This Week in Tech Episode 854 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech, our last live show of the year. We've got a great panel for you Owen JJ Stone is here. Tim Stevens from CNET Roadshow. From TWiG Jeff Jarvis joins us. We'll talk about the worst security exploit ever in my opinion YouTube and Disney reach a deal. Elon Musk, the person of the year really I'll make a very embarrassing revelation. And then we'll talk about the dog that talks or does it really it's all coming up. Next. It tick talks on Twitter.

New Speaker (00:00:33):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:50):
This Week in Tech episode, 854 recorded Sunday, December 19th, 2021 filters not included. This episode of This Week in Tech is brought to you by stamps.com. Save time and money this holiday season with stamps.com. Sign up with the promo code twit for a special offer. That includes a four week trial free postage and a digital scale, no long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphones, the top of the homepage and the code twit. And by userway.org. Userway ensures your website is accessible, ADA compliant and helps your business avoid accessibility related lawsuits. The perfect way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities. It's not only the a right thing to do. It's also the law. Go to userway.org/twit for 30% off user way's AI powered accessibility solution noon. You don't need rules to lose weight. Just the knowledge and wisdom to empower you to build smarter more sustainable habits. Start building better habits for healthier long term results. Sign up for your trial at no.com/twi and by mint mobile catch your wireless bill to $15 a month. And for a limited time buy any three month Mint Mobile plan and get three more months free by going to mintmobile.com/twit.

Leo Laporte (00:02:28):
It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech, the show we cover the week's tech news with my little metal dear friend here, I get that out of the shot. <Laugh> Hey, we got a great panel for you. Starting with upper New York state in the house, Tim Stevens of the Roadshow at CNET. Great to see you, Tim.

Tim Stevens (00:02:48):
Hey, it was great to be here and thanks for having me.

Leo Laporte (00:02:50):
I know you're an ice racer. Is there ice?

Tim Stevens (00:02:54):
We had a ice storm yesterday. That's about as close as we've got so far. We had temperatures in the sixties this past week. So now it's not really been a typical winter and looking like another bummer of a season.

Leo Laporte (00:03:03):
So what a bummer. I think it's just so I don't know. I always bring that up when I see you. Cause I think it's so cool that you race on ice, which just seems like self-defeating but anyway, <laugh>, that's what, that's what turns you also from this week in Google, our dear friend, Jeff Jarvis, I guess I gotta do the whole rigmarole don't I couldn't stand up on ice. <Laugh> I just fall down I'd yeah. Can you imagine racing other people on an, on an ice, a frozen lake? No. Jeff is the director of the town height center for entrepreneurial journalism at the CRA Newmark. Oh wow. We got a new one graduate school of journalism, a new one at the city, university of New York. Yay. Very nice. Very nice. Good to see you Jeff course, boy, TWI TWI gets all the benefits. Oh, this is a big show, baby. You know, you're not TWI land anymore. Notice I'm wearing a three piece suit in a bow tie mean we're this is serious, serious journalism also with this OhDoctah, Owen JJ stone.

Owen JJ Stone (00:04:06):
Speaking of serious journalism, tis the season

Leo Laporte (00:04:08):
Oh, look at you for seasoning. Look at you.

Owen JJ Stone (00:04:13):
It's it's almost like somebody loves me and knows that I like to eat flavorful food. So they sent me some delicious season for, for Christmas.

Leo Laporte (00:04:20):
You know, you know that that face on that salt Hank salt is my son. Did you know that? I did. Oh, good. I did. You didn't just think we randomly sent you salt. Oh, oh, oh no,

Owen JJ Stone (00:04:32):
No, no, no. I, I I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm following him on the, to I'm stealing I'm stealing stuff all the time. So I, I was very honored to have of it. My daughter wants to take this and keep it for herself. I said that just seems like it's greedy.

Leo Laporte (00:04:45):
I think you should save it. I think it's like the first can of chef boy RD. Like if you, if you had saved that it'd you worth something today and Warhol we're only here. I mean,

Owen JJ Stone (00:04:55):
I mean, if that's the case and send me another pack cuz you know, I'm gonna be cooking. I mean, I it's impossible for me not to it's really good. It says truffle garlic on there. Like yeah. How could I not cook things with truffle garlic? You know,

Leo Laporte (00:05:06):
Know what I'm saying? It's it's really, really good. I think. And, and I'm a little prejudice, but it's and actually I guess I, I guess I have to let me ask professor Jarvis. I have to disclose I am an investor in the salt Hank enterprise. I I, you

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:22):
Yes, I guess you should. And I think it's doing very well. Good Lord 27.4 million for

Leo Laporte (00:05:28):
One of his videos on TikTok. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Wow. Yeah. Wow. Oh, I keep seeing stories. 7 million

Jeff Jarvis (00:05:34):
Followers. Let's see if we get that to 1.8

Leo Laporte (00:05:37):
During the show folks underscore Hank underscore Hank on the TikTok and on Instagram actually. That's where the, somebody who sent me an email saying, I, I don't like your son's videos. He never says what ingredients are in there. Well, the TikTok is just like, you know, pretty pictures. It's food porn, but all the ingredients are on the Instagram. So follow 'em on Instagram, if you care about the recipes. But I think it's really just to look at, make you hungry. That's all.

Owen JJ Stone (00:06:05):
I, I, I, I will tell you and I cook. I'll tell you like 75% of it. I'm never gonna make in my lifetime, but there's like 25% where I'm like, all right, I gotta go to the Amish market like today. I need this now.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:16):
What's your specialty, oh doctah, what's your specialty?

Owen JJ Stone (00:06:21):
Meatballs are my jam. I make the best meatballs in the world and I make the best macaroni and cheese in the world.

Jeff Jarvis (00:06:27):
I'm coming over. I will do both through the show from there. I'm having dinner with that.

Leo Laporte (00:06:32):
Now let me ask you, cuz we took you out. I did not know that you considered Mac and cheese, your specialty, we took you out with and you and your daughter were here to a little restaurant where we had, I think it was lobster, Mac and cheese. Was that? Yes. How did that compare? Okay. It was

Owen JJ Stone (00:06:46):
Adequate. It was adequate. Okay. Adequate. It wasn't bad by any step of the means and it was good for what it was. It was very delicious. I just am. I'm like a Southern snob when it comes back kinda stuff like my, my Mac and cheese, my grandmother's recipe, my meatball recipe is from like my friend's Italian grandmother. She taught me and didn't teach her granddaughter because she knows that I cook and she doesn't do you. So I spent time crafting certain meals and I cook really well. So

Leo Laporte (00:07:11):
The only time I made meatballs you, I brown them in a skillet and then bake them to finish them off. And then you throw 'em in sauce. Is that kind of, yeah. Yeah. That's a

Owen JJ Stone (00:07:21):
Good way to do it. There's multiple ways, but that's a good way. You know my, my, I have an important question. Good. Ask your question. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:07:28):
Have you had the Popeye's new macaroni and cheese?

Leo Laporte (00:07:30):
Why, why Jeff? Why <laugh> every time with the Popeye's

Owen JJ Stone (00:07:40):
Soon pop. By the time I got a hold of that chicken sandwich, I started selling 'em like there were drugs on the street. Like these, I don't understand why people thought these things. So good marketing is amazing. They have tricked the world into believing that diamonds have value and that Popeyes is killing it in macaroni, cheese and chicken sandwich, market marketing on human being. So you

Leo Laporte (00:07:59):
Saying it is amazing. Popeyes is the de beers of chicken sandwiches?

Owen JJ Stone (00:08:04):
Yes. Yes. Okay. They, they couldn't sell chocolate diamonds cuz they were trash diamonds and then they tell you their chocolate diamonds and then you gotta have 'em a bottle barrel for decades now. C chocolate it's chocolate.

Jeff Jarvis (00:08:18):
Yeah. One of my favorite O lines ever is when the sandwich came out and it's kind of thick at one end, he said there was a chicken bolus in the

Leo Laporte (00:08:25):
Sandwich. It's got a Polish, a chicken in there. I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan. I think you should preform that stuff. Oh, I

Owen JJ Stone (00:08:33):
Think it's good. <Laugh> so do you know, do you know what you would not like when I was in China and I don't know why I did it when I was in China, I saw KFC and I said, huh, let me go to a CFC in China. Why not? Oh yeah. Why not? I go, I go to get a chicken sandwich. I bite into the chicken sandwich and somehow the breading was around loose pieces of chicken. Like it real chicken, like it wasn't foreign into a Patty. It was just like, I was biting out like breast pieces of chicken out of the breading. And I'm like, this is really weird. And I don't understand

Leo Laporte (00:09:00):
Why they, they say that, you know, the Chinese are gonna rule the world and all that. But I say be there's a KFC on every corner in China. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think we are socially in cultural dominant,

Owen JJ Stone (00:09:15):
I think it's cuz they got tourists there. I didn't, I don't see

Leo Laporte (00:09:19):
No, the Chinese love KFC. Oh my God. Japan as well. Yeah. Huge.

Owen JJ Stone (00:09:27):
It must been before the time. What's not when I was there, there was nobody in there. But Americans, when I went

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
Biggest I, you know, they're calling this log for shell exploit the worst security vulnerability in a decade. Somebody called it. I think it's the worst ever. And it's the gift it's gonna keep on giving discovered. The weekend of Thanksgiving log for Jay is a widely used job of based logging tool. From the Apache foundation it's used everywhere. First discovered in Minecraft servers. It's very easy to exploit it's it's literally, you can, you could put it in the URL of a, of a website and it'll get it entered in the log. And as, as soon as it's in the log gets executed and Rome Mo command execution, pro profit it is now we see being used by nation states, dramatically, China and others. It was a zero day. So and it was so easily exploited that it, the minute it was revealed, everybody knew how to do it.

Leo Laporte (00:10:35):
So everybody is working very hard to resolve this. We're also hearing from other security sources that this isn't the only flaw in log four, J that there will be others that even though you fix, you know, you, you close the, the back door, you update to the latest version of log four J which fixes it. You're if you've been compromised, it's the gift that keeps on giving and people say for years, we're gonna, we're gonna run across servers that have this problem ad the us officials said this week, that adversarial governments would in inevitably seek to exploit the security whole but companies like Mandy and Microsoft, they already have dudes. They already have including China, ransomware attack groups are using the attack. Go ahead.

Tim Stevens (00:11:26):
Yeah. I was just gonna say thankfully so far, most of what we've seen has been, you know, the typical bot farm and crypto mining stuff, but yeah, it's still very early days of got a good friend. Who's a sister been at a very large company and he had a very long week, my bad patching on bank systems. And it's been about, I used to be a software engineer and an architect. It's been about 15 years since I've written any code. And I remember using log for Jay in everything. And I'm sure some of those things that I wrote way back in the day are probably still running on production servers right now. And hopefully someone's got the keys to go in and, and do some updating

Leo Laporte (00:11:56):
Checkpoint. Is there one person who created, who's saying, oh hell, well this is the irony. It was created by one guy. It is of course there as with all open source projects. Now there are other committers. Yeah. But they're all volunteers, they're all, part-time open source developers and suddenly they're, you know, on the line it's used by everybody it's Java. So, you know, there's always that notion that Java is somehow sandboxed and safe, but this, you know, it clearly shows that there's that it's not, it's the, I think part of it is the problem is that it's so ubiquitous as, as you say, Tim Stevens it's everybody uses it. It's so it's just the default logging tool. Part of the problem is it's so easy to exploit. I could do it. Anybody could do it. It's a, it's simple text string by Tuesday, and this is running

Tim Stevens (00:12:50):
To, to system logs and really needs kind of preload level access to, to these systems to do its job effectively. And so it tends to be given a lot of permissions and that means they can, can do a lot of harm in the wrong hands.

Leo Laporte (00:13:00):
Yeah. Checkpoint software says it had counted 600 by the, by the way, this is Tuesday. This is almost a week ago, 600,000 attempts to exploit the bug by malicious cyber criminals for 4% of corporate networks worldwide had been hit by these attempts. As you said, Tim, a lot of it relatively benign like crypto miners. But once you see China and other nation states starting to use it, it's gonna be about data X filtration and perhaps worse to date. CSA is unaware of a federal agency being breached, but federal agencies have been given till Christmas Eve <laugh> to, to patch their software. Cancel

Tim Stevens (00:13:46):
That vacation everybody. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:13:49):
My right. God, the attack work. This is what the wall street journal says. The attack works reliable and is trivial to exploit. That's about as bad as <laugh> as you can get CrowdStrike Adam Myers, senior vice president of intelligence with CrowdStrike. One of our sponsors says, it's a surprise. It's not more widespread. The question everyone's asking is what aren't we seeing? And that's really where this gonna be a long term problem, because I would guess many, many servers have been impacted and affected, but the, the people who have used it are laying low they're in there, but they're sitting in there and they will you know, do something later with it. So tariff just, just really awful cease is actually saying that it probably will affect hundreds of millions of dices. Now the thing I'm I say all the time, just to reassure people or it's not affecting your individual computer, you're a home user, a business user of windows or Mac or, or Linux.

Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
It's not, it's not gonna affect you. It only affects servers. It's the logging tool use for servers. Unfortunately <laugh> because it affects all servers, including Apple's iCloud, <laugh> from Minecraft to iCloud and everywhere in between. It's very likely that something you use is impacted by it could then turn around and bite you. That's why it's really important that you keep your own systems up to date because it will be looking for weaknesses in your systems. So and, and really the people's most affecting people who like Tim used to be CIS admins. People have to keep their servers running, I guess. I mean, there's, I mean, normally on a show like this would go, well, let's point a finger of blame or, you know, there's no blame. This is just, you know, this happens. It is, you know, somebody said, oh, this shows you should never use open source. I don't think that shows that. Yeah, that that's

Tim Stevens (00:15:48):
Not, it <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:15:50):
Every saying that everything's got a problem. I mean, every software is gonna always have bugs. In fact, I think you could say the fact that this got patched almost immediately is Testament to the fact that, you know, these unpaid part-time volunteers who maintain this thing care a lot about quality and fixing it. Well, I've also heard the number of people say this has been a problem for a longer than anybody's admitting. I don't know about that. I haven't seen that evidence of that yet, but so just be careful <laugh> out there. So what's the wor what's the, what's the nightmare scenario. What's the worst that can be done with it. Anybody wanna use their imaginations?

Tim Stevens (00:16:32):
As far as I know you can run arbitrary code. You can basically inject whatever you want to. So as far as I know, worst case scenario is basically complete control of, of any, any system that's available publicly. You know, hopefully things are properly firewalled or even air gaps, you know, truly secure systems like that obviously should be fine. But anything that's got some kind of public access potentially is completely exploitable. And then at that point you may be able to get inside of a firewall and gain access to some more secure system that way. So the, the potential OK. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:17:04):
Is really problematic. <Laugh> thanks, Tim wired magazine. The next wave of log four, J attacks will be brutal. And this was three days ago. The really that's the that's the OCRA wave in other words. Yeah, exactly. We've only seen Delta so far <laugh> because I it's my guess that a lot of servers have already been compromised, but that the nation states who've compromised those servers, the bad act, the really bad actors are not the script kits, putting crypto miners on the, but people who are saying good, we got access could be, you want the real nightmare scenario. It really is gonna depend on how well these services have been secured if they're open to the public. And a lot of that's kind of the nation notion of a server is it's open to the public. You know, it's a Minecraft server or it's iCloud, or it's Amazon people are using it.

Leo Laporte (00:17:56):
And, and if somebody with malicious intent is one of those users, you can do it. So, you know what we don't, what we've seen in the past is things like our electric grid, no, not super secure. In fact, there's evidence that virtually every electrical provider in the country has been compromised in one way or the other, I think fairly likely that nation, state actors, Russia, probably already in the electrical grid financial services, I have to think most financial services probably do a better job of securing themselves than the nations electric providers, but they probably still, some of them are online somewhere that could be devastating. You could bring the grid down, which is worse, bringing that, turning the power off or destroying America's financial system. <Laugh> the financial, that would be pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah. You could trigger a, a recession, a depression economic meltdown. Oh, geez. I'm sure our military systems are well protected except that I wouldn't be surprised at all. If military contractors don't have somewhere publicly accessible servers or themselves access these servers I suspect it's as bad as it gets now. The only bright side is we are also probably in Russia's electrical grid cuz they're using it too. <Laugh> so it's mutually assured destruction. Don't

Tim Stevens (00:19:29):
Worry. All of your NFT should be safe because they are Coble. So that's all of your investments. All of our retirement fund really should be totally fine. If it's on blockchain,

Leo Laporte (00:19:38):
The

Owen JJ Stone (00:19:38):
Blockchain, we put everything on the blockchain.

Leo Laporte (00:19:40):
Everything's gonna be okay, it's safe. I meet Joran CEO of tenable, cybersecurity firm, and founding director of us cert. It is by far the single biggest, most critical vulnerability ever <laugh>. And I, and I, I have to agree. I can't think of anything, you know, people might say, well, look at Intel's meltdown inspector problem. Yeah. But that was really, really hard to exploit every machine has it, but it was really, really hard to exploit. And as far as, no, we haven't seen any exploits in the wild because it, it, it took such skill to implement this. I could do <laugh> any idiot could do. It's not hard at all. Checkpoint says they've seen 1.8 million attempts to exploit the vulnerability in the past week. In some cases, a hundred attempts per minute, China and Iran have been spotted using it to establish footholds.

Leo Laporte (00:20:39):
And that's really the thing. Footholds is the thing. And so I think, you know, China and Iran, they're not going in there and putting in crypto miners or defacing your website, they're going in there for the long haul they're going in there to live and no way to, to detect it. Well of course there's always a way to detect APTs, there's always a way to find somebody in your server. The problem is they're savvy. They're good. They're probably leaving very little trade. And they're probably being smart enough not to trigger any trip wires. So I think it's, it's a safe bet that they'll be there undetected for some time. Yeah.

Tim Stevens (00:21:18):
It's really a question of how well your network apology is defined, because again, this is giving easy access to, to public servers and, and realistically, if you're designing your network, right, you should be able to prevent some kind of, or have some kind of firewall or some kind of a, a barrier in between these public servers and anything internal with really truly mission critical stuff. But like you said, Leo, there's this perception, of course, the job that is inherently safe. And so therefore I think a lot of admins out there probably were a little bit relaxed and setting up access permissions to these and from the, these servers thinking, well, you know, there's, there's really low likelihood of anything really dramatic happening. So if those network technologies aren't correct, if there aren't the, the proper checks and balances kind of in place to prevent someone from hopping from a public facing server to something internal that's supposed to be kind of blocked off from the world. Yeah. That's when this starts to get, get really problematic. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:07):
Anyway you know, <laugh>, we don't have our usual pundit level information apart to talk about this because it is, and there's not much we can say about it. It's just this is, this is the gift that's gonna keep on giving probably for years. They're saying that they'll be, they'll be compromised servers in closets every, or that nobody even pays any attention to that will just be sitting there. And one day, you know, you'll log in and boom, <laugh>, you'll be sorry. Cuz because, because I think probably most servers will be patched pretty quickly. The patch is out there. It's easy to fix. But the problem is patch. Doesn't eliminate the person who got in. It's just closing the barn door after the hackers already inside. So anyway, well this is a depressing show. Okay. I'm gonna cheer you up.

