This Week in Tech Episode 855 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech. Yes. I'm all decked out because this is our annual holiday special this year. We thought we'd gather the our hosts together, Jason Howell, Mikah Sargent, Ant Pruitt, to talk about the big stories of 2021 and some silly little stories too. The best of 2021 live next.

New Speaker (00:00:24):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:37):
This is TWiT, This Week in Tech episode, 855 for Sunday, December 26th, 2021. Our holiday special, Smitten by 2021. This episode of This Week in Tech is brought to you by Blueland. Single-Use plastic is so year 2000. The thing is it's 2022 almost, which means it's way has time to make cleaning fun, beautiful, and plastic free. Right now you get 20% off your first order when you go to blueland.com/twit, and by 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 habit or healthier long term results. Sign up for your trial at noom.com/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 right thing to do. It's also the law. Go to userway.org/twit for 30% off Userway's AI-powered accessibility solution.

Leo Laporte (00:01:58):
It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech, our special can you hear it? End of the year holiday edition it's boxing day. I'm Leo Laporte. You know, it's, it's kind of as you know, it's been kind of a tough year and in years past we've flown in hosts from all over the world. We've had celebrities like judge John Hodgeman, Jonathan Colton you know but this year, which just gonna be us. And I think that's kind of fun. The hosts on today's TWiT End of Year special. Ant Pruitt from Hands On Photography and he's pouring good. Good. Good. Cuz you don't have any holiday F festive cheer around. I thought a little, uh, a little, uh, something brown might be good.

Ant Pruitt (00:02:39):
Mmm Yellowstone Bourbon, sir. Ooh, Yellowstone. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> from the national park or the TV show. <Laugh> not quite the national park. Okay. <laugh> so the TV show. All right, that is Jason. Hell of All About Android, Tech News Weekly. Hi Jason.

Jason Howell (00:03:02):
Hello. It's good to be here. I wish I wish I had remembered that a liquor could be a part of this. It can be all the way downstairs. It can be. The problem is I'm in the corner of my bedroom behind this desk. That requires me to basically do like a ninja warrior course in order to get out of this. Right?

Ant Pruitt (00:03:18):
So send to carry your pigeons.

Leo Laporte (00:03:20):
We were really hoping to have y'all in studio. In fact, when we planned this, we thought we would be able to, and thenn the the least favorite Greek letter also with this Mikah Sargent from his home. Hey Mikah.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:33):
Hello? My least favorite Greek letter is what is it canoe,

Leo Laporte (00:03:38):
Canoe, canoe, canoe. That's it? No, there's no Greek letter canoe. What are you thought? What is that? There's like, you want me to do this? I'm gonna do this because I spent misspent youth learning the Greek alphabet, alpha beta Gama, Delta Epsilon, Zeta, ADA, theta. You just stop me when you hear the worst one. Zeta ADA, theta, Yoda, CAPA Lambda Mo new. Now I pronounce it C but that's C I don't like C see, I don't who nobody does. Although my friend who is in the fraternity says, oh no, that's she anyway? Oh, C. Now I gotta do it. Fast. Alpha beta GA Delta Epsilon, Yoda, lamb, MUN Cron fee. Keep C omega. No, I've lost a track. Wait that's I get a whole chunk in the middle. I think it's C, C omega. Now I've something new OCN, something new OCN. Anyway, it's the

Mikah Sargent (00:04:32):
PSI one or however C

Leo Laporte (00:04:34):
CS. Oh no. That's that's at the end. C there's C Xi, C and PSI. Actually, none. That's real because it's the Greek, alphabet is not Roman alphabet. So I don't know what it is. P I forgot P P rose. We shouldn't trust you. Salon P keeps the omega. Pardon me? Yeah, I

Mikah Sargent (00:04:51):
Just, I, I was convinced that you knew

Leo Laporte (00:04:53):
These canoe though is the new one. And then we're gonna add that alphabet, a canoe <laugh> I don't know, canoe. Anyway. Good. Thank you guys for sharing this time with me. We are recording this a little early, of course, cuz you'll all be busy, Jason. You have little kids, little kids who still think Christmas is a great holiday.

Jason Howell (00:05:18):
Yeah. They're they're still convinced. I won't say that very loud cuz they're on the other side of the could be so much, you might actually hear them throughout the recording of this episode cause they, now I love it from school for the week, which means they're going crazy and bouncing off the walls, trying to entertain themselves. So scooter X

Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
Is join us. Our, our chat room is with us at IRC dot TWI TV, scooter X suggests you broadcast a message on your smart speakers.

Jason Howell (00:05:40):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
You bring some boos <laugh>

Jason Howell (00:05:48):
Can I please get a Manhattan?

Leo Laporte (00:05:49):
We're gonna this, this episode as we usually do, we're gonna look back at the year, which, which is actually not a festive thing this year at all. We'll find something to be festive about, but I thought one of the things that happened this year <laugh> is I got a, a very special candle from a PR agency thanking me for having one of their people on our shows, which as far as I know, we never did. Maybe that explains the candle cuz <laugh> the the official sense of this is smitten. So I thought this would be appropriate during our holiday show. We should have a little, you know, we've got the fake fire, let's have some, let's have some real flame. I'm gonna light stare the candle. And when I blow the candle out, that'll be it the last wall TWI of the year.

Leo Laporte (00:06:36):
There we go. So the little candle we should mention outstanding next week is the best of episode, right? Am I right? January 3rd? Yeah. Yeah, you're on. And then you got January 9th is gonna be a very special future episode. So we, we traditionally do this. We've done this for years where one episode looks back at the year, gone by this episode. And then in two weeks we're gonna do an episode and this was Amy Webb's idea. Predicting the future. Amy Webb, our favorite futurist will join us. So will one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I'm so excited. Daniel Swar of Woohoo. Yeah, really love him of demon and, and freedom. TM and freedom. Somebody great books will join us. I figured somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about the future. Should I have something to say? And then we have a player to be named later but we have some ideas we're working on. Not only does he think about the future, but he thinks about like the interoperability of networks. Yeah. He's a really good guy to get for this because all of his books kind of our near, near future, here's where technology will take kind of stuff. That's really, that's fascinating. So Daniel will be a great guest. Of course that's what Amy does for a living, but I'm now and I've been putting it off. It's time to take a look back <laugh> oh, yay. God, it's a

Jason Howell (00:07:53):
Year. That was 2021.

Leo Laporte (00:07:56):
So it was 2020, right. Which is when it all started the COVID nightmare. Then, then people were saying, oh yeah, 20, 21 w O N. And then Lisa, the other day realized, oh no, it's 20, 22. <Laugh> so mm-hmm oh God, it's a year. That will not. Yeah, that's what it is. It's a year that will not give up. I guess guess if we're gonna talk about the year in the year in technology. So but we, but, but COVID has had a huge impact on tech. It's had people working from home. In fact that may go on forever. I think in some ways it's changed how tech companies work, many companies are now hiring people all over the world and letting them work from home. Of course the great resignation has impacted tech. And I think you could also say that COVID 19 is complicit. Maybe not the total cause of the supply chain shortage. So yeah. Tech very much affected. Oh, and there's one more and there's a bright side to COVID 19. A lot of tech billionaires got really rich <laugh> mm-hmm

Jason Howell (00:09:04):
<Affirmative> yay. Tech billionaires.

Leo Laporte (00:09:06):
It was COVID O's been great for Amazon, right? I mean,

Mikah Sargent (00:09:11):
Still ordering than there ever have been. You know, I, I was just on Twitter yesterday, seeing different people kind of talking about the year. And that was one of the things that they were talking about is not only are you ordering, you know, your Amazon packages, but people who are doing grocery delivery. So many of those new kind of industries that at least here in California have had an interesting go of things due to the different law that we've tried to put in place to protect those individual delivery drivers. This has been even more of a, of a thing this year than ever before, because we are relying on them so much. And we, you know, trying to, to kind of adapt the way that we do or do not go shopping and visit stores and, and use folks who there

Leo Laporte (00:09:56):
To do that in the first three months of 2021 Amazon's profit tripled up 220% profit up 220%, $8.1 billion. And of course who, who benefited from that? Besides the share holders, the, the chief shareholder, the shareholder and chief Jeff Bezos, but his title as the world's richest man was short lived because another guy who benefited from COVID 19 Elon Musk quickly overtook him and is currently as of this recording, they're in a battle, a race, the richest man in the world. <Affirmative> Elon is also the time magazine man of the year, financial times, man of the year. 

Jason Howell (00:10:44):
Oh, Elon, <laugh> not necessarily for good reasons, right? He's honestly notorious reasons than anything he's troll of

Leo Laporte (00:10:50):
The year troll of the year

Jason Howell (00:10:54):
Just happens to also be one of the richest people on the planet.

Leo Laporte (00:10:57):
Want to guess just I, I know, no, I remember in the back in the day, when we were all talking about bill gates, being the richest guy in the world, he had 32 billion and it was like, how can it, what he, he even said after after few hundred million you're infinitely wealthy. There's just nothing. You can spend that on. So how anybody don't look at this headlines wanna guess what? Elon is worth?

Jason Howell (00:11:18):
300 billion.

Leo Laporte (00:11:20):
Very good guess. Oh, okay. Little high, 243 billion, 200. How

Jason Howell (00:11:27):
41 person be worth that much money? Like it just boggles my brain. It don't understand.

Leo Laporte (00:11:32):
Elon of course famously tweeted. <Laugh> a couple of, well, a lot of tweets, couple hundreds of tweets that were crazy. One of them was should I sell my stock to pay my taxes? Which really wasn't a poll. Although it's a little weird that he had a Twitter poll about whether he should sell a stock to pay his taxes. He did in fact, pay 11 billion in taxes this year, but he didn't have a choice. It wasn't

Ant Pruitt (00:11:56):
Like I'm gonna say as he was supposed

Leo Laporte (00:11:58):
To. Yeah. Like the Twitter poll made up his mind. Okay. I guess I will. No, he kind of had to, he also well, so many tweets. He also yeah. Manipulated doze coins

Ant Pruitt (00:12:12):
Do coins. Yeah. DOJ coin

Jason Howell (00:12:13):
And continues. He, I think he's even still saying, you know, he's still riding the doze train saying 20, 22. It's all about DOJ. This is where our bets are, you know, and oh boy, that's, that's a whole other facet of the 2021 is the, is the DOJ coin.

Leo Laporte (00:12:27):
He he was invited with his great wealth to solve the world's hunger problem. <Affirmative> by I think it's a United nations hunger commissioner. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and Elon said, well, if you could say in a tweet, <laugh> how my 10 billion would save, would solve the world's hunger. I'll be glad to do it. I don't think we ever heard the end of that one. I, I don't think

Ant Pruitt (00:12:51):
I'd like the, and the thing is I could believe leave him doing that if, if they say, all right, this is how we can allocate this. I bet he would sign a check. Nobody signs checks now. Sorry. <laugh>

Jason Howell (00:13:03):
<Laugh>, it's not a

Leo Laporte (00:13:05):
Signing. Who's cash, a 10 billion check. That's what I want

Ant Pruitt (00:13:07):
To know. Right. And, and I, that's one of the few times where I sided with him on, on this, these shenanigans these days, because we have all of these different funds and, and, and packages that are supposed to be doing this and that for the people. But yet there's still millions and millions of people right here in our own backyard that are struggling and, and, and fighting to pay bills. And they're getting these little $600 checks.

Leo Laporte (00:13:33):
Well, and these little, when you look at somebody with 243 billion, more than any human ever could need and to Elon's credit, it's not like he earned it. I mean, he didn't dig ditches to earn it. Oh, no, he didn't.

Ant Pruitt (00:13:44):
But he, but he almost just made the right moves at

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
The right time. He almost bankrupt himself both with Tesla and SpaceX. And I think you could make an argument that both Tesla and SpaceX and a benefit to society promoting electric vehicles and, and putting us back research. Yeah. Research. Yeah. it's not like he's not a capitalist. I'm sure he invested in both of those with the hopes to make money, but he risked his fortune to do that. And he, and he made a lot, he made a pile of money. Is it fair to say that he benefited from COVID probably not how I

Jason Howell (00:14:16):
Wouldn't. Yeah. That's what I've been trying to, to figure out too.

Leo Laporte (00:14:19):
The one thing he did with COVID early on, and this was actually last year he did not wanna close the Tesla factory for Vermont, California. And during the early mask mandates, he was told to and he refused

Ant Pruitt (00:14:32):
That's right. I remember

Leo Laporte (00:14:33):
Him refused. He risked, not his life <laugh> is a employee's life. Yeah. To keep making cars. And he said, well, you know, I've got to, because the, my comp competitors in Michigan are doing are not closing their plants. Actually what really closed plants in 2021 was supply chain shortages, shortages, not, not of not, not just of the big chips, like Intels and AMDs chips, but shortage of what we call legacy nodes, the chips, that things like the in fact, who was it, some, one car manufacturer decided to start just chipping cars without out automatic window openers, because <laugh> oh, wow. It's like, we can't get the chips. We wanna make the trucks. So let's just ship 'em out.

Ant Pruitt (00:15:19):
I wonder if that was Chevrolet.

Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
I know I Chevrolet or Ford, I'm trying to remember who it was and, and it wasn't window openers, but it was some minor like seat adjustment, things mm-hmm <affirmative> or something like seat heaters

Jason Howell (00:15:30):
Sounds like than Toyota would do, you know, along with their the package deal of the key fob thing and everything. <Laugh>, they're, they're thinking of all sorts of ways to break down their vehicles and make money on every single little piece.

Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
Yeah. They we, we talked about that yesterday on or actually whoop, I mean, last Sunday, <laugh> there we go. There we go.

Jason Howell (00:15:49):
Good

Leo Laporte (00:15:49):
Illusion last Sunday on, on on TWI with Tim Stevens, of course, who does roadshow for CNET? And he said, you know, they kind of got a lot of heat for something that maybe people pay $500 for that remote start option to Toyota. And it's, even though it doesn't use wireless, doesn't use 3g. It, you, it just is a local network

Ant Pruitt (00:16:12):
Proprietary software, right?

Leo Laporte (00:16:13):
Yeah. they, they, it was always intended that you would pay for it. They just got the first, whatever three years free. And so now that the mm-hmm <affirmative>, so it wasn't like they didn't, it didn't, wasn't a later decision to

Ant Pruitt (00:16:25):
Do that. I bet that was in the contract that the, the customers initially signed too, but

Leo Laporte (00:16:30):
It was read that it was however, you know, it's still silly. It's still silly. It's the same thing as BMW charging to use Apple's CarPlay, which they eventually retracted. But I asked him, I think I said, is this gonna be, you think this will be the, the future of, of cars is we'll have subscriptions. And of course, yes. And that was by the way, that's another term that became all the rage this year revenue, what was it? It's R revenue

Ant Pruitt (00:17:01):
Per, per unit, a annual revenue per R P or

Leo Laporte (00:17:06):
A R P U annual revenue per unit. And by the way, unit it's per user, but it's also per unit. And and it is so technically it is per unit, according to vested, but of course, per unit is per user. And the, and this is apple kind of has done very well, right, Micah saying, Hey, we're a services company now we're gonna make, in fact, they don't even tell you how many smartphones they sold. They just tell you how much they make per user.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:34):
Yeah. Yep. And that just keeps growing. As you see apple expand. I mean, we saw that a lot. This year announcement after announcement, we talked about on smart tech today about apple adding its apple TV platform to so many different places. You've got apple music on Android and iOS. So all of these ways that they are able to make money continually off of those services is it's no surprise that, you know, you're seeing a lot of companies make that move

Leo Laporte (00:17:59):
General motors will stop shipping heated seats due to chip shortages. There it is. I got the actual story. Thank you. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:18:12):
It's like BuildingOS luxury. It is. And they've just

Leo Laporte (00:18:15):
Lego pieces. You're say the green piece that hold it's done. Yeah. You don't need that to drive a car. But I think it is interesting. I mean, this is Tesla does this, you, when you buy a Tesla, they say, if you give us $10,000, now you'll be able to give us $500 a month down the road for full self driving, which is <laugh> like, wait, what? Wait. Yes. And wait, what is exactly the right response? Wait, what are you serious? Yeah. That's oh no. Oh. And full self driving. Elon said this week, it'll never, he said this this week. Let me get you, you know, they always talk about, can charge me another 500 a month. Yes. In the future. Oh no. Oh no. Elon said this week, you know, they always talk about the people who died in Tesla full self-driving accidents. They never talk about the people whose lives we saved. Okay.

