This Week in Tech Episode 870 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT this in tech, my friend, Mike ELGAN sitting right next to me and he's in studio, Daniel Rubino from windows central and Aloha from Hava it's doc rock. We will talk about Elon Musk. He's a big old troll. He also now has a controlling interest in TWiTtter. What's he gonna do should be interesting. The worldwide development conference, developers conferences coming up for apple. What will they announce? And the battle of the pixels on slash R slash places is all coming up next in a whole lot more with TWiT

TWiT Intro (00:00:36):
Podcasts.

Leo Laporte (00:00:37):
You love

TWiT Intro (00:00:38):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:51):
This is TWiT this in tech episode, 870 recorded Sunday, April 10th, 2022. Kim apple says good morning. This episode of this week at tech is brought to you by worldwide technology and Intel with an innovative culture, thousands of it, engineers, application developers, unmatched labs and integration centers for testing and deploying technology at scale WWT helps customers bridge the gap between strategy and at execution to learn more about WWT, visit wwt.com/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 and ship to your door for free@mintmobiledotcomslashTWiTandbystamps.com. Stop over paying for shipping with stamps.com. Sign up with promo code TWiT for a special offer. That includes a four week trial free postage and a digital scale, no long term commitments or contracts. Just go as stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the page and enter the code TWiT and by it pro TV, give your it team an engaging it development platform to level up their skills. Volume discounts. Start at five seats, go to it. Pro.Tv/TWiT, and make sure to mention TWiT 30 to your design it pro TV account executive to get 30% off or more on a business plan.

Leo Laporte (00:02:33):
It's time for TWiT this week at tech to show we cover the week's tech news. And this time we had to bring in somebody on the windows signing on the Mac side. So we have, and then Mike ELGAN you're in the middle on the

Mike Elgan (00:02:44):
Against everybody

Leo Laporte (00:02:45):
Mike ELs here from elgan.com. He represents the represents the DMZ, the neutral zone. That's right. It's great to have you in studio back from Morocco.

Mike Elgan (00:02:55):
Yeah, just got back from Morocco after two months in Morocco was

Leo Laporte (00:02:58):
Wonderful trip watching all your pictures. Of course, Mike and his wife Amira do that. Gastro Noma adventures and Morocco was your most recent. So we'll find out all about that a bit. I see. You've also brought a beverage I have. So we will find out about that a bit, but let's introduce the guys who can't drink with us on your left, representing the Macintosh contingent doc Royal youtube.com/rock. Hi doc.

Doc Rock (00:03:22):
Thank you. Thank you. I am very Mac heavy, but I am actually BI H have been BI H since the very beginning of time, because I have a CNC in a laser machine, so,

Leo Laporte (00:03:31):
Oh, you have to be Bial. Yes,

Doc Rock (00:03:33):
But I am probably about 90% max height.

Leo Laporte (00:03:36):
I pretend that I use windows. You okay? Curious. All right. It's not my favorite thing in the world. Daniel rub Joyfully. Doesn't he from windows central he's executive editor over there. I do. Or see, I'm starting to think Paul throt is using windows cuz it's his career not cuz he at a choice. You know what I'm saying?

Daniel Rubino (00:04:00):
Yes. I think that's, that does kind of feel accurate as well. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:04:06):
It's it's

Daniel Rubino (00:04:06):
Hard windows hard to choose

Leo Laporte (00:04:08):
Windows these days. Microsoft seems to be kind of actively annoying its users. I'm sure that's not how they see it.

Daniel Rubino (00:04:17):
I, I, I think that's the, even the less than 1% users who are complaining, I think most people are actually pretty fine. It's a windows. Eleven's actually been very successful for Microsoft, but there are people,

Leo Laporte (00:04:28):
It looks good. Complain. Absolutely. It looks good.

Doc Rock (00:04:30):
They're better looking than us. So that's all

Leo Laporte (00:04:32):
They meant. Yeah. It's good looking. It's good. Looking on. Although I had somebody call me on the radio show yesterday said I cannot install Chrome. No matter what I do it, I just got this surface book and it won't let me install Chrome. And I said, you wouldn't buy any chance be using windows S 10 S he said, oh yeah. Right. He said, oh, well let me, let me walk you through it. Let me break it to you. Let me break it to you. No, you can. But that's it. But then I had explain, well, oh, it's easy to turn off cuz actually you have a full windows, 10 machine. It should a setting. Where do I go to set it? Well, you would think the control panel, but no, you go to the windows store and you push a button and implies. You're gonna buy an upgrade to windows called windows 10 pro you press the get button. And suddenly now you're normal. Again. It's very confusing. They, that is not a good, I didn't, I

Daniel Rubino (00:05:20):
Didn't find it confus. I thought they made it so much simpler recently cuz it gives you the popup menus and you just follow you. You already clicked that and it goes to the store and you, you click something else like it's less than 60 seconds, but you understand A reboot anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:05:32):
You understand? Yeah, I know it's because it's really, I think it's just probably a race squeak. It's relatively confusing in the windows context. They're I feel confusing thing, right? This was the problem with me for the podcasting was you would have to go to a store and press a button that said subscribe. And I think that probably slowed down podcasting cause people thought, well, what is this gonna cost me? Right. And so I think going to a store to do a free upgrade is a little problematic, but anyway, look, believe me there's problems on all sides, all sides. We have awful people on both sides. But there is none awful than Mr. Elon Musk, the new owner of TWiTtter. Well at least he owns the lion share era of TWiTtter more even than Jack or biz or E he's got more than 9% of TWiTtter. Kind of interesting. Elon's been slowly buying it up since January,

Mike Elgan (00:06:30):
Since January 31st. Yeah. And he he's gonna be on the board and this is the thing it, I think is UN underemphasized in, in his essential takeover of TWiTtter, which is that there's a lot of mousey sort of like non-descript people on the board and then you have this bigger than life personality, Elon Musk. And he's just gonna be running rough shot over, over the board. He's he's gonna, and, and this is my biggest fear actually that going to use it as this personal play thing he's gonna mess around with features. He's gonna use it to troll the S E C. He's going to do all these things that are for him personally. I don't know that he's gonna do that. There's no evidence, but I just feel like why else would he want to be so involved in TWiTtter suddenly as a

Leo Laporte (00:07:17):
Company, the information even said, oh, just go ahead and do it. You know, you're gonna make him the CEO, wait, it's not impressive.

Doc Rock (00:07:24):
The dead giveaway was him saying, oh, I'm gonna bring out the edit button. And then TWiTtter have to go

Leo Laporte (00:07:30):
Seconds

Doc Rock (00:07:30):
Later talking about this. Yeah. For years relaxed people

Leo Laporte (00:07:34):
And, and, and we're gonna do it. And, and yeah, they were kind of, I think agro all the CEO, the interim CEO of TWiTtter, I think was at pays to say, oh no, no, this wasn't cuz of Elon. But it was right after Elon's poll. He's not stopping there. Look at Elon's TWiTtter. It goes on and on and on. Here's the most recent, this is from Elon, the fourth grader. Should we delete the w in TWiTtter? And there's only two choices. Yes. Or of course by the way, yes. Is winning. That's obviously jokey, but then you have to wonder, you know, how much is of this is jokey convert. Twittter's SF had quarter to homeless shelters since no one shows up anyway. Now if you're on the TWiTtter team. Yeah. If you're an employee, you might, I mean, I might say that's a joke. You might say

Mike Elgan (00:08:30):
Uhoh right. Well, he does, he does extreme things. I mean, he really does them with his other company. I don't think

Leo Laporte (00:08:35):
He's gonna turn into a homeless shelter. No, but it could be a shot at people who aren't working from home. Right. Right.

Mike Elgan (00:08:40):
But

Daniel Rubino (00:08:40):
Again, just what, yeah. I think that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's the whole idea that he he's kind upset that people aren't showing up, you know, for their work from home. Cause a lot of companies are obviously refining their policies. Now I find like the problem with him is like, there's no repercussions for his actions. And that's what happens when you're very wealthy. You have a lot of power a lot of people on TWiTtter, you know, follow him and respond to him and wanna be part of his orbit. And when you're that powerful and you don't have repercussions, you can just go and act the way you want to act. And no one's gonna kind of stop you. And that's, you know, the tweet about you know, is TWiTtter dying. He says, cuz he, he decided like the top three people who are followed on TWiTtter and how little they tweet. Right. And like anyone who knows anything about social networks realizes like that's not how you analyze the social network in terms of growth, which is monthly active users and monthly active growth and new subscribers, how TWiTtter blue is doing, you know, all this, like all these other metrics that he could be using then said he comes it from this other angle. And it's just so like, this is gonna be the person in, you know, con not in charge, but you know, trying to run the show here, it's just kind of disturbing,

Mike Elgan (00:09:44):
Let's be clear. Elon Musk is a TWiTtter troll and all this stuff about him joining the board and buying, you know, the money he spent to buy a 3 billion, 9.2% of, of the company and is nothing to him. I mean, it's, it's less, what is it? 1%, something about 1% of his total wealth, it's really nothing. And it, it greatly amplifies an already amplified TWiTtter account, by the way, the stock price went up 27% when he was announced that he had purchased this amount and he could have just sold it and made a billion dollars. Right. But, but I mean, as Dan was saying that there's all these, all these metrics that you normally use to, to judge the impact of the social network. But the one that especially applies to TWiTtter is the fact that all the media's on it, celebrities are on it.

Mike Elgan (00:10:34):
Justin Bieber, not withstanding who's only, well here's, here's the tweet top 10, most followed TWiTtter accounts. Most of these top accounts tweet, rarely post very little content is TWiTtter dying. Barack Obama. Well, he's not president anymore. Justin Bieber, I don't know. Katie Perry, RH Christiana, Taylor swift, lady Gaga, Elon Musk's number eight. He's tweeting to make up for the top seven. No no Mody, the primary premier of India and the Ellen show. But he says, for example, Taylor swift hasn't posted anything in three months and Justin Bieber only posted once this entire year. But is that a problem? I don't know. The problem is that all these other people who don't tweet or have more followers than he does, and that's the problem. Oh,

Daniel Rubino (00:11:17):
There are also, and they're PR accounts, right? These are accounts that are run by PR agencies. It, it's not like Taylor Swift's actually on TWiTtter. I might, maybe she is.

Mike Elgan (00:11:26):
I might say there is a problem because anybody smart, like Taylor swift who has to manage her reputation carefully is probably reluctant to tweet nothing good ever came out of a tweet.

Daniel Rubino (00:11:39):
Yeah.

Mike Elgan (00:11:40):
Elon's, Elon's a poster boy for that. So maybe what he's saying, TWiTtter's dying in the sense that people are reluctant to use it because of trolls mischief, all sorts of stuff that can happen when you tweet, you know,

Daniel Rubino (00:11:54):
That's, that's a very positive outlook. I would love that to be the case. You know, the, the funny thing about TWiTtter is everybody uses TWiTtter. A lot of us use it for our job. Mike was, you know, accurate, right? It's a lot of news and media journalists. We have to use it. But then everybody seems to also hate TWiTtter. And so it's this weird thing about, I hates it half the people want an edit button and, and now they're finally getting an edit button. A lot of people are like upset. They're just gonna be an edit button. A lot of news people are upset about it. And it's one of those things like, no, one's really happy with TWiTtter. I'm not sure how to solve anything on there, you know, with the harassment. It's like, if you wanna address harassment, you have to talk about what will lot of people call censorship. But I would just call rules of the platform in you know, terms of service. So those two things collide. So I, I don't know, Elon Musk, you know, if he wants to control, you know, trolling and everything like that, you're gonna have to put regulations basically on the platform, more term in the terms of service. And that's something he seems very adamant against. So I don't know how this is ever gonna get better. To be honest,

Mike Elgan (00:12:59):
I fear that he will unleash the trolls out of a sense of you know, free speech or whatever. That's how this all started was is there such a thing as free speech on TWiTtter, maybe we should start our own social network. And then it was revealed after he tweeted that he had already bought now, by the way, there's not a controlling interest, but no one has a controlling interest. It is the largest single shareholder by a long shot, right? Jack Dorsey only has 2.2%. So he, he, you know, I don't know how it works in corporate governance these days, but, but having nine per 2% of a company is a significant thing. But also

Daniel Rubino (00:13:33):
It depends also on the share, right? Cause there's different levels of shares. I know Google does this where there's like a top level share and, and it's the share that like the founders hold and one of those is worth more than a third level share because due to voting rights, which I think the third level doesn't even have voting rights. And so I know corporations can stagnate their, they're not having by, at stack their shares in a certain way that some are worth more than others. I'm not sure if that applies to TWiTtter. So

Mike Elgan (00:14:01):
It's problematic in, in two directions in one direction. Elon Musk is essentially TWiTtter, by the way, as far as I know has one, one class of stock. Yeah, it's all the same common stock voting shares. But if he's on the board and he owns 9.2% of the company, then he can have an undue influence on his own TWiTtter account and even worse. His own TWiTtter account can have an undue influence on the company. So for example, if he loses a vote on the board, he can just go crap all over the board, crap, all over TWiTtter, affect their stock price. Do the stuff that he in fact has done with, with Tesla stuff. He could do the without 9.2% of the stuff that's true. That's true. But it, he may use his are problematic, his megaphone to, to be overly influe influential on the board to do, to, to Ram through features that the

Doc Rock (00:14:46):
Gonna use it for PR. I mean, that's the thing he's gonna use it to cover issues with the cyber truck. He's he can easily silence tweets about, you know, solar city messing up. I mean, Lord know that battle was, you know, kind of messy and still not completely straight people in California that went early on solar city are still waiting for stuff. I mean, and we, we understand, you know, supply crisis, whatever, but like having a play platform, this strong, he can control the narrative of things like that. You know, that's the part that's crazy. And that also makes it D

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
We should. I mean, S sec did put strictures on Elon Musk, which he promptly ignored. One of which is that every tweet would have to be reviewed by an ombudsman before he tweets. And he completely ignored it. He S E was mad because well the one where he said I I'm, I have enough, what did he say? I'm gonna buy back take, I'm gonna take Tesla private, right. At $420 a share that was in finance. He's already got the financing for this, which is a, a lie, right. And then the stock promptly went up. And so he made money on it. In fact, this whole TWiTtter thing, according to the Washington post may have made him 156 million because he delay, he broke like, again, broke the S E rules about, about disclosure. He was 11 days late in disclosing that he surpassed a 5% stake in the company. And by doing so could, could have benefited it with the stock rise. In other words, bought it before anybody knew that he was controlling owner. Yeah. And then the stock goes up and he sells it. Right. That's illegal, of course. But

Mike Elgan (00:16:29):
Why would he care when, when in August of 2018, when he tweeted that and, and went through that whole thing the S E C find him 20 million and find Tesla, another 20 million, 20 million to Elon Musk is like 25 cents to you and me. Oh,

Doc Rock (00:16:47):
Era.

Mike Elgan (00:16:48):
Yeah. Or to me anyway. And that's

Doc Rock (00:16:50):
Why it's so bad when they give him these, which sounds like a lot to the public. So that way it looks like you did something. Right. But you're not really doing

Leo Laporte (00:16:57):
Anything. Yeah. The U 20 millions real, but not to him. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (00:17:00):
It's

Doc Rock (00:17:00):
Yeah. Even if you get a job, right. Is, is commensurate to your, you know, your experience or whatever. Right. So like make the punishments commensurate to your wealth. Like that was just dumb.

Mike Elgan (00:17:10):
Yep. So

Leo Laporte (00:17:11):
Here's, so here's the question for you guys? Do we give him a pass because of what he has done, which is remarkable with Tesla and SpaceX. I mean, he has single handedly put EVs on the map and now that the earth is burning and we're very glad he did, right. Spacex just put four non astronauts on the international station. He's Starlink is gonna provide internet access to the whole world. Maybe not quite as well as was suggested, but still also

Mike Elgan (00:17:44):
Contributing to global cooling because it's shadowing the earth and satellites, but that's Hey, that's okay. We'll take it. Raising the earth. Abido so do we give him a pass, Mike? Well, I, I don't like the fact that he's on the board and, and owning 9.2% stake, but it's his legal right. And so it's, it's really not about giving a pass, not a, a legal pass. If he, if, if the S E doesn't have fines that actually curb law breaking and, and bad behavior, then they, then that's our, our problem as, as by the way, citizens last month months must ask the S E to scrap the agreement, right? Yeah. The agreement he wasn't really adhering to. Cause he has not clearly been vetting his tweets with lawyers. I do not respect the S E. He said, plainly on 60 minutes a few years ago, he it's, and this is clearly the case.

Mike Elgan (00:18:35):
And, but I, I just, you know, again, I don't like it. Some people do like it. Some people love the fact that, you know, some a loose cannon is, is on the TWiTtter board, et cetera. But I think it's, I think it'ss legal TWiTtter for him is the best way to do pump and dump, which he has done again and again, in February, it was announced the S E was investing a stock sale by his brother. Remember the tweet he put out in November saying, Hey, should I sell a 10% steak in Tesla to help the poor or to pay taxes or in world hunger. And the day before, or that tweet, his brother sold a bunch of stock. Yeah. So he, I mean, he did it with DOJ coin. Yep. He's done it with other cryptocurrencies. He, the TWiTtter for him is a fantastic vehicle to make money. The irony is, I don't think he does cause I don't think he cares about it. He's got plenty. Right? He's the richest man in the world. This is crazy. Do you give him a pass Daniel because of the, the great things he's done.

Daniel Rubino (00:19:35):
I mean, he definitely has done great things when it comes to science and engineering has no doubt about it. Evidence is lacking for his ability to make social networks better now in terms of giving him a pass. No, but I am a wait and see kind of person. So I'll give him a fair shot. I mean, like I have a choice here anyway. Right? we're all just kind of waiting and seeing what happens with TWiTtter. It could get better, it could get worse. I don't know even how you measure, but it's getting better or worse either since so many people, you know, have conflicting views on it. I think the bigger issue is I just find it just bizarre that people tell, talk about, you know, the issue of centralizations of, of the internet, right. Everything. And this is something a, a former CEO of TWiTtter was talking about, you know, this idea that everything is centralized and controlled by corporations.

Daniel Rubino (00:20:24):
And here we have a billionaire who just kind of does whatever he wants and buys up things. And doesn't matter if it's good or bad. And then people up to these people as if they're going to save society. And, and I'm not sure that's the appropriate way we should be running things. I I'd rather have a more grassroots actual people involved because fundamentally it's anti-democratic when you just have one person with so much wealth and capital and influence determining the direction of something, as, you know, as important as TWiTtter is in terms of news these days and who knows what comes next. And I think this is just a but people love it. They, they want, they wanna say they're for democracy, therefore more equality. But then when it comes to worshiping a billionaire you know, they get wrapped up in this idea that he really is like Ironman when he is not, he's just another flawed human being. Who's made some amazing decisions and done some great things, but at the end of the day is still just a person who maybe he is not the right person for every single job on the planet.

Leo Laporte (00:21:24):
Doc rock. Do we give Elon a pass?

Doc Rock (00:21:27):
No hard note. I'm with Daniel to some extent on the wait and see part of it. But I think the concept of, okay, let me fix this of Americans in general, probably more global population than just us, but I can speak to the people that I see. We really have this stop looking at other people to be heroes. When people ask me who is the most inspirational person to you, I give them the answer that most people, Hey, I go me. Why? Cause I started worrying about stuff that I can control, right? I'm I'm not looking to anyone else to make the world better. I'm gonna try myself and I don't know how good I'm gonna do, right. I might be that one splash of red dye in the gigantic pool, but I'm gonna try, you know, I don't know any better.

Doc Rock (00:22:15):
I'm gonna go in straight foolish. I'm gonna try to make it better. And if I did that, and I know you're already doing that, Mike's already doing that. Daniel's already doing that. We could actually affect change waiting for one magical person to go sprinkle some, what is it, X whatever. I can say, ax three, three level dust on the world to make it better. It's never going to happen. We have to take responsibility for ourselves. So I don't wanna give 'em a pass because we've been giving too many people past enough as it is. So how about we just try to fix things ourselves.

Leo Laporte (00:22:48):
I it's pretty clear that Elon is exactly your worst case nightmare of, of having, allowing people to get so UL ultimately rich that there's nothing anybody can do about them. Right. And it's, you know, this is straight out of the Marvel cinematic universe or, or DC comics where you get this kind of trollish behavior. Yeah. Out of a guy. Who's. I mean, what if, I mean, what if stark industries also, you know, you know, Rob banks, I don't know. I mean, it's just, it's kind of,

Doc Rock (00:23:22):
And these BIS looks like Lex Luther. Yeah. Look like,

Leo Laporte (00:23:26):
I think billionaires are a big, big, big problem. And it's dealing yes. Now, by the way, if I were on the board, I'd be a little terrified at this tweet from Elon on April 7th, TWiTtter's next board. Meeting's gonna be lit. And there he is. This is him on Joe Rogan, smoking a blunt. Yeah. that is simultaneously horrifying and 

Doc Rock (00:23:50):
And refreshing and

Leo Laporte (00:23:51):
Refreshing it's. Yes. I don't, it's bizarre.

