This Week in Tech 491 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte:  It's time for TWIT:  This Week in Tech.  Owen JJ Stone Ohdoctah is here, along with Jason Snell.  Ohdoctah has a theory about the Sony hack, we'll find out what that is, we'll preview CES, and you'll find out why I am wearing a hat.  It's all coming up next, on TWIT.

NETCASTS YOU LOVE.  FROM PEOPLE YOU TRUST.  THIS IS TWIT! Bandwidth for This Week in Tech is provided by CacheFly, at cachefly.com.

Leo: This is TWiT, This Week in Tech, episode 491, recorded January 4, 2015.

Programmed to Kill Ponies

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Jason Snell:  Hi Leo.

Leo:  Good to have you.  sixcolors.com is his new website.  Former editorial director at IDG and MacWorld and PC World.  It's really great to have you.  Happy New Year.

Jason:  It' a pleasure.  Happy New Year.  It's my first podcast of the year.  I'm happy to be a part of it.

Leo:  Me too.  Also here, Owen JJ Stone, Ohdoctah from owenjjstone.com.

Owen JJ Stone:  This is for you, Leo.

Leo:  He's got shaving cream.  Actually you're on because we love you.  Because you're great, but you're also on to give me some advice, so we did—you may know.  We did a 24-hour broadcast.  Great success on New Year's Eve.  We call it the 24 hours of 2015.  Second row in a year we've done it, in which we say, "Happy New Year" in every time zone.  All time zones in those 24 hours.  In fact, we had callers from many of the time zones.  It was great fun.  But what we did differently this year was we were raising money for UNICEF, I think a really great cause.  United Nations Children's Fund helps kids all over the world who need inexpensive things, like mosquito nets, more elaborate things, like education.  It helps kids be safe from violence and exploitation and really a great cause, Charity navigator ranks it among its highest charities.  We wanted to use it because it was global, so everybody who was watching all over the world could get behind it, and because it is such a well-run charity.  What we planned, we thought we'd raise $20,000. That was our goal in the 24 hours, because I thought, "well, it's the first time we've done it.  We have really no idea, but let's say $20,000."  Jeff Jarvis, who is the wonderful host of This Week in Google very kindly said, "let me get things started.  I will shave for the first time in 42 years.  I will shave my beard if you raise $20,000."  Amazingly we raised $20,000 before noon.  So Jeff kindly let me shave him, his beard, which I did a terrible job!  He had to go back and fix it up.  I'm saying this as an excuse, because then I got swept away.  First, then Sarah Lane pitched in.  She said, "If we get to $30,000 I'll sing the song I hate more than any other song with a passion.  Bare Naked Ladies "One Week."  And she did.  We did and she did, and that was great.  So I said, "I have to ante up.  I have to pony up.  I have to participate."  So I said if we make $40,000, I'll shave my head, and if we make $50,000, this I thought was never going to happen, I will get a tattoo.  Those of you watching the video, I padded part of my anatomy.  That's where the tattoo went.  So we got $40,000, and ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing left up top, and we also got $50,000.  In fact, we ended up, you can put us over $70,000 now.  If you go to unicefusa.org/twit, we're at $61,000, but there's more than $10,000 from our auctions, so we're well over $70,000.  I'd love to get even higher.  We're going to keep that site open, if you'd like to help out.  unicefusa.org/twit.  So, initially we had mine clipped.  A number of people said, "you know that's not shaving." 

Jason:  You're full Lex Luther now.

Leo:  I am full Lex Luther.  I am the one who knocks now.  Owen you're here to help me to give me advice.

Owen:  I prefer to call it black bear and polar bear. 

Leo:  If you were only here.  I wish you were.

Owen:  The best part is we could rub our heads together and create static electricity, friction. 

Leo:  How long have you been bald up there?

Owen:  I've been shaving my head since I was 23.  I don't know how old I am now, but it's probably like 10 years or so. 

Leo:  I am googling, last night I'm googling first time you shave your head, what should you do?

Owen:  People come up and want to rub your head!

Leo:  It was worse when it was kind of short.  Then it was like a little teddy bear.  Everybody wanted to rub it.  Now it's a little scratchy.  It's like number one grit.

Jason:  yeah it is.  It's a little sandpapery.

Owen:  In two weeks it'll be soft and fuzzy again.  It'll be all teddy bear again.

Leo:  That's what I'm counting on, because unlike the tattoo, and I did get a TWIT tattoo on my behind, unlike the TWIT tattoo, this will come back, I hope.

Owen:  What if it doesn't?

Leo:  Then I'll be you.  I'll just get used to it.  I was freezing last night; I realized that you need a cap.  Do you wear a nightcap?

Owen:  Yeah, I have to wear a hat.  I don't wear a nightcap.

Leo:  I don't wear a nightcap dude.  I think, frankly now, this is for the first time ever, this pork pie hat looks good.  This was the Breaking Bad look.  So now I've decided I'm not going to shave either.  As long as I'm scratchy, I'll grow it all out.  We'll have a race. 

Jason:  See what grows faster.

Leo:  See what grows faster, my beard or my head.

Owen:  Let it be all even, and then you can turn into a wildebeest man.

Leo:  Anyway, props to those of you who do this every day.  I did actually; I go down to the Boulevard Barbers.  They are very good; they knew exactly what to do.  The barber there, Sara, used a straight razor on me.  Have you ever used a straight razor?

Owen:  I've had it done.  I've never use one myself, I'd be terrified.

Leo:  I wouldn't do it myself.

Owen:  I have a very eloquent old gentlemen that opens his barbershop at like 3:00 in the morning and I go to him and he does.  And I'm scared when I'm sitting there, but it feels amazing.  It's the best kind of shave. 

Leo:  It was great.  She used essential oils.  Orange and stuff and just scraped it. 

Owen: She made you feel special.

Leo:  But that's it.  I'm done.  I'm growing it out now.  I don't think there's any rule that I had to keep it for any length of time.

Jason:  That's totally fair. 

Leo:  I'm humiliated now, sufficiently. 

Owen:  Grow it out all year, don't get a haircut, and donate it at the end of the year.  Start over again.

Leo:  At the end of the show, I'm going to give thanks because we don't, I'm the one in front of the camera, and of course we have lots of guests, but it's really people behind the scenes who work the hardest like John, who worked 48 hours, not 24 hours, getting this thing ready, getting the ball drop going and everything.  I have a list of a lot of people to thank, we'll roll those credits at the end of the show.  You're not going to CES, Owen JJ Stone?

Owen:  No.  I haven't gone to CES in like 4 years.  I really find it pointless.  They push so much stuff at you, half of it's crap. 

Leo:  Half of it never ships!

Owen:  Yeah, that's what I mean.  So you go there, and you're like, "I need that in my life!"  And it's like, "Oh.  We're never going to make that.  We just brought it here and put it on the table for you to not touch and want. 

Leo:  I bet you, Jason Snell, because you were at IDG, you had to go every year.

Jason:  Yeah, in fact I had arguments with my boss multiple years about whether I needed to go or not.  Last year I negotiated I only had to go for a day.

Leo:  This show, for the first show of the year, is the "Aren't I glad I'm not going to CES show?" 

Jason:  I was saying earlier on Twitter today, I am totally qualified to talk about CES today on TWIT, because I'm available.  I'm not in Vegas.  That qualifies me. 

Leo:  Almost everybody who goes says it's great.  Almost everybody who isn't going says thank god I don't have to go.  Those of us who have been more than ten times, if you've been more than ten times, then you have the right to say, I'm done. 

Owen:  You know what's great about things?  Other people are there with you.  It's not great because it's there.  It's because a mass amount of people in your industry are there, and you can pick and needle and choose and talk about a subject.  That's the awesome part of it.  Otherwise, it's pointless.

Jason:  That's totally true.  I would even throw in there it's not valueless.  There are lots of interesting things to see, the problem is that there is so much there and the interesting things are this tiny fraction, and you've got to get through a million people to get there, and it is not a pleasure to go to CES for me.  I never liked it.  I don't really like going to Vegas.  Vegas when it's completely at capacity with tech people is kind of insane.

Leo:  It's so hard to get around.

Jason:  It's not as if there's not interesting stuff there.  In fact, some of the best stuff at CES is the weird stuff.  It's not the press releases about things that are new TVS that are kind of boring, it's the totally crazy stuff that you end up stumbling into and you're like, "Why does this exist?  Why is this here?"  Often, there isn't a good answer to that. 

Leo: I want to break it down a little bit, because there are some categories.  There are categories you won't see at CES this year, some categories that have been big in the past.

Jason:  Oh yeah.  The Smartphone industry—the phone industry in general has gone to mobile world congress in Barcelona and so as a phone show, CES is kind of terrible.  It's not for phones anymore, like it used to be.

Leo:  It used to be a lot of cars went to CES.  Less so this year, although—

Jason:  They used to have one of those huge convention center buildings for just cars and car stereos. 

Leo:  Although I have to say the one category that might be interesting, I would love to see more of, we've seen it in past years, but I think this is going to be the big one is autonomous vehicles.  Look what Outie posted on their Instagram.  This is an A7 that's designed to be driverless.  They say you're pilot to CES today and I'm wondering if they might even use that to pilot some journalists around CES. 

Jason:  That wouldn't surprise me.

Leo:  Wouldn't that be cool?  Google is supposedly also going to have some stuff there.  I remember a couple of years ago Chevrolet had autonomous urban vehicles.  They were very small capsules that just had two seats.  But the Google cars don't.  I have a feeling they're—it's sort of a small car too.

Jason:  Well and Nevada is essentially lawless, right? 

Leo:  Nevada, actually autonomous vehicles—

Jason:  It's one of the states where it is legal.  They do a lot of testing there.

Leo:  That's going to be kind of interesting.  There will be TVs there.  So we are going to send three reporters.  Father Robert will be there, Dick D. Bartolo, who always goes and does the junky stuff, the bottom floor Chinese pavilion—he always looks for the weird and interesting stuff.  He'll be doing that.  He's also doing showstoppers tonight.  I'll explain that in a bit.  And Scott Wilkinson, our home theatre guy, is going to be there and talk to the TV things.  In the past, it's always been Sony, Panasonic, LG, Sharp, and—

Jason:  Samsung.  The Korean and Japanese companies. 

Owen:  LG is what I'm excited about.

Leo:  We'll talk about that in a second, because there is some new stuff like LG and 4K that those companies are bringing out, but I'm also hoping that he'll go over, and I know he will, we're going to send him to TCL and High Sense, the Chinese companies, just as the Korean companies took over from the Japanese companies, when Samsung and Lucky Gold star said, "You know what?  We want the premier business.  The profit business."  And took over and really have put great pain to the Japanese TV manufacturers, they're all losing money on TVs in Japan.  In that same way, I think China is hoping to supplant Korea.  Highsense and TCL are both Chinese companies, and both are doing some really interesting stuff, so we're going to get to—we will have coverage.  We just won't have the big booth.  You know mobile nations, Renee Ritchie's company, is doing a big booth with GeekBeat TV and Tom's Hardware.  They're actually taking our location. 

Jason:  Yeah.  I was talking to Serenity Caldwell.  She's going to be out there.

Leo:  So they'll do that.  It costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars and I didn't feel like—you can actually get a better look at CES by staying at home and letting people feed you the stuff.  The Internet makes CES frankly, not that useful, if what you're doing is finding out the new stuff.  If what you're doing is hanging out with Owen and Jason—

Owen:  Live the dream.

Leo:  It's different.  If it's a party—you know expense accounts aren't what they used to be.  I remember going with Gina Smith on the Ziff Davis expense account.  That was living.  It didn't matter what you bought.  As long as it was for a client, it was OK.  So autonomous vehicles—we're expecting some interesting TVs like Quantum Dot. 

Jason:  The story of TVs at CES in the last five or ten years, it really has been: what do we do now that the HD conversion has happened?  Because that was the big thing was HD conversion.  And now with sort of the quest with what else can we do to sell TVs, because everybody just bought a TV, so what else can we do?  3D—

Leo:  3D, they tried 3D.  Flop. 

Jason:  It's kind of a flop.  They've done the curved screen thing, there's some OLED stuff that is kind of early but is interesting, that is to replace the Plasma.

Leo:  I got the very expensive curved Samsung OLED a year ago, and it's still my best TV.  It's only 55, it's not giant, it was very expensive.

Jason:  Gina just did an OLED TV review and said it was the best picture they'd seen that wasn't a Plasma. 

Leo:  It is, and I have the old Vieras, which were the great Panasonic plasmas, and they've discontinued those.  So what's out there right now is OLED and LCD, and OLED is prohibitively expensive still.

Jason:  It's coming down.

Leo:  LCD is the technology that they're really pushing.  They're pushing 4K, and then this Quantum guy.  I'm going to read you, this is what Wikipedia says Quantum dot.  It's a nano crystal made of semi-conductive materials.  It's small enough to exhibit quantum mechanical properties; its excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions.  I wish my excitons were confined.

Jason:  Did Jordie Laforge write this article?  Is that what's happening here?

Owen:  This is the Marvel Universe of television.  You just start coming in and telling me about quantum phazons and protons—the only TV I care about, I don't know why I do, because I hate Sony TVs, but I want a Sony TV because I can put my Playstation on my Sony without having a Playstation in the room.

Leo:  Sony made the first Quantum Dot TV's, the XPR in 2013. 

