This Week in Tech 452 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte:
It’s time for Twit, This Week In Tech, Jeff Jarvis
joins us with Patrick Beja, Liz Gannes.
We’ll talk about the big announcement from Microsoft’s Build Conference, take a
look at the new Amazon Fire TV and Kevin Rose will stop by to explain why he’s
not a parasite. It’s all coming up next on Twit.
Net casts you love, from people you
trust. This is Twit!
Bandwidth from This Week In Tech is provided by cachefly.com.
This is Twit. This Week In Tech, Episode 452 recorded April 6, 2014
Kevin
Rose, Parasite
This Week in Tech is brought to you
by audible.com.
Sign up for the platinum plan and get two free books. Visit audible.com/twit2.
Don’t forget to along on Twitter. User ID @audible.
And by Go To Meeting with HT faces from Citrix. The powerfully simple way
to meet with people, coworkers, and clients anywhere. Share the same
screen and see each other face-to-face with HT video conferencing. Even present from an iPad. Start your 30 day free trial at
Go To Meeting today. Visit gotomeeting.com, click on
the try it free button, use the promo code twit.
And by Square Space, the all-in-one
platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or
online portfolio. For a free two-week trial, and 10% off, visit squarespace.com.
Use the offer code twit.
And by Jira, an Atlassian product. Jira is
the project management solution, for teams planning, building, and launching
great products. To learn more about Jira and to try it free for 30 days, visit atlassian.com/twit.
Leo: It’s time for twit, this week in
Tech. Hello everybody, welcome to our live studio audience. All of you at home
this is the show where we talk about that week’s tech news. And there is a lot
of news to talk about. Let’s say hello to our panel, and Liz Gannes. So Liz do I say recode now, that’s the official
name?
Liz Gannes: You don’t have to pronounce the flash, it is silent.
Leo: Re/code.
Liz: No you don’t have to say that
anymore.
Leo: We love Liz Gannes, she of course is a
long time feature, all things digital. When all things digital recast itself
with recode you went along for the ride.
Liz: Yes all of us did actually.
Leo: That says a lot frankly.
Liz: It is actually pretty awesome. We
are still in the same place kind of doing the same thing but we are bigger and
better and all that. We hired I think nine or 10 new people since January, so
we are going through and crazy growth spurt. And everyone who was there before
is still there.
Leo: Ina Fried is wonderful and John Paczkowski and the whole group.
Liz: You even know how to pronounce the
names!
Leo: I’ve got to ask you a question. You
don’t have to answer this. I don’t see a lot of Walt. Is he semiretired?
Liz: No! Walt is still there.
Leo: Okay!
Liz: But I’ll tell him you said that!
Leo: Tell Walt, while you’ve got to
write more. You better get busy!
Liz: I agree. I’d love to see his stuff
more. Now that he is not restricted by the weekly column.
Leo: I feel like he’s just kind of…
Liz: He Says he’s going to tell us what it all means about Apple and all that. So look for a
column on that soon.
Leo: Come on he is taking it easy! I’m
talking about Walt Mossberg.
Liz: You know honestly, Walt and Karen
have done a ton of stuff around the company so I think it might not be obvious
from the day-to-day. He does business and he is the main guy on the product
stuff as well so everything goes through him. Maybe he has been less out in
front but he is very busy.
Leo: I read his review of the HTC1,
which is my new phone. It just seems, maybe it is just because he isn't writing
any less than he was at the Journal that maybe it’s just because I want to see
more of him.
Liz: I want to see more of him too.
Leo: More Walt! More Walt more often! Anyway
we are thrilled to have Liz. Lots of Liz Gannes there on recode.net. I just went to recode.com.
It's Nero!
Liz: Yeah, we’re sending them a lot of
traffic! You know that URL’s don’t matter anymore right?
Leo: They don’t. That is exactly right. Oh
look who is here, also from France. Not Patrick. Is it Patrick Beja?
Patrick Beja:
It is me! Hey, how are you doing?
Leo: Here to give us the European angle
on all this. It’s going really well. We had a very busy week this week to kick
things off with Amazon’s announcement of their new streaming TV. And I only apologize, I’m going to mention this because it is US only
right?
Patrick: Right it is not available for sale
in France or Europe, but I’m sure that if you order it from the US you can get
it delivered. Amazon has always been pretty good about those things unlike
other companies.
Leo: You know it is a
me too product, nothing to get really excited about. It is quad core,
and android. IFixit tore it down and it is a
Snapdragon 600 in there which is not the latest and greatest but it is a nice
little processor. It has a dedicated GPU which means you can game, and that is
the biggest difference. Netflix, Hulu Plus, and all the usual
streaming stuff. And of course it is Amazon streaming. But they really
push the gaming, in fact this is $100 for this. It is
like an Apple TV without rounded corners. And then they also sell for an
additional $40, a game controller. It looks just like an Xbox controller, only
as if somebody sat on it. Same buttons and everything.
Liz: And there is voice control.
Leo: Oh let’s not forget. In the remote
there is a microphone, and you can talk to it. Have you played with it at all
Liz?
Liz: No I’m actually Really entrance to see you holding it up because I hadn’t seen it yet except on the
demo.
Leo: You know me I bought it right away.
Did you go to the event in New York?
Liz: No I didn’t. I actually didn’t know
where it was I had it in my head that it was in Seattle but I can’t say that I
even know that.
Leo: Maybe it was, I just thought it was in New York. We had Peter Kafka on during our
conversation and I said, “Is Kara there? Is Liz there” and he said no. Maybe
nobody knew where it was. Maybe that was part of the problem. Seattle would
make sense. They made a giant living room with big-screen TVs. I think it
must’ve been New York because Christina Wong was there. So I think it was New
York. You know what I’m going to do I’m going to fire it up and I’m going to
watch Game Is… oh no I’m not because HBO Go is not on
here.
Patrick: You know it's not revolutionary.
It’s not going to be the one that makes everyone convinced that they need a box
like this. But it definitely seems like they put a lot of work into it. And
it’s fairly easy to use from all reports and it is very responsive unlike some
of the others that we’ve seen. That voice control, that voice search element is
kind of so simple that it is almost a throwaway feature. But it is interesting
and it is almost the kind of seeing that you wonder why has no one else done it
before? If it works, it’s cool.
Leo: Others have done it. My Samsung has
TV has a microphone in the remote. It also does gestures, and as I'm sitting
watching TV every once in a while a hand will show up on the screen and
controls come up. And I have to say no.
Liz: I’ve got the Samsung TV too, and I
like the Roku better and it actually works better
because it only does the things you want it to do. Samsung Smart TV will ask do
you want to do a workout? No I don’t.
Leo: I’m watching TV! Stop it!
Patrick: That’s the problem with Samsung. All lot of the time. They add so many features, a lot of
designers often say, and Apple will say that as well, one of the design
principles that you have to adopt not including a feature is as important as
including a feature.
Leo: Saying no is critical.
Patrick: The Amazon one seems it’s got just
the right amount of stuff and presented the right way and working with the
right way. It seems like it is a good choice if you want one of those devices.
I’m not sure that it is going to convince a lot of people that don’t already
have the need to get one.
Leo: Of course Google is not going to be
left behind. Android TV, the replacement for Google TV, is said to be eminent,
The Verge says. It will be much simpler than its predecessor, Google TV, which
I liked a lot but it was a bomb. They have some screenshots from the leaker and
it looks very similar to the Amazon Fire TV. It has more front and center
Google stuff like hang out. It will have YouTube, which Roku does not have, although the Amazon box does. This is the real problem.
Liz: I don’t know how you keep all that
stuff straight.
Leo: Thanks to Veronica Belmont, she
makes a spreadsheet which she no longer maintains, it
is being maintained by the community, of set top boxes. I’m going to check it
first before I give the URL. But it has every set-top box and people have maintained
this over the years. It is bit.ly/settop is the short
URL. This is what everybody needs, because… and they've already added Amazon
Fire. You have to be the Rain Man to know what does what. Who has HBO Go, who
has YouTube, they all have Netflix, that’s one thing
you can be sure of. This is crazy, but some of them do Netflix better than
others. The Apple TV for instance is a winner with Netflix because Apple runs
its own CDN so the data is better. It is just crazy! Thank
you Veronica Belmont. Anyway this does not have HBO Go but it does have
YouTube. The Google TV will have YouTube but it won’t have… I don’t know. That
is the problem there is no one device you can buy. I don’t know what it’s like
in France, Patrick but every device they have in the United States plays
Netflix. My TV does, my Xbox 1 does.
Patrick: In France we don’t have Netflix. Hopefully soon. Not yet. So that isn’t a problem.
Leo: I’ll tell you my biggest take away
from the Amazon TV is that this hardware is fairly
commoditized. Because Android is free, and open, and of course this is not the
Android with Google services this is just the open source android. Which Amazon
has customize. Because the chips from Qual Com are widely available and it is well understood how
we integrate them. All of this stuff now could be made in a very high quality
package at a very low cost, $99, easily. It is a commodity product. It strikes
me that this is just the beginning. Because anybody could do
it. People come to visit us all the time with new Android streaming
sticks. I have a new Android, I have a new Android,
etc. 1 million of them!
Patrick: It is kind of a consolidation of
the market isn’t it? There used to be a lot of slightly more niche products for
a while but now the big boys want the TV. We are sort of stabilized in the
mobile landscape and now all of the big boys are seriously taking another look
at the TV. And even Apple is probably not going to be making an actual TV but
they are graduating the Apple TV it seems. It is a hobby that they look like
they are taking pretty seriously. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the
smaller players in that market start going away slowly over the next couple of
years.
Leo: One of the things that is going to happen is at some point, and I know Apple is negotiating
hard and I’m sure will be fruitless with Comcast, at some point one of these is
going to stream live TV. One or all. Peter from Recode
said it was his opinion the contract companies wouldn’t give it to any one
player. They are afraid of what happened with Apple, which is dominated. He
says they are all going to get it at once.
Patrick: So you guys don’t have ISP TV at
all in the US? In France the triple play system or trends started a tier with
an ISP. That was very innovative and still is actually code free. We actually
have TV live streaming going through IP services. And the thing is, all of the ISP’s do it now. So you pay for your Internet
connection and you have obviously Internet phone, TV, and sometimes you even
have a package with mobile. But the point is the TV services also go through
the IP. Now they are relayed on a special part of the bandwidth and they have
special servers at each ISP so that you have consistent quality. But that is
something that we have had for years. I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t
happened in other countries.
Leo: The reason is because you have
government run television and we have Comcast. We are going to table this
conversation, I do want to get back to this and we will. But Kevin Rose has
joined us and I want to bring him into the conversation. Kevin, thank you will
just keep you for a few minutes. I know you have things to do. First of all is
great to see you again.
Kevin
Rose: It's great to
see you as well. Thanks for having me.
Leo: I was so pissed off when I saw your
Instagram post this morning. I couldn’t believe it. This is not an April fool’s
joke right?
Kevin: It is not a joke. Unfortunately, I
wish it was.
Leo: So everybody probably knows there
have been these protests in San Francisco. This week a protester vomited on the
Yahoo bus, on it. Not a writer, a protester. There have been all sorts of
stuff. The feeling is, I guess, that the cost of living in San Francisco has
just gone through the roof, particularly the cost of housing, because of rich
Yuppies from the Silicon Valley moving in and taking their fancy leather clad
Wi-Fi enabled buses back and forth. It is making it hard for San Franciscans to
live. I’ve got to point out that the real reason for that is because San
Francisco is landlocked. It is actually water locked. It is a small region and
the rules the city has created on creating new housing are so prohibitive that
nobody is building housing. And that is what puts pressure on prices.
Nevertheless, there have been these protesters. And I’m sad to say, and Kevin
specifically, is now being targeted. So can I show this?
Kevin: Yeah go for it. Share whatever you
like.
Leo: Tech Crunch had an article about it
but I saw it first on Instagram. Parasite! Happy face. Already I’m starting to think this guy is nuts whoever put this up.
Liz: What’s with the happy face?
Leo: How big is this banner?
Kevin: That is just a handout. A leaflet
they were handing out.
Leo: That there was also a big banner
right?
Kevin: Yes they brought like a 10 foot
banner, that it took a few of them to hold it up.
Leo: In front of your house!
Kevin: Yes in front of my house. And they
were chanting things like “Kevin Rose is a douche, Kevin Rose is a parasite”. And other stuff.
Leo: This makes me very sad. How about
that one? I’m going to snip snip your balls. What is
wrong with these people? Oh my God. Anyway let me read this. And I want to know
what your take is on this, and I’m just so saddened. “Greetings, your neighbor
(and they are giving your address), a man named Kevin Rose is a parasite. Perhaps not of you, but of us. This is why we are here, to
reveal him for what he is, as a partner venture capitalist at Google Ventures.
Kevin directs the flow of capital from Google into the Tech start up bubble
that is destroying San Francisco. The startups that he funds bring the swarms
of young entrepreneurs that have ravaged the landscape of San Francisco and
Oakland. Like locusts! There is no more corn in San Francisco and I ask you
why? With each new tech Corporation comes our way the fresh new techies who on
average earn four times more than a normal service worker. We are the ones who
serve them coffee, deliver them food, watch their kids and mop their floors.
