This Week in Tech 637 Transcript

Leo Laporte: It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech. We have a fantastic show! Everybody's in the studio. Jason Hiner from Tech Republic. All About Android's Florence Ion. From Crunchbase News, Alex Wilhelm. We're going to talk about the new Pixel 2's. In fact Florence has hers. Tony Fadell suing Andy Rubin. Light Room Pro, the new version just for you. Eleven herbs and spices. Twitter's safety schedule and a whole lot more. It's all coming up next on TWiT.

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Leo: This is TWiT, This Week in Tech, Episode 637, Recorded Sunday, October 22, 2017.

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It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech. The show where we cover the latest tech news. I always love it when we get everybody in the studio. Today we have an all-in-studio show and I'm thrilled. Jason Hiner, who is normally in Louisville is here.

Jason Hiner: I wish I was a hologram.

Leo: That'd be cool.

Jason: Here but as a hologram. I am in analog. That's digital. Analog Jason's here.

Leo: When we originally designed the show that was my plan. I even talked to somebody who said they could do it with standard PCs. And someday maybe we'll have 3D holograms.

Florence Ion: Like the Disneyland ghosts?

Leo: Yea! Pepper's Illusion. Hey, that's Florence Ion. Oh that Flo.

Florence: Hi!

Jason: Also in analog.

Leo: I always think of the Progressive… is it Progressive? Geico? Who is Flo?

Florence: I am selling you insurance.

Leo: Yea but you're not.

Jason: The all-white commercials with the awkward shelves and the overly peppy person.

Florence: In the latest one she's hiding in the closet of a little boy's room along with…

Leo: With a monster. That's so weird. I don't get that.

Florence: I don't understand that commercial.

Jason: Insurance ads are bad because they're out of ideas. They have been for a long time.

Leo: The insurance ads are the best ads. Geico's ads, Progressive's ads; those are the best ads!

Jason: The fact that we're talking about it, they succeeded.

Florence: Oh my gosh, we're part of the problem! We're part of the machine!

Jason: Because most of them are so forgettable. You wouldn't pay attention if it's terrible. But you talk about it later like they won.

Leo: Geico is so weird that they have different campaigns. They have a gecko and then they have a weird like… you would never do this.

Florence: Non-sequitur.

Alex Wilhelm: Those are the ones that I hate; the ones that make no sense.

Leo: That's the famous Alex Wilhelm! He's Editor in Chief of the new Crunchbase News. Is that crunchbase.com?

Alex: Crunchbase.com is the main site. Dot-news is our stuff.

Leo: Nice. Crunchbase.news.

Alex: Vanity URL, I know, big time.

Leo: Speaking of vanity URLs, he's @alex on the Twitter. That's vain.

Florence: Lucky. I want to be @flo.

Jason: Vanity all around.

Alex: Bought it off a guy in 2008.

Florence: You bought it off a guy?!

Alex: I told this story like three months ago. I was not early enough to get it. I don't deserve that credibility. I bought it off a guy in 2008.

Leo: Was he in an alley somewhere?

Florence: Yea, Craigslist?

Alex: He was in Mexico actually.

Leo: Want to buy a handle?!

Florence: He was in Mexico?!

Alex: He was in Mexico. I PayPal'd him only $60 and he gave me the handle.

Florence: That's it?

Alex: I didn't have any more money.

Leo: That's like the guy who bought a pizza for 10,000 bitcoins.

Alex: Oh gosh that guy.

Florence: What a maroon!

Leo: Flo is a good Twitter handle. Yours?

Jason: @jasonhiner.

Leo: I'm @leolaporte. We're just not creative enough.

Jason: I know.

Leo: Oh that Flo, that sounds so good. So I'm glad we're starting on a light note. Because I have a heavy thing to talk about. And we won't spend a lot of time to worry about. It's not a tech story but as it applies to somebody who's a regular on this show. A guy I know very well, I've known him for 20 years. We're talking about the Scoble story. And I'm sure many of you saw the Medium post, which Scoble was accused of totally inappropriate behavior at O'Reilly Foo Camp. And that's been confirmed by the way by the O'Reilly publicist who said, ‘yea, he was banned from then on from going to Food Camp.' So that's a true story. It was before Robert got sober. He very publically got sober two years ago. But now two more women have come forward to accuse him of harassment. I know Robert very well. I know others have heard stories… I have never heard any of these stories. I was at that food camp; went to bed before the incident happened. And never heard anything the next day. So while it's not a complete surprise because I knew Robert was pretty wild in his drunken days. It is very sad to me. And I really love Robert. On the other hand, I don't love what he did. And if there is any good to come out of this, I hope this will be a message to all men that that's not okay. And more importantly, it's no longer going to be kept secret. Because it does happen; it happens every day. I don't know a woman who it hasn't happened to. But men have bound together and have kept this stuff secret. And many of the victims are afraid for good reason to say anything about it. That's changing and I think that's for the better. I hope Robert gets help; I know he wants to. He has apologized. I care a lot about him and I know he knows he did something terrible. Let's A, hope it doesn't happen again. And more importantly hope that this sets a tone. It's happening everywhere. Tech is not immune to it. So this is the time for all of us to say that that's not going to happen anymore. Women are going to be respected as equals, going to be treated as partners. And not as sexual objects. As a woman, do you have anything you want to add to that, Flo? I don't want to be just a guy talking about this. But I feel like I had to bring it up because everybody knows Robert's been a regular here. He was here three weeks ago.

Florence: I think the important thing to take away from all this is to believe women when they say something. That's the important thing. We have bread a culture here. Society as a culture in the United States particularly, we've bread a culture that allows this sort of thing to fly under the radar. And you know, just believe her when she says something.

Leo: And guys, if you see it happening, stop it.

Alex: Don't do it to begin with.

Leo: And help others not to do it.

Jason: And if you see something happening, stand up and say something. Report it to HR or whomever.

Leo: And that's part of the problem.

Jason: HR's not always there.

Leo: As we know with Uber.

Alex: They're on the side of the corporation. They're not on your side.

Leo: Anyway, sad for me for many, many reasons. And I hope Robert gets help and can renovate, or rejuvenate his reputation. Because at this point I doubt he'll be asked to speak.

Jason: Oh no.

Leo: I don't think this man will have work.

Alex: The word radioactive was invented for his situation.

Leo: Radioactive is a good word for it. Alright, enough of that. I felt like I had to say something because I know people are watching saying, ‘well what does Leo have to say about this?' You know it was on the top of Tech Meme this morning. I'm thinking oh my God, this is a nightmare. Robert did apologize on Facebook. I think impairment, being an alcoholic is no excuse.

Alex: It's not.

Leo: Although, seeking treatment is somewhat mitigating because he acknowledges that he had a problem and he hit bottom. And he did something really bad, many things really bad. And he's trying to make amends for that.

Jason: It's an active step.

Leo: It's a step. And I support him in that. Okay, so you brought something fun. Let's cheer up! Flo, when we did the…

Florence: Time for some gadget porn!

Alex: Gadget porn!

Leo: You're right. You can add porn to almost anything.

Jason: If you missed the preshow, it made a lot more sense before.

Leo: I want it to be the title.

Florence: Milo and Otis of Disaster Porn.

Leo: Milo and Otis of Disaster Porn. Just put a pin in that for the title. We'll figure out some way to incorporate that into the show. So when you were here when we did the Google announcement of the Pixels, you and I both ordered the Pixel.

Florence: We did. We took a break from talking live to order.

Leo: I ordered Panda with an orange button. I will not see it for months.

Florence: You also ordered Panda with the purported display issues that have been going crazy amok.

Leo: I went into a Verizon store on Friday to take a look. And to try to get one and I couldn't. But you were smart. You ordered the Pixel 2.

Florence: I did. I ordered the Pixel 2. Personally I will say I ordered it because this is the one made by HTC. And I just kind of feel like HTC is going to maybe-I don't know-I kind of trusted them in this batch.

Leo: You may have been right…

Jason: A lot of bezels don't bother you?

Leo: It's pretty old-fashioned, isn't it?

Jason: This is the Pixel 1. It's got giant bezels. I'm not judging.

Florence: Yea, I got the Pixel XL. Then think about my privilege as a reviewer. If I don't want bezels then I can just grab another phone.

Leo: This is the phone that you could have bought.

Florence: I got that phone too.

Jason: No bezels.

Leo: That's a Note 8. The thing you did avoid though is that blotchy, so-called blotchy screen. The LG OLED, POLED that they put into the XL, same one that's in the V30.

Florence: Which I'm using by the way. And this is not a production unit.

Leo: Do you notice the blotch?

Florence: No, there's not blotch. It's blue-tinted when you tilt it to the side. But that's just the OLED panel, is my understanding.

Leo: I went into the Verizon store because they have an exclusive. I went in on Friday to get it. Or at least look at it. They have the slider turned all the way up on brightness. And of course that makes it look better. So the first thing you do is turn off automatic dimming and you turn the brightness down. And that's when you look to see is it blotchy; yea. Admittedly, it is blotchy. The way they dim it seems to be by turning pixels off selectively or something like that. But if you hadn't said something, I would have never noticed it. I don't think it's going to be a deal breaker.

Florence: The thing is the Android community is not okay with this.

Leo: Especially Reddit. You go to Reddit, and it's like arg!

Jason: That's Reddit everyday on every topic though. That's not special.

Florence: But if this happened to Apple though, this would be a huge deal. People would be returning their phones, which I think is going to happen.

Leo: It would never happen to Apple. Only because of preconceived expectations. People are not going to look an Apple screen no matter how bad and say, ‘that's bad.'

Alex: I agree with that.

Florence: But they have the bend-gate or whatever. And before that they had the antenna issues. The antenna-gate. So I just mean to say that minor little things for a company like Apple I feel might get more exposure.

Leo: They wisely bought the Samsung's OLEDs for the iPhone 10. Although they have a deal with LG as well. But they are using the Samsung OLEDs in the iPhone 10.

Alex: The iPhone 10, the little notch at the top is getting very bad reviews. On the outline there was a long piece about how Apple's bad at design for that reason. So I feel like they are being picked apart for small design issues. Now. I think three years ago the argument made more sense that people just wouldn't care. I think that shyness now has gone away.

Leo: I don't know. You remember the mouse that you charge by putting the thing in the bottom of it so you couldn't use it.

Alex: I use it every day and it's hilarious.

Leo: Well on your iPad Pro the way that you charge the pencil is you stick it in the charging port. Where it could be broken… I mean Apple's not perfect. They're not flawless.

Alex: Oh I agree with that entirely. I'm not a fan boy of either team. But I feel the Android community's anger about the screen issue could be the fact that they're just very serious about this. And the average person in the public won't care.

Florence: It's also an expensive device. I forgot how much the XL2 costs off the top of my head.

Leo: $930.

Florence: C'mon, you're getting display issues. Now this phone, I only paid…

Leo: Let's unbox it!

Florence: … $654 or something around there.

Leo: Such a deal. You got the 128? Or the 64?

Florence: I got the 64 gig Pixel 2 which is manufactured by HTC.

Leo: Why did you not get 128?

Florence: I didn't want to pay that much.

Leo: Yea, good reason. That's a good reason.

Alex: So she wanted to have money instead of storage.

Leo: 64 is enough frankly. Unless you put a lot of music on it or videos.

Florence: Yea, and I back up my photos all the time to Google Photos. I take advantage of that. So this is my unboxing of it by the way.

Jason: Did it just arrive?

Florence: This arrived a couple days ago but because I've been using the V30, I have not unboxed it. Because I'm trying to experience the V30 as an LG device.

Leo: How do you do that?! You have it and you don't open it?!

Florence: You know I'm not going anywhere cool soon. So I don't need the photo capabilities.

Leo: I tear the box open.

Florence: I know. I just took this out of the box today. It was still in the FedEx box. So Alex, if you don't mind holding the phone. Alex is going to hold the phone. I'm just going to show what's in the box because we're unboxing this.

Leo: Did you get headphones?

Florence: An instruction manual. A connector I believe for connecting and connecting to other phones.

Leo: That's the on-the-go connector, yea.

Florence: A charging cord.

Leo: It's USB C to A.

Florence: And of course the dongle.

Leo: So you don't get-this is some complaint that people had-you don't get type C headphones. You just get an adapter and no headphones.

Florence: And then an adapter inside. So there's no headphones. And that is the Pixel. Wow it really is nice.

Alex: Yea, this is actually gorgeous. This is a 7 Plus for reference.

Leo: You've got the almost white, sort of white, what's it called? Kind of white.

Florence: Kind of white. Clearly White!

Alex: I don't know. I didn't think I was going to like it. But now that I have it in my hand, this feels fantastic.

Florence: Well let's turn it on.

Leo: Squeeze it.

Alex: I don't know how to turn it on. Android confuses me.

Leo: Squeeze it. Jason, are you an iPhone…?

Jason: I've got a Pixel. And I've got a Pixel XL2 coming.

Leo: When's yours arriving? Because mine's not until November 14^th.

Jason: It's like November 8^th or something.

Florence: Look it says hi to me. Hi there.

Leo: Hi to me.

Jason: Excellent greeting.

Florence: That's the Pixel 2.

Leo: I want to ask can I touch it but in light of Scoble I don't think I ought to say anything. No I'm just kidding. You know it's going to get worse.

Alex: I know. I'm stuck in this chair for two hours.

Leo: So this is metal. But it's a soft-touch metal is what people say. It's painted so it does feel like plastic. It's soft-touch.

Florence: But I like that because an all-glass table slips off the table and every little thing… and it's so fingerprint-y.

Leo: You know I think this is pretty compared to… the Pixel XL has these same large bezels. It's not doing it. I can't squeeze it.

Florence: I haven't set up anything yet.

Leo: I don't want to… where do you squeeze it because it's hard…

Jason: I could hold onto that a lot better.

Florence: Yea. I'm having a hard time convincing my mother to switch to the Pixel XL, the first gen. She really wants a Samsung. So this is what's going on in my house right now.

Leo: Well a couple things we'll want to know about the next time you're here is photography and how good the camera is.

Florence: I think I have to set it up. And I have to start…

Leo: We can't do it today. This is a first look.

Jason: I didn't get a chance to hold it.

Florence: Oh I'm sorry!

Jason: Don't deprive the nerd of his time with the new phone.

Leo: I think it's actually surprisingly nice. And now maybe regretting that I…

Florence: Well I want to know what the Pixel XL2 is like. I'm hopefully getting one tomorrow. And Monday to bring it to the Android show. Because I want to see the display.

Leo: So Tuesday on All About Android you'll see the XL and the XL2.

Florence: I want to see what the display is like. I want to know what happened in manufacturing. Why is it beautiful?

Leo: Google said we can add new settings which we plan to do: color settings for more vibrant colors. But of course if there's a flaw on the panel there's nothing they can do about that. But they did say there will be some software that will maybe make people feel better.

Florence: There's a lot of investigation going on right now. Like who the perpetrator is, who started this display.

Alex: Who's to blame?

Florence: Who is to blame effectively? Is it Google? Is it LG?

Leo: Now one of the things you want to do is sign up for the beta. Because that way you'll get 8.1 which turns on that system on a chip in there that's just for the camera. This is the dedicated image processor that isn't active right now.

Florence: True.

Leo: But Joe Bumper beta has it. And presumably the public beta.

Florence: But the problem with having 8.1 is that a lot of apps, and because it covers a lot of IOT now, don't work with the new version of Android. Which is partly why I've stuck with the V30, so that I can actually use these apps that I need to set up lightbulbs and set up all my IOT switches around the house. So yea, that's one reason I've been kind of avoiding switching to stock Android.

Leo: Yep. I think it's amazing. What Apple's done with the A11 Bionic, well Google's doing with custom-silicon eight… this is an eight-core dedicated processor that's not even turned on right now. Just sitting there with DDR4 in there. This is very sophisticated.

Alex: Is that the SOC just for the camera?

Leo: Just for the camera. The HTR Plus.

Alex: Whoa, that's amazing!

Jason: An eight-core. Now I kind of want one.

Florence: And this is so that other apps can start using it. Which is opening it up for developers so that maybe you can go into Instagram and actually use this functionality on your phone versus whatever the Instagram tweaking is for your camera app.

