its moves. Most of the other androids were controlled by joysticks with human operators running alongside of them.

02:19:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Some had leashes yes, I saw some of them had leashes, I wasn't sure why. Like are they gonna? They're afraid they're gonna run off they're worried.

02:19:34 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
They're going into traffic like a parent.

02:19:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They don't want to fall down and like it's a million dollars of, like you know, repairs this needs to be a reality show there was one that was a gundam.

02:19:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There was a gundam that really the thing is lost control and crashed into the barricade separating the human and robot laughs now, but I I want to remind you, 15 years ago, during the darpa grand challenge for self-driving vehicles, it was rare for a vehicle to get more than 10 feet down the road before hurtling off the road, I mean, and we thought it was funny, we laughed, yeah, uh, you know, this is the first step these.

02:20:15 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I mean, it's the first couple steps until they start smoking and fall over. But just in case you're worried that, uh, robot competition is too masculine, they had exactly one female looking robot, juan Han, who was equipped with a mannequin-esque head and stormtrooper style armor. She collapsed shortly after the start, scattering body armor on the track. It did not continue the race, so women can't, but I guess they can try, at least in robot form jammer b is suggesting the show title.

02:20:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We had some good ones so far. Be some had leashes. Uh, are you ready for a social now? You know, now that we've decided social networks are destroying society, are you ready for one from OpenAI?

02:21:06 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Is it just going to be the bots talking to each other?

02:21:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like who's going to be posting? Openai is working with its own X-like social network, working on its own X-like social network. It's interesting. The Verge is now finally calling it X, not Twitter. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the project is still in early stages. The Verge is now finally calling it X, not Twitter. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the project is still in early stages. The Verge got this scoop. We're told there's an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT's image generation that has a social feed. Yeah, wait a minute, what? Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about this project. That's, I think, think, where they got the leak. It's unclear if openai's plans to release the social network as a separate app or integrated into chat GPT. We certainly spend many, many hours chatting with chat GPT, don't we?

02:21:59 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
some of us do. Yeah, you know.

02:22:02 - AI Zuck (Caller)
This just seems like a place for them to collect more data.

02:22:04 - Benito (Announcement)
Right, that's what this is. They just want more data, yeah, and more usage time, you know.

02:22:14 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I mean, I think social networks are particularly sticky. We've yet to see the stickiness of one-on-one chatbot things. I guess over the same time period that we've been able to observe the stickiness of social networks, I could totally see why a company would want to combine the two.

02:22:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you had. You did see the. Did I mention that on this show or that I did mention it? It costs money for for you to say thank you to open AI.

02:22:42 - Benito (Announcement)
I assumed that it would also like the part of the training would be the relationships between all of its users. Right Like that's now it knows, like the relationship.

02:22:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, yeah, you want to build a social graph. I mean, that's what made Facebook so successful, right? This knowledge about how we're all interconnected?

02:22:57 - Benito (Announcement)
And that becomes part of the training data now.

02:22:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense actually um palantir.

02:23:08
So I started reading alex carp's new book, the technological republic. I wanted to give it a chance. He's the founder of palantir, along with peter teal. Palantir is an ai company designed to make money by uh charging the government for National Defense projects, and they've made a lot of money. They made Alex carpet billionaire.

02:23:31
His book kind of makes the argument that Silicon Valley should be working for National Defense instead of just designing you know a better way to show ads or you know silly social networks or gadgets. And I have to say I can't disagree that there's a lot of brain power being used on pretty trivial stuff these days in Silicon Valley. He says if people, engineers in the last century, the 20th century, worked with government to create things like NASA and the atom bomb and the internet and we're losing out because we're not doing that anymore. But then in the book he makes a pitch that's why you should come to work for us volunteer. He invokes he's actually obviously an intellectual. He invokes, uh, everything from the philosopher habermas, with whom he studied as a graduate student, uh, to Keith Johnstone, who wrote a famous book about improvisation. He thinks companies should be run like improv troops.

