This Week in Tech Episode 880 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT this week in tech, Sam bull. Sam is here my car guy from wheel bearings podcast. Also Paris Martin know, from the information I love her and Owen Thomas from the protocol. And we have so many things to talk about the crash in Bitcoin. What's going on there. Elon Musk talks to TWiTtter's staff and does not encourage them. The Senate says it's USBC for all. And finally, the white house rolls out a task force to eliminate online abuse while it's about time. It's all coming up next on TWiT podcasts. You love
TWIT Intro (00:00:42):
From people you trust.
Leo Laporte (00:00:45):
This is TWiT.
Leo Laporte (00:00:55):
This is TWiT this week in tech episode, 880 recorded Sunday, June 19th, 2022. Larry's PLOS. This episode of this week in tech is brought to you by no unlike other programs. New weight uses a psychology based approach to help people better understand their relationship with food and gives them the skills and knowledge they need to build long lasting positive habits. Sign up for your trial at noom.com/TWiTt and by it pro TV, give your team an engaging it development platform to level up their skills. Volume discounts start at five seats, go to it. Pro.Tv/TWiT, and make sure to mention TWiT 30 to your it pro TV account executive to get 30% off or more on a business plan. And by user way.org, user ways, the world's number one accessibility solution. And it's committed to enabling the fundamental human right of digital accessibility for all. When you're ready to make your site compliant. Deciding which solution to use is an easy choice to make, go to user way.org/TWiT for 30% off user ways, AI powered accessibility solution, and by zip recruiter, summer's packed with things to do and you can enjoy 'em all because if you need to hire zip recruiter can help zip recruiters. Technology finds great candidates, and you can invite them to apply. Try it for free at ziprecruer.com/TWiT
Leo Laporte (00:02:36):
It's time for TWiTt this week at tech, the show we cover the week's tech news happy father's day, happy Juneteenth to everybody. It's great to see our panelists today. We're gonna have some fun. I could tell Paris Martin O is here from the information. Hello, Paris. Hello? Wow. Hopefully to be here, you look like the girl with a Pearl earring. Did you, you must. You got a new camera?
Paris Martineau (00:02:56):
I did. I'm finally using like my Hannah just normal photo shooting camera. I've realized you can just put it above your computer at it looks great of a bang and webcam
Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
And you've got sunlight coming in. This is a total Vermer it's beautiful. Well done.
Paris Martineau (00:03:11):
Thank you. Thank you.
Leo Laporte (00:03:12):
You're better lit than I am, unfortunately. And I'm in a studio also here, Owen. It's crazy, man. Owen Thomas. Hello, Owen, senior editor over there at protocol. Good to see you again.
Owen Thomas (00:03:27):
Hey Leo. Good to
Leo Laporte (00:03:28):
See you. Welcome. Welcome. You're in the office. I think
Owen Thomas (00:03:31):
I am. I'm. I'm kind of having camera envy though.
Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
I know. What kind of Canon is it? Paris.
Paris Martineau (00:03:38):
It's actually kind of an old candidate. It's an EOS rebel team.
Leo Laporte (00:03:42):
Yeah, the rebels. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Paris Martineau (00:03:44):
Did
Leo Laporte (00:03:44):
Your parents give that to you when you graduated from high school?
Paris Martineau (00:03:48):
Yeah, I got it when, before I went to abroad in college. Yeah. yeah. And it has been sitting in my closet for quite a few years now and I, but it looks the other day I was, I was looking up webcams and I was like, man, I could just bring this out. Yeah. And it's
Leo Laporte (00:04:02):
Prime and it's retro just like the turntable behind you. So it's
Paris Martineau (00:04:05):
Perfect. Exactly.
Leo Laporte (00:04:06):
<Laugh> a trip back in time with Paris smart. No
Owen Thomas (00:04:10):
Paris is that one of the one of those old apple speakers, it
Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
Looks like it doesn't it. Those
Paris Martineau (00:04:16):
Crystal speakers it's what's it called? I'm
Leo Laporte (00:04:18):
Gonna, it is, those are the apple, those
Paris Martineau (00:04:20):
A Harmon card.
Leo Laporte (00:04:22):
Harmon cards. Those tubes.
Paris Martineau (00:04:23):
Yeah. They
Owen Thomas (00:04:24):
Like for the 20th anniversary Mac
Leo Laporte (00:04:26):
Sort of.
Paris Martineau (00:04:27):
Yeah, it was for they're technically computer speakers, but I think they look really close. I wish there was a way to get it to focus on
Leo Laporte (00:04:33):
This. Yeah. They're clear. Isn't that wild,
Paris Martineau (00:04:35):
Clear. It looks like one of those things that you would put your hand on and all the sparks come out, <laugh>, you know, kinda like one of those mad scientists thing.
Leo Laporte (00:04:44):
Yeah. The Tesla coil. It's the Tesla coil of, of, of speakers. Hey, we got Sam bull Sam now. So his Comcast is back. Sam is also here. Principal researcher at guy inhouse insights. He's the wheel bearings podcast. All about cars. He's my car guy on the tech guy show. Hi Sam.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:05:01):
Hi Leo. Good to be back with you.
Leo Laporte (00:05:03):
Drop off.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:05:05):
Yeah, we're doing the pre-show there. All of a sudden everything, all you guys froze. And I went to check, check my network on, on my phone and nothing. And I ran upstairs and the cable modem lights were not showing the way they should be. So I had to restart everything
Leo Laporte (00:05:23):
Well. Oh, good. Restart worked. That's good.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:05:26):
Okay. Yeah. Re restarted the cable motor restarted the, the network now it's all good.
Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
How many show of hands? How many of you have Bitcoin here? <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (00:05:36):
I don't, but I know someone close to me who did and lost an unfortunate amount of money. Yeah. On the recent crash.
Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
I, I feel like it's a little shot in Freud and I shouldn't feel good about anybody losing money, especially nowadays, but Bitcoin went below 20,000. It's actually gone back up a little bit. It actually got down to about 18,000 over the weekend. Holy cow. Wow. Holy cow.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:06:02):
And you know, the, the scary thing about this is that people who really should have known better got into this thing in a big way. And you know, a lot of them got burned.
Leo Laporte (00:06:13):
That's why I shouldn't say, oh isn't to me, it's like, oh yeah, Bitcoin went down. What a surprise? You know, you should have known better, but I feel bad for people who, you know, saw Matt Damon saying courage, favors the brave. And they said, well, I'm gonna be courageous and buy Bitcoin <laugh>. And of course, if you hold stocks right now your 401k's probably not doing too well either.
Paris Martineau (00:06:39):
We don't look at that Leo. Yeah. Yeah. We don't look at the numbers when they go down. That's right. When they
Sam Abuelsamid (00:06:43):
Go up, just keep pumping the money in there, you know, every paycheck and, and then, you know, hopeful, hopefully at some point in the future, there will be enough in there to at least, you know, well, you, you know, give you a little bit of extra spending money as you keep working until you drop dead
Leo Laporte (00:06:58):
<Laugh> yeah. Right.
Owen Thomas (00:07:00):
Well, I think, you know, I think the scary thing about the markets right now are stocks are down. Bonds are down. Crypto is down like, you know, there's, you know, every everything's down
Leo Laporte (00:07:09):
In the past, when stocks went down, people would buy gold and I thought Bitcoin would be like that. Right. Like that would be
Sam Abuelsamid (00:07:16):
A lot of people thought that it would be like gold, but didn't, you know, unfortunately, you know, at least gold, you know, you have something physical that, you know, has some well,
Leo Laporte (00:07:26):
But let's be the industrial value of gold comes nowhere near the no price of gold. I mean, yeah, you could, if, if you had some gold bricks in your basement, you could probably find somebody to buy it, to make, you know, expensive stereo Don goals, but it's not like it's gonna be, what's some price of gold per ounce. It's a lot more than the industrial value of it. So gold is probably similar to Bitcoin in that respect. Right?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:07:53):
Well, I mean, I mean, at least it has some industrial value Bitcoin, you know, is nothing. Yeah. You know, it's, it's a scam. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:08:02):
The current, well,
Owen Thomas (00:08:03):
I think there's
Paris Martineau (00:08:03):
The future guys. That's what we're all forgetting.
Owen Thomas (00:08:06):
I, I guess I have to be the, the web three defender and you know, I oh,
Leo Laporte (00:08:10):
Good. I think we found one finally. Great, great, great. Finally,
Owen Thomas (00:08:14):
Well, I, I think there is, you know, there is some utility value in in cryptocurrencies broadly, you know, in the idea of like greatly improving cross-border payments, taking a lot of cost out of the equation. Not necessarily with Bitcoin because Bitcoin is one of the least efficient cryptos out there. The problem is that the speculation value the, you know, the quote unquote investment value, but really it's speculation. The speculation value of these cryptocurrencies is at complete tension with any utility, the more volatile and hence, you know, short term money making these currencies are the less useful they are for payments.