Leo Laporte (00:23:00):
<Laugh> actually, I'm looking at all the top stories. There's nothing, nothing to sell over. Nothing happy there. Nothing happy. Dr. King, here's the good news. Here's the good news. Disney's back on YouTube TV. Woohoo. I hate, I have to say, I really hate these clearance negotiations. Yeah, it happens all the time. It happens with cable networks in local television stations. It happens with Roku. It happens with apple TV, YouTube TV Disney said, look, if you want to carry our channels, all 18 of them, you've gotta give us more money. Google said, well the heck with you, I went back and forth. It's really a game of chicken, whoever blinks first, right? We've seen it happen before. And almost always. These are resolved the day before they're gonna pull the plug. Well, it didn't happen this time. And on Friday Disney pulled the plug. A lot of Disney channels disappeared from YouTube TV. Now this is not YouTube. This is YouTube streaming TV serves. I actually subscribe to it. It's expensive. See five bucks a month, but it's basically like cable. It has some nice features. It has a DVR for up to six people. Everybody in your family can D unlimited

Owen JJ Stone (00:24:15):
DVR.

Leo Laporte (00:24:15):
Yeah. Except we learned something with this. Something really important. Not only did the channels go away, ESPN FX, national geo, your ABC locals, but all your DVR recordings for those channels went away. They're not recordings. They're not permanent. They're I'm not sure how it works. I'm not sure what the mechanics of it are, but when you lose that channel, you, you lose the DVR recordings. So like every thing else in the cyber sphere, you don't own it. You're renting. Well, they're just pointers. They're just pointers. They're just pointers. Yeah. Google said we've had good felt good faith negotiation with Disney for several months. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts would be unable to reach an equitable agreement before our existing one expired. Their channels are no longer available on YouTube TV. We're gonna give you for 15 bucks off. It is expensive. It's 65 bucks. Now I think that's a little bit of a PR thing on Google's part. See how much Disney's cost is, is impacting your bottom line. So it went from 65 bucks to, to 49, 99, 50 bucks.

Owen JJ Stone (00:25:22):
I, I almost wished in fixed. Cause I use, I use YouTube TV. I'd rather pay the 49 99, then pay the extra $15. Cuz again, as being at this point, I'm I'm over. I might as well pay for cable again, cuz I have the Hulu package where I get ESPN, Disney and Hulu anyway. So I might as well. I was thinking to myself, well I already got it. So go ahead and take it $15 off. Save me some extra money off the top of my bill. But that just goes again. And like you're about to say that's how much it cost. Disney had to flinch I'm I'm happy Disney gotta take a little bit less money then hopefully that means

Leo Laporte (00:25:55):
My Google. Well, I don't know who flinched. It could be Google it flinch. We don't know it.

Owen JJ Stone (00:25:59):
It had to be Disney cuz go okay. If it was Google, they would've not. When I said I'm gonna give you $15 discount and all kinds of stuff, cause nobody's gonna cancel their service right away. Remember, do you feel the impact?

Leo Laporte (00:26:08):
All of this is little bit of, you know, jock like jocking in the public sphere. For instance, I think ESP and alone is almost $15. So it's the most expensive cable channel it's it was, I'm not sure it's anymore. It's pretty expensive. It used to be expensive. And this weekend because of the bowl games was a, of course they always do it like right before. Like you're gonna really yeah. And I, I'm not convinced what we, I don't think we'll ever know. We never do who blinked, but they, but they, but they took 'em a day. Right? So they just it's a game for them. It's a game. When I worked,

Jeff Jarvis (00:26:43):
When I worked in the cable to the side of the cable industry, they would all brag that they leave no scrap of meat on the table. Even if we everybodys satisfied, they still just wanna fight for the sport of it.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
It's a bunch of Logan Roys swear at each other. Yes, exactly.

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:00):
That's Lisa.

Leo Laporte (00:27:04):
We, we're talking about this TV show on HBO, which is still, I think the best TV show ever succession. It's really good. And Lisa loves it. In fact, we like it so much. We're doing something I'm calling now the re binge where the season three ended and now we're so desperate. We're actually starting over. We're just gonna keep watching <laugh> how,

Owen JJ Stone (00:27:21):
How do I keep hearing people say this is

Leo Laporte (00:27:23):
That's TV show. Best TV show ever. I know you okay. You don't agree. That's fine. You

Owen JJ Stone (00:27:29):
Know, it's not only do I not agree. It's just like, that is such hyperbole. I live in a world of like breaking bad. The Sopranos better wire.

Leo Laporte (00:27:37):
Better like better. Yeah. In every respect. It's better. It's the Shakespeare of our time. Anyway. You, we don't have to agree on that. That's not important. Lisa. Lisa has started using Logan ISS against me the other day. She said stop

Jeff Jarvis (00:27:51):
Buzzing in my air. <Laugh> what has she yet told you to F off? Oh yes. Many times.

Owen JJ Stone (00:28:02):
I'm sure that was I'm sure I was pretty succession.

Leo Laporte (00:28:05):
No, no. Well maybe. Okay. Yeah. But she's gotten more eloquent in it. Thanks to Logan Roy. Anyway,

Jeff Jarvis (00:28:11):
With the accent, does she do with the accent? She, she does

Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
It like she's yeah, she does it exactly like Logan does Brian. The great Shakespearean actor, Brian Cox who's I think 76 he's in his seventies. He's he's the he's the eminence agrees of this show is wonderful. In fact, the episodes without him are not quite as good. I have to say so good, but, and they give him some, every actor in this show is brilliant and the writing is brilliant. So they all have wonderful lines, but they give Logan such, <laugh> such salty speech. It's wonderful. In any event it's a show about a media mogul, Logan. Roy's kind of the Rupert Murdoch. But, but, but in every negotiation he has there's, there's one of him and everybody else gets cowed. I feel like with these it's two Logan Roys going and nobody's the winner, you know, who's the loser us in every case, these carriage battles it's us, it's the users who are her ranked by the cable company saying you're gonna lose the CW write 'em a letter they're gonna. And and, and if, and if it very rarely happens, but in this case, it's like this one where you do lose a channel, maybe you didn't see the what's the Jimmy Kimmel bowl. How does he get a bowl by the way? <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:29:28):
A boom. That's why I want the Leo bowl.

Leo Laporte (00:29:32):
The really there's a Jimmy Kimmel bowl. That's the, anyway, you, so you're gonna, you're not gonna get to see the Jimmy Kimmel bowl. But and I think that was the whole negotiation strategy behind,

Owen JJ Stone (00:29:42):
But see, back in the day, that back in the day that affected the user. But now, you know, I don't get stars network. Okay, well I'll just go pay 2 99 a month and get that's true. That's as

Leo Laporte (00:29:51):
Many ways, correct? Like

Owen JJ Stone (00:29:52):
Before, before, like yeah. Oh man. I, I don't have the guess what everybody's got their own app. If you take, like I said, if they took this away from me, don't care. It didn't freak. I didn't bother one IOT. I logged in the day. I had this big blip on my screen. Sorry. No longer. I said, okay cool. Now I gotta actually go to their native app. Oh, it sucks for me. It's so hard. But I mean, nowadays you have to worry about that the user doesn't suffer anymore. The world changed. I'm still paying too much for subscriptions. Youtube

Leo Laporte (00:30:18):
TV is my favorite of all of these Hulu who has a streaming service where you get local channels. And it is in fact, one of the us' biggest internet pay TV services, according to variety, 4 million subscribers, they don't reveal numbers, but that's the, that's pretty small. Yeah. It's small, but it's in a universe where there's a million little and it's gonna grow like crazy. Yeah. TV had more than 3 million customers in the third quarter of 2020. So it is growing Hulu plus what do you, what do

Jeff Jarvis (00:30:49):
You like about it? Is there anything beyond just what it has, what it offers and channels or is there anything

Leo Laporte (00:30:54):
Well, and, and the DVR, if you've got Logan Roy money, cuz it is the most expensive of these it's 65 bucks. And if you're willing to pay an additional $20 a month, so it's $85 a month. They have 4k content, not a lot of 4k content yet, but if you have a 4k TV, it's one way to get, see a lot of, for instance, NFL's not in 4k, but a lot of college football weirdly is so if you want 4k sports, this is one of the best ways to get, get it. The other

Jeff Jarvis (00:31:23):
Thing, look at that green it's so green, isn't it? <Laugh> oh, I've never seen green like

Leo Laporte (00:31:28):
This. You, you know what, if you're a football fan, it's the difference between watching it on TV and being in the stands, you really feel like you're right there. I can see the

Owen JJ Stone (00:31:36):
Sweat in their armpits.

Leo Laporte (00:31:38):
Yeah. Almost can see smell it. The other thing I like is that DVR, although it's very interesting to see that the DVR you lose the rights to your content. If the if the channel goes

Owen JJ Stone (00:31:49):
Away. Well, I don't know why you didn't think that that would happen. It's in the space. It's in the, in the, server's in the cloud. It's not on your device. It's not like you recorded

Leo Laporte (00:31:57):
It. Right? I

Owen JJ Stone (00:31:57):
Mean, no, no. You recorded it on your cloud. Like you, yeah. You, you say you didn't record it. You saved it. But yeah. Saved ads on their hard drive. It's a bookmark.

Jeff Jarvis (00:32:07):
It's

Leo Laporte (00:32:07):
A bookmark. Yeah. But okay.

Owen JJ Stone (00:32:10):
Yeah. It's not, it's not Tebo I don't have a boxing. I understand. I'm record's well, I mean, you sounded right now. Stop complaining about the and side note. Obviously I should never say anything like, cause you're the smartest person. So you you're a genius, but let me tell you something. If you're looking right now, if you have it, I know Leo said it's expensive, but if you have family that lives in your tri-state area, that's right. You crap. You globally. I've got up to six family members. I've got four on my line right now. I'm talking about 25 hours a piece. I get, I, I actually make 25 a minute. You

Leo Laporte (00:32:41):
Charge your family members for access to your YouTube TV.

Owen JJ Stone (00:32:45):
I, I have to pay. They have to pay. And $25 is better than 65. Is it not? I'm not good at math, but I'm just saying 25 hours is better than 65. So if you're out here and you know, you live in California, you just hook up six people on the line and you're good to go. You can't go outta your region though. Cause they're smart. They, they stop. It only give you three weeks of viewing. Cause I, I have like 42 accounts, all kinds of countries, but you get,

Leo Laporte (00:33:09):
You get the, what stations do you get? The New York stations or the Philly stations.

Owen JJ Stone (00:33:13):
I get the Philly stations.

Leo Laporte (00:33:16):
See, I think that's one of the, so we don't get locals here. You have to get cable. I guess if you haven't had antenna 50 feet above your house, you might. But we're far enough from the big city that we don't get anything. We get, you know, like one UHF station up the, up the, up the road a bit. So I need something and YouTube TV gives me the San Francisco locals. That's that's good.

Owen JJ Stone (00:33:37):
It is good.

Leo Laporte (00:33:39):
You know what? The only negative is you can't. So with the TiVo, you can skip easier. Skip commercial. I shouldn't talk about this. Never, ever skip commercials, boys and girls it's it's like stealing. It is stealing. It's AOR. You should feel guilty as hell, whatever you, you do it. It's wrong. Ask you should say four hail Leos. Every time you do it. So the YouTube TV scrubber is not, it depends, I guess, on what device you're using. But on the apple TV, you gotta do it like this. But then I realized this was a

Owen JJ Stone (00:34:13):
Bit, if you lived this life, you'd be happier. You need this life. Ah, this remote right here. Does that get better? Oh, they're remote. Oh, I'm be skipping dude all day, all day long. This, this thing right here is Ooh. The quickness right here. See you in the apple universe. You gotta get over here. That air universe, once you get into their device,

Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
Wait, I found a workaround. Siri will skip for you. So you can say, sir, skip ahead one minute, two minutes, whatever length you want. So the only time I skip is, is a if I have a recorded football game or the F1 races or things like that, where I just wanna see the results, right? But you can say, and with football, you know, that's gonna be a minute break. That's gonna be a two minute breakthrough minute. So you can say skip ahead or as, and they also the, and you would say, skip DDA ahead,

Owen JJ Stone (00:34:58):
Skip it a DDA. And, and also with the fun thing they do is horses. Like if I come into a game and I'm late, I can just hit that catch up on all the key moments, thing, love that, that they have and admit. And they really do have all the key moments. That's YouTube time. That's YouTube. I thought like, yes, I was like, man, this isn't gonna work out. Let me see this horse. I watched three games like that and, and they hit the notes boy, like it was like, I forgot this. It was impressive.

Leo Laporte (00:35:21):
That's the other benefit of YouTube TV. You can, you, it has that summary kind of, yeah, really do a good job. It's it's great. All right. So now we have, we sold you. That's a happier, I was a happier segment. That was happy. All right. Let's take a break. Now that we're ending on a happy note, it'd be a good time to do a commercial. We'll come back. Love it. Having you guys on, on our last well I guess it's not our last show of the year. Exactly. we're gonna, so we're gonna have next Sunday. It will be a little bit prerecorded. It's the best of TWI, the ho not best of holiday, special TWI. And this year, you know, you've been on that Jeff in the past we, we actually flew hosts in, it was a lot of fun, but this year, those were the days.

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
Those were the days because of <inaudible>. We, we aren't even gonna be able to have people in the studio. So our holiday special will feature our in-house hosts, Jason Howell, Mike, a Sergeant, aunt Pruitt. And I, and we'll gather virtual with our virtual eggnog and and have some fun. That'll be the holiday special December 26th, a week from today. And then the following week, January 2nd is our best up where we you've been ask, hearing us, ask all your long, you know, let us know what the best moments were in it. So we compile them. Those are always fun. And then we'll be back, live on January night. That's actually gonna be a special show as well. That's gonna be our prognosticators show. This was something Amy Webb. Who's a regular on TWI said I would like to come on. She's a futurist. That's what she does.

Leo Laporte (00:36:50):
She, she helps companies strategize plan for the future. She said, I'd like to come on and do a kind of look ahead to the future show. I thought that's a great idea. So Amy, we will join us. Then I thought, well, we shouldn't just have a futurist. We should have somebody whose imagination lives in the future. Daniel Suarez will join us. He's of course, one of my favorite science fiction, authors, demon, freedom, TM a whole bunch of books in which he's really that's, especially, he's thinking about what the future will bring. And we're also working on a third and we, I won't say any names yet. We've reached out to some very interesting people, but I wanted to get a scientist. So a scientist, a science fiction author, and a futurist walked into walk into a bar, a TWI bar. And that should be very, very interesting episode there. The January 9th. Yeah. Kicked, can I do

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:39):
A looking back show? You know, a

Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Gutenberg show. I remember when Gutenberg invented the Bible. Yeah, I could.

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:48):
I could. I could do the whole 400 years

Leo Laporte (00:37:50):
Of history. Actually. That's a great idea, but we should mention for those of you not watching video, Jeff is some somewhere found a Gutenberg. T-Shirt <laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (00:37:59):
Wait a minute, wait a minute. At the, at the Gutenberg museum,

Leo Laporte (00:38:03):
This in mines, watch this

Owen JJ Stone (00:38:05):
Stop buzzing in my ear. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:38:09):
Lace is here with Christmas cookies forever. Lisa. Hi, Lisa. They're all saying hi to you. Hi Lisa. Oh, these look really good. I might eat VI it up and ginger sugar cookies. Gingerbread, gingerbread. Oh,

Owen JJ Stone (00:38:21):
They also, yeah. Also side note SCR. I was just texted. If you use custom guide with your YouTube TV, you can re add all of the Disney channels and they will appear DVR recordings and save library.

Leo Laporte (00:38:35):
Items will remain also. No, I know guys gotta that, that the thing, when they went away, come back, the DVR went away when they came back. So did the DVR yeah. Say you gotta, just gotta say that out loud. You have me thinking all my old stuff was gone. Oh no, no. That's the beauty of it. As long as you got an agreement, you can have it. All right. Well, we agree on the a yeah. For today. Yeah. Let's take a little break. <Laugh> while I eat a gingerbread man, he bit his head off. Do, do you start with the toes or do you go with the head? I work with it. They're all the same. It's all the same. Yeah. Yeah. You can't really tell. It's just a cookie folks. Our show today brought to you by stamps.com. This is a tough time at the post office.

Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
I love the post office. I love my postal workers. I know we know our male carrier's name by, you know, I won't say her name, but we know her and she's great. And we give her a Christmas card and a little bonus every year. But I have to say, you don't wanna go to the post office around this time of year, cuz there's all that's Anne hour. All the people <laugh> who go to the post office once a year will be there with 20 packages in their arms. And you will be in line. I've been watching the lines get longer and longer. Here's the, here's a pro tip. You don't need to, you don't need to go drive down the post office waiting line. Oh no, that's a, because you've got stamps.com. You can do everything you would do with the post office without leaving your desk with your computer, your printer, and you don't need a postage meter.

Leo Laporte (00:40:02):
Stamps.Com is amazing. And by the way, it's not just the us postal service anymore. Stamps.Com also does ups. So now, I mean, this is now the all in one service you need stamps.com lets you compare rates between ups, us PS, various services that each offer print labels for packages. You could even print right on the envelope for the postal service plus. And I love this. You'll get discounts. You cannot get anywhere else. You can't get at the postal service. We are. I love stamps.com. They've been in a, on our shows. This is I we're now going into our 10th year. We've been using 'em for even longer. If you haven't tried 'em yet I gotta ask. I don't know what, how can I in entice you? I don't know what you're waiting for, except that this is the time of year. Whether you're selling online at oh, especially if you are, if you're eBay, Etsy, Amazon seller, and you know a stamp.com actually pull the address from the website.

Leo Laporte (00:41:01):
You could put a logo on there. You could put your return address, all this automatic, less data entry on your part. Plus you always have exactly the right postage. Can't tell you how many times I've received packages for you. Etsy. Clearly they licked the stamps. They put the wrong number on there. Postage due is not a good look for your business. Stamps.Com can do it, right? You'll even get a USB scale. So you put exactly the right postage. You get all the services, the post office and ups without taking the trip and, and discounts up to 40%, 40% off us postal service rates and 76% off ups. It's amazing going to the post office instead of using stamps.com. Well's I mean what's like taking the stairs. Take the elevator. I guess if you're just going on a cup, a couple of floors take the stairs, but if you're going up 30 flights a day, you need stamps.com, stamps.com for anyone who spends more than a few minutes a week dealing with mailing and shipping.

Leo Laporte (00:41:59):
You'll save time. You'll save money. It's just the right way to do it. Go to stamps. Here's what we got a great deal. Go to stamps.com up in the upper right hand corner. You'll see a, a little link that says you heard this on a podcast or click that enter the promo code TWI. Now you're gonna get a very nice special offer. Four week trial, free postage digital scale, no long term commitment, no contracts. Just great service from stamps.com please this year, yo it to yourself. I know you've been thinking about let's do it this time. Stamps.Com, click the microphone and the code to T w I T. Thank you. Stamps.Com. Do you still Owen and you still do a ups store, right?

Owen JJ Stone (00:42:41):
Yes. but since you bring it up, I'm going into a preretirement after our Christmas Eve this year.

Leo Laporte (00:42:49):
Oh, is that good? Or bet? What are you eating by the way? Are you eating a meatball, macaroni and cheese?

Owen JJ Stone (00:42:54):
You had a cookie. So I figured I'd have some

Leo Laporte (00:42:56):
Have a cookie. Okay. <Laugh> I didn't mean to interrupt your

Owen JJ Stone (00:42:59):
Cookie. No, no, no. You're you're fine. No pre preretirement is me. Just not having to go back in the store. Good. Since COVID happened. It was hard hiring people and keeping people in. So I had to actually go into the stores and work for the last year and a half, but that ends on Friday.