Nearly all of them are just like Kevin Rose.”
Kevin: I mean don’t say it aloud but that
one that you skipped was a doozy.
Leo: I will read it out loud. If you've
got kids are watching cover their ears. It says, “We
are the ones who serve them coffee, deliver them food, suck their…”… REALLY????
Kevin: I never got that perk. It’s not
offered to start ups I can tell you that right now.
Leo: is that the end of it? If you
tweeted there was more that did they really complain about Diggnation?
Kevin: They complained about Diggnation, they were upset about a joke that I made many
years ago.
Leo: You mean that serious? I thought
you were making a joke on Twitter.
Kevin: No, I was being dead serious. They
were just going through the Internet and trying to find any dirt that they
could find.
Leo: They mentioned Diggnation?
Kevin: I don’t have the flyer here but it
said that it was an awful show that ran for six years. Basically what they
said.
Leo: An awful show that ran for six
years! Wow. So this must make you sick to your stomach. This is scary stuff.
Kevin: Yet I mean it certainly. I wasn't
home at the time actually, they ring our doorbell and Darius went downstairs
thinking it was somebody delivering something and she opened the door and they
handed her a flyer. She said what is this? And they started chanting and
yelling and she just closed the door and locked it. And then she called me up.
I was down the street helping somebody build a skate ramp, actually.
Leo: See? Ravaging San Francisco!
Kevin: It was a skate ramp for a nonprofit
to actually.
Leo: I knew you were a bad man!
Kevin: So I came home and I walked out.
They recognized me and they walked up to me and they
were like throwing lots of insults and then they were saying how can you live
with yourself? What you're doing is bad for our city, you know. They were
recording the entire thing on an android phone. I said that you guys realize
you're on an android phone right? That is a Google product. And I asked him
where they work in a post it and they said YouTube. And I’m like do you not see
the irony in this? I’m serious.
Leo: YouTube is free bandwidth.
Kevin: The thing that really gets me at
the core is that I understand their frustrations, I get it.
Leo: You tweeted, “I agree with them. We
need to stop raising rents and keep the San Francisco culture and crack down on
landlords.”
Kevin: You don’t throw up on people busses
though. There is a conversation to be had here but it’s not by throwing rocks
in peoples windows and throwing up on buses… I think that I mean Leo you know
how it is when I was working for you at Tech TV when I first got hired in the
Bay Area in the early 2000’s, you know I remember my starting that salary was
$28,000 year.
Leo: You have learned every penny you’ve
made. You worked your way up. You know what it’s like to live in San Francisco.
We paid you that little?
Kevin: And then I was pissed off because I
found out Dan was making $30,000 a year so I went to Paul and I said “you give
me a $2000 raise or I’m quitting.”
Leo: I’m sorry they were paying you that
little!!!
Kevin: I just needed a job, you know!
Leo: Tech TVs ruining San Francisco! But
that’s the point is that you were building a skate ramp for a nonprofit. This
is not the Kevin Rose I know obviously. And it doesn’t even make sense there
are certainly issues but there is that issues don’t go back to Google or even
startups or any of this and I know you’re sympathetic to that. I wonder if
these people are crazy! Are they genuine you think?
Kevin: I think that their complaints are
certainly found in reality like there are some really shady things going on
here like landlords are kicking out longtime tenants and instantly jacking up
the prices because they know they can get it with some of the tech lords that
are making more. And so people are being displaced. That is very frustrating to
a lot of people. So there are complaints to be had here. But I certainly don’t
think that Google and some of these other tech companies are necessarily at
fault. Yes we are bringing in more tech workers but I think there is a lot of
good being done here as well. I certainly know what we do in Google Ventures
founding new tech companies. You know foundation medicine is one of our big company as it is working on cures for cancer. It’s not just
funding companies for the sake of funding companies. There is a bigger mission
here.
Leo: Absolutely and if you look at… If
you wanted to protest against the financial industry all join you. There’s lots of places you can complain. Google doesn’t seem
to be one of them, or any of the start-up industry.
Liz: Have you gotten a sense Kevin that
you talking about this has meet anyone else say this also has happened to them,
or is this just a Kevin Rose targeting?
Kevin: I know that has happened to a few
other people. I don’t know who those people are but someone left a comment on
my Instagram post saying that happened to them and I know that there was at
least one other Googler that it happened to.
Liz: There was the soft track and car
guy.
Leo: Right.
Liz: Are they going to hire a security
guard for you? Are you concerned?
Kevin: At this point we have Google
security on it so I reached out to them and they have a pretty decent
department there that handles this type of stuff. But you know there is no real
concern here, my house is pretty locked down I have cameras all over the place
and I’ve created a little bunker here so I’m not too worried about that. But it
is obviously, you know it gets your stomach grumbling and your little tense in
your shaking. Of course my wife was spooked out by the whole thing. You just
don’t know how far is going to go. Right now, yes I was able to sit down
outside and it should have a conversation with these folks and it wasn’t
aggressive like they weren’t here to throw rocks. They were upset and visibly
upset but I didn’t feel at all like they were going to start a fight. And then
the cops showed up they just kind of ran and they took off.
Leo: I need to tell you though, to be
careful about mobs. Individual humans are just fine but sometimes when they get
into groups they will do things that they wouldn’t do as an individuals. So
don’t under estimate the risks to you when you go out and talk to them. I honor
you and I would have done the same thing. But it can be dangerous because mobs
will do stupid things. Have you and Daria thought about moving out of San
Francisco?
Kevin: No, we love it here this is our
home here and has been her home for quite some time. I've been here since 2000
myself. This is the longest of any other place I’ve ever lived. And I consider
it to be home. You know I think there this a lot of real positive awesome
things that are happening here. In about two different
sectors. So I think that this is certainly, for me, something to pay
attention to and something that I think that, I saw Ron Conway at The Crunchies give a long talk about other tech media has to
come together to solve these problems. I certainly believe that is the case. I
would like to take part in that conversation, sit down with some folks that are
willing to have the conversation that isn’t aggressive. And hopefully that will
happen. But yes this is home, we don't plan on moving
anytime soon.
Leo: Kevin, I saw that and I was just so
sad. And I agree, there are real problems that need to be addressed but you’re
not the cause of them.
Kevin: Well I sent them to your house!
Leo: I am the one, you’re right! It is
my fault. I am the one. Petaluma has been ravaged. I say ravaged. By people like me. Thank you Kevin, I thank you for taking
your time to talk to us about this. I really actually admire your point of view
on it.
Liz: It seems, Kevin, like they chose
the right person to target in a way because you’re not… maybe it’s a good
channel for conversation to start. I don’t know, maybe that is too… I look at
the upside of it. Kevin got the message out instantly with Instagram. I was on
this weekend and it went out immediately. People started talking about it.
Kevin: Yeah, they were a little shocked
when I… I kind of tried to bring it back to , we started talking about jobs and
help you could get started, and I let them know that I wasn’t born in this. I
actually was a college dropout. I think it was pretty shocking to them. And so,
you just kind of try to have a real conversation rather than yelling. And so,
it started to happen at the end but in the police up. We’ll see where this
goes.
Leo: By the way we’ve got that picture
at kevinroseisaterribleperson.wordpress.com, in case you want to look at it.
Isn’t that nice?
Kevin: Sweet.
Leo: Kevin is one of the great people in
the world. He really cares deeply and this is just so wrong. Kevin Rose, leach.
It is so wrong folks. That is sad. Here is a guy that has actually done a lot
to create employment.
Kevin: I appreciate that.
Leo: Thanks Kevin. Sorry that happened.
Love to you both.
Kevin: Thank you so much! Thanks for
having me on. Cheers guys!
Leo: Makes me so sad. All right, let’s
take a break and when we come that will have more from Liz Gannes from recode.net and Patrick Beja from France. I need something
better. Do You have a better when Patrick? Something I
can save it’s better than Patrick Beja?
Patrick: Yeah, Patrick beja.com works.
Patrick from France! That’s fine.
Leo: From France! I do want to talk a
little bit about how television an content is treated
differently in France, in Europe than from here. Because we got to that topic
and it was a good topic but first let’s talk about audible.com. When you are riding in the Google bus
you got the Wi-Fi and the leather seats but there is another nothing better
than also having your headphones on, maybe those Bose quiet comfort three
headphones on. You know the titanium ones? And listening to a
book. Oh look at this, Mary Roach’s Gulp. This is a great book. As a
matter of fact any of Mary Roach’s books are good. At audible.com you can
get two books free so maybe you could do Gulp, which is the story of the Allimentary Canal and Bonk, the story of Sex, or Stiff the
story of cadavers. She also wrote a great book called Packing for Mars, the
curious science of life in the void; Spook, science tackles the afterlife. And
My Planet, finding humor in the oddest places. She is actually one of my
favorite authors, I think this is when I first became
aware of her a couple years ago. It is the Study of Death. Stiff,
the curious life of human cadavers. And then you can go on to Gulp and
Bonk. And really have some fun. Audible is a great place to go to get
audiobooks of all kinds. Those are nonfiction books but they of course have
fiction books too, like Daniel Suarez’s latest, Influx. Wow, is that a page
turner. That is a drive around-the-block three times because I don’t want to
stop listening, even though I’m home. In your car, at work, on the treadmill,
at your desk, Audible is a great companion. 150,000 titles in
every category. Oh, this is cool. Mike Elgin was talking about this last
week. The Biz Stone book, things a little bird told me, confessions of a
creative mind. It is on this list as well. Audible has the best readers, by the
way. That is a big part of this. You are listening… oh I really want this one.
I think I will put this on my Audible wish list. Flash boys;
Wall Street revolt. This is the new Michael Lewis book about
high-frequency trading. It is the talk of the town. That’s one of the things
about Audible that is great is that you are not getting last year’s books. I
mean you could, they've got classics and great literature too. But all of the
new books now come out on audible.com the day they are released in the bookstore. That is awesome, you are never left
behind. Anything by Michael Lewis is a must read. He is just one of my
favorites. But his latest Flash Boys, with high-frequency trading, he is really
hot stuff. audible.com/twit2 will get you two books
when you sign-up for the platinum account and that also includes your daily
digest of either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. That is nice.
You are going to get some great listening, you can
cancel any time in the first 30 days and pay nothing. Those books are yours to
keep. But I think you’re going to want to stick around, it is fabulous. I
listen all the time. Chad and I had a great conversation last night, or I guess
it was Friday night. I didn’t realize you were such an Audible fan!
Chad: I’m a huge Audible fan. I've been
listening to audiobooks in one form or another for years. When I found audible,
it is the best way.
Leo: This was like a college education
in your iPod. So audible.com/twit too. Try it today. I know
you’re in a like it. Before we move on I’m going to buy Flash Boys. I have two
credits. I love having the credits. It is so nice. Oh there is some other books I want to listen to. Oh and that new Haunted Empire. What did
you think of that Liz? I’m sure you read it, did you?
Liz: I haven’t read it actually. It is
interesting to see Apple come out against it. I kind of, this is obviously an uninformed take on it since I haven’t read
the book, but I think it might be a little too early to write a book about Tim
Cook’s reign at Apple.
Leo: It is a little early. The premise
is that it is haunted by Steve Jobs ghost, of course. I think it does imply
that Apple is not going to do too well in the future. We don’t know that yet.
But the criticism, I've heard from some, and I haven’t read it either in fact
I’m going to put that in my cart as well, it that it’s a lot of anecdotal stuff
and some of it not very accurate. Some of the people deny it, saying it’s not
true.
Liz: But Apple, Tim Cook, put out a
statement against the book. Which is pretty unusual, I mean I guess it’s not
that unusual but, unusual for Apple.
Leo: I don't remember which book it was,
but I remember when one of the books about Steve Jobs came out, he pulled it
from… what did he do? He pulled the publisher from all
the Apple stores. So they punish the publisher.
Liz: Oh that's right!
Leo: This is not a new phenomenon. So,
let’s see. We can move on a little bit. There was a big event in San Francisco
this week called build. Microsoft’s developer conference. And they announced a time of stuff. Let me go through a few of the big stories.
One is of course that Windows is now free on devices with screens under 9
inches. Which would never have happened under Steve Ballmer
or Bill Gates. That was the crown jewels and they're giving away the
crown jewels! This is a response, obviously to Android. To
get Windows on mobile devices. And maybe to get
Windows 8.1 out there too.
Patrick: So does that mean, because they are
saying phone and tablets, does that mean that Windows phone is free to
everyone?
Leo: No, no, no!
Patrick: But they are saying phones and
tablets right?
Leo: Well they are saying anything under
a 9 inch screen. But there are a lot of 8 inch tablets that have Windows.
Lenovo has one, Toshiba has one, Dell has one. So those guys,
that is a big deal for those guys. They also cut the license costs in
general. Significantly. So I think you could make the
case that this is a Satya Nadella move. Some of the things like Windows phone 8.1 obviously in the works for a
long time. And the new update for Windows 8.1 has been in the works for a long
time. I think Satya Nadella is really taking Microsoft in a new direction.
