This Week in Tech 872 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
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Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT. This week in tech Lisa Eadicicco is here from New York, New York and seen it all the way from the UK, Nate Langston of Bloomberg fame and from the Vatican city in Rome, father Robert Ballas here, it's a global episode. We'll talk about Netflix. What happened? And what's the future hold for streaming media CNN plus goes, bye. By and record time, we're gonna try to find something that folded faster. Google's new pixel smart watch. Is it real or just a rumor? And should you buy an NFT? Hmm, maybe not. It's all coming up next on Podcast. Love

TWiT Intro (00:00:41):
From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:53):
This is TWiT. This week in tech episode 872 recorded Sunday, April 24th, 2022 from the people who brought you likable TV this week at tech is brought to you by express VPN. Using the internet without express VPN is like checking your baggage at the airport without a lock for three extra months, free with a one year package, go to express vpn.com/TWiTns. And by audible audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover. New members can try audible for 30 days free download the audible app and get started with a free trial at audible.com/TWiT or text TWiT to 500 for 500. And by Noom, unlike other programs, Noom weight uses a psychology based approach to help people like me better understand their relationship with food and gives us the skills and knowledge we need to build a long lasting positive habit. Sign up for your trial at no.com/TWiT And by

TWiT Intro (00:02:06):
Wealthfront

Leo Laporte (00:02:07):
To start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/TWiT It's time for TWiT this week at tech, the show we cover tech news. Got a great panel assembled for you. Let's say hello to Lisa Eadicicco. She is a senior editor at CNET. Hello, Lisa? I haven't seen you in a long time. Welcome back.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:02:34):
Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great to be back.

Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
I miss you. I'm so glad you're here. Yeah. What do you cover at CNET?

Lisa Eadicicco (00:02:42):
A lot of things, but mostly mobile. I, so phones smart watches, things like that, but you know, occasionally I write about other things too. There

Leo Laporte (00:02:50):
Is a smart watch story in LA run down. We'll get to that just a little bit. Also with us from the UK, Nate Langston, he is at Bloomberg tech editor does the UK tech show as well. And for some reason has a massive drum kit behind him. Hell, we've never yet got him to play on it, but hello, Nate? Good to have him.

Nate Lanxon (00:03:10):
Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, one day, one day. It will happen one day. I promise.

Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
I think TWiT like any good rock and roll show. Should have it. 20 minute drum break.

Nate Lanxon (00:03:20):
<Laugh> absolutely. I mean, if you want a 20 minute drum break, then

Leo Laporte (00:03:24):
We'll wander off, go play cards, have a drink. And do

Nate Lanxon (00:03:28):
You wanna lose all your listeners and sponsors

Leo Laporte (00:03:30):
Solo <laugh>

Nate Lanxon (00:03:32):
And death knuckle for 20 minutes? I

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
Love it. I, I think we'd only gain listeners also where this is great to have them from the Vatican ladies and gentlemen, father Robert baller, the digital Jesuit beated Easter, happy Easter to you. I bet you were fairly busy last Sunday.

Padre (00:03:50):
It, it was a, a busy busy week and of course I am the senior tech editor for Vatican tech news <laugh> which, you know, we, we cover all the ladies PTT technologies. Yes. Running Potter, toilets, clay pot, stuff like that. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:04:02):
Oh, there's been breakthroughs in the clay. Potage of late lots to talk about with father Robert, I guess a big story of the week really is a twofold story. All about the story of streaming and what the hell is happening with it. First thing had happens Netflix in their Q1 financials revealed that for the first time ever, they lost subscribers, couple of hundred thousand subscribers versus two and a half million expected. And of course it's the first time ever. They've lo they've gained every year since they were founded. I think immediately the market reacted by killing Netflix value by almost a third might be my more than a third by now. A huge plummet. And I guess the feeling is this is the beginning of the end for Netflix, which kind of surprises me. Netflix is well we're, we're looking at ad supported programming, which would Def for me, definitely kill Netflix, tends the wrong way to go.

Leo Laporte (00:05:10):
You know, Netflix blamed the there are a couple of things that clearly make a difference. The broad variety of streamers. Now you have many, many choices, Disney plus PCO, Hulu. Netflix is just one of them. You also have so you have competition for them, but they they've also been hurting Netflix by pulling back on the programs they own peacock pulled out the office, Disney pulled out Marvel's content. So Netflix is losing a lot of its catalog to these, to the competition. And then there's their, which was a good answer was to make original programming, but they spent 13 billion last year on original programming. And it's kind of hard to imagine that that's a sustainable strategy. So Netflix in trouble. And this affects you too. Nate, Netflix is big in the UK.

Nate Lanxon (00:06:00):
It's big. But actually one of the things we were looking at this week is how subscriber numbers to all streaming services are really going down in Britain. And a lot of people are wondering why is this happening in particular in the UK? And a lot of people looking at the cost of energy in Britain, which went up by about 50% in April, which doesn't sound like it would necessarily impact streaming directly, but most households in, in the UK had their energy bills sort of go up by 50%, literally overnight. And they're gonna go up again in October by a similar amount. So one of the first things I think people have been looking at is, well, do we need this many descriptions? Do we need Netflix and Disney plus and apple TV and all of these other things that we have. And I think a lot of the answers now is, well, no we don't.

Nate Lanxon (00:06:46):
And I, I don't necessarily think it, it dooms Netflix because the numbers are still enormous. You know, we're still talking hundreds of millions of, of subscribers. But it's definitely a, and, and as you noted with the, with the share price, which is something that we look at a lot, obviously at, at Bloomberg, you know, it started the year, it's something like 600 and it, and it closed on Friday at about 200. Wow. So, I mean, it's just absolutely annihilated and, and a lot of very prominent investors have lost money and, and notably lost money by selling at this loss and actually saying, you know what? We don't think this is gonna get any better. So we're gonna counter us as, you know, get out now. And, and some people been saying that that that was a smart move, but it's, it's, it's must be deeply challenging, particularly when you look at the wider market and the fact that streaming is growing it's a sign that Netflix just cannot keep all these people to itself anymore. At least not consistently

Leo Laporte (00:07:42):
Bill Aman is one of the investors. He's a, the lead at Persing square. He got into Netflix just a few months ago. Whoops. In January bought 3.1 million shares shares have fallen 60% since then he sold all those shares netted a $400 million loss. Yikes.

Nate Lanxon (00:08:04):
Yeah, that's, that's the, that's the chap,

Leo Laporte (00:08:05):
But somebody like that will only do that. If he says, look, there's only downside here. I see no upside. 

Nate Lanxon (00:08:12):
This is the, this is the, this is the thing. And, and a lot of people, you know, particularly retail investors will, will talk about, you know, buy the dip by the, and, and there's a lot of logic in that a lot of the time, but when something so disastrous comes along as what happened this week with Netflix's figures and the forecast to lose even more subscribers, then the smart money sometimes is on, well, if you're gonna lose something, lose, lose the least amount possible. And that at least seems to be Amans strategy here. Whether or not that'll continue, who knows maybe this isn't even bigger dip to buy.

Padre (00:08:46):
Netflix has three CS that are a problem. You've got cost, you've got competition and you've got content now, cost and competition. Those are, did

Leo Laporte (00:08:55):
You just make that up?

Padre (00:08:57):
I just made that up. That's really good. But I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:08:59):
That's exactly the three problems. Yeah,

Padre (00:09:02):
Yeah, exactly. Because the first two you can fix, you can price your service better to be more competitive, but the problem is content. And this is where it becomes a long term issue for Netflix, Amazon and Disney, which are number or two and three are fine. They've got plenty of content that has actually pretty dang good. Amazon just bought an entire catalog from paramount and Disney is never gonna be running out of content in the next 15 or so years. But when you start looking at how Netflix has been stocking up its content it's with pardon my French crap. It's horrible, horrible stuff. It's a lot of more programs that nobody,

Leo Laporte (00:09:38):
They have some successful movies. They were able to lure Scorsese over and make a three hour film called the Irishman. They almost won an Oscar for RO two years ago. They have some very successful streaming, original film, and

Padre (00:09:52):
That's great, but it only means I have to subscribe one month out of the year. Right. I can binge everything. I wanna watch on Netflix in one month and then I'm done. So you know, where I am right now is I almost don't want to steal the password for Netflix for one of

Leo Laporte (00:10:08):
My tracks. <Laugh> do you have Netflix?

Padre (00:10:12):
I, I have Netflix. I'm not paying for Netflix.

Leo Laporte (00:10:16):
So you left out there's three CS, but there's also an R it's like credence, Clearwater CCR CCCR, which is revenue. And that's one of the things Netflix is trying to do. Yeah. Go after password sharing, they claim a hundred million people are using Netflix with a shared password. I meant my kids who had my, when they lived with me, they were part of my household when they moved out. I didn't change the password on them. So they're still watching Netflix. But I, I have to say, I don't think those a hundred million people are necessarily all gonna become subscribers. I do like Netflix apparent plan. They're trying this already in central and south America is to, instead of saying, we're gonna cut these people off. They're just gonna charge you a couple extra bucks a month for the other people. So it's very likely that dad who's paying for the Henry and Abby will pay a couple extra bucks a month for each of them, then have to make the phone call and saying, I'm, I'm cutting off your Netflix kits, get your own account. What do you think Lisa is Netflix worth? Is it 12 bucks a month now?

Lisa Eadicicco (00:11:23):
You know, I think it's hard because I think it, it goes back to what we were just talking about. It's all about the content. And I think, you know, if Netflix does start charging more to have, you know, more people on their account, just like you were talking about what they're piloting right now, in some locations, I think this is gonna be a big test for Netflix. I think we're gonna figure out, you know, how crucial is it really to people? Are they willing to pay more? You know, I think you'll have a lot of those conversations of like you were saying, you know, dad might call you up and say, Hey, are you using Netflix? Do I need to upgrade? Or can I just, you know, cut you

Leo Laporte (00:11:56):
Out? Oh, that's good way. Thank you for giving me the wording. Hey, are you using it still? <Laugh>

Lisa Eadicicco (00:12:00):
Yeah, exactly. I could see that happening a lot. But I do think the competition is a big part of it. And, you know, Netflix was comfortable for a long time because they were really the first to popularized streaming and they did, they were also one of the first to have really good original shows like house of cards, but it's, you know, they obviously can't just keep doing the same things anymore because the competition has changed so much.

Leo Laporte (00:12:24):
I think that's what the market is saying. Not so much that it's over for Netflix, but that the heyday of streaming is over. I mean, we certainly, we had two very good years during COVID. Maybe they're feeling like, well, okay, but people aren't gonna be staying home as much and anymore, and they're not gonna be paying because times are tight with the recession and inflation. They're maybe not gonna wanna pay that extra subscription. What's the first one to go. That's the real question.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:12:49):
Yeah, it's true. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> well, I also think people sign up for one show and then they cancel just like, you know, we were talking about before. So I think that's part of it too. I think to really keep people in, they just need to have a really good catalog of good shows. Like kind of like Netflix is kind of like a cable replacement, right? Like people don't usually sign up to watch just one show and then, you know, quit. I feel like that's some thing that you see more with like maybe Showtime or some of these other, you know, streamers that were a little bit later to the game. But I think if Netflix really wants to keep subscribers from, you know, just having that be the first one off the chopping block, they need to just make sure they have like a really big back catalog of stuff that can essentially, you know, fill that able hold for a lot of people,

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
You know, at the stock, you know, Leo might have looked at the top 10 shows on Netflix in the us. It's always a bad sign when a network goes to reality programming. Right. That's cheap. Yeah. And it's usually a, a kind of drive to the bottom. Number one, selling sunset. Number two convers is with a killer. The John Wayne Gacy tapes. I don't know. I think the marked hardest fiction anatomy of a scandal probably fiction Bridgeton. Well, Bridgeton is just hot and the ultimatum. I, I don't, I don't watch it. The ultimatum Mary or move on number six, these, this is kinda looks like a bad sign. I

Nate Lanxon (00:14:16):
Boss,

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Huh? I me say something.

Nate Lanxon (00:14:20):
Oh, I think that was my Netflix. That for some reason to make sure through here. Oh, okay. When I was, I was trying to find what the what the, the, the popular equivalent in the UK were. I didn't. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:33):
This is a, this is a, a, what they, what do they call is carousel? I haven't seen before the top 10 shows in the us today.

Nate Lanxon (00:14:40):
Okay. So the top, the top, the, the top ones here are actually fairly similar in the UK. Yeah. Selling sunset anatomy of a scandal, the John Wayne heart stopper. Bridgeton. Yeah. The missing. Yeah. Yeah.

Padre (00:14:53):
You know, Netflix can fix this.

Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
How

Padre (00:14:55):
All they have to do is move to a, a metered plan, $5 a month, 40 hours of programming. No, one's gonna share it. If you're gonna be using up your hours.

Leo Laporte (00:15:03):
That's an interesting idea. And then it's less, so maybe you won't get rid of it. And you could probably think of five hours to watch.

Padre (00:15:10):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:15:11):
And most people like me are gonna end up watching more than five hours, probably. So.

Padre (00:15:15):
Yeah. And so you go up to the next level, you go to the next tier. Also, Leo, you know, we predicted this 10 years ago, back in the, the early days of TWiT in, in cord cutters. When we were talking about cutting the cord, and we talked about the rise of streaming services, there was a prediction about how all of the studios are gonna want to get on, on this. They see what Netflix has. They're gonna wanna start their own streaming services. It's gonna take a while for them to build their catalogs, to build their technology. But eventually we're gonna get to the point where people are gonna start saying, I don't want to have five or six different subscriptions a month to watch all the programming I want. That's where we are right now. This, this is the calling groups, the bottle

Leo Laporte (00:15:51):
Over for court, cutting on a caller today in the radio show said, I just signed up for cable again, because I couldn't find the shows I wanted. It was more, it was getting more and more expensive court. Cutting, no longer saves you money if you include the cost of internet. It's I think maybe it's the end of court. Cutting

Lisa Eadicicco (00:16:11):
Is. Yeah, I think I saw, I saw some report that I think said on average, people's Americans spend $47 per month on streaming services. I mean, that's like getting into cable territory again. So

Leo Laporte (00:16:22):
Especially when you add the 40 bucks or 50 or 60 in, in my case for your internet access, now you're at a hundred bucks.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:16:30):
And also if the cable companies are catching up just streaming and are offering more on demand options and things like that, that allow people to watch what they want instead of just defaulting to whatever happens to be on right now. I feel like, yeah, there is a compelling case for just going back to cable, instead of signing up for like, you know, five different streaming services to get everything you want. Yeah.

Padre (00:16:50):
Ha have you seen Samsung TV?

Leo Laporte (00:16:52):
I have not. So

Padre (00:16:53):
It it's something that I, I, I just bought my parents a brand new 70 inch TV for their, their house in Las Vegas. And there actually what, when I first installed it and it took all of information, you know, where we were and what locality we were in, we got access completely free, no subscription to about 3000 channels over Samsung TV. Wow. And that's free forever, which includes local TV. And they've now cut the cable. They don't need anything. They've got everything they want and they're not paying any subscription. Feess

Leo Laporte (00:17:25):
Now, you know, that's not,

Padre (00:17:27):
But it's awesome.

Leo Laporte (00:17:27):
I don't know if they know, but you know that the reason Samsung does this is because now they are getting marketing information for, from them and sending, right. I mean, that's where the revenue stream is. I would guess.

Padre (00:17:37):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it tells you at the beginning, it tells you, this is exactly what's gonna be happening. This is what we're

Leo Laporte (00:17:43):
Using. But I think most people, if you got free locals sure. I'll do that. You're gonna sell my information back to advertisers, but I don't care if I get free TV. That's interesting. Do they still, Nate, forgive me of my ignorance. Do you still have to buy a license to watch TV in the UK?

Nate Lanxon (00:18:02):
Oh yeah. Oh, you do. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:18:04):
Yeah, yeah. You do.

Nate Lanxon (00:18:04):
Oh yeah. It's that's back.

Leo Laporte (00:18:06):
<Laugh>.

Nate Lanxon (00:18:07):
It is. I mean, there's a lot, there is a lot of controversy around this at the moment because the BBC is, you know, I don't wanna say it's having its lunch eaten by the streaming giants, but it's certainly having a lot of its food taken by the streaming giants. The, the BBC license fee, in a nutshell, it used to be, you paid it. Anyone who had a TV paid the license fee, then your TV was free. And bear in mind that has now moved to the point that it's, it's streaming it's back catalog. It's the BBC news. It's radio it's podcast. It's all that other stuff. And it is entirely ad free. And that's the thing that makes a big, big difference. Like it is illegal even to show ads like you cannot show ads on it. So it's a completely different model and it does work.