Mike Elgan (00:23:53):
It's upsetting because, because I mean, you never provide us with, with, with weed. So,

Leo Laporte (00:23:58):
But you do, you did bring us

Mike Elgan (00:24:00):
Yeah. The next best thing I suppose, but you know, you know, but I love the, I love the, the direction of this conversation. This is the right conversation. Elon Musk himself, as a person, I think is a very laudable person. He thinks way outside the box. He's clearly

Leo Laporte (00:24:13):
Brilliant. That's his strengths. And

Mike Elgan (00:24:14):
He he's like, you know, we can,

Leo Laporte (00:24:16):
I think he doesn't believe this is a real world. I think he's totally in on this simulation thing. Yes, yes. And that he doesn't really think they're humans outside his body. And so he HES playing pinball because it doesn't matter. And

Mike Elgan (00:24:27):
To a certain extent, the existence of Elon Musk in our world is, is some kind of evidence that evidence he's lowkey. Yeah. Clearly. But, but it's like he personally I think is, is a laudable person. The system that allows we should somebody who am asked 300 billion and just do whatever they want and is not the best system. So I think we need to, yeah, well, we need to vote people, you know, Essent to one's point, get the money outta politics.

Doc Rock (00:24:54):
There was a joke, you know, we, we jokingly said that he might turn TWiTtter headquarters into a homeless shelter and just to be, get back at them for not doing whatever is going on for the same round and era that he brought TWiTtter for any one of these guys could take what he would've bought TWiTtter for just to play around with. And instead of making a power play, he could have done something to help, to help poverty, or actually done something to help humbles right. Or done something to help food deserts and whatever. So instead of taking your play money to buy a company so you can like, you know, slap it around and be funny with your hilarious tweets, how about actually do something to affect

Leo Laporte (00:25:36):
You? Well, Congress is considerably less than 3 billion. I mean, Congress, you could buy for half that, oh

Mike Elgan (00:25:42):
10Th Congress is

Leo Laporte (00:25:42):
Cheap. Congress comes very cheap. Seriously. I I'm actually being serious. So if you put that kind of money towards lobbying, you'd get Congress, do whatever you want. I think Elon sees TWiTtter as, as, as a lever. I think he sees it as extremely powerful and by the way, a powerful in a weird way, because not normal people don't care about TWiTtter. It's only got 350 million active users, normal people, right. You know, TWiTtter, but it has an UN an outsized, thanks to president Trump and the, all of those 10 celebrities before him. It has an outsized power in the media. Yes. And so if you wanna control media, if you wanna control the over 10 window, if you wanna control what people are talking about, what a great do it well. And I think Elon has seen this. Yeah. Knows it. And if I, if you give him credit as a smart guy, then he's saying, well, what can I spend three billions on that would give me the most levers of power. Maybe this is it.

Mike Elgan (00:26:42):
I went on a rant a couple years ago on this show about a billionaire philanthropy. And my theory is that we shouldn't lionize this kind of philanthropy because essentially once you're a billionaire, you know, 1 billion, 300 billion, what's the difference, basically, you can't, Hey, how much money can you really spend and how, how much happys can you get out of additional billions you can. So once you've bought all the houses and you bought an island in Hawaii and you, you, you know, you have a hundred Teslas or whatever, what's next. The only thing left for people like Zuckerberg and Bezos and Elon Musk is influence and power. And so usually they turn to philanthropy to do that. Bill gates says, well, you know, I personally like GMO, so I'm gonna just blanket the African continent of GMOs. He's done a lot of great things. It's also how you revitalize as Andrew Carnegie did, how you, how you par Polish up the reputation.

Mike Elgan (00:27:31):
Yes. But everybody's, and I think that's what bill gates is. That's yes. But to assume, and then Jeff Bezo buys the Washington post, somebody in the chat room, right. Is saying, oh, that's even more corrupt, except that he's not really making the Washington post do his bidding. Right. Elon is, is very, this is a very direct, clear path to power. The, the, the Washington post part is an indirect path to similar kinds of power because you know, now you really, you, you additionally, have to take seriously what Jeff Bezo says, because he is the owner of the Washington post. This is more true. Elon Musk is more direct. He's more direct about everything. I mean, the, the, everything does, he goes straight for the jugular and really tries to tackle things that he's concerned about. But, but the larger point is every, the humanity is always in these conversations and these disagreements about, oh, should we do this? Should we do that? What's the best way to do this. What's the best way to do that. Everybody has an opinion, including these billionaires and they use their billions to get their way on those arguments that everybody's having. And that bothers me, correct quite a bit. And it's not democratic. No, not at all. It's the opposite. 

Daniel Rubino (00:28:29):
We need to start calling

Mike Elgan (00:28:30):
Billionaire oligarchs. I like they're. I like it. Go

Daniel Rubino (00:28:34):
Ahead. They are getting into the philanthropy aspect of this. It's really important because yeah. You know, like bill gates, you know, he gets a lot of you know, praise for giving away his billions of dollars, you know, which is it's, it is good. But part of the problem is he has so much money. He is how to set up a foundation for it. And his foundation creates a bunch of bureaucracy as Mike was right. It gets directed in certain directions and two policies. He prefers and likes, but there's also corruption involved with it because you're talking about so much money. They don't know how to spend it. A lot of money gets lost in the process. And so it would be much easier if that capital was never centralized in the first place. Like they have so many billions that they don't know how to spend it all in one place.

Daniel Rubino (00:29:15):
They can't just dump it into the market. They can't just solve homelessness because it's a systemic problem. So it's like, it would be much easier though, if that wealth was just distributed amongst average people, you know, this is the idea of behind what made America successful. Post world war II was a solid middle class. Well, what have we seen in the United States the last 30 years, the decline of the middle class and when the middle class has enough capital, everybody is happy. Things are stable. But when you start deteriorating that, and the capital gets concentrated in just a few hands and then they don't even know how to spend it. That's where you really start to get a lot of these problems. So you know, this is, we can't have oligarchs. Basically. We just can't have this kind of system, but so long as people love them and worship them and feel like in their head that, oh, someday, that could be me.

Daniel Rubino (00:30:04):
I mean, you bring up stark, you know, this, the Marvel universe, but what made stark so interesting as a character was he was completely flawed as a selfish human being who didn't care about human life and the way his character evolved, you know, changed that he developed a moral compass towards the end. And that that's what made him such a fascinating character, pro Deon Musk. There's no sign whatsoever of a moral compass. It's all just numbers and abstractions away from that. I think that's, you know, that's what bothers a lot of people. There's no sense of an actual vision.

Mike Elgan (00:30:35):
Well, unfortunately he, he does have a moral compass and a vision, but it's, it's not necessarily a good one. I mean, he, for example, he wants to put a million people on Mars. And he's even said that the problem with the population is that it's not the human population isn't growing fast enough because he won't have enough people to send a Mar I mean, it's just, this is a, this is a vision, this is a moral, this is a moral compass. You're right. But the moral compass is just spinning basically. And, and, and you know, this is, this is the fear that, you know, what will he do to, to put a million people on Mars? Which is, to me an objectionable thing, he probably wants to Terraform Mars. I don't really like that either. So, you know, I, I just, it's just he should have a voice like everybody else, but he shouldn't have you know, he shouldn't, in my opinion, I, I would put fur that he didn't control the most important place where people exercise their voice, which is TWiTtter.

Mike Elgan (00:31:29):
Yeah. actually the person I would, who should most be afraid is that kid who's tracking Elon Musk jet. Yeah. Cause the very first thing he wants that's right. Is ban him from, from TWiTtter. He can buy him. So now now bad, it's just fascinating. It's I feel like we're living in this kind of weird story land or a simulation or a simulation. And it's just, I it's fundamentally anti-democratic. And I think that there's a problem in this country where we get tired of the democratic process. We want things to move fast. We don't necessarily agree with the decisions that are made. And so we kind of like the idea of a strong man. Yep. And I think Elon is playing, playing to this and that's where populism is. And I also fear that he'll wanna be president one day. That's I think I hate to say it. Yeah. I think that's where we're headed. Yep.

Doc Rock (00:32:22):
We are definitely on path to more quote in air quotes, celebrity presidents. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (00:32:30):
Yep. Yeah. Well, we had Ronald Reagan

Doc Rock (00:32:33):
Who star was gonna say started at Reagan. People

Daniel Rubino (00:32:35):
Want the rock

Doc Rock (00:32:37):
As is being said in the

Leo Laporte (00:32:39):
Jet. If you had a choice between the rock to do that. And Elon as president, I would prefer Elon.

Mike Elgan (00:32:45):
I would prefer the rock because the rock is a lot dumber. And he, he doesn't have a lot of ideas. He just wants to, he just wants to be successful,

Leo Laporte (00:32:53):
Be president. Right.

Mike Elgan (00:32:54):
I think he would. He he's,

Leo Laporte (00:32:55):
He's kinda like the last

Mike Elgan (00:32:56):
Guy. Exactly. Elon Musk would be like, now I have all the power I'm literally going to do XYZ. Whereas I don't think the rock would really do anything. You know, he, he would

Doc Rock (00:33:05):
Just be Dwayne

Mike Elgan (00:33:06):
Mediocre

Leo Laporte (00:33:07):
Present 20, 28 Elon in 2028. I guarantee you,

Doc Rock (00:33:10):
The thing about Dwayne is being from Hawaii. Our cultural nature is to be nice. We just it's how we're raised out here and he's

Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
Not. And you can tell

Doc Rock (00:33:18):
Is that he's done. He's a genuinely nice person. The Aloha spirit lives within that brother. So

Leo Laporte (00:33:23):
I wouldn't mind the Aloha spirit in the white house.

Mike Elgan (00:33:25):
Remember, remember the president in Idiocracy he was a professional.

Doc Rock (00:33:29):
So I just said, Terry Cruz,

Leo Laporte (00:33:31):
Terry Cruz.

Doc Rock (00:33:31):
That's the woman.

Leo Laporte (00:33:33):
That's where we're headed. Oh, terrifying. What is the wine? Tell me about the wine before we take our break. I

Mike Elgan (00:33:39):
Wine. Okay. So can I tell you the occasion? Yes. Very personal thing for me 17 years ago, my favorite podcast was posted on the internet April 11th,

Leo Laporte (00:33:52):
Give or 2005

Mike Elgan (00:33:52):
Give or take. Yeah. And and so I think we should sell I'm we're we're leaving the country again. And before we go, I wanted to celebrate that with you

Leo Laporte (00:34:02):
April 17th. It's

Mike Elgan (00:34:03):
April 17th. Yep. Yeah. And so that in about a week, but I thought we should. And so I tried to

Leo Laporte (00:34:10):
Find anniversary. They, they, my team was trying to talk me in a cupcakes, balloons, a cake. Yeah. And I said, that's cheesy. Yes. You know, you know, you know, you know, watch the L show and they're celebrating their 17th episode or something. It's cheesy. I didn't wanna do that. But on the other hand, you bring some wine. I'm not gonna say no.

Mike Elgan (00:34:29):
17 is not even a legal adult. That's not even the age of consent. That's right. So in any event, this is a, we tried to find a 2005 wine in our seller, AKA Kevin's garage. 

Leo Laporte (00:34:42):
The

Mike Elgan (00:34:42):
Closest we got was 2004, so

Leo Laporte (00:34:43):
It's okay. He has a hydrogen vehicle. So the garage does not get up. It's

Mike Elgan (00:34:46):
It's just a little pool. Puddles of water. Yeah. That's it. So it's a domain, du grand 10. Now this is a, this is a oo to pop wine. I know from

Leo Laporte (00:34:54):
2005,

Mike Elgan (00:34:55):
2004, four, it's closest we could get, and this is this winery

Leo Laporte (00:35:00):
Love chat enough to pop.

Mike Elgan (00:35:01):
Yeah, I know. And

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
Lisa's gonna be here in about three minutes, cause

Mike Elgan (00:35:04):
Exactly. She's watching at home

Leo Laporte (00:35:05):
And she's going on. How dare you.

Mike Elgan (00:35:07):
Exactly. So

Leo Laporte (00:35:09):
By the way the chat room, always the cons ever the constitutionalist reminds me, Elon Musk was born in South Africa, right. Is not eligible to be president.

Mike Elgan (00:35:18):
Well, he power on TWiTtter to change that

Leo Laporte (00:35:20):
Danger. Well, I remember Arnold Schwartzenegger for a while was talking about how can we change?

Mike Elgan (00:35:24):
I'd like to see him as president actually.

Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
He'd be fine. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (00:35:26):
Kevin, come on. Gets that.

Leo Laporte (00:35:27):
I wish we could get you guys to join us. I'm sorry, doc rock and Daniel have that LA fro you were talking about or something else. Kevin ELGAN is in studio. Come on. You can get, you can get one. The the founder and creator of chatter box is in the studio. So,

Mike Elgan (00:35:43):
So anyway 

Leo Laporte (00:35:44):
Thank you. That's nice. I wasn't

Mike Elgan (00:35:46):
Even congratulations. Celebrate. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:35:48):
I appreciate it. Happy. 17th next Sunday,

Mike Elgan (00:35:52):
Greatest official, greatest podcast in the world. In my opinion,

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Wells. Certainly the oldest I'll give you the oldest. All right. Mm.

Doc Rock (00:36:04):
I, I lied. It's a Lu

Leo Laporte (00:36:06):
OFO. Oh, but that's even better. No, that's that's even better. Yeah. Nice. Mm. I don't know. I think that the shots enough to pop might be better. That's quite delicious. Our show today. Trust me, I'm still sober. So you're glad to be the first out of the day, the show today brought to you by worldwide technology. Love these guys and Intel. In fact, I've shared a glass or two with Chad and the gang over at worldwide technology, really great company at the forefront of innovation. They work with clients all over the world to transform businesses. You know, and enterprise technologies are a, a miracle, a remarkable thing. But if when you are buying enterprise technology, you don't consider your business strategy, your goals and your plans. You're probably not gonna buy the right technology. That's why I love WWT. There are totally focused on combining strategy and execution so that the technology you use in your enterprise matches your goals.

Leo Laporte (00:37:05):
And it all begins for a WWT at their advanced technology center. The ATC, this thing's amazing. Lisa and I went out there a couple of years ago to visit it's the research and testing lab that brings together technologies from the biggest OEMs and the smallest, the, the, the people are transforming the space more than half a billion dollars in equipment in the lab started in one building at more than a decade ago is now in multiple buildings rack after rack of the coolest technology you've ever seen. And what I love about it, we, we were there. I talked to the the engineers who work in the lab. I say, you have a great job. You get to trial and stuff. They said, yeah, it's the fan. It's the best job we love this, but what's cool. And I didn't know at the time, but shortly after we visited, they, they announced plans to make it open to all.

Leo Laporte (00:37:54):
So now the advanced technology center offers hundreds of on-demand and schedulable labs. You can run, you can do yourself featuring solutions that include technologies like Intel, Zion, scalable processors, Intel obtain persistent memory, obtain SSDs, everything, representing the newest advances in every area of enterprise multi-cloud architecture, security, networking, primary, and second to storage and data analytics and AI and DevOps, and on and on and on. Now, of course they use it, their engineers and partners use it to spin up proofs of concept and pilots to integrate technology. So customers can confidently select, select the best solutions. And that makes a big deal in your evaluations and your RFPs. It really gives you a better sense of what you're gonna get when you move in this new technology. But now you can do it yourself with the ATC. You can test out products and solutions before you go to market.

Leo Laporte (00:38:49):
You can access, not just the hands on labs, but technical articles, expert insights, demonstration videos, white papers, all the tools you need to stay up to date with the latest technology, because it's not just a physical lab space in St. Louis. It's now virtual. And if you join the ATC platform, you can do it for free. Right now, you'll be able to access all these amazing resources anywhere in the world, anytime of the day or night. And while you're at the ATC platform, check out WWTs events and communities. There's always stuff going on. We actually did a panel that was streamed to all the ATC members, lots of ways to learn about technology trends, to hear the latest research and insights from their experts, whatever your business need WWT can deliver, tried and tested, scalable, tailored solutions, WWT, worldwide technology brings strategy and execution together.

Leo Laporte (00:39:42):
To make that new world happen for you to learn more about WWT the advanced technology center to gain access to all of these resources, free visit wwt.com/TWiT an account on their ATC platform. You've got a partner somebody's really there to help you bring your business forward in the 21st century. Wwt.Com/TWiT. Make that new world happen for yourself. Wwt.Com/TWiT. Thank you, WWT. We appreciate your support. We've had over 17 years, quite a few standup sponsors. Who've really kind of been there for this for us. And we, we are very grateful, really appreciated. It's another way you can support us by the way. And if you wanna celebrate our 17th, I would love for this to be the best week ever for club TWiT. Yes, you've been on club TWiT, Amira. We did a great conversation about gastro Noma adventures. Yeah. Club TWiTtter is ad free versions of all of our shows access to the club, TWiT discord, which is great fun.

Leo Laporte (00:40:48):
Yep. It's a community, not just during the shows, but we talk about all sorts of stuff from, you know, food and wine to autos hacking and ham radio Lennox, there's the trip plus feed as well, which gives you access to shows that we don't put out on the regular feed things like our untitled Lennox show the GI this week in space. And this is another reason we love having the club club members kind made it possible for us to try out this in space. And now rod PI and tar Malik have brought that to the public. So it is available to the public. Now it took that TV slash it's out of this world. It really is. It is outta this world. We're gonna do more shows because we can do shows without advertising support when you're first starting out, it's hard to get advertisers. So that's what club TWiT lets us do. It, it's a great boon to us and we think it's worth your $7 a month.

Mike Elgan (00:41:43):
Can, can, can I make a point or the club TWiT and an item in the rundown? Yes. Which is the the new research that found that pot podcasting has a special people have a special relationship with the podcast. I

Leo Laporte (00:41:57):
Saw that story.

Mike Elgan (00:41:58):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and basically what they were saying is that that podcast listeners are, I mean, I'm, I'm summarizing here, but they're less crazy than normal people. They,

Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
They're less neurotic. They're less the word that neurotic.

Mike Elgan (00:42:10):
Okay. Let's go with that. It's very clinical. They're not, I don't know if that's true, but making LUN takes like the average people,

Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
There's normal people.

Mike Elgan (00:42:18):
But, but essentially the, one of the points they made is that, that, that podcast listeners tend to form a parasocial relationship with the host that they that's

Leo Laporte (00:42:27):
So

Mike Elgan (00:42:27):
True. Okay. But here's, here's an interesting point about club TWiT with club TWiT, you take your parasocial mean you as the listener feel like you have this close personal friendship with the host, but the host doesn't have the slightest idea who you are. So it's a one way relationship that feels like a normal two-way relationship to the listener. And this is true. We've all felt that with our favorite podcast host. So we feel like we know who they are, especially. You've been doing it for 17. It's very interesting do this for 17 years. A lot of us feel like we we've known you for a long time. I mean, I started doing the show, I don't know, 10, 10, 12 years ago, something like that. But, but, but club TWiT turns that parasocial relationship into a social relationship. Now you are interacting with people on club TWiT instead of them just feeling like there's, you're somebody they with, even though you don't know who they are, you're actually interacting with people on club TWiTtter. And so it's, it's really that's a different relationship. That's not, parasocial the relationship you have with your audience on club TWiT. And it's very cool. It's very intimate space

Leo Laporte (00:43:29):
Truthfully from day one. The one thing I wanted to do, I knew from being in radio of free years and somewhat in television, too, that these relationships occurred. You know, you meet people who watch you on TV and they really do think they know you. Right. And it's a, it's kind of weird for both sides. Yes. but I, I wanted to break that fourth wall I wanted to do with podcasting something a little less talking down to people or to talking at people. I wanted more community and it's always been a challenge. That's why we've always had a chat room. That's why I do talk radio. And it's why we have the club it's to try to break that fourth wall. Right. So it's a community, not a speech, you know, you're, you're, you're not a member of an audience. You're a member of a community and that's a hard thing to do. And I hope we're getting better at it. So, yeah. Please join club TWiT, TWiT TV slash club, TWiT seven bucks a month. But you are all podcasters, every one of you doc rock podcast, Daniel, I know you have podcasts at windows central. So I think you're all aware of that. It's, it's a, it's, it's a great medium and I that's a, I fear for it to be honest with you. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino (00:44:34):
I was just gonna say, yeah, I mean, community building something we've done extensively, you know, going back to windows, phone experts or windows mobile experts back in 2007 all the way up through windows windows, phone central and everything. Like we always, and I always made it a point whenever I wrote an article, an editorial or review to hop into the comments and to talk to people. And I do that on a YouTube channel as well. And it's funny, cuz a lot of people don't expect that, you know, you get the the higher tier media out there, they write the review and they're like, I'm done and that's it. And then there's like, you know, 200 comments, which is great, but the reviewer never has to answer for the things they said. And I don't believe in that, you know I, I, if someone makes a, a critique of my review sometimes I may agree with it sometimes I don't, but I like to go in there and like have that discussion cuz that's how I learn. And I like kind of, you know, there's, it's so much knowledge out there, especially from your own audience. And I know you, us where your own audience sometimes surprises you. It's like, wow. You know, I'm more, you've always had these like weird experts that

Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
Pop up. You show me up all the time.