Leo Laporte (00:43:17):
Yay. Congratulations. Going

Owen JJ Stone (00:43:19):
Back to just collecting my royalty checks as it were. That's

Leo Laporte (00:43:22):
Nice. Have you, so you you've experienced what they're calling the great resignation

Owen JJ Stone (00:43:28):
<Laugh> yes. Which is so what happens is it cracks me up so much because there is a thing to where people are like, oh, nobody wants to work. No, nobody wants to work for you. Is thats,

Leo Laporte (00:43:40):
Right? I think that's

Owen JJ Stone (00:43:41):
Right. Yeah. You know there there's a kid that I, I hired, I call him a kid. I don't know why hate when I call people cuz he's a grown man. Anyway, he worked a target for three years and he's a hard working guy. He's like, I just wanted to raise. I wanted to be promote and they would not promote me. And he comes in the store all the time. Cause he is doing side hustles and whatever. And he's complaining. I'm like, dude, I need somebody come work for me. I hire him. This kid busts butt. He's making more money now than he was there. And they call him every week, promising him a management position to come back. And he's like, no, because when I was there, you wouldn't pay me. Yeah. And gimme any kind of increase. He's like, so I'm gonna don't wanna come back there because you need people and you're not gonna give me what I, what I deserve for, for growth. Like, so nowadays you're like, look, I can go work at Sam's club or Costco making $24 an hour. I get an, an email from Amazon every day saying, look, we'll pay you 3000 bonus in a week. And we're paying first. It was $18. It was 22. Now it's up to 24. So I mean there's options out there. So when you go to a store and they say, oh, we can't find help. Mm mm. Look

Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
At yourself.

Owen JJ Stone (00:44:43):
Yeah. I think that's true. What you're offering.

Leo Laporte (00:44:45):
Yeah. I mean people are, I guess they're not dumb. <Laugh> they're gonna, they're gonna take the job. That's the best it competition. It's competition. It's it's it's

Owen JJ Stone (00:44:56):
Hey capitalist.

Leo Laporte (00:44:56):
Welcome to capitalism. I'm not sure I'd wanna work in an Amazon warehouse for any price though.

Owen JJ Stone (00:45:02):
Well Amazon's had huge problems this last two weeks. Yeah. The ups store that that happened and their systems went down multiple times. I love when I get an email that says a big, we get a big red alert in the morning when they're, cuz we pre see the systems down for returns and things like that. And it says in there don't tell anything to the customers. Don't tell them the system is down. And I'm like, if you turn on the news, it's on, it's on nine o'clock morning news. So you, so I'm supposed to get cued out by customers because your stuff isn't working, but I'm not that your system's down when they get it's on ABC 20 minutes ago. Like, nah, dude, like I'm telling everybody, yo Amy is Amazon. Can they

Leo Laporte (00:45:38):
Enforce that though? Can they make it hard for you to work with them? If you no. No.

Owen JJ Stone (00:45:43):
They it's a suggestion from them because we suggest

Leo Laporte (00:45:45):
You don't embarrass us. Thank you very

Owen JJ Stone (00:45:47):
Much. Yeah. I mean just in our stores we do a lot of volume. Like I said, I, I wish I could talk to somebody at Amazon because there's so many scams that I see people doing. And I can't say anything about it. I just gotta sit there and watch it go. But I wonder how much money they lose left. And right. When, again, when their system was down, that was really bad. Like the whole nation, you couldn't return anything for like a day and a half. No returns. People were

Leo Laporte (00:46:10):
Upset are the scams. You're seeing people returning stuff.

Owen JJ Stone (00:46:15):
So I'll tell you two scams that make me angry. Physically angry. Halloween comes November. Second families come in with five costumes, one for the mom, one for the dad, one for his kid. And they're like, oh, didn't work out. So you went and trick treated in, got this costume all funky and return it because you don't have to look at a person you'd never go to the Halloween store. You would return those costumes. You never walk into Walmart and return costume. They look at you. But when you go on Amazon, you clicking and clean and click you. Ain't gotta talk to nobody. You walk in your hand to me. I don't work for Amazon. I don't care. I have to my store alone. We do thousands of Halloween costumes returns every year, the last years. Cause people found out about it.

Leo Laporte (00:46:55):
Amazon knows this and they go, well, it's the cost of doing business. We're still making money,

Owen JJ Stone (00:47:00):
But there's so many individual people out there that are losing money on that too. I don't, again, I, I don't know how the math works out, but I'm like man alive. That's just one thing that I see. My other favorite thing is because again, because you're not checking the product. I why I shouldn't be say this. I guess people could learn more to do it. Anyway. You come in, you say you bought a, you say you bought an apple, right? This,

Leo Laporte (00:47:19):
This is why you listen to TWI ladies and gentlemen to learn how to scam Amazon.

Owen JJ Stone (00:47:23):
You bought an apple from Amazon. You come into me again, not an Amazon employee and you're returning it and you give me a penny in the bag and I just close up the bag and put the label on it. Now it goes back to the warehouse. Now, sometimes they just bulk ship 'em off somewhere else. But half the time nobody's checking. So once people realize that you could get away with this, you, you get away with it. Now, mind you point of

Leo Laporte (00:47:45):
Time, expensive and return something cheap.

Owen JJ Stone (00:47:47):
Yes. Now mind you just, just so people don't go crazy. There, there was a guy who just got caught after nine, $290,000 of the stuff he'd buy a, a $1,200 laptop send in a $300 laptop return. He'd buy a, a, a $400 toaster and send a $25 toaster return. But after a while he got caught, but how did you let it go up to 200,500? But I, I, people come in, I had a guy come in with a trash can. It was one of those fancy to, and the box was empty. I said, sir did you forget the trash can? He's like, no, it came delivered like just to me. So I'm returning it to Amazon and I'm like,

Leo Laporte (00:48:26):
Okay, but it's not your job to enforce those

Owen JJ Stone (00:48:28):
Rules. You just, it's not, I can't say anything about it. I don't do anything IER the button, go on. But when I see it, it, it is in recurrence. I'm like, man, people catch on really quick. So, but that,

Leo Laporte (00:48:38):
Unfortunately from Amazon, go ahead, go ahead. Go ahead, Tim.

Tim Stevens (00:48:42):
That, that actually can, can burn consumers down the road too. I actually bought a a roof rack attachment kit for a car. And it was Amazon, Amazon warehouse used. So it was like 20% cheaper. So I thought, sure. It's, it's no big deal. Like I'll save some money. I get it. And it's actually the wrong kit. And what somebody had done was purchase the kit that they needed for their car, but the kit for their old car in the box, ship it back to Amazon. Amazon hadn't actually checked it. So they just said, oh, it's, it's in good shape. So we'll sell it as used through Amazon warehouse. And then they sold it to me and I get it. And it's the wrong kid because it's the kid from the previous person's last car that they had returned and gotten a full refund on. So exactly, definitely go kind, kind of carry down the road and, and burn the next person.

Leo Laporte (00:49:21):
All right. I'm gonna admit an embarrassing story. I think I told this on twig, Jeff, but I'm gonna further embarrass myself. I spent when the part of the COVID thing, I thought I've gotta get a big HEPA filter that can do the whole house, like a, you know, a thousand cubic meters of air. So I got a giant, it was like $700, but because it was the time he couldn't get a new one. So I got a giant one that was used. And as I've been running it for a year and after a year, the light comes on, says, you need to replace the filters. So I opened it up and said, well, where are the filters? And I got online there. I'd been running it for a year without the filters, because somebody you did. I know what happened. Somebody bought it, new, took out the filters, return. It got their money back, but they got the a hundred dollars worth of filters for free. And I end up buying the one <laugh> I foot the bill because I bought the one. And you had dirty air for a year and I didn't even know it cause I, I didn't look,

Owen JJ Stone (00:50:19):
I am so angry at you and I am so angry at that company. <Laugh> first of all, the fact that it didn't alert you, that there was no filter in the system for over a year. It just

Leo Laporte (00:50:29):
Shows you those lights that come on, that saves time for a new filter, have nothing to do with anything. They're just a timer, I guess. And

Owen JJ Stone (00:50:37):
Second of all, you need to check everything

Leo Laporte (00:50:40):
You opened. Well, I did, when I didn't know how it worked, I thought the filters were inside or something. I didn't know.

Owen JJ Stone (00:50:47):
You're a nerd. The first thing I wanna do, I got air filters too. I go look at 'em. I'm trying to look at the design. I'm trying to make sure that the thing ain't got extra holes in it well, I will, from now on, I've looked at filters. Maybe I'm just a loser, but I look at filters. I wanna know all filtration.

Leo Laporte (00:51:02):
I'm getting, I've been going, we're safe. We're safe. We got the filters. We've got all the airs, clean, safe,

Owen JJ Stone (00:51:08):
Nothing. You've been running. The you've been running the 700 fan and I'm so sad right now. I'm so

Jeff Jarvis (00:51:14):
Upset with you right now. So I had to return a TV to Costco. They check the serial number, they check everything which could on them. But I also got something from Amazon that was expensive and, and it was defective. It wasn't working well. And I wanted to return it and they first gave me some record roll and they said, okay. And they said, just keep it. I said, I'm not trying to keep it. I don't wanna keep it. I wanna return it. No, no, just keep it.

Owen JJ Stone (00:51:39):
Yeah. There's certain list of items that they can't return. Again. I shouldn't say these things either, but there's certain things that they can't return to. People figure it out too that they won't take back. Or there, anything that ever had any kind of fuel in it, you, they tell you just keep it anything. That's a medical device. That's been touching your skin, which they, they tell you keep it, which I'm wondering, like, how do they take back clothes then? Cuz I put the clothes on. They touch my skin. But anyway, that's Neith hear nor there. And nobody

Leo Laporte (00:52:02):
Wants to buy a used, you know, colostomy bag or something. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone (00:52:09):
You go, you go right there. Leon,

Jeff Jarvis (00:52:11):
You

Leo Laporte (00:52:11):
Say a lot of possible illustrations illustrations. I'll you know, you maybe you'll buy some a used jacket. But if it's, you know, I mean, if it's a, you know, a hernia belt, you're not gonna maybe wanna buy somebody. These's old hernia

Owen JJ Stone (00:52:22):
Belt and, and shout out to Costco, go after Christmas, go on a hashtag Costco and Christmas tree people turn Christmas trees after Christmas day. New year's day. Yes. Because Costco will return anything. They do check all the numbers, but you could return anything to Costco. Like if you bought a bed from like Sam's club Costco's or BJ's, that's one of the things they can't take back to. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:52:42):
Not gonna, I'm not gonna ask you this Owen. Cause I know what your answer will be. What's my answer. No, I know your answer. So I'm gonna ask Jeff and Tim, and then I know what your answer's gonna be. Do you think people are more dishonest than they used to be? I know you think they are. Cuz you see the worst of life Owen, but Jeff, this, I mean, what is all of this? This is all little minor scams. And I think some of it is because it's anonymous. I think Owen's right. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> but this is these little like people just in do people care less than they used to about just or do

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:11):
They feel they get ripped off more and, and, and this is their, this is their recompense or I,

Leo Laporte (00:53:16):
Or maybe that's it. Maybe they, they feel justified. You

Jeff Jarvis (00:53:19):
And I are old and grumpy. Tim, what do you think?

Leo Laporte (00:53:22):
<Laugh> no, I definitely think that there is a general perception of

Tim Stevens (00:53:25):
I deserve this which is, I think is more widespread than before. But honestly, I, I think that it's just easier than before. Like Owen said, there's no eye to eye contact with anyone who's really directly affected. And so I think that that that level of, of corruption or whatever it is, it's probably roughly the same place as it was before. It's just so much easier to do. And now than more and more people are doing it. Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (00:53:43):
Owen. So what are you gonna say? I'm gonna give you the chance now. <Laugh>

Owen JJ Stone (00:53:46):
So I, this is what I tell people about the world, right? The world is the exact same. I hear people say all the time, kids nowadays don't wanna work. My, my son doesn't wanna back in my day, I was like, first of all, who raised the kids that are in this day? You did. Second of all, I remember when they used to make kids work in minds in coal. And I remember slavery and I remember people, waterboarding people. I remember Ru Romans and Egyptians and slave. I remember the whole world being crappy throughout history because human beings are crappy. So the world is a beautiful, ugly place. There's always been crime. There's always been theft. It's just on different levels. Ask Alexander it a great how he acquired so much. Did he just get it for free or, or did he do something extra to go get it? Okay. So getting Halloween costumes is scummy for sure. But I mean, human history has shown that we are beautiful evil creatures throughout the arc of our time on his planet. So I'm not saying it's worse right now than it was yesterday. Cuz my great-grandfather would disagree about how I'm living, talking on a show with you guys as opposed to how he

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
Had to go. That's Steven to say that's Steven Pinker's contention. He says we're less. You think we're more violent, but really if you compare it with history, we're, we're, we're less violent. Although I have to say the 20th century was pretty darn violent and nasty cuz of mass weapons of mass destruction, we were able to kill more than ever before. So anyway, Pinker makes a pretty strong case. Oh the, the, the 30 years war was pretty awful. Yeah. It's not that they wouldn't have used weapons of mass destruction. They just didn't have them. Didn't have what it went on for 30 years. Yeah. I, I, I did a panel. Well, wait a minute. How long were we in Afghanistan? That's true. Not, not quite. We got, we got to 20. Yeah. We would've gone to 30. Could have easily all the, the Swedes just kind of did big stuff in Europe, but then they became Swedes right now. They're nice. So you can't change all of a sudden other Swedes. They're nice,

Owen JJ Stone (00:55:42):
Beautiful, horrible

Leo Laporte (00:55:43):
Place. I maybe humans have been bad all along. I just feel like they, they just, this is what we do.

Owen JJ Stone (00:55:48):
There's this low. This is what we

Leo Laporte (00:55:48):
Do. It's it's not a, it's not a, it's not a big evil, it's a low kind of a low level of I'm gonna get mine kind of thing. Like it's, it's the huberous and present tense that we think everything the is worse now, I guess you're right. Yeah. You know, I have to say there is one social network. I really like there, you know, I know you're a big Twitter fan Jeff and but I, to me, Reddit gives me the news. I want it's the social network I want. And I realized, I was thinking the other day, why I like Reddit because I am an enthusiast. You know, I get in, I get little, I get excited about a thing and I want to go all in on it. And with Reddit, I could say, good, I'm gonna follow those three subs. And then when I move on to the next thing, I unfollow them and I follow the next three subs. So Reddit always kind of is perfectly suited to the thing I'm interested in right now. I happen to think it's a really good social network. They have apparently announced they're gonna do I P O owned by Conde Nast. Right? Jeff?

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:46):
Yeah, majority. So Conde, I told the story on, on twig. That's not here. My old boss, Steve Newhouse was desperate to buy dig and they weren't interested. And so he bought what was then kinda the second choice choice. Oh, everyone

Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
You should have sold

Jeff Jarvis (00:56:58):
When you had the yeah. So it was the second choice was, oh, this thing called red out. They're pretty cool. They're a little weird and different, but they

Leo Laporte (00:57:05):
Were clone initially. They clearly copy dig question.

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:09):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and Steve taught me interactivity, Steve Newhouse. He's he's, he's, he's visionary about it. So he got read it and he owed it fully for not much money at all, but then very wisely kind of spun it out a bit. So he created equity to motivate the former owners to keep going and new staff and, and then they were able to acquire things and work that way. And so now going to a full IPO was really kind of a brilliant arc of the story where they could get the full value now of Reddit.

Leo Laporte (00:57:38):
If I were Tim Stevens and ice racer, I'm sure there's a subreddit. I'm sure there is for, for every little niche and, and I betcha. There's a nice Reddit. I'm actually not sure. I know there's a supervis Reddit and I'm certainly on it, but I'm actually not sure if there's a silver Reddit, I'm checking right now as we speak,

Jeff Jarvis (00:57:57):
There are clots Reddit. I'd be there.

Leo Laporte (00:57:59):
So <laugh>, it's so interesting cuz you can, I think it's, I think it's a good IPO. I think this, there are definitely issues like with every social network. I mean, Reddit was hosting a lot of horrible stuff, but they under Conde, I think for a long time under Alexis Hanney then Steve Huffman, they kind of wanted to be the free speech wing of the free speech party like Twitter. But I think they realized that not gonna fly in Conde, certainly didn't want to be host to some of the horrible stuff that was on Reddit. So they've gotten rid of all of those, I think. Have they gotten rid

Jeff Jarvis (00:58:33):
Of all of, it's just not

Leo Laporte (00:58:35):
Visible now. There's it's like Tumblr <laugh>, there's still adult content. But the thing about Reddit is you don't, you only see what you wanna see, so you get to follow what you're interested in. And I think that, that I think, I don't know. I, I believe in anyway, I think the IPO, I think it'll be very interesting. I feel like they'll do well. Let's let's just say that, but maybe that's just me. They wanted to be the civil somebody dwindle in the chat from saying they wanted to be the civil four Chan. Yeah. They, I think they predate four, maybe not, but yeah,

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:08):
I think they do. I mean, I mean, Steve dude, my old boss did call me after I left the company and kind of said, what do we do with this bad stuff here? Yeah. Cause as you say, the owners, the, the founders wanted to keep it as free speech. And, and as the difficulty of number one, setting a policy and number two, enforcing it at scale, right. It's the problem with everybody says,

Leo Laporte (00:59:27):
But the thing that does differently that is different from say Twitter, it's not different from Facebook. It's different from Twitter is you have moderators for each subreddit. So they are kind of responsible for what that subed it's rules are, are. And so, because there are people who have some ownership of it, they're not paid, but they have some ownership of it. I think it works pretty well. I don't know. I, how does Wells point money go ahead. How does red make money advertising? Right. Is advertising

Jeff Jarvis (00:59:56):
There is advertising there

Leo Laporte (00:59:58):
Butt for a long time and, and I pay for Reddit. I mean, there is, you can, you know, pay for gold coins or something. I don't know what I get, but

Owen JJ Stone (01:00:05):
I'm just wondering how much

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:07):
Go ahead. Oh,

Owen JJ Stone (01:00:07):
I'm sorry. No, I'm just, I'm just wondering how much money they have for having IPO. Like I, I just don't, I dunno if the

Leo Laporte (01:00:13):
Market's gonna, like, I guess the market cares about that. That's right. <Laugh>

Owen JJ Stone (01:00:16):
Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I, I still think of Reddit as like nerd bill and like hyper finite nerd bill. So I mean, as far as money for the masses, I I'd be interested to see it. I just don't think it'll work, but that's just me. I don't know anything. Yeah.

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:31):
So Leo, actually your point about Reddit proves what you keep on whing about with Facebook. And Twitter is how you want what you wanna see and you don't wanna see anything else that else recommends to you. That's why you like read it so much, right?

Leo Laporte (01:00:45):
Yes. It's not algorithm exactly. Right. It's not algorithm that's you like it. That's another

Jeff Jarvis (01:00:50):
One, like my algorithm masters, but

Leo Laporte (01:00:52):
You don't. No. And we've had this conversation on this, on twig and on this show and there are people who say, oh no, you wouldn't want, you'd be bored to tears. Adam Messer, the guy in charge of Instagram says you'd be bored to tears. If you only had a, a chronological feed of the people you're following. See, I don't, I disagree. That's up to me to make it what I want it to be. Where do you fall on this? Tim Stevens?