Nate Lanxon (00:18:53):
And it is actually very, very good value if you are someone who values BBC content. But at the same time, there are a lot of people who say it is a tax. It shouldn't be paid. It should be a subscription model. It should be paid monthly. It should be privatized and it should be made to compete better with the likes of Netflix. But it's withstood that. And a lot of the reason is because it's not just TV. It is a, a huge wealth of other things as well. And that sort of kept people kind of happy with it. For the most part, at least

Leo Laporte (00:19:21):
I feel like at a remove anyway, cuz you know, we don't see everything. The BBC is the gold standard for broadcasting, both radio and television mm-hmm <affirmative> and I would glad to pay what's the license fee. How much does it cost? I

Nate Lanxon (00:19:34):
Think I'd have to check. So I just renewed it, but it renews automatically. It's something like about 140 pounds a year. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:19:41):
That is a lot that's Netflix territory. A little steep. Yeah.

Nate Lanxon (00:19:45):
Yeah. I mean in dollars that's probably about 180 bucks a year.

Leo Laporte (00:19:48):
That's more than Netflix.

Nate Lanxon (00:19:50):
Yeah. It probably a is more than Netflix, but, but it is it's it's, you know, it, it is a, it it's almost incomparable to, to Netflix in terms of the subscription and what you get for it because it is, you know, you are paying for the newsroom, it, it funds everything the, the BBC does and I'm not a, a BBC apologist should throw that out there. There's an awful lot. I don't like about what the BBC does and the way the model is. But you know, there is a lot of educational stuff that comes with that. There is a lot of you know, international bureaus full of journalists, which obviously as a journalist myself is something that I I know is not cheap and is very, very valuable, particularly, you know, more so now than ever possibly. So that,

Leo Laporte (00:20:30):
Yeah, if you want a democracy, you better damn well have a free now I don't know how free and independent the BBC is, but you better have a free and independent journalism in your country to report on the MIS MIS use of power or otherwise you have nobody, you know, you have no idea what's going on.

Nate Lanxon (00:20:49):
And the idea is that it's meant to be, it's meant to be unbiased. It doesn't have a political agenda. A lot of people is

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
There political influence at all on the BBC?

Nate Lanxon (00:20:57):
I, I mean, there's political influence in everything, right? You can't get away from it, but the goal is that it is that it doesn't have that influence personally. You can never get that. Right. I just don't think gets possible. And I don't think the BBC gets it right at all. And there is a lot of establishment related problems with the BBC from the top, which is kind of out of step with what a lot of people experience in their day to day lives as is also the case in politics. So there are parallels that

Leo Laporte (00:21:20):
If it were tax supported, though, I think that'd be more of a parallel then a license fee, I guess. I don't know

Nate Lanxon (00:21:26):
The license fee for all intents and purposes is a tax. It's a tax because it's, you know, it's a legal requirement. Yeah. But you know, if you ask most people who would watch a show like this week in tech and who are in the tech world and who are generally pretty familiar with the way that the modern world works far as tech and streaming goes, you would not find that many people who think that what the BBC does is bad. But there is a lot to be said for ways it could be brought up to date. We,

Leo Laporte (00:21:55):
Our problem in the United States is all media is corporate it's and it tends to be owned and increasingly so by GARS. And so that's really a problem. And part of the problem that Netflix and streaming and court cutting is having is the people who distribute the content are increasingly buying the content creators. They are the one and the same, which now means they have a monopoly on the content and its distribution. It is not a good system. I, you know, I have to say here in the United States, CNN, which we're gonna talk about in a second has become is, is become the Ukraine war, poor channel it's it is basically wall to wall Ukraine war. It says if nothing else is happening, I saw not one story about Macron's run against Maria Lappen for instance or even salacious stuff like Johnny Depp and Amber herd. It was all Ukraine all the time. I started to watch BBC world news it, and you're getting news. So I'm grateful. Thank you for paying your license fees, Nate.

Nate Lanxon (00:22:54):
Well, yeah, I mean, you, you pay for it in a different, in a different way as well, because if you look at something like BBC America or DVD sales and, and the, the license deals that go out, they

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):
Have to pay for it. Yeah.

Nate Lanxon (00:23:04):
Those sorts of things. Also, they fold in they're under a different arm of the BBC. Yeah. This BBC worldwide and, and, and so on. So there's a lot to be said for what the BBC does. And I personally would hate for it to go away in, in any significant way. But there are also ways I'd love to bring it up today. And frankly, you could pay more. I mean, it's been around for decades and decades, and there are so many old programs that are just sitting in vaults and are archives somewhere that aren't online. All the old Dr. Whos are always the ones that people bring out as an example, like that is an insane and huge back catalog of extremely valuable IP. That if you put all those online and said to international audiences, Hey, pay this and you get all of this as well. That's gonna please license fee pay. Is it a I'm? Sure, please. A lot of people who are watching this right now, being able to get a, you know, add free, very low cost access to a lot of old stuff, but you know, you cannot please everyone, one size doesn't fit, so all blah, blah, blah, insert your metaphor here. But it's, it's interesting compared to Netflix, I should,

Leo Laporte (00:24:05):
By the way, clarify, I think the war in Ukraine is extremely important. I'm not saying that it's unimportant, I'm saying we don't need wall to wall coverage, or, I mean, we need coverage and we should have coverage, but there are other stories that are also important going on. And we

Padre (00:24:20):
Need Sage this passionate

Leo Laporte (00:24:23):
Coverage. Well, it's really clear. I don't know you get in Italy, but it's really clear. Now when I watch CNN that they've decided that war is good for ratings.

Padre (00:24:32):
Oh, of course.

Leo Laporte (00:24:33):
And just can, you know, there's no news, it's just, let's keep talking to people in basements and looking at Bon buildings. And I, I don't think it's you know, at the very least, if you, you want to cover Ukraine war, let's talk about what's going on in the geopolitics of it. And, you know, I mean, there's lots more to talk about. CNN is partly, this is happening because CNN is currently rudderless and that's the other streaming story today, CNN plus, which was launched last month with great fanfare and 300 million in marketing has just been shuttered <laugh> they gave up canceled it's over,

Padre (00:25:13):
You know, Leo, I never even knew what CNN plus was. I never heard about CNN plus. So the first time I heard of CNN plus was when it, they said it was gonna shut down. I was like, oh, okay, sure. Why not?

Leo Laporte (00:25:25):
It, so it's a, it's a complicated story because it's part of that story of the rolling up of content by distributors at and T owned time Warner, which owned HBO and CNN divested of it because they realized we're a phone company and discovery audit. So the problem was that discovery, I think, is not yet running it or they are, they just started running it and they could not tell Warner don't launch this. We aren't gonna do it. Get it, stop. It don't stop that Warner was gonna pay, spend a billion dollars to get some screw, but it, you know, it's not allowed if you are in the process of acquiring a company to tell the company how to be run. So they, they could say nothing the day that the merger happened, they said, okay. And by the way, that's CNN, plus that's gotta go.

Leo Laporte (00:26:21):
It was kind of sad. There are a lot of people who quit their job to go to work for CNN plus including Wallace. It is, it's quite a stunning sh I think black mark on the reputation of CNN, but also at the same time, CNN plus didn't have any live news. So I think it was destined to die anyway, to apparently what was happening in Warner. We had stories that from Axios and others, that there were only 10,000 daily active viewers. It, the New York times implies that that was, that was leaked by Warner to Tanksy. And plus I'm not Warner by discovery to tank CNN plus it's really quite a soap opera. So it just feels like the streaming world is in quite an uproar this week.

Nate Lanxon (00:27:17):
Yeah. There's the argument that whenever something gets shut down that, oh, it's I, and it's a black mark because it's been shut down very quickly. And obviously there are other circumstances around this that make it more than just a, a business decision. You know, it it's the victim of a merger. It's probably conflicts of in not conflicts of interest, but conflicts of the preference you know, in management. But often I think we see when companies shut down a product very quickly, it's often for the best in the long run. And you look back because you look back and you think, well, actually this was never gonna work. So we did well to kill it when it was young. And we take the learning that we did, that's still very relevant. And we plug that insight. We plug that expertise. We plug that whatever you've got behind the scenes, into the next new property and then get of where you would've been. Otherwise we've seen that happen time and time again, I think to be honest, we kind of saw it in the previous section talking about Netflix and, and, and the investor who sold it, a loss, like get out now and maybe you'll be glad you did

Leo Laporte (00:28:18):
Cut. Cut your losses. Yeah.

Nate Lanxon (00:28:19):
Cut your losses. There's times where that doesn't make sense. And I, I did something on my podcast, only a, this, this, after no, comparing this to Microsoft kin, if you remember in 2010 with Microsoft, you know, it launched a, launched a whole new phone platform, physical holiday.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:28:33):
I actually owned a Microsoft kit

Leo Laporte (00:28:34):
By the way, save it. I hope you, I hope you kept it.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:28:38):
I, I don't think I did. It was the second one. So it looked a little bit more like a normal phone than the original one, but, but yeah, I, I love to the idea of it, but it was a great all the time.

Leo Laporte (00:28:48):
Yeah.

Nate Lanxon (00:28:49):
It, it really was. And I went to the launch for that in San Francisco and they killed it within a few weeks. And actually, if you look back, that was probably a very good decision. It didn't help windows phone. It didn't help the NAIA stuff that came afterwards. But at the time it was probably never gonna succeed long term. And so they just killed. It said, right. You know what, forget, it's not bother probably a good decision. Maybe this was

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
2 48 days. It died in 48 days. So I think the Ken actually lasted a little longer than CNN plus <laugh>

Padre (00:29:18):
It? It was like, it lasted three scaries.

Leo Laporte (00:29:21):
<Laugh>

Padre (00:29:22):
No, I mean, that's not bad. 

Leo Laporte (00:29:25):
It, we, you know, I, I've always said that we are in a, a complicated traditional transitional period between the days when you had three networks on your television and you turned the dial, ABC, CBS, and and NBC into this, you know, infinite number of streaming channels. And it's, it's, there's a lot of uproar and shift and change going on. And we're just seeing that I think very clearly and very dramatically, what do consumers want? What do we want, what would be Lisa? What would be the perfect, you know, thing from our point of view,

Lisa Eadicicco (00:30:00):
Honestly, just having a lot of content. That's really good. That's not that expensive. And I think that's, you wanna buy, did well for a long time.

Leo Laporte (00:30:08):
Do you wanna buy individual shows or do you wanna buy a channel or,

Lisa Eadicicco (00:30:13):
I mean, I think in a dream world, there would be one service that just has everything, but we obviously know that's not gonna happen because of, you know, ownership and rights and all of these other things, it's just not gonna happen. But, but yeah, I, I do like the idea of having, you know, maybe three or fewer services that just have everything that you need, because it just gets so complicated. That is, yeah, let's go back like maybe seven years ago or five years ago or however long. But I, you know, all of this does, I, I do feel terrible for all the people that, you know, went over to CNN plus and jobs. A lot of

Leo Laporte (00:30:49):
People quit

Lisa Eadicicco (00:30:49):
Their jobs. Yeah. Yeah. I do feel like this is kind of a, a turning point for the streaming wars. And I, I do think if there are new services in the future, it is gonna be harder for companies to recruit talent or something like this after seeing what happened at CNN. Plus

Leo Laporte (00:31:05):
The thinking at this point is that discovery wants to make HBO, max, that discovery kind of agrees with you, Lisa and thinks we are just gonna make one master subscription that you get CNN, you get everything with HBO max. And I kind of agree with you, but, but how much would you pay? I mean, are they gonna charge $50 a month for that? Or,

Lisa Eadicicco (00:31:23):
I mean, I think it depends on what else you're subscribing to also, like if I'm only subscribing to one or two things, I will pay more for those services. But if I need to have like four or five services, I don't wanna pay more than $5 a month for something else. Yeah.

Padre (00:31:37):
What if you're already paying for it? What if we already have a subscription fee? I like fee like they do in the UK, except we call it Amazon prime. We bought Amazon prime. Cause we wanted to be able to get our stuff faster. And Amazon prime video just came along with it for Free's true. I know it's expensive in the states here in Italy. It cost me 30 Euro a year.

Leo Laporte (00:31:59):
That's it? That's

Padre (00:32:00):
Nothing. And that's by free shipping shipping, and that's all of the Amazon is including prime video, so, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:32:05):
Wow.

Padre (00:32:05):
That's, that's my streaming service. Not because I wanted that streaming service, but because it came with something else I already bought

Lisa Eadicicco (00:32:13):
And that's yeah, that's a great point because of

Padre (00:32:15):
Amazon.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:32:15):
Yeah. I don't know if I would, I would've signed up for Amazon prime video unless I already had Amazon prime, but now that I have it, I do find myself watching it like fairly often, again, not enough to get it on my own, but since it comes with Amazon prime already. Yeah. That's a good point. Mm-Hmm

Nate Lanxon (00:32:30):
<Affirmative>, I'm right with you there as well. Lisa, we have similar in terms of the pricing strategy here. I mean, I, I, I get prime for the same day shipping and you know, when there's something that comes up on prime, like the new what's the thing that, that was top gear the grand tour, the new grand tour comes out. It's, it's just on there and that's great. And it's nice to have, but I never, I'd never sign up for that on its own. Absolutely not. I like the idea of a service where you get it's like a, a service that sits on top of the streaming income pennies and you get like one hop a month and you, you can hop from Netflix one month to Disney plus the next month to Hulu plus the next month and to apple TV the next month. I mean, it would never work because why would they agree to do something like that? And then there's all the technical problems there isn't parity in the pricing models or anything, but in principle I'd like that idea because I would probably give a overall more money to each of those companies than if I was maintaining one subscription with them all for the whole year. I don't think we'll see it, but in terms of answering the question, what would we want? I would love something like that, for sure.

Padre (00:33:33):
Also, I have to say that Amazon prime video in Italy has way better catalog than Amazon prime in the United States. I get all of star Trek, so Picard and discovery and all of the sci-fi series that I enjoy everything from upload to the expanse. So it, it, it kind of depends where you located in the world, which only means it depends on what kind of VPN you have

Lisa Eadicicco (00:33:54):
<Laugh> and that, that general approach also kind of reminds me of apple TV. Plus as, I mean, it's not exactly the same, but since apple gives you, I think it's a full year that you get for free when you buy a new apple device. Right. That's a really long time. I mean, I guess the idea is you're already buying an iPhone or an iPad or whatever, and by the time the free trial is up, you probably forget that you not forget that you have it, but you're so used to watching it. If you did fall into it, that it's like, oh yeah, I'll pay five bucks a month to keep that. So it's a little different than Amazon, but the same in that you're paying for something else. And then you happen to get that

Leo Laporte (00:34:30):
Service. And also that apple and Amazon don't have to make money on their streaming services. So Netflix, that's it. Right? That's all they've got. But, but Amazon, apple, I think, guess to some degree Disney, they it's just, it's his incremental income for them, or they even can sell it at a loss because they're gonna make it up with sales. In other areas, apple TV is spending not as much money as Netflix, but they've gotten up to several billion dollars a year and actually have to say apple TV is, is starting to look better and better. There's some shows on apple TV now, which I would say are as good as anywhere else. I, and I couldn't say that for the first year

Lisa Eadicicco (00:35:10):
Or two. Yeah. It's I mean, severance alone was amazing severance. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):
Wow. That ending <laugh> I wasn't sure about the show, cuz it's kind of sterile at first, but by the time I was the, of the last episode, I'm like, you can't stop now <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
You must not and slow horses, which they've just put out, which I was sure they bought from the BBC. But in fact, no, they produced themselves is every bit as good as any BBC spa spy drama. They got Gary Oldman to do TV. So, but that's an advantage because apple can spend this money. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, that's not their business. Amazon can spend this money, Amazon, by the way, is spending more than anybody that for this new Lord of the rings, they spend a billion dollars just for the rights and I can't, but, and then now they're making, I can't remember what the per episode price is, but it's,

Nate Lanxon (00:35:59):
It's something like 250 million in episode. I think

Leo Laporte (00:36:02):
It's mind boggling.

Nate Lanxon (00:36:04):
Yeah. It's crazy. It's really crazy. I'm with you on the apple TV thing, by the way, invasion, I've got one more episode of that left to watch. And I, if I wasn't doing this, I'd be watching that.