Daniel Rubino (00:45:39):
Yeah. And so it's a great resource. I, I don't, I love interacting with people that way. I,

Leo Laporte (00:45:44):
I completely agree. Yeah.

Doc Rock (00:45:46):
Some of the best friends are people that I originally maybe met in the sorry, a para of social type relationship, the disagree with, but they were able to give me information that let me see light in a different way. Yes. And so like I've been building my community on, on a discord for a minute. It was on Facebook at first, which was horrible because it's just an odd place to do community. It doesn't really flow us nice. But like that is my thing. Well, it's funny my job title, I'm a community manager for piece of software, so right. Like I'm very, very big on community. People ask us all the time, Hey, what's the best feature in E Camm? Like, how is it different from XYZ software? I'm like our community. I don't even, it's not about cameras or mics or sounds or none of that stuff. It's the community that's where everything lives. And one thing Leo, you always had from the very beginning of TWiT week to now, you've always had an amazing community. I

Leo Laporte (00:46:37):
Agree. Right.

Doc Rock (00:46:37):
Yeah. It it's, that's been one of the pillars of it. Cuz you can find any group of nurse that sit around and talk story with you, you know, a couple times a week, but the community has always been on point.

Leo Laporte (00:46:48):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and boy, if anything, positive has come out of the internet revolution, it's this notion that anybody can have a soapbox and that everybody can talk back to them. Right. And so whether it's YouTube or TWiTtch or discord or podcasts, and I wanna keep it that way. And I have to say podcasting, I feel for a little bit because not just Spotify, but the big companies are kind of coming for us and trying they're buying up all of the infrastructure stuff. And I feel like at some point apple, Amazon, Spotify wanna make this theirs. They don't want RSS. RSS is too hard to, to track. Right. And so I really, I, you know, as, as you who listen to our shows it's really important for all of us to really keep real podcasting right. Alive. Yeah. Just as in a way, windows central is, is a, is a look back to that independent blog, which was such a transformational thing 20 years ago. Right. I wanna keep that alive too. And I think blogging kind of got co-opted a little bit by the big, big businesses and all of that

Mike Elgan (00:48:03):
Stuff. Exactly. And, and you know, the same thing happened with blogging that happened with podcasting, which is that for well, slightly different timing. So there were many, many years where I was the biggest cheerleader in the world for podcasting and, and some hardcore fans were into it, but the general public just kinda like what I don't really. Yeah. And, and so, and I kept pushing, it's like, come on, this should, this should, this should take over TV and radio. This is it's asynchronous. It's better. It's more intimate. It's, it's more nuanced. It's more everything. And, and, and the public was kind of like, well, I don't know. And then it happened. And so you have this thing where you have the real podcasters like you, and then on one side of it, you have like professional radio, you know, NPR has podcasts podcast.

Leo Laporte (00:48:41):
I come from a radio background. So someone might disagree with you on

Mike Elgan (00:48:44):
That. That's the beauty of it. Your radio shows a radio show and your podcast are podcast. They're different. You don't do a radio show,

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
This delicious wine on my radi. That's

Mike Elgan (00:48:53):
Right. You, you, you have a, you have SP you know, sponsors who, who don't want to hear that kind of thing on, on, on the radio. And then you have like, people, there are people with podcasts who have like an audience of, of, of zero. I mean, it's like so many people have podcasts. So it's a, it's a really weird space. And, and, but, but I love, but

Leo Laporte (00:49:11):
That was true with blogs. Right?

Mike Elgan (00:49:12):
Exactly. Yes. That

Leo Laporte (00:49:13):
Was absolutely true

Mike Elgan (00:49:14):
With

Leo Laporte (00:49:14):
Blogs.

Doc Rock (00:49:15):
Mike been listening to my podcast.

Leo Laporte (00:49:17):
Yeah. But no, but that, but that's fine. If you have a hundred listeners who care about you and what you're doing, that's a hundred friends, it's a community of a hundred. That's actually a big community.

Mike Elgan (00:49:26):
Exactly. Yes. Doesn't

Leo Laporte (00:49:28):
Need to be massive. In fact, it's a disadvantage. Cause then it's hard

Mike Elgan (00:49:32):
To have that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the big companies that have, like, they try to move their podcast off to some other, you know, Spotify or whatever, or who, who try to, you know, sort of have, you know, slate. Plus for example, really bothers me. It's like, they, they give you half the show and they're like, oh, if you like to listen

Leo Laporte (00:49:48):
Not to do that with a club because of exactly. Cuz of that. Yes,

Mike Elgan (00:49:51):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
It was like, you mean, I don't get the whole show unless I pay for it. But

Mike Elgan (00:49:55):
Once people see it as like this way to make money, they want to make more money, more money. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
Money ruins everything,

Mike Elgan (00:50:00):
And they're gonna squeeze it. So it's that bothers me. But I, I, I love the real, the real podcast. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
Yeah. I agree. So, and that's one of the things Spotify seems to be doing, which is you know, what they did with Joe Rogan, what they do with every podcast they buy is making, taking it away from all of the open stuff and making it exclusive. So you have to have the Spotify app to listen to it. And I think in the long run, that's, that's problematic. Advertisers love it. Cuz if you are listening on Spotify, they know exactly who you are. Right. They know what you do, what you for a living, they know where you live. And so advertisers can love that. Yeah. They can buy you specifically. Right. they don't know what they're getting when they buy this. Well,

Doc Rock (00:50:41):
We just had a great conversation about this on an, a podcast that I was guest on. That's not published yet. So it was cool though. Cause one of the things that we both talked about is long time podcasters. The one thing that's missing is there's no real standard on podcast players and there's no really good interoperability between players. So like back in the day, withm L was trying to be a thing, but there's just way too many players out there that each one can even wreck the experience of all the work you put into producing a good podcast, a bad player can ruin that experience a little bit. So I wish there, you know, like with TV standards, we have, you know, I E B we have, you know, like a certain loudness at full regimens that you're supposed to follow looking at you a and E television with the extra loud commercials. You're supposed to be at like negative 23 loudness at full scale. So it's nice. And even across the board, that one station's not louder, somebody needs to help generate a certain amount of standards so that everything comes off

Leo Laporte (00:51:46):
I'm against for you. I, I like it. It should be a mess mess. He's good. No, I'm serious mess. He's good. You know, there's a movement podcast 2.0 movement you might have heard about from Adam. Curry's kind of behind that which is, he's got interesting motivations. He's trying to create a podcast directory that is not censored. That's job one, but then they want to do kind of new RSS features and so forth. And I'm just against too much. I don't, I don't want top down anything. Right.

Doc Rock (00:52:20):
We can't go back to RSS. Remember having to hand code those suckers. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:52:24):
I's fine. I enjoyed it.

Doc Rock (00:52:26):
Pod and paint and these other things,

Leo Laporte (00:52:28):
I did it by hand for a long time, but, but I just, I don't want too much top down stuff. I think that's democracy is a good thing. Absolutely. I guess it's kind of related to our Elon Musk conversation earlier, too much power consolidated in, in too few hands is anti-democratic. I'm not I'm again, it, so let's not have any rules. Let's not have any additional standards. We have good enough simple standard that works well enough. Find the podcast player you like, you can listen to your show doc and all of our shows on any podcast player. Right. I mean, yeah. You

Doc Rock (00:53:01):
Know, and I think the one thing that is cool and I think a lot of new people, you know, like Mike was just saying so many new people, right. Which in my community, we call muggles nicely. I the, the muggles don't know that you can go through 7, 8, 9, 10 players until you find one that you really like, and that's okay.

Leo Laporte (00:53:18):
Right. Oh, they'll figure out

Doc Rock (00:53:19):
Out. I guess. I think a lot of people just use what stock that they came with or had the, the nerd in their family set them up and they don't, you know, go through various,

Leo Laporte (00:53:28):
Well, one of the reasons we have a website and we stream is for people who don't want to have a client. Right, right. You just go to the website, click a link.

Doc Rock (00:53:35):
Somebody mentioned that in a chat, one thing about clients is that fill, fill up your device real quick. Yeah. Cause you're downloading all these podcast that you don't yeah. Stream. So streaming it stream. I like streaming it better

Leo Laporte (00:53:44):
To some degree, this whole conversation about web 3.0 is a very related conversation. Yeah. And I, I think it's the wrong direction. I think it's also more centralizing, not less. Right. It's Andreson Horowitz, the VC firm. That's really pushing web three. They're saying, oh, it's, it's decentralized. Cuz it's built with blockchain, but it's not right.

Mike Elgan (00:54:04):
And it

Leo Laporte (00:54:05):
FTS aren't decentralized. Everything goes through open sea. Right. This is the exact opposite it's centralized.

Mike Elgan (00:54:10):
They're waving the pot. It's weird flag in order to control something that they can't not control.

Daniel Rubino (00:54:16):
It's it's weird when the powerful people with all the control are like gonna set up a decentralized. Yeah. Right. Because that's traditionally not how that stuff gets set up. It's it's start it's off at like developers and just regular people start building out something like the original aspects of the internet became that. So it's always, I always am distrustful when peop very powerful people are like, oh, we're gonna decentralize. Like, why don't we just decentralize everything, including your power, you know, in your influence with money and like, oh, well, you know, think can't do that. You know, it's too far. I don't know. I'm very skeptical of the web 3.0 stuff. I just, just not how this technology is where these systems are supposed to start. So

Leo Laporte (00:54:55):
Grassroots. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (00:54:56):
Grassroots regarding podcasting though. The, the, the, the the way podcasting currently is, is that it's about the content. It's about the hosts. It's about the content is about what you hear. And C and any innovation is going to be, oh, we'll have a button that does this. And we'll sort of have like, you know, other, it takes it away from just having it be pure content. I want to go on a long walk. I wanna sit, play. And I want to, to listen to the podcast and reverse chronological order of the ones that I subscribe to. I don't want any algorithmic MEDing I don't want any sort of special features. Yes. I just want to immerse myself in the, in the con in the audio and the content and you can't approve that.

Leo Laporte (00:55:36):
Yeah.

Doc Rock (00:55:37):
Oh, kid is so true. The only thing I do differently is for people who talk really slow, but they got great content. I do hit on

Leo Laporte (00:55:45):
Like you like

Doc Rock (00:55:46):
Or one in a five. But other than that, I'm with you, Mike. I like to just get in there and Immers it. But there's some guys who make great podcasts who just talk slow. They're

Leo Laporte (00:55:55):
Slow talk.

Doc Rock (00:55:57):
I'm like my brain don't do that. I'm mostly cause a lag of woo. In 16.

Leo Laporte (00:56:02):
I'll tell you a secret. I would say more than half of our audience listens at one and a half speed. A and when meet you, they go, boy, you sound drunk. Exactly.

Doc Rock (00:56:11):
Oh my God. But Andy one and a half Andy at one and a half B is like, whoa, that's way too much. You gotta slow Andy down. Andy.

Leo Laporte (00:56:18):
And I go, yeah, he probably shouldn't be one and a half. Right.

Mike Elgan (00:56:21):
Slow.

Leo Laporte (00:56:22):
Won't listen to a book. I don't understand it. She'll play your books for me. Yeah. Or a podcast or any audio content. It's always at one and a half at least. And I go, how can you listen? Like that books I want at regular speed. I like listening to the podcast that I'm on at 1.5 sounds so much smarter and sharper when I'm, when I'm talking fast. So it's true. Very true. W WDC, apple has put out the announcement the invites have gone out. It will be online only, which kind of surprises me. What do you think Daniel is, is, is Microsoft doing, starting to do is build, gonna be in person. I think it is. Isn't it

Daniel Rubino (00:56:59):
Build is happening. It's actually not in person. It will be again virtual this year. E

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
Three

Daniel Rubino (00:57:05):
Cancels.

Leo Laporte (00:57:05):
Probably not because it's COVID, but because, because it's failing it's cuz it's over. They say we'll be back next year. But I was surprised. Apple says we're gonna have select few in the audience at Steve jobs theater, which means they'll probably do a live stream. Call it bringer to the developer to Workday. Is that what they're calling? No, that's what I'm calling. Oh, okay. June 6th, June 6th. They're gonna, yeah, they're gonna have a, I don't know, hunger games contest or something to choose. I'm curious if they will, if, if Tim cook will come out on a stage and there'll be a person and they'll be an audience, or if they'll be sitting there watching a movie right. Of Tim cook on a screen, they're gonna put 'em in chairs, watching a screen like everybody. Yeah, no, they'll be in the audience. They, they want some energy in the room. And if it's only apple employees that doesn't quite, and they don't really like the press in the room cuz we tend to sit on our hands. Yeah. And they want cheers to erupts. Right? Exactly. For the silliest little possible thing thing. It's North Korea. Let's face it. They want

Daniel Rubino (00:58:04):
Said it at me

Leo Laporte (00:58:07):
And ladies. A gentleman. Kim Jonu good morning. No, no. That's wrong. Kim Jong apple. Apple Kim apple. Oh, that's a good name. Tim Kim apple. Kim apple from now on yeah, there there's a show title. Tim Jon moon, Kim apple, Kim apple, Kim Jong apple. Is Microsoft not doing any live? Yet? Have they not announced any ignite or anything?

Daniel Rubino (00:58:26):
Nothing. Yeah. Nothing interest like said build is May 24th through the 26th. I believe I'll be online again, which is convenient for a lot of people. I don't expect them. I, I think the next event for them would probably be a surface event in the fall, I think may happen, but you know, of the whole pandemic stuff. Right. It keeps changing dynamically. So I think companies are still a little skittish about 

Leo Laporte (00:58:51):
Maybe that's wise people. Cause yeah, we don't know what B two's gonna do. It is starting to run, run through rampant, through New York and DC and of course internationally. So yeah, maybe, maybe it's wise. Google said we're gonna do Google IO. They air developer conference mostly online, but there will, I think there will also be some in person. Yeah. Stuff online is good for. I think online's great for many of us because yeah. Remember they used to have ha have to have lots for things like bill and WWDC. Right, right. Because there weren't enough seats and so not everybody could get in now everybody can be a developer. Everybody

Mike Elgan (00:59:29):
Can learn. Right. And that the

Doc Rock (00:59:31):
Great about WWDC online. What is that? Their one of the two or three players in a game that actually have a player that sounded funny, but you know what I mean? Because of apple TV, because of your iPads and things like that.

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
No, in fact, you can't watch it on a, on the Microsoft edge, you have to have safari.

Doc Rock (00:59:52):
So, so having a legit player though, like, cause I watched a lot last year from my apple TV and having the app and everything

Leo Laporte (01:00:00):
A nice way to do it. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:00:01):
Made the experience. Yeah. So, so good. Right now we were live, you know, tweeting and yelling and screaming and saying weird stuff and whatever as we tend to do during keynotes and things like that. But it, it is kind of a nice experience. I fully understand the pullback. I just came from a live in person con conference. And it was great to finally see some of my contemporaries and you know, space and, you know, have fun and all of that at the end, the last couple days everybody was walking around. Okay, I'm gonna go home and start sniffing. Like, what is this gonna be like? So we were happy to get out, but then it was also a little bit sketch. So that's

Leo Laporte (01:00:35):
What, that's what you missed though, is that face to face, hands on a hundred percent. There's a certain amount of benefit to that. If you're a developer

Doc Rock (01:00:43):
To the person, come

Leo Laporte (01:00:44):
On. Well, it's part of it's social, but there's even value to hands on. So I don't, I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it, but I

Mike Elgan (01:00:53):
Is probably prudent to be honest. The problem with the apple events is that the hands on portion is not that ha hands on. They, they, they, they shuttle the press into a special room where you might looking at stuff through glass. I know I've, I'm on the blacklist too long time. It's alphabetical. So I think I'm ahead of you on the blacklist. But but, but basically they, they whip you into, they whip the, the Adly, they, they only invite the, you know, pro apple press. Then they whip them into a frenzy. Then they send them into these rooms where they can maybe touch, maybe just look at close up the, the products they announced. And then they're gushing about, everybody's saying, look at me, I'm at the apple event, it's, it's access journalism of the worst kind. And, and really if apple does have in the future, you know, a year from now five years from now, they do have a live audience.

Mike Elgan (01:01:39):
The purpose of the live audience will be to enhance the quality of the streaming presentation, because essentially the audience is a prop to show excitement for what they're talking about. It's also traditional, you know, back in the Steve jobs days, the, the whole apple event was an event. I mean, it was a big, big deal. And the audience you know, people in the audience wedding themselves was part of the, it was part of the whole thing. You know what I mean? It's like getting so excited about these products. And so to the, to the extent that they have them, it's all about the stream. Now it's all about the stream. If they have a live audience it's to enhance the stream, if they don't have a live audience it's because the stream is the only thing that matters. So it's really the, the larger world that, that apple cares about. Microsoft did have an event this week, the future of hybrid work. Was that live Daniel, did you go to that? No, that was streaming. 

Daniel Rubino (01:02:31):
It wasn't in person, but it was it was online 

Mike Elgan (01:02:34):
Streams, pane. Yep. Did not announce any new products,

Daniel Rubino (01:02:40):
No new products as a focus on what is coming to windows 11, how the company is meeting, trying to meet the needs of businesses, as well as remote workers facing this new hybrid work model and what they're doing to windows 11 to make things better. Basically.

Mike Elgan (01:02:56):
I, I love it cuz I don't know if you know this Leo, but I have a relatively new newsletter with Foundry it's weekly. Oh, I didn't know that call the future of work. Oh. And it's all about this kind of stuff. And I just was crapping all over the hybrid work concept right, right on schedule for the Microsoft hybrid work event. Would you like to hear my prepared statement about what's wrong with hybrid work? So first what is hybrid hybrid work is the idea that so you have work in an office, the old fashioned model where everybody goes into the office every day and works. That's one model, there's the remote work model where people are working from home or they're digital nomads or they're working in some far flung place. And then the hybrid work model is like, oh, okay.

Mike Elgan (01:03:37):
We'll have people, either people, either some people coming into the office and other people not, or they have people come into the office two days a week or three days a week, we might have this thing called hoteling, which is what there's special software for this where you go and you check in and you're assigned a temporary. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. And so my, my, my beef with the hybrid work idea is that it's, it's this thing that companies think is a panacea. They don't want people working remotely. They won't want them working in the office. Right. And yet the employees are like, there's no way I'm gonna just work in an office again. The hot desks is the worst of both worlds. Yeah, exactly. Well, hybrid work is the worst of both worlds. There's all kinds of problems with the hybrid work idea as a panacea.

Mike Elgan (01:04:19):
I think it's so why, why are we doing it? Because the, the, the, the companies real estate can't get what they want. They already bought this office space. Is that what you're? That is by the way the conspiracy theory is, but they own all these buildings downtown. They gotta do something with them. Yeah. But they could sell them Daniel or cancel. Some of the tech companies are, they don't have to keep 'em. Right. Some of the tech companies are buying real estate left and right. Which is like, kind of curious. Sure. That's WeWork. It's gonna be huge any day now. Yep. I love your I love your your illustration of the great return of the office. Joyless careers, hours of endless meetings. You've got an office worker action figure. I like it. But sitting in a very old, old IBM, or it actually looks like a Wayne looks, it looks like a commod sexy or something. I dunno what that is.

Daniel Rubino (01:05:07):
I feel like, and I agree with Mike on this, you know, the terrible hybrid work for me, it actually has two meetings. Right? So you you're right. There's this idea. A lot of companies are like, oh, you gotta come to your office two days a week. You could do the rest remote. And for some people that's a fine solution. But hybrid work could also mean just some of the workforce is remote all the time, while some are in the office all the time, too. So it can work, you know, different ways. But, you know, we face this with, with my, you know, parent company, future PLC 

Leo Laporte (01:05:36):
They're in England, where

Daniel Rubino (01:05:37):
Is a reluctance. Yeah. And they're very like, we like offices. We want people to work in an office and mobile nations, a company, they bought that. We were a part of,

Leo Laporte (01:05:47):
Doesn't like a hundred percent remote. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino (01:05:49):
Hundred percent remote. And like, we crushed it, like you bought us.

Leo Laporte (01:05:53):
So why do you wanna change that? You know, who likes offices? It's always the boss. Right? Who likes offices and the workers who don't

Mike Elgan (01:06:00):
Right. They like to hold forth. Yeah. And they, they, they, they want to, they want to look and make a judgment about how people are and what they're, how they're working, all this stuff. Here's the problem with the hybrid work idea. So employees are saying, look, we don't wanna come into the office. And, and employers are saying, okay, we'll do a hybrid. But H hybrid work is about location. It's about flexibility in terms of location. What employees want is flexibility in terms of time. And when they do their work,

Leo Laporte (01:06:27):
Oh, bosses don't like that. Exactly.