Owen:  That's why I don't buy Sony anymore.  Sony is always first with this oh, this space ads magical martial artist ninja turtle thing, and guess what?  The quality of the image you put in the TV is the same quality of image you put in the TV.  So unless I got Quantum physics DVDs or BlueRays, what's the difference going to be for this television?  What is it going to do for me with my crappy Verizion cable that's pushing out 720 P on 80% of the channels?  I can't take it.

Jason:  That's the problem with the 4K stuff.  It's the same thing.  Yay, it's a 4k TV, what can I put on it?  Nothing.

Leo:  So the upshot of Quantum dots, according to Scott Wilkinson is blacker blacks, better contrast ratios, more even lighting.  But the proof will be in the pudding when we see the TVs this year.  He'll have the reviews of that.  We also expect more OLEDs and lower priced OLEDs, but that's it.  I think those are the two technologies that are survivors.

Jason:  I think the Quantum Dot technology works is every show that is possibly on your screen is on your screen in a parallel universe, and one of them is the one you see.

Leo:  That's good.  I'll take that.  It does sound, you're right Owen, a little bit of a marketing turn.

Jason:  They're trying so hard to get—everybody bought an HDTV in the last ten years, and those don't turn over.  TVs don't turn over very fast, and all the TV companies are like, "What do we do now to sell new TVs?"  And they still haven't really figured it out. 

Owen:  The best thing they could do to sell new TVs is say, "Hey.  We sold you a crappy new TV last year.  Trade it in with us and we'll give you this new TV for 3/4 of the price.  I have 3 55-inch TVs in my house; my daughter's got a 47-inch in her room.  What do you have to do to get me to take it out of her room?  You've got to take this TV from me.  Because I'm not going to sell it to my friends for $200 after I spent $1215 on it.  What do you do with all these TVs?  Keep them, because they're still good.  Buyback program.  That's how you get me to buy a new TV. 

Jason:  It's like selling mattresses.  We'll take your old mattress away, we promise.

Leo:  We should explain—in a way, this is your preparation for what you're about to hear all week is people who are like, "quantum dot."  It's still an LCD; it's just a different kind of backlight.  Maybe it'll be better, maybe not.  It's an LED backlight.  Light emitting semiconductor nano crystals. 

Owen:  Somebody watched Guardians of the Galaxy this summer like everybody else did and they wrote a pamphlet on the TV.  That's what happened.

Leo:  We'll wait with interest to see what those look like.  Autonomous vehicles.  Wearables will probably be big.  They were big last year but they were all horrible.  Maybe now we're in the second or third generation of wearables.  I think Android Wear has come a long way, but just like previous CES, Apple's not there, except in spirit.  In 2010 at CES all they could talk about was the iPad, in 2007 at CES all they could talk about was the iPhone.  This year, it's going to be iWatch, what is Apple going to do?  And here is everything that we can think of on the shelf, and we just hope—I feel like Android wear is pretty close.  There will not be a new pebble this year at CES, I'm told.  I'm wondering if they're sliding behind a little bit.

Owen:  LG has a really nice watch that they're putting out, I forgot what it's called, but that LG watch looks really nice. 

Leo:  Not the G Watch R, the round one?

Owen:  Yeah, that one.  That looks nice.

Leo:  That's a pretty watch. 

Owen:  It doesn't have that stupid thing—

Leo:  We call that the flat tire, yeah. 

Owen:  That's horrible.

Leo:  I don't mind it.  I have a flat tire.  Here I have a watch face, of course, I’m like any TOG.  There's a black bar at the bottom.

Owen:  But does the black bar do anything for you?  Do you swipe up with it?  Does it move?  I want full value for my money.  I don't want a watch with 10% of it missing.  I want the whole service of my watch.

Leo:  You know what you have to do with the design watch face is you have to take the 6 off.  

Owen:  See?  That's horrible.  Sell that watch on Ebay right now and get an LG—

Leo:  This watch in terms of pure utility doesn't bother me.  I can live with it. 

Owen:  You can call me and I'll tell you what time it is.

Leo:  You know what this does?  Hey Owen, what time is it?

Owen:  It's not 6:00. 

Leo:  You know what this watch does that the Apple watch won't do?  Maybe you know better, Jason, because you cover Apple pretty closely, will it have this different watch faces?

Jason:  Yes. 

Leo:  It will, but they'll all come from Apple?

Jason:  Either they promised a face builder kit or there is one.

Leo:  The only reason they might not want to do that is Google is getting in trouble for allowing Tog Hoyer.  This is obviously fake.  I can also get a Rolex. 

Jason:  And Pebble had the same problem.  Apple has a whole bunch of faces that they have licensed.  I think there's a 3rd party program for that too.  But it's Apple, they're going to have to approve it and they'll probably say, "Make sure you have the rights to this intellectual property."

Leo:  They won't get in this kind of— Nobody is going to say, "Oh Leo.  You've got a Tog Hoyer."  They know it's a fake watch face. 

Jason:  I guess I would say if I'm Tog Hoyer I might want to make a really good face for these things. 

Leo:  Yeah.  Rolex. 

Jason:  I had a Domo face on my Pebble for ages that was totally not licensed and they finally did one that was licensed and it's great.  Or they finally licensed that one. 

Leo:  What else will CES bring us?  By the way, it's not the consumer electronics show this show.  They reminded journalists that CES doesn't stand for anything.

Jason:  It's like DVD. 

Leo:  Just remember.  Oh, and you're supposed to say International.

Jason:  International CES. 

Leo:  What else will international CES bring us?

Owen:  If it doesn't stand for anything it will fall for anything.

Leo:  How about home automation?  Apple again, this is an area we're pretty sure Apple is going to do a TV which will be a hub, the Dish folks have already announced that just as they introduced Hopper, which kind of revolutionized DVRs a couple of years ago, they plan to do something called Sage, which is a home automation hub, along with your DVR and top box.  So they own sling box, they have Dish, and they're going to use this Sage platform.  I presume Hopper as well, to do home automation.  I'm sending Father Robert to the Home Automation pavilion this year, because I have a feeling that— in years past it's been disappointing because you've got all these different standards.  Samsung is going to introduce appliances that talk to its smart things hub, so you can tell your dishwasher, "Hey, wash those dishes.  I'm on my way home."  I don't know why you'd want to do that. 

Owen:  Because people are lazy.  They want to have things timed out.  I want to get home and have my dishes warmed, Leo.  I had my home automated, and I do it exactly the way you just said not to.  All my stuff is separate.  I got a Nest, I've got an Irish thing from Home Depot, and I’ve got Philips Hue Lights.  You know why?  I don't want these robots taking over me.  I don't want to go get Samsung smart home and then Samsung says, "get the heck out of your house, we own it now." 

Leo:  It's actually good, if you're scared about SkyNet, it's good if the robots don't talk. 

Owen:  I don't want them to talk.  I want to control the lights; I want to control the heats.  I don't want the heat to talk to the lights and do something without me knowing.

Jason:  But what if the heat and the lights hate each other, and the lights turn on and try to warm things up and get the heat to shut off.  You could have a robot war in your house. 

Owen:  Then I could sit back and enjoy the show.  But I could do one thing—you know that one commercial they got with the robot that's the thing and they're trying to turn you into home automation but the robots creepy?  That's the problem.  If you get one system to take everything, that robots just like, "what do you mean you're going to replace me?"  And that's not the situation I want to be in.

Leo: You're right.  We should cripple the situation and not let them talk together, because they might plot. 

Owen:  You got cars driving themselves, your robots are making you drinks, they're making that microwave thing from StarTrek that magically 3D prints food now, like, I don't know, Leo.

Leo:  I want my Hue lights to talk to my Nest, Thermostat to talk to my Sony speakers, to talk to my set top box to talk to my alarm sensors, my lights out front.  I think they should all talk together.  That's right.  That was Doctor Morbius reminds us of the very good Sci-Fi story.  I think it was Ray Bradbury, "There will come soft Rains."  Do you remember that?  When the house takes over, it's a computer-controlled house? That was great.  And that was 2026.  It's only 11 years from now.

Jason:  So in the next five or ten years, the stuff will become more interrelated and that will be useful, and then in about 11 years it will kill us.  But for the next ten it will be pretty sweet.  It's pretty sweet right now that my nest knows if I'm in the house or not and the lights can turn themselves on and off.

Leo:  Enjoy it for now.  We know it's over soon anyway.  Actually, the house does everything.  The house is cooking and working and stuff, but soon you realize that there's no people.  And then he goes to the outside of the house and you see the silhouettes of the family burned in the paint because they were killed in a nuclear war, but the house lives on.  It's a wonderful— if you haven't read that story—

Jason:  Spoilers for Ray Bradbury.

Leo:  I did just spoil it, but it's a great story.  So here's something very exciting.  Sony Walkman.  Big banner out front of the CES Hall.  Sony is bringing back the Walkman for CES. 

Owen:  Is it like Zound's older cousin?

Leo: Well we had a review on it on Before you Buy this year that does HD tracks, that does high res music.  I don't know what this does.  You can see on the left a gold headphone jack.  It—I don't, and there's the Walkman logo.  Isn't that great? 

Owen:  Unless it's super small and it fits on my wrist or my shoulder for the gym, what's the point?  I have a phone.  My phone plays music.  Every phone plays music.

Leo:  Right.  That's what happened to the iPod. 

Owen:  Exactly, so what is the point of this, and why did you do it?  I'd rather you bring out a tape deck and do something nostalgic for me as opposed to that.

Leo:  What's funny is that Sony does make phones, right?  Here's the video.  This is called, Welcome to the New world.  She's riding in an elevator but the elevator is going up and she's licking a lollipop.  Wait a minute, is that Android 5?  But no, here's music and sound.  And there's a lizard.  5.  Brilliance, the Eiffel Tower, Shadows, Hands, Rainbows, double rainbow, Iris, eyeball, eyeball looking, what's the eyeball seeing?  It looks like a Walkman.  Now she's smiling.  Now her hair is standing up on her arm.  Oh my god!  She's crying!  That's a giant belly and a small child.  That used to be his home.  Now he lives in a curtain.  Welcome to the new world.  Sony.

Owen:  I think we just got programmed to kill ponies or something.  That was a college student—that video did nothing for me except to make me hate Sony and the fact that they ended with Sony on it.  You put a small child on a baby's belly?  That was the only nice thing in that video.  Who pays for this stuff?

Jason:  I was going to say that video proves JJ's theory about how the world is about to come to an end, actually.  That's a little—

Owen:  I feel like something bad could happen.  Like I just got programmed to do something.

Leo:  It was subliminal messages. 

Owen:  Yeah.  Owen JJ Stone arrested for kicking ponies. 

Leo:  Shave your head!

Jason:  Well you guys are more susceptible to the brain wave mind control.

Leo:  You're the only guy with hair on this show.

Jason:  That's right.

Leo:  I'm scaring the children now. 

Owen:  That video scared the children.  Really though.  What did that video have to do with anything?  Anything?  The new world of rainbows?  We haven't had rainbows?

Jason:  And at the end there's a Sony Walkman.

Leo:  At the end of all that—

Owen:  There was a Sony Walkman?!?  I didn't even see it!

Leo:  It was in the reflection of her eye.  If you looked very closely you could see that little Walkman in the reflection of her eye, and that's why she was crying.  Because Sony hasn't got anything new for 2015. 

Jason:  Nobody buys. 

Leo:  Sony is a troubled company, financially. 

Owen:  I told you a couple weeks ago.  Sony is in big big trouble.

Leo:  You heard it here first folks.  Sell your Sony stock.  Is Sony stock?

Jason:  I don't know.  Sell your metaphorical—

Leo:  We're the wrong people to have.  Sell your—let's take a break.  We're going to come back with more Owen JJ Stone, Ohdoctah is here.  Wake up. 

Owen: I'm awake.  I'm upset about this video. 

Leo: You're so relaxed.  Hey, by the way, I saw the beautiful pictures on Instagram.  You've got to follow Ohdoctah on Instagram.  Of your daughter playing—we sent you—last time you were on, we had the LittleBits kit and we sent you one, and you gave it to her for Christmas.  You bastard.

Owen:  Yes, she loves it.  I upgraded it.  You guys sent me money, and I doubled what you gave me so I could get her more.

Leo:  Because what she did, she made a —what did she do?

Owen:  The first project she wanted to do was a hand buzzer.  Actually, the first thing she made was the feather.  She made the tickler. But then she made a hand buzzer where you shake the hand and it makes a buzzing sound.  But on her own, she attached a light to it and put it in her hair so when she buzzed it made a buzzing sound and her hair lit up.  Man, she is doing it.

Leo:  How old is she?

Owen:  She's 7, and she did it all by herself.

Leo: That is so cute.  Seven-years-old.  Go down her arm a little bit there.  You can't see it, because—yeah.  There's all the little bits. 

Owen:  This is a test run.  But after that, we put it underneath her sleeve and ran it up through her hair and she ran around to all her friends telling them to shake her hand.

Leo:  Awesome.  There is hope for the children of the future.  I love it.  Well I'm glad, that's great.  Also here, Jason Snell.  His new venture:  sixcolors.com.  How many podcasts are you doing?

Jason:  It's so many.  Too many to count.  About four a week.

Leo:  That's great!

Jason:  It's nothing compared to you, but we’re just starting.