Jason Howell (00:19:07):
We're there.

Leo Laporte (00:19:09):
Well, we don't because

Jason Howell (00:19:10):
They, well that's they never really know that. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:19:13):
Totally. Is that a fair thing to say like, well, let's focus on the good that full self does. I,

Jason Howell (00:19:18):
I, you know, honestly, I think personally, I think Elon has a point we're I do too. This is the, this is the new technology, right? This is the new technology. All eyes are on it. We went through this prob I mean, I wasn't alive when we went through this, but when via, you know, when motor vehicles were new, that was a new technology. And there were more deaths as a result of motor vehicles than there were prior to it because they didn't exist. And you know, I, I don't know. I, I think he's got a point, I think we're so we're so quick to jump on the, the fatality that happens without comparing the fat inside of, you know, Tesla vehicles to just vehicles at large. And I think we, we would probably find out that as a percentage in vehicles at large, a lot more fatalities, but it's just that, Tesla's the new thing. We don't understand it. Or the, the, you know, the, the public doesn't understand it quite the same. And so the it's extra scrutiny as a result, we are,

Mikah Sargent (00:20:10):
There were, are more traffic deaths this year than there have been since 2016 by a huge margin. There were many, many, many, many traffic deaths this year. And a lot of that is attributed to distracted driving. So in that way, yes, absolutely. I think that autonom, would've helped right. Looking at, at automated driving as a way to get past that just strike to driving death is, is really important.

Leo Laporte (00:20:34):
When you look at unintended consequences of COVID 19 people don't think that because the roads were empty for most of last year and even still a little slow this year because of, you know, people working from home and quarantining. And so there's some question why traffic fatalities went up in 2020, in early 2021. The thinking is because there are fewer people on the road, people are speeding more and you, of course, you're much more likely to die in a high speed accident than you are in a slow accident. So the fact that there's less traffic is actually increasing traffic fatalities. That's Hmm. That's the best theory. Anyway we are gonna do at the end of the show, by the way, we are gonna lift you up because I realize we're bringing you down. We are gonna lift you up with some of the funnest stories, the unusual, and this really belongs there, but we're in the Tesla section. So I'm gonna bring it up this week. The first Tesla baby, a woman whose waters broke while the family was stuck in traffic, they put it on autopilot while she gave births. So there you go. Elon not only live saved babies born,

Ant Pruitt (00:21:46):
Right? Kevin can't deny that the world low clap for that. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
With contractions increasing by this, this way. This happened in September. We're just learning about it. Now with, with contractions, increasing rapidly and traffic barely moving. The couple realized they were not going to get to the hospital on time. No Keating, Sherry, her husband put the vehicle in autopilot, set the navigation system to the hospital. 20 minutes away. It's a good thing. He paid that 10 grand for the autopilot. He said he laid one hand gently <laugh> on the cars, steering wheel. As he attended to his wife, she was squeezing my hand to the point where I thought she was gonna shatter it. I was saying Yuran, that's his wife. Okay. Focus on your breathing, the decision over whether to try to wait to give birth until they reached the hospital was an agonizing one because traffic was stopped. They said, she said, should I push? Should I hold? Should I push? Should I hold oh, F it let's do this. According to people magazines, she gave birth to her daughter in the self-driving vehicle. As they arrived at the hospital, whispering <laugh>. This is, this might be the motto of all of 20, 21. Oh my God. Keating. She's out. Oh

Ant Pruitt (00:23:06):
Boy. Oh boy. Wow. Is the baby's name? A bunch of it should be a

Leo Laporte (00:23:14):
Yes. <Laugh> 

Ant Pruitt (00:23:17):
It's just X or Y or whatever their model number was of

Leo Laporte (00:23:20):
Their Tesla. First, the first Tesla, baby. 

Ant Pruitt (00:23:23):
Congratulations to him. Yeah. Mother

Leo Laporte (00:23:25):
And child are doing fine. Daddy Keating says, thank you. Genius. Tesla engineer is for your brilliant design of autopilot. It worked this time. So Elon, see, see, that's what Elon was closes to

Ant Pruitt (00:23:38):
Elon. But if this were just a regular car, we wouldn't be celebrating that regular car people would've just pulled over and handled business with cuz they didn't have autopilot. And this wouldn't have been a news story, but <laugh>, that's

Leo Laporte (00:23:51):
True. They would've just pulled over. You know,

Ant Pruitt (00:23:53):
What, what am I thinking? Trump Tesla, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:23:56):
<Laugh> for years, people have just pulled over and had the <laugh>.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:01):
We're gonna keep driving. We are so efficient. So much more one. We are efficient. Okay. We multi thought about it. Let me try it out. A rational person would just pull over, pull over

Leo Laporte (00:24:16):
Aunt as always. You're the voice of reason. <Laugh> let me just take a little breath of

Ant Pruitt (00:24:23):
Smitten, smitten. Oh God. Is it musky? Or like what does smell

Leo Laporte (00:24:30):
Elani? How would do we just that Elani <laugh> it smells like Elon Musk after a long day at the office. I think it's floral, I would say. Okay. Okay. All right. By the way it says on the label. Thank you for being a light in the world of podcasts.

Ant Pruitt (00:24:48):
Oh, right. Yeah. Very nice. You've earned that, sir.

Leo Laporte (00:24:52):
I'm smitten. <Laugh> Fortunately we have a molecule here, sucking all that right? Outta the air.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:02):
I, I, I have that realization this year. It's like, oh, I can't burn candle are incense and run my air pur fire at the same time. That sort of thing.

Leo Laporte (00:25:09):
Taxing it. You're gonna actually, you can go right ahead. I did tell this story on the last TWI and I'm embarrassed, but of the air purifier, I ran all year thinking, oh boy, there wasn't a molecule. It was another one was a, he, I have a molecule in the bedrooms, but I wanted a HEPA in the grand room just to kind of recycle the air. Right. it is cuz people come over and stuff and and it was a big one. It was supposed to be a thousand square feet or something. Some huge. So like do the whole room. It was very expensive, but I bought it. What do you call it? Not used refurbished. You go saved. Some money. Came from Amazon, set it up. We've been running it all year.

Ant Pruitt (00:25:52):
Oh they call it renewed. Renewed. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:25:55):
You didn't hear this story. So I, so the light comes on last week saying it's time for a new filter. It's been a year. I say, oh, that's great. So I open it. I ordered filters on Amazon. They come, I open it up. I go, I wonder where the filters go on this. There didn't seem to be any apparent place to, you know, the old filters to take out. So I looked at the video online. There were no filters that had come without filters. I guess I was serious

Ant Pruitt (00:26:20):
For a year running this thing. This

Leo Laporte (00:26:23):
Is a fan. It was a very, very expensive

Ant Pruitt (00:26:25):
Fan. Oh anyway, it's

Leo Laporte (00:26:29):
Working now. <Laugh> thank God we had the molecules. That was so one of the points of controversy this week we talked about on all the shows was that Elon Musk was the man time of the year person of the year, time person of the year mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I of course always, and everybody does have to point out, well, Hitler was person the year, once too. So you know, it doesn't have to be a good person, just a person. And certainly you could say Elon got a lot of attention, but it was my contention that the real heroes of 2021 were the vaccine scientists, particularly the F RNA scientist. And it turns out time did acknowledge them as like scientists of the years. So good. Yeah. But I think that was another thing. And, and now here's an interesting point. And this actually was brought home to me when I was talking to Andy weer, the author of the marsh.

Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
We were talking about his new book, which is excellent by the way. Oh yes you have. Did you read it hill Mary hail. Mary? Yes. It's great. They're making a movie out of it. Oh, nice. Yeah. In fact, we try to get Andy Weir on our speculative thing on the ninth, but he's having a baby. He just had a baby. Congratulations, Andy. And he's like deep in production on this movie with I'm a little disappointed to say Ryan Goling is the lead, but okay. You know, you didn't say crying gossip, you know, Annie said this in the interview and I'm going, oh, that's nice. <Laugh> okay. But the Martian was so good, right? It was, and it was such a great movie. So I'm sure this it's the same. It's gonna be, you know, the same quality and same writer.

Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
So anyway, a the, we, I was talking about the year and so forth and he said, you know what, you're gonna, we're gonna look back about 2021 and say, wow, is RNA vaccines. This is a huge, huge breakthrough. The ability to use computers, to do a genomic analysis, by the way, they were able to do that back in I think it was November, December a year ago, using a computer in a weekend to generate the whole genome. And then again, using computers generate a vaccine that would target that genome. They were in a, in a matter of a week or two able to create a vaccine. Now, of course, what took so long was testing, cuz we rightly, so we wanna make sure it's safe and effective. So that took almost, you know, that took a long time, but they were able to generate that.

Leo Laporte (00:28:52):
Actually it was, they did that back in 2020, almost immediately after the pandemic bit broke out they were able to do that and then they tested it all year. The vaccine came out at the end of last year, but I think this officially the year of the mRNA vaccine and Andy said, you're gonna see vaccines for a huge number of diseases we've thought intractable, including possibly cancer, thanks to this breakthrough technology. So, you know, we may talk about supply chain and the latest, you know chip from apple, but really it could very well be that RNA vaccine, that breakthrough, which by the way, did not happen overnight scientists, particular, one scientist been working on it 10 years laughed at mocked underfunded, but she she, she persisted and thank goodness she was there when COVID 19 showed up. So no doubt. Yeah. all right. We can leave the, the COVID unless we wanna talk about supply chain at all, that is not easing up and that is gonna be with us next year, too.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:00):
Well where people know that word than ever before. I know whoever's

Jason Howell (00:30:04):
Understand everybody's blaming the supply chain right now. Everybody's like supply chain.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:08):
I'm angry this morning and it's because of the supply chain

Leo Laporte (00:30:11):
<Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (00:30:12):
Well, and as always, I tried that on the hard heads and it didn't quite work cuz they walk up and say, Hey dad, can I have so and so, and I just say supply chain and they just look at <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:30:22):
It's, it's a supply chain issue. SUD. You just wouldn't understand. It's kind

Mikah Sargent (00:30:25):
Of weird. What's missing though. Right? Like there are some things that you wouldn't expect. I, I, we were talking to somebody Jason Hall and I on tech news weekly and they were saying, I wanted to play tennis with some friends. I went to the store and could not find tennis balls anywhere mm-hmm <affirmative> and because of the supply chain. Yeah. It's just interesting what ends up getting hit. Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:30:46):
Yeah. They were the vaccine scientists for time magazines, heroes of the year. Thank you, scooter X for that. The correction, the, the miracle workers. And if I paid for time magazine, I could show you their picture, but instead I'm getting, this is, this, this might also be the year of the rise of the paywall this year.

Jason Howell (00:31:08):
Yeah, no kidding. Literal

Mikah Sargent (00:31:08):
Rise. Like it's getting bigger. It's it's rising up on the pay.

Jason Howell (00:31:11):
This pay wall is literally

Leo Laporte (00:31:13):
A wall blocking for the rest of this article. <Laugh> like, I could just pure over the wall and I could see just the tops of their heads. I get,

Jason Howell (00:31:22):
Sometimes you can just view the cash version and that works too.

Leo Laporte (00:31:26):
Yeah, of course. There's always, there's always workarounds. There's always

Jason Howell (00:31:30):
Workarounds. Sometimes.

Leo Laporte (00:31:31):
I don't know if paywalls are a good thing or not. Most companies have figured out to give you a few articles and then, and then you pay and most people have figured out if they don't want to pay how to get around all that with things like cashing. So this is also the, the year of the aggressive cookie banner. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:31:49):
No kidding. I mean every single place you go and if you go to that side a million times, you're gonna see it a million times. I mean, it's, it's kind of like at this point I feel numbed to it and I, I don't like that because the second it pops up, I'm like, okay, okay. I'm, I'm kind of at the, you don't even read it so downtrodden, I don't even read it. I just hit. Okay.

Ant Pruitt (00:32:10):
Am I the only person that actually opens up the settings and, and uncheck the stuff that I don't want? Yeah. As part of that,

Leo Laporte (00:32:17):
Oh God, you, you're definitely the only person that <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (00:32:20):
Okay. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:32:22):
Really applaud you at. I applaud you, you that you do that. But yeah,

Ant Pruitt (00:32:25):
Every time I see and not everybody, not everybody offers that option. Most of them just say, just click here to view what we're doing. But there are a few that says, okay, if you click here, you can uncheck this one and uncheck that one. And there's one, that's like a, a, a, a mandatory one for, you know, just in case you log in, they have to have that. But the other stuff, they let you

Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
Tick off. If you don't in any way, record people's information and you don't save their IP addresses, you, you know, rotate your logs or whatever, you don't really need to do it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. But, and for instance told, oh, you have to do it. You use, you use Google analytics. We, we just wanna see how many people see the site and which parts of the site are popular. I don't think that that's an invasive thing, but of course, I guess Google gets the IP address. So maybe it is anyway, mm-hmm <affirmative> so we, we said we have to do a cookie. And I said, well, let's just do the, the passive, aggressive hostiles, somewhat hostile cookie that they do on Tector. Yeah. And we duplicated that, which is basically, look, every site uses cookies, get over it. <Laugh> <laugh>. And we do too. Click here. Yeah. And and, and nobody's complained about it. TEC. Dirt's been doing it for a while, but it's not, cuz we don't, we're not spying on you. We're not trying like information. So the, we, what is the weirdest supply chain? Shortage chips are obvious, you know, no car seat heaters and GM vehicles. It's been hard to get, you know what the really bad one has been the Microsoft's Xbox series X and to a lesser to replace station.

Ant Pruitt (00:34:01):
I was gonna say PlayStation cuz here recently, I don't know why, but I've been looking at picking up PlayStation again, cuz I used to play years ago. And then when I started looking, it was like, nobody has them available. But I assumed it was all cuz of the supply chain. It is the latest one PS five. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:34:20):
Sure. And that you can get, but the, but Microsoft says we had Chris Capella on last year, the CMO of Microsoft mm-hmm <affirmative> and he said, last year he said, this is gonna go on for a while. We don't, we don't want to give people a chance to order something if we can't deliver it in any, any timeframe. And this is where apple really shines. They, I mean, if you order a MacBook pro 16 inch right now, you won't get it until Valentine's day. But at least they give you a date. Microsoft. I said, why don't you do that? And they said, Chris said, we can't cause we well, is it

Ant Pruitt (00:34:51):
Because apple pretty much runs the whole stack themselves though.

Leo Laporte (00:34:54):
Yeah. They, well, they, they lock it in. They lock it in. So the weirdest supply chain, in my opinion shortage is cream cheese.