Mike Elgan (01:06:29):
I want to, I wanna work from 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM, then, then not work for three hours. And whenever you try the hybrid work is a desperate attempt to get people in the same place at the same time. But that's exactly what doesn't work for. Employers,

Leo Laporte (01:06:42):
Industrial age model of

Mike Elgan (01:06:45):
Work. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:06:46):
You're nine to five because your job is putting widgets on an assembly line. Right. And that doesn't work for information workers. It's

Doc Rock (01:06:53):
Not years ago, Adobe and a couple other people started something called R O w E results, only work environment. And what's his face, Jason, from the old base camp team, like they were all part

Leo Laporte (01:07:06):
Of freed,

Doc Rock (01:07:07):
Jason free. There we go. They were all, all part of this thing and it showed effective. And I was working on it here. I had a co-working space here in hon and I was working on it here trying to get more people to do it. And everybody was super anti because people have this idea. If I let my people stay at home, they would just go beach. Right. That's just a,

Leo Laporte (01:07:26):
Not been my experience by the way. At least the employees we have, they work just as harder, not

Mike Elgan (01:07:30):
Harder. Oh yeah.

Doc Rock (01:07:31):
And much, much harder. And one thing that you free up, and I think people are realize this during, you know, the situation over the last couple of years, when you don't have to wonder what your kid is doing at school or how they're doing, or if they're safe or if they're still sick or is that fever getting on or whatever you can focus. Right. And so a lot of times to be able to just walk over into the bedroom and peep and see that they're getting their study on doing their thing, and you can go back to doing your thing. It's fine. The people who didn't like it, or the people with bad kids, that's a parenting thing. That's not my fault. If my parents had work at home environment, we were never interrupting him in zoom. Cuz we didn't say things like when mom and dad was working, you got you. You would be silent. That was just a thing. So part of it, I believe is a lot of the management people and the bosses, if you will, who feel like the other people are going to slack are the bosses who do the most slacking themselves. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:29):
Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:08:29):
Cause they just thinking they're, you're

Leo Laporte (01:08:30):
Thinking they're projecting themselves. They're projecting, you're

Doc Rock (01:08:33):
Projecting. That's the word I was looking for. They're projecting. And it's like people, it is always been stated. If you let people be people they will normally do fine. When you give them the opportunity to be stuck between I don't trust you. So I'm gonna lean on you. They will do things to see what they can get away with. Cuz that's the test and proof of this in upstate Washington. A lot of places here, they have these stands, right? So you can go to a vegetable stand in Maui and all the vegetable was there. There's a bucket. You pick a

Leo Laporte (01:09:04):
Leave, the money

Doc Rock (01:09:04):
You put your, and you dig and nobody's jacking vegetables. I'm sorry. Dumb.

Leo Laporte (01:09:09):
I did that once for Halloween, I was hoping I wouldn't have to candy out candy. I put all the candy in a bucket in the front door was gone in a minute. So I don't know if that works. Maybe it only works in Hawaii.

Mike Elgan (01:09:21):
It, it, well actually that's what That stuff is all over Petaluma. People have like butter and eggs farms and stuff like that. And you just walk and put

Leo Laporte (01:09:28):
In the drawings, the farms for some reason maybe cuz you kind of know how much work

Mike Elgan (01:09:32):
Those darn teenagers, those kids on your lawn,

Leo Laporte (01:09:34):
Payday, payday bars. I any money into that, that, that babe bruise. I didn't work

Doc Rock (01:09:38):
Hard. You know the funny thing Mike, and I know you're joking, but the funny thing, if the teenagers are bad, whose fault is it?

Leo Laporte (01:09:43):
Well, yeah, that's true. Yeah. So this R O results only work. Obviously it doesn't work for everybody. It only works for people who have a deliverable that you can measure. Yeah. Like our editors, for instance, they either get the job done and get the stuff out or they don't, and we don't, they can work from home if they could. Right. I mean, they need the te they need the hardware and stuff, but we've set it up so they can work from home. Yeah. But then there's, there's kind of information workers. And Lisa says this and I kind of agree with her. There's certain people like people in marketing, you want them in house. Cuz there a kind of creative

Mike Elgan (01:10:19):
And market types, people are drawn to marketing are the kind of people who yes, exactly. I remember working back in, working in magazines, used to edit magazines for a living. And there was always this huge cultural and personality Gulf between the ad sales people and the editorial people, editorial people wanted to do everything on email. The ad salespeople. I wanted always wanted to have a call. Right. Always on the phone, always talking, always social, always meeting. And the, the editorial people wanted to be in their own office like, you know, and all this kind of stuff. But let me tell you something about this deliverables thing that I discovered in Morocco, which was really kind of fascinating. So Morocco,

Leo Laporte (01:10:55):
You just came back,

Mike Elgan (01:10:56):
Just came back to you as

Leo Laporte (01:10:57):
A gastro mad adventure in Morocco.

Mike Elgan (01:10:59):
Exactly. There there's a, there's a, there's a product that's grown only in Morocco called argon oil. It's I

Leo Laporte (01:11:05):
Love Arcan.

Mike Elgan (01:11:06):
It's amazing stuff. But it grows only in Morocco. There's a little farm in Israel and some other country, but basically it's indigenous to,

Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
I had never of it. We were in Tange we bought some it's amazing. And it was like, oh my God, this stuff is the best oil.

Mike Elgan (01:11:19):
It's like a miracle oil. Yeah. So there's they roast it for food and they, and then the non roasted versions for cosmetics is totally blowing up for cosmetics on the last couple of years and so on. But, but we went to an organ women do this work and they have these cooperatives. So we went to this women's cooperative for argon oil. And guess what? Leo, all the women were working from home. So the, the way they process the argon oil, they've

Leo Laporte (01:11:42):
Got a deliverable. They

Mike Elgan (01:11:43):
Have exactly. So, so, so they have, they crack the stones of the rock. It's very hard to do. I

Leo Laporte (01:11:48):
Bet you it's labor intensive. It's

Mike Elgan (01:11:49):
Labor intensive, but they sit on the floor on a rug. Yeah. And they crack the nuts individually with a rock on between a rock and a and another rock. And then they, they separate the seed out. And then, so, so what they're doing is they deliver the UN cracked seeds to their homes. Then in their own time they crack them and then they bring the crack seeds back to the factory. Wow. So it's not about information work. It's about me when you can measure the deliverable. Yeah. It can be anything.

Leo Laporte (01:12:16):
Did Adobe have success with Roe, doc rock? Did that work for

Doc Rock (01:12:20):
Them? Oh yeah. A lot of companies went that way and started that way. And I mean, look at me. I I'm in hon my company is in Massachusetts. We do perfectly fine. But I agree with Mike because I'm in market department. What do we do every day we huddle on and that's,

Mike Elgan (01:12:35):
That's

Doc Rock (01:12:35):
Our, that's our thing. Like we have a good time because we get to hang out and I go out on my way to try to visit mass TWiTce a year just to come in, not from the hybrid thing, but just to connect with the team, you know, have dinner with the, with the crew, things like that. I do wanna tell you if you haven't seen it already, this is probably like two years old, fantastic video from business insider about why argon oil is so expensive and it's so labor intensive in hand, but oh my goodness. It's awesome. It's very,

Leo Laporte (01:13:03):
Very awesome. And I should point out

Doc Rock (01:13:04):
And I use argon oil every day for the beard.

Leo Laporte (01:13:06):
Yes. If you, if you think he has a sleek, beautiful beard, it's because it's, it's argon. Thank you for a hundred percent. I heard of it. I thought we were getting scammed, cuz we, well, we went to the Medina and there was a guy who specialized in organ

Mike Elgan (01:13:22):
Oil. You might have been. So they cut it. They cut the Medinas to you, the pure stuff, you get the cooperative. It's just like, it's just like heroin or anything else. But, but basically

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
They put baby laxative in AR oil.

Mike Elgan (01:13:34):
They, who knows? No, basically it's

Leo Laporte (01:13:36):
No, I know if you go to the store and look for AR 3%,

Mike Elgan (01:13:40):
2%,

Leo Laporte (01:13:40):
It's not whole

Mike Elgan (01:13:41):
Right. But 1, 1, 1 little factoid. You've seen the photos of the goats in the trees in Morocco, right? Yeah. So what they do is the, the, the goat Herts work with the AR producers and they have the goats go into the trees and eat the AR seeds and 60% of them, they spit out and, and 40% of 'em, they, they go out, the other end is really valuable.

Leo Laporte (01:14:03):
I

Mike Elgan (01:14:03):
Either way it softens the shell makes them, makes them easier to crack. And so, and so a lot of AR oil is

Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
Actually both ends is what you

Mike Elgan (01:14:11):
Saying? Been processed by a goat.

Leo Laporte (01:14:13):
Oh my God. And the goats are in trees.

Mike Elgan (01:14:16):
Yes. They get, they actually go up in the trees and eat them directly from the

Leo Laporte (01:14:19):
Trees. And it's only in,

Mike Elgan (01:14:21):
Only in a specific part of Morocco. Wow. Only it's near Erra between ER, and Meke there's this AR area and that's, that's the only place where it grows in the world in any significant amount.

Leo Laporte (01:14:33):
I, I can't believe doc rock knew all about argan oil. Well,

Mike Elgan (01:14:36):
You saw this beard,

Doc Rock (01:14:37):
Man. That's you got, man, you gotta keep the beard. And plus that's how I stayed looking young. Like, you know, I still look like the teenager,

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
You know, I, so the whole time I had, I was putting on my, my cuticles on my nails. It was great. Yes. And I have not found anything as good as

Mike Elgan (01:14:52):
That. Well, you know, Moroccans, eat it for breakfast. It's the most amazing thing. They, they grind organ seeds with almond oil and put honey in it, those three ingredients and they dip bread into it. And the most delicious.

Doc Rock (01:15:04):
Yeah. I love Moroccan food. We had a restaurant here is so good called Kaza mine. And they have the best Moroccan. Is

Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
That where from, is that

Mike Elgan (01:15:12):
KCU? Well, I it's from the Mora. So Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia essentially. It's basically where the bours live. The Burber. It's the BBER food.

Leo Laporte (01:15:20):
It's a Burber food.

Doc Rock (01:15:21):
It dope carpet.

Leo Laporte (01:15:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Dope carpet too. Oh, asma.net. Look at the Morocco experience. You're gonna be just back from the one in the spring. Now you've got two in the fall. One in next one this year and one next year. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (01:15:35):
The fall, this year sold out, sold out, sold out. So, but next year is, is not sold out. So,

Leo Laporte (01:15:41):
And this is the longest gastro man. You do. It's a two week

Mike Elgan (01:15:44):
Excuse two weeks. Yeah. Cause you move around. We go to chef Shallen Fazz. Meke Mene, which is a wine country. We are in the desert. We go to Erra nice. So it's a, it's a really glorious experience. What fun?

Leo Laporte (01:16:00):
Yes. What fun? And I know all these people. Yes. Who are testimonial? Yes. Yes. What fun? So what did mic or do apple and Microsoft? What did, what did Microsoft and now it's at this hybrid, it's actually smart at Microsoft to say, we're, we're gonna help you with hybrid work. Cuz it is challenging for a business.

Mike Elgan (01:16:19):
Well, everybody's had a,

Leo Laporte (01:16:21):
They were struggling with it. We, we were doing hybrid too. Some of us are here. Yeah. Some of us are still at home. So did Microsoft offer anything of value? Daniel?

Daniel Rubino (01:16:31):
No, I kidding. Well, there it is. Yeah, probably one. The, one

Mike Elgan (01:16:37):
Of the, thank you for joining

Daniel Rubino (01:16:38):
Us. Every things I, one of the more interesting things I think they did was in windows 11, they're building in, like, if you see my background, it's blurred, right. I'm using Invidia. Gforce it's specifically Invidia broadcast is blur.

Leo Laporte (01:16:52):
You need a lot of hardware to do that. And actually he's doing it very well, like right. Your hair. I don't see anything. It's a, we call it a key in broadcasting. It's a very, very good key. Yeah. Much better than you get from zoom or Google meet or any of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino (01:17:06):
So this is like, I considers the top of the line, but yeah, you, you need a power for RTX GPU to do it. So what they're doing windows 11 is they're building in the ability to automatically blur your background and video just in the operating system itself. It does rely on an NPU to be presence, which, you know, we see a lot of the arm processors, although Intels course, building out this technology as well. It can also do things with, you know, the voice and amplify the voice when someone's talking, including if they're walking away from the microphone or moving, it'll keep the audio level. And so you're seeing like a lot of the smart technology tech crunch had this very sarcastic, I thought it was kind of dumb, but like right now, like I'm looking at the camera to make eye contact. We all know this. I,

Leo Laporte (01:17:49):
I know where you're going. I hate this AI I adjustment.

Daniel Rubino (01:17:54):
Right. And so it's technically not new. Right. Apple's been doing it for a while. The surface prox by Microsoft has had this feature too for the last two years. So on Skype, it'll do it. It's actually very subtle.

Leo Laporte (01:18:06):
Do you have it on right now?

Daniel Rubino (01:18:08):
I don't have it because I don't have the, it's not set up in, on this PC to do it. Okay. but with the surface prox, you could do it on there. But it's a very subtle thing. So I think tech crunch is kinda making a big deal about this saying it looks unnatural when I've used it. I mean, it, it was, it was almost, it didn't look unnatural at all. In fact it was almost hard to see the difference. It was, it was a very will change. But I think that technology it's just like anything else, even if it does look weird at first, just some tweaking will adjust that. But I think this is a, it's a, it's a pain to you wanna look at your screen, but then you got the camera above it. Yeah. And so they're trying to just

Leo Laporte (01:18:44):
As long as it's not

Daniel Rubino (01:18:45):
A little bit more natural,

Leo Laporte (01:18:46):
What I've seen looks a little there's something off and everyone looks like Marty Feldman. Got, I dunno what you have's eyes. So tell me what,

Daniel Rubino (01:18:56):
But that's like everything. Right? That's that's like CGI too. Right? CGI was, was awesome. So now it's getting to this point where, you

Leo Laporte (01:19:02):
Know, valley. Yeah. What, so tell me again what you're using. Cause we're on zoom, but you're using something to pre-proces the video for Nvidia. What's

Daniel Rubino (01:19:10):
The cool yeah. I'm actually well, so the camera I'm using is actually a new one. It's called Lumina which is a kind of a startup. I think they're at Japan. I wanna say it's really interesting. Camera it really good. It's the first it's yeah. It's the first camera that I consider that could actually beat the Brio 4k by Logitech, which has been the long running champ. But so I'm running and they actually do their own blurring ability, which I, I haven't enabled cuz yeah. So this is running through the computer and I have a RTX 30, 80 GPU on here and you just installed, there's a free app Invidia called Invidia broadcast. You just download it to your computer. You technically can get away around it. There's like a way to get around the GPU requirement even it'll probably use your CPU more course. What's using it. It uses the GPU and it uses it to it can blur the background. It it's also doing my voice. So if I FLA or

Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
Into the it dumps that out.

Daniel Rubino (01:20:03):
Yeah. So, wow. I don't even have it maxed out. I don't have it maxed out even. When my, my senior cat used to always come in on the podcast that she would just scream her head off, but you never would hear it. I would hear it. Wow. So it's using AI on the fly to do this. They keep improving it and they can do some auto tracking and all this other kind of stuff. And that's where you're seeing a lot of this like engineering going into computers. Lenovo has a brand new laptop, the yoga nine I it's a 14 inch laptop. And it has a button, a physical button on the deck that you could hit that will blur your background in any video app. So doesn't so you can just be in any call. You can just hit a button. It will just blur your background on

Leo Laporte (01:20:43):
This is the best key I've ever seen done in real time on a computer though. It's really good. Doesn't it look good? It looks great. Yeah. So that's so I have a 30, 80 at home, so I could use the Invidia broadcast on that with my zoom calls. I'm gonna blow people away. Yeah. wow. That's and that's, if you have an Invidia card, that's a free download and video broadcast.

Daniel Rubino (01:21:06):
It's just a free app. Yeah. I feel so.

Leo Laporte (01:21:08):
You don't. Cause it looks so good. It does look good. And now I'm have to look at the Illumina as well, which is only one 90 nines, less than the Brio. Yes. So I'm gonna have to take a look at that as well. Wow.

Daniel Rubino (01:21:18):
It's they're really interesting cuz they're they're focusing. So the hardware is very good, but the software it's almost like a Tesla, you know, I, I own a Tesla. I'm sure some of the guys do too, but like when you bought the te like the way it evolved over two to three years through the software updates is what's really made it an interesting car. This is the same thing going on with this camera. They're focusing a lot on the software and AI and they're gonna be tweaking a lot over it for the next couple months and years and stuff like that, where they're really going to kind of get the most out of it, which is really where cameras an op things are going, right. It, it is the power of AI. That's really gonna improve these things. The

Leo Laporte (01:21:52):
Only thing I would say, and I noticed this when you first came on, it's a, it's a little cooler than normal. We usually mom, I'm warm.

Daniel Rubino (01:21:59):
I'm overrid that?

Leo Laporte (01:22:00):
Oh, you're overriding

Daniel Rubino (01:22:01):
That I'm overriding that. So I could actually put it onto, I can change it right now and put it on scene and it'll auto adjust. So

Leo Laporte (01:22:07):
Dan Rubino himself is cooler than normal. He's a cool cat. He's cooler. He's a cool, but I'm even noticing on their website that the video that they show on the website is considerably cooler. That's the video on the left and the video from the Sony, which I think actually looks more realistic. So it's funny that they're putting yeah. They get

Daniel Rubino (01:22:26):
Full controls over all that stuff, which is kind of nice. So do sliders.

Leo Laporte (01:22:30):
Yeah. Interesting. Oh, and it has active calibration looks, she's holding up a card and it's calibrating. That's kind of cool too. Look at this once.

Daniel Rubino (01:22:39):
Oh, I should try that. I actually do have a

Leo Laporte (01:22:40):
Does it come with a card or do you just have a gray skill or a

Daniel Rubino (01:22:43):
No, I, I don't think so, but they're, they're a cool company. Like yeah. So I already, so this is when I put on, well

Leo Laporte (01:22:49):
That looks

Daniel Rubino (01:22:49):
Great theater, right?

Leo Laporte (01:22:50):
That's 10 times better. Yeah. Go back to the other one. What was that?

Daniel Rubino (01:22:54):
I forgot which,

Leo Laporte (01:22:56):
Oh yeah, yeah. Too many settings. He doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino (01:22:59):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
The warmer one was was better, but that's just me. That's that's just me. Yeah. So I don't care. You could be as cool as you want cuz you are too cool for school. We're gonna take a break and then we'll come back and talk about the rumors around WWDC as well. Great panel. I love having you guys here. Daniel Rubino is the man in charge of windows central E I C. Great to have you or sorry, executive editor is that different than EIC executive editor. It's like even higher

Daniel Rubino (01:23:32):
Exchange. I used to be the executive I editor in chief then executive editor. But yeah, I'm just the I've been there almost 15 years now. Wow. That's the foundation of it.

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
Yeah. You are the legend at windows. Central's great to have you on Mike ELGAN who for years this editor in chief of windows magazine. Yes. Now is@elgan.com. Where can we find your Foundry newsletter?

Mike Elgan (01:23:53):
So go to, well, just go to elgan.com and you'll see, every week I post it with some information on subscribing. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:24:00):
So, so it's like sub stack kind of it's a paid subscription plan. It's

Mike Elgan (01:24:03):
No, it's free, but it's, it's, it's a, it's kind of an odd model. They do a sort of qualified. So it's not really qualified. They ask you questions. What do you do for a living? You know, all that kind of stuff. And then it's free. So it's, it's you know, it's Foundry, formally IDG. So it's oh,

Leo Laporte (01:24:18):
It is it's IDG. Oh, okay. Yes, exactly. And you like their CMS is that part of the

Mike Elgan (01:24:24):
It's basically I, I just submitted as a, you know, submitted and they, they post it and it goes out and so on and we're, we're working to to, to transform that, that whole newsletter thing. But right now it's, it's, you know, it's a email newsletter.

Leo Laporte (01:24:39):
Some very, I love this picture street signs in the Medina and FES. They will not help you. That's right.

Mike Elgan (01:24:45):
You will get,

Leo Laporte (01:24:48):
I think that's safe. Bet. Yes. I have no idea what I'm looking at. Doc rock is also here. He's community manager at E cam, which by the way is really great software for anybody. Oh, you got one of those. Look at that. And anybody

Doc Rock (01:25:03):
Sony don't calibrate, I gotta reach back there and press a button.

Leo Laporte (01:25:06):
And you, you using the Sony? Which Sony are you using?

Doc Rock (01:25:09):
Right now I'm using the Z V E 10, but the Boca comes from a Sigma 16, 1.4. I also have the,

Leo Laporte (01:25:16):
Oh, see, he's doing it in optical. It's called optical

Doc Rock (01:25:19):
Boca. And I'm look looking down a teleprompter too. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:25:22):
You have a teleprompter and everything. Wow. Here,

Doc Rock (01:25:25):
Lemme show you how fancy cuz it's actually super simple to do. I just hold up my iPhone, just like this press over

Leo Laporte (01:25:30):
Here, switches over to the iPhone. See,

Doc Rock (01:25:32):
Look at that. That there's all of the cool,

Leo Laporte (01:25:34):
Oh, there's the chat room. Nice.