Patrick: Well they want to get everyone
involved in their echo system. And Nadella is very
much corralled in the services oriented. So I mean Windows on these types of
devices has not been doing too well. So they do need to do something to get it
a little bit more popular. And obviously that is one of the things that they
could be doing. And hopefully by emphasizing the services aspect of Microsoft
then maybe they can pull people in with cheaper devices and get the juice going
on the services. But the sad thing is, I’m not even
sure that that will be enough.
Leo: Too late you think?
Patrick: I don’t know if it’s too late. I
love my Windows 8 PC. I’m one of the few people that actually enjoys Windows. But I think that people just don't want it.
Leo: Okay I want to talk about an off
the record conversation I had with two very well-known Windows watchers, who
may or may not do a broadcast on this network. What we were talking about, and
I don’t know why they haven’t said this more forcefully on that podcast, but
what we were talking about is the idea that what seems to have happened is, for
reasons no one fully understands, Microsoft said to Steven Sinofsky, “Go make
Windows 8 and we are going to let you rethink the whole thing and we’re not
going to weigh in. Anything goes Stephen”. And Sinofsky went off and created
this kind of nightmare, hybrid of touch and desktop. And not one person at
Microsoft not one person on the board said Boo to Sinofsky. Sinofsky is the
right guy to do it, he had great success with Office, the Ribbon, he was very
forceful apparently in the way he communicated his ideas. I asked them, is
Sinofsky that persuasive? Is it like perceived at Microsoft that he’s a genius?
They said no he is just very forceful. Windows came out, Sinofsky was
terminated, Ballmer was forced out as a result, it has been a very, I think it
is safe to say, a big failure. Windows is the crown jewel. You do not mess with
Microsoft’s crown jewels. And the real flaw goes back to management saying go
ahead, do whatever you want.
Patrick: Well there is the key thing you
said right there. You talked about the Ribbon and how Sinofsky was the one who
made it. And, the thing is, a lot of people still hate the Ribbon. It is
incredibly better than what was before. It it still
has a horrible image. So, I’m wondering if they were getting some feedback or
maybe themselves were thinking, that thing that he is doing with Windows -
we’re not sure? We don’t like it, but we also didn’t like the Ribbon and it
turns out the Ribbon is actually better for productivity. And we need to move
in a different direction so it is easy, in hindsight to say, well obviously
Windows would never have worked the way it is now. But they had to worry about
the touch interfaces and the tablets and all that and they needed to do
something radical. So, basically something that a lot of people said at the
time as well, if Windows had not done this we would all be sitting here saying,
and criticizing them for not moving and thinking differently and doing things
in a different enough direction. So, I can’t understand definitely why they
would leave him free rein to change everything and not pulled him back in when
they realized maybe they, as individuals, don’t like it as much.
Leo: It seems clear that it’s why
Ballmer stepped down. I think Satya Nadella was chosen, they wanted somebody inside Microsoft, maybe they wanted somebody outside of Microsoft to have said
no. I think he was a very good choice because the future of Microsoft clearly
is in the cloud yes? The future of computing is in the cloud.
Patrick: The future of everyone.
Liz: You are getting into trouble when
you are talking about giving away the crown jewels. That is an attitude that
will not allow you to focus on whatever is coming next.
Leo: Right. So is it a new Microsoft?
There is no question in my mind that it is a new Microsoft. Giving away
Windows? I would say Windows phone 8.1 is the first, I’ve always thought highly
of Windows phone. I think they did reinvent that. In fact I think that is one
of the reasons why they let Sinofsky do what he did because they said well,
this interface is working really well on the phone let’s try bringing that into
the desktop. It is good. It's just like the party and it doesn’t have the apps.
But Windows phone 8.1 fills a lot of holes especially with Cortana,
which is the voice activated personal assistant for windows 8.1. Microsoft is
in a unique position. Apple has Siri, of course,
Google has its own voice. Apple is a little hobbled by the fact that it has made
the decision, and I think a lot of people embrace the decision, to protect its users privacy. Unlike Google they are not willing to
aggregate all the data from all the different things they know about you and
make Siri better because of it. With Siri, a lot of people felt like it was better before Apple got it.
Liz: That’s definitely true. Siri was
different before Apple bought it. It tied in to the API’s of a whole bunch of
different services and so it let you do all sorts of things like plan your whole
date for the evening without ever leaving the app. But I think, if you look at
the little incremental updates, I'm an iPhone user, and if you look at the
little updates it is starting to get much more like a personal assistant. You
see that in the voice thing. It’s not just about voice in Siri. if you pull it down your screen it will tell you things like
how many meetings you have that day, what the weather is like, it is becoming
more and more useful in doing that sort of thing. Anticipating your needs rather
than waiting for you to search for things. Which is where Google is going, it
is a better experience in a lot of ways. And as long as you are willing to let
your phone know where you are located, look at your calendar, and stuff like that. But you’ve already done that if you’re using iPhone.
Leo: What Apple doesn’t have that Google
has is the search and email. Your YouTube choices.
Liz: And what Microsoft is saying what
they have is your Xbox and…
Leo: They have a lot. They are better
positioned that Apple. I’m looking at my Google now and it says how long it is
going to take me to get home, I guess Apple could do that, the Giants game, it
knows I follow the Giants, for some reason it thinks I like moon Alice but that
is a mistake. It knows what stocks I follow. It knows that I ordered a Fire TV
- I expect to see more postings because that came in through Gmail. So Apple is
not willing to do that. And rightly so.
Liz: They are not far off though. I was
just looking down at Apple and it tells me what the weather is, I am currently
at home so it’s not going to tell me how long it’s going to take me to get
home.
Leo: Would Siri do that? Tell you if you
need to get going, you need to get home.
Liz: Yeah. In fact it says tomorrow,
your calendar looks clear in the morning but you have three events schedule
starting at 12 PM.
Leo: But that is your calendar, you
explicitly gave it permission right? I think Apple is going to be hobbled
because they don’t want to go so far. Google is willing to go to any length. In
fact they just updated the way that logging in to your Gmail works on your
iPhone. I’m sure you knew this Liz, but now since you are logged into Gmail you
are logged into all the other Google services.
Liz: Yes Google is making themselves much
more of a package deal than they used to.
Leo: And of course they are saying we
are going to aggregate all that information, so when you watch a YouTube video
we associate that with your account. Whether you knew it or
not. It doesn’t bother me, but it bothers some people.
Liz: I understand that I am doing a
trade-off of privacy for convenience everywhere in my online life. I also have
an Android phone and by comparison, I think there are a lot of things it does a
lot better because it is a more cohesive experience, it is not all these
discrete apps split up with no knowledge what the others are doing.
Leo: My point is that Microsoft is
better positioned than Apple to do this because they have Bing, they have
enough… I was impressed. I like Cortana, Cortana is the name of the
personal assistant, the voice. She has a good voice, in fact she has arguably a better voice than either Siri or Google because some
of the speech is pre-recorded actual voice. Some of it is synthesized and some
of it is not. It’s a little disconcerting when you listen. It is the same voice
but one sounds more synthesized.
Patrick: It’s okay, but it doesn’t feel like
oh that was the virtual assistant I was waiting for. It is good. It is nice
that Microsoft is getting in on that game as well. What I’ve felt was really
interesting and all of those conferences, I guess what Microsoft does best
ubiquity and they made a lot of noise about the fact that you'll be able to
develop apps that would unified the…
Leo: That is a huge thing too. Windows
runtime will be the same across all of its platforms.
Patrick: Including Xbox. They are going
really really wide with this. And they are even
announcing innovated TV in the car, there was a leak about Windows for devices
where they were talking about wearables in general.
So it seems like they are, I think that Nadella is
going to get the credit for a lot of the changes that are going to be happening
this year. But it feels like a lot of those have been in the works for the past
couple of years, when Windows 8 first came out.
Leo: He’s only been on the job for a few
months so he obviously didn’t have anything to do with Cortana.
Nevertheless, I do think that he is more willing to… well you know, on the iPad
announcement he said, give me my iPad. You would have never heard Ballmer say
that. Ballmer stomped on an iPhone at a meeting a few years ago.
Patrick: The release finally of office on
the iPad, that probably would have still taken a bit more time.
Leo:Nadella Is putting his stamp on it. I think
it goes along with things, like getting Windows phone 8.1 up to parity with
iPhone and Android phone. One of the things you can tell, see this is where
Microsoft has a little bit of advantage, they own Skype so you can say, call my
mom on Skype. So it will not only open Skype it will call her. You’re going to
get some similar functionality with Facebook. Cortana scans the email on your phone. They are going to have to stop doing this Google
campaign. It’s over. Cortana scans the gmail on your phone? And recognizes
things like a flight schedules and other reservations. So she will
remind you what time to leave for the airport?
Patrick: It’s all to show you Apps.
Leo: Oh, so that’s okay?
Patrick: You know, that is their argument with Scoogle. And it is also,
I’m sure, the people who do this Scoogle campaign
talk to the people who develop Cortana.
Leo: Well, they may. Because
the guy that did the Scoogle campaign has been
promoting on Microsoft. And is now in charge of
digital strategy. At Microsoft. Yeah, he is
Executive Vice President of advertising and strategy at Microsoft.
Patrick: And you were saying earlier, is it
too late for Microsoft? I never want to say it’s too late. But we do have a
tendency as the consumer space watchers to a lot of enterprise that is
important. We have a tendency to underestimate how important and how big
Microsoft still is. In a lot of places. I really don’t
think it is too late for Microsoft, ever. They are so ubiquitous and have such
big presence in some of the spaces that matter. That it would take a lot, much
longer period of screwing up for them to be out of the game.
Liz: But they are spending so much time
on idiotic things. Right? Why are you spending your
time once Scoogle? Why are you spending your time on
not releasing Office for iPad?
Leo: That is the old Microsoft. I think
what we are is seeing a kinder, gentler Microsoft.
Liz: Yes. But you can’t get ahead of
your competition if you are just internally messing things up like that. When you are putting your focus on things that are totally not
improving what people actually like and use and want to be loyal to your
company for.
Leo: And I’m thinking Satya Nadella came in and said exactly
that.
Patrick: Probably. Let me take the other
side of the argument. You are just coming out with a tablet computer, with a
brand-new system, with a brand-new voice. It does look very strange if the next
day you come out with office on the iPad and you don’t have the touch version
of office on your brand-new system. So, I’m not saying it was the right choice
but I definitely understand why they wouldn’t want to come out with office on
the iPad immediately.
Liz: Yeah. And I don’t want to say that
other companies don’t do stupid stuff, right? Apple is so pissed off about this
whole Samsung patent thing. They are allowing their internal emails and
strategies from not that long ago, like a year ago, to be exposed in court.
Companies do really, really bizarre things.
Leo: How much did they talk about
surface at Build? I didn’t see any mention at all. Maybe I just missed it.
Patrick: There wasn’t a lot of it. Except for the runtime, the universal runtime.
Leo: That's for everybody.
Patrick: The fact that you can have the
Windows store applications on the desktop. There's a lot of stuff happening in
there. But I think that what Nadella said when he
announced the iPad version of office was that there was going to be a number of
announcements in the next few weeks. And Build is part of that, of course. I
wouldn't be surprised if we heard a little bit more, specifically about tablets
in the near future.
Leo: I wonder. Maybe we should read the
tea leaves and see if maybe they are backing down on the hardware. What else?
Patrick: I wouldn’t be surprised.
Leo: I asked this
mythical couples who may or may not host the podcast on my network. Why
doesn’t Microsoft just say we blew it? 8 a mistake.
Patrick: They don't need to. They are making
eight into seven now.
Leo: They can’t because all the
developers would say that’s it I’m done!
Patrick: What do people need now in eight in
order to accept it? The start menu, and they are bringing that back. If you go
to desktop and you have the start menu you can control everything with the
mouse, including Windows Metro style applications. You can put them in a window
on the desktop. Eight is, as Sinofsky conceded, pretty much gone, I think it is
safe to say.
Leo: Liz, you cover mobile on Recode and
of course you have the mobile conference. What do you hear about Nokia and
Microsoft? They said next month maybe?
Liz: Yes, I think.
Leo: That is going to change things.
Maybe we are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Liz: Give it some time.
Leo: Okay.
Liz: I mean I look forward to seeing how
those things can come together. I think there are still smart people who have a
lot of experience on phones who are trying very hard to make something
interesting. But, yeah, even in the course of defending Microsoft we are
talking about how court, that is just catching up. So there is more to be done.
Patrick: And answer your question, on should
they be giving up on service? I think the problem is if they are not going to
be building one, then probably no one is. So they really need to keep doing it.
They have to.
Leo: I have I guess they do. I think
Nokia actually has some great product and the camera is phenomenal. Now that I have
seen 8.1, I’m thinking maybe we don’t… I was saying for a long time they
shouldn’t just abandon Windows Phone with android, because I want to see that
hardware with Android on it. But maybe we don’t need to? Windows phone is actually
getting better and better and the cameras are good, maybe they’ve got a strong…
boy, from the point of view of users having three major choices would be great. Apple, Android, and Windows. I’d like to see that.
