This Week in Tech Episode 878 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
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This is TWiT this week at tech episode, 878 recorded Sunday, June 5th, 2022. Having my baby this week at tech is brought to you by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and getting your first $5,000 managed free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/TWiTt and by podium. Join more than 100,000 businesses that already use podium to streamline their customer interactions. See how podium can grow your business. Watch a demo today at podium.com/TWiT and by Indo Chino. If you've got a big day coming up, getting the perfect look is no big deal with Indo Chino. Get $50 off any purchase of 3 99 or more by using the promo go TWiT@indochino.com and by Nu Reva traditional audio conferencing systems can entail lots of components. Insulation could take days and you might not get the mic coverage you need. That's complex expensive, but Neva audio is easy to install and manage no technicians required and you get true full room coverage. Now that's easy. Economical, learn more@neva.com. It's time for TWiT this weekend tech kind of a different show today because of something in the studio that went wrong. I am gonna be hosting it from my house and that's okay because we're still gonna have a great TWiT cuz we have a better than great panel. First of all, haven't seen Jill in so long. Jill Duffy, deputy managing editor at PC mag. It is great to see you. Welcome
Jill Duffy (00:02:00):
Back. Thank you. It's it's a pleasure to be back.
Leo Laporte (00:02:03):
Yeah. how are things going at PC mag?
Jill Duffy (00:02:07):
Good. We are chugging along. We just had our 40th anniversary of PC magazine. So new editor in chief this year, the first female editor in chief we've ever had and lots of big milestones and in my personal life, I just had a book come out earlier this year. Oh nice. Appropriately enough. As you're working from home today is the everything guide to remote work. So everything you need to know from where to find remote jobs, how to interview, how to
Leo Laporte (00:02:36):
Handle your, how advice from home,
Jill Duffy (00:02:37):
<Laugh> how to handle your AB issues, the whole shebang in one book.
Leo Laporte (00:02:42):
Did you think when you came out in January? Oh shoot. I missed the pandemic. I wish I'd written this faster.
Jill Duffy (00:02:49):
No, I, you know, I had been covering remote work for a long time, just here and there. And then suddenly with the pandemic, there was just, you know, such a need for more information. So I felt really lucky to have been following the trends prior to that, to know like, what are remote first companies do? How do they do it? How do they do it? Well, what have they learned in the last 15 years they've been doing it? So it's, it's been, it's been really great to be able to share some of that with people who genuinely need it right now and continue to do it
Leo Laporte (00:03:21):
Well, as it turned out. Yeah. In fact, nobody wants to go back to work. That's kind of the story we've been covered for the last few weeks and months. Yeah. Is everybody says, yeah, let's not go back to work. Let's work from home. So perfect. Perfect timing. Who publishes that and work. Can we get it?
Jill Duffy (00:03:36):
It's Adams media and Simon and Schuster. And you can buy it both in a physical print book or as an ebook. Nice. anywhere you buy your books, I like to, to turn people onto IndieBound IndieBound hooks you up with a local independent bookstore based on your postal code.
Leo Laporte (00:03:54):
God knows. Let's let's support the independence. Thank you, Jill. Also here, Alex Wilhelm. It's great to see you deputy oh, senior editor. You're not a deputy. You're a senior at tech crunch.
Alex Wilhelm (00:04:07):
<Laugh> actually I I'm neither. I've gotten promoted.
Leo Laporte (00:04:10):
Wait, let me, let, let me edit that. Who are you now?
Alex Wilhelm (00:04:13):
I'm the editor in chief of tech brunch plus, which is our stuff behind the pay wall.
Leo Laporte (00:04:17):
Oh, nice. Is that with a plus sign or PL L U S how do we start?
Alex Wilhelm (00:04:21):
It's with a, a plus sign or if you're on TWiTtter, it's PL L U S because that's how user names work.
Leo Laporte (00:04:27):
<Laugh> great to see you. Good to Alex also with us thrilled to have Dan Gilmore back on our microphones such as they are today. Dan is co-founder of the Arizona state university news. Co-Lab at the Walter Cronkite journalism school and a journalism expert and a great fellow. Thank you, Dan. Good to see you again. Great to be back. So I thought when we were preparing this show that WWDC be the big story. Well then Cheryl Sandberg decided to quit <laugh> and that has to be the big story. Let me start with you Jill, because Cheryl became almost a feminist icon some years ago when she published lean in she survived, you know, the death of her husband and a lot of adversity and became more and really more and more important at meta. I don't think she had the role when she first started, she had the tech, the name chief operating officer, but I think she really became more and more important as mark Zuckerberg's partner over the years.
Jill Duffy (00:05:30):
Yeah. I mean, she was always kind of known as the grown up in the room. Right, right. She, she was the one who brought a little bit of an air of professionalism kind of held things together and it's hard. It's, it's hard to judge anybody for stepping down when they've been in a position for a long time in a company that's had taken a lot of heat and rightfully so. It sounds like there may be some issues related to burnout for her. So, you know, I don't FAL her for stepping down.
Leo Laporte (00:06:00):
Absolutely not. Although meta had just been kind of reorganized with the enunciation of Nick CLA to do global affairs. It looked like a triumph for it for a while. So they had mark Zuckerberg handling the software and the technologies and then Shel Sandberg running the business. And then Nick cl fing off <laugh> the government attacks, Alex what does this do to the structure? She won't be leaving till this fall. Yeah. But does this change how ne how Netflix, how meta runs?
Alex Wilhelm (00:06:31):
I, I think so. And I think it's indicative of the change in the company's focus. I mean, Sheryl Sandberg is synonymous with the company's advertising business because she was really brought on to build that. And now as the company moves more towards the, the metaverses, which I think is one of the squishiest concepts in all of the history of technology I, I think it just, she makes less sense as the obvious number two. And honestly, just speaking as a human, who wants to be one of two and then suddenly told you're gonna be one of three.
Leo Laporte (00:06:57):
Well, that's true.
Alex Wilhelm (00:06:58):
It feels like a demotion by dilution.
Leo Laporte (00:07:00):
So although I would think she would want the shield that Nick leg, I mean, the biggest headwind for me are the east days is government inquiries. Right. and let Nick handle, I that's what I felt like mark was saying, oh God, we don't have to do this. Cheryl was just like Nick anal that he's like, Mikey he'll do anything. Just let him do it.
Alex Wilhelm (00:07:17):
<Laugh> I, I just, you know, if, if I was her and I had had this one particular job that I had run for so long, and then the company that I had essentially built the financial side of at least said, Hey, we're gonna pivot. And just something else entirely different. Right. I would, I would be like, cool, have fun. I've already made my money. I'm gonna go sit on a boat. And you would never, personally, you would never hear from me again. I would be too busy enjoying the sun and an endless supply of I don't know, margaritas or whatever.
Leo Laporte (00:07:41):
She, in an interview after she announced her resignation, she said, this shouldn't be taken as a sign that meta is moving away from the advertising business, which is probably right since it's 98% of their, of their revenue Javier Olivan will succeed her. He is head of product engineering and he'll take over ad sales as well. But I wonder Dan, if this isn't really, as as Alex says, kind of a sign of the times for meta, that they are moving to the metaverse.
Dan Gillmor (00:08:15):
I, I hard for me to know. I should, I should make a disclosure before I say anything. And that is that the Facebook journalism project funded one of our projects. And
Leo Laporte (00:08:27):
As it did Jeff Jarvis as well, they been very good actually doing that.
Dan Gillmor (00:08:30):
Yeah. So you know, I saying that there's a sort of this triumph for it that was forming, it's hard to be part of a triumphant where one person controls everything. That's
Leo Laporte (00:08:47):
All the shares
Dan Gillmor (00:08:47):
<Laugh> I think the best description of the, the structure of Facebook is that it's an empire with an emperor and it isn't her, and it isn't this, it isn't clay, it's, it's Zuckerbergs it's. So and it's, it's hard to suggest to me anyway, that much is going to change.
Leo Laporte (00:09:13):
She says she wants to focus on her philanthropic efforts. And I, you know, she intimated that for a woman with a high profile, this is an important time to become an activist, probably referring to Roe V Wade and other women's issues. But there's also been some, you know, naing about maybe political ambitions, Diane, Feinstein's 88, she's up for a reelection in two years. Our Senator from California, I could see do you think Jill that's part of the equation,
Jill Duffy (00:09:46):
You know, it's not something that I, I follow very closely. I think you, you know, the, the larger issue that I see here is that we put so much pressure and spotlight on people who are executives, what are you gonna do next? What are you gonna do next? What are you gonna do next? It's I don't know. I, I don't follow any of her political ambitions, so I don't know, but you know, I, I don't know. I I'd be just as happy to see people, you know, fade out and do what they wanna do.
Alex Wilhelm (00:10:15):
<Laugh> the, the thing I'd throw in there, chill is that, I mean, if, if you keep going to Davos and you keep sitting on stage, you put yourself into the conversation to a degree. Now that doesn't mean that she has to do anything next. I mean, again, I would be on a boat but you know, Diane Einstein was my, my Senator when I lived in California for a while. And it's probably time for a fresh face. And we have seen, I think, business people, generally speaking presume that they can translate their experience into the political sphere. Don't forget, how are Schultz Starbucks man himself tried to run for president? I believe it was before Biden ran and didn't
Leo Laporte (00:10:50):
Get very far either. Did he?
Alex Wilhelm (00:10:51):
No turns out money and business acumen do not always translate into intellectual politics. And so to me, I, I, I, I doubt that just because I don't think it would go that well.
Leo Laporte (00:10:59):
I kind of, I, Jill, I agree burnout is probably a big part of it. She's estimated her net worth is 1.6 billion. She doesn't probably have to do anything. <Laugh>, she's got kids she remarried and or is about to remarri actually next month. That might be the other reason. I mean, she, she's got a new family. She might wanna spend time with them and you know what, God bless her. That's not an issue really, for us to worry about more more interest is what it means to meta Mark's spending 10 billion a year. He is got 18,000 engineers working on whatever this next thing is. Metaverse is clearly that's Mark's focus. And, and by the way, people have said that Javier, her successor is not gonna be the same powerhouse that Sandberg was. So maybe this is kind of, is it, is it of the beginning of the deceleration for Facebook, the social network?
Alex Wilhelm (00:11:57):
You know, what's funny about this. If you think about the, the end of the Google era with the founders, they kind of yeah. Stepped away. So did Eric Schmidt, who was their adult in the room back to Jill's earlier point about what she's done from Facebook meta? We're seeing the opposite. We're almost gonna doubling down from Zuck, if you will, because if if the replacement for Cheryl's gonna have less power internally, and as you know, Dan pointed out, it's certainly soft power, cause it's not based on voting control of the company. Ice seems to concentrate more power back in the hands, the Monarch or theor, depending on which, which phrase you
Leo Laporte (00:12:28):
Prefer. He doesn't have the power regardless. He's making a big bet. I mean if all your money comes from advertising and, and that will probably continue for some time still to, to focus so much of your energies in the, in 18,000 engineers and all that money on the metaverse is a big, is a big bet. It's a big gamble,
Alex Wilhelm (00:12:48):
18,000 engineers doing, what is my question? Good
Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
Question. Maybe I got that number wrong. I think that's what, that's what I remember. I might have that wrong. We,
Alex Wilhelm (00:12:55):
I mean, Gerald, Dan, do you guys play games? Are you interested in the metaverse? Because to me, like, I'm a, I'm a gamer and a person who has a PC that can run this stuff. And I keep waiting to
Leo Laporte (00:13:04):
Care interest
Alex Wilhelm (00:13:05):
Just I
Leo Laporte (00:13:06):
Don't no,
Jill Duffy (00:13:08):
No. You know what many, many years ago I was I worked for game developer magazine. I was the managing editor of game developer magazine, and this is the early two thousands. And there was so much talk even then about, you know, what's, what's gonna happen with mobile games, cuz that was still like pre iPhone days. What are mobile games gonna do? How they're gonna, you know, some customizing to you based on your location. And there was this whole immersive technology idea, which I guess we're now sort of calling the metaverses and like it comes up in conversation, but it's a matter of what, what do people actually want? What do people wanna engage with? And I think you'll always get a slim number of people who are willing to go all in and try it out and be on second life and have their classroom there and whatever else, but like, will it catch on with everybody? My answer is no, I don't. I don't think it's gonna be a big explosion.
Leo Laporte (00:14:02):
It's a, it's a hard thing. When you're you you know, a tech company, we always talk about the innovator's dilemma. Apple's in the same boat where 52% of their revenue now comes from one product. It's always a challenge to say, well, you know, this engine, isn't gonna go forever. What's the next Lilly pad we're gonna leap to. And I, I don't, I think it makes sense for Facebook to be looking for another Lilly pad. But I, I agree with both of you. I don't feel like the metaverse is gonna be the next big thing. That's what you think. You think that if you read a lot of science fiction,
Jill Duffy (00:14:36):
They've done a good job of sort of using acquisitions to spread out what their business does a little bit, right? Like if you look at WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook, those are sort of the three big pillars. Right. But they own a whole lot more than that. And I think that may have been strategically in a business sense. Their best move to date is sort of diversify through, through acquisitions.
Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
But how do they monetize WhatsApp? They haven't. I mean, they don't, they're not putting ads. I haven't used WhatsApp in a long time. They don't put ads in it. Right. I don't know if they can even monetize that. That's really more of a service than a, than a profit center. Instagram I do use and is worse and worse all the time. <Laugh> isn't it, it's terrible. I see photographers now saying, where do we go? What do we use? This is not a good place to show off your photography. It's now it's looking like Facebook. It's so algorithmic that you don't know what you're gonna see. I have what, what I see, I don't even know who these people are.
Dan Gillmor (00:15:34):
Maybe some of these issues are this is, you know, my fond wish that never has come true yet that we're gonna go back to a truly decentralized creator economy, not, not a web three, by the way, as it's developing, but where, where logging the way it was, makes a comeback where a number of things happen to give people their own platforms where they don't live or diet the whim of a couple of very large companies. So if, if I had a wish, it would be that all of these moves in the end become irrelevant.
Leo Laporte (00:16:15):
Okay. Don Keyte
Alex Wilhelm (00:16:17):
<Laugh> no, I mean, shout out to Dan for saying that, I mean the, the, the
Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
I'm with you a hundred percent. Yeah.
Alex Wilhelm (00:16:23):
Look at
Jill Duffy (00:16:23):
The popular or email newsletters.
Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's true. There is this kind of new writer as oter thing, maybe that maybe that's some of it podcasting is con is consolidating. It's gonna be a few big companies and that's the,
Dan Gillmor (00:16:39):
It's not worthy on newsletters that a venture funded company is trying to basically create a monopoly there. So on a platform basis. So be careful we get what we wish for
Leo Laporte (00:16:52):
Him. Isn't that what Tim Mo says happens though, is inevitable as this kind of consolidation.
Dan Gillmor (00:16:57):
Yes. But he was talking about telecom in and, and media in a different way, I think. But his, yes, Tim's book is, must read for everybody on this topic.
Leo Laporte (00:17:09):
Yeah.
Alex Wilhelm (00:17:09):
Can we go back to Leo's point about Instagram becoming Facebook? Because there seems to be a, a parallel here between what we observe in the world of FinTech and what we see in the world of social networks and, and FinTech all companies end up looking like one another, like square started off with a little credit card reader. Now it does, you know, a zillion million things that are very similar to what SoFi does, which are, and all FinTech kind of becomes the same thing over time. I wonder if there's like a ation end point for all social networks, <laugh> when they essentially become so over-optimized for near term add incomes that the user experience must be essentially whacked with a stick repeatedly.
Leo Laporte (00:17:44):
I think there's a lot of examples of that. You know, what's interesting is that TWiTtter, you would expect TWiTtter to become like that. And it seems to be resilient to that somewhat they're killing
Alex Wilhelm (00:17:53):
Tweet, Delio. I'm sorry. They're killing my, my
Leo Laporte (00:17:55):
They're not killing app. Okay. App they're killing the Mac app, which is just an electron interface to the web. The web is still gonna be there. You can use a browser. No, I'm sorry. Well, I love tech it's the only way is use TWiTtter because you can control it. Then there's no ads.
Dan Gillmor (00:18:12):
I go to great lengths to not put apps on devices and use web interfaces wherever possible.
Jill Duffy (00:18:18):
Yeah. I read an article recently about how I got myself off of Instagram the same way. So I don't use the Instagram app. I still look at it, but I use it on a mobile web browser and it is so paired down. It looks nothing like TikTok when you use it that way you don't get as many videos pushed in your face and you only see content from people you follow. It's adding a little bit of friction can help.
Leo Laporte (00:18:40):
That's brilliant. I'm gonna have to start doing that. I, I don't want, Instagram's the only Facebook property meta property that I have an account with. And it's just so that, because they set it up, you can't show Instagram pictures. And I like to show people's images and stuff without an account, actually the same thing with Facebook, but I don't care. <Laugh> when I pulled up Cheryl Sandberg's message. There's a one third of the screen is, well, you're not a member join log in. No, no
Jill Duffy (00:19:08):
Read around. You know, you mentioned that you don't use WhatsApp. And Leo, as you know, I've kind of lived in a couple of different places around the world and it's really hard. That's right. To impress upon people in the United States, how much WhatsApp is used outside of the us. So it, it's not just for person to person communication, but it's also businesses. So you know, my friends in Columbia, when they order takeout food, they WhatsApp the restaurant yeah. And send a direct payment. And that's how their food comes. Like WhatsApp really fills in a lot of gaps in, in mobile offerings, outside of the us in ways that people don't seem to understand. And the other kicker to this is that a lot of phone companies outside of the us will offer WhatsApp messages or Facebook messenger messages for free so that doesn't deplete people's data usage. And that's really how they've gotten their closet.
Leo Laporte (00:20:01):
A life date, Gilmore scare quotes when you said theory. Yeah. <Laugh> but that remember internet.org that was Facebook's attempt to become the internet for a whole bunch of developing nations. India said, no, we have a good experience with colonialism. Not good experience. We have a history,
Dan Gillmor (00:20:16):
Not don't
Leo Laporte (00:20:17):
Do it again. Not this time. Not again. Yeah. We're having, this is kind of a different kind of TWiT. It's a little more, I think it's a TWiT kind of fireside chat after hours sitting around talking with smart people. Jill Duffy is here for PC magazine from ASU Walter Cronkite school. Great to see Dan Gilmore. And of course my good friend, Alex Wilhelm from tech crunch plus <laugh> or as we say it in France tech cross tech tech hunch P I
Alex Wilhelm (00:20:45):
I'm here for that, do it in a
Leo Laporte (00:20:47):
Accent. We can just keep this going because why not? We're gonna take a little break, come back lots more on this weekend. Tech, Hey, our show today brought to you by something I've been telling my kids for years, wealth front, I know it's so much fun to buy NFTs and fantasize about how much money you're gonna make off your DOE coin investments. But honestly playing the stock market, buying individual stocks, buying cryptocurrency, that's fun, but it's a little risky. I would say it should be enjoyed in moderation. Something like casino, gambling, or questionable street food. When it comes to building your wealth for the future day, trading stocks is not the secret to success. Wealth threat. In fact has a ton of data. Show that time in the market, almost always beats timing, the market wealth front's gonna build based on questions. They ask you things like your risk tolerance, your goals, your planning, what are you planning for retirement college fund you know, buying that first house.
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Leo Laporte (00:23:53):
I think to you know, apple. I have, I am convinced maybe you can, maybe you can Dan, gimme some insight into this. We used to be the wall street journal, but there're various journals, journalists or gossip, mongers or whatever that apple can go sub Rosa, go to and say, Hey, don't say I said this, but we're not gonna announce anything on Monday. And then you'll see this kind of bubbling up. Sometimes it'll say, well, I've heard from my sources, but more often it's just, I have a feeling and that's what I'm starting to see from mark Gogerman Ming, CHIO and others, some of the rumor mills, Renee Richie on Mac break weekly kind of echo this. Don't get your hopes up tomorrow for hardware. We are thinking maybe tomorrow apple would announce or at least talk about its first. We know that, or we've heard that they plan to release this year headset. Dan, is that, is that how apple works? Do they kind of do this little subtle?
Dan Gillmor (00:24:53):
I, I can only speak to how apple used to work. Right. And also for context that I was never the one they leaked to never
Leo Laporte (00:25:04):
Me neither
Dan Gillmor (00:25:04):
<Laugh> so but you know, they selected their journalists and made sure they were well cared for Paul
Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
Mossburg Steve jobs was like basically groomed all moer. He's a modern term.
Dan Gillmor (00:25:20):
Well, and Steven Levy and a few others, there were there's a, there was a group that Steve jobs favored. And that was that. But I, I don't know about the, the, this idea of spreading a, you know, don't say that because it's not gonna happen thing though. Smart companies do that.
Leo Laporte (00:25:41):
Sure. Well they want lower expectations, right? They don't want the story from tomorrow to be apple. Didn't announce it what's wrong, right?
Dan Gillmor (00:25:48):
Yeah. As unexpected, right. Apple didn't do. That's a, that's a weird
Leo Laporte (00:25:53):
I'm even hearing. They might not announce any hardware about half of WWDC. It's a developer's conference. They don't announce any
Dan Gillmor (00:25:59):
Hardware. Well, they often dev they often announce something that developers want to see like a high powered desktop or, or laptop. But it, it wouldn't surprise me to see some hardware announcements in the processor category, like the M two and the and, and some indication of where they're going with the headset, which I, the more I read about the less, I understand <laugh> so
Alex Wilhelm (00:26:32):
Can, can we just push back against the apple PR strategy here and just get outraged that they're not going to show off the headset tomorrow? Like screw this, this pre-work let's
Leo Laporte (00:26:38):
Get disappointed now. Is that what you
Alex Wilhelm (00:26:40):
Saying? How dare are they? What a disappointment. I'm only being half facetious because I am excited about what Apple's gonna build in the headset department. Because like I said, waiting for this technology to grab me and apple, lots of history of making me buy new stuff. Three, I
Leo Laporte (00:26:54):
Didn't have thousand dollars, 14 cameras, some of them pointing out, but some of them pointing in these are all rumors. So that, and we have this vision of googly eyes in the front so that they so that you, when you're, cuz you're wearing this headset, you know, let me I don't know. I'll have to simulate it with this. I'm wearing the headset. <Laugh> no one can see what I'm thinking or looking. But if you put goly eyes in the front, so if there's a camera, so these are all rumors for some reason more than two screens, you only need one per eye. Don't know what the other screens would be, but maybe that would make sense. Then there's two in the back and one in the front. These are all rumors. Here's the thing. It is developers conference. If you want developers to line up, you get one chance a year to pitch them on what, the thing that they should be working on. If you've got something called reality, OS which that's the, the trademark, you better tell 'em about it tomorrow. Right?
Dan Gillmor (00:27:49):
Well, I don't know. I'm gonna challenge that. The idea that apple gets one chance to persuade people of anything because the obsession of tech journalism with apple means that they could, they could drop an announcement, you know, at 4:00 AM Saturday morning. And it would be worldwide news by 11
Leo Laporte (00:28:13):
Maya culpa. We we'd be talking about it for days. You're right. You're right. They don't need this tomorrow,
Alex Wilhelm (00:28:18):
But, but you're right though, Leo, they do act like congregate developers provide company
Leo Laporte (00:28:23):
Resources. This is when you say to developers, here's our priorities for
Alex Wilhelm (00:28:25):
You. Yeah. I think you're both right. I think Dan's right. You could make ripples. But I do think like getting the actual developers together into like one room is relatively infrequent. And it's why big companies that have platforms, you know, host developer focused events. I mean, I've been going to these since I was like 22. Are
Leo Laporte (00:28:40):
You going tomorrow?
Alex Wilhelm (00:28:41):
No. I have been assigned to do the stock market reaction post, which is usually me just talking about like the stock philosophical perspective. Doesn't
Leo Laporte (00:28:49):
It always go down, you know, you buy in the room or sell on the news. Is that, or is that old
Alex Wilhelm (00:28:53):
Hat? Leo? I'll tell you this. Brian heater at tech run every time there's an apple event asks me to cover the stock market changes. And every time I start off with, and once again nothing happened and I read a whole post about this and it's an absolute blast. It's become like an art project as
Leo Laporte (00:29:05):
Well. Well, yeah. And now you have boiler plate. You can just stick it in and you take the day
Dan Gillmor (00:29:08):
Off. Right. Then again, you've already written the story. So
Leo Laporte (00:29:13):
I just see what I'm talking about. You're get a little red check from the professor over here. If you keep that up.
Alex Wilhelm (00:29:17):
Well, Joe trying think of,
Jill Duffy (00:29:20):
I'm trying to think of an example of when apple has announced or previewed some kind of hardware before they were really ready. Oh, I feel like that's
Leo Laporte (00:29:28):
Not some, yeah. The Mac pro the both Mac pros, they've announced seven months ahead of time. The first iPhone they announced in January didn't ship till June. So here's the, I think the rule of thumb, if it's something they're selling and it's the new version, they don't want to Osborne it. They don't wanna kill the sales of the thing they're selling right now. But when it's a new technology, they do wanna get developers in line. And so this would, I think they could announce you know,
Jill Duffy (00:30:00):
But they have to have enough, right? They have to have enough of a, of an assurance that what they're telling developers is gonna allow the developers to then start thinking and working and prototyping and whatever, right? Like it, it needs to be far enough along. That's, that's my only, my only thought about it with hardware is right. You know, that that's the real difference. You know, I'm, I'm somebody who covers software. And the issue with software is you can write a review of somebody's software and then they can come back to you two days later and say, well, we fixed it. And we changed it, update your review, please. And that doesn't happen with hardware, hardware. The most you'll get is maybe a firmware update a few months later addressing some issue, but like hardware really has to be locked down. Before you can start selling it to people at any level and software, you have a lot more flexibility.