Leo Laporte (00:36:13):
Interesting. yeah,

Nate Lanxon (00:36:14):
It's, it's the one service I UN canceled. I did cancel apple TV. I canceled Disney plus I canceled a couple of others. I went back to apple TV and it was because of

Leo Laporte (00:36:23):
Invasion. There's one other thing. Apples TV has not one little ACE in its sleeve that hasn't pulled out, which is sports. The one, the, the what's interesting is none of these competitors are doing live sports yet. Amazon prime has started to do it and now apple they've got baseball and the rumor is strong that they're gonna get Sunday night, Sunday ticket, which is a lot of football away from direct TV. That could really put them over the top. Sports is something people do pay for and are willing to pay for live sports.

Padre (00:36:53):
Netflix could do live F1. They, they have,

Leo Laporte (00:36:57):
They've gotten that show organization drive to survive, survive a hit show

Padre (00:37:01):
That actually could be a cash cow for them. If they could work that,

Leo Laporte (00:37:04):
Oh man, I have to, I, I cuz F1 in the us, it was just in Italy. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I at a Emilio Ram Romania. But it's a 6:00 AM here. <Laugh> so I have to tape it and don't tell me what, cause I haven't started the race, but I haven't watched it, but you're right. F1 has huge potential because of that Netflix show, I would say they probably doubled their audience all of a sudden because of drive to survive. And I'm, if I can

Nate Lanxon (00:37:31):
Just just really point out something just to correct myself and what I said, the 250 million about Amazon, that that's what they paid for the rights to tell. And according to Hollywood reporter, but it is a they're saying 650 million budget for season one

Leo Laporte (00:37:45):
Alone. And that's how many episodes? 10, if it's 10 episodes, 65 million a show is astounding, especially for an unproven property. I think that they, they spend end up spending more than that on game of Thrones, but that's a lot of money and Amazon can afford it, you know, and they don't even have to make it back with subscriptions. And that's the key. All right. Let's take a little break. I've it's fun to talk about TV, but we're gonna have to talk about Elon Musk. I'm sorry. <Laugh> no, I'm sorry, but we have to, and there'll be other stories too. It's really wonderful to have a Lisa Chico here. She is. Of course at CNET senior editor there. Wonderful to see you. Thank you for joining us. Yes.

Lisa Eadicicco (00:38:27):
Wonderful to be here. Yay you again for having me. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:38:29):
Yay. Also with this father Robert Ballas here, the digital Jesuit from his home somewhere high above the Vatican, not that high, not all the way up, just, you know, halfway to heaven. It's great to see you and Nate Langston, who is tech editor at Bloomberg. You were talking about VPNs, Robert, our sponsor for this segment express VPN, you know, three reasons you to use a VPN there's security, there's privacy. And there's the ability to watch Dr. Who <laugh>. And I would say all three are very, very important, but one of the benefits of express VPN is they are in more than 90 countries. So when you use express VPN, it's really easy to put it on your phone, on your smart TV. You can even put it on your router, on your laptop, on your desktop. When you use express VPN, you can say, I wanna be in London right now.

Leo Laporte (00:39:25):
And then if you've got a Netflix subscription, you can binge all the doctor who you want a Netflix, UK. That's just one of the many reasons to get a, a, a good VPN. But I have to tell you, I wanna underscore good because there are lots of awful VPNs, the free VPNs that spy on you and sell your marketing information. The VPNs that don't invest in infrastructure, not express VPN, they they're not free, but that money goes to making them the best VPN out there. The only one I use, you can even put it on your router and protect your whole home. And it's so fast. Nobody's gonna complain. That's really, really important with a VPN. Not only do they invest in, in all those servers and all that bandwidth, they rotate their IP addresses. That's very important too, because the privacy angle on a VPN, when you're using express VPN, you're not using your IP address.

Leo Laporte (00:40:16):
When you make those Google searches or you visit those websites, you're using their IP address. And because they rotate IP addresses, they spend the money to get a whole bunch of 'em. You are never the same person TWiTce. That's real privacy. If you're not using a VPN you're internet service provider knows everything you do. Google knows. Google says, hello, welcome back. You don't, you know, the incognito mode is not incognito. You need express VPN using the internet without express. VPN is like checking your baggage at the airport without a lock. Yeah, sure. Nobody's gonna go through your bags unless they do. And just think of all the things they'll find. That's not mine. When you go to a online without a VPN ISP, see what you're doing. Google knows who you are with express VPN in Cognito mode truly is private. Your identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server.

Leo Laporte (00:41:11):
And when you find out about the technical details of what express VPN does to protect your privacy, I think you'll be very, very impressed. They just had an article in bleeping computer about this fascinating. They have a custom Debbie and distro running on their servers. It runs a, a server, a VPN server. They call their trusted server. It runs it in Ram. And it can't it's sandbox. So it can't write to the disc. And then every day the whole hard drive gets wiped. Anyway, they reinstall the entire distribution. So you're you're you, there is no trace of your visit to express VPN that's real privacy security. You can use express VPN anywhere and no matter who else is on that network, they can't see what you're doing. Secure your online activity. Use the only VPN I recommend for privacy, for security and yeah, for watching, you know, TV shows and other jurisdictions visit express vpn.com/TWiT. Right now that's E X, P R E sp.com/TWiT three extra months free. When you buy a one year package, it is the number one trusted VPN. It's the only one I trust. The only one I use express vpn.com/TWiT. And we thank them so much for their support.

Leo Laporte (00:42:36):
I, you know, I got up this morning and there, there was already I'm thinking is today, the day we don't have to mention Elon Musk on, is it gonna be Nope, <laugh> there's already <laugh> Elon chatter because early this morning, apparently he tweeted this two words and an ellipsis moving on and all the pundits immediately jumped on that. This is by the way, Elon loves this attention. This is I'm convinced the main reason he does this saying, oh, he's moving on. He announced this week that he had an enough money, that he had the resources to buy TWiTtter, that he had banking assurances from Morgan Stanley and others. We thought, oh, moving on from buying TWiTtter. No, no three hours later, he says, moving on from making fun of bill gates for shorting Tesla, while claiming to support climate change. Action. Now, look, this is a mean, mean tweet <laugh>, but it's kinda apt <laugh> yesterday.

Leo Laporte (00:43:42):
Elon tweeted this picture of Mr. Gates in a blue polo shirt. Wait, look, I'm no guy to say anything about a stomach. You got a little bit of a belly and Elon said, looks just like the pregnant guy OG. And he kind of does. Okay. Kinda Elon is like five. He's got the mentality of a, of a 12 year old. I don't personally think he should own TWiTtter. I think that's a terrible idea. I think oligarch should not own media. What do you think, Lisa, is he gonna buy TWiTtter or is all just fun in games?

Lisa Eadicicco (00:44:21):
Honestly, I, it's hard to say. I do think, you know, I, I agree. I, I do think, you know, it, it's probably best if Elon Musk does not own TWiTtter. But I think what's interesting is, is why he's interested in buying TWiTtter as well. And I know you've talked about Elon a bunch, so you've probably touched on this already, but he keeps kind of talking about how he sees a lot of potential in TWiTtter. And I think that kind of made a lot of people think about what Elon would do with TWiTtter if he actually, he bought it. And I think that's something that's on everyone's minds right now. He's talked about, he's been very vocal about his thoughts on free speech and content moderation and making the, the TWiTtter algorithm public. Right. I think he, unless I'm mistaken, I think he has kind of talked about maybe making an open source or something like that, which would be a really big shift. But yeah, I don't know. I it's, it'll be interesting to see where things go.

Leo Laporte (00:45:21):
Yeah. I think actually Jack Doley is more interested in making TWiTtter open source, but he's not the CEO and he's not even on the board anymore. Right. So we, we don't even <laugh> we don't even care. I'm gonna call Elon a billionaire <laugh> cause he's a billionaire full of bull. We'll give credit on that to actually, I, I first read it in Ian BOGOs post on the, on the Atlantic Elon Musk, baloney king. But actually he gives credit to Benedict Devons. Who's a great tech blogger, a billionaire. So One of the things people thought Elon might be talking about, cuz he talks a lot about free speech is bringing back conservative voices like the former president. But then I read that house Republicans are, are just as nervous about Elon Musk <laugh> as, as Democrats are Jim Jordan sent a letter to TWiTtter saying you must preserve all records about Musks bid to buy the company setting the grounds for a potential co congressional probe of the acquisition. So even the right isn't happy about Elon's free speech. I think he's trolling us. What do you think father Robert, do you think he's trolling us?

Padre (00:46:49):
No. I think you think he's serious. Is Elon being authentic? No, not, no. I think the Elon has a history of being pure IID. He lets his ID control his ego. He loves the pleasure principle. He he's making he's points. He's he's lowkey. He's the, he likes chaos. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:07):
The monkey trickster. Yeah.

Padre (00:47:09):
And, and you have to remember, this is a person who, who grew up in, in a, a life of privilege. He grew up wealthy. He's used to having all of his needs met when he wants to met. He's used to having people take his meetings anytime he wants to take his meetings. So for him, this is all part of the same game. Now the people who cheerlead Elon Elon, I get that. I understand he's successful. He's wealthy. He seems

Leo Laporte (00:47:34):
Brilliant. Well, we have things.

Padre (00:47:36):
Thank for

Leo Laporte (00:47:37):
Tesla has yes, we do promoted electric vehicles. Without Tesla, I don't know we'd be where we are today, where we really need EVs. I don't know if we'd be this far advanced SpaceX is a huge success, right? <Affirmative>

Padre (00:47:50):
Which is great. And, and, and I wanna reward him for that. People should be rewarded for coming up with brilliant ideas and for executing them. I'm absolutely not against that. What I am against is when people build up privilege and wealth, by doing those things and then use that privilege and wealth to make it more difficult for everyone else to do the same, have a big player, a billionaire to

Leo Laporte (00:48:10):
Pull the

Padre (00:48:11):
Ladder up, American Oli guard,

Leo Laporte (00:48:12):
Pull the ladder up, pull, pull the ladder up.

Padre (00:48:13):
Yeah. And that's what this is this, you know, if you allow Elon to own TWiTtter own any social media company, you are essentially recreating the disaster we have with Rupert Murdoch and that never should have happened. I don't want part two. And unfortunately that's what this would be Elon in saying that he wants free speech is essentially saying, well, I want anything that the market will bear everything that the market will bear does not work well for free speech that is not free speech. Yeah. In the United States and our constitution, we have definite limits on free speech. You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater and it free speech. That's essentially what Elon is saying. We should allow on TWiTtter. Should

Leo Laporte (00:48:55):
Jeff Bezos have been allowed to buy the Washington post?

Padre (00:48:59):
Yes. It's, it's very different there. Steve

Leo Laporte (00:49:02):
Jobs Bezos, the Atlantic, which I just quoted or in jobs,

Padre (00:49:06):
But, but look at how they they're owning it. There is a block between ownership and editorial ship. Elon doesn't wanna do that. Yeah. If you look at the way Elon's companies work, the ownership is editorials. He controls everything from top to bottom at any point, because he is ID and super ID. At any point, he can pop in and implement some crazy idea that cannot be how, how our media works, how our press works, how our expression of free speech works.

Leo Laporte (00:49:36):
Yeah, it does. And that was the premise of Ian BOGOs Colman the Atlantic, it is a bad thing for democracy. We need democracy. We need, we need, and I would say, and we need good journalism, as I just said to bolster democracy so that the people in power are called to you know account. Thank you. And I fear that we're losing both in this country without a free press to speak truth, to power, the oligarchs win. And it's pretty clear. That's what the oligarchs are trying to do is, is buy up media. So I'm hoping Elon is not, I'm hoping he's not serious that he's just messing with us. And I sincerely hope he doesn't buy TWiTtter cuz I don't think any, any good will come of that. Nate, you know, TWiTtter is, has outsized in, in a, in its importance here in the United States. It doesn't have that many subscribers. It's one 15th, the size of Facebook. But unfortunately it's the media that pay attention to TWiTtter and give it an outsized influence. Is it the same in, in the UK?

Nate Lanxon (00:50:48):
By and large by and large, it still is. Yeah, because

Leo Laporte (00:50:52):
Lots of stories come outta TWiTtter and you know, Elon gets Elon. If, if nobody's paying attention to Elon, he tweets something and everybody's paying attention to Elon. The former president did the same thing

Nate Lanxon (00:51:02):
As long as the audience is in any way global, then a user and Canada has to pay attention to TWiTtter or even if you're local. Yeah. So, so yes, but there, I mean there is a small anarchist in me that thinks it would for a very short period of time, be really quite entertaining to see El and Musk on TWiTtter <laugh> but that would, but that would very quickly spiral, I think, into something that is not entertaining in the slightest. And the other question, the more serious side of me also thinks, what is it about TWiTtter specifically about that, that he would want to do with it? Because he has the means certainly has the motive, has the, you know, has the resource has the ability to set something up to create something from scratch and attract a lot of people to it very, very quickly. Why if he wants to run a successful business like that, why not build one? Why not start it, he could very easily do it. So there's something specific to TWiTtter and that's why I think he's serious about wanting to buy it. And that's why I think it's probably a good idea as a, has already been said on this, this show just now why it's probably not a good idea.

Leo Laporte (00:52:14):
<Laugh> I have to say, I agree with you. It would be entertaining until it's so horrific <laugh> we would be going style. Well, I think it,

Lisa Eadicicco (00:52:24):
I think it comes down to how influential TWiTtter can be in a weird, and I think, you know, TWiTtter tends to draw a lot. A lot of people, I feel like tend to lump it into like the same category as Facebook and other social media platforms. But like you were saying, Leo, it's not really the same, because I feel like the people who really pay attention to TWiTtter the most are journalists. You know, people in the tech industry, it's not really, you know, the, the social network where people go to post things about their personal life all the time, the way you might on Instagram. So I think Elon sees that and he sees it as kind of a microphone. And you know, I, I honestly think that a big part of the reason why he's so interested in TWiTtter is because of that influence, you know, as we just talked about the former president and Elon must himself, when they tweet something controversial, it's news, it's, there's a whole new cycle that's built around it, right? You don't really get that from Facebook and, and some of these other social media platforms. So I, I think that is the main reason is for the influence that TWiTtter can have

Leo Laporte (00:53:24):
Is TWiTtter biased against the right. Somebody in the chat room says TWiTtter blocks everything today that doesn't fit the woke narrative.

Padre (00:53:35):
Yeah. I hear that all the time. And I would ask one question of everyone who has that opinion define what the woke narrative is.

Leo Laporte (00:53:42):
Yeah.

Padre (00:53:43):
You ask people don't know

Leo Laporte (00:53:44):
What it is, but I know it,

Padre (00:53:46):
The woke narrative, see, yeah. You get 15 different answers. The woke narrative is, well, I, I don't like that. So it's woke. Right, right. Okay. Well, no. How about this? If you do not communicate in a civil way, people will block you. I have a block bot that automatically does it for me. I have people that have created numerous accounts trying to get a around it just so they can say, it's not fair that you have a block bot. Well, that's silly if you can't communicate with me in a way that is going to encourage a civil conversation, why would I wanna waste my time? Speaking with you?

Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Elon says TWiTtter is biased against conservatives. If you actually look at it. And, and there was just a study by professors at M I T and Yale called is TWiTtter biased against conservatives. The challenge of inferring political bias in hyperpartisan ecosystem. The study basically concluded just what you just said, father Robert TWiTtter, doesn't block people because of what they say, they block it blocks 'em because of how they say it, which is fair, right?

Padre (00:54:51):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:52):
Block. If you're abusive, I don't care which side you're on block 'em.

Padre (00:54:58):
Yeah. And, and that's what my block bot does. I've looked at what it's blocking. It's just looking for sentiment. It's looking for how things are being expressed. Yeah. And it's blocking about 50, 50 people on the left and on the right. I don't want people yelling at me. There's nothing that comes productive out of you yelling at me. If you wanna have a great conversation, we can go back and forth. If you want to explain why you feel the way that you feel, I actually want to know that I, I become more intelligent. I become more informed about the world by hearing a posing viewpoints. I don't learn anything by someone saying, oh, that's just because you're a PTO priest or that's because you're whoa. Oh, that's because, oh man,

Leo Laporte (00:55:35):
You

Padre (00:55:35):
Know that, okay. I, I don't need that. Yeah. And so when people are saying TWiTtter is oppressing X, Y, Z voice, what they really mean is I feel like people aren't listening to me, scream into the ether and guess what? No one should listen to you scream into the ether. You should learn how to express yourself.

Leo Laporte (00:55:53):
So, so going back to our conversation, Nate, about the BBC, I would love to see a way in the United States that we could have a media that was not corporate bound, was not run by and owned by oligarchs, not run and owned by government either. Cuz that's not the solution. It's gotta be able to speak truth to power, but somehow independent, fair and free.