Leo Laporte (00:08:52):
Right? As El Salvador has learned to their chagrin, they made Bitcoin last year, their state currency replacing the dollar and now they can't pay their debts. I shouldn't, I shouldn't have they make it go ahead.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:09:09):
I think they made it legal tender, but I don't think they completely replace the dollar. I think they made it parallel as an alternative to the dollar. So, oh, that's so you use the dollar or use use Bitcoin, but it, it didn't completely replace the dollar.
Leo Laporte (00:09:22):
They bought a significant amount of Bitcoin, which was also a little bit of a mistake. I shouldn't laugh, but there's so many Bitcoin bros, especially those Bitcoin billionaires going around saying, you see, you see it's the future. There's so much hype around it. I, I guess I feel terrible for anybody who's lost money. You know, because I don't know, I doubt it, it will come back to the its former glory days. Maybe it will. But I think maybe some of the bloom is off the road. So I feel terrible for anybody who's lost money, but at the same time, I'm glad that it's kind of taken some of the air outta the market. Ironically, Jack Dorsey, former TWiTtter CEO, founder, one of the founders of TWiTtter announced web 5.0, which is web 2.0 plus web 3.0, based on Bitcoin's blockchain, just a couple of weeks ago. That's not looking like a good choice right. About now coin based. You get
Owen Thomas (00:10:20):
Time for web
Leo Laporte (00:10:21):
6.0 yeah. Maybe, maybe we gotta skip ahead. What's
Owen Thomas (00:10:25):
There's
Leo Laporte (00:10:25):
Now you, you said you're gonna defend web three. What is good about web three?
Owen Thomas (00:10:32):
I mean, there's a limited set of circumstances where a blockchain, which is, you know, basically a right only database that's, that's distributed on the internet is useful. And it's generally where you don't want to have one party maintaining a database and where you, you know, like where you don't want to have to trust someone. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:10:54):
Like a bank.
Owen Thomas (00:10:56):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, the, the irony is that we've built all these systems that do rely on trust and people are kind of used to it. And there's even a kind of a thinking in the you know, in the crypto world that, well, like if you get caught by a scam, you didn't do your research. Right. You know, it's your fault because you shouldn't have to
Leo Laporte (00:11:18):
Trust. Yeah. And who do you blame? Right. There's no bank to complain to.
Owen Thomas (00:11:22):
Yeah, exactly. So I, I don't know, you know, to your point, Leo, I, I, I am very sympathetic to people who saw a misleading ad and kind of yeah. You know, and kind of went for it based on, you know, based on those false premises. I'm, you know, I'm also sympathetic to people who say, Hey, the existing system is you know, I believe, you know, people who believe the existing system's rigged against them and, you know, don't want to, you know, don't want to invest in stocks. They're certainly not getting any kind of interest on their bank deposits. And you know, and that's the way to, yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:11:58):
And that's exactly the situation this person close to me was in, you didn't believe, you know, thought the system was corrupt and broken and, and basically rigged against normal people. And, you know, was reading Reddit forums. And even, even when I tried to explain, you know, the, the, the technical stuff and the limitations you know, I mean, there there's, as you said, I, I agree that there's some, some theoretical, you know, really interesting use cases for blockchain and, and crypto, but when you actually start looking at it, as, you know, as a, a store of value, you know, it becomes way more problematic, you know, and actually trying to use it. And certainly nobody, I don't think anybody has come up with a really viable way of making it usable as a store of value. And when, when you, when you look at the world around you today and, and see all the corruption, you know, it, it, it is very enticing to jump into something like this and, you know, hope that, you know, maybe this is gonna be a solution to the problems that we
Leo Laporte (00:13:01):
Have part of the eye opener though, is it's not corruption free. The world is full of corruption. It's full of scammers. It's full of bad guys and NFTs. It turns out not only is it centralized pretty much all on open sea. But if open sea decides as they did with the board ape oh, we're not gonna sell anymore. You can't, that's it you're done. So it is centralized. And there are plenty of scammers out there who found ways to steal NFTs to fish NFTs. I, I mean, I, I feel like it's, it's the best, it's the worst of all worlds <laugh> combined, but it does have this utopian promise of something better. I just don't, I just don't see it happening. There's also the environmental impact, which we can't ignore. I know that banking has an environmental impact as well, but you know, these proof of work cryptocurrencies right now are not exactly the thing we should be doing. I think as the, as the world gets hotter and hotter,
Paris Martineau (00:14:01):
I mean, my one issue is that people are describing them as currencies, but really what they're being used as right now is just for speculation. They're
Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
Tulip bulbs. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Paris Martineau (00:14:12):
Yeah. Yeah. They're tulip bulbs that we're all betting,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:14:13):
Except they don't look pretty in the spring.
Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
<Laugh> at least
Paris Martineau (00:14:17):
Something to hold. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
To your point, Sam, at least you could play a tulip bulb. <Laugh> even if you paid $5,000 for it, at least you'll get a tool lip <laugh> maybe not. If your tulip is held in a vault under the Swiss Alps. Yeah. Maybe not. Anyway, I don't, I don't wanna pile on if you, if you're holding Bitcoin, I, I have almost eight Bitcoin, but I can't access it cuz I forgot my password and it's just sitting in my phone. Oh no. Yeah. It's an old story. Everybody knows this story. No, actually not all. No. Well maybe, oh no. If, but see, this is always a problem with, even with stocks, if you knew when the peak was, it would be, oh no, you should have sold Leo in a 60,000, cuz it's never gonna be there again. But is it if I sold it today at 20,000 and it goes to 60 in a year, did I do the right thing? So it's better. It's locked away. I didn't buy them. They were donations for a while. You know, we, we have a tip jar or something on the website for a while. I had a QR code for Bitcoin wallet. And so yeah, no, I didn't buy 'em there. They were people
Paris Martineau (00:15:20):
Who sent you eight Bitcoin.
Leo Laporte (00:15:21):
Well, this was in the, the last one, $20 back. This was when they were worth anything and they weren't even sending whole Bitcoins were sending fractionals but enough people did it. It was 7.85 Bitcoin. And I can see it. It's in the, I have the wallet. I just have to remember the pass phrase to unlock <laugh> it'll come to me. <Laugh> I don't feel as bad. And I mentioned this before too. And I apologize if you're hearing me repeat. I don't feel as bad as Steve Gibson, our security guy, when Bitcoin first started, he thought I'll be fun to set up a Bitcoin minor. Next morning. Literally next morning, 50 Bitcoin came out of it early on. It was easy to do that on a, just a PC. So he put it on a, he put the wallet on a hard drive, forgot about it. Later erased the hard drive. So he had even by today's standards, he had a million bucks. You know, he had $3 million at, at the peak that just never, he, he erased and that's the other, by the way, no central bank, nobody to complain to you lose, you, forget your password, you forget your, you erase your hard drive. You lose your wallet, you use a custodial wallet, which a lot of people did at Mount go and other places and you lose it. There ain't nobody to complain to.
Owen Thomas (00:16:39):
Of course, if you set fire to a pile of, you know, paper bills, the banks not that's true replacement,
Leo Laporte (00:16:44):
That's, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah.
Owen Thomas (00:16:48):
But yeah, I mean the, the, the non reversibility of cryptocurrency transactions, but by and large, there are some, there are some that are reversible. But that, you know, that's a big problem and people haven't really gotten in their heads around the customer service implications of that. Just the, you know, like if there's transaction fraud I haven't even heard people talk about that issue, right. As much, which I think is a big issue in terms of making it mainstream.
Leo Laporte (00:17:12):
Right. At least Jake Paul is broke now. That's all, I'm just happy about that. That's all. <Laugh> okay.
Paris Martineau (00:17:18):
There's no way he's broke. He probably has marginally less money.
Leo Laporte (00:17:24):
Yeah. I mean, there's still worth 20,000 unless he bought it at 30
Owen Thomas (00:17:29):
Or is he, is he leveraged if he bought it on?
Leo Laporte (00:17:32):
Oh, he could be. He could be. He apparently he put all point
Paris Martineau (00:17:36):
Is the thing that brings Jake Paul down. I'll be very surprised. <Laugh> what a world
Leo Laporte (00:17:42):
<Laugh>
Owen Thomas (00:17:43):
I, you know, but I think that, I think that a lot of what we're seeing, like why is everything kind of collapsing of once it's because you've had a ton of leverage into this market. And all of this leverage bets are unwinding at once,
Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
Right.
Owen Thomas (00:17:59):
And it's just enormous selling
Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
Pressure. Right. And by the way, this picture is why there are people maybe me who have some shot and Freud about all that. There's Jake, Paul, literally rolling in money. And you know, that's why people don't like Bitcoin bros. Right. There's a, you know, and so I feel bad. Anybody lost money? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jake. At least you have your boxing career to fall back on.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:18:25):
It's not his brother.