Leo Laporte (00:30:47):
So if you had a bingo card for tomorrow, you would, would you maybe say we got a reality OS we want you to start cuz apple does have VR technologies for the iPad and the iPhone and they have a format called U S D Z. And so they could say, Hey, here's a new toolkit. They do have trademarked the reality OS. They could say we're gonna ship a beta of reality OS so you can start playing with it next week. I mean, it is, it's, it's less meaningful without hardware of course. But
Jill Duffy (00:31:21):
Yeah. And do you really wanna ruin that surprise of here's the new hardware, here's the thing that we want you to get excited about and bye bye bye. Right. This is, I mean, I think WWDC for me is, is always so much about the OS update and yeah, we know for years we've seen this, this trend of like Mac OS is gonna be more in sync with iPad OS and, and iOS or whatever it's called at this point. Like kind of getting that convergence together. Like I think that's been the long journey mm-hmm <affirmative> and I'm expecting to see a whole lot more of that
Dan Gillmor (00:31:54):
That RA, that raises a really interesting question too, about the Mac OS and the iOS merging which way it's going to go in the control sense. And I've been saying for a long time hoping I'm wrong, that I think apple is planning to lock down the Mac O S the way it has locked down the portable device OS. And I continue to hope I'm wrong, but you know, a control freak company with something that's open is kind of a contradiction. And if the more they make one like the other, let's see which subsumes the other. And I know where my bed is.
Leo Laporte (00:32:41):
Mark Gorman in Bloomberg on the second three days ago, said apple will announce significant changes to the iPads software this week. Making it more actually Dan like Mac OS a redesign multitasking interface windows that can actually overlap other windows, which is something historically the, the Mac O S never, I mean, iPad O S never wanted to do that's what Mac O S does. So it may actually be going, we'll see. Well, that's I do with you. I'm always afraid of what the lockdown
Dan Gillmor (00:33:13):
But, but what that, what you've described there is a user interface issue rather than a question of whether you, they can do that. And if they still don't let you load, right. A Mac OS piece of software, then, then in fact, it's, it's still the iOS just changed.
Leo Laporte (00:33:37):
Right?
Alex Wilhelm (00:33:38):
I think the, the decision though, to make the iPad a bit more like a laptop computer, or more like a desktop environment makes a lot of sense because I, I recently bought an iPad pro and I I'm amazed at how I can't do much with it. <Laugh> and, and I
Leo Laporte (00:33:54):
It's essentially the same hardware as an M one MacBook air. Yeah.
Alex Wilhelm (00:33:58):
Right. And yet it's, the software makes it appear to be a very large, stupid iPhone. And like, it's a bummer because it's a piece of hardware. It's actually one of the sleekest and best things. It's beautiful
Leo Laporte (00:34:07):
Purchased. I've said this again. And again, this thing's amazing, but it, but the software just doesn't support it.
Alex Wilhelm (00:34:14):
It's good for chess. I've discovered <laugh> I play a lot of chess on that. There's a lot of chess on that. It's
Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
So funny. You should say that. Cause I just bought a chess. You can see all the chess crap I have. I just bought a electronic chessboard that plugs into it. Oh. And then you play the, the, you load up a game here and it lights up on the chessboard. So you don't have to look at this anymore. And the, I know stupid,
Alex Wilhelm (00:34:34):
It's a good thing. This is a safe space for nerds, because otherwise you would take on feeding right now, alert.
Leo Laporte (00:34:39):
You may be right Dan, this actually isn't incompatible with your notion that apple might be locking down. Macko S cuz if they make iPad OS more like Mac OS and iPad is really locked down. Why not make Mac OS more locked down? I, my, the only argument against that is that people like you and me who want the Mac to be an open operating system will be very, will move to Linux or something.
Dan Gillmor (00:35:04):
But Tim cook has been getting more and more shrill about the dangers of letting people load software that they actually would prefer to use. I mean, he's been yelling and screaming and apple leads the in leads, all industry in fighting against right to repair legislation where you could
Leo Laporte (00:35:26):
Actually, and you know why he talks about things. So
Dan Gillmor (00:35:27):
You purchased
Leo Laporte (00:35:29):
Because he doesn't want the app store to be unlocked. Well,
Dan Gillmor (00:35:31):
It's it's money. This is, this is money, money and control. But they ought to be at least more, a little more straightforward about it.
Leo Laporte (00:35:39):
Probably. No, I'm gonna note
Alex Wilhelm (00:35:40):
This. I, I agree.
Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
That's you and I are never going to apple campus again. <Laugh>,
Alex Wilhelm (00:35:44):
You know, I, I, I have
Leo Laporte (00:35:46):
My invitation anyway.
Alex Wilhelm (00:35:48):
I have a bunch of windows and Mac machines in my little home office here. And it's funny the PC that I install apps on has exploded into flame several times. Cause I picked up apps that I wanted to pick up that Steve jobs or sorry, Tim cooked didn't approve for me. <Laugh> it's a BS argument. I mean like we, the windows has been open for so long
Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
As, as Android. Yeah.
Alex Wilhelm (00:36:05):
Thank you. Yeah. And so to me, it's I find it sad that
Leo Laporte (00:36:08):
It's self-serving
Dan Gillmor (00:36:10):
Yeah. I'm probably the only one here who uses Lennox as my day to day operating system. But but I I'm, Microsoft is so envious of apple. You can see this and you can also see as they make it harder and harder to do things with windows 11, like you cannot set up windows 11, unless you sign into a Microsoft account, cannot be done. That's a, a very Apple-like kind of thing.
Leo Laporte (00:36:39):
Yeah. Even apple doesn't make you do that. You can have a local account on a Mac
Dan Gillmor (00:36:43):
That that's true. You still can do that. Yeah. Just try and do anything after that. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:36:48):
I just got a Dell XPS 15 brand new one with, I wanted to take a look at Intel's 12th gen processors, cuz they're trying to compete with the M one series. And it's windows 11. And Jill, you may wanna weigh in since you you're at PC magazine, but it's it's windows is a little dis it's you know what? My biggest problem with windows it's unpredictable now maybe that's cuz I don't use it as much as they use Mac and Lennox, but I just, things disappear. <Laugh> things close things don't happen that you expect to have happen. For instance,
Jill Duffy (00:37:22):
I've been editing a lot of stories about windows 11 and one of our biggest reads has been 10 things I hate about windows 11. Oh no. Everybody wants to hate on it. Yeah. I mean you're right though. I mean there's a lot of things that are just unpredictable. They change. Why did they change it? Right? There doesn't seem to be a reason. My other big pet peeve with Microsoft is they changed the name of something. So just as all the journalists have written the help articles about how to find this feature, how to use it, they changed the name and now you don't know what you're looking for anymore. When you go to find help for
Leo Laporte (00:37:56):
It, you have to, you have to tune into windows weekly cuz Paul Thau and Mary Jo Foer tearing their hair out all the time about this. Or then they use one name for 20 things like outlook. Outlook is a bunch of different things. And when somebody says outlook, you have to say, well, do you mean the application that comes with office? Do you mean outlook.com? Do you mean, I mean it's, it's all these different possibilities.
Dan Gillmor (00:38:20):
Yeah. And I, I give apple a lot of credit with Mac OS it it's not windows is a little bit like having someone show up at your house while you're out at dinner and rearrange the living room <laugh> and say you must now keep it in our new arrangement. I don't think apple does that quite as much as Microsoft does. All right. I'm windows 11. I still can't move the task bar over to the left where I want the task bar to be.
Leo Laporte (00:38:48):
I found a setting. It's very, but it's in there.
Dan Gillmor (00:38:51):
Can't be done.
Alex Wilhelm (00:38:53):
I the only, okay, fine. I'll do it. I'll defend windows. I like it and I think Mac S is annoying. And Mac S is the one when I have stuff disappear and I can't find my files. And also I have to constantly update it to new versions and they never changes anything like Mac S and my user experience has not changed in like 10 years. And also windows 10 is great. There you go. That's my,
Leo Laporte (00:39:13):
There you go. There you go. But what about windows 11? Are you using that
Alex Wilhelm (00:39:16):
Hell? No.
Leo Laporte (00:39:17):
Okay. Well,
Alex Wilhelm (00:39:18):
What windows has
Leo Laporte (00:39:19):
We found a group of commonality here.
Jill Duffy (00:39:21):
I believe you have until 20, 25 you've before you're gonna be four steps grade. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:39:26):
High
Alex Wilhelm (00:39:27):
12
Leo Laporte (00:39:27):
All the way to the end. It, I don't, I might go into my litany of complaints. <Laugh> no operating. System's perfect. Although Dan I'm with you, I think Linux is as close as you can get and at least no one's telling you what to do when you use it. Let's see WWDC tomorrow. We'll see iOS 16 previews. We'll see Mac OS 13, watch OS nine. It is possible. They'll announce new air MacBook errors. I think some of the problem is supply chain. When I ordered the Dell in April, they said, well, we think you'll get it in June. Then they made it, it was manufactured. They said, but because of the lockdown in Shanghai, we're not gonna give you a tracking number until it gets to the United States. They literally had no idea what was gonna happen to it. And I'm sure apple as, as much as they've been somewhat impervious to the supply chain issues, I mean, I just took a look at ordering a custom built Stu Mac studio and that's 10 to 12 weeks off. So there's still a big supply chain issue going on. Leo,
Alex Wilhelm (00:40:39):
Are you excited about iOS 16 Macs, 13 watchOS nine. Who,
Leo Laporte (00:40:43):
Who would be, who could be
Alex Wilhelm (00:40:45):
<Laugh>? I, I recently got Chrome 100, I think. And I went,
Leo Laporte (00:40:48):
Oh, woo let's have a party. The days of remember windows, when the windows 95 came out and they had events all over the country. And then what was it? Windows seven, where they had have your own party. They sent, you could order balloons, playing cards and invite your friends over <laugh> for the new windows seven. The whole industry has lost that. I think so. Is there anywhere in the industry where people are going, oh my God, this is the gonna change everything.
Dan Gillmor (00:41:21):
Well, games are still exciting to people who are in and into games. And there's a lot of people who are into games as their revenues would show
Leo Laporte (00:41:30):
There. Aren't I mean, you <laugh> Alex there. I mean, it's not like there's a new genre. It's like, well, you're gonna shoot a gun. What's the gun gonna look like? Who's the person you're gonna shoot look like, otherwise it's the same game, right, Alex,
Alex Wilhelm (00:41:43):
No wrong. So you are correct that first person shooters remain very popular in different iterations. I think games like APX legends have actually pushed the ball forward in terms of what that means. But if you play games on a PC, yes. You are in the golden era of indie game development. Okay. And you are also in the golden era of very complex management games. And so if you
Leo Laporte (00:42:04):
Love those, I forgot you love those ridiculous games that are more like work than they are like play <laugh>
Alex Wilhelm (00:42:12):
Leo, I'm a journalist and therefore I'm already a masochist. So like bring it on. No, but games like an 1800, which is all about supply chain management and so forth. We live we're living
Leo Laporte (00:42:23):
That
Alex Wilhelm (00:42:24):
Makes me just excited. Whoa,
Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
Supply chain management, actually, you know what? I am 600 hours into Vahe, which is an indie game that is really quite fun and has a lot of building and stuff. So I'm with you. There's some really interesting stuff being done. Yeah. But we are at peak technology and almost almost every area, frankly. Let let's face it. Let's take another quick break. We've got, we've got court action coming up next on TWiTtter. Really great to have Alex Wilhelm here. Tech crunch, pew. That's what I'm gonna call it from now on <laugh> of you don't mind,
Alex Wilhelm (00:43:02):
Would it matter if I did?
Leo Laporte (00:43:04):
I think we stopped I stopped getting people from Bloomberg business week. Cause I insisted on calling Bloomberg Beri <laugh> so I won't I'll I'll be nice. I'll be nice cuz I want you to keep coming back. Jill Duffy. It's great to have you back. It's been way, way too long. PC magazine. Thank so nice to see you. And of course from the Wal Cronkite school <laugh> okay. It's darn Gilmore.
Alex Wilhelm (00:43:29):
<Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
Watch Lish. We are gonna take a little break, come back with lots more of our ex you, you sounded like Nixon. Sorry. I did. I'm sorry. My Cronkite turns into Nixon. I'm working on this.
Alex Wilhelm (00:43:42):
It was all the smoking back then. I think
Leo Laporte (00:43:44):
<Laugh>, I we'll be back in just a second. Our show today brought to you by podium. I love podium. In fact, a lot of our small businesses around town have started to use podium. You know, if you own a small business, the last few years have been, believe me, I know tough, really tough supply chain issues. You can't get the stuff. And then all of a sudden the demand is up and <laugh>, if you could get it, you could sell it, but you can't get it. And on top of anything, everything else you're trying to manage the businesses that are thriving right now are the ones who are a little more forward thinking. And that means using text messaging, using podium podium helps your small business stay ahead of the curve with modern messaging tools that your customers actually want. It makes it easier for them to connect with your business and it, and a lot of people these days, for instance don't like to call, do you, I mean, are you one of those I don't wanna call, but what the pandemic taught us is, Hey, we can text businesses.
Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
They can text us back, say your order is on the way away. If you want to get a bid, I did this the other day. It was incredible. I a, a window broke at our house. I texted instead of calling, cuz he wants to call 20 different window repair people, glazers. They call themselves. So I text him and you know who got the job? The first one I texted back probably using podium, right? A hundred thousand businesses from healthcare providers to plumbers are texting with customers through podium. Customers love the convenience. Businesses love the results. Podium's giving businesses, the tools they need to compete with. The convenience offered by, you know, Amazon. How do you compete as a small business with Amazon personal service podium, it's really that simple. A dentist who send out payment requests. He was, you know, he, they were, you know, as, as often happens, a lot of people forgot to pay.