Nate Lanxon (00:56:15):
Don't you have PBS isn't that what PBS is supposed to be? No,

Leo Laporte (00:56:18):
<Laugh>, it's supposed to be. And I guess to some degree, PBS is more balanced than anything else. Although if you watch, for instance, they have a nightly news hour, the PBS news hour, the sponsors of which are all major us corporations. So do they have influence? Well, there have been some studies that say PBS only brings on spokespeople from major us corporations or think tanks funded by major us corporations. The influence of big business on the public discourse in the us is absolutely outsized.

Nate Lanxon (00:56:55):
Right. It is I, from what I, from what I hear, yes, I, I think that that is also the case here, but from a different point, I think that essentially it boils down a lot of time to, to money and privilege and where you were educated. Because if you look at a lot of the large media companies in Britain some of them are owned by American giants. Channel five, for instance, one of the main terrestrial broadcasters in the UK done by I can't remember who owns it now, but, but it is definitely at us owned. Channel four has been in talks to be taken private because that was set up in part to be a free service that basically makes the content that no other broadcaster would make. It's one of the reasons it's quite unusual, never the most popular, but always

Leo Laporte (00:57:42):
Paramount ones. Channel five

Nate Lanxon (00:57:45):
<Laugh> there you go. So paramount owns that in, in the UK as well. Wow. And then, and then on the other side you've got, you've got an establishment like the BBC that, you know, it always kind of tends to be run and influenced by people who have large political sway. Right. They don't have advertising product placement is illegal. You know, it's things like that make the British landscape different, but it is equally influenced I think by a different, a different type of power, but it's probably equal in size.

Padre (00:58:18):
You know, Leo, we had this discussion in the United States, not too long ago because we have PBS and PBS is still the, the most unbiased news source in our country.

Leo Laporte (00:58:27):
I think that's fair. Yes.

Padre (00:58:29):
I think that's, that's fair to say. Yes. And remember, I, I remember there was one time where they had Archer, Daniel Midland as the main sponsored news and, and there were, they were doing stories about what ADM was doing wrong in illegally. I'm like, okay, that's I like the, I love to hear that. But what was it two years ago, PBS ran a series about, I don't even remember what it was, but it was a darling of the Maga community. And there was this huge campaign defund PBS take away tax dollars from this woke narrative. And the thing is PBS had to remind them we're we are supported by sponsors. You know, we, we don't take your tax dollars, but even that became part of the anger machine of, oh, see the liberals have invaded PBS, which used to be a neutral news source. And it's like, well, I mean, PBS is at crossroads. Now they see where this is going. They're gonna lose corporate support. They're gonna lose public support and they're gonna cease to be a voice in the news, which they desperately need to be. So what's the other option. Take corporate money, take more corporate money, take the corporate money that will actually have conditions on what they can report on the, on the news. And there's no good solution for us right

Leo Laporte (00:59:43):
Now. Yeah. I just, I think it's a, a warning sign democracies do not flourish if there isn't a free press, moving on. Let's move on from media. Cause we've been talking about that a lot. Let's talk about apple. Apple is telling the developers. I, you know, when I first saw this headline, I thought, oh good news. That they're gonna pull apps that are out of date that are old from the app store. But now I'm starting to think maybe this isn't such a good plan. There are certainly a lot of apps in the apple store that haven't been updated in years. Some of them don't properly, but they're not all abandoned where and developers are starting to say, wait a minute, you mean I have to update my app, even though it doesn't need it, just to keep it on the app store. This is especially true of games. Here's a proto pop games tweet. I feel sick. Apple just sent me an email saying they're remov. I free game. Movoto because it's more than two years old. That's that's not fair. It's it doesn't need to be updated and people still download it.

Nate Lanxon (01:00:54):
I think there's a, should be a simple solution to this, which is you, you, it's a, check-in like, Hey, you know, you're up still live, right. You're still happy with it. Any changes to make, do you want, you know, maybe forced a, just to check that it still works like an approval process, but on a diluted level and that's, it doesn't need to be updated. You have, it's kinda like a news story you have published on updated on and that's quite helpful do that with apps published on most recent date, validated, checked for compatibility on such and such a date. Why shouldn't that be a problem? I hundred percent agree with it. It's ridiculous should not be pulled. Yeah, I'm a hundred percent with this developer on this one.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:01:38):
I also feel like it's not like a one size fits all kind of an issue. And I think that's part of it too. It's like if there's a game that people love and it's still working properly and it's still functioning and people are still playing it, that's very different than, you know, I don't know, maybe an email app or something that isn't being maintained and isn't working or might have like a bug in it or something like that. So I, I do think that one size fits all approach is, is gonna be D goals to apply here.

Leo Laporte (01:02:05):
This is part of Apple's problem is that the success of the app store has been so huge. And there are so many apps in there. You wanna, I can understand the desire to clean up the app store, to prune, prune out the weeds, but you can't, you just can't at scale, you know, you have to make arbitrary rules like, well, if it hasn't been updated in two years, it must be out of date. Costa <inaudible>, who's been very critical of the app store. He wrote a program called flick type keyboard, which was a keyboard for the watch design for visually impaired users. He says apple removed it because it hadn't been updated in two years. Meanwhile, games like pocket, God have not been updated by the developers for seven years, but they're still on the app store. So, but I think those are the kinds of things that are gonna happen at this scale. It's very difficult. But there's a problem.

Nate Lanxon (01:02:51):
Yeah. If the app Go

Leo Laporte (01:02:53):
Ahead, Nate, Lisa,

Nate Lanxon (01:02:55):
There are much bigger problems on the app store than than an app that works line that you can still download and use. Right? Not having been updated for two years, copycat apps or apps that are just garbage. Like there is so much bad app content on the app store and, and on and on the Google play store as well that they do far better to just do a urge of apps that have not been downloaded and are just clogging up search. There you

Leo Laporte (01:03:24):
Go. Maybe use that. Maybe use that as the criterion nobody's downloaded this in three years. Maybe it's time to remove it.

Nate Lanxon (01:03:31):
Yeah. That would be for me, at least that would make more sense. Get rid of that. Get rid of the clones that you can really really game.

Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
Oh man, there's so many Wordle clones. I thought they got rid of them and they're more sprang up and, and they're not free.

Nate Lanxon (01:03:47):
They're not. And look at the titles and the names that you can game this, like nineties SEO, putting different words in the meta tags. Like it's, it's really, really bad. It's really bad.

Leo Laporte (01:03:58):
There's also the larger question of some games are art. Even if they haven't been updated in years, if they're still playable, it's a work of art. It's, you know, you don't ask Picasso to update well, you couldn't, but you wouldn't ask Picasso to, to update a painting just cuz he had, you know, he finished it. Lisa, I, we interrupted you. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:04:19):
Oh yeah, no, I was just gonna say, you know, it's one thing if an app is in danger of possibly not working anymore because it hasn't been updated in seven years, maybe, you know, if it hasn't been updated that long, there's a chance. It won't, you know, this is just a hypothetical scenario, but I could see apple doing that. If there's a chance, it wouldn't be supported by the next version of iOS or something like that. You know, I think apple had part of why it's so strict in its policies is because it doesn't want you to have to sift through all of these apps that don't work or don't function properly. Like when you go to the app store, there's a certain level of trust and whatever you download is going to run smoothly and it's designed and optimized for these devices. So I get that apple really wants to crack down on making sure developers keep up and keep their apps updated.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:05:04):
But going back to what Nate was saying, you know, there's bigger problems, obviously, you know, copycat apps and clone apps are a much bigger issue, but I think it all falls under that same umbrella of, you know, there is a certain level of trust, but at what cost does that come to the developer community too? I mean, you know, developers have not been that happy with apple over the past couple of years. And I think, you know, that's also part of, you know, this is just kind of adding fuel to, to the fire in that regard. But, but that's all I was gonna add.

Nate Lanxon (01:05:38):
It's taken me.

Padre (01:05:39):
I wanna go the other way.

Leo Laporte (01:05:40):
Okay, go ahead, Robert. And

Padre (01:05:43):
I want both apple and Android, not just to remove apps that are not updated on their stores. I want them to remove them from my phone. So cuz I've got apps on my phone that have been transferred from phone to phone.

Leo Laporte (01:05:54):
Oh you want us to do your job? I'm not exactly spring

Padre (01:05:58):
Clean. The whole dang nuke from orbit is what I'm

Leo Laporte (01:06:02):
Saying with you. But I just downloaded slay this SP all right.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:06:08):
You know, I don't, I don't want, I wouldn't want any company to go that far, but I do agree that it would be nice if there were more tools built into these operating systems that helped you realize like what's on your phone and how old some of those apps might be. Because even as a tech journalist, I have so many apps on my phone that I don't use or maybe I downloaded them once for a specific story that I was working on. And then I forgot about 'em. So it's, it's a lot, it's, it's a burden on people to do it themselves. So I, I would love to see more of that in iOS and Android updates.

Leo Laporte (01:06:42):
I also have turned on the thing that says, if anybody in my family down lives an app, which means there's an interesting, surprising number. <Laugh> well, let's put it this way, Lisa. Yeah. Couple of days ago said I didn't just buy Tinder. I said why? I said, I don't, I didn't think you just bought Tinder. She said, well, it says I just bought Tinder <laugh>. I said I hope you didn't buy Tinder. It turns out our 19 year old son bought Tinder and it showed up on all our phones though. So it just, you know, that got Tinder.

Padre (01:07:16):
Wait, do you have to buy Tinder? I thought Tinder was a free app.

Leo Laporte (01:07:19):
Well, for some reason he's paying 10 bucks a month. Maybe it's super Tinder, Tinder pro Tinder

Padre (01:07:24):
Pro Tinder plus

Leo Laporte (01:07:25):
<Laugh> it's plus I don't know. I wouldn't know either. You and I, neither of us know talking about, mm least. Do you have anything to say about Tinder plus?

Lisa Eadicicco (01:07:38):
I was gonna say at I'm with Robert on this one, I thought it was free. So hopefully it's not a scam app or something like

Leo Laporte (01:07:45):
That. Oh God, I didn't even think of that.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:07:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:48):
Oh man.

Nate Lanxon (01:07:50):
I have found three of apples own apps that would, it would have to remove under its own policy. Just in the time we've been talking about

Leo Laporte (01:07:57):
Apples apps. That's right. Wow. Remember the robot apple remote wasn't updated for five years. Cause the guy's the guy was busy.

Nate Lanxon (01:08:05):
There's one here called indoor survey published by apple that's marks is two years old. So that would have to go there's a Texas Holden game. Apple released apparently to great fanfare. According some of the

Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
Reviews. I don't remember that. Wow.

Nate Lanxon (01:08:18):
Yeah. Well apparently apple mold them. There's anyone else? Because it hasn't been updated for two years. So

Leo Laporte (01:08:25):
There you go.

Nate Lanxon (01:08:26):
There you go.

Leo Laporte (01:08:28):
Oh, oh the chat room saying, oh he bought Tinder silver <laugh>.

Padre (01:08:36):
Is that like a Cougar finder?

Leo Laporte (01:08:37):
Yeah. C finder. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Let's take a little break and we will have more great panel. Nice to see you Nate Langston from the UK tech editor at Bloomberg, you know where this is a very international show. I like this. You're in. Tell me again, what part of England you're in?

Nate Lanxon (01:08:56):
I'm in a, a lovely little town called bros born, which is slightly north of London. Nice. And it's mostly trees and birds and animals and I oh,

Leo Laporte (01:09:05):
Sounds wonderful. Sounds lovely. Yeah. Can you take the train into town?

Nate Lanxon (01:09:09):
I can, if I want to, or I can go and walk down the canal for part of it.

Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
Oh, how nice. Hmm. Get yourself a little boat row down the thas.

Nate Lanxon (01:09:19):
Oh. There's people who live on the house boats around here as well. Yeah. It's great. Sounds great. Beer and all sorts. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
Also with his father Robert baller, he's in Rome, actually a little tiny place called Vatican city. Up above the you're in the top floor of the jet ISIT house. Is that where you are?

Padre (01:09:38):
This is actually not just the roof of the Jesuit house. If you were to go to Google earth right now. Yes. And look at our house. You could see my office cuz it's like a little tower on, on the roof now

Leo Laporte (01:09:47):
I'm gonna have, and behind

Padre (01:09:48):
Me, this is actually a window. If, if I were to open up the window you could see St. Peter's behind me.

Leo Laporte (01:09:55):
What's your three, three words for the location.

Padre (01:09:59):
Oh, oh my gosh. That's right. I should figure that out.

Leo Laporte (01:10:01):
You should know. So like quickly go there. How would I if I had the long longitude and latitude, I guess I could go there.

Padre (01:10:10):
I think Google earth actually gives you the longitude

Leo Laporte (01:10:13):
St. Peter's

Padre (01:10:14):
Second.

Leo Laporte (01:10:15):
Not St. Petersburg, Florida. St. Peter's Vatican city St. Peter's

Padre (01:10:21):
You for Casa. Casa generally. D desu.

Leo Laporte (01:10:24):
Well, yeah, it's easy for you to say. Is that Latin? Whoa, here we are. Here we

Padre (01:10:31):
Are. We go. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:10:32):
So now you're down here, right? Somewhere around here.

Padre (01:10:34):
We're on the left side. Okay. You see where you see all those tennis courts right there? Yeah. That, those, those soccer fields. Yeah. Okay. That building that the that the blue pin is on. Move your mouse over to the right, right there. That's us. That's us. So zoom in

Leo Laporte (01:10:45):
On that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh.

Padre (01:10:48):
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now move down a little bit down.

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
Yeah,

Padre (01:10:50):
Yeah. Down right there. That, that square I'm inside that

Leo Laporte (01:10:54):
The big one or the little one that,

Padre (01:10:56):
That, no, the big one. That's that's my office.

Leo Laporte (01:10:58):
Wait, let's look in the window. See if we can see him. Oh, I can't. I can't get any closer. Look at that. That's where you're. That's where you are right now.

Padre (01:11:07):
That's where I am

Leo Laporte (01:11:08):
Right now. So jealous. Is there a good Gela down this? Down the road or anything?

Padre (01:11:13):
Oh, there are two. One is called old bridge and the other one is called Camilla.

Leo Laporte (01:11:16):
Wow. Look at this. I can't believe it. Look where you are.

Padre (01:11:21):
You, you can come visit anytime you want. And that's our garden. That to the left hand.

Leo Laporte (01:11:25):
That's that's we can wander around and

Padre (01:11:26):
Nevada cats live.

Leo Laporte (01:11:27):
That's where the cats are. Okay. That's and who the statue of

Padre (01:11:31):
That's fall. I mean, Jesus,

Leo Laporte (01:11:34):
You gotta do that. I've heard of him. Okay. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:11:40):
I'm surprised. There's only one. Okay. let's take a little break. Also. Lovely to have Lisa at a Chico here. In fact, I'm gonna put you to work in a second, Lisa, because there are rumors. There are rumors floating around and I mean around, but first a word from audible. We love audible. Audible's been a sponsor for our shows for, I think more than a decade. Just the best place to get audio entertainment, whether it's audio books, per performances, best sellers to celebrity, memoirs, mysteries, thrillers, motivation. The app audible app makes it easy to listen. Anytime, anywhere you'll discover exclusive audible originals from top celebrities, renowned experts, exciting new voices in the audio. You can listen to audible while traveling, working out. I kind of miss it. I used to have, I've been an audible member since 2000, 22 years now. I used to listen when I commuted into San Francisco to tech TV and I kind of miss it, cuz I would get a couple of hours, at least sometimes as much as three or four hours a day in the car, listening to great audio literature, audio books. I'm gonna make a recommendation cuz I'm I'm listening to maybe, you know this one, father Robert, do you know the Baba verse?

Padre (01:13:03):
I love the BA verse.

Leo Laporte (01:13:04):
I love, I love the Baba verse. The Baba verse, the premise of the Baba verse is fascinating. It's annoyment probe. The idea is this guy, Bob, Bob, Joe Hansen, very successful game developer write, you know, signs, a contract to have his head frozen, you know, just in case cuz he just sold his company. He's got extra money. He's in Vegas for a trade show, signs the contract. And I don't think it's a spoiler. Cause it happens. The first five pages killed immediately run over by a car. His head is frozen. The next thing he knows, he wakes up a hundred years later and he's got no body. He's an artificial intelligence made outta his brain and he goes and, and, and the story is fantastic. He replicates himself. They go out and explore the universe. They meet alien civilizations. They made hostile aliens. There's space warfare that there's also a lot of humor in it. And you gotta listen to it cuz Ray Porter reads it. He's the guy who did the Martian. You you'll recognize his voice.

Bob (01:14:10):
Mr. Johansen. It's Bob, please. You're not talking to my father.