Guess who is going to join us in a little bit? Jeff Jarvis is just sitting
around doing nothing on a Sunday afternoon. I tell you it was really hard to
get people on the show and Chad and I finally figured out why. Game of Thrones!
I could not figure it out. That game of thrones debuts tonight.
Liz: And also the nicest weather that
San Francisco has ever had.
Leo: It is almost 80°.
Patrick: Oh shut up!
Leo: Wait a minute! April in Paris!
You’ve got to tell me it’s gorgeous there right?
Patrick: In fact it is wonderful. But it is
24°.
Leo: Fahrenheit?
Patrick: No Celsius of course.
Leo: So it’s a very nice! 24 is perfect!
Patrick: Yes, it is wonderful.
Leo: Wonderful in Paris right now. Hey
Jeff Jarvis, welcome.
Jeff
Jarvis: It is nice
here too.
Leo: New York is beautiful too. But see
there is no leaves on the trees.
Jeff: No leaves on the trees. It is
barren and sad. And gray.
Leo: What is this? All of a sudden you
are joining us on a Chat room on Sundays now?
Jeff: We don’t have the Bozo’s of San
Francisco here and that is a good thing We don’t have
the Commies.
Leo: Oh my god did you see that?
Jeff: You talked about the story, but I
missed it.
Leo: We had Kevin on. Kevin Rose was on.
Jeff: Sorry I missed it.
Leo: You’ll have to go back and watch
the on demand. Kevin is much more gracious than I would be.
Jeff: He is way more. I would’ve just
gone berserk.
Leo: He went out and talked to them. Can
you believe that? Brave man!
Patrick: Oh, and I just wanted to say about
this story. In Paris the prices have been going up for 10 years. It is getting
completely crazy. And we are trying as hard as we can to get the start-up echo
system to take off in Paris.
Jeff: No offense, but Parisians are known
to be even nuttier than San Franciscans! San Franciscans are outdoing them
right!
Patrick: Absolutely.
Leo: To the Barricades, it used to be
the Parisian call, now it is the San Franciscans.
Jeff: Now, let’s go barf on a bus. So
every bit of money should just leave San Francisco!
Liz: It is funny though because I think
that there is this internet trolling comments kind of come to life. I almost
don’t believe that… look, I am from the Bay area and I understand there is a lot of different nuances here. But to
have someone come to your house and say that without kind of cracking up? It is hard for me, I have to wrap my mind around it. It
seems like it is in the Internet comment section, which Kevin helped to set off
on Digg, coming to life and appearing in front of his house.
Leo: It is the ultimate trolling. The
trolls have come to life.
Jeff: The one thing that I hope to see,
Liz, the same San Franciscans stand up and say, okay folks enough. We benefit
from technology being here, we benefit tremendously from this, so some buses
come by, prices go up. Welcome to capitalism welcome to the market. But at some
point is really going to hurt the city it is really going to harm, I think
image of the city. I lived in San Francisco in the days when it was known as
nutty, the days of Jonestown and other craziness. It has also always been known
as somewhat nutty. But I think this is harmful for the city.
Liz: I am interested to see, for me
personally, alarm bells are not going off yet. But nobody has come to my house
this morning. We did get some evict our tech loving mayor graffiti on my side
door that we had to paint over but that has been the personal that has impacted
me so far.
Jeff: That would drive me nuts.
Leo: I am very sympathetic to people who
are getting evicted and he were getting pushed out of their neighborhoods. People that live there their whole lives. That is sad and
that is not right. But I don’t think you can blame Google or Yahoo for that.
Jeff: And would you rather do without?
Would you rather be Des Moines? Would you rather be Detroit?
Leo: What scares me even more than
anything is just this notion, I feel like it is a backlash against technology
in general. It goes along with the privacy issues and all that. I really fear
that there may be a lot of backlash in the making. And that scares me because
that would not be good.
Jeff: I think you’re right Leo, I think
there are two things going on. One is the technology back lash and the other
one is the economic backlash. There is a technology 1% being created, as jobs
are eliminated, there is higher profitability and higher productivity. Greater wealth being created in Silicon Valley. And that is
an issue that Silicon Valley has to figure how to deal with.
Leo: I guess income equality is a major
issue. It goes too far. You know that Patrick, back in 1789, these things go
bad. They don’t end well!
Patrick: I don't think we are quite there yet, but yes let’s
keep our eye on the situation.
Leo: When they build the guillotine in union square then
I'll know trouble is a brewing.
Liz: Techi's don't go to Union
square.
Leo: They don't go there? I would protest there. Go protest
Neiman Marcus. You want to protest something, protest Nieman Marcus. Our show brought to you by, Jeff stick around yeah, can you give us a minute? Lots to talk about.
Jeff: Sure I can, I was just going to go out for a healthy
walk but I would rather be here with you.
Leo: Oh yeah this is so much better than exercise.
Patrick: I have a topic for Jeff after the ..
Leo: Good. Patrick is going to give you a topic to expound
upon. Ladies and gentleman it is my great pleasure and privilege to talk to you
about Go to Meeting. Our friends at Citrix have created a fabulous way to stay
in touch, to meet with, to collaborate with co-workers and clients. Anywhere
they are, anywhere you are. It is so important to build a strong relationship
with your team. Meet and collaborate with co-workers and clients on a regular
basis to brainstorm, develop quality ideas and solutions. You got to do it in a
meeting but you don't all have to be together. With Go To Meeting you can get everybody in the same room in effect, you are on the same
page sharing your screen. Your seeing each other face
to face over GoToMeeting with HG faces. It is fabulous. Look at this, this is
really cool if your using Google Chrome you can now
use GoToMeeting free. Video conference with up to 3 people, no sign up, no download. They are always trying new stuff at
GoToMeeting. I am wondering if this is using web RTC, we got to check this out.
This is really cool. It is so easy to use GoToMeeting at your business. You can
sign up for 30 days free, get the full thing. As many people as you want, as
often as you want. It is no surprise that this is the choice in business for
meetings. Visit gotomeeting.com click the try it free
button and use the promo code twit. Gotomeeting.com, try it free button right
there, promo code twit. Take advantage of this, a really great deal if you are
using Google Chrome, you can use Go To Meeting free
for up to 3 people. That is awesome. Gotomeeting.com on mobile, on ipad, on iphone, desktop, on
laptop on android it is all there. Alright Patrick Beja is here notpatrick on the Twitter. Patrickbeja.com. Liz Gannes, I always ask you is how do you say your name?
Liz: Gannes rhymes with brains.
Leo:That is the answer she gave me the last time. Recode.net
and I mentioned it before but I go back a ways with Liz's dad Stu Gannes. It is nice to work with his daughter. It is so
cool.
Liz: I am trying to get him to come watch basketball with
me tonight. The Stanford woman's basketball is in the final 4.
Leo: Oh how exciting.
Liz: So I might see him later.
Leo: Are you an alumni?
Liz: No, but you know growing up in Palo Alto, it is kind
of a fun thing to go out for. The women have won the NCAA since I was growing
up in Palo Alto.
\Leo: Now's
the time
Liz: So yeah looking for a win.
Leo: Yeah, Huskies in there. I mean this is exciting. I
don't follow this stuff at all but you know. I pretend I know Sport ball.
Jeff: As I always say I am neither a real man, neither am I a real American because I don't know sports.
Leo: You’re not a real man because you don't into sports
but what is the American part?
Jeff: Sports.
Leo: You like freedom fries? Oh sports, ok.
Jeff: I don't know sports.
Leo: So Patrick you have a challenge. Jeff Jarvis is also
here by the way. Normally host in This Week in Google. We can't keep him away. It is so nice to have you on a Sunday afternoon. Thank you Jeff for joining us. He is with the Professor of
journalism City University of New York. He is also a really accomplished
author.
Jeff: You are the plugmister.
Leo: I like to get the plugs in because you guys come here
for free.
Jeff: You’re good.
Leo: I've got to give you something. Something
in return. Actually Stearn is the plugmister. But he saves it for the last 10 minutes of the
show. Nobody is listening at 10 o'clock. So I like to stick my plugs in
earlier. So Patrick. Wait a minute oh that is funny. Jeff
says did you already do the audible add I was just signing up again.
Jeff: It is true, it is why I
wasn't watching the show. I was busy signing up again because I realized I was
buying 3 books and this is stupid paying 22 bucks a book. So I subscribed
again.
Leo: What books are you buying? All of Jeff's books are on
Audible. Don't you get a complimentary membership or something?
Jeff: No, I should. Gutenberg the Geek is only 99 cents. I
have just finished The Island at the Center of the Universe or the World
whatever it is called. Russell Shorto's History of Manhattan. It is wonderful. Read before that Russell Shorto's History of Amsterdam as the great liberal city. It
is just magnificent. I just bought the Biography of Money.
Leo: Wow you are an intellectual.
Jeff: No I just need something while I walk.
Leo: This sounds good, The Island
at the Center of the World.
Jeff: It's great. There is a guy named Audrian Vonderdaunk.
Leo: Those dutch.
Jeff: Who I really want to start a kick starter campaign to
build a statue for Audrian Fonderdaunk.
Leo: If Vonderdaunk hadn't done
it there would be no Manhattan.
Jeff: Right, Vonderdaunk is really
one of the fathers. Unheralded fathers of the American way of
life. Of independence, equality, self-government, and I am just amazed by this. Have you ever heard of Audrain Vonderdaunk?
Leo: Never heard of him. Never heard of
the Vonderdaunk.
Jeff: Mr. Vonderdaunk is amazing. So
I am inspired by Audrian Vonderdaunk.
Right now across America people are going to Wikipedia to find out who the hell is Audrian Vonderdaunk.
Leo: Well just get that book.
Jeff: It's good, it is very good. I listened to the whole
thing on Audible. In the last exciting minutes, just as British are about to
take over Manhattan and I am rooting for the Dutch to win myself.
Liz: Spoiler.
Leo: So Patrick you has something to pose to Jeff?
Patrick: Yeah, well I wanted to gloat a little bit and also get
Jeff's take on this topic. You are aware I am sure of the European parliament
passing very strong net-neutrality laws this week.
Jeff: Good topic Patrick.
Patrick: Thank you I thought you would like it.
Leo: Tell me what they did because I did not know this. Being a provincial American.
Patrick: So basically the EU, the European parliament had a
very important vote on net-neutrality. I believe it was this week.
Jeff: Yes it was this last week.
Patrick: Yeah last week obviously sorry.
Jeff: Nilly Crouse.
Patrick: Yeah Nilly Crouse had a
somewhat, semi controversial text before the parliament. But then a number of
very active left wing parliamentarians just swept in and changed it completely
changed the text. Passed a number of amendments that makes this text very very, well makes the text very net-neutral. In the sense as
we in techies would think of it. There are no exceptions, very very few exceptions. No special services that were a big
point of contention in the text that would have allowed the ISP's to create
special channels for certain deals that they would want to make. All of that
gone and what remains is a text that enforces net-neutrality in all of Europe.
Jeff: Patrick is absolutely right.
Patrick: Honestly it is amazing. We didn't think it was going
to happen like this and it was the best news of the year for people like us.
Jeff: I salute you. I sometimes make fun of my European
friends. I sometimes make fun of the EU. I am wrong, I salute you. Excellent legislation. As Patrick said the law came in when
it was done with all the EU politics. Had a lot of exceptions and as Patrick
said all the left wing pulled one by one amendments to
pull the exceptions out and it is real net-neutrality legislation in the EU. It
leaves us in America in the dust.
Leo: Wow, tell me a little bit because I am an ignorant
American. This has the force of law everywhere in the EU? Everybody has to adhere to this? What is the
enforcement, how does it work?
Patrick: It needs to be adapted to each country but essentially
yes it has to be adapted in every country that is a member of the union. So it
has force of law. It comes in opposition of certain rules that people were
thinking about putting in place. To counteract Netflix coming
in France for example. There were a number of those special services
that people wanted to implement. But it is essentially law unless in the next
few months something incredible happens that I am not aware that could happen. It
is now law, net-neutrality as we think of it. That is very important because a
lot of people have been starting to try and sort of re-brand net-neutrality. To
try and say yes you need to be neutral but if you have this case or this case
then you can make exceptions. But that is not the way the law was passed. So
yeah again it is law in all of the member states of the union.
Jeff: The reason we know it is good is 4 big
telecommunications companies, according to a Michael Furtive piece in Forbes,
condemned the legislation. So that is how we know it.
Leo: It could never happen here. You know it is so funny
because I was watching TV3 just the other day and I saw. Let me see if I can
find it here.
Jeff: TV3?
Leo: Yeah in France. And it was so good.
Jeff: Speaking French.
Patrick: Speaking French.
Leo: Maybe is that what they are calling it now?
Jeff: I love hearing you say that, that is so good.
Patrick: I can say names of cheese later, if you want.
Leo: We could just listen, it will be so fun.