02:24:33 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Well, four, oh four, has has he ever witnessed an improv troupe? There's more drama in the average improv troupe than every company in Silicon Valley combined. They're all dating each other and in a constant free fall of social relationships says you don't want hierarchy.

02:24:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you want to create something great, the the leader has to shift, has he?

02:24:53 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
ever taken an improv class, a classic early. You draw cards to then determine what the hierarchy of the scene is, because having hierarchy is part of comedy.

02:25:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right an improv one-on-one class but it's, but it's, but it's fungible, right, because the the hierarchy is always changing and sometimes you're the leader, sometimes I'm the leader. It's kind of like intelligent machines really, to be honest. Perhaps, uh, it's. 404 has leaked Palantir's plan to help ICE deport people. So Palantir in the book he says, among other things we've done at Palantir and it was hard the brass and the Pentagon really didn't want us to do it. They didn't have ways that you could procure AI from us, so the troops just went behind their back and used our AI to find IEDs. Because that was a big problem in Afghanistan. A lot of lives were lost. People were severely injured by these improvised explosive devices. So we turned our AI genius into ways to predict where there would be an IED and save many lives. He claims Now Palantir wants to help ICE deport people, finding the physical location of people who are marked for deportation.

02:26:19
According to Palantir slacks and other internal messages obtained by 404 media, 404 is doing, uh, great work. Uh, these days, joseph Cox writing the story. The leak shows that Palantir's work with ice includes producing leads for law enforcement to find people to deport oh, what could possibly go wrong and keeping track of the logistics of the mass deportation effort track of the logistics of the mass deportation effort um. The internal communications also show palantir's leadership preparing for a potential backlash from employers employees, I'm sorry or outsiders. So they wrote faqs that can be sent to family and friends. If they ask you about our work with ice, here's what you should tell them hey all this ends.

02:27:05 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I've seen lord of the rings yeah, palantir, that's.

02:27:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the seeing stone right that saruman was using, right yeah over the last few weeks, we prototyped a new set of data integrations and workflow within ice. The new administration's focus on leveraging data to drive enforcement operations has accelerated these efforts absolutely meaningless yeah I don't know.

02:27:30
Well, I hope it's meaning, I hope it's useless and meaningless. But my, of course, the greater fear is that is false positives that ai often generates with face recognition and other tools, and there was a story this week about clearview ai and that was started really with the intent of of doing that. The show. This is a story from mother jones the shark, shocking far-right agenda behind the facial recognition uh tech used by ice and the FBI. Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI's founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. That was their goal. They got in a little bit of trouble because they were scraping all the face images from the internet they could find. They also got in trouble because Clearview AI had a particular trouble uh with people of color, didn't do a very good job and there were a lot of false positives. Turns out they didn't really care about that. What could?

02:28:37
go wrong what could go wrong. So there, there you have it a couple of uses for ai that are perhaps not the best.

02:28:47 - Benito (Announcement)
I think it's fascinating how the guy from Palantir is like. He's trying to say that this technology is about like it's like the internet. Right, like it's the internet.

02:28:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's good.

02:28:57 - Benito (Announcement)
for us, it's as important as the internet.

02:28:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it's very believable at first. Maybe it's part like the manosphere. He starts out by saying look, we've got to defend our way of life, we've got to defend this country, and I'm not against that, I think it's true there. There, there are adversaries that we don't want to uh attack us or invade us, so it's not unreasonable to have a strong national defense. And he says that's all we're doing. We just need to, you know, devote our, our intelligence.

02:29:25 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
We just need to let the computers that have no responsibility or oversight decide who gets sent to uh prisons in foreign lands.

02:29:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I confess it has a lot it is is a little more scary when you see this now being done without due process, without trials, uh, just based on whatever the AI says. Yeah, he, yeah, he's in the gang. Uh, he's got a tulip on his lapel or whatever. And and that's getting a little scary the willingness of our government to bypass constitutional protections and send people to what is essentially a torture cell, a torture prison in el salvador um makes this much more scary. Technology it just gives them um deniability.