Ant Pruitt (00:35:05):
Like what? Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:35:07):
Did you not notice no cheesecake for you? You cannot get cream cheese to save your life. Yeah. I didn't notice. Maybe that's cuz I ate a lot of bagels. I have to have cream cheese. <Laugh> well,

Ant Pruitt (00:35:16):
Well sir, we are in, we are in dad, gum, Petaluma the home of dairy and eggs. We're gonna be jealous. You think I've been seeing cream cheese? You've

Leo Laporte (00:35:26):
Been seeing it. Yes. Where do you get your cream cheese dude? Yeah. I've not had any problems with cream cheese. Oh my God. Maybe it's only in New Jersey and Boston. This is from the Boston Herald supply chain shortage impacts animal goods, including including cream, cheese smears, smears, smears, craft, Philadelphia cream cheese. They, they actually put out an ad spread on spread the feeling.com their promotional site. Oh boy. It, it says you may not be able to find Philly to make a cheese ke cake look at the empty shelf. So get any other dessert on us. Oh interesting. Wow. Oh, sorry. All rewards have been claimed. <Laugh> nevermind.

Jason Howell (00:36:20):
Nevermind. See that. Even, even, even the reward is a shortage. Even there's a

Leo Laporte (00:36:24):
Shortage of awards.

Jason Howell (00:36:26):
Yes. Thing. One, another thing that I've noticed is that Chris, if you are a fan of getting Christmas trees, there's fewer to choose from. Are there apparently they're really expensive. And then if you wanna get an artificial tree to replace it with, because they're made a plastic and, and everything, those are up as like 25% over last year because of shortages. So if you like Christmas trees, either way you go, you're screwed.

Ant Pruitt (00:36:53):
This is, I found that out last year, we decided to, to go with the fake tree, cuz normally we get a real tree and it was ridiculous. The price, you know, queen brewer was like, go find a tree. So I went, okay, I'll go find one. And I was like, Hey, no, I'm not paying for that. <Laugh> and so yeah, I said, I'll go and look for something, you know, an artificial tree. And even that was a bit of a markup, but we got one and I know we can at least have that it for another five to 10 years. So we'll be on

Leo Laporte (00:37:21):
Yeah. Cream cheese may not just be a supply chain issue is also a ransomware issue. That is the other one of the other big stories of the week. We're gonna get to that of the year. I should say. We're gonna get to that after this word from smitten <laugh> Can you almost, when I do that, can you almost smell it

Jason Howell (00:37:41):
Kinda smell sour? Like I'm I'm not there, but I feel like it's probably a sour smell. Yeah. Yes.

Ant Pruitt (00:37:48):
I don't know if anybody looks cooler smelling a candle than you, sir.

Leo Laporte (00:37:51):
I don't know what this outfit is. I just, I just threw on whatever I had in the closet. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:37:58):
I don't work it, sir. I will. I like gigantic caller. I gotta say yes, just work it <laugh> what's

Leo Laporte (00:38:04):
Going on here. Actually. I do wanna talk about a brand new sponsor. I am. Do any of you use Blueland?

Jason Howell (00:38:12):
No, I'm smitten by the not I'm

Leo Laporte (00:38:14):
Smitt. Yeah. Smitten. So we look, I, you know the number and as I'm concerned, number one, environmental thing, everybody needs to dress is plastic single use plastic. It's it's a problem. You know, we talk about clean up the oceans. Remember the YouTube stars, raising millions of dollars to clean up the ocean, the amount of plastic they removed for all that money from the ocean was replaced in 15 hours by more waste. Wow. 15 hours. The solution is not to clean up the ocean. Well, certainly we wanna do that, but let's also use a little less plastic in our lives and estimated 5 billion, plastic hand soap and cleaning bottles are thrown away every year. I mean, that's just, it's a waste of, of, of natural resources. It's a waste of landfill. This is a forever bottle from blue land and I like it. So I've, I've actually done a, it kind of the wrong way round.

Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
I have some other bottles. This is these are cleaner bottles. It actually says on it what this is. So this is the glass and mirror. This is like to, you know, for your glass cleaner, they have a hand soap bottle. They are famous for their toilet cleaning pellets. We actually got the, the clean essentials kit. So it has everything in there. And then there's you also get a little tin to put your laundry pellets in it's great laundry soap. So instead of the plastic dissolvable laundry soap or the big plastic gallon bottles of laundry detergent, you just throw this tablet in and the waste is so much lower and it works. Now I have to tell you a blue blues, blue land's toilet tablet cleaner is so popular that it sells out. So they have some right now, but that's the supply chain shortage, I guess mainly cuz people love it.

Leo Laporte (00:40:05):
You just put it in the toilet. You let it fizz bubble. You clean the toilet. You're done. It's really easy. I'm gonna show you how this works. So this is the I, I normally what you do is you put the tablet in and then you add water, but I'm gonna do do it the other way around. Cause I don't want get up. This is the bathroom cleaner. So you sh spritz this, you know, I've got a multi-surface cleaner. These are the little tablets. And of course they don't send you more bottles by the way, when you buy a bottle, plastic cleaner, not only the plastic, most of the cost is about the they're about 90% water. And then just a little bit of active ingredient, right? So they're shipping you water, which you have in plentitude at home. <Laugh> so save the planet.

Leo Laporte (00:40:48):
This is the hand soap, by the way, that'll go in here. So put water in here, put a tablet in there. It foams up it's it's it's as good as anything. It's great. Here's the glass and mirror cleaner. So I'm gonna put the tablet in here. This is the little the little Blueland pellet. This is all the active ingredients you get with any commercial cleaner. But, but, but it's they don't ship the water. They just ship the tablet. Let me do this on camera. So you oh yeah. Good. Okay, there you go. I'm gonna drop it in. I'm gonna close it up. It's gonna foam for a little bit. You sit and now I have bathroom cleaner spritzer, surface cleaner. It's just great. This stuff really works. You buy the bottle once they call 'em there forever bottles. You really fill it forever.

Leo Laporte (00:41:30):
No more plastic waste. The only thing you gotta get rid of is your outdated idea that eco-friendly products are more expensive and less effective. These work I can vouch for it better than some of the products I'm using better. Stop wasting water, throwing out more plastic at blue land's revolutionary refill cleaning system. Instead blue land was founded on the belief that a cleaner planet starts by eliminating plastic waste while creating powerful, effective cleaners for your entire home. The dish soap is fantastic. The laundry detergent is fantastic. The toilet cleaner is fantastic. Just filled blue. Land's beautiful Instagramable bottles with warm are pop in one of the hand soap or spray cleaner tablets within a minute powerful cleaning products. And by the way, they smell a lot better than the smitten candle. Iris agave pairing lemon, lavender eucalyptus. Oh, that one that smells good. I don't know what that is.

Leo Laporte (00:42:28):
I think it's the eucalyptus from their best selling clean essentials kit. That's what we got. Once you get it, then you just, you know, buy the refills to their hand, soap duo and plastic free plastic free laundry and dishwasher. Tablets Blueland has something for every inch of your home. And as I said back by very popular demand, Debbie loves these, by the way, she's been using 'em for a months, the Blueland toilet tablet cleaner. Get it before it sells out again, the, the, the high quality forever bottles, some of 'em are glass like this for, because of the weight, the hand soap foaming hand soap is glass. So it's heavy. So, you know, it sits on your counter. Some 'em are plastic, cuz you're gonna carry 'em around and use them. They started just $10 when you buy a kit, they are reused forever, but you know, you can get more.

Leo Laporte (00:43:14):
I get us even if, even if they lasted a year or two, you're saving hundreds of bottles from going into the landfill and then the tablets get this start at just $2. So you're gonna save money and this stuff works really well. It's just basically it's the same ingredients. It's just, they don't ship them all dissolved pre dissolved for you. You'll love it. Your planet will. Thank you. Finally, you can do something without give without sacrifice, right? It's way past time to make cleaning fun, beautiful and plastic free. Right now you can get 20% off your first order go to blueland.com/twi that's 20% off your first order of any Blueland products, blueland.com/twi. They actually really look nice to the blue land bottles and because they're labeled and everything, they just, I just it's nice. Now this is still dissolving by the end of the show, I will be able to wipe up the smitten candled residue. <Laugh> blue land. Thank you, blue land. We're really glad to get blue land on sometime. Yeah, it's a really good product and very happy to have them on our holiday special. We are celebrating and I mean celebrating the end of 2021 the year that it would not end

Ant Pruitt (00:44:32):
Putting it behind me as best as we can

Mikah Sargent (00:44:34):
Anyways, in the, in the

Leo Laporte (00:44:36):
Considering what happened. Holy cow. So the cream cheese shortage is also because in October Shreiber foods, which is in Wisconsin, had to shut down during its busy peak period, right before Thanksgiving high and Christmas making cream cheese because of ransomware, they have annual sales of cream, cheese of 5 billion. Whoa, wow, goodness. So it may say Philly on the front, but a Shreiber on the back. I guess <laugh> the company also makes cheese slices, yogurt. Every cream cheese producer was already struggling to keep up adequate supply. So there is, you know, it's partly supply chain, but this does not help certainly 20, 21. And I think this is gonna be, you're gonna always say the same thing in the year. The 2022 was the year ransomware got worse.

Ant Pruitt (00:45:30):
Yeah. I think it's all only going to get <laugh> more and more prevalent nowadays because the tools are out there for these bad people to just do it. And a lot of folks aren't as security conscious as we keep preaching to them to try to be security conscious. I mean, I, I got, I wanna say four emails today and four notifications today across <affirmative> four different online platforms where someone was trying to get into my account. Yeah. Wow. And if that was anybody else, it's probably a problem. Right. You know?

Leo Laporte (00:46:03):
Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:04):
I have a moment. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Use two factor and I gotta give a, a little shout out to my, my grandma because I saw some pretty sophisticated different attempts coming at me. And so I thought, oh, I'm gonna reach out to her and give her a rundown of the latest couple or that's latest three or four. And she, she responded. She's like, oh, I I'm, I'm good. I pretty much every time someone texts me who I don't know or emails me who, I don't know, I just get rid of it. She's like, I, I don't, I'm not following for any of that stuff, but I thought nice. You are awesome. Yeah. She's very cooler. Yeah. She's, she's pretty cool. She is

Leo Laporte (00:46:41):
Pretty cool. Did you read the Sunday times article? This is so broke my heart tragic. It's a scam scammers pretending to be from Harvard university off jobs to women in India. It, it is. And they you know, it is just horrific and I think your grandmother, I mean, for a lot of the women, it's like, well, wait a minute, that's a number from Dubai, not Boston, but what happened was they, they slowly improved their attack. They, they bought a web domain, Harvard careers.com put the Harvard logo on it. It got more and more sophisticated. They got Harvard letterhead, they got the names of deans and they pretended to be the deans when they called. And they actually tricked one of India's best known news broadcasters. She'd been 20 years in the business audience of a billion people. But she was getting tired of the political situation and, and just was, she was burned, job burn.

Leo Laporte (00:47:44):
And she thought she had this great job offer paying 150, $1,000 dollars to teach at Harvard in Boston. She thought it was real. She quit her job. She tweeted, I'm going to Boston. It was all a scam. Oh my God, this is awful. That's more of my heart. Dang it. But the, you know, I mean on the one hand you could say, well, you know, Micah's grandmother wouldn't have fallen for that, but, but the problem is they targeted all in every, every case, the journalists were anti Modi, anti a nationalist reporters. They had written critical stories about the government. So no one knows, you know, they gave them passports and all sorts of details, but none of that stuff was ever used. So no one knows, but the suspicion is that this is maybe the, the government or, or sophisticated it's, it's something like that where they're yeah, it is sophisticated and they're, and they're, you know, they're trying to get these people out of the country to shut 'em up. Yeah. There's that a little criticism to Harvard for not doing anything about it, even though they had been warned about it just a, just a tragic story, but it just shows, you know, look, these scams have always happened, but the internet makes it, you know, a lot easier. Right. Okay.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:58):
I'm a lot easier in cases. Ignorance.

Leo Laporte (00:49:01):
Hold on, go ahead, Micah.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:02):
I was just gonna say the, the, the sophistication continues to increase in some ways and that's, what's troubling to me. Sophistication typically requires money. And so it, you do wonder, you know, how many of these people are. They actually scamming in order to be able to make this amount of money, to continue to justify their continuing expenditures, to make this thing as sophisticated as it, as it is. That's the part that's quite terrifying. And we talked about BOGOs filters before these are of things that would not chirp off your BOGOs filter. You wouldn't think it was bogus because it's so sophisticated.

Leo Laporte (00:49:36):
Yeah. the times hired security experts, all sorts of forensics. People brought them in and they never were able to uncover who it was. That's. The other thing is it's possible to really do this completely and anonymously or the, or automotive for it. And, and all of the, all of the, you know, the trip wires like Gmail and so forth that should have warned her did not. She's, by the way, she had quit her job. She did not have a job at Harvard she's according to the time I'm quietly, beginning to rebuild her life, teaching public policy at an Indian university and writing for a newspaper, but she keeps asking herself the same question. How could I be so stupid that you wanted to ask a question? Well,

Ant Pruitt (00:50:26):
I was gonna say, I'm probably showing my ignorance, but you mentioned Harvard is getting grief for not stepping in to do something about this. What exactly could they have done considering that anybody and everybody can download a Daum JPEG from the website and build a website from whatever domain builder.com within a few minutes and just paw this stuff off as, as a legitimate service and site. So what exactly. Yeah. It's not exactly

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
Their fault, but according to the times, Harvard fiercely protects its trademark. They use software to detect websites that pretend to be from Harvard. They never Uhhuh. They don't, they haven't cease in desist. Yeah. They haven't said whether they knew about@harvardcareer.com or did anything about it. One of the early victims of the scam called Harvard and alerted them to this scam, but apparently they did nothing to note, to let people know they didn't look for other victims. So I don't know how much of it is Harvard's fault. You're right. It could happen to anybody. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (00:51:23):
But E but even if there were cease and desist sent out or whatever, right. Yet think that was gonna stop anything. No,

Leo Laporte (00:51:30):
Probably not. I guess really the only moral of this is, is you know, be like Mike's grandma. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:51:37):
And I, I mean, so one of my grandma's friends, she was using that kind of as a, as a comparison unfortunately, was taken by a scam. And she was kind of talking to the friend because I've always been this way with my grandma. Very encouraging of the fact that if something like this happens, you should not take that time to, to blame yourself. Like, it's, it, it is easy. And you do fall into that pattern of like, ah, how did I fall for that? And her friend was feeling that same way. And you know, my grandma talking to her, she's like, what, what my grandson talks about is how technology should work in our favor and should have all of these things in place. And so when those kinds of things happen, it's the technology that's at fault. And the person who is doing this to you, who's at fault.

Mikah Sargent (00:52:25):
It's not your, you know, it's, it's not something that you should spend the time, just, you know, beating yourself up over, oh, I should have picked that up. I should have picked this up. It's hard to realize those things. It's hard to pick up on that. And I, it does, it kills me you know, for people to be blaming themselves and feeling so kind of lost after that happens, given the fact that there are any, no of people who could have fallen for that. It's not something that's just so simple to, to pick out. So yeah. I just encourage people. Don't, don't beat yourself up too much because in those situations, someone is trying very hard and playing on all of the right psychological things to get you to do the thing that they want you to do.

Jason Howell (00:53:07):
They've figured it out. They they've cracked the code. That's, that's one thing that, that kind of comes to mind when I'm, when I'm hearing you talk about this, Micah is that like, there has never been, it feels, and maybe it feels this way because we're in the midst of it right now. But when we're talking about ransomware, we're talking about hacks, we're talking about all of these different aspects of security online. It feels now more than ever that there is that, that the attackers are far ahead of the people who are protecting and, and, and trying to, you know, lock the doors before they get in. It seems like the people who are, who are hacking or doing the ransomware attacks, they know so much more than I think those threat actors in the past seem to know there there's, there's some distance now between mm-hmm <affirmative> between the people who would stop this from happening. And the people who are just like, you know, what, it's easier than ever. The stakes are as high as they've ever been. Like, it's, it's overwhelming. So of course, someone shouldn't blame themselves if they fall for it. It's that sophisticated now?