Leo Laporte (00:18:26):
Oh, is it? Logan's I can't keep track of
Sam Abuelsamid (00:18:28):
Him. I, I don't know
Leo Laporte (00:18:30):
There's it was my son who is hip and with it tells me there's one good Paul and one bad Paul <laugh>. I dunno, which is which
Paris Martineau (00:18:37):
Inside of you, there are two Pauls,
Leo Laporte (00:18:40):
A good Paul and a
Sam Abuelsamid (00:18:40):
Bad Paul
Leo Laporte (00:18:42):
Jake, Paul did blame Biden for the fall of Bitcoin. So I'm thinking, oh,
Paris Martineau (00:18:47):
So there's that?
Leo Laporte (00:18:47):
Yeah. <laugh> maybe he's the, maybe he's the bad Paul. Alright. We, we are not gonna go on and on Bitcoin. I hope it goes back up. I really do for all of us all of your sake. And I hope they go to proof of stake or less energy intensive ways of of keeping the ledger, cuz that's not good either,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:19:08):
But before, before you move on, going back to Owen's defense of, of web three you know, I think some of the, the principles behind that, like more decentralization getting away from everything being consolidated with a few major players like Facebook or, and Google and apple and, and, and so on. I think I, I like that in principle, but you know, the reality is the reason why it got centralized in the first place is people don't, most people don't want to and, and don't know how to run their own servers and, and do all this stuff on their own. Right? This is something that, you know, that the technology is such that invariably you will end up consolidating it, you know, with a few players and, and open sea and you know, everything else. There's no reason why, you know, technically today, why it couldn't be decentralized. I mean, that's what it was to begin with, but the, the reality is most people don't want to manage all of this stuff. You know, they wanna be able to just use, use the stuff without thinking about it. Right.
Leo Laporte (00:20:13):
Yeah. I agree with you a hundred percent and that's, that's also part of the problem because you, you know, you're gonna get taken if you aren't vigilant with, with this, with these cryptocurrencies you, I wonder how the Winkle, Vos TWiTns are doing <laugh>
Paris Martineau (00:20:30):
Weren't they playing a concert
Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
Recently? Yeah. They're rocking rollers now. They're new. That's a new thing. Cameron Wilco OS says, I can't believe Bitcoin's taken. They were, they took all the money that they got by suing mark Zuckerberg saying he stole Facebook from them. They plowed that into crypto. They had a crypto fund. They did all sorts of stuff.
Paris Martineau (00:20:53):
Don't gamble with money. You can't afford to lose <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:20:56):
But again, well,
Owen Thomas (00:20:57):
They had, you know, they, they had that Facebook money. I wonder, I wonder if you compared the performance of Bitcoin versus meta stock
Leo Laporte (00:21:06):
Meta, stock's not done that well either. Right?
Owen Thomas (00:21:08):
They're probably glad they got out of that. Yeah. For many reasons,
Leo Laporte (00:21:12):
Cameron winklevos tweeted Bitcoin under 20 K feels like an over rotation. The underlying fundamentals, adoption and infrastructure have never been stronger. We saw the irrational top. This feels irrational in the other direction, which is his way of saying keep buying Bitcoin.
Paris Martineau (00:21:31):
I think the most impressive thing about that tweet is that he doesn't have an NFT profile.
Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
Oh, you're right. Well, he's not E no, he's he's
Paris Martineau (00:21:38):
BTC,
Leo Laporte (00:21:39):
Right? Yeah.
Paris Martineau (00:21:40):
That makes sense.
Leo Laporte (00:21:41):
I wonder if all the people who have dot E TWiTtter handles are quickly ready taking those off, changing theirs. I
Paris Martineau (00:21:48):
Wanna know how the crypto.com stadium is doing.
Leo Laporte (00:21:51):
Oh my God.
Paris Martineau (00:21:52):
Crypto.Com arena. I
Leo Laporte (00:21:53):
Hope they've got the money up front
Paris Martineau (00:21:54):
That
Leo Laporte (00:21:55):
Yeah, they renamed the staple center, crypto.com. Remember all the crypto ads on the super bowl. I, you know what it's kinda
Sam Abuelsamid (00:22:03):
Like when pet's got pets.com is advertising on the super bowl.
Leo Laporte (00:22:06):
Larry, remember Larry David his ad where he's the boomer who is, you know, thinks everything's dumb the wheel toilets, Bitcoin. I mean, the
Paris Martineau (00:22:18):
Wheel is pretty dumb. It's got,
Leo Laporte (00:22:20):
Yeah. So it was a funny ad.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:22:22):
And what did the wheel
Leo Laporte (00:22:22):
Ever do for us? But all it was was really saying, okay, boomer, you don't get it. Bitcoin's all that. And you know, I hope he got paid in dollars, American dollars. That's all.
Paris Martineau (00:22:34):
I, I believe he did. I think there was I'm oh, really? The outlet. But someone had followed up with him and their, his agent after that ad being like, did you guys get paid in Bitcoin? How do you feel now? They're like, we got paid in normal dollars. We don't know anything about Bitcoin. It was an ad <laugh>
Owen Thomas (00:22:53):
That's Larry just got up and read a script
Leo Laporte (00:22:55):
That D it was very funny. It was as good as curb, your enthusiasm, his TV show. What
Owen Thomas (00:23:00):
About all those mayors who quote unquote got paid in Bitcoin. I mean, first of all, they never got paid in Bitcoin. They, they took their mayoral paychecks and converted it to Bitcoin, but that's you know, that's gotta be a hit. I think the, I think the mayor of Miami, he has some other job. So he said like, he wasn't worried about it,
Leo Laporte (00:23:20):
Which they Miami created their own cryptocurrency. I, you know, I guess he ran on the notion that he's really you know, hip Francis, Francis, what
Paris Martineau (00:23:32):
Was Miami coin doing? I thought it it's crash.
Owen Thomas (00:23:35):
It's, it's actually, it's actually issued by a company called city coins. Miami's just a, a beneficiary. So
Leo Laporte (00:23:43):
Like
Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:43):
It's a white label.
Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
City is gonna tell you what happened February 2nd. They cashed out of Miami coin, depositing five and a quarter million American dollars into the city city's coffers, at which point Miami coin crashed 95%. It's worth 30.003, $2 right now. Wow. Three, 100
Paris Martineau (00:24:09):
A I'm much like Miami and the future Miami coin is underwater.
Leo Laporte (00:24:13):
<Laugh> wow. Good.
Paris Martineau (00:24:15):
One for Florida Floridian. I can make that joke
Leo Laporte (00:24:18):
Be well. And you're also next door to Eric Adams, who is so jealous of Suarez that he said, oh, I'm gonna take my first three paychecks in Bitcoin, the Nu mayor of New York city. I think he's changed the subject lately. I don't know if New York city's they were gonna also issue a New York coin. I believe. I think that that plan is
Owen Thomas (00:24:37):
That's changed. There was going to be train. I think Philadelphia ran them out of town.
Leo Laporte (00:24:42):
<Laugh> that's for Philly as usual. Apparently Suz told Davos. He spoke about this at Davos. He says I still take my salary in Bitcoin, but he said, if it, I have other, as you said, Owen, I have other income. If, if, if I, a person was deciding to take their whole salary in Bitcoin, if it was the only source of income for them, I wouldn't recommend it. <Laugh> oh, really? <Laugh> he's a
Paris Martineau (00:25:12):
He's come. Does he have isn't marrying a full-time job?
Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
Yeah. You would think, but I guess in Miami, everybody's
Paris Martineau (00:25:19):
Got a side
Leo Laporte (00:25:20):
Gig. You can have a side hustle. Yeah, true. Anyway I don't, I shouldn't gloat because I am gonna have to work for the rest of my life because my 401k is now down 25% as well. So <laugh>, you know we're all suffering inflation through the roof and we are all stock market through the, yeah. We're all suffering. It's not nothing to, nothing to celebrate anyway. Happy father's day. Happy June teens team
Paris Martineau (00:25:48):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:25:50):
Oh, good. I almost don't wanna bring up Elon Musk. He is, of course. One of the people who has been flogging cryptocurrencies, remember the doge coin tweet. Now he's being sued for billions of dollars for by it's a, you know, it's one of those class action suits. People claiming that doge coin was a pyramid scheme, which it wasn't, it was a meme coin. But Elon said he was gonna buy it. It went up. In fact, he just said it again.
Paris Martineau (00:26:20):
<Laugh> yeah. He just tweeted this
Leo Laporte (00:26:23):
It's to, I mean, Elon, he says, I will keep supporting DOJ coin. He tweeted that yesterday, keep buying it then says Al alt coin Gordon to which Elon says I am.
Paris Martineau (00:26:36):
That man needs to impose screen time limits on his devices. He just needs to log off.