Doc Rock (01:25:36):
They're on the Mac studio. So I'm wasting over the studio speed for the chat and then we are over here. Now we're gonna create,

Leo Laporte (01:25:41):
So the chat needs is a studio ultra it an ultra.

Doc Rock (01:25:45):
No, I got a max max,

Leo Laporte (01:25:46):
Max. You know what? I'm glad I, the max, I we'll talk about that too. DP review had a very telling benchmark between the max and the ultra I thought was fascinating. Great to have you doc, rock youtube.com/doc. Is it doc underscore rock or just no one word? No, just doc rock. D C

Doc Rock (01:26:03):
Just about everything. R C K

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
R O C K C

Doc Rock (01:26:07):
And Ks worth the extra thousand

Leo Laporte (01:26:09):
In the a our show today. Its like

Doc Rock (01:26:12):
The coolest name.

Leo Laporte (01:26:13):
Isn't it? Doc rock

Doc Rock (01:26:14):
Compared to the rest of us. I

Leo Laporte (01:26:15):
Don't even know what his real name is. To be honest.

Doc Rock (01:26:17):
It its Sean. But the doc rock came from when I was a paramedic in the army. I was also DJ and one of the nurses, she was a civilian nurse, but she was an older lady. And so she used to call me Dr. Rock roll. My original DJ name was Yogi. And I was like, that name is dumb, but miss O he calls me. It's incredible. So I switched it to doc rock. It's short for Dr. Rock roll,

Leo Laporte (01:26:37):
But like P Diddy, you could use Sean, but you choose to use doc rock. I like it. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:26:42):
Cause there's just way too many of us. You know, the time I was born, everybody is named Sean. It was just black.

Leo Laporte (01:26:48):
Our show today brought to you by the single best way to do your cell phone mint. Mobile. I've been telling people this for years. Why are you paying incredible, insane amounts of money every month for wireless? When you could save so much much by switching to mint mobile, it is literally the easiest way to save this year and you can shop around. You will not find a better deal. How does mint mobile do it? They were the first company to sell premium wireless service online only no stores, no overhead. They don't spend money on anything. Mint. Mobile passes those savings along to you with incredible, incredible wireless service as low as $15 a month. And I actually saved cuz I got a MIT mobile iPhone se for 15 bucks a month, the MIT mobile service for 15 bucks a month. So brand new phone plus service less than 30 bucks a month, which is a third of what I was paying for this same wireless service from T-Mobile I it's unbelievable.

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
All plans come with unlimited talk and text. Yes, of course you get unlimited talks in text nationwide plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5g network. It's on T-Mobile there. So now, you know, if T-Mobile works for you now switch 5g on T-Mobile that, that ultra capacity mind boggling. You'll get all of that. You could bring your own phone if you want with any mint mobile plan, unlike everybody else they'll even send you a SIM for free port your number over you'll keep your same number, keep your contacts or you can buy a phone from them as I did. They make it easy with mint mobile, you choose the amount of data that's right for you. You don't pay for data. You'll never use switch to mint. Mobile, get premium wireless service starting at $15 a month. Yeah. Four gigs a month, 15 bucks.

Leo Laporte (01:28:40):
Ain't nobody needs more than four gigs a month. That's plenty. You need 10. Okay, go knock yourself out. Now. Now it's 20 bucks a month. You see what I'm saying? Mint mobile.com/TWiT. Get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month. Get the plan shipped to your door for free. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month. Mint mobile.com/TWiT. This is the best kept secret for saving money. Everybody I'm I'm trying to keep it every, I want everybody to know mint mobile.com/TWiT. Thank you. Mint mobile for supporting this in tech and saving our listeners a ton of money.

Doc Rock (01:29:21):
PO mint, mobile.

Leo Laporte (01:29:22):
Sorry.

Doc Rock (01:29:24):
Use mint. Mobile. Yeah. Cuz you're smart. Me too. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:26):
Cause you're smart.

Doc Rock (01:29:28):
You know, it's funny a year in, at their conference.

Leo Laporte (01:29:31):
I did. That's what I did. I bought a $300 plan for a year. I mean, incredible.

Doc Rock (01:29:36):
It was a black Friday special when, when iPhone first came out with dual Sims, I just wanted something to play with. And so it was a cheap way to play and then it ended up liking it. It was funny. It was in San Diego last week. The at T service was just horrible. And then some say, oh, go on your phone and switch the thing to MIT. And it was ridiculously. Yeah. Like it was incredible.

Leo Laporte (01:29:56):
I like the I have to say both Verizon at T and T-Mobile now are rolling out this mid band 5g. And if you're lucky enough to be near a tower, unlike millimeter wave where nobody has got it, you have to be so close to a tower. It's ridiculous. Pretty much everywhere. A lot of metros. I'm surprised at the places I'm seeing it and I'm getting like 500 megabits down. It's incredible. Wow. It's incredible. It says you see on your mint mobile or T-Mobile phone, I think it says UW on your Verizon or at T phone. We did not yet say what the rumors were about June 6th. We will cover that by the way Micah Sergeant, I cover the keynote, whether it's live or on Memorex, we'll still be there to cover it. And the rumor is that and this is brand new, hot off the presses from mark Garman that they might well announce an ANM two based MacBook air, which increasingly I'm feeling like you're foolish to try to buy higher end MacBook spending three or $6,000.

Leo Laporte (01:31:06):
The MacBook air is perfect in every respect. And it's just as fast single core as, as every other M one. And I, I think apple is maybe, I don't know, DP reviewed it. A very interesting head to head between the ultra and the, the max. You have a max, I have a max at home. I'm not gonna show this to Lisa who has an ultra, but they tried all of the photo apps that you might use. And they found with the, with one exception that there was just a minor bump going from max to ultra $3,000 more in price, but a minor bump. This was the only exception, light room classic where the ultra was in fact TWiTce as fast. Now I know a lot of people use light room not, not light room, light room, light room CC, you know, the classic edition. Right. But, but they looked at, you know what I use capture one minor improvements. Like they said, barely generational a few seconds. Most of the programs people use not, not a huge difference. What is your experience that rock? Are you, they be glad you got the max or do you wish you had the ultra?

Doc Rock (01:32:16):
You know, I, part of me do wish I had the ultra, but I got the Mac because I know, I know in the bottom of my heart that the, it will be finished by the end of 2022 means November is

Leo Laporte (01:32:26):
You're gonna get a Mac pro, is that what you're gonna get?

Doc Rock (01:32:28):
Exactly. So I got a studio, max, max Mac as the stop gap. But I also say, I understand where everybody goes with this stuff. When this stuff first comes out, this machine has been sitting on the desk for all of two weeks. I also know that every software manufacturer, once they have 'em in hand, not the development machines, but the real machines they go in and they tweak and somewhere around late June, July, especially after WWDC with increases in, you know, Mac IDE platforms they will fix everything and everything will work well.

Leo Laporte (01:33:01):
Wouldn't think apple

Doc Rock (01:33:02):
Percent true.

Leo Laporte (01:33:03):
Yeah. But when you think with apple, with final cut pro would've absolutely optimized it. And look at the differences between the ultra and the max.

Doc Rock (01:33:10):
I think they didn't have enough time minimum, honestly, don't think they had enough time because remember we just got the max in November and I think they said, we need to get this out for it at this right time for money wise, but we can fix final. So I think a 10.7 FCP and right after WWDC and we'll start to see some improvements also ancillary hardware that goes along with this stuff also needs to catch up. Yeah. so yeah, and honestly, in the pro pace, everybody still premier, which only half, but does it anyway, I was gonna say a bad word. Well only half does anyway. So there's

Leo Laporte (01:33:45):
Yeah. Here's Premier's benchmarks. Adobe has made it M one compatible, but you're right. They probably haven't optimized it for the M one, but again, a very little difference in the max and the ultra in fact,

Doc Rock (01:33:58):
Yeah. Premier just got M one like lo recently. Yeah. But even for final cut, it took it like two updates to catch up when we first got the one. All right. And this apples thing, once it was set, oh my goodness. It's glorious. Right. So I think to your point about the MacBook air, the tech verse, us guys, right? All of us sitting here at the table, we are a small segment of the normal. Popule like, we're, we're mostly,

Leo Laporte (01:34:26):
I ain't, I ain't editing AK video myself. Right,

Doc Rock (01:34:30):
Right. So it becomes echo chamber. Yeah. But to the wifey and my niece and the mother-in-law stuff like that, they will love M one MacBook air, how quick it is and what it does and to what they're doing on a daily basis, they would be absolutely stoked. Yeah. And it's so funny that in our space, people like myself and like Renee and you and whatever, we all get into this echo team, we're yelling at each other about these benchmarks and a benchmark means I scratched the table to her. You know what I'm saying? I can't believe you scratched this family heirloom. That's a benchmark. Like not how fast you

Leo Laporte (01:35:07):
Mean a mark on the bench. Yeah. I get what you're saying on an actual bench. Yeah. An actual bench. Not,

Doc Rock (01:35:11):
Not how fast my Invidia 10 30 can do this, that or the next thing. And I wish we would be more open to understanding when these companies make these changes. Like it's only, we're a small segment and I understand it does affect us. And I know we want things to be better, but like outside of me, nobody else in my family cares about apple versus epic. Not a single one of them. They have no,

Leo Laporte (01:35:36):
They probably know even know what's going on. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:35:38):
Holler back. They have no idea what that means. Right. And I'm not a small family. So I just wish we would understand that. And,

Leo Laporte (01:35:47):
Well, I understand that, but we do shows for the people who know what epic for apple is all true. That right. True. I'm not, I'm not talking to your family at all. I bet

Doc Rock (01:35:57):
You mom's gonna be on TWiT. And it's like, what is that?

Leo Laporte (01:36:00):
What's that I've been watching this. Why would forever, why would you wanna be on TWiT by the way? Good to good. On epic, Fortnite raised 144 million for Ukraine relief. In just a matter of days, I think they did a two week fundraiser, 36 million in the first day alone, own funds being put toward direct relief, the United nations high commissioner for refugees, the UN children's fund world food program. That's not alone though. I mean, game the game companies are really stepping up riot games did a a bundle of a hundred games on H IO raised 5.4 million humble bundle, raised 20 million. So gamers are stepping up. That's more than the Russian military spent on communications. Probably, probably.

Doc Rock (01:36:50):
Oh, those jacked radio calls are both interesting to listen to and a little bit freakishly scary at the same time. So

Leo Laporte (01:37:00):
Tell me about that. Cuz I'm trying to, every time I turn on the TV, it's all about the war and I, you know, I look, it's a horrific, horrible thing. I'm just a little fatigued. So I haven't seen all the latest they're they're stealing Russian telecommunications.

Doc Rock (01:37:13):
Well, yeah, cuz they're radios are

Leo Laporte (01:37:15):
They're

Doc Rock (01:37:15):
Encrypt. Well, not encrypted. And then so these guys are like talking to their parents on some cases, some cases they're talking to their higher ups and the higher ups are telling them to do stuff that they don't want to do. And they're like, no. Then the higher ups are like, no, you have to, no. And these guys are like, okay, you here to think disconnect the dudes walk away. Like it's, it's awesome. It's scary. And it's upsetting. But at the same token, like this, guy's like, you lied to us. You say we're gonna get money and medals. Cause I don't even want the medals no more. I'm outta here. And the guy's like, no, wait, you do this or you're gonna get in trouble and click you.

Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
You've served in that combat situation.

Doc Rock (01:37:53):
Yeah. That's why it's, it's scary. And it's nuts. Yeah. Cause I'm hearing the commands that they're giving because that's not what the people are being told. And again, there's nothing to do with politically. Just throw all it out, just be a human. Right. regardless of how you feel about anything, just from a human standpoint, to have somebody tell you to look somebody else in the face and do something mean when they're civilians, they're not part part of the game. Like that's, that's been the rules, right. Forever civilians are off freaking limits right now. Have we done dumb stuff before? Absolutely. Right. But we don't go out of our way to do it in theory. Yeah. Right. So we're told anyway. And so I guess I understand hearing the guy listening to the higher ups, like I'm not gonna listen to this person. I understand that. Cuz we did the same thing.

Mike Elgan (01:38:37):
There's a lot of that in Vietnam, too, with, with you know, people troops turning on their command, commanding officers and stuff like that. But the tech story here wired had a great story on it. There's a, a us company called primer. What they're doing is they're they're in real time able to feed the unencrypted communication by the Russians, into this AI system, which simultaneously in real time translates it. And it basically you can have, you can be listening to hundreds of these communications and it will surface the ones that are of particular interest. Somebody saying, oh, we're about to attack the, you know, Keve or whatever. The, and, and it's it the, the contrast between the capability of this private company that doing AI and the fact that the Russian military doesn't even have the capability or the will or the wherewithal or whatever, to encrypt their military communications is just a stark contrast. It's really a, a stunning contrast between these communications capabilities, but this is just devastating for Russian military because you they're just listening in English to this Russian chatter in real time. And so some of this presumably is getting to the Ukrainian military leadership hope and helping them in some way hope so. But it's, it's really fascinating technology.

Leo Laporte (01:40:00):
One of the things we've been watching and, and, and interested in is, is cyber warfare between Russia, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. We've done Microsoft actually did something to disrupt attacks against Ukrainian targets, coordinated by apps 28, the hack Russian hacking group. Tell us about that. Daniel, what, what exactly happened? Yeah.

Daniel Rubino (01:40:26):
Yeah. So they they have a process Microsoft now where they can just go to these courts and get immediate orders to shut down these servers. And the hardware, the infrastructure that these hacking groups are using, are these

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
Servers controlled by Microsoft?

Daniel Rubino (01:40:44):
No, that's the thing they're getting control, but they're going, so

Leo Laporte (01:40:47):
They're getting permission to hack basically.

Daniel Rubino (01:40:49):
Yeah. They getting to, to, they take 'em and then he redirected traffic to a sinkhole. And so the traffic goes nowhere. Wow. And so they've been doing it for a while now, but this was just another VO this week where they found a bunch of other servers in this group going after Ukrainian telecommunications and just trying to show their infrastructure. And yeah, Microsoft's been very good. It's very interesting how companies like Microsoft play a role in this kind of new era where they're not governments, but they have enormous power to sort of, I don't know, com combat, what is a new form of military warfare? And it's just I don't know. It's like, I'm, I'm happy Microsoft's doing it at the same time. It's like, it's scary how it could be reversed. Like, it's, it's a lot of power that's in. But

Leo Laporte (01:41:39):
The good news is they're getting court orders. They're doing it in a, in an, a lawful fashion. They're not just vigilante freelancing shutting these things down. I don't understand how they shut 'em down though. If they're not controlling, the servers are the, how are the, does Microsoft have a hacking team that's getting in there and saying, okay, now we have the capability to get a court order

Daniel Rubino (01:42:01):
That I don't know. Yeah. You know, the actual ends now of how this has happening. I haven't been able to

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
They're redirecting the domains, as you said to a sinkhole that Microsoft controls. So these are I, I presume command and control, you know, chatbot kind of things. Yeah. And they're somehow taking the traffic coming out of these control servers and saying, you go that way, maybe be with BGP routing. I don't know. I wonder what they're doing. I'd love to find out, you know, who might know Steve Gibson probably I'll get Steve to look into it. Throw it to Steve. Steve will do. According to according to Tom Burt, who's corporate vice president at Microsoft. This disruption is part of a long, ongoing long term investment started in 2016 to take legal and technical action to seize infrastructure being used by strum. Strum is the name of the hacking group. That's fancy bear apt 28, apt 28. They all, I don't know why they have so many names.

Leo Laporte (01:43:01):
I like fancy bear though. That's my favorite, right? It it's a good visual. Yeah. so we've established a legal process that enables us to obtain rapid court decisions for this work. They obviously have some sort of liaison with the court fascinating the, the Microsoft, but you know who better? I, I mean, if I'm the NSA I'm saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you do it. Go ahead. We'll support you. But here's the thing in a cyber war, the targets are also companies like Microsoft. So there's no, and their customers, there's no separation between, between in private companies and all out cyber warfare. They they're gonna go after every, every tech company, every, you know, and so it's, it's kind of, it's kind of good to get companies like Microsoft engaged because they are also protecting themselves. Yeah. In fact, the domains not only were used to target multiple Ukrainian institutions, including media organizations, also in attacks against us and EU government institutions and think tanks and VA involved in a foreign policy.

Leo Laporte (01:44:04):
So yeah, I mean, I guess one way you could do it is if you analyze the malware and you saw that the malware appointed people to these command and control servers, now, you know, where the command and control servers are. Right. You don't have to actually go and get them physically. You can reroute their traffic, I guess. Yep. Yeah. I'm gonna ask Steve. That's fascinating. Yep. Question. Yeah. Apple has finally gotten its Khans. Yeah. They yes. As you may remember the Russian government asked the app store in Russia, the apple app store in Russia to take down an app sponsored by the opposition leader, like say Naval days before Russia's legislative elections. This was after pressure from the Russian government. Yeah. Apple exceeded, they took it down. Voters went to the polls. I don't know what happened, but probably didn't go well apple has now restored that app. They've restored that app. Of course there's no election going on. So I don't know both apple and Google did this removed the app right before the election. Yeah. But

Doc Rock (01:45:14):
Google put it back right away. And apple was playing like, oh, what's gonna happen. Just a good thing to do, not a good thing to do whatever Google did it like a couple days after. So yeah, I wish they had it done it faster, but you know, let's just say it's there now because one of the things that happened, although you might not be able to use it, it for voting right now, apps are apps. So when you update them, maybe they can slip in the news section and start talking about what's really going on. Ah, as opposed to, what's not going on. So my guess is they didn't put it back right away. Cause I like a lecture's over no biggie, but now the app can be used for something else. Maybe they even get some live streaming with somebody, you know, telling the truth or, you know, having some Ukrainians in there or whatever to say, what's really going on. Or guys who ran away like the soldiers we were talking about. So that's the good part about it? You know,

Leo Laporte (01:46:02):
One of the reasons and one of the pressure points, the Russian government had, one of the reasons apple and Google had to give into the Russian government is they make them have personnel in Russia that can be arrested. And so according to ours, Technica who's writing this, I wanna just give him credit Timothy B. Lee. He says Tim Lee. Yeah. It wouldn't be surprising if apple had let many or all of its Russian employees go because they stopped selling iPhones in Russia and right. February. Yep. And so then the Russia government no longer has these pressure points. Right. And so maybe that's what happened yet. I mean the, the, the Putin government is essentially a mafia organization and this idea of arresting employees is a way to pressure, right. A foreign company to do its bidding and essentially, you know, suppress

Mike Elgan (01:46:49):
Speech and suppress political dissent is is just another example of why everybody is very unhappy with Russia these days. So it's, it's, it's good that they're finally doing it. I don't know the very, I don't know the details, but but they're obviously it's the, this is one of the issues that I've been writing about for, I don't know, 10, 15 years. It, it also comes up with China. What do companies do? To what extent do they cooperate with authoritarian regimes? When the penalty is to be expelled from the country and to lose market share to one's competitors, it's, it's a real, it, it, it's a, it's a problem. There's a, there's a, there's a, there there's a scale, right? There's a point at which, you know, if, if for example, the Chinese government said, okay, my we want Tim cook cook to personally come to stadiums in China and execute prisoners with a, with a revolver.

Leo Laporte (01:47:41):
We're not gonna

Mike Elgan (01:47:42):
Do that. He would say no. Yes. So there's some somewhere between that and like, you know, cooperating to a certain extent there, you know, other companies, Cisco and, you know, and networking companies that participate in the great wall of firewall of China. There's this, you know, the authoritarian regimes are always pushing to see how far they can go. And it's a, it's, it's a tough call. But in this case, Russia has gone so far off the rails that, you know, companies like apple can cans family saying no

Leo Laporte (01:48:09):
To them anyway, but it is ultimately economic. I mean, apple could say, well, no, because we, we care about those poor people who are employees in Russia. We didn't wanna get 'em arrested, but you don't have to exceed to the government and say, we're gonna have employees there. You're giving into them for economic.

Mike Elgan (01:48:24):
I was, I always oppose the, the rationale. So let's say for, for example, let's say the China, Chinese government wants apple to remove certain app from the app store because they they, they they're used by the opposition for one thing or another. And apple says, okay, we'll remove those. And then apples defenders will say, well, they have to, they have to obey the laws in the countries. They operate again. But I would say to that, but I would say to that, they don't have to operate in those countries to walk away. They there's, they're helping the Chinese communist part already suppressed democracy and Anden free speech and they're doing it for the money. Let's be clear about what's happening.