Leo Laporte (00:54:11):
Yeah. Just tragic. And I guess it's our job really to, to spread the word as much as possible and to tell people, you know, yeah. Be

Jason Howell (00:54:19):
Well. And obviously thaty, if like his grandpa is, is so educated, at least is working for you know, for some prob probably people are more educated about this stuff now than they were 10 years ago or 15 years ago, you know, with the email scams that were happening then, and everything was so fresh and new, we're a lot more knowledgeable about the possibility of these threats. Now it's just, the stakes are a whole lot higher. Yeah. The,

Ant Pruitt (00:54:46):
It makes, I appreciate the fact that you said Mr. Laport, you hate to tell people to be cynical. Cuz I think about a situation at a one of my previous employers where a coworker got in the email from one of the, you know, upper management people about X, Y, Z report, cuz that's what they normally get mm-hmm <affirmative>. And of course, when they went to open that spreadsheet, it was a problem, you know, but at the same time we can't fault this person that they were just doing their job. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it it's, you know, they're just doing what they do all day long. They know that they're superiors gonna send over some type of report on a regular basis and talk about it and you just open it up and sadly, some mess happened and you

Leo Laporte (00:55:33):
Know, <laugh> somewhat of the blame goes to companies like Google and Microsoft because their software has been so horrifically has all those holes. <Laugh> I can't remember what the last count will have to do tally on security now and Nick year on, on zero day flaws in Google's Chrome, but it was more than 13 in a year, more than one a month, more than one a month. And Microsoft's 2021, you know, I I'm sure Microsoft really, really wanted to to be able to say, Hey, you know, we we've really locked down our operating system <affirmative> but routinely on patch Tuesdays, there's more than a hundred flaws being fixed every, every month, Tuesday. And that doesn't even bring up the big ones, which, which are the exchange server vulnerabilities. Mm-Hmm you know, the solar wins flaw. There's some, there have been some really nasty ones on June 8th, Microsoft patched 0 6, 0 days, six of them. Wow. Then there was the prince Pooler, vulnerability print nightmare. The, I remember that. Yeah. It, Micah has to list the security. Now he produces a show. So, you know, he was nothing, but <laugh> every week. Oh, and there's another one. Oh, here's another one. Here's another one

Mikah Sargent (00:56:50):
Print nightmare produces security now. But I remember being in for one episode, I, I think that's what

Leo Laporte (00:56:57):
It was. You hosted. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:58):
You two were out. And so I up covering print nightmare. That's what's what it was. Wait they're you, the Microsoft solution at the time was you just can't print for right now. Yeah. You

Leo Laporte (00:57:08):
Don't print, don't use your print. <Laugh> just don't that would be a bad idea. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:57:15):
Best tech support ever. I

Leo Laporte (00:57:17):
It's one of those things where, you know, I've always said, okay, fine. If Microsoft fixing flaws from older, that software has problems and fixes them, you should fix 'em when you find 'em that's fine. But if they're fixing problems introduced newly <laugh>, then you need to really look at your process. Yeah. And see what you're doing. That you keep making these same mistakes over and over and over again. Of course we are. You can't even really say we're looking back at 2021. When we talk about the worst flaw of 2021, which is probably the worst security flaw of all time, we we're just starting to see the fallout of the log log J problem. This is a Java based logger that's used on pretty much every server everywhere. Apple uses it. Microsoft uses it from the Apache foundation. EV Amazon uses it. Everybody uses it and it is not merely a bad zero day it's it's it's trivial to exploit.

Leo Laporte (00:58:14):
So I could do it, which is the thing not saying, I mean, if I, anybody could do it it's just putting a little string in your browser and suddenly you have access to whatever's behind the wall and that server that's horrific. And the problem is, oh, it'll be patched probably you know, the people who do it, it's an open source project. Volunteers do it. They worked very hard over Thanksgiving weekend to fix it, by the way, there've been three now. And they probably more cuz they keep finding more problems with it, but they keep fixing them.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:43):
But sorry, could you say volunteers? Why was it? It's not a fall. It's an open source project. Oh, okay. Gotcha. It's all

Leo Laporte (00:58:51):
Unpaid actually volunteers doing this. That's the other dirty little secret of enterprise software. These companies are making billions, but often their entire stack relies on a open source project, maintained by some guy in Turkey, you know, and it's just, it's not it's a very weird model in any event. Even if they fix it, we don't know how many systems have been compromised. And we may never know because these guys are going in there and a lot of 'em are nation states. We know China's been doing it and they're just sitting there and

Ant Pruitt (00:59:22):
They, one of my favorite analogies of yours regarding this was the fact that if, okay, it's this is getting patched, but unfortunately the bad guys are already in. They're already in, they're already in, you know, you're closing the gate behind them.

Leo Laporte (00:59:35):
So this was an absolute nightmare. You for security RAL, Hey, that that was, is the one bright side re which is the horrible ransomware attack gang. And you're gonna talk about, this is one of your story picks. So I won't, I won't give away all the story, but, but the good news is we got 'em. I think we got 'em so mm-hmm <affirmative> they finally did something so horrific, such a horrific infrastructure to that, the FBI police from all over the world. We, they tracked him down and I think they've shut him down forever and arrested a number of affiliates. And maybe even one of the, one of the guys behind RAL RAL was ransomware as a service, which is another modern concept. The, these guys set up a website where you could go and say, yeah I would like to <laugh> I would like to buy some ransomware, please. I'll give you 10% of what I make. And then, so they don't have to know anything about ransomware or tax. They just have to get in. Yeah. Put it on the system. They collect the money, they pay re their 10% and they move on. And so there were many, many affiliates doing this. So it's not just cream cheese anymore. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:00:47):
No, it's definitely more than cream cheese. Another

Leo Laporte (01:00:50):
Story. That's a little, another story this year, a fun story. Billionaires in space.

Ant Pruitt (01:00:57):
And you need to put that in air quotes, sir.

Leo Laporte (01:01:00):
Space. Yeah. Sort of space it

Ant Pruitt (01:01:03):
Lower earth orbit SP

Leo Laporte (01:01:06):
<Laugh>. So what was the chronology of this? Did, did, did start with, Bezo saying he was gonna go up in his penis. Rocket

Ant Pruitt (01:01:14):
<Laugh> that's a good question. In a

Leo Laporte (01:01:17):
Next message. And then Richard Branson said, no, I'm gonna go up in mine first in Virgin galactic. And then Elon, he kind of trolled them saying, I'm not going up at all. <Laugh> <laugh>, I'm just sending people to the space station and

Ant Pruitt (01:01:36):
The moon, he says, I got bigger fish. I get bigger fish to

Leo Laporte (01:01:38):
Fry. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:01:40):
That'll

Leo Laporte (01:01:41):
Show you. Then William Shatner went up, which I think was a very smooth PR move cuz cuz captain CRI links in tears after, you know, he was like, so moved,

Ant Pruitt (01:01:51):
You know, I, I, I saw Shatner's one of his talks I listened to Adam carro. I know he's very controversial, but his, his podcast is pretty funny too. He's a good

Leo Laporte (01:02:03):
For, I like Adam

Ant Pruitt (01:02:04):
A lot. Yeah. And he had chater on after his, his, you know, space ride and whatnot. And this, the way chater talked about it in, in, in that interview, it was just unbelievable. Cuz before, you know, leading up to that, they were just having general conversation and he has this specific tone and he's, he's a big ham, you know, he he's, he's an actor, you know, but when he started to talk about that experience and just how moving it was and just how, you know, he started to, to reconsider, you know, what really matters in life. And it was, it was quite, it was quite moving if you can. I highly recommend yeah, I'll look that up and listen to it. It was really, really,

Leo Laporte (01:02:43):
Really well. And of course they made a documentary. That's the other thing on Amazon prime, you can watch Shuter in space, the documentary <laugh> by the way, do

Jason Howell (01:02:53):
You get chat room Shatner speech. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Probably cuz it didn't they us cut him off.

Ant Pruitt (01:02:59):
Yes. He cut him off <laugh>

Jason Howell (01:03:01):
Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:02):
Him off. He was in the middle. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:04):
He said stop talking champagne, drink champagne <laugh>

Jason Howell (01:03:08):
And then continued. But I mean it was really sweet. I mean, hearing, hearing Shaer talk about it. You could tell, I mean we all know Shaer for, you know, star Trek and, and his entire career. He is been very visible around the, that franchise and you know, have the association with space, but to see someone of his, his background actually go, you know, as about as close as most of us will ever get to space and come back and have just, I mean, they were beautiful words. Like you could tell he was moved emotionally through that experience. And that was, that was a highlight. Definitely watching that, put a smile on my face. I

Leo Laporte (01:03:46):
Love it because YouTube comments, which pull no punch the very first comment on the teaser for Shaer in spaces. I kind hope we get that clip where Shatner was trying to tell Jeff Bezos how extraordinary he felt. And Jeff just left in mid conversation. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:04:00):
It's true. We all saw,

Jason Howell (01:04:02):
Yeah. We all

Leo Laporte (01:04:05):
Saws a deal. Jeff, somebody in the chat room said, you know, you gotta say billionaires in space cuz billionaires in lower earth orbit is not, you know, just doesn't really quite, it's not quite billionaires it stratosphere. It's not doesn't have the same. Doesn't have the same thing. No we're

Jason Howell (01:04:19):
Billionaires closer base then you'll probably ever be true.

Ant Pruitt (01:04:23):
<Laugh> although

Leo Laporte (01:04:24):
The musical, I think NASA says we're not gonna give wings to everybody. Stop it. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (01:04:30):
Yeah. I saw that the FAA

Leo Laporte (01:04:32):
Where's the FA

Ant Pruitt (01:04:34):
FAA yeah. Said, no,

Jason Howell (01:04:35):
We only have so many astronaut wings, sorry. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:04:39):
No more commercial. Astronaut wings too many launching says the federal aviation administration. It was cool that when Bezos went up, he also brought that was really cool. What was her name? The the older woman who tried really hard to be an astronaut, but, but in those days, NASA didn't have female astronauts. So she, she got to train people and she was the flying teacher, but she finally did get at least space adjacent with the blue origin. So that was, that was a very nice story. I'm sorry. I've forgotten her name. Michael. Strand's gone up now the football and good morning America star. I

Ant Pruitt (01:05:21):
Mean, is there, is there any reason they shouldn't be going to space if they have the means to do it there

Leo Laporte (01:05:26):
Isn't there's environmental issue. Okay. Going on

Ant Pruitt (01:05:31):
It's environmental issues with everything today. I that's true.

Leo Laporte (01:05:35):
I I'm, I, you know, I should.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:37):
Yes that's because we don't have much time before all. Yeah. It was a guy and

Leo Laporte (01:05:41):
Funk. Thank you very much. It was Wally funk. I think I read that the amount of pollution put into the atmosphere by that rocket is like the equivalent of all of Jeff Bezos's private jet flights for a year. I think it's wow. Something on that.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:57):
Wow. Interesting. That's

Ant Pruitt (01:05:59):
Yeah. That's I know ed high. Good grief.

Leo Laporte (01:06:02):
<Laugh> that was one of the trolling tweets that Elon Musk said is, you know, our rockets do not do not pollute in the same to the nearly the same degree. It's possible to do this with a considerably less pollution. I'm not that. Yeah. I've we've I've talked about with rod pile on the radio show. I'll have to, I have to let's see. Oh, okay. Fact check. Thank you. According to USA today, Jeff Bezos's new shepherd rocket launch did not, oh. Behind a firewall behind a paint wall. Darn it. Something year. The pay wall did not emit carbon. Okay. Okay. So there you go. What did it emit IIT? We don't know. <Laugh> I had seen this Facebook post that said it put hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide. That is actually USA a said it did not. Sorry. Leo,

Mikah Sargent (01:06:56):
Did you say a Facebook post?

Leo Laporte (01:07:00):
Yeah. Nevermind. I forgot. I saw that on Facebook. Spacex's Falcon rockets use kerosene. In fact, the blue origin uses a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen combination. Blue engine three. That is not car does not image carbon di excited the atmosphere or during the launch.

Ant Pruitt (01:07:21):
Oh yeah. Shatner was talking about hydrogen in his commentary and how he was just a bit nervous. Cause he is like hydrogen really? <Laugh> he blowing up. He was a little

Leo Laporte (01:07:33):
Nervous. It's not completely neutral. The amount of water it puts in the air apparently problematic, but yeah, I know you would think start a that's a good thing, but water, water vapor, remissions from individual launches can notably impact the Mesosphere and IOE, but do not contribute to carbon emissions. So that's, there

Mikah Sargent (01:07:56):
You go. It's kind of amazing how violent if you, if you make water as, as opposed to just existing as H two, oh, if you actually take hydrogen and oxygen and combine them to make water, it's actually quite a violent reaction. So I'm not surprised that they can harness that to propel something.

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
Hmm. Billionaires in space, I guess that's all there is to say about that

Mikah Sargent (01:08:20):
Billionaires near space. <Laugh> I did enjoy that someday.

Leo Laporte (01:08:24):
If you had a quarter of a million, you could do it to civilians. Yeah. I did enjoy that. They paid oh, the civilians in the in SpaceX SpaceX launch. Yeah. The inspiration for, yeah, the, that was very cool. Wasn't I did enjoy that. Yeah. Those are regular people with the, and they orbited, so yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's pretty darn cool. This was the year that Jeff Bezos did step down as CEO, as Amazon Andy jazzy taking over jazzy, a close Lieutenant who had run the very, very profitable Amazon web services division. And I, as far as I know, it's been good. One of the first things that happened when jazzy took the helm is Amazon announced it was gonna raise the minimum wage. They did a number of things that were a little bit, I think probably more kinder to the warehouse staff.

Leo Laporte (01:09:12):
So but I haven't seen any big juice in Amazon has certainly been very popular. Well, they still have some work to do all. They have a little work to yeah. Little bit considering of course the tornado tornadoes. Yeah. Illinois word. Yeah. Yeah. Jack Dorsey stepped down this year too. Let's not forget the CEO of TV. You're one of the founders, one of the founders, the guy with the beer to, in the nose ring, you know him. Oh, okay. Jack Dorsey. He's going to, I thought he ran square, not Twitter. He is running square now. And except it's not square anymore. This was also the year that a number of companies decided to change their names. Square changed his name to block because they're all over the blockchain. And

Mikah Sargent (01:09:55):
Now it's getting sued by H and R block because H R block, oops. He's trying to claim trademark on that. So that's an interesting

Leo Laporte (01:10:04):
And then Facebook changes, name to meta. That's either the biggest story of the year or a non-story I can't decide <laugh> yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:10:11):
Totally completely agree. Right. It's really hard. No, when they, Facebook had a really rough and and all entirely brought on by its own self. And so it is interesting while the name change itself is maybe a, non-story the idea that it's changed its name for the metaverse or that it changed its name to try to get away from all of the stuff that Facebook had to deal with this year. That part is a big, big story. I mean, it the, the Facebook papers and, you know, testifying before Congress and huge story, all sorts of stuff going on there,

Leo Laporte (01:10:46):
Francis Hogan, the w whistleblower, who released a lot of documentation showing that Facebook probably knew and probably decided not to do anything about the damage that they were doing, not just politically, but to young girls psyches on, on Instagram. She, I think the, the kind of the quote that I will remember is Facebook values profits over people, which is not a good thing for a company that really kind of pretends that it's all about connecting people,

Mikah Sargent (01:11:18):
Connecting people at people's expense is Facebook's

Leo Laporte (01:11:22):
Deal. Yeah. And, and we'll take that. Thank you very much. I, I, I think that we might have said at the beginning of the year that the tech lash was gonna be a big Congress, the FTC the EU in all investigating some fairly hefty fines coming outta the EU now to some of the big tech companies. But I also think we're starting to see that that was a lot of sound and fury, but I don't know if much is gonna happen. No. What do you guys think? Well, I,

Jason Howell (01:11:53):
I mean, it keeps going, we keep seeing the things that make us believe that there might possibly be some changes, right? Like CEOs going to Congress, testifying, blah, blah, blah. But each time it happens, there seems to be no resolution. There seems to be no, there, there it's, it all seems to be kind of staged for show. And so if there is change that that's going to come about from regulation and you know, these, these folks going to, to DC and having to testify on the behalf of their companies, we certainly haven't seen it yet. There haven't been many clues this year. Let's just say that, that make me feel very positive about that.