02:30:18 - Benito (Announcement)
Yeah, the ai told us to do it yeah, it's computer says no, that's what that is computer says, no, yeah, new jersey is suing discord.

02:30:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, let me take a break and then we'll get to that. Uh. So over what? You'll have to continue listening to find out. Stay tuned. Why would new jersey be suing discord, I wonder.

02:30:40
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02:33:26
All right, last few stories before we wrap this thing up on our easter sunday episode. So good to have georgia dow and paris martineau and nicholas de leon here. Thank you guys for giving up the. Uh, did you do, did you when the kids were little? Uh, georgia, and you're the only one with kids here, so I can say georgia, did you do the easter egg hunt thing is that was that? Yeah, you don't do that anymore. Egg hunt thing Is that was that?

02:33:45 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, you don't do that anymore, though so much fun.

02:33:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, frank's outgrown that right.

02:33:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, like you know, it's just different now. Now he just searches around the house for where I've like hidden all of my Cadbury cream eggs.

02:33:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, where are those chocolate bunnies?

02:33:57 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, lisa gave our 22 year old son a chocolate bunny that's about this big, it's huge.

02:34:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you just get more expensive chocolate now. It's the giantest bunny I ever saw. Do you eat the ears off or the tail off first?

02:34:13 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
this is very important it's the story of the two bunnies that are staring at each other and one of them has its ears bitten off and the other one has its butt bitten, and one of them goes my butt hurts and the other one goes huh that's good, I like it.

02:34:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And you say paris, you say the ears.

02:34:35 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yeah, you unwrap the ears, those are the most, the most obvious place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good mouth feel and you can't. You can't have any of that hollow chocolate bunny stuff.

02:34:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's got to be a solid chocolate bunny well, if it's a foot tall or foot and a half tall, you don't want a solid one.

02:34:50 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
There'd be a lot of chocolate well, listen, I mean, that's a challenge. If you don't want that much, if you don't want that much chocolate, then you're a coward, did you?

02:34:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
ever do this? Georgia, we used to do this. It was so fun. Lisa would I would help her with is that? Cut out a bunny paw print that's about this big, you know, like eight inch bunny paw print and cardboard, and then we'd sprinkle powdered sugar over it all the way down through the yard, out the back door, through the yard, over the fence. Do you ever do?

02:35:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
that that's so cute. I've done that with sparkles for the tooth fairy. It didn't end well it ended up just having sparkles all over the place, and that was the end of that.

02:35:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why powdered sugar is a good choice.

02:35:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Except I remember the trauma of having sparkles all over the place.

02:35:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When he was really little. He believed it. He was like it was so cute. These two bunnies have been here. Little powdered sugar footprints.

02:35:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Love it. That's so cute, these two bunnies been here little powdered sugar footprints.

02:35:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Love it, so love it until the ants show up. Yeah, well, maybe I'm blurry, I don't know you've gone out of focus, that's all right. You're fading away.

02:35:56 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
The camera's getting tired.

02:35:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's been three hours it has been a long no it. Oh, you're right, it has. Let's wrap this up, new. I have to finish this story. New jersey sues discord for failing to protect children. Not the children, not the children. New jersey attorney general says, uh, that discord's features to keep children under 13 safe are inadequate. See, this is why, again, I'm going to come back to that great solution, which is let the platform do it. A few years ago, uh, so the attorney general of new jersey, uh, who is named platkin, uh, matthew platkin says there were, a few years ago, a family friend came to him astonished that his 10 year old astonished. I tell you that his 10 year old was able to sign up for discord. I am astonished. The other one's a little more serious the mass shooting in, uh in buffalo, new york, where the shooter used discord as his personal diary in the lead-up to the attack and then live streamed it on discord. Don't do that. That's terrible, uh. But is this discord's fault? The ag says it is.