Leo Laporte (00:26:42):
I think no one should be on TWiTtter. I told you this, Sam on the radio show today, there's this whole you know, this great man hypothesis, right? That we love to think of you know, a Tony stark. We love to think of Thomas Edison, you know, Alexander the great, these great men who changed the world. Single-Handedly we love this myth. But I think if any of these great men, except for Tony stark, if any of these other great men tweeted, who
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:13):
Is a fictional character,
Leo Laporte (00:27:14):
Who is completely made up <laugh> and if he tweeted, he probably tweet cool. But anybody TWiTtter in, if Thomas Edison had TWiTtter, we would've known what a Dick he was. If Henry Ford had TWiTtter, we would've known he was an antisemite.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:29):
Well, we didn Henry was, was, was an antisemite because you know, he published little pamphlets.
Leo Laporte (00:27:34):
Yeah, but I forget that's the difference between tweeting the old tweets and publishing little pamphlets. Like I bet you, most of the people buying Ford automobiles didn't really know about Henry's, you know, hobby true. But that's the thing. Twittter reveals all
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:53):
I would support. It's a classic transition
Paris Martineau (00:27:55):
From tweeting to a pamphlet based mean economy.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:59):
Let's you know what? There
Leo Laporte (00:28:00):
We go. That's the punishment.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:02):
If <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (00:28:03):
If you get bad for tweets, TWiTtter, you have to punch published pamphlets. <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:08):
Yeah. It's it's the classic. It's the classic you know, better to, to remain silent and be thought of fool than speak up and prove it. Oh, so what does, does retweeting become like hiring people to distribute those pamphlets door to door
Leo Laporte (00:28:23):
<Laugh>
Paris Martineau (00:28:24):
Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:25):
Those like, yeah. I mean, it's just like buying, it's like buying with your original, like retweeters, it's like buying followers, you know, you pay, you pay people to redistribute your pamphlets,
Leo Laporte (00:28:32):
Knock on the door. I'm trying, I'm here bringing you the good word from Elon. <Laugh> have you found Elon? He is facing a 258 billion lawsuit over do coin, which makes me think that the only reason he tweeted that he's still all in on DOE coin is to troll the people who are suing him. I guess he just doesn't care.
Paris Martineau (00:28:56):
When is he going to face some consequences for what he is doing with the TWiTtter murder deal though? Because I mean, clearly there were terms in that that said don't disparage TWiTtter, you know, don't try and shake up the deal. And he is doing all of those things.
Leo Laporte (00:29:11):
Twittter wants him to pay 54 20 for their shares so badly. And he knows this, that they are willing to put up with all sorts of bad behavior. Now there is a billion dollar breakup fee, but they want all 54 20 a share. They want the $44 billion. And I think that's just, what's going on. They're just saying, I, I don't just let's get to the end of this. Elon did address an all hands meeting at TWiTtter. I imagine terrifying the employees.
Paris Martineau (00:29:41):
He went in on a port, like he FaceTimed in like portrait mode, style, crap.
Leo Laporte (00:29:49):
Talk about dis referred guy. That's
Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:50):
Yeah. Well for, especially given his recent comments, you know, his recent memo to Tesla employees about working remotely, you know that, you know, if you want, if you wanna do fake work, go somewhere else. You know,
Leo Laporte (00:30:03):
He dialed
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:03):
In coming in remotely to TWiTtter,
Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
10 minutes late via his phone.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:08):
Oh, he was, he was early by Elon time though. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (00:30:12):
But it
Leo Laporte (00:30:12):
True. Yeah. I mean, this, this is so disrespectful, right? If it's an all hands meeting, get a desk, get a, get an EOS rebel. Come on, get a decent camera.
Paris Martineau (00:30:23):
Treat these people respect decent. No. Spend your time talking about aliens. Oh, that's what he did.
Leo Laporte (00:30:29):
He did.
Paris Martineau (00:30:30):
Yeah. I'm pretty sure he talked among other aliens among other topics. Wasn't much topic.
Leo Laporte (00:30:36):
Is he, is he bullish on aliens? Is he,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:40):
He still thinks we're in a simulation. So
Leo Laporte (00:30:42):
This is the picture of Elon. It looks like he's in a hotel lobby.
Paris Martineau (00:30:45):
He looks like he's doing a cameo. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
Happy Musk, happy birthday Paris. It's Elon Musk wishing you best for regards
Paris Martineau (00:30:55):
Hi guides. I think you should do the rest of the show in that point,
Leo Laporte (00:30:58):
Please. Not how Elon talks.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:01):
According to Casey Newton's platform, or he says here also at one point, Musk mentioned that he had seen no evidence of alien night alien life. And no one really knew what to make of that <laugh>
Paris Martineau (00:31:12):
Oh, so he'sish on aliens.
Leo Laporte (00:31:14):
I just have seen no evidence. I he he also says he wants a billion users, which is, I mean, same. It's like five, we all, yeah. 770 million more than it has right now. And so he says, look free speech is important. We should allow people to say what they want, but
Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:38):
Unless you work for SpaceX,
Leo Laporte (00:31:39):
Right. Oh, I'll get to that. Yeah. Unless
Paris Martineau (00:31:41):
You work for space.
Leo Laporte (00:31:42):
Yes. But it's important to make TWiTtter as attractive as possible. And of course, free speech, real free speech, which turns you into four Chan or worse does not make TWiTtter a billion user platform by any means. Right? So he is got a little bit of a problem there. And by the way, spam is a protected form of protected speech. So I don't know what he is gonna do there. He says really that means showing, not showing people content, they would find offensive well, Hmm. Or even friendly. One of boring is not good. Tiktok the old TikTok. There you go. Does a great job of making sure you're not bored.
Owen Thomas (00:32:24):
I mean, it's, it's freedom of speech versus freedom of reach. He's kind of backing away from the, you know, free speech, you know, the free speech wing of the free speech party position and saying, well, maybe let people tweet that stuff, but don't show it to anyone else, which is a lot of what, you know, the Republican critics of TWiTtter are, are worked up about, you know, the, the so-called shadow banning.
Leo Laporte (00:32:49):
So is he, you think he's advocating shadow banning because that's not going
Owen Thomas (00:32:53):
Now. He seems to be Prosha banning. Oh. Even though I've seen, I've seen him reply to people saying, oh, we're going to fix that shadow opening
Leo Laporte (00:33:00):
Stuff. Yeah. He's you know, this is the problem. He he's very much a shoot from the hip kind of guy. And so he's just
Paris Martineau (00:33:06):
Saying, yeah, he's just pro talking. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:33:08):
He's pro Elon. Casey said, I, I talked to half a dozen or so employees after the meeting reactions were mixed, but mostly negative Musk. One, some points were sounding genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect of owning and running TWiTtter. I think that's a good thing there. These poor TWiTtter employees are shell shocked, cuz everybody's been going, ah, you know, Jack Dorsey, go see ya. <Laugh> I mean, it's been, it's been a Rocky 10 years. And it looks like he does in fact want it. He's gonna go through or at least maybe if TWiTtter can resolve this spam bot thing, you can go through with his 44 billion acquisition.
Owen Thomas (00:33:50):
The, the spam bot thing was never going to stop the deal like that's,
Leo Laporte (00:33:53):
You know? Yeah. Well he wanted a better price. Do you think Owen, is that what it was about? Like negotiation?
Owen Thomas (00:33:57):
I, I think so, but there's, there's no way the TWiTtter board was going to give it
Leo Laporte (00:34:01):
To you. Yeah. He already signed on the dotted line. You can't,
Owen Thomas (00:34:03):
He signed, he signed a clause called specific performance and specific performance means you can actually go to a judge and force the other party to consummate the deal.
Leo Laporte (00:34:12):
You agreed. And, and furthermore, you agreed as is. You didn't say, well, let me do due diligence. You specifically waived it. Right.
Owen Thomas (00:34:21):
Musk said he wanted to buy TWiTtter to fix the spam bot problem. And then he says, oh, I didn't know. There were spam box on TWiTtter.
Leo Laporte (00:34:29):
There's
Owen Thomas (00:34:29):
So many no sense. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (00:34:31):
Yeah. Casey Newton's on platform. Or if I were to make a word cloud of employee responses, the biggest ones would be incoherent, rambling. <Laugh> uninspiring.
Owen Thomas (00:34:43):
So it's a typical Elon speech
Leo Laporte (00:34:45):
Then. Yeah. Rambling and incoherent here. Is there any takeaway from this? I guess the takeaway is he's he he's wants to buy it.
Paris Martineau (00:34:57):
He, I don't know if that's the takeaway. I think the takeaway is that at that one, during that 10 minute conversation, he wanted to buy it. It's gonna probably change through different times over the next month.