Ant Pruitt (01:12:32):
Mr. Howell, as long as there's as lobbyists, <laugh>, ain't nothing gonna change, sir. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:12:41):
Well, and that's an interesting point because it's certain, I think it's almost certain that Congress will do nothing, not just because of lobbyists, but let's not forget that politicians love to advertise on Facebook. You know, at the same time as their critical of Facebook, they benefit from all this data collection. They use it. So there, I think they're maybe somewhat less likely to try to shut it down. I think they're gonna make a lot of noise. I doubt much will happen. Now, on the other hand the FTC and Lena con, the new chairman of the FTC, it has more teeth and is more aggressive than than I can. And remember the FTC being even back in the bad era for Microsoft to the late nineties, when they got in trouble with the DOJ, I feel like the Lena con in fact, Google asked a court to force her to recuse herself because she'd written such Antigo and antibi tech pieces as a, as a professor the courts, by the way, re rejected that she is very much going after big tech. Now, can the FTC make a difference? Can they do something without the support of Congress? And, you know, I, I, my suspicion is that the, the, the current administration doesn't have a lot of teeth because of a split Congress. Our split Senate. I just wonder how much she's gonna get done, but she's, it's pretty clear. She's gonna try. And it's also clear. Google was very afraid. 

Mikah Sargent (01:14:04):
Yeah, there was something you mentioned on the tech guy that stuck with me though, that makes me think that there will be regulations that take place, but they are championed by those big tech companies because of how they snuff out smaller tech companies who can't hold up to those regulations that are needed. What was that, that you meant?

Leo Laporte (01:14:23):
There's a thing for it. Regulatory cap cap is the term that Jeff Jarvis always uses, but the, but you, you know, this going on because I don't, maybe you, I, I watch a lot of football and there's on every NFL game. There's at least one or two Facebook or sorry, meta ads featuring often meta content I don't know, overseers, you know, kind of people on the ground who are managing the content on Facebook, who say, we need a law, Congress ought to pass a law. We can't do it alone. And, and it sounds like Facebook's on the side of the angels saying, yeah, yeah. You know, we, we ought to be regulat, us regulate us, but, but really it's important to understand that FA any regulation Congress comes up with Facebook will be well positioned as big as they are, as rich as they are as powerful as they are to handle. But we'll also have the very strong effect of stifling, any competition, cuz nobody coming up will have the resources to deal with these requirements. So it's pretty obvious when Facebook's lobbying Congress to pass a law, regulating tech, that it is somehow for their benefit. And I think that's how it's called regulatory capture. And

Ant Pruitt (01:15:36):
Facebook is gonna continue to make so much money because the users are not going to go away. That's that's, they're trust the bottom line. They can't go. They're not gonna go away. People can hate Facebook and everything that it stands for, but for whatever reason, they're not gonna drop it. Even if it's just to stay in touch with the grandkids.

Leo Laporte (01:15:53):
But remember, you know, you might have said the same thing about my space, right? Facebook completely destroyed my space. Isn't it possible that somebody would come along and do the same to Facebook?

Ant Pruitt (01:16:03):
I don't know. I, I have no reason to believe that's going to happen because of how big Facebook has gotten. When you compare to two my MySpace head it's it had

Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
Barely got a toe in. Yeah, right?

Mikah Sargent (01:16:16):
Yeah. Yeah. And it was never the backbone of the internet in a, the higher country. Totally.

Ant Pruitt (01:16:20):
Right. Facebook is a bunch of services.

Jason Howell (01:16:22):
Yeah. I mean the scale is just completely different. Now my space was so early on, it was, it was really part of, of defining what social media actually was. Yeah. So it was, it was on almost inevitable that a MySpace that early on, I mean, I suppose, I suppose it could have been, we were there first, so therefore we ran in Supreme forever, but it's almost like they were the, they were the training grounds for the rest of the social networks that came after them. Facebook, they walked

Mikah Sargent (01:16:48):
So Facebook could run. Yes,

Jason Howell (01:16:50):
There, there, I mean,

Ant Pruitt (01:16:52):
Google, Facebook, SOC Google had the resources and still wave or whatever it was. <Laugh> you know, plus yeah. Google, they have plenty of money, plenty of engineering talent, all of the network.

Leo Laporte (01:17:05):
It feels like Facebook is much more single minded that Google just couldn't. It was so a D D oh yeah. They are a bit a D D I think that's exactly it had, they put all the same. If you know, the, the business term has put all that wood behind a single arrow had they put all the energy that they put into all these different things, including April fools jokes into dominating the world, they might have done it. It Google plus was great, but they just couldn't keep pay attention. Meanwhile, Facebook laserlike right. Yeah. They know what they want and they go get it.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:40):
Yeah. At, at all costs.

Leo Laporte (01:17:42):
Yeah. And I don't think, I don't think they're at all thrown by what Congress is thrown at. Maybe

Mikah Sargent (01:17:50):
The metaverse is going to be a distraction for

Leo Laporte (01:17:52):
Them. Let's take a break. That's the next topic of conversation? The meta here it comes or does it <laugh> or is it just second city Redux? I don't know. Our show today brought to you by Noom. I want to talk about Noom a little bit, another great product that we use started doing it early this year cuz of the COVID 19. Actually it was more like 20 for me. Lisa said, I'm gonna do this to support you. And, and now she surprised me. She loves Noom. She didn't have as much to lose, but she's always had trouble with that last few pounds. And I'm sure, you know, a lot of people like me who, if I see food, I gotta stuff at my mouth. I just kind of complete unconscious eater. And I think there are people like Lisa who is very, you know, careful and, and smart about what she eats, but was just having trouble with that last few pounds.

Leo Laporte (01:18:42):
And Noom worked for us both because I'm gonna say this. I don't know if this is their motto, but because I don't, it's not a diet. Noo is education. Noom is teaching you better habits for better, long term results. You're in it for the long haul. And I just love it. I mean, I've been on every diet ever. I've done. 'em All. And you know that. And I've talked about 'em before. I don't know if I wanna live on kale for the rest of my life. Noom doesn't make that distinction. I'll never forget when I first started on no, I had to have a hot dog. I had a hot dog and I wrote to my coach, you get a personal coach. Tia is my coach idea. I wrote to my coach and said, I had a hot dog. She said, what's wrong with that?

Leo Laporte (01:19:23):
There's nothing wrong with that. Did you log it? Yeah. That's great. In fact Noom, cuz you get lessons. It's about 10 minutes a day of, of lessons food logging. It's very simple, very easy to do every once in a while they surprise you. They say time for some fun, take a day off. I've never had a diet do that. It's awesome. Instead of making you feel guilt, regret, feeling bad about yourself, feeling thwarted, Newman empowers you to keep, if there's a single secret to Noom, that's it there aren't strict rules. Noom gives you knowledge so that you understand what you're doing. You understand it. I I'm a fog eater. I come home. I stuff my mouth. I don't even think about what I'm eating. I don't even taste it. One of the things, the great lesson we did with Noom, Lisa and I both still do this.

Leo Laporte (01:20:09):
We love it is we turn off the TV. We put away the phones, we put away any, any distractions and we take one bite, put down our forks and really taste the food. And I can't tell you what a difference that makes it all comes from Noom. They use a cognitive behavioral approach. You focus on the why instead of the what to change your relationship with eating. That's it, your relationship with food has changed, but it's for, and this is important too. Everybody's journey is different. Nobody's nobody's perfect. Noma is not about perfection. It's just about progress. And it's about eliminating the pressure, eliminating the good, the bad fitting yourself to other people's expectations. Having the, you know, feeling that, that you know, I can't do it. And then with Noom, you find things that work for you and you go, this is it.

Leo Laporte (01:20:57):
I can do it. No one wants to be in a strict diet. Do two a days at the gym, drink these weird teas. No one wants to do that. And that's not Noom. Instead of trying to cram your life into somebody else's idea of health, trying Noom, it's a tested psychology based approach to find a healthier balance. That's moldable to your life. It really works. 75% of Noom users finish the program. They go all the way through. And by the way, even when you're finish, it stays with you. You're it's always in your head. Now more than 60% of, of users who really engage with the program, keep the weight off for at least a year. I just look at Lisa and I just go, wow, it's amazing. She never thought she'd get that last couple of pounds. You don't need rules to lose weight.

Leo Laporte (01:21:39):
Just the knowledge and wisdom to empower you, to build a smarter, more sustainable habit around food, no weights, cognitive behavioral, lets you better understand your relationship with food. How to be more mindful of your habits gives you the knowledge and support you need for a long lasting change. It's what you want. Trust me. This is what you want with Noom. Taking care of your health is empowering, not stress inducing cuz you know what happens when you get stressed, you eat. That's why diets don't work. They make you, you, you say you can't eat that. What are you gonna do? I gotta eat that. Not with Noom, no need to fear. Ruining the whole program with one off day. Noom keeps you on track and gets you back on track. All you need is a daily 10 minute check in no grueling early mornings, huge chunks outta your day.

Leo Laporte (01:22:25):
No fasting, nothing hard. It's easy. Start building better habits for healthier long-term results. Sign up for your trial right now. Nu is N O om.com/twi. I know you've seen the ads and, and I had seen him actually, Lisa and I had seen him many, many times when we finally decided to do it. I thought, you know, maybe this is right and I'm so glad we did no N O om.com/twi sign up for a trial. It really, really works. My Health's better. All my numbers are better. My doctor says, what are you doing? I said, no, he's happy too. Which is good. Thank you Noom for your support. It's the, it's the, it's the sci-fi trope. You, you put on the headset or you Jack in the back of your head. You're suddenly in the, metaverse a world that is. And by the way, I have to point out in every single science fiction novel, whether it's snow crash or cyber punk or ready player one and every single one of 'em when you're jacking in it's because the real world is so awful. So dystopian <laugh> that you don't wanna be in it. Right?

Ant Pruitt (01:23:38):
Is that our future, sir? This world is just gonna become that our present awful, awful place.

Leo Laporte (01:23:44):
Well, I don't think that's the right answer, but <laugh> maybe it is. I don't know. Are, are you all, what do you, Anne, are you looking for you? You like the, the VR stuff, right?

Ant Pruitt (01:23:55):
Yeah. I, I dig the VR stuff, but I think the way Mr. Your future guest hosts Mr. Daniel SW has put it in his F the, the demon franchise. I think that is something that's way more useful. And that was just the way in advisors that gave you more of a not VR. What is it?

Leo Laporte (01:24:17):
The AR it was augmented. Yes. I loved his vision of

Ant Pruitt (01:24:21):
You're. Right. You know, I think that's the way to go because you're not totally jacked into something, but you are out in the real world and you're able to see different things in the meta space. You know, that, that, that may be useful for you out there. Now, granted, there are some security implications with that because I don't wanna look at strange person coming down the street and see their credit history and things like that. But it, it would be nice if someone walks up to me and say, Hey, are you ant from TWI? I could look at 'em and make sure they're not some weirdo <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:24:54):
Or, or you could say, oh, it's it's you mash potato? How are you? Who's

Ant Pruitt (01:25:00):
Asking <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:25:03):
Yeah, that's actually one of the best parts at the very beginning of demon they're walking around and you see people's reputation score floating around their head, but you're still in the real world. You're still in the real world, additional information that's mixed reality or augmented reality. That's what apparently they say Apple's working on Microsoft has the hollow lens, which is kind of a, not very satisfactory experience of the same thing.

Ant Pruitt (01:25:24):
I just don't like the idea especially in this time that we're in with the pandemic and people having to be locked in. I don't like the idea of, of just giving more of a reason to stay locked in and, and isolated from people. Even if you're in your, in your house, you're now isolating yourself from people within your house because you're in this virtual environment kind of thing, you know, it's, I got boys that, that like to play on their phones or play video games or, or what have you. And every now and then I have to tell 'em put it down. I don't care if you ain't got nothing to say to me, you need to come outta that room and get some air and be around other people. You know, I think it's better for the, for the psyche. You

Leo Laporte (01:26:10):
Know, I don't get the feeling that mark Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse is augmented reality. It really is more like that old snow crash where you're in a new, no,

Ant Pruitt (01:26:21):
It definitely looks more VR. No,

Jason Howell (01:26:24):
Because

Mikah Sargent (01:26:24):
He wants be transported to a whole different world where he's got control of the advertisements there to, to right. But I mean, genuinely that, that's what it is. And what's, what's fascinating about all of this. I feel is the psychology behind it because there is, you know, what T's talking about, there is a lot to suggest that human physical touch is something that psychologically we need. And you, the, those interactions in particular, the physical touch interactions are starved in VR. However, mm-hmm <affirmative> how are brains are not very good at the base level of, of differentiating between real and imagined. And there are a lot of really interesting studies surrounding that, that I won't go into. But the point is you can be taken away to another world where you are communicating with other people and outside of human, physical touch, which I do think is very important.

Mikah Sargent (01:27:19):
You can have those same interactions, experiences, and the psychological benefit of being around other people in this virtual space. If your brain is capable of, if your brain, you know, sort of falls into that and you kind of get taken out of yourself. So it's a baby. I agree that, that there are the pros and cons of, of people maybe having an issue where they do get so sucked into it because it is like real life in some ways and will continue to get better. And I'm certainly more of a proponent of, of AR over VR myself as well.

Leo Laporte (01:27:52):
But have you ever, I'm sure you guys have stood on in virtual reality in what looks like a very tall building right on the edge and you're looking down and your heart starts pounding is all,

Ant Pruitt (01:28:05):
It's such an awesome feeling. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:07):
Even the kind of weak, you know, VR, we have the low res VR we have now is capable of tricking you into feeling like you're really there. Imagine, you know, a few years, hence

Jason Howell (01:28:20):
There's, there's an embodiment there that you feel in that scenario, hearing what you were saying. And as far as kind of like the disconnectedness and needing like reality and, and real touch, especially, and, and like you said, it as well, Micah in the last couple of years where we've been so locked down, like I would, I would pose the counterpoint to that, which was that during the true lockdown where like no one was going or like, right. Things have eased up now, but when things were really locked down and we were starved for like getting out and doing something, I was thanking my lucky stars that we had a couple of head headsets here because me and my girls could throw on the headsets and we could go to a virtual bowling alley together. And it was like, we were bowling together. You know, I, I just happened to be up in this room and my other daughter was in our living room and the other daughter was in the den, but we were all in the same place together. And it really, it really was like, we were in a place hanging out together. It was so much fun. That's what we needed when we could and have

Ant Pruitt (01:29:21):
It. But that's the difference you actually came together and said, Hey, let's put the headsets on. And, and then sure. When it was done, you took 'em off and y'all came back together.