02:37:14 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Um well, I mean, I suppose if you're specifically looking at discord, having um users under the age of 13 and not applying the kind of provisions established during copa under copa on them, that is certainly a problem but what can you do besides saying are you 13?

02:37:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
and then?

02:37:32 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
this is the open secret of the entire internet is that all the websites. All they do is say you, by entering this and clicking this box, you attest that you're over 13. Pinky promise. We have to believe you swear and, yeah, increasingly regulators, uh, from attorney generals to people in congress, to regulatory agencies, are saying that's not good enough and it we still haven't figured out what is the alternative I think that it goes to who who really should be watching over what your children are doing.

02:38:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And who should it be? Georgia, the Attorney General of New York.

02:38:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Probably not, Like there's just too many kids out there for them to be able to police. Maybe the parents and they're just smart enough, let's just say it, they'll find ways to be able to skirt any of the rules.

02:38:22 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
So I mean you have to, sorry, continue skirt any of the rules.

02:38:28 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
So I mean that's part, sorry, continue, yeah, you. So you, you have to be able to watch over them, to be able to know what they're doing and to have to take.

02:38:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the problem kids are always going to go off and do things right yeah, for sure.

02:38:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Of course that's their job. Their job is to try to make as much trouble as possible and our job is to try to keep them under wraps. But the thing is is that if we're if minimum wage is so is able to cover so little and you have to work two jobs, then how do you watch over your kids too? So, like it's, the blame can be kind of given to many different sets of things. It's so much easier to just say parents should do a better job, but when they are working so hard to try to put food on the table and not starve to death and die, you know, if you, if you're working two jobs, you can't be there with your child.

02:39:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I understand, but do give them the tools. Start by giving them the tools right.

02:39:08 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
And I mean I think what George has said is a really important point Like I've had a lot of conversations with parents of like immense privilege, like a woman who incredibly incredible financial resources she has three children.

02:39:22
At the time she was taking time off work to kind of be a full-time parent, while also maybe dabbling in some nonprofit stuff on the side, and she was like even for me, a parent with immense resources, I am struggling to do this.

02:39:37
She's like I've got all the things downloaded on all of my kids' phones.

02:39:38
I have specific phones that will block them from stuff and software set up in the back that if they access any of this content that I've considered, like you know, yellow flag or red flag content, then it'll notify me and I can, you know, approve or disprove it. And she's like, even with that, I get like 500 notifications a day and she's like I don't have time to go through that every single day, at every single moment, at every single moment. She's like how would any person with a normal amount of responsibility, much less a high amount of responsibility, maybe a single mother or a single father how are they supposed to do any of this successfully if these companies aren't providing the tools necessary for parents to kind of take control of their kids' experience, and we've only recently had that in the last year or two, that companies like meta and tiktok are rolling out more robust parental controls, and it is, I feel like, too soon to say is whether or not those are enough yeah and they don't want to have any parental controls because they they.

02:40:41 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
We already know that if you do not start something that's addictive before the age of 18, the odds of you going to. It are very little. They do want you, so they want to try to grab kids as early as possible. So they will do the most lax things as possible so that they can grab as many kids as they can early, get them latched on.

02:41:00 - Benito (Announcement)
Kids also have the most time to just chill on Facebook.

02:41:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That is true. Yeah, is it anything like sneaking into an r-rated movie?

02:41:10 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
yeah, of course, yes, but it's different sneaking into an r-rated movie.

02:41:15 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
It's different in the sense that sneaking into an r-rated movie in the way that you're describing it, back in the day that was a discrete event. You sneak into the movie and you see one movie. Maybe, if you're crazy, you're going to be with your friends and maybe sneak into a second movie. Oh, a temporal limit and like a physical space limit. At a certain point your parents will be like where is my child?

