This Week in Tech Episode 858 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. We've got a really good one for you this week. Christina Warren, Ashley Esqueda, Rich De Muro. Do I need to say more? We'll talk about CES, Rich was there. He found some really goofy stuff. Why? E3 is not gonna happen and will it ever happen again? Plus the future of the metaverse should it be called them micro verse? It's all coming up next on TWIT.

New Speaker (00:00:22):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWIT. This is TWIT, This Week in Tech episode, 858 recorded Sunday, January 16th, 2022. The Meat CEO. This Week in Tech is brought to you by ITProTV. Are you looking to break into the world of it? Get the introduction you need with ITProTV, visit itpro.tv/twit for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use the code TWIT 30 at checkout. And by Novo. Novo is the number one business banking app because it's built from the ground up to be powerfully simple with free business banking.

Leo Laporte (00:01:20):
Get your free business banking account in, in just 10 minutes at banknovo.com slash TWIT and by Mint Mobile, if saving more and spending less is one of your top goals for 2022. Switching to mint. Mobile is the easiest way to save this year. Get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month and get the plan shipped to your door for free. Go to mintmobile.com/twit. And by worldwide technology and checkpoint software technologies. When was the last time your company updated your security strategy are your business assets protected WWT, combined strategy and execution to secure your organization and drive business outcomes. Visit wwt.com/twit to get started. It's time for TWIT, This Week in Tech the show we cover the weeks's tech news with a panel I've hand assembled Cobbs together with my own. No, Justin did it <laugh> I know I've nothing to do with it, but I'm very pleased with panel this week. Rich DeMuro is here from KTLA richontech.tv. In honor, he's gonna kind of, this is his homage to, I love Lucy. He is gonna be in four by three all day today. You, you wanna do black and white too, cuz that would really 

Rich DeMuro (00:02:42):
This is all sponsored by the new movies o

Leo Laporte (00:02:46):
The DeMuro's.

Rich DeMuro (00:02:46):
Prime video. So I'm just, that's my shameless plug. They paid me millions just to have this old school format with the shades behind me.

Leo Laporte (00:02:56):
You look like you could be at the Desi Lou studios right now. So that's good. That's good. It's great to have you. It's good to see you rich. It's been a while. Thank you for joining us also. Christina Warren, senior cloud advocate for Microsoft film girl. She's got still got the tags on her. What do they call it? Crossing dolls. Animal crossing dolls. Yeah,

Christina Warren  (00:03:18):
Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna take the, the tags

Leo Laporte (00:03:20):
Off. I mean, well wait minute. The top one is the, is the woman at the front desk in animal court? Yeah.

Christina Warren  (00:03:24):
It's it's it's it's it's Isabelle and it's Tom. No. So it's like, is that Tom?

Leo Laporte (00:03:28):
No below her. It doesn't. Is that Tom? No,

Christina Warren  (00:03:30):
No, no, no, no, no. This is the GitHub. This

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
Is that's the GitHub squid. That's cool. I didn't know. You could get that. Yeah,

Christina Warren  (00:03:37):
Yeah, yeah. That is that's who is? Yeah, this is Mona.

Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
Mona is her name. Okay. Mona is her name. So she's got Bel Mona where's Tom. I don't see Tom, Tom. Tom is, oh, Tom fell behind the package. Okay. <Laugh>

Christina Warren  (00:03:48):
Yeah, no. Yeah. Cause Tom is behind Patrick Bateman. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:03:52):
Wait a minute. And what do they call those ones with the big heads? The nos? What do they, there's the name for those uncle pop Inco

Christina Warren  (00:03:58):
Winka. This is the Funko pops. Pops. Yeah. Funko pop. Okay. Funko pop. And, and this is, this is literally, this is Patrick Bateman from American psycho. And he

Leo Laporte (00:04:05):
Has like, okay. That's a little weird.

Christina Warren  (00:04:07):
It is a little weird. Right. But it's great. <Laugh> I mean I'm a fan.

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
Okay. <Laugh>

Christina Warren  (00:04:18):
Leo's like, I don't know what to do with this. And I'm like, it's higher. It's funny. And then like to have, I love it. Commerce based on kind of an anti commerce book, like perfect people. Misunderstood. It is great ly

Leo Laporte (00:04:28):
It's it is your generation is so ironic that it just fits in with all the other irony. Right. Also back on our mics for, we haven't seen her in ages. It's so great to see Ashley Esqueda from CNET and look at two tellies over your shoulder there. That's congratulations on those.

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:44):
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm now an award-winning producer. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:04:49):
I think I, but

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:50):
I agree with Christina. There's nothing quite like the juxtaposition of animal crossing and murder

Leo Laporte (00:04:54):
And Funko, pop and psychos. Yeah. Yeah. But it's sweet murder.

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:58):
I argue Tom. No kind of there's lap there.

Christina Warren  (00:05:02):
Look, I agree. I agree. No, look, he's got some shady stuff going on. Like we, we haven't really, you

Leo Laporte (00:05:07):
Know, there's something buried in the back there in 

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:11):
100%. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Some villagers have in fact had their legs broken for not paying back downs. Okay. That's all I

Leo Laporte (00:05:18):
Show hands. How many of you are still playing animal crossing now that the pandemic is over?

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:23):
Oh wait, I'm sorry. The pandemic's over Leo. I

Leo Laporte (00:05:25):
Have a 10 year old. I forgot. Okay. Rich and rich. By the way, one of the reasons rich is in Desi, Lou studios is cuz he's actually in a COVID bubble.

Rich DeMuro (00:05:34):
I'm I'm in the middle of the pandemic. Like literally I am, I am like round zero for the pandemic right now. And somehow I've avoided it. I Don know how congratulations, but I went to CES last week. Avoided it there coming, come home to my kid who has it. And immediately everyone here gets it except me for the last week. So did your

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:53):
Son go to CES? <Laugh>

Rich DeMuro (00:05:57):
Got apparently as far as I can tell nobody got it from CS. It was the safest yes. In yours because everyone was so far apart

Leo Laporte (00:06:02):
Was there everyone was terrified. It was like, there

Rich DeMuro (00:06:04):
Nobody showed up. That's why

Leo Laporte (00:06:05):
For what they said, it's 40,000 people, which is a quarter of the normal, right? Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (00:06:10):
Yeah. And so it's not the people were there. It was mostly the exhibits that were to me, the most impacted. So I mean, obviously floor was easier to kind of navigate, but it seemed like the exhibits were, you know, or I don't know what you call 'em the, the ins you know, the, the exhibitors. Yeah. They, they were definitely all the booths, but I will say for my purposes, it was fantastic because all the stuff that I got, nobody else got. And so my videos were great. We got a couple videos that went viral and it was, I thought it was a fantastic trip. So I'm hoping that everyone stays away from CES. You now

Leo Laporte (00:06:40):
I did see a video of you from CES doing something a little odd. Uhoh I can't remember what it was. I just thought, oh, oh, there he goes again. <Laugh> no, what I really thought was the great thing about CES this year was you could get those shots. You could go in and you could, you know, ride the snake or whatever. I can't. What were you doing? Tell me about,

Rich DeMuro (00:06:58):
I mean, literally it was, it was so easy because there was no, you know, usually you'd have to go to like, they're like, excuse me. Talk to the press. People, you know, you gotta get in early. I didn't do any meetings set up nothing. They're like, oh, do you wanna tour a booth early? I'm like, no, I'll just tour it on the first day. No problem. Was there any, you sounds

Ashley Esqueda (00:07:12):
Like the greatest CES experience it does if I'm being honest, but it doesn't work.

Rich DeMuro (00:07:16):
That's the problem. It doesn't work. Could that way. You know what I mean? Like if they did that every year, it would be hard. It would be,

Ashley Esqueda (00:07:21):
It would be chaos. No, you, you can't do it that way, but it, that literally sounds like it just reminds me of the old, the convention days of your, where it was like very small before these things became these massive, like right. Consumer driven. Like I just remember E three and like year, 2000, like the year after the dream cast came out or maybe it was 99, maybe it was the year the dream cast came out. I just remember it was like so small. Ken hall was still real. Those were Ken

Leo Laporte (00:07:49):
Hall. Those you remember Ken hall.

Ashley Esqueda (00:07:50):
Yeah. Those were the, and it was like, I, I, I just remember that I will never forget that floor layout. They literally had they had all kinds of crazy stuff going on there. Like Temo had a whole thing with like the girls from dead or alive. And like, they had just like all these models and they were all dressed up in all the costume. Like, and it, it was insane. Like, I, I mean, it was really just pure. It was the pure distillation of what? E three. You must have

Leo Laporte (00:08:14):
Been like 12.

Ashley Esqueda (00:08:15):
Yeah. Oh no. I was I, so I was definitely not old enough to attend this show. We lied like me and my friends just lied <laugh> we just lied to get in

Leo Laporte (00:08:23):
Dreamcast. I like, well, listen. Even believe you were born when the dream cast came out alone. Yeah. I,

Ashley Esqueda (00:08:29):
I think I was let's see, I was 99. So I was 16. Yeah. I 16,

Leo Laporte (00:08:33):
16. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (00:08:34):
Yeah. I wasn't far but shy of being allowed to go. But yeah, my friends who were just, they were, they were a little older and literally just made up a company. We were like, oh yeah, we're a independent video game shop out in California. And that was when no, no one cared, no one looked at it. No one cared. So I was gonna, I did the same thing. We're the same age and I, something not,

Christina Warren  (00:08:55):
Not, not in California, but it was in Atlanta in like, like 97.

Ashley Esqueda (00:08:59):
Oh yeah. 90, 98. Yeah.

Christina Warren  (00:09:01):
And, and I stole like, I like, like made fake business cards and we did too. And that's how we got in.

Rich DeMuro (00:09:10):
Look at, look at the types of personalities you guys are and look how successful you are. This is what you, you have that this, this is just a couple of pastor over here.

Leo Laporte (00:09:18):
I remember when Alexander Graham bell introduced the telephone. I'll never forget that

Rich DeMuro (00:09:23):
The world fair you were under your age.

Leo Laporte (00:09:25):
You see how the world fair. Yeah. It was amazing. Yeah. Well, I mean,

Christina Warren  (00:09:29):
When you think about what we were lying about, like to do, like we were to go to a trade event, right? Like, like we wanted to see cool up, but like, you know, like the dumbest thing, like not, not, I had like, you know, fake ID not to get into clubs, but to go to E three to go to E three. That's

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:44):
That kinda thing I can games before they came out. That was my, that was my one goal. I was like, I just, I did you,

Christina Warren  (00:09:51):
I, I did have a fake ID to get into clubs as well. I will say that.

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:55):
Oh, no, I didn't. I was lame. I was super late. Oh yeah. I, I totally, I just only playing video games all the time. Very sad. <Laugh> still do. In fact, I'm, I'm now almost 40 and I just do that too. So it's

Leo Laporte (00:10:04):
So rich. What was your favorite at CES? Was it the was it the amazing color changing car? The world's smallest dishwasher, the massage robot. What exactly what exactly. So

Rich DeMuro (00:10:17):
There are so many, I think the it's funny, the, the video that went the most viral is the I didn't put it on my Instagram, but I put it on my Facebook. And it's the look at the new mail truck. So this thing, I don't know if it got posted and it's like some mail carrier association, like form the

Leo Laporte (00:10:32):
Ups approved this thing. It's a beautiful thing. Is it the one with the big, big windows in front and all of that, but the strange,

Rich DeMuro (00:10:39):
Yeah, that's an official, yeah. It looks like a Pixar truck. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:42):
Yeah. That's the new the mail truck. I think that's a, that's a, that's a very cool

Rich DeMuro (00:10:48):
So that has done like over I think it's why up to 1.2 million views on my Facebook page and it's like, wow, people are just debating, you know, whether the truck, you know, it looks like it was just, you know, if it's gonna work, if it's gonna be able to navigate didn't what did they say? Did they say they're

Leo Laporte (00:11:03):
Gonna buy like a, like a hundred thousand of these or something. I mean, I think you'll be committed to that

Rich DeMuro (00:11:08):
Even more. And it's like, 10% of them are gonna be electric. Electric. Yeah. So that's another side, but it's, it's also been about 30 years since they upgraded these trucks, which is

Leo Laporte (00:11:18):
Time. I'm sure they're vulnerable polluters and, and all of that. But's I guess my point is that it's kind of gimmicky these days, CES, right? I mean, it's all a little bit of a gimmicky, like the world's smallest dishwasher. I'm sure they'll make that, but who the hell

Rich DeMuro (00:11:34):
Cares? Oh my gosh. So many people care. I'm not kidding. This is, this is what I love about this. I got so many people that

Leo Laporte (00:11:42):
Emailing me, I guess I'm outta touch.

Rich DeMuro (00:11:44):
I, I don't, this is what I'm saying. Like, I love CES so much because it's a, it's a, I don't care about the big installations. You know what I mean? Like the giant stuff, that means nothing. It's the little things that I discover like this dishwasher and like all these other little things that you

Leo Laporte (00:11:58):
Can wash five dishes in this who wants

Rich DeMuro (00:12:01):
This, you live in a giant mansion. There are so many people that live in tiny little apartments that don't have a dishwasher. If you have five dishes

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
To wash, you can wash them in 30 seconds in the sink. You don't need a dishwashing machine.

Rich DeMuro (00:12:16):
When you have an apartment that does not have a dishwasher, your only goal in life is to have a dishwasher. I guess

Leo Laporte (00:12:21):
I've been there.

Rich DeMuro (00:12:22):
I'm guessing at it's a nightmare to not have a dishwashing there.

Ashley Esqueda (00:12:25):
I, I gotta say, Leah, I agree. 100% with rich, like the best part of CES is finding all the weird, weird stuff on the show.

Leo Laporte (00:12:32):
It's what I hate about nothing better. The stuff that's there, you can't buy you. Maybe you could buy it in a year. Most likely you can't, every time you do see as coverage, you have to say, well, if you're responsible, you say this is never gonna, you're never gonna see a color changing car from BW. Enjoy. No, but this is goofy because you, you know, so here's a weird thing.

Ashley Esqueda (00:12:52):
Yeah.

Christina Warren  (00:12:53):
But see, that's not

Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
Feeling that people love that. I, I know, but I don't, that's

Christina Warren  (00:12:58):
The only good part because the rest of it, like, it's just the, it's basically just the press conferences. And like the companies that know that they can get your attention will just have their own separate events anyway, which is what they've all done. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:08):
That's true years. They don't need CS,

Christina Warren  (00:13:10):
So they don't need CES. Right. So like Sam, like when all the big, you know, will start like pulling out of CES, like it, it made the show different and it made it worse in some ways. But then like, I think that the, the beauty of it was like, okay, well now we can just focus on the really weird stuff that you might not ever see. Or maybe you will, but, but like, this is why else are you gonna show up at this? Why else are you gonna spend five days in Las Vegas? If you don't have to, unless you can look at, at the really weird stuff. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
Yeah. Okay. I guess, I mean, if you, if somebody hit you in this BMW, what's cool. Is the E ink display would actually show where you got hit. There'd be a nice E splash. That would be nice.

Rich DeMuro (00:13:47):
Yeah. It would all be like that. Like when you break like an LCD screen, you know, it's all like the best up. You'd like just what you want. That's I hit that. Yeah. But this car they said, number one, that there will be color changing cars in the future. I know that's just black and white right now, but well Ian

Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
Can only do gray scale, so that's all it can do. Yeah. For

Rich DeMuro (00:14:04):
Now. Yeah. For now, for now. But they working

Leo Laporte (00:14:07):
On the car, I dream of a day that all mankind will have color changing cars in color. That will be, but

Rich DeMuro (00:14:13):
Here's okay. Here's a couple of real world examples. Okay. Let's say you now, here's where it gets kind of weird. Like if you're driving dominoes on the weekend, right. You know how to put those little things on the top, so you could have your car say dominoes on the side. Now it wouldn't be a BMW. Perhaps it would be.

Leo Laporte (00:14:29):
So I got a magnet or if you're an Uber, I have to drive for Dominos Uber driver. I just put the magnet on the top or I put the Uber we're in the window. I mean yeah.

Rich DeMuro (00:14:39):
In the future, you won't have to in the future

Ashley Esqueda (00:14:40):
Or you're autonomous. Okay. So here's another example. So you have an autonomous vehicle system in like a metropolitan city. You know why

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
They're gonna do this, pick you up and it has your name on it. No, no, no. And they just give in yep. Ads. It's all about putting ads. Absolutely.

Rich DeMuro (00:14:55):
What, if you all, if you could have ads on your car, a company comes out and says, Hey, we'll pay you for the ads that we've bought. They've done that for years.

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
It hasn't worked. It's

Rich DeMuro (00:15:02):
Called a red. I, it never works, but it's never been to scale because it's so expensive. But if your car can display this on as a side note, you know, it can go from red to green, but it can also ads for

Leo Laporte (00:15:13):
How about this. This is the massage robot. Did you actually get a massage from this or no trained professionals are allowed to go under the wheels. I, I,

Rich DeMuro (00:15:22):
The people were worried about this girl's hair getting caught in those. Oh

Ashley Esqueda (00:15:25):
Yeah. I would be too. I would be terrified

Rich DeMuro (00:15:27):
About, could you imagine? And what if this thing went too hard and just literally crack your bones?

Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
It seems like, yeah, this is I feel like the humans can do a pretty good job. I don't do we really need robots to

Rich DeMuro (00:15:38):
Do this? No, again, here's, I, I am an optimistic tech person. Imagine you're at a, a restore you, me too, that you come off a long clean flight. And the last thing you wanna do is sit there with someone, whatever you go into this room, you pay the, you know, 10, whatever it is. And if you know a phone

Leo Laporte (00:15:54):
It's a $250,000 robot, that's massaging you. So it's,

Rich DeMuro (00:15:58):
It'll get, it's gonna be installed at like a, yeah, exactly. It'll be installed at like a resort. You know, it adapts to your body, by the way, if I'm not a

Christina Warren  (00:16:04):
Resort, I want a real

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Person. Yeah. I want a person. I'm sorry,

Rich DeMuro (00:16:08):
But this could be at like a holiday and Express's the worst amount.

Leo Laporte (00:16:11):
Well, here's,

Ashley Esqueda (00:16:11):
Okay's the use case. I think I can, I think I can argue this to rich, rich, rich, and I share an optimism of tech. Okay. So here's use cases. Here's what I imagine. The use cases. Yeah. We're a tech optimist. Okay. So I imagine a world in which you can very cheaply. Once these are a little bit more common, easier to create, you can, because one of the things that a lot of massage therapists experience when they're a longtime career person is a lot of repetitive motion strain. And so it's, it's hard. Oh, it's hard. I know

Leo Laporte (00:16:41):
It's really hard on their body. I know. It's very hard. I know that.

Ashley Esqueda (00:16:43):
And so I argue that the premium experience would be getting a massage from a human being. Yeah. And the non premium would be like, Hey, you spend 10 bucks, you get half an from this like robot. Yep. So it's, we have massage similar to like massage chairs at the mall, right? Yeah. So

Rich DeMuro (00:16:58):
Massage, very similar

Ashley Esqueda (00:16:59):
Experience. Yeah. Very

Rich DeMuro (00:17:00):
Similar. By the way, if your app is connected, you have like, what you like, you know? So if you like to concentrate on the backs of your legs or your back a certain way, it's all pre-programmed. So that this follows you around. Whether you're getting massage in, you know, one state or another or one facility, it's all the same.