Tim Stevens (01:01:19):
I think it, it depends on the platform. I actually genuinely enjoy on Instagram. For example, seeing kind of interesting things on there, but for Twitter, I, I absolutely want a linear feed of the people that I'm following and, and I maintain pretty strict lists in terms of, of what I wanna see. And so I'll hop from one list to the next, depending upon what kind of content I'm looking for. If I'm looking for, you know, news that we need to hit. For example, I have one list for that. If I'm just kind of checking out with what my friends are up to, I have list for those sorts of things too, but I definitely like the Reddit model in terms of, of subscribing to what you wanna see. It does bubble up things to the front page that are just genuinely interesting. And I think it does a pretty good job of that too, but I tend to prefer to curate my own things when I can't.

Leo Laporte (01:01:58):
Yeah. Anyway, I don't, I didn't mean to turn this into a referendum.

Jeff Jarvis (01:02:03):
How do you, let me, let me question about it. What's the smartest way for the you who, who love it? Cause I have not been on it much. What's the smartest way to use Reddit? How do you use Reddit? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:02:13):
I would say you should pick some and a small number of red sub Reddits. So where Reddit is it's kind of like forum software, it's divided into se sections of interest. I would pick a few things that you are really interested in and follow those. So I follow for instance, slash R slash politics. I think that's a good one. Obviously, you know, you're not gonna follow R Linux or slash R slash Val Heim. That's not gonna be in your there's pixel six. See, that's a good one. Let's say, I know you have a pixel six, you've had some problems with it. That would be a good one to follow. Unfortunately the pixel six sub Reddit has a problem, a lot of Reddits do where people post pictures of stuff, the, a Mac subreddit. I don't know why everybody posts their picture of their new Mac. Like I could care less. Pixel six subreddit got all of a sudden, a lot of cats but <laugh> but, but pick politics or news you know, I follow the succession subreddit. I follow the chess, subreddit, things like that. I to follow a lot of tech stuff. So pick three or four things you're really interested in because they're, you know, a lot of these are very active. A lot of 'em will have multiple, you know, dozens of posts, but they're not like Twitter active. And they're very, very specific.

Owen JJ Stone (01:03:33):
I find red to be some of the smartest, regular people on earth. Again, it's a very finite window for people that are under groups, but like when you get into a group, sometimes I read stuff and I'm like, man, you should be running a country or something like, what are you doing? Just post it on here. Like who you should

Leo Laporte (01:03:50):
Through a company. There, there is a, there's a lot of a Reddit sub called best of slash R slash best of where it is. That's exactly what people do. This was the best post. Like this guy nailed it on some topic. And so that's a good example of, but I will also say that Reddit has its own culture. And some of the comments on any given post can devolve into kind of Reddit, stupidity America. Yeah.

Tim Stevens (01:04:15):
It's America. But in general, I think Reddit is the one social network where you should always read the comments. And, and I think, you know, on YouTube and elsewhere, you, you, you kind of say, well, don't read the comments, but in Reddi you really should. Because quite often something will, will bump up his own page. And the first comment will be actually, this is fake and here's why it's fake. And here's how you can tell it's fake and you wind up learning, oh, now I could identify this is being fake in the future. And you don't really see that, that level. That's good

Leo Laporte (01:04:37):
Point commenting. That's a very good point. Yeah. a lot of times, yeah, there's a, there's a meme going around and, and you will, and the Redditors are smart and we'll say, yeah, see, you could tell this is faked. But what I usually will do is I'll read the comments until it gets to the point where it starts to descend into Reddit, you know, punting <laugh> and then I'll say, okay, this comments, this comment is done. Let's go to the next one. I, I don't know. I really like it. I, I, I'll be very curious how well it'll do I think you're right. I don't know how the markets will react to this, but they have

Owen JJ Stone (01:05:11):
Buzz feed was

Leo Laporte (01:05:12):
A disaster. Well, exactly right. I mean, it's interesting that Reddit's planning this on the heels of a horrific Buzzfeed. I woo. Why do you thinks, go ahead. It almost seemed like somebody shorted that thing, like it was AMC. Stop boy. Hey, they just it went down quick. So Buzzfeed was a,

Jeff Jarvis (01:05:33):
It was a spec and that's and was a particular spec that would let 'em stay in charge. And, and NBC was about the the falling valuation and, and got a carve out, which ruined it for everybody else more. And then a lot of people left the back and so the actual money they raised was tiny. And then it went down. Actually the employees couldn't get out, cuz there was some bureaucratic mess up. So they're all off the

Leo Laporte (01:05:57):
That's a particular vulnerability of specs that I was not aware of a spec. Can you explain what a spec is? I don't wanna,

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:08):
A spec is a thing that already has people investing in it and then they, they it's a nothing company and then they can merge with a company it's

Leo Laporte (01:06:14):
Kind of a made up company that has raised money in all order to merge with another company and make a real deal bet on the com yeah, the problem, which I didn't know about is the people who said, oh yeah, we wanna buy, yeah, we definitely wanna buy Buzzfeed here's you know, or put it a million bucks. I didn't realize they could say no, nevermind. And take it out afterwards. And apparently that's what happened to buzz feed. They had raised, I dunno, tens of millions of dollars for this spec. And most of those investors withdrew, they decided not to participate. How can that even <laugh> it

Jeff Jarvis (01:06:52):
Seems like, cause it's a public, it's a public entity with, with liquid assets. It's liquid I'm I I'm getting that's what they're gonna buy. Oh hell, let me run to the Hills and you get out.

Leo Laporte (01:07:01):
Yeah. So here's liquid, I think maybe we've learned a lesson about specs this week. Didn't work out so well, Jonah Peretti, who was the founder and she stood probably to make a lot of money on this. 

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:15):
Jonah let's be clear is brilliant. He's vision,

Leo Laporte (01:07:19):
Very smart. Yep. Probably hoped for, you know, a nice exit in effect and, and it's an exit without an exit. Isn't it? That's that was the other side of it. And probably one of the reasons it didn't do well, is it wasn't really an IPO or a sale or a merger. It was just give us some money <laugh> and we're gonna still run the place. Is it a sign that Buzzfeed's model is not good?

Jeff Jarvis (01:07:46):
No, I don't think so. I mean, but, but so I, I, I, I, what it inspires in me, we talked about this a little bit on twig is that I think we're seeing the last gasp, the last super Nova of scale. And what whatI said is that, is that we've gotta, we've gotta ramp up together and do and do rollups to compete with the big boys, even though they're tiny compared to the big boys Google and, and, and Facebook you saw Vox and group nine merging another effort saying scales it you see the magazine companies are, you know, look at what happened to the time Inc and Meredith came together and then sold off a couple. And now they're just on the, on the, on the content factory floor for Barry Diller cuz it's scale. So I think scale has been, has just cheapened media to its extreme here. Scale allowed all kinds of new things to start scale created. The mass market scale created the advertising market, the consumer economy, but the internet ruined all of that and they haven't realized it yet. And so I think that's what's happening here. Is that, is that what I don't blame these guys? Jonahs brilliant. The management of both V and group nine are brilliant. But they're doing what they have to do with the present advertising market cuz they depend upon advertising. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
It's always advertising, isn't it? <Laugh> it's

Jeff Jarvis (01:09:06):
Always well it's it's happening in the subscription market too. Yeah. But that's, you know, what, what benefit does subst stack scale really bring you if they don't use it to market across? What benefit does Spotify bring you? Well, Spotify says we own all the podcasts, but Hey, buy this one

Leo Laporte (01:09:21):
Team of fortune. They don't own this one yet. Yep. And I don't think yet is very, a very optimistic wave putting that <laugh> let's take a little break when we come back the most successful mobile gaming year of all time, kind of a remarkable year for mobile gaming, but first word, speaking of sponsors from user way, this is a sponsor. I almost feel like this is a public service announcement because I'm a big believer that the internet should be accessible. We have a lot of blind listeners who can use your website because their screen reader just chokes on things like images that have no alt tags or weird navigation menus, you know, where you really want those screen readers to work on your shopping cart. You're leaving behind millions of people who would like to be your customers cuz they can't use your site.

Leo Laporte (01:10:16):
Now I I'm a also sympathetic for anybody who runs websites. That's a challenge cuz I know I, you know, we thought, oh, what are we gonna do? This is gonna take a lot of extra development. A lot of extra time along comes user way. This is a big, big, big break user way. Dot org is amazing. Every website has to be accessible. The ADA requires it away is an incredible AI powered solution that automatically remediates and enforces the hundreds of web content accessibility guidelines. And it does it with one line of JavaScript. It could do more than an entire team of developers making your website accessible. I know can be overwhelming, but user way solutions make it simple, easy. And I really wanna underscore this cost effective. It's much less than you'd think probably. I mean it's less than we spend on web fonts every month.

Leo Laporte (01:11:08):
It's it's really affordable. Now, first thing to do go to user way.org/twi. They've got a free scanning tool. Run it. See if your site's ADA compliant. If it's not now that's cause for concern, you're open to ADA related lawsuits. You're also leaving behind a lot of potential users, user ways. AI and machine learning solutions are used by more than 1 million websites. Some of the biggest in the world Coca-Cola Disney, eBay, FedEx, Walmart, UNICEF, UNICEF uses user way to make its site accessible and now user ways, taking those best in class enterprise tools that are used by the big companies and making 'em available to small and medium size businesses at a price, small businesses can afford operating an accessible compliant website just makes business sense. And if you do take off, you suddenly scale user way can help you there too. I mean, if they can work for Disney, they can work for you.

Leo Laporte (01:12:05):
You'll automatically generate using user ways. Computer vision, the code for those image Ts it'll it can it's it'll see the golden gate bridge in an image as an example and say that's the golden gate bridge. By the way, it gives you an easy way to add to that. That's the golden gate bridge at sunset with bicyclists or whatever you wanna have it say, but it gets you the base level. There it gets you the basic description in there. It'll take those complex nav menus that are the bane of screen readers and make 'em accessible. All the popups will be accessible. All the forms, your shopping cart will be accessible and you'll get a detailed report of all the violations that were fixed. Plus an easy way to modify it, to enhance it to improvement user way, completely platform agnostic. One line of JavaScript. It works almost everywhere on WordPress, Shopify wicks, AEM site core share point on many of these sites, it's just a plugin on any site you can always add that line of JavaScript. It integrates seamlessly and it gets the job done. It's really kind of remarkable. Just ask Susan Bennett, the voice of Siri, which she thinks of user way. Hi,

Speaker 6 (01:13:08):
I'm Susan Bennett, the original voice of Siri. You won't hear me say something like this too often. I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're looking for, but every day that's what the internet is like for millions of people with disabilities user way fixes all of that with just one line of code.

Leo Laporte (01:13:30):
One line of code it's kind of amazing user way can make any website fully accept fully ADA compliant and with user way, everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly and customize it to fit their needs. This is how you could show your brand's commitment to the millions of people with disabilities. They wanna use your site, make it easy. Go to user way.org/twi 30% off right now on user way. AI Howard accessibility solution user way, making the internet accessible for everyone. Visit user way.org/twi. Today we thank you user way for supporting this week in tech, Elon Musk person of the year, 2021 <laugh> as you pointed out, Jeff's been on the, been in these editorial boards, making these decisions. You never did the person of the year for time, did you?

Jeff Jarvis (01:14:25):
No, no, no, but I was, I was at people when we had a picture of, I don't know who it was, Tom Selleck or some buddy and the, and the editor, pat, Ryan, my mentor couldn't figure out what to do as a cover billion. It was just another boring, good looking celebrity. And she finally decided let's call him this sexiest man alive. And that became an institution every year. Like, oh, they're gonna decide who the sexiest man alive. Like it was like, it had any meaning whatsoever. It's just a cheap trick. And I realized that, you know, time used to yeah, you find they put Hitler on as a man of the year. Okay. Okay. Okay. In 1939. But their goal was to sell magazines. That's no longer the case. I realize this after we talked about this last time. Yeah. Cause now

Leo Laporte (01:15:03):
Magazines anymore

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:04):
Is to troll. They want the attention that we're doing it right now. They did it to time trolls. That's what this is about.

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
If it works and it worked,

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:13):
It worked. We're talking about it. Schmucks.

Leo Laporte (01:15:16):
We are in in 2006, it was us. By the way, you were the person of the year cuz of the worldwide web. You <laugh>, the world is all about you. Now that's talk about ridiculous. That's that run right there is ridiculous. 2011, it was the protestor. 20 2005 was the good Samaritans, the American soldier, the whistleblowers, but more often it's somebody 2018. It was the guardians and the war on truth.

Jeff Jarvis (01:15:48):
Wow. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:15:51):
So, you know, your point is well taken. This is just trolling. On the other hand, I think, and we talked about this on the radio show with rod pile, who's our space expert. You can make a case that what Elon has done in many respects is, is world changing. I mean, SpaceX, what SpaceX is doing is mind boggling. They, they they're worlds ahead of not just Jeff Bezos, but of NASA of the military industrial complex electric vehicles. That was two years ago. Okay. Maybe it wasn't 2021, but I think Tim, the impact of Tesla can't be understated on the world of vehicles.

Tim Stevens (01:16:29):
Definitely. They they've raised awareness of EVs in a big, big way, but you have to, you know, how much of that was El Musk responsible for himself? Tesla was not his company. He, he basically was a very deep pocket book to, to keep Tesla alive for sure. And he's certainly done a lot to raise a profile of Tesla and he certainly had a major influence in shaping Tesla's destiny. But you know, was that really a major story in, in 2021? You know, this is supposed to be the, the most you know, news impacting individual or group of individuals of the year. And you know, it, it is hard for me to, to say that he was the one who was the, the, the person that was most talked about in, in the past year. That seems that seems unlikely to me. Certainly there are a lot of other deserving folks. I think either on the political side of things you know, with the teams direction or certainly on the COVID research side

Leo Laporte (01:17:15):
Of things, whoever invented the mRNA vaccine might have been a more important person this year. Yeah. You might say in heard if Elon was in the, in the, on the headlines this year, it was almost invariably about weird tweets. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't about anything he'd done.

Owen JJ Stone (01:17:32):
Can I, can I ask the panel of question? Yes. What is time magazine? <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:40):
There you go. Well, my Sonenberg and we'll get there in about an hour.

Owen JJ Stone (01:17:47):
I listened for the last three minutes and for the life of me, I still understand what, what any of you talking about? You talking about

Jeff Jarvis (01:17:51):
Owen Owen, where was the last time you bought if ever a physical magazine? What's the magazine is your next question.

Owen JJ Stone (01:17:58):
Well <laugh> this is a family show. So I mean, <laugh>, I've had a couple magazine. What? It was nobody by the way, magazines, common publishing

Leo Laporte (01:18:08):
My you're magazines. What the hell? Who's buying curly men. Yeah. Yeah, really? I mean, what is that business that's still around? I guess.

Owen JJ Stone (01:18:15):
I mean, I don't know. I still, I go into bodega. I see the top row with the black bag on somebody it's still out there selling 'em I guess physical media brother, physical media. Some people still like tangible objects. You know, lot of people,

Tim Stevens (01:18:26):
Some people do not trust digital devices. And I think there's probably a pretty good, you know, if you haven't the vendor diagram of people who need that kind of content and people who are really distrustful digital devices, there's probably some something

Jeff Jarvis (01:18:35):
Overlap and like cyber I'm getting betting too and have a lot of blockchain.

Leo Laporte (01:18:40):
I'm my mom, I, my dear mom, 88 years old sent me a subscription to the New York review of books, which is, you know, so every, I think it's every week I get this big tabloid size paper, is it monthly? It feels like it's all the time. <Laugh>

Owen JJ Stone (01:18:56):
But in time you get around the looking at it as a week. And,

Leo Laporte (01:19:00):
And it's a magazine about books. Like, I mean, it's like paper on paper, it's meta paper. I love it.

Leo Laporte (01:19:08):
I actually she's right. She knows. I love books, not buying a lot of books. These days usually buy 'em in eBooks, but still that's a book you're reading it or audio books. But anyway, she asked me and she said, should I get you the New York review of books? Do you enjoy that? And it broke my heart, but I'd say, mom, I just, I, I love it, but I don't need to read it. I read everything online and it's probably not online. I don't even know if it is, but don't. I said don't no, that this is, this is like

Jeff Jarvis (01:19:33):
The reverse of that. Great. Everybody loves Raymond episode where Raymond bought his parents fruit of the month club. <Laugh> why would you do that? What a, who needs a fruit every month? What am I gonna do with all this? Grapefru what are you doing? What are you

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
Thinking? Yeah, the first one's always grape fruit. Isn't it? Who needs a, a case of grapefruit? No one, no one needs a case of grapefruit. No one. What my father, speaking of EVs, we should go ahead. Do you wanna tell an anecdote about your dad?

Jeff Jarvis (01:20:03):
Oh, just real quick. I accidentally bought my father seven bags of grapefruit

Leo Laporte (01:20:07):
In the whole, I got the same

Tim Stevens (01:20:09):
Routine. What am I supposed to

Leo Laporte (01:20:11):
Do? That's a grapefru. I said, I know I don't. What about speaking of EVs? I think now I guess the build back better bill is dead. Thanks to Joe mansion, but that was gonna a fairly hefty incentive. The current EV incentive is $7,500 only available to car makers who sold less than correct me if I'm wrong, Tim, 200,000 units. So Tesla's over, you can't get an EV credit for that, but I did get one for my Mustang. Mock E how, how important is this to EV growth? The, these incentives

Tim Stevens (01:20:49):
Right now, it, it, it reminds me seen because there are such D dramatic supply chain shortages that I don't really know that it's going to impact the economy that much. But certainly there were a lot of pricing decisions on these EVs made with the expectation that incentives were were coming. Ah and so these going away has a pretty significant impact, but you know, it, it remains be seen. We, we may see this come back again and I hope we do. You know, the incentive was gonna get even stronger, especially for us made and union made EVs which was, you know, a, a controversial addition to the thing, but ultimately meant that a lot of people would get up to 1200, excuse me, $12,500 off of a new EV, which would really actually bridge the gap between a traditional gasoline powered car and an EV and get a lot of people into these things. And I think ultimately that would be very good for the economy for the environment. So I do hope that we'll see this come back, but but yeah, I'm not sure exactly what it's gonna mean, given these things are so hard to find right now anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:21:42):
Yeah. I would not actually have covered the Mustang ma cuz it's made in Mexico. Right. So

Tim Stevens (01:21:47):
You would still get an incentive but you would not get the full 12,500, I think you would lose about 4,500 off the top of

Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
The, I don't have a problem with that. Bringing auto manufacture back in the United States, that creates jobs part of the incentive was for union jobs. Again, I don't have a problem with that you get more money if the batteries made in the us again, that seems like a good idea. I I'm sure it makes a big difference in the purchase. It, I mean, if people feel like they're getting a nice big chunk of change, is it a tax credit or is it actual money? It's

Tim Stevens (01:22:18):
A tax it's a tax credit. Yeah. But, but it, it depends on some manufacturers and some dealerships were actually kind of taking that off with the lease price, for example. So it would be often factored into the price of the car. It depended, you know, on state incentives too, which would sometimes get factored in that way. Yeah. But it would definitely, you know, that's a significant amount of money out a car that's, you know, in the 40 to $50,000 price range, you're talking about maybe a 20% discount and, and that really would be enough to, to encourage someone to go to an EV you might not have been thinking about it otherwise. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:22:43):
Yeah. And, and, and I, is it the case that it's a good thing to encourage EV I mean, I'm not all, I, I am not in favor of just general subsidies for American industry for just cuz they're American, but is it a good thing for the environment of the economy to have EV sales go up?