Jason: These processors on these phones are getting serious. I'm sure you guys have seen some of the benchmarks on the A11. It's pretty ridiculous.

Leo: It's faster than a MacBook Pro!

Jason: Yea. And we've done some testing to try some of it out and have been able to replicate some of what the commercials have shown. It's impressive stuff. So this is cool too. Sort of running this through its paces and seeing what kind of driving… really more powerful things especially video photo, multimedia kind of things. Which tends to be slow. It's one of the more frustrating things on a phone, is some of the multimedia stuff. It's just kind of cumbersome and slow and not very impressive. So it's a good sign.

Leo: Google Pixel 2, as Google was quick to say, has the highest DxOMark score ever at 98. But that's the single number score. The actual still-photo score for the Huawei Mate 10 Pro is better.

Jason: Interesting.

Leo: Yea, so you have to dig deep and kudos to Marques Brownlee who did a whole video on why you shouldn't use that topline number when you look at DxOMark. You have to look at… these guys look at everything and look at all the numbers. The Huawei got marked down a little bit because its video wasn't as good as Google. So it ended up at a lower total number. But photo number, look at that: 100.

Florence: Wow.

Leo: So the average is lower because it's got a 91 on mobile which is still not bad.

Alex: That's still pretty good.

Leo: And I have to wonder, is a two-point difference enough to even notice? But still, that's amazing.

Jason: Interesting.

Leo: And the Mate is kind of interesting. I don't know if I could live with their custom Android UI.

Jason: Yea, it's one of the heavier ones.

Florence: It's so heavy! It's like eating a really greasy tuna casserole. It's so good and you want to keep shoving it in your mouth but it's just so heavy and you're going to regret it afterwards.

Jason: Seafood is disgusting and that analogy is foul.

Florence: Okay, chicken tetrazzini.

Jason: Oh good. Yea, I could do that.

Florence: Yea, so it's like that which is super, super heavy. And you're just like on the couch, ugh.

Jason: So I speak Italian for no reason. Yea, I've been there.

Leo: This Mate 10 Pro comes with dual Leica lenses. They partnered with Leica. And they're F1.6 which is I think the fastest camera.

Jason: That's the lowest I've seen. Lowest aperture.

Florence: On a smartphone. I've seen 1.7 before.

Leo: I think I can't remember another time when we've had two flagship phones: the iPhone 8 and the Note 8. About to be eclipsed like three weeks after they come out by the Pixel 2 XL and the iPhone 10. That is bizarre.

Florence: But different customer bases.

Leo: Do you think normal people though must be… and then if they look at these reviews, you're right, most people probably just walk into the store and say what do you give me? Because I still hear people…

Florence: They'll give you a Moto Z. Moto Z2.

Jason: Is that bad?

Leo: I talk to people all the time who have the Samsung insignia portfolio. And I say what's that. ‘Well I got it free.' It's like some crap Android phone, Android 4 phone or something. Most people, when they walk into a store, that's what they're getting.

Jason: Person on the street's never heard of the Mate 8, you know.

Alex: I haven't heard of the Mate 10.

Florence: Huawei is, the thing is their unlocked phones work here but they don't have any carrier backing so you don't have…

Leo: They're not even for sale in the US yet. But they say they're going to.

Florence: Who knows if they're going to work with all the carriers here. So it's like why would I import a phone that scores so well on DxOMark when I can get an unlocked Pixel 2 that works anywhere in the world. And is supported by Google's update system.

Alex: What about Essential? That Essential phone by Andy Rubin.

Florence: The camera on there is so…

Leo: No, no it's better!

Florence: Since the software update?

Leo: They have pushed three updates that I can remember to the camera. And at this point it's fine. But it doesn't matter. Because it's too late. They sold 5,000 of them.

Alex: Was that confirmed? I saw that story.

Leo: Sprint said it.

Alex: Oh no, that's too bad.

Leo: They must have sold more unlocked. I bought an unlocked one. But probably not much more. And that's a sad state because that was a very interesting small form-factor, interesting materials: Ceramic and titanium. Unfortunately and this is why I don't do pre-production reviews, all of the Essential phone reviews were with pre-Pro models. They all complained about the camera. And while I think the camera… I had problems with the purchased model that I got, they fixed it within a few weeks. But that doesn't matter.

Jason: The damage is done.

Leo: The damage is done. It's over. Nobody's going to buy that phone. And I feel bad for Andy. Although he's being sued now. Did you see this?

Florence: It happens.

Alex: We're not bringing this up now. This is like the poor Andy Rubin Show.

Leo: What did he do in a previous life? So now there's a company who claims that-actually it's a pretty bad claim…

Jason: From when he was on Android?

Leo: No, Essential. They talked to a company. They said we want to know about your technology. Maybe we're going to acquire you, that made the wireless connect technology that I believe is used in the little adapters that you adapt to the phone. They sent 20 engineers over. They did all the due-diligence. This is that old Microsoft technique. The engulf and devour technique where you find out everything you can about a product. And then you say, ‘hey, you know we thought about it. We're going to with another guy.' And make a duplicate product. So they're being sued now for that.

Florence: By Tony Fadell.

Leo: Oh I didn't mention that!

Alex: That's the best wrinkle in all of this. While we're thinking about people with good tempers.

Florence: It's so good! This is what I live for, the soap opera.

Leo: Tony Fadell is one of the designers of the iPod who then went off to start Nest. And then left Nest kind of under a dark cloud, right?

Alex: Well Nest has only done so well. It's part of the alphabet family.

Leo: So I guess I could have got some link-bait. I buried the lead. I should have said Tony Fadell sues Andy Rubin.

Florence: Yea, you did bury it.

Jason: Tony Fadell-backed company. I don't know if Tony is involved.

Leo: I know but see that's why you and I don't get the links. We're too honest.

Jason: What does that say about this side of the table, first of all? You're all looking that way when you said that comment.

Leo: No, Kisa is the name of the company. It was started in 2009. They say they were in talks with Essential for 10 months. They sent engineers over and then Essential backed out. But made something strangely similar.

Alex: That looks almost exactly like it.

Jason: It's kind of like in that movie Coming to America where it's like, ‘we're much McDowell's. We're McDowell's and they're McDonald's. Their bun has seeds. Our bun doesn't have any seeds.'

Leo: That's different. It's a different thing.

Florence: Or like Vanilla Ice.

Alex: I was just about to say, Queen.

Jason: No his was ding-ding-ding. Ours was ding-ding-ding-da-da-ding-ding. Yea, like that.

Leo: You young people, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Alex: Queen is not for young people.

Jason: He sampled the…

Leo: Vanilla Ice was in Queen?

Alex: He was the lead singer after Freddy Mercury. His song stole the base line from Under Pressure, right?

Leo: I got it. And that's the same as Ice Ice Baby?

Florence: Well Ice Ice Baby goes dun-dun-da-da-dun-dun.

Alex: We don't have to do this again.

Leo: I get it.

Florence: There's a whole VH1 special about it out there somewhere.

Leo: Beyond the Music, this week.

Florence: It was Beyond the Music.

Leo: So, what was the outcome of that? Was there a lawsuit?

Jason: Yea, I think he lost.

Florence: Oh gosh, I don't remember, guys. Wait, you're younger than me actually. You'll have to…

Leo: There's nobody younger than Alex.

Alex: No that's not really that true anymore. Every year that goes by that stuff's not true.

Leo: There's more babies born?

Alex: No just people that show up in the industry now that are like 23.

Florence: And you're like what am I doing with my life?

Leo: Isn't that weird.

Alex: Yea, it's terrifying.

Leo: I saw that happen to Mark Milian. Mark Milian was the boy genius, the wonder kid who was hired at like 21 to write for the LA Times. Now he's some old slob. He's some old guy. He's not a kid anymore.

Florence: We will be called old slobs at one point. I mean life is hard.

Alex: We're all slobs until someone comes over for dinner.

Leo: Let's take a break. I want to talk about all sorts of stuff. There's lots to talk about. A great panel: Jason Hiner from Tech Republic, CBS Interactive, in-studio. I love that. What are you in town for?

Jason: Uh, meetings. Yea, nothing exciting. No conference or event.

Leo: I was wondering if you came out to the West coast for Adobe Max. Because I got to talk about this. I'm in pain over what they did to Lightroom.

Jason: We have a lot of coverage on that from Ant Pruitt, who's on the show.

Leo: Ant's great. Love Ant.

Jason: Yea, he writes for Tech Republic and he's got a lot of coverage on the Adobe Max stuff.

Leo: I'm sure he's just as upset as everybody is. Adobe is going for the money, I guess. Also, Florence Ion from All About Android. Wonderful to have you. Oh that Flo. No relation to Progressive.

Florence: No, not at all.

Leo: And Alex Wilhelm, the boy wonder, or used to be. Former wonder-kind.

Alex: I feel like that was never really true.

Leo: I know. Crunchbase News, crunchbase.news. Great to have all three of you. It's nice to have you all in-studio, it's fun. I think we should break out the booze. Oh no never mind, I'm sorry.

Florence: I've got the boot. I've got the ka-boot.

Leo: There's alcohol in that, right?

Florence: Like a tiny, tiny bit.

Jason: Only some of them.

Florence: Give you a nice little…

Leo: And a Pepsi. And you don't have anything?

Jason: Water.

Leo: Oh very nice.

Alex: That's why he's so trim.

Leo: This is the water side of the table.

Jason: You keep trying to divide this line. Like we can all just change chairs. We can put Flo in the middle.

Alex: Old people, young people.

Leo: People with hair, people with no hair. I don't know. Our show today brought to you by Rocket Mortgage. My friends, I have to tell you a sad tale of woe when we bought our house four years ago, we made the mistake of going to a bank. Going to a bank, the big bank, the bank with the stagecoach and the horses and the whips. And I mean whips. It took them almost two months to get us a home loan. So long that we almost lost the house. And the thing that bugged us most was they kept coming back saying, ‘okay well we need some more documents.' At one point we said could you just ask for everything you want. We'll get them all together. We went on vacation and we were still faxing stuff on vacation to this big bank. Now, thank God, you don't have to do that anymore. The big bank is still the number-one lender in the country. Number-two lender, but the best in my heart: Quicken Loans. I know you've heard about them. They're revitalizing Detroit. The Quicken Loans arena in Cleveland. I mean these guys are super-cool and they love geeks. And they realized that this process that Lisa and I went through a few years ago is not appropriate anymore! We live in the age of technology, of the internet, of computers! So they created an entirely online mortgage approval process. You can do it from your phone: you just go to rocketmortgage.com/twit2. But here's the thing: in the time it took us to drive to the bank to apply for a loan, you can get a loan on Rocket Mortgage. Because you don't have to get any paperwork. You don't have to go anywhere. You can do it from an open house. Say, ‘look, let's buy this house.' Go to rocketmortgage.com/twit2, you give them some basic information. They have trusted relationships with all the financial institutions so they can get what they need. You just have to give them permission, you say okay. Go out, they go out, they get the numbers. They crunch them and within minutes, because it's computers, within minutes based on your income, your assets, your credit, they're going to analyze all the home loan options out there. They're going to give you the ones for which you qualify. You choose the rate, the term, the down payment, and you're done! You're approved! You could show the realtor at that open house, ‘look we're approved. Let's take it.' In fact it's dangerous it's so easy. Make sure you want that house before you go to rocketmortgage.com/twit2. It's never been easier to re-fi, never been easier to buy. I love this. This is how it should have been all along. Rocketmortgage.com/twit2. Equal housing lender, licensed in all 50 states. NMLS consumeraccess.org number 3030. Maybe you're not buying a house today but bookmark it for when you do, you'll be ready. Rocketmortgage.com/twit2. We thank them so much for their support of This Week in Tech.

Alex: I feel like that ad that makes me sad to be a Californian. I'm like oh my gosh I should buy a house. And then I look at any sort of real estate listing and then I burst into tears.

Leo: Did you see… somebody published on Twitter a list of houses in Sea Cliff, San Francisco…

Florence: Oh don't do that to me. Ugh.

Jason: Sea Cliff is a great…

Florence: That's where Robin Williams lived, rest in peace.

Leo: And Dianne Feinstein and a lot of very famous people.

Jason: You have to be a master of the universe.

Leo: They start at $3 million.

Florence: It's Sea Cliff! Have you seen that view?!

Leo: There was $22 million houses.

Alex: No! I'm not rich enough!

Florence: You know, to be fair you actually can't see that view because it's gated off.

Jason: Even the Google cars haven't been there, huh?

Florence: Probably not, yea.

Alex: And if Google can't afford it…

Jason: Just to clarify, I did look up Vanilla Ice, or the Queen threatened to sue Vanilla Ice and he settled out of court and agreed to pay the royalties. So he did lose but he paid.

Leo: I sampled it with my mouth.

Florence: Oh I'm glad he did that. That's very responsible of him. Good on you, Vanilla Ice.

Alex: Good job stealing and then paying for it.

Leo: What was the San Francisco… okay here it is, this is a story that is some revenge I think for the prices in San Francisco. Presidio Terrace, right next to Sea Cliff, very nice area.

Florence: Beautiful house. This is real estate porn.

Leo: Beautiful area. Hadn't paid their taxes on their median strips. It's an oval-shaped street, gated, sealed off, lined with towering pine trees, million-dollar mansions. Famous residents: that's where Dianne Feinstein lives. Nancy Pelosi. So the city of San Francisco had an unpaid tax bill; they auctioned off to Michael Chan and his wife Tina, the sidewalks, the street, and the common ground areas for $90,000.

Alex: What?!

Jason: So they own the stuff around the house?

Leo: They own everything around the house. It turns out the Homeowner's Association for Presidio Terrace had failed to pay the $14 per year property tax. $14 a year! So they put it up for sale. $90,100 bid in April 2015 and everybody's wondering what are they going to do with it! They could charge residents to park on their own street.

Florence: Oh! That's so mean!

Jason: No, that's awesome!

Alex: #capitalism.

Leo: As legal owners of this property we have a lot of options. I think that's the best… that's revenge.

Alex: I was going to say put a big tax the rich sign right there in the median. Have it up all the time.

Jason: Wow that's wild.

Leo: Isn't that hysterical? $14 a year bill they forgot to pay.

Florence: $14.

Leo: That is not tech but since we brought up San Francisco.

Jason: Sorry I got us off track again.

Leo: Of course, the house prices are so expensive. San Francisco is so expensive. Kevin Rose.

Jason: Hold on, Kevin Rose?

Leo: It's Kevin Rose's fault.

Jason: He's in New York.

Florence: Also Zuckerberg's fault.

Alex: He apologized for it, in that video.

Leo: Did he really?

Alex: Oh yes.

Leo: It's not his fault.

Alex: No, some people came to his house to protest back in 2014. He came out to talk to them and said sorry about the rents.

Leo: I hope I'm not revealing a secret. Edit this out if I'm saying… Kevin and Daria, his wife-beautiful wife-have moved back to San Francisco and any day now they could be having a baby. She is due today.

Alex: Well good for them!

Leo: Isn't that nice? Nice story.

Florence: I hope they live in a nice school district.

Alex: I think they can afford any school they want.

Leo: I don't think it matters. Has Apple's pace of innovation slowed? Eddie Q says, ‘I disagrees vehemently.'

Florence: Of course you do. C'mon.

Jason: He wouldn't be doing his job if he did.

Leo: I think we've been incredibly innovative. Q pointed out that the iPad and Apple Watch launched after the iPhone, right? Apple historically has a track record of coming out with industry-defining products.

Jason: You got to look at the iPhone, it's such an anomaly.

Leo: That's the problem.

Jason: Having a hit like the iPhone that becomes a business that sells $75 million a year.

Leo: It's like Vanilla Ice and Ice Ice Baby, it just throws you off.

Jason: Or it's like if you're an NFL team and you go undefeated and you win the Super Bowl. Everything you do after that is going to be, not anything.

Florence: So they're like the Patriots.

Jason: Nobody's done it since…

Alex: The Patriots are bad.

Florence: Sorry. I don't want to get into it.

Jason: There's nothing you can do that's going to live up to the iPhone. And everything they got to do afterward, they got to try really hard and be as good as they possibly can. And know that everybody is going to say you're just not as innovative as you used to be.