Patrick: The really weird thing was that the initially was
basically tailored initially to ISP's and to cable providers. I am not sure
exactly what happened but within 2 days it completely changed and it passed. It
was very strange. And of course in light of what happened U.S. A couple of months ago with the net-neutrality being,
not debunked but rejected. I think, to make it
a little more global I do think it is going to make it a little more difficult
for other countries to reject net-neutrality.
Jeff: Screw their customers. Screw their citizens should we
put it that way.
Leo: This is it I think. Francua.
Jeff: You are just showing of Leo. International Leo, Mr.
Cosmopolitan.
Leo: I love French television. I even understand it which
is great. Did you see this Patrick.
Video Playing in
French
Patrick: I did not.
Leo: This is Saturday Night Live last night. This is the
French dance. It is the new sprockets. I
am sorry we are going to get banned from Youtube now.
This is all in coverage of the new French net-neutrality law.
Patrick: Completely appropriate.
Leo: Ok enough of that.
Liz: You know what is so sad. I was trying to look up all
the Saturday night live skits from last night of which that was one. You can't
see, that was the only one you could actually find
online. A bunch of them used Amy Hendrick as a singer
so they used a bunch of music for skits and it is just like.
Leo: They don't have the rights.
Liz: Why can they show it on TV but not online. I know they
don't have the rights but it just seems stupid.
Leo: So frustrating. Turkey lifts the Twitter banned. Apparently it
was illegal. And the Youtube ban violates human
rights.
Jeff: Yay.
Leo: Yay. This is why you don't want to try and shut down
the internet in a democratic Republic. Court limits restrictions to 15 videos
on Youtube. That was right after the ruling scrapped
the ban on Twitter. It was the Turkish prime minister Urdigon was trying to shut down social media. Primarily because it carries
stuff that is unflattering to his government.
Jeff: He was coming up with, there
were some great great mimes of him online. Pictures of him with ridiculous statements of his about the net and
Twitter. About how Twitter is evil and awful.
Leo: Well there you go victory in Turkey so far anyway.
Patrick: It is kind of interesting to think that he's banning
them and he's got this image of dictator almost to people. To a lot of people
who probably hear of him for the first time with this. Then the court says he
can't do it and he's like oh right OK well I guess we won't do it then.
Jeff:Never mind.
Leo: I tell you one thing you can't do in this country. You
can't take a selfy with the President of the United
States using a Samsung phone.
Patrick: That is not exactly what happened.
Leo: David Ortese the Red Sox
ball player apparently has a deal with Samsung, and took a selfy with the President in which the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 was fairly prominently
revealed. Very much like Ellen's selfy. The White
House says the Presidents legal team objects to the company’s commercial use of
the photograph.
Jeff: What can they do about it?
Leo: He is a public figure, it was done in public.
Jeff: Yeah, there is nothing they can do about it.
Liz: It is not the selfy that is problem, the problem is that someone took a picture of the
picture taking, right?
Leo: Oh yeah because it isn't, that's right they aren't
transmitting the selfy.
Liz: The selfy doesn't say
sponsored by Samsung on it.
Leo: That isn't the selfy of
course. Samsung tweets the picture of the selfy. That of course, another home run for Samsung. Social media.
Jeff: Here is my prediction, my prediction the next one, the
Pope.
Leo: Ooh I think we can arrange that.
Jeff: I think it is going to happen.
Leo: I know the Pope's tech guy.
Jeff: Samsung is heading to Rome scene at the White House.
Barack Obama on Video: It looks like it might fit him
better than me, though.
Leo: Ortiz gives Obama his own Red Sox jersey. Then whips out his conveniently placed Samsung Smart Phone. Big Poppy selfy. You know that
Note3 looks kind of small in Big Poppy's hand. That's the guy that phone was
designed for. I think they made the right deal on that one. I guess the white
house is objecting but what do you do you do.
Patrick: Wait you can wear that suit but you can't take a selfy with the President?
Lep: That suit is quite something. For those listening, I
don't know which Red Sox that is but he is wearing an American Flag suit.
Jeff: In my day you honestly could have been arrested for
desecration of the flag for wearing that.
Leo: That is thanks to the liberal supreme
court now. Anything goes with our American flag. Hey speaking of Scotus, of course it was this week that the supreme court disenfranchised all of Americans. By saying
there is no limit of the amount of money that you can donate a corporation or
any individual could donate.
Jeff: Your limited percanada but
you’re not limited in total. Did you know you can donate to every damned
Republican across the country should you wish.
Leo: Right, or using a variety of different packs and
interest groups. The sky is the limit go have fun. Knock
yourself out. What do you think of that Jeff? We'll just ask Jeff Jarvis off
the top of his head. What do you think of that?
Jeff: I agree with Larry Lesig that money is unbelievably corrupting to our legislative and government
branches. I believe it's the root of our mess. I don't think the companies are
people and have rights. However at some point in a media economy that is built
on buying TV time, artificial limits are difficult to put forward. So I don't
think the solution is to try and limit the money. I think the solution is not
having 5 year campaigns. But I don't know how you do that?
Leo: I do feel like we are on our way to a plutocracy where
the rich get to buy congress. But there is a solution to this. A tech angle to
this frankly, which is why I bring it up. There is a solution to this. Really
what they are buying with all that money is votes. Their buying ads, their
buying influence, but ultimately the voter still controls who is in congress.
Jeff: Here is the question about it all.
Leo: I think the internet offers a real alternative to
making a decision of who to vote for from television commercials. So maybe now
there is no limit on the amount of money you can donate to a campaign. But
folks, there is an opportunity to figure out who you like and who you don't
like by going on the internet doing your research and then voting.
Jeff: The key here is to me, we are only going to end the
hegemony of television in this country. I mean it doesn't happen in Europe
because you are limited on what you can spend on campaigns and the campaigns
are short. So once again I salute Europe. But in this country, Mark Andreson was talking about in Twitter, he went off on
another Twitter rant, saying but don't even poor people even have one vote so
how do they limit this. But clearly there is money spent that has an impact on
opinion, that has an impact on everything. The question is this, the first
person who's elected to let's say congress by the internet without television
that's when the revolution starts. We are nowhere near there, we are nowhere near
that. Everybody still gets elected by television but if you could possibly use
the internet to get elected that makes the internet an equally powerful tool.
Patrick: So what you are saying we need the Justin Beber of congress.
Leo: Well you could make the case.
Jeff: Well we don't forget we had Gopher from Love Boat we
proudly say in this country. And Sunny Bono, so yeah, what the heck. But then again you have a head of state
who is having affairs around and nobody thinks it’s a big deal which I think is
pretty cool.
Leo: Francqua Holland for
congress.
Patrick: That's what we're managing to achieve.
Jeff: Yes, you should be proud, Patrick.
Patrick: We are.
Leo: I just want to say, I know with a lot of techies it is
very fashionable among geeks to say oh your vote doesn't count. Your participating a corrupt system I just, I am not going to get
involved. Your vote does count. If you think it is a corrupt system, vote. Because
if you don't vote it is, guarantee you, it will be a corrupt system.
Patrick: You know how much it counts, it counts exactly as much
as everyone's vote. That is the idea of the thing. So yes it does count.
Leo: And this from a Frenchman. You know I thought it was
interesting what was the story about, it was a French story. Wasn't there Chad,
people were scandalized by something, by some form of nudity.
Chad: I don't remember this at all.
Leo: Then I was talking about Librate and she is bare breasted but the French didn't mind, what was that? I have
forgotten now.
Chad: Was this a tech story?
Leo: Yes
Jeff: Darn it Chad where is your memory.
Leo: Yeah well it might have been a tech story I don't
remember.
Chad: I don't remember this at all. Chatroom?
Leo: Just edit this part out this is where senility finally
happened.
Jeff: I am going to try Google, bare breast.
Leo: No it wasn't bare breast, it
was something else that the French were scandalized by. I thought this is odd
given that Liberte has been naked since 1789.
Jeff: Oh I see.
Patrick: Oh we have no problem with bare breasts.
Leo: Well I thought so maybe it was just a dream, a dream I
had. Speaking of game of thrones, right after game of thrones all of silicone
valley will be watching a show called Silicone Valley debuts tonight. It is
kind of game of thrones for geeks, actually. Oh it was the strap on the
shoulder, thank you, thank you. It was the controversy, we were talking on Macbreak.
Chad: Oh yeah
Leo: It was on Delaquas altered,
no it wasn't Delaqua, oh I
am really starting to forget.
Chad: And then you found 10 dollars right?
Leo: It the painting, remember the painting he was talking
about in the Boston Public Library. Oh I
forget. Back to Silicon Valley.
Patrick: Cultures are weird.
Leo: Chatroom back me up. Anyway Silicone Valley, I don't know why we didn't get invited to this
but there was in Palo Alto a screening this week.
Liz: In Redwood City, I went to it.
Leo: Did you go?
Liz: I can offer a report, yes.
Jeff: So what did you think Liz?
Liz: I laughed. I am not, I don't have a great track record
for knowing what will resonate with a larger audience but it was very funny. So
the premiss is it is a group of guys of all guys. One
of them has an idea and they live together in a startup incubator/hostile sort
of thing. He has an idea that turns out to be technically significant. In the
first episode his company wants to buy it from him or a VC who is modeled on
Peter Teal wants to invest in it. So the drama is, is actually the drama of
running a startup of should we take the money. The second episode is all about
can we involve the guy who's not really contributing to the project, how much
equity should he get. So does that have large
management appeal I don't know but it is really funnily written.
Leo: Mike Judge did it, he did Beavus and Butthead but more importantly Office Space. Which is to
this day the classic on life in a cube farm in a tech company.
Liz: Yeah and he gets it too. There's not like a lot of
lines that fall really off.
Leo: See that's good.
Liz: He doesn't have a lot, yeah. There's definitely the
Dr. pitching you the app as he is giving you, your check up for anxiety attack. Which has happened to me. Not for an anxiety attack
but my doctor has definitely talked tech with me.
Leo: What app would you recommend for... So Nellie Boles was there from Recode. She wrote an article worthy of Gawker.
Congratulate Nellie on this.
Liz: No it is better than Gawker because she doesn't hate
everything. She is awesome, she is a culture reporter
who thinks culture is interesting.
Leo; She was great, she went to the movie, I guess with
you? Or the TV show I should say. Then afterward s there was a little get
together. This was at the Fox theater in Redwood city. She says Elon Musk was there.
Jeff: This is hilarious.
Leo: He says the truth is stranger than the fiction most
start-ups are a soap opera but not that kind of a soap opera. He didn't like
the show. He says thumbs very much down. None of those characters were software
engineers. Software engineers are more helpful, thoughtful and smarter. They're
weird but not in the same way he insisted. I was just having a meeting with my
information security team and they are great but they're pretty f-ing weird. One used to be a dude, one's super small, one's
hyper smart that's actually what it is. This is weird.
Patrick: That would make for an awesome show.
Leo: It gets weirder. I feel like Mike Judge has never been
to Burning Man.
Liz: That's the best line.
Leo: Which is Silicon Valley. If
you haven't been you just don't get it. You can take the craziest L.A. Party
and multiply it by a 1,000 and it doesn't get f-ing close to what's in Silicon Valley. The show didn't have any of that.
Liz: What's funny is if you look on the Wall Street Journal
I think. Elon Musk also gave them an interview and I
think maybe it was a few beverages earlier in the evening. He had a slightly
more even keeled take.
Leo: He does sound a little snockered here. The parties in Silicon valley are amazing
because people don't care about how they are perceived socially which I don't
think Mike got. See if you read it like that it all makes more sense. Hollywood
is a place where people always care of what people think of them and the show
is more like that. I live in Hollywood 12 years and I have never been to an f-ing good party. He then reached for a bacon waffle; writes
Nellie and
Liz: It was a tasty bacon waffle.
Leo: It sounded tasty.
Liz: I had a little tiny bite.
Leo: I would love a bacon waffle hors devour. And he
proclaimed he would take Judge to Burning Man this year. Wait a minute this is
my favorite line: Despite some misgiving about the show it was clear that Musk
was more than a star than anyone present at the premier. A Coventry of Millennium women waiting for him
to break away from the group circled him and he disappeared in to the night. I
added the disappeared into the night but I think that's what happened.
Liz: It's true he was definitely the biggest star there. That
includes all the people in the show because they're kind of like.
Leo: They're new.
Liz: They play the nerdy guy in every other movie and they
brought them all together into one show now.
Jeff: There was a description, I don't know where I saw this
but I think it was the Aspergers entourage.
Leo: That's terrible. But it is true if you look at this picture of
the cast Mike's in the middle. You've seen them all before as the nerdy guy. On
various, at least The office.
Liz: I think a bunch of them, at least that one on the far
right he was in the Google movie, the Internship.
Leo: He was in the Internship, yeah yeah.
This guy is to good looking he is obviously in marketing. This guy he was in
The Office.
Jeff: They guy in the brown shirt was in the Outright.
Leo: this guy looks familiar, anyway I don't know. You got
your token Indian guy.
Liz: Yeah, he was in Freaks and Geeks.
Leo: Freaks and Geeks, thank you. Loved
that show.
Jeff: So Leo, I should know this about you. I should see it
on your Bio, have you been to Burning Man? \
Leo: No, I saw the line.