Jason Howell (01:29:32):
Yeah, no question.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:33):
Yeah. Right. Yes. I'm an introvert. I, I love just chilling by myself, but I do have to make sure I spend time with the family and, and, and yeah. You know, cuz it's healthy, you know, it it's the right thing to do. Were you

Leo Laporte (01:29:49):
Wearing the quest two? Is that what you were using, Jason, when you were doing that?

Jason Howell (01:29:52):
Yeah, the quest, the, actually it was three different, three different systems, quest quest two and the PlayStation VR. Okay. So,

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
And were they all roughly in experience or was there one that you liked better than the other?

Jason Howell (01:30:05):
I mean the PlayStation VR is definitely the lowest tier. Like that's the one I always end up in and the girls request that's

Ant Pruitt (01:30:13):
Really

Leo Laporte (01:30:13):
You sacrifice is that it

Jason Howell (01:30:17):
Just because the controller mechanism is way different, right. It's not nearly as intuitive as it is on the, on the quest quest two, but then I prefer the quest two just because it's a higher resolution, just it's maybe a little less comfortable, but yeah, they're, they're both pretty similar in my opinion. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:30:31):
I, I got to be a part of horizon worlds while it was still in invite only stage and try that out which is Facebook's like first take on the metaverse and it was a really fascinating experience building my own little world, but then also going to this shared space, there was a, a VC over in the corner talking with somebody else about investments that he just made. And I was like, I'm staying very far away from that. That sounds really boring. <Laugh> but there is this there's, this sounds like clubhouse,

Jason Howell (01:30:59):
Right?

Mikah Sargent (01:31:00):
A person going around saying hi to everybody, but then a Facebook person like community, you know, guru or whatever came into the space. And she was walking around and was telling people about some different kind of hidden Easter eggs. And so you saw all of these people kind of having this delightful moment of learning new ways to interact and make sparkles appear above your head and all sorts of stuff. I was kind of listening in a little bit from a distance while I was playing with a, a paper airplane game standing at top and kind of looking down on this whole group of people. And I was able to do this all from my, like a real party actually. Yeah, it was, it was, it was really like a real party and it was around Halloween too. So this one world would take you to different worlds that people where there were Halloween themed things. So there was like a haunted house and some games where you tried to get rid of ghosts and different people could play. And there was a huge scoreboard in the background where everybody could see their score and compete against one another. And I didn't have to move from a spot, which was a pretty cool thing to be able to do again while you're in lockdown. So I do see some value to this. I think the big thing is adoption and whether or not that is going to take place,

Leo Laporte (01:32:11):
I'm actually not worried about adoption. Cause I look at how people have taken to VR and that, and they really love it. I mean, there's a certain percentage of, but who will always be nauseated by it? I think I'm in that group. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:32:22):
But I struggle with the latency

Leo Laporte (01:32:24):
For the yeah. And maybe, maybe it'll get better and it won't be an issue. What you just described. Sounds pretty cool. Mike, I guess the question is, do we have to be in meat space to relate to one another? Or can we really have a genuine with one another in a virtual space? Do you think we can? Right.

Mikah Sargent (01:32:43):
I think that there's so I'll tell you, I think two things, one, this is still in the way that it's working now is relatively new. And so there will be a number of studies that go out. But the studies that we have seen, I think in psychology today, even there was a, a piece about people going through therapy and the empathy that can take place in a virtual space. But I will say I joined horizon worlds and I've got this issue of everywhere. I play everywhere. I create an online persona. I always use my name at mic, a Sergeant on everything. And in horizon worlds after I'd already created my character, my avatar, whatever I thought, oh man, I feel kind of bare and open to the world. I kind of wish I would've just come up with a different username as I'm walking around and my name's above my head.

Mikah Sargent (01:33:31):
And that was a weird experience for me because I'm on camera. A lot of the time I talk to people, talk in front of people, fascinating to feel enough exposed in this virtual space was kind of an interesting thing that I was not expecting to feel. And it kind of changed how I, I interacted with it and I had to get comfortable turning off my mute, switch for the microphone and start to participate in the conversations that were taking place around me. So yeah, I do think that we can, I, I would, I wanna go with the word supplement. I don't wanna go with replace, but supplement some of those interactions we have elsewhere. Cause we're trying to do that now just in, in text based and in video conversations. And so the closer we can get to the real thing, the more our brains can sort of give away with that suspension of disbelief. And I think the more than it will work,

Ant Pruitt (01:34:21):
Do you, I Def agree with supplementing it because I think about every dad gum Wednesday at about two, 2:30 PM Pacific time when I get to sit down virtually with you and miss Mrs. Habo and Mr. Jarvis. And just how much that means to me, the, the conversations we have every week. Yes. I'm working, but it is, I, I freaking love just sitting with you folks for those two hours and it, and it, it, I, I think that's something that most people enjoy if they had that type of connection with people, they can't necessarily go out and hang out at the bar or anything like that. But if you can fire decent audio and decent camera and be able to see each other and just have some meaningful conversation, that's a, that goes a long way in supplementing just the regular in person experience. In my opinion.

Leo Laporte (01:35:13):
I mean, John just spread out. We are actually in the, at first, before us, we're not connecting. We're not the same room. We're not in meat space and people who are watching us. I think at this point probably feel like they're around the table with us conversing. Here's the thing I, I really don't want to have happen. I, I think there's a lot of potential in, it'll be very exciting. And I think that the things that have been most exciting about technology, even things that have been created by individual creators, working in garages, working independently, I really don't want mark Zuckerberg's vision of what this is to become the dominant vision. That is not yeah. Ground up. That is from top down. I think Mark's a creep and I don't think his vision of what the metaverse is. I mean, I find his ideas creepy and I don't want him to, but is this technologically so hard that it isn't gonna happen kind of naturally as the internet happened, it's gonna happen? You know, only from a big corporation,

Mikah Sargent (01:36:15):
If you ask it, Intel will tell you you that there's no way we're going to get this in the next five, 10 years. There was a, a blog post by an Intel exec who or a, a research scientist who said, look, this is gonna take a thousand times the compute power we have right now, the, unfortunately the blog post ended up kind of being an advertisement because at the end they're like, but we can do things like a machine learning and artificial intelligence, which Intel chips can do to get us sort of the way there. But the larger argument was that yeah, this, the thing that Facebook is trying to say is coming next year or the year after is

Leo Laporte (01:36:49):
Quite a way. No, I agree with you. And if you look at it, it's very cartoony. But, but let's not forget what, what, how, how, what's the order of magnitude between the first IBM PC running at four megahertz and today's iPhone running, you know, we've got billions of transistors in our pockets running at many gigahertz. That's more than a thousand. So I don't think saying, oh, a thousand times more power is really a deterrent. It you're right. It's not gonna happen today. It's not gonna happen tomorrow. Some form of it might like what we're experiencing right now, right? Big steps, but maybe 10 years from now, maybe 20 years from now, we'll certainly have that capability. The only question is I, I really don't want it to come from a big, I don't want to come top down. I think it needs to be organically. I don't want one company to run it.

Ant Pruitt (01:37:44):
That would say it wouldn't be something that the open source community jumps on and, and, oh, I'm sure

Leo Laporte (01:37:49):
They are as well. I mean, people like jar Lenier, he's been working on this for 20 years himself. One of the very first proponents of virtual reality. So I think that there is a movement that way I just don't want it to come from. I don't want mark Zuckerberg to own the metaverse. That to me is a nightmare scenario.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:08):
It's worth pointing out that Facebook did actually say, or meta did actually say we don't want to own the metaverse. Sure. But exactly. Then you name your company meta. So really, I don't know if I can

Leo Laporte (01:38:21):
<Laugh> I'd like to see, I would love to, I mean, look what the internet has done. And I don't think we would've known 20 or 30 years ago what the internet was going to be today. And it's certainly made a huge difference in our lives and everything we experience. I think that VR AR mixed, I think it's all gonna be part of something is absolutely gonna happen. It might take 10, 20 years. But just like 20 years ago, you saw at the beginnings of the internet. I think now we're seeing the beginnings of it. I just don't. I think the internet succeeded because it was a lot of little people. It eventually, you know, became dominated by a handful of companies to its I think to its disadvantage to its detriment, but maybe we can do something a little better this time with AR and VR. I'm hoping

Mikah Sargent (01:39:08):
A thousand blockchain enthusiasts just said, that's how we solve

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
It. That's web free. I think next year will be the year of web three. We'll be talking a lot about that. We talked a lot about NFTs this year. An you even minted some NFTs.

Ant Pruitt (01:39:22):
Yeah. <Laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (01:39:25):
How's that going for ya?

Ant Pruitt (01:39:28):
I have a love, hate relationship with NFTs. I, I, I totally did the idea of creative artists being able to, to, to get money for their works another way. But at the same time, it is such a rip off, in some instances when it comes to many things and gas fees and then there's the whole aspect of people just fricking right. Click and downloading, whatever digital asset that you have out there. Anyway. if it's like an image or what have you, and you totally lose out on that. But I do like that. People want to collect things like oh, doctor was saying before, like baseball cards, people wanted to collect baseball cards and they, they invested in that they paid their however many bucks per package of baseball card. And I like that it, a creative artists could, could earn revenues from that and, and make a living off of it.

Ant Pruitt (01:40:21):
But what I don't like is just how difficult and expensive it could be when you're dealing with gases and stuff like that. So you can try different blockchains, but boy, we are so early in this game and, and you start talking about wallets to people and they assume you're talking about PayPal and no, I'm not talking about PayPal. I'm talking about an actual crypto wallet. Well, how do I create a crypto wallet? Okay. You go to this website or how, how can I get money into that crypto wallet? Well, you need to make sure you convert your us D to something like E or BTC or do what I'm gone, you know? And so I've already lost that sale, you know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:03):
It feels like right now this is ripe territory for scammers and speculators, but maybe something I'll come of this down the road. I think blockchain ichnology is a interesting I just think that the people who have latched onto it <laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:41:17):
Are not necessarily, I know two people that have made some good money this past year in and FTS and I am so happy for 'em and proud of them. Yeah. You know, but it was definitely lightening in the bottle, in my opinion. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:41:31):
Can I ask you a question, Anne, you, you know, people who have made a, a good amount of money on F NFTs, do they already have an audience? Like, because I think, I think that the general, the one of

Ant Pruitt (01:41:41):
Them has a large audience. One of 'em has a very large audience. And the other one, his, his audience was not much bigger than mine, you know, super talented still, but yeah, yeah,

Jason Howell (01:41:54):
Yeah. It's, it's interesting to me, like, I mean, I mean, as I, you know, I haven't investigated NFTs on whether like it's even worth, you know, spending my own time with it, you know, I'm not making image art and making music, but but just

Ant Pruitt (01:42:08):
Nable <laugh>

Jason Howell (01:42:09):
Totally NFT. Right. But I guess anything is really NFT able, but it but there is a lot of interest in this, from the from the creator space, just from the perspective of, Hey, great. Here's a possible potential way for us to actually be paid what we feel like we, we

Ant Pruitt (01:42:26):
All right, because they don't want to have to deal with the middle man. Especially the way you being a musician, the music industry was just killing you. Oh yeah, yeah. Completely. It's not even cool. And this is something where they can totally, you know insulate themselves from that type of robbery. And, and, and, but our gas fees, the new middle man, that's what it's starting to look like to me,

Jason Howell (01:42:50):
That's really feels that way.

Ant Pruitt (01:42:53):
And then there's no real <affirmative> you can't really predict it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> there was one point, you know, several weeks ago I went to, so I had some T coins out there not Bitcoin, just some regular T coins. And they grew quite nicely. I was like, well, this was a fun ride. I'm gonna take my money and run kind of thing. But man, I think I ended up losing 40, 45% in gas fees. Ah, just, can you explain or someone explain what gas fees are? If there's anybody out there listening, who's going, what is the gas fee? It's basically the transaction fees on getting money to one wallet and away from another wallet, you know? Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:43:33):
And it ends up being ridiculously expensive

Ant Pruitt (01:43:36):
And it changes on the hour. <Laugh> one minute, if it, the next minute is low it's it's, it's ridiculous. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:49):
A big road. Her, one of the things I asked you guys to do before we started the show is to come up with your stories of the year. I'm curious, let's start with you, Jason Howell. What, what was what in your sphere of course host all about Android. So I'm gonna guess it has something to do with that. Yeah. In your sphere. It's shocking. What was the big surprise? What's the story you think you should pay attention to?

Jason Howell (01:44:15):
I mean, so I guess, I guess each and every year following Android, I could possibly say the, the latest version of Android, but this year I feel like it was especially important. In the past, however many years, the major, the new ma major version of Android had been, had felt, I mean, significant, I suppose enough for another, you know, another number increment or whatever, but still at the onset, looking at it kind of hard to come up with like, okay, well what's different here. Oh, it's a little bit of this little bit of that. And I felt like Andrew 12, at least, you know, you could argue whether you like it or not, but at least this time Google said, Hey, let's make a big change to the us and really get in there and kind of shake things up a little bit. I, I just kind of felt like Google had been kind of getting a little, I don't know, a little sleepy I don't wanna say lazy because they've, they've definitely done work behind the scenes, but the OS just kind of needed, needed some extra tension.

Jason Howell (01:45:12):
And I actually like 12. I know, I know that. Yeah, at least you, and you've said that you, you, aren't a huge fan of Android 12. I, I like the changes that they made with material you. I, I really like a lot of the the privacy focused changes seeing the little chip that tells me when my camera, my microphone is live you know, being able to have approximate location information instead of very specific. Here's where you are. You can tell an app I'm approximately in this large geographic area you know, a number of other changes. It's, it's not, it's not ground, you know, like record shattering by any stretch, but at least this shows that Google is still putting some time in to come up with something different and unique. And I appreciated that.

Leo Laporte (01:45:59):
I can't think of another Android version that has been so controversial on the one hand jellybean really was jelly be. Yeah. Jellybean was the one for tablets though. That was no, not jelly being honeycomb, honeycomb, honeycomb,

Jason Howell (01:46:12):
Honeycomb. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:46:14):
Okay. Honeycomb for sure. It was a long time ago, but, but I have to say this one, there are people who say it's the, you know, and the pic going, I have to say the, to me, Android 12 and the pixel six kind of go together. They do, they do cuz you can't get anywhere else. But I've seen people say the pixel six and Android 12, that's the phone of the year, the best phone out there. I've also seen people and that's not alone by any means, say, this is, this is a nightmare. This is the most buggy version of Android ever. It's a real hit or MIS proposition. I myself have some issues. At first I was thinking,

Jason Howell (01:46:47):
Okay, it's the developers with the apps

Ant Pruitt (01:46:49):
That I like to use? You know, they haven't quite updated and you know, I get that, that happens. But then when I started noticing core functionality of the OS just puking on me, it's not the developers. It's it's Google and it's development team that did a crap test. Job of quality assurance testing. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:47:09):
Yeah, there are, there are aspects of the OS that when I've encountered them kind of make you feel like, okay, maybe this was kind of rushed to hit a timeline or whatever, but I have no problem to a certain degree. I feel like you could say that about all of, all of their releases. That's just kind how Google works. Right. It's like, oh, let's put it out, have the way we have it. And then you find out after the fact that it's never perfect. It's literally never perfect coming from Google. I guess I'm used to it. Yeah.