Leo Laporte (01:14:15):
I love his delivery. That's what's so cool about audiobook from audible. They you're not reading them. You're listening to them, their performances and they are so great. Audible includes thousands of podcasts for favorites and exclusive new series. That by the way, the Bobba verse is an audible exclusive. It wasn't slated for an audio book. So audible brought 'em in and record, got ready to do it and recorded it all four volumes of fifth volumes on the way. Audible gives members a chance to listen, to and discover new favorites and explore different formats. Part of what makes your membership so much more valuable things like the exclusive words plus music series or maybe a podcast you never thought of or considered before, even theatrical performances. Now as an audible member, you could choose a title a month to keep from their entire to keep I should say, I should emphasize to keep, I have been a member for 22 years.

Leo Laporte (01:15:09):
I have more than I think I'm up to 600 in my library. And I go back when Doune came out, I thought I'm gonna re-listen to Doune I'll go back and listen to 'em again. They're yours. As long as you're remember to keep in your catalog, the best sellers, the new releases, you can download them. You can stream 'em. You can listen anywhere on any time on any device. I even listen on my Amazon echo. I can say echo, read to me and it'll pick up where I left off, which is awesome. I'm listening in the car. I get home. I say, read to me. I'll pick up right where I left off 2022 is all about celebrating our newfound. Self-Awareness making positive change. Audible helps make space for what matters to you. It's a destination, not just for entertainment, but for wellness. Whether you're looking to soul search, be inspired, work toward new goals, unwind or simply be entertained.

Leo Laporte (01:15:57):
Audible can make you happy. It'll certainly make you smile or cry or sigh. It's got it all. You'll find the best of what you love or something new to discover. If you want to try it, new members can try audible for 30 days free, which by the way, with the new audible originals means lots of listening, hundreds and hundreds of volumes, you can listen to download. The audible app gets started with a free trial audible, a U D I B L e.com/TWiT. That audible plus catalog is is a huge boon. And you can listen all you want, or you can text TWiT to 500, 500 a U D IB audible.com/TWiTtter text TWiT to 500 to 500 to start your free trial. You'll also see on my library. I just bought Neil Stevenson's termination shock. I'm a big Neil Stevenson for fan. And I'm really excited about that father. Robert, do you still listen to audio books

Padre (01:16:59):
All the time? Okay. I, I have to ask you this. Leo, do you re-listen to audio books?

Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
Sometimes, like I said, I like June I re-listened to that is a, I've got three offers. Amazing. Okay. I always listened to T Taylor. Yes. Andy Weir. Bobba verse and Daniel Suarez project hill. Mary is incredible, highly recommend that. And of course Daniel's a friend of the, both, all three of them. Well, I don't know. I don't know Tennessee Taylor yet. I hope to make a friend of him, but both the Andy Weir and Daniel soars have been on the, on the show and Ray Porter, res project, hail Mary, and that same kind of great style. Wonderful, wonderful. Or you get in Spanish and then Raoul, Lauren will read it for you. So either way, Paul Y hail Mary <laugh>. All right, here, it comes the round pixel watch. Now Lisa, tell me Google filing a trademark application for the words pixel watch. Does that confirm the, the, this watch or is it, I mean, they, that doesn't maybe they don't want anybody else to call it a pixel watch.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:18:07):
Yeah. I mean, I think you're you're right. Like, it doesn't confirm anything yet. They could just be doing it because they don't want anyone else using that branding. Although I don't think anyone would because they probably make things really confusing. But I don't think it confirms anything, but we've been hearing so many reports that Google, you know, for years, not even just recently, but for years we've been hearing that Google has been working on it. So own smart watch. And by we I'm talking about the collective news cycle and the rumors and reports that have been floating around for years, not anything that I'm specifically aware of or anything like that. But we have been hearing more reports recently and one of which I think one of the most detailed ones came from insider. I believe it, it might have been December, I'd have to double check, but that report had a, a lot of details actually written by one of my former colleagues since I used to work there. You Langley, my former colleague at insider wrote this great report about how Google was working on a pixel watch. And it'll probably have, I think that report mentioned they like the design possibly being round, which wouldn't be very surprising because I think all Android wear watches are round. I'd have to double check that, but I'm pretty sure they all have that. I think you're design. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen a square one, but again, I could be missing fossil

Leo Laporte (01:19:25):
Might make one, but I, you know, I think they're round. Yeah.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:19:29):
But yeah. And you know, that report mentioned a bunch of things that we would expect like health tracking features and things like that. But you know, I, I wouldn't be, there's also a, a bunch of things that you can kind of assume would be on a Google smart watch. If Google did make a smart watch, like integration with Fitbit seems pretty logical. You know, the late a version of, of where OS, but I think to me, what would stand out the most is, you know, Google has done a really great thing with its pixel phones in that it kind of has a lot of software features that make it stand out and, you know, that's a hard thing to do in, you know, a, a space like the smartphone market. That's already pretty crowded and pretty dominated by apple and Samsung. But I, I really like the way Google thinks about, you know, taking care of some of those inconveniences that we experience on our phones sometimes like, you know, having the Google assist didn't screen calls for you and things like that, or estimating wait times how long you'll be on hold, things like that.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:20:32):
So I'm personally hoping that we see some version of that in a Google smart watch. I don't know what it would be, but like really thinking about how to improve the way we use these devices. And I think that's one thing that we've seen from Google that is pretty unique. So I hope that carries over to the pixel watch if it is in fact real, of course,

Leo Laporte (01:20:52):
One of the things you, you told me in your article and I, I was, I have forgotten this. Google's never made a watch.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:20:59):
Yeah. They don't have a, their own consumer watch yet. And that's the thing it's, it's kind of similar to what the smartphone market was like for Google before it came out, out with it, pixel phones, I mean, it had its nexus phones for a while, but those weren't really as popular, but Google was still so influential obviously because it's the operator of Android. So it has this really huge, you know, presence in the mobile space, but it's also a competitor, you know, it, it's weird in that it, it has to partner with the company that it competes with. And that would be the case for smart watches too. And I think that would be a challenge for Google, you know, having, if it does release a pixel watch, it will have to, you know, obviously promote that while also working with Samsung, which would then be one of its competitors. And then also differentiate its own watch from Fitbits watches. So it's, it, it would, you know, there's, there's a lot going on there, so it could cause some confusion.

Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
It kind of makes sense because Google bought Fitbit that they, you know, they still release Fitbits, but they're not under the Google brand that they might want a brand to watch a pixel watch. Do you think that this is the pixel watch? The one that was left behind in a restaurant? <Laugh> <laugh>,

Lisa Eadicicco (01:22:14):
You know, I actually haven't seen that. I don't know. It, it

Leo Laporte (01:22:18):
Looks like the renders,

Lisa Eadicicco (01:22:20):
It does look like the renders, but who knows if, if that's even legitimate, who knows how old it is or if that was even meant to be something that would even be a final version of it. There's a lot of questions we won't really know until Google comes out and says it.

Leo Laporte (01:22:33):
Yeah. whoever left it in the restaurant apparently took the band with them. <Laugh> <laugh> yeah.

Padre (01:22:41):
Maybe there isn't a band.

Leo Laporte (01:22:42):
Oh, maybe, maybe it's pocket, watch

Padre (01:22:44):
A pocket watch.

Leo Laporte (01:22:45):
I would get that.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:22:46):
That would be pretty cool.

Leo Laporte (01:22:47):
I would buy a Google pocket watch, but

Padre (01:22:49):
A chain in that thing and have a monocle at the end. I'm I'm in

Lisa Eadicicco (01:22:53):
A Google glass. <Laugh>

Padre (01:22:55):
Here's the thing though. Google's pixel strategy from the phone to the, to the, the pixel book has always been to inspire their partners to make something better. That's that's what they've

Leo Laporte (01:23:07):
The first one was the motor 360. Right. And that was a great watch. It was round. I really liked exactly.

Padre (01:23:13):
Actually, I, I, you had it, you bought it. Yes. And then you gave it away and I got it. I wore it for six months. Is that where that realized? Oh, it wasn't really waterproof <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:23:26):
Oh

Padre (01:23:27):
Yeah. It's kinda a bummer. No,

Leo Laporte (01:23:28):
I really like, but the problem is if you are an apple user, you're gonna end up using an apple watch.

Padre (01:23:34):
Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:23:35):
And if you're a Android user, you're probably a Samsung user. So you're gonna use a Samsung watch again.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:23:42):
Well, I think that's the thing here too, is that there is, you know, the Android space is, is more fragmented. You know, there is no, just like you kind of mentioned right now, there is no, just one answer to the apple watch on the Android side of things. There's choice. Right. There's Samsung, there's Fitbit, which works across both there's fossil. So I think Google has an opportunity. Like we were just talking about to say, Hey, this is the ideal Android smartwatch experience. You know, just like the pixels kind of become a blueprint for what Android smartphones could be. A pixel watch might do that for Android smartwatches. So I, I'm very interested to see what, what Google does with this, especially since it's pretty late to the game at this point, compared to rest of the industry

Padre (01:24:28):
Question to you, which is so yeah, with the other pixel products, Google has always tried to fill in something that they feel is missing. Like the products don't get, right. So with the, with the phones, it was look, you need to have better screens and faster processors with the Chromebooks. It was, you need a premium Chromebook, no more of this $50 to $200 stuff. And they approved that. That could work. So what does Google think is missing in the, in the Android watch arena? What, what, what are the features that it wants to include and inspire the other manufacturers to put in?

Lisa Eadicicco (01:25:00):
Yeah, I, I think that's what we're hoping to see. I mean, it's hard. I can't answer that question for Google, but what I'm hoping to see is, I guess I, I think a lot of it's gonna come down to the software honestly, but again, that's a tricky question because how much of it is gonna be specific to the pixel watch if there is a pixel watch and how much of that is just gonna be part of whatever the next version of where OS is that, you know, would come to Samsung's may smart watches and fossil smart watches and presumably, you know, other companies that partner with Google. So I think that's gonna continue to be the challenge is again, like having Google say like, Hey, this is what we feel like needs to be done better. And we're doing that on our product versus how much does it, you know, also share with the rest of the industry. So I'm, I'm curious to see how they strike that balance.

Leo Laporte (01:25:50):
It's a tough job, because apple is so dominant mm-hmm <affirmative> and then if they're not, like I said, Samsung is what could you do that apple and Samsung don't do well, good battery life might be something 

Lisa Eadicicco (01:26:05):
That would absolutely

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
More than one day battery life,

Lisa Eadicicco (01:26:08):
But Fitbit already does that really Well's true, at least compared to apple and Samsung. So I, I, I hope that Google, you know, gets some inspiration from Fitbit, which they now own. But yeah, I mean, battery life is, is definitely a big part of that, for

Leo Laporte (01:26:24):
Sure. There's so much parody. I have both the Samsung galaxy watch four and an apple watch series six, and there's so much parody between them for activity, heart rate, sleep monitoring. I mean, it's hard to imagine what you, what you're missing except the things that apple is historically, but not been able to do. No. One's been able to do things like blood sugar monitoring and blood pressure, which is both of, which are very hard to do some watches claim, blood pressure. I

Lisa Eadicicco (01:26:51):
Wonder, I think a lot of it, yeah. I think a lot of it's gonna come down to how they decide to show that information. And I mean, Google, you know, you were asking, what can they possibly do differently? What can they bring to this, that apple and Samsung I haven't already done yet. You know, one thing that I would personally like to see is, you know, we have so many health metrics now that can be measured on our wrist. And you just mentioned some of the ones that we can't measure yet. Which is probably a good thing because, you know, I, I think having, I have a lot of opinions on having access to that kind of data from home and on one side, it's great that you can learn more about your health on the other side, without the context of a doctor. I kind of worry about having all that information at our fingertips. Right. But I, I, I honestly think that companies can be doing a lot more to make this data useful to us,

Leo Laporte (01:27:39):
Samsung, you know, part of the reason Samsung promised the Google assistant on their watch, they still haven't done it. Maybe that's something, I mean, I guess

Lisa Eadicicco (01:27:49):
I hope so. I mean, I think there's a big opportunity for, you know, Google to really prove how useful the assistant can be on smart watches because theoretically, you know, it's, you know, that, that is the, you know, the Google assistant is in so many different products. I don't find myself using it that often on phones, but I use Siri on my apple watch all the time because it's such a small screen. I don't really wanna type on it. I don't want to really navigate the, watch that much using swipes, like for short things and short interactions. Absolutely. But if I wanna quickly set a timer or check the weather or something like that, I use Siri all the time for things like that. So I think Google has a big opportunity to really show what the assistant can do on a pixel watch.

Leo Laporte (01:28:33):
Interesting. Yeah, you're right. That's we don't have the assistant on any of these watches yet. Do we does most do it, does fossil do it?

Lisa Eadicicco (01:28:43):
It is on some smart watches, I believe, but, but I, I, I do think that it was promised to come to the Samsung galaxy watch four, and I don't think it's come out yet. I'd have to double check, but I don't think

Leo Laporte (01:28:54):
It has. In fact, I think Samsungs, if they're not putting it off forever, they're delaying it significantly. Yeah. Right. I mean, it shows you that Google still has some mind share that people are even talking about this. Somebody in the chat room says any Google watch should have the feature that, you know, Google releases it, then kills it a month later, they'd be competing with the kin and cube quibi and CNN plus for the, the quickest death.

Nate Lanxon (01:29:22):
Quibi, that's what I was trying to think

Leo Laporte (01:29:24):
Earlier.

Padre (01:29:25):
Good. Old, more recent

Nate Lanxon (01:29:26):
Comparison. I could have pulled out than the kit.

Leo Laporte (01:29:30):
No, I like the kit. No, no, I liked it.

Padre (01:29:33):
I loved it.

Leo Laporte (01:29:35):
The Palm Zion. I don't even know that one.

Padre (01:29:38):
It was the product that was manufactured, marketed, and then destroyed before it was ever released. Oh, that is definitely the shortest product ever

Leo Laporte (01:29:46):
Million. No, wait a minute. Microsoft says home of beer didn't they do a surface tablet, lightweight surface tablet.

Padre (01:29:54):
Oh, the, the two screen.

Leo Laporte (01:29:55):
Yeah. No, the, the courier they never did, but they also did a no. Or the duo. Yeah. There's a lot add products out there. Come to think of it. But remember was the first thing satin Nadela did when he took over his CEO and said, we're not releasing that. And there was a warehouse full of them. Oh, that's right. That's right. Where surface? Not the mini. I can't remember what it was called, but it was kind of, oh,

Padre (01:30:20):
What about the Threecom Audrey?

Leo Laporte (01:30:22):
Oh, the Audrey, which is the kitchen computer. <Laugh> that's right. For all you gals who like to work in the kitchen <laugh> I was such a, you'll love the Audrey kitchen computer. Yeah, that was a long time ago. That was ancient history.

Padre (01:30:39):
Yeah. We're digging. We're digging back now.

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
Would they announce it? So Google iOS coming up, it's a weird non it's, not exactly hybrid slightly hybrid event, mostly online, but there'll be a few people at the event, mostly developers and Google employees. Would that be where they would announce it? Prosser? Who said they would announce it in may, is now backing backtracking and saying he's one of the big Google pixel rumors, rumor guys. He actually does apple rumors too. He's now saying they'll show it or talk about it at Google IO, but won't release it until October. That seems like a stupid plan. <Laugh>

Padre (01:31:17):
No, I'm pretty sure that Google is just gonna release another messaging app. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:31:21):
That's the killer. There it is the killer for the pixel watch messaging.

Padre (01:31:27):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:31:27):
Brilliant. Cuz you've always trusted Google with your messages. All right. Maybe not. Let's see. Speaking of Google vice had a great article on Google's AI powered inclusive warn feature. This is part of, kind of a grammar checker. That's rolling out this month for Google docs. And of course vice having some fun with it. For instance, one of their motherboard, senior staff writers typed annoyed, Google suggested angry or upset, which is not a good replacement for annoyed. Then social editor, Emily Lipstein typed in motherboard. As in the name of this website into a document, Google said, you're being insensitive. <Laugh> using the word motherboard. Some of these words may not be inclusive to all readers consider using different words. Then another person, a journalist, Rebecca Barrett, Reba tweeted that she got the warning on the word landlord, which Google said, you should say proper or proprietor. Maybe this isn't gonna be well, you know, they're working on it, let's say they're working on it.

Padre (01:32:48):
I, I am not so much interested in the whole inclusive language grammar check as I am in the technology that they're using to do this. My understanding is this isn't just a, a find and trigger. Is it

Leo Laporte (01:33:01):
GPT?

Padre (01:33:02):
This is actual, this is actual context analysis. And if, if it is that, that would be a great hook because right now I'm paying Amazon for context analysis and that's expensive. If Google could give me a product, I would definitely try it.