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
It's so like, we have seen you before we will fix you. We,

Christina Warren  (00:17:20):
I was gonna say, I was like, I was gonna say on the one hand, I like that, like, I would go into one of those, you know, what do they call 'em the little express spas or whatever. I would like that. It would know that I like my shoulders worked on. But on the other hand, I'm also like, yeah. Do I really wanna express spa to have a

Leo Laporte (00:17:34):
Of my data? Look how empty look, how empty the floor is at CES. Just crazy. Tiny, tiny. This is your report on KTLA.

Ashley Esqueda (00:17:42):
Hey, look, there's where our booth is. Normally. Yeah. Normally seen

Leo Laporte (00:17:45):
It. Yes. I was.

Rich DeMuro (00:17:47):
That's where I did. I did that in your Omaha. Ashley. Oh, I was looking for Bonnie

Leo Laporte (00:17:51):
Gannon. So this is one of the things that got a lot of attention. I'm sure. She'd say hi, it's a robot with expressions,

Ashley Esqueda (00:17:55):
Amika. It's

Leo Laporte (00:17:56):
Amika Amika. The talking robot is this real product or again, another kind of concept engine.

Rich DeMuro (00:18:05):
I think I thought it was I think there's a person and behind the booths, they would not confirm that to, oh, you're kidding me.

Leo Laporte (00:18:11):
It's not even real. It's fake. Wow.

Ashley Esqueda (00:18:14):
So,

Rich DeMuro (00:18:15):
So it's no way with the, with the answers that they were giving, there is no way that a

Leo Laporte (00:18:20):
Oh, so she would ask her a question and she would talk to you. Oh

Rich DeMuro (00:18:23):
Yeah. And it was just impossible for a AI to come up with the answers that they came up with that quick and that fluidly can I, I think the

Leo Laporte (00:18:30):
Movements, would you mind if I turn on your sound? I don't want to get in trouble with K T a

Rich DeMuro (00:18:36):
Oh, I, I don't think they care. Okay. You can tell the robot is very fluid in its movements and also its expression. Can you show us your range of motion?

Speaker 5 (00:18:45):
Absolutely. I would love

Leo Laporte (00:18:47):
To, oh, that's a human for crying out out. This is just, this is one of the things I really hate about

Rich DeMuro (00:18:56):
CES are a lot of people interested in you at the show this year,

Speaker 5 (00:19:00):
Humans are very fascinated in me. It is quite wonderful to see Aika can

Leo Laporte (00:19:06):
Recognize expression. I like, I like how she pretends to think for just nanosecond. Yeah. Yeah. Let me process your question. Human. Oh yeah. Or let me overhear this through the, the latency, you know, of the microphone. Yeah. So I maybe, maybe she doesn't have to,

Ashley Esqueda (00:19:23):
I know that I know that there's an X prize for the, for an avatar, like a true human avatar, a robot where you can control it remotely. And like, you know, do, there's like, I think five activities that require, like you have to check all those boxes. And years ago I got to control a robot, like using a headset and like other stuff. And I like shaking people's hands and stuff. And that was very weird. And so I could see where that would be like this, but that seems very not trans. Like they weren't just like, oh yeah, this is an avatar where you can like control a robot for remotely

Leo Laporte (00:19:55):
Or whatever. I do have to ask you rich, did you go in the boring tunnel?

Rich DeMuro (00:20:00):
I did. Yes. I, this is what I'm saying. I Leo, when I say that Vegas was like an open playground, I did everything. There's nothing.

Ashley Esqueda (00:20:10):
There was no line. There was no line. This was the

Rich DeMuro (00:20:12):
Best about the boring, the boring tunnel. Okay. So we go in there, I'm talking, we shop for like this. We

Leo Laporte (00:20:18):
Should explain. I'm sure everybody knows, but this is Elon. Musk's boring company. They bore a hole. You may have heard of subways. No, this isn't quite like that. There's no escape route. There's no extra tunnel on the side. You're just driving Teslas down a hole on the, the Vegas center. Go ahead. Now you can explain how cool this was.

Rich DeMuro (00:20:37):
So we, so these are built 40 feet under the ground. And they, the idea was that this would be built all under Las Vegas. They started with just the south wing of the convention center to the, all the way to the west wing. And so it's basically a 1.7 mile. It's two tunnels. And by the

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
Way, there's already a monorail above it, but go ahead. Keep going. Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

Rich DeMuro (00:20:58):
Yeah. So well this was a proof of concept and they did do it very quickly with only money that they got from the hotels, like the hotel associate, you know, you hotel. And there's like a thousand fees for being in Vegas in addition to the resort fee. But anyway, they built it and they put, Tesla's supposed to be autonomous. The Teslas can't be autonomous because the, this was the best. The drivers will tell you anything, by the way. So <laugh>, they were telling us like the inside scoop of how the cars, since the walls are so close to the sides of the cars, the self-driving system was nuts because if you that's, you got a Tesla,

Leo Laporte (00:21:30):
So you have to manually drive it.

Ashley Esqueda (00:21:32):
The proximity alarms proximity. Yeah, yeah,

Rich DeMuro (00:21:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
Beep beep

Rich DeMuro (00:21:36):
That's good. Yeah. So they're gonna have to write special software for these cars that just allow them to go through this tunnel. Yeah. But the tunnel was cool. It remind me, I grew up in New Jersey going to the Lincoln tunnel, you know, to New York city. You know, that's,

Leo Laporte (00:21:49):
Cool's, that's fun. That's a fun drive. I've done that. Yeah. It's,

Rich DeMuro (00:21:51):
It's a big tunnel with a lot, like you said, safety and this and that. This has none of that. None of that. It just has cars that go underground.

Leo Laporte (00:21:59):
Lith I on batteries that can explode. Right. And what the hell? Let's go ahead and try it at

Rich DeMuro (00:22:04):
<Laugh>. But here was the best part of the whole tunnel situation. So we went down there, shot for like three hours, took like a hundred rides one day. And then we go back the next day just to do like a couple, like we call 'em raps, you know, like the intro. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:22:17):
Serious. You spent a lot of time in there,

Rich DeMuro (00:22:19):
But the best part was the next day we go down there like, oh sir, sorry, you can't film down here.

Leo Laporte (00:22:23):
Watch you just spent a few days me. Huh?

Rich DeMuro (00:22:26):
All day yesterday filming like, no, no, no. Orders from up above no filming. We're like okay, well yesterday your car drivers were telling, giving us interviews and all, anyway, they had like a big, was

Leo Laporte (00:22:37):
That because there was a traffic jam. Oh, that cuz there was a traffic jam. Wasn't there

Ashley Esqueda (00:22:41):
At one point. Yeah. Well I see those pop up every now and again on Twitter where they're like, oh yeah, well it's like, okay. So here's what it is. It's a tunnel and dead instead of a subway. It's got, you could put cars through it.

Leo Laporte (00:22:51):
Yeah. We invented the subway tunnel, you know like a couple hundred years ago.

Ashley Esqueda (00:22:55):
No, no. All these specific kinds of cars can go in. Yeah. That's it. I just, it's such

Leo Laporte (00:23:00):
A weird, this looks to me like a very scary Disney ride, to be honest

Rich DeMuro (00:23:04):
With that's what it felt like. It felt like a Disney ride.

Ashley Esqueda (00:23:07):
It's really cool to go through it. I went through it when it opened bend. Yeah. And and it was, it is fun. I

Leo Laporte (00:23:12):
Would do it. I would also it's like, I'd take my chances. It's

Rich DeMuro (00:23:15):
A, okay. Hold on. Look at, look at the tunnel right now. You see how it's affected with like those lines. It looks like a million cars have crashed into the wall. I why they decided to use that. They look

Leo Laporte (00:23:25):
Like scrapes. They do look like scrapes. Yeah. Why they do that? They're not they're painted there. That's not. That's just to make you so, so that's,

Ashley Esqueda (00:23:31):
That's intentional.

Leo Laporte (00:23:32):
That's weird. Yeah. To make you look like you're moving faster is what that is. If it were just white, you would just feel like you were getting re

Rich DeMuro (00:23:41):
That's

Ashley Esqueda (00:23:42):
True. I get that. But, but I, but I still feel like it it's the

Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
First canal is what it is and they don't

Ashley Esqueda (00:23:48):
Wrap the whole thing in L E D and like do it like

Leo Laporte (00:23:50):
Yeah. Make it it fun. Come on. Like Fremont

Ashley Esqueda (00:23:53):
Street. Come on. Your is,

Leo Laporte (00:23:55):
It is kinda cool. This cool though. This it is kind cool. Now you're up. Cool. Yeah. Now that would've been a long walk, but they're not, they're not autonomous. Somebody's driving the whole time. <Affirmative>

Rich DeMuro (00:24:05):
Yeah. Somebody is driving and they, they go 40. They go 30 miles on the, on the curves and then 40 miles on the straightaway. Although if you get a good driver, they'll go a little faster than that.

Leo Laporte (00:24:14):
<Laugh> so they have, they actually allowed to they're like you could say step on it. I'm in a hurry. Oh yeah. Can you say follow that Tesla?

Rich DeMuro (00:24:23):
It's actually it's it's very confusing down there. I had a driver who didn't know the lay of the land. Cause I guess they hired a bunch of them and they was like making all these UTURN. No, no,

Leo Laporte (00:24:34):
You can't make UTURN in the tunnel. It's no UTURN in the tunnel on was confused.

Rich DeMuro (00:24:40):
It's a, I that's, I didn't wanna question it, but it was

Leo Laporte (00:24:46):
That reminds me of the Austin power scene where he is trying to turn the turn, the golf cart around in the tunnel. 13

Ashley Esqueda (00:24:53):
Point turn, he's doing a 13 point

Rich DeMuro (00:24:54):
Turn in there. I thought it was being punked because he, he literally did a, he, we didn't do, we did a UE in the main area.

Leo Laporte (00:25:01):
Can't do it there. Obvious. Can't do the tunnel

Rich DeMuro (00:25:03):
Tunnel. Yeah. But I was like, dude, what, what? Wait, there's only like literally two tunnels here. Like how do you not know which way is which it

Leo Laporte (00:25:10):
Seems, I mean, look, it's cool. I narrow on the ground, but how many, how much did it cost? It must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to dig that to

Rich DeMuro (00:25:17):
I think it was 47 million and it took, it

Leo Laporte (00:25:19):
Took a couple years. I remember they've been digging it for a long time. No,

Rich DeMuro (00:25:22):
No. It was less than a year. A year. And it was, was special. Yes. Yes. And that they show that I show that at the end of my video, it looks like something that fell out of the sky, like an alien spaceship. I'm not kidding. It's this huge. You saw it Ashley. Right? The

Ashley Esqueda (00:25:36):
Like, yeah. Yeah. At the event in in, at the, was it at SpaceX where they did that a big event where they said, oh yeah, here's the, it was when they initially said, here's the drill that we're gonna use to like drill all these holes. And then it's much faster than a snail or something like that. They were like really excited about it. This was

Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
Like years ago. I am just 

Ashley Esqueda (00:25:54):
Glad he's a wild machine. Pretty incredible.

Leo Laporte (00:25:56):
I am just glad that Elon takes a lot of drugs because as a result unlike anybody else in the world, he is willing to do crazy things. You, you saw the what, he's, what he's building to catch the Starship. The Starship is, is gonna land in. They call him chopsticks because Elon says it's, it's just like in the yeah, like karate kid where he catches a fly with chopstick, the, the rocket's gonna land and the Crane's gonna catch it and then it's gonna take it and it's gonna reposition it for the next flight.

Ashley Esqueda (00:26:34):
Okay. That's I like to call that a Pince or maneuver.

Leo Laporte (00:26:37):
That's a, that's literally a pier maneuver. They call him the chopstick. If he didn't take serious psychedelics, you think he would've imagined this? I mean, this is not, we need people

Rich DeMuro (00:26:47):
Like this. This I think is what I

Leo Laporte (00:26:48):
Love. Talk about out of the box.

Rich DeMuro (00:26:51):
Yeah. Like what's his name? Bezos. I mean, look, the guy is like, now he's just like on these islands, he's doing all these. Like he's just like working out all day. He

Leo Laporte (00:26:59):
Turned into pit bull is what has happened. Right. He's on the

Ashley Esqueda (00:27:02):
MCU superhero diet. He's like getting swollen. Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (00:27:06):
I's like, I'm doing Bulletproof for breakfast.

Leo Laporte (00:27:07):
Meanwhile, Elon's looking more and more like a potato, but he's got great ideas.

Rich DeMuro (00:27:13):
He's like, have you bought my

Ashley Esqueda (00:27:14):
Latest, but that has great ideas or is he just finding people who are really good at this?

Leo Laporte (00:27:18):
I mean, obviously, I mean, that's the point. Elon's not doing the engineering, but I do. No, I do feel said I could see him at a meeting going, what if we had chopstick? <Laugh>

Ashley Esqueda (00:27:28):
What catch he's eating. Okay. Let's let's this is exactly what happened. He's eating Flaman, hot Cheetos out of a bag with chop, the chopstick with chopstick. Yep. And he was like,

Leo Laporte (00:27:37):
I got it. I have, and I hope this is what I want. I had a producer on TV who, well catch the space shuttle who an invention. She really wanted to market this. I think it never happened. Cuz this was years ago called Cheeto gloves that you would put on before eating and then you wouldn't have orange hands, obviously a spend a lot of time eating Cheetos. You know

Rich DeMuro (00:27:56):
That, you know that that's the entire thing about Cheetos. The kids they love, they actually put orange a certain amount of that stuff. They love to have that. If it, if it didn't leave that residue, people stop eating em.

Ashley Esqueda (00:28:07):
Yeah. No, but you know, but also one of the hottest pictures I've ever seen of someone eating food was Oscar, Isaac eating, flaming hot Cheetos with a pair of chopsticks. So I'm just saying,

Rich DeMuro (00:28:19):
Should I like look that up now? Cause I am

Leo Laporte (00:28:21):
Absolutely Googling that right now is everybody else. Oh

Rich DeMuro (00:28:25):
My gosh. Gosh Ashley, you did it

Leo Laporte (00:28:27):
Again. Oscar Isaac explains viral video of him eating chops. Oh yeah. No

Ashley Esqueda (00:28:33):
I I'm looking at this now. This is actually pretty hot. I'm not gonna lie. I am. I I'm not wrong. No, you're not at all. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:28:41):
Hot. And look how rich, by the way, I like it.

Ashley Esqueda (00:28:43):
Look at that is a man who is he? That's ingenuity right there. That's like, that's how ingenuity. That's someone who gets

Leo Laporte (00:28:50):
Creative. Who can I just one thing in all aspects. Can I just one thing, can I ask you who's Oscar. Isaac.

Ashley Esqueda (00:28:57):
Oh no. Leo, Leo. Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:29:01):
Did I tell you about that time? I met Thomas Alva. Edison. All right. I

Rich DeMuro (00:29:06):
Asked her at the world. I dunno who this guy is here. You don't don't worry. No,

Ashley Esqueda (00:29:11):
God okay. You don't,

Rich DeMuro (00:29:13):
Know's gonna leave you. But then I, you

Ashley Esqueda (00:29:15):
Don't, you've never seen a star war.

Leo Laporte (00:29:17):
I've seen a star war war. Is he a star war? Who is?

Ashley Esqueda (00:29:22):
He's the star of the freaking second trilogy. He's the leader of house of tradies in do really?

Leo Laporte (00:29:29):
Yeah. Oh, I didn't recognize him. You know, the problem is he's he's wearing a Toke and I didn't recognize him in the Toke. Oh, okay. And the mustache.

Rich DeMuro (00:29:38):
Yeah. If you look at him with his real

Leo Laporte (00:29:40):
Pictures exactly. Here he is in his kitchen, eating Cheetos. He's move night. I didn't recognize

Ashley Esqueda (00:29:45):
Him. Wow. So I do kind. I'm amazing, Christina and I are, this is now officially this week in Oscar. Isaac. We're

Rich DeMuro (00:29:52):
Changing the name. Oh, he in Adams family too. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:29:55):
So miss not a favorite of mine. I've never seen that movie. What? I mean, I'm gonna confess I'm big star wars fan either. Is he Doune though? Leo? I did. I loved Doune. What is he? He he's in do he's Theto of tradies. He's he? He's

Ashley Esqueda (00:30:07):
He's the leader of house

Leo Laporte (00:30:08):
Of tradies. He's Lito. Okay. Yeah. Duke Lito. Yep. All right. I just, you know,

Rich DeMuro (00:30:16):
By the way, the things you,

Ashley Esqueda (00:30:17):
He looks super different. I, I will give you that he looks super D picture, then he doesn't 100%. Totally fair.

Rich DeMuro (00:30:22):
Thank you. That, that must have been it <laugh> is

Leo Laporte (00:30:24):
This Christina Warren eating chopstick, eating hot Cheetos with chopstick or is that just my imagination?

Christina Warren  (00:30:31):
That's just that is not me, but that looks like that could be me. Could be you. That could be me. That is not me. I wish it was. But that actually on any

Ashley Esqueda (00:30:38):
Given Sunday,

Christina Warren  (00:30:40):
Honestly, no, I mean on the beanie, the whole thing that could completely be me. It

Ashley Esqueda (00:30:44):
Could be you it's a

Leo Laporte (00:30:45):
Vibe. That's right. I wanna take a little break. I just wanna, I don't, I don't wanna press my opinion here, but it feels a little bit like CES has become and actually not become, it has been for a long time. Kind of mostly just get, get G gadgets and gimmicks.

Christina Warren  (00:31:03):
Yeah. All the big companies left. So it's cars, it's a car show and it's like a weird gadget show. Its it's

Leo Laporte (00:31:08):
A little gimmicky. Yeah. Completely. All right.

Ashley Esqueda (00:31:11):
That's fun TVs. Don't forget TVs. Cuz I TV are big. Have personally I, I like that is actually my favorite part.

Leo Laporte (00:31:16):
Oh man. I love that part where you walk in the main doors and there's LG and they've got the video water. How was the video waterfall this year? Rich derro

Rich DeMuro (00:31:25):
Leo L G's booth was actually empty a hundred percent. So if you look, I'm trying to find my tweet. I'm envious. It's it's unbelievable. It's just, they did, I guess they didn't know if they were gonna go to the show or not until the end so they didn't plan it. And so it's literally just, it was plywood and then a bunch of Q our coats that you would scan, it was like a virtual booth and it was like the biggest letdown. It was huge. I mean, it was a huge area when you first walked. Yeah. Cause it's

Ashley Esqueda (00:31:50):
A huge footprint. It's massive square footage that they take up every day.

Christina Warren  (00:31:53):
Yeah. I was gonna say, I was, I was gonna say like they pay so much money for that. I mean, that was just a complete write off for them. I'm sure that they were just like, all right. Oh man, we're just writing. We are just writing all of this off and we are not going. And

Ashley Esqueda (00:32:04):
I feel the worst for the small companies that pay a lot of money to be there and just man, they got hoed. Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (00:32:12):
Can I tell you about a startup that I saw that was so wild and crazy that you could tell me what you think. I know you gotta go to commercial, but can I just do this real quick? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:32:20):
This isn't this isn't KTLA we go to commercial when wet.

Rich DeMuro (00:32:24):
Well, I would've been off like, like 20 minutes. Yeah. Like two minutes. I know.