Ant Pruitt (01:47:35):
K cat was okay. Right. K cat was okay. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:47:39):
This is such eight ancient history though. Honeycomb and kit Catt. It was so long ago. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I mean I wouldn't, I, of course there been problems, but but I thought 11 was pretty reliable. Android. Ten's been pretty good. 12 seems like there's issues and there's some, and some protracted and long term issues. And, and then, then other people are saying, oh no, man, this is the best thing ever. So I'm, I'm actually very puzzled. I think you could make an argument looking at what we've talked about today with Microsoft and, and Google and apple will, will get to apple that maybe software is just starting to fall apart. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (01:48:19):
I kept thinking, all right, maybe it's been

Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
Around along

Ant Pruitt (01:48:22):
<Laugh> yeah. I'm like, maybe it's me. Maybe it's the phone. So I've done the, the, the factory reset and wiping of the phone and all of that stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:48:29):
You might have just gotten bad phone it's it is completely possible. No, what's your what's your story of, of the year aunt?

Ant Pruitt (01:48:38):
Well, it's, it's all about ransomware. Yeah. And they hit pretty Daum close to home. First was the colonial pipeline. And in them getting hit with the ransomware attack back in may, I believe it was the, yeah, this

Leo Laporte (01:48:53):
Was, this was the, I think this was the one that really put re on the, on, not only on the map, but also put them in the sites in the in the target zone

Ant Pruitt (01:49:03):
When, when that went down and to hear the story about, you know, it's just a lack of security on colonials. Yeah. behalf is

Leo Laporte (01:49:13):
Actually, that was dark sight. I apologize that

Ant Pruitt (01:49:14):
Wasn't, it just, it, it stung, but at the same time when that happened, I had, I was on vacation and gone back to visit my mother in Carolina. And all of a sudden we couldn't get any gasoline.

Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
That was the, that was the that's when that pipeline went down, that was where you at all the stories about people hoarding gasoline in long lines. And

Ant Pruitt (01:49:36):
I go to get gasoline bags of gas. Yeah. Yeah. Plastic bags really <laugh>. I go to get gasoline one day and, and this was like my second day, second day there on vacation. And I'm like, why is there a line in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina <laugh> for this petroleum? And sure enough, man, I, I picked up my phone and saw the news about the ransomware and they had to shut it. They had to shut down the pipeline because of this. And it just would trickle down effect. So I spent a lot of my time, I was able to go out and do one shoot, but I spent a lot of my time just sort of sitting on the couch, cuz didn't have much gasoline. It just, oh, it just stunk. But then the next story is another ransomware attack with Sinclair broadcasting and that one hit close to home because my mom is the Sinclair employee.

Ant Pruitt (01:50:33):
Now, granted she's not gonna tell me everything that went down, but she had her concerns like all the employees there and the people that don't know about Sinclair it's television broadcast network. And when this happened, this happened on the weekend and during football games. So that's when a lot of these networks make a lot, make most of their money during football season and the ads during football season and things just sort of went to crap that weekend. And they were down for quite a while. I believe I saw a news story that they were down at least until November of this year, the, the attack happened in October, but I believe they were down until November of this year. Because of that, which made me question, wow, how are their backups? What happened? You know, something, what else is going on with this? How are they down for a month after a ransomware attack?

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
Yeah, of course. Colonial paid the ransom. That's

Ant Pruitt (01:51:31):
Another trend, never heard word on Sinclair. Cuz I looked that up to see Sinclair paid. I never heard, heard word if

Leo Laporte (01:51:36):
They paid, I have a feeling that's one of the trends we can talk about in 20 20, 20 too, is just giving up saying, all right, take your money. In this case, the FBI got some of that money back. I, I don't know if it got back to colonial or if the FBI kept it, but they got some of that money back and it, it was an infrastructure attack. And I think those infrastructure attacks are what really got our government to sit up, take notice and to do something about ransomware. So in a way that was the turning point

Ant Pruitt (01:52:04):
Don't insurance companies now offer ransomware protection. Yeah, they did.

Leo Laporte (01:52:07):
I don't know if they still do,

Ant Pruitt (01:52:10):
You know, and I thought about this, cuz if they're offering this protection, then, then pay the company that gets the company. Yeah. They just like whatever

Leo Laporte (01:52:21):
Happen. Yeah. We talked, this was at the beginning of the year, maybe it was the end of last year, I think maybe in the end of last year thanks to the pandemic. A lot of school rules were kind of abandoned and schools and city governments ended up getting really attacked and it turned out that one of the reasons they were so popular is because they often did pay because they had insurance. And and so you know, ransomware author authors and, and their affiliates are not dumb. They're going afterwards.

Ant Pruitt (01:52:50):
It's like, what's the incentive on being more secure in my enterprise it or small business it, yeah. If I got insurance. Yeah. Right. And then what's the incentive for the bad guys to say, oh, they got insurance. They're gonna pay their, it's gonna keep coming hard and hard at, you know, that's that's right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:07):
Yeah. Micah, what was your story of the year?

Mikah Sargent (01:53:13):
My story of the year. So it's kind of a jumping off point because in 2020, this was actually when the apple versus epic case kicked off. So if you are not aware the apple versus epic was this interesting start to a conversation where epic games, which makes Fortnite released an update to its app in the app store and nothing happened at that point. But then it made an update on the server side that pushed an update to the game, essentially that let people sort of circumvent the app stores Apple's app store in app purchase system to be able to get credits for the game that they were playing. And then they publicized it on purpose. Apple shut them down and then epic games put out this whole press release. And this video where they did a parody of an original video from apple original advertisement from apple, and then things went from there, essentially epic games said, Hey look we think that the app store is a monopoly and that we should be able to have our own payment system within the app store without having to pay apples commission, et cetera, et cetera.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:25):
And then that turned into, for me, especially, I've never paid so much attention to antitrust and, and sort of fairness rules, so to speak mm-hmm <affirmative> when it comes to tech companies, I had not personally considered the app store and Apple's commission as much as I did this past year, I had not considered Google's take on this and their commission. I had not considered and paid attention to all of the companies who were making changes. Chris Capello was just on windows weekly for the end of the year episode. And he was talking about something that he considered to be one of Microsoft's hidden gems, which was clearly a kind of, of point at the other companies talking about app store fairness, where in the Microsoft store or the windows store the commissions are, you know, different and that they are, anybody can have

Leo Laporte (01:55:19):
A store equitable and they don't charge very much.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:21):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so there's just a lot of attention being paid to that this year that I think it has isn't seeped as much into the general what Milu as the supply chain has. It's not as much of a meme or a hashtag, but app store fairness and that kind of conversation about what developers deserve and sort of the examination of epics handling. And now this ongoing the, the court cases is continuing to be sort of pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and pushed back all of that regulation of the government, kind of paying attention now to these app stores and, and Google's place in that I think has been a really fascinating thing to watch this year. And I think it's gonna continue on for several years.

Leo Laporte (01:56:10):
Yeah. In a way, even though epic did lose this case in every respect, even down to the judges' requirement that apple opened its app store being overturned by the ninth district just last week epic got nothing tactically from the suit, but you're right from, from a point of view of mind share, they kind of did win a victory and apple even has had to kind of cave and give in a little bit and give rethink some stuff. Right?

Mikah Sargent (01:56:35):
Yeah. Yep. There's been a few changes that have come by that apple, you know, of course says, oh, you know, this is though we were gonna do, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:56:41):
We were gonna do this other way. Yeah. Yeah. It's

Mikah Sargent (01:56:43):
Very clear that it's in response to the EU and in response to sort of these yeah. It's getting ahead of those things, these preemptive decisions that are very clearly. So yeah. They, they didn't win the, the war, but they certainly got into the history books. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
As it were very good point. I actually hadn't thought about that, but we would, we, you wouldn't be having these conversations except for epic lawsuit, three good stories. When we come back the silliest stories of 2021, and this was hard to pick, believe it or not, there were quite a few we'll get to that in just a bit as we wrap up our holiday special. So nice. I'm so glad you guys could get together. It's funny. I completely forgotten. We're not, we were hoping we could all be in the same room because of <inaudible> we can't, we're not. But it, it does, this is virtual reality, isn't it? It feels like is we're sitting around the table and, and having a nice conversation. It's kind of, kind of interesting. You've got our holograms around the table. Yeah. It's it's as if we're truly there, you're practic table with you, <laugh> now go get some booze and we'll come back and get silly in just a little bit.

Leo Laporte (01:57:50):
Our show today brought to you by user way.org. Accessibility is so important. It, I mean, it's the law in the United States, the Americans with disabilities act requires that any public entity be accessible and that includes every single website, but it's also important because there are a large number of people who can't use your website, who can't shop in your store, who can't use your shopping cart. And I think you want them to be able to it's it's a right thing to do. It's good for business. It's also the law. Now the problem is, and I'm very sympathetic, running a, quite a few websites myself. You'll look at that and go. Now, what do I have to do? Do I have to hire developers? How much time is this gonna take? How much is it gonna cost? Let me introduce you to user way, user way.org.

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Their screen readers, just, they just get lost on those hamburger menus user way. Ensures all your popups are accessible. Your forms, your shopping cart, it'll fix vague link violations, fixes any broken links. Make sure your colors are all accessible without changing your brand colors, by the way. And there's an accessibility layer on all browsers. So people come to your browser and just use the front page. If they can see, they just use the front page. But if somebody comes there and they have disability software screen readers are such running. It'll use the accessibility layer and it does two things. First of all, it shows them, shows the software, the stuff they needs so that they can generate a, a speech or whatever it is to make that site accessible. But they also make it customizable. And that's important too, because everybody's different. There's no one disabled person there. There's all kinds of disabilities. So it's important that you also be flexible and user way. Does it completely platform agnostic, WordPress five wicks. It's easy to add user way. AEM site course. Same thing with SharePoint because it's one line of JavaScript. Pretty much any website. You just add that line and it's done user way, integrates seamlessly with everything. It lets your business meet its compliance goals. It improves the experience for users. Just ask Susan Bennett, the voice of Siri, what she thinks of user way.

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Leo Laporte (02:03:02):
I <laugh> I, so, so last tweet, we talked about scientists taking a tar grade, which is every, every kindergartner's favorite animal. It's a, it's a microscopic animal lives in MOS. They sometimes they call 'em a water bear. Cause it looks like a bear got little claws. It's really the cutest thing, but they're also tough. They've been put in space for two weeks and survived. They've been frozen. They've been shot out of a gun and survived. So this gave me the inspiration for this whole segment because scientists have taken <laugh> Singapore have taken tar grade, this little microscopic water bear. And it's the first multicellular organism to be put inside a quantum entanglement. They, I don't even know what it means. I don't even know what that means you do that. I don't even know what it means. They put it on a cubit from a quantum computer. It was in a quantum tanglement. And so that made me think, you know, I bet there's some other stories from the year that is that five nanometers or what? Oh, it's tiny. Let me see <laugh> oh, I get it. What's the process. Oh my God. He's making geek jokes now. Oh no.

Jason Howell (02:04:20):
I, I tried to pull a kid. Evan. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:04:24):
These are so cute. Look at the tar grades. They're so cute. Little water bands creepy. I mean,

Jason Howell (02:04:30):
There's just something. Are they creepy about those, those claw hands? Yeah. The like pucker face is, is kind of unsettling to me.

Leo Laporte (02:04:37):
It is a little, it looks a little bit like a sci-fi alien. It really does. And maybe they are aliens. I mean, they kind of floated through space to get here. These

Jason Howell (02:04:46):
Things 20 times the size of us are gonna be the things that land on earth and, and we reach our

Leo Laporte (02:04:51):
End. Well, I didn't know this, but Tim Stevens yesterday, I'm sorry, last TWI Sunday. <Laugh> said that they, that tar degrades power, the discover discovery and star star war Starship.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:05):
Star Trek. Yeah, that's a spoiler, but I was gonna mention it and I was like, no, that's a spoiler. It's

Leo Laporte (02:05:09):
A spoiler. Yeah. If you don't know that already, which I don't, that's true. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (02:05:16):
Now you do. But you know, actually every single tar grade in existence was created. The moment that they put it in a quantum, in quantum entanglement, all from the beginning of history to now of them were

Leo Laporte (02:05:29):
Actually creating at the same

Jason Howell (02:05:30):
Time, time at that moment. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:32):
Yeah. They all existed from that point

Leo Laporte (02:05:35):
Past and forward. You wanna see a video target mating?

Mikah Sargent (02:05:40):
Not particularly <laugh> no, not really, sir.

Leo Laporte (02:05:43):
Okay. Nevermind. Nevermind.

Mikah Sargent (02:05:45):
Are you sure it wasn't

Leo Laporte (02:05:46):
Defecating? I don't know what it was doing. It says it was mating. That's just, this was the year the, and this, I think began the supply chain crisis. The ever given containers ship got stuck in the canal.

Mikah Sargent (02:06:03):
That was hilariously. That was Hyster

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
Hysterical. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (02:06:06):
You know, you know what that did when, when that was all going down, that really took me back to like the old days of Twitter. When some random event would happen, that everybody was watching like patiently every day, like checking in on the status. Like I got, I got those fields around the ever given 

Leo Laporte (02:06:23):
Container. There were a lot of memes about ever given <laugh> still are, yeah, there still are a hundred, took 106 days to get it outta the canal. They were able to open it up to traffic in a few, but like 106 days to get it out. <Laugh> and its a big container ship. It had a lot of containers on that sucker. Yeah. So the ever whatever

Mikah Sargent (02:06:49):
Happened to the, to the, the, the person in charge, whatever happened, oh, where are they now? Sort of situation. They, is there any fallout about stock in the Les canal? They didn't let them leave. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:07:04):
I remember it because that was right around when I started playing Val Heim, which is for me the story of the year, <laugh> you running around hundred hours playing a stupid video game, but my character is named, ever given.

Mikah Sargent (02:07:18):
Oh, that's amazing

Leo Laporte (02:07:20):
Because I guess cuz I was stuck in Val Heim, I don't know April fools we'll do this chronologically. So that was March, April fools VW puts out a press release a few days early saying they're gonna rename the company volts wagon, cuz they're gonna go all electric. And then when journalists call to say, is this an April fool's joke? They say no. Yeah. Except it was, it was so it

Mikah Sargent (02:07:45):
Was their stock rate. They had a stock increase because of the Cho decision. And so then that called in what the FTC going. Now we have to investigate this April fool prank because you may have tampered with the marketplace. Yeah. And they also lost a bunch of journalists trust and respect in the process. So yeah. You know, don't not a good idea

Leo Laporte (02:08:06):
All the way we do an April fools joke, but don't lie to the press when they ask you, is this an April fools joke? Just say, yes it is. Aren't we clever?

Ant Pruitt (02:08:14):
Just had no comment.

Leo Laporte (02:08:15):
That's fine. We had a lot of fun playing this at. Oh it's been disabled. I can't play it. The Italian video. Yeah. Probably I didn't check. Yeah. The Italian sportscaster. <Laugh> who couldn't during the Olympics. Couldn't log into the laptop in the booth. So on Mike on apparently unwitingly on Mike. He asked somebody in the booth, what's the password for this thing. And the guy shouts the password, which is terrible. Oh yeah. I remember that. It's the booth number. And then he, he says, but that's a terrible password <laugh> but security through obscurity was all in Italian. So <laugh> obscure to us anyway. I will translate you. It was during the broadcast of the Turkey chili volleyball game, Turkey chili. That sounds like something good.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:01):
I do like Turkey

Leo Laporte (02:09:02):
Chili. <Laugh> the Turkey, the Turkey China volleyball game. And there

Ant Pruitt (02:09:06):
Goes on Turkish and Chilean fan base.

Leo Laporte (02:09:09):
He says, and we had, I think Carolina MENA was on the show during this. So she was translating. Do you know the past word for the computer in this commentator booth? He asked, oh my God. When he was told that it's based on this booth number, he said, oh, he said Italian profanity <laugh> it was too hard to call the password. People pit Pluto, top <laugh> turns out the password was booth zero three, which was infected the name of the booth Lord of mercy. He concluded using the popular Italian swear word. That literally means a pig's misery. Anyway, I don't think any security breaches as a result, but if you're ever in boot zero three <laugh> you know the password go right ahead.