Leo Laporte (01:33:15):
<Laugh>

Nate Lanxon (01:33:17):
That is interesting. I've used, I've used that on not, not this and not for quite some time now. But a script that picked out language in, in job specs and in adverts or jobs to, to try and make sure that you weren't using language and keywords and phrasing that could put off a more diverse pool of, of candidates for a position. And there was a really interesting study done which I don't have to hand, cause it's only just come back to my, my mind, but I'm sure it can be Googled a study done about in inclusive language within the world of job applications. And actually you get a much rich or can get a much richer workforce by tuning the language used in your job in your job specs. And I've, I've used that before. How, how effective that is long term is hard to measure at least from my perspective. But I, I do think that there there's a, there's a kernel of validity in some of these things that can be, can be helpful, perhaps not quite to this level, but but sometimes

Leo Laporte (01:34:22):
Yeah, well we we have a sponsor Grammarly and I use Grammarly. My wife needs Grammarly cuz she can, she can sometimes she's, you know, she's the boss, she runs the place. And as you know, she's kinda look a lot of stuff to do. Sometimes she'll or emails will seem Kurt, cuz she's just giving you the information and Grammarly will say, you know, maybe just, you know, please, and thank you. And, and I think that that's appropriate and she appreciates it when they, when they reminds her, you know, you gotta be nice. Sometimes you gotta be nice craziness going on in the world of travel. After a judge in Florida lifted the CDCs requirement for masks on airplanes and on buses and on trains. Uber went along and lifted the mask mandate for drivers and riders. I'm curious since we've got people all over the world here, you know, here in California, I just went yesterday we had our big for the first time, since the pandemic make our big parade and celebration, it's called butter and eggs day and it's a heart attack in the making <laugh> but it's a lot of fun.

Leo Laporte (01:35:26):
And I went downtown and we watched the parade in the cutest little chicken town contest, no masks, no social distancing. People were so happy to get outside and party and have fun. And it was as if it had, it was like two years ago. And I'm just curious, Nate, what's it like in the UK right now? Here in the United States, there seems to be a, a growing, regardless of what's happening with COVID a growing desire to just say Chuck it all and go back to the way it used to be.

Nate Lanxon (01:35:56):
We, we, yeah, we haven't had masks enforced for, for quite some time now. So Uber, Uber dropped it when the law said it was no longer mandated. I can't remember exactly when that was, but it was, it was, it was a little while ago and, and the numbers had been very, very high. But the number of hospitalizations were, were relatively it low. So they, they just stuck to it. And now, and now infection rates are falling again, but it's been a long time since I've felt pressure to wear a mask. I've done it out of courtesy on occasion, but it's, it's very, it's very much not expected here right

Leo Laporte (01:36:33):
Now. Apple has ended the mask mandate in retail stores in the us, Amazon made mass optional last month for warehouse workers. Big tech companies are starting to bring their workers back by the way, kicking and screaming. Cause the workers don't wanna come back. What's it like in Italy right now?

Padre (01:36:52):
Everyone's running.

Leo Laporte (01:36:53):
<Laugh> really

Padre (01:36:55):
Well. Not everyone. I mean outside, it's still pretty much everyone takes it down. A of puts it over their nose, but in the Vatican, you're still required to wear mask. And in the areas, the main areas of Rome, people understand what happens if the rates start going back up.

Leo Laporte (01:37:10):
Right. And so out of Italy got hit everyone. So hard, fair mask early on, right.

Padre (01:37:14):
We were the first in the Western world to get hit and we got hit so hard and people learned from that. Yeah. And, and also, I mean, everyone in my house, we, we wear masks. None of us had had a flu or a cold for two years. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:37:27):
That's the other reason to keep it on. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get a cold <laugh> that's a good reason. I didn't, I didn't ask you, Lisa, are you on the east coast of the west coast?

Lisa Eadicicco (01:37:38):
Yeah. I'm on the east coast of New York

Leo Laporte (01:37:40):
Where there have been spiking happening.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:37:45):
Yeah. And you see, for the most part, I feel like it's kind of mixed. I do see people with masks, but especially outside, I also see people not wearing them. The one place you definitely continue to see them a lot is the subway. Of course. Yeah. You know, every pretty much everyone on the Subway's wearing a mask. Yeah. There's, there'll be a couple of people that might not have one, but I feel like that's usually the, the exception for the most part. Good. But I mean, indoors restaurants, things like that, like, you know, people used to at least kind of walk in with their mask on and then take it down. But now I think people are for the most part, just, you know, not really wearing them as much indoors and restaurants, at least from what I've observed.

Leo Laporte (01:38:25):
I think I wanted there to be like a day where everybody said it's over and that's not gonna, it's not gonna be that way. And in fact, you know, if I, there are places I will continue to wear a, I'm gonna, you know, I've got a pretty good supply of them now. And it should be of the things it should be okay to do either. I think,

Nate Lanxon (01:38:43):
Yeah. One of the things that's that's happened over the last couple of days, that's got a lot of people, very annoyed. Here is the emphasis on a certain lawmaker in our conservative government here who so badly wants every civil servant to be back in the office that he printed out a very, very passive aggressive letter and left it on their desk saying, sorry, I missed you. I hope see back at your desk

Leo Laporte (01:39:14):
And the junk, oh geez.

Nate Lanxon (01:39:16):
Youngman, who does this? His name is Jacob Remo. I will, I will bite my tongue in the interest of, of, of not, you know, making a fool out of myself, but just Google it, have a look at it. It's he, he, he is the sort of person you would expect to do something like this. The fact that he's done something like this has made a lot of people or just face Palm so hard, but it goes back and this and the tech angle here is about working from home and about how effective can people be when your office job is a desk job, how effective can you still be having two years of experience doing those jobs remotely? And the answer is for, I think, many people very effective. So these kind of passive aggressive ways of trying to get people back into the office when they're very happy and very potentially efficient doing their jobs from home one or two days a week, it's just, it's very offensive. And a lot of, a lot of people in the public over the week in have been really, quite angry about, about this.

Leo Laporte (01:40:14):
Here's here's the note featuring the gray eight seal at the top. Sorry you were out. When I visited, I looked forward to seeing you in the office very soon with every good wish. The Wright honor, Jason, Jacob, Bri Morgan P minister for Brexit opportunities. There's a title. Yeah. And, and I think it's very nice that it's pinned to green bays, which is nice. It's very British, very English. Yeah. Very nice.

Nate Lanxon (01:40:40):
Looks like

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
He had these printed up. <Laugh>

Nate Lanxon (01:40:44):
Yeah. It's absence, please. Please think before printing this passive aggressive email, that's what they should be adding into Google docs. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:40:52):
Do you really,

Nate Lanxon (01:40:53):
You realize you sound like a,

Leo Laporte (01:40:55):
You sound like a TWiT.

Nate Lanxon (01:40:57):
Yeah. A TWiT. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:40:59):
There's,

Padre (01:40:59):
There's, there's a balance that we have to strike. There are definitely some work spaces that need at least a minimum of interaction between people. It, it does help in the creative process. It helps in sort of things out quickly. However, I office managers have to come to grips with the fact that we've proven that they're useless in many situations yep. That employees work much better when they don't have an office manager hovering over their shoulder, that they'll get as much or more done on their own. So now the question becomes, all right, what are we paying people for? Are we paying them to fill a space at a desk? Repaying them for productivity are repaying them to be part of a team in which they collaborate and cooperate with their fellow work workers.

Leo Laporte (01:41:39):
I think this is shake out. Well, I think there are some managers who don't get it, but I think the vast majority of managers will, if, if they're not by themselves or forced by their employees, one or the other, and it's gonna in the long run, have a beneficial effect that this, and does drill your mentality of sitting at a desk nine to five Monday through Friday. I think that's almost over, California's actually considering a four day work week, a 36 hour work week. I think

Nate Lanxon (01:42:05):
That would great. I mean, in France, it's, they've passed laws to, to ban from being forced to check emails after hours. Like you can, you can go pretty heavy handed. I

Leo Laporte (01:42:14):
Love that. <Laugh> you know why you have to do that?

Padre (01:42:17):
You get fine, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:19):
Because their bosses will say, I sent you an email at 2:00 AM. Why did you not respond?

Padre (01:42:23):
Yep.

Nate Lanxon (01:42:23):
Yeah. Yep. But

Lisa Eadicicco (01:42:25):
Yeah, that was the other thing I was, oh, go

Leo Laporte (01:42:26):
Ahead. Go

Nate Lanxon (01:42:27):
Ahead. No, go ahead, Lisa.

Lisa Eadicicco (01:42:28):
Yeah, I was gonna mention, you know, aside from more flexibility in terms of where you're working, I do feel like the pandemic has raised awareness about burnout and yes. You know, the culture around burnout. Because I think, you know, at first, when we all started working from home, the opposite was happening, right? Like you're, you're home. There's not much else to do because you can't really go anywhere. And I think a lot of people probably ended up working more in, in the early days of the pandemic, especially us in the news industry, for sure, because there was so much going on that we needed to be covering. But you know, I, I do think that it, it has brought up a, a good conversation around burnout and being aware, you know, having managers be aware of burnout and drawing that line between your personal and your work life, when it all starts to kind of blend together as it has over the past couple of years.

Leo Laporte (01:43:16):
I love it. I think, you know, I, I follow the anti work subreddit, which has really actually helped open my eyes to how awful some workplaces are. And I'm glad workers are standing up and saying, yeah, that's not okay, this we're not gonna stand for this. And I feel bad for a young, for the younger generation now faced with jobs that are so pitifully paid and mark so many hours that all they can basically do is work, eat, sleep. They'll never own a home. They'll never be able to put any money aside. That's not right. That's not how this is supposed to be. And I, for one would like to blame the oligarchs because they're doing just fine. Just better

Padre (01:43:55):
Than fine. Better fine. Better. The last two years have been fantastic. Yeah. For the wealthy, yeah. Remember the first time in the history of our country, the top 1% of, of wealth is concentrated into people who own more than the next

Leo Laporte (01:44:09):
60% income inequality is gonna be all assets in the us, a massive problem in the us. Yeah. COVID lockdowns in Shanghai, however, proceed a pace. They are now starting to fence in people 39 fat fatalities yesterday bringing the total number of virus related deaths to 80 sevens since late February, that doesn't sound like a lot, but the Chinese communist party's policy is zero COVID and they are anxious to have no COVID. And so they are, they are seal up buildings, locking people in there's been food insecurity due to that. And from the point from our point of view, one of the concerns is many of the factories in Shanghai are shut. Some are saying the supply chain shortages we are currently experiencing will get nothing but worse due to the shutdown. So I don't know whether it's merited, you know, this is this the Chinese government had had up to now done a very good job fighting COVID. But it is a real problem right now for workers.

Padre (01:45:19):
We have had guests from China, from Hong Kong, from Shanghai, from Chen Zen come into Rome and the numbers, the actual numbers are way, way higher.

Leo Laporte (01:45:30):
They're not reporting all the deaths yeah, they're not reporting. Yeah, of course not. And now they're fencing people in these green fences. This is from the BBC, of course, green fences being installed outside of buildings to keep people inside. Wow. 25 million people in Shanghai, all shut inside in their homes to, to prevent the spread of COVID. Let's take a little break. I hope you and your you and your loved ones are well and surviving. Our show today brought to you by Noom. If you would like to start a healthier lifestyle. I know for me and Lisa, it's been a Bo we love Noom. Of course, one of the things I, I consider myself a, a diet expert. I know of new, 'em all done. 'em All. But what I hadn't really considered is the psychology of eating. And that's what Noom was so grateful.

Leo Laporte (01:46:32):
It's really not a diet. It noo will, will head you on a path toward better health with a psychology based approach, changes the way you think about food, improves your understanding of why you eat when you eat. I, for example, and everybody's different, but I am a fog eater. I will eat unconsciously and Noom helped me become more conscious about my eating chewing, putting down my fork, turning off the TV, turning off the phone while I eat to really enjoy my food. And you know what? I enjoy it more. And I eat less Noom, psychological approaches based on scientific principles like cognitive behavioral therapy, C B T really works. It helps you understand your relationship with food and then build sustainable habits. That last a lifetime. One of the things that surprised me about Noom when I first started and I've been doing it for about a year is they said, there's no bad foods.

Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
We don't demonize food. It's not about there's there bad foods and good foods. That's not what this is all about. Noom. Doesn't believe in restricting what you can or cannot eat. It just helps, you know, better what you're doing. So you're doing it consciously and kind of almost magically, you lose weight, you get healthier, you get more fit. Noom understands building these long-term positive habits is hard. It can be filled with ups and downs. They say, it's not about perfection. It's about progress. Everybody's journey looks different with Noom. You get an app, you can track everything you're eating and drinking and all the exercise you're doing. You get coaching from Noom just a few minutes every day to learn these good habits. You also get a personal coach and you get a group that you're in the, you know, in it together. And all of that really helps.

Leo Laporte (01:48:18):
Nu is grounded in science. It's the heart of everything they do. In fact, they take this so seriously, they've published more than 30 peer reviewed scientific articles that inform users, but also practitioner and scientists in the public about how the methods work and how well they work. And I can tell you, Lisa and I both love Newman. It's really changed our lifestyle. You know, I started doing it and she said, oh, I'm gonna do it to, to, to support you, which was really nice. We've been eating that way and eating really right for a now. And it's been so great. Our son has lost weight too. Joining us on this nom journey. It's incredible. And you don't have to worry about, you know, things like, I always hate diets cause you one bad day, one day off and oh, it's all over. And you throw it in.

Leo Laporte (01:49:06):
Not with Noom. They help you get back on track. There are no, you know, there are no bad days. You decide how Noom weight fits into your life. Not the other way around. You could spend 5, 10, 15 minutes a day reading. That's up to you. There's always extra if you want. I, I, it changes how I shop. It changes how I look at food, how I think about it. And it really, and the best thing for me is, and this is per, this is about me, but I, if I, if I saw food, I would eat it. If there's food on the counter, if there's food in our kitchen here at work, I will eat it. There's there's been treats sitting on that counter at work. There's always treats there's candy, there's cakes. And I, and I feel really good. I don't have to force myself.

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
I just have the knowledge to go, oh yeah, you're gonna foggy go put that in your mouth. Go ahead. So when I do eat it, it's conscious and it's a decision. It's incredible. Start building better habits today. We are huge fans of Noom. It's been really good for us. Many of the people we know have started doing it as a result, sign up for your trial. No, N O O M O om.com/TWiT. When you first sign up, there's a questionnaire that is the beginning of the process. You're gonna really learn about how your, what your relationship is to food. It's just, even that by itself is great. N O om.com/it to sign up for your trial, noom.com/feel better, have more energy, look better, be more confident. And for me, the most important part was this struggle that I have always had with eating and dieting and weight, just as period, no more struggle. I love that if, if it were just that, that enough would be a long, that alone would be enough noom.com/to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, Noom. And Lisa, thanks. You too. Okay. Let's get back to

Padre (01:51:05):
These. No, during that ad, I, I signed up for,

Leo Laporte (01:51:08):
Did you

Padre (01:51:09):
Really all my information? And it said I could hit my target weight by March 14th of next year.

Leo Laporte (01:51:14):
Wouldn't that feel good?

Padre (01:51:15):
That would be incredible. Actually. Wouldn't that

Leo Laporte (01:51:17):
Feel good? <Laugh> yeah. 

Padre (01:51:20):
I think I have to cut off a leg, but

Leo Laporte (01:51:21):
No, no, no, no, no. The, the number one thing is you're logging. And I think by just by itself, logging, writing down everything you eat just completely changes it. You know, cuz you just don't unconsciously put something in your mouth, you have to write it down. I have, I'm mixed feelings about this. I'm great friends with Kevin Rose. I love Kevin Rose. He has gotten together with people, the digital artist, Gary Vaynerchuck. They created a company called the proof collective and they designed 10,000 cartoon owls, a thousand NFT collectors. Some of the biggest names in NF. They or initially, and I maybe I'm just mad at Kevin cuz he didn't tell me when they launched. I could have bought in at $7,900. They the minimum price now for one of these owls, remember they, they, if you got in at the bottom $7,900, $285,000 of the 10,000 moon moon birds, 7,000 were given away for a raffle 2000 for members and 125 for distribution by the moon bird team. They have sold hundreds of millions of dollars, 281 million in sales volume and Kevin and company, the founders of proof collective have taken home 50 million and all they had to do was create some cartoon owls. So I'm just curious. <Laugh> Kevin made a video explaining no we're gonna do something good with the money. Really? I'm just curious. And I bring this up a lot. No one is yet to convince me that this is anything but a speculative bubble

Nate Lanxon (01:53:17):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> I like that. The screenshot that you showed was dated April 1st

Leo Laporte (01:53:22):
<Laugh> it almost feels like it is, but it's not <affirmative>

Nate Lanxon (01:53:26):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:27):
Yeah. You could get a an owl with devil's horns or an angels halo. You can get an owl and a space helmet. You can get a robot owl, an owl with a duck on its head.