Leo Laporte (00:32:29):
I, I don't believe

Rich DeMuro (00:32:29):
Me. I know. Yeah. so, okay. It's a, it's a startup called halo car. Have you heard of this? No. Okay. So it's a ride sharing startup and they, they bring a car to your house. Just like kind of remember zip car where you would go and you'd get a car and you'd unlock it with your phone and like use it. I dunno if you, in New York city it was big. Yeah, but anyway, this is a ride sharing startup where they deliver the car to your house and then you drive the car. But how they're delivering the car to your house is with a guy who is driving the car. Autonom you know, like using like a video game controller from an office building. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:33:04):
So they pretty cool the car too, right?

Rich DeMuro (00:33:05):
Well, this is, I don't know. What do, what is this video? I don't, this is

Leo Laporte (00:33:08):
Halo. Innerspace autonomous luxury car CES. 20, 22. Could there be two halos?

Rich DeMuro (00:33:13):
No, there's this

Leo Laporte (00:33:14):
It's a, this one's from GM. Oh my God. That's a collision. That's a GM.

Ashley Esqueda (00:33:17):
That's a, that's a up car from GM.

Rich DeMuro (00:33:19):
From Cadillac. Yeah. it's oh my, I don't know how you find tweets, but it's on my Twitter. It's how you, you

Ashley Esqueda (00:33:25):
Can search your Twitter, your Twitter. Look, you can search your Twitter now. You

Rich DeMuro (00:33:29):
Know that? I know, but not from the website though. How does the Twitter work? Think it's only on mobile.

Leo Laporte (00:33:34):
Rich. If I write, if I write your name rich to me and I write halo, let's see what I could find here. No results. I Google

Rich DeMuro (00:33:45):
Try rich on tech halo car.

Leo Laporte (00:33:48):
<Laugh> no, no. I,

Rich DeMuro (00:33:48):
I think we know and I wish there's a way to me to send you a link. But anyway, so they, this guy is driving, using like a standard like video game rig from an office building and he drops the car off to your house and then you just drive it regularly. And then when you, he will pick it up and it's, it's driving itself through the streets. Like is it this without a driver?

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Halo is my favorite ice cream.

Rich DeMuro (00:34:07):
Oh gosh. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:34:11):
What is it rich? How do I just send you? How do I feel like your grandma? Oh my gosh. Nevermind. It doesn't matter. I believe you really do. I'm

Rich DeMuro (00:34:21):
Sure it was. I'm not kidding. You gotta see this guy driving it. It's just so wild that it's like, oh my gosh, how is this? So is

Leo Laporte (00:34:27):
It on it's on your Twitter feed? I'm gonna find it.

Rich DeMuro (00:34:30):
I'll send. The problem is you I'll

Leo Laporte (00:34:31):
Link you. You tweet too much. It's gonna happen if you didn't

Rich DeMuro (00:34:34):
Tweet so way

Leo Laporte (00:34:34):
Too much, I could find it. I'm going through your Twitter feed was on.

Rich DeMuro (00:34:38):
It,

Ashley Esqueda (00:34:38):
I found it.

Leo Laporte (00:34:39):
I found it. I found it. Well do me any good?

Ashley Esqueda (00:34:42):
I know I'm gonna send the link. I'm gonna send the link. Share

Rich DeMuro (00:34:44):
Your screen.

Ashley Esqueda (00:34:47):
Yeah. That'll make the pre layout here.

Leo Laporte (00:34:50):
Here's is this

Ashley Esqueda (00:34:51):
Sending it to everyone in the zoom chat? It's right

Rich DeMuro (00:34:53):
There. Are you saying, share my screen and I,

Leo Laporte (00:34:56):
I get bad news for you. I am not in the zoom chat. In fact. No, one's in the zoom chat. You're all alone in your own zoom check. Yeah. Your own little zoom

Rich DeMuro (00:35:04):
Way. Is this it own private Idaho?

Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
Is this it rich? I found this on your Twitter. Is that it? January 7th.

Rich DeMuro (00:35:09):
Keep scrolling. Keep January, keep, keep scrolling. You gotta go to January

Leo Laporte (00:35:12):
Seven. No joke. January 7th. No joke. This

Ashley Esqueda (00:35:15):
SUV is, is being driven remotely from this gaming style rig man.

Rich DeMuro (00:35:19):
And the best way to do it is you have to it's right here. Gotta hit media first. So get past all this. Oh, if I go

Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
To media. Yeah. This is teaching Leo. How to use the Twitter.

Ashley Esqueda (00:35:30):
It's come a long way since Edison. Leo

Leo Laporte (00:35:32):
Has come a long way. If, if, if Thomas, Ooh, look at

Rich DeMuro (00:35:35):
That. Oh, that was a good dessert. Keep going over your

Ashley Esqueda (00:35:37):
Close. It's January 8th. Keep going.

Leo Laporte (00:35:39):
<Laugh> here. Here I am an a Tesla charger here I am at the California state line. This is like Rich's home slideshow. Here I am in front of the, I am at the casino in front of the casino casino. Here I here it here. It is here

Rich DeMuro (00:35:53):
It is. I found it. There it is. Well, I that's that's one shot.

Leo Laporte (00:35:57):
How boring is that? That's boring. These

Rich DeMuro (00:35:58):
Are the self-driving race. You scroll down a little

Leo Laporte (00:36:00):
Bit down, down. Oh, here's the guy driving. It's one lower.

Ashley Esqueda (00:36:03):
That's the guy driving. There's the video

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
One lower. Aren't you glad this is not your job. He looks so bored. All right, here we go. Okay. So there's

Rich DeMuro (00:36:13):
The car driving. Wait,

Leo Laporte (00:36:14):
When do they put a racetrack in, at the Las Vegas convention center? That's the first. This is at the

Rich DeMuro (00:36:17):
Speedway, huh? Oh, wow.

Leo Laporte (00:36:18):
Yeah, the Speedway.

Rich DeMuro (00:36:20):
Yep. Yep. They did. Self-Driving race cars.

Leo Laporte (00:36:23):
So that's not so hard because it's really just going in a circle.

Rich DeMuro (00:36:26):
Well, yeah, but he's gonna be doing it on, on city streets in Las. Vegas's where it's launching this year. That's

Ashley Esqueda (00:36:32):
So wild to me. Isn't that? Across the car off. And then you drive it around and then it's like, he drives it to home base.

Rich DeMuro (00:36:38):
Right? Exactly. So it like, it's like a, I mean, it's brilliant and I love it. I agree.

Ashley Esqueda (00:36:44):
I'm loving this gaming. I'm loving this

Leo Laporte (00:36:45):
Driving. R I guess if, yeah, if you play Forza, you'd be right at home. I was

Christina Warren  (00:36:49):
Like, I, I have my my, my boss's boss has spent a significant amount of money, like having a, a racing rig in his else, you know, with like all the monitoring,

Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
Spending all that good Microsoft money on something. Well,

Christina Warren  (00:37:02):
Yeah. I mean, he, he he's a CBP, so yeah. So, you know, but he has like, you know, the whole like system

Leo Laporte (00:37:08):
And pedals and shifts and,

Christina Warren  (00:37:10):
And yeah. But imagine if you had that, but you're actually controlling a car, like people would pay for that opportunity. Would they

Rich DeMuro (00:37:16):
Work from home? It is the new

Leo Laporte (00:37:18):
Generation from

Rich DeMuro (00:37:19):
Kids. Yeah. That literally are like, okay, I'm trained on this. I know how to use it. And now I have a job from my house that I can deliver these cars to people. I mean, it's, it's, this is the kind of stuff that I do think is just mind boggling. When this guy was explaining me this startup, I, my eyes just blazed over. I'm like, I thought Zipcar and Uber were cool. And this is like, Ooh, thoughts. It's

Christina Warren  (00:37:39):
Wild. Well, what's crazy to me. I can't drive a real car, but I could drive like one of those, like, that's, that's the, that's the thing to me. Like, like driving actual cars gives me massive anxiety, but I'm very good at like,

Leo Laporte (00:37:50):
So this way, if you hit somebody, you're not really there, but then also

Ashley Esqueda (00:37:53):
Like you driving

Rich DeMuro (00:37:54):
A car, you have to sleep.

Ashley Esqueda (00:37:55):
See massive anxiety. So I don't know how

Christina Warren  (00:37:57):
That even out I was gonna say, I mean, I mean, well, look, this is why we just need the, the hit

Leo Laporte (00:38:01):
Reboot hit reboot. I think I hit somebody.

Christina Warren  (00:38:04):
We just need the self-driving thing to be like a real thing. And then I, no one has to worry at all. I'm just saying like in car.

Leo Laporte (00:38:09):
Yeah. I've seen you play

Rich DeMuro (00:38:11):
S all the videos. I am not confident.

Christina Warren  (00:38:15):
Fair, fair. I do hit a lot of, a lot of people in the grip that

Leo Laporte (00:38:19):
Autos too. We will have more of rich Christina and Ashley teach Leo how to use Twitter coming up, but first a word from our sponsor. It's great to have you three. This makes me, this makes my life very easy. I basically just sit back and let you guys talk. <Laugh> I'll find another topic here and we can talk about that too. Ashley ske, CNET. Great to see you. It's been a while you are on fleet. Do the kids still say that you are on fleet today? I'm not a kid. I don't know. I don't know. Mm-Hmm no, you look great. Sling is that that's a Paris Hilton thing. Heli. I stand you. I understand that. Something's I'm sliding. I'm standing with the SLI also. Christina Warren, Phil girl, are you wanna now call it digital media girl or something like that? Maybe. No, it's too late, too late.

Leo Laporte (00:39:04):
It's too late. It's too late. <Laugh> it's too late, baby. <Laugh> it's too late and rich tomorrow from KT, L a rich on tech.tv. Our show today brought to you by speaking of TV, it pro TV. We know if you watch, you know, our shows, you probably have somewhat of an interest in technology. Maybe you're a tech enthusiast. Have you ever thought about working in it? Boy, it's a great time to be in it. There's a huge demand for it. Experts, especially in security, networking, even desktop support. Now you don't have to worry about how, how to get started or where to get started. You can just go straight to our sponsor. It pro T V great guys, and gals, of course, who have the knowledge and the information and the courses to get you the certificates you need to get into the it world to make yourself more desirable to future employers.

Leo Laporte (00:39:53):
And if you're a business, you're gonna love it. OT for enterprise, a great way to keep your it team up to date, up to snuff. And of course, if you're already in it, you need to keep those certs up to date. You need to get new skills. It pro TVs great for that. This month is getting started in it. Month at it pro TV. They've been doing this for the last six months. They've had to theme months. You'll have a great start to the new year. If you wanna get into it, check out the following courses to get you started. Compt it pro TV's official video partner of compt. They've got the ITF plus and the compt a plus search Linux essentials, Microsoft 365 fundamentals. That's Ms. 900 hands on PC build. We used to do that on tech TV. That's fun from the bench.

Leo Laporte (00:40:38):
That's part of the, from the bench series, Cisco CCT routing and switching 100, 4 90 apple certified support professional, get that ACS P cert. And of course, it's up to date with Mac O S 11 because the trainers are great. They're experts in the field who also are so enthusiastic, so engaged that you'll get engaged to they call 'em EDU entertainers. They're enthusiastic. They make it entertaining. Interesting and fun. All the courses are chunked up into 20 to 30 minute increments, which makes it great for, you know, watching one during lunch, when you get a moment. And of course, for us, with those of us with short attention spans also perfect. They are constantly now new content because there always is new content, new versions of the exams, new versions of the software, new software, new certs. That's why they've got seven studios recording Monday through Friday, all day 5,800 hours of on demand content.

Leo Laporte (00:41:32):
That's updated within 24 hours from studio to library, and you have practice tests and virtual labs. So you can practice for the exams before you take the exam. And the monthly webinars are fantastic. I'm just a big fan. And I know you will be too. If you want to break into the world of it, get the introduction you need with ITProTV, go to itpro.tv/twit for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions. As long as you stay active forever, if you stay active forever, that's incredible. Use the offer code twi30 itpro.tv slash TWIT offer code TWIT three, zero for an additional 30% off. As long as you stay active it pro TV builder, expand your IT career and enjoy the journey with the best people in the business. ITProTV. Thank you, Tim and Don and the gang. We really appreciate we've been with you guys since the very beginning ITProTV. Gosh, I wish CES were all year long. It was so much fun talking about that. I get your point now. It's, it's interesting, right? It's fun. It's fun. It's fun

Ashley Esqueda (00:42:39):
To

Leo Laporte (00:42:39):
Us. No, E three this year, they they just called it off online only.

Ashley Esqueda (00:42:45):
I don't know Leo. I like, okay. So I have some friends, I have some friends who have friends and

Leo Laporte (00:42:53):
It's a friend named bananas.

Ashley Esqueda (00:42:55):
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And he, so I have heard yes, that they actually pulled out of their commitment to the ESA pulled out of their commitment to the convention center space in November. Yeah. Oh, they

Leo Laporte (00:43:11):
Didn't. They, they planned this months ago,

Ashley Esqueda (00:43:13):
November Uhhuh. And, and so that there was actually, maybe even before Ohn kind of picked up and I think it was just a good reason for them to say, Hey, we're gonna go virtual again. I think I'm a little, like, I don't know. I, now I'm only speculating, but I can only guess that maybe like, there wasn't a lot of interest. And I, I think that because Sony pulled out of it, it's sort of like CES, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so Sony it's worse

Leo Laporte (00:43:37):
Because there's

Ashley Esqueda (00:43:38):
The once Google left right. In gaming. It's like, it becomes a different show. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:43):
I mean, CES, you've got a lot of other stuff, but in gaming, it's the big boys. Aren't if they're not there. Well

Ashley Esqueda (00:43:48):
There's, and, and they haven't for a long time, like, like when Sony pulled out, Nintendo's never really been part of it. So it's been dying even before. COVID right. So you think this, like, I remember, I think the last time Nintendo did an in-person press conference, like that wasn't an Nintendo direct was back when the, when the, we was happening, which was, I was the last think of the wild, I think was the last game that I remember covering their, the, well they had they've had, they have booths, like they've had booths. Yeah. They do their, yeah. But the, but the actual press conference, they used to

Leo Laporte (00:44:20):
Do events. All three of big guys used

Ashley Esqueda (00:44:22):
To dos used do events in a theater mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I remember that for things like later we like all of the later we stuff and maybe early WEU, but that's about it. Like, I don't

Christina Warren  (00:44:33):
Think the WEU was not there. I remember that the WEU was not there cuz they had a separate event and they had even, even at CES the year the WEU was out, they show it to me in a hotel room that was not part of CES cuz they didn't wanna get the CEA, any money at all. And then that, that E three, because they don't need to, there, they don't don't

Ashley Esqueda (00:44:51):
Like Sony doesn't need to either right.

Leo Laporte (00:44:53):
Badly for E three. I mean CES went on. Oh yeah. But it sounds like maybe, and I know CES will be here next year, but you think E three? Maybe not.

Christina Warren  (00:45:00):
No. I mean it's been dying for years.

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:03):
Yeah. And I think the problem is okay, so it's like a twofold problem. So what you have is you have a convention that used to be like ch like tight industry only and liars like me and Christina. So we used to have those, that group

Rich DeMuro (00:45:17):
Of people and the 16 year old mix pretend

Christina Warren  (00:45:20):
Industry in the 16 year old

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:21):
Liars. Absolutely. But overall like really, it was like not super of interest. And most of the gaming community was getting that information in magazines. They were getting at print media the next month after. Right. So now with streaming now with the ability to live stream a press conference with the ability to show off all of your games, just right there on YouTube or Twitch or wherever you want, whatever delivery platform you feel like putting it out on E three has become less and less relevant and, and less, is it the same, certainly less and less necessary to be there in person. Why

Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
Isn't that true for CES? I mean the same, you could say the same because to other

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:55):
CES is about gadgets and

Rich DeMuro (00:45:57):
Person. And there's so many companies, there's so many little companies and that's really what it's about. Like anyone can I call it bubbling up to the top? Like any company that goes to CES has the ability to, to win the show because it takes one journalist to find something cool to they blog about it. And then a thousand other people do the same thing. They go and find that like that

Leo Laporte (00:46:16):
Industry's much

Ashley Esqueda (00:46:17):
Narrow toothbrush. Yeah. Yeah. And, and also it's just, I so want that to worky of what it is. I know me too, never, my proxy of what

Leo Laporte (00:46:23):
It is. This is a crazy brush we should mention inherently. It's a full mouth brush. It's south guard

Rich DeMuro (00:46:29):
That you put in having it at the show for so long. It it's never gonna take off. Of course I have

Leo Laporte (00:46:35):
Forever. And you know, I know what the secret is at CES. You buy right inside the door at show stoppers or pep come. And one of the mm-hmm <affirmative> pre-show cause journalists are lazy. Not you rich, you covered it all. But most TV guys, they come in me.

Christina Warren  (00:46:48):
I was, I was lazy. Absolutely. They

Leo Laporte (00:46:49):
Go to show stoppers. The first thing they see, they do a bit and they go home. We're done. Yeah, we're done. Yeah. Get out almost invariably. The story of the show is the first thing in the door at show stoppers and that's it. Oh, it's like,

Rich DeMuro (00:47:01):
It's so it's it. But

Christina Warren  (00:47:03):
Also you packed, but with gaming too, to Ashley's point, you also, you have competition from like the more enthusiast consumer shows like PACS. Right? So if, if I was a big game company, like I would, and I, one of my enthusi there and you have Twitch con and you have these other things. So like E three as a concept, I think even before oon the big companies were gonna do their own events, the smaller companies who wanna kind of get the fan feedback have better spaces for that, that aren't encumbered by all the E threeness of E three, the trade and the, the, the, the trade aspect. Right. They don't even have to, to pretend with that. You know, because I would much rather go to PACS than E three, if I'm being honest. And then, you know it, it's kind of like, and then you have gaming has gone into other spaces. You have ComicCon, which is just this massive juggernaut of, of, of horror at this point. But is, you know, this massive thing where if you have a big property, I would much rather if I'm gonna put my money in, into a, a summer thing in, in Southern California, I would much rather look at doing something in ComicCon. What

Leo Laporte (00:48:01):
About FICON? Is that, does that have

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:03):
A well, VidCon is all like it's, it's TikTok creators, creators, creators. Yeah. Content creators, and the kids

Leo Laporte (00:48:09):
16 year olds love that one. So, oh yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:12):
I love, I love VidCon.

Rich DeMuro (00:48:14):
You wanna feel old? Go to VidCon. Oh, I, you wanna

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:16):
Feel really old? Go to

Rich DeMuro (00:48:17):
Vidcon. You feel like, like on your death font of information,

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:21):
It is a font of great information about creating content. Like so good. The seminars are amazing.

Rich DeMuro (00:48:26):
So just, yeah, that's very true. These people like to share their, you know, what they learn with other people. They're

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:32):
Very generous. And I like, I love it. It's it's a wonderful, it's really a wonderful conference. If you can block out the sound of 12 year olds screaming with like over, so that

Rich DeMuro (00:48:40):
You've never seen before in your life,

Leo Laporte (00:48:42):
Like Oscar, what's his name? Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:44):
Like Oscar, Isaac nobody

Rich DeMuro (00:48:46):
Saw star wars.