Leo Laporte (01:48:59):
That's the clearest way you could put it. Boy, this show turned into a com Fest. I tell you, you guys first, we're getting the Oli. GARS now we're pulling outta China. Google did it. It's

Mike Elgan (01:49:11):
It easy for

Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
Us? Yeah. Easy for us to say, I have not yet pulled my podcast from Russia or China. I just wanna say, I bet you, we have listeners in Russia and Ukraine. I can see no benefit. No, no TWiT listeners gonna pressure Putin because we pull the podcast from Russia. We

Mike Elgan (01:49:29):
Could turn this whole war around. Actually,

Doc Rock (01:49:30):
If you, you know, one of the things that we come the grips with right away, when, when, when the S you know, hit said, proverbial fan is as Mac users, we have so much software that we know and love. And I'm sure it's some on the window side, too. A lot of the window side, too, that are just made in Ukraine, right? The whole riddle team RTO, sorry, who we've spent many a time with at Mac world, all my set app stuff. Like so much of it comes

Leo Laporte (01:49:56):
Mac, Mac love, Mac Mac,

Doc Rock (01:49:58):
Right? Yo man those guys are so much fun

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
Sky,

Doc Rock (01:50:02):
Great to hang out with Ilum, which I use. Right? Yep. So like, there's a lot of stuff that's there that we use all the time. And so we originally had the notion of just caring about our friends. Cause we know these guys from, from conferences and stuff. Yeah. And then, so I'm sure a lot of that's on the other side is too. So again, yeah, it's, it's kind of a, a messy situ and I'm sure Mike can say this much more elegantly than I, but the part of the reason why we're where we are right now, even with something like that, right. As much as we have always great tools we use from the Ukraine back when we had our chance to dump money into education for tech and tech growth, even as we were grow the best tech companies in the world with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, apple, all of the above our government wouldn't put any money towards ed educating the tech, those of us nerd who wanted to play, we fought over three computers in the lab. Some schools didn't even have one, you know, so we kind of dug this hole for us. There's

Leo Laporte (01:51:07):
A reason why so much good softwares coming out of be Russ and Ukraine and old Soviet republics. Right. Israel, Israel. Yeah. they, a lot of gaming in Ukraine too. Yep. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:51:19):
And we just didn't do it even back in the beginning of, you know, Xbox and PlayStation and you know multiplayer games. I can't speak English today, you know South Korea. Cause I was living there at the time. Yo, the internet was just dumb, fast, right? Japan, the internet is ridiculously fast. You could be underground in a tube pulling 1 75 up and down. No company here wants to give you 1 75 up and down in the mobile without thinking that you're gonna just watch too much Netflix and kill the bandwidth, have it as if it's a finite night thing. You know? So like even to this day we have capsule and dumb stuff and, and a lot of places don't, and this leads people to just become better at what they're using the tool because they're using it. Our people here in quote unquote, democratize, you know, riches come the world, we have to worry about how much I'm going to, to sin because Cox might, you know, cap me like really why? Yeah. For understanding

Mike Elgan (01:52:16):
One, one interesting dimension of the Russia Ukraine conflict as far as technology is concerned is the use of apps for smuggling. So the information and also money. So for example for a while, I dunno if it's still happening people were using Airbnb to basically book rooms in the Ukraine. I remember that which they didn't have any attention of going to Ukraine and, and staying in those rooms, but to, as a way to transfer money from wherever to, to Ukraine. And, and there's an, a Ukrainian company that has a a photo app that's very popular in Russia and they're using the popups, they're using the notifications of that app to inform Russians about what's really happening in Ukraine. Wow. And so it's bypassing thing because it's an app that people already have installed in their phones. And it's really kind of fascinating. I, I I've been sort of working on a, on a piece for a while about all the different ways that, that the app ecosystem represents a sort of an underground railroad or sort of a, a secret pipeline for information for, for, for funds transfers. And so on that really can't be effectively shut down. It's a, it's an, it's an interesting development that is unique to this conflict, but won't be unique in the future. I don't think

Leo Laporte (01:53:37):
We have a a chatter who's from Kave Keve BODEX in the chat room and he's in Slovakia now he's evacuated, but he was from Keve he's listening to the show. So welcome. Burdocks it's it's great to have you. I hope your family's okay. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:53:55):
I just told him happy. He's safe, man. I'm just like, every time I get to hear from, you know, somebody from the region that somewhere safe, it makes me feel better. Yeah. I know that selfish, whatever. I'm sorry. I'm gonna take it though. I just, I just wanna see you Aloha from Hawaii brother

Leo Laporte (01:54:09):
And I'm skeptical. So I did verify his IP address and he is coming to us from Seva.

Leo Laporte (01:54:14):
So I, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:54:16):
I, I

Mike Elgan (01:54:18):
Know people disin info everywhere.

Leo Laporte (01:54:19):
I know people. Yep. Let's take a little anyway. God bless you. And I hope you're okay. And God bless everybody in Ukraine. Hope you're doing okay. It's it's tough right now. It's very hard to watch. I have to say let's take a little break, come back with more great panel. We will talk a little bit about cuz Kevin's in the house about chatter box. Kevin's amazing solution. Yes. For teaching kids about voice assistance without intruding a, on them

Mike Elgan (01:54:47):
And helping with the problem doc rock was talking about, which is investment in getting kids. Perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:54:51):
Example

Mike Elgan (01:54:52):
Technology.

Leo Laporte (01:54:53):
Yeah. Hello, chatter box dot com a smart speaker that teaches literacy. Computer AI literacy. It's really cool. You got raspberry pies now we do. Where'd you get 'em huh?

Kevin (01:55:05):
We bought them from another company. Who's put out your timeline.

Leo Laporte (01:55:08):
Okay, good. Cause I know that was one of the things holding you guys back is it runs on a raspberry pie and getting them has been really hard in the last few months. Oh, I'm glad you got some. Yeah. Hello, chatterbox.com. We'll we'll talk more about that later in the show. Our show today brought to you by stamps.com. Print your own stamps legally from your computer, your printer, you don't even need a postage meter. You just need stamps.com. Now I love the postal service I do. I do. In fact, we're trying to talk Michael into becoming a postal worker cuz they need staff right, right now. But with stamps.com, you can do everything you would do at the post office, right from your desk. And you'll even get discounts. You can't get at the postal service, which is awesome. Now we've been using stamps.com for more than a decade.

Leo Laporte (01:56:00):
They've been an advertiser since 20. So what are you waiting for? You know, a stamps.com actually pull the address from the website. You could put a logo on there. You could put your return address, all this automatic, less data entry on your part. Plus you always have exactly the right postage. Can't tell you how many times I've received packages for them. Etsy. Clearly they licked the stamps. They put the wrong number on the postage due is not a good look for your business. Stamps.Com can do it right. I gotta ask you if you've been hearing these ads and you haven't tried it, I hope you will try it. I've got one more thing that might help put you over the top. They are now a partner with the ups as well. So with stamps.com, you get access to the post office and ups shipping services they'll even tell you, which is gonna be better for the thing you're shipping.

Leo Laporte (01:56:48):
You'll get discounts. You don't get anywhere else up to 40% off your United States, postal service rates up to 76% off ups. It is your 24 7 post office. Whether you're sending invoices, maybe you've got an Etsy shop and you're making I don't know, macro may potholders, whether you're a full blown warehouse, shipping out orders, stamps.com is there for you. You'll look more professional. You save your time. You save your money and your recipients will love it. Just a computer and a standard printers. All you need print postage for anything, whether it's a letter or a package, you can do ups anywhere you wanna send for any letter, any package. It's a really great deal. So stop over paying for shipping, whatever kind of shipping you do. Stamps.Com, promo code TWiT. So what you do is you go to stamps.com. You click that microphone in the upper right hand corner.

Leo Laporte (01:57:43):
You type in TWiT. You're gonna get an amazing four week trial, which includes a substantial amount of free postage, a digital scale. It's a great deal. Just sign up and you'll do it. I guess it's kind of up there in the corner. What you're gonna get. It's $110 offer including four weeks free of stamps.com. It's a really great deal. No long term commitments, no contracts. We've been using it for years. I swear by it. Go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the page, enter in the offer code to it. You won't believe what a great deal it is. Stamps.Com. Thank you. Stamps.Com for supporting us through this. It has been a difficult time for podcasts. I have to say I am very excited about unreal engine five. This is something apple will not probably have probably because it's from epic. And I'm curious what you think doc rock about. Does it matter that apple doesn't have access to the unreal engine? Look at this, look how beautiful this is. It's amazing. It's

Doc Rock (01:58:50):
Incredible. I, it, it is tough to say because I think one thing that's going to happen and it might be a couple more generations out, but as we get more and more work on these SOCs that they're creating, eventually one of the gaming companies will take the leap and a bunch will follow. Yeah. Because tech wise, yo, the thing is incredible. Like it's absolutely incredible, but somebody has to bite the bullet and do you know, do the thing and make the first one, whoever does it first wins. And I think people will recognize it as good machine. That being said, I don't know, console gaming to me is dope, but maybe I'm just, you know, old.

Leo Laporte (01:59:30):
No, you know, it's funny.

Doc Rock (01:59:31):
I just prefer my console because it's, it's in a bucket. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:59:34):
I tried to play El ring on my fancy dance PC and it wants a console controller and I put it on the Xbox. It's great. So I'm, you know, I'm perfectly happy playing. I still get my ass kicked, but I'm perfectly happy playing elevator, but it looks

Mike Elgan (01:59:48):
Beautiful when you're,

Leo Laporte (01:59:49):
It looks good. I'm going. And I did you know, I know it's probably better to play flight simulator on a PC, but I put flight simulator on my series X it's so much fun. I didn't think it'd be fun. Just flying around

Doc Rock (02:00:02):
Now. Flight simulator might work on the Mac, but will it use the new graphic stuff? Yeah, that would be pretty crazy balls. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:09):
Right. There is a, there is gonna be an interesting, and I'll, I'll be curious at WWC to see what happens, but people have started to look at the source code of iOS 16 code names, Sydney and apparent. It's just loaded with references to mixed reality. And there have been a lot of rumors that apple, of course is gonna do a mixed reality headset. Something like the hollow lens Microsoft already

Mike Elgan (02:00:33):
Does. There's no question they're gonna do that. The, the, the question is when, when would they announce it? They always frustrate us with how long they take, but they won do it until it's really, really ready. I think in general, I don't know when they're gonna announce this thing, but I do believe that they will announce it before they well, before they ship it, like the iPhone, the iPhone. Well, and in

Leo Laporte (02:00:55):
Fact, you gotta get developers developing for it. So the time to announce it, frankly, is this Jim they're

Mike Elgan (02:01:01):
Already references to a simulator. So I think, I think there's a two digit percentage chance that they're actually gonna announce this thing, open it up to, to developers. I think it's real possibility and people can start building it on this simulator. So

Leo Laporte (02:01:15):
Somewhere between 10 and 99% chance.

Mike Elgan (02:01:18):
Yeah, exactly. Probably 10, probably 10 Let's go with the ten two

Leo Laporte (02:01:22):
Digits is kind of a wide

Mike Elgan (02:01:24):
I've so many times

Leo Laporte (02:01:25):
Now mark Goman points out that because it's in iOS 16, lots of references that it will probably launch during the life cycle of iOS 16. Doesn't mean it'll come out in the fall when I 16 does, but it will sometime between fall 20, 22 and fall 2023, that seems reasonable. Right? Absolutely.

Daniel Rubino (02:01:43):
And weren't the rumors that this first version, so there's like supposed to be three stages. I believe where this first version's gonna be like a $3,000 headsets kind of

Leo Laporte (02:01:52):
Developer model kind one

Daniel Rubino (02:01:53):
Living room based. Yeah. Yeah. And it'll probably come out for developers first. And then I don't know if it'll come out out, you know, regular for consumers. The next stage is the one that people really want, but that's not until 2024 or 25, which is this idea of like apple glasses, the idea you just put on glasses and you use uses your iPhone and your apple watch as, you know, the actual computer connection to it. And you just walk around the world. Right. And you see augment to reality. It gives you information notifications and all this kind of stuff. I think that's really the dream here. I'm really curious about what Apple's gonna bring to the table in terms of augmented reality and virtual reality in the living room that hasn't already been done. That's so unique cuz I'm still, I, I feel what they're set can generation this idea of like glasses is what people really want, but we're still seeing pretty far off from it. Although north, you know, if north FOS was doing some cool stuff in this area before

Leo Laporte (02:02:49):
I thought those were great, but then they they're gone. Google owns them now,

Mike Elgan (02:02:53):
But I can answer that question. So, so first of all, you talk about the regular glasses that are actual augmented reality, where you seeing through glass, you see the real world through glass rather than the first version, which will essentially be VR that they use for AR where you're looking at a video of the real world. That's the first ver version. But the, and there's no way the glass version gonna be out in 2024. That is the plan. You're correct. That that's what the intention is. That's what the rumor, but I don't believe there's any way and how they're gonna be out with the, that version technology in, in two years, there's no way, but here's their, here's their what I believe their killer app is they call it bionic virtual meeting room. Basically it's a, it's a way to have social interaction and it's a way to do business meetings through AR.

Mike Elgan (02:03:43):
So basically holographic MI emoji where you can do the eye contact. You can you hear the, the, the rich audio? So, so if, if Leo's a hologram sitting there, I would turn and hear him, his voice coming from this direction. I could make eye eye contact with this hologram. I think that's really the, the killer app that they've been working on. They, they did an acquisition. I don't recall the name of the company and you know, two, three years ago. And they have dozens of patents around this bionic virtual meeting room idea. So that's their idea for a killer app for the, for, for their, in the, in the short term. And I think it's actually, I think they're onto something I think be

Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
This might solve a hybrid workforce

Mike Elgan (02:04:27):
And, and, and the, you know, zoom, fatigue, that whole thing, that all that the Brady bunch wallow people

Leo Laporte (02:04:33):
Come on wearing that headset for hours at a time. No, but this

Mike Elgan (02:04:36):
Is, this is the, this is the difference between the, the, the mark the, the Zucker verse as I call it. And, and Apple's version, the Zucker verse idea is, oh, we're gonna just get up in the morning and put on headset and live in the metaverse all metaverse, there's no way that's gonna happen. Apple says, no, we're gonna be living in the real world. But every once in a while, we'll put on the Goggle for a 45 minute meeting, right. That is the right version of what is gonna happen. And I, and it

Leo Laporte (02:05:02):
Will certainly be more like being in person.

Mike Elgan (02:05:05):
Yes, exactly. You you'll see your actual environment and then holographic humans will come, will come. You know, Apple's not the only one doing this. There are dozens of companies working on this idea. But they've got some really good technology and they're the ones who will mainstream it. I think what's

Leo Laporte (02:05:21):
Your prognosis for HoloLens Daniel. It's unclear what Microsoft's goal long term goal are with

Daniel Rubino (02:05:26):
That. Yeah. Well, I was gonna also mention Microsoft mesh is the same concept of having a virtual yeah. Meeting space that they work with alt space and they've kind of combined these technologies. Well, this idea you know, it's interesting if apple has, like, it makes sense, right. If they have a video capability to do a video stream of your real environment and then do what Microsoft was calling hollow deportation a couple years ago. Yes. Where you bring people into your environment to answer your question about holo lens. Yeah. I, you know, the insider did a, a real bangup job of reporting on the inside happenings of the HoloLens team and mixed realities team there. And, you know, it seems chaotic and I'm really kind of worried about what's going on there. It sounds like they were working HoloLens three, which was gonna be, again, more of an enterprise device was gonna have newer technology, but then they got this massive government contract and they started Devo devoting a lot of their resources towards that. The army

Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
Military, the army was gonna buy a hundred or it still is gonna buy a hundred thousand hollow lenses. Although Microsoft's been downplaying

Mike Elgan (02:06:31):
And the Army's not happy. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:06:32):
The Microsoft even warn, you know, soldiers, aren't gonna like this at first, you just gotta pair with,

Daniel Rubino (02:06:38):
But technology. Yeah. It's, it's not up to what they were saying that they promised they could deliver, which

Mike Elgan (02:06:44):
Is, and what about the rumors that they are planning to partner with Samsung on.

Daniel Rubino (02:06:49):
Right. And so that was a separate rumor that was in later kind confirmed by insiders saying that, yeah, they're partnering with Samsung to develop some sort of mixed reality or augment to reality glasses or headset, which I think makes a lot of sense for Samsung because Samsung wants more than anything to compete with apple and Samsung can't do it all. So they rely a lot of times on Microsoft, you see Samsung going also big on PC and computers these days. And with those PC computers, they're using 'em as extensions for their galaxy phones, mimic the ecosystem, the tight ecosystem that apple has. So

Leo Laporte (02:07:23):
In fact, this is the only phone that really works well with your phone. Now my phone on windows 11 is the Samsung phone, but it works flawlessly. It works beautifully with it.

Daniel Rubino (02:07:33):
Yeah. Well, I mean, the only difference with the what your phone or what's now called link to windows is the, I

Leo Laporte (02:07:40):
Thought they were gonna call it

Daniel Rubino (02:07:40):
My phone Philly to stream maps.

Leo Laporte (02:07:42):
They're not gonna call it my phone. No,

Daniel Rubino (02:07:43):
No, it it's gonna be

Leo Laporte (02:07:45):
Called

Daniel Rubino (02:07:45):
Somebody. It windows

Leo Laporte (02:07:46):
Link to windows. Okay. Yeah. But the idea is that you pair it to your phone, you have an phone on your phone and you can see the phone, you can see of image of your phone screen on your, on your windows screen. You can share apps. Yeah. It's kinda, so

Daniel Rubino (02:07:59):
That's like, yeah. So

Leo Laporte (02:08:00):
Technology get notifications on your

Daniel Rubino (02:08:02):
Computer. Yeah. So it just says like app streaming and then the, the Samsung version allows you to launch individual Android apps, like their little windowed apps. That's the main difference. And you have copy paste, but for anyone who has an Android phone, Android 7.0 or higher, you can do things like, do your phone calls, do your photos do SMS. So you're already getting that integration. That's basically Samsung gets a little extra

Leo Laporte (02:08:23):
That's parody to what Apple's got with its iPhones

Daniel Rubino (02:08:25):
Basically. Right. Right. So, but with Samsung, so the question of course is right. So Samsung,

Leo Laporte (02:08:31):
Sam can make the hardware, they've got the screens. They seem like they'd be a great hardware partner and Microsoft the software partner. Right,

Daniel Rubino (02:08:38):
Right. Cause Samsung has mask global production. They actually know how to make this up. What do they also make? Right. They make the, the LCD screens used in a lot of VR type headset. They all, they own their own audio company, AKG. They own, they make their own processors. Right. So they, they do do a full stack basically. But Microsoft also has all the technical know how they learn from HoloLens and holographic computing as well as the software. But the question is, is it's gonna run on Android. What's happening to all the stuff that Microsoft has been building out for the last seven, eight years with holographic mixed reality on the windows platform, which doesn't sound like it has much of a, a path forward. We don't know what that is. Holo. And three reportedly got canceled. The government contract is now problematic.

Daniel Rubino (02:09:26):
Apparently it's having issues. Oh. And now you have the Samsung strategy, which is like, seems like it'll really benefit Samsung, but I don't see how it benefits Microsoft long term if they wanna do this idea of like mid for windows. So, and then you, on top of that, you have a lot of employees who are absolutely unhappy about this, which is why they have 20 people for that article for insider that were on, not on the record, but off the record leak who are either current or former employees. Like that's, that's a lot of

Leo Laporte (02:09:55):
People, is that the military thing there on high happy with the defense contract, that's what they don't want.

Daniel Rubino (02:09:59):
No, I think that a lot of the people were unhappy because they hired a guy from micro, not Microsoft from apple and his goal and his, he just wanted to build a consumer version of HoloLens. Right. This, there was this question we always, when are we gonna get that? Apparently he was brought over to do that. And that's not really happening at this point. So you've the teams. Aren't happy because there's no sense of direction it's chaotic. Right. And these projects they've been breaking off on are kind of failing and not doing well. So I don't know. It really sounds well. It sounds like typical Microsoft it's,

Leo Laporte (02:10:33):
It's pretty Rocky. But if you look at the mesh presentations it really required a hollow lens. I mean, they, they show somebody using an Oculus, I guess something like an Oculus, but honestly, or maybe an HTC vibe, but honestly without the hardware hollow lens part, I know don't really does any of this make sense?

Mike Elgan (02:10:55):
Meanwhile,

Daniel Rubino (02:10:56):
You could do the VR part. Yeah. You could do like a VR with it. So you can use like regular VR headsets and it'll still be fine, but HoloLens would give you the ability to pretty critical environment.

Leo Laporte (02:11:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the, this is the, all it

Doc Rock (02:11:10):
Is fantastic tech and you know where the majority of this VR stuff is going to end up on the yellow and black site that shall remain nameless that way too many dudes spend too much time on.

Leo Laporte (02:11:22):
I'm trying to think what it is. Yellow and blacks don't

Doc Rock (02:11:25):
Think Neil, just let it go.

Leo Laporte (02:11:27):
The

Doc Rock (02:11:27):
Audience knows what it is. Just, you're a nice, I feel like

Leo Laporte (02:11:29):
I love left the cold I'm left in the cold, out in the cold. I don't even know what you're talking about. Okay. Then

Doc Rock (02:11:34):
You got it. And so that was good enough.

Leo Laporte (02:11:36):
Okay. Okay. oh, I get it. Something adult something adult. Is that what you're saying? Yes.