Leo Laporte (00:45:37):
They hadn't paid. He decided to send it out. Texts. 70% of the outstanding collections got collected in two weeks. Just like that. Cuz you know what? People open texts. They respond to texts. It's more personal. It's more direct. It's faster. You can ask people to leave a review for you. You can sell things. A truck, a dealer sold a $50,000 truck at four text messages. The negotiations are faster, easy customers, happy you are happy with podiums. All in one inbox. You can do a lot more than just chat with people. You can ask for reviews. If somebody leaves the store, you say, how is your experience? Leave as a review on Yelp or Google, wherever you like your reviews. And I have to tell you when a customer gets that and you're fresh in their mind, they respond more quickly. They leave you a more accurate review.
Leo Laporte (00:46:24):
You can collect payments fast from anywhere you can do marketing campaigns, the ice cream parlor downtown. I went there a couple of times gave my phone number. Now every three, three or four weeks, I get a text saying, Hey, we miss you. We got a special on ice cream right now. That's the last thing I need, but it really works. It really does. And it's all in, in a text message. It's quick, it's fast. It's better for you. Your employees love it. Cuz of that single inbox and your customers. Most importantly, your customers love it and respond. See how podium can grow your business. Watch a demo today. It's it's easy. You could try it for free podium.com/TWiT podium.com/TWiT podium. Let's grow. All right now let's get back to the show. Back we are with our esteemed panel. As we take a look at the week's news, you might notice there's a slight difference in the way this show looks and sounds that's because we had a calamity at the at the factory. I think the entire supply chain collapsed, Alex, maybe we could bring you in you can solve our supply chain was we had a power outage overnight and not everything came back as it should have. Even though, though
Alex Wilhelm (00:47:40):
Of all the people in the world I'm least qualified to help with your it setup. No one
Leo Laporte (00:47:43):
Is, I got all the engineers going on. I don't know. We rebooted everything. Everything lights are coming on, but nothing's happening. So I'm doing this from home. We're using zoom. Thank, thank God. Zoom has guns. When I first started TWiT, we used Skype with four people and I would spend hours after the show fixing audio. And this is I think actually pretty good. And everybody's used to zooming now, right? Jill's written a book about it actually. What
Jill Duffy (00:48:11):
Is it called? I gotta say boots. See everything guide to remote work, wherever you buy physical books and eBooks. I gotta say, you know what? I am really, really proud of this book. And it, it is truly a guide where you can pick it up and flip to the chapter that you need. So if you're like, I'm having a bad day and I need to shake up my work from home routine, like what can I do differently in my environment? What can I do differently with how I communicate and collaborate with people or I'm a manager and I need to figure out what are some tricks to like get my team to be cohesive again. Nice. pick it up, flip to what you want. I have these really fun little tabs that are birds. I dunno if you can see those.
Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
Oh, that that's cool. Yeah.
Jill Duffy (00:48:52):
Yeah. Little, little page
Leo Laporte (00:48:54):
Tags that doesn't come with the book, right? That's purchase separate.
Jill Duffy (00:48:56):
No, you've gotta go get those from a fancy Japanese paper store. Very,
Leo Laporte (00:49:01):
I love that. I'm always looking for good bookmarks. That's pretty retro, isn't it. But three out of four panelists today have bookshelves behind them. So I guess, I guess we are a retro bunch. Maybe I should have purchased your book before this calamity. I would <laugh> I'm still trying to figure out how zoom works.
Jill Duffy (00:49:19):
<Laugh> yeah. So back to zoom, I wrote about zoom. You know, it was really like this darling of the tech industry and a lot of remote companies before anybody else had really heard of it and picked it up. And I came to PC mag and I was like, you guys, we really need a review of zoom. It's gonna be a big thing. This was probably 20 17, 20 18. Oh wow. And I had, I knew a little bit about the company and the, the real point of differentiation was from the very beginning. They said, let's not think too much about features and bells and whistles. Let's focus on getting the backend technology. Good. So it's stable because at that point in time, there were so many video conferencing solutions and the problem with all of them was they were so glitchy. Yeah. And so I think if you compare it, then at that point in time, 20 15, 20 16 to everything else that was available, it was just so much more stable. And I think that's what really sold it. When people realized we need to have meetings online a lot more, we can't have something that's just gonna crap out all the time.
Leo Laporte (00:50:24):
That really answers a question. I don't know if we ever got an answer to why during the pandemic zoom took off and FaceTime and duo and Skype and all and teams,
Jill Duffy (00:50:35):
Microsoft teams,
Leo Laporte (00:50:37):
Why did they couldn't they capitalize? Do you think it was just simply quality or
Jill Duffy (00:50:41):
I, I think a lot of it really was the, the quality and also that out of the gate, they had a very generous free offering for a long time. So it's no longer this way, but when, when the
Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
Pandemic hit that's lot of 40 minute zoom calls cause people don't pay for it. And so they go,
Jill Duffy (00:50:58):
Although isn't that brilliant. If you have a multi person call 40 minutes, it's the limit. That's great. But at the time you could have a one on one call that could be as long as you wanted. So no restrictions on that. A lot of people relied on that and used it because it was just more stable than
Leo Laporte (00:51:14):
Anything else. It would, it was a lifesaver. I mean you know, if we hadn't had zoom, I, life would've been a lot harder
Jill Duffy (00:51:21):
And the company is not without its controversy. You know, there was a big problem with zoom bombing, which, you know, I, I have to say, I think I got it wrong in the beginning. When I heard about that, I said, well, people really need to be educated and turned on on the, the correct features to prevent people from getting in. And that was the wrong take. The company really needs to make sure that it's taking proactive measures for people to have the protections that they need to keep their meetings secure from the beginning. And for me, that was a good sort of thought process to go through, to think about what is the company's responsibility to you as a consumer. And then some other things they got wrong to where they, they announced that they were gonna charge people for one thing and not another and what was gonna be encrypted and what wasn't. So they've been through the ringer a bit and that's good. You know, the more people use the tool, the more emphasis and, and light you shine onto their user agreements and their policies and their procedures. And the more it really pushes the company to get it right.
Leo Laporte (00:52:21):
We I mean, there was a lot of discussion on our networks, especially in the security shows about their lack of end end encryption that, you know, they said it's end, end encrypted. But it wasn't, they were very aggressive about hiring contractors. They didn't hire the staff, but they hired good people. They acquired Keybase, which is a really good encryption firm and some very good engineers there. So obviously they were smart. They took the money that they, their windfall profits from the pandemic and they put 'em in, I think in the right places and at this point you know, we use Skype for most of TWiTs life. We switched to zoom about a year ago. And at this point there is nothing that comes even close. In fact, thank goodness we did. Cuz we can, we actually have a show today <laugh> which we might not. If we hadn't had zoom Leo, you were lost Bruce
Jill Duffy (00:53:12):
And I still had Skype on any
Leo Laporte (00:53:13):
Computer. So thank you. I know, I apologize to all of you who are forced to keep Skype on your computer so you can do it. I am so sorry. You can now erase it. We don't need it anymore. Yeah. My machine
Dan Gillmor (00:53:25):
Breathed a big sigh of relief when I'm uninstall it, it was <laugh> it. The Google the Google product would, I don't know, they keep changing names. Well,
Leo Laporte (00:53:34):
There is a big change
Dan Gillmor (00:53:35):
Coming. Google meet, I think was what it's called. Now. That chart that's become pretty good.
Leo Laporte (00:53:40):
You use it and at for business meetings for safety meetings and
Dan Gillmor (00:53:44):
Stuff like that, I'm on a major mass project that where people are using that. And I, I still in many ways prefer zoom, but it it did force the big companies to pay attention, instead of saying, well, that's just one more feature you can use or not use. They they, they did upgrade it a lot. I, I like zoom, partly because it's not Microsoft or Google or Facebook or apple. I, I want to keep supporting stuff. That's not one of the big ones.
Leo Laporte (00:54:19):
<Laugh> I am starting to feel some zoom fatigue. So that is a real, that is definitely a real thing for being forced to look see, it's funny when I'm in a studio, it's not quite the same. But when you're on the a call, you kind of be forced to look at people and stuff like that. And it's an interesting shift. Actually, there's a meeting is in the news Google meet because Google is unbelievably. Although by now we should expect this once again, changing their messaging strategy. They have a product which I have used, which is much like FaceTime or zoom or Skype it's called duo. I use it with my daughter who has an Android phone works great. Has a lot of some interesting features that others don't have. They've announced that they're gonna merge duo and meet so that everybody will be confused and nobody will be happy. <Laugh> I guess in theory, it could be an improvement to meet because of the core technology of duo, which is very, very, very good for video. Yeah.
Dan Gillmor (00:55:19):
You used the expression, Google messaging strategy. I think <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:55:25):
Is that an oxymoron?
Dan Gillmor (00:55:26):
Yeah, I don't think there is such a thing. It's a
Leo Laporte (00:55:29):
Google messaging. Chaos is what it really feels like. Google messaging chaos. Yeah. So get ready if you are using meat it's UN it's kind of unclear to me, but it sounds like Google's going to, I don't know what their merge duo into it. They're eventually phasing out the name duo, but phasing meat into duo. So really meet with, be duo <laugh> with meet feature.
Jill Duffy (00:55:57):
And this is, I mean, the same thing just happened with Google chat and Google. Yes. Me message. Google voice, hang Google, hang
Leo Laporte (00:56:05):
Out me. And
Jill Duffy (00:56:08):
It's like they hired somebody from Microsoft to handle their namings.
Leo Laporte (00:56:11):
Oh, oh no. But, but going back to the Cheryl Sandberg conversation, <laugh> when, when, when Paige and, and Brin left and, and, and Eric left, Google did start to turn into this kind of less well run and sun Pacha has not, I don't think been a very good CEO. We've talked about this on this show before. I'm sure he is technically good, but the leadership there's a, I think a leadership void at, at, at alphabet, I guess I should call it alphabet. And and the problem is they get away with it because they make, and this is gonna be the same problem with Facebook. So much money you're nodding Alex on, on advertising, right?
Alex Wilhelm (00:56:52):
Yeah. But I mean, at the same, same problem comes up though. We talked about the ratification of social networks earlier and how Instagram's being essentially been being forced to take on more and more of the revenue growth at Facebook. Google search is a mess. Yeah. Google search is a hot mess. A it's
Leo Laporte (00:57:07):
Getting more like Instagram <laugh>
Alex Wilhelm (00:57:09):
Well, it's getting like, like when I search for a term, most of the time I want the Wikipedia page. Right. And now on mobile, I have to scroll through like blocks of suggested alternative searches. Like, like screw you Google. I literally knew what I typed. Thanks. And then there's ads. And then there's so much more sponsor content. It's just miserable. And they're just ringing that rag because nothing else they've ever done makes money. And I'm just gonna go back to what Jill said about Microsoft. At least they have more than one business line, you know? Right. Apple has an iPhone. Facebook has human misery. Google has not results. At least Microsoft sells more than one thing. No company has problems to be clear, but at least they can do more than one thing.
Leo Laporte (00:57:50):
Yeah.
Jill Duffy (00:57:50):
Remember, you know what you're saying about Google? I, I think another issue that a lot of us as journalists and writers know from the back end is that Google changes how it surfaces information all the time. And it, it, you know, I, I think so many online publications have just come to rely on Google so much for feeding their traffic. And it is impossible to know how these changes come about when they take place, when they're being rolled out, how do you make your content optimized? It's it's really hard. And it doesn't seem like a good long term solution for people to get information. It's just seems like it's getting worse.
Leo Laporte (00:58:30):
Well, we gotta solve that because I mean, doesn't, isn't that the whole thing, I mean this, if, if the internet didn't have Google, I don't know if we'd have an internet.
Alex Wilhelm (00:58:41):
Yeah. Back to what Dan said about platforms
Leo Laporte (00:58:44):
Though. Bing
Alex Wilhelm (00:58:45):
Well, Bing is, Bing is fine. It's not amazing. That's the same problems that Google this. But Dan was talking earlier about getting off platforms, controlling your own media, going back to the era of blogging that brings the, the, the, the source of information back to an individual versus Google's magical algorithm. Right. And it would, you know, if that did ever happen, you know, I, I don't want to dream about something that might be crushed, but like at least it would remove some of the dominance when Google's prominence in information centrality, which is a really boring way of saying that. Sorry, I could show that simpler, but
Leo Laporte (00:59:13):
Yeah, but you can't find those blogs without Google, unless we bring back, I don't know. Blara or whatever it was techno
Alex Wilhelm (00:59:19):
And techno techno.
Leo Laporte (00:59:20):
Right. <Laugh> we have to have blog search again. One thing that is coming back TWiTtter seems to, I wrote so way back when I think this must have been 2009 or 10 TWiTtter took, had a feature that was great called tracker. It was kind of like a Google alert where you could say, I wanna see any tweets about a certain subject. It was hugely valuable. And I remember very well something they called bear hug camp. I think your brother was involved in this Dan actually where we were trying to get TWiTtter to bring back tracker. They never did. Except they just it's. I don't know if it's a rumor or an announcement they're gonna bring back basically search indexing search terms, alerts tracker. So maybe TWiTtter is the hope for all.