Nate Lanxon (01:53:38):
You know, there are some very needy owls in the world that could use your money in the form of a donation. So they don't die than this. And I don't mean to bring the tone down, but give some of that money to do some good. Yeah. If they're gonna do that. Great. I hope they do. I otherwise

Leo Laporte (01:53:57):
Kevin, I love Kevin. I trust him his podcast on defi and crypto is great. And I've learned a lot, including how NFTs work I've yet see anything that makes this anything other than a pyramid scheme

Padre (01:54:12):
To be it's it's a tool of

Leo Laporte (01:54:14):
It's worse than

Padre (01:54:15):
Tool of. It's absolutely a tool of

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
It's worse than a tool because people are buying these. Not because they love these owls. Maybe some people do, but mostly because they think somebody's gonna come along and pay more than they did. Right.

Padre (01:54:27):
Think

Nate Lanxon (01:54:27):
What happened with, with Jack Dorsey's first tweet. It can't sell.

Leo Laporte (01:54:32):
No, no. And it makes me happy because the guy who bought it is now out a couple of million dollars <laugh> yeah. He spent what 2.9 million for again, it's an NFT. So you don't, I mean the tweet doesn't like go in your pocket it doesn't become part of your PO physical possessions. You just have kind of some tenuous link to it. He, the guy who bought it 2.9 million, hasn't been able to find a buyer for more than a few thousand. So he is out almost 3 million. Of course the guy who bought it,

Padre (01:55:13):
Anyone else can make a copy of it. Anyone else can have it?

Leo Laporte (01:55:16):
Anyone else I can tell you? What is, yeah,

Padre (01:55:18):
You have a link, you have a tenuous grasp on the ownership of said thing, but no way to really enforce your ownership of said thing. I mean a okay, I get it. It is a speculative instrument, just like most everything in the financial world. And if you can make money on it because someone else is willing to pay you for it. Great, awesome. But I'm like you Leo, this is, this is one of these things where everyone is just waiting for the music to stop and they wanna be not there when it stops.

Leo Laporte (01:55:48):
It's a little telling the guy who bought Jack Dorsey's tweet when he bought, it said this is not just a tweet. I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet. Like the Mona Lisa painting crossing. That's

Padre (01:55:59):
The guy who wants to sell it.

Leo Laporte (01:56:00):
Yeah. And then a year later he puts it up for auction. Not a lot, not a lot. The highest bid. I don't, I don't know, I think $13,000, but I think it's even less. And when you take out the gas fees, that's the other problem. The people are really making money on this. The people were generating the, the NFT. Hmm. All right. I, you know, I don't want to pile on or anything. I love, I love Kevin Rose, but I am skeptical of all this and I will not be buying any board, owls or board apes or zombies. Do you have any NFTs, Lisa? Did you buy, buy in at the, at the bottom?

Lisa Eadicicco (01:56:43):
I don't. I am right there with you. I I'm still kind of skeptical and personally trying to figure out what's going on with NFTs. It's it's not an area that I'm very well versed in. Maybe I need to listen to Kevin's podcast a little, a bit more about it.

Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
<Laugh> you should it's. It is the first episode of modern. It's called the modern finance podcast. He has an NP guy on and think that's probably why Kevin ended up doing the proof collective. At least with tulips, you got a bulb, right? You don't this, I was thinking the charm saying no, no cryptos tulip bulbs NFTs are pictures of tulip bulbs. <Laugh>

Padre (01:57:25):
No, no, no. I, I wouldn't even say NFTs are pictures of tulip bulbs. I think NFTs are the description of a picture of a picture of a tulip bowl

Leo Laporte (01:57:32):
Of a tulip bulb. I

Padre (01:57:33):
Think that's getting closer.

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
Yeah. I and by the way, I should say Kevin bought advertising on TWiT for modern finance and I, which by the way, I still agree with it's a great podcast. I, I think my problem is not. If people, if, if people who are in the crypto arena are buying this stuff fine, you know what you're doing? You, you know, you're probably spending your DOJ coin that you only bought for pennies for it anyway. Right? You're it's, it's not like you're spending real money, but it, where I get where rather the lines, we start to promote this to people who are not in the crypto sphere and they have to, because it's only worth something. If they can get somebody to pay more for it. So all of this enthusiasm, all of this excitement, all these people saying, it's the next big thing.

Leo Laporte (01:58:22):
What they're really saying is please buy this thing I bought <laugh> this worth anything, unless you buy it for more than I paid for it. And that's what bothers me. So I, I kind of wanna keep hitting this because I want people who are on the fence or saying, oh, that's interesting. Or maybe there's something there or being persuaded by all the crypto bros who, who say this is the greatest things in slice pres gonna change the world to think TWiTce a little bit, because there is no, I don't, there's no inherent value. It's a,

Padre (01:58:51):
There's a difference between telling someone that they're gambling, which is what a financial advisor will do. Say, this is a speculative instrument. You may make money, you may lose money and telling people it is an investment. Those people who are telling others that NFTs are investments that will only go up in value. That's wrong, morally, ethically

Leo Laporte (01:59:10):
Repo. Well, now we know,

Padre (01:59:11):
Because we know that's not true.

Leo Laporte (01:59:12):
Yeah. It's not if you, yeah, there

Nate Lanxon (01:59:16):
Was go ahead. There, there, there was a some ads that ran on the London underground little while ago about by investing in, in, in Bitcoin. And I think the wording was something like, if you're seeing ads for Bitcoin on the tube, it's time to buy and they got in trouble for it and, and had to pull the ads. And it was really interesting because actually if you're seeing ads for, for Bitcoin on the ch chances are, it's probably a good time to sell <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:59:45):
Exactly.

Nate Lanxon (01:59:47):
And, and I, I, I don't think the, the irony of that was, was lost on the, the, the regulators who, who said, you, you can't put this ad on for, for that exact reason, because it's, it's, it's disingenuous at best. And it is, you know, repugnant at worst. Getting people to think that it's an investment when it's it's speculation and it's gambling. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:13):
Oh, well 

Padre (02:00:15):
It's sort of like when your parents are on Facebook, it's time to get off of Facebook.

Leo Laporte (02:00:19):
Yeah. Yeah. I hope I is. My is my, are my mom and dad on Facebook. <Laugh>, I'm not on Facebook. HBO creating a Minecraft movie,

Padre (02:00:36):
Jason, with Aquaman,

Leo Laporte (02:00:37):
With Aquaman, which is very confusing. Jason MAOA Aquaman will see star, but star in quotes. No one knows. Is he gonna play Steve? Who is he? Who is he gonna play? Is it, I think it's a live action. They say, live action. Minecraft movie.

Nate Lanxon (02:00:56):
Is it, is it a blockbuster?

Leo Laporte (02:00:58):
Oh, I'll give you eight bits for a it. Yeah. I mean, Minecraft is huge. One in December Minecraft videos surpassed a trillion views on YouTube in 2021 last year, there were over 140 million monthly active users playing Minecraft. So, you know, it may sense to make a movie. The director, Jared HES did Napoleon dynamite and nacho Libre. So, you know, it's gonna be good. That's that's quality. I, I just, the only way I see this working is if it's, it's a movie about like the Minecraft community, not actually a movie about what's happening in Minecraft. Yeah. I, you, and that, that would actually be interest. I would like that I would enjoy it. Yeah. Oh no, that's fascinating. Yeah. But I don't think it's that.

Lisa Eadicicco (02:01:54):
Yeah. I mean, I like how Minecraft is huge. So it'll probably make a lot of money, but I'm skeptical because I feel like there aren't many video game based movies that are actually good. I mean, there's been a lot of,

Leo Laporte (02:02:07):
There was Sonic. I know.

Lisa Eadicicco (02:02:09):
Yeah. Say maybe Sonic super

Leo Laporte (02:02:10):
Mario brothers was incredible. Okay. No, it wasn't. You lie. You liar. You're lying. You just lying now. How do you like your Oreos? Do you eat 'em all at once Lisa or do you open 'em up and eat the cream first or you dunk 'em in milk? What's your Oreo strategy?

Lisa Eadicicco (02:02:29):
I usually open them up. I, I flop back and forth though. Sometimes I just eat it like a regular cookie,

Leo Laporte (02:02:34):
But, oh, you'll, you'll be interested in this. The study of why Oreo cream filling usually sticks to one side. They're calling it ology. And MIT is actually published a paper in the journal physics of fluid. The co-author a graduate student at MIT, crystal Owens per primarily studies 3d printing with complex. You got some Oreos there. Go ahead. Twitst it one side. Oh, oh wow. You should mail that to her right now because that completely contradicts the, the conclusions. The, did you warm that Oreo up? Had you pre it? No, I, I literally just took it out of the package right now. Love it. I did my own research. You are not on noon. You have a package of Oreos right there. Oh boy. That is actually, this could be a good test. Are you gonna eat it or put it back in the box? <Laugh> is in the garbage. I know you're into 3d printing. I don't know what 3d printing with complex fluid inks is. But complex fluids are all around us. She says many foods sauces, condiments, yogurt, ice cream, and other products are complex fluids, you know, like near their solid nor liquid, I guess. I don't know. I, I think that's like us some sort of fluid in suspension. Yeah. Basically is a complex thing. Yeah. Yeah. So she designed a tool <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:04:10):
To, to TWiTst the Oreo you know, it it's a Oreo stress. Rioter R H E E O M a T E R. It TWiTsts the fluid between parallel discs in order to measure its viscosity. She had a epiphany looking staring at her. Rioter said, oh, wait a minute. I could use that to study Oreo breakage.

Padre (02:04:38):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:04:40):
So I, you do so as one does. So I proposed my idea to my research advisor and the project was born. Turns out Oreos are a canonical example of parallel plate geometry. The cookies are in every a tri layer, laminate composite. The cream is the fluid sample and the two wafer are the parallel plates. Counter-Rotating the wafers. That's what you just did. Robert causes the cream to Shearer and flow before fracturing as the two wafers come apart. But your results, your results are com completely contrary the results of the study, because

Padre (02:05:20):
Shall we try again?

Leo Laporte (02:05:20):
Yeah. Do another one. <Laugh>

Padre (02:05:22):
Okay. So counterclockwise. Right?

Leo Laporte (02:05:24):
Well, any way you want counter, no, you you're

Padre (02:05:26):
Allow clockwise. Feel like you could be doing a drum. Roll

Leo Laporte (02:05:30):
That one. No, you know, you have special Vatican Oreos. That's that's their speech. There's something she said. I had my in mind, if you TWiTst the Oreos perfectly as Robert just did, you should split the cream perfectly in the middle. But what actually happens contrary to our own research, I might point might point out is the cream always, almost always comes off on one side. The, the cream distribution is not affected by rotation. The amount of cream filling or the flavor. They got double stuff. <Laugh> They got all kinds of flavors. They tried in all different ways with the rioter. She does say the rotation rate does play an important role in whether or not the cookies break apart cleanly. If you try to TWiTst the Oreos faster, you can do a, another one, Robert, try it fast. Okay. It actually takes more. It's harder. The faster you TWiTst. So if you're stressed and desperate to open your cookie, do it a little slower, but

Padre (02:06:30):
Oh, oh, well, no, Jay Louis Oreos.

Leo Laporte (02:06:35):
These are defective.

Padre (02:06:36):
I actually, these might be counterfeit Oreos. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:06:38):
That's what

Padre (02:06:39):
It is.

Leo Laporte (02:06:39):
You're not. Oh, they're Hydrox. I can tell

Padre (02:06:43):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
Those are Hydrox those Oreos. Anyway. So you just, you just with your own empirical results, just as the Vatican and the Jesuits have always been known to do you have completely destroyed

Padre (02:06:59):
You do

Leo Laporte (02:07:00):
This, what you do this scientific paper with your own investigation. But by the way, if you wanna do the studies at home, they have open sourced, their 3d printed Oreo meter. So you could use it at home or in the classroom.

Padre (02:07:15):
Oh, I am so printing that thing up. You should,

Leo Laporte (02:07:17):
Cookies can be mounted under two clamps powered by rubber bands. Powered may not be the quite the right word there. The next step is to load pennies. One by one into either of two symmetric, penny castles, thereby applying torque and precise increments, use new pennies for the best results. When they tested their Oreo in the lab, they achieved similar results.

Padre (02:07:40):
Leo, I'm gonna make you one of these, except I'm gonna power it with a stepper motor and an Arduino.

Leo Laporte (02:07:44):
All right, baby.

Padre (02:07:45):
Let's make this let's let's make this real. Yeah.

Nate Lanxon (02:07:49):
I don't think I've ever had an Oreo. What, what <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:07:55):
That

Padre (02:07:55):
Is an anomaly. That's wow.

Leo Laporte (02:07:57):
You've you eat some sort of weird British biscuit that, that tastes like malted. Barley. Ah,

Nate Lanxon (02:08:05):
We have something called a cud cream, custard

Leo Laporte (02:08:09):
Cream

Nate Lanxon (02:08:10):
And a B biscuit. A

Leo Laporte (02:08:12):
Wait a minute. They don't have Oreos in England,

Nate Lanxon (02:08:15):
But we probably do. I just never had one. They've got Oreo everywhere. I'm sure we do.

Leo Laporte (02:08:19):
Oreo are everywhere. You get Oreos in every country of the world.

Nate Lanxon (02:08:22):
I'm sure we do. I've just never had one <laugh> but, but now I'm thinking, could you apply this to the custard cream or the board biscuit

Leo Laporte (02:08:29):
Chat room? I hate to tell you this. Nate says that your drum skins look like open Oreos. Bye <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:08:38):
So you may have had Oreos that just never knew it. Okay? Yeah. You just never, never knew it. All right. One more break. Then we have more silly stories to wrap this up. Fabulous panel. Great to have all three of you. I would like to talk instead about our sponsor for this segment wealth front. If you wanna buy some silly owls, fine. Go right ahead. Stock trading can be fun. It's like, as you said, it's like gambling, but the thrill of risky and all is best enjoyed in moderation like casino, gambling and eating straight food. If you're playing the market, I hope for your sake, you're stashing some safer money in a place like Wealthfront wealth. Front is not day trading wealth. Front is a way to invest using well researched, proven methodologies to build your wealth. Wealth. Front has a ton of data to show that time in the market.

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Ant (02:11:17):
Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Burke says that I was supposed to ask you about your appearance on moonlighting.

Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
Oh yeah. Very famous. Everybody knows about that.

Ant (02:11:27):
I don't.

Jeff Jarvis (02:11:28):
I have right here, a tape of last week's episode and I'll show you all the good parts don't take long

Jim Cutler (02:11:35):
Previously on TWiTtter, Mac break

Leo Laporte (02:11:38):
Weekly apple is readying several new max with next generation, M two chips, as many as nine max, according to developer logs, that's

Padre (02:11:48):
Something apple tries to avoid because a lot of times, people who are testing these devices, they put apps on them and then the offer gets logs back. And sometimes there's unique characteristics about future devices,

Jim Cutler (02:11:58):
Tech news weekly.

Padre (02:11:59):
I was talking last week about CNN plus, and how folks were a little bit concerned that CNN plus was not doing so well that the subscribers were not doing well, et cetera. It looks like things are a little bit more interesting than we thought it appears that CNN plus us is going to be shut down

Jim Cutler (02:12:16):
This week in.

Leo Laporte (02:12:16):
Google. No good terrible day for Netflix yesterday, they had to announce for the first time ever a loss of subscribers, Netflix is saying, we're gonna start looking at ads supported. I don't want ads in my Netflix. That could go the other way for them. Right? I always enjoy watching one time. I now huge and successful pivot to turf protection. It always involves using all kinds of distorted logic to justify making their product worse, to please investors

Jim Cutler (02:12:45):
To it. It keeps going and going and going.

Leo Laporte (02:12:49):
And the great Jim Cutler. Thank you, Jim does all our voice announcing he's. So he's been doing it since TV days. We love you, Jim, Jim and Don are the best. Thank you. Thank you for that. It is now legal to watch TV behind the wheel of a self-driving vehicle in the UK. Congratulations, Nate. Get on out there. Watch your movies.

Nate Lanxon (02:13:13):
I don't even drive.