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:48):
So Christina mention, and like one of the things about, she mentioned PACS and ComicCon, and I think one of the things that happened with E three is there was a time when all of the exhibitors, because it was industry only and press, it was a place where they could show you behind closed doors games, or even on the show floor games that they weren't quite ready to show. Right? Every, everybody else mm-hmm <affirmative> that they, they wanted you to preview them. Now, the show is open to a small percentage, but still a percentage of the public, which, which now that means all of those games either get pulled from the pulled for me three, because they're not ready to show them yet. And they're not ready to, you know, be presentable to the public who doesn't really generally understand, you know, game development. And can't quite, you know, judge it properly or they may judge it more harshly based on what's presented to them. And then on top of that, journalists are now struggling to get time with games like that. And also all of the games on the floor, because some of these lines, as I'm sure rich and Christina can attest to. I remember when breath of the wild was on the show floor. It was a six hour wait and they closed the line off right in the morning. I mean, it's the whole, it would wrap around the whole entire booth. And then it was like, sorry, the line's closed for the

Leo Laporte (00:50:02):
Day, but doesn't that mean this is more popular than ever. And this is a huge and growing industry and it's vital. Isn't that all good for E three? Well, but

Ashley Esqueda (00:50:11):
Is not able to take advantage E three. It's good for video games, right? It's good for video games. It's not good for E three because, because of the advent and the boom of streaming and streaming games, you need a conference and being, you just don't need that conference. And this is why we've seen all of tech do exactly the same thing. We saw apple pull out of CES. We've seen Google, Microsoft, like all of these massive, hard to are like,

Leo Laporte (00:50:33):
We're just do it ourselves. It was 2019 when piano Reeves came on stage for cyberpunk 20, 77 and the game still, which was great. A piece of crap. Yeah. And <laugh>, and I'm sure I'll get it's better now. It's

Ashley Esqueda (00:50:44):
Gotten better.

Christina Warren  (00:50:45):
It's that game. It was,

Rich DeMuro (00:50:47):
It was not ready. There are new ways that tech companies can, can get the interest of the media and journalists and the public can. And that's really, I mean, you can go viral can go directly to those people. You can exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
You can go video games and we know this cause we try to do a video game show is it's a very fragmented arena. I mean, there's console gamers. There's PC game. There's casual gamer. There, there isn't, there's no monolithic video game industry. Not at all. Frankly, console gamers couldn't care less about anything else. So PC gamers look down their nose at console game. So it's so fragmented. I think maybe it is better just to go direct to those people. And those people are sophisticated enough. They're gonna watch your Twitch stream or YouTube

Ashley Esqueda (00:51:26):
Video, and they're gonna seek out. They're all already reading about your game. They're already seeking it out. They're already trying to find it. And they, yeah, they just don't need it. It's it's it is really an inherent thing of the ESA needs. These companies, the companies don't need them. Like they don't need them, but

Rich DeMuro (00:51:41):
There is, there is one thing as a person though, and I will say the and this is, you know, as a journalist. Yeah. I get to go to these things, but I, cuz a as you know, even growing up like there's any, there's this shared experience, right? Like a car show. Oh, CES E3. Like there is something as a nerd or someone who is magical group. Exactly. Like you wanna be there, you wanna be with just people that share your interests no matter does that mean

Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
The fan IES, taxis and, and, and comic. And those will become bigger rather than the industry trade shows. I mean, I think

Christina Warren  (00:52:13):
So like packs west happens at the Seattle convention center, usually Washington state convention center, whatever, like hat's up the street from my house and yeah, it does become like kind of that congregation of, of you have, you know, players and, and that's the whole thing with that is that, you know, they, they put it's like, ComicCon like the, the gamers are

Leo Laporte (00:52:31):
People like being with these channels. It's

Ashley Esqueda (00:52:33):
Fan facing it's

Leo Laporte (00:52:34):
Fan fan facing fan facing fan first. It's always fan fact. Think about it. Who were the real fans at E three? It was you 16 year olds lying to get in.

Ashley Esqueda (00:52:45):
It was a couple of dumies making fake business cards.

Leo Laporte (00:52:48):
That's who you make east trade shows for, not the industry. The industry doesn't need that.

Rich DeMuro (00:52:52):
You have to be fake to get in. You can't anyone real can't get in from now on <laugh> you have to have, you've got press credentials,

Leo Laporte (00:52:59):
Bylines. Let me see your clippings. Oh, you can't come in. No.

Ashley Esqueda (00:53:03):
Sent a lie.

Leo Laporte (00:53:04):
Yeah. Two truths in a lie before you can get in. I love it. All right. Well, I'm sad because actually I remember when E was started was a Gina Smith and electronic entertainment magazine that started E three way back in the day. And it was very exciting. And for a while, it's definitely served its purpose, but yeah, but yeah, with

Ashley Esqueda (00:53:23):
Streaming, it's just, it's it's a little bit,

Leo Laporte (00:53:25):
That's why I don't that's I still don't understand why there are any trade shows at all. I really thought COVID would just kill the trade show.

Ashley Esqueda (00:53:33):
I mean, cars, I understand.

Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
Cause you have to see the car. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (00:53:37):
See the car, drive the car, get a feel for the car. But also there's something to be said for like rich said, there's a it's there's a collective experience. That's

Leo Laporte (00:53:44):
Ance I mean, there's two different things. The fan shows. So that's fans and then there's media that goes to trade shows like CES and they like mm-hmm <affirmative> we like hanging out, but

Rich DeMuro (00:53:52):
Here's what, here's the dirty secret of all these, these these trade shows is that the, the best journalists are on the inside already. They've gone hands on with the stuff before

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
Trade shows, shows they're

Rich DeMuro (00:54:03):
Not learning anything. They don't even go to the boot. I mean, they, they get these things in closed rooms. I mean, so it's the whole, like, it's really fascinating when you kind of break it down. I, so Leo, I do understand what you're saying, but there is, I think the, the main thing is that these trade shows generate a lot of revenue and that's another part of this. And it's also a big group that has a lot of power. And so there's, well, look at lot of things going on he's

Leo Laporte (00:54:23):
This is the big business billionaire that CES built and his, or com built and his, his smart move was to get out of it before it started declining. 

Rich DeMuro (00:54:32):
Yeah. Did he sell, he sold it to CES right. To CTA or whatever. I can't

Leo Laporte (00:54:35):
Who bought Comdex, but Comdex went away, but he stole it for billions before it collapsed, became a very influential Republican donor and billionaire. He just died recently and yeah,

Ashley Esqueda (00:54:46):
Las Vegas, like he owned like half Vegas. He own

Leo Laporte (00:54:48):
Las Vegas, right? Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (00:54:49):
Oh, wow. Vegas. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:52):
The shells. Alright. How about, let's see, I wanna pick something that you guys will get as excited about. I don't know what it is though. A lot of

Ashley Esqueda (00:54:59):
This. Can we talk about iMessage? The Google IMEs? I wanna, okay, cool. I, I have opinions.

Rich DeMuro (00:55:05):
We talk about,

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:06):
First of all,

Leo Laporte (00:55:07):
I knew we would all have opinions. How many of you are green bubbles? How many of you're blue bubbles?

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:12):
I'm I'm a blue bubble,

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
All bubble bubbles, all you're all blue bubbles,

Rich DeMuro (00:55:15):
Obviously just cuz I'm forced into the ecosystem. I could never get out. You

Leo Laporte (00:55:18):
Wrote a book about it. You have to do it.

Rich DeMuro (00:55:21):
Okay. So honestly I switched to iPhone when I wrote the books and I, I have not gone back. It's been, so you're a

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:26):
Big old,

Rich DeMuro (00:55:29):
It's funny. My friend was interviewing me. No, no. I switched when I wrote the book because I was like, this is what I get the most questions and about. And honestly it was the best thing I ever did. And it, it like, I, I grew to love the iPhone so much in that time. Cause I was sort of an Android person and now I can't go back because there's so many things at the iPhone does, especially for production. But anyway, let's let's besides the point let's get, let's talk about street journals

Leo Laporte (00:55:53):
Began this conversation with, with a pure link bait, you know, it's one of those stories. We don't have anything to write about. I know I got it. Why apples? Imessages winning teens dread the green text bubble and they say the blue bubbles are bullying the green bubbles of poor people using Android devices. And you know, this is a silly article except then Google picks up on it says yeah, yeah. Apple. Why bullying? Yeah. You're pulling us with your, with your technical superiority and your, your better sales that's bad. And then I love Ron Amma's piece where he says we're let's, let's call it. Let's call. I don't wanna say a spade, a spade, but I don't know what else to say. Yeah, remember have I let's call it as I see it that the real pro is that Google ruined messaging for Android, please stop kicking our butts so badly. He writes after ruining Android messaging, Google says IMEs is too powerful Boohoo.

Ashley Esqueda (00:56:55):
Hey Leo, scroll down in that article and look for there is a link in that article that made me, I, I almost scream laughed where it's under the high adding, reaping what you so, and it's a 25,000 article,

Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
5,000 word article. Ron also wrote this

Ashley Esqueda (00:57:08):
Full table of contents of all of the messaging programs and software that, oh my has launched and killed. And it's like, like there's your evidence right there. Yep.

Christina Warren  (00:57:18):
Also, if you care so much X and PPP was a thing that Google like Google kills way to killed. Yep. And we could all be using X and PPP right now, but we're not.

Leo Laporte (00:57:27):
So now Google's pushing RCS, which Ron and others say is antiquated because it's tied to your phone bill. It's tied to your carrier. Nobody wants that. Every the problem is in the real world outside the us, people use WhatsApp or maybe telegram or Facebook signal jurisdiction signal depends on what country you're in. If you're in Brazil, 90% of everybody uses WhatsApp. There's no blue bubbles, green bubbles. Nope. Right. But here in the United States, for some reason we have this fragmented system I mean, if you are using Apple's messages, you can text anybody using SMS. But there,

Rich DeMuro (00:58:03):
There is a reason to, for this. And let's, let's be honest. What apple did, apple hijacked people's phone numbers and put it into iMessage. When you set up your phone and you go through that you know, that flow of, of setting up your phone for the first time, what does this say? It says, can we use this? You know, do you want to, do you wanna I'm I don't even know what they say anymore. Do you wanna say yes, yes, yes.

Ashley Esqueda (00:58:22):
Your email or from your phone number and you can choose and, and you can

Leo Laporte (00:58:26):
Get both. It's your account. I don't even know if they

Rich DeMuro (00:58:28):
Ask you and nobody does it from your email. They don't, nobody uses no one does it from their email. No, but they use their

Ashley Esqueda (00:58:34):
Have a phone number unless they don't have a phone number, which

Rich DeMuro (00:58:37):
Actually is people's numbers. They put it, they put it into this system and people are now in it. And the reality is it works very well. It's amazing. Well, and even worse,

Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
If you leave the iPhone system, you have to go through steps. It's hard. Yeah. To take your phone number away out from apple, or you're gonna have all sorts of trouble with your messaging.

Rich DeMuro (00:58:56):
Now that's gotten a lot easier with that. Dre, I was gonna say, they can prove that you used to take days. Now it takes, it takes, you

Leo Laporte (00:59:02):
Still have to go to a separate website. And

Rich DeMuro (00:59:05):
If you forget to turn it off before you, I'm not an

Leo Laporte (00:59:06):
Iphone anymore,

Rich DeMuro (00:59:08):
Your phone. So you have to do

Christina Warren  (00:59:08):
The same thing with WhatsApp. Leo, you have to do the same thing with signal. Like

Leo Laporte (00:59:11):
Any of those systems. I agree. No, nothing should be tied to your phone number. 

Rich DeMuro (00:59:15):
I agree. I don't, I mean, I want, I want a one messaging system for everyone because it's just, it makes sense in today's day. Like I use telegram. I love telegram because when I use telegram, no matter who I'm talking to, I don't think, oh, are they on an iPhone? Oh, can I send them a large picture? Oh, can I send them a video? Can I do this? Can I do a reaction? It just all works. No matter what phone they're on, whether you're using a 10 year old phone. And I do think there is a point to the whole, you know, apple does like to play this game of like, we want you know, everyone to have like, you know, access to this and like we, you know, and then they go ahead and they do this thing where they're, they're holding back iMessage, which is a great program from other devices except their own. And they're fully within their rights to do that. But I do think it's not right.

Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
You can also with telegram, I think there's a short code t.me and your telegram name. It's very easy to give somebody your telegram account. I don't care what we use. I just wish we'd agree on something.

Christina Warren  (01:00:13):
Well, and that's the funny thing is most other countries have and it's, and it's, you know, the, this story, the reason I thought it was kind of flawed is that they're always going to, to be in group signifiers for teenagers. Sure. When Ashley and I were teenagers, did you have NOIA phone? Did you wear Abercrombie? Yeah. You know, like did, were you on aim? Like those were kind of the things now for, for a lot of teens now it's do you have an iPhone? Like for 20 years, I actually kind of wanna write something about this. The most enduring fashion symbol, like of the last 20 years I was thinking about this the other day has been white ear butts. If you think about that's right. White earbuds has, has been the most enduring fashion, like sad symbol of the last

Leo Laporte (01:00:50):
One. Those things are gonna happen. But I guess the criticism is that apple has embraced this and, and furthered it. But, but, but, but

Christina Warren  (01:00:57):
Percent I, I, but I don't think that's a fair criticism to put on apple. It's like the teens are never apple look. The iPhone is just to cooler product. Like it just is like,

Leo Laporte (01:01:06):
According to this article, 87, 80 7% of teens surveyed last year by Piper Sandler have iPhones, 87% teens

Rich DeMuro (01:01:15):
Are mean enough. Like why does your, but they're gonna be mean, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:01:20):
They they're being mean over the color of your bubble. We're

Ashley Esqueda (01:01:22):
All we're dumies because we're all your teenager. Bozo. Yeah. Yeah. We're all

Rich DeMuro (01:01:28):
Wanna add to it. Why should apple this huge company? Why should they adding to this? Why should they capital?

Christina Warren  (01:01:32):
They're not adding to it. People look, people will literally pick on anything, honestly. And most teens that I know use their, their order of messages goes discord, Instagram, and then iMessage. So I think that, yeah, most teams I know use discord far more than love discord. I message. Discord

Leo Laporte (01:01:48):
Is I know use love discord. They just

Christina Warren  (01:01:51):
On TikTok,

Leo Laporte (01:01:53):
Any message on TikTok, use text message. You can't,

Ashley Esqueda (01:01:55):
They just use DMS on, on TikTok. That's

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
It? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I get a lot of DMS on Instagram and I don't

Rich DeMuro (01:02:00):
Even use, see, I think Instagram that's my audience is ONT, you know, from TVs a little bit older and honestly, like I get so many message from Instagram. Yeah. I think it's almost like the, the equalizing platform. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:02:10):
Wanna give Facebook anything though. I don't want them, I don't wanna use WhatsApp or Instagram cause I don't wanna give Facebook anything. Yeah. I mean, I like,

Ashley Esqueda (01:02:17):
So for me I feels like, okay, like I, I totally understand what rich is saying about, you know yes it is. It, it, it stinks that this has to be a thing, right? Like this is like, but also apple doesn't do this on purpose. No. So that teenagers will bully other kids it's they know it just happened. They, they stumbled into an extremely Dicky thing, a feature, but

Leo Laporte (01:02:40):
On the phone, they know, we know this from the epic versus apple trial and the D discovery, a hundred percent of the, they know it's lock in and they, and they say is, carrot is good. This is lock in Craig Feder. We got the

Ashley Esqueda (01:02:52):
Emails, scenes are gonna bully other kids. It's good because people are locked in. Like it's not here's, it's not, it's good because of the stuff that, you know, teens are being mean to each other about. Right. Also, I would argue

Rich DeMuro (01:03:03):
That apple conceal the deal by just coming out with iMessage, for Android and plat and desktop platforms. And then they just own messaging for an indefinite amount of time here in the us.

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:12):
Yeah. But what did they get out of that? I was

Christina Warren  (01:03:14):
Gonna gonna say, I think I was gonna say, I think that if they could make the business case, that that was where they needed to be, they would do it. They would. And I don't even think, I don't even think that they're afraid. Like I wouldn't switch away from an iPhone if IMEs was available elsewhere. I, I, I, I would still be an iPhone user and I think most iPhone users would be, there are just those other things, you know, handoff their continu there, there would these other things. Yeah. There's a lot with it. Right. So I don't think that iMessage would be the only thing, but I, I personally, I mean, I, I don't Beru them for were saying, yes, we could completely dominate messaging if we went to these other platforms. But, but to Ashley's point, what's the business case for that? Like why do they need to be in that?

Christina Warren  (01:03:48):
Like may, maybe one day they will, but what's interesting. John grouper pointed this out in, in his story. He I, I think it was Nick here who mentioned this in his, in his article, like his blog about this. So the iPhone is even more popular in Japan than it is in the us. But the number one messenger there by far is line. And so that just to me, shows messaging services, people are gonna use what they want to use. I think it is notable that for more than a decade younger people have in the United States have been like hooked on iMessage. But I mean, if, if apple open this, it's not it's though the reasons

Leo Laporte (01:04:24):
To bully other kids. It's not Philip Morris' fault that kids smoke cigarettes. Here's the smoking gun literally or not literally figuratively from April, 2013. This is the verge went through a lot of these epic discovery emails, Eddie Q once iMessage on Android, just in case Google buys, WhatsApp, Phil Scher, chief of marking says, and since we make no money on iMessage, what will be the point I'm concerned, iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families, giving their kids Android phones. That's Craig Feder. I think we need to get Android customers using and on apple products, they know exactly. Yeah, of course. What's going on. Of

Ashley Esqueda (01:05:06):
Course, course, look, I'm gonna give full credit here. I, I had, I covered that trial and it like, those emails were incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love that. They wrote that stuff. The veneer

Leo Laporte (01:05:17):
That they put it in writing crazy.

Ashley Esqueda (01:05:19):
Yes. To see the veneer of the dad executive like clean squeeze. These are ruthless businessmen, just like every other company. And, and like the idea that Craig Feder hair force one wrote that email amazing brings me, brings me an inordinate mean out of joy to know that there is a ruthless, cutthroat human being behind <laugh> that friendly

Leo Laporte (01:05:42):
Face. This is another 1, 20 16 in all of these apple things. They, they get an email from the beats music. Co-Founder Ian Rogers about quote, how he missed a ton of messages from friends and family. After switching to an Android phone, Phil Scher writes to Tim cook saying jaws. And I think moving iMessage to Andrew will hurt us more than help us. This email illustrates why, instead of saying, oh, this is a terrible experience. They said, see, this is great. This is keeping people on iPhones. They not only know it. They embrace it.

Ashley Esqueda (01:06:13):
Of course it's they stumbled into this amazing sticky thing. And, and to Christina's point, like it's not, it's not a thing that is guaranteed in every country. It just happened to happen here. People just really glomed onto iMessage.

Rich DeMuro (01:06:28):
I've thought about this

Leo Laporte (01:06:28):
Google. There's a lot completely screwed it up as you point out. Yeah. There was no good competition. Google, maybe. So

Rich DeMuro (01:06:34):
Hold on. But would you rather have a world where Google has their, their messaging system that just works really well with all the Androids and then this other messaging system? I message that works with iPhones. No. Why? Like to me as a tech person, I want stuff that works with everything, but

Leo Laporte (01:06:49):
That's what Google would've done worked everywhere. Google. It was always in interest that it worked everywhere. Cause they make money on usage. Apple makes on iPhone sales. So they're two different business models and that, and it was in Google's interest to make it universal. Obviously the perfect world. It would be signal or some independent third party. Everybody in the United States would all of a sudden say let's use that. And, and that would be perfect. Right. But let's

Rich DeMuro (01:07:15):
All agree on one day to switch and

Leo Laporte (01:07:17):
I'm, I'm cool with telegram. I mean, it's

Ashley Esqueda (01:07:19):
Not, we did that with my family. That's that? So my, yes that's dad and my brothers use pixels. They use pixel devices. That's, that's their preference. They love Android. They they're tinkerers. They like to get in there and, and have customize everything. And they were getting so upset because we would be in a group text and everybody else has an iPhone and they would not get like, they would have like tiny videos and they would have, this is all on SMS. And so I just said, you know what? Like, this is an important thing. So we should just all have signal. And so we all have a signal group chat. Oh. And that's man, I'm jealous. And it's like, it's only for our close family and that's fine. Like, to me, that seems like a happy medium where I'm okay.