Tim Stevens (01:23:04):
Yeah, I definitely think it is. It's one of those things where right now we're still in such early stages, you know, EVs make up less than 2% of the us overall car market at this point. And so we're still kind of in that unfortunate chicken, the egg state, where there aren't enough charges to make people comfortable. But there aren't enough EVs out there to really make the investment in a charging network worthwhile. So this was really, you know, it continues to be an attempt to, to kind of kickstart that industry, to get more of these cars on the road to make it make more financial sense, to incentivize other companies to come in and build more charges, which will then encourage more people to buy more cars, which will mean more charges. And everybody's happy at that point. So that that's definitely good. And while, you know, you can, if you take the worst case

Leo Laporte (01:23:43):
Scenario in terms of, if you are you charging your car based on electricity that comes from a coal burning old school power plant at that point, the emissions are roughly the same as a gasoline powered car. So you can make the argument that it's actually maybe not helping things, but you can also, you have to look at this as kind of a transitional period, if we can get more people onto EVs, well, then there's more incentive for us to get more renewable power sources and more opportunities to, to get more green energy into more people's homes. And that just helps to kickstart that industry. So there's a lot of carry on secondary tertiary effects here, which I think are all very positive. And ultimately this could be a bit of a, a handicap for those efforts and there is money already in the infrastructure bill for the charging network. Right. I think it's significant amount of my,

Tim Stevens (01:24:26):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That that's Farst too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:29):
Some billions of dollars. Go

Owen JJ Stone (01:24:31):
Ahead. I'm I'm happy. So said at the end about the renewable energy Tim, cuz the thing that cracks me up the most about these things is how do these batteries get made? How do we mine these batteries? Are we just taking flowers and making batteries? Are we just blowing up, but be parts of the earth with large machine and exposing things and digging and drilling to get the materials, to make all these EV batteries that only last a certain amount of time. And then the way that we charge them, like if we were a solar wind water generating power place, it'd be great. But I mean we're destroying the planet to get the batteries and then half the places aren't even using good power to read, generate the power for the battery. So it's a gas 22 1, whether it's better for the environment or not. I mean it's

Tim Stevens (01:25:13):
Better for the environment,

Leo Laporte (01:25:14):
Many, many, it's clearly better gas. It's definitely

Tim Stevens (01:25:17):
Better pollute. If we don't transition, then it's a dead we're,

Leo Laporte (01:25:21):
We're all vehicles pull the, I think you could us a strong, a strong to case that private ownership of cars is a bad idea, but as long as you're gonna have them, it's a lot better to make 'em electric vehicles than it is gas vehicles. By the way, there's a, there's a lot of effort made to recycling these batteries. They're getting very good at that. So you're not always pulling lithium out of the environment to make these batteries they're lasting a pretty long, surprisingly long of time. It feels like longer than we expected.

Owen JJ Stone (01:25:51):
And, and that's why I said what he said towards the end is what we want to, to work towards the, the, the reusing of the materials that we're using and the way that we power those materials. That's really important too. So hopefully we, yeah,

Tim Stevens (01:26:02):
Absolutely going forward. And there's this perception that, you know, having more EVs on the road means that in 10 years, we're gonna have a bunch of, you know, lead acid batteries sitting in landfills kind of dripping into the earth, which is absolutely not true. Even after 10 years, even if these battery packs are down to 80% capacity and they're not good enough for powering a car anymore, there's still gonna be incredibly valuable batteries, more valuable than any component of a, of a used car that we have right now is 10 years old. So people are absolutely gonna spend a lot of money researching ways to, to get those batteries out. And some of them will be in industrial applications working

Leo Laporte (01:26:34):
As, you know, industrial UPS's. But certainly we, we've seen a lot of interesting research into how to basically break those batteries down. And as you said, Leo extract those raws back out because if you have lithium eye battery pack, that's 10 years old and it's not good enough to power car anymore. If you can compositionally break that down, you can theoretically make a new battery outta those same raw elements and, and start new without having to, to go to those those really unfortunate parts of the world, as you mentioned, and do some unfortunate things in the environment to get those batteries. So those almost once their mind out, they can be reused and, and in 10 years we'll see some really interesting technology to, to make this work. Yeah. I, I feel like it's not perfect. No, we're not saying it's perfect, but it's, it's better than gas cars. I have solar panels, so I'm putting power back into the the grid. Partly because I have EVs also I have two big Tesla power wall batter, which I it's, my understanding are actually re recycled Tesla batteries from cars that aren't sufficient for cars, but work fine to power my home. So I think it's partly it's jumpstarting this right? It's yeah. It's not there yet. Yeah, but jumpstarting it.

Jeff Jarvis (01:27:39):
Leo, can I ask a safe, I promise, but, but fairly ignorant political car question. I would think that it would take one Republican to say, I can be Joe mansion. I can have the whole world coming to my door, begging me to vote for the, these things. If I just, you know, hold the temptation out. Yeah. Trump's not gonna like me, but it's

Leo Laporte (01:28:01):
True. It doesn't have to be a Democrat. Does it? No,

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:04):
You're the center of power. You're the first or second most powerful person in watching

Leo Laporte (01:28:08):
Anybody or that who could swing a vote. Is that person. Yeah. So if man decide, he doesn't wanna do it, you could be one Republican. There's only one problem with that. <Laugh> yeah, I know. And he's sitting in the Mar Lago berating Jews at this point, but you know, he's the old man yelling at the clouds, but he's somehow got a lot of sway and I, I, I don't know why that, that you're exactly right. I dunno why that hasn't happened. The balance if

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:38):
Power, God, you'd be in the center of it right then

Leo Laporte (01:28:40):
Could be one vote. It doesn't happen. Be a democratic vote. Come on,

Jeff Jarvis (01:28:43):
Come on. Tempt

Leo Laporte (01:28:45):
Me. Yeah. That's a really good question. I don't know why. I don't know why. Let's see. I think we've covered EVs. We had a number of stories. Oh, I was gonna talk about mobile games. Holy moly. You wanna be in a good business, make a mobile game, eight mobile games this year suppressed a billion dollars in revenue. And I think all of them are free. The way to make money now is free to free to play games that encourage players to spend money as they're playing the number one mobile games this year, two of them made 2.8 billion. It's not profit it's revenue, but I imagine it's a fairly high margin business PUBG mobile, which is player underground player, unknowns, battle grounds. It's a, it was the original battle Royal game before for Fortnite made 2.8 billion honor of Kings, which is kind of another top down, you know scenario, game 2.8 billion Chen impact 1.8 billion Roblox. The old kids game free to play, but lots of subscription features one, 1.3 billion coin, master and aptly named 1.3 billion. Here's a funny one. Pokemon go made more last year than it's made in its entire five years of life. Wow. Wow. 1.2 billion. More people are playing Pokemon go and giving money. And I guess that, that really comes down to COVID except go is one of those, the only one in all of these games that requires you to leave the house, but you

Owen JJ Stone (01:30:28):
Don't have to do

Leo Laporte (01:30:28):
Be around people, right? No. Although it was a very social game when it came out in 2016. Yeah. Yeah, it was. But even then it's outside. Yeah. And now they've changed the rules. They were smart. They changed the rules so that you could do a lot of what you would have to go out to do. You could do without leaving that house, then candy crush, saga. I'm sad to say candy. Chris saga made 1.2 billion in series and something called they're still holding on. They're hanging in. There's amazing.

Owen JJ Stone (01:30:53):
It was candy crush in Farmville. Back in the day, you go to a bar, you hear some weird 23 year old talking about Farmville and candy crush. Like bro, what are we doing? <Laugh> like, what are we doing? Candy candy crush is still strong. Candy friends is still strong.

Leo Laporte (01:31:05):
Now. I think saga is a variant of the original candy crush, but it's still, still doing very well. It's crazy birds still around angry birds. They're angry and they're not crazy angry, angry. Bird's not on this list. That's a good point. Oh they kinda, maybe they burned. They're welcome. I don't know. It is the first time that eight games have crossed a billion dollar mark ever of, it was five games in 2020. It was three in 2018 and 2019. So the money being made by mobile games. This is according to sensor tower, cuz nobody reveals the actual amount of money. But sensor towers seems to have a pretty good handle on this number of games making more than a billion dollars in mobile revenue in 2021, a record eight actually apple just released swift playgrounds for, for the iPad, which is for the first time allows you to make a, an app on the iPad, stand alone without any use of a Mac that you could sell on the app store on the iPhone and the iPad. It's I played with it a little bit to this morning. It's pretty amazing.

Owen JJ Stone (01:32:15):
I'm I'm gonna make a game and use my, my favorite revenue new model, which is I'm not even gonna name this game, but I I'm addicted to this game. And the way they got me to pay them money is that every single thing that I did came up with an ad after my accomplishment. Oh. And to get to the next thing I had to watch, watch and another crappy game. And I was like, you know, what, what, what, what was a 4 99? Take my, I got, I, I paid them instantly because after it took a day where I was like, oh, it's not a big, I watch. And I'm like, oh, but I have, I don't have time to do this. They got my money. That is the best model to get me to pay for a game. So I'm just working on something addictive. I'm gonna just throw spam it somebody and be like, look, just gimme $2. And you feel free to play this game for the rest of your life. That that's the best model they got going. We're none of these games on that list do that. Obviously

Leo Laporte (01:33:05):
We're at the breakfast table yesterday. Lisa's playing. I think she's playing words with friends. She gets up and walks away. I said, what what's happening? She said, oh, there it's an ad. I don't wanna watch it. So I wanna come back and yeah,

Owen JJ Stone (01:33:16):
Get a commercial break. You know what I mean? Run, run the fridge, get a sandwich him back. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:33:22):
Yeah. Speaking of making money now I I'm curious what Tim, what you think about this? This was Toyota got a lot of heat for this and I don't know if they deserve it. They made its key fob remote start. This is the ability to start the car from a distance, a subscription feature, but I'm not sure this is as bad as it, it plays out to be, or is it, it was

Tim Stevens (01:33:42):
Initially reported and, and it was perceived to be pretty gross and it is still kind of gross. But it's not as bad as it was perceived to be basically. If you have a Toyota of certain age, I think this is 2018 and onward cars. Many of them have a remote start button on your key fob, which actually makes a direct connection to your car, an RF connection. So it's not going to the, or anything like that. You hold that button down. The car starts. So the, the belief would be, well, this is connecting directly to my car. It doesn't use the cloud. So it doesn't matter if I'm subscribing to Toyota's premium services because it's directly connected to the car. However, it is actually included in part of Toyota's package of digital services. It's just that those cars got that for a certain amount of time for free.

Tim Stevens (01:34:20):
Ah, and that is now out becoming no longer free. Those customers are kind of falling out of that free window. And now they're being asked to pay $8 a month or 80 bucks a year to continue to use this feature, which again, doesn't use the cloud at all. So it, it, I can see both sides of the argument. You know, it was kind of always the way it was. It's just that people are starting to realize it now, but it is kind of, it's almost like, you know, when we used to play games on physical media and they would charge you money for DLC that was actually already on the disc and they were just kind of unlocking it. Yeah. It's a little bit like that. And that it kind of makes, you know, it, it, it tastes bad in the back of your mouth, but it is ultimately something that that's not really a change as it were. It's just really unfortunate. So, so Tim, and it's the way it's gonna be

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:02):
Sorry, Tim. Yeah. Not, not to make you feel bad, but being that you're near Albany, it'll be one of the places on earth where I think you might actually find use in pre-start in your car. Oh yeah. Is it, is it a useful service? So

Owen JJ Stone (01:35:15):
You warm every thing up before you get into it and drive away, you melt the ice

Tim Stevens (01:35:19):
On window and all that stuff. Yeah. This time of year, it it's definitely an invaluable thing. And you know, it, there are multiple ways of looking at this services based economy as applied to automobiles. One of them being, you know, would you pay a couple thousand dollars extra for this feature? Certainly a lot of people do, but you really only need this feature maybe four months outta the year, five months out of the year. And so maybe it's actually cheaper in the long run if you only pay for it in October through April, oh,

Jeff Jarvis (01:35:45):
Turn off, you can cancel it.

Tim Stevens (01:35:46):
And, and re-up, you can actually do go months by month if you want to. So that's kind of the argument that a lot of people are, are, are making BMW has been an early proponent of this kind of software based application to, to seemingly hardware based services in cars. Tesla's certainly doing it as well where you can kind of pay as you need for these sorts of features, it's gonna be coming a much more common thing. You know, recurring revenue is everything in the modern economy and the automaker at all. Yeah, press it.

Owen JJ Stone (01:36:12):
I don't like, I, I don't, I don't like this at all. I don't like it at all. I don't like it at all. I don't like it at all. So I drive Honda and I've driven them for a while. Now I pay like it ends up being like $12 a month, but I pay for the year, but guess what? I can be in California and start my car, warm up my seats, turn on a defrost and do what I need to do. That's what I'm paying for. I'm paying for that. And if I drive in a ditch, they send out a beacon and somebody comes to me if I'm unconscious and then come help me. That's what I pay for. You're gonna charge somebody 8 99 for physical connection that they've gotta be visibly. Being able to see their car with the art connection to do that. Guess what? Go to your local best buy car dealership. Guy pay 1 99 for a remote, start on your car and be done with it for the next 10 years of your car's life or 20 years. Wait a minute. There's no reason. Some third party solution America. There aren't many.

Tim Stevens (01:37:05):
<Laugh> you'll have to create a second key fob with you to make that work, which is a bit of a

Owen JJ Stone (01:37:09):
Bummer. Viper is in the future right now. You can have Viper be your whole new key fob where you don't have to have a secondary key fob. Okay. I'm I'm not saying I know what I'm just saying. There's products out there where you don't have to have three key fobs anymore to do that. But the fact that they're doing this just irks me so much, because if you're going to charge me, then give me full service. Don't tell me that my key, that already costs $500 to replace. When you lose a car, I got my car key and this plastic bag on my desk, because if I lose this and my life is over, I gotta keep. Yeah. Why are they so expensive actually? So the fact that the charge that money drives me crazy. I don't like it. It don't like it. It's why are FAS so expensive? That's a very good point.

Tim Stevens (01:37:50):
They should. There's such a fair bit of encryption going on in keys. So you basically got a private encryption set up going on and it is keyed okay. Directly to your vehicle. So the, the process of replacing is a little bit complicated, but certainly there's some technology in there. And the big thing is it's proprietary technology. So it's not the kind of thing that they can really mass produce

Leo Laporte (01:38:07):
Piper can't sell a key fob that necessarily start market. They actually, so

Owen JJ Stone (01:38:13):
How people get robbed? Oh, yes. That's around that could go and pick out your key. Sorry that Tim that's. Okay.

Tim Stevens (01:38:20):
So, so some of these third party ones would actually entail kind of installing your key inside the car and then having always be in there. And then the third party thing kind takes over functionality and kind of, but, but yeah, one of the exploits to get around these things and the encryption in involved is basically to do like a man in middle attack where somebody triggers the car and then is close enough to your home to trigger the key. And then they can kind of trigger the the response and enable your car to start and then drive it away at that point. So there, there are some vulnerabilities in the older versions of these things, way in 2018 is probably old enough, but anyway, it all,

Leo Laporte (01:38:52):
It's ugly. It all comes down to the ugliest acronym them in the world. RPU a R P U average revenue per user user. Although the people, although the people, a lot of people call it average revenue per unit, which tells you how much they think of the users is you're a unit. But, but this, I, I wonder is this the, is this the way the car business is gonna go? You mentioned BMW for a while. They were getting a lot of heat, cuz they charged, they put CarPlay in your car. But if you wanted to use it, even though it's an apple feature, you had to pay BMW, a monthly fee. I already paid, I don't, I don't have a Toyota, but if I did, I would've already paid $500 of this remote start feature. And then on top of that, you want $8 a month. Is this if you're gonna, is this what's happening in a car business?

Owen JJ Stone (01:39:43):
Yeah, it is. If you're gonna pay, pay, get the right amount of services for something that you're trying to charge. Like I said, the fact that's attached to your physical key in that they're still charging me $8 a month. Seems scammy to me. You know what I mean? When you buy a Tesla, they say, do you want the technology package for 10 grand? I, I don't know. Who's not buying that up front. You know what I mean? But because that's what you need and that a lot

Leo Laporte (01:40:02):
Of, of people there's like there's a, who paid 5,000 or even $10,000 to get full self driving. Yeah. And yeah, that ain't <laugh>

Tim Stevens (01:40:11):
And it ain. You're looking at one of them. Did you?

Owen JJ Stone (01:40:15):
Yeah. Well now that hurts. I was looking, Hey Tim, I bought glass. I feel stupider. It's okay.

Tim Stevens (01:40:20):
<Laugh> oh, I get glass as well. Yeah, no. Oh, don't you in? We need to we need to test this. So this is actually car that we leased through road shows that's we can do testing of the car. So it's not my, my money directly, but we needed to, to, to have access to that. Functionality's ran for the model one we lease so that we can, we, we now own a Tesla, one that we can do testing on and we paid the 10 grand and yeah, we don't have full self driving and, and honestly is a two year lease. I, I wouldn't put money on the fact that we're going to have full self driving by the end of this

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
Lease honest. Yeah. It's probably a bad idea to do it on a lease. I did it when it was $5,000 on a least model X three years later, I turned it back. Never got anything for that $5,000 in it's funny in my mind. And this is I think 2016. I felt like I don't mind paying Elon a little V for my, you know, bio weapon, hazard mode <laugh> which is just a he filtered. But because I feel like I'm kind of subsidizing this move to electric vehicles. I don't know. I was

Owen JJ Stone (01:41:17):
Probably, but did you, did you open a hood? Did you open a hood check filter there? Leo, are you sure this have a filter there? You might have paid for that filter? Never. You've been just mowing another $20,000 fan of Gole. I mean what you do, Lisa, Lisa, if you could hear my voice from now on Lisa, you are in charge in the purification of that home. This man cannot be trusted. Lisa, you are in charge. Okay. I

Leo Laporte (01:41:41):
Must just put it out. Must look like a sucker. That's all I could say again.

Owen JJ Stone (01:41:46):
It see me coming. I'm mad at you and a device I'm mad. The device did not alert you before a year of the fact that there's spitting out the same old air. Like that's just terrible. It's terrible. I, I need their name offline so I can make sure I make sure I don't have it in me. Yeah. I didn't

Leo Laporte (01:42:03):
Mention the company's

Owen JJ Stone (01:42:04):
Name, right? Yeah. You're you're a good man. You're a good man.