Florence: Well they sold a lifestyle. What they're selling is a lifestyle. That's how you really get people to latch onto that. Because as a gadget-head, I'm all about the ‘it's the got the coolest specs. Look which one has the better aperture.' But you know, a lot of people are like, ‘I don't really know what you're talking about, Flo. And you need to stop with your googly-gock. And I'm just going to buy a nice iPhone because it looks good, it shoots pictures really well, it has all the apps that I want.'

Leo: Normal people: that's what they do.

Alex: You're describing me! And I'm a fellow dork! I wonder if that opinion is actually popular even among our social group.

Leo: I think it is.

Florence: It is. Even in the tech-sphere, it's a popular thing.

Alex: I just want the iPhone that will run Slockstill.

Florence: Why does it have to be so hard?

Jason: And I think there's less mental energy.

Leo: A lot of retro-rationalization. You choose it for this gut thing. Because you're right, Apple's almost a fashion company. It's an emotional buy at this point.

Florence: Oh yea.

Leo: But then you retro-rationalize. You say it's more secure, right?

Alex: iMessage?

Leo: iMessage.

Alex: And iTunes is great.

Florence: Macs are better for development of some platforms.

Alex: All the developers at my company are on Macs.

Florence: Yea, my husband just bought a Mac because he realized he couldn't do all he wanted to do on Windows.

Leo: I notice we've got two Macs here. You're using the new TouchBar Mac with the butterfly keyboard. I'm sure you read the butterfly keyboard in the outline. This is Joshua Topolsky's new publication about that keyboard and the space bar.

Alex: This is the mote of dust.

Leo: The mote of dust. Let me see if I can find that article.

Alex: This was a great piece by the way. If you haven't read it in its entirety, take the five minutes and do it.

Leo: It wasn't a great tech piece. It was a great emotional rant.

Florence: Because that's what happens! Your keyboard goes out. What are you supposed to be? That's your livelihood. What am I supposed to do? Dictate my stories?

Leo: And what happened is his space bar stopped working. And he took it to the Apple store and they said… oh yea, by the way the headline…

Florence: I believe Casey Johnson wrote this?

Leo: Casey Johnston, who is very good. Bad tech, the new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life.

Alex: But I wonder what the piece is about.

Jason: It's so bad.

Leo: It's bad tech. It's so bad. So he brought it in. The genius said that's going to be $800 for a new keyboard. We can't fix it. Because unlike every keyboard I've ever used, I guess you can't take the key caps off. You have to replace the entire keyboard.

Florence: Which is not user-friendly.

Jason: This is actually my dad's argument against modern cars. My dad's a big car guy. And he says it's not like modern cars because you can't take them apart and fix them. You really have to take them in and maintenance-ized by the people. And they don't even know really what they're doing. Now computers are that way. The modular era that we all liked when PCs were essentially hand-built or could be, is over for modern laptops. We demanded thinness and this is what we paid for. Crappy keyboards with no travel. And apparently atomic motes of dust.

Leo: Casey says this is a big problem according to the genius I spoke to. The most susceptible to act up from that piece of dust. He said the Apple store guy, not Apple, it's the issue on this computer. And I have seen people like tilt it sideways, blow air into it. I mean you can sometimes do some triage but it is a big deal. $700 to replace the keyboard.

Florence: Oh! That's prohibitive!

Leo: Yea. For a piece of dust?!

Alex: I'm guessing that's a pretty bad taste but…

Leo: This to me is part of the problem. This is the same problem I have with Adobe now. I think for a while Amazon for instance really promoted this notion: customer comes first. We succeed when we super-serve the customer. And I think Apple had that attitude in the early days. I'm still a big Apple fan but I was a really big Apple fan back then. At some point, something happened at Silicon Valley and maybe it was the profit mode where companies made changes that were less customer-friendly. Like taking the headphone jack out. Or these butterfly keys. I don't know, you type a lot, right? Do you like this keyboard?

Jason: I love it. I type faster with it. I have no doubt that I'm not faster.

Leo: It has so little travel. I just can't use it. I'm so inaccurate on it.

Jason: I mean, it took me a while.

Leo: There are people who like it.

Jason: Yea, I like it.

Leo: It's very polarizing because there are people also who just say-myself and Ihnatko-I can't use it.

Jason: This one's better. I had the MacBook before we tested and I used it for like six months. It was very even less than this. I still like that one. I felt like I typed faster… I like this one a little better because there's a little more tactile-ness to it.

Leo: I actually stopped buying Macs.

Jason: Most people I know don't.

Leo: This is for me a huge thing. I stopped buying Macs because I just won't buy a Mac. I bought a Lenovo. It has a great keyboard!

Alex: This is why I run external keyboards both at home and at home.

Leo: That's one solution but what's the point of the laptop if you have to carry…

Florence: Yea, the whole point is to have it on you.

Alex: Well when I'm out and about I use the laptop keyboard. But this is a 2015, it has a pretty good travel on the keys.

Florence: I love that MacBook.

Leo: Keep that one.

Alex: I have not asked for an upgrade at work because I know how to type on this keyboard. And I get paid to essentially make jokes on Twitter.

Leo: I don't want to make this a slam-Apple-whole show so I'll mention Adobe too. Adobe as you know stopped-Microsoft's done this too-stopped selling boxed software and started selling subscription software. The Adobe Creative Cloud. And actually the photography subscription is a pretty good deal. $10 a month: you get Photoshop and Lightroom. So Adobe Max this week, they have split Lightroom. There's a new Lightroom: Lightroom Creative Cloud. It costs a little more. It keeps all your photos in the cloud. You have to specifically say I want them on the hard drive if you want them on the hard drive. And they completely changed the user-interface. So much so that it is, well it's just a different program. It's designed for simpletons or normal people.

Florence: Like a Photoshop Express for Lightroom?

Leo:

Florence: No!

Jason: No!

Leo: Actually it reminds me a little bit of what Apple did with iPhoto to Photos or Final Cut…

Jason: Final Cut 10.

Alex: Final Cut 10 was a problem.

Leo: It's very stripped-down.

Florence: I was there for that.

Leo: Now knowing that people like you and me would be upset, Flo, they released a version called Lightroom Classic CC. Which is, they haven't updated Lightroom. The last version of Lightroom came out in 2018; they've done some patching. This is the first time. It's faster, it's more compact. But the name Classic is really worrying people even though Adobe says no, no, we're going to keep doing it. It looks like the future of Adobe is this more expensive solution that's designed to work with an iPad, is very cloud-focused, is designed to be easier to use. It's almost Instagram-like filter. And that's a different audience for Adobe. And I can't think that this is what their customers were asking.

Florence: I think they're trying really hard to appeal to a millennial user base. I hate to do the low-hanging fruit but I feel like that's what's happening.

Leo: Burkes says it should be called Lightroom Bro.

Florence: I agree, Burke!

Alex: That's rude!

Florence: We'll put some filters on this photo that I took in Munich.

Alex: And then I'm going to do a keg stand.

Leo: Oh yea, bro! Munich! I was there for Beerfest.

Jason: Oh, Octoberfest! I was like why are we going to Munich.

Florence: Bros, Munich, October.

Alex: Is that a thing?

Florence: It could be.

Alex: It could be a thing, okay. We'll give it a partial-thing.

Leo: Am I crazy or maybe it's just because I'm an old guy and this is what you say when you get old: it used to be better in the good-old days. But it feels like companies are a little less customer-centric than they used to be. Maybe they never were.

Alex: Yea, I think to your Amazon example, I think Amazon still is… I'll give you an example. Amazon AWS: Amazon did this feature where if you don't use one of your AWS instances, they send you an email and say you probably want to turn this off because you're not using it. They saved their customers-over the past three years-$500 million by turning off things.

Leo: I love that.

Florence: Because it brings them back.

Leo: Everybody else says, ‘subscribe and don't mention that!'

Alex: And they said because we're trying to build long-term relationships with our customers and we don't want somebody to pay something when they're not getting value from us. So I think that it's not old-fashioned or out of style to take good care of your customers. You look at… they are in an easy enough market share-you know disrupting all kinds of markets-with that approach of playing the long game. So I do think that when you do that, you engender the kind of customer a loyalty that will pay off in the long run. Even if it's old.

Leo: This is where it pays to be a genius. He was willing to have the stock price tank, he was willing to have investors turn their back on him by not making money for almost a decade. Because he wanted to invest in what he saw was the future. He turned out to be right. Amazon is now hugely valued: It's price to earning is like $800 or something. But at the time, he had to borrow money. He couldn't raise any more money because investors said you got to make money. You cover this?

Alex: Yea well he is the honey badger of tech CEO, I think pretty effectively. But going back to the user-interface changes and how it impacts functionality. I think this kind of tours so I can think about it. There is the crappification of software, which is if I'm looking at 10, when it becomes the child version of it, and everything gets worse. Then there's the Office 2017 change which was a dramatic UI change and the ribbon. But they're making a lot better versions of Office down the road.

Leo: People hated that, didn't they?

Alex: My parent who I still run TextBoard for, lost their stuff. Whatever that phrase is. Because they couldn't take it. But by Office 2010, it was better running Windows 10 or anything they could have done before. So I'm in favor of this for the reaffirmation and the complaints you get.

Leo: That's what Adobe'ans would say. You would be changing our software but we need to move into the 21^st century. We need to update this program. And we see this is the future. We see everybody wants their stuff on the cloud. So we're going to take a hit; Apple's always famously done that, right? We're going to go to Intel, get rid of Power PC.

Jason: Get rid of the headphone jack.

Leo: Courage, my friends, courage.

Alex: It's always okay to metamorphasize from a slug into a butterfly. Just never from a butterfly into a slug. Both are changes, just don't go backwards. And it sounds like in this case they made a huge mistake and made Lightroom Pro.

Jason: It feels like Final Cut 7 to Final Cut 10. I think the one difference is the cloud thing.

Leo: What does Ant say, does he like it?

Jason: I think the jury is still out.

Leo: I haven't used it long enough to really criticize it. But you install it and it says I'm going to migrate you-this is a one-way trip-I'm going to migrate your catalog.

Jason: It's the Hotel California of software.

Leo: For instance normally it was about data management, it would say where do you want to store stuff. How do you want to store it? Do you want your folders to be dates? What do you want to do? I'm looking for all of that; none of that's there. The formerly 20 pages of preferences in Lightroom are now one page and really there's a checkbox that says do you want to store your photos on the drive too. I don't know where the photos are going. I imported photos; I don't even know where they are on my hard drive. But the idea is that you don't need to know. We'll take care of this. It's kind of Apple with the iPad; you don't need to know.

Alex: But you know what I hate using? iPads. Want to know why? Because I'm a power user and I want this style interface with all the buttons because I want to use them. This is a cool device for on the go but I don't want all my software to be this form factor, not that form factor.

Florence: Yea. Even the Chromebook is limiting.

Alex: Yes, and I don't want to be limited. Because I am behind and I have too much work to do.

Jason: What device is that?

Florence: Oh this is a Galaxy Tab S3 from Samsung. Android-based tablet. Tab S3.

Jason: How is it better than the Tab S2.5?

Florence: Well this one has pen support now.

Jason: Oh dang it she knows.

Leo: I like pens.

Florence: HD screen.

Jason: I really need to not ask you questions about Android because you always know the answer.

Florence: Well it is my job.

Leo: Uh, let's take a break and come back with more. Fun panel. It's moving so fast. My head is spinning. I can't keep up. You guys are too brilliant. Smoke them if you got them.

Alex: Can we smoke on TWiT?

Leo: Sure.

Florence: It's California you can't smoke indoors.

Alex: Okay I just figured I would ask.

Leo: We have to ask the studio audience to leave to stand outside. You have to get me a gas mask. Do you smoke?

Alex: Yea.

Leo: A lot?

Alex: No, just once in a while. At night.

Leo: Only 12 hours a day.

Florence: I wear sunglasses at night.

Alex: I wear sunglasses while I smoke at night.

Leo: Interesting. Well, John let's turn on the smoking lamp then. Our show today brought to you by WordPress! When you create your small business website on WordPress, you suddenly give yourself a global presence. I know you think, ‘oh no, I have a Facebook page.' That's a bad idea. First of all you don't own it, Facebook does. I have a Twitter account. Same thing. You should have all that but it should all point back to your site, the site you own, the site you control. And that's at wordpress.com. Maybe it's too hard, you said. It's not. With wordpress.com you don't need any prior experience. You don't need to hire somebody to do it for you. They guide you through the entire process, they take care of all the technical stuff. It keeps your site up and running. Look I know how to set up… I ran my own WordPress site for years on my own host. But I use wordpress.com because it's so much easier. They keep it up to date, they keep it secure. You choose from hundreds of beautiful designs. And now with a business plan you can install any plug-in you want, any theme you want. You're not limited at all. The automatic features are fabulous. Boost your visibility with built-in search engine optimization. Your customers will help generate business for you because every post on your site has social sharing so they can say, ‘hey I really like this restaurant.' Share it on Facebook, share it on Twitter. And if you need help they have a customer support team that's just the best. I love these people. I actually called them a couple times because I had some questions. They're WordPress experts. They're eager to help you get the most from your site and they're there 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday. And on weekends too. Plans start at just $4 a month. There's a reason that 28% of all websites in the world are on WordPress. It's just the best. Wordpress.com/twit. Start today, you get 15% off your new plan purchase if you go to wordpress.com/twit. My blog's on it: leolaporte.com. But also some of the biggest publications-Quartz use WordPress-a lot of publications use WordPress. It's a really powerful tool. Wordpress.com/twit.

Jason: 28% is pretty strong.

Leo: Isn't that amazing? It was 27% when we started doing the ads. So I take credit for that last percentage.

Alex: Good word. Every place that I've ever written professionally has been on WordPress. So I've been living the WordPress life.

Leo: No kidding. I didn't know that. They're probably on the VIP program.

Alex: I probably shouldn't comment on which package they use but they're on WordPress.

Leo: Yea, don't say. Wordpress.com. They're self-hosted?

Alex: I don't know.

Leo: Yea, Quartz is on wordpress.com.

Alex: I make type-type. They put it on.

Leo: You don't care. Yea, they have big server farms for big publications. Remember when Quartz came out. Everybody said look at this design. This is amazing. And I'm going it's WordPress.

Alex: But it's just a really good WordPress install.

Jason: Quartz is great though.

Florence: How the websites should look, quite frankly. They're a lot more readable that way.

Leo: I agree with you 100%.

Florence: I read more on the internet now.

Alex: Well the outline which we just had up on Leo's big screen. That looks fantastic. That is a similar sort of design that has lots of negative space, tons of room to read, and the focus.

Florence: Listen, I'm down for the negative space.

Leo: How's it doing? This is Joshua Topolsky's next. Next, next, right? This is my next, next. Is it just him or does he… it's not just tech, right? It's culture. It's good writing. He's got great people writing for him. I guess Casey is still at the Verge. He hasn't left the Verge, has he?

Alex: Casey Newton?

Leo: Casey Johnston.

Alex: Casey Johnston is at the Verge?

Florence: She was from Mars.

Leo: Oh she was from Mars!

Alex: Casey Newton's at the Verge.

Leo: Casey Newton, you're right. All these Casey's. And Casey Newton's a guy?

Alex: Yea, and very tall.

Leo: Okay I was confusing Casey Johnston who's a woman with Casey… okay. Live and learn. Sorry, Casey. I probably said he a couple of times. I'm sorry. I apologize. Yea, I think it's very nice. It's very pretty, isn't it?

Alex: I wonder what they're running that on, now that we bring it up.

Jason: Right after a WordPress ad!

Leo: Go to the very bottom.

Alex: I feel like I've once again derailed us.

Florence: About.

Leo: It doesn't say. They don't have to say, of course.

Florence: See I want my website to look like that.

Alex: Me too.

Leo: You know what I like when you put your pointer over their head…

Alex: They've got bobble heads. I mean, how cool is that?

Jason: They've got good bobble heads.

Alex: Also the color scheme is very nice. It's very bold. You can tell you're on the outline.

Leo: That's some hot CSS right there.