Ant Pruitt (02:10:06):
Can I amend my story of the year? Yes. With miss. Nessi speaking Italian on TWI.

Leo Laporte (02:10:13):
I love, oh my gosh. Isn't that? Isn't that great. Oh, she's

Ant Pruitt (02:10:16):
My made my liver quiver.

Leo Laporte (02:10:20):
And you didn't wanna see tar grades mating. <Laugh> I'm outta here. Astros <laugh> did remember now did they release this Amazon's Astro robot? The one with extending neck. Oh my God. <Laugh> this was I, this was, this was ridiculous. Did anybody buy this thing? Somebody ordered it.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:40):
I thought you did. No. So I never put, I put my name down for some of the other things, but I never put my name down for that one cuz I just think it's a foolish product. And also yeah, there were several people who had reportedly on it who were like, yeah, no one needs to put this in their house. It will literally drive off of stairwells and try to throws

Leo Laporte (02:10:59):
Up down the stairs. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (02:11:00):
Yeah, it'll throw itself down the stairs. <Laugh> still available by request. Oh you, you can request. And it has to be granted.

Leo Laporte (02:11:11):
The idea is it, it will patrol all your home and spy on your kids and and if they, if I think later on this video, it discovers a problem in the kitchen. Oh no. That's how it charges. It goes into charges and it sleeps. Look at the little eyes, go to sleep. Oh, that's so cute. But nice it if you hear a noise in the kitchen. No, no. Now it's now it's just macing on the teenage scanning. There you go. It is. Here's going, it's running off to the kitchen run. My favorite part is when it, when it raises its Periscope to look around. Oh, that's so creepy.

Mikah Sargent (02:11:46):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:11:48):
Here's I can turn on the sound. Can I it's going in here. Oh, there's a mess in the kitchen. Uhhuh. It's raising the Periscope, showing you a picture. Huh? Of, and then he presses the alarm button and the raccoon scammers away.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:09):
Wild grabbing as a cupcake.

Leo Laporte (02:12:11):
Yeah. It's good. By the way, just the robot clean up. No, cuz it can't. No, it can't do anythings that bring you a beer. If you put a beer in the cup holder on the robot <laugh> let's rough around with it. So robots have a long rosy. This is not rosy. No, it's definitely not. This. This is nobody's idea of a good idea. Amen.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:33):
Wow. That's also the time of this episode. Yes,

Leo Laporte (02:12:36):
Exactly. No, I already know the title. Okay. Smitten by 2021 Sance can smell the funk. Finally the story of the guy who accidentally swallowed his AirPods turns out he was sleeping in them, rolled over. Oh no. And gro he says, I moved my phone off the pillow and removed the wireless AirPod head from, from one ear. The other had fallen out and I couldn't find it still barely awake. I patted to the bathroom for a so up of water, but couldn't swallow properly a clue. My throat <laugh> My throat. I filled with water a clue, but wouldn't go down. I had to lean over the sink. Let the water drain out.

Ant Pruitt (02:13:33):
Oh my goodness. That's scary.

Leo Laporte (02:13:34):
It was bizarre and alarming, but I was so tired. What did he do? He went back to bed, bad to

Ant Pruitt (02:13:39):
Sleep. Most dudes <laugh> I can't

Leo Laporte (02:13:42):
Swallow. There's something in my throat throat, but I'm gonna go back to bed. That's

Ant Pruitt (02:13:45):
So frustrating to

Leo Laporte (02:13:46):
Me. The wife says, call the doctor, honey. He says, no, no, I'm fine. I checked, get the missing air bud. In the morning, I use to find my airon function on my phone, which makes the headphones beep. But the batteries were flat. So they didn't beep still couldn't swallow a clue. <Laugh> anyway, eventually, eventually after another mouthful of water comes straight up, he begin to wonder it took him like all day <laugh> I'd also become aware of a faint pressure in the middle of my chest. He goes to the doctor and they give him an x-ray and the doctor's expression when she returned was priceless.

Ant Pruitt (02:14:26):
I bet this dude doesn't eat breakfast,

Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
Right? Obviously not. Well, I'll be damned. She said she led me to her workstation surrounded by my medical staff on the screen, a cartoon clear image of my ribs parked between them at 45 degrees, the missing air pod. You solved the mystery. Terrifying. Okay. <Laugh> clue. Even more terrifying. They, he went to the endoscopy center. The AirPod was retrieved using a tube with a lasso attachment and he says it still works fine. <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:15:02):
Hopefully doesn't wear them to bed anymore. The next apple ad <laugh> yes. Talk about durability, saves your life.

Leo Laporte (02:15:10):
And actually there is also a post from a woman who, who swallowed her AirPods. Apparently it's happening a lot. And accidentally, she says recorded audio from her stomach.

Ant Pruitt (02:15:21):
When I saw this, I'm thinking to myself, I must be a super taster because there's no way something has been in my ears. You're just not

Leo Laporte (02:15:29):
Stupid in my mouth. You're just not stupid. She said, I, I had a ibuprofen tablet in one hand,

Ant Pruitt (02:15:37):
My air really bad taste, no taste swallowed

Leo Laporte (02:15:40):
The wrong

Ant Pruitt (02:15:41):
One clips. You know, it happens to all of us. Does it really? We all accidentally swallow our AirPods instead of our, as

Leo Laporte (02:15:51):
How many times has that happened, guys? You're a good crew to hang out with. I have to say thank you so much for spending a little of your holiday time with us. Are you gonna, you know, we recorded this I this little air the day after Christmas for obvious reasons, recorded it beforehand. Tell, tell me a little bit about what each of you're doing and what are you doing for Christmas and, and boxing.

Ant Pruitt (02:16:14):
I, I had to actually shoot the family portrait because, huh? I forgot to do that. I, it started send out a

Leo Laporte (02:16:21):
Christmas card. You

Ant Pruitt (02:16:22):
Mean? Well, no, not a Christmas card. It's just, we take a family picture since moving here, we decided to start a new tradition of doing the family portion and I've totally just slipped my mind. So I gotta get that done. And otherwise just gonna be sitting on the butt, grooving the couch and having whiskey and beer.

Leo Laporte (02:16:40):
Will that be on your Instagram?

Ant Pruitt (02:16:45):
Or is it prime? I guess I can put it. There is, I don't think I've ever done <laugh> it on Instagram, but I guess I should well

Leo Laporte (02:16:51):
Approve

Ant Pruitt (02:16:52):
On

Leo Laporte (02:16:52):
Instagram. Yeah. He's he's he's a cat. He just looks scary in that picture. Do you guys

Ant Pruitt (02:16:59):
<Laugh> I don't look scary in that.

Leo Laporte (02:17:02):
I really agree. Dominant that dominate. That looks pretty scary right there. You don't celebrate Kwanza or anything like that? My happy face. That's your happy face? I wouldn't wanna meet that in a dark alley. Holy cow. <Laugh> did you steal my nunchucks?

Ant Pruitt (02:17:17):
Hey, on the right you swallow my AirPod in a bright alley either. <Laugh> it?

Leo Laporte (02:17:22):
Wasn't that anyway? No, we love you. We love you Ann. It's really a pleasure having you part of the family GE you don't celebrate quans or anything like just traditional? No, sir. Christmas

Ant Pruitt (02:17:31):
Eve. Christmas. Christmas. Yeah. I'm all Southern Christian Baptist guy. So it's all Christmas watch college

Leo Laporte (02:17:37):
Football. That's correct, sir. All the ball games you got a week of bowl games ahead. That is correct, sir. Is there really a Jimmy Kimmel bowl or

Ant Pruitt (02:17:44):
That yes it is. And it was a great game, sir.

Leo Laporte (02:17:47):
How does, how does Jimmy Kimmel have a bowl or named after him? I don't understand. It's it's

Ant Pruitt (02:17:52):
Actually a pretty good story. Cuz he is a college sports fan and you know, LA doesn't necessarily do college like that, even though there's UCLA and USC there, they just don't do college football the way the rest of the country does. And he wanted to bring a bit of a presence. So he, he was able to get some sponsors to put some stuff together and they came up with the Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimball and it ended up being really good. It was Oregon state versus Utah state, Oregon states from the PAC 12 Utah states from the mountain west. I believe in it was, it was an entertaining game. I thought the BES were gonna win, but they lost good

Leo Laporte (02:18:27):
Football. The

Ant Pruitt (02:18:28):
Jimmy Kim, I

Leo Laporte (02:18:29):
Nerded out about football. That's hysterical. Well have a one. He's

Ant Pruitt (02:18:33):
A he's a football

Leo Laporte (02:18:34):
Fan. Yeah, no, I guess that makes sense. I mean it's every fan's dream to have a bowl game named after them.

Ant Pruitt (02:18:39):
He even had his own little sandwich served there. His special sandwich served there. Oh wow. Italian beef and stuff. The, the, the winner, they didn't get a trophy. They got a big golden rest. One belt

Leo Laporte (02:18:53):
Instead. Sounds like Kimel.

Ant Pruitt (02:18:55):
I mean, he had a lot of fun with it. It was great

Leo Laporte (02:18:57):
Wrestling belt. <Laugh> oh my God. It was great. Have a great holiday. An and thank you. Merry, Merry Christmas to queen Pruit to the boys. The hard HEADSS thank you. Sounds like you got a band there. Queen Pruit. Hardhead featuring an that's right? <Laugh>

Ant Pruitt (02:19:14):
The man featuring the manager. Nice. An an

Leo Laporte (02:19:17):
With Anon drums coordinator, at least beating the skins. Jason, how you've got two little girls who are very excited about Christmas. I'm sure.

Jason Howell (02:19:26):
Oh absolutely. They can't wait. You know, the grandparents big box of, of gifts was delivered the other day. So now the tree has much more presence underneath. They can hardly, you know, hold themselves from tearing

Leo Laporte (02:19:38):
It all open. Now I asked aunt about Kwanza. I gotta ask you about the white people's holiday EST. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (02:19:45):
Best of us for the rest of,

Leo Laporte (02:19:49):
Do you celebrate, do you have the feats of strength

Jason Howell (02:19:52):
Holiday? No, I celebrate at all. No, let's just say no <laugh> I celebrate every, I celebrate life around this time. The

Leo Laporte (02:20:01):
Airing of grievances. There you go. Yeah. It's that's I, I do the airing of grievances. EST is Thursday. This, this weeks or was Thursday cuz we're we're on boxing day today. Oh yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:12):
Boxing day. Wow. Yeah. That's Canadian. Right?

Leo Laporte (02:20:16):
You know, don't think UK. I think so this story apparently is oh UK. It's kind of embarrassing. Isn't with banks. No, it's the Lords of the manner would box up all the food from the Christmas feast that they didn't eat and distribute it to the peasants

Mikah Sargent (02:20:35):
Village and surfs.

Leo Laporte (02:20:37):
Yeah. So it's not a day. We, we, we like to think about us, us white folk. I prefer to think of fess. <Laugh> nothing to celebrate. Have a great Christmas to you and yours. Jason and give, give big hugs to the kids that will do they're the perfect age. Perfect age for Christmas. It's just the best

Jason Howell (02:20:59):
Time. Yeah, it's great. We're gonna do our Christmas here. Keep it low key. And then a few days later we're hitting the road to big, sir. And we're gonna be camping for new years. We've never done.

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
I did that once in my youth, it was the coldest night I've ever spent in a tent. It was horrible. Yeah.

Jason Howell (02:21:17):
We we've got, we've got some ties to keep ourselves rolling.

Leo Laporte (02:21:20):
My God. It was it was big, sir. It was, I think it was Tasara and we hiked up into the Hills. Oh my God. It was the coldest night ever anyway. Have fun. Can't wait. Enjoy. Oh, you're gonna love it. I think I lost a toe. <Laugh> Mike is Sergeant your plans for the holidays?

Mikah Sargent (02:21:39):
Well, I celebrated my birthday yesterday. Happy

Leo Laporte (02:21:42):
Birthday. I forgot. I meant to happy birthday to you yesterday. Happy birthday you.

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
And what'd you do celebr anything?

Mikah Sargent (02:21:51):
Actually we, there's not a whole lot to do right now, so Sebastian's and I just chilled the house and

Leo Laporte (02:21:58):
December 19th, delicious people want to know that's Micah's birthday next year. Yeah. For the Wikipedia. There you go. Put it in the Wikipedia. I'm gonna sit right. That's great. How old are you? Micah? Come on. You could tell the truth. I'm not gonna, you're a youngin. I'm

Mikah Sargent (02:22:11):
Not gonna tell the internet, but yes I am. I am on the younger side for

Leo Laporte (02:22:14):
You did not turn 40.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:17):
I did not turn

Leo Laporte (02:22:17):
40. That's what the slack said, slack

Jason Howell (02:22:22):
And I totally fell for it too. I was like, I

Leo Laporte (02:22:25):
Looking, he's not 40,

Mikah Sargent (02:22:26):
A really young looking

Leo Laporte (02:22:27):
40. Okay. Are you gonna, do you have a tree? You, you put up a tree Micah?

Mikah Sargent (02:22:31):
No, because we're gonna be going to Sebastian's family's house for Christmas. So it'll be a small little group getting together and his aunt is like the biggest Christmas fan in the universe. So it'll be a good time. I'm

Leo Laporte (02:22:44):
Christmas and Ukiah.

Mikah Sargent (02:22:46):
Yes, indeed. Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):
You remember that'll be fun. Oh, it's pretty up there. Well, I, I, I wish you all a wonderful holiday. We are so glad we love, I love doing the holiday episode just cuz we can relax and have a little bit of fun and it's extra special to have it with our inhouse host. We have such great host. You guys are all wonderful. Thank you. Ma'am we will be doing next week. We will be doing a best of that'll be the January 2nd tweet and a very special tweet. January 9th was we, we, we looked behind back this episode on January 9th. We'd look ahead with a futurist science fiction and a player to be named later. That should be a lot of fun. TWI is usually this time we, we prerecord it, but usually is every Sunday two 30 Pacific five 30 Eastern, 2230 UTC.

Leo Laporte (02:23:38):
You can watch live@livedottwidottvchatliveatirc.tv. You know, I really owe a big thanks to this was the year we launched club TWI. And it has been a huge success. I think we're almost, and is it almost 4,000 members? I think we're, we're nudging close to it. And is our community manager and I just wanna thank each and every one of you who've joined club TWI. I know we, you know, we thought the benefit would be yeah, thank you. The benefit would be the ad for shows. I think it's really the, the, the community in discord. And the fun stuff. Hands down discord. Yeah, I think the discord is amazing. <Laugh> so if you'd like to join, we have corporate memberships and individual memberships just go to twi.tv/club Twitter. It supports what we do. It's seven bucks, seven bucks a month. And I think it I think it's well worth it.

Leo Laporte (02:24:28):
So thank you very much to all of our brand new club members, cuz this was a year we launched it. We really, really appreciate it. After the fact, you can always get all of our shows, even this one on demand at the website, twi.tv, there's a YouTube channel. And of course this would be a good new year resolution subscribe to so you get it automatically. The minute it's available of a Sunday night. So you can listen to it first thing Monday morning. And if your podcast application allows for reviews, please leave us a five star review. Let the world know about the world's longest running tech podcast. Thanks every Woohoo. I hope you had a great Christmas happy new year. Happy boxing day. Don't forget to feed the peasants. We'll see you next time. Another TWiT is in the can Merry Christmas, everybody

Speaker 7 (02:25:20):
Doing the TWiT, doing the right, doing the baby, doing the all right, doing the baby, doing the with.