Leo Laporte (01:42:06):
Not our sponsor. Those guys actually do what they said they would do. Let's take a little break. We'll come back with more ASN <laugh> Mo docto and JJ stone IQ MZ the season, his phone number. Please call him, give him a hard time. 8, 4, 4 <laugh> 9 8, 6, 4 5 6, 3 that's text. Only of course. And Owen was saying he's he's been giving this out every time he appears on the show a year long and he's, he's never had a problem,

Owen JJ Stone (01:42:37):
Which is awesome. I've met, I've met some awesome people. Sh shout out to one of your fans. Her name is Joanne. She doesn't message or anything like that too. I'm sure. But this woman has been a, a fan of mine for a long time. Since I've been on your show, she's 75 years old. She's one of the sweetest women in the whole world. And I don't even know why she listened to I'll be renting and Raven and talking crazy, but she tells me all the time. I love you. And I love Leo and I'm like, I don't know why I'm on the list, but thank you for following me all the time. And she send me notes and emails and I don't think I've met with my daughter. You, you, again, you, you might not notice it, but shout out to Joan. I know she, why she's I know she's listening. Love Joan. You Joan, there you go. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:16):
That's you for being fan Joanne. This is why it's good to be trusting. Like you are Owen and give out that phone number and everything and look at all the stuff you get as a result. I think

Owen JJ Stone (01:43:26):
That's, yeah. I mean, I, I might not believe in batteries yet, but I, I believe in people <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:43:30):
Well, you follow right along with Jeff, Jarvis has always been a man who lives in public. He, you know, he wrote public parts. He believes in the, in the value and the power of yeah, of sharing. And so you're, you're also one of those people, buzz machine.com is, is blog. It's great to have you and from C net's road show, he's the editor in chief, which makes it really fun. Cuz you get to, how is does, is that the only car scene at leases? Or do you have other vehicles as well?

Tim Stevens (01:43:59):
That's actually the first one we've ever released when Tesla Nicks, their PR department, they stopped really giving out cars to anybody. But you know, you had to buy it some very, very favorable YouTubers let's say. So got pretty hard to actually get access to cars. So we wanted to get the full ownership experience. And so we put the money down to make it

Leo Laporte (01:44:14):
Happen. It's kind of what I've always done. Not think anything that expensive because I don't, I mostly, cause I don't wanna deal with PR departments. I just don't wanna, I don't it's a pain in the butt. They go, well, we don't like that review. It's like, no, I'm just gonna buy it. And then we don't have to think about it. But not cars. Although wait a minute, I take it back. I bought a Mustang. I bought a Tesla. Yeah. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone (01:44:37):
You bought, you bought a Mustang, you bought a Ford

Leo Laporte (01:44:39):
When they were a sponsor. I did. I bought it cuz they were a sponsor and we were talking about Ford sync and I wanted to be able to legitimately talk about it. I bought the Maki because I wanted to talk about, I thought that was interest by the way, the Mae kind of peripheral story, but has been a huge success for Ford. They are gonna make 200,000 next year.

Tim Stevens (01:45:00):
Yeah. And they are of course, like a lot of cars, but there's a huge back order if you want one, especially with the long range battery and yeah, as you said, they're, they're doubling production for next year and that's a really great success story kind of first Ford's first big EV we've got a lightning coming out next year, which should be a big story too. I'm really looking forward to that.

Owen JJ Stone (01:45:16):
I want that thing. That thing looks amazing. No. And

Leo Laporte (01:45:19):
You looks amazing. The cyber truck,

Owen JJ Stone (01:45:22):
Man. Look, I, I, I'm not gonna lie. I did want a cyber truck just because I wanted the little four wheel ADV that came with it. <Laugh> but that, that Ford lightning, that Ford lightning that for lightning's beautiful. That's legit. It's the utility. I'm not even, I'm not even a a man's man, but I tell you what, give me one of them things I'm gonna be powering people's houses on the side, delivering couches, just going off into the woods. That thing looks amazing. Oh, I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:45:45):
No though. You might like the Rian with the builtin kitchen.

Owen JJ Stone (01:45:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm already too big glassing. I is another place to eat food at. That's the last thing I need <laugh> I mean, I'm trying to cut that on fast food. The last thing I need to do is have fast food on my back in my, in my vehicle. You know what I mean? I'm gonna skip that one. That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
All right. Our show today it's great to have no speaking of actually Owen, I'm gonna, this is gonna be my prescription for you. You've seen the ads. I wanna tell you, Lisa and I have been doing Noom. It works. We love it. I have done every diet in the world and I've learned one thing. Diets don't work. What it, and, and one of the thing you saw me eat that gingerbread cookie, right? So the trick with Noom is there are no bad foods. There are no good foods. There's no pressure. No is here to how to is here to change how you think of food. It's a psychology based approach that looks at what you eat. But also more importantly, how you eat. And with nom, I discovered I'm doing a lot of fog, eating, unconscious eating. I was able to track down those habits that weren't supporting me.

Leo Laporte (01:46:59):
I could still have a cookie. In fact, I remember very early on when I was doing Noom, you get a coach, you get a group. You can talk to. I told my coach, Tia. I said to, I had a hot dog. She said, that's fine. That's not nothing wrong with that. You logged it. I said, yeah. She said, there are no bad foods. And that was a light bulb went off. Cuz I don't. I think my psychology, I bet it's many others as well is if I am feeling deprived, I overeat, I compensate. I said, screw you. I'm gonna have an extra piece of cake. No. Instead of making you feel guilt or regret empowers you to keep going, I gotta tell you, it really works. You don't have a strict set of rules. Noom weight empowers you with the practical knowledge to build smarter, more sustainable habits and behaviors.

Leo Laporte (01:47:47):
It's using something that psychologists have known about it for a long time. I'm a big believer in called C B T instead of, instead of, you know, getting, you know, weird and deep with it, you focus on the why. Instead of the, what I don't know is that doesn't really, these changes your relationship with eating. You understand why you eat when you eat and what's going on. And by just simply the knowledge helps you control it. You are now in charge of your eating everybody's journey is different though. I don't wanna say this is, you know, but I'm just gonna say no knows it's about progress. Not perfection. There are no bad foods. There are no good foods. There is no pressure to change yourself, to fit someone else's expectations. You just find things that work for you. And that is freeing. It feels good.

Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
Not everybody needs to be or wants to be on a strict diet. You know, two days at the gym, two days at the gym or you know, weird teas or anything like that. Instead of trying to kind of fit yourself into the, to the jam yourself, into the lifestyle that somebody else tells you, try noo. It's a psychology based approach to find a healthier balance. That's moldable to your life. As a result is more sustainable. By the way, one of the Reddit sub forms I follow is the Noom sub FORMM it's sub Reddit, cuz it's great. There's even more support from numerous there talking about our experience. There's a Noom group that you get the new map. It starts with a new map on your iPhone or your Android do vice. And I have to say, you know, I, I can have a cookie, I write it down.

Leo Laporte (01:49:16):
I put it in the new map and I write it down. And that it's helps me understand what I'm eating when I'm eating, why I'm eating. And that helps me lose weight. You don't need rules to lose weight. You just need knowledge and wisdom. You need empowerment so that you can build a smarter, more sustainable relationship with the food you eat. New habits, noms, cognitive behavioral approach helps you better understand your relationship with food. How to be more mindful of your habits, gives you the knowledge and support you need for long lasting change. It all starts when you go to noom.com/twi answer the questionnaire. It's by the way, that's a great onboarding process, cuz it, it starts right there. You start thinking about you, start thinking about it, how your relationship with food Noom is very effective. 75% of num users finish the program and more than 60%, 60% keep the weight off for a year or more.

Leo Laporte (01:50:10):
It really, really works. I feel like I it's changed my life and Lisa will vouch for it too. She it's amazing. What she's done with Noom taking care of your health is empowering instead of stress inducing, cuz you know what happens when you get stressed eat. So why did diet stress you out? It's crazy. No need to fear ruining the whole program with one off day. Believe me. I have, when we went to Mexico, I said to Lisa, I'm not Newman. I'm not Newman. She said I'm Newman. She did. She, she knew the whole time did her lessons logged her food, got her exercise. She lost weight. <Laugh> so matter. Her. I gained a little bit, but you know what? I was able to lose it right away because Noom got me back on track. All you need is a daily 10 minute. Check-In it's by the way, this that's the other thing. It's very, very, very easy, no grueling early mornings or huge chunks of your day spent doing stuff it's simple. It's fast. It's a lifetime habit that will stay with you forever. Start building better habits for healthier long-term results. This is not a diet. This is the right way to learn about how you eat and make it work for you. Sign up for your trial@noonoom.com slash noom.com/twi. Sign up for your trial. Absolutely. I'm can go ahead. I'm

Owen JJ Stone (01:51:32):
Gonna knew Mon Leo, because you've heard about, I saw you in the cook. I saw you eating a cookie and then what was I doing? I, I had to get a snack too. See some, yeah, there's some psychological. It's totally

Leo Laporte (01:51:40):
Psychological. I had to get a cookie too. I just, you know, they talk cook loans. I gotta figure about the elephant <laugh> and you're and you're trying to control an elephant by riding it, the elephant gonna do what it wants to do. So <laugh> so you have to learn how to work with the elephant <laugh> it really were. I don't know. It's hard to describe you gotta do it. It's fun. You're gonna love it. No education is the key. That is the trick noon. Big, big believer in this. We really, in fact we started doing that beginning of this year, I think in March, something like that, maybe January, March, I started doing it. Lisa said, I'll keep you company, cuz she was gonna be a supportive wife. She did, she looks great. Then she kind of fell in love with it and she, you know, she's lost.

Leo Laporte (01:52:28):
She didn't need to lose a lot, but he's at her lowest weight that I've ever known her and she's sustaining it. And she's very, very happy about that. She's always been slim me on the other hand, I've always battled with my weight and it's just a really nice way to kind of handle that for my health and for my long term goals. I just I'm really, really, really happy with it. But over, over the year it's just been it's been great. This one you clearly you put in Jeff Jarvis, the words, Y Lacoon just tells me everything. He's a professor at your school, right? Oh, he's an NYU. You are you there Jeff? I, no, I didn't put this in. Oh chief AI scientist at Facebook. Oh I

Jeff Jarvis (01:53:12):
Didn't put it in. Yes, you're right. I put it in <laugh> <laugh> Yeah, you got me. You got me. <Laugh> I I know, I know. Say dog and I know, I didn't know the dog. I know from 

Leo Laporte (01:53:24):
Touring award Laureate from the ACM, his tweet world models, intuitive physics planning, problem solving discreet search for solutions. Continuous optimization of control parameters, dogs manage to do this with 2 billion neurons. Why debate human level AI. When we can't approach dog level intelligence yet. And he posts this video of a human and a dog. The dog is helping a good boy. You guys show the video, John, are you not? Oh we are, oh, I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing it because I'm not seeing the, so this the humans putting what tires up tires and then the dog dog wants to help, wants to help. So he's, he's sorting the tires.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:13):
He's figuring out how to carry four at once. Oh my. Which is a, which is a

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
Challenge. But

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:17):
You know what is rearranging the tires to figure it out. He figures it out by bit. Well, you'll see. Yes he does. Oh spoiler. He does. Oh my God. Figures out. Well, that works. Okay. Well I'll get one more tired to deal with. Let me see.

Leo Laporte (01:54:31):
I don't think I could figure this out. No.

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:33):
Especially while you had to use your teeth. <Laugh> Nope. Didn't quite work.

Leo Laporte (01:54:39):
He's actually solved the problem of how to pick up one tire and move all four. At the same time,

Jeff Jarvis (01:54:47):
We don't deserve

Owen JJ Stone (01:54:48):
Dogs. We don't deserve dogs. Dogs are the best pets in the world.

Leo Laporte (01:54:53):
Wait a minute. I have to watch that again. That's

Owen JJ Stone (01:54:55):
Crazy. You know that. Have you seen that little, like the little like it almost looked like a buzzers that they have and you put a word on there and it like the dog hits and says treat outdoors, whatever.

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:07):
Oh, that was great on TikTok. Yeah, man.

Owen JJ Stone (01:55:09):
I've seen somebody with like 37 buttons and the dog's literally writing essays every morning. Like, Hey, let's go for a 15 minute walk and I'm gonna take a bath. And you know, Susie came by earlier. Right? I'm like what? <Laugh> the dog

Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
Knows what? Don't trust that if it's on TikTok, but this is

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:25):
Oh no, no buddy bunny. The talking dog, the talking dog.

Owen JJ Stone (01:55:29):
It's no, I mean, and other people's dogs do it too. And not just on TikTok. I've seen on YouTube. Like I've seen people in their house use. I'm not smart to train my dog. I ain't got a time, but I mean these dogs, once they learn these buttons, boy, it is hard to shut. 'em Up. They be like, treat, wait a minute, minute treat,

Leo Laporte (01:55:44):
Treat. Okay. Then I understand cuz they figured out somehow I pressed this button. Whatever it means on. Yeah. There's a lot

Jeff Jarvis (01:55:50):
Of buttons. Wait, do you see it? There's a lot of buttons. Go on

Leo Laporte (01:55:53):
Tiktok and look up bunny. Okay. Here's bunny. The talking dog. Wait a minute. They're training this dog to talk. So there's those buttons. Look at that. You couldn't do it Leo. I couldn't do it. I, I always want Bunny's hair. You gotta listen to it though. You okay? Wait a minute now. So, so turn on the sound. Thank you, baby.

Speaker 7 (01:56:15):
Okay. Pump him up on the couch for

Leo Laporte (01:56:16):
Switches. Okay. Okay. I missed, I got another one don't know. Okay. Okay. So here here's here's mom pooping here. Okay. Mom, mom, where mom poop.

Speaker 7 (01:56:30):
Where? I guess we could go for a walk on the trail to poop.

Leo Laporte (01:56:37):
This dog is not talking.

Jeff Jarvis (01:56:40):
You watch it. You watch this all the time.

Leo Laporte (01:56:42):
You're gonna

Speaker 7 (01:56:43):
Believe in that. Why are you asking where I poop? Oh my God. Mom poop in here. Mom. Poop over

Owen JJ Stone (01:56:50):
Here. See the dog wanted an answer. You don't

Leo Laporte (01:56:53):
Know what's going. No mom has. Mom has has assuming a lot. The dog's just going poop. I don't buy that for a minute. We, we

Owen JJ Stone (01:57:01):
Don't have time. You watch, you watch this dog. You watch any of these dogs, Tim. I'm sorry. I made you suffer through this, Tim, but I'm telling you

Leo Laporte (01:57:10):
These dogs, those are genius. Rich ones. Should I watch? I don't care about where? I don't know. All right. Let's watch.

Owen JJ Stone (01:57:16):
Watch own time. Stop. Many people suffer. Just everybody go watch the dog. They I'm telling you.

Leo Laporte (01:57:21):
It's real. No, it's it's real. It is. This, all this proves is how dumb humans are.

Owen JJ Stone (01:57:27):
I've seen dogs get beers on her fringe. When the daddy goes to the,

Speaker 8 (01:57:32):
And then look in the mirror.

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
There's a lot of human interpretation going on.

Speaker 8 (01:57:40):
Who? This that's bunny. That's bunny. <Affirmative>.

Owen JJ Stone (01:57:46):
I said, I teach a dog. You don't understand.

Leo Laporte (01:57:52):
Okay, I'm sorry. You, you can't watch it like this watching too much TikTok. It's gone to your brain. It like this. Oh, TikTok thing.

Owen JJ Stone (01:58:00):
And, and stop. See this. What I like about TikTok. We need talk about these TikTok stories just because it's on TikTok. I'm blaming TikTok for you not understanding or the way the world happens. There's other forms of media. There's other forms of content and his content is not. Thank what I'm saying because the TikTok, the things happen. Let's talk about the TikTok school thing, because that personally affected me this week and it made me angry. Let's talk about, so you wanna be TikTok and let's get to some of these TikTok stories. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:58:25):
So this was a, a case of students posting on TikTok. What bomb threats? Well, or just threats?

Owen JJ Stone (01:58:33):
Nationwide school attacks.

Leo Laporte (01:58:36):
Okay. And school districts were shutting down, sending kids home. Did this happen to Aaliyah?

Owen JJ Stone (01:58:43):
Yes. So I get a text message. Now. Now mind you, since Leah's been in the third grade, we've had a thing where I go in her classroom. I scout her school. I tell if there's ever an event. Like I give her a certain places to hide and go to, and her mother's always hated that I do this, but it's what I do. So anytime that there's a fire, drill, alert, anything, her first thing to do is to text me. So she texted me and said, there's a, a drill going on. And I said, okay, five minutes later. She says, dad, this isn't a regular drill. Something's wrong. So I go up to the school. Now, mind you, I'm not Rambo. But I like for her to know that I'm close by. So I sat at the edge of the school parking lot. They got Amber up, you can't approach the school.

Owen JJ Stone (01:59:22):
And I just find out where she's at and we're talking back and forth. And you know, her mom starts texting me because now her mom's a teacher, her school started shutting down. And then that's when you realize it's more than just one school, one location. And then you start hearing about the threats being made online and TikTok and Twitter and all that kind of stuff's. So it made me feel a little bit better that there wasn't an actual threat at this school, but mind you, last year, our kid had a knife and there was the school got shut down. So things do happen. But this, this freaked me out because they don't schools. Aren't really equipped for like, things like this that really do happen in the moment they haven't.

Leo Laporte (01:59:59):
It's ironic. Cause no one has yet to find the original post. Right. That's the issue. Yep. Yeah. So somebody supposedly posted it, you know, December 17th to be national shoot up your school day. No one has found the original post. Nobody, none, no journalists. Nobody can find it, but there are a lot of follow up posts saying yes. Yeah. Oh yeah. Did you see that? Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, and you said there was an Amber light at the school. Is there a, like a warning traffic light at the school?

Owen JJ Stone (02:00:32):
Never. So yeah, our, our, our school, we had an incident, like I said, where a kid had a knife and he had threatened hurt to somebody and they were woeful and prepared. So then our school put in an institution and where there's huge signs before you enter the school to say, if the Amber light is flashing, do not enter the school, do not come on school, property, things like that. So if you just were to happen to drive up, you'd know this's, what's going on.

Leo Laporte (02:00:56):
Isn't this sad that we have to, this's

Owen JJ Stone (02:00:58):
Just, you would know. So, so first

Leo Laporte (02:01:00):
Of all, it it'd be crazy to blame this on TikTok anymore than you'd blame the phone company. If a bomb, threat were, were phoned in, which has happened by the way, since I was a kid in school.

Owen JJ Stone (02:01:10):
And that's what I mean about that. Every everybody in line was like, this is what they should been TikTok. And the kids in the TikTok. And they got, I was like, bro, like this, it's not a TikTok issue per se. Like these things have been going on long before TikTok. So let's focus on the problem.

Leo Laporte (02:01:26):
Police department put out a warning saying, there's a trend on TikTok. That could be very dangerous. Now I never saw this trend. I'm not, I guess, enough of a TikTok user or maybe cuz I'm an old guy. I don't see this. But apparently people were hammering out the rhythm of a Kesha song on people's door mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so the pet police were saying a, it could damage the door <laugh> and B and this is actually a legitimate concern. Don't do this kids because a homeowner might open the door and shoot you're dead. <Laugh> so thinking that this is like some beginning of some assault on the house or something like that. Knock,

Owen JJ Stone (02:02:07):
Knock, zoom, zoom, anybody. Is that what it is? Putting a FLA putting a flame in bag of P on somebody's doorstep. Yeah. There you go. And knocking and having to come down, like, like I said, like we blame technology for the things that dumb children have for a lifetime throw TP on people's houses and trees and egging somebody's car or windows. I mean, long before the long before the internet happened, these things were going on. So,

Leo Laporte (02:02:29):
So, and I have to say, Jeff, you're famous for the use of the phrase, moral panic. This is moral panic. You know, it is the pedal of a police blaming TikTok for this 

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:40):
Cause you, you, they almost want to believe it and they wanna blame somebody for it.