02:41:48
they're not a good point, but if you have a few if this kid has a phone and is able to access all of this content all of the time 24 7. That's a bit. It ramps up. And if that is not one app, not two, but three or five or ten, plus anything they can get on the internet as well, that just makes it more complicated. I mean, I don't think that it should be some sort of nanny state that is policing every action that kids do. But I do think that parents by and large are kind of calling out for help because they find it incredibly difficult to parent effectively, given the tools that they have currently.

02:42:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, they don't have to give the kid a phone or a computer, I mean for most parents.

02:42:29 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I I don't know the age of your kids, georgia, but the parents that I hear nowadays of like people, even of elementary or middle school parents, they'll be like every child in my kids. Middle school class has a phone and they are bullying the child incessantly for not having one or I'm being left out of practice.

02:42:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I'm being left out of homework assignments. It's a social contagion. I didn't want to give my children a computer or tablet and in their elementary school it was obligatory they had to have.

02:42:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, that's not unusual.

02:42:59 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Because of that it forced my hand that I had absolutely no say in the matter of them having access to that before. I wanted them to be able to have access to it. And then, if we add to the state that your brain is wiring whatever you're doing at any moment in time, your brain is wiring itself to get better at that. And so if we're having something that you're getting this immediate feedback from, whatever it might be, any type of dopamine were wiring their brains to become more easily addictive and having shorter and shorter attention spans, and that effect is pretty hardwired because neurons that fire together wire together.

02:43:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I don't want to leave the show on a negative note, so let me leave it on a high note.

02:43:40 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Sorry, that was a positive. Was I meaning it negative? No, sorry.

02:43:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just want to know if paris has a little like you know, it's not like a pen jar, it's like a fork jar with a bunch of forks in it, just by your. So whenever you need a fork, you got one just in case, just in case, you need a little fork holder on your desk.

02:43:58 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
You know, sometimes during the ad break you go and you get a little plate of uh crackers and sometimes I do that a fish friday sometimes a stray, an errant hand gesture, flings the fork across your keyboard. These things happen. You gotta continue on.

02:44:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the good news scientists have found promising indications of extraterrestrial light, and it's only 124 light years away this is good news. This stresses me out don't worry depends your thoughts on aliens it's just dimethyl sulfide, a potential biosignature of marine microorganisms. This got a lot of attention. This got almost as much attention as the dire wolf story from last week and was almost equally bogus.

02:44:44 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
They did not makes me think of that planet in interstellar with the big waves oh, I love that, and and one planet is like seven years in the real years.

02:44:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, stressful yeah, poor Matthew McConaughey got stuck down there and then he has to watch the video of his kids growing up and he cries, and he cries and then I cry and then I cry imax continues and yeah, you know, uh the good news is this is with the help of the james webb space telescope.

02:45:13
That's very cool biosignatures of marine microorganisms. Unfortunately, this dimethyl sulfide can also occur because of other chemical processes. It's not necessarily life, but it could be, and it's kind of a cool planet. It is a watery planet. Its year is only 33 days long. It is in the Goldilocks zone, days long. Uh, it is in the goldilocks zone. Uh, it's what they call a hyacinth planet, a class of worlds characterized by having vast liquid oceans and a hydrogen rich atmosphere. I mean, really, if you're gonna, if you're gonna be a marine microorganism, that's the place to be are they water oceans?

02:46:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
are they something else?

02:46:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, they think they're water oceans. It's 1901 over there to them yeah 1901 here yeah, it's ancient, ancient times, 124 light years away. They're watching us going. Gee, I wonder if they'll ever figure out how to fly. Anyway, I you know, I think it's maybe possible. I wasn't even going to do this story, but lisa was so excited about it I said all right, we'll do this story. She likes the idea that there's extraterrestrial life out there.

02:46:38 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I think that's really cool yeah paris martineau, the information?

02:46:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
nope, sorry, that's a force of habit. Tech journalist currently, uh, in the mood for a new job.