Florence: This is what happens though, now that magazines aren't like a part of our lives as much as they used to be. We've taken all this design to the internet. And I kind of love how this is sort of transformed our internet into this really pretty place. It's not just-I mean it's experiences now.

Alex: Experiences!

Leo: Okay, but do you ever go to the front page of a website?

Alex: Yes.

Florence: Yea!

Leo: Really?

Florence: Yea!

Alex: A lot.

Leo: You don't just deep-link from Twitter or Tech Meme?

Florence: No, every day: jezebel.com. My lunch time, jezebel.com.

Leo: Okay, I take it back. The only front pages I go to are Twitter and Facebook. And everything else is a link from Twitter, Facebook, Tech Meme, I go to.

Alex: You're more common than…

Leo: I thought deep-linking was just… so here's an In Gadget story on the front of Tech Meme. If I click it, I'm not going to go to the In Gadget front page, I'm going to deep-link right into that story, right?

Florence: Yea.

Alex: Every publisher would love it if you go to their front page and then click on two links. Really boost their page views per visit.

Florence: That's what I do because I know this is what we do for our living. So on my break I try to go to the front page, see what everybody, my pals have been posting.

Jason: Nice. I like it.

Alex: What have those crazy cats been doing?

Florence: I like to keep the ecosystem going, guys.

Alex: I even buy print newspaper some times.

Alex: I'm going to click on some front pages this week. You inspired me to click on some front doors.

Florence: Just put it on your lunchtime routine. I've got my five-six sites, two of them are not tech.

Leo: You guys are really old-fashioned. Get with the program.

Alex: I bought a quarterly at the airport yesterday.

Florence: I still buy quarterlies sometimes too.

Leo: Like what, McSweeney's? What did you buy?

Florence: It was Foreign Policy, wasn't it?

Alex: No, I read Foreign Policy; that's six times a year, not quarterly.

Leo: Oh, excuse me.

Florence: Oh sorry.

Alex: I buy the new Philosopher, which is proof that I'm not cool.

Leo: The new Philosopher?

Alex: Yea, I was a philosophy major in college.

Florence: Of course you were.

Leo: He's pretending.

Alex: I failed a lot of econ, what do you want? I wasn't good at multi-variable calculus, sorry.

Leo: Philosopher. Did you really major in philosophy?

Alex: Yea, I went to U-Chicago for Economics. I took pre-reqs for a year and then I dropped out of Economics because I didn't take multi-variable yet. And then I was like I want to write for the next full-time so what can I take that doesn't have problem sets. And they were like Philosophy. And I was like sold! And now I'm here.

Leo: So, interesting.

Florence: Still more useful than my journalism degree.

Leo: No, you're using it right now.

Florence: True, true, true.

Leo: Excuse me, please.

Alex: This has been help and love support with Leo and friends! C'mon, just love me.

Leo: I never graduated from college. I had to work in the dining hall.

Florence: But look at you now, Leo.

Jason: But he did go to Yale. Keep in mind, he was in Yale.

Leo: I did go to Yale. And my major had I finished-I only had a year and a half left-would have been Chinese.

Alex: That would be really useful.

Florence: Wow. It would have.

Leo: Now it would be useful.

Jason: You can learn the whole story about this actually in my book: Follow the Geeks. The Leo LaPorte story is included. One of the 10. You're at chapter 10; I saved the best for last.

Leo: No, I'm not the last chapter.

Jason: You're the ninth chapter, sorry.

Alex: Did you just fact-check his book?!

Jason: He did, thank you.

Alex: Did you write that book?

Jason: I did, half of it.

Leo: I'm the second to last chapter.

Alex: That was the best 20 seconds of TWiT of all time.

Jason: And then Maya Penn is number 10, you're right. Who is an amazing teenage Phenom.

Leo: I like it that you dug. Is Scoble in that book?

Jason: No.

Leo: You smart man. Dodged a bullet there, didn't you?

Jason: Sorry. I side-tracked a little.

Alex: When Leo said 45 minutes ago it's going to get worse, that was the thing he was eluding to.

Leo: Is this happening now? Is it happening?

Alex: I'm slowly watching. I have one eye on you

Jason: Followthegeeksbook.com.

Leo: Oh, thank you. Little plug: Follow the Geeks.

Alex: All fine bookstores everywhere online.

Leo: It's a great book. And it is the closest that I'm ever going to have to a biography.

Jason: I don't know about that.

Florence: You're not going to write your own? I'm going to write my own.

Leo: Are you going to write your memoirs? You're already planning?

Florence: Oh yea. I have to!

Leo: This is what happens when you're under 30.

Florence: I have to, Leo, because I have to out-write my mother. She's going to write her own memoirs too.

Leo: Well what's your mother's story?

Florence: Oh, she's going to write about her journey to America.

Leo: Oh, interesting.

Florence: Yea, she's been emboldened.

Jason: From where?

Florence: From Romania.

Jason: Aw, nice.

Leo: I love Romanians. Two of my favorite people are Romanians.

Florence: I am one of them.

Leo: Three of my favorite people. Friday I interviewed an amazing illegal immigrant. And he said, I said you're an immigrant? He said no I'm an illegal immigrant. Phillippe Kahn, the man who started Borland       International.

Florence: Illegal alien.

Leo: He came to America on a tourist visa, stayed for years, didn't have a green card so he couldn't get a job. So he worked as a consultant. He had worked in Switzerland. He had a master's degree in mathematics and he worked with Niklaus Vierds in Switzerland, the guy who invented Pascal Le. So he came to America; he released a $50 Pascal Le compiler that was 10 times faster than anything out there, called Turbo Pascal Le. Changed the world. Then sold the company, went public, sold the company. His next company… oh he did Sidekick too. Which you won't remember but if you ever use DOS, Sidekick allowed you to do a calendar and a notepad. You're nodding, right?

Jason: Good, not the phone, right?

Leo: No, it was before the phone.

Alex: That was my first thought too. I'm like I was there, Leo. Oh, never mind.

Leo: No, way before then. It was a DOS program that allowed you to multitask in DOS, which you couldn't right? But you'd press a keystroke and it would pop up and do it. It was amazing. And then he did Starfish which did synchronizing technology, that was adopted and licensed by many, many companies. Sold that company. His next company, I'm missing one… oh, Lightwave. He invented the camera phone. I forgot, I'm sorry.

Alex: Was this guy on Triangulation or something?

Leo: On Friday I interviewed…

Alex: Oh, nice.

Leo: Well he's one of my heroes. He's an amazing guy. Yea, but 20 years ago his wife was having a baby and he had brought his Startec phone. He thought, gosh I wish I could… and I have this Casio digital camera. Really crap: 640 by 480 digital camera. How could I get the pictures out of this camera onto the phone so that our friends and family can see our new-born baby when she comes. So he asks his wife, he runs downstairs, he rips something out of his car-it wasn't Bluetooth-but the music player out of his car and get his soldering iron. Comes upstairs in the hospital room, he's soldering a StarTech to his digital camera. He has a server running, so he uses the connectivity to the StarTech to get to the server. He takes a picture. Time Magazine said it was one of the most important pictures of the last 100-years.

Jason: That is so MacGyver.

Leo: That is totally MacGyver.

Alex: Pay attention to your wife that's having your child.

Leo: Well, he asked his wife—

Florence: To be fair, she may not have wanted him in there.

Jason: Distract yourself, honey.

Florence: Exactly.

Jason: We've got work to do here.

Leo: This is that wonderful short, the video they made, the birth of the camera phone. And Phillipe says, "It's so true. It's not only true and accurate in terms of the facts, but they actually shot it in the host hospital in the hospital room where we were, were I invented the baby." There he is.

Florence: Oh, I love that idea.

Leo: That's Philippe. There's him by himself. There's the camera.

Florence: Oh, my God.

Leo: He's taking the picture.

Jason: That's incredible.

Leo: And that's the picture. That is the first camera phone picture. He then went to Motorola, licensed it. Almost every camera phone for the next 10-years was licensed from that company.

Alex: Does he just sit on a large pile of money?

Leo: He's not done yet. His next company, he invented, you've heard of MotionX? Maybe you haven't but you've heard of the Jawbone Up? The motion sensors in the Jawbone Up he invented, licensed. Your Apple Watch, every accelerometer in your phone, that's all his invention.

Jason: I'm not sure what I'm doing.

Alex: I feel really dumb right now.

Leo: Illegal immigrant. He's a citizen now, but at the time he snuck into the country from France.

Jason: This is America. If you make that much money, you become a citizen.

Leo: He sold one of the companies for $300-million-dollars to—

Alex: Smarter than us. Richer than us. Anything else? Or is that a good enough list?

Florence: You know what? I have the wealth of life.

Alex: Yes.

Leo: You know what? Never compare yourself to other people because you're going to always lose. There's always somebody smarter, better looking than you, right?

Jason: Well said.

Florence: True. It's true.

Leo: You'll lose. We are all unique, wonderful snowflakes.

Florence: We are. We are. You too, Alex

Alex: Fox News calls me a snowflake all the time.

Leo: Do they really?

Alex: If you get that joke, go outside.

Leo: Generically, yea. Pepe the Frog calls me a snowflake.

Florence: Every time you say go outside, I'm like I get your joke. Should I go outside? I'm not leaving this table.

Alex: No, whenever I make a really, really stupid joke I think to myself, wow. I said that out loud. And then I think if anyone gets that they should go outside. The whole thing. Sorry.

Leo: Edgette22 made an amazing discovery.

Florence: Oh, my gosh.

Leo: She looked at Kentucky Fried Chicken's official Twitter count, @KFC and noticed it followed exactly 11 people. 5 Spice Girls and 6 guys named Herb.

Jason: Oh, my God.

Leo: 11 herbs and spices. This is probably the most viral tweet of the last 5 years.

Florence: The Spice Girls will pronounce it Herbs.

Jason: That's true. That's true.

Leo: I've got 11 herbs and spices.

Jason: That is amazing.

Leo: Kudos to the social media director.

Jason: It's a Louisville company. Actually, I know their social media directors. I should ask about that because that's incredible.

Leo: Find out if he's the guy. That would be a great story. Is he the guy who thought of this?

Jason: It's a lady.

Leo: Ok, it's an Easter egg though, right? You do this and you don't tell anybody. And you wait for somebody to notice it.

Alex: But you said social media director which is the right thing. People were like oh my gosh. That social media intern is so great. And then people who work for social media were like, not the intern. That takes actually thought, planning and execution. Don't diminish the value of the work that just went viral and brought KFC, not just on social media, but right here. I am now saying KFC which I don't say ever. But good form.

Leo: You'd have to—and Jet's pretty smart because these are the people that KFC's following. You have to kind of—but that's Geri Halliwell. That was a Spice Girl. Wait a minute. @OfficialMelB. She was a Spice Girl. Wait a minute. One, two, three, four, five, six Spice—5 Spice Girls.

Florence: Who are the Herbs?

Leo: Herb Scribner. Herb Wesson. Herb Waters. Herb Dean. Random Herbs. And Herb Alpert.

Jason: All verified Herbs.

Alex: He's a great trumpet player, actually.

Leo: Well, they are all checked.

Jason: All verified Herbs.

Florence: Oh, they all--- oh, they did all verified accounts, too.

Jason: All verified Herbs and Spices.

Alex: How elitist.

Florence: Well, you want to look legitimate, right? You can't just follow—

Alex: Because @MilkshakeDuck? Your Herb could become—have you ever seen that thing? Oh, so Milkshake Duck is a meme. It says, oh, look, we all love Milkshake Duck. And then five minutes go by. We're sorry to inform you that Milkshake Duck is racist. Whenever the internet finds something that's lovely and nice, it turns out to be bad. So, if you found an Herb that was non-verified, he may become Milkshake Duck and actually racist and KFC needs to apologize. That's ruining the moment. So, by following verified accounts there's probably a lower level of that happening.

Jason: Yes.

Alex: Anyway, social media is hard and now it is hilarious.

Florence: It is hard. Kudos to anyone who had to manage social media. I can't seem to manage my own.

Alex: You're pretty good on Twitter.

Leo: Milkshake Duck in the Urban Dictionary is defined as a person who rapidly becomes famous for something wholesome before they're revealed as a deeply flawed character with terrible opinions and or a shady past.

Florence: Welcome to humanity.

Alex: Do you remember Ken Bone? Remember Ken Bone?

Florence: Yes.

Leo: Ken Bone.

Alex: Ken Bone.

Leo: And the sweater boy from the debates.

Alex: And then all his adult video habits from Reddit were found out.

Leo: Oh, poor Ken Bone.

Alex: Yep. Exactly. Don't become famous. Just don't do it.

Leo: Yea.

Alex: Now it's on Reddit on porn in your own name.

Leo: Yea, incognito mode.

Florence: What comment do you have to—anyway. Anyway.

Leo: Are you ready for Samsung's Bixby on refrigerators? Ah. Will my fridge, next fridge have a Bixby button?

Florence: Probably. It will probably listen to you. "Hi, I'm Bixby." It's going to become—they're going to do horror movies.

Alex: I don't want my fridge to listen to me. I want it to make ice and shut up.

Florence: Shut up and make ice, fridge.

Jason: You know the bad things about the tech in refrigerators? So, we have one. In Louisville we have CNET Smart Home and the Smart Apartment. And in the Smart Apartment, when it was built 18-months ago, we out in the newest, cutting-edge, fresh off the line refrigerator from Samsung. It's like it's completely out of date now.

Alex: 18 months?

Jason: Yea.

Florence: That's a good fridge, by the way.

Jason: It is a good fridge.

Leo: I pressed the Bixby button right before you started talking about that. I got a video from Samsung about refrigerators and other devices with Bixby built-in on my Bixby. Brilliant. Brilliant. Then you have to agree. I agree. I agree.

Florence: You can connect to all the devices in your home. And you can pair your IOT devices with it. I have the Samsung Robot Vaccum.

Alex: You—what?

Jason: Nice. Nice. Can you call it with Bixby?

Florence: No, but you can control it with—I mean, I'm sure you can control it with Bixby. I haven't tried. But you can control it with Google Assistant and say like, "Start cleaning."

Leo: So, we're about to enter the war. I don't think Bixby is going to be a combatant this December but Apple's Home Pod, Echo has 18 different form factors.

Alex: There's the Cortana.

Leo: We have the Harmon Kardin Cortana.

Florence: I have one of those in my home, by the way.

Leo: What?

Jason: How did you get one?

Florence: (Laughing).

Leo: That's the Invoke.

Florence: Well, I cover IOT now.

Jason: Ah, yes. That makes sense.

Leo: Mary Joe Foley has one too, apparently. That's her article.

Florence: I'm a little delayed on writing about it though, because in all honesty, I haven't spent very much time with Cortana and I just—I want, I mean in honesty I had no time this week. Whatever. I'm a free-lancer. Anyway, so, I'm spending some time with it. I listened to it all day yesterday as I was doing my house chores and the music sounds phenomenal. Like I love it so much more than the Google Home but Cortana is—I don't know how to talk to it.

Leo: She's different. Yea.

Jason: Interesting.

Florence: Like I don't know what to say to it to get it to work. I'm still kind of figuring out how it works with my IOT ecosystem in my home. I'm still figuring that out.

Alex: It's hey, Cortana and Ok Google, right?

Leo: Yep.

Florence: Yea, you can't say Ok Cortana. It's doesn't work.

Leo: You can say hey Google.

Alex: Ok. But I use Cortana on Windows 10 Home because I like Windows 10 and I have the same problem. I never know what to do with it. And it's always in the way for me because I never can actually do anything faster with it. I always want to use keyboards

Leo: I don't think that—I mean Apple's put Siri on the desk. I don't think speech in the desktop is a really good idea. The next Chromebook, the Pixel Book will have a dedicated Google Assistant.

Florence: IOT. I mean I just think about connected devices.

Leo: But, exactly. I want to talk to my house. I don't want to talk to my computer. No, you nailed it.

Florence: But what if you're sitting at your—you know, I work from home.

Leo: Just shout, "Turn on the lights." I mean, it's natural to talk to the house.

Florence: It is. It is actually more natural.

Alex: It's natural for Asimov. I don't know if it's natural in real life.

Florence: You've not been to my house. My house is very connected.