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
And, and I, you know, the same thing with the tide pod challenge and all of that stuff. I don't know. I, I don't feel like it's worse than it was because the TikTok exists. So anyway,

Jeff Jarvis (02:02:58):
It's the fallacy here that everything was okay. America was just fine. Yeah. We were just fine. We had no problems, no racism, no sexism, no inequity until the internet came along. You know,

Leo Laporte (02:03:08):
Now on the other hand and I talked about this and you had it, Jeff on on Wednesday, everybody in the world got a, a cyclone warning from the Philippines' get it. You did not get no, I didn't go. Yeah. Oh, I thought everybody. I certainly UN Reddit. Everybody said I got it all over the world. A public storm warning for a storm guy hitting the Philippines from the Philippines era. What is air and space? You know, the weather weather group. I never heard anything from Google, but I sure did hear on Reddit. A lot of people saying I'm in Germany. I got it. I'm in New Jersey. I'm in the UK. I saw it when I got up and I thought this is weird. Are we getting a big storm? So that's just a, a strange feature of our modern world that we're all interconnected, somehow

Owen JJ Stone (02:04:02):
Alert, alert,

Leo Laporte (02:04:03):
Alert, alert. I guess we haven't done any Facebook stories. Jeff, do you want to, do you want to, should we delve in

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:12):
What's here? Well,

Leo Laporte (02:04:13):
It's here. Well the big, I think the big one actually maybe it's not even here. Look, did we miss it? Did I somehow miss it? The big one is that Facebook had to, or should I call it meta or Facebook? Oh,

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:25):
Facebook <laugh>, you know, it's the pan a building still MEA. I, I refuse

Leo Laporte (02:04:32):
To agree. The I'm gonna call it from now in the company, formerly known as Facebook says 50,000 Facebook users may have been sped upon by private surveillance firms, seven surveillance for higher firms. They have now banned them from the meta platforms. They say the firms carried out a combination of reconnaissance engagement and exploitation

Jeff Jarvis (02:04:54):
Defines sped upon. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
I, it's not my phrase. It's metas phrase. Cobwebs technology, cogni black cube, black blue Hawk, bell trucks, sidetrack, and an unknown Chinese entity. Four of them located in Israel, one in India, one in north Macedonia, one in China. They all denied it. Of course. Meta said the seven firms carried out a combination of reconnaissance engagement and exploitation. Some carried out all three while others focused on one or two 1500 accounts linked to the seven firms have been removed from meta platforms. They targeted journalists and human rights activists in over a hundred countries created fake accounts, befriended targets, hacking methods to acquire information. I guess, you know, if Facebook's the internet, this stuff happens on the internet all the time, but does feel like

Jeff Jarvis (02:05:51):
I still wanna know what, what they, what was their goal? What did they do? What, what was, what was the risk? Not saying it's not there. I'm not saying it's not real, but just it's it's, it's, it's rather amorphous as, as stated

Leo Laporte (02:06:02):
The global surveillance for higher industry. This is from MES post targets, people across the internet to collect intelligence, manipulate them into revealing information and compromise their device and accounts,

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:16):
Right? That's the closest it's gotten to her are it's

Leo Laporte (02:06:19):
Like Pegasus. You know, what is, what is Facebook's obligation to protect you? I mean, part of the problem is that Facebook is uniquely positioned to let bad guys into your life. You know, we all get emails. I just got an email this morning. I say, and I'm so excited saying, I I have 14 million you in a bank account in Nigeria, just waiting for me. But that's an email. It's easy to ignore Facebook. Somehow you feel like friends and family they're letting them in to your life. Do they have a, what?

Jeff Jarvis (02:06:51):
Oh, a minute ago, saying this has gone on for ages. I got a physical letter with somebody saying that there's a Jarvis who died in Canada with $6 million. And all you have to do is sign a piece of paper, physical letter and chain.

Leo Laporte (02:07:03):
I remember chain letters.

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:05):
Yeah. Right, right. Oh man.

Leo Laporte (02:07:08):
Good stuff. Good, good old time. So Facebook doesn't have a responsibility to,

Jeff Jarvis (02:07:12):
Oh yeah. I think, I think it does. But this is what I've I've, you know, I think that Facebook should make a, a warrant, a covenant with its, to users to say, this is what we will do for you. And then, and then stick up to it. But they're afraid of doing that. Cuz every time they don't, every time they mess up, every time they, you know, forget one, then they're not gonna,

Leo Laporte (02:07:31):
The good news is Facebook did say something about it and said, this is what we've done about it. This was on Thursday. But they say nearly 50,000 journalists and activists were targeted in over a hundred countries. I mean, this is, to me, this is just the other arm of Pegasus. This is yeah. One more way that we can get at the, you know, journal was an activist people. We don't want to have anything to do with, you know I'm sure we'll all get the free year of credit monitoring and everything. <Laugh> so important. So important. Melania Trump getting into the NFT biz. The good news is this is NFTs meant to inspire and earn cash and it talks it's <laugh> so she's looking at you, she's

Owen JJ Stone (02:08:27):
Spying on you. Her eyes are gonna stare at you <laugh> and then it

Leo Laporte (02:08:30):
Talks okay. You know, Tom Brady is doing NFTs. I digital ownership of his college resume and his old cleats <laugh> by the way, you don't get the cleats <laugh> he keeps the cleats, you get digital ownership of the cleats. He grows to $1.3 million on his NFT seal Melania's first NFT offering a watercolored depiction of her quote, cobalt, blue eyes. It's called Melania's vision. It will you for $187, you're gonna get an Alet to inspire. And I don't know, you, you get a piece of her eyes. I don't know. They plan to sell many of these. She calls it a one of a kind auction of historical importance that will include <laugh> digital artwork, physical artwork, and a physical, one of a kind accessory. See,

Owen JJ Stone (02:09:33):
This makes me mad because I'm an NT person. I'm an you believer. But when you read this, it makes me angry. And I I'm mad that I have to get angry about it. Like I shouldn't care, but it makes me angry. I, I think of first, first thing I think is, is your demographic even gonna be capable of purchasing your NFC? Are they, are they really like, you might as well just be selling. I dying pills on what's the name's website. What's the guy's name, whatever the guy's name, you know, the guy I'm talking about. I, I just

Leo Laporte (02:09:58):
The pillow guy, Mike Mike

Owen JJ Stone (02:10:00):
Pillow. Yeah. My pillow guy. Like, I feel like you should be, get sent out feathers, like physical feathers people like who's, who's really buying NFTs from her, with her a eyes stop making me mad about NFTs. I like

Leo Laporte (02:10:11):
Nfts. Well, this is another problem. I don't know exactly the solution. An NFT artist has withdrawn on all of his art from deviant art because somebody's just taken it, selling it. It's identical to his original. That's terrible. And they're just selling it. And the thing is the people who min NFTs don't do anything to say, oh, do you own this?

Owen JJ Stone (02:10:34):
No, no. Most people don't even write descriptions to their stuff at the time. So you're it. It's, it's a definite problem. They've gotta fix their problem. What, what, what, what do you use NFTs for? What do, what do you like 'em for? What, what, what do they do for you? So we are human beings and we collect things and we save things that have value. Can I buy

Leo Laporte (02:10:53):
Your cleats legendary?

Owen JJ Stone (02:10:54):
Right? So again, the cleats thing, isn't a big deal, right? Like that's dumb, cuz it's a physical, let's say let's take the Mona Lisa. Right? How many people have put up pictures of the Mona Lisa on their background or on a t-shirt and they've worn it just because it's the Mona Lisa and they love the Mona Lisa, that picture doesn't have value. But the actual Mona Lisa does when people say, oh, I can just copy and paste the picture. The real value is in the ownership of things. So like, let's say I wanted to make, do bots and put 'em outta my discord and give 'em to people that were fans of mine. Right? So let's say I have a thousand fans and I make a thousand things and they wanna save them a collector. They'd be the first one to have 'em if they wanted to resell 'em one day down the line.

Owen JJ Stone (02:11:30):
What if I died yesterday? They'd be worth some money. I don't know. But it's human is what we do. We collect baseball cards and songs and music and records. It's what we do. So I fully understand and get the concept and grasp of NFTs. But there's also like with everything, like I said, beautiful, horrible human beings that are stealing people's content and distribute it. And MA's eyes and things that make me angry too. But I, I, I just understand the stored value of at FTS and the process that we're doing it. And it's also something that is disruptive in a new way for artists to get paid for their stuff. Like if you're a musician, there's no reason for you to go slave yourself out to a, a, a big company. That's just gonna advance you some money and rip off your royalties for the rest of your life.

Owen JJ Stone (02:12:10):
Go make your song, put on an NFT, put it out to your fans and say, Hey, you'll get royalties. I get spins on Spotify, which means they're gonna put you on their playlist and listen to you every single night because they're gonna end up getting 2 cents a day or whatever. There's multiple different ways I can read on it forever. But I just believe, and the power that's giving back to regular people and content creators. And I know that there's also things wrong with that too. Buy humbug, Merry Christmas by my NFTs when I start selling <laugh> cause right now, right, right now I do all my stuff in public. I I've made some good money, flipping some NFTs and I just believe in the process. That's all I'm saying, but I know that, I know that there's also a problem. So there's also a problem.

Leo Laporte (02:12:46):
Radio shack went bankrupt at 2015, right? They closed all the stories, which you saying, because in a lot of towns, that was the only place you could get, you know, components. And then of course the battery club I don't know, then somebody bought it and then there's kind of around and then they're not around, but this is like bell Howell is the latest. Yeah. I don't know who actually owns the brand radio shack or the site radio shack.com. But if you go to radio check.com, this is the latest bringing cryptocurrency to the mainstream. Our mission is to be the first protocol to bridge the gap in mainstream. Use of defi decentralized finance. They're gonna issue a radio token. They're getting into crypto

Owen JJ Stone (02:13:38):
Brand recognition, brand recognition.

Leo Laporte (02:13:42):
They got the radio, she logo I don't know who these people are. They must have they've got a radio shack, super bowl commercial on the site. It's just weird.

Owen JJ Stone (02:13:58):
It's weird. It's weird. Like I said, I, I'm not trying to tell anybody to go buy anything or invest anything. I'm just saying, I understand why we do as human beings. I understand this value. Yeah. Okay. But I also understand that just like Amazon people return in high Halloween costumes that there's some fishy stuff out here in the water too. I, I

Leo Laporte (02:14:14):
Get it. Yeah. I mean, and you, you, you nailed it. I mean, why do we collect baseball cards? They have no intrinsic value or bottle caps or, you know, be babies. They don't have any intrinsic value. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone (02:14:25):
You, you hang on to 'em because you love them. And then hopefully one day a billionaire says, I wanna buy my childhood back in these, willing to pay you a million for it, you know? Or, or, you know, you go up in your grandmother's attic and you find a plate from world war three that there's only two left in the world. And now it's worth something. You know? I mean,

Leo Laporte (02:14:43):
You see people watch antique road show. Cause they, man, they figure somewhere in the attic. I got something.

Owen JJ Stone (02:14:49):
Well, that's, that's my favorite thing.

Jeff Jarvis (02:14:50):
My wife cleans everything. Now we have nothing of value level.

Leo Laporte (02:14:54):
It's all gone. She's marketing in your

Owen JJ Stone (02:14:56):
Future. Anything here. <Laugh> all right. Let's a sign. A couple of those books in the back, dude. Jeff, I can, when I come visit and change your lights, I can grab a couple personally sign autographs, jar books. There you go. I,

Jeff Jarvis (02:15:07):
I have have lots of copies of my books that didn't sell. I can, I can do as

Owen JJ Stone (02:15:11):
Many of those as you want. I love you too. Jeff. <laugh> <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:15:16):
Our show today brought to you by here's where if you're a millionaire, you should spend some money. Look what Ryan Reynolds has done with mint mobile, it has become my go-to mobile carrier. When you switch to mint mobile, and by any three month plan, you'll get another three months for free. Now I gotta tell you MIT mobile was already the company to go to for affordable wireless service. They were the first company to sell premium wireless. Online. Only you could order from home. You save a ton cuz they don't have to pay. The overhead of stores. Plan started just $15 a month. All plants, all plants include unlimited nationwide talk and text and high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5g network T-Mobile and now their best offer of the year. For a limited time, by any three month plan, even the $15 a month plan and get three more months free.

Leo Laporte (02:16:11):
That's incredible savings. And I can tell you as a long time I mobile user they're great. You choose the amount of monthly data that's right for you. Don't pay for data. You don't use. They do have an unlimited plan, but I would suggest you look at the site and pick a plan that makes sense. Look at your existing cell phone bill. And after you burst into tears, when you see the bottom line switch to MIT mobile, I'm paying a third less than a third of what I was paying for T-Mobile service. You could bring your own phone. MIT mobile will send you a SIM for free. Another way they don't G you almost other companies charge you just to send you a SIM. You can keep your phone number. If you will want port it over to mint mobile. If you keep your phone, you know, nothing changes. They also sell phones. It's up to you. Mint mobile.com/twi. Switch to mint, mobile, get premium wireless service starting at $15 a month. That's for unlimited talk and text. Why are you paying 80, 90, a hundred dollars a month when you get, get the same for 15, it doesn't make any sense. And now three months free when you buy any three month plan mint, mobile.com/twi is just a no-brainer mint, mobile.com/twi. Cut your wireless build to 15 bucks a month at mint, mobile.com/twi.

Leo Laporte (02:17:31):
I just think it's an amazing thing. I ended up they sent me a SIM for I think, three months and I said, I'm buying a year. This is such a good deal. I ended up, I, I, I looked at all the, and I use a lot of data, so I got the 15 gig plan, 25 bucks a month. Come on for 15 gigs. You're never gonna use that much. A that's why you should go to the site and look and pick a plan. That makes sense based on your usage, cuz it's great mint, mobile.com/twi. Thank you, mint mobile. We had a fun week this week. I know we're going into the best OFS starting later this week, actually that's always a lot of fun. Have our TWI holiday special will be a week from tonight. Sunday, the what is that? The 26th, the day after Christmas, that's gonna be our holiday special with Jason Howell, aunt Pruitt, Micah Sergeant the following week will be the best of and all the week, all week long between Christmas and new year's day, best OFS, but this week all fresh material and what a week it was watch. There you look good. You looks scary. Well actually, no, you might look more like an aged monk. <Laugh> he looks, he looks like a Sy Lord, this Lord, and maybe somebody in the Sy Lord retirement community.

Speaker 9 (02:18:45):
Oh, ages man

Speaker 10 (02:18:47):
Previously on iOS today, apple has released iOS 15.2 and Rosemary orchard. And I look through the new features. You can expect

Leo Laporte (02:19:00):
Flush weekly log

Speaker 11 (02:19:02):
4G, which is a Java library for logging. And it's used in a whole bunch of things. Like Minecraft is one of the, one of the big ones.

Speaker 9 (02:19:11):
When there's a security in and flaw in something that's written in Java, it can be years before everybody has sort of noticed, oh actually I do have a log for J jar files sitting around doing something. It, they, they don't get updated very automatically in a lot of cases

Leo Laporte (02:19:27):
This weekend, Google. Yeah. I think that TWI should make a new feature. Every, every December I call it of the year of year. Yeah, no, there you go. Our of the year, this year, aunt Pruit, I'd like to, with the year with the official of the year award, it is a lovely <laugh> I dual golden deer golden deer award TWI.

Owen JJ Stone (02:19:52):
I can had the receipt for that.

Leo Laporte (02:19:56):
He threw the deer back by the way. Yeah, he didn't pick up the, he didn't pick up his award so I could give it to somebody else next year. It's it's a, I'll just engrave his name on the back on, on the back. Take the price off. No, it's still there. It's 39 99. <Laugh>

Owen JJ Stone (02:20:12):
Also a, a random update for the people in the world. Guess who? After complaining on national TWI television that I couldn't get my apple card. Yeah. Who

Leo Laporte (02:20:23):
Got their, who got

Owen JJ Stone (02:20:24):
Their card? Did you get

Leo Laporte (02:20:25):
Card?

Owen JJ Stone (02:20:26):
I, they finally approved you. Boy. I hear these streets. I mean, it only took a seven 90 credit score. I mean, it don't, that's all it took. It's just bad. Had push over seven 80. We actually had to get up to seven 90.

Leo Laporte (02:20:36):
You were on and applied for it. And it got rejected again with a, with a very, that's a very good it better than my credit score. And, and, and we never could figure out. So did they send you a letter saying we're sorry, or just suddenly it worked? No, no,

Owen JJ Stone (02:20:50):
I, I just, I've been on my random, I apply every couple months because I was buying I always buy apple stuff randomly, but mind you, I bought the MacBook pro max 24 for guess. What? Guess what though? Guess what? Yeah, it hasn't been delivered yet. It was supposed to be here by the 17th. Then it got pushed back now to January 14th. And now I'm like, should I cancel it? I think that they, what they did was that 24 core, which I was trying to be to get in my sweet spot. I think it's really a 32 core and they shut down cores and they're scared to send on the people cuz they think I might hack it and get the full 32 cores. I don't know why they keep pushing this shipment back for me for this laptop I

Leo Laporte (02:21:27):
Make is part this excellent. This is just part of the supply chain. Did we order did we wear one for Anthony? And when is the delivery date? Cuz so this, we ordered, I ordered one for Anthony, our our head editor and graphic sky. The day it came out and it was gonna be delivered December 17th. No, no it was gonna be delivered a back in November. It was like November 5th. In fact, I got a notice saying FedEx, can't find you. So we're sending it back on November 5th. What I tell I called apple. I said, what do you mean? We get FedEx deliveries every day at this address, of course FedEx can find us. Apple sits too late. They return it. We're crediting a refund. So I didn't get the money back. But then we around, we ordered it and it was gonna be like Christmas. When, when is it now? Do you know John? When we ordered it in mid-November it was six to eight weeks. And now it says January 18th is as soon as yeah. So this is,

Owen JJ Stone (02:22:20):
And my keeps pushing back.

Leo Laporte (02:22:21):
So I'm upset. You're welcome to the club. This is just what it is. If you order one now it'll say it says Valentine's day. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone (02:22:29):
And my, my well mines push back now to the end of January. But at this point I'm like, I might as well hold on and wait and buy a Mac pro desktop or whatever comes out by the time I get it, they're gonna be now some new stuff. You know what they gonna have that

Leo Laporte (02:22:40):
Me, I bet you would. That will be that they'll have a Mac pro or an iMac pro. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone (02:22:44):
Or Lisa announce it. So, but yeah, I gotta prove they, they got me, all I had to do was come on TWI and complain. And then somebody saw

Leo Laporte (02:22:51):
This, they saw you by laptop, give his card. We should give this guy 3%.

Owen JJ Stone (02:22:54):
That's what it is. And I, I don't spend a lot of money. They don't, they should have been gave me that tank on thing. So

Leo Laporte (02:22:59):
Weird. It's weird. Yeah. Super weird. Yeah. And it even stranger that it turned around, you didn't do anything differently. You should have been accepted previous. I

Owen JJ Stone (02:23:08):
Mean, I mean, my score went up blank a little bit, but I mean like again, like once you're over 700, I'm

Leo Laporte (02:23:12):
Like, I think it's usage. It's a lot of factors. It's Goldman Sachs by the way that does this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry that I'm glad to hear you got it actually. Yeah. I I'm I'm

Owen JJ Stone (02:23:21):
In the community. I got, I got, I got my apple car NFT. Yeah. I mean, I got the baby. I got my Ft. You woo. Yeah. Getting 3% royalties on everything. I buy. People don't believe INTS. They don't understand you don't get it. The future,

Leo Laporte (02:23:34):
My plan to get rich is to is to use the Homeland security bug bounty. Actually I'm being sarcastic department of Homeland secure. Remember bug Boies are a very good way for companies to make sure that if somebody F finds a security flaw, they tell you, instead of, I don't know, telling the NSO group and selling it to some, you know nation state to attack people's devices, DHS wants to get people hackers to submit flaws directly to DHS so they can fix 'em. So they've got a bug bounty per, but guys it's called hack DHS and the bug bounty. Now remember companies like the NSO group are paying millions. Apple's paying 50,000, 60,000, a hundred thousand. The DHS is gonna give you $500 to, to $5,000 for each flaw, depending on the gravity of the vulnerability.