02:46:52 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
If you've got one right, yep, fire away, we're talking we're talking we're talking around if you're a person that works in tech and you've got an interesting story, uh to report, hit me up. Wouldn't that be the way to do it?

02:47:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
have like the hottest story in the world I've got.

02:47:09
You can reach out to me at tips at parisnyc yeah, don't use your work, email don't give her give her a scoop, uh or martino.01 on the signal and I will see you next this wednesday for intelligence yeah thank you, paris, it's great to see you. Always a pleasure, great, uh. Nicholas de leon. He is the senior electronics reporter, consumer reports. Always great to see you. Please give my regards to your wonderful ashley yes, thank you leo hey, uh, you guys are so much fun. We had a great time down there in Tucson. Anything you want to plug you going to do anything out there in the world.

02:47:51 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Just go to the Consumer Reports website. That's fine, Like I said. I mean, I'm still on X, but I feel like these things are less fun than they used to be.

02:47:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They are not fun anymore, not for me.

02:48:01 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
So just go to the CR website, subscribe and read. Uh, you know, read our stuff.

02:48:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's about it. There you go. I've been a member since like 1980, very happy to say love. It wouldn't buy a thing without the recommendation of consumer reports, and that's actually I don't me too.

02:48:20 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
Like it's funny, like as I've gotten older, I'm like man, uh I'm. I'm literally about to start the process for, like, buying a new refrigerator yeah, you gotta look at some reports.

02:48:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I could actually ask the guy, but like this is you know the guys yes, as a matter of fact, they do so I do remember I used to um my my wife said why do you buy that shampoo? I said it was highly rated on Consumer Reports. She said they, those guys wash their hair with soap. You should not get there. You should not take their reviews for for Cosmetics seriously. I said I don't know, I don't think that's true. So there, I was actually always been inspired by Consumer reports. Uh, and it's ad free policy.

02:49:07 - Nicholas de Leon (Guest)
I really think that's brilliant yeah, I mean it's as I've said many times it's very nice to be in an organization where you're not really subject to the pressures of you know other outlets where it's like you know ad sales are weak. What do we do? You know we're we're, you know we're not impervious to market conditions, but we're a little bit we're a little bit, uh, isolated a little bit, I mean a little isolated it's supported.

02:49:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's supported by its subscribers, which I think is the best way to go. Thank you so much, nicholas. Great to see you, thank you. Thank you also to the wonderful georgia dow. She on YouTube, youtubecom, slash Georgia Dow. You can it's a therapist reacts. It's a whole bunch of stuff and I'm looking forward to your new thing with Mr Richie. That's going to be cool.

02:49:54 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It should be a lot of fun yeah. So, Leo Anthony's asked me to ask and he's just he's going to be really upset if I don't. Okay, the Altair 800, 800. Is it behind you? 8800 behind me 100 sorry yeah you're all upset that I said that wrong. Is it real? No, is it like a replica?

02:50:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
he wants to know yes, it's a replica, I think you've got a fake computer behind you hey, it's a computer.

02:50:19
It's got a raspberry pi in it. So the one on the top is a pdp 11, although they call it a pi dp because it's got a raspberry pi inside. But it's, it's it's. The funny thing is a raspberry pi is actually faster than the processor in a pdp 11, so they have to slow it down, but it's running pdp 11 code and os and the altair I. I don't know what's in that, to be honest with you, but it is running a game and you can program it by flipping the switches on the back.

02:50:47 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
He's very jealous, he wants it.

02:50:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Good on Anthony for recognizing it.

02:50:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, no, no, he keeps on, anyways, yeah.

02:50:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You could drive down to the antique computer show, the vintage computer festival they have.

02:51:04 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yeah, you should go. There was recently one on the east coast, but I think they have a west paris was talking about it. Yeah, vcf, they had all these old computers, including they have a huge marketplace for old computers yeah, you could probably get a real gonna come back with a wheelbarrow full of we found out about marketplace and it's been oh, bad news.