Leo: Do you not have an Echo in your house?

Alex: No. No.

Florence: I have a lot of them.

Alex: I will borrow one.

Leo: Me too. I have a ton of them Google Assistants.

Alex: I don't want to have any recording devices in my house ever. I'm sorry. I don't want that.

Leo: They're not recording ambiently. They're only listening for the trigger word.

Florence: I get kind of scared when Google's recorded me saying—you can go back and listen, by the way.

Alex: I can?

Florence: At yea, from your Google account.

Alex: I can listen to myself. I can't hear you.

Florence: You can hear what Google Home—

Leo: That's a new social media thing. Share my Google.

Alex: Is that like sharing your Google score among your friends?

Leo: Wouldn't it be awesome?

Florence: But it's creepier.

Leo: Wait a minute.

Jason: You talked about it on the show last week, right? The fact that the Google Home was accidentally recording everything.

Leo: Yea, and the apologized.

Jason: By the way, they came to his house to get it. I was like--

Leo: Within an hour.

Jason: There's no way I would have been giving that up. My manager and I talked about that. That was the first thing we said. I'm not giving up that device. You go and fix that. Find some other ones. Test them and make sure it's right, but I'm not giving this back to you.

Florence: But it was Android Police and if they wouldn't have shown up, that would have been on the website and they would have rallied. Because there's a lot of- they have a huge reader base.

Leo: But why—a journalistic point of view, why would you hold on to it? What would you do with it?

Jason: Well, because one, you know, they're going to go out and do what they do to find other ones, and yea, and still when they say, "Is this doing it? Oh, we fixed it. It's no longer whatever." And obviously you can take other devices and try it. But I'm like, "I want to hold on to this one because this one is evidence that there was some problem." Was it a hardware problem? Was it a software problem? Who knows?

Florence: It was apparently a possible problem with the glue that was used on the capacitive fabric that covers the top of the device. And so, what it was doing was it was constantly engaging.

Leo: It was if you were tapping it.

Florence: Yea, constantly engaging. So, what they did is they disabled that in the software which—it's a bummer. Now it's like I wanted that. I wanted to be able to touch and do that and now I can't. It's a bummer.

Jason: Yea, it is a bummer. At the time we didn't know all of it yet, so, yes. I would have said, "Like, we're going to hold onto it and keep an eye on it."

Leo: I was nice of them to help Google out because Google obviously doesn't really want to send out a bunch of big donuts that are listening to you all the time.

Florence: Well, I mean but that's the—as a journalist, you've got to check in and be like comment.

Leo: But that's important. It was a review unit, pre-production review unit.

Jason: That's right. That's right.

Leo: So, really—

Jason: That's what's different. It's not one that they bought.

Leo: If they bought it, you're right.

Alex: Well, if they bought it, you can't take it back.

Leo: Well, Google could say, "Could we take that back and give you a different one so we can figure out what's wrong so we can fix it so nobody else has this problem?"

Alex: I've got two middle fingers and an opinion about that.

Leo: You want to hear my last time I talked to my Google?

Alex: Yea, please.

Leo: Can you get my audio?

Leo's Voice: Ok, Google. Ok, Google. Hey, Google.

Alex: And silence descends on the show.

Leo: I never responded (laughing). That's it. You hear the clicking of the clock, the ticking of the clock in the background. That's kind of a horror story right there.

Alex: So, it turned on and it recorded your clock?

Leo: Well, it's under a cuckoo clock.

Leo's Voice: Ok, Google. Ok, Google. Hey, Google.

Leo: (Laughing).

Florence: It heard you.

Leo: It's the ticking. I don't know what's going on.

Alex: You sound like the ghosts of Leo Past.

Leo: But that's—but my point is I'm, using this as an example saying that everything  you do or say is recorded but it's here.

Alex: I don't want it to be there either. I want it to be nowhere.

Leo: Well, you can delete it.

Alex: Well, why does it—can I auto not save it?

Leo: No.

Florence: No.

Leo: Here's when I said rabbit.

Florence: No, you didn't do that.

Leo's Voice: Rabbit.

Leo: Oh, that's TV setting it off.

Alex: So, now your TV can set off the recorded things and then it uploads the audio from your house to the internet forever.

Leo: All the time. All the time.

Alex: No.

Florence: Burger King did that.

Leo: This is what triggered it.

Leo's Voice: I was thinking about something fun to do.

Jason: Whoa.

Florence: All right, Leo.

Leo: (Laughing).

Alex: That's the second time today you had that great impression. It's fantastic.

Leo: Of who?

Alex: Well, she did the voice earlier that was hilarious, the accent voice with the review and then that was good too.

Leo: But who was it the voice of?

Alex: I don't know.

Leo: Time to die. Isn't that what you just said? Maybe I'm deaf. I don't know what's going on. I've lost control of the show.

Jason: Like every time we say these, if there are people who are listening on their speaker out loud, right, when we say—

Florence: Yea, and we're really sorry to everyone for doing that.

Jason: We say like, "*****, order paper towels," it's like we just ordered—

Alex: Well, you shouldn't just do that.

Florence: Don't do that because it's very possible that could do it.

Jason: Sorry, everybody.

Leo: If somebody ever turned on their locking-down PIN by now--

Florence: Didn't somebody write you a letter a long time ago and said—

Leo: Yes. I bought a bunch of stuff.

Florence: You bought a bunch of stuff.

Alex: Did you feel bad?

Leo: Yea.

Alex: Ok.

Florence: It was an accident.

Alex: No, I'm curious. Should you feel bad about that or is that just bad luck.

Leo: I didn't believe it.

Alex: Oh, ok.

Leo: I think that was just somebody teasing me.

Florence: But I think it's a great prank to play on a friend. While they're in the bathroom, just go—

Leo: Let's talk about KRACK when we come back. How about that?

Alex: Ok.

Leo: All right. @ohthatflo Florence Ion. @Alex, Alex Wilhelm and Jason Hiner @jasonhiner (laughing).

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Alex: You should put the Betterment ad before the Rocket Mortgage ad so we can save all the money and then buy a house.

Leo: And then buy.

Alex: I know. I feel like they're out of order right now.

Leo: It's out of order. You're right. I've been saving to buy a house. You're right.

Jason: The chatroom brought up that Amazon commercials don't set off the Echo.

Leo: Yea, how do they do that?

Jason: They must be doing some kind of filtering.

Leo: I think I read that they put a tone. They do. They dim it with something to keep it from doing that because in the early days it did.

Jason: It's really smart.

Leo: Do you remember Aaron, the kid from Breaking Bad.

Florence: Aaron Paul.

Leo: Aaron Paul did an Xbox commercial. This is the first time to my knowledge that this happened, that set off Xboxes all over the country. Because he talked to his Xbox. Yea, way back when. I don't think he called it a bitch. Right, isn't he the guy who always said bitch?

Alex: Yea, I think so.

Leo: Yes, it is.

Alex: I stopped watching that show, so.

Leo: It's over now. You don't have to.

Alex: Well, I didn't finish it at the time.

Leo: What? Finish it.

Florence: It's a really good story about just like a man's fall from grace.

Leo: It's the Robert Scoble story.

Alex: See, I told you.

Leo: (Laughing).

Alex: I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. The somberness lasted for four minutes.

Leo: No, you should. It has the best season ender.

Florence: It does.

Leo: Or actually series ender of any of them.

Alex: Yea, I saw some clips from later on. Looks fantastic. But I didn't want to go back and re-watch the first two seasons and the one's that I saw. I mean like there's a lot of—if I got sick for a week I would love to do it. But I don't have—no one here has that kind of time.

Jason: That's kind of where I'm at. Like I need to finish it but I haven't.

Leo: Stranger Things coming back.

Alex: Oh, I'm going to get sick for that.

Leo: I'm going to be sick for that. I'm not coming to work. You binge it, the whole thing? You watch the whole thing or do you--?

Florence: No, you've got to spread it out because you've got to do like every night you have to setup the ghoulie candy and the ghoulie decorations.

Leo: Perfect for Halloween, isn't it?

Alex: Oh, you're fun. That's a great idea.

Florence: I put a red lightbulb in my window and I hung a zombie, so.

Leo: Wow.

Jason: Serious.

Florence: I set it up with a motion sensor so every time somebody comes up to the door, it like flashes red and like a sound plays. But I had to give some of that stuff back.

Leo: Wait, you took it from the neighbors?

Florence: Oh, no, no, no, I was testing some stuff.

Leo: Oh, it was a review unit.

Alex: Oh, you are IOT. I get it now. Yea.

Florence: Yea. I know it's a new thing to get used to, to me, because I was playing with phones for so long.

Leo: Netflix says that they're going to spend $8-billion dollars this year and half of their content will soon be original content. They're basically giving up on Hollywood giving them stuff because Hollywood hates them.

Florence: Because they want money now.

Leo: Right. So, they're taking—remember, they raised the price about a buck. They say, "We're going to invest it all of that $8-billion dollars in original films and anime."

Florence: Oh, yea. Anime's a big deal because right now there's just two studios that really have like grabbed all the intellectual property.

Leo: Anime is popular with younger people, too, right? That's a good way to get—

Florence: It's popular with a lot of adults.

Leo: Adults too?

Florence: Yea.

Leo: Ok. I didn't mean like 12-year-olds but I mean, under 30s

Florence: It's a giant—I mean it's huge.

Leo: It's huge, yea.

Jason: When you get older, kid has a much longer—like I say this too.

Leo: Yea, anybody under 50 is s kid to me.

Jason: We have people. We have journalists that we hire in their 20s and I keep calling them kids and I'm like stop saying that. It's really rude.

Leo: You're like Lou Grant now. You just call everybody kid. Hey, kid.

Jason: Hey, kid.

Leo: Hey, kid.

Jason: I need you to do a story.

Leo: They're having a conversation over here. Are we keeping you? Share with the group.

Alex: Oh, while you guys were having a serious discussion, I asked, "Are there 30-year-old men who watch anime?" And she said--

Florence: Yea.

Alex: And I went oh.

Florence: My husband watches anime and he's 40.

Alex: Ok.

Florence: Yea. My good friend works for anime.

Leo: I don't get anime. But I don't get comics in general, so.

Jason: Same. But Netflix I do get and I do get that they're going all with original content.

Leo: Thank you for bringing us back.

Florence: Thank you.

Jason: It really is a golden age for original content.

Florence: It is, it is.

Jason: It is amazing. There are writers in Hollywood, a few that I know, that it used to be, they used to have to beg people to take scripts. It would be like, "Please, would you look at my script? It's really, really good." And now, they like scribble out an idea, you know, three sentences. Like I want to do a story on this. They're like sold. And then they like sell. They have three ideas sold and they're working on two scripts. And they're like barely scribbled out in email or whatever.

Florence: I'm happy for it. A lot of people are getting writing jobs now in LA which is great.

Leo: Do you want to write a script?

Florence: Oh, yea. I mean—

Leo: Do you have one in your drawer?

Alex: Oh, she didn't say no.

Jason: In LA, writing a script is like what San Francisco is to app.

Leo: Did you write another Gossip Girl?

Florence: No, it's a space opera.

Leo: Space opera.

Jason: And there's like apps. Everybody's working on an app. Your waiter's working on an app in San Francisco, right? In Hollywood it's like a script. Everybody's got a script. And now they're getting them sold.

Alex: The scale of money here's like really interesting. So, what where we talking about? Anime. I pulled up some numbers and apparently, HBO spent $2-billion on content last year which is a fraction.

Leo: Yea, see, $8-billion. Four times what HBO spent. And then Apple's saying, "Oh, we're going to spend a billion." I'm sorry. That's a drop in the bucket. You've got HBO spending twice that. You've got Netflix spending eight times that.

Alex: But I wonder how much of Netflix's stuff is actually as effective in terms of spend as HBO? HBO stuff tends to be a solid B+ or above. Netflix in my experience, and I love it, a little lower average quality.

Leo: I agree but what happens is, Stranger Things is out this week. A lot of people will subscribe to Netflix, at least this month.

Florence: Yea, I'll go back to Netflix for this month.

Leo: Exactly. A significant number of people—and Netflix knows, by the way. They see it. They made, for instance, House of Cards. $100-million dollars to make House of Cards. They made ten times that in new subscribers.

Alex: Oh, I believe that.

Leo: So, the economics work for them and more important, they know what the economics are. There's no mystery. They can see the result.

Alex: They have the data.

Leo: They have the data. And that's where somebody like Reed Hastings really has an advantage because he comes from that background. I think that's why coming from a tech background in Hollywood, not only—you know, you're not a creative but having the data and being able to use the data, this is where something actually surprisingly Jeff Bezos has not done very well. Amazon seems to have stumbled with its originals. They won a lot of Emmys. Transparent was amazing.

Florence: But that was it.

Leo: It was kind of that's it, right?

Jason: Quick question. Most expensive show of all time?

Leo: Game of Thrones.

Jason: Nope. That's what everybody thinks and it's close. The Crown on Netflix.

Leo: That was more expensive?

Jason: That was more expensive than Game of Thrones.

Leo: What, did they build Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace?

Jason: They must have. They bought them. They're now leasing them back to the Queen.

Leo: So, the Crown is the story of Queen Elizabeth. It's wonderful and they haven't gotten through it. There's at least three or four more seasons I'm sure.

Jason: Yea, yea. It's the most expensive season of all times, season one.

Leo: No kidding. It was $100-million for House of Cards. That means it was more than $100-million.

Florence: Kevin Space has a big salary.

Alex: All this content is created over the long-term. The long-tail effect is if you build it, you own it forever. You pay for it once.

Leo: You nailed it.

Alex: And so, Netflix here is dropping $8-billion this year. It sounds like a lot of money. But that investment will persist forever.

Leo: They'll sell it again and again and again. And, they're caught between a rock and a hard place. In fact, you know, as much as I admire Bezos, I think Reed Hastings is actually quite brilliant. He got dinged, he got a lot of heat and pushback when he split the company. Whatever happened he was going to do DVD along with Quickster and then have a streaming company. But he knew there's no future in the DVD rental company. We're going to do streaming. He saw that happening and then he saw the movie companies squeezing him like cotton. They weren't getting first run movies. They were only getting kind of crappy stuff. And he said, "We've got to solve this. We're going to do—" they were one of the first to do original programming. I mean, HBO's a content company, but this was a digital—they rented DVDs. And they turned into a content creation company. I think you've got to give Reed Hastings a lot of credit.

Florence: Oh yea. He helped started—I mean I think Hulu had a path paved for it in that sentence.

Leo: He was way ahead of the game I think.

Alex: But you have to really be fearless in a way to start a DVD business, try to get rid of it halfway through, and still you're a cash flow driver and then start spending billions of dollars a year on original content. I meant that's amazing.

Florence: He did that when Blockbuster was like—the writing was on the wall.

Leo: And also, hindsight's 20/20. I think you're right. I think his courage—but that's what makes or breaks an entrepreneur, right, is the ability to step up and say, "I'm going to do the very, very risky thing." It's the innovators dilemma. It's very tempting to just say, "Hey, we've got an iPhone. We've got some great success. Let's just keep doing that. Let's not take a chance."

Jason: If you're in the content business, to be fair to Amazon, you know, Amazon is really in one business. They're in the delivery business. They deliver you goods and they deliver you bits. And they want to be in the middle of every single transaction on earth for those two things. That's why I said when we talked about it a few months ago, I think they eventually buy UPS or make their own delivery company because—delivery service, because they are all about delivering you stuff and they can be in the middle and they get payoff on every single transaction.

Leo: And the original content actually isn't their business, is it? It's just—it's really just a benefit for Prime members actually to be fair.

Alex: I want to go into the accounting of Prime and figure out how they figure out cost per user and how that makes money or doesn't because I would love to see the math there.

Leo: Did you read Dogfight, the story of Amazon? He talks about that. Jeff Bezos made it up. They said—he said, "Well, we're going to do—" he's a brilliant guy. "We're going to do this deal where you pay us a fee and we'll give you two-day shipping and we'll absorb the cost of it." And they said, "Well, how much will that cost?" "I have no idea. I have no idea." And literally made up a number.

Alex: Four.