Leo Laporte (00:35:10):
Yeah. Analysts believe he will cut 20% of the workforce. In other words of the 8,000 people listening, you know, couple of thousand gonna lose their job. He, when asked about layoffs, he dodged the question, but he did say TWiTtter is losing money and that's not a great situation. <Laugh> if Elon thinks he's gonna make 44 billion back in his lifetime on TWiTtter, he's just wrong. But obviously he got a lot of people to invest, right. Where's why are people giving him money to buy TWiTtter? That's crazy. Larry Nelson gave him a billion dollars. You're not gonna get that money back. Larry. Guess he can afford it. I want, here's what Musk said. I want TWiTtter to contribute to a better long lasting civilization where we better understand the nature of reality. It's, it's kind of a heavy burden for a social network. <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:11):
And also probably impossible if it's essentially unmoderated.
Leo Laporte (00:36:17):
Yep. Okay. Now, meanwhile Mr. Free speech fired a number of employees, apparently who instigated a letter at SpaceX, the letter saying that Elon was embarrassed and embarrassment
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:31):
And a distraction
Leo Laporte (00:36:32):
And a distraction. How many people signed that letter?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:37):
Apparently it was several hundred signed it but it sounds like about five were fired. Oh, apparently they, they may think that they were the, the instigators of this thing.
Leo Laporte (00:36:48):
So you, I can say, see, I didn't fire him all <laugh>. But yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know, is it, I, if, if John, if you circulated a petition saying Leo's a jerky jerk and we we don't like him and he is a distraction and embarrassment, actually. I think that letter was, did circulate, but <laugh> am I allowed to fire you for doing that actually in California? Yes. It's an at will you're you're allowed to fire anyone for anything. Yeah. It's an at will state in the us. Yeah. Well, I, I think, well, I don't know, in some places it may not <laugh>, I don't know you,
Owen Thomas (00:37:23):
I think even in like a, you know, even in a stricter state yeah, you
Leo Laporte (00:37:27):
Could, you could still fire people for that. Yeah.
Owen Thomas (00:37:29):
Okay. For actively disparaging. Yeah. The company, but let's, let's talk about the substance. I mean, you know, like what does any of Elon's activity around TWiTtter or on DOJ coin have to do with, you know, with SpaceX, which he has always said, like, you know, getting to Mars, making, you know, making human civilization multi-planetary multi-planetary is his most important thing. He's not acting like it. He's not signaling that. It's the most important thing. And I think that is a legitimate gripe by SpaceX employees. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:38:04):
Although, and I, you know, people always say, oh, you bash Elon. You don't ever give him credit. Spacex launched three rockets in the last 48 hours retrieved all of the what are they are the, was it of those boosters, John first stages? The first stages, one of those first stages had been reused 13 times, which is the kind of economy NASA can only look at and rule over. That's really impressive. Now, you, now we had rod rod pile, before you say that one more thing. We had red pile on our space guy on Sunday and he did something I knew he would do. He said he launched three rockets in 36 hours cuz Elon gets all the credit. Right. Of course. Elon did not launch three rockets in 36 hours. Spacex did. And all those great engineers wait
Paris Martineau (00:38:56):
During that period of 36 hours, how many times did Elon Musk tweet
Leo Laporte (00:39:00):
<Laugh> about do coin?
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:03):
The, the, the other thing about SpaceX is that, you know, while Elon is technically the CEO, he doesn't actually run the company day to day. Sounds like he's
Leo Laporte (00:39:13):
Actually there. He pretends here does
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:14):
Very often.
Leo Laporte (00:39:15):
He pretends
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:15):
He does. Yeah. Gwen Shotwell runs the company. Right, right. She, she is the C chief operating officer and president, but she is the one that really runs the runs the operation day to day. And you know, if any, if there's any one individual and, and certainly in something like this, there is never any one individual that deserves all the credit, but it, you know, if there is somebody that deserved credit, it would be her not
Leo Laporte (00:39:38):
Elon Quinn. Yeah. Yeah. She was the one who fired the letter writers by the way.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:43):
<Laugh> yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:39:44):
So we'll give her credit for that too. That is a very impressive thing. And while NASA is struggling getting the SLS, even to do a, a fueling test, they keep rolling it back off the platform. Elon launches three rockets in 36 hours. They're
Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:59):
About to try again
Leo Laporte (00:40:00):
Another one. Oh, the SLS, the fueling test
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:03):
For the
Leo Laporte (00:40:04):
MLS. Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:04):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:40:06):
How many times have they rolled it back? Three or four times.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:09):
I think they only rolled it back once they, they tried the fueling test three times and they rolled it back to the vehicle assembly building. And now they've rolled it back out again. Yeah. I think they're gonna try again this week.
Leo Laporte (00:40:19):
So credit to Elon's company SpaceX. How about that? He had the, you know, how he had the, what
Paris Martineau (00:40:28):
Was it? Sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, how SpaceX sent a Tesla up into space. What do you think he'll do if he owns TWiTtter, I'm gonna send a big tweet, a big tweet to the moon.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:44):
Oh, he on the original server up. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:40:47):
Get get somebody to stamp a tweet out onto the surface of the moon. Cause you know, it'll never go away. It'll be there forever. All right. Let's take a little break. That's enough Elon for the day. I mean, I had many, many, many, many, many more stories I could use, but he's trying to get outta the S E C seriously. Elon is the chief news maker of the day. He's trying to get out of the S E C deal to have lawyers approve his tweets. He is pumping. Do I guess we got, we got 'em all. There you go. That's it. That's all of them's speaking Elon. Yep. Yep. This week in Elon has now come to an end. Thank you very much for your attention. We'll be back with something else in just a bit. You might have noticed it didn't say anything, but you might have noticed I'm look a little trim, little fit.
Leo Laporte (00:41:36):
I've been steadily safely losing weight through Noom. I am a fan of Noom weight because it's not a diet. It is about learning about your relationship with food so that you are conscious when you eat and then kind of magically you eat better and eat well. And there are no forbidden foods. It's you know, there's a lot of information out there. It's very easy to be overwhelmed by all the information from the wellness industry. But Noom believes the only place you really need to start is right up here in your mind with nom weight, you take a path toward better health, one lesson at a time, it's a psychology based approach. That really helped me change the way I think about it. Food and health, rather than changing my whole lifestyle. You know, I, early on in Noom, you have a coach, you have a group.
Leo Laporte (00:42:29):
And I'm, I shamefacedly said I had a hot dog last night. My coach said, what are you talking about? Nothing wrong with that. There is no bad foods. Why I can eat a hot dog. They said, yes, you log it. Yes. Have you been taking, reading the lessons? Yes. It's cognitive behavioral therapy and other scientific principles that help you better understand your relationship with food. For instance, I really learned that when I overeat, I do something. They call fog eating. I'm kind of in a fog. I'm, I'm eating for emotional reasons or stress reasons, and I'm not even tasting the food Noom taught me to turn off the TV, put down the phone, sit, enjoy, taste every bite. And you know what? I just magically by doing that eat less. It's kind of remarkable. Noom understands building long term positive habits can be hard and filled with ups and downs.
Leo Laporte (00:43:16):
It's about progress though. Not perfection. Everybody's journey looks different. New is fully grounded in science. This is not voodoo. It it's, it's scientific. They've published more than 30 peer reviewed scientific articles for users, practitioners, scientists in the public about how their methods work and how effective they are. The idea is get no more stress, be empowered, be empowered, cuz you're taking care of your health. One day off. Isn't gonna ruin the program. Noom helps you get back on track. You decide how it fits into your life. Not the other way. Around 5, 10, 15 minutes a day. I take about 10 minutes a day to read the lessons with new my log, my food. So I know what I'm eating. It's about being about bringing awareness to what you're eating. But how much time you spend is, is up to you. And the thing is, I've been on Noom now for a year and I am about 20 pounds under my starting weight.
Leo Laporte (00:44:13):
And I don't weigh myself every day. It fluctuates and it's that's normal, but I feel better. I'm healthier. All my metrics are better. My doctor's very proud of me. Start building better habits today. Sign up for your trial@noonom.com slash TWiT. Give it a try. They, they have a trial. You can see if it, if it works for you, I think it will. I that's what I did. And I was so happy. In fact, <laugh>, I'll tell you who's really happy. My wife, I started doing it at Lisa said, well, I'll, you know, I'll keep you company cuz it'll, it'll be, I'll be a supportive spouse. She's she's at the lowest weight she's ever been her whole life. I, since I've known her, she looks great. She's completely in control of her weight and she just loves it. And you know, we went out last night, seven course dinner, very fancy fun.
Leo Laporte (00:45:05):
She's writing everything down, taking pictures. She was fun. It was fun. We're we're doing it together. Get your spouse to do it with you. N om.com/TWiT. Sign up for your trial. Just be prepared for her to do better than you cuz she's really she's really, I don't know. She's amazing Noom. Thank you Noom. Thank you very much. Noom noom.com/TWiT. So remember how the EU said we're gonna pass a law that requires apple to well all phone manufacturers, but it's only apple. That's not doing it to use USBC. Well now senators have written a bill to Gina Ramono of the us commerce secretary saying we wanna do the same thing. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren ed Markey are calling on the on the FTC and the commerce secretary to require USBC chargers by 2024, they cite a figure from the EU saying chargers alone would account for about 11,000 tons of e-waste type C is everywhere else. Frankly, this is only apple, right? I don't think anybody's not using type C at this point. Laptops do all the Android phones do. It's just apple. Apple makes somewhere between three and $4 a cable for licensing light the lightning cable. So if I were gonna make a lightning cable, I'd have to pay apple cause it's proprietary. I'm sure they're reluctant to let that go. But I also see this happening. In fact, I think Apple's been planning this before 2024. Any thoughts? Is this a good thing?