02:51:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Bad news the vcf east was just just happened, I think yeah, they have other ones though but they're all over the country, they're southwest, west, midwest.

02:51:37
Don't look, avert your eyes yeah, oh, it's so cool, all this old stuff. It's really great. It's really great, uh. Thank you, georgia. Thank you for having me great to see. It's really great, uh. Thank you, georgia. Thank you for having me great to see you. Thank you, nicholas, thank you Paris, thanks to all of you who joined us, special thanks to our club twit members who make these shows possible.

02:51:53
Yes, we have advertising, but advertising does not cover all our costs, not even close, uh. And so a couple of years ago we thought you know, instead of cutting back, maybe we should go to our audience and say would you like to support us? And you guys have responded with vigor. I really appreciate it. Seven bucks a month, I think that's nice. It's a very low cost. We try to make it affordable. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get special events. We did yesterday or Fridayiday I guess it was we did a coffee segment with our friend Mark Prince, the coffee geek. We do all sorts of fun stuff photo segments, uh, micah does his crafting Corner every month. Our AI uh user group is coming up next Friday. If you want to find out more twittv, slash, club to it. We would love to have you in the club and I will give you a little insider tip buy now while the prices are low, uh, because we, I think we're gonna have to raise the uh, not a lot, but I think we have to raise the club membership a couple of bucks uh soon, because, uh, it's, it's getting a little tight, to be honest, but I promise you, if you're already a member, we will not raise it on you, so lock in that. Seven bucks a month, 84 a year. Yes, we've added an annual as well. Twittv club twit.

02:53:15
You can watch the show if you're in the club on our discord. We do the show every sunday from 2 to 5 pm pacific, 5 to 8 pm eastern time, 2100 UTC. You can also watch it, whether in the club or not, on YouTube. There are people, lots of hundreds of them, watching right now on YouTube, twitch, xcom, tick tock, facebook, linkedin, kick watch however you want, but you don't have to watch live. You can if you want to. If you, if you watch live, you can chat with me and that's nice. I see all you chatters in there talking about things. Uh, if you don't want to watch live and I know it's you know you have to be around a Sunday, on a Sunday evening. Uh, you can always download the show at our website, twittv. There's audio or video. Uh, there's also a YouTube channel dedicated to this week in tech and, of course, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player and get it automatically. It's free. It's free Thanks to our club members and our wonderful advertisers. And if you're not a member of the club, join us.

02:54:19
All right, thanks for being here, everybody. And we're in our 21st year now it's official. And again, yeah, woo're in our 21st year, now it's official. Drink and drink.

02:54:27 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
Yeah, woof, amazing, huh, please, just pour your beverage directly into whatever thing is playing your podcast right now. Just to celebrate, please.

02:54:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, don't do that, please don't.

02:54:36 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
That's the official guidance from this podcast.

02:54:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We had a great last week. We did our 20th anniversary. We had all these wonderful videos. There was a fire eater, there were two not one, but two guys driving tractors. There was a guy in a boat. Listen, I'm going to say it again.

02:54:51 - Paris Martineau (Guest)
I say it all the time on Intelligent Machines, we as an audience of Twit have to bully Leo into bringing back the 24-hour Twit live stream where we do content every hour for 24 hours, and last time Leo got a tattoo at midnight and I think we could make it happen again.

02:55:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I got a tattoo and I got my head shaved, but it was for charity. But not a tattoo on his shaved head? No, the tattoo is on my behind. Oh.

02:55:20
It's very small Really. It's as small a tattoo as you could get it was midnight From the only sober tattoo artist on New. Year's Eve we called around and everybody was you know, and there was this one guy who was a non-drinker. He said, oh, I just went to bed. We said it's for UNICEF, it's charity, and he waved his feet, donated his feet to UNICEF and gave me the world's smallest tattoo. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time. Another twit is in the can Bye-bye.