Leo: Well, I think it was sixty when it started. It's ninety now. Or fifty.

Florence: I think it was eighty, wasn't it?

Leo: No, it was cheaper than that. Was it eighty? All right.

Jason: The interesting thing about them, you know, every time before they launch a product, you have to, if you're a product manager, you have to write the press release and you have to write the FAQ so that you're really customer centric about everything you do.

Leo: Isn't that brilliant?

Jason: Because then you work backward from that.

Florence: You know, I find information on Amazon listings more than I do on the actual website when I'm doing product reviews. Sometimes I'm just like—like I can find the ounces and the size and like all those little things on Amazon because they require you, for the most part they require you to submit that stuff unless it's like a bad third-party store.

Alex: Before we leave the topic though, there was one news headline that I did see. I think it was last week.

Florence: Oh yes, please.

Alex: So, can I just read it?

Florence: Yea.

Alex: LinkedIn CEO says they're quote open to the idea of original video content.

Leo: Oh my God.

Florence: I'll just apply for a job.

Alex: But, but this is just like putting stories in everything. It works. It's worked for some companies so now everyone's trying to bandwagon on this, but LinkedIn does not need original video content any more than Excel does.

Leo: Reed Hoffman, not Reed Hastings but Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn says Linked in is very smart. But LinkedIn—is he still running it or is Microsoft now running it? Is this Microsoft's idea or Reed Hoffman's?

Alex: No, no, the LinkedIn CEO so still Reed Hoffman.

Florence: It's centric so, what you would do is you would hire, you would have all these business-centric videos to come out and like teach people how to do things like how to write the perfect cover letter. Or how to increase your so-and-so in your CRM. I don't know. All buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords. And it would just be content like that. Business people love that.

Alex: Really?

Florence: Yea.

Jason: Jeff Wiener's the CEO. Reed is like the chief vision guy.

Alex: I apologize.

Leo: Actually, here's what's going on. And especially after the Microsoft acquisition. And this was, by the way, why Mark Benioff at Sales Force was so upset about Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn. He was trying to get LinkedIn, remember, because he's afraid—the value of LinkedIn is the data. Just as with Facebook, but this is even maybe more valuable than Facebook. It's what it knows about every employee, every CEO, every business person in the country. It's huge. And that's why Microsoft wanted it. They had a bidding war with Sales Force and Sales Force is afraid that Microsoft will keep that all to itself.

Alex: And plug it into dynamic CRMs competing with Sales Force's core product, therefore stifling their growth.

Leo: So, if your business is not a social network for job hunters, but getting as much data as you can about people, it might make sense to have other products that get people to use more, spend more. Isn't Facebook, after all, trying to say—they're doing original content, too.

Alex: They're going to waste another $20-milllon dollars on that.

Leo: They're going to waste a lot of money and YouTube also, remember, wasted quite a bit, $100-million dollars on original content.

Alex: YouTube had a shot.

Leo: Yea, that was their business.

Alex: That actually makes sense to me.

Leo: I think it's, it might be a—I don't know.

Alex: Twitter tried, like NFL licensing.

Leo: They're still doing it.

Alex: They just launched those new morning shows like #AM to DM with what's his face from Buzzfeed.

Florence: Yea, yea.

Leo: This one I don't get because you go to Twitter's front page and you watch TV? Who does that?

Alex: No one.

Jason: Facebook is.

Leo: So, right now it's the Walking Dead, AMC red carpet. 29,000 people, that's who does that.

Alex: Is that a lot or not that many?

Florence: People love the Walking Dead.

Leo: There's more people watching this show than watching that show.

Alex: Right now?

Leo: Well, not right now. Soon (laughing).

Alex: That's got right now on there.

Leo: It's the front page of Twitter.

Jason: Somehow, I blocked that because I think I hid that because it's never shown back up again, the live video stuff.

Leo: It comes and goes. Well, actually I see a hide button. So, maybe you don't have it.

Alex: The downside now is with Twitter, is executive staffing. So, like observing about Twitter complaints from power users. You can't mock Twitter now and not have Jack show up in your mentions. They're like, "Hey, we're working on it." And you feel bad. He's literally active the last couple of days on the harassment stuff.

Leo: Yes. In fact, Twitter's announced—I've got to read these to you. New rules for harassment. And more importantly, the time table.

Alex: Yea, that's the—the show notes on this were great.

Leo: (Laughing). So, next week they're going to end revenge porn and hate speech, it's going to take us a couple of weeks. What? So, I don't know exactly—

Florence: Who works like that?

Alex: You just wave a wand at it.

Florence: You just click off.

Leo: Oh, I wish I could find it. Is this in the show notes, Karsten?  You found it really quickly. There it is. In the new timeline, here it is from Ars Technia. I just have to read you some of these because it's—this feels like, or I don't know. On October 27^th, non-consensual nudity, like up skirt photos from hidden webcams, will be banned. Who knew they weren't? They will be.

Alex: That's what bugs me about that one.

Florence: Now they'll be banned.

Leo: Now they'll be banded. Non-consensual nudity as opposed to consensual nudity. Ok, this is the only thing I don't like about Chrome on Windows.

Florence: They have, overseas you have to have the camera app play a shutter sound when it takes a picture because people were taking so many up the skirt shots.

Alex: I didn't know that, and I hate that I do.

Leo: So, early next month, organizations and groups that advocate violence will be suspended. Just a little word of warning. You've got a couple of weeks. You might want to advocate some violence.

Alex: Get your hate out in time.

Leo: Same day, hate images and hate symbols will be barred, including in avatars and profile headers. So, those of you with, I don't know, swastikas in your profile, you might want to—you've got until 11/3. Same thing with unwanted sexual advances. That's going to become a rule violation. But they're going to wait until November 22^nd to ban hateful display names.

Florence: Just until the 22^nd.

Leo: Well, I think they want everybody who's going to do it for Halloween and then after Halloween, the.

Alex: Oh, Leo.

Leo: What? Don't you—do you do a Halloween name?

Alex: I was.

Leo: You change your nick all the time on Twitter.

Florence: You do.

Alex: I do. But I was Vacation Alex last week so I'm not doing anything. And then I was Holiday Alex before that. Because I was not clever enough to think of a name.

Leo: So, you've got generic holiday.

Alex: Right. I wanted to be participatory but I'm not fun.

Leo: So, was that for Canadian Thanksgiving?

Alex: Essentially, yea, that and Leprechaun day. So, you've kind of got both in reverse. But how are they doing this stuff? Is this all machine learning based? Is this by hand? How on 11/3 does the world change on Twitter which has been successful for the last 10 years?

Leo: Well, they say this won't be a quick or easy fix. But we're committed to getting it right.

Alex: That says nothing.

Leo: One more. Just so you know, right before Christmas, content that glorifies or condones acts of violence that result in death or serious physical harm will be banned. So, you have until Christmas to advocate death.

Alex: I mean, we joke. I really hope this helps. Like sarcasm aside, snark aside, if they can make Twitter a better place, then we all stay there and we don't all lose this app that we mostly love.

Leo: In a way, that's what's interesting. All this stuff is currently permitted. This is all ok now.

Alex: Well their free speech way with the free speech party which worked for a long time until people have learned how to brigade essentially on Twitter and turn the old news of the platform against it and therefore take what made Twitter beautiful to start and do a poisonous end.

Leo: And this is why we can't have these things.

Alex: Because, as we talked about in the car on the way up here, people are bad and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Jason: The thing is, Twitter has for a long time, leaned on its argument that it is a platform for free speech as Alex is saying. But it's used that, I feel like as an excuse to not do the hard work that it needs to.

Leo: You know what happened? Kind of like the Arab Spring. So, I think Twitter knew. I think Jack knew and Ev knew that there was a problem. But, then the Arab Spring happened and whether this is true or not, and I think it's maybe a little more myth than true, the organizers of the rev revolts in the Middle East used Twitter to organize, to band together, to encourage each other, in that they take credit for the Arab Spring. And that was to them, the justification. See, free speech works because it can make a huge difference. Look what we did. And they know there's a downside. But they said—so, the downside is justified because we also give people without a voice, a voice.

Jason: And even before that, it's true. Because even before that, 2009, the Irani presidential elections, remember there was massive fraud and dislocation? They were about to run a maintenance update and the US Government came to them and said, "Please don't do that."

Leo: Don't. Hold off for a day or two, yea.

Jason: They were like, it's too important. There's stuff going on. And these activists, the only way they had to connect to each other.

Leo: They're swelling, right? And so that's why—

Alex: Well, they actually were.

Jason: And they were.

Florence: Then it was used for evil.

Alex: And it was used for evil, so you know what I'm really glad? I don't have to solve that mix. It's going to be super, super hard to keep the platform open for people who are serious and not horrible Nazis, and to get the Nazis off.

Leo: I actually would disagree. I think the value you and I and everybody finds in Twitter has nothing to do with hate speech or Nazis or reprehensible speech or bots or any of that stuff. It has to do with people really talking legitimately.

Alex: Absolutely.

Leo: And to the degree that they can get rid of that stuff, that's how much better Twitter will be.

Alex: Provided they do a good job at excising the stuff we all agree we don't have to have and won't miss.

Leo: But don't you think they know, though, what should be excised?

Alex: No.

Leo: No?

Jason: It's grey but they painted themselves into the corner with all that free speech.

Leo: If it's grey, don't ban it.

Jason: Rhetoric.

Leo: I would say there's enough. The stuff we just described is not grey.

Jason: Agreed.

Leo: Ban that stuff. That will make it a better place. And it's not a grey—there's no grey area if you've got swastikas or hate speech on your page.

Alex: I am agreeing with you. It's a private platform run by a for profit corporation that doesn't make any money. They can do whatever they want with their platform. Sorry, that's dick.

Leo: Well, I know they can. I know they can.

Alex: But I'm not sure they're going to do a good job and the problem is, if they say they're going to end certain things by certain dates, people expect them to pull through. And if you're point is grey—

Leo: That's a good point.

Florence: That's going to be held.

Alex: And if your point about the grey area is their position, they will not ban or block some things that some people think do fall afoul of those rules and they're going to get beaten up. But it is a no-win situation with a hard technological, and media problem at the same time run by non-journalists. It's going to be a mess.

Leo: You follow the stock. Didn't it go up when Jack made these announcements? Did it not—

Alex: This was last week?

Leo: Yea.

Alex: I was eating pastries in New Orleans, not online. I was on vacay last week.

Leo: He was in beignet shock.

Alex: I was in—more like tarts. They were fantastic. But, yea.

Leo: I'll tell you, Monday, I was in KRACK shock. This is—here we are for years, for a decade, saying, "No problem. You can use Wi-Fi. It's very safe. Don't use WEP. We know WEPs been broken. Wired equivalent protocol not's safe. But good news. WPA2, especially if you use the AES version, safe. Mathematically proven. Mathematically proven safe. The math." And on Monday we found out, no it's not. We had—actually it was great. On Thursday, on Tech News Weekly, we had Mathy, is it Vanhoef? Is that his name? The guy, the kid who discovered this. And he even said, "You know, it took me years to figure this out." He said, "It was mathematically proven solid, but I had a feeling." He found an odd bug. I think a lot of the reporting has been inaccurate so, I want to clear it up. If you want to hear the details, listen to Security Now on Tuesday or go to KrackAttacks.com, Mathy's website. It does not affect wired, wireless access points. That's not where the patches have to happen. It's the things that connect to them, your laptop, your phone, your internet of things devices. That's where the attack happens. They can interrupt the communication, request the knots three times, get the key and then from that point on, intercept all the traffic from that client into the access point. So, big deal if it's your oven. Bigger deal if it's the camera in your house or maybe biggest deal of all, if it's your laptop, phone or tablet because they can see all the traffic. Now, if your traffic's encrypted using SSL, it's probably safe although apparently there's some sort of additional man in the middle that may happen. So, that potentially is problematic as well. If you use a VPN you should be safe. And the best news is, it's not a hardware problem. It's fixable and the software fixes are rushing out. In fact, Free DSB put it out before the revelation which upset some people. People said, "You shouldn't have done that. Now the bad guys will know what we're going to tell you on Monday." Free DSB said, "Yea, but people, we don't want our—"

Florence: Yea, yea.

Alex: That's a weird complaint.

Leo: Isn't it? Well, it's understandable. That's how this thing works. We'll hold back on the revelation and give everybody a chance to fix it. But don't fix it too soon.

Alex: Oh, because they kind of broke the embargo quotient.

Leo: Yea, it's embargoed.

Alex: That's fair.

Leo: So, Microsoft didn't have to fix it because it turns out they're implementation of WPA2 is flawed and doesn't have the flaw. They did it differently. Same with iOS. Nevertheless, there should be fixes for both those coming out. LINUX has fixes. Most importantly though, you want to look at fixes for your internet of things devices. And when they come out. Android, Google says they'll have it in the next security fix. That's a couple of weeks. It's not—somebody would have to be on your network or near your network. So, they'd have to be sitting on your curb.

Florence: Yea, they'd be parked at your curb with their laptop.

Leo: They'd have to be sitting outside your house. An open access point, it's kind of like you're on an open access point. Think of it as that way, that if you're using somebody's Wi-Fi, think of it as potentially open. So, use a VPN or stay on encrypted sites and you're probably ok.

Jason: 2017 sucks, man. This is like the Equifax—

Alex: That was my next question. Compared to Equifax—

Jason: It's like the Equifax of hacks, you know, or security vulnerabilities. It's like the hits keep coming in 2017. We need some good news. But I think this is one of those things that you look and you just think, "How long has this been an issue and how long have attackers been exploiting it?" That's a lot of times what I want to know when these really bad things happen. We don't really know the answer. We won't know the answer for a little bit, until researchers dig into it. But, man.

Leo: By the way, I have to correct myself. It was Open DSB, not Free DSB. But Open DSB is the one who says, "We are the most secure, safe operating system."

Alex: Is security getting worse or are we just hearing about flaws more?

Jason: It's getting worse. But partially, well—

Leo: I think it's the same.

Jason: Security's getting better but we're finally paying for decades of the tech industry putting so much emphasis on innovation and security being an after though. And I think the products that are built today are better. Like the products built in the last few years are better and are more secure. All the stuff that's getting attacked tends to be stuff that was built before that and years often and sometimes even decades before.

Leo: There's also a richer ecosystem of people trying to KRACK it because there's so much money to be made in bug bounties and contests and Pwn2Own, things like that.

Jason: It kind of gets to your point.

Leo: A lot of people are trying because there's money. But all stuff has always been flawed, right? And the good news is that because of all this, we're getting better at making safer software. Windows is a very good example. Windows was a nightmare for a long time, but they got to the point where they patched it regularly enough and they patched it and they patched it. It actually got very secure. In fact, attacks moved off of Windows to Flash and browsers and things, and other vectors.

Florence: They had to find another way in.

Leo: They did because Windows got pretty solid.

Florence:  Yea, yea.

Alex: Now with Windows 10, it's fantastic. Like I feel super safe in Windows 10, just running the stock antivirus Microsoft Essentials or whatever it's called.

Florence: I love Windows 10.

Leo: Yea, I think you are safe enough.

Alex: Yea.

Leo: The real issue is, of course, all those things, the plug-ins, the browsers, all the things that you use to get online, those are all vectors. Your email is a vector. And ransomware is really spread by—

Alex: How long do we just presume that we're always at risk? I mean—

Leo: You're always at risk. Another thing that's made it worse, another thing that's made it worse, the NSA. So, now you've got government actors finding flaws, looking actively for flaws and using those flaws. And then, like the NSA, not protecting them so that they equation group works can be leaked out and used by bad guys. And of course, that's WannaCry. The WannaCry ransomware used a NSA flaw. So, that's another reason why it's worse.

Jason: And, you know, for all the rhetoric about North Korea, North Korea is super dangerous and a lot to be concerned about. What they've invested more money in than nuclear warheads by some estimates is actually cyber attackers, right.

Leo: Thousands.

Florence: That puts their—

Jason: They're much more dangerous in that.

Florence: That's what scares me.

Leo: This is a country that doesn't have public internet but has thousands of hackers working on state sponsored attacks against the west.

Jason: Possibly created WannaCry. Possibly created others.