Dan Gillmor (01:00:12):
Well, you can, you can do a lot of that with keyword searches now, and you can, you can set, but this
Leo Laporte (01:00:19):
Was, this would alert you. Yeah. So like, if you wanted to be alerted when something happened, it was a very useful tool.
Dan Gillmor (01:00:28):
Mm. That be that I didn't, I don't even remember that. Remember
Leo Laporte (01:00:33):
That nobody was, yeah. It was way in the dim, dark ages of blogs and podcasts. Oh man. <Laugh> so speaking of I said, we were gonna talk about the courts. This I'll see if I can make my way through this without completely confusing myself, Florida and Texas, both past social media laws that attempt to force large social media companies. <Laugh> not, well, basically not to censor Donald Trump let's face. It that's really what it was, but, but they couldn't say that. So not to censor conservative, they couldn't say that. So not to censor, but it, it, of course is a pretty clear violation of the first amendment, which says government shall make no law bridging speech. And that speech, if you say, I don't want that on my on my TWiTtter feed, or I don't want that on, on Facebook that's speech.
Leo Laporte (01:01:30):
So weirdly the Texas law was of course there was an immediate attempt for request for objective relief by social networks who said, wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, you can't make that the law yet. Let's let's let's Sue. So they sued. And they said, and asked the judge, okay, look, stop the law. The judge said, yes. Then the state of Texas appeals to the fifth circuit, which says, eh, no, that's a good law. And they said, okay we're waiting. That's currently the state it's legal in text. No, wait a minute. No, no Supreme court, because then they appealed again in the Supreme court. And by the way, I thought this would not happen. Cuz justice Alito is the guy who manages the shadow docket for the fifth circuit. So I thought Alito would just say, ha no, but no. In fact, weirdly the Supreme court actually voted on this. They didn't put out a decision. There was a, a dissent from some of the justices. So it's now blocked the Florida bill also blocked by a lower court by the 11th circuit that has not yet been appealed to the Supreme court. So at, as it stands, neither one of these weird laws are in effect. Although court cases will continue in both cases. Did I get that right?
Dan Gillmor (01:02:48):
<Laugh> close enough. You did. And, and the Supreme court semi decision, you can't call to it. It, since this is gonna come back in a appeal again about the actual law, as opposed to the injunction. What fascinated me was that the vote there was five to four.
Leo Laporte (01:03:09):
Yes.
Dan Gillmor (01:03:10):
And now, and
Leo Laporte (01:03:11):
Who was on the dissent and who was on the affirm.
Dan Gillmor (01:03:14):
And, and, and I'm assuming because again, it was really about whether an injunction sh was timely or whether this thing should be let, let stand for now that I'm assuming that most of the ones who dissented will actually vote that it's unconstitutional when it gets back with that being the issue because Kagan was one of the ones who said, now, let it let it ride for now. And that's baffled me.
Leo Laporte (01:03:47):
She was the lone liberal you would expect. But, but, but justice Roberts and, and I think it was Kavanaugh and Barrett. <Laugh> voted to, to uphold the, to reverse the lower, the fifth circuits decision and to block the law, right. Kagan voted to allow it.
Dan Gillmor (01:04:09):
Well, it's a strange, well, I, I think I, I, I think perhaps, I don't know, you can't read their minds, but the, it, it seems likely to me that this will be fairly resoundingly found unconstitutional. One would yeah. When it gets back, but we have a Supreme court now that's becoming more and more visibly a tool of the Republican party. And that is somewhat alarming because the Republican party is clearly not that interested in free speech, per se. It's interested in free speech for people it agrees with and who agree and are part of an agenda. And the, there, there were several justices who would vote to overturn one of the most important cases ever. The Burg case that would, that requires malice when talking about a public figure as a standard for libel, and that's, that's really dangerous, but this is things are changing faster than we all seem to be paying enough attention to.
Leo Laporte (01:05:23):
Yeah, it seems the first amendment would protect these social networks. Somebody pointed out that if this I think Mike Masick on te pointed out if, if this Texas law had stood for instance, TWiTtch might not have been able to pull down the Buffalo shooter's live stream. And, and if it did, it would risk lawsuit because that's what the law establishes as the right to Sue.
Dan Gillmor (01:05:51):
Well, the Texas law did have very, quite a laundry list of carve outs. That's I think that Amazon would've been totally fine pulling that down, even if that law had been found constitutional. Okay. so I mean, and it's
Leo Laporte (01:06:09):
Still, nobody wants that to be, you know,
Dan Gillmor (01:06:10):
Well, it's, it's still a bad law, but right. When you read it, you see that it wasn't done completely without thought. Just mostly perhaps without thought
Alex Wilhelm (01:06:23):
<Laugh> yeah. It's like giving someone like half the interceptive they need, before they cut off their legs, it's like, oh, you made an effort. Good job. You're something they gang green and die. I, I think it's ridiculous that we're at the point where we're arguing that the government should force private actors to carry speech and disseminate. Like, how did we end up in this fricking, sorry. I not swearing on TWiTtter takes so much effort. It's just like this like whole soul.
Leo Laporte (01:06:46):
Well, I hate to tell you, but I can't bleep you right now. So have at it.
Alex Wilhelm (01:06:51):
No, I, I, the people who produce TWiT do not deserve me to make their life harder, but I'm just saying it's, they're
Leo Laporte (01:06:55):
Just gonna have to work harder. That's
Alex Wilhelm (01:06:57):
All <laugh> no, I, I I've met them. I love those guys. I, I just can't believe we're here. It's it's like I'm living in cartoon land or upside down. We like, what the hell is this? This is just essentially two different governors, each gunning for the future, a top of political party that is neofascist arguing about how they should be given more power over corporations to determine what is speech
Leo Laporte (01:07:17):
It's really performative. I think both Abbot and DeSantis are smart enough to know that it doesn't stand the sniff test for the first amendment, but it's certainly a performative. I mean, it certainly establishes their bonafides in terms of, of protecting conservative speech. Right? Yeah.
Alex Wilhelm (01:07:32):
And it also establishes their bonafides in my brain as morons. <Laugh> like, I mean, I'm not interested in performative governance. Call me a technic.
Leo Laporte (01:07:39):
I'm only get more emails from people to say, you'll never let conservative people out the show. Alex is just a crazy liberal lefty at a, at a Rhode Island, which is a hotbed of crazy liberal lefties.
Dan Gillmor (01:07:53):
I, I, we, weren't using the word conservative to describe extremists. I, I
Leo Laporte (01:07:58):
It's. Okay. I'm, I'll grant you
Dan Gillmor (01:08:00):
That well, but it's, it's,
Leo Laporte (01:08:02):
It's, it's time to call.
Dan Gillmor (01:08:03):
It's common. It's a common misnomer at this point. We all use it and I think it's wrong.
Leo Laporte (01:08:08):
It's protective cover for them. Yeah. Cuz they're the opposite of conservative.
Alex Wilhelm (01:08:12):
Yes. They're they're neofascist and, and essentially monarchists. They want to give Donald Trump the country and let him sit there and hold onto it. Right. Because they don't actually believe in democracy. And to me, that's discussing an anti-American and should be called out as such. And if you wanna find someone who will come and argue, the first amendment does allow the government to compel corporations to cover speech. They don't agree with or don't wanna disseminate, bring 'em good luck finding that person
Leo Laporte (01:08:35):
Who's serious. Yeah. well Elon might come on Elon. <Laugh> TWiTtter said on Friday, this is gonna be our brief mention of Elon. We've been trying to, we've been trying to we're on a Elon diet. <Laugh> TWiTtter said on Friday. Sorry, I didn't, I didn't see you drinking. I wouldn't have said that said on Friday, the waiting period under the har I love saying at heart Scott Rodino, antitrust improvements act has expired, which means Elon, where's your check for 44 billion. No well I guess TWiTtter's next step is to go to the shareholders and say, do you wanna get 54 20 for this stock that's selling at $38. Alex, why is TWiTtter's stock so low? Shouldn't it be closer to 54 20
Alex Wilhelm (01:09:26):
The gap between the proposed deal price and the current share price just shows the market's lack of belief that it will get closed at that level. He has been again, editing crap, posting all over TWiTtter about the deal, the company, the management it's user base and so forth are, are there in an attempt to break up with the company and get out of the deal. And there's legal issues there and some fines and so
Leo Laporte (01:09:48):
Forth. He may not be able to, well, it is not just a $1 billion. What do you call it? Breakup fee, breakup fee. It's it's he may be compelled. He signed it's like you said, I'm gonna buy a car. You know, you sign on the dotted line. You can't decide not to,
Alex Wilhelm (01:10:04):
Or he's starting to lower the price. And that seems to be what investors are betting on. But I don't think TWiTtter, TWiTtter has
Leo Laporte (01:10:09):
Don't forget
Alex Wilhelm (01:10:09):
Twittter didn't want to sell. Yeah. They'd adopted a poison pill, defense to dilute ownership to avoid this. Right. Then they got kind of bullied into it. And now the guy who bullied them is walking away. Cause he's like, Goward
Leo Laporte (01:10:20):
Weird. Meanwhile,
Jill Duffy (01:10:22):
I think, I think it was a bluff from the start. I really do think it was ABL from the start. And if you look at anybody else who is a, a high powered bleepity bleep, the next, the next step is to litigate, right? Like that's how you get out of it is you, you threaten a lawsuit, you bring a lawsuit, you,
Dan Gillmor (01:10:42):
You settle a lawsuit,
Jill Duffy (01:10:44):
You
Leo Laporte (01:10:44):
Settled a lawsuit. Exactly. Elon has done things which are not good for Tesla to raise the money. He's been actively kind of trying to get the money together if he didn't mean to buy it. I don't know. Would he be doing that?
Dan Gillmor (01:10:58):
He probably thought that he could leverage Tesla stock forever. That it would continue to go up. Explain how can well, and it's Tesla, stock price has been insane. Yeah. And, and not in the crazy Eddie sense, but I mean, in the ridiculous sense for a really long time,
Leo Laporte (01:11:19):
Right? Twittter's now $40 as we record this. So that's a $12. What is it? You know, $14 and 20 cent differential. That's a pretty significant differential. If you thought he was gonna be forced to sell it or buy it at 54 20, it might be a good buy. Right. I know.
Alex Wilhelm (01:11:40):
Can, can we also kill off the annoying thing about putting meme numbers into deal values like four 20? Like, I mean, yeah. That's nine sense department, like, like, like are we run by children
Leo Laporte (01:11:49):
That confirms Jill's theory that he didn't mean it because why would you bid something 54, 20?
Jill Duffy (01:11:55):
You know, I think there's, there's people who have a lot of power and not a lot of clarity of thought anymore who don't always know that they are bluffing, right? Like there's a moment at which you believe what you are saying, right. But you don't really think you're gonna be held to it. And when you're called out on it, you double down, but you still know you have all this money and a galley of lawyers to back you up to, to help you get out of it in the end. And you know, I'm not saying people do this with the conscious thought, but you see it happen a whole lot.
Leo Laporte (01:12:31):
I just, I started watching the WeWork documentary with Jared LTO and excuse me, Anne Hathaway. And Jared LTO is embodying Adam. Newman's absolute faith and, and willingness to lie up and down, but believe it, because his fundamental faith is, if you believe it hard enough, it will happen. And I'm sure Elon Musk has that same mentality. A lot of startup founders do right.
Dan Gillmor (01:13:03):
A lot. I, I think we've all known founders who acted like, you know, Dorothy in Oz trying to get home and just, you know, if you believe it it'll happen is yeah. Is, is faith. And we, we don't, it's really tough because we, in, in this business that we're all so steeped in a lot of things have happened because people didn't give up when it made no sense to continue. It's a
Leo Laporte (01:13:36):
Lot of examples. Yeah. But
Dan Gillmor (01:13:39):
I think we've also, and, and I, I fault myself on this considerably. I think I've, I've tended to give people, cut people slack at times when I should not have, when I've said, well, it could, maybe it could happen when it was sort of observably ridiculous from the start. And the whole tech journalism industry basically got taken in more than once by fair. We're false.
Leo Laporte (01:14:05):
Yeah. we're complicit. We try not to be, I think we all try not to be, we all try to be hardheaded. But I don't know. I, I kind of want it to work. I'm kind of, I, I think this would be cool if VR, if the metaverse existed or, you know, if we all were in self-driving vehicles and sometimes we forget there's some barriers, some real technical barriers to that. Tesla is actually pausing all hiring worldwide. They're gonna cut 10% of their staff amid Elon's memo. Elon did not buy your book. Jill <laugh> Elon's memo saying, if you wanna work here, you're gonna come back to the office. I'm sure you read that. Jill
Jill Duffy (01:14:50):
<Laugh> yeah. Minimum 40 hours a week in an office minimum.
Leo Laporte (01:14:54):
How very American and I mean minimum.