Leo Laporte (01:07:58):
See, I feel like disor, would've been a good choice there as well

Ashley Esqueda (01:08:02):
Because you, I see, I can't get my whole family in. It's more multiple tricky to harder. I, I was like, I was gonna say, getting her dad on discord would be difficult. Right? Yeah. I think it would've been harder to get my mom and the, actually I argue it would've been harder to get all of the iPhone users in my family on discord.

Rich DeMuro (01:08:16):
One of the things is they don't wanna download a, an app. That's the other thing, you try to get a, an iPhone user to download a messaging app. And they say, why, but message messaging system in the world. You

Leo Laporte (01:08:26):
Can't make it to default say all doing apple locks you in because you get, if you could down, if you could say me, help you download signal, we'll make that to default. It would work just like iMessage. You just wouldn't know you're not using it exactly. Then it would be doable, but apple won't let you make it the default.

Ashley Esqueda (01:08:41):
So I think that that will change.

Leo Laporte (01:08:42):
Actually. I hope it does. I think that's think

Ashley Esqueda (01:08:44):
All of the, I think with all of the, you know, the trial, the, the, the epic versus apple stuff with Fortnite and the lot, the ecosystem stuff, you don't think apple

Leo Laporte (01:08:54):
Was embolden by that they won that trial and every single point.

Ashley Esqueda (01:08:58):
So yes and no. Yes and no. So I, I do think they were emboldened by that. And I do think that it was a very, like, it was a, it was a pretty strong message that the court sent out. But also I do, I do argue that we are seeing regulation in the, you that is gonna, oh yeah. Not just come over here. We're gonna, because now South Korea have a much more, we have a much more like anti monopoly. Yeah. De like regulation, strong FTC, like we're, it's going to be the, the future is going to be this sort of dismantling of these. So I load monopolies, like, however you wanna call it, you

Rich DeMuro (01:09:39):
Think actually

Ashley Esqueda (01:09:40):
Within the

Leo Laporte (01:09:41):
Next five years, FTC in Congress can actually act in concert and make that happen in the

Rich DeMuro (01:09:45):
Courts. I don't, I, they won't have to. It's just the, like you said, Ashley, it's time has come. It's the yes. And I don't think you get away with the stuff that you used to be able to get away with, which is something to bullying people into a certain thing. Like we're seeing, if you look at almost everything, like look at the streaming services, you know, like if you have fire TV or Roku or apple, or any of these, you know, Chrome Google TV, pretty much, you can get all of the major streaming apps on those services. Now they try to play hardball once in a while. But like, could you imagine, like the, remember the days when, like you couldn't get H HP on whatever and you'd be like, ah, yeah, you would just switch. And with the iPhone, it's really tough to switch because it's a whole world that you're in all because of this blue bubble.

Ashley Esqueda (01:10:26):
But I do think there will come a point where there is some sort of re some sort of regulation that requires all phone makers to allow users to choose a front default app to use for specific things. So like, I,

Rich DeMuro (01:10:41):
You know, I don't see that happening just like

Ashley Esqueda (01:10:43):
You would on an Android phone. I like, I, I think there might like if the case was narrow enough, I think it could be argued. No,

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
Say this is apples, business, apples, not a monopoly. It's only 50% of the market, right? This is their platform. It's their business. We, and in good conscience, tell them how to run their business. I don't think that works. You'd have to have them be pred. You'd have to find something really evil. And I don't think that's gonna happen.

Ashley Esqueda (01:11:07):
I really don't. I mean, they wrote all that stuff in those emails. I know who knows

Rich DeMuro (01:11:11):
The, but that's not showing. I dunno. You can tell people that you've moved to a service. Okay. Let's say you're on iMessage. Okay. Instead of switching to like, you know, SMS, you can I've thought about this a lot. You can put on the automatic, cuz there's no automatic reply on iPhone. You know, you can't like on Android, you can set an automatic message reply to your SMS, but on iPhone, you set up the not disturb while driving and you can set the message set it put,

Leo Laporte (01:11:36):
Sorry, I won't answer. I have to be I'm on telegram now.

Rich DeMuro (01:11:39):
Yes. And so you put your little telegram link. That's, that's your auto responder and you say, Hey, I've moved to telegram and just find me there. They click the link. Boom. It's it's done. I've thought about this a lot because it really workaround. It's a little work. That's a, that's a hot sure. Apples. A good ho that off at this point, because have you done the only thing

Ashley Esqueda (01:11:58):
On tech on, have you done that ever? That's a great tip. You should do that.

Leo Laporte (01:12:02):
You know what? You'll never do that. You, why people would get exactly. They would get upset. Why are you trying to get us off of iPhone? Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (01:12:08):
What's wrong with it's the same reason why I don't really show people how to do ad blockers on their fair it's that's fair. If there's certain things, whereas a as a person who is doing very mainstream tech you know, it's, I don't know. It's just tough to do some of this stuff. If someone asks me, yes, I will respond, but it's not like I'm doing segments on this kind of stuff on TV. You know? That is a great tip. That is a

Leo Laporte (01:12:28):
Great tip. SWIR yes. <Laugh> oh, God, let's take a

Ashley Esqueda (01:12:34):
Everybody's first Wordle. What word? Which

Leo Laporte (01:12:36):
One's the one mine was query. It was fairly recent because line

Rich DeMuro (01:12:40):
Was apple, which was also recent. And mine was like two days ago. I just started this. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:12:45):
Word's fun. I usually pick audio or a rise because you get a bunch of vowels.

Leo Laporte (01:12:49):
Oh, what's your, oh, I see what you're saying. The word I thought you meant the first word you solved. You mean the word start with

Ashley Esqueda (01:12:55):
Yeah. I usually have like, do you have like one that you usually use that's want?

Leo Laporte (01:12:59):
That's a great

Christina Warren  (01:13:00):
Question. I start with grant, which is my husband's name, but it's also a good start.

Leo Laporte (01:13:04):
You should start something with

Ashley Esqueda (01:13:06):
Of fortune R S T L N E baby.

Rich DeMuro (01:13:08):
Yes. Yeah. That's what I tried. And it didn't work. One of the most common,

Leo Laporte (01:13:11):
The most common letters. E T a I O N S H R our D U. So you should start with those mm-hmm <affirmative> something that uses those, right? No,

Ashley Esqueda (01:13:20):
Maybe I don't. So I do audio that's that's usually the one that you audio. Oh, that's a good way. UD IO. You get four vows, right? Outta the way booth. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (01:13:26):
That's great. What's your quick word, guest time. Two, two words. Two. That's just luck though.

Rich DeMuro (01:13:32):
Right? And mine was two. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:13:35):
I, I did. I, I did one. I did one and I got, I think I guessed a rise as the first one. And then I ended up getting like, I like a rise, three outta five letters. And then I ended up, I ended up getting the second one. The only

Leo Laporte (01:13:45):
Thing, usually I get it in three. I don't like about a rise is I've read somewhere. I may be wrong, but I've never seen it that they don't do plural words. So S there's no plurals, no plurals. So man's S is maybe as good a letter as it would. One would think mm-hmm <affirmative> because you're not gonna get

Ashley Esqueda (01:14:00):
A possibility. That's a good point. That's very good point. That's a good point. Just

Leo Laporte (01:14:03):
Thinking y'all stick with audio way too much time. Audio

Christina Warren  (01:14:08):
I'm I'm gonna start using audio from now on I'm stealing it's it's a good point to get like

Rich DeMuro (01:14:11):
Said more vows. Today's

Leo Laporte (01:14:14):
A you, I like it. A U D I O

Rich DeMuro (01:14:17):
Let's just, what is this guy getting out this, by the way. Nothing's I know, but

Leo Laporte (01:14:22):
Except loans who charging 30 bucks a month. Exactly. Except for

Rich DeMuro (01:14:28):
Shouldn't he that's at least run his web site through the Google ad sense. So that it's just like, totally. Well, there

Ashley Esqueda (01:14:32):
Was another person, I think who made an app and now they're donating, not the guy who was charging much. No. And, and, and he made it that five years ago, like donating. Yeah. He made the SA, he made an app called Wordle, like literally it's called Wordle and he's donating all of the current. Like he, he just started spiking. And so he reached out to this, this guy and was like, Hey, like I have this app, like what, what can we do? Can we work on something together? And so they ended up donating, oh all of the proceeds, the profits to a, a literacy nonprofit, which is really cool.

Leo Laporte (01:15:04):
If I go to the root site, power language.co.uk. Is he? No, it's just some guy. Josh's it

Rich DeMuro (01:15:12):
Just rolls off the, yeah. It's this guy. He's a he's from he, he worked at Reddit, I think. Oh, it's Josh. Warren. Yeah. He

Leo Laporte (01:15:19):
Works at Reddit. Oh, I know who that is. He, yeah. He worked at

Ashley Esqueda (01:15:22):
Reddit. He made that cool Reddit experiment.

Rich DeMuro (01:15:23):
Yeah. He, he lives in Brooklyn. It's very misleading. Cause you think this is from across UK. This is, yeah. That's just a website he had from when he like was from the era and now he lives in Brooklyn.

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
He did the very famous Reddit button. Yeah. Which was hysterical because, well, it was just a, it was just like meaningless game, but people got red. That's very, Reddity people got way into that. People got into it. Oh, I know. I know who George wor is. I didn't realize he was Wordle. Word's Wordle. War's word. Yeah. Okay. Should have known. Let's take a little break. I, we have lots more to talk about. We've only done two stories. <Laugh>

Rich DeMuro (01:15:57):
They've been really good, but

Leo Laporte (01:15:59):
They have been so good. You guys are so good. <Laugh> I am a huge fan. Ashley Eske Christina Warren, rich de best panel. Since last week. Love having you on rich is again at the Desilu studios. It looks like it's hysterical. Mm. But everybody in your family's okay. Right. Everyone.

Rich DeMuro (01:16:23):
Well they're feeling all right. Two wife. Hard. I will tell you this thing is real. Like I, oh yeah. You know, I don't wanna it's she was triple VED and I'm not kidding. I can't believe how sick she got. Oh, wow. With the three vaccination. So it is it's. It was scary. Wow. I'll just leave it at

Leo Laporte (01:16:37):
That. Yeah. I it's funny because in the first round didn't know many people who got it. Now, everybody, you knows. Got it. Has had it. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> it's just like it's, you know, Christina's had it. It's everybody's

Ashley Esqueda (01:16:48):
Had it. I feel the walls closing in guys walls. Haven't gotten it yet. And I just feel like Indiana Jones, do you wanna see, goes in with

Leo Laporte (01:16:54):
The spikes? Do you wanna see the mask I wear nowadays? Yes. This thing, I feel like bane. This is,

Rich DeMuro (01:17:02):
Oh man. Gosh,

Leo Laporte (01:17:02):
Respirator. It's a respirator. No out, no inbound now outbound. It's a, it's a all a wow. 99. Do people just

Rich DeMuro (01:17:09):
Run in like directions when they see you with that? It's like you go to the grocery store. Like no, no. I'm just here to shop.

Leo Laporte (01:17:15):
I'm here to shop pat man. <Laugh>. Oh, wow. But you know what? I won't get it. I put a face shield this and I won't get it. I don't, I'm determined. Not to, even though I suppose I will. I mean, we all will, at some point, I guess, I don't know more good conversations with this group. You should, you all should have a drink or something enjoy. You've been doing such a good job. You're working hard. While I tell you about banking. You know, you think about banking and what do you think of you think of, you know, vaults tellers, giant buildings made out to marble it's so 19th century. But if you're a business you really need to be with Novo, N O V O business banking for the 21st century. Be your own boss. This year join a hundred thousand customers. Who've ditched their clunky old banks for a streamlined, no hidden fees, banking app that does the work for you, works with all the tools you use every day.

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Rich DeMuro (01:21:07):
I myself every day, I don't know is Google don't understand when, when apple is absolutely killing it with both the hardware and software and by the way, Samsung also killing it with the, the software updates on their phones have been like, like clockwork. Good and really good. Google

Leo Laporte (01:21:28):
Look at that. I got a software update to install right now on my on my Samsung flip look at that.

Rich DeMuro (01:21:34):
I'm telling you there's keeping it like date. Yes. And it probably was available on the first <laugh>. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:21:39):
That's just Leo doesn't check actually. I was just saying, oh, look, the Google January updates finally here. And you said, no, it came out a couple of days ago, but I'm getting that now too.

Rich DeMuro (01:21:48):
So I did, I waited for my review. You know, the pixel came out, I think October, I waited to do my review until I think December, like mid-December in my review. I said, I love this phone. There's a bunch. The camera things, love

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
Fact, your battery life is great,

Rich DeMuro (01:22:03):
But software is nice, but it had a lot of little bug and you can't make

Leo Laporte (01:22:06):
Phone calls.

Rich DeMuro (01:22:07):
<Laugh> well, I didn't have that problem on, I didn't either. I don't know. But so many

Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
People did. Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (01:22:13):
But I said, and also

Leo Laporte (01:22:14):
The fingerprint reader worked for me just fine. Oh.

Rich DeMuro (01:22:16):
But no, that, that is, that is a very sore spot on this phone for me. It's I've heard and there's, there's no face there's no face unlock. No. but I said in my review, like, look at the end of the day, Google's gonna fix this any day now. And by the way, January 14th, before it was still a whole month and a half before this, you know, software update. I ended up side loading the software update that they came out with originally. And it was quite easy to do, but obviously the average person can't do it

Leo Laporte (01:22:45):
Well. And then they charge it off because people like you well,

Rich DeMuro (01:22:49):
So

Leo Laporte (01:22:50):
Not a way, way, it, you

Rich DeMuro (01:22:51):
Found a way around it. No, it just still wasn't buggy. It was, it was still a buggy

Leo Laporte (01:22:54):
Phone. So many people had problems with the December update, especially with connectivity that they stopped it. Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (01:23:01):
They stopped the update. Yeah, I did it

Leo Laporte (01:23:03):
Right before that. Okay. and I never got that and I've never, I honestly, and this is weird and I'm, I'm here channeling all the people I know with pixel sixes, I've had nothing but great experiences of mine, but it's weird that some people have great experiences of fingerprint where either works for me, the cameras are great. I've never had connectivity issues or phone issues, but so many people have, and even then that speaks to a problem, right? Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (01:23:26):
It shouldn't it, this should, this phone should be amazing. It's it's Google's baby. They're a smart company with a lot of smart people working there. And I just don't think they take their phones serious enough. Also. Can we talk about the fact that the pixel changes every single time? Every year, it's like an entirely different phone from the ground up. Yeah. Like how annoying is that? Like with the iPhone, there's like, it's, it's evolved over 15 years or whatever. However many years it's been around it's it's like pretty much the same exact slab of glass and metal that it started out as, except like, if you just put it on a, I love how mad

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:00):
You are about this. <Laugh> I

Rich DeMuro (01:24:02):
Am, it really annoys me that like Google just can't get anything. Right. Except search say there are a one trick pony at this point. Wait a minute, nailed search

Leo Laporte (01:24:10):
Youtube, YouTube, Gmail, and search YouTube, Gmail and search

Rich DeMuro (01:24:15):
Gmail. They nailed

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
Everything else. It's like attention deficit disorder or, you know, Mike

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:22):
Gal just, I just argued Gmail. Got there first. I, I don't, I mean, I don't know.

Rich DeMuro (01:24:28):
Yeah. Like outlook is pretty darn good. I don't know if you, I use it for work, but like use

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:32):
I outlook is great email I've ever used in my life. But do

Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
You spark with Gmail?

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:37):
I use it with my own with CNET. I have my own with your own server email server. Yeah. No, no, no. CNET is like, that's all locked down. I can, I have to use that through outlook and outlook is actually per pretty good. I, but I, yeah, I use spark with my own,

Leo Laporte (01:24:49):
My own stuff. Spark's an app, but you know, it works with the various email. You're

Rich DeMuro (01:24:53):
Self hosted. You're

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:54):
Saying yeah. Self

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
Hosted. You're not, you don't have like a server in the basement.

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:58):
No, nobody, but I just, I don't host it. I, I

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
Don't run. You go to, I use fast mail for instance. Could

Rich DeMuro (01:25:04):
You do that? Leo? Could you host like a pop email server? We have a, we had

Leo Laporte (01:25:08):
A sponsor. Yeah. Who makes a really cool device. That is an email server. It works really well. I cool. It's a hard thing. Sit in that it's a hard technology problem because Gmail, for instance, won't accept email sent from your IP address. They go, I don't know,

Rich DeMuro (01:25:26):
You're a camera. Oh yeah. This spa would get this thing suspicious.

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
So the way they have to, they support demark and you know the other authentication technologies, but the way they do it is you route the email through a server. It doesn't even look at your mail just as routing through IP addresses. They preconditioned to work with email services. So you need to do that. I see it. Good. It's a, it's a, it's a kind of a

Ashley Esqueda (01:25:49):
Nerd through my domain. Host mine just threw my domain. Host your domain

Rich DeMuro (01:25:52):
Host. I used hover, which was a TWIT sponsor along hovers. Great, fantastic.

Ashley Esqueda (01:25:56):
That's use

Rich DeMuro (01:25:56):
All my, all my, but by the way, one other thing that, one other thing that Google did do they nailed is Google photos. But I will say, I, I have a problem with that too, because once they got you in there, now they charged, used to be. Yeah. Yeah. They charge you. Well, the charging is fine. I don't mind paying because I, I love what they do, but here's the thing you used to be able to sync your Google drive to an external web, you know, like a NAS server and you could have your Google photos inside there. And it would also sync. Now they've shut off that functionality. So if you have photos in Google photos, the only way to get 'em out is to do that. Google takeout. There's no way to like sync that. Yeah. That sucks. Third, like third party can

Ashley Esqueda (01:26:31):
Automatically sync it to a hard drive.

Rich DeMuro (01:26:33):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that's ridiculous. I'm sorry. It's it's absolutely not acceptable,

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
But I will give, I'll give 'em half a point for photos. So you too, Gmail search half a point. I better be careful which finger I use for that half, half a point for photos. I think photos is actually pretty good, but you know

Rich DeMuro (01:26:51):
That amazing. You could search for anything in there and find a, but they did some bad thing.

Leo Laporte (01:26:55):
Phenomen. Yeah. They bought Picasa for instance, which everybody loved. It was a wonderful windows, free windows, snap seed too. Yeah. And then they destroyed it. Snappy's still around that's okay. So,

Ashley Esqueda (01:27:07):
But it's not, I mean, it's not the same as it was. So Mike

Leo Laporte (01:27:09):
ELGAN, who's a regular on our shows. Big, remember he was a big Google plus supporter. He says out and out Sonder Pacha is a terrible CEO. Fair.