Leo: I talked to this guy who called the radio show. I hope this is a true story. I have no reason not to believe so. His name is Dennis. We've talked before. Last time we talked he was, I can't remember where. This time he's in North Korea. I said, "Oh. Where are you?" He said, "Well, I'm a little north of Seoul." I said, "Well, how far north?" He said, "Pretty far north." He's a cyber-analyst. He's a government contractor. I'm sure he works for the NSA. Cyber-analyst. He says, "Don't worry. I'm not going to be here much longer. I'm going to Ukraine." He's very excited that he's going to Ukraine because that's ground zero for all the Russian attacks. Russians are using Ukraine as a test bed. And he's really excited to get in there and get his hands dirty on this.

Jason: We have a long form that Dan Patterson did on that—

Leo: Dan was there.

Jason: He was in the Ukraine.

Leo: With the Mobile Cyber Security Conference.

Jason: Yea, and had some really scary stories. I know we talked about them last week.

Leo: We started to and then I wanted to get more out of him.

Jason: Yea, if you're interested in this topic, read the stuff Dan Patterson's written on it. Also, Steve Ranger for us out of London went to Estonia and Tulin, basically the UN is running all these mock cyberwarfare scenarios. And Steve actually was an embedded journalist in the middle of, was a part of the scenario because part of the scenario is what do you tell the public, right, if one of these really bad challenge hacks happen.

Leo: It's challenging.

Jason: So, Steve then wrote a long form about kind of what they're doing and how they're preparing for this and the kind of attacks they're worried about. And the kind of things that could happen. And so, if you read those two things, you'll get a pretty good sense for what's being done to protect against these things and the things that potentially are the biggest dangers.

Leo: And Russians are doing things in the Ukraine like, you know, let's try cutting the power for 5 hours. See if we can do it. That are tests for other attacks they might perpetrate. So, I think the answer to your question, it's both getting worse and getting better. It's getting worse, but we're getting more aware of it and I think we are finally taking it seriously. Cyberwarfare has been a real threat for years. We're clearly starting to take it seriously.

Florence: I feel like it's maybe a hyperbole, but I feel like it's the biggest, for me it's the biggest fear right now.

Leo: I can come up with more if you need more.

Florence: I mean, it's a big fear.

Leo: Wait until you get Krisper starting to change your genes.

Alex: I'm just really excited we have a president today that is up speed on technology and really gets the threats of the digital world.

Leo: Thank God. He's smart. He knows cyber. And he's got Barren.

Florence: That's what scares me. It scares me that we're hearing about well, I mean I feel like—I don't know how political I want to get. That's why I'm sort of holding back.

Leo: I think it's reasonable to say that. In fact, a number of people who were working on the Cyber Intelligence Advisory Board left because they said, "We're not doing anything. We're not paying attention." I think it's fair. They were all Democrats but I think it's fair to say that I don't have a lot of confidence, not just in the White House, but in Congress in general, that they are doing the things we need them to do. Maybe the military is. I feel pretty good that the military has the skills, the knowledge and understand the problem, I just hope they get the tools they need. We don't need ten times more nuclear weapons. We need a smarter military that is up to speed on cyber threats.

Florence: Is that $700-million going to go to that? I wonder.

Leo: I don't know.

Alex: Which $700-million?

Leo: So, speaking of Estonia, there's another KRACK. So, Steve Gibson said, "You know, KRACK's bad but there's something worse that happened. It's called ROCA." We're going to talk about that and why Estonia wants to recall 750,000 of its digital ID cards.

Florence: So, not an Almond Roca. That's not what we're going to talk about.

Leo: No, sorry.

Florence: That's unfortunate.

Leo: I wish we were. I wish we were. We had a fun time this week and we have a little show for you to enjoy that highlights some of the best parts of this week on TWiT.

Narrator: Previously, on TWiT.

Florence:  ZTE Axon M is a foldable phone.

Leo: That's you. Are you going to get that?

Ron Richards: There's no reason to use this. I love it.

Florence: I mean, like the idea on it.

Narrator: Tech News Weekly.

Jason Howell: Joining us is Mathy Vanhoef, the researcher behind the discovery of KRACK. Are you aware of any tools that are actively exploiting this vulnerability at this point?

Mathy Vanhoef: So, I'm not aware of any people or hackers that are currently using this tool to carry out attacks. Making a program to carry out these attacks requires some technical expertise. So, it could be, say a few weeks before this happens.

Narrator: Triangulation.

Leo: 20 years ago, you did something really important that changed everybody's life and it was at the birth of your daughter. Look at that. That's the first camera phone picture.

Philippe Kahn: I didn't think about it as a business. I thought about sharing with friends and family. Then a lot of people went back and said, "How did you do that?" Because they were getting these pictures in real time. People really want this. We better—this is our next business.

Narrator: TWiT. Friends don't let friends miss TWiT!

Leo: It was so great to talk to him. We had a really big week and if you want to see that full interview with the discovery of KRACK, Mathy Vanhoef, it's Tech News Weekly. It's a brand-new show. It's our weekly news show where we focus on news makers and news breakers and it's really a great show, great chance to see the people who are really making the news with Jason Howell and Megan Morrone.

Leo: Our show this week—oh, I love it. I get an Audible ad. Every week I say, "I wish I had an Audible ad so I could tell you about all the great books out there." The Man Booker Prize just went to one of my very favorite Audible books. I highly recommend it. Man Booker is the British Prize. In fact, there was some controversy because it's an American author. Lincoln in the Bardo. Have you listened to that yet?

Jason: No.

Leo: OMG. If you pick one novel—I don't know. Do you read novels or do you only read nonfiction?

Jason: I mean I read a lot of mostly nonfiction, 98% nonfiction. But I can be convinced. I do have one Audible recommendation as always.

Leo: I will of course—and we also have your book, Follow the Geeks which is on Audible as well.

Jason: Yes, of course. I actually am the reader. I'm the author.

Florence: I was going to ask.

Jason: I am the reader of it as well.

Leo: So, this may be will help you be interested in this. Now the Man Booker award winner. George Saunders, it's his first novel. He's in his 50s but he's written many, many short stories. He's a wonderful short story novelist writer. Nick Offerman narrates it. David Sedaris, George Saunders, Carrie Brownstein, Miranda July, Lean Dunham. It's a full cast performance and it's—I mean read the book if you prefer reading, but this is a great Audible book. We're actually going to set you up with a free book, so, it's one—look, I'm going to give you way too many choices, ok? So, that's one. But given that he just won the Man Booker award and I agree. It is one of the best novels I've ever read and the best, absolute best way to consume it is listening to it on Audible. So, that's one and then of course we've got to mention Follow the Geeks. This is a great, a great audio book. Your co-author, Lyndsey Gilpin, you read it and 10 Digital Innovators and the Future of Work.

Jason: A lot of names that TWiT listeners will recognize.

Leo: You'll recognize a lot of the people. In fact, here's the first review. "A must listen for fans of TWiT.tv".

Jason: Did you do that, Leo?

Leo: (Laughing) And Jason's delivery is natural and conversational and accurate. They don't like Dan Patterson's version. They liked you. Dan's the radio guy.

Jason: I don't know.

Leo: It's a matter of taste.

Jason: Yea, it's a matter of taste. I love Dan's version of the book.

Leo: I do too. Actually, I haven't heard you do it yet, so, I'll have to listen.

Jason: You are the sample chapter, actually.

Leo: Oh, well let's listen. Let's listen. Sit back, relax and enjoy.

Jason on Audible: Kate Botello's fingers dug deep into Leo Laporte's arm as she yanked him—

Leo: Oh, wait a minute. I don't think that's the incident we want to talk about. So, Follow the Geeks:  Digital Innovators (laughing).

Jason: It was perfectly benign.

Leo: No, it was the first time—Tech TV started in 1998. Kate Botello and I did The Screen Savers. And it was the first time we ever made an appearance. And when we started Tech TV, we didn't think anybody was watching. Nobody was watching. We weren't anywhere except that the Las Vegas cable company picked it up. So, our first big audience was Las Vegas, so Kate—they said, "We're going to go to Las Vegas. There's a mall. The cable company's setting it up." You know, how they set up tents and give away. We wanted to give away stickers. We said, "Can we go?" "Well, we never thought of that. Ok." So, that's the point where we're arriving at the parking lot. Kate gets out of the car and she grabs me. She says, "There are people here." There was a big crowd.

Alex: Oh, really?

Leo: It was 110 degrees. We were outside in the parking lot but there was a huge crowd. It was the first time I think we, either Kate or I ever realized that anybody's actually watching Tech TV.

Alex: Well, there was no Twitter back then, so people couldn't tell.

Leo: There was no way to know. Yea, there was no to—yea, you're right. No Twitter.

Alex: Because that's how—I get immediate feedback from everybody.

Leo: Now, you know. So, what's your book?

Jason: Yea, so this book is Whiplash by Joi Ito from MIT.

Leo: I love Joi Ito. He's of course the director of Media Lab.

Jason: He's amazing.

Leo: He was director.

Jason: He's still the director of Media Lab. Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future. It's about the rules for the digital age are in many ways so different, right, than traditional ways, business and organizations have been run. And it's about how to survive in the digital age when things are moving and changing so fast that you have to move in much faster ways. I mean we think about this every day with trying to deliver useful information to people. And so, it's very relevant to everybody no matter what business we're in.

Leo: I think we all feel like we're getting whiplash, trying to keep up. So, here's the deal. Audible is fantastic. It's the best readers bringing to life the best fiction, non-fiction classics. They have a great Sci-Fi selection. In fact, one of the things Audible did, and I really praised them for this, is they realized a lot of the great science fiction novels were never made as audio books because on those days they were just kind of pulp fiction. So, they went back and they created the Audible Frontier's program and recorded a great many of the classics. So, you can pretty much get all of the classic Science Fiction. It's a great way, maybe for your kids to get introduced to science fiction if you love science fiction or for you to rediscover Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven and of course the great Jerry Pournelle. Wonderful stuff.

Jason: This new Leonardo da Vinci book by Walter Isaacson just came out. I've heard this is really good too.

Leo: I can't wait to read this. You know, he wrote the Jobs' biography, the Einstein biography. He's a really great biographer. And of course, Ron Chernow who wrote the Hamilton biography has a new one on Grand that's supposed to be fantastic. I like biography. You like biography.

Jason: I do, I do.

Leo: There's so much. Look at, you can tell. The great courses are on here. Let's do this for you. For those of you that need 2 audio books to give Audible a try, what we're going to do is we're going to give you the Gold Plus One Plan. You get two free audio books. That's good. We gave you like five. Two free audio books to try out. And then after that, one book credit a month. So, we kind of jumpstart you with two right off the bat. You may—I know you like podcasts. You're listening to this, but you may not know if you going to like a book on audio. You will, but just in case, it's a great idea to try before you buy. Go to Audible and pick a couple of books and enjoy. As with all the other plans, you get a free subscription to The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times Daily Digest. Offer is good in the US and Canada. I should show you. I mean I have—see, I just got two credits. I get credits on the 22^nd. Oh, I'm not logged in. Too bad. I was going to show you my wish list. I have so many books on here. And so many that I'm listening to. I just love it. Audible. Go to Audible.com/TWiT2. Get two free audio books with their 30-day free trial. Audible.com/TWiT2. We always do really long—oh, wait a minute. Is that a new Tom Hanks book about typewriting? What? Tom Hanks, hidden talent.

Florence: I don't think he narrates it, though. I'm just reading over your shoulder.

Leo: It's read by Tom Hanks.

Florence: Oh, it is.

Leo: It's called Uncommon Type: Some Stories. 17 short stories written by Tom Hanks?

Alex: Wait. It's fiction?

Leo: Yes.

Alex: Oh.

Florence: It's about Eastern European immigrants.

Jason: Wow.

Leo: Oh, wow. Peter Scolari's in this. Lots of other people reading. Wow. That's what I love when Audible does those dramatizations. Those are so great. Just, all right. Enough. Clearly, we love Audible. Audible.com/TWiT2.

Leo: So, I've been promoting this. In fact, when I was in Estonia last year I almost got one of these. I think this is such a brilliant idea. They call them, they're digital identity cards. They're E-cards. They have a chip on them. You have your public key on it so you can use it to verify your identity. I mean it's a really powerful technology. And anybody in the world can get it except I guess this is an Infineon chip because it turns out Infineon chips have a bug that allows an attacker if he has your public key, which is the key you give out to everybody, to deduce your private key. And from then after to decrypt all the traffic to you on PGP and other RSA keys, public key crypto. Basically. breaks public key crypto.

Jason: It's 2017. We just can't have nice things.

Leo: Steve Gibson said, "This is more serious. TPM modules in Windows machines? They have the Infineon chip." So, they have the problem. This is fairly widespread. It's difficult to fix. Millions of keys are crippled. This didn't get as much attention as KRACK and I'm kind of surprised. Maybe it didn't have as good a name, but we were worried the public key crypto would be broken by Quantum Computing. We didn't think it would—

Alex: Be broken so soon.

Leo: Broken by a bug. It's in a RSA library developed by Infineon 1.0 2.013. If you use, as I do, open PGP to generate your keys in software, you're safe. If however, you used a UBA key which can't generate PGP keys, earlier this year they fixed it but any key before July of this year has that flaw. You're going to want to generate new keys. It's a pretty scary thing and it's hard to know what your keys are and so forth. So, there is a site you can go to, to figure it out. But I just wanted to let you know. We're talking about KRACK but forget KRACK. We've got ROCA. Almond Roca. See, if you had named it Almond Roca—

Alex: That would have been amazing.

Florence: Better SEO.

Alex: A tasty treat but bad news for your security. Next on the news.

Leo: Much better SEO.

Alex: It's not just SEO per se, it's just good naming, branding?

Florence:  Everything's SEO now.

Alex: Oh, gosh. I'm getting tired of SEO. Bad.

Leo: The senate has announced a bill called the Honest Ads Act. Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar and John McCain, the sponsors. This would be in response to the illegal ads on Facebook from the Russians. Two democrats, John McCain obviously a Republican. It would require tech giants for the first time—and I think this would solve it by the way—to make copies of political ads public. And the information about who those ads targeted. That's all you have to do.

Alex: It's smart and Senator Mark Warner who I've actually interviewed before, is at least by Senate standards, very tech competent. And so, it's fun to see his name on this because it implies that there's probably some intellectual heft behind the movement or the idea. And then it may actually get out of committee. So, I think it's cool and slick. Facebook won't like it but, boo-hoo.

Florence: Well, look what happened, Facebook.

Alex: All that money and then Democracy.

Leo: I think that at this point, Facebook, which had been denying it for so long, is going to have to say something. They're going to welcome this. We'll see. They may lobby against it. But I think they're going to welcome it because they know they need to do something. They cannot just let this sit. This sat for too long.

Jason: And they don't know what to do, inside Facebook. By all indications, they are just not sure.

Florence: Listen, Mark Zuckerberg went to get some chick's numbers so he created a social network.

Leo: That is not true. That is the movie written by Aaron Sorkin that is not related to the truth.

Alex: And Leo is here to set the record straight about his favorite nerd.

Leo: He was already dating his future wife and mother of his children. He was not looking to get kissed. He was very happily dating.

Alex: And he's not that awkward in real life.

Leo: Yes, he is.

Alex: His PR team said so.

Leo: He's totally awkward.

Florence: That movie was really good, by the way.

Leo: I loved the movie.

Alex: I turned it off after two minutes.

Leo: Really?

Florence: It was so dramatic.

Alex: The opening scene when he's being awful and she's like, "Oh, you're awful." I was like, "Yes, he's awful." I just turned it off.

Leo: There's the famous, every geek movie has to have it now, a guy writing a mathematical formula on the window. And of course—

Jason: Or a mirror.

Leo: Or a mirror, yea. It's just you have to—and then the best part is the end where he just keeps hitting refresh because he tries to like the girl who wouldn't kiss him and hoping she'll accept his friend request.

Florence: We have all been there, though, Leo.

Alex: Is that what actually happened?

Leo: That's all it is. He's hitting the refresh button. The whole thing's fiction. But, it's dramatic. Aaron Sorkin is—

Alex: I mean I watched the West Wing.