Leo:  I think it's wonderful.  You're just starting, exactly.  We are brought to today by the great lynda.com, a great time in this new-year to start and invest in yourself and learn some new skills, some creative skills, and some business skills.  Kick start your new year and I've got something brand new for you.  A free ten-day trial to lynda.com.  Millions of people, including us use lynda.com to train, to learn, to expand our horizons.  4500 courses on topics like web development, photography, some of my best friends—my best photographer friends teach at lynda.com.  Visual design and business.  Software training like excel.  Bert Monroy teaches Photoshop at lynda.com.  That will give you an idea.  It's great teaching programming.  That gives you some idea of what you're getting at lynda.com.  These aren't just great teachers, inspiring and exciting people, these are people who are actually doing it, who are out there, who are in the real world using these tools, and they're passing their knowledge on to you.  When I see someone like Bert Monroy giving away all his secrets, I just go, "Yay Bert.  You rock."  It's so great.  The Photoshop CC essential training, great way to start.  In business, managing your time.  They have a really great time management course.  Code clinic, it's a great series.  Every month, lynda.com issues a code challenge, and authors share their solutions using different programming languages.  Even if you're not an adept coder, this is so much fun.  We use lynda.com to teach.  All our editors are using premier, so they're using lynda.com.  You can learn final cut too.  Do something good for yourself in 2015.  Sign up for our free ten-day trial, lynda.com/twit2.  This is the new trial.  lynda.com/twit2.  With your membership, you get unlimited access to every course, so you can take them all, or as many as you can in ten days.  Including IOX and Android on your portable devices.  New courses are added every week, and you get access to them too.  lynda.com/twit2, ten days free.  Go ahead.  I challenge you.  Learn something new.  Look, I shaved my head, I learned something new.  Now it's time for you to learn something new at lynda.com.  You don't think they have a how to care for your shaved head on lynda.com?  Owen, you should teach that class!

Owen:  I should teach that class.  I'll call you up and do a practice run.  Make sure you don't cut yourself.  You're not trying to shave again?

Leo:  I'm not shaving again.  I'm just trying to keep the darn thing from hurting and being cold.  I understand hats, I had no idea how much hair does for your head.  It keeps you warm, it keeps the sun off, I can see why, now I completely understand on Breaking Bad why Brian Kanston after he had his chemo and lost his hair why he went and got the pork pie hat.  That wasn't an affectation, you need it.

Owen:  Leo, the way you just took your hat off you looked like a stooge. 

Leo:  I definitely have the Curly look at this point.  Wow.  Burk says hair is a hat.

Owen:  Side note.  You're going to keep yelling at me because my website is down.  My website is down because I'm in a heated battle with GoDaddy, and I'm trying to escape the evil clutches, and it is not a good situation right now.

Leo:  Get rid of GoDaddy. 

Owen:  I've got two domains they do not want to let go.

Leo:  Hover.com, get on over there.

Owen:  As soon as I get free, I will be going somewhere, but they act like they can't get a hold of my account because they want to sell my domain. 

Leo:  Aren't they terrible?

Owen:  It's an issue.  And I've got 30 things hosted with them and they want two.  I know that there's two that they want, and that's why they won't let me transfer everything.  I don't know what I've got to do to—

Leo:  Do you have a really good name?

Owen:  It's my daughter's first name.  I have leah.com. 

Leo:  Why would they want that?

Owen:  I don't know.   Somebody wants it.  I've had people offer me 25 k so far. 

Leo:  So it's their daughter's name too?

Owen:  Or it's that chick from Disney.  It's A Disney chick named Leah that wants it.

Leo:  Oh, sure. 

Owen:  Somebody powerful wants it and they're not playing games with me.  It's weird. 

Leo:  That's it.  That's exactly it.

Owen:  I'm going to focus next week on getting it fixed, because I can't stand it. 

Leo:  Compost Semini says if you and I stood next to each other we'd be 2/3 of a pawnshop sign.  Moving right along.  Jeff, did you guys have a good Christmas and New Years?  Did you have a good Holiday season?  So did Apple.  This kind of surprises me.  Flurry does these measurements.  Actually, Yahoo owns Flurry now.

Jason:  Yeah, all those guys got bought out.

Leo:  Flurry was—you covered Flurry for years.  Tell me what they did.  What are they?

Jason:  Well the biggest thing they did was you would embed their code in your app and it was like— you go to a website that pings Google analytics and you can know how many page views you got.  Well this was that for apps.  So Flurry would be integrated into an app, and basically when you launch it, people don't know this necessarily, it would phone home.  It would ping their server and say I just got launched or I just tapped this button, or last time I launched I crashed.  So the developers can see who is using your app, how often they're using it, and all the stuff that the app platform doesn't or didn't offer you.

Leo:  So Flurry is now more than 600,000 apps doing the analytics.  So that's a pretty good sample I would guess.  Are they as strong an Android as they are on iOS? 

Jason:  I don't know.  I don't know how much of that Google has started to put in their developer tools, because that's the next trend is to actually build the stuff into the tools.

Leo:  Presumably they've normalized for the Android vs. iOS balance, but according to Flurry, the top 5 device activations by manufacturer—and this is global—51% of all device activations, December 19th through Christmas day—51% were Apple.  iPads and iPhones.  Only 17% Samsung.  The real surprise here, Sony and LG, but Nokia which is a Windows phone platform, 5.8%, they're in there.  They're number 3.  They're not huge, but still pretty good.

Owen:  Last year it was the issue, my friend who is not really a tech person, the father had an iPad, but he bought the whole family Kindle Fires.  The wife and his four kids he bought a Fire HD.  This Christmas, he went out and bought the wife and all three of those kids iPads, and didn't even do anything with the Kindle Fires.  He just kept them.  He said, I made a big mistake.  They were only $100, I thought it wouldn't matter, but it matters, and I had to go get the apps for the kids.  So people realized I can get these cheap, because some people can't afford $400 for an iPad, and then a year later, they're like Holy smokes—

Leo:  How much of that is the kids are very brand aware?  It would be like if you gave them Air Jordans and they wanted Airforce Ones?

Owen:  The kids are brand aware when it comes to I can go play with Osmo on my friend's iPad and they don't have that for this?  Dad, why did you get me this thing?  It doesn't do anything!  It doesn't do what my friends do!

Leo:  But come on.  You can watch movies, you can watch people play games. 

Jason:  If Dad had an iPad, they probably had been using games on the iPad, and even if they could get some of those games on his Kindle Fires, they have to buy them again, which means Dad didn't say, "Oh, I'll just buy all those apps again for you kids."

Leo:  I've got to point out that's $400 more for the iPad than it was for the fire.  Each. 

Owen:  I have a Fire and I have a Samsung tap 3, my iPad is just faster.  It's just better.  That's not saying anything about brand awareness.  It's just better, and when apps come out, they come out three times sooner for iPhone or iPad than it does any other device and it's usually not as buggy.  I don't know.  There's pros and cons.  Because I like a lot of the free stuff you can get on my Android, but it's not the same.  

Leo:  Android has a ton of free apps.  In fact, replacing your iPad apps on an Android device, admittedly there are some gaps.  It's not much more expensive, especially now with fermium. 

Owen:  I just meant from Amazon. Going from Amazon to an iPad is the—

Leo:  I have to admit, going from the Android store to the Amazon store is a little weird.

Jason:  So iPad mini 2 is 299.  And that's last year's retina model. 

Leo:  So it's only 3 times more expensive.

Owen:  As long as you don't get the 16 gig.  Who is going to do anything with that?  You'll be down to 3 gigs. 

Leo:  A lot of people couldn't go to iOS 8 because they had 16 gig devices and there wasn't enough free space.  So Flurry does say the reason you pay attention to the Christmas buying week and the Christmas present opening week this year is because that's a bell weather for the rest of the year. You can kind of tell what's going to happen.  Here's an interesting graph that's a little hard to read.  This is by Screen Size.  So, I'll describe this for you looking at home and I'll try and describe this in some way that people listening can understand it.  It shows 3 years, 2012-2014.  In 2012, 16% of the devices that were activated were full size tablets.  This year, 11%.  Small tablets had 17% of the market in 2012, this year, 11%.  Fablets, the giant phones went from 3% to 13%.  Medium phones, I guess that would be 5-inch phones, 58 to 64%, and the smaller phones, which were 7% of the market of the new activations in 2012, probably iPhone 4S, or, 5?  right.  7% down to 2% this year.  I think the takeaway here is that the growth area is in the big phone area.

Jason:  You're looking at percentage of distribution.  So what we know about the tablet market is it's roughly flat.  It's not actually going from 16 and 17 to 11 and 11, but that's how much more the phone market is growing than the tablet market.

Leo:  So sales aren't down, they're just not growing.

Jason:  We're going to assume that tablet sales are flat or up slightly or maybe down slightly, but something in there.  But on the phone side, phone sales continue to grow.  That trajectory hasn't stopped and we see now that fablet sales seem to be way up, and that medium phone sales keep motoring along.

Leo:  Yeah.  People want big phones, between medium and giant phones.  77% of all activations.  That's a big chunk. 

Owen:  Also, people don't have money, so a lot of my friends buy 6 plus, because they're like I always wanted a tablet or an iPad, but I didn't want to spend $500 on it, but you get a 28 plus 6, now you feel like you got yourself an iPad too, and it's your phone, so it's an all in one purchase that cuts down on a lot of overlap. 

Jason:  I was talking to somebody at Apple when the new phones were announced; they said very much the same thing.  There are lots of markets where people buy the big phone.  In some cases it's their only computing device.  Some places don't have a computer in this world.  If you've only got one device, make it a big one.  Right?  And you need it to be a phone, so there it is.  It's a big phone. 

Leo:  Big change in music as well.  According to Nielsen Soundscan, streaming music in 2014, not downloads, streaming, grew 54%.  Spotify, Rhapsody.  Moving from 106 billion songs in 2013 to 164 billion in 2014.  Traditional sound song downloads dropped as well.  Paid downloads to full downloads dropped 9%, individual songs, 12%.  Although, 257 million albums sold in 2014.  106 million downloaded digitally. 

Owen:  I think this is going to be one of those roller coaster moves, because I remember something about 4 weeks ago.  One, Taylor Swift dropped all of her stuff off of Spotify and her record was the number one record because people couldn't get it anymore, so they had to actually buy it.  Two, Forell got a check for $3000 for a hundred 80 million plays of "Happy" on Pandora.  And I'm like wait what?  And he's like yeah.  So he pulled it off Pandora.  And I'm like, how does that work?  If you're not getting paid the money.  Spotify is quick to say we spend 95% of our money paying royalties.  Well if those royalties are coming out of $3000 checks you've got hundreds of thousands of artists, that doesn't mean anything to the Artist when they could have gotten somebody to buy it for .99 cents.  You could have sold more Happies for 99 cents than the $3000 check you got from Pandora. 

Jason:  I think the greatest threat to the music streaming services is they're going to turn into Netflix.  I'm not saying this will happen, but it's the fear.  If more A list artist like Taylor Swift aren't going to play ball with them, and then we're going to get into the situation, there aren't new releases on Netflix and there are not new home video releases on Netflix.  You have to wait for that after you get off of everything they're selling and renting, it eventually comes to Netflix.  If that's what happens to the music services where they've got the catalogue, but nothing from the last year, that would be a big problem.

Leo:  I think the music and the movies are very different.  First of all, a couple points.  Pandora is not the same as Spotify.  Pandora is a radio station, so I would bet that Pandora royalties are a lot closer to radio royalties in the sense that it's a discovery medium.  The record companies don't like this.  They've always said the Internet will never be like radio.  The Internet is where people discover music, which of course, if that's their current plan, they may want to rethink that.  So I think Pandora is—because you don't control what you hear, so it's discovery, much like radio.  But you have a sound style that you pick, the country station or the progressive station.  Second, I would point out that music sales are driven by the new stuff, and if you don't get discovered that's going to tank.  There's no catalogue if the album wasn't popular when it came out.  So it's really—music has a long tail in the way movies don't, so discovering and getting excited about an album when it comes out is critical to the long-term success of that album, I would guess.

Jason:  I think they're a little more similar than that.  I'm not saying that they're right; that the way it works with Netflix is even right.  I mean, we could make the arguments that movies should come out on demand like The Interview did, and that this is all artificial.  But when I see Taylor Swift withholding her album and selling well, it does make you wonder if something is going to have to give in the relationship between the artist and the streaming services. 

Leo:  That's a unique situation where she has a strong community and the demand is so high that that works for her.  It's not going to work for a new artist at all.

Jason:  I agree. 

Owen:  A new artist people aren't going to want their music either because they're a new artist.  But established artists that are going to demand that market is a huge issue for that.  When you say the new people, yeah they want to be on everything, they want to be on your mom's radio station, anywhere they could possibly be, because they're new.  But established people when they pull their product off, or when Jay Z goes and makes an exclusive deal with Samsung and says anybody who buys this phone gets my album and then he sells 5 million albums because people bought the phone, there's a lot of moves for artists to do that don't include a Spotify or Beat royalty check.

Leo:  Why did Taylor Swift not pull her videos off of YouTube?

Jason: Are those through VEVO?  Those are monetized, there's ads in front of them.  So she's making money on plays. 

Leo:  I'd like to see how much money.  And I'd like to see what her contracts are, and what her contract says about Pandora vs. YouTube.  I think the labels have something to do with this as well.

Jason:  Sure.  There's no doubt. 