Liz: You are going to answer the question.
Leo: Here is the line you say, Oh I haven't been to Burning
Man since I left San Francisco. That's
the line, that one ups them all.
Jeff: It does.
Leo: Right, oh I stopped going when I left San Francisco. Which
is actually true but I don't think that really counts.
Jeff: By the way I want to make an invitation to Kevin Rose,
to all San Francisco tech people leave the Bay area, come to New York we love
you.
Leo: yeah people would be.
Patrick: You already have a rent problem in New York so
Leo: so nobody would notice.
Jeff: I'll amend it Patrick, come to New Jersey.
Leo: New Jersey could really use you.
Jeff: Yeah.
Leo: So I guess the question is should I watch this live or
should I wait and watch it on demand later?
Liz: Well it's on demand tomorrow right? So watch it
Leo: Watch it whenever you want, right?
Liz: Yeah. There are only 8 episodes in the first season.
Jeff: how many stars out of 5?
Leo: How many stars?
Liz: Oh me?
Jeff: You were the one who actually saw it, so you can
actually say something.
Leo: Jeff used to be a TV critic.
Liz: Yeah I know it's funny. It's 3 to 4. You know it made
me crack up but it didn't change my life.
Leo: Three and half stars says Liz.
Jeff: Here is the question from what I have seen and from
what Judge has said, its seems to be adoring of the
tech community. Is it too fawning?
Liz: Oh no, it's very
funny. It's very sly about making fun of people. Actually it was funny, I don't
know if you saw the Valleywag review, but they loved
it because they thought it because they thought it was fittingly mean to the
Silicon Valley community so that's.
Leo: Yeah, but we can
laugh at ourselves. Alright, people in the chat room are saying I should live
Tweet it tonight
Liz: You should, that would be great.
Leo: Okay then, I
will live Tweet my viewing. Actually, to really do it right I should Tivo it and watch it in a week, and then live Tweet it.
Jeff Jarvis: You should talk about Letterman. You should be the next
Letterman, Leo. I just wanted to get that on record.
Leo: I am sad about
Letterman but-
Jeff: I'm very sad.
Leo: He is- Yeah, so
I think it's our generation, Jeff.
Jeff: Yes it is.
Leo: He is the Carson
of our generation. He was the fresh, young, funny guy who kind of thumbed his
nose at mainstream television and made it work.
Jeff: My father's
generation's timing in comedy was made by Carson. If somebody my father's age
tells a joke, you hear Carson timing. At our age, you hear Letterman timing. I
think my son's age, it's Jon Stewart timing.
Leo: Jon Stewart is,
absolutely. One of the reasons why Letterman's retiring, he announced his
retirement this week, next year when his contract runs out. He's 66, and I
think one of the reasons that it didn't get a lot of attention is because the
world has moved on a little bit. Stewart and Colbert, who is supposedly number 1 to replace him. But they've replaced him already culturally. But I'm
very much influenced by David Letterman.
Jeff: Same here.
Leo: And Carson.
Jeff: Somewhere I have
a Thank-you note from David Letterman.
Leo: Johnny Carson
used to-Really? That's nice.
Jeff: Yeah, it was
signed 'your friend, Dave' however, Letterman never
let TV critics sit in the audience so I wasn't allowed to go sit in the show.
Leo: I went once and
they spotted me immediately because they have a scrum that afternoon at the CBS
theater to get tickets for that show. And so I went to the scrum and they've
got people- It's really interesting. -They've got producers walking around in
the group because they talk with you and if you're fun and interesting, they
give you a ticket. You have to earn a ticket. So they're talking to everybody
and this guy immediately said, "Hi, Leo. Here's a ticket." And they
put me way up in the balcony. First of all, the fact that they even knew who I
was blew my mind, but I think that's his job is to spot industry types and put
them in the balcony. Because they want real people who are going to go, hey
David!! I love you, in the front. But it was fun, and I got to go to a Carson
too.
Jeff: Wow.
Leo: Yeah, really
amazing. And I'm not talking Carson Daily. Patrick, Johnny Carson used to go to
France because nobody knew who he was. Do you even know who we're talking about
here?
Patrick: I watch a lot of American television and movies but I'm fairly sure
that the average French person does not.
Leo: No idea. Carson
said it's the only place that he can go and be a normal person. Couldn't do that in America. Thank you so much for being
here Jeff, Patrick, and Liz. You are my best friends forever because everybody
else is watching Game of Thrones right now. Bastards!
Jeff: We're the extra
choices here. The 5th and 6th and 7th choices. That's
what Leo's saying. Patrick already observed that. Hey we had Kevin Rose! That's
number 1, top of the list! And Liz has been booked for months, she forgot this was Game of Thrones night. She would be at the Red Wedding
Parties with everybody else.
Liz: It's 4:45, it hasn't
started yet.
Leo: You've got time.
Yeah, it's the East Coast folks that we couldn't get. Our show today brought to
you by Squarespace. Oh, we love Squarespace.
Mostly because every time I send people to a website I have to quickly type in
the site and then tell them the URL because it brings every site down, I actually
did it earlier.With Squarespace,
you don't have to worry about that. If you're running your website on a Squarespace site, you cannot bring it down. We've tried it
a hundred times. That's because they are doing the best hosting out there. Part
of the reason their hosting is so good- They've explained this to me, and I'm
not going to try to explain it... I was in New York with a Squarespace team; They were a great group of people, and they were explaining, well the
integration of the software with the Java virtual platform allows us to do
virtualization on the servers and we can turn up the bandwidth whenever there's
a... There's a whole technical reason. But it's because the software and the
hosting are so tightly integrated, that they can do this. And man, are they
always working on they're platforms. Smart people. Designers, engineers, etc. who are really making it work. There are 25 templates now, but that's just a starting point. It's not a cookie
cutter because you can move stuff around, point and click, get everything in
there. They've got the logo creator tool, the mobile apps which are the best in
the business and are truly gorgeous. It's very easy to use but they also have
brilliant support including live chat and email support 24/7. A completely redesigned
customer help site for easier access. These guys can't sit still, they've got
to make it better all the time. Easier access to self-help articles and video
workshops is now included and they've now got e-commerce on all subscription
levels. Which is just great for the low $8/month plan that
would be great for a school or a non-profit. You can accept donations,
that's always built in and you could even have a cash wedding registry. I mean, $8/month... And you get the free domain name when you
sign up for the Annual Plan: That's the hosting plus the software. Full
e-commerce for $20 and that includes shipping, calculators, inventory, control,
and integrated accounting. They'll do the fulfillment... Everything! Plus a
developer platform that's second to none. If you really know what you're doing,
you're going to love it. Squarespace. Here's what you do, go to squarespace.com, click the 'get
started' button. You don't have to give our offer code or anything, or even a
credit card number. Just two weeks of playing with Squarespace,
really. Import your data- They have importers for all of the blog API's.
-Import your data from your existing site including the pictures and the
comments. Everything. Play with it and change
templates. The templates are beautifully done so that they are completely
independent of the content so it's like that Zen Garden where you could just
change the template- Push a button, and everything looks different. It's so
nice, play with it and you'll love it... Squarespace.com and if you do decide
to buy you can receive 10% off when you use our offer code: TWIT.
Squarespace.com. If you missed this week- We don't have the 'best of?'
Chad: We do, I was
just-
Leo: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.
Chad: I didn't have it
ready. From the back I-
Leo: The bright red
hair... I can see it when you've got your- He's got his head on the desk and I
said, "If you missed any-" And his head pops up.
Chad: Aaa! We got to get ready for that-
That one thing!
Leo: If you missed
anything this week, take a look.
(Previously on TWiT, TWiT live specials. Leo Laporte: I am thrilled for the
opportunity to talk to Vint Cerf. He's often called
one of the fathers of the internet.
Vint Cerf: The value
of the network comes from what we put into it and what we get out of it and the
benefits far outweigh some of the risk factors.
Tech news tonight.
Sarah Lane: We start the program today with Amazon's Fire TV, a new
set-top box the company unveiled at its media event.
Devindra Hardawar: Amazon has potential to kind of
build this niche market: Make Android games that could be the equivalent of
console games.
Windows Weekly--
Leo: And he's looking
even more emo with that haircut than ever before. And I'm afraid I mocked him.
Paul Thurrott: I am reasonably sure he still
can't grow facial hair.
Triangulation--
Michio Kaku: We can read minds, move objects with
our minds, record memories, upload memories, and even photograph a dream. All
of that has been done in the laboratory.
TWiT, broadcasting from the capital of the free
world- Petaluma, California.
Leo Laporte: Somebody did point out, who is
watching at home, that your shoulders are so much broader than mine.
Paul Thurrott: Yeah.
Leo Laporte: And they said maybe you should
fix the cameras, but no that's--
Paul Thurrott: I am in general, more
masculine than you are.
Leo: You are, in
general.
Leo: They really are
broad. That was Paul Thurrott. I'm sorry I
interrupted you Jeff. Were you saying something?
Jeff: No, I was just
making fun of you, that it was your job to vamp until
Chad's ready.
Leo: Oh, I can fill
like nobody's business. It's kind of my job. I'm the filler. Maybe that's what
they meant at my first job when they said, you're the filler. Apple is suing
Samsung for $2 billion, I feel like we've seen this before.
Jeff: Can't we just
get along?
Leo: Geez, Louise! $2
billion over five iPhone features that Apple said they created, but Google
stole. Are you ready for this? Is this really... Oh this is April Fool's, is this not an April Fool's--
Liz: This is the software version, the last one was the hardware.
Leo: It feels like a
joke. Addresses, dates, phone numbers, and times appearing as links in text
messages. You get a text message with a date, you can click on it, and your
calendar opens. Apple says, we got a patent in 1999.
Background data syncing is apparently not allowed unless you're Apple, or else
license it. They have a patent for data synchronization among devices while in
use. You know, if the court rules this a good patent,
they've got them. Universal search... When you search for something on your
iPhone, it gives you the option to search the web or Wikipedia. Apparently
Apple owns that, too. They got a patent in 2005 for a universal interface for
retrieval of information in a computer system. It seems like Google has been
doing that for-
Jeff: Yeah, it's all
so offensive.
Leo: Slide to unlock,
we invented that too. I'm reading Fred Vogelstein's book, he's the Wired writer who wrote the book "Dogfight" and
these two companies do not like each other. This is the legacy of Steve Jobs. Auto-complete texts. Again, something it seems like I've
seen before the iPhone. Apple has a patent called Method System and Graphical
User Interface for providing word recommendations or auto-complete. Apple says, we own auto-complete.
Patrick: Well like when you hear the title of a patent, it seems like it
covers a very large type of operation but aren't those patents actually very
specific?
Leo: No, so here's
how our patent system works here in the United States of America. And every
patent lawyer knows this. When you write a patent specification, you write it
absolutely as broadly as you possibly can intentionally. And it's for this very
reason. So, as long as you get the patent, you're golden. The problem is, the way
the patent office seems to work is they feel that barring any substantive
dispute, we're going to approve this patent and let the courts decide if there
should be an issue. The problem is software patents, plain and simple. These
should not be allowed.
Patrick: So do they ever not grant a patent?
Jeff: When is the
Supreme Court going to rule on that, Leo?
Leo: It's this term.
Have they heard the arguments, I think they've heard the arguments. I
understand, I mean, reading Vogelstein's book is great because you really go
back in time to 2007 when Apple, yeah, did a lot of brilliant work. The iPhone
was not a given, by any means. None of this had been done. Right down to touch
screens on a screen that size, multi-touch... This was all brilliant work and
they deserve all credit for that.
Patrick: And there's no question that Google completely copied, right? I mean,
they're version of Android was basically a Blackberry before that. I'm not
mistaken there am I?
Leo: Yeah, there's
the smoking gun. We've seen the email that said, oh Christ, we just saw the
iPhone. Back to the drawing board. And it's really
true when I hold up this new HTC One. You know, this is all- Slide to
everything. It's all in there, and it's not just Samsung. In fact, I think it's
pretty clear that this Samsung is a proxy for Google in all of this, right?
Liz: Yeah, I had a chance to look through the
documents yesterday since I am on weekend duty. And it's pretty clear in some
cases that Samsung was just looking at- Like there's a document... There's a
mock up where they have, here's our slide to unlock feature that doesn't really
work and here's Apple's slide to unlock feature. Like, how could we make it
more like their feature? But I just don't understand Apple's rationale here.
Why they're going to court to defend themselves for things that are really
quite obvious. It just seems like they are really upset about something that
doesn't really matter that much.
Leo: That's what I
feel. Steve Jobs' initial upset over this were going nuclear, he told sir Walter Isaacson, we're going nuclear against Google on
this. That still lives on and I really did think that-
Liz: Yeah, and actually the documents that came
out there was him saying he was mounting a holy war. That was his plan for
2011, a holy war against Google. But you know, there's some interesting tid bits in there. For me, it's fun reading. I don't understand why they hate Google
and Samsung enough to bring this stuff out. But there is Phil Schiller watching
the 2013 Samsung Super Bowl commercial, and it has like an emergency note to
their ad agency saying like, these guys are nailing it. Samsung's ad is
awesome, why don't we have something as good as their ad. I don't know, it's a little peek behind the curtain.