Leo Laporte (02:13:14):
Well, that's good because there are current no such vehicles available in the UK. <Laugh>

Nate Lanxon (02:13:20):
Yeah. There is some, there's some really interesting caveats to this. One is that it has to be, or will have to be on a screen that is part of the vehicle. So it has to be on a, you know, built in display. It will still be illegal to use your phone in the car.

Leo Laporte (02:13:35):
Wait a minute. You can watch TV, but you can't use your phone

Nate Lanxon (02:13:40):
That's law today. Yeah. It's illegal to use your phone if you're driving. Yeah. But even having it in your hand.

Leo Laporte (02:13:44):
Yeah. It seems like watching TV would be equally distracting. Okay.

Nate Lanxon (02:13:50):
Well I think the argument is that if the, the way that it's written is basically if you are stuck in traffic, ah, On a, on a motorway, on a highway and, and you're going very, very, very slowly, then, then it's okay. Or rather then it will be okay because they, they wanna make sure that you are able to take the wheel if you need to really quickly and having a phone in your hand means you maybe impaired it, doing that quickly. I think also the argument is maybe that if you're looking at it on the screen, then you are paying attention to something, the car can alert you on as well. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:14:23):
That's

Nate Lanxon (02:14:23):
Obviously won't happen on a phone. So there are, there is some logic to it. And the other thing that came out and as part of this same announcement though, is that if a, if a self-driving vehicle causes an accident, then it is on the insurer to pay, ah, not the driver, not the manufacturer.

Leo Laporte (02:14:43):
Interesting.

Nate Lanxon (02:14:44):
Yeah. So a lot of the questions are now gonna be, well, what insurer is gonna in gonna ensure self-driving car? If they know that if it, if it has a problem, it's on their to tie out. So it's, it's quite

Padre (02:14:53):
Interesting. So for example, if say Tesla just ran into a multimillion dollar aircraft because someone used the summon feature.

Leo Laporte (02:15:02):
Oh, did you see that video being

Padre (02:15:04):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (02:15:05):
It's amazing. Oh my God. Let me see if I can find that. It's amazing.

Padre (02:15:08):
Absolutely amazing. It was a nice jet too was a really, and it, what? Wasn't just a, it hit it, it hit it and then it obviously didn't know what was happening. Cuz it kept pushing

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
It. It kept going right through it. It's kind of hard to see this. This is the tweet from, or actually it's from the subreddit flying. Let me start it. Let me start this over again. See if I can make it a little bit a little bit bigger on red it, so this was at an air show, right? And this is, these are these vision jets I guess are personal jets or country million or so here comes the car. Oops. Oh, oh, oh. He's actually turning, turning the jet around and he doesn't stop until he, maybe I, the owner is coming along to stop. It he's used something I had on my Tesla for three years and never dared to use the summon feature where you press a button and the Tesla slowly drives to come and get you <laugh> I never trusted it. And it turns out I was right. Although I don't have a lot of jets in my parking in my driveway, but still

Nate Lanxon (02:16:14):
To be fair, to be fair, who trains a machine learning algorithm for a car on whether it can recognize a plane. If you've got a plane in your field of view, <laugh> in your car,

Padre (02:16:23):
You've got bigger problems. That's

Leo Laporte (02:16:24):
A good point. What did, what did the car, what did the car think? Oh, I I'm imagining it. Oh no, that can't really be there. <Laugh> the vision jets are three and a half million. We don't know if the insurance covered the loss or not.

Nate Lanxon (02:16:40):
Wow. They would have

Leo Laporte (02:16:42):
Actually yeah, well, but so you don't have any full self-driving vehicles there. Even the Teslas don't do F there they're no

Nate Lanxon (02:16:50):
Allow. No, they don't. They, no, you, you can do like the lane assist stuff, but we don't, we don't have any here yet. But also remember it's pretty small country, like loads of people don't drive here cuz we just don't need it. That's

Leo Laporte (02:17:01):
Sensible. I, you know, I increasingly feel like it'd be nice if we just Bann all personal vehicles in urban centers you know, have it's

Nate Lanxon (02:17:10):
Extremely expensive to take a car into London. Yeah. Like as it should be 20, 25, 30 pounds a day just to take your car in. So people are like, if I live here, what's the point don't need a car. It's

Leo Laporte (02:17:20):
More than that in San Francisco. It's have, have

Padre (02:17:24):
We have people to,

Leo Laporte (02:17:26):
Oh, you have to pay a, a fee to get in

Nate Lanxon (02:17:29):
Just to be just, just to get in. Yeah. Wow. Because they don't want you in there. If you wanna park then yeah. You gonna, that's more, more money.

Leo Laporte (02:17:36):
Yeah. So you have people doing what rum trolling

Padre (02:17:40):
That we're trolling trolling Tesla. So you can buy shirts or jackets that have stop signs printed on the back.

Leo Laporte (02:17:46):
If

Padre (02:17:46):
You're walking in front of a Tesla, it makes the Tesla stop. <Laugh> at least it stops and I've seen it happen three or four times. It's it's, it's actually kind of funny.

Leo Laporte (02:17:58):
Actually the national highway transportation and safety administration is investigating now officially as of this week Tesla's auto autopilot software. Yeah. To see whether it's safe, they've actually launched two formal investigations into it. Let's see the Cal I don't have any more details than that, but they are launching the investigation. We'll keep an eye on that. I don't know. I think honestly, in this case, it's, it's the driver who's responsible if you're using FSD to keep his eyes out for any issues and to take control if there are issues, right? It's not self-driving really well. The name does say full self-driving. If you thought spam was getting better, you are wrong. Spam Americans, according to Axios are drowning in spam, not just spam email, but spam text messaging, which is now outpaced spam robo calls. As of last month, there were 7.6 billion spam am, phone calls in the us 11 point still 11.7 billion spam text messages. And I, and I have to tell you, I'm not surprised cause I get calls all the time from very nice people. Usually older people saying, why are they sending me text messages about porn all the time and how do I stop it?

Lisa Eadicicco (02:19:33):
You know, I wonder if this reminds me like a lot of this. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead Lisa. Oh, no. I was just gonna say, I feel like a lot of this is probably because a lot of the tech companies have made tools for filtering robocalls over the past few years. Like that technology has gotten bad. So I feel like a lot of these scammers are now turning to text messages to do that because it just hasn't caught up as much.

Leo Laporte (02:19:52):
Well, and the FCC has kind of delayed the implementation of the technology. That's supposed to stop spam texts and spam phone calls, the stirred and shaken framework. They allowed the big companies are all doing it, but they can allow through calls from small companies until the end of, I think it's the end of may companies, small phone companies with no facilities will have to use stir and shake into authenticate, which means a phone companies say, Hey, if you don't say who this is from, we're not gonna take it. That will do a lot to stop this. And then I think at the end of the year, small phone companies that have facilities like buildings will have to stop. So I think what's also happening is this is a last I'm hoping. Anyway, this is the last gasp for spam texts because as soon as stir and shaken is implemented at and T T-Mobile Verizon can, can, and should legally say, you know, unless you say who you are and you can identify that authenticate that we're not gonna accept that. I think that'll solve it. I hope,

Lisa Eadicicco (02:21:03):
I hope so. I've been getting so many, I mean like a lot of people have been getting so many of them, especially in the last few months, I feel like it's picked up a lot. So I really hope that that

Leo Laporte (02:21:13):
Changes absolutely has. Yeah.

Padre (02:21:15):
So what, what do we do over here? It, it, that stops it. I never get spam on my Italian number. I get it all the time on my us number.

Leo Laporte (02:21:23):
Oh, that's interesting. I never

Padre (02:21:24):
Get any either.

Leo Laporte (02:21:25):
What

Lisa Eadicicco (02:21:26):
Really are we

Padre (02:21:26):
Something different here? I mean literally I, I, nothing,

Leo Laporte (02:21:31):
That's bizarre cuz it's it's nonstop. Right? Lisa?

Lisa Eadicicco (02:21:35):
Yeah. It's like, I wouldn't say it's daily for me, but it's probably probably multiple times per week I would say. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:21:43):
I get of course you get the calls for your auto warrantys expired. All of that. You, the text message is, you know, just

Padre (02:21:53):
Tax settlements, tax settlements. I love those there's one. My

Leo Laporte (02:21:56):
Favorite. Yeah. Or

Lisa Eadicicco (02:21:57):
I get a lot of fake banking ones. They're

Leo Laporte (02:22:01):
Yeah. Yeah. They're fishing scams. Yeah. Well your phone company's supposed to block it. Let's hope they start doing that soon. Finally chopsticks to make your food saltier without, ah,

Padre (02:22:17):
I love this.

Leo Laporte (02:22:18):
Add, love this salt, this, I think you gotta make these researchers in Japan have developed a set of electric chopstick. They're attached to a wristband computer. It uses electrical stimulation to transmit sodium ions from the food to the Eater's mouth. This is according to Maji university professor home who developed the chops sticks with Kirin, who of course makes food soy sauce. I think there's Kirin beer, by the way. This is not his first time to this rodeo. If that's what you call it, he's the guy who designed the liable TV. Yes. Not great. That would let you taste whatever you see on the screen. The chopstick do require you to wear, at least in this first iteration a little wrist computer researchers say that chopsticks can enhance the perceived saltiness of foods one and a half times. So you know, could be a lifesaver. It certainly is birth control. So either way you're, you're a you're ahead. And on that note, I, I would be willing to test those. I mean serious. What I saying? I, no, its not, I love salt. I too love salt. I'm not supposed to have it, but I love salt. Yep. All right, let's do it Chico. You're the greatest. Thank you so much for being here, spending your evening with us.

Lisa Eadicicco (02:23:52):
Yeah. Thank you for having me. Anytime senior

Leo Laporte (02:23:54):
Editor at CNET. Anything you wanna plug?

Lisa Eadicicco (02:23:59):
Just keep checking out. CNET. We have a lot of great reviews and news coverage every day. So just yeah. Keep checking it out.

Leo Laporte (02:24:06):
Thank you. It's great to have you. It's great to have you Nate, Langston tech editor at Bloomberg, you stayed up late for us, but is it one in the morning?

Nate Lanxon (02:24:15):
It

Leo Laporte (02:24:15):
Is. I'm sorry.

Nate Lanxon (02:24:16):
Thank you. Feel worth it Leo. So

Leo Laporte (02:24:19):
You, we love having you on really appreciate it. Anything you want? Oh, I know what we're gonna plug UK tech show your podcast.

Nate Lanxon (02:24:26):
My podcast. Yeah. Text message. Which is@uktechshow.com 

Leo Laporte (02:24:33):
Text message. That's one message. You won't let a block.

Nate Lanxon (02:24:37):
Yeah. And that's why the, the URL is UK tech show.com because it's, it's a, it's a play on words that works better written down than it does pronounced. Right. And I got sick of saying T E C H apostrophe S message. Oh, I get it now I get it now. So I just thought right. Screw. But yeah, we actually did talk a lot about the self-driving car stuff on the episode that went out earlier today. Okay. I think that's episode 2 72. So yeah. I'd love people to check that out and give us a follow if you liked what I say and how I say it.

Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
Great. So tech goes down better with an English accent. I just have to say it really does. Sounds smarter. Thank you posture. Yeah, it does. That's why I listen to F1 racing as well. <Laugh> they have the best announcers in F1 racing. The like are out D

Padre (02:25:24):
You like Croy.

Leo Laporte (02:25:25):
Yeah. He's so good. I love him. I love him. So you've become an F1 fan as well. Huh?

Padre (02:25:34):
I've been, I, I was, I had been watching F1 for about eight years.

Leo Laporte (02:25:38):
It's really this season. Yeah. You stopped this season. Oh this

Padre (02:25:41):
Because the way last season ended. No,

Leo Laporte (02:25:44):
I know. That's why you gotta watch this season. They've made changes in the rules. There's more overtaking. It's much more balanced there's limits on what they can spend. It's actually they've transformed. The, the sport says somebody's been watching it.

Padre (02:25:58):
It, same reason why I stopped watching the NFL. If, if you don't care enough to, to who Garve the integrity of your sport, then why should I watch?

Leo Laporte (02:26:05):
Okay, fair enough.

Padre (02:26:07):
But yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:09):
Father Robert Ball. I, the digital Jesuit Padre's corners back

Padre (02:26:15):
It is intermittently youtube.com/digital Jesuit, or just go to TWiTtter.com/padre stra. You're always gonna find what, whatever I'm working on at the time. A lot of stuff, unfortunately, I can't post because I don't really make my own content of the majority of the time anymore. But it's fun. You get an inside look of what happens on this corner of the, of the globe.

Leo Laporte (02:26:38):
Are they, are they keeping you busy now doing like priest stuff?

Padre (02:26:45):
The amount of pre the pre stuff that I do is actually it's pretty minimal <laugh> because they need my other, my other,

Leo Laporte (02:26:53):
Oh, the technical skills.

Padre (02:26:54):
Yeah. I do the pre stuff for me, cuz I don't feel right if I'm not consistently getting out there, but they need the technical and the production and the content creation skills. Those are the things that are being used every day.

Leo Laporte (02:27:04):
Oh, that's interesting. So increased social presence and of course the Vata cats, which we have to show right here, cats gotta have cats increased social presence for the, the Vatican or 

Padre (02:27:16):
For the society of Jesus. For the Jesuits. Yeah. You know, and a couple of, I wouldn't call them black, but they're definitely dark, darker project. Nothing, nothing bad, nothing nefarious, but a few things that are going on behind the scenes

Leo Laporte (02:27:30):
To, oh,

Padre (02:27:31):
Find out what's happening around the world. Some

Leo Laporte (02:27:33):
Stuff works stuff going on. Yeah.

Padre (02:27:35):
Yeah. Nice. Some very interesting work.

Leo Laporte (02:27:37):
Are you enjoying it? I,

Padre (02:27:38):
I, I can. I, I am. I would prefer to be back in California as always. I love California. It is my home. Every once in a while I'll stop and I'll hear the bells of St. Peter's or I will hear some wonderful music wafting over the city. I know it makes it worth it.

Leo Laporte (02:27:53):
Yeah, no kidding. Well you always, and

Padre (02:27:56):
You're always invited

Leo Laporte (02:27:57):
And you're always invited. We always have a place for you. We're coming to Rome and next year in almost exactly a year from now. So we'll see you late April. You

Padre (02:28:07):
Just let

Leo Laporte (02:28:07):
Me know 2020. We will

Padre (02:28:09):
Have a, we will have a lunch up on top of our roof. Overlooking Rome. You can literally see all of Rome from my office here.

Leo Laporte (02:28:17):
You'll be able to see us on the Google earth having lunch. <Laugh> <laugh> free time. It will. No, I, yeah. I want to come out. We're gonna I think we're gonna spend at least a week in Rome. Excellent. Yeah. We wanna spend enough time because we've never been. And I think it'd be really fun just to really get to know the city better. So maybe two weeks, give

Padre (02:28:36):
Me the time because they're starting to let us do those after hour tours of the,

Leo Laporte (02:28:43):
The CATA museum

Padre (02:28:44):
Before they just let us know. They let us in after hours. Oh, you're kidding. They basically say no, those are my favorite. No one else. There's no one else. Just you.

Leo Laporte (02:28:53):
Oh my goodness. I can give you the exact time, but we, we, we won't slow down. People's people want to go home. Of course we'll let them go home. And then I will give you the exact time. <Laugh> <laugh> we do TWiT Sunday afternoons 2:00 PM, Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2100 UTC. You can watch us stream it live at TWiTt TV slash live. If you're watching live chat, live with us, the IRC chat is open to all of course club TWiT members get their very own discord, which as you were the one who introduced me to discord, his father, Robert has taught me is a really wonderful place for community club. Twit is $7 a month. It's not just the discord though. You get the TWiT plus feed with things like the Jeff Jarvis. Ask me anything. Have we done an AMA with you yet? Robert? We better. We better get one of those in 

Padre (02:29:45):
We've we've been trying to get one scheduled. The last one got messed up because of COVID, but yeah, we're, we're working on

Leo Laporte (02:29:50):
It. We're working on that. And of course we thought that the benefit would be ad free versions of all of our shows. Since you're paying us seven bucks a month, we don't need to play ads for you. But I think all the other stuff kind of is even better go to TWiT.tv/club TWiT to find out more TWiT.tv/club TWiT. After the show is over, you can download on demand versions of it from the website. All of our shows are@TWiT.tv or on the YouTube channel. There's a YouTube channel for every show dedicated or best thing to do. In fact, get your get your podcast player and subscribe that way. You'll get it automatically. The minutes available every afternoon or evening every Sunday evening. Thanks for being here, everybody. We're entering into year 18 now of this week in tech, I think we have many great eight shows had for you. Another TWiT is in the can!