Jill Duffy (01:14:56):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:14:57):
Wow. This is less than we ask of factory workers. And then he sent another email. Cuz I guess people, I don't know. Maybe you thought people weren't taking him seriously. The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That's why I lived in the factory so much. <Laugh> I thought it was to annoy the workers. What did I know? Yeah. So that those on the line could see me working alongside them. I saw I've seen posts from a number of anonymous Tesla engineers who said, yeah, he was there. He has no engineering expertise. So he was just micromanaging us and making it harder to get our job done. So thank you Elon. He said, if I hadn't done that Tesla would long ago been bankrupt. Now maybe I should
Jill Duffy (01:15:37):
Bring in the, he certainly knows how to get some, some spotlight on him, right? Like, yeah. Say something that's controversial. Say it loudly, make a big bluster over it. That's how you get people to pay attention. Even if you're wrong. I mean, isn't this wrong with, with what isn't, this what's wrong with social media is right. Is that that's the way to get the attention. That's the way to get the clicks and the views and the YouTube culture and follows.
Leo Laporte (01:16:02):
Right.
Jill Duffy (01:16:03):
It really is. And it's
Leo Laporte (01:16:05):
Pure Kardashian. You don't have to do anything important. You just have to be on TV
Jill Duffy (01:16:11):
And say something, say something that people don't like.
Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
Right?
Dan Gillmor (01:16:15):
Yeah. He's got some, I mean, genuine, amazing accomplishments to his, to his record. And I don't wanna dismiss those. I mean, the, we would not be as far as we are in electrification of automobiles and, and vehicles, as we, as, as we are today, we would not be there. Had it not been for Tesla we'd it would, we would get there and, and on space travel, I I'm, you know, hats off to SpaceX, although so much of SpaceX has been funded by us taxpayers. That's food, Tesla, too, genius entrepreneurship, but did
Leo Laporte (01:16:56):
Pay back those loans. So,
Dan Gillmor (01:16:58):
And, and I, and, and Tesla gets the benefit of enormous tax breaks for its customers, et cetera. Cetera, having said that I'm still, I I'm having to separate the admiration I have for, for the vision at some level and, and the fortitude to push through trouble and to make things actually happen with a great team and all of the BS and the, the, some of the vial stuff that he represents. That really bothers me a lot. And I, I come out on this sort of, well, I admire the accomplishments, but really, really can't stand the person. Yeah. As, as a leader of people,
Leo Laporte (01:17:41):
I drove a Tesla. I was very happy to drive a Tesla. I really did want, you know, and I still drive electric vehicles. We all do in, in our family. I don't know. I've also read articles from people who say, you know, a lot of it's bluster. He certainly, for the last seven years been telling us we'd have self-driving vehicles next year. I don't know if that's ever, ever gonna happen. Spacex. Yeah. Pretty impressive. Thanks. Thanks to a lot of government money, but still they're doing okay. And and now, now I'm starting to see some Starlink dissatisfaction as they raise the prices and the quality seems to be deteriorating. So he likes to promise. Go ahead, Alex. I could tell you wanna say something.
Alex Wilhelm (01:18:26):
I just wanna go back to the whole working from the office thing. Forget. I mean, Dan did a good job going over the accomplishments and the issues and controversy. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:18:32):
He credit.
Alex Wilhelm (01:18:33):
Yeah. I, I used to work 50 50 between a home office on the east coast and an office on the west coast. I would just fly back and forth. And so I had infinite natural experiments between the two working environments, same job, just different places. I would do work for two weeks. And then I would fly to the office for two weeks to be annoyed by people who wanted to talk to me at the coffee machine. And like, I'm just perplexed by this idea that
Leo Laporte (01:18:56):
Bernie, you wanna go for lunch today, Alex?
Alex Wilhelm (01:18:58):
I mean, you joke, but yes. And just walking like, and the time spent commuting and the, the executive function of my brain that I had to waste, just getting around San Francisco, love the city. By the way, to me, this is just insane insanity that people are saying you you're less productive. I do understand that certain jobs will have a higher office component, sales teams, people who build stuff. Sure. But for most of us who go to an office, sit down and put on headphones what are you doing? <Laugh>. And so I'm just for someone who's theoretically, so visionary. And when
Leo Laporte (01:19:26):
We're all working from home right now, aren't we even me,
Alex Wilhelm (01:19:29):
We're working from home on a Sunday,
Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
On a Sunday. Yeah. Thank you. You guys are great. Jill Duffy, Alex, Wilhelm. It's great to have you Dan Gilmore. We're gonna take a little break, come back and lots more to talk about on TWiT. Hey, before we go on, I wanna show you my new jacket. Wait a minute. Let's take it off. My dresser is here. Hand me the jacket, Dr. <Laugh>. Thank you, Lisa, look, wait a minute. Look at that. Look at that lining. I got this. I wasn't gonna show anybody. I've been mentioning it, but I got this for the cruise, cuz you know, they have these formal nights, but who wants to wear a tuxedo? So I went to Indo Chino and I got an amazing se my whole wardrobe for the cruise is from endo Chino. Look at this. Isn't that beautiful? Oh, oh my God. And you know what?
Leo Laporte (01:20:17):
I didn't even, this is the first time I've worn it, but I knew it would fit. You know why endo Chino, you send 'em their measurements and it's like getting a tailor. It is a tailor. They make it to your measurements. No XL X XL, small medium. This is, this is to match my exact dimensions. I love Indo Chino. If you've got a wedding coming up, it's the month of weddings. If you're gonna be a groom or maybe in the grooms party, if you're going to the wedding, you wanna look good, get a custom fit suit from Indo Chino. You will look great. You will feel confident. You'll enjoy the big day and you won't fuss over your clothes. The nice thing about Indo Chino and you know this because it fits so well. The nice thing about it is it's comfortable. So I don't know if when you get dressed up, sometimes you go I feel just a little weird, a little uncomfortable not with end Chino because it's like, it fits you like a glove.
Leo Laporte (01:21:14):
It's beautiful. And you know what? You get it to match your total needs and desires. You could choose every detail on the suit. They make shirts, dinner jackets, the prices are remarkable, much more affordable than you would expect for custom tailored pieces. Look, you can even, you know, you could choose the buttons. You could look at this, you could choose fun linings. I thought I'd choose the purple P cadets. I love this is a, for those of you listening, I look like James Bond in my purple velvet suit with satin lapels. <Laugh> best part is INO. Chino suits start from just $429 shirts from just $79. These are tailored custom fitted. They also have casual wear, get a wardrobe personalized to your style and taste without spending a fortune. And they're always adding new pieces, new options. So you could, it's fun to shop it into Chino.
Leo Laporte (01:22:06):
And you know, once they have your, your measurements, man, you know, everything you order is gonna fit perfectly. The things we ordered, everything fits just right. If you've got a big day coming up, getting the perfect look who no big deal with Indo Chino, I N Dio C H I N o.com. I look sharp. Don't I? $50 off any purchase of 3 99 or more right now when use a promo code TWiTt go to Indo chino.com $50 off any purchase of 3 99 or more Hindo chino.com. Promo TWiT. He's a little warm though. So I <laugh>, I will take it off for the rest of the show. We're gonna hang it up nicely. And if you're coming on the TWiTt cruise with us, cruise TWiTt do TV to Alaska next month expect James Bond in a purple velvet suit or something, something like that. All right, back to the show, we go, we're back.
Leo Laporte (01:23:01):
Special edition of TWiT. The sweaty Leo stays home edition. <Laugh> I just wanna set the record straight. I'm not here cuz I have COVID I'm here cuz the studio fell apart basically overnight. And so but you know what, in a way, this is kind of, I like this. This is more like us just sitting around talking. This is how TWiTt started way back in the day. And I'm really glad you're here. Jill Duffy. We're gonna talk about the 40th anniversary of PC magazine in just a little bit. That's amazing. Dan Gilmore who's of course the Dean of journalism. So he's gonna be our, our conscience today for <laugh> and and of course I've known Dan for years since the San Jose mercury news, Alex Wilhelm also dear friend from tech crunch, New York state passes. I thought this, I was stunned to see this headline first ever right to repair law.
Leo Laporte (01:23:55):
I thought there were dozens of states working on right to repair laws. I remember talking about how apple was going to one state government, somewhere in the Midwest saying, oh, you can't let people repair their stuff. I thought, for sure, we'd have a right to repair law. There's the right to repair.org. Kyle, we, and I fix this as website that, to push this. And yet this isn't the first actual right to repair law. I guess what the upshot is, if you do it in New York, they're big enough that probably every company would have to respond. Right? New York says all manufacturers who sell digital electronic products in the state of New York, we'll have to make tools and manuals, instructions available parts too, for people, consumers and independent shops that wanna repair their stuff. The measure won't take effect for another year. So once the governor Hawk signs, it it'll be a year, but I fix, it said it's one giant leap for repair kind. <Laugh> good
Jill Duffy (01:25:03):
News. Right? It's so important for environmentalism too. Yes. You know, we live in this, in this society where we are really pushed to consume, consume, consume companies, corporations have to grow, grow, grow like anybody who has an environmental conscience will see that that is not the right way to do anything. And a better way is to have devices that last a long time that we can fix that we can repair that we can use those parts over and over again. And this is just too long coming. Super happy to see it though.
Dan Gillmor (01:25:36):
Yeah. I, I'm still waiting for the governor to sign it before I break out in cheers and it's worth noting California blocked it the same, same kind of law in the last few days due to
Leo Laporte (01:25:51):
Lobbying
Dan Gillmor (01:25:52):
Well, the industry that wants to make sure that you don't own what you purchased that they continue to own. What you're, what you purchased is very effective at blocking common sense laws like this. And increasingly this is, this is evil that they're blocking these laws just evil.
Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
I agree. Hundred percent. Yeah. President Biden issued an executive order asking the FTC to re enforce these repair rights. I don't know how much teeth that had technically I should clarify that New York state's the first electronics law. There are, there have been previous laws that Massachusetts law focused on automobile data. You have the right to repair your data. I don't know. And Colorado your data, I'm reading the verges article. The Colorado passed a bill ensuring, and this is wild, the right to repair powered wheelchairs. This was a big controversy because people were waiting months. Yep. To get their only form of transportation fixed because the manufacturer said, no, no, no, we can't let you fix this.
Dan Gillmor (01:26:58):
It's the John Deere story in a different way. John Deere refusing to PE let people fix their own tractors. And the Massachusetts law, I believe was it was about the diagnostic things that you plugged into. The OB had to open that up. So what did the make auto manufacturers do? They made it mobile and wireless, which negated the law there, you know, listen industry. And I remember this is led by apple. Apple is the primary company that runs around spending lots of money on lobbying and other things to prevent this, this kind of law from passing. Everyone else is in on it. But apple is the leader in blocking right to repair,
Leo Laporte (01:27:48):
Which is funny because and I don't, I don't even understand that they do now have a self-repair plan. We, we actually Michael Sergeant ordered a phone battery for his iPhone 12. He didn't need to repair it, but he wanted, we wanted to test it got the 76 pounds, the two big Pelican cases. They arrived, the clock starts ticking. The minute they arrived, you have seven days to return it. Or you have to pay thousands of dollars for the equipment. The battery didn't come. The battery didn't come. It was shipped separately. Cuz I guess cuz it's lithium ion two hours before this seven day deadline, they arrive. Mike is calling apple and it turns out apple doesn't do this. A company called spot is doing it for apple. He calls spot. They say, no, no extension. You didn't get the battery, not our problem. Send it back. So we now have a battery <laugh> and no way to repair it. And then on top of all of that, I mean Apple's, you know, it's, it's malicious compliance. They're, they're adhering to the letter of the law without actually giving you something you can use. And on top of that, the cost ends up being about the same as bringing it to an apple store. So, and it's only for the latest iPhone se iPhone 12 and iPhone 13. It's not for so
Dan Gillmor (01:29:03):
It's, it's the way Microsoft vowed to comply in back in the old days when it was ordered to remove internet Explorer from the operating system and they said, fine, we'll just disable the operating system. <Laugh> because of course this is all hairball that you cannot remove one part of without destroying everything. It's I, but I remember writing about that and saying this was compliance with a raised middle finger
Leo Laporte (01:29:28):
<Laugh> it's like paying a fine in pennies, you know, 50,000 pennies this here's another, I think good law, Jill, you might have something to say about this. It's not passed in the us. It's the province of Ontario has passed a right to disconnect a right to disconnect law as of June 2nd employers in Ontario with 25 or more employees have to have a written policy on disconnecting outside business hours. That means no work related communications, no emails, no telephone calls, no video calls, no sending or reviewing of messages, no performance of work. When you're off duty, you wouldn't think you'd need a law to do that. Yeah. But you do.
Jill Duffy (01:30:16):
Yeah. You know, what's interesting about this is I think there's been a, a really strange shift generationally as younger people have come into the workforce. This is be before the pandemic, there was a, a piece of research done that asked people about how much they wanted to be connected to their jobs when they were on vacation nights, weekends, whatever their time off was. And younger people said, I feel like I want to be connected so that I don't come back to panic and chaos and unexpected. Oh, interesting things. Right. I'm used to being connected to people I'm used to know what's going on. And now I think there there's a caveat there, which is to say younger people who are inexperienced and may have been led into believing you are so important to your company. You're so valuable. The company will love you back.