Leo: Ina Fried's article in Re/code is all about this Apple
document, it's a really good article. Apple was worried, do you think Apple still is worried? I guess they are, they should be. Samsung is selling like hotcakes.
Patrick: The problem is, I think that there's a
little bit of resentment on Apple's part there because it's happened before.
They were there with the Mac before when Microsoft copied them and won. They
won the war. There's still, more or less, balanced iOS and Android now, but
there's a real chance that Android is going to eclipse the iPhone even more
than it already has. There was a time where the iPhones were 80% of the
smartphone business. So, it might be a little bit of fool me once kind of
thing. Like, they could live with it but it's happening again? So, I could see
why Jobs would be very upset about it.
Leo: Yeah. In fact,
The Verge has a Steve Jobs email... What's great about the lawsuit is the
discovery because we're seeing all of this stuff. This is, "FYI - DO NOT
FORWARD" from Steve Jobs to E.T. Which is, I guess, a
group. And what the strategy is, and there's the line, "2011-Holy
War with Google," it's on their road map. It's on their-
Liz: Yeah but it goes both ways though, if you
look at the documents that Apple has released about Samsung, there's one that
says, our #1 objective is to go up against the iPhone. This is our total focus,
is kill the iPhone. It's not patent infringement to say that on your internal
road map, but it is kind of salacious and interesting for the rest of us who
are watching.
Leo: Yeah, I'm not
thrilled about the lawsuit but I really am enjoying the discovery, I have to
say. And really, that's why Apple shouldn't be doing this. I think they're
paying a higher price doing this. So they get $2 billion, maybe they win and
get $2 billion. But really, do you want all of this stuff to come out? And do
you want people to perceive you as petty when by making a better product.
Jeff: And the problem
is, Apple hasn't made any new better products lately.
So it starts to look like a patent troll unless it has some real creativity
coming out.
Leo: In the United
States, iPhones are dominant. They really are, everybody carries them, certainly in the coasts.
Jeff: No, just among
your friends. The numbers are Android.
Leo: Well, it's maybe
50/50 but a lot of iPhones-
Jeff: Noooo...
Leo: I thought it
was, even if you look at total sales, I know you've got a Nexus 5. I see your
Nexus 5, and I'll raise you an HTC One.
Jeff: Yeah, what do
you carry? Yeah.
Leo: And a Moto X.
I'm going back and forth. Back and forth. You know,
there's a rumor that there's this X +1, the Moto X +1 might be coming out. This
is Evleak's post of a very cryptic Tweet yesterday.
But the cool thing about that is we do expect, and they've even said, a new
Motorola X this summer. You know, Motorola, just be paying attention to this and just make a better one, okay. Apple is 42% of US
smartphones and growing. And growing, that's important. Market share is
growing. Tell me Patrick, in France...
Patrick: Yeah, I don't have the exact numbers-
Leo: But what's the perveption?
Jeff: Blackberry,
probably. I know France is Blackberry,would you still lose the phones?
Leo: Come on.
Patrick: Jeff, that is not funny! I can take a little bit of fun but that's
just-
Leo: That's gone too
far.
Patrick: So, yeah obviously when the iPhone first came out it was the Holy
Grail I guess. Everyone wanted one and it was everywhere, you know? You'd go on
the metro and everyone would get their iPhone out. But now I think now it's a
little bit more in line with the US, I think it's maybe 40%-30%? Something like
that, it goes back and forth. But the image of Apple has eroded a little bit
and we don't see it as interesting as it was when it first came out. Even
myself, I got the first few iPhones the day they came out, I'm still using a 4s
now and I'm happy with it.
Leo: What? Oh, I'm
not going to talk to you anymore. The 4s, what are you nuts? That's years old.
Patrick: Yeah, and so I'm not the only one. There are a lot of people who
think that- I guess that's how I would frame it. It used to be that, if you
were serious about getting a cool phone, or actually a good phone, you would
get an iPhone. Now, it's really a matter of choice. There are lots of good
reasons to get an iPhone, lots of good reasons to get an Android phone, and a
few reasons to get a Windows phone.
Leo: So Jeff, your
perception is very interesting. Because I think you're right, I think that is
the general perception. But according to NPD, Apple has 45% market share, at
least, in sales last year compared to 26% for Samsung.
Jeff: Well that's
Samsung, what's Android overall?
Leo: Android over all
is like 40%, it's like 50/50 overall.
Jeff: 50/50, which is phenomenal, considering that Apple created the market. And world-wide Android is going berzerk because the
price-
Leo: That's what I
was interested in, world-wide. Yes.
Jeff: In India and
places like that, it's Android now.
Leo: Yeah.
Patrick: Sure, but Apple is not even competing on that segment. So it's a
little bit unfair to include all of those cheaper Android phones as well.
Jeff: Well, it's not
unfair...
Patrick: Okay, you're looking at a different strategy.
Jeff: What's the strategy. Right, it's the strategy and what Eric Schmidt
said years ago is that the strategy for Android was, with a free operating
system, you would end up with more users, thus ending up with more developers,
and you would thus, take over. And the price point is exactly part of the
strategy.
Liz: There's a slide though, if you look at one of
the documents that we've been talking about from the discovery. This is an
Apple internal executive retreat around strategy from last year. So April,
looking forward to 2014 strategy and this is the slide, I put it at the top of
my article because I thought it was crazy to see this in kind of an Apple
slide. The headline is, 'Consumers Want What We Don't Have.' And it talks
about-
Leo: Big phones.
Liz: The smartphone market is coming from two
places. One of them is phones that are cheap, and one of them is phones that
are big. At the time, they didn't sell either of those. Now
that they have a little bit of a cheaper phone.
Leo: That does lead
us to maybe believe the rumor that we've heard that there will be a big iPhone
for the next release sometime later this year.
Liz: Well they definitely recognize that weakness.
Jeff: I'm sorry, I'm
not sure- I don't want any Apple fans to come after me, but if that's your
innovation, let's take the same thing and make it a little bigger, that's not
terribly inspiring.
Leo: Well...
Patrick: Yes, it's true. No, I agree. I completely agree. What I want to
challenge is this idea that there needs to be constant incredible innovation in
that space. You know what we had maybe 3 incredible years when the new types of
smartphones arrived. But then nothing has really become incredibly innovative.
Jeff: But that's the
problem, Patrick. Apple charges a premium because Apple is supposed to be wowee, but if it doesn't bring new wowee out, it isn't worth the premium.
Patrick: The premium is not necessarily there for the innovation, I mean,
they've been selling Mac's that have not really been that innovative for a very
premium price for a long time. The build quality, the image, you know...
That's, I think, what their core wowieness, if we're
making up words, comes from. It's not necessarily from the- We sort of have
this weird idea now that Apple is failing if they're not revolutionizing the
market with every product they come out with. And historically, I don't think
they've done that with every new product they come out with. It's happened
every 3-4 years, but I think people are expecting a little bit too much and are
being a little bit unreasonable in their expectations.
Jeff: Let me introduce
you to my Chromebook.
Leo: He loves his Chromebook. Although, why anybody would spend that much
money for a computer that doesn't do anything except browse is beyond me. I
just don't understand.
Jeff: All we do is
browse.
Leo: Oh, I do a few
other things.
Jeff: Like what? Like
what?
Leo: Write Python
code, I don't know. Edit video, edit photos. That kind of
thing. Let us take a little break. I've been putting it off but I guess
we have to talk about Brandon Ike.
Jeff: I'd be eager to
hear what you think. Very eager.
Leo: Oh geez, I don't
know.
Jeff: It's hard.
Leo: I don't know,
anyway, we'll take a break, then come back and talk about it. Our show today
brought to you by Atlassian, the folks who make Jira.
Don't ask me what Jira does because I don't have to worry about it, but if you
are managing a big code project you probably know all about it and I'm sure you
are interested in what it could do for you. It is the world's most powerful and
customizable issue and project management system. So the whole idea is it's
something that will capture your workflow so you can take action on what's
important, stay up to date on the activity going on around you. Plan, track, work smarter and faster. Great for you team.
This is the jazzy video from Atlassian. A simple interface for collaborating with each other, in real time,
by the way. This is not Twitter, here. Well I mean, you have a Twitter-like interface
but there's a whole lot more. There's a full real time activity stream. You can
do anything you want, pretty much. Any business process you can imagine, you're
team can work the way you want. You define your own issue types, track the information that matters to you. They've got email chat, @ mentions, RSS, you can moniter streams of
activity, self-updating reports, dashboards... Really significantly- Angy Nerds: Bug Work Flow. I like this, this is a good project they've got here. Angry Nerds, they're making. It works
of course, with Git and that means you can follow the
code from development all the way through delivery in a single system. The
planning dock is in there, the files, and changes, and the code repository all
the way. You can even build onto Jira yourself. A lot of people do with Atlassian's rest ap,
as it's easy. Flexible and simple enough for a five person
start-up, powerful and reliable enough for a 100,000 person enterprise. That's why 70% of the Fortune: 100 uses Jira, NASA uses Jira, 25,000 companies
are using Jira. Jira is at the heart of Atlassian's offerings for managing your entire application dev process. From concept to launch, and I want you to try it right now at
atlassian.com/twit you'll get more information, try it free for 30 days, and it
really is affordable. It's as little as $10/month for up to 10 users. Atlassian.com/twit to find out more about Jira. I do hope
they make that Angry Nerds game. We could use that. So Kara wrote the story,
and I think that's great, about Brenden Ike resigning. He was one of the
creators of Mozilla and had been tapped by the board to become CEO. Like a week
ago, right?
Jeff: About 3 weeks
ago.
Leo: 3 weeks ago.
Almost instantly, 3 members of the board resigned, there was a Twitter
Jeff: Though, some say
that they were already planning to resign.
Leo: Well they didn't
deny that it had to do with Ike.
Liz: -Came out on the record in the New York Times
this weekend saying that he did resign because of the Ikeman-
Jeff: He did, okay.
Leo: Yeah, I mean
there wasn't any attempt to separate the two events.
Liz: No, there was.
Leo: Oh, there was?
Liz: Yeah, there was some kind of fuzziness around
it. Particularly because Jon Lilly was the former CEO, Gary Kovacs was the
former CEO and maybe it was time for them to move on as they were naming a new
one. There are some plausible reasons but in the New York Times, Lilly was
quoted as saying he didn't want to be involved while Ikeman was CEO.
Leo: The
controversies over the fact that Ike donated $1,000 to Prop A, which was the Anti-gay marriage initiative that passed in California. That
became public only because the data bases are public, as they should be in this
country. So you can see who gave money to what. Cupid kind took the most
extreme point of view by forbidding people using Firefox to use their site.
Liz: No, they don't forbid you, the put up a
pop-up suggesting you use something else.
Leo: They didn't lock
you out, they just said don't use it.
Liz: Yeah.
Leo: Oh. Alright. They're calling this clickdivism,
which is a terrible word. I misunderstood and thought you couldn't use Firefox.
So they really just took it as an opportunity to raise the issue and then move
on.
Liz: Yeah, plenty people have done that, said
something like you might want to come back with a more modern browser. Not
usually over political issues, but in this case, something like that.
Leo: On March 28th,
Ike blogged he has sorrow at having caused pain but he did not however, say I
now support gay marriage. I don't know what, Jeff... You put me on the spot
because I don't know what to say about this.
Jeff: I don't know,
and then after this Andrew Sullivan, obviously well-known gay political writer
argued that gays had basically put a head on a stake and this was going to be
bad for the cause of gay rights. Mark Andreessen, who had worked with them at Netscape said that this was going too far. Josh Marshall
wrote a very interesting column today saying, listen nobody has the right to be
a CEO. A CEO is a different job. If somebody just plucked out somebody from a
federal agency and said you're fired, that wouldn't work. But if a Cabinet
member with a controversial view like this, then people would understand and
say you've got to go.
Leo: There's
legitimate concern if you're in the LGBT community that you're maybe not going
to get treated well at Mozilla under Ike.
Jeff: Which, then I
think is legitimate concern but on the other hand-
Leo: Well, he made a
point of posting- I don't know whether this is sufficient, but he made a post
on the blog saying, I'm committed to equality in everything we do. I want to
work with the LGBT community, etc., etc. Maybe that wasn't enough, it does feel a little like a witch hunt I've got to say.
Patrick: That's the issue.
Liz: I think that there is a couple of things
going on here that are important. One, is that Mozilla
is not just a company. They're a community of activists that work together on a
non-profit all contributing and they have this kind of radical openness of a
culture where they actually encourage their employees to criticize their CEO on Twitter if they feel like
criticizing them. That wouldn't be the case other places. So, I think it's less
about feeling like you won't be treated well at work, and more about feeling
like you're in this mission-driven line of work and if your CEO has a
close-minded approach, to something that's crucial, to how you define your
values. It's hard to reconcile that with a notion of openness.
Jeff: But Liz- Number
one, I'm resolutely in favor of gay marriage, resolutely against the
proposition, and I agree with what you just said. The question then becomes,
where are the lines?