Leo:  By the way, I just played Shake it Off.  I don't see an ad.  Oh wait, that's because I pay for Google access, so I don't get an ad, but I give her 8 bucks a month.  But that's the same I give, but isn't that the same I'm paying to Spotify?  It's actually a little less.  So I just, I think that this is complicated.  Bob Lefset who is an Industry analyst and observer, and often very right on, says this, and I wonder what you guys think.   Prediction for 2015:  "The major labels will only get stronger.  We live in a money economy and the only ones willing to invest in artists are the labels.  Furthermore they've got the relationships at Radio, which are key to developing acts.  The players want cash, the major labels have it.  No one else will get involved because the returns are so bad.  The majors have gotten a second wind.  They have adapted to the Internet.  All the hogwash about disruption was just that.  It may not be forever, but it certainly for now."  You agree?  Now this is a guy, this is what he does for a living.  He's also old school.  That may be true if your model is the old model of Superstar artists producing—what do they call it now? 

Owen:  Record is fine. 

Leo:  It's not a record though.

Owen:  The world bends to us, Leo.  We don't bend to the world. 

Leo:  So artists produce music, sells it as an album like Taylor did with 1989.  They hate singles sales.  They want to sell a whole album, and the record labels somehow have marketing clout.  Radio play, I don't know how that is. 

Jason:  Well you have to discover it somewhere.

Leo:  I think there's a different model.  There's a model like a Jonathon Colton, where these are unsigned artists who market using social media very effectively.  By the way, Taylor may be giving a record label more credit than they deserve.  She does the best marketing I've ever seen on Instagram and Twitter and everywhere else.  Brilliant social marketing. 

Jason:  But the Joe Kos of the world are a great niche group of artists.  But, that's not the same as I've got a 13-year-old daughter.  How does she find music?  Some of it's Pandora. 

Leo:  Yeah.  I think Pandora is important.

Jason:  We have Satellite radio on the car, and she will turn it to one of the hits station, the New York or LA hits station, and I think it's a little bit of both.  There's still some radio, believe it or not, but it's a lot of discovery and she will go on Spotify and listen to stuff she discovers, but discovery is step one.  And I think that's where this prediction about the labels is true.  To break through the noise and reach a 13 year old or a 15 year old with a new artist takes money.  Because you've got to find them who knows where.

Leo:  You don't think it takes skill on Instagram and YouTube—you've got to build word of mouth.

Jason:  That's another way to do it.  There are many paths.

Owen:  Every once in a while I've got to remind you that you live in a bubble of technology.  Most of the world—

Leo:  You live in New Jersey, so—

Owen:  I live in the real world.  I'm not living this dream.  I have Satellite radio.  Most people get in my car and are like, wow what's this?

Leo:  What do kids in your world, how do they discover music?

Owen:  Most people listen to the radio still.  They still listen to the radio.  You know what else is huge?  YouTube.  You know the first time I heard Shake it Off?  I saw four stay at home moms post Shake it Off.  And then they put whatever they put up and they share them with the other, oh this is good for you daughter, this is good for your son.  There's a lot of ways to discover it, but the radio is still huge.  You know why?  Because it's free, and if it's free it's for most people. 

Leo:  My kids don't even have a radio.  Where are you listening to the radio?

Owen:  Every car has got radio, Leo.  Every car. 

Leo:  But are people listening in the car?

Jason:  This is what I found with my daughter.  If we didn't have a Satellite radio she'd be listening to the local hits station anyway.  There are fewer channels; it's easier for her to find the hits on the Satellite radio.  Bottom line, she's listening to the radio. I don't listen to the radio.  We have Satellite Radio; I'm an 80's music kind of guy.  But my daughter's like forget that and she turns it to the hits.  So radio is still a thing.  And YouTube, you're totally right.  YouTube is a thing.  We're talking about Taylor Swift not putting her album on streaming, not only does she put Shake it Off on YouTube with a video, Shake it Off was on streaming.  Because what is that?  That's a teaser for her album.  That's the first single off the album.  You want to hear more?  Go buy the album.

Leo:  I guess what I would say is that there are many roots now.  More than ever before.  Reliance on the big league labels is probably foolish, especially if you're an up and coming young band, right?

Owen:  There are a lot of people who are doing it independently because they don't want to be in that debt of working the deal with the devil.  But at the same time, if you think you can get over the hump with a little bit of help because a lot of people are tricked into one hit wonders.  They come in, they shovel all this money at the radio stations, they put it out there, you buy this person's album and you never hear from them again—but they made a little bit of money of the person.  So there's still a market for it, there's still a place for it, and the digital world we live in is a special world and there are some people that are rocking it very well. 

Leo:  It's much more complicated than it was. 

Owen:  Yes.  There's more avenues.  There's more options.  

Leo:  I do feel like YouTube is really important.  I watch my kids, and that's really where they see stuff.  Word of mouth is still the best way, right?  You learn from your friends who—

Owen:  Or you hear them singing it.  I hear my daughter singing stuff like, what song is that?  You're a firework?  I don't care.

Leo:  If you were to rely on the major labels in radio, you would get what pop music is, which is a lot of crap. I feel like that's not the best music being made right now.  Or is it? 

Owen:  It is very repetitive.  I still listen to radio. It is excessively repetitive.  But I do use it for discovery, because sometimes I just turn it on.  9:00 at night, Power 99 does the top 10 songs.  And when I'm in the car at 9:00, I'm like it's 9:00.  I should listen to what the top ten songs are right now.

Leo:  Do kids have Spotify accounts nowadays?  Do they have streaming accounts?

Owen:  My daughter has Pandora.

Jason:  My daughter has free Spotify and Pandora.

Leo:  Free Spotify.  Everybody can have free Spotify, sure.  I feel like you can use that for discovery very well.  They have new stuff. 

Jason:  Pandora is pretty great at—I have to regulate how much I use Pandora.  As somebody who still buys music, I listen to Pandora and I bought way too much, because I discovered.  I discover.  It's dangerous.

Leo:  Will there ever be another Beatles ever?  Could there be another Beatles in this era?

Jason:  Totally.  Taylor Swift is everywhere right now.

Owen:  I was about to say, Taylor Swift was a Beatle.  She broke a lot of records with that album which justified her pulling off of Spotify.  When she pulled off Spotify, everybody was like this is a huge mistake.  Next thing you know, she's breaking all kinds of records, which I know for a fact she wouldn't have broken.  One, people want to rally behind her as much as they did, two they had no other place to get her music.

Leo:  But having a community, having a bit supportive community, boy does that make a difference.

Jason:  Whether you're big or small as an artist, having that audience is the— that's the key to breaking any artist, right?  That's the key.  You break them by having an audience discover them and love them. 

Owen:  Side note.  iTunes radio isn't terrible either. 

Leo:  It's really good.  I don't think anybody knows about it.  That's why Deeds was so important to Apple.

Owen:  When I listen to my iTunes radio I really have to stop myself from pressing that button, because I connected my credit card, and it's over for me.  That's the one reason I stay out of it, honestly.  Man, I really like that.  What is that?  They had a Jay Z lullaby album.  Jay Z's music, but it's played to soft piano lullaby.  This is so gangster!  Why am I buying this?  I'm not a child.  It was so cute, it almost got me, I almost spent 14.99 on this Jay Z lullaby album. 

Leo:  Now you've got a brilliant combination.  That's where Beats does make sense.  You have free radio with an easy buy button, perhaps a subscription service too, and all of it ties to a store that's one click and buy.  That is a good model.

Owen:  It was a smart purchase.  I realize that when they did it.  It wasn't for the headphones; it was more for that because they know more than anyone what their roller coaster ride is of people buying music.  They have their finger—

Leo:  They saw it coming.  14% drop in iTunes sales this year, they knew.  They saw the train coming.  I was very skeptical, but I didn't understand what was going on in music last year, and it was a big shift towards streaming.  All right.  We're going to take a break.  Owen JJ Stone.  Ohdoctah is here with a website that won't work.  Thank you GoDaddy.  From sixcolos.com, great friend of the network, Jason Snell.  Love having you here.  Just down the road.  He comes up whenever we demand it.  You're missing the football game.

Jason:  You press the red button and I appear.

Leo:  JJ, at least you don't have to worry about your eagles.

Owen:  I don't.  I'm sitting here watching the cowboys lose. 

Leo:  You do not like those Cowgirls do you?

Owen:  No I don't.

Leo: This is another great reason to follow Owen on Instagram.  Unless you're a Cowboys fan.

Owen:  My Cowboy bashing is strong.  My hatred for the Cowboys is strong.

Leo:  The Cowboy bashing is strong in this one.

Jason:  I have a friend who is a crazy Eagles fan, and he has a second Twitter account for his Eagles rants because everybody followed him and was like why do you go crazy every Sunday?  Well, it's the Eagles.  So now he has his Eagles account. You can just follow that. 

Owen:  For four hours you look like a psychopath.  I try to stay off the Internet for reasons like that.  I do realize that man, this woman seems so mild mannered all week long, and then the jets come on and it's F this and F that.  Oh man!  Calm down Grandma, calm down. 

Jason:  It does something to people.

Leo:  This is my favorite one.  This is from last October.  That's just mean.

Owen:  Cowgirls!

Leo:  That's just mean! 

Owen:  I've got a whole folder full of Cowgirls stuff for certain occasions. 

Leo:  As CyberSalt reminds us in the chatroom, fan is short for fanatic.  You know who is fanatical about the servers they run and the service they give you?  Those great folks at SquareSpace.  Absolutely fanatical about having 100% up-time. Nobody can do 100% up-time. But the lengths the folks at Square Space go to, to keep your site fast and flowing. Owen, you’ve got to move here. You’re going to love it. Plus the best software for creating your website. State of the art software. This new Square Space 7 makes it so easy. You can live edit on one screen-no more preview site manager-preview. You can see how your changes will look on your tablet, your mobile device, because every single one of their gorgeous designs-there are over 30 of them-are mobile-responsive. That means it looks great on every size screen automatically. Plus now some of the templates are designed for specific professions. If you’re a musician, this is a great place to go to make a website to help build that community. Or an artist or architect, a restaurant, ecommerce… take a look at the page for musicians. It gives you aviator, is that it? No that’s the business template. The musician’s template, there it is on the right there, it gives you shop, tour dates, a shop where you can sell your music. It is so cool. I am such a fan of Square Space. I know you will be. Cover pages, 10 new templates. Look at that! Imbeds sound, what is that? Sound…

Owen: Sound Cloud.

Leo: Soundcloud.com in there. It’s awesome! Cover pages are great for the personal identity that single-page thing. That can be integrated with your website. Google Docs are integrated, too. Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, Drive, Calendar. Square Space 7 can easily link branded email accounts to your domain as well. And their mobile apps are second to none. The portfolio, the note, the metric, the blog apps. By the way, note and blog are available on Android as well as iOS. They just keep getting better and better. Look how that looks on a phone: spectacular. That’s what’s so great about Square Space. And if you are a developer, you can do anything. In fact, some of the world’s top digital agencies use Square Space in the developer platform to make sites for their clients. Plus you get $10 access to Getty images, ecommerce in every template, social media’s built in. If you’re the next Taylor Swift, you’ve got to know about squarespace.com. Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and more. And of course the best help and support with a really great portal for webinars and information. Live chat and email support from their Square Space offices, 24/7. And can you believe it? $8 a month! Plus that includes hosting plus the software, and a free domain name when you sign up for a year. $8 a month! But the beauty part of this is Square Space lets you try it free for two weeks. You don’t need a credit card. You can start building your website right now. To sign up for Square Space, all I ask is use our offer code TWIT. You get 10% off and they will know that you were here at This Week in Tech. Squarespace.com. By the way, if you’re an existing customer, you can go to the settings tab and activate all the new features in Square Space 7 with just a click of the mouse. That’s really nice. Squarespace.com. Try it free for two weeks. If you decide to buy, use TWIT as the offer code. Square Space, start here, go anywhere! If your site were a Square Space site, I’m just saying. What’s the score now?

Owen: I’ll make one. 20 to 17, Leo.

Leo: 20 to 17 is close.

Owen: It is? It’s a little too close.

Leo: Owen, if you want to leave and watch the game, I wouldn’t hold it against you.

Owen: It’s okay. I’ve got multiple screens going on. That’s why sometimes when I look you directly in the eye and I look cross-eyed, I’ve got monitors over here and screens over here. I’ve got some jellyfish floating here.

Leo: Turn the camera around. I want to see the setup. I want to see how Owen…

Owen: Look, I live in a secret fortress of solitude. You know that. You know I don’t put my address up on TV! That’s why I put my fake 816 N Dusty Dr, Glass Road, Georgia 08028. Because that’s not my real address. You can send me free stuff. I’ll take it. Can we talk about who hacked Sony now?

Leo: Oh, alright. This story is the story that just keeps on giving. It’s the perfect story for the Christmas season. President Obama and the FBI, I wouldn’t say somewhat prematurely announced that it was North Korea. And immediately every security expert in the world said what! How could you know so soon? Norse Security is the most recent. Norse-corp.com. They met with the FBI. The FBI, Norse said, has been very open to the idea of talking to other security firms. So now, Norse, this is Norse talking. They said you know we called them up and they said yes come in and talk to use. Norse says its research leads to laid off Sony staff, not North Korea. Last Monday, the FBI took a three-hour briefing with Norse. Of course we’ve heard many security experts including the guy at Cloud Flare. It was Bruce Schneier as well who said I’m not so sure it was North Korea. Almost all of them seem to think it’s much more likely an inside job. But here’s the problem, and we’ve said this before, the government, the U.S. Government says we have information we can’t share with you. Because it would compromise our spies, our intelligence operation to tell you that it’s conclusive. And we just, all we can say is okay. Because they won’t tell us. Do you trust the U.S. Government?