Doc Rock (02:11:41):
Requires less clothes,

Leo Laporte (02:11:43):
Less

Daniel Rubino (02:11:43):
Where all the internet

Leo Laporte (02:11:44):
Goes. That's where always goes, have you been a second life lately? I can't believe what's happened to second

Mike Elgan (02:11:49):
Life. Quick thing about magically though. They came out with the, the second version and they have two two, two features that I think are really killer. So we, we, when we talk about consumer versus enterprise, we all want a consumer thing. We think about a consumer thing, but actually enterprise is where AR is really gonna last off this high end, AR that, you know, that homelands is gonna do for, for quite a while. And then the consumer full blow up many years in the future. So you have apple, who's gonna have this big consumer thing, but also enterprise, but it'll, it'll seem consumer, but it'll be valuable for enterprise magically. Two is gonna have a killer enterprise product for two reasons. One is they have, they're going full, open source. So they're using Android open source development.

Leo Laporte (02:12:37):
This is like, cuz I've written magically fall completely.

Mike Elgan (02:12:39):
So no. Yeah. Well they're still around. They've almost died a couple of times. Yeah. But their, their new version is really great. And so lots of companies, universities enterprises will be able to very quickly create their own special purpose applications, which is why, in fact, it's gonna blow up on enterprise first, cuz you only need one or two applications for specific enterprise usages, whether it's in the, you know, a factory or for drivers, whatever. And the, the other one that I think is really brilliant is they have this kind of dark mode for, for for, for their, their, their glasses, where if let's say you're outside and you have this holographic projection that you need to do useful work with, you can't see it cuz it's like too bright. So they have this thing that will darken the screen and make it almost like VR.

Mike Elgan (02:13:28):
So they, they basically darken the actual environment while giving you this bright holographic data or image or whatever that you can interact with. And that is a really great feature for enterprise applications. Cuz now you can be in a bright factory, you can be in a boardroom, you can be outside, you can be in lots of these environments and you're not doing VR. You're doing and it's, it's, it's highly visible. So I actually don't think we should be writing off magic leap. In fact, I think they're doing far far better and have a bigger chance than Microsoft does in this space. Wow.

Mike Elgan (02:14:02):
My own personal opinion, but I think they, this

Leo Laporte (02:14:04):
Is a, a video of the magic leap too, which is not yet things

Mike Elgan (02:14:08):
Out

Leo Laporte (02:14:08):
Later this year, but doesn't look frankly, as spook insect is magically one it's much better. Magically one had the same problem HoloLens had, which was, it's just this narrow slot of VR.

Mike Elgan (02:14:20):
So they broadened.

Leo Laporte (02:14:22):
So that's

Mike Elgan (02:14:22):
Bigger field of vision. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:14:25):
You know, the jury's really out on this whole mixed reality thing. Yeah. I love and regularly reality is hard enough. I know. I love the premise and I feel like I can see the vision. Yes. But it's maybe it's just very hard to do.

Mike Elgan (02:14:39):
Well, it's hard to do it. It's expensive and the batteries are an issue. And where, where, you know, how, how do you put processing power into a headset? Do you have a thing put on your belt? And so on? I think that the killer combination is, is when you have, you know, I think apple will is in a good position so they can connect it to an iPhone, which can be the super computer computer that powers it. Yeah. Right. And then, and then what they can do is they can use, I, I believe that Apple's going to heavily use QR code. So QR codes can give you the data that you want to present in AR and also the location.

Leo Laporte (02:15:12):
We all walk around with a little QR code on our four. No,

Mike Elgan (02:15:15):
No, you put a QR code on, on a bottle or, or on a table,

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
Something like that as you looking at it and the thing

Mike Elgan (02:15:19):
Hovers over the QR code, but it also tells you what to go or a sign on the, on a restaurant window or, you know, you can put QR codes anywhere and that can be the location for you know, I'm talking, you know, 1.0 usage for the mass public in the future. They've able

Leo Laporte (02:15:36):
Just recognize,

Mike Elgan (02:15:36):
So promise, anchoring it to physical reality. How do you do that? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a lot of what the, you know, what, what what HoloLens is so good at, you have a, you can have a virtual object that not only stands on the table, but actually gets behind the table. How do you do that? It's really, really hard. Right. So I think QR codes can solve that in the short term and in a more cost effective way. And of course apple has all kinds of really unique apple specific QR code type technology that they've they've worked on. So I, I really think it's, this is gonna seem like this whole category is kind of going nowhere until apple hits us with their version and, and then suddenly it's game on because they're gonna mainstream it

Leo Laporte (02:16:18):
It's early days. Yes. And I think that's what Microsoft struggling with with HoloLens is it's just, it's not quite delivering it. Right. And they've just got, and no one knows what to do

Daniel Rubino (02:16:28):
With it. Yeah. I mean, outside of like an enterprise, like you can do, you know, Mike's right. You can do specific applications you're using in medical schools. Right. But when it comes to the consumer space, it's like, what is that killer app? You know, AR VR, VR, at least at home, it's like, it's gaming, right. That's gaming and social has been kind of two main driving factor factors for VR, but how do you now? But there's still something so isolating about it. If you're, if you have a family and you're like, all right, I'm putting on my VR hell. You're just basically cutting yourself off from the rest of

Doc Rock (02:16:56):
Maybe

Daniel Rubino (02:16:56):
Wearing society, the rest of the people around you. But when you go to AR and this idea of you're just wearing glasses and it's just giving you, you know, augmented reality, giving you information about the world, you, you, that kind of changes things. So, so

Doc Rock (02:17:08):
You Daniel, one thing that I've been waiting for sorry, sorry, brother. One thing that I've been waiting for. Okay. So you you're wearing this shirt right now and it's cool shirt, right? Like say I would, I would love to walk into, you know, the men's Hari. And I try on that shirt, that shirt has the, the near field communication to the mirror because comes in six colors. Right. You know what we do now we try on all six. I'll love to just put on one, but stand in front of the mirror and then swipe the mirror. Okay. Let me see it in blue. All right. That works. Let me see it in red. Yep. Okay. I'll take all three of those, you know, and that kind of stuff is how we get it into the normal people's space where it works even, or a car like I'm, I've been dying to get like micro, you know, L E D paint job because I had a gray car today, but you know, tomorrow

Leo Laporte (02:18:02):
Want a purple car.

Doc Rock (02:18:03):
Right. My favorite team is playing. I wanna rock Manchester, United colors. I just wanna hit a button. PR is, is Manchester out

Leo Laporte (02:18:09):
That black and yellow? Is that the black and yellow you were talking about? Oh

Doc Rock (02:18:12):
No, that's, that's red, it's red and gold, but you know, it's that old that what's that game called the original PlayStation GT five grand tourism grand.

Leo Laporte (02:18:23):
There you go. So grand Chara.

Doc Rock (02:18:24):
Okay. Grand. Tourismo like, it'd be super cool for stuff like that. And I think when we can figure that stuff out where it's say semi-functional and not just the gaming side that's what's coming and yes, I do believe E ink painting E ink paint is coming. I actually know some material scientists here at a university that are working on stuff like that. So nice. That's the stuff that's going be quite amazing. Self healing

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
Paint show. Yes. Yeah. Mercedes they're

Doc Rock (02:18:49):
Doing self-healing paint. And then E in for color, you're

Leo Laporte (02:18:54):
Self feeling pain. If you've got E ink pain you're gonna need, so something pretty powerful to heal that one up actually, you know, where they may find use for this. You just made me think of this. In retail, there is a massive problem right now in retail. I think partly due to the pandemic, a Nash. This is from the CNBC, a national retail Federation survey found that more re me merchandise was returned to retailers in 2021 than the entire us military budget, $761 billion of merchandise returned. Amazon. We don't know how much, but Amazon's got a big portion of that. Returns are way up year over year. And I think that's because people don't go to the store and try on five colors of Daniel's shirt. They order all, all five. They try 'em on, keep one, send five back we back

Daniel Rubino (02:19:52):
Is why Amazon prime prime wardrobe is right. Amazon has the thing where you, you purposely order that. And that's, that's, it's set up to do exactly that. You're supposed to return it. What you

Leo Laporte (02:20:01):
Don't, want's

Doc Rock (02:20:02):
Huge. I mean, huge

Leo Laporte (02:20:03):
Cause

Doc Rock (02:20:05):
A problem. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:20:06):
You,

Doc Rock (02:20:07):
Part of the problem you do that because I'm, I'm stitch fix.

Leo Laporte (02:20:10):
There you go.

Doc Rock (02:20:10):
I love stitch fix because I hate going to the mall, but

Leo Laporte (02:20:14):
To get different t-shirts from stitch fix. I didn't realize that

Doc Rock (02:20:17):
They're, they're sending, they're sending you stuff. You pick what you want. They send it back. Right. But I swear just literally two, three days ago, I saw something on YouTube. I think it was business. Since again, you know how the algorithm works, where they're showing you this mountain in, in Africa, huge problem. The they call it fast retail clothes, you know, the H and M's and the stores like that. I can't, you know, I don't go to the mall. I can't remember the Kohls, but yeah. Kohls. Yeah, that, that kind of stuff. Big, lots. It all ends up at this place. These women, they sell it in the bizarre there in secondary market. Alex probably knows this down to the details.

Leo Laporte (02:20:55):
They grind it up into argan oil. I think

Doc Rock (02:20:57):
It ends up into these giant mountains of clothes on the beach. And it were so sad and disgusting,

Leo Laporte (02:21:04):
16.6% of all merchandise sold during the holiday season 16.6 are turned the average return rate for online 21% us returns generate 16 million metric, tons of carbon emissions because they've gotta be shipped back, right. And 5.8 billion pounds of landfill every year. Maybe we do need VR just so that we can try shirts on. Amazon has said to old CNBC, we don't send stuff to landfills. We do get this energy recovery. Hmm. You know what? Energy recovery is? Landfills burn it, burn it. Oh gosh. Wow. Burn it. We burn it. Oh, that's better for the environment. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino (02:21:50):
All right. I, Amazon also does a thing. It's actually very convenient, but contributes to this where you buy, you get something sent to you decide you don't like it, and you can bring it back to a local store and just return it there. You don't need to send it back to

Leo Laporte (02:22:07):
Them's still a

Daniel Rubino (02:22:09):
Yeah. And a lot times that's store then gives you a credit or a coupon. Right. And then gets your shop in that store, which I've actually used numerous times. It's been pretty brilliant.

Leo Laporte (02:22:19):
I think maybe there's a time coming in this world where we stop trading convenience for climate. We, I mean, I don't know if you saw the latest UN report. We are in bad yep. Shape. We've only about a 10 year window left to, to change things. It was a great editorial in the LA times, which kind of I took to heart. The only thing we should be talking about right now is the climate crisis because the time has come, we are in deep, deep water. So anyway, cheer up. Well, it's almost over.

Mike Elgan (02:22:58):
It'll all be over soon.

Leo Laporte (02:22:59):
It's all gonna be over soon. But I think the kinds of things that we're doing, like trading convenience oh yeah. It's really convenient. Right. But it's destroying the environment is not a good

Mike Elgan (02:23:09):
Thing. One thing I loved about that article is that they really pile onto the the language we use. So we, we say climate change, which sounds innocuous and natural, and we really should call it something like it's a human extinction crisis extinction

Leo Laporte (02:23:25):
Event. We need it

Mike Elgan (02:23:25):
A better language. We shouldn't call it global warming or anything that sounds, you know, pleasant. We should call it the, the, you know, the, the generational, you know, once in a, you know, human lifetime crisis, that's about to kill us all. We, we, we need to boost the language so that when we talk about it, we understand that this is like really, really? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:49):
SI let's take a little break cuz I can't do anything about climate change right now, but if

Doc Rock (02:23:59):
I'm gonna cancel my stitch

Leo Laporte (02:24:00):
Fix, I'll get right on that. Yeah. I don't know. You know we actually more and more, we're getting more and more sponsor that are all about yeah. You know, reducing plastic use and stuff. I stopped shaving with one of those five blade, plastic razors. And I use the fashion single blade that is metal and I recycle it and I don't buy another handle every, every week and all that stuff. And just trying to do more, you know, trying to here in California, we're now starting to comp ID a huge reduction in the amount of recycling. We do. Yep. Because it's a lot of it's compost now. Yeah. But we just gotta do more. And the truth is as much as we do as individuals and I have electric car and I, all of our cars are electric and we have solar panels generating all the electricity they use in our house users. But it, no individual, it can change the world. We gotta all do it. And we all governments have to go well

Doc Rock (02:24:51):
Then also their's still too, also in industry too, right?

Leo Laporte (02:24:54):
Industry. Absolutely.

Doc Rock (02:24:55):
It's it's really like the consumers always get blamed for it. And then the industry comes up with ways to set the argument, right? We're gonna give you here's the old school way for people who love it, never mind the new people who trying to do Waah wa and for the Wawa wa people. Here's another thing that costs even more than a traditional one, because you want to be a good human being. That thing right there drives me batty. There's no way that certain foods without all the unnecessary things that are harmful for you should cost more and no way they should get away with lying on packages about stuff that's healthy for you. That's actually not like those two things gotta go away right away.

Leo Laporte (02:25:33):
The real problem is that we've pulled trillions of dollars of oil out of the ground, right? We have this massive infrastructure, investment, trillions and trillions of dollars. And those C these are not willing to abandon their investment. They're not willing to abandon that trillion dollars worth of oil. They've already pulled outta the ground. But if we burn it all, it's too late. Yeah. There will be nothing left. Billions will die. And but you know what? I don't wanna, I, I, Hey, I already pulled it outta the ground. We gotta use it.

Mike Elgan (02:26:03):
And plastic is a petroleum product and it's cheap

Leo Laporte (02:26:06):
Such a nightmare. Yeah. So such a nightmare. We have a great sponsor Blueland which I'll give a free plug to where it's all about not reusing, right. You know, single use plastic, not, not wasting all those.

Mike Elgan (02:26:16):
If I could advise people about how to think about this in the most simple way don't lean too hard on recycling. Recycling's good. You should do it, but that's not a solution. Don't reply plastic willynilly and say, well, I can,

Leo Laporte (02:26:31):
They're not, not recycling plastic.

Mike Elgan (02:26:33):
The, the only, the only good plastic is one that you never buy or use. And the only good, the only environmentally friendly smartphone, for example, back to tech is the one that's never manufactured. Because once you manufacture a smartphone, you, you, you have toxic chemicals, you have all this stuff, you have all these problems. So we should be embracing. I fix it. We should embracing repairability and reusability and, and, and everybody should embrace the idea of, of, of using laptops and phones and tablets and everything, milking them for and adding every bit of life out of them one way or the other is we can to reduce the manufacture of new devices, cuz that's really, what's gonna help. The tech industry do a better job with the environment, right

Leo Laporte (02:27:15):
On,

Mike Elgan (02:27:16):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:17):
Take a little break to sell something. And then that, that we'll not use any environmental resources. And then we'll be back with some final thoughts from our fabulous panel. Doc rock is in the house. Great to have you Sean Mahalo, ha Mahalo, Mahalo, Mahalo, Mahalo, Aloha me, Kaki Maka. Also Daniel Ravino, executive editor of windows central and the fabulous Mike ELGAN from elgan.com. Our show today brought to you by it pro TV. You know, if you're in it already, you know what a great job it is, how much we're needed it, folks. And you also know that it's a constant education. You cannot sit still. You gotta get re-certified. You gotta get new skills. You gotta get, if you want a better job, get new skills. It pro TV is the place to learn. And if you have a business with an it team, it pro TV is still the place to go.

Leo Laporte (02:28:16):
Your it team needs those skills. They need those knowledge. Those, those, those upgrades, you know, providing it pro TV for your it team is just a no brainer for businesses. You get huge return on investment, but you wanna make sure it's something they enjoy doing. Cuz if they enjoy doing it, they'll do it. They'll get more value out of it. I should tell you it pro TV more than 80% of users who start a video, actually finish it. Cuz engaging. It's informative. They get what they want out of it. It's not painful. It's all divided up into small chunks, 20 to 30 minutes. So you can watch it at a lunch break or at a quick break. It's fascinating. It's fun. And it's fresh. That's really important. Tech industry's constantly changing and you need to be trained in the of latest software releases. The latest system upgrades, latest cyber threats.

Leo Laporte (02:29:04):
It pro TV has seven studios running Monday through Friday, all day. So they have brand new content all the time. Content goes from the studios to their library in 24 hours. Right now they're up to 5,800 hours worth of fascinating, informative, useful con content ranging from technical skills to compliance, to even soft skills, to business skills, Microsoft, Cisco, Linux, apple security cloud, every vendor, every skill, all in one place. And the dashboard for business is great. You can track your teams results, easy to manage your teams, make assignments to even to individuals or subsets of teams. You can have full courses or just assign individual episodes because all the episodes have full transcripts. You give and say, I want you to watch minute 15 a minute, 17. You need to learn this. And the reporting is great. You'll get all sorts of insight into your team's viewing patterns.

Leo Laporte (02:29:56):
What progress they're making you'll know that you're getting the return on investment with it. Pro T V. They'll love it. You'll love it. And you'll have a smarter team and you know, everybody wins give your it team, the development platform. They need to level up their skills while enjoying the journey for teams from two to a thousand. And by the way, volume discounts start as low as five seats. Plus if you mention TWiT 30, TWiT three, zero to your account executive at it pro TV, you'll get 30% off or more on a business plan. So what are you waiting for it? Pro.Tv/TWiT it pro.tv/TWiT. And don't forget that offer code say TWiT 30. And that that way we get credit and you get a nice 30% discount it pro.tv/TWiT had a great week this week on TWiT. We've made a nice little video for you. Enjoy this at your leisure.

Jason Howell (02:30:56):
Okay? So on this episode, we are proving that win and flow are not the same person just disguised as different people because there never, there were, there were some concerns, but

Flo Ion (02:31:06):
Look at our backgrounds when you reverse them, they're kind of the same

Leo Laporte (02:31:12):
Previously on All about Android

Jason Howell (02:31:15):
Flow actually goes hands on with four devices, the one plus 10 pro the Motorola edge, plus the Shami 12 pro and the Samsung galaxy a 53

Leo Laporte (02:31:26):
This weekend, Google street photography. It's a new book of street photography, but it's not of people. It's of the screens of their smart phones. These are great photos. It's fascinating. Yes. And I think it's a total invasion of privacy, but you get the book as hashtag NYC from Jeff Mermelstein, tech news

Jason Howell (02:31:44):
Weekly. It's a subreddit called place. And it's just so cool. The idea is that any user, any Reddit user can post one single pixel or, or they call it a tile after that pixel is placed, I must then wait five minutes before I can place another. So what this does is it requires collaboration with others in order to actually create something meaningful,

Leo Laporte (02:32:06):
Twit tech, just like you like it, to have a massive battle over the Canadian flag or whatever, or to just waste a lot of time waste a lot slash slash place is fascinating. It's over. It's so cool. It's over. But but some of the, some of the battles and the, the, I don't know what the Germans were. They had, the flag went well all the way across. I mean, they really, they were very organized. Somebody would build a building, then it would catch on fire then a fire truck that was hysterical one. Wasn't it amazing. That was an amazing one. How did they organize that? I gamers, I guess I

Daniel Rubino (02:32:39):
Was gonna say the among us guy, they kept drawing, I

Leo Laporte (02:32:43):
Know

Daniel Rubino (02:32:43):
Human parts on the among us person and it would get a race and they kept coming back and it was just like, this is, this is a good use of people's time. I can

Leo Laporte (02:32:54):
It's been voided voided out. So you're, you're, you're not gonna be able to, you know add to it anymore, but this is the final ArtPlace I've seen people get giant prints of it. There's a, Zelensky, there's a lot of Ukrainian stuff in here. Do they have the oh yeah, we can watch the timeline. It's 82 minutes long. I don't know if I wanna go through the whole thing. You can also zoom in. But pretty impressive. Impressive. What they did. I love Reddit. I'm sorry. This is, I live on Reddit now. I don't contribute. I just breathe. I

Doc Rock (02:33:29):
There Chelsea in there.

Leo Laporte (02:33:32):
Well, we should get man United. Wait a minute. Yeah, you man, United fans, you gotta get involved.

Doc Rock (02:33:38):
We're too busy crying from a crappy season,

Leo Laporte (02:33:41):
Right? So this is, this is the void when it started here and we can scroll through it and you can see it building. It's pretty amazing. I don't know. I think, I don't know if it's gonna stay up forever. I think they pretty much shut this down. After a while slash R slash place on reddit.com, you can see stuff happening. There's the German flag. It's kinda wild, kinda wild, credible. Yep. The hive, mind it is the hive. Let's see. Couple, I, I, we are not gonna get to a 10th of the stories I had planned for you. I'm sorry to say. Drones are dropping ice cream in Texas alphabets wing drones. They're being used to deliver stuff primarily from Walgreens, but also blue bell. Creamies the video. You of it. It looks like it's on a fishing line. It drops down.