Rich DeMuro (01:27:20):
Mm that's cool. That's I'll let Ashley touch that

Ashley Esqueda (01:27:23):
One. I was gonna say that's a, I that's a bold claim because I mean, I think that there are just, I think that there are just a lot of people making maybe not great to no,

Leo Laporte (01:27:33):
But that's his company. He runs the free

Rich DeMuro (01:27:35):
Company. Is he a visionary? Does he have a, this is,

Ashley Esqueda (01:27:37):
See, this is my, see, this is like my argument right? Where it's like, even, even apple, I think has this problem where it's like at the top, like, like Tim cook is not a visionary. He's, he's a, he's a guy who came up through smart chain. He's a really smart guy, but he's not a visionary. And like, and I don't, but he has kept that

Rich DeMuro (01:27:54):
Company. I mean, okay, maybe he's not inventing the next iPad or iPhone, but he has really, I think he's done an amazing job at that company. Done an amazing job step into those arguments. Maybe

Leo Laporte (01:28:04):
The, the smartest thing to do was just to keep the, the lights on and the wheels running because they had a flywheel that was going great. So why mess

Ashley Esqueda (01:28:12):
This? And I also argue that like, you could not have put somebody like a, a Johnny Iver. You no,

Leo Laporte (01:28:19):
I think apple, when Johnny left,

Rich DeMuro (01:28:22):
I was gonna say, I argue, you

Ashley Esqueda (01:28:24):
Put somebody, you could not have put somebody in that role after Steve died, just by proxy up there, would've been too many comparisons and went by, by making it Tim cook. It was very easy for them to just sort of be like, well, I'm nothing like him. Yes. And it, that just, that was the end of that conversation. He said, he said,

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
Steve told him on his deathbed, you should not be asking what Steve would do. You need to be your own guy. You need to run this company. But honestly he's been a caretaker. Yeah. I, Sundar Petina is a very nice guy. I really liked him. He's smart. He's smart. I don't think he's a leader. And I think that's the problem is that you have a headless operation and everybody's doing their own thing that happened at Microsoft. Let's let's not forget the days at Microsoft when every division was sniping at every other division and you couldn't make windows good because the office division said, that'll be bad for us. And, and, and who comes along with such an Adela? And I think everybody would agree. He's the opposite of CCHA. He took a company, transformed it, pivoted it, and has done a really laser focused, brilliant

Rich DeMuro (01:29:27):
Job. Yeah. Yeah. He's done a laser

Ashley Esqueda (01:29:29):
Job, laser focused on it. Very done. A very good job. And I, I just, I argue that, like I it's, like, I think that he's Sunar is really smart. I just don't know that he's the guy to run Google.

Rich DeMuro (01:29:39):
Can we also get back to why the pixel is a, a heap of trash this year? I tell

Leo Laporte (01:29:44):
You why chime. That's why sonar.

Ashley Esqueda (01:29:47):
Listen, I would listen. Have you tried to this? Listen to your rich. Talk about this all day, by the way,

Rich DeMuro (01:29:51):
Have you tried to hold this thing in your hand? How big it is? It's big. I

Leo Laporte (01:29:55):
Like a big phone. I, I

Rich DeMuro (01:29:57):
Too big is. So if they <laugh>, if they have three, if they have, how tall are you rich? Which is great. How tall are you? I'm six feet. I have big hands. I've got big feet.

Leo Laporte (01:30:07):
I'm a li guy and it fits my hands. Just fine. What are you talking about? Oh, I, how much bigger

Ashley Esqueda (01:30:11):
Is that phone compared to the Promax? Like how, how much

Leo Laporte (01:30:14):
Bigger is it?

Rich DeMuro (01:30:15):
Side by side feels better in your hand. How takes cases off square edges? And it's not look, Google me to make the next picture. I will make this phone, the best selling phone in.

Leo Laporte (01:30:26):
I kind disagree. Rich. This is a beautiful phone here. It is side by side. It's the same size. It's very close.

Rich DeMuro (01:30:32):
You can hold the iPhone easier because the, the edges don't go off to the, you know, they don't go. The

Leo Laporte (01:30:37):
Rounded screen. People have

Rich DeMuro (01:30:38):
To round rounded screen. It's, it's a nightmare typing. You try to type a on it. You're messing up the entire time. You have to go to voice type, but don't

Leo Laporte (01:30:45):
You put a case on it. Everybody should just have a case, but it's

Rich DeMuro (01:30:48):
Still tough to use. I'm telling you, I test every single phone out there and the pixel is the phone I lose. Well, you're

Leo Laporte (01:30:54):
Not alone. Marque Brownley, who also tests every phone I saw announced this week. He said, I'm finally taking the SIM outta my pixel six, putting in a Samsung S 21 ultra the too unreliable.

Rich DeMuro (01:31:05):
And he put it right back in the pixel. As soon as that software update came out. So bully me. I, he did. He put it in the S 21 ultra for like two minutes. Well, are you kidding? I didn't see the update. Kidding.

Leo Laporte (01:31:14):
He went back to the pixel six.

Rich DeMuro (01:31:16):
Of course he did. Oh, marque. He's a pixel guy. He's a pixel guy. He used the S 21 ultra until he needed to, you know, to, just to get through a pixel. Yeah. And then he went back. He made this big tweet and then Google came out with the update. Literally. That's his story? 48 hours after his tweet. Oh, I didn't know

Leo Laporte (01:31:30):
That. Oh, that's his Hyster

Rich DeMuro (01:31:31):
Hyster. Now I, I can't confirm that he put his SIM back in the pixel, but I'm pretty sure he's back to the, because look, the pixel, you can't deny the photos that come off of the thing are amazing. The software, the way it integrates Google is whenever I use it, I sit there and I realize all little things that

Leo Laporte (01:31:47):
No, I far prefer vanilla Android. Yeah. I far prefer it. Gosh, you know, but I'm with you kind of, I'm heated about this stuff. The experience with the iPhone, as much as I want the, I don't like the waled garden is a much more consistent, reliable experience. It's always a

Ashley Esqueda (01:32:04):
Why like Siri every year is consistently bad. Stupid. Yeah. Like, yeah, no, I'm gonna get, we know Siri experience. Like I know

Rich DeMuro (01:32:12):
It's gonna text on iPhone is getting to be laughably horrible because it doesn't like Google, let me give you one example of Google, how they do voice to text. So if you're standing in front of a restaurant that has a specific name and you say, Hey, meet me at you know, John's restaurant, right? Yeah. Yeah. Google knows from your location when you're using voice that you are in front of that restaurant, it says, oh, they mean John's restaurant right here. Right. I'm not kidding. When I say, meet me at whatever, it'll be like navigate to Las Vegas or like, you know, John's restaurant Las Vegas. I'm like, no, I'm standing in front of this restaurant because Siri doesn't use those cues that apple, that Google does, sir, can things like

Leo Laporte (01:32:48):
That. Apples respecting your privacy. Right.

Rich DeMuro (01:32:51):
Doesn't have the information to do that information. Did

Ashley Esqueda (01:32:54):
You see, did you guys see the, the thing about the reason why the iPhone keyboard, the auto correct has been so, or the predictive is so bad? No. Have you seen this? This is

Rich DeMuro (01:33:04):
I have, but it has been

Ashley Esqueda (01:33:06):
Christina, please. Christina, please at the size, everything. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:33:13):
Why is the iPhone keyboard so bad? What is happening

Rich DeMuro (01:33:16):
Here?

Christina Warren  (01:33:18):
They they've, they've been taking they've been like crowdsourcing. It they've been like taking everybody else's type. Yes. They've typos. Yeah. What <laugh> they they've done for real. They've done like a Grammarly. It's it's terrible. So basically all the, the

Leo Laporte (01:33:33):
Terrible ways of, oh, they're using, in other words, they're using my corrections and adding it to the database. Not just locally, but to that everybody else is using. Yeah. They're crowd sourcing the auto. Correct?

Rich DeMuro (01:33:45):
I thought apple doesn't do stuff like that.

Ashley Esqueda (01:33:49):
So we did too. Okay. So this is a tweet that I saw. I've been sending this to friends, because they've been complaining about me or complaining about the text messages for probably complaining about me too. But this is from Steve Troon Smith, who is

Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
Expert on this stuff. Yep.

Ashley Esqueda (01:34:07):
Yep. He says apple. Really? This was on the 9th of December. So this is last month. Okay. I missed this apple. Apple really needs to throw out its crowdsourced machine learned autocorrect system entirely autocorrect use to learn from everything I typed. Now it interjects with typos and weird ISS from random internet users. It's been a complete train wreck since they introduce this stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:34:30):
Yep. That makes sense. Because people would say, why would it replace that word with this word? Why would I ever

Rich DeMuro (01:34:39):
Wanna type every time I say, hold on. I say, let me try that for a sec. It always changed it to sex. So are people talking about sex on their phones? Is that what's happening? Their sex

Ashley Esqueda (01:34:47):
On the internet? Certainly on the internet.

Christina Warren  (01:34:49):
Like absolutely.

Ashley Esqueda (01:34:50):
Yeah, no, but this is

Rich DeMuro (01:34:51):
Every time have you ever tried to send a business text to someone and it like changes the word at the last second? And you're like, here's my guess.

Ashley Esqueda (01:34:58):
Yeah. If it's the last word you're right. Every like this is the most annoying thing. And also it's it. And also it just has no context. Like that's

Rich DeMuro (01:35:06):
The, that's what I'm saying. That's no context. I'm not kidding.

Ashley Esqueda (01:35:11):
Why would I write hell? Why would I write hell go tomorrow. No heal go tomorrow. Like apple, this is not hard. No, it's Don's

Rich DeMuro (01:35:20):
Don't get me started on proper names. Any proper names, anything that is like a mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's, I mean, just try the pixel voice to text for literally a, a three days. And you will not believe you forget how bad sir is, because that's interesting. You know, most people aren't using it's

Leo Laporte (01:35:37):
Of the reason, one of the things I thought was really cool about Siri is the automatic captioning of anything you're watching or listening to. If you turn that on and it's, I think it's very, very good. Well that's mean yeah. The pixel. Yeah. Okay. Sorry.

Christina Warren  (01:35:52):
You said Siri. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:54):
Yeah. No, the pixel theory. Good. Yeah, no.

Christina Warren  (01:35:57):
I was say, I was like,

Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
Well, no, Google, Google. I'm

Rich DeMuro (01:36:00):
Talking about, if you're trying to learn a new language from Siri. Oh my, you have people watched with close caps. You'll

Ashley Esqueda (01:36:05):
Get accident

Rich DeMuro (01:36:06):
You.

Leo Laporte (01:36:06):
So why is Tim cook such a crappy CEO? No, I'm sorry. That was the wrong

Christina Warren  (01:36:10):
Conversation. No, but what's, what's funny though. You mentioned like the, the voice of text stuff. What's this is what I thought you were talking about Leo, but it's different. So if you use the actual built in dictation, like dictation on the iPhone, that's fantastic. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:22):
I use that all the time. I very rarely type text messages. Yeah.

Christina Warren  (01:36:25):
That one is, that's absolutely amazing. Cuz it's completely different from Siri dictionary. So exactly. So, so Siri is the garbage, but, but the, the dictation stuff is great. When when I was in the, the accident a few years, I couldn't use my right arm. And, and I, I was having a hard time even typing, like I was doing a ton of voice to text stuff and it was amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
I still do it all the time. I do it, my car technical stuff.

Rich DeMuro (01:36:51):
OK. So using is different when I say send a text and it does that. That's different from actually typing on the keyboard. That makes a lot of sense to, okay,

Leo Laporte (01:37:01):
Well, I guess I'm using Siri then when, when I

Rich DeMuro (01:37:03):
I'm gonna take it all back serious,

Leo Laporte (01:37:04):
I'm using, when I'm using CarPlay in my car, I get a text. I say, I press a or thing and it'll read it to me and then says, do you wanna reply? I think that's Siri and I irritated and it, but it's always very, very good.

Rich DeMuro (01:37:17):
Oh, Ashley you'll love this. I'm so when I, when I say call, my wife's name is Lindsay. I say call Lindsay. And I would think my phone, my iPhone, after 10 years of saying call Lindsay, it should, would know my wife after like it calls Lindsay Turntine every single time <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:37:32):
Oh my God. It doesn't even offer literally the choice.

Rich DeMuro (01:37:35):
No, it's just like call Lindsay Turntine and I'm like no, no. Like I like Siri. Every time you think that Siri would learn like

Ashley Esqueda (01:37:46):
My Siri, this is my favorite sir story. Whenever I tell, tell Siri to call my sister-in-law her last name is Dio and also a lovely Italian name. Well, now it's my brother's first name. Cuz

Rich DeMuro (01:37:58):
They got sounds like she's in my family,

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:00):
But sh every time it's like it, it literally writes out calling like her first name, the meet CEO.

Leo Laporte (01:38:09):
<Laugh> like

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:13):
In what universe? What? That,

Leo Laporte (01:38:16):
That a thing

Rich DeMuro (01:38:17):
Did you say? Well, if you were the CEO of Dominos, maybe like, you know, in meat, I'm the CEO

Leo Laporte (01:38:21):
Of meat in a tangent related story. NASA is putting Amazon echo into its Artemis spacecraft. Terrible idea. Here is it's gonna blow up here is don't do it. Here is turn up my sound, John, an example of what you can expect in the Artis spacecraft

Speaker 6 (01:38:42):
Searching for Cod recipes online, open the pod bay doors, please. Hal. Sorry. I can't find anyone named garage more in your context. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. Sorry. I'm having trouble processing your request. <Laugh> what's the problem. Problem child is a 1990 comedy movie. <Laugh> telling Michael all, what are you talking about? Huh? This is great. Playing, talking heads on Spotify.

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
<Laugh> all right. We'll stop there. But you that's idea. And I wanna give credit to a Peter pile. Who's a YouTuber and only has 95 subscribers, but has a quarter of a million views on that one. Definitely. It's amazing. Cause it's perfect and exactly right. It's exactly right. And that's why we should not, I've

Ashley Esqueda (01:39:30):
Not unplugged all voice assistant speakers from my house. Yeah. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:39:34):
Use them. There's you? There's an example. And there are more and more of them all the time of a technology that was gonna transform lives five years ago. And didn't

Rich DeMuro (01:39:45):
Just the only, the only thing I use, my literally all the technology in the world and I have all the smart speakers. The only thing I say to my smart speakers every single day is HG turn off the lights and that's it. Every school day do every day. It's only. And it's just cause I'm too lazy to go to

Leo Laporte (01:40:02):
The thing. That's how hard is it to flip that switch?

Rich DeMuro (01:40:04):
Yeah. Yeah. That's like not something that I needed a billion dollar, $20 company

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
Solve and a spaghetti timer and timing this spaghetti. Oh and a

Rich DeMuro (01:40:11):
All I did that last a couple days ago, if you say SETR a pasta timer, Google actually will do, then Google,

Leo Laporte (01:40:19):
Google has really won up. Amazon's echo on that. Yeah. I have a Google, a Siri and an echo every in every room, all three of them. Oh wow. So I could say echo, but instead I do because Google, like when you say set a chicken timer for 40 minutes for the roast chicken, it'll go. It's kind of fun. I admit it's stupid, but it's fun.

Rich DeMuro (01:40:40):
And that was under Pat's. That was his personal request. Okay. He was like, look, I'm leading this company. So maybe he's not so bad. Best YouTube.

Leo Laporte (01:40:47):
Metaverse Gmail search. A half point for photos and chicken timers, chicken timers. <Laugh>

Rich DeMuro (01:40:54):
That's the timers and a stereotypical Italian song at the end of an Italian timer. <Laugh> let's bring you to olive of garden or what's what's the other one. This is like, look at the Peppo.

Leo Laporte (01:41:07):
All right. We're gonna take a little break finely fine. And we'll come back with more of our two talented team of pundits. You guys are great. I'll tell you, I'll tell you if you've got an iPhone or an Android phone. The, the, the, the carrier you want is not one of the big three names. It's mint, mobile, more and more people are discovering how great mint mobile is. If you're one of your goals for this new year is to save money. Every time a I look at my cell phone bill, I think, why am I paying same thing with like cable bill, but why am I paying so much money? Well, you need to switch to mint mobile. When I look at my mint mobile bill, I owe $15. What that's all it was. How does it do it? Did the first company sell premium wireless service online only no stores saves them money, which means it saves you money.

Leo Laporte (01:41:56):
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Leo Laporte (01:42:45):
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Christina Warren  (01:43:58):
I saw that. I saw that. I mean, look, this is, this is his time to shine, right? Like the metaverse is, is, is becoming a thing and, and NFTs. I there's, there's a way people could make second life and of tease. I don't wanna think about it, but you know, there's a way that it could happen. This is his time to shine

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
Was second life just too early. I mean, it really was the metaverse. It was before

Ashley Esqueda (01:44:19):
Its time. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:44:20):
Totally. For sure. Phil Rosedale founded,

Ashley Esqueda (01:44:23):
We just all need those reigning. We all need raining fall in our lives, in the metaverse and so

Leo Laporte (01:44:28):
That, well you've got a hell of a memory. Wow. That was one of the early forms of griefing thing.

Ashley Esqueda (01:44:34):
I remember about second life.

Leo Laporte (01:44:36):
Yeah. Was that they called it griefing it happens. Still have those things raining. Fallas don't show me your reigning. Fallas please. It looks like the flying

Ashley Esqueda (01:44:43):
Toes it's reaching

Leo Laporte (01:44:44):
Down is gonna fly my God. What do you think that well, you mean this? He says, oh my gosh, I was reaching for water. I know let's all have a drink after that. I'm getting a little hot and bothered.

Ashley Esqueda (01:44:59):
Oh my gosh. That's the only thing I ever, I like, I just, I didn't get into second

Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
Life. That's the only thing I yeah. Thousand three Philip Rosedale founded it. You were had an avatar computers. Weren't up to it. So it was kind of chunky. It wasy. And then they, it was, but you could build, there was a whole building community. You could sell stuff you built. There was a whole internal economy. The first, the first

Ashley Esqueda (01:45:18):
Roblox, if you

Leo Laporte (01:45:19):
Will, there was Lindon. Yeah. Yeah. There was a, and once people were building like everything in second life, it was like Starbucks as an outpost in second life, there were concerts in big businesses. I

Ashley Esqueda (01:45:28):
Remember just like Fortnite. It was just like this like concert

Leo Laporte (01:45:32):
Big. Yeah. Embassy, embassy. The countries would open their consulates in second life. My

Christina Warren  (01:45:38):
Aunt who worked at the CDC, like they were trying to do something in second life. I remember that because I remember her asking me about it. And I was like, this is a really weird thing for,

Leo Laporte (01:45:47):
So like what a virus work in second life. Well, but they

Christina Warren  (01:45:50):
Like, well, cause they thought that it was gonna be the digital me eating space. They thought people were actually going to congregate there to learn about things. Like they thought it was going to be the same stuff that people tell us the metaverse is going to be. Which I, I don't believe any of this is ever going to be a thing to be completely candid.

Leo Laporte (01:46:03):
What? Oh my gosh. People

Ashley Esqueda (01:46:04):
Congregated there, but I'll tell you right now, people congregated there, but it wasn't to learn about stuff.

Christina Warren  (01:46:09):
Right. That's what I mean, like,

Leo Laporte (01:46:11):
Yeah, actually, and it's still around. So I don't mean to be, but towards, as it started to the end of its popularity. Yeah. As it started to generate, you could buy different outfits, including nude suits so that you would look like you were naked and then they were just struggling towards the end. Yeah. And it would be like, oh no, well, come

Christina Warren  (01:46:28):
On. Sex is gonna take over from the beginning. It, it would like always these things, things

Ashley Esqueda (01:46:32):
Foreign, an industry always drives technology. We know 100%.

Leo Laporte (01:46:35):
Yeah. But can you imagine a worse experience than kind of a clunky avatar dressed in a nude suit? And you're not, you're just, <laugh> doesn't seem like much fun.