Owen: I do not trust the U.S. Government. They have made major mistakes before which I won’t bring up. Because I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I’m just saying someone told me there was weapons somewhere. And there wasn’t any weapons.

Leo: WMD. That was secret intelligence. We know.

Owen: They want to go to North Korea and mess with some people who can’t keep their internet up or five minutes after calling Obama a name. I don’t know what’s going on. But I’m going to tell everybody right now, the person who did this atrocity is Michael Mann. Look him up, Google it. His name is Michael Mann. If you don’t know who Michael Mann is, Google him. You’re going to know who Michael Mann is. Michael Mann is the Sony hacker. I know this for a fact. You know why?

Leo: Wait a minute…

Jason: The Korean of Miami Vice?

Leo: He’s a director.

Owen: He is the director and the screenwriter for Blackhat coming out next month.

Leo: Blackhat’s coming out next month!

Owen: You people keep telling me, oh it’s a thing trying to bring people in to bring… no! Nobody wanted to download that stupid movie to interview. That movie ain’t nothing. But you know what? A whole lot of people are going to be sitting around watching Blackhat. I don’t want them to break into nuclear bases. They’re really doing it! They took down Sony!

Leo: No, see you are going along with the people that say this was an inside job by Sony to promote a movie.

Owen: No, because people who say that are absolute idiots. Because why would they release social security numbers of not only employees but active actors? To ruin their business. That’s the best promotion in the world, right? To give out social security numbers, you knucklehead. But I’m just saying, Michael Mann, I’m looking at him specifically.

Leo: Can you buy Chris Hemsworth as an elite hacker?

Jason: Have you seen the ads for this? That is unlikely. So what JJ’s saying is it’s cyber warfare. Between Universal Studios and Sony.

Owen: That’s what I’m saying! You don’t believe that? It sounds more reasonable than North Korea. I’m just saying! North Korea, half of those people don’t have food to eat, okay? So they’re too hungry to be looking at computer screens hacking 18 hours straight. But Michael Mann is about to make this money. Blackhat. The sequel is going to be White Cat.

Leo: We just want to say this show is parody, not commentary. That he doesn’t really think Michael Mann did it. I’m sorry Universal. Please don’t sue me. And in recompense, here’s a trailer for the movie.

Jason: From Michael Mann. Producer of Miami Vice, comes a tale not set in Miami.

Leo: When any movie comes out in January, that’s where they bury the worst movies of the year. That’s when the stinkers come out. I always say don’t go see a movie…

Jason: It’s the world’s most dangerous hacker.

Leo: Chris Hemsworth?

Jason: Thor.

Leo: Thor?

Owen: He is so good-looking!

Leo: Where’s his hammer? He is a good-looking fellow.

Jason: You get that good-looking when you sit hunched over a computer for 10 or 20 hours a day.

Leo: No, no. He went to prison. He’s been lifting. He looks good. I bet he’s got a prison tat like me.

Owen: Why does he have glasses?

Jason: To see the Matrix.

Leo: Here’s the real question about this movie.

Owen: Computer nerds unglued, they’re not staring.

Leo: Yea, they’re good-looking. They’re sexy.

Owen: They can be anything. You never know.

Leo: Here’s the question though. How good will the technology be in this? Going back to that Robert Redford film, Hackers, right? And then Halle Berry in Sneakers. No, it was the other way around.

Jason: Man, Halle Berry in Sneakers would have been something. But no, that was Robert Redford.

Leo: Yea, Robert Redford in Sneakers. Halle Berry in Hackers.

Jason: The Net. Sandra Bullock and Dennis Miller.

Leo: Terrible technology. It was embarrassing. Wait a minute, let’s go back a little bit here. Let’s look at this screen he’s looking at here. Let’s see if we can tell. What is that? Sometimes you can tell. Our good friend John Graham… that looks like HTML.

Jason: There is some CSS. He hacks the CSS of the internet. That’s what changes everything.

Leo: Okay.

Owen: Swordfish.

Leo: Function declaration. Swordfish, that’s the one.

Jason: That’s for Swordfish. Very good.

Leo: We’ve got to look at this. I want test, compile, and C-code. I want everybody to look at this code and tell us… you know what you should do? And this is what John Graham-Cuming does. He Googles the code here and it’s almost always open-source code for a library in Linux that does things like… let’s Google this code here and find out what it’s really from. Because you know it’s not real, right? Entry point, H-instance.

Jason: We just did that on the Incomparable. We did an episode about Terminator. And one of our panelists freeze-framed the HD in Terminator in his eye. And it’s like test code from something. It’s just like whoever wrote that code, congratulations, your crappy test code is immortalized forever in the eye of the Terminator.

Leo: Wait a minute. Houdini 7, Craig Mullaney who wrote shift key software who wrote the TWiT app says it’s his code!

Jason: It is his code! It’s shift key. And it shows like 16k of available memory in Terminator. So that Terminator is super-efficient with the code is what I’m saying.

Leo: They call this by the way, play back. Oh an NSA breach. Shocking! And we actually have fans of our shows that do the playback for TV shows. TWiT has appeared on the Newsroom, and as a tab in the browser on Silicon Valley. Because the people that do the playback for those productions snuck it in. So you know, it’s these guys… I think they have to get a little bit better.

Jason: Well yea, they’ve upped their game. The people who did the Terminator code didn’t ever expect that there would be some high resolution format where people would be able to stop the frame and look at the code. And say oh, it’s that code!

Leo: They’re reading the code!

Owen: What would be horrible is if it actually did something. It would be like oh well, you know we didn’t mean to give up national security on a movie.

Jason: Just put the Sony employees’ social security numbers in there. No one will ever see it.

Leo: I think we will just never know the details of the Sony hack. I wish we could but we won’t.

Jason: I don’t think all these things are mutually exclusive. I think it would be very easy for an employee who was upset at the layoffs and stuff at Sony. And that they then approached somebody in a chat room somewhere and said I have information about these servers and I want to sell it. Or I want to give it because I want to hurt them. And then who knows? They were saying maybe it was Russian-speaking people who were…

Leo: They did a syntactic analysis of all the text and they said it’s much likely Korean speakers, more likely Russian speakers based on the idioms they use.

Jason: Even that doesn’t preclude it from being that North Korea paid the Russian hackers to take the information from the Sony employee. I mean it’s all interconnected potentially.

Owen: North Korean spy went to Russia, contacted the person who got fired, and then released information. We all know it’s…

Leo: That’s why it was a little shocking for the security community when the U.S. Government so quickly, within weeks, said it’s North Korea. They said you can’t know. You just could not know that fast. Unless they have signal intelligence. Maybe they’ve got a tap on Kim Jong Un’s phone and he said we got him good. It was good, wasn’t it?! And by the way, I saw the interview. Terrible movie. Maybe that’s the smoking gun. We don’t know!

Jason: He called Putin and said that was totally me! I did that!

Leo: And maybe he was lying, right? Maybe he was boasting the Putin. It’s so hard to know this. There is a scenario; because we do know that Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked in the spring, in March. And decided to ignore the hack and not announce it or tell anybody. It could very well be the initial attack got in and then collected passwords and server names in walking around the network. Then created or crafted a targeted attack which then was launched later in September. There’s lots of scenarios you can think up. It’s a question mark and I would love to know what happened. But I don’t think we’ll ever know. It doesn’t seem sensible and this is what most people have said: that a government like North Korea had this trove of information, that they would just give it away. It seems much more likely that they would use it for propaganda purposes over time than they would just say here, here’s a paste bin. Here’s a torrent. Have fun. Have at it. However, job done, they embarrassed Sony. But the movie got released. Did you see it?

Owen: Yea, I saw it. I didn’t pay for it, but I saw it.

Leo: That’s fine. Neither did North Korea. What did you think?

Owen: My friend liked it and the more he laughed at it, the more I didn’t laugh. There were like three funny parts in it.

Leo: We saw them all in the trailer, didn’t we?

Owen: Pretty much they hate us because they anus. They’re just peanut butter and jealous.

Leo: Really? Those are the jokes?

Owen: Yea. Like, they hate us because they anus. No one says that! Say it.

Leo: They hate us because they anus.

Owen: There’s a tiger in it. That was funny.

Leo: I’m told Mike Elgin and his wife saw it and they said the woman who played the Korean interpreter was very funny.

Owen: Yea, she was awesome. But the interview… it’s not like Chandler’s List or anything. It’s a stoner movie, haha, great.

Leo: Here is John Graham-Cuming’s Tumblr; it’s called Movie Code. I think this is his… dot-tumbler.com. Where he talks about source code appearing. And look, they already got the Blackhat code. They say it’s a lot of variable declaration in C++. Mostly can’t find the source yet. So this is a great blog where they actually try to source this stuff. Is this John Graham-Cuming’s? I can’t remember. DigiMon, Digital Monsters episode five. Here’s a little basic code.

Jason: Nice.

Leo: This is the HBO remake of West World. The code is from serial port testing software for Cell Bot, the tool for controlling robots via cell phone. They just lift it. It was probably a trap in the backdoor I used to infiltrate the system! I’ll infiltrate the normal operations again and determine the location of the train car. It’s Ruby. It’s all in Ruby. Great site.

Jason: Perfect for the train car.

Leo: Yea! The HP script, Jack Ryan shadow recruit.

Owen: At least the movie industry has learned one thing. They’re keeping the font small, the way it normally is on a display. Because if you remember years and years ago, it was like let me hack into the system. And it was like 40 point font.

Leo: What, prodigy? What is that you’re hacking into?

Owen: Would you like to hack? Hit Y to answer. Hit Y to accept.

Leo: This is John Graham-Cuming’s Tumbler. It’s moviecode.tumblr.com. Nice job. Hey, speaking of bugs, there was a fairly significant… well no I should take that back; there was a bug in Windows 8.1. A bug that would require someone with physical access to your computer but then it could escalate. It was a privilege escalation that bypassed UAC and allowed someone to log in as a standard user to get administrative users. And again, as Microsoft pointed out, you had to be at the keyboard. Google discovered this three months ago. They’re often probing for bugs a lot. And found these, told Microsoft three months ago. Microsoft did not patch it. So Google this week released it including sample code suitable for someone to take advantage of it. Microsoft says okay, okay, we’ll patch it! This is kind of normal practice. Nobody’s upset about this, right? Or are you? Should Google have kept it quiet about this?

Owen: Nope.

Leo: There comes a time when a company doesn’t fix it, bad guys are going to get it. The public has a right to know that there is a flaw. Now it does complicate things at Google and Microsoft; they’re kind of at odds with one another.

Jason: So what’s the benefit of Google announcing this? Are there steps that somebody can do as a user to protect themselves from this? Or did they literally have to wait for Microsoft?

Leo: The best step is not to let somebody sit down on your computer. That would be step one. Microsoft says we’re working to release a security update to address an elevation of privilege issue. It’s important to note that for a would-be attacker to potentially exploit the system, they first need a valid log-on credential. Be able to log on locally to a targeted machine. But of course if you’re logged in and they get to your machine while you’re still logged in, that would count. We encourage customers to keep their antivirus software up to date, install all available security updates, and enable the firewall. By the way, none of those things have anything to do with this hack.

Jason: Right, so Google then said they notified Microsoft at the end of September about it. So this is partially Google sort of shaming Microsoft into action.

Leo: I think you could make a case that it’s good for Google, which makes its own operating system which is not vulnerable to this: Chrome OS. To say look Microsoft, you’ve got a flaw. But on the other hand, security researchers have always done this. And a 90-day block, it’s not unusual.

Jason: Right, that seems perfectly reasonable for Google to say look, we notified you 90 days ago. You took no action. We’re going to let the public know.

Leo: Google said it’s the public’s right to know. Alright, let’s take a break. When we come back, more Jason Snell, sixcolors.com. When he left IDG, and you left on your own feet. They didn’t kick you out the door.

Jason: We came to an agreement. They knew I wanted to leave. And they...

Leo: They kept you there longer than you wanted to stay.

Jason: Yes. And they were making a lot of cuts. And the last thing they wanted to do was keep somebody around that didn’t want to be there. So it all worked out for the best.

Leo: Yes, and I highly recommend his new enterprise and his new podcast. It’s all at sixcolors.com. Let me just look at the podcasts. Upgrade is the official podcast with you and Mike Hurley. Clockwise with Dan Warren. I love Dan Warren. And you talk about technology.

Jason: Yea, that’s a 30-minute super-fast talk show with four guests.

Leo: You and Serenity and others do the Incomparables. That’s really fun. That’s kind of pop-stuff. TV Talk Machine with Tim Goodman who is great. Do you know Tim?

Jason: Yea, I know Tim.

Leo: I used to read him in the Chronicle. And I loved him.

Jason: I’ve known him for a while. It’s one of those perfect cases where he has a lot to say and he knows a lot about TV. And I can be the one who puts him on a regular schedule and edits the podcasts and posts it for him. That’s the stuff he’s not good at. He’s good at the content. So I kind of am the facilitator for that one.

Leo: I’ve got to start listening to this. I’ve always thought he was one of the best TV reviewers out there.

Jason: He’s great.

Leo: Now a Hollywood reporter. Which means he has all the inside stuff. Did you guys talk about Sony at all?

Jason: No, he’s a TV critic. So he’s not doing the reporting of the news. He’s doing the reviews of all the shows. So it’s very much like what shows are worth watching.

Leo: That sounds like a great job until you have to watch…

Jason: Well that’s exactly it.

Leo: …like Modern Family, all 30 episodes a year.