Leo Laporte (02:34:40):
The kid runs out, picks it up. What could possibly go wrong? It seems so, so weird. Inefficient. Doesn't it? It's just, I it's like it's like every tech demo ever. It's like what? What windows three, one. Now you, we talked about how VR it's in its infancy, windows 3.1, which is the first decent windows. 30 years ago. That's all. Wow. That's all. You both are big windows guys. Mike, you were probably, that was the, that was the version that really sent windows magazine at the time into stratosphere. I remember the first issue that we published. We were, we were going on and on about how huge windows was. It had 4 million users and 3 million copies in the first three months. But windows one was terrible. Windows two was terrible. Even windows three was pretty awful. I remember vividly what was this? 30 years ago. So 92 looking at three, one going uhoh yeah. They've this is a, this is actually gonna happen. This is good.

Doc Rock (02:35:48):
Oh man. This is

Leo Laporte (02:35:50):
Time. Leo

Doc Rock (02:35:51):
Was windows for work groups, right? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:35:53):
Basically three. That was 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 1.

Doc Rock (02:35:57):
That's where I like back then. I used to just do so much networking and get offices set up and yeah. Windows for work groups was fantastic.

Leo Laporte (02:36:07):
Happy birthday, Microsoft also celebrating. It was formed. April 4th, two SA 1975, I think. So it's 47 47. It's just, it's a middle aged company. Yes. let's see, what else? Did you anybody watch Friday night baseball on apple TV?

Doc Rock (02:36:31):
Oh yes, but that's not the thing. The thing is the Dick Tracy pitch

Leo Laporte (02:36:36):
Thing, the pitch thing, they weren't using game that I was watching. That's weird. Weird its on your it's. So the problem has been for years signal stealing. Yeah. Right. You'll have somebody out in the outfield with a camera, beaming it back to the dugout so that the batter can know that it's gonna be a fastball high and tight and he can hit it. So this is a technology to avoid pitch. You've got a little calculator on that's big on the catcher's wrist and a little earpiece to the pitcher and the Cal and the catcher goes, I noticed a lot of teams are not yet using it. How do you do that with the glove? Do you, do you have the whole glove? Is, is there a, oh, that's a good question. I

Doc Rock (02:37:17):
Don't know. That's that's what had me kind of, but so it's on the gloved hand, right? So your other hand?

Leo Laporte (02:37:22):
Yeah. Okay. Sits on your, your free hand.

Doc Rock (02:37:24):
But the there's a little bone conductor that goes into the back of the picture's new era and it goes slider. Like what, what slider or cut

Leo Laporte (02:37:35):
You're

Doc Rock (02:37:35):
Because the only way. Okay. Here's why this is dumb. Here's how we defeat this. All right. So you got out there. You're set up right? Yankee's dude is on the Mo we're at Finway and he's punching away trying to ask for a slider. And all we do in Finway is just make noise. He can't hear nothing.

Leo Laporte (02:37:52):
Nah,

Doc Rock (02:37:55):
Slide or cutter.

Leo Laporte (02:37:56):
I know cutter.

Doc Rock (02:37:58):
Do you bring that cutter in? And it just gets

Leo Laporte (02:38:01):
Shape over

Doc Rock (02:38:01):
The freaking green monster and Andy NA going duck rocks, cheer. Yay. Like, I don't know. It's funny, but I get where they're going, but yo it's so far

Leo Laporte (02:38:10):
Here's the device. It's huge. It's on the it's on, it's a big, you think they could make this a little better? This seems pretty. It's like a leftover blackberries. Yeah. and the pitchers say it sounds Metz reliever. Adam Avino said you don't even notice it just sort of whispers to you. It's like he plays

Doc Rock (02:38:31):
For the me. See, he, he can ask you. I'm sorry, Matt fans. I'm sorry. I'm from New York, but I'm not a me fan. I'm not a Yankees fan either. I'm a red Sox

Leo Laporte (02:38:40):
Fan. So yeah. Red Sox. Yeah. anyway. Okay. No race

Mike Elgan (02:38:44):
Is on to, to, to crack it.

Leo Laporte (02:38:47):
Oh, I bet. You know, I hope it's encrypted.

Doc Rock (02:38:51):
Do anyone of those pictures can hand this to their 15 year old and like dad, here's how you do it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:38:57):
Probably

Mike Elgan (02:38:57):
Also they're gonna put cameras on the wrist so you can see what buttons are.

Leo Laporte (02:39:03):
Yeah. You know, that's all you do. You zoom on the wrist instead of the fingers.

Doc Rock (02:39:08):
Yeah. It's silly. That's silly. It was good. It was a good try. Baseball.

Leo Laporte (02:39:11):
Yeah.

Doc Rock (02:39:12):
You know what? They, they are working really hard to try to get. This is funny because I love baseball. I think Leo, YouTube. I do. Yeah. one, one of the things they lost their star power a while ago and they haven't really been able to put it back. The last of the stars are aro and poppy. Who cares? What you think about them? They're just not really in the game. Like if you went

Leo Laporte (02:39:36):
To you say that, cuz you're a red sucks fan. I know that.

Doc Rock (02:39:39):
No, no. I said Aron. I said Aron I'm giving right now. The biggest star is probably Jud. But like, you know, a lot of, I mean judge, sorry. 

Leo Laporte (02:39:49):
But like, no, they don't have the star

Doc Rock (02:39:51):
Power. The Mike trouts like no is not the same anymore. Right. So if you ask somebody who's the most wicked player I see Brett man, who's the most weak player in baseball right now. They can't even tell you. Yeah. Like that's I feel

Leo Laporte (02:40:02):
Like it's probably, it's too slow for the modern times. It's probably a dying sport, but I love baseball. I, I do too. And I have to say apple TV did not do baseball justice on Friday with their two games. They're trying new graphics, which I liked. It's awesome in 4k. But turn the sound off because I don't know who these guys are doing the play by play, but 

Doc Rock (02:40:26):
Yeah. Go get some better. Some people first start to get some better or let us do it. Yeah. If you, there you go. First football, basketball, baseball executive listened to us back in the day in when Fox had soccer, Fox soccer nation, they used to do a thing on Mondays where they would play a game and just let two fans from opposing teams go at it. So it'd be a Manchester game versus arsenal. And you had a group of fans that got randomly picked and a group of got round and pick. And we did the play by play that it was hilarious. It was fun. Everybody would tune in the chat back then was on some special chat app, which now we have all of this stuff. Right. So like do a sports broadcast on, on like apple TV where you let fans come in and maybe there's a panel of 10 from each side you're randomly picked and it would be just glorious.

Leo Laporte (02:41:16):
That would be interesting.

Doc Rock (02:41:18):
That'd be, oh my I'll watch that. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (02:41:19):
Or maybe that all, maybe they need the podcast feature where you can watch baseball at 1.5 speed.

Leo Laporte (02:41:26):
You know, that might solve it to the, to the, that would solve it

Mike Elgan (02:41:29):
To the Benny hill theme. Yeah.

Doc Rock (02:41:32):
Oh goodness.

Leo Laporte (02:41:33):
You

Doc Rock (02:41:33):
Recently try Mike. When I was at my tech conference, normally on every other weekend I babysat my niece and you know, she was her night to come over, but I was out of town. So she came over anyway. And then we watched what is it, Ryan Renolds movie. We watched it over the apple Adams share, play stuff,

Mike Elgan (02:41:52):
Adam project. And

Doc Rock (02:41:53):
It was, it, it was great. It was I'm in my hotel. I'm in my hotel.

Leo Laporte (02:41:58):
That's San Diego.

Doc Rock (02:41:59):
They're here in Hawaii and we watched it together. That's it was fantastic. That's

Leo Laporte (02:42:03):
Nice. So I like that. That was good. Here's a good use of technology by an old form of technology. Amtrak set up a TWiTtch stream. This is the train station in base base St. Louis, Mississippi Amtrak wants to open a passenger service. Two trains a day between mobile, Alabama and no, but the freight train lines that own the track say no because we're using it for freight trains. So Amtrak set up a TWiTtch stream of this track so you could watch it and see how, how dead it was. It really isn't fair. The freight train companies say, well, of course we only, we ship. We do eight trains a day on that track. You're not gonna see it all the time. It's gonna be kind of slow eight to 10 through trains, one to three coal and grain trains and numerous local trains. CSX says, Amtrak wants to run two round trips a day. That's four trains. But the problem is these freight trains are so long. You have to have big sightings for them to cuz it's a single track. As you can see, there's only one, one train at a time and one in both directions. So but I thought it was interesting that let's see if the TWiTtch stream is up right now. Amtrak connect us is offline, but you can watch a popular, you can watch a popular clip. Let's let's do that right now.

Leo Laporte (02:43:24):
Oh,

Mike Elgan (02:43:24):
This is, this is one of the better clips.

Leo Laporte (02:43:25):
This is good. This one. I'm glad they saved this one. Yeah.

Mike Elgan (02:43:30):
Oh, look cloud moved. Look, there's a

Leo Laporte (02:43:35):
Squirrel. I'm gonna leave this up for all of you wanna stay tuned and watch the rest of the evening Amtrak station Mississippi. Not very busy, kind of kind slow right now and then a lot happening. Oh, that was it. That was the whole a clip. It's over. Sorry. Stupid. It just stupid it cuz you know it ain't gonna change. Hey I'm glad Kevin came your son. I really want to give a big plug. Hello, chatter box.com. Yeah. This is a great choice for any school that wants to get kids up to date AI on smart speakers without invading their privacy. Its it's they build it themselves. And now that you guys have raspberry pies in stock, how much is a chatter box

Kevin (02:44:25):
With that? Without the raspberry pie, it's

Leo Laporte (02:44:27):
1 49, 1 49 provide your own raspberry pie. And it has a very simple chatter blocks language, which is a customized version of Google blockie. So the, the kids are coding the skills themselves. It does not listen to you until you hit the button. So no intrusion, but a really great idea for li stem literacy in the schools.

Mike Elgan (02:44:49):
And one issue with education is that the teachers feel like a, you know, I'm not a technologist. How do I teach technology to the, to the kids? Right. And chatterbox solves that problem because basically it's, it's very simple for teachers to teach it. They don't have to be technological. They don't have to be developers or programmers or engineers or anything. They can just be regular teachers. And the curriculum takes them through process of doing everything on chatter box. And so the kids learn without the teachers having to be a, you know, PhD in computer science or whatever. So,

Leo Laporte (02:45:20):
And you know, I, and I remember this learning programming, you know, what we did is, you know, 10, hi Leo, go to 10. Yeah. But having the computer actually do something, anything, because you wrote a program for it to do it is, and you can write a program for, to do square roots and not know a thing about square roots and it does it yep. On demand. And that feels pretty damn good for a five fifth grader or sixth grader. That's exciting.

Mike Elgan (02:45:45):
And with, with access to APIs, into woo from alpha and all these other weather services and everything you can do, you can just build the most powerful, like genuinely powerful things with it, very simply. And th this blows away teachers and students I went with Kevin to Indianapolis to, to this big technology education event. And everyone's blown away by the, just the, the, the power of it and the flexibility of it. And it's just an amazing product that will, you know, help, help kids. You know, this is the kind of thing that we would have if we had the kind of Sputnik energy that remember when Sputnik happened and the us decided to really do a big push into science and engineering and mathematics and technology, and much of the technology that we have today as a result of that, this is the kind of thing they would embrace. Now, if they had a clue about getting kids really prepared for the, for the future, do any individual parents buy 'em for their kids or some yeah,

Kevin (02:46:41):
It's it's available, but we really focus more like impact driven.

Mike Elgan (02:46:45):
It's mostly you wanna get in classes and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin (02:46:47):
You know, get in school,

Mike Elgan (02:46:48):
But I could for looking

Kevin (02:46:50):
For these solutions and especially with the pandemic.

Mike Elgan (02:46:52):
Yeah.

Doc Rock (02:46:53):
I wouldn't buy one just for my niece

Mike Elgan (02:46:54):
Tonight. I know. Wouldn't it be cool. Yeah. I just feel like you'd have so much fun doing it together and all that. Yeah. Hello, chatter box.com. I always like to give Kevin a big plug and of course, as long as we're plugging gastro nomad. Yes. Dot net. Yep. What's the next real Prosecco. Well, Perseco Barcelona. Morocco are all sold out so this year, but the next that's partly, I mean, it sounds really good, but you only take a few couples. It's not like there's a big group of people. We do. We do small intimate groups for, for Perseco we're doing I think, eight to 10 people. But, but I would really encourage people to embrace our pro. This is in the summer during the peak of lavender season. Nice. and Amira doesn't let me give away anything. I can't tell you anything about it.

Mike Elgan (02:47:38):
You should, because you, you know, it's a surprise. It's that's the whole point of it, but Mexico city and Oaxaca are also have a availability. And those are wonderful experiences while you did a Oaxaca loved Oaxaca, speaking of Oaxaca today's Pam's birthday, she asked me and she did Morocco happy birthday. She said, Hey. Yeah. I told her I was doing TWiT. And she's like, Hey, that's my birthday. Give me a shout out. So happy birthday, Pam. We had lots of fun with her in Oaxaca. She, yeah, she's, she's great. But, but the gastro home experiences, if you're unfamiliar with, with what we do is that these are based on the places that we have lived extensively. And so Amira has deep relationships with winemakers, with food visionaries of all kinds. And we take people around to meet them and to experience things in a way that no tourist ever could.

Mike Elgan (02:48:25):
So I'll vouch for that. It was amazing. Yeah. And if your club TWiT member, there's a great conversation with Mike in America that I did a few last month. That was a lot of fun. Plus feed was really for that too. Get a better idea of all of this highly recommended. Mr. MI, Mr. Daniel Reino is such a pleasure having you on the show. It's been a while. I'm glad you're back with your fancy camera and you're superb Boka. Unbelievable. Really look how good that looks. So doesn't that look good? Looks amazing. Executive editor, windows, central, plug something.

Daniel Rubino (02:48:58):
You've got the podcast every Friday, one 30 PM on our YouTube channel at windows central. And we got a bunch of content there, but yeah, the Nat follow me on TWiTtter and at windows central or I post pretty regularly

Leo Laporte (02:49:11):
Absolutely windows central.com. What's the name of the podcast?

Daniel Rubino (02:49:18):
Is it just the windows central podcast?

Leo Laporte (02:49:19):
Okay. So if I search for that,

Daniel Rubino (02:49:21):
I should, we also have a gaming. If people aren't a gaming, we do have our Xbox two podcast, you know, have,

Leo Laporte (02:49:27):
I'll be listening to that. Gaming

Daniel Rubino (02:49:27):
Is very huge now in window central, but gaming is massive.

Leo Laporte (02:49:31):
I finally got an Xbox series X couple of weeks ago. Thanks to

Daniel Rubino (02:49:35):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:49:36):
They're

Daniel Rubino (02:49:36):
Anthony. It's only coming back in stock.

Leo Laporte (02:49:37):
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm all excited about that. Nice windows central. Thank you, Daniels. Great to see you. Thank you so much, doc, rock the Dr. Of rock and roll. He's a community manager at E cam, which is great software. Everybody should use. You could follow him on his YouTube channel, youtube.com/doc rock. What do you talk about on doc rock channel?

Doc Rock (02:50:01):
Trying to teach people who are getting into becoming content creators that to get out there and start doing it. Because I believe leave that when we share our stories and we tell, you know, like what sort of, what Mike and, and his family is doing. When you get people to tell their stories, you help pick other people up, you know, like just like today, right? We're out here, we're talking tech, we're having a good time. And then, you know, somebody comes in from UK and lets us know they're okay. We all feel better. Right. That simple story like that can just change their life. And so now I'm trying to teach people how to get into con tank creating as a way of, I guess, letting more people in the world to see other people in the world. So then you understand that everybody's just people

Leo Laporte (02:50:39):
I am, he's such a big believer in that. Yep.

Doc Rock (02:50:41):
You know what I mean? I think if the more we know about an outside world, the better we can behave as all people in this process. So as a traveler, like Mike, I think that's what started me on my mission and yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (02:50:54):
So true. Yeah. Doc's, doc's one of the great people in the world and there's actually a picture of him without his hat on the site. I can't believe it. So what never seen him without his hat here? Do you use argan oil on the head as well as the beard,

Doc Rock (02:51:14):
Nothing comes out of their head except heat. It looks like a bad lawn when it's going in couple blank spots and yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:51:24):
No, you look good. And it is really always a pleasure to have all three of you. Three, three friends on the show. Thank you to Daniel and doc and Mike. And thanks to all of you who tune in and watch you. Can't actually watch us do this live at live.Twit.tv. It's usually about 2:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon. That's at Pacific time, five 30 Eastern 2130 UTC there's live audio and video@livedotTWiT.tv. If you're watching live our IRC channels heat up during the live shows. So it's a good time to visit irc.Twit.tv to join the fun. We also have a discord channel for the club TWiT members. After the fact on demand versions of every show we do are available at our website, TWiT.tv, including I might add that YouTube channel where you can watch every show, there's audio and video best way to watch.

Leo Laporte (02:52:18):
So probably find a podcast, client, whatever suits, your interests, whatever speed you like to listen, you can and subscribe and get it automatically. The minute it's available. If your podcast client allows for reviews, please leave us a five star review. After 17 years, there's some people forgotten. We exist. So let 'em know. We're still, we're still standing. Russ never sleeps. Thank you so much for joining us. And as a, I have said for 17 years, actually 16 years and 51 weeks, another TWiT is in the can. We'll see you next week for our anniversary show,

Credits (02:52:56):
Doing the, the, the, doing the, doing the, doing the

Leo Laporte (02:53:05):
Fun. This was a good way to celebrate. This was yes. Excellent.

Doc Rock (02:53:08):
Oh, Leo. Somebody just reminded me and I'm so bummed that I forgot. I would, I wanted to send some happy thoughts out to Justine.

Leo Laporte (02:53:16):
She's recruiting. Well, let's do that right now. So I, I didn't, I did not know my wife leaned over. She said, you know, Justine was in the hospital for five days. Yeah. What happened? Doc rock?

Doc Rock (02:53:28):
She has a rare condition. I, I, the word is too fancy for me to remember, but yeah, she just got sick and then come to find out she has some rare condition that's gonna require, you know, some maintenance throughout the rest of her time.

Leo Laporte (02:53:41):
Oh, we love Justine

Doc Rock (02:53:43):
Check, check her out. Her ID PO you know, her, she went and told everybody what's going on. Yeah. And yeah, it was a blood clot. That's what it is. Thank you. PC guy, it, it, the 8 0 8 messed me up. Cause I went oh, Hawaii, but then it's

Leo Laporte (02:53:57):
Paget Schroder

Doc Rock (02:53:58):
Syndrome. That's the one Paget Schroder. I, I was

Leo Laporte (02:54:01):
The weird

Doc Rock (02:54:01):
From 

Leo Laporte (02:54:02):
Yeah. Paget. I know the weird thing is she might have to have a rib removed.

Doc Rock (02:54:08):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:54:09):
Which is bizarre. But anyway, Justine, we all love you and we hope you're feeling well. I'm glad you're getting good medical care. And yeah, she's on Instagram and talking about it at I Justine. So yes. I, Justine has been a friend of the network for almost 17 years and and we wish her all the best get well soon we love you Justine. Very good. I'm glad you I'm glad you brought that up. It's weird. Did she talk about how you get it or where it comes from?

Doc Rock (02:54:40):
I, I don't know. You know, I just happened to be looking at the, the chat and then Keith five 12 reminded me and I was like, oh yeah, I meant to do that anyway, cuz yeah. So, you know, just, I was talking to to some people the other day and I got to go shoot with Sydney young song when I was in San Diego. And as you know, he works with his sister. So him and Jenna do some stuff together. So it it's a trip that our, our spaces were small. Right. Even though like, I think people watching us assume our space is really big. Right. Because we do all the podcasting and blogging and we're all over the place, but our space is really small. So we end up running in relatively tight circles.

Leo Laporte (02:55:18):
You know what I mean? So,

Doc Rock (02:55:20):
Oh yeah. Like just hearing that she was sick and is just like, oh no, like that's somebody that we literally watch grow.

Leo Laporte (02:55:26):
Well, she she's so

Doc Rock (02:55:27):
Young, very beginning. She

Leo Laporte (02:55:29):
Should be sick. You know, it's just sad that an old guy like me is perfectly healthy and she's in the hospital is not right. Yeah. So I'm volunteering to take your place. She was in the hospital for five days, the blood clot in her shoulder. I'm glad they caught it, traveled to her lungs. And she may have to have a rib removed for some reason. I'm not sure why that would be so get, well, I guess she's home, but boy, that's, that's scary. That's scary. It's crazy. She had a, so a sore shoulder for several days. Didn't do anything about it, but then it got so bad. She could and raise her arms. So she went to a local hospital. Thank goodness. They saw something going on. They, they wanted know more and sent her to a larger hospital. The CLO is still not cleared according to our chat room.

Doc Rock (02:56:17):
So send her some, some positive thoughts. Send her some Aloha hope she gets better. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:56:22):
Yeah. She's a great per all right. Thank you guys. Have a great evening. It's kept you long enough. Good. God knows. Good for you guys. We, we were gonna hold out for three hours to be easy on you. Have a great one. Daniel,

Doc Rock (02:56:39):
Take care, take care.