Paris Martineau (00:46:51):
My question is, I guess, is there a world in which by 20 24, 20 25, there's a new type of cable that is perhaps better for all of these things
Leo Laporte (00:47:03):
And now using we're stuck with the
Paris Martineau (00:47:04):
Types and now we're stuck with USBC. I mean, I generally don't know. Is that not how this works? Where is USBC going to be here to stay?
Leo Laporte (00:47:12):
Well that, you know, that's always the reasonable thing when government mandates technology is like, well, do you know what you're doing?
Paris Martineau (00:47:19):
<Laugh> yeah. I mean, that's the thing, right? It seems a little complicated to mandate one sort of cable.
Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
I am told I have not read the U EU regulation, but I'm told the EU regulation does allow for this, that if a new standard comes along, it makes it easy for them to support the new standard.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:40):
So when U S P D comes along, they can say, okay, three years from now, you have to switch to U S B D right. Or whatever it might be.
Leo Laporte (00:47:48):
Right.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:50):
I think my, my bigger complaint with this is does the us Congress have nothing better to do <laugh> it sounds, seems like EU has already got this covered if EU mandates USBC, right? Apple's gonna switch to BC. There's no, they're not gonna sell phones with lightning in the us and USBC and Europe. Right. They're gonna have, they're gonna have one design. And why, why does our Congress have to bother with this, you know, do something productive.
Leo Laporte (00:48:23):
Won't like, that should be politics in this nation. And really worldwide has become increasingly performative. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> like you do this because you know, that a certain percentage of your constituency is gonna say, yeah, they're sticking it to big tech, love that. And it doesn't really matter, even if this becomes law, it, you know, I mean, maybe Bernie believes it. <Laugh>, I'm, wouldn't be surprised if Bernie Bernie, you know, just says, no, no, this is the right thing to do. But I think it's, and this is probably the part of the problem with politics especially in the us, but generally worldwide is it's not about doing anything. It's about looking like you're doing something.
Paris Martineau (00:49:11):
I think this is something that I've noticed as over the years when I've been covering kind of the big tech hearings or social media related hearings is the first couple times I was like, oh, great. You know, a lot of debate and discussion around tech related issues, antitrust, but what ends up being every single time is just the politicians reading from a stump speech that they want to have their team clip and share on TWiTtter and Facebook so that their constituents can be like, oh, wow. They really stuck to those tech CEOs or, wow, they're really asking mark Zuckerberg about X, Z. And it ultimately ends up being for no real purpose.
Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
Right.
Owen Thomas (00:49:53):
Doesn't doesn't apple maybe need some raining in here. Like they just introduced new MacBooks that have surprise the Mac safe charger is back, which, you know, like, I really like that design if you've ever had it fall off, you know, it's
Leo Laporte (00:50:09):
But you can't, by the way, I'm pretty sure. In fact, I think I've done it. You can still charge those MacBooks with USBC, with the type C
Paris Martineau (00:50:16):
Connector.
Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:17):
Yeah. Most. So you have the choice. Most newer computers can like my, my HP laptop that I have from my employer has a proprietary charger with a barrel connector on it. But I can also, when I travel, I, I leave that on my desk and I have a USBC charger that's in my, in my backpack and I can charge it from that.
Leo Laporte (00:50:35):
That's a great compromise, cuz I do think Meg safe is better in some situations. It's for one thing, you know, when I put my laptop to bed at night, because it sucks it in as it's magnetic, I don't have to, you know, kind of figure fiddle around and try to find the hole and all that stuff. So it's really, I think I like mags safe, but if I didn't have a mag safe adapter with me, I could still charge it. I don't know why apple would care that much except for this license fee. I mean, they already don't put charging bricks in the in the iPhone box, which ironically is making some people angry. <Laugh> I think, I think in Brazil, they're mad about that.
Owen Thomas (00:51:17):
I mean, it's kind of a no win. Like if you included then you're accused of you know, driving up costs and contributing to e-waste. Yeah. And if you don't, then people get mad too. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:51:28):
Yeah. Yeah.
Paris Martineau (00:51:30):
I will say I'm pretty excited about the new line of max, just because they now have a lot of ports and I mean, my Mac is not that old it's 2019 or whatever. So I'm probably not gonna upgrade just now, but I would love to have a computer with more than two ports. Oh, I agree. Generally.
Leo Laporte (00:51:46):
I agree. I bought the 14 inch MacBook pro when I came out last year. It's so nice. I mean, I, it was like who snuck into apple in the middle of the night and put an HDMI port, an SD card reader on this thing. It's like, that is, that is going back. That's like nostalgia time. And I think it's just cuz Johnny I've left. <Laugh> Johnny. Oh, I,
Owen Thomas (00:52:09):
I remember when when apple switched switched design and took out the SD card reader totally messed messed up my live blogging routine because I would, you know, I, I had a nice camera with an SD card. I would take some photos, then run back and you know, just swap in the card. I even had two SD cards, so I could like keep going. It's
Leo Laporte (00:52:29):
Awesome. Isn't it? Yeah.
Owen Thomas (00:52:31):
And then got a new Mac. Didn't even look to see if it had a reader. And I had no way of, I, I didn't bring the USB cable and I had no way of getting the the photos off my camera at that next event.
Leo Laporte (00:52:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of back to the future, this was the week internet Explorer died. Oh, w
Owen Thomas (00:52:55):
Blah.
Leo Laporte (00:52:55):
Oh, the end of the line.
Paris Martineau (00:53:00):
No more internet left to explore
Leo Laporte (00:53:03):
<Laugh> I guess it's over <laugh>
Owen Thomas (00:53:06):
It, it is kind of retro. It is like you remember web surfing, you know? Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:53:11):
Yeah. Of TW 27 years. I think I remember when I E three came out, it was 1996, net Netscape was still charging. Right. You had to buy Netscape and Microsoft said, just get our browser for free. And when the version, I guess it was 3.0, came out. That was as good as net. You know, I, you could justify paying for Netscape with the earlier versions of I E but when it came out as good as Netscape for free, I said, in fact, I said this on TV, on MSNBC. I said, kiss it goodbye, byebye, Netscape. I E is free and it's gonna take over the world. And I was told later that mark and Dreesen was watching. He was, of course the founder of Netscape was watching NBC and came, screaming down the hall, saying who the hell is this guy? But I was right.
Paris Martineau (00:54:15):
That's what I say every time I see you on my TV screen as well.
Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Who the hell is this guy? What's he think he's talking about? And of course Netscape went away. It was the end of the line. And,
Owen Thomas (00:54:26):
And what happened next is that Microsoft of course, neglected to develop internet Explorer, right? Particularly on the Mac. And Steve jobs got so frustrated with the bad performance of IE for the Mac that he started, the safari project. It was actually a story on wired that that asked, you know, why is IE for the Mac so bad? And they benchmarked it against IE on the PC. And that was the beginning of sari.
Leo Laporte (00:54:52):
It was a pig, it was a harm. And it crashed. In fact, I have, let me see, there's a site. I bookmarked it here somewhere that brings back the, you know, the, probably the most remembered feature of internet Explorer. Let me see if I can I can find this. I bookmarked it some time ago, cuz I just, you know, sometimes you get a little nostalgic here it is. It's lag plo.tms.sx. You ready show my screen cuz I want to. So it's the best loved feature of internet Explorer. <Laugh> when, when it crashed, it would do this <laugh> you would paint the screen with the crash dialogue. Remember this? You just that's it you're getting PTSD.
Paris Martineau (00:55:39):
Honestly. I think internet Explorer though has a future as a streetwear brand. Like imagine this all over a jacket. Oh, straight fire.
Leo Laporte (00:55:46):
That's a nice, I wear that. Yeah. You gotta just keep doing it. It's just right. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe some bed linens. My sheet and pillowcase could look like that.
Paris Martineau (00:55:58):
Brooke linen needs to get on
Leo Laporte (00:56:00):
<Laugh>
Owen Thomas (00:56:01):
There, there are actually some crypto websites that have this like retro gray background, you know, kind of blocky tabs. Look, that's very throwback to internet
Leo Laporte (00:56:13):
Explorer. Oh that's hysterical.
Owen Thomas (00:56:14):
I don't know why that look is, is trendy, but Paris. I think we gone
Leo Laporte (00:56:18):
To something. Well it's NOST
Paris Martineau (00:56:19):
It's the retro. Yeah. It's the retro vibes.