Jason: Yea, he does a lot of passing off of reality shows to other people. Like no, no, no, take that.

Leo: And then total party kill, which is a DND podcast.

Jason: That’s becoming a thing now. We were ahead of the curve. There are a lot of people playing DND in podcasts now. People seem to like it. I don’t think we expected anybody to want to listen to us play Dungeons and Dragons. But they do and it’s fun.

Leo: It’s amazing what people will listen to. I thank the lord every day.

Jason: What a time to be alive.

Leo: Actually you know what, if you watched our 24 hour show, I think this was the pinnacle of what we built this studio for, what we put together an amazing staff for. They did such an incredible job. And I know nobody watched all 24 hours except us because we were here. I was here starting at 3, a little before 3am doing yoga. And then Zach, who did my yoga class, told me he had been studying yoga for two days. But it was still fun. And while yoga was going on, Simon Phipps who was a host of our Floss Weekly show, was in his beautiful English accent, reading poetry. Perfect for 3 in the morning! Let’s see a little bit of what happened this year on New Year’s Eve 2015.

Previously on TWiT:

Five, four, three, two, start the fireworks, happy New Year! Woohoo! Welcome to TWiT 24 hours of 2015. And I want to remind you that this is not just some gratuitous silliness. We’re raising money for UNICEF. Aha! Happy New Year, New Zealand! So far, thanks to your generosity, $23,885. If we get to $40,000 for UNICEF, man I’ll be so happy to shave my head. Oh my God! If we get to $50,000, I promise you that tattoo is going right on my toosh. It’s time for the Game of Thrones. Oh man, they broke a promise! Oh my God, I killed it! We’re crazy here. Oh my God, the moon is rising. Happy New Year, Korea! All of the U.K., happy New Year, Melbourne! Happy New Year, everybody! It’s 2015 from all of us at TWiT. And thank you for joining us on our 24 hours of 2015.

Leo: That was a lot of fun. And you know we had a really incredibly dedicated staff who pitched us this long list of people. But they deserve some credit. Because let’s see, Anthony. We call him Iron Man; Anthony Nielson. Ryan Marsh, our lighting guy; we call him wizard. Alex Gumple, the mad scientist. Burk McQuinn: one stop shop. Jason C, who is our newest employee, Jason Clianthis. And he did that great Muppet version of the first episode ever of TWiT. We call him the rookie of the year. Chris, who is our intern. But Chris was here for the whole time; high school student. He was our best boy endurance cable puller. Did you run cable the whole show? We burned through two camera operators. And you did the whole thing.

Chris: For Jerry.

Leo: Finally, the second camera operator gave up and went home. He said I can’t take it. But Chris never gave up. You ride on. Debbie, Deb Delkeny who is super mom. Jeffrey, needles, the judge. Jerry Wagley: graveyard camera man. Late night. Because no one else would do it. And all the folks at the pixel core who really helped us. We got all the Skype people ready. And then our major producers, the four who really put it together: Tanya Hall, Carly Perkins, Carsten Bondi, Glen Rubenstein; great job. Guest relations: Craig Burnett and Mario Delkeny. Thank you. And of course we flew out as many hosts as could make it, a few of them couldn’t make it. But Steve Gibson, Paul Thurrott, Jeff Jarvis, Mike Elgin, Chad Johnson, Randall Schwartz, Alex Lindsey, Sarah Lane, Dick DeBartolo, Jason Howell, Rene Ritchie, Ron Richards, Brian Burnett, Mary Jo Foley, Scott Wilkinson and his wife Joanna, Aaron Newcomb, Simon Phipps, Zach… I don’t even know Zach’s last name. And of course Lisa Cantell, our CEO who actually wrote the checks. Zachary Smith. He has the name Zachary Smith, the same name as the guy in Lost in Space. Danger! He said we’ll rob… yea, okay. I’ll remember his name from now on. But most importantly, you didn’t put yourself on this list: Jamra B, John Sleneda, worked 48 hours to get this together. Jamra B, thank you. All of the episodes are up on our specials feed at twit.tv/specials. Or youtube.com/twit. If you want to watch me get my head shaved, if you want to watch me get my butt tattooed. If you want to watch the gospel choir, they were amazing. The rock and roll bands, the Dixie Land was really a lot of fun. So thank you very much. Really appreciate all of your hard work. The staff worked harder than I did. It was a lot of fun. Oh, and it’s not too late. Unicefusa.org/twit. Currently, $61,790. But we could raise more and people have been going in there and putting more in. And we really appreciate that. More than $10,000 in the TWiT auctions. I don’t have a final total there. Do you know what the final total on the auctions was? We’re still waiting to get paid. And then we’ll give you a number. It’s over 10 though. So over $70,000 raised for UNICEF. That’s a great thing! I’m very happy. Thank you, all, for doing that. Unicefusa.org/twit. More with Owen JJ Stone; Ohdoctah.

Owen: Uncle Leo, did you not see what’s over my shoulder? You haven’t noticed it but my Twitter’s blowing up.

Leo: I see the UFC pad there.

Jason: You’ve got the Listerine.

Owen: There you go. What’s next to that Listerine?

Leo: A bottle of brandy and Listerine. What is that for?

Jason: Oh no.

Leo: Twitter’s blowing up?

Owen: This is that pure white Hennessey, Uncle Leo.

Leo: It’s pure white Hennessey. It doesn’t look so white.

Owen: It’s not white. It’s like a yellow. But it’s different because I got it when I went to the Dominican Republic.

Leo: Now that’s a brandy, right?

Owen: Yes. It’s a cognac.

Leo: Cone-yack?!

Owen: Cone-yack!

Leo: Pure white cognac.

Owen: Yea, I’ll buy you a bottle the next time I go to an island and send it to you.

Leo: Did you have to go to the Dominican to get it?

Owen: Unless you want to buy it on Craigslist for like triple or quadruple the price. They don’t sell it in stores here. So you have to get it duty-free.

Leo: Ooh, it’s like $200 a bottle. Holy cow.

Owen: Yea, but I don’t like Hennessey at all. But this is amazing. And I put it up there with the Listerine just to see if anybody noticed or paid attention. Everybody’s tweeting me saying what’s up with the Listerine? Oh, there’s Listerine in the… yea, it’s really good.

Leo: I’ll have to try it. It’s for cognac enthusiasts.

Owen: Something. I only bought it because I hadn’t seen it before. I never even had Hennessey. I was like oh, that’s different. I tried it and I liked it.

Leo: Wine searcher, let’s see where we can get it. A miniature is $20. A full bottle is a lot more. Wow.

Owen: It was $40 at the airport. And I got home and I went with my family members. And they were loading up the barrel. I was like what are you doing? They’re like man I put this stuff on Craigslist. And sure enough, they sell like gangbusters. You can only buy four bottles but you can triple your money ASAP.

Leo: Also here, another Audible fan.

Jason: Yes.

Leo: We share our love for audiobooks at audible.com. Jason Snell, what’s you listening to these days?

Jason: I always like to just promote something. Read a lot of books for the Incomparable. A book called Station Eleven, which is on Audible by Emily St. John Mandel.

Leo: You have the weirdest stuff. It’s usually sci-fi.

Jason: Yep. This was on a best book of the year list, Station Eleven. Spelled out Eleven.

Leo: There it is. Emily St. John Mandel.

Jason: It’s kind of an apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic. But not in a brutal way. It’s like the road, which is really dark. It’s not quite that dark but it’s about a group of traveling musicians and actors going from small town to small town in the Midwest after a flu… like a stand…

Leo: I love that.

Jason: …where 99% of the people have died. The technology is gone. And then these musicians and actors are performing Shakespeare and music in these little towns that are varying degrees of safe in the Midwest. And it’s plus flashbacks to what happened before. And it’s kind of beautiful and I really liked it.

Leo: I’m going to add that right now. For some reason I’m really drawn to these end of the world stories.

Jason: There are a lot of them right now.

Leo: What’s the first one? It came out in the 50’s and it’s such a good book. It’s the first one I remember. Although I imagine there’s more. One of the nice things you can do with Audible is when you hear somebody talk about it-you have to make an Audible account-you can add those books to your wish list. This is another one I’ve got to get, the complete Sherlock Holmes narrated by one of my favorite Audible readers, Simon Vance. He’s got the perfect British accent and is a wonderful reader. Whoops, how did that happen? I’ll go back to Audible here. So it happens all the time, you hear people. That’s one of the things, if you’re on Audible, people are going to talk; what are you listening to? I think that’s another one of yours: Ancillary Justice.

Jason: Yea, absolutely.

Leo: I have my wish list, it’s filled with stuff that you recommended. Which is awesome! And Andy Ihnatko. So let me tell you how you can get two books for free; go to audible.com/twit2. You’ll be signing up for the platinum plan, that’s the two book a month subscription. That’s the one I use. But I think two books, this is for the serious reader. And I love having all these great books. Are you going to go see the movie American Sniper? Read the book that movie is based on. You’re a fan of Amy Poehler? Isn’t she, oh no. Is she hosting the Golden Globes this year?

Jason: Yea, with Tina Fey.

Leo: With Tina Fey? They’re doing it again? I love that. So her book-Yes, Please-is narrated by her with appearances from Carol Burnett and Seth Meyers and others. It’s great stuff. If you like show biz or fiction, non-fiction, great science-fiction. A lot of non-fiction, too. Really great stuff. I’m a big fan. I do alternate. I read fiction then non-fiction. To keep myself fresh. And I listen to Audible all the time; in the car. I wish I had a good commute. I don’t anymore. Even if I’m driving to work for five minutes, I’ll listen. When I go to bed, I’ll listen to Audible. When I am in the gym of course I’m going to listen to Audible. Walking the dog, doing the dishes. I put Audible on the speakers in the house and listen all around the house. It sounds crazy. There’s this big booming voice going on throughout the house on my Sonos. Audible.com. Look at this Randall Monroe, what if serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. I love Randall Monroe. Will Wheaton narrates this one. So here’s the deal. It’s hard to pick two but pick two, then go to audible.com/twit2. You’re going to get two credits, your first month is free. You can cancel in that first month and pay nothing. But those books will be yours to keep. You’ll also get the free subscription to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times audio programs. Fascinating reading that will keep you engaged. That will make you happy. I love this. I like the cover anyway: The Last American Vampire. By Seth Graham-Smith. I tell you, it brought reading back into my life. Audible.com/twit2. Listen and enjoy. This Week in Tech continues on. Owen JJ Stone, you thought it would be a nice short show, didn’t you Owen?

Owen: No, I knew better than that, Uncle Leo. Even if we have to fill it with our delightful entertainment, the gray-haired one wouldn’t allow us to leave the show early.

Leo: No, not exactly gray-haired anymore. Hey, did the Cowboys lose yet?

Jason: They’re about to win, I think.

Leo: Oh no. The Lions are going down in shame?

Jason: They’re trying.

Leo: Come on, Detroit!

Owen: Come on, Jason. Don’t put me in that hole yet. They’re working on it.

Leo: It’s exciting. Did you see the Lizard Squad? Have you seen the Lizard Squad? The Lizard Squad is the hacking team that took and said we did it. We brought down on Christmas day, we made a lot of kids cry.

Owen: The real Grinches!

Leo: The real Grinches are the Lizard Squad. They brought down the Sony Play… the Sony network and they brought down Xbox.

Jason: Xbox Live.

Leo: Brian Krebs, one of our favorite security guys identified him and now for 40 days he’s been bombarded by D-Dos. Brian Krebs’ site. Just jerks. Can I just say they’re jerky-jerk-jerks? They ruined Christmas for people not just in the U.S. but all over the world by D-Dossing. And by the way, it’s a trivial thing to do. You don’t have to have mad skills. They’re just jerky-jerks. And then they said oh just go out and get some fresh air. What are you? Mom? You’re a jerky-jerk and you’re talking like your mom. Uh! So Brian Krebs identified two members, a 22-year old British man called Vinny Omari who immediately got arrested. Yea, enjoy that time in prison. You know what prisoners do to hackers.

Jason: Ask them to fix their computer?

Owen: Ask them to fix their credit. That’s the first thing to ask for. Forget the computer.

Leo: And a 16-year old Finnish boy, Julius Kivimaki. He’s been questioned but not to this date arrested yet. They of course have joined in by mocking his hair line. Go ahead and mock my hair line!

Jason: You don’t have one anymore, Leo.

Leo: Hair line?! What hair line? Anyway, good news is at least one has been arrested allegedly. Allegedly. Which we don’t know for sure if he’s a Lizard Squad.

Jason: Yes allegedly arrested.

Leo: He confirms it. The Daily Dot has the story. It even provided a photo of the search warrant. They took everything! Xbox One, files, laptops, computers, USBs, etcetera. Of course they did, you nitwit.

Jason: In some ways isn’t this the sort of thing that has to happen for some of this internet crime stuff? Especially like just trolling and docking people and swatting people and doing these denial of service attacks. Isn’t this the only way that there will be a cool-off? Is if people… I remember when I was a kid and I had a computer and people were like doing phone-freaking and stuff like that. Where they were stealing… there was always that question of oh will we get in trouble or arrested? They’re like no, no, it’s not going to matter.

Leo: They’re never catch us. Who cares?

Jason: Something like this, I think there is a little bit of a chilling effect. I don’t think it’s ever going to stop. But if some people actually get in trouble, it might have an effect.

Leo: Can I tell you the truth though? And this is why we’ll probably never know what happened to Sony. Unless a hacker boasts, it’s usually hard to catch them.

Jason: Very hard.