Owen JJ Stone (02:24:30):
I made more money than that snitch to the IRS. It

Leo Laporte (02:24:33):
Seems like it seems like they maybe could increase the amount of that. I don't know. I'm glad that they're doing something. There was a hack, the Pentagon event. I think it was under our friend, Matt cut's EIS at the United States, digital service us. They found 140 unidentified vulnerabilities, 140 on the department's websites, Pentagon success prompted congressional lawmakers to do the same at other federal agencies, including the state department. But I don't know. I maybe that's plenty. I do just the, the bad guys. I know 500 bucks. I

Owen JJ Stone (02:25:11):
Think the IRS pays you like a thousand dollars to start when you snitch on people. I think it's like 1,015 hundred seems kinda low. I mean, so, I mean, this seems low by way. If you don't know about that, you're not gonna come to my house. I

Jeff Jarvis (02:25:23):
Don't

Owen JJ Stone (02:25:23):
Trust you. I'm I'm worried. Look, I I'm not, I'm not doing it. I'm just saying there's people out the internet flashing money. And then other people report those people. And then the IRS shows up and say, how'd you get all this money on YouTube? I'm just saying Mr. Beast, watch out. That's all I'm saying. You know what I mean? Somebody out there report me on this more than 500 bucks. So that's why they doing it.

Leo Laporte (02:25:40):
Actually the president did sign an executive order will send an executive order to move 17 agencies, 17 government services online, including this is a big change allowing you to apply for a passport online. Whoa. It lasts

Owen JJ Stone (02:25:57):
Finally.

Leo Laporte (02:25:58):
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Filing taxes, applying for social security benefits will waiting in TSA lines. Wait a minute. You can't do that online. <Laugh>

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:09):
My, my avatar is gonna wait for me. Thank you very

Leo Laporte (02:26:11):
Much. Yeah. <Laugh> 30 specific updates they need to make according to this executive order, including allowing Americans to renew passports or renew passports online. Yeah. It would

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:23):
Be a little to actually get your first passport, I guess. So look at

Leo Laporte (02:26:26):
You and say, yes. Yeah, you go to the post office to do it. Right. And they look at you and you're talking, which is

Jeff Jarvis (02:26:29):
Fairly new actually. Cuz you used to have to go to the state, you state

Leo Laporte (02:26:32):
Department. Yeah. So you can renew online though. That's good. Disaster victims will be able to submit photos of damage via their mobile phones. That's good. Smart. Good. All of these actions are near term in nature, according to the deputy man director of management at the OMB and they will generally be completed in the months, the coming months within one year U S D S at the forefront of this Matt Cutts, our friend, Matt Cutts is no longer administrator there. He retired, but the United States's digital digital service, which was created to get Silicon valley to come help with the Obamacare site. The ACA site now is doing stuff for all. They did the veterans administration and stuff. There's also a tech team inside the white house. Oh that is the tech. I'm sorry. That is the tech team. The us digital service, a tech they're inside the Pentagon, I think. But that's all right. Well protocol says the white house. The

Owen JJ Stone (02:27:31):
Modern, I say that's one thing that COVID did for us. Like the fact that like the DMV before you had to go in and do the whole process to get an ID. Now you, you just go online. They mailed to you. I, I got my new ID and then within a week I lost my wallet and all I was thinking to myself was I gotta go all the way to DMV. My friend's like, didn't you do it online? I was like, yeah, said go online. I paid $5. I had a new driver's license in three days. I'm like, wow. Wow, wow.

Jeff Jarvis (02:28:00):
Special. The special one that lets you fly. 

Owen JJ Stone (02:28:03):
Yeah. Driver's license. They have a driver's

Leo Laporte (02:28:06):
License that lets you

Owen JJ Stone (02:28:07):
Fly's real ID. You gotta have the real ID. Oh you mean

Leo Laporte (02:28:11):
Get on an airplane. The airplanes, no

Owen JJ Stone (02:28:12):
Flying. No, no, no. Once you get it, they've gotta chip in your brain. Elon made and I can now fly across front of these guys. Don't worry about it. Neuro league, 2022 coming up. Isn't that horrible? That it's 20, 22. It's actually gonna be 2022.

Leo Laporte (02:28:27):
It was it's make out loud. That's horrible. And then 2021 w O N and now it's 20 22 2 be the, the, the, the, the quickening or something. I don't know. I just, I need a, I,

Owen JJ Stone (02:28:42):
I need a foil hat instead just saying a hat something's going on. I just sold myself. By the way, I

Leo Laporte (02:28:47):
Periodized myself. Matt was replaced by an engineer who worked on the healthcare.gov rollout. Mina shag is the new administrator at the United States digital services. And they have a big new job, which is to get things like the passport renewals online. Yay. Yay. Yay. Finally a little word of warning in the UK. Apparently they're very worried about the health threat. Posed by 5g. Again and there's all, there's been a brisk business in the Netherlands for these net necklaces, the, the quantum pendant, which protects you against 5g, except these 5g net necklaces are radioactive <laugh> and the touch authority for nuclear safety and radiation protection has, has issued a warning about the 10 products that found gave off harmful ionizing radiation. By the way, this is where moral panic gets you. Yeah, <laugh> right. It's you're gonna be radioactive. So people ly saying your cell phone's gonna kill you. And I always say, no, no, it's non-ionizing radiation. Which means as far as we know, it's harmless to human cells. So what do you buy a necklace with iron radiation to protect you from non by the way, does it do anything with the 5g? No, of course not actually do anything. No. It just kills you. The necklace the products identified including an energy armor, sleeping mask, bracelet and necklace, a bracelet for children. Oh no. Branded magnetics. Well also emitting ionizing radiation. It's radioactive.

Owen JJ Stone (02:30:28):
Is this on the MyPillow site too?

Leo Laporte (02:30:30):
Probably the Dutch, the Dutch agency said don't wear it anymore. Put it away safely. And the wait photo return instructions. That'ss the worst Dutch accent I have ever. I don't have ever heard. Excuse me. In the UK and may of last year, the UK's trading standards sought to halt sales of a 339 pound. I mean British pounds, not weight USB stick. So it's about $500, a $500 USB stick that claim to offer protection from 5g. And you can also right now, go on Amazon and buy anti radiation stickers. There's one born every minute. Yeah, there's a sucker born every minute. The stickers protect you against electromagnetic fields from phones. Scientists say the stickers have no effect, no effect at all. Except identifying you as schmuck. It's the sucker hat that I was talking about. When they see that sticker, they see you coming. 

Owen JJ Stone (02:31:42):
Actually you think it's, you think it's bad, but I just mentioned a million NFT eye eyes, tokens that will protect you. They're only 10 99. If you'd like to purchase one today on my sucker. Oh its

Leo Laporte (02:31:53):
Pillow.Com every minute. Do you guys know what Tarda grades are? Oh, there power. The Starship discovery. Excuse me. Do they really? They do lot do the, so these are, these are little microscopic multicellular organisms. They are cute. Look how cute they are. They look like they're cute. Little, I don't know pigs. They get little claws in their feet, but they're also in virtually indestructible. They have been into the vacuum of space for more than a week survived. They've been shot from guns, survived in most cases, a few, a few gave up. Well lately we found a new way to torture tar grades. This, this is nuts. I don't even know what this means, but Rainer dokey and his colleagues at the NA yang technological university in Singapore have taken a hibernating target, ATAR grade, placed it on a super conducting cubit. And they, it is now the first multi-cellular organism to be quantum and entangled.

Owen JJ Stone (02:32:59):
So go goof full, go to full screen real quick auto panelists.

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
Okay. Auto panelists, everybody. Yeah.

Owen JJ Stone (02:33:06):
Tim, I don't know you, but I love you. We are now friends. Okay. First of all, you answered that question very quickly and precisely. And I was scared to say it. Cause I thought I was gonna sound like an idiot, but you knew exactly what it was because we, we were, we were thrown it now. Secondly, the fact that that's a real thing and that we're trying to do things to that thing makes me upset because sometimes I watch TV shows and I don't Google stuff. Sometimes I just enjoy the show. But the fact that that thing is real and is like impervious to everything. It's crazy. And Tim knows talking like Tim, watch the show and why star Trek discovery one, one of the great reboots of star Trek. Oh my goodness. Stop messing with that thing and leave it alone before the collapsed into a black hole and we lose everything. Stop it right now. All the research in I'm Peter. Get on it. Peter Peter protect the tars. Yes,

Leo Laporte (02:33:51):
Yes, yes. Tard gray. The tars, our microscopic eight legged animals sometimes referred to as water bears. Oh, they live in so torture water bear.

Owen JJ Stone (02:34:02):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:34:03):
Think all just started a new hashtag and a new campaign protect the target rates. So in our campaign, sometimes they're known as MOS, piglets <laugh> and we have listen to what we've done. When, when they're, when they're in extremes, they shrink into something called a ton T U N state their metabolism practically zero. They're still alive and they can survive. They can survive without water for decades. They can tolerate high doses of gamma and x-ray radiation. They have been shown to survive temperatures as low as 270 degrees below zero Celsius and 150 degrees Celsius above. They've also breezed through 10 days in the vacuum of space on anything else, it would destroy your DNA, be terrible, but they have some weird damage, presser protein that somebody Harvard, grades and cockroaches, that's all it's gonna be left their DNA. It it's a fascinating animal.

Leo Laporte (02:35:05):
I don't know though, to be Frank. I mean, I've heard the phrase quantum entanglement <laugh> I, I studied, I, you know, when I studied physics in high school and read about it, I read about quantum mechanics, but I don't really understand what it would be to be in a quantum entanglement. John, do you, does it make any sense to you? I know you like science. I wanna know what it is to put a tar grain on the cubit. What does that mean? I don't either. <Laugh> none of this makes sense. I think we're gonna have to get Reiner dump key in his collar league at NA yang technological university in Singapore on the show and explain, but tar grades are fascinating. However, the first multi-cellular organism to survive a quantum entanglement, just one more notch in the tar grade, in the MOS pig, GLI belt.

Leo Laporte (02:35:59):
If it, if you would get on it, Jason, <laugh> super conducting cubit, which is part of a quantum computing device. I think I, I don't. Yeah, this is, this is sci-fi as far as I can tell super sci-fi super sci-fi super fly sci-fi ladies and gentlemen, we are at the conclusion of this episode, Tim Stevens, I wanna thank you so much for coming out of the cold and joining us. <Laugh> I hope you get some snow and ice so you can race on that lake of yours. Thanks. Still open for white Christmas. We'll see if fingers crossed, crossing your fingers up there and way up and up. If you, anybody has a chance you do up there. Yeah. Thanks very much. Great to see Leo always think great to see you follow his exploits at roadshow at the roadshow that's CNET roadshow. Is it roadshow.cnet.com cnet.com/roadshow or the roadshow.com. Oh, just go to roadshow.com. And of course you he's on the Twitters. What are you laughing at now? Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute, Leah. LE's joining us. Hello, Lea. Yay. Yay. She she's got the week off after the TikTok bombing, I guess. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:37:15):
After the what? No, never mind forget it. I don't want to Nick her nightmares. See,

Owen JJ Stone (02:37:20):
See, she doesn't even claim it as a TikTok thing. She just claims this. I got five tests on Monday now. Oh no,

Leo Laporte (02:37:28):
No. There should be a wall all now. They, are you wearing that necklace?

Owen JJ Stone (02:37:35):
Oh, I, I literally was just wearing it like two. She was, she was wearing it two. Okay. So go ahead and tell 'em. Oh, every Christmas and it was really nice meeting you and Lee.

Leo Laporte (02:37:44):
Yeah, we had a wonderful dinner.

Owen JJ Stone (02:37:46):
Thank you all for the, for the soap buying. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:37:49):
We love your soap. Thank you for the salt buying. Yeah. Now my son's in salt. You're in soap. It's great. You, you too. Well, he's a little older for you. That's a sun. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's my son. Lee's very excited about the salting. Yeah. She's a queen of merchandising. Yeah. We had a wonderful dinner with Owen and Leia in Petaluma and then Lisa apparently had taken LE's shopping <laugh> yeah. And, and always all kinds of always a risky stuff. Always a risky thing. Merry Christmas, Leia,

Owen JJ Stone (02:38:15):
Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Leo Laporte (02:38:17):
Merry Christmas. Jeff Jarvis. Thank you so much, professor Jeff Jarvis. Wait a minute. Let me get the thing, cuz we got the music and all that. He is the Leonardtown professor for journalistic innovation at the CRA

Leo Laporte (02:38:33):
Graduate school of journalism at the city of did you buy that one? I don't know where we get. Where'd that come from John? That's good. Do we do that or do we buy it? Came in the mail, came in the mail. <Laugh> hang on. That's to say, I think we need more of those. That's great. Yes we do. Yes we do. Yes. Craig will be alerted. We can summon Craig from another world again. Oh yeah. That might be fun. That might be fun. It came from Eric Jones who? Thank you. Eric artistic director of the master singers of Virginia. Oh wow. That's like, thank you, Eric. And thank you, Eric and master singers of Virginia. Thank you for your kind gift. We also do show I'm gonna let Owen close it out. So as, as we traditionally do I wanna thank everybody for joining us.

Leo Laporte (02:39:23):
I remind you next week. It's the holiday special. We are recording early. We're recording it on Monday. So you can also watch us do that live Monday, the 20th, tomorrow 2:00 PM. Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2200 UTC. Same time new day. We always do TWI around actually 2:30 PM, Pacific five 30 Eastern on a Sunday 2230 UTC. As, as always you could watch us record the holiday special tomorrow or any TWI show by going to live.twi.tv, you could chat with us at IRC dot twit TV. So I encourage you to do that. The following week will be our best of episode. That's January 2nd and January 9th. We'll come back, live with a live TWI and that one is gonna be very interesting. Our futurist panel, including Daniel Suarez, sci-fi author with Amy Webb and futurist, and we're working on scientist to get somebody in there.

Leo Laporte (02:40:19):
So that way we'll kind of cover it all. That should be a lot of fun on January 9th. If you're a member of club TWI, you can also chat with us all the time. At any time in our discord server, you also get ad free versions of all of our shows and the TWI plus feed, which has things that we don't put out on the regular podcast feed. Like our untitled Linox show the GI PHZ Stacy Higginbotham's book club. We have ask you're coming up on, ask me anything. Aren't you Jeff? Pretty soon. You're gonna be on. Yeah, pretty soon. Yeah. Pretty soon in January, March or March, March. We're booked out until March books

Jeff Jarvis (02:40:50):
Way. I'll tell you. Aunt is organized. He has booked holy 20, 30. Holy

Owen JJ Stone (02:40:55):
It, he booked me three years ago and he keeps bothering me about it. I'm like, bro, I don't need to answer yes yet. Okay. <Laugh> you booked me

Leo Laporte (02:41:02):
17 years. Don't put it off. Don't put it off. But if you wanna, if you wanna access to all that great content, just join club TWIs $7 a month. It supports us and everything. We're doing fun people. It's really yeah, great. It's turned out to be really, really great. And we thank all of the thousands of people who are members. Now this

Jeff Jarvis (02:41:19):
Show you have a nice welcoming meme up on there right now. If you can do the

Leo Laporte (02:41:23):
Video, oh, I go go to our discord. You mean, join us,

Owen JJ Stone (02:41:28):
Join, join us,

Leo Laporte (02:41:29):
Join, join us. <Laugh> and also there have number of tar grade things. And here's, here's a video of of Tim trying, trying to get his truck across the lake. <Laugh> I dunno. I dunno what I dunno what that is. Definitely not you. <Laugh> I'm sorry. I now gone on the rabbit hole of animated gifts on on the discord club. TWI is available at TWI TV slash club TWI and we do have, by the way, at corporate memberships, we've now got two companies with corporate memberships. So that's great. Really great. It's a good way to kind of SP your employees tends to be often the it department, people like that. They really appreciate it. So twit a TV slash club TWI, and now ladies and gentlemen, to close out our last episode of 2021, I give you the right Reverend Owen, JJ stone.

Owen JJ Stone (02:42:29):
First of all, if you're in the chat or you're in the discord, you are the backbone of this show. You guys are smart and create. I'd also suggest that you say the name of this show should be fake filtration, imaginary filtration, something with filtration. Think of a bunch of yourselves. Talk about it. I was was gonna Skippy

Leo Laporte (02:42:47):
Do die.

Owen JJ Stone (02:42:50):
No, we, we really need to emphasize this filtration chat room and, and disor. Just focus on that for me, come up something quicky

Leo Laporte (02:42:57):
And having to do with filtration. Okay. All right. 

Owen JJ Stone (02:42:59):
Secondly it is the most wonderful time of the year, which also means that for some people, it is the worst time of the year. So if you have family members that have don't have kids or are alone, or maybe their spouse passed away, make sure you check on your aunts, your uncles, your nieces, your nephews, your cousins call 'em stop by pick 'em up, go watch Spiderman together. Spend some time cuz you got a couple days off, but don't forget about the people that are usually alone at this time of the year that are in your circle. Oh, I know Omni crimes out there, but if you can even just give 'em a call to check on 'em, I'm sure they would appreciate you. I will tell you that the one show that I don't do enough, but I'll start doing next year is raising an engine cuz people love you talking to Leah and about Leah.

Owen JJ Stone (02:43:41):
Yeah. And I'll tell you the other night I came home and you know, we bought all these candles. If you look on the internet, you can see it. And the candle was fresh in her room and I'm like, man, it was just, her lights were out, everything was dark. And I was like, there's no way she went to bed that quick. And so the next day I'm like, yo, what, what happened last night? She was like, oh, I was actually crying. And when I heard you come in, I didn't want to bother you. So I just blew the candle out and I jumped in bed and went to someone was like, well, why were you upset? And she was like, it's not a big deal. You know, the holidays, you know, just press your school and all that. And I was like, no, literally let's talk about why.

Owen JJ Stone (02:44:13):
And she said, she's wrestling. You know, it's two hours after school is beating her body up, you know, school work tests and you know, just the, the general things of life. And you know, she's making soap and doing that stuff so long story short Christmas Eve, this will be the last order for taking for soap. We're gonna shut it down for next year so she can focus on her sports and the other things that she wants to do. And it's totally fine. But my point is that my kid is one of the happiest kids on earth, you know, but her mom's a great mom. I do the best I can, but even she was just super sad and down for a day. And if you don't think to take the time to check on your kids or your parents or your loved one, your significant other, sometimes that moment can cascade kid into something else. So make sure you're paying attention. Make sure you're looking out and again, Merry Christmas, happy new you're happy Hanukkah, happy qu are happy, whatever you celebrate, but make sure you check on the people that are alone in the world because I love you. They love you. We love you Merry Christmas. And you know what else they say, another twins in the kid music doing the, doing the right, doing the, doing the right, doing the baby, doing the.