Christina Warren  (01:46:46):
I mean, the Sims is probably one of the most enduring franchises again the last 20 years. You're right. And there're a ton of Sims MOS and the Sims is still great. Sims four hasn't been, when did that come out? Ashley like seven years ago.

Ashley Esqueda (01:46:57):
I mean, it might even be more now time is, might be more than that. I don't have any, any concept of time anymore. So could be 10. So,

Christina Warren  (01:47:04):
You know, right. So the Simms is still insanely popular. The, the modding community that huge second life was just like, okay, so Sims is teenage girls and like second life was men in their forties.

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:16):
Do you remember? Do you wanna make a metaverse? The Sims, all you need to do is just make the Sims like

Christina Warren  (01:47:23):
Honestly, totally.

Leo Laporte (01:47:29):
Everybody

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:29):
Should only speak in SIM. If you're in,

Christina Warren  (01:47:32):
I would totally just speak in SIM English 100%

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:35):
Only. I never speak in

Leo Laporte (01:47:37):
Language.

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:39):
And my, my hunger gauge, my angry gauge would be mostly full all the time. And my hunger gauge would be like mostly empty. So,

Leo Laporte (01:47:46):
So it's interesting cuz rich one wants to be in the metaverse. He can't wait. He's dying to put on the helmet. Christina thinks it's never gonna even happen. And you work for Microsoft, which has the closest thing we've got, which is the holo lens

Rich DeMuro (01:48:01):
As, and that thing they did the didn't they do like the meeting rooms or something like what, what were they called?

Christina Warren  (01:48:06):
I, I don't remember. But like the, the teams thing. Yeah. I saw it. I see.

Rich DeMuro (01:48:11):
Can I just give you my burning

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
Man vision

Rich DeMuro (01:48:13):
Thing and where I think this is where I see just, just one little thing that I think is gonna be huge. Okay. So you know how, when you're researching like a hotel for like a resort you wanna stay at, right? Like somewhere exotic. What do you do? You flip through trip advisor, you're looking at pictures. It's like the worst pictures you've ever seen of that hotel. It's like, if you wanna see one room like of the hotel, they take a picture from like the worst angle of the room and you're like, wait, that doesn't show me anything. So my idea, just one small part of the metaverse is gonna be Hilton hotels, Marriot, hotels. Every hotel is gonna be mapped virtual for VR. And you just put on your, you know, your Oculus and you just walk into the and see what it looks like. You see the view, you can walk upstairs, see what the room looks like. You can kind of

Leo Laporte (01:48:56):
Hear that now. I mean there's 3d. Yeah, yeah. 360 images.

Christina Warren  (01:49:00):
No, no, but I, no, but I'm into this. I I had a, when I, when we were allowed to travel, I had a fairly popular Instagram stories thing that I would do of Christina's hotel tours, where I would just tour the hotel rooms I would go into was remarkably popular. Probably one of the top things I've ever done. Shockingly. Like I had people who didn't even know me from other ways. I was like, oh, I love your hotel tours. I'm like, would you walk

Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
Around, do your room and then you'd walk around and show the lobby and all that. Is that what you would do? No, I, I,

Christina Warren  (01:49:26):
I would basically just walk into the room. I would do like a tour of what, what things were like and, and kind of show the whole thing and give my, my thoughts on, on where it was. I don't know why people liked it, but they did so to Richs point because you can't get it. Right. I mean, people, I would watch that, like before I were booking a place, I would like to know what it actually looks like. If I could have, if I would strap on a VR helmet to like find out is the room I'm going to be in

Ashley Esqueda (01:49:47):
Actually going, but that's an app.

Rich DeMuro (01:49:48):
I would do that. Imagine walking through it though, but I'm saying like, no, but what about walking through, you know, you wanna walk the cobblestone streets of Paris before you visit, I mean this, and yes, there are ways of doing this

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:00):
Universe, like tourism and stuff. I think argument is clear. It's

Rich DeMuro (01:50:04):
Just not that it's all together. And it's like, just like, but it won't be, whoever has the killer for walking through, it'll not be, well, it'll be fragmented, but it's going to be a thing that you do do, but that's

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:14):
Not a metaverse but then it's not a metaverse that's my argument. Well, what

Rich DeMuro (01:50:17):
Do you, how do you define what the metaverse is?

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:19):
I guess? Well, so, okay. So Facebook Facebook's vision of a metaverse since we're. So this is the reason we're all talking about it now is that you, you know, they're going to provide this sort of framework for everybody to build their own thing. That is all interconnected interop. And that you're gonna be able to kind of like go seamlessly from one thing to the next, like in a, in a perfect metaverse or whatever, but they

Rich DeMuro (01:50:41):
Provide the framework,

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:42):
They provide the framework. And here's the problem that is that we're, we're already seeing that the FTC is already investigating that they we've there there's there have been news stories about the FTC investigating Facebook's acquisitions of all of these little VR companies, little AR companies, because they're trying to, once again, just like they did before, you know, they started getting in trouble, just like they did with WhatsApp and Instagram. They're trying to snap up and kill all the oxygen in the room, all competitors so that they can be the monolith. And I don't think the FTC is gonna let that happen again. Like I just don't. And

Rich DeMuro (01:51:21):
So, no, I, I agree. And I don't, I don't think it's Facebook controlling

Ashley Esqueda (01:51:23):
This thing. No, no, no, but it that's what I'm saying. It's like, it can't be a metaverse in the traditional sense of the way that we're presented with it in books like snow crash, where it originated, like we it's a, it's a fully operational, you know, matrix basically. It's the matrix mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I argue that we will never see that because companies are too greedy. No one is going to want to share their experience. No, they want the, they feel it's really amazing. They want to own the platform. And so we're just never, they're all gonna fight with each other. This is the, these are the real franchise wars in demolition, man. It's not the fast food ones. It's this, it's this right here. Do you, they're all gonna be fighting

Leo Laporte (01:52:02):
About it, talking about this or at all interest in this, if it weren't for COVID and climate change and why old fires and earthquakes and tornadoes and volcanoes and tsunamis, do you think? I think so. It's, it's really, we wanna retreat from this and we want think so.

Rich DeMuro (01:52:18):
Yeah, I think so. I think, I think it's an actual evolution.

Ashley Esqueda (01:52:22):
Yeah. Didn't we all, when we, I remember when I was, what, 12 years old at the LA county fair paying $20 to strap on a headset and sell handed a little ring and spend 15 minutes walking around in blocks. Literally just like polygons

Rich DeMuro (01:52:36):
And the amount of people that got Oculus over the holidays is, is unbelievable. It was the number

Leo Laporte (01:52:43):
One app installed on iPhones over Christmas. I don't

Rich DeMuro (01:52:46):
Think they're it outta loss sales numbers, but they are selling this thing like crazy. And I had people come up to me, they're like, rich, this is unbelievable. And yes, VR is very tough to cover for TV because it's like, you just get this thing of like, but like the reality is every single story I've done with VR, that where I see stuff and I'm in this world and I, it is, it is so amazing. And we're just at the beginning. So like I said, that one little app that I had is just one thing. But like, imagine on a Friday night you can just walk into a bar and sit there with your friends and like you're in different places. And I get it. We still want to do this stuff in person. But the reality is not everyone wants to do that in person and not everyone's, there's going to be a, another place to do that. Like it's just going to everyone. Can your world, not everyone can exactly

Leo Laporte (01:53:32):
Oculus downloaded 1.3 million times globally between December 21st. Wow. And 27th of 363% increase. Clearly the big gift

Ashley Esqueda (01:53:43):
Of four people in my family. Yeah. It was a huge gift this year, this holiday, it was wild. Yeah. I've heard from a ton of people who got it. It got it for

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
People, but it was cuz of COVID 19. Right. It's cuz we've been in lockdown. We're all trapped. Yeah. We're all

Rich DeMuro (01:53:54):
Trapped. Yeah. I think it was also the, yeah, it was the right time. And it's also the right price. I think the price came down to a point where people said, okay, and it doesn't require like other equipment, so there's

Leo Laporte (01:54:04):
Right. But to your point, you have to have a Facebook account to use it. I mean, it really is.

Ashley Esqueda (01:54:09):
Which is why I don't have one. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:54:11):
I mean, either it's talk about locking. I can't, I, I don't have a Facebook account. Wow. And I'm not gonna set one up just to use ocus and by the way, if you fake it, if you make a fake account and they catch you, you're banned from Oculus.

Ashley Esqueda (01:54:22):
Yeah. You just banned from Oculus. So I just,

Rich DeMuro (01:54:24):
Well you need an apple account to use iMessage.

Leo Laporte (01:54:28):
No, I know it's all about platform lock in. And, and it's all about dystopia because if it weren't for dystopia, every single I've pointed out this before, but every single example of the metaverse, whether it's snow crash or ready player one or a cyber, it's all bad. It's ne neural answer. It's always a dystopia, you, that people are trying to escape from. Yeah. It's always a nightmare scenario. You don't wanna live in that world. So you go to this fake world, which I think were years from it being even close to look every single time they talk about it. You have to have some way of simulating touch and smell and movement. Look at that crazy thing they have in ready player one so that he can run that. <Laugh>

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:10):
I mean, come on. Well, but you think about like 

Rich DeMuro (01:55:13):
Something like

Leo Laporte (01:55:14):
Gaming, I wouldn't be surprised.

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:16):
Like if you look at something like gaming, like you look at, you know, it's, it's 20, 22 and 2000. We were, you know, we were, we were playing Dreamcast games and Nintendos and we were happy and we were, but I think about how far we've come in that time. That's a very short amount of time in, in the whole innovation. And I argue that like my kid in 20 years, like I can't even be in rap my brain about what he's gonna be playing games

Leo Laporte (01:55:43):
Will be much more vivid. Although, you know, if you think about it, why did you keep playing animal crossing? It's not the most vivid experience, not the highest resolution screen it,

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:52):
No it's warm hug, but you get

Christina Warren  (01:55:54):
It well, cause it comes down to the game. Ultimately it comes down to the game, but just, you know, when you can, when you can, I think that

Leo Laporte (01:56:00):
The, the mind is a better VR helmet than anything. Anybody can make your imagination,

Rich DeMuro (01:56:07):
But, but this is not what powers VR. It's like your it's like your senses are tricked in this system. Exactly. These, these,

Leo Laporte (01:56:14):
I would submit that actually you, you would be better off if you gave less signals to your mind and you'll let your mind do it than if you kind of gave it these concrete crappy signals from a VR helmet. Well

Rich DeMuro (01:56:25):
Maybe we just open a book, breaking news news and just, you know, breaking news. Imagine Leo

Ashley Esqueda (01:56:31):
Endorses,

Leo Laporte (01:56:31):
Microdosing. Oh, Hey, you know what, if you can actually, I've been looking for a way to get some, is that legal by the way? I it's not legal. I don't,

Ashley Esqueda (01:56:40):
I don't know

Rich DeMuro (01:56:42):
Ashley you're at expert on all things drugs is that you,

Christina Warren  (01:56:46):
You, I was gonna say my

Ashley Esqueda (01:56:47):
Expert actually has got it. Yeah. Clearly as the magic mushrooms expert on the panel.

Christina Warren  (01:56:53):
Yes. Please tell us,

Rich DeMuro (01:56:54):
What are you mixing behind you in that lab? I dunno. I

Leo Laporte (01:56:57):
Just feel like I wanna, I feel like I it's time for me to micro dose. What could possibly,

Ashley Esqueda (01:57:02):
You know what, Leo, I fully, I fully support this on every level on every level I have

Rich DeMuro (01:57:09):
To, there are a lot of startups working on this full confession.

Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
It's a thing, full confession. And when I was a young guy breaking into E three, when I was a younger person, I took a lot of psychedelics, enjoyed them quite a lot. But of course, as a normal adult, I immediate cut all that. I don't even, I don't wanna smoke pot. I don't wanna lose one brain cell. And yet, for some reason, the idea of microdosing sounds appealing. Like I get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and 20 micrograms of LSD. I think it would be good. <Laugh>

Christina Warren  (01:57:37):
Huxley was, was brilliant. I don't know. I mean, look, I can't argue with

Ashley Esqueda (01:57:40):
This. I, you

Leo Laporte (01:57:42):
Did all this Huxley. I know he took acid. Did microdose or did he take the, he took the full blow board thing. Didn't well, that's a whole laugh

Ashley Esqueda (01:57:49):
Stuff. You don't want that. Yeah.

Christina Warren  (01:57:51):
I mean, I mean, mean he, he, he experimented with all the different things that

Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
We're going down a very bad road here. I have to stop right now.

Christina Warren  (01:57:57):
But you, you, you, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm with Ashley. I'm very here for you doing this and you could guide get somebody to like watch, oh,

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:03):
I don't even guide support it. Don't

Rich DeMuro (01:58:06):
Yeah. Leo I've

Leo Laporte (01:58:06):
Been there. Leo. Leo's been the way I've been there. Experience out of all of us. I've been there. I've be your guide. That's right. I'll be your guy. You will be the guide

Rich DeMuro (01:58:13):
In the metaverse for microdosing. Yeah.

Christina Warren  (01:58:15):
Compile. Oh my God. Okay. So see,

Rich DeMuro (01:58:17):
That would actually kind like your little mushroom tree that you live under. You'll be like, okay,

Christina Warren  (01:58:21):
See, now you made me actually like the micro, like the metaverse because the, now the concept of a bunch of people like tripping getting high in the micro, but the micro at averse,

Leo Laporte (01:58:32):
I like the micro first. Can we call it the micro verse?

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:35):
I'm gonna go buy micro verse.com.

Leo Laporte (01:58:41):
All right. Let's take a break. <Laugh> you guys is good. I'm having way too much fun. Who needs, who needs microdosing? When I've got Christina Warren, rich Duro, Ashley Skea fabulous panel. Really, really lots of fun. Our show today brought to you by worldwide technology and checkpoint two names. You really need to know if you are a business and you are worried about getting hacked, getting ransomware, WWT offers, security solutions and services to protect your business. Attackers constantly updating their strategy. Are you WWT can help you. They can help your organization, air and combat those next gen threats. I'm telling you, you want a company like WWT that has the vision, the services and the capabilities that you need to deliver security controls and reduce the risk for your organization. Nobody does it better than WWT. Their team provides resources and platforms that make it possible.

Leo Laporte (01:59:40):
Three deck CS in this business, they have a proven track record to help you succeed. I've assembled a couple of case studies. A healthcare organization you'd know the name. They were ready to move to an electronic health record technology. They had a good sense to go to WWT, to help them do it, to make sure it was secure. They had to, right? You've got HIPAA. You've got all the security issues with electronic health records. Those WWT consultants come in, they use their expert knowledge. They use state-of-the-art tools. They used in-depth analysis and they even went so far as to, to, to, to training and repetition with the staff. They did a full assessment. They found 90% of the vulnerabilities they found could fixed just by putting a comprehensive, systematic approach for patching. They made it possible for this healthcare organization to safely securely, efficiently move to electronic health records.

Leo Laporte (02:00:33):
That's the kind of team you want. They fire on every cylinder, whether it's risk management, endpoint, security, network, security, identity, and access cloud security, all the areas these days, your company needs to Excel at. But the good news is you don't have to do it alone. You've got a great partner and those are the words I hear every time, great partner with WWT. See how WWT and checkpoint can protect your business assets and your intellectual property. With a holistic security approach. They know business, they love business. They, they will help you make your strategy, your business strategy and your technology strategy align. And they know that's gotta both have to work together. Go to wwt.com/twi. Get started. Let worldwide technology help you enter this new era safe and sound and efficient wwt.com/worldwide technology. Make a new world happen. Quick break. I think it'd be fun to check in with our editors. They have put together a little movie to celebrate this past Week on TWI watch.

Speaker 7 (02:01:41):
Congratulations. We are celebrating episode 800 of the Mac break podcast. I, I, I, I didn't get us a cake. Oh, it's just too much cake for someone who lives alone, whatever I don't eat during this show or dinner tonight, I will freeze. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:01:56):
Previously on TWI this weekend, Google proud to report. According to Mike ELGAN and the computer world.com. You can safely ignore web three.

Speaker 8 (02:02:07):
The problem with this whole thing, the, the idea of rebuilding the web based on NFTs, blockchains, cryptocurrency, et cetera, et cetera, is that it's fundamentally compatible with human nature.

Leo Laporte (02:02:21):
All about

Speaker 9 (02:02:21):
Android. We already know that Samsung has been kind of doing gangbusters in the large cream fold devices with our folds and our flips. Well at CS 2022, we've got a co they've got a couple more form factors for us that are pretty interesting. I gotta tell you all of

Speaker 10 (02:02:36):
These take foldable to like the next level and like Bravo, Samsung,

Leo Laporte (02:02:42):
Mac break weekly, the LA police officers when they decided to go after a snor lack, instead of responding to a armed robbery in progress at a mall are still fired. They were charged with one failing to respond to a robbery in progress called two making misleading statements to their Sergeant free failing to respond on the radio four, failing to handle and assign radio call five playing Pokemon, go on patrol.

Speaker 7 (02:03:07):
Yeah, that that's number five. That's the fifth one on the list. TWI

Leo Laporte (02:03:12):
Tell your boss it's job related. <Laugh> it is it's job related. We had a fun week and lots more great stuff come. Andy, did his ask me anything in our club TWI this week and that's available on the TWI plus feed. If you are not a member of club TWI, I, I do want to remind everybody that's a great way to support what we do. Seven bucks a month. You get ad free versions of all the shows we figure you've giving us money. We don't need to use the ads to monetize. So you get ad free versions of all of our shows. You also get access to our club, TWI discord, which is always a great, great time that has become more than just a place to chat while the shows are going on. We've got a whole community going in every area of, of geek tu, and then the TWI plus feed Stacy's book club is in the discord becomes part of the TWI plus feed.

Leo Laporte (02:03:59):
We have an untitled Linox show, the GIZ fi and soon watch we will. We figured that this is the best way to launch new shows. We've got a new show we're working on. We're very excited about which will premiere first in the club, TWI discord and on the TWI plus feed. So if you're not a member of the club, here's a great way to kind of get inside TWI, go to twi.tv/club, TWI seven bucks a month, small amount of money really how helps us really supports what we do. And I think there's some really good benefits that go along with it. All right. Yes, we do have business accounts. We, we, a number of companies now have bought business accounts. There's, that's all that information. That's on the page, back to the show, worldwide PC shipments up big time, 27% over 2019 last year, 15% over 2021. I mean over 20, 2340 1 million PCs sold in 2021. What? Wow. What the big PC makers, number one, Lenovo, HP, number two, Dell, and then apple, apple had the biggest growth year over year. Apple now has eight and a half percent market share. I have to think the new M one processors probably helped with that. And again, obviously work from home is, is the driver here, although it's interesting that PC sales were up in 20 21 20. Yeah.

Christina Warren  (02:05:21):
Yeah. Well, okay. So, so we think about it. You had like the, you had the M one that really came out like the end of 2020, so that drove into the entire year. Yep. And, and these are our big deal because for a lot of a spec users, you know, we haven't had good laptops from apple in years, and certainly

Leo Laporte (02:05:38):
There was probably pen up demand. I bet you, yeah, I think so.