Leo: But as soon as you go oh I did that. Then well…

Jason: And the best people who are in the best position to figure it out are the people behind the wall who want to keep everything a secret because they’re working for a government.

Leo: That’s why governmental hacks never come out. We’ll never know who did Flame or any of these governmental…

Jason: And they may know who did some of this stuff and never want to say it because they don’t want to reveal why they would know.

Leo: Here’s the funny thing. Lizard Squad’s attack against PlayStation network and Xbox Live apparently was to market their new D-Dos service. They call it Lizard Stressor. They launched it Tuesday morning and the prices are fair between I think $5 and $500. And you can use it to D-Dos. Any idiot can run a D-Dos attack.

Jason: Don’t give them your credit card.

Leo: yea.

Jason: They have Bitcoin. Pay them in Bitcoin.

Leo: The most expensive tier offers 30 seconds of attack. That’s about 20 days, costs $130 a month. So I expect that we will quickly be D-Dossed by these guys. For $500, just kick it in because then you can launch unlimited attacks.

Owen: Can’t we just get better security? I mean I didn’t mind when my PlayStation 3 went down because it was free. But I’m sitting over here paying $50-60 a year for PlayStation and Xbox and it goes out on Christmas Day. And two punks take it down? That’s a huge problem.

Leo: I can tell you the solution. And it’s so easy that this is embarrassing.

Owen: It is!

Leo: If internet service providers were willing to do what it takes, this would go away. The only way you can launch a D-Dos attack and there are some really good by the way-and I don’t know if they’re using this-amplification attacks that use known flaws in things like the network time protocol. So one guy with a… you don’t have to have huge pipes anymore to do a D-Dos attack. You can take advantage of these amplification attacks even if you’re on a dial-up. You can bring down massive sites. A D-Dos attack works by sending a packet, a SYN packet to a website. There are other ways to do it but the basic idea is websites can’t ignore SYN packs. That’s the knock on the door saying I want to look at your site. They come back with a SYN-ack. If you’re trying to D-Dos a site, you flood them with SYNs and you don’t care about the ack. And the site is so busy handling all these incoming knocks that it doesn’t have time for any normal users. So you bring the site down by flooding its bandwidth with malformed packets. The identifying IP addresses in these packets are rotated, bogus, spoofed. Obviously you wouldn’t want it to be your IP address; that would make it really easy to catch you. In fact, very easy to block. So you have a different IP address for every SYN. But the way we stop this is whoever the ISP is for the person launching the attack, all they have to do is see all the outbound traffic. They say is that an IP address from our network? And they stop it. And there would be no D-Dossing. This is from Steve Gibson, our security guy. It’s that simple.

Owen: Need to fix that.

Leo: ISPs are acting irresponsibly.

Owen: Maybe that’s why we need Google Fiber to be spread out across the land. Because apparently they like to tell people about holes.

Leo: I can guarantee if Google were the ISP, that they would say hey is this IP address matching the IP address of the user? Or is it within the range of our IP addresses? And if not, just stop it. All D-Dos attacks, they’d have to find a new way to do it.

Owen: I know we skipped it but real quick, I need the FCC to approve Google’s request so we can get this thing crack-a-lacking nationwide. Because I need Google in my life for my ISP.

Leo: Google wants to roll out. Is that what it is? I didn’t even see it. Google wants to roll out gigabit Ethernet everywhere?

Owen: Yea, they filed so they can become…

Leo: Hired!

Owen: … like Comcast. I just need it.

Leo: By the way, it looks like the cowgirls won.

Jason: Yea they did.

Owen: I know. That’s why I need something happy in my life like Google Fiber.

Jason: It’s okay. You can root against them next week.

Leo: The real way to humiliate a team is to let them get to the Super Bowl and then have them lose.

Owen: That’s true.

Leo: As a 49er fan, I know.

Owen: If they get there and win, I’m SOL.

Leo: There’s always that risk, right? But the farther they go and the sooner they lose, that’s great. Yea, good. I would love to see it. This is interesting because Google always implied that this was to show that it could be done. Not that they wanted to make a business out of it. Good! The FCC is going to be busy. They’re also… the Marriott has petitioned them to allow them to proceed illegally in block Wi-Fi access points on their properties.

Owen: Again, it’s just like the people that made that stupid Sony video that told me kick ponies. Who sits in a room and has this discussion and comes up with this stuff? Do you not understand general people would say don’t stay there because on one they charge triple the price of other hotels.

Leo: For crappy internet!

Owen: And they won’t let you use your own internet. Like why would someone do this? The nickel and diming of certain companies is so idiotic over the broad span of the money they would save with goodwill. Now other hotels are coming out saying we have free internet and we’ve doubled the speed. Come stay with us. And people say sure. I’m going to fight the enemy just like I fought North Korea by downloading the interview.

Jason: So Marriott’s saying it’s not their intent to do that. They filed this petition because there were people doing fake base-stations that are matched up to their conference rooms. They’ve got a whole story about it. But the problem is what they’re trying to do is erode this very fundamental idea that this spectrum is for the public use and everybody can use. And it’s illegal to jam it or block it in anyway. And they say no, of course you will be able to use your Wi-Fi hotspot in your own room.

Leo: Only in the conference center.

Jason: But once they have the right to block it, they could block it anywhere. And it’s just a terrible idea.

Leo: It is a fundamental tenant that this is unregulated and it may not be blocked.

Jason: Junk spectrum, right? It’s supposed to be… yea, exactly.

Leo: So the other thing the FCC is going to do they say soon is rule on this Title 2 regulation, the net neutrality regulation. In a letter to the FCC, Google’s director of communications law Austin Schlick said there could be a good thing if we go with Title 2. Because that gives Google Fiber access to utility poles and other essential infrastructures owned by utilities. Right now the way that these companies can preserve their monopolies, they say hey you can’t use our infrastructure. But if they’re Title 2, the FCC can say no, you’ve got to open that up. That’s a good thing. Because what is the best way to protect net neutrality competition? We all agree. Nobody disagrees that the best way to do this is to have some competition. The only reason I’m still a Comcast customer is because I have no choice.

Jason: Yea, me too.

Owen: And Comcast isn’t buying Google. At least not in the foreseeable future.

Jason: On my site, Six Colors, a couple months ago Glen Fleishman wrote this piece that was about this same issue. And he was saying the tech giants really ought to get in this game. Google has the right idea here. And other tech giants like Apple should also try to invest in broadband only because the more competition there is and the more you don’t have the cable companies as gate keepers, the safer it’s going to be to build their businesses on the internet. And I’m rooting for Google Fiber. And in some areas, I’m not a big fan of Google. But I am absolutely rooting for Google Fiber because there needs to be more options for broadband internet in the United States.

Leo: The other thing is that Obama proposed Title 2. The FCC is certainly considering declaring that broadband providers are common carriers. But we have not heard anything from Microsoft and Apple and Google and Facebook. These guys really should be stepping up. This is the first indication in any way that Google supports us. So it’s good news to I think the FCC has been waiting to hear from these guys. And in fact there have been some that accused the big companies of secretly fighting Title 2 with lobbyists.

Owen: It’s the mafia. The reason some of these companies don’t get into that space is because the old factory machine is kicking in a lot. And they’re new. So to jump into bed with that, Google’s got to put their foot in the water and show that they’re not going to jump out. Then other people might get in on it. Because everybody has TV in their house. Someone like Apply coming in and being the direct pipeline into your home would be something they would love to do. But it’s not something they’re going to step out and branch out to do like what Google might. Because they want to try everything. They make stupid networks, they make all kinds of crazy stuff that flops and they don’t care. So if anybody is going to try something different, then Google is the one to lead the way. And I am happy for it.

Leo: Then Hollywood continues its war against piracy with a bizarre idea.

Owen: They took down piratebay.org. Sad day in the world.

Leo: According to Leaks Documents, Hollywood has a new secret weapon in the fight. A little known legal venue designed to take new powers over the digital realm. It’s called the ITC, the International Trade Commission. It’s been around for a while. It’s the company that kind of prevents the fake Gucci bags from coming into the United States. But the ITC, and I don’t know if many people know this, recently gave themselves the power to examine data as it comes in. Not merely hand bags, but data. This goes back to a 3D printing case. If the decision holds and the courts don’t overturn this, it means that data could now be stopped like the Pirate Bay at the border. Fascinating. We’ll watch this case with great interest. There are a number of Supreme Court cases coming up this spring that are going to be very interesting for the internet. Google did release their top search terms. We’ll talk about those in just a second. Before we do though a reminder that if you’re doing meetings, you should be doing them online. There’s no reason that especially with clients and colleagues spread out all over the world, no better way to do it. It’s frankly faster, more efficient, more effective, more fun than a face-to-face meeting. It’s GoToMeeting! You’ve heard me talk about that forever. Good communication is critical for every business. Especially with people distributed all over the world. You need to stay connected, meet with coworkers, brainstorm, break through log jams. And clients, there’s no better way to present. They prefer it! That’s why, seriously your client does not want to bring you to lunch. They just want to hear your pitch and decide. That’s why millions of small business professionals rely on GoToMeeting from Citrix. You should too! It’s the proven solution for meeting and collaborating online. GoToMeeting not only do you get the screen sharing so you’re on the same page. Review documents, presentations in real-time. But then you turn on the HD video conferencing and now you’re seeing each other face-to-face. You can present, demonstrate, and meet from anywhere with any Mac, any PC, any tablet. Imagine holding a meeting from your iPad; you can. Any smartphone. We use GoToMeeting all the time. It is a really great tool. It’s just efficient. It’s fast. It’s easy for you. Maybe even more important, it’s easy for your clients. They just click a link. If they don’t have the software, it downloads quick and they’re there. And they love it. See why millions use GoToMeeting; see why we use GoToMeeting. Start hosting your online meetings today face-to-face for 30 days free at gotomeeting.com. All you have to do is visit gotomeeting.com. There’s a big orange try it free button. Click that and you get 30 days free. GoToMeeting! Citrix GoToMeeting, we love it! You will too. We saw Google’s talked about the top-trending searches before. Robin Williams is number one. World cup, Ebola, Malaysia Airlines, and Flappy Bird. But now they’ve put out some interesting other trends. Trending people: Jennifer Lawrence. I wonder why. Kim Kardashian. What are they looking for? Tracy Morgan. He had that car wreck. People were worried about him. Ray Rice kicked off the… who is he playing for, the Ravens?

Jason: The Ravens, yea.

Owen: He’s playing for the home couch right now.

Leo: He’s playing at home. Tony Stewart. Race car driver?

Jason: Yea. He ran over somebody in a race.

Leo: Oh that horrible thing! Yea. Here’s one, animated GIFs. What do you think the number one animated GIF was for the year? I want to see it. Miguel Herrera. He’s the FIFA coach. So apparently his hair is on fire and I don’t know what…

Jason: Yea, during the World Cup, he was the Mexico National team. He was great and totally acting out on the sidelines.

Leo: Here’s a collection of Miguel Herrera GIFs. I’m not sure which one was the winning GIF, or Jiff. What do you say?

Jason: I don’t want to say. Because it will make half the people angry at me.

Leo: Oh what is this? I have to sign up for something.

Jason: In the 80s, I learned that it was Jiff, so I can’t change it now.

Leo: I say GIF.

Owen: I was going to say, Jason, you have to give an answer and make a stand.

Jason: Yea, but I realize there’s lots of evidence to the contrary but it’s too late now.

Leo: Luis Suarez, the biter. Madden. John Madden, there’s a GIF of Madden. Godzilla. And the shmoney dance. What’s the shmoney dance? I don’t know, should I click this?

Owen: Yea, you could click it.

Leo: What’s the shmoney dance? What is this?

Owen: It’s a guy who does dance because he can’t dance and everybody does it.

Leo: I feel like I’m searching in all the wrong places.

Owen: You’re not playing the GIFs anyway, or Jiffs. Jiff-GIF.

Leo: I feel like I may be GIF challenged here.

Owen: I think it’s the fact that you lost your hair and brain capacity.

Leo: That’s actually something I’ve been asking.

Owen: The shave might have been too close, Uncle Leo. She might have taken some cells with it.

Leo: Elmo does the shmoney dance. Have you seen Elmo do the shmoney dance?

Owen: I’ve seen a lot of shmoney dances.

Leo: This is a meme I missed.

Owen: It’s not in your wheel house, Uncle Leo.

Leo: Is this the Cowboys?

Jason: I don’t actually surprise because usually when there’s a dance craze with videos on the internet, you do it here.

Leo: I’m here to do it. I do not know the shmoney dance. I missed that one. That was only number six. Then Robin Williams, Ashley Wagner, dancing Groot, and Vince McMahon.

Jason: Oh, dancing Groot.

Leo: Number-one actor, Jerry Lotto. He was great in the Dallas Buyer’s Club. I guess that’s a hangover from that. Then Matthew McConaughey. Okay, that proves it. True Detective and Dallas Buyer’s Club. Macaulay Culkin. Why is he the number three actor? The Home Alone kid?

Owen: They put up he died like three times this year.

Leo: But he didn’t, right?

Jason: No, he didn’t.

Leo: Jennifer Lawrence, number one actress for obvious reasons. Rene Zellweger because everyone’s wondering what the heck. And Betty White. Is she dead?

Jason: She had dead rumors, yea that’s true.

Leo: Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Richard Sherman.

Owen: I love Betty White.

Leo: Who doesn’t love Betty White?

Owen: I don’t know. I would just love to hang out with Betty White.