Florence: It's dramatic.

Jason: You know what's better than a million dollars?

Alex: Not using Facebook.

Leo: A billion dollars.

Jason: A Facebook free, no advertising. Honesty in advertising.

Leo: A hundred thousand dollars in Russian ads.

Alex: Bringing us back to the topic, Facebook has been running a very broad ad campaign on major media sites like the Washington Post, I think Politico as well, saying that, "Facebook really cares about election's integrity." I'm like six months ago you were like, "We had nothing to do with that." But they're trying to—

Florence: Well the thing about election integrity, they get down on the ground and help those people—

Leo: The point is though, is very important. We are one year away from the midterms. We are three years away from another presidential. They have a year to fix this. They've got less than a year. They've got 6 months to fix this. I hope this Honest Ad Act passes because that's the right way to do it. If it's in public, they may be buying the ads, but at least it can be exposed. People can write about it. They can say, you can see what people are saying. Right now, these dark ads, the only people who see it are the targeted people.

Alex: Which will never be us because presumably they're micro-targeting this thing. The chance that we actually see these are quite low. Also, don't use Facebook.

Leo: You know, I took it off all my phones and my life has been 100% better.

Florence: I took it off too, although, I don't really know what's going on with some people. Like, I haven't seen some kids.

Leo: That's why I didn't take it off the computer.

Florence: Yea, I check in like once a week, but.

Leo: Yea, I go on the computer.

Jason: Yea, I do the same. It's a lot better/

Florence: Yea.

Leo: Just don't have it on your phone. What happened was I'm up at three in the morning looking at Facebook. And I thought, "Oh, crap." So, at that moment, I deleted it. I also deleted Twitter.

Alex: Whoa. Hang on.

Leo: Wait a minute.

Florence: I know, right? First thing in the morning, last thing at night.

Leo: Twitter and Instagram are back. I confess. Because—

Florence: Those are the two I use.

Leo: Instagram's just pretty pictures.

Jason: There's no link guilt.

Florence: I still use Snapchat.

Alex: I don't Snap anymore.

Jason: That's what I like. No link guilt.

Leo: You don't Snap?

Alex: No, no.

Florence: I didn't know you were on Snap.

Alex: I used to Snap with my brother-in-law. We used to Snap back and forth to stay in touch because we're both bad at that. But then it was too complex and it was hard. And I didn't want to—you swipe and then things happen and I didn't know.

Leo: You are old now.

Alex: I am 1,000-years-old. I have been for a while.

Florence: You missed out on all my singing.

Leo: You know what I realized? If you don't have Twitter, you don't know what's going on. Twitter is the place you go. You hear somebody died. If you say-- my poor wife. I wake up in the morning and I go, "Oh, God." And she says, "Are we at war with Korea?"

Florence: Oh, my God. Oh, that's terrible. Oh, that's current.

Alex: Poor Lisa.

Leo: But you kind of need to check, don't you? And Instagram, yea, I probably should get rid of that. It's easy to get rid of Facebook.

Jason: Instagram is nice though. It's like no link guilt. That's why I like Instagram.

Florence: But I still get FOMO. I still get FOMO.

Leo: FOMO's a big problem. My problem with social media in general, it does not make you happier. It makes you unhappy, doesn't it?

Florence: No, it makes you super unhappy.

Alex: Use Instagram like I do. Use it to store photos of your life that are happy.

Leo: I do that.

Alex: Don't read your feed.

Leo: You don't actually use it then. You just post on it.

Alex: No, I'm saving these for me. These are like little memories that I want to hold on to. It's a great platform for that. I don't need to see the fact that you had crab for lunch because I never liked you in person and you're worse online. So, go away.

Leo: Firefox NX is FOMO, fear of missing out. That's the story of our life. Or YOLO. You only live once.

Florence: It's the human condition. Let me think about it.

Jason: Actually, you know what the best thing for that is? The mute feature on Twitter is like the best.

Leo: Because they don't know.

Florence: Oh, it's great. It's the perfect way to like be cool with somebody but like not have to listen to them.

Leo: And then some apps have time right, where you can mute a guy for a day? Twitter doesn't do that but I think some apps will let you mute a person for like a period of time.

Alex: I love that. During a baseball game. I could be like, oh, I'm not going to like any of you.

Leo: Yea, I don't care about you Yankee fans.

Alex: Are you an Astros fan?

Leo: No, in fact, I'm embarrassed to say, I asked Jason before the show, wait a minute. The Astros are in the National League? And he said not anymore.

Jason: 2013

Leo: I was so confused because I thought—normally the World Series is an American League team and a National League team. But the Dodgers are a National League team and so are the Astros. But apparently not.

Jason: The commissioners going, when we moved you in 2013, we didn't expect you to make the World Series. This is causing us a problem.

Leo: See, this is what's wrong with the world. Baseball should never change. They should still be wearing heavy wool clothes, little flat caps and the ball should be soft. This is—they should never change. They should be hitting it with a broomstick practically. They shouldn't change. It was good enough for baseball.

Alex:  You can only have one shoe. You have to run backwards on Tuesdays.

Jason: Did you ever see Field of Dreams? Field of Dreams.

Leo: Of course. If they build it—if you build it, they will come. Ladies and gentlemen, I think this will be a very apropos moment to bring this festival to a close. I hate to do it but—

Florence: That's a bummer.

Leo: I know. Have we not been having fun?

Florence: We've bene having fun.

Jason: Yea, it's been fun.

Leo: It's been a lot of fun.

Alex: This is the funnest shoot that I do I think in terms of just getting space to talk about stuff.

Leo: See? Instagram, I get jealous. You take these pictures of your microphone as you're about to do you podcast and it makes me jealous. I think, "He's seeing another podcaster." I hate that. So, what is that podcast you do?

Alex: I'm on a podcast called Equity with some TechCrunch people. It's about major capital and startups.

Leo: Nice.

Alex: Super nerdy so, if you're not into that specific niche, don't listen to it.

Leo: It's for finance nerds?

Alex: It's for tech finance nerds, yea.

Leo: Equity Podcast. TechCrunch.com.

Alex: I was not on last week because I was in New Orleans. But I'm on the rest of the time.

Leo: Oh, you do it with Katie Roof.

Alex: Katie Roof and Matthew Lynley. We bring on a different VC most weeks and we talk about the news of the week. But, it's short form. It's like 20-minutes. So, it was designed—

Leo: What do you think of Magic Leap getting rid of half a billion dollars?

Florence: Yea, this is filling up my screen (laughing).

Alex: Yea, so I was—so, Magic Leap, for people who don't know, is a mixed-reality platform that has raised billions of dollars and has not released a product.

Leo: It's a vaporware platform.

Alex: That's what people say, but people who have used it claim, often on Twitter, that it's going to be fantastic. So my—

Florence: I've used it.

Leo: Oh, you've used it?

Florence: I was here with you.

Alex: You mean Magic Leap? No, no, no.

Leo: Not Magic Leap. We've never used Magic Leap.

Florence: Oh, sorry. It was something--

Leo: No, I know people like Kevin Kelly who have used it. Kevin wrote a rapturous description of it in Wired.

Alex: So, it's either going to be the most amazing smash hit given the amount of money and hype that's going into it, or it's going to fall flat, kind of like, I don't know, Spectacles?

Florence: Sorry.

Leo: I'm waiting to hear what Robert Scoble thinks.

Alex: What did Robert—ah. Leo.

Leo: I had to get his name in one more time.

Alex: Two minutes ago, it was the moment to end the show and somehow we ended up right here.

Leo: No, so, but I think it's interesting because they've raised how much total? Billions.

Alex: They just confirmed $502-million.

Leo: Another $502-million.

Florence: Series D.

Leo: Yea, so that means they've raised—and is there an end in sight? Is there a product in sight?

Alex: Not that I've heard. They've raised, looks like $1.89-billion dollars to date.

Leo: Holy cow.

Florence: Theoretical elephant in your hands at this point.

Alex: But I can do it in ARKit for free.

Jason: That's worth $2-billion.

Florence: True, true.

Leo: It's an interesting—we actually talked about this with Phillipe Kahn on Friday. There's a lot of money out there being thrown at companies like Uber that has never made any money. Like Magic Leap has never even made a product, because you've got to invest somewhere, and if you hit the next big thing which both of those potentially could be, there's big returns. But these are big boy and big girl investors who know enough to know that in all likely hood, you're not going to make money.

Alex: No, that's actually—I don't think so in this case. If you write a check for more than $100-million dollars, you are not gambling it that way if you're an outside investor. A $5-million-dollar series paycheck is a gamble. A $1-million-dollar seed check, complete wager.

Leo: Is it because they're guaranteed they'll get paid first?

Alex: No, everything's more mature. If you put into a series C or D enterprise-sized corporation, you see their cash-flow statement and their growth. You kind of get a picture of them. Magic Leap should have proven tech they can use now to show people and say, "Look."

Leo: I wouldn't put half a billion dollars unless I saw it.

Alex: The investors do get to see it. I mean if the investors are putting money in sight unseen literally, then I'm done with planet Earth and I'm moving to somewhere else.

Leo: I think they might be.

Jason: Theranos, though.

Leo: Theranos. Good example. How much did they raise? More than a million.

Alex: Hold on.

Leo: Uber, there's no mysteries about Uber.

Jason: CrunchBase guy will get us the numbers.

Alex: $686.3—well, I mean, I wasn't going to say that, but yes, this is what I'm using.

Leo: That's where you'll find Alex at CrunchBase.news and it is always a pleasure. This is his product, Editor-In-Chief there. It's going well?

Alex: The new stuff, yea. The data on the main service is not my domain, thank God.

Leo: You don't do CrunchBase. You do the news.

Alex: Yes. And it's going ok.

Florence: I love watching you work, Alex.

Alex: Well, that's very generous of you. You're very kind. Thank you.

Leo: What, do you have a window into his office?

Florence: Well, he tweets very smartly and I just, you know, I read your articles and you know.

Leo: I love his tweets. If you're not following these guys on Twitter, you're missing out. That's one of the keys for getting a great Twitter feed is following people like Alex, OhThatFlo on Twitter, Florence Ion. You'll see her every Tuesday on All About Android, 6:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 PM Eastern.

Florence: That's right.

Leo: And maybe Tuesday you'll have a Pixel 2XL to show.

Florence: I hope so. I'm trying to borrow one from my pals at Android Authorities. So, we'll see.

Leo: I'd love to see it.

Florence: Now, if I put it on video, maybe. I have to borrow it.

Jason: It's a thing now, yea.

Leo: Friday, are you all getting up at 12:01 AM to order an iPhone X?

Florence: Not me.

Leo: Only one million according to the supply chain. One million in stock.

Florence: Hey, that's more—isn't that more than how many Pixels sold or something?

Leo: Yea.

Alex: It's a lot more. 20,000 times as many as the Essential sold.

Leo: I'm sorry, 3 million.

Florence: Yea, 3 million.

Leo: 3 million at launch.

Alex: It looks so good there.

Leo: Now, I figure probably 3.1 million people will hit the Apple servers at 12:01 AM. So, I just have to get there early.

Jason: Yea, yea.

Leo: I do have a scoop, though. We will have a review and a unit on November 4^th when they—if you get there in time. I might get one. I'm hoping I will. But we have guaranteed a unit, an iPhone 10 for The New Screen Savers. We'll have a review and a unit on November 4^th.

Alex: This is the best thing I've seen in some time.

Leo: Now, you've got a sparkle back.

Alex: I do.

Florence: Oh, this is my phone.

Leo: We talked about this before.

Alex: No, I'm sorry. I just saw it and I'm blown away.

Florence: No, this is the new one.

Leo: But be careful because you know that there was a whole case of these, the liquid coming out and burning people.

Florence: Yea, I paid $7-bucks for this.

Jason: She's not worried.

Florence: Less than the case may be.

Alex: I bought it on Wish.

Florence: But it's a water-resistant phone, so.

Leo: I came so close to buying one the last time you were on. I came this close.

Jason: It's water resistant. Does it have a headphone jack?

Florence: Yea.

Jason: It's not fully water resistant then.

Florence: Yea, whatever.

Jason: At least that's what Apple says.

Leo: Yea, they're wrong. I've got plenty of IP68 phones that have a headphone jack.

Florence: Are you going to scare me off liquid glitter cases now? They're like the thing keeping me going.

Leo: Multiple reports of chemical burns. Oh, John has brought me my case for my Pixel when I get it.

Florence: You bought your case before?

Leo: I hate that. Apple does that too. Oh, an Apple delivery's coming. And it's the plug.

Florence: Such a tease.

Leo: This is my—well, at least I know how big the iPhone 2XL will be in my hand and the case has me on it.

Florence: Oh, my God.

Leo: Trapped, trapped under the desk.

Alex: I can't decide if I love that or not.

Jason: Doesn't it have another button? I tried this with—I tried one of these—

Leo: This isn't one of those. They don't do those anymore.

Florence: That was the 6P iteration.

Leo: It never worked well. It never worked. So, that's what it's going to look like. The Pixel 2.

Jason: It didn't work. It didn't work.

Leo: I might have the famous clear Pixel 2. You just wouldn't know. And thanks so much to Jason Hiner, Tech Republic. Don't forget his book, Follow the Geeks at FollowtheGeeksBook.com?

Jason: Yes.

Leo: And of course, got to read him at TechRepublic. What have you got coming up? Anything exciting?

Jason: Yea, so on TechRepublic, of course, everybody in this industry is trying to keep up because it moves so fast and we wake up every day trying to help people make good decisions about technology and be smarter about what they buy and how they use it and all of that. And so, we have lots of good stuff. There and if we're good enough and helpful enough, then we get to come to work tomorrow, so, that's what we do.

Leo: And you've got the great Dan Patterson writing for you.

Jason: Yea, Dan Patterson. I was a fan for a long time before he was writing for me and yea, come and check out the great stuff he's doing. He's kind of like our anchor. He talks to all of our journalists. You know, a lot of our journalists will go on shows like this and others and we pretty much realized, you know, we need to do this ourselves. We need to actually interview our writers about their stories so they add some color to it. So, Dan, a lot of what Dan does is interview all the writers and talk to them about their story and do like a 2-minute clip.

Leo: That's nice and that's on TechRepublic? We can watch it?

Jason: Yes.

Leo: Good. I like that idea. You're smart getting those newsmakers, news breakers we call them. We do This Week in Tech every Sunday afternoon, 3:00 PM Pacific, 6:00 PM Eastern, 2200 UTC. Please come by. Join us. Watch live. You can be in the studio if you just email tickets@TWiT.tv. We'll put a seat out for you. We thank—it's always nice to have a live audience because it gives it a little excitement, so, we more than welcome you. But do email us because we're not open every day and we want to make sure we expect you, so we don't want any surprises. So, tickets—

Alex: Just don't show up.

Leo: Just don't show up. Tickets@TWiT.tv. You can also watch the live stream and you don't have to have permission to that. Just go to TWiT.tv/live. And if you do that, please be in the chatroom, irc.TWiT.tv. That's kind of our virtual audience that's always here. In fact, when I go home and I don't have a chatroom to look at, I don't know what to do. Should I eat this egg? Should I not? Where's the chatroom? I don't know.

Florence: That's what Twitter's for.

Leo: Oh.

Alex: Twitter's IRC for the post IRC.

Florence: Yea, exactly.

Leo: It scrolls too fast and I can't keep up with it.

Florence: It's a good way to put it, Alex. And we're always on it.

Alex: It's bad.

Leo: If you can't watch live or be here live you can always be here on demand. It's easy. Whenever you want to listen, go to TWiT.tv and download a copy of any of our shows, audio and video. Don't forget, we do video if you want to watch. You can also use one of the great TWiT apps. There's a ton of them and that means you can watch on your big screen TV or your—you know, anywhere you want to be. If you subscribe, and you can do that with any podcast app like Overcast or PocketCast or Stitcher or Slacker, iTunes, if you subscribe you'll be sure to get every episode. Your first podcast of the week is the last word in tech news, This Week in Tech. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time! Another TWiT is in the can. Bye-bye. I almost forgot how I end the show.

Alex: Yea, I was like, I'm waiting for the words.

Leo: I almost forgot (laughing).