Liz: Right.
Jeff: I'm sorry, this fits in with the Kevin Rose story. Because at some point, if you become dogmatic and don't allow other
voices or other ways to view the world, then you have an issue of openness. And mind you, I couldn't disagree more with Ike's stand on this issue.
Leo: But it's his
right to do it.
Jeff: At some point,
isn't it?
Patrick: It is, it absolutely is.
Leo: He should be
allowed to have his opinion. Should it cost him his job, is the question. And
you make a good point, which is his job is an open source project, it's an open
community, and he'd be managing gay employees. Would he be fair and equal to
them? I think he would have been.
Liz: Yeah, I think the witch hunt or online
discussion is moving faster than ever, but also the discussion about this
particular issue. 6 years ago, Proposition 8 passed in California. A majority
of people who voted, voted yes on Proposition 8, and that's basically
equivalent to- I mean, it's a little bit more to give money to it but he was on
the side of the majority 6 years ago. So yes, the online witch hunt is moving
faster than ever but also the which is the right and
which is the wrong side of history is moving faster than ever as well. And so
you're living in that new dynamic.
Jeff: Exactly, really
well said. And that's what Josh Marshall's point, which I think was a good one,
that says the victors in a moral war need to give the losers a chance to come
in time. And I think that's true, I think the victory of LGBT communities about
these issues was magnificent and you're right Liz, swift. So swift that some take
time to catch up. President Obama himself, had to
catch up on this issue. It wasn't that long ago that he said, I'm all for gays,
but I'm against this marriage thing. And he had to catch up, and I guess the
issue for Ike was he wasn't making any effort to catch up.
Jeff: And very
similarly, I actually looked up the-
Leo: By the way, at
exactly the same year.
Jeff: Yeah, when he
was elected. Yeah, and Meg Whitman, who I think is maybe even a better
comparison because she's the republican CEO of a technology company and a
former candidate as a republican for governor of California, she said in
February that she changed her mind and now is in support of gay marriage.
Patrick: We're talking about people coming around, and sure. Let's say he
doesn't, and like Jeff, I have to say that I am very much in favor of gay
marriage, so that's not even the issue. But the guy was not an incredibly
militant person it seems. The issue is not that he was at rally's,
that he was trying to raise money, he just gave $1,000 for a cause that he
thought he was folding on one side of the issue. And if he is being stigmatized
for it in this way, 6 years later, he's being stigmatized for an idea. An idea,
that yes is probably going against the openness that the company Mozilla wants
to promote, but it's still very concerning that he's being stigmatized like
this. And not just just stigmatized you know, forced
out, for the extent of what he did. Which doesn't seem to
warrant that kind of ire.
Jeff: Patrick, I think
as we're going to argue more and more about protecting the internet for the
sake of free speech, that we have to decide as an internet culture, what that
means. What is the level of tolerance that we have about different opinions.
And I consider it a wrong opinion, flat out. At some point you defend the
rights of others to have those opinions. We defend the notion- We make fun
Erdogan for shutting down Twitter and Youtube because
of beings he doesn't like. Did the militant side of Mozilla shut down Ike for
an opinion they don't like. And I don't like that opinion either, but we have
to decide what is the culture of free speech on the net.
Patrick: We've had this issue in France very recently about gay marriage, and
believably it became an issue in France. I thought it was just you weird
Americans that would make it an issue. And I've been taking a little bit of
crap but we've had an open dialogue with my followers and the people who want
to discuss this issue.. And that's exactly the
problem, Jeff, what you're saying. We have to be tolerant of other people's
ideas. I think that's what I was trying to emphasize in what I said earlier.
He's not running around strangling puppies or drowning people, you know? He
just expressed his idea, yes a little bit more forcefully-
Leo: What if it were
racism? What if he'd-
Jeff: That's a good
question, Leo.
Leo: I always try to
define it in those terms and the reason I do is because as times change,
bigotry changes. And so it's now pretty well accepted that if
you don't like somebody because of the color of their skin, that's clearly
wrong. And I think we're rapidly moving into that situation with
discriminating against people because of who they love. We now know that's
wrong. But we're catching up on that. What if it were racism? Which is widely agreed that's a problem. I think there would
be no question if there were some smoking gun in an email in 2008 that said, I
don't think we should hire black people at Mozilla, he would be out. He
wouldn't have been considered.
Patrick: Well that's not even what he said, Leo. He didn't say I don't think
we should hire gay people...
Leo: Okay, you're
right. I don't think black people should be allowed to marry white people, what
if he said that?
Jeff: Make an
analogous here, what if he had said that in 1965?
Leo: Yes and I think
we did in fact, after the Civil Rights Act and after integration finally came
to this country- Although we still have a long way to go. -I think we did
forgive a lot of people. Not George Wallace, maybe, but a lot of people for
racism. I think we recognized that times had changed and people have come a
long way. Now, Ike has never repudiated his point of view. For all we know, he
still has that point of view.
Jeff: Well that's the
other issue, and I thought about that too. What if he'd said, well I changed my
mind. But then that would mean that the mob made him change his mind to keep
his job.
Liz: Yeah, I think it was the original act. Not to
be the stickler here, but one other point that came out in reporting is that,
at least according to the folks who are talking about it, which is not Ike
except for a very brief blog post. Mozilla contends that they did not ask him
to step down they just asked him to not serve as CEO. He decided that he needed
to leave the company. So I thought it was an interesting distinction of him- He
was ultimately the one who kind of ran from the fear that he ignited.
Leo: Okay but if
you'd be asked to step down as CEO after 3 weeks, you're probably going to leave the company. You're probably not going to stick around.
I wouldn't blame ya.
Liz: Well and he had been there for 15 years, in
the senior technical world.
Leo: Yeah, and the
thing to point out is he was a senior technical guy. He was one of the
creators, not just some guy off the street. If they'd brought in Chainsaw Al
Dunlop, it'd be different.
Liz: Yeah but that was Josh Marshall's point, that
it's different to be part of the deal rather than the figure head.
Leo: Right, he was a
founder. Oh and Josh said that means you have a higher standard. Is that right?
Liz: As CEO.
Leo: Yeah. That's a
tough one, I don't know. One-third of consumers are abandoning wearables. Hundreds of Galaxy Gear smartwatches listed on Ebay, according to Charles Arthur writing
for The Guardian. Is the wearable market dead already? I've heard a lot of good
things from people who buy Pebbles. They've sold hundreds of thousands, what
was it 400,000?
Jeff: I was going to
reach for my Glass but it's not here.
Leo: That's your
number of the week. But I do think that wearables are
not quite accepted yet.
Patrick: Well, the market is not dead already, it hasn't started yet. That's
the problem.
Leo: Yeah, maybe
that's it, no one has made the one that we need.
Patrick: Exactly. Nest is going to stop selling it's smoke alarms. And that was a feature they touted in it and everybody's had this
happen where you'll start cooking bacon and the smoke alarm goes off. Who
doesn't fan a newspaper in front of it until it quits? Well here's the beauty
of the Nest, smoke alarm goes off and you just wave your hand in front of it. So it'll go, oh you're just making bacon and it shuts up. Well...
Jeff: I always
wondered about this.
Leo: Apparently, Nest
feels like maybe that's dangerous. In testing, it was discovered that you could
accidentally dismiss the alarm and maybe burn to death.
Jeff: Hey everybody
get out!!
Leo: So Nest has
halted sales. Tony Fidell recommends that users
disable the feature and Nest is going to update units that will allow it to
work correctly. If your Nest Protect is connected to the WiFi,
well we're just going to turn it off for you right now. It did seem like it was
a little too easy to disable the smoke detector. That is not good news. Now did
the Nest Google acquisition go through?
Liz: Yeah it's done.
Leo: It is done. So
it is a Google company.
Liz: Yeah, they're still based at their own office
in Palo Alto but they're now wholly owned by Google.
Leo: Well they don't
need to sell that silly old smoke detector anyway. Who needs it? We'll make
something else.
Liz: That's a good point I guess. Maybe it gets
old businesses swept out of the way.
Leo: Might be a good
thing.
Liz: I was surprised that there was no record that
this actually happened to anyone, they just said that this happens in their own
testing there's a possibility but you know, you don't
mess around with safety equipment.
Jeff: No.
Leo: Yeah, and when I heard about that I thought well I like that
but should it be easy to disable a smoke alarm? Oh stop it. We were talking at
the beginning of the show about how our TVs wake up and say what do you want when I just move my hand so maybe this all
should be disabled.
Liz: It's crazy though, that they just have two products and one of them is now off of the market.
Leo: Hey I'm telling you, sell to Google you can do anything that you want. I
think we have completed the list of stories that I had brought to the table.
We've even thrown in one from Patrick Beja,
congratulations. You have net neutrality now.
Jeff: And you made me
salute.
Leo: I salute you.
Patrick: Wow, I get a double American salute. I'm impressed and intimidated.
Leo: But you still
don't have Netflix, so who cares?
Patrick: Well they're coming and the funny thing is, they're coming to France. And are in other places in Europe, but they don't
want to establish their headquarters in France, they're going to Luxemburg
because of regulations. And as much as the government is angry about this, they
can't do anything because that's how the world works.
Leo: The chat room is
reminding me about how we were talking last week about Goat Simulator- If this
is an April Fool's joke or if it is real and it is
absolutely real. In fact, we have now spent many hours on air playing Goat
Simulator during the week so just go back and look at the tapes. You too, for
$10 on Steam enjoy the Goat Simulator. It's actually a really fun game.
Liz: I saw that there was an April Fool's joke that has continued to go viral and now people
don't know it's April Fool's related. Which is Beyonce is looking for an intern in which she will pay in
Pepsi and three selfies taken with her.
Leo: Was that a joke
or is it real?
Liz: Yeah, it was not from Beyonce but now I continue to see irate Tweets about people being like, come on Beyonce! Pay your interns. It wasn't even her April Fool's joke.
Jeff: God, I hate that
day. I hate April Fool's.
Leo: Me too we talked
about it on This Week in Google and this year was not as bad as it has been in
the past. For some reason, Google did not do the 800 April Fool jokes they often do.
Jeff: Well they were
later. Matt Cuts changing his shirt color.
Leo: It was cute.
Jeff: It was cute, we
knew what it was and it was a joke.
Leo: I like the auto Hoffsam.
Jeff: That was good.
But you knew what it was. In the age of native advertising and up worthy, you
won't believe this, and all these things that try to manipulate us, problems
with April Fool's is the effort to say, I got ya'! It really was irritating, whereas the things like Hoff
appearing your picture I'm fine with because it's not trying to manipulate me, it's not trying to fool me it's just a joke. And that's
okay.
Leo: I did get, by
the way, a number more Hoffsam's as time went by- Hasslehoff appearing in my photos on Google+, I got a ton
of them. After April Fool's was over, they didn't take Hasslehoff out of my pictures, he's still there so
Google, you've got some 'splaining to do.
Jeff: That's still my
favorite.
Leo: Liz Gannes thank you again, for being here. We really
appreciate it. Liz writes regularly for Re/code.net it's a great site. The
reincarnated all things digital it's just fabulous. You knock it out of the
park every single day, must read. Thanks to Patrick Beja,
at patrickbeja.com he's @NotPatrick on the Twitter.
Patrick: I am.
Leo: Any podcasts you
want to plug or anything like that?
Patrick: Well you know, I still have my French tech
news show. So if you speak French, want to learn French, or have anything to do
with France and tech, that show is where you want to go.
Leo: Is there French
dancing?
Patrick: That's a question that is automatically answered by of course.
Leo: I want you to do
a segment of the show, or maybe just do a whole new segment- That would be
awesome.
Patrick: That can be arranged if I am paid well enough.
Leo: Jeff Jarvis- A
surprise guest, wasn't planned but I'm so glad to have
you.
Jeff: Thanks for
letting me butt in. I love this.
Leo: Yeah always a
pleasure.
Jeff: You could have
had people in the East Coast, Game of Thrones is not
on yet.
Leo: Alright, but
they were having parties-
Liz: They were watching the end of Pitch Perfect
again.
Leo: Oh I love that
show. Speaking Anna Kendrick let's do some French dancing. Here's the Cups song
from Pitch Perfect. Thank you Jeff, we'll see you on TWiG on Wednesday. Thank you Patrick, thank you Liz thank you everybody for joining
us. Real quick let's take a look at the week ahead.
Mike Elgan: On the week ahead, the NAB show
starts today and runs through Thursday. We're sending Father Robert Ballasaire to cover it. Also Natalie Morris joins me as our
guest co-anchor on Tech News today all week so don't miss a single episode. Back to you Leo.
Leo: Monday through
Friday 10 am Pacific, 1 pm Pacific, 1700 UTC for you daily dose of tech news
and of course don't miss tech news tonight which is at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm
Eastern time so you can get your evening and your morning fix of news news news. We do TWiT Sunday afternoons 3 pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern time,
2200 UTC on Twit.tv please watch live you miss all of the profanity if you
don't watch live. But if you can't, on demand is always available, and please
subscribe. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time on TWiT!