Leo: What is the number on beer on Google? Bud. Then Corona. This I think represents America’s drinking. Keystone, Miller, then Blue Moon. We can do better than that. Here’s the number one beauty question: how do I get rid of acne? Number two: how do I get rid of stretch marks? Number three: how often should I wash my hair? What do you do after you shave your head?

Jason: Yea, good question.

Leo: Do you need to wash your hair? What is BB cream? I don’t know… you know what, I’m not going to click that link.

Owen: This is a family show, Uncle Leo. You can’t trust the internet.

Leo: I cannot… number one book: Boise No Bird. Never heard of it. Number two: Blood will out. These are probably all young adult, right? Number three: Savage Harvest. City of heavenly fire, flash boys. Calorie searches. You know Google does that now. How many calories are in… what do you think? I’m going to reveal it. Owen JJ Stone, what is the number one search for how many calories are in?

Owen: Soda.

Leo: I’m going to say donut.

Jason: Burger.

Leo: And the winner is banana!

Jason: Banana?! You people are so healthy!

Leo: Aren’t you glad I didn’t say donut? You know why it’s banana? Because that’s the example Google gave when they told people it could do that. So we’re going to throw that answer out and go to number two. Number two: pumpkin pie.

Owen: This is horrible.

Leo: What’s wrong with America?

Jason: This is the worst game of Family Feud ever.

Owen: This is horrible.

Leo: Number three: apple. We’re going to throw all those out. What’s number four? Egg?!

Owen: Go to 15. Get to the nitty gritty human life.

Leo: Cheeseburger! You win, because it was the most…

Jason: Then Big Mac. You put those together.

Leo: Watermelon, orange.

Owen: You know how many calories are in a Big Mac? 1150!

Leo: What?! How many grams of fat, Mr. Owen JJ Stone?

Owen: Uh, 49 grams of fat.

Leo: That’s disgusting.

Owen: It’s delicious. And they’re taking it off the menu apparently so I’ve got to get one.

Leo: What?!

Owen: No they’re not taking it off. They had a big thing saying McDonald’s was going to un-supersize stuff.

Leo: They better not.

Owen: But McDonald’s is hurting. No one is eating McDonald’s anymore because they won’t tell people what’s in their meat. So McDonald’s better do something.

Leo: I told this story before but I’ll tell it again. When I worked at McDonald’s, I was in high school. It was my first job, when I worked at McDonald’s. This is where my weight problem began, Owen. I was working and the guy said you can go on break. Because they don’t want to waste burgers. They actually count how many don’t get eaten. And they have to be eaten. There’s a little timer. When the timer runs out they have to throw them in the waste bin. They get counted at the end of the day. The guy said you’re going to break but you have to eat all seven of these Big Macs so I don’t have to waste them. And I did. How many calories? That’s 7,700 calories.

Owen: That’s amazing. I love Big Macs so much.

Leo: I do too. I crave them! They’ve got me hooked!

Owen: Let me tell you something. Here’s the fat man cheat on that. They put that extra piece of bread in there. You go ask for a double cheeseburger with Big Mac sauce on it.

Leo: Yea, baby!

Owen: Oh, the Big Mac sauce. Anyway, I’m sorry.

Leo: Something happens when you lose your hair. Your butt gets bigger. Ford, number one cars, Ford, Jeep, Dodge, Toyota, General Motors. Celebrity pregnancies…

Jason: Preganaceces.

Owen: Hey, you know that girl’s pregnace, right?

Leo: Mila Kunis, is she pregnant or just fat? Cierra, Kourtney Kardashian, Kate Middleton, Carrie Washington. Celebrity weddings: Kim and Kanye of course. Do they have a name, you know how like Bradgelina?

Jason: Kimye?

Owen: Kimye.

Leo: That sounds like a South Korean street. I have some Kimye. George Clooney and that person no one knows.

Owen: Oh.

Leo: Amal Alamuddin.

Owen: We talked about music and the power of people. Kanye West put out a song on the internet and it blew up everywhere. He didn’t release it anywhere or do anything. But again, the power of Kanye. He did some song with Paul McCartney and the next thing you know I saw it on Twitter, Facebook. Everybody’s talking about it. No radio play, no nothing. Because he put it out at midnight on New Year’s.

Leo: I saw it on the internet too. Is it a good song?

Owen: I like it because he’s talking about family and whatever. It’s a crap song but the message is nice.

Leo: It’s not ebony and ivory, is it?

Owen: No. He’s just talking about having and raising kids and what he wants them to be when they grow up. So if you got a kid, you feel like, oh he cares!

Leo: Oh I remember. I listened to the first line and it was so auto-tuned, I said I couldn’t listen to the rest.

Owen: Yea, like I said it’s not a good song. But the message is a good message.

Leo: Kanye does like his auto-tune, doesn’t he?

Owen: He do.

Leo: Top five diets: Paleo, Atkins. We’re the wrong guys to ask about that. Gluten-free, Mediterranean, and Dash. I don’t know what that is.

Owen: Dash is I’m running to get this food, son.

Leo: I want a Big Mac! Let me dash out! You got seven Big Macs? I’ll take them!

Owen: That sounds so horrible.

Leo: Top dog questions: why do dogs eat grass? Do dogs dream? Why do dogs howl? I was really disappointed that the Pope didn’t say dogs go to heaven. That was wrong.

Jason: Have you seen the movie?

Leo: Donations: donate to ALS, Ebola. I did that search. Donate to breast cancer.

Jason: You should not donate to Ebola. It is a terrible virus. You should donate against Ebola.

Leo: Yea! No wonder there’s a problem! People keep donating to Ebola. It doesn’t need your money!

Owen: If you do not donate to me, I will give you Ebola. I have Ebola. And I want my donations!

Leo: Okay, this is it. We’re going to wrap it up. How to questions: how to air dry.

Jason: Hello, Apple.

Leo: Because no one can figure that out.

Jason: Now there’s two different versions of it and it’s very confusing.

Leo: That should tell you right there that’s a problem. How to contour. What’s that? Contour, is that something the kids are doing? How to vote? How do I vote?! How to kiss, how to craft, how to color-block. I don’t know what that is. I’m not a crafty kind of guy.

Owen: Do you know what the best part about this is? Someone’s going to be making videos for all these trying to grab YouTube clicks.

Leo: Because now we know what the top search terms are, don’t we? Yep. Natural events: places on Google map. The most searched place on Google Maps: Walmart. Then Starbucks, then Target, then McDonald’s. See, who says they’re not eating at McDonald’s anymore? Best recipes: chicken recipes, then meatloaf, banana bread, pancake, and chili. And the number one podcast: what a surprise. Serial. Followed by Stone Cold Steve Austin startup, John Bachelor, Shane and Friends, True Detective, Night Vale, Ask Women, Tim Farris, Strange… can’t I go more than ten? Can I have another ten? No.

Jason: Everybody knows where you’re already are. They don’t need to search for you.

Leo: Night Vale is great. All of those are great podcasts.

Jason: I love Serial.

Leo: Everybody loves Serial.

Owen: Who did it? Nobody knows. Keep listening! It’s like stuff like that is the best gimmick in the world. I’m going to tell you a tale that has no answer. There was a Sony hack. Who did it? Was it your mom?

Jason: Endings are hard. If you don’t have to do one, it’s pretty good.

Leo: Alright, there you go. The top charts. This is all on Google’s website. The 2014, we searched trillions of times. What do these searches say about us? They don’t say what they say about us. They just say what they are. You decide. Anything else to talk about? Sony hack, we already decided that it’s Michael Mann?

Owen: Michael Mann.

Jason: And Blackhat. He might have gotten some help from Thor, his hacker.

Owen: He put the hammer down, that’s all I’m saying.

Leo: I think that’s it. I think we can wrap this sucker up. I think we have now covered the entire spectrum of great tech stories as we begin the New Year with two great tech journalists. We love you, Jason Snell, sixcolors.com.

Jason: Thanks, Leo.

Leo: Spelled out, six. And of course Owen JJ Stone: Ohdoctah. Ben Thompson was going to join us today from Stratechery. We apologize, he wasn’t here. He wasn’t feeling well. We’ll get Ben on next week or soon. And don’t forget our coverage of CES is all week long, non-stop, wall-to-wall. No it’s not. But we will have a lot of coverage. Do we have a week ahead? Mike Elgin will be doing that on TNT, 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC, Monday through Friday. Coverage begins there but we’ll have coverage on throughout our shows. A very special home theater geeks this week with Scott Wilkinson. Visiting all the major TV players to see what’s new in TVs. Father Robert Ballecer, he’s going to Show Stoppers tonight. That will be our first special. It will come out tomorrow but he’s going to search the show floor for interesting stuff. And of course Dick DeBartolo, the Giz Whiz. He looks for the silliest, oddest, all the small weird booths. I think by doing that, we cover the waterfront. We cover the waterfront. Owen, what are you going to do this week? Anything fun?

Owen: I am actually going to do some work this week because I take the month of December off. So I don’t do any work.

Leo: So you feel rested?

Owen: I owe Lisa an email. Lisa, I am so sorry. Monday afternoon-ish, you will get an email from me. Because I need to respond to you. It is great not to work. I like not to work. If I could get paid to sit here and look cute, I would.

Leo: We will pay you to sit there and look cute. I have money in my pocket and I am prepared to throw it at you.

Owen: That’s why God already singled you, Uncle Leo.

Leo: What are you going to the strip club tonight? What is that all about?

Owen: I’m a teddy bear. They pay for this. This is my money.

Leo: Oh that’s your money? They put that in your jock strap? Before you go, will you do the shmoney dance for me?

Owen: No, I’m not going doing the shmoney dance! I know better! And you know, you’re so lucky you did the Elmo one because that song has really graphic words applied. And if you would have picked any other song with those words… get out of here. Snell, smack him.

Leo: We’re going to send you a case of delicious cream corn and your very own ham. All for being on the show. Thank you, everybody.

Jason: Why you knucklehead, you!

Leo: If you can’t watch live and it is fun to watch live. It starts at 3pm Pacific Sunday, every Sunday, on this network. By the way, Jason put together a very good best of last week. Thank you. We got the week off.

Jason: That was great.

Leo: It was Jason’s best of, the best of Jason Howell.

Jason: Not a problem. Honestly could not have done it without everybody’s suggestions.

Leo: Thank you. Yea, because he wasn’t here all year. So thank you, Jason. I appreciate that. You will find us here 3pm Pacific Sundays from now on. No more time off for us. That’s 6pm Eastern time, 2300 UTC. Please watch live if you can. On-demand audio and video always available after the fact on our website, twit.tv, wherever podcasts are aggregated including iTunes and all that stuff. And our great apps, thank you to all our great app developers. We don’t do an official TWiT app. We don’t have to. But you will find them on Android, iOS, even Windows Phone, and Roku. Thanks to Craig for that one, Craig Mullaney at Shift Key software. If you want to be in our studio, we would love to have you. Just email us so we can put a chair out for you. Tickets@twit.tv, right? Tickets@twit.tv. I’m Leo Laporte. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next week. Another TWiT is in the can!

Owen: Thanks for having me, guys.

Leo: Always a pleasure. You look great in there. Look at that gangster.

Owen: I know.

Jason: He’s got the little tilt on the hat.

Leo: Should I do…?

Owen: That’s because my hat’s too big. I have my dad’s head. If I put this on like this, I look like a cowboy.

Leo: How about this?

Jason: Or like an FBI agent. Oh, now you look like a logger. Or a farmer. Get some sheep in the back.

Owen: Where did you get that hat from?

Leo: Isn’t that awesome?!

Owen: Who makes a hat like that? What is the purpose?

Leo: This one’s even better. Want to see this one? I got the whole collection. So I can be ready for anything.

Jason: Got some more hats for you.

Owen: That’s for the roster hair, obviously.

Leo: I need dreads coming out of this. This is the Amish hat. I was doing a little…

Jason: Yep, going to raise a barn. Going to churn some butter.

Leo: I like this. This is good. It’s like yours over there.

Owen: There you go.

Leo: It’s a nice hat. It’s got a brim.

Owen: What’s the title, Uncle Leo, for this show?

Jason: You know this studio is not lit for you to wear a hat though.

Leo: No.

Jason: You’re like a man of mystery.

Leo: So, it’s better to have hats without brims, like this? I turned on the whole show like this.

Jason: Oh yea!

Leo: Yea, I got my head shaved and then I got it leatherized.

Jason: It accentuates the egg-shape of your head.

Owen: I tell you what, being a pilot is a very hard and technical skill to do. You have hundreds of hours to learn. When you put that hat on, you set aviation back 300 years. You look crazy.

Leo: Quiet. I’m hunting wabbits. Elmer Fudd was bald, too, wasn’t he? Ah-ha-ha.

Owen: Show title?

Leo: Oh, wait a minute. I got a Jane hat.

Owen: What are you doing with all these hats?

Leo: I have thousands. You haven’t been out here lately. I’ve become the Howard Hughes of hats. I’ve been collecting hats like crazy.

Owen: You’re preparing for this day.

Leo: I must have known somehow.

Jason: Oh now there we go.

Leo: I could be in Bob’s Burgers.

Jason: That’s the one you have to wear to bed.

Leo: I actually will wear this to bed. That’s a great idea. Lisa’s not too happy with this so I might as well just go all the way.

Jason: Does this stuff never get posted anywhere? Because this is gold, man.

Leo: Comedy gold.

Jason: You need… the specials feed needs to have…

Leo: I briefly had a Mohawk. I got a lot of them.