Leo Laporte (00:56:21):
Do you remember? You're not old enough to remember. Did you use IE Paris? Do you, are you old enough to remember those things? Yeah. Yeah.
Paris Martineau (00:56:27):
I used IE.
Leo Laporte (00:56:28):
Yeah. I guess we, we all kind of had to wall street journal had the strangest article about this. Sure. Internet Explorer had its faults. They wrote, but fans are mourning its death. Anyway, here's a 22 year old kid.
Paris Martineau (00:56:46):
Three windows of internet.
Leo Laporte (00:56:48):
Yeah, he doesn't. Let me tell you something. Let me read you some of the quotes from the people they say use internet Explorer Sam Malonga 31 year old Polynesian dance instructor from Ulis Texas said this is the wall street journal folks. I'm still trying to process it. I've used it for so long. It's the first thing I get on my laptop.
Owen Thomas (00:57:13):
Wait, is that a wood cut? STLE of the I,
Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
Yes, it's a wood cut. Tipple of the, I <laugh> I've always wanted a wood cut tipple of me, but no, I E got it. So first of all, it comes in your laptop, Sam, you don't have to get it. <Laugh> that was
Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:29):
My, my, my guess is none of the people quoted in this article ever used it never actually used it. Yeah, but they probably responded to a tweet from, from the writer, looking for internet Explorer, users and thought, Hey, this is a way to get some attention for my Instagram account or my TWiTtter, whatever
Leo Laporte (00:57:46):
Polynesian dance instructor from you. Liz, Texas. Notice that was in there. Matt linker, the 22 four mentioned 22 year old talker from Peter burrow. Ontario. It's sad to see it go <laugh> no, he doesn't care. He doesn't care. This is, this is another one. Jonie Casey, a 67 year old retiree in Elcot city. Maryland says the internet Explorer browser is quote one of the three. I gotta do it in the right voice. One of the three that pop up on my C phone. What? This
Paris Martineau (00:58:24):
Is the only person that I believe actually uses. I don't think
Leo Laporte (00:58:27):
It Explorer pops up on your cell phone. We have, well,
Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:30):
She might, she might be still using an old windows mobile.
Leo Laporte (00:58:33):
She must be using a windows phone. Cause that's the only phone IE was ever on as far as I can.
Owen Thomas (00:58:37):
How is yeah. How is that?
Leo Laporte (00:58:39):
<Laugh>
Owen Thomas (00:58:40):
We a windows phone? What are the two other ones that pop?
Leo Laporte (00:58:44):
No, exactly. It's this is made up. We have I'm
Paris Martineau (00:58:47):
Go
Leo Laporte (00:58:48):
Ahead. Sorry.
Paris Martineau (00:58:49):
I'm just imagining that she is holding a laptop up to her face every single day. And it's like, it's one of the three things on here.
Leo Laporte (00:58:56):
Pop on my cell phone. We have too many choices. She says, I sort of feel like the fewer, the choices, the better, I guess now only two things will pop up on her cell. Oh, well, you know, it's hard to write a what do they call these in journalism on think piece about I E a lifestyle piece.
Owen Thomas (00:59:19):
This is like a non think piece. This is a, we were not, you know, no thought this piece, actually, I, I would use this as like you know, like an instructional piece on how to fact check, like, okay. Just because this person said that I E pops up on their cell phone. Okay. Did they show it to you? Put it, did you like, is that actually possible? Like you don't just do a quick Google
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:46):
Search to see if that was
Leo Laporte (00:59:47):
Doable. <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:49):
If there was any phone that ever ran IE. Oh,
Owen Thomas (00:59:52):
I mean, it's true that she said it, is it actually true? Like, I don't know. I'm kind of, I, I, I would, I would have questions. Yeah. If I were editing that
Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
Piece. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least they got the story, right.
Paris Martineau (01:00:08):
<Laugh> at least they got the STLE or
Leo Laporte (01:00:10):
They got Thele. Do you think they computer generate that now? I mean, sure. In the early days it was so, oh,
Paris Martineau (01:00:15):
I I'm sure that Dolly is just pumping out wall street, journal stipple. I think that there's actually a, a website you can go to, to generate kind of a wonky stipple of whatever you put in it.
Leo Laporte (01:00:27):
I, I it was one of the great disappointments of my, my life. Some years ago when I was on tech TV, I was interviewed for a piece in the wall street journal. And I was, God, I was hoping please put tipple me. I was just praying for this <laugh> and they killed the piece. They never ran it. So I, I feel like it came this close and maybe there is a tipple of me somewhere in the archives of the wall street journal. If there's an intern listening, would you please look, I want my stipple here in Korea. So
Paris Martineau (01:00:56):
Imagining you pick up the phone from a wall street journal reporter, and you're like, okay, I can talk to you, but can you gimme a stiffer please?
Leo Laporte (01:01:02):
You know, it's like desperate. The rolling stone calls put me on the cover, man. All I ever wanted was a stipple. Here's a a viral gravestone from Korea, internet Explorer, 1995, August 17th to 2022, June 15th. He was a good tool to download other browsers. <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:24):
It's about all. It was
Leo Laporte (01:01:25):
Good for this says it. All right. Do you think this is real? I hope this is, I hope this is not a Wally. We're gonna have to we're we're gonna Dolly. We're gonna have to start asking every time we see something like this, is that a Dolly? Is that generated? Is it real? It looks real. Looks really real.
Owen Thomas (01:01:41):
Browser wars were exciting though. Like it was, they were fun to cover back in the nineties. Like, remember, remember when a bunch of rogue Microsoft employees dumped a giant blue E on the front lawn of Netscape.
Leo Laporte (01:01:56):
Remember there was a funeral. There was like a funeral procession at a one year. They had, they had Netscape and a coffin.
Paris Martineau (01:02:06):
Oh my God.
Owen Thomas (01:02:07):
Sure. You were not thinking
Paris Martineau (01:02:08):
Of, oh my God, this I'm sure you're thinking of baby now.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:09):
Sure. You're not thinking of Mac world. When they brought out Macs or classic Macs, Maus nine in a coffin.
Leo Laporte (01:02:15):
I'm pretty, maybe, maybe this happened more than once. I don't know. <Laugh> yeah, it could just be a fever dream. I, I might be imagining I'd be imagining that
Paris Martineau (01:02:26):
Early browser died so that what it was Mr. Nut or baby not could rise the, the two different ad campaigns that I remember you know, baby
Leo Laporte (01:02:37):
Butt, but they're too.
Paris Martineau (01:02:38):
Do you remember this? The Nutter butter guy. This was right when the pandemic started, they killed off.
Leo Laporte (01:02:43):
Oh, Mr. Peanut. They killed off Mr. Peanut,
Paris Martineau (01:02:46):
But they have baby nut. That's kind of what happened with the browser. You know,
Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
You know, it's funny. I was talking about that this on Tuesday, because Andy NACO was eating a can of planters, cheese balls, and it had Mr. Peanut on it. And I said, wait a minute. They killed him.
Paris Martineau (01:03:04):
<Laugh> wait a minute. He's dead.
Leo Laporte (01:03:08):
He's dead. You can't have him on a can of cheese balls. All right, we're gonna have to do some research and see if either Andy got a five year old can of cheeseballs or that was all just a marketing ploy, hard to believe. No, no company would ever do that. No, he would ever do that. I am gonna show peanut or Superman. Andy thought he was all that cuz he was using chopsticks to eat the cheese balls. And so Anthony Nielsen gave me these you can be doing your work. You can be typing. These are called conjoined chopstick snack clips. And so you can reach into the jar, pick up a cheese ball. I John, we gotta get some cheese balls for Tuesday to make an Andy jealous. Look at that. They even have like fine Corinthian, leather and bossing.
Paris Martineau (01:03:59):
Oh my God.
Leo Laporte (01:04:00):
You want these? Tell, tell me you don't want these.
Paris Martineau (01:04:03):
You should get a can of pre Mr. Peanut death, cheese balls and post baby nut cheese
Leo Laporte (01:04:11):
Balls, baby nut cheese balls, chase test. I got one.
Paris Martineau (01:04:14):
Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:04:14):
One for every hand. One for every hand. That's a little like Wolverine. If Wolverine were a fat guy who ate cheese balls the,
Owen Thomas (01:04:24):
The, the eating, you know, eating greasy salty snacks with chopsticks. Innovation is brilliant.
Leo Laporte (01:04:30):
It's brilliant. It slows you down. You don't get orange on your hands. And you look damn cool.
Paris Martineau (01:04:39):
I don't know. I think you're missing out in half the flavor though. Half the experience of eating cheese balls is licking the cheese dust off your fingers and feeling a, a deep sense of shame.
Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
That's oddly specific Paris. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (01:04:52):
I don't know what you're talking about. So a universal experience
Leo Laporte (01:04:55):
<Laugh> well, and, and then, but I know also looking, looking off whichever's on your keyboard as well. Well, or your Alcon Tara, do you remember somebody tested Alara on the on the Microsoft surface laptop, they have that fake fabric surface. Somebody actually did rub Cheetos into it to see if it would hold the orange. And it does just now, you know,
Paris Martineau (01:05:21):
<Laugh> more, you know,
Leo Laporte (01:05:22):
<Laugh> so more, you know, is it your local library, kids leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings. I don't even care about this shows that us user data has been repeatedly accessed from China.
Owen Thomas (01:05:43):
So Leah, do you, do you not care about this? From that, from like the same way Scott McNeilly famously said you have no privacy anyway, get over it. Or like you just assumed that China was looking at
Leo Laporte (01:05:56):
And what are they getting <laugh>. I mean, what are they getting? That's so bad.
Owen Thomas (01:06:02):
They know exactly how many people
Paris Martineau (01:06:04):
Watch that, that I watch interior design videos and TikTok.
Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
Yes. And then I'm looking for bikini, rich content, at least that's what they think
Paris Martineau (01:06:14):
<Laugh> but that's just a, its a psych op
Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
It's a psych op I'm trying to fool 'em
Owen Thomas (01:06:20):
Am I the only person who's still so paranoid that like I have not downloaded the TikTok app on any of my devices, but what
Leo Laporte (01:06:28):
Are you? I I'm merely I'm serious afraid. What are you afraid of? I
Owen Thomas (01:06:31):
Don't know. Like, and I'm not, you know, like I'm not that paranoid in other things, but I was just like, or, or, or maybe it was just social media overload. I was like, okay, I do not need another, another, like
Leo Laporte (01:06:43):
That is a very sensible plan. In fact, I paranoia
Owen Thomas (01:06:48):
Or you just don't care. I mean that, that's what it is for me. I just don't care. Yeah. It, it, it kind of feels like multiple things kind of boiling up to just like, I am not gonna download this. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:07:01):
My son. I have to, because my son is a TikTok star, 2.2 million followers
Paris Martineau (01:07:08):
Drop the handle, Leo.
Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
Yeah. Well I think everybody knows by now it's salt Hank. In fact, he's so famous now in TikTok that people are saying to me, do you know, are you related to salt, Hank? So it's, it's like it's, it's on, you know, the battle
Paris Martineau (01:07:26):
We, your home is technically a content house. <Laugh> it's not a content house. It's a content home.
Leo Laporte (01:07:32):
Well he's 27. He's not living with me. He's not a although, oh, although I have to say a lot of his videos are shot in his mother's kitchen because she has such a nice kitchen. He borrows her kitchen. 2.1 million followers, 35 and a half million likes. So all of our best cooking recipes are now known by China.
Paris Martineau (01:07:54):
Mm dangerous.
Leo Laporte (01:07:55):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> the world will never be the same. I have to talk to this young man. This is Emily Baker White's story in Buzzfeed. They, they discovered this leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meeting shows that us user data has been repeatedly accessed from China. <Laugh> get ready. I feel like with these tools, there's some backdoor to access user data and almost all of them says an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information like Americans' birthdays and phone numbers. If I get a call from China, then I'll know, especially if they call me to say happy birthday God, your birthday, then it'll be, I just, then it'll be obvious.
Owen Thomas (01:08:41):
I just found Googling discover Ukraine, misinformation on TikTok. So, you know, I, I think there are real world.
Leo Laporte (01:08:50):
There's a legit. No, I agree. It's not that China is spying on us so much as that TikTok, like any social media can be used to spread disinformation to propaganda. I don't think you could elect the next us president with TikTok. You might say that, you know, president Trump in 2016 was elected, not solely, but with a lot of help from Facebook and TWiTtter. Right. but I don't think TikTok could elect somebody. Do you think the Chinese are gonna say, oh, let's, you know, let's elect Biden. He's our puppet. So he should win in 20, 24 and then there'll be all these positive Biden tos. I don't think so.
Owen Thomas (01:09:31):
I, I think it's more subtle, right? It's like, you know, if you, if you just kind of pull an Elon Musk and say, oh, free speech, you know, we're just letting people express them themselves. And, and you just take your foot off the, you know, off the break a little and let things spread. Does that do enough by itself? So you don't have to actively promote this stuff. You just kind of, you know, like neglect it and right. You
Leo Laporte (01:09:56):
Know, well, that's what Ted Cruz says. He says, TikTok is quote, a Trojan horse. The Chinese communist party can use to influence what Americans see here. And ultimately think, I just think it's a great way to learn how to make a sandwich <laugh> but <laugh>, but you know, that's me talk's response to this. And I don't know if this is better, was to move all of the Americans data to Oracle. So now who would you rather have this information? The Chinese government or Oracle,
Owen Thomas (01:10:33):
Have you read that that recent story about how Larry Ellison runs the island of Lanai, which he, he owns 90. He owns the whole island. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:10:44):
Tell me about it. And it's beautiful island.
Owen Thomas (01:10:46):
I believe it was in Forbes. It's Bloomberg business week. I've got the cover. Oh, sorry. Sitting next to me. Bloomberg business
Leo Laporte (01:10:53):
To read it. Oh, show us the cover. It's actually on. Oh no, you don't have to get up. That's all right.
Owen Thomas (01:10:58):
My apologies to Bloomberg business week. But it's,
Leo Laporte (01:11:01):
By the way we have a rule on TWiTtter that if you say that it has to be B big beatnik week <laugh> Lord of Lanai, big be week.
Owen Thomas (01:11:12):
So now he's the Lord of Lanai and the Tyran of TikTok,
Leo Laporte (01:11:16):
Tyron of TikTok, the Lord of Lanai, the Oracle billionaires, making his Hawaiian island more hospitable to the super rich and pushing out families that have been there for generations. Well, that's the story of Hawaii, frankly for the last 500 years was Lanai the leper island or no, that was Malachi.
Owen Thomas (01:11:37):
Machi. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:11:37):
Yeah. But there's still people who've been living there for quite a while. Here's a guy named Andrews who does not look like a native Hawaiian. He was kicked out of his house in the past year, but I gotta point out Andrews', you know, four bears, probably an English sailor kicked some other native Hawaiian outta their house. This is the story of Hawaii, sad to say, wow. Oh, I didn't see. When I looked at your cover that he's wearing what are those nickers? What do you call that? When the,
Owen Thomas (01:12:09):
So it looks like a little Lord font, Loy pans, it
Leo Laporte (01:12:14):
Pans he's wearing pan
Owen Thomas (01:12:15):
Balloons. I love that
Leo Laporte (01:12:18):
Pans. A black turtleneck.
Owen Thomas (01:12:20):
<Laugh> little Lord Ellison. Little
Leo Laporte (01:12:23):
Lord Larry. Yeah. I think's where gates got married many moons ago. Didn't he get married on Lanai. They had a private wedding there and all the famous fancy people. He also, I think he's built isn't that? Where the Ritz, the new Ritz Carlton Lanai is there. Yeah, there it is. That's the four seasons. I mean,
Owen Thomas (01:12:48):
They've got two of them.
Leo Laporte (01:12:49):
Yeah. Can cost thousands or tens of thousands.
Owen Thomas (01:12:52):
Isn't that? Eight seasons technically <laugh> is two, four
Leo Laporte (01:12:58):
Seasons,
Owen Thomas (01:12:58):
Eight seasons <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:13:00):
And where do the extra seasons go
Owen Thomas (01:13:01):
Or is it exponential? Is it
Leo Laporte (01:13:03):
16? All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little fact checking or a little real time fact checking. I'm gonna try to book a room at the four seasons Lanai and just see how much let's check the rates at the four seasons Lanai. When, when should we stay? We'll get two rooms, one one, one for the boys, one for the girl. How about, how
Owen Thomas (01:13:25):
About around Christmas time?
Leo Laporte (01:13:26):
That's high Christmas time. Okay. Yeah. All right. Is that high season? All right, that's gonna be more expensive. Look by the way it's booked for the next couple of months. There's no availability. Oh, let's check rates again. Oh, best rate guarantee. I guess I pushed a button. What what's going on here? Choose your room. Do I want lead with care? What room do I? I don't know. This. Didn't gimme a room. Let's get one. When I, when there's a room available, change search. Sorry. Real time. Checking can be very costly. You said Christmas,
Owen Thomas (01:14:02):
Go, go for the ally. Royal spring, Christmas in
Leo Laporte (01:14:05):
Lanai, Christmas in Lanai. Looks like, oh, can you go backwards? Oh yeah, there we go. Let's go. The 23rd. What do you say? And we'll stay straight through boxing day. See how much that's gonna cost us by the way they want to. We're sorry. There are no rooms available for you. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (01:14:27):
Oh, I think they've realized your SLS, a talker.
Leo Laporte (01:14:32):
You you're well, they know, right? Don't they know cuz Oracle now has the data. Let me go back a little bit. That Christmas is booked. Let's try October. Let's go for Halloween.
Owen Thomas (01:14:44):