Christina Warren  (02:05:41):
Yeah. But then you also had like, kind of the coalesce of, of you know, kind of the, the thirst. Everybody wanted a graphics card, the rise of PC gaming, because people couldn't get, you know, or, or even if people could get the newer consoles, you know, PC gaming has had is really having a moment, the, the rise in processors, again, you know, a fourth quarter of 2020 probably, you know, leading into 2021 bicker mobile chip improvement. So I think there's probably, I, I think it'll probably be the gaming work from home and, and pen up demand. But that's my take, I, I, it could also just be FOMO, right? Like you can't get a processor, you can't get at chips, so everybody wants it. You know what I mean? You were talking,

Leo Laporte (02:06:17):
You are crazy. You are talking in the chat room, sharing your techniques for getting an Invidia graphics card. Yeah. What is the deal there? What are you buying them for friends?

Christina Warren  (02:06:29):
I, I have, I haven't in, I haven't in months because it's been very difficult to, to be completely candid. Like at this point to try to get a graphics card is so hard. Still the, the it's it's gotten worse, actually. There's a line, the usual methods that you could do that Ashley and I used when we were building our rigs, like our are over. And it, you used to just be able to tell people, follow certain, discords have notifications on, on Twitter and whatnot. That's all gone. And this

Leo Laporte (02:06:57):
Point's, what's the hot card everybody wants these days. It 30, 90, 30, 80

Christina Warren  (02:07:01):
Is what everybody wants expensive. Yeah. The 30 80

Leo Laporte (02:07:02):
Is really like, kind of, that's what I have the way I got it was I bought it for Alienware and I figured, well, they're gonna have enough. So I was able to get in a couple of months, get a AMD. Right.

Christina Warren  (02:07:12):
I know a lot of people who have bought prebuilt, it was the

Leo Laporte (02:07:15):
Only way, the only way I could me

Christina Warren  (02:07:17):
Too. But the problem is even with prebuilt is that companies have learned that people are just buying them for the card. And so they've either raise the price or they've changed the config of the package. So it's not as good. So you have to be careful in terms of what prebuilt you get. Cuz it used to be, you could say, okay, well if I spend $1,600 on this prebuilt, but it has the card I want fine. Now a you're not gonna be spending 1600 to get that card. And, and B like, yeah, the, the rest of what you get might not be worth it. So if somebody wants a 30, 90, which is their most expensive card other, well, they just count with 30, 90 ti, but it, it, somebody wants their most expensive card. Unfortunately, at this point, my advice is you're gonna, you're gonna pay the scalper one way or another. Find like the scalper who

Ashley Esqueda (02:08:00):
Hope are just enter the new egg shuffle literally every time and cross

Christina Warren  (02:08:03):
The fingers and the problem, the shuffle though, I've had friends hit the shuffle I have too. And I, and I've, I've hit the shuffle. The problem, the shuffle is many times they will make you get a bundle of stuff that then you don't want. So, so, so either way you're paying, right. So I mean,

Leo Laporte (02:08:18):
Yeah, what's the new egg shuffle. I don't, I'm sorry. I, oh, sorry. It's related to Oscar. Isaac. Is there, does he have anything do with

Christina Warren  (02:08:26):
It's a raffle. So every, every day or every couple of days, nube has a number of products that they make available for people to get the opportunity to buy at random. So you sign up, you have to a big, yeah, well have to tell them these are the products I would like to buy. Then you'll get an email. If you get the email, it's not guaranteed that you'll get it. It just means you have the opportunity to buy. And then you need to like click on, you know, the, the buy button as fast as possible. Sometimes they let you just get the product on its own, but more often than not, they have it bundled with something else. Its bundle like when, like when I got my 30, 80, which I, I got a year ago, I got it. Like at the end of January of 20 21, I was able to get it basically for MSRP.

Christina Warren  (02:09:02):
And then it came with a power supply that wound up being recalled. That was fun. I didn't use the power supply, unfortunately, but it was the one that blew up the gigabyte one that was catching on fire. Yep. So I, I paid, you know, about $900 a drive out for, for the card and the power supply. So, which was huge because I couldn't get a 30, 80, you know, for, for that price. Now you'd be lucky to get it for double that price. Right. But, but that was a year ago. And now, you know, the whole thing is just much more difficult because supply is still constrained and you know, demand is even, is even greater.

Leo Laporte (02:09:40):
Is this harder to get than sneakers now? Is this your new thing? Yeah. PS five. But you know, it's still harder to get than anything X, Xbox X or COVID test one or the other. Yeah. <laugh> very good test. No,

Christina Warren  (02:09:54):
I was gonna say, did you see that? Like all, all the like worry 64 and all the other like console finders, when you

Ashley Esqueda (02:10:01):
Can buy a COVID test or

Rich DeMuro (02:10:03):
Get all on there. Like now in stock wise,

Leo Laporte (02:10:06):
Wise cam was selling COVID test, but they sold out

Rich DeMuro (02:10:10):
<Laugh> the funny thing is six months ago, when all these companies pitched me, like when wise was like, Hey, rich, we're selling you know, COVID test. Like, do you wanna do a story? I'm like, no. And then iHealth comes to me. They're like, we're doing COVID test. I'm like, no, you can get their, I was making fun of 'em at the CVS. They have 'em stacked up, you know, stacked up, get 'em anywhere. You can't get 'em anywhere. Yeah. Although I did get two shipments over the last couple days, so I will say they, if you order 'em online, they do to ship 'em out pretty quickly. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:10:35):
You just have to wait a, just order them preemptively. Like don't order. Don't need one. If you, if you wait until you need one, you've waited too long, then

Christina Warren  (02:10:43):
You're screwed. Well, so we had, I, I got like spoiled. So we have a clinic on campus at work and they would allow us like, when you came in, like you, you could get a free, they would like give like the free, you know, Binx I have labs, whatever, like COVID test people. And so if you went into the clinic, if you could go in multiple times a week, and I knew people who did I didn't, but I would typically go in once a week and I would get like a free, you know, take home test or whatever. Well, they they've run out. So they had to send out a mass email to be like, for this foreseeable future, we will not have free co the tests available. We were all very sad.

Rich DeMuro (02:11:16):
Geez. What you they were giving out those BAC tests, like candy at CS. Like I, oh, I'm not kidding. They're. And so my wife is like, get as many as you can. Yeah. Buy,

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:25):
Buy a second suitcase. Rich pack of

Leo Laporte (02:11:28):
I'm kidding. There's a shortage.

Rich DeMuro (02:11:30):
You know how you go up to those booths to CS? Like if they have like little swag that you want, you kind of talk to them for a little bit. They might give you like the cool thing. Well, that was like the B were they

Leo Laporte (02:11:38):
Handing

Rich DeMuro (02:11:41):
Outs? Oh yeah. How did you funny develop these tests? <Laugh> that's

Leo Laporte (02:11:45):
So, oh, a free one. Sure.

Rich DeMuro (02:11:47):
Oh, do you want to try? I'm like I I've never

Leo Laporte (02:11:50):
Done a test. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:54):
Yeah,

Rich DeMuro (02:11:54):
Totally. Do I put it up this not, no, no, no. You put up your knot on your ear. Oh, okay.

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:59):
Another one. Cause I messed up one. I'll try it. When I get to my hotel room tonight, I like just pack. I run. Just run. Yeah. Run. That's a college. That's a college fund. You could, you could just sell 'em flip. 'em Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (02:12:11):
Isn't this a weird world we live in who would've thought. I mean, as we entered year of this

Ashley Esqueda (02:12:16):
Two years ago, could you imagine someone just coming to your door and being like, Hey, it's me. I it's it's you from the future? Just calling you on your phone. Hey, it's you two years in the future. I just wanna let you know pandemics coming. You're gonna spend a lot of time at home also. You're gonna be, people are gonna be rationing out COVID test. Like what? Like, could

Leo Laporte (02:12:36):
You imagine I'm from the future? Exactly. This is how you'll be doing your shows from now on <laugh> exactly what a world. What a world.

Ashley Esqueda (02:12:48):
Scary stuff you think COVID is your a, you nearly adopted the billion, the virus.

Rich DeMuro (02:12:54):
I was both. Everyone's gonna think it will be two weeks and it will pass just Tucker down. I was,

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:00):
Yeah. Just I'll just

Leo Laporte (02:13:01):
Lock your doors. Yeah. It's gonna be all over any minute. Hey, I wanna thank all three of you, cuz I'll tell you whatever's going on in the real world you made this last couple of hours. A hell of a lot of fun. Thank you so much for being here. I wish we could go on for two more, but I, you know, I can go home now cuz the football game's almost over. So <laugh>

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:21):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:13:22):
Thank you, Ashley ake. I mean look at all those trophies. You are a star. You're wonderful. Tell us anything you, what are you working on? Anything you wanna plug?

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:34):
I, you know, I just did a video last month about on C's YouTube channel about microphones. If you wanna upgrade your

Leo Laporte (02:13:41):
Streaming, that's why you have such a nice microphone. Now I,

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:45):
So the nice people at sure were kind enough to send me the SM seven B as a, as a test model. And I did have to send it back, but I I've never actually felt this way, sending back a product. Like I usually am like, oh good rids. Like I just wanna go back to the thing I'm used to. I was so sad about the S M seven B going back to shore that I literally same day that I shipped it back, went out and bought one for myself. So but I, I do a, it's a video where I walk through like AirPods pro a $70 microphone, $150 microphone, a $170 microphone. And I'm like, here's how you can tell the difference in sound between all of them and what they sound like. Yeah, that's me. And I'm in the same sweater. I'm in the exact same sweater. Look

Leo Laporte (02:14:27):
At that. We didn't know that. We didn't have to know that by the way that it just

Ashley Esqueda (02:14:32):
Today.

Leo Laporte (02:14:33):
That's right. But it's earlier, it's,

Ashley Esqueda (02:14:35):
It's a nice video. If you're looking, if you're looking to like much like the computer boom of last year, if you're realizing that you're at home setup is in need of an audio upgrade. If you need a microphone upgrade. I had a lot of fun testing out microphones at different price points and it, I hope it's helpful for you. If that's something you're looking for

Leo Laporte (02:14:54):
We use that. It's so funny because that we use that. What is it? SM B seven SM seven. We used, yeah, the SM seven radio for years. That's all I ever worked with. It's a workforce.

Ashley Esqueda (02:15:04):
It's a work horse. Well, you just sold.

Rich DeMuro (02:15:06):
Me's exactly my it's my Amazon car. You need it? I don't know what,

Leo Laporte (02:15:08):
What the hell are you wearing? Rich. What is that?

Rich DeMuro (02:15:10):
Is that this is my sportscaster. What it looks like. Yeah. It's great. I love it. It's just how I do my podcast. It's a play by play. It's so easy. It's you know, no one sees me and it's just so easy to like have anywhere I am. I love it. Anyway. I'm not stealed from Ashley's thunder.

Ashley Esqueda (02:15:25):
No, no, just you should get one. I, I just, so I cannot say enough about how much I love this book. Yeah. These

Leo Laporte (02:15:30):
Are classics. When I started using them in radio at first it hurt my voice. I actually got a little horse because I was for the first time hearing stuff in my voice that I'd never heard before. And I was kind of adjusting, trying to correct. Adjusting it to try to connect, to make it sound better. So it's yeah. It's that good? It's really I

Ashley Esqueda (02:15:48):
Have also found that I speak in lower tones. Yes. With this microphone, because I can hear you don't need to protect at all. It's a very good, so I, I know this is like a very sexist thing to say about myself, but I, like, I have been told that I can be very shrill. And so some, some people on the internet have maybe said that about me. Screw them.

Leo Laporte (02:16:09):
What the hell did they know?

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:10):
I mean, look, I don't, I don't really care. It's neither here nor there, but like in situations they have not been wrong. And so so yeah, this has actually been a very nice upgrade for me. So

Leo Laporte (02:16:19):
You should always talk like this. I hate

Rich DeMuro (02:16:21):
With people. You've made a living. You've made a living on the internet for years. I've on living. Who's tall.

Leo Laporte (02:16:29):
I mean, gimme a bra. So I think, I think people don't mind the sound. I hate fake voices. We started watching the Witcher and I don't know why Henry Kas do like this all the time, but I really hate it.

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:40):
I just it's for the it's for the ladies, Leo, it's not it's. Oh really?

Leo Laporte (02:16:43):
You like it. It's absolutely not for you. It gets you going, but it's not

Christina Warren  (02:16:47):
About him. She knows what's every, anything about him gets

Leo Laporte (02:16:50):
He has no emotions. He's a matter

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:52):
A Popsicle. He doesn't do it for me because he's a, he's just a dork. And like I is, but I love it. Doesn't matter how attractive he is. Like, I'm just like, oh, you just seem like such a dork, like such awe to hang around, man. Like, I don't know. I hearing, I married someone who looks like a Viking who like plays. He's a musician.

Leo Laporte (02:17:09):
That's what you want. You want a hipster? That's what I want.

Christina Warren  (02:17:12):
Yeah. You're you're with some new cool look, I don't care how dorky heli travel is like I will. Absolutely. I see.

Ashley Esqueda (02:17:18):
He's too clean. He's clean. I like him. I like him. A little rough

Leo Laporte (02:17:21):
Watch the Witcher with the subtitles on because you know, he grunts a lot and all they write is M <laugh> annoyed

Christina Warren  (02:17:30):
Grunt. I

Ashley Esqueda (02:17:31):
Like that. Actually. That's funny. I'll have to do that. That's a good, that's a good, that's a lot of good tips on this show today. You rock

Leo Laporte (02:17:37):
And roll. I think it's wonderful. It's been so long since we've seen you cuz you've had a baby. You've been stuff to do. Please come back. This is my day

Ashley Esqueda (02:17:44):
To, this is my day normally to like watch him all day. We each give each other a day off on the weekends

Leo Laporte (02:17:50):
For me then. So yeah. Yeah. The kid spending for himself now. So it's great. Hey, three years old, you can just give him a box of cheer hours. Yeah. It's he hangs out with, he signs takes care of

Ashley Esqueda (02:18:00):
Himself. He's out, probably out in the backyard playing a Hawkman from flashboard. That's like his

Leo Laporte (02:18:05):
Thing. That's the cutest thing I ever heard. He

Ashley Esqueda (02:18:08):
Loves that song. I bet he does.

Leo Laporte (02:18:11):
I bet he does. That's awesome. Thank you, Christina. Warren, you are awesome too. When are you gonna get to go back on the road? You were doing those ignite sessions and everything. What's

Christina Warren  (02:18:21):
I wish I have no idea. No, I don't know. I mean, things have been ch things have changed so much. I mean, I thought that where we were a few months to go was different than where we are now. So hopefully I will be able to, to do that more. I hope so. It, we will see, you know, like hopefully, I mean, this is, I kind of hope <inaudible> burns through and, and kind of, you know, we, we can read and demonst, that's

Leo Laporte (02:18:42):
All of our hope

Christina Warren  (02:18:43):
Honestly, and go back to normal. But but yeah, no I have to second Ashley's rec on that mic. I have one, I do not, I'm not using it right now because my office is a disaster and I'm trying to set it up. But, but I did actually buy one cuz I had a similar experience. It's her, I used it on a project and I was like, it's so good. So secondary

Leo Laporte (02:19:02):
You're using a road that's like, is that a road I'm

Christina Warren  (02:19:04):
Using a road, which is fine. But, but the, the, the SM seven B is just way better. But yeah. So, but I'm not, I am, I did, I do wanna like we just brought it back. Actually. It's a new show that I'm doing on the Microsoft developer YouTube channel every Friday, it comes out, it's called the download with Christina Warren and it's basically kind of a, a rundown of the latest things happening in the developer news space in the developer space every week. So youtube.com/microsoft developer is where you can see episodes of that each Friday.

Leo Laporte (02:19:32):
Nice. Congratulations. Thank you. That'll be fun. I'll be start. I'll start watching that. That's great. Yeah, really good. Thank you, Christina. Great to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Great, great being here. And we wanna thank Desi EZ in the shape of rich tomorrow for joining us. <Laugh> you got, it does look like Desi, actually rich on tech.tv. Anything you wanna plug rich?

Rich DeMuro (02:19:55):
You know, I'll, my podcast is called rich on tech. It's where I talk you know, about, I basically answer questions that people send me. So, you know, obviously being on TV, people send me questions about technology. So I answer for those every week,

Leo Laporte (02:20:08):
DM on Instagram, he loves it when you do that. Oh,

Rich DeMuro (02:20:11):
I love I do. I, I, you know, I forget about it. It emails the easiest, honestly, but I'll take the DMS. But Instagram is my favorite, you know, I'm, I'm at rich on tech, on Instagram. I post a lot of cool stuff. It's funny because it was like two years of, I used to, you know, post a lot of cool like tech videos. And then it's like, without going to things, it got a lot tougher to do that. And now with CES, I feel like I got my groove back. You know what I mean? Like I'm posting massage, robots and little, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:20:37):
<Laugh> remote controlled

Rich DeMuro (02:20:39):
Cars, remote controlled cars and like robots. Here's a

Leo Laporte (02:20:43):
Pen robots. I think everybody needs a pen sterilizer in their life

Rich DeMuro (02:20:47):
Is my favorite. The pen sterilizer. You put the pen on the top. It spits out a clean pen on the bottom for just a small, this is not your favorite, this $750.

Leo Laporte (02:20:55):
This is your very, very favorite thing. And all of CES, a pen sterilizer

Rich DeMuro (02:21:01):
Was the best. I actually, the day I sent it back, just like Ashley, the day I had to send back my pen sterilizer.

Leo Laporte (02:21:06):
Oh, so sorry. I got my

Rich DeMuro (02:21:08):
So very sad. Sometimes

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
That happens sometimes

Rich DeMuro (02:21:10):
That happens that and a Sherm might. I love that

Ashley Esqueda (02:21:12):
Person. Wait, that comment right there is perfect. Has it really come to this? <Laugh> that person is exactly. Yes. That person it's always a flower.

Leo Laporte (02:21:20):
Your right. Literally, literally come to this. Yeah.

Rich DeMuro (02:21:24):
I live for the comments on my social media. I mean, it's like Facebook is the most negative. Literally I can post a picture of like a, a cat, like trailing a baby in like a, a red flyer wagon. And it's like really would a cat do that? It's like, come on. They have better things to do. And like, Instagram will be like a little bit nicer. And then Twitter is just, you know, no, you don't even know what you're gonna get there. You

Leo Laporte (02:21:46):
Don't have to go in the boring tunnel. Just go to Rich's boring tunnel videos on Instagram and there you go. There

Rich DeMuro (02:21:53):
It is the best

Leo Laporte (02:21:54):
Video. That's awesome. Thank you. Rich thank you, Ashley. Thank you, Christina. You guys rock. We do Twitter every Sunday afternoon, two 30 Pacific five 30 Eastern 2230 UTC. It's fun to watch live. If you wanna do that, go to live.twit.tv. There's live audio and video. People have been complaining about YouTube, YouTube periodically. For reasons we don't know refreshes the URL. You can't use the old, old URL. If you can't, you can go to the page, get rid of the old URL, refresh the page, get the new one. And we are on YouTube as well as other places live.twit.tv, irc.twit.tv. If you wanna chat along, of course, if you're Club TWIT member, you can chat along on the discord as well. After the fact, all of our shows on all of the network are available on the website, twit.tv. In this case, it's I think twit.tv/twit, you'll find a link there to our YouTube channel. You can watch there. Of course, I always like to encourage people to subscribe though. That way we know you'll hear the show every week, the minute it's available. TWiT.tv. And do me a favor. If you subscribe at a podcast player leave us a five star review. The oldest continuous running tech podcast in the world. Here we are eight, eight hundred and fifty eight shows in the can. Thank you everybody. Come back next week. We'll see you then another TWIs. This is amazing in the can byebye

Speaker 11 (02:23:20):
The, doing the, doing the doing all right, doing the baby.