Jill Duffy (01:31:06):
You know, there, there might be a little bit of disillusionment there about what it means to be connected. But they sort of had a very different understanding of why they wanted to still be connected in their time off. And it didn't mean they wanted to be working. It just, they, they didn't wanna have any surprises come up while they were away and have this like, you know, very strange fear of missing out. Whereas older workers sort of said, I don't wanna be looking at email on the weekend. I don't wanna be getting text messages when I'm on vacation. I wanna be able to disconnect. So I, I think, you know, on the one hand, it, it is good for people to feel like they have some agency and some choice and how much they want to be connected with their employer. But there is the problem that not everybody knows what that really means. And they don't have the experience to why it could be problematic.
Leo Laporte (01:32:01):
Yeah. Well they will, they'll get what's the Cheryl Sandberg burnout. I hope our next is is not lean in, it's burned out or something like that. I wouldn't, there is definitely, we, we talked about it earlier, this kind of notion, the found the notion of the founder and working 60 hours and you know, losing your wife, your kids, your family life, your regular life, because you're building something that's gonna change the world. And I guess if you had stock options, you might say I'm also, you know, building my future. But otherwise really you're just building up the pocketbook of the guy owns the company.
Jill Duffy (01:32:38):
<Laugh>, you know, in media we have layoffs every couple of years, it's just sort of like a routine thing that happens. Yeah. I got laid off in my twenties and maybe it was the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of having a better understanding of what my self worth and my identity is. And in connection with my job at the time it was awful. I had to go through a grieving process. It was really painful because I felt like I, this was so important to me and I was really pouring my all and I wanted to be important to this publication that I worked on. And with some years of hindsight, it really, it really was a big shift for me. And I'm glad it happened.
Alex Wilhelm (01:33:20):
Yeah. I'm gonna take well, I mean, Leo doesn't know this yet, but my spouse and I are well, she's pregnant. I'm just part of it. Congrat
Leo Laporte (01:33:28):
Congratulations.
Alex Wilhelm (01:33:29):
We just, we just had 12 weeks. So I'm kind of,
Leo Laporte (01:33:31):
You can say it now.
Alex Wilhelm (01:33:32):
Yeah. I can say it now. I'm
Leo Laporte (01:33:35):
Take trimester. That's the best by the way.
Alex Wilhelm (01:33:38):
Well I'm just gonna that spouse,
Leo Laporte (01:33:39):
After
Alex Wilhelm (01:33:40):
That, more interested in eating food now that she can no,
Leo Laporte (01:33:44):
That's great.
Alex Wilhelm (01:33:46):
I, I bring it up though, because I'm gonna take paternity leave mostly Q one and good. You know, my spouse asked me, you know, how much time can you take off? And I said, I don't know, but I'm taking off a lot. And she says, well, what if they say no? And I said,
Jill Duffy (01:33:58):
Well, F, M L a
Alex Wilhelm (01:34:00):
No more like more like eat experiment and expire. It's like, I'm not going to miss these months because of a job.
Leo Laporte (01:34:08):
You don't have to say that yet. They haven't said no yet
Alex Wilhelm (01:34:11):
<Laugh> no, no, no I'm but she brought up the, you know, that's the
Leo Laporte (01:34:13):
Priority priority. And that should be your priority. It's crazy in this country that especially paternity leave is not the law of the land. I mean, every other civilized country gives you a lot of time off. It's insane. Yeah.
Jill Duffy (01:34:28):
But I would like to very gently suggest parental leave other than per paternity leave. Well, he'd be
Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
Parental leave. Yeah. Parental. Yeah. My point being that I think a lot of companies have a maternal leave policy and they don't have a paternal leave policy. I agree. Parental leave is, is, is very important, but sometimes fathers are left outta that equation. They go, well, you didn't do anything. Come back to work. What are you doing there? You
Alex Wilhelm (01:34:52):
Know, taking care of the new life that just came into this earth and is perfect.
Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
It's a little more important than writing. Oh, I'm not gonna do it. I don't wanna get in trouble. Hey, Hey,
Alex Wilhelm (01:35:00):
Hey. Let's not, let's not diminish writing
Leo Laporte (01:35:02):
The day of the WWC apple stock price story. That's a good story. It's a valuable story.
Alex Wilhelm (01:35:08):
<Laugh> it's not, it takes seven minutes. It's an absolute, it's fun. You can do that in the wait.
Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
You can do that in the waiting
Dan Gillmor (01:35:13):
Room. Is Arrington listening to this the seven minutes? No,
Alex Wilhelm (01:35:16):
He isn't there anymore.
Dan Gillmor (01:35:17):
He's long gone.
Leo Laporte (01:35:19):
He's long gone.
Alex Wilhelm (01:35:20):
Dan. I can type really fast <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:35:22):
So,
Dan Gillmor (01:35:23):
You know, you talk about this civilized countries. When you put that in context of United States, this is getting more and more of a problematic notion in all kinds of ways. Not least of wish that we don't have healthcare for people.
Leo Laporte (01:35:37):
We don't have healthcare. Exactly.
Dan Gillmor (01:35:41):
You want entrepreneurship to explode and do really well and let people have healthcare that they can rely on and not fear bankruptcy, which, but we don't do that.
Leo Laporte (01:35:51):
We have a, I have a first person example of that Renee Richie who worked for I Moore and a lot of other publications decided he wanted to start a YouTube channel and really focus on, you know, building his YouTube presence and brand as his own, you know, personal stuff. And he could do it cuz he's Canadian mm-hmm <affirmative>. And he said, if I, if I were, you know, lost my health, if I were in the United States, lost my healthcare, I couldn't do this, but I can do it because I have a nationalized healthcare in Canada. Yeah. And I'm not risking my my life and limb launching on my own. And he's done very well, which is, which is great. We sh I should make this a regular segment, a more board yacht clubs NFTs stolen in the middle of the night on discord from PC magazine comes this story.
Leo Laporte (01:36:41):
<Laugh> unbelievable. Coin desk reports, a hacker took control of the discord account of Yuga labs, the creators of the board API club of his of the community manager, Boris Vagner that compromised account then used to share fishing links. It came from Boris. It's gotta be real to the official discord channels for B a Y C and other side which Yuga labs describes on its website as a gamified interoperable, metaverse currently under development. This whole thing is so scammy all around mm-hmm <affirmative>. Coinbase said the hacker stole 145 E as well as the B a YCS NFTs. The price of the E was a mere 1792 at the time of writing, but $618,000. Wait a minute. Oh, the price of E was 1792. So the total was $260,000 in E $358,000 worth of Ts. Unbelievable. on April 25th, the company's Instagram account was compromised to steal 2.8 million worth of Ts. The funny thing is this is probably good publicity for NFTs, cuz at least they say they're worth something. Who's gonna buy these stolen NFTs. Is there still a market? I don't know, just crazy. This
Dan Gillmor (01:38:09):
I, this market is a, just an example of mass hypnosis and I, I just, it blind, it just blows my mind that this conversation can even be taking place. But then again, we live in a, we live in a, in a world now where people there, people are buying into this stuff and cryptocurrencies and other things, partly because they have nothing left that they trust. They're watching governments.
Leo Laporte (01:38:35):
I think that's what's happening. Yes,
Dan Gillmor (01:38:36):
They they're. They're they're watching governments inflate their money and, and take away value there. They're watching all kinds of things, go on where they say, this is my only chance to put away something that I'm gonna be able to have in the future. That's not true, but that's what they think. And you know, people who are desperate are the easiest marks of the con men and we're in a time of just end middles cons and, and I I'm really afraid of what could happen. And the worst of it is that it's bad enough for the people who are getting suckered. And I do feel sorry for them, but I have little less sympathy than they may want. The problem I'm seeing is that in a lot of this stuff has been enTWiTned with the real economy in various kinds of financial instruments and such that when this all fully collapses, I think it may it could bring down a whole lot of stuff by extension that we don't want to bring down. I'm very worried about how we're just letting the, these things go run wild without any serious law enforcement that I'm aware of.
Leo Laporte (01:39:57):
Yeah.
Alex Wilhelm (01:39:59):
There is some stirrings of that there there was some inside trading at open sea, which is a probably the biggest NFT trading platform in the world. And the the government's getting involved in kind of prosecuting that. So
Leo Laporte (01:40:12):
I think that's the starting to see it insider trading action against the NFTs space mm-hmm <affirmative> I think it is it was it's Nate chestain who was buying NFTs before they were public promoting them on the open sea marketplace, you know, and when you get promoted, you know, Hey, this is gonna be a good one. They, they tend to sell and then he would flip them. So he was getting to choose, which are featured. And then he would flip them for two to five times what he paid. And this is one of the things a lot of people think, well, this is all anonymous. He thought, well, I'm, I'm using anonymous wallets and anonymous accounts, but apparently it's not fully anonymous to the government. So open sea did figure it out and fire him. So he's working by the way, in case you wanna invest in a new NFT project oval <laugh>, let's just, here's your chance and get in early <laugh>. Cause as you know on these things, it's always get to be the first to buy, not the last to buy. Let's see.
Leo Laporte (01:41:24):
Now we're getting down to the seeds and stems, the drags of the stories you guys, we sent you a hundred stories and I apologize more than a hundred, hundred 30 stories. Let me see if there's anything else. I really want to talk about before we take a quick break, cuz I do want to kind of celebrate 40 years of PC magazine, which is which is really great. No, I think we'll just take a break. How about that? I don't see anything of urgent. If you, if you see anything Dan or Alex or Jill that you wanna talk about put a pin in and we'll get back to that in just a moment. This episode of this week at tech brought you by Neva. Neva is so great if you're going back to work, but not everybody is, and you've got your conference rooms, some employees will be there in the conference room.
Leo Laporte (01:42:13):
Some employees will be at home and you don't wanna disadvantage of the people who aren't there. You want them to be able to hear what's going on in that meeting. And that's why you need no Reva. Sure. You could go get a big AV company that install cameras, they'd install cameras, lots of microphones, lots of wires technicians coming in installers coming in. And by the way, those those special rooms, they need to be constantly calibrated. That means more technicians coming in and way you see the bill. Why do that? When you could get great sound from Neva, this is the more modern way of doing it. Ne Reva has patented the microphone missed technology. So one sound bar. If it's a really big room, you could put two sound bars in very simple. That's a speaker and their microphone missed technologies built in which literally puts well, I guess it's figuratively cuz <laugh> they're, they're not really putting thousands of microphones in the room, but it's like they are everybody in the room can be here.
Leo Laporte (01:43:09):
Occurred clearly, no matter where they're positioned, no matter where they're facing, allows people in the room to move comfortably to social distance, great for classrooms where people are need to separate by six feet or more. It's so much simpler than a traditional system. You can install it yourself, just like a sound bar. And thanks to continuous auto calibration. Your rooms are instantly and always ready with optimized audio. Nobody has to come in and, and calibrate it. In fact Narva will also give you a simplified console. Then Arava console had consulted an array console. So your it team can sit down the hall or across the country and coordinate control, power, manage and adjust all the rooms wirelessly over the internet. It's a fantastic technology. One or two integrated microphones and speaker bars fill a room with thousands of virtual microphones. So there are no dead zones.
Leo Laporte (01:44:02):
Everyone can be heard. Meeting participants, class participants, just talk naturally move naturally in the space and your remote participants can hear, they can participate. They don't feel left out. So everybody's working together as a team. This is exactly how conference rooms should be designed. 30 minute DIY job, big savings on time and cost compared to those traditional systems. I think you gotta try it. Ask yourself, do you want to go with a costly, complicated traditional system or make the leap to something very modern, simple economical Neva it's N U R E V a. Do yourself a favor. Check this out. Neva.Com N U R E V a neva.com. It is a revolution for conference rooms. We had a great week. Thank you. NA Reva. By the way, we had a great week on TWiT with lots of good things.
Leo Laporte (01:46:27):
PC magazine. I never worked for PC magazine. I read it religiously. It was the king of the computer magazines back in the day. I remember the, the people who worked there and the editors, there were gods. I remember going to Comdex and bill MCCR was like royalty coming in. They used to have the the big parties. There was a lot of money. I can't believe it's 40 years PC magazine. Yeah.
Jill Duffy (01:46:56):
You article about it 19. Oh, I didn't write an article about it. Oh, okay. <Laugh> PC, but we there's a big, yeah, there's a big celebration. Suite of content for the 40th anniversary. So PC mag, PC magazine, as it was called, then launched in 1982. And in that first issue was an interview with bill gates. So the current editor in chief
Leo Laporte (01:47:21):
Just starting, right. I mean, he
Jill Duffy (01:47:22):
Wasn't really early, really early out. The current editor in chief went back and had an interview with him today, 40 years later to see how he's thinking about things now and how the history of computing has shaped the world and what he's, what he's up to, what kind of gear he's using. So that's a really fun article to read and there's some other great content. For example, a look back at 20 PCs that shaped the last 40 years of computing. That's a fun one, lots of fun, little graphics in there. And I know a lot of people are gonna say, oh, the amigo is missing and this is missing. It's a, it does have a little frame on it. This is like PCs PCs that were covered by PC magazine. Right, right. But still a really fun read. And there's a great piece of video too, where a couple of the editors went back into a storage room and pulled out some of those old issues from the eighties.
Jill Duffy (01:48:20):
And some of them were five and 700 pages long. And they said, you know, why, yeah. Why was this, why were these issues so big? And, and, and it had to do with advertising full page. And not just that the advertising was, was, you know, making money for the magazine, but this is how people found out about where you could buy no other computing equipment and, and add-ons for your personal computer, because there was no internet. There was no online marketplace at that time. So you had to to get the shipping rate for a magazine, for something to be officially called a magazine, you had to have a ratio of editorial to advertising. So the more ads that you sold, the more editorial you have to mix in in order to get that magazine shipping rate. And so that's, this is why a lot of people don't know this about the history of print magazine, but this is why so many magazines back in the day were so fat. Was you, you needed to get that, that ratio of advert advertising to editorial. Right.
Leo Laporte (01:49:20):
And yet I think in soup, computer shopper, which had some editorial PC. If Davis, the owners of PC magazine spun that off, probably once PC magazine got thicker and thicker, they said we need an even bigger format. It was a tabloid format magazine. It was also inches thick, but it did not have a lot of editorial. Maybe they didn't mail it, or maybe they mailed it on a different rate, cuz it was just basically a
Jill Duffy (01:49:45):
And it's you could have a lot of advertising. You could. I think, I think it was like upwards of 60, 70% could be advertising, like is pretty high ratio. Yeah, they did have inventory, but those, those laws still hold today too, for print for anybody who works in print, I came up in print. So I definitely know those, those days of looking at pages and actually like laying out the magazine on a table and this actually having a word count limit to what you could write.
Leo Laporte (01:50:12):
<Laugh> I'm looking at this, you know, the piece 20 most influential PCs. I agree. Every one of them really a great read. And what I didn't know is you've got every issue of PC magazine available on the site, 550 issues. So you can read the first one. Oh man. That's
Jill Duffy (01:50:32):
And, and for people who don't know the history, so the print magazine of PC magazine folded, I think at the end of 2010. So it was roughly 30 years, maybe 28 years of print magazine. And now it goes by the name PC mag.com. Right? And, and today, you know, every now and again, I get an email from readers saying you don't do as much high level nerdy stuff as you used to do. You don't talk about this really in depth, personal computing. And the truth of the matter is we still do. There is still a good amount of, you know, stories about building your own rigs or whatever. But we, we cover a lot more now because technology has changed and it really is for more people now. And, and the way that we use technology, the way that it's integrated into our lives affects everyone. So we try to approach it in a way that we can give advice, buying advice for products and how to advice for using those products to be applicable to everybody so that anybody could read those articles and really understand what they need to understand.
Leo Laporte (01:51:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's true. I mean, remember stereo magazines in the fifties, I mean, Dan, you remember it? Yeah. I remember these young, these young, not the, not the fifties, but I <laugh>, but in the early days it was, it was about, you know, you play the 18, 12 overture because the cannons would really test the RMS capacity of your amplifier in your, in your big you know, Alec Lansing speakers. And then a after a while it became more about content and less about the, the speeds and fees. And I think the same thing happened with the computer industry. I I'll a little story. I, I don't think I've ever told before when we first started doing TWiT 17 years ago we first, we weren't gonna do ads, but finally we decided, all right, we're gonna have to do an ad supported network, cuz that's the only way we can go forward.
Leo Laporte (01:52:26):
But nobody had set ad prices for podcasts at all. So I, I, I called PC magazine and said, what do you charge for a full page ad? And I figured, well, we're not as, we're not PC magazine, but, but also your ad isn't competing with a bunch of other ads. You have to kinda listen to hear it. So I found out what their price, I cut about 40 bucks off CPM <laugh> and that was, that was how we established the price for podcast advertising and you know, what it kind of held. Oh, wow. So it was as rule of, as as seat of the pants as it was
Dan Gillmor (01:52:59):
One of the things about PC magazine and the things in that genre. And it's true today of, of a lot of still a lot of sites and remaining magazines. When we talk about editorial content versus advertising in a really interesting way, the advertis was content that I wanted to look at. I, this is how I got a sense of what was actually going on. I'm I'm into computer based music. And I still subscribe to a couple of magazines that for me, the advertising's at least as important as the editorial, because I have a much better sense of what's really happening in that industry and, and idea of things I might wanna look at more closely. So I, I, I think it's hilarious that there's this I know that the rule is for very good reasons and for postal reasons that you want to have a robust national discussion and that's what the postage rates are about. But the, I just think that one of the things I miss is leafing through and not turning pages past the advertising, the way I do with the New York times magazine on Sunday, where really I'm not interested in the advertising, I'm interested in the only in the articles where I was the, it was both in the case of this.
Leo Laporte (01:54:36):
Yeah. I completely agree with you that there is a, there was a certain merit in advertising in that case because it was something you wanted to know about mm-hmm <affirmative> and it was a new industry and it was exciting. And you wanted to know about these new companies and what they were offering. And every single ad was just as important probably as the as the articles. I think that's a really good point. Maybe that's exactly what advertising should be in a way, right. Instead of trying to figure out what people want, we'll do affinity based content and and advertise that's, that's how we sell our ads,
Dan Gillmor (01:55:07):
You know, and the important part is to keep it straight, which is which to, so that's, and, and not to me merge the two yes. And PC magazine has had a very good record of doing honest editorial. Yes. And sometimes labeling becomes an issue, but the, you know, I want both.
Leo Laporte (01:55:26):
Yeah, no. In fact I learned, you know, from the best, when we, I worked for S Davis for a while, never wrote for PC magazine, but I worked for them and and bill MCCR and Lance OV and Jim latterback and their ethical standards you know, at Ziff Davis television and and everything they did were so high. And that's the standard we want to keep. I remember Jim going around the studio and putting black tape over all the brand names of the product in the studio. So, so it wouldn't become an ad for that product or this product or that product.
Jill Duffy (01:55:58):
I'll tell you another, another big benefit of working from home is you don't overhear people with the water cooler, talking about what ads sold or how much money was made off of something, cuz every now and then it would happen. You'd be like, oh God, I don't wanna, I don't wanna know. Don't tell me that.
Leo Laporte (01:56:14):
I, I remember we were gonna do an, a, a segment on the screensavers about how to hack the Xbox. And Microsoft was a massive advertiser at the time on on ZDT V and I think reasonably, we might have been a little over concerned, but we said, you know, we just wanna let you know, we're gonna do this. And Microsoft is not gonna like it. And to their credit, they, they editorial people. And the ad people said, no, no, do it. You know, it's important, it's journalism and we'll deal with the the blowback. And there was a lot of blow back <laugh> I think Microsoft, maybe in fact that I can remember is that that happened with some magazines too, where Microsoft said, Ariel, well, that's it, no more ads, but you know, when're PC magazine. <Laugh>, nobody's gonna say, no, we're not gonna buy ads there anymore.
Leo Laporte (01:57:03):
You mentioned a computer music Dan of a key figure in the development of computer music passed away. This week, Dave Smith, who was the inventor of MIDI. He he was at a company called sequential circuits, created a number of sequencers and programmers to be used with the Mo and a synthesizers back in the day. He helped design the profit, which was a very popular synthesizer. You've hear, you've heard it on. Yeah, thriller. And and Madonna's like a Virgin Evangel jealous used it in his chariot of fire. He also developed MIDI, which stands for musical instrument, digital interface. It allowed you to synchronize your instrument in fact, to this day. I think even if you're connecting via USB, you're using the MI protocol when you come
Dan Gillmor (01:57:59):
Mid, mid is the TCP P I P of music. Yeah. And it is you cannot overstate how important it was and what it influenced in standards making and, and, and rules making protocols in the future by other people. It was, it was the thing everyone looked to to say, see, it can be done. And the industry cooperated it. It's just, just a tremendous achievement and something that we all have benefited from
Leo Laporte (01:58:33):
Dave Smith. The inventor passed at the age of 72. If you wanna see a beautiful picture of him with his synthesizers go to sequential dot com. And I thought it'd be appropriate to to mention that I didn't know, Dan, that you were into computer music,
Dan Gillmor (01:58:50):
But back back in my twenties, I played music for a living for a few years. So it was yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:58:57):
We also, and we'll talk more about this on Mac break weekly, cuz he, he was a good friend of Alex. Lindsay's but a, a member of the family, John Foster, who was an early contributor to Mac break shows actually came up with the name pixel core has passed away as well, far too young. But we will talk we'll I think of him a more fitting memories on Mac break weekly, cuz of course Alex and he were close friends and I remember him very well. He was a great man to work with and we will miss him as well. That was a fun show. I think we should do more shows from my home. <Laugh> Dan Gilmore. Thank you so much for being here. Dan is at ASU. Do you teach today? Do you still talk to kids and, and all of that
Dan Gillmor (01:59:47):
I've been doing online for a number of years at this point. It it's why the pandemic, it was a time where very little change for me and I was in Japan for most of the first two years. Yeah. Yeah. So it was it's been I, I, I wanna read Jill's book. We've, we've been living it for quite a while and it's I like it,
Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
You know, it's funny because pandemic didn't affect any of us much cuz we're all for the most part working from home. So it's just more, more of the same for all of our family. Thank you Dan. Co-Founder of the Arizona state university news. Co-Lab at the Walter Cronkite.
Dan Gillmor (02:00:30):
He's great to be
Leo Laporte (02:00:30):
Here. Awesome. Always great to have you Jill Duffy. So nice to see you. Thank you deputy managing editor at magazine, the author of a fabulous book. No, no, no. Hold that up longer. The everything guide to remote work. If you don't need it, you know somebody who does give it to that person who always joins the calls, muted <laugh> and I want you you're on mute.
Dan Gillmor (02:00:55):
That's the default and it should be <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:00:59):
On mute. All right. Give it to that person be right. I agree. Should it should be. And Alex Wilhelm, I cannot say it with greater pleasure, congratulations to you and your wife. That is the best news. I know you were trying cuz I could tell you were exhausted, but <laugh> you don't hear
Alex Wilhelm (02:01:19):
There's the Leo comment on
Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
The show. You do not know from exhaustion and you will in six months, I promise you my friend and we will celebrate that day. Congrat. That is wonderful. Wonderful. I
Alex Wilhelm (02:01:31):
Look tired. It was the two IVF cycles.
Leo Laporte (02:01:34):
<Laugh> you and Laura. Now you enjoy your many weeks off. Oh God. Hell so how long you don't really know how long you want to take off?
Alex Wilhelm (02:01:42):
I'm thinking most of Q1.
Leo Laporte (02:01:44):
Good. Yeah. Great.
Alex Wilhelm (02:01:46):
If not all of it calling
Dan Gillmor (02:01:47):
Parental leave time off is kind of a questionable concept.
Alex Wilhelm (02:01:52):
I'm going to not sleep for hopefully all of Q1.
Leo Laporte (02:01:55):
Oh yeah. It's harder. Much harder work. You won't. I can. I was so happy to get back to work. <Laugh>
Alex Wilhelm (02:02:02):
May that happen, please?
Leo Laporte (02:02:03):
Please. Let me go back to work. Do you have family around? Yeah you do right? You're
Alex Wilhelm (02:02:08):
Yeah. Li my, my spouse's parents live nearby and I'm gonna fly in both of my parents are great with kids. Good. And this is gonna be the 10th grandchild in my family. Oh, so I'm gonna, yeah, I'm the youngest. So I'm so their
Leo Laporte (02:02:20):
Experience
Alex Wilhelm (02:02:21):
Five, two. Yeah. They're gonna have a village cause
Leo Laporte (02:02:23):
I, they, they will be wonderful. Anything, let them do everything for as long as they're willing to stay. Yeah. And just prepare yourself. Cause the day they fly off <laugh> that's day. Your troubles begin
Alex Wilhelm (02:02:35):
<Laugh> yeah. I'm just glad that my spouse is a physician because I don't know any, like guys I'm a, I'm a technology and finance journalist. Like I'm the most useless person around a baby.
Leo Laporte (02:02:43):
Oh no, you're gonna be great. Send tips. Be a great dad. You're gonna, you're gonna love it so much and you're gonna have a great time. Thank you everybody for joining us. We normally, if the studio's working, we'll do TWiT on a Sunday afternoon at 2:00 PM. Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2100 UTC today. The first time in, I think must be 15 years. We did not have a live audience because I didn't wanna stream and challenge my bandwidth. So normally you can watch live at live, do TV or listen, live and chat at IRC, do.tv. I know the chat room's going crazy right now because they don't know what's happening. <Laugh> <laugh> you can also join our club and chat with us in the discord. The club TWiT is actually three different benefits in one ad free versions of all the shows.
Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
It includes access to our discord, which is a wonderful community. Lots of events in there shows that we don't put out on the podcast and feeds and so forth. And you also get the TWiT plus feed, which will include stuff that never made it to podcasts for a variety of reasons. All of that is seven bucks a month. Nothing go to TWiT.tv/club TWiT, and sign up today. Thank you in advance. After the fact, all the shows are available commercials intact at the website, TWiT.tv, there's YouTube channel for all of our shows. And there's also of course, and it's the easiest thing to do. You can get a podcast player and subscribe and that way you'll give it automatically the minute it's available. Thanks for joining us. Everybody have a great week. We'll see you, you next time. Hopefully in our studio, another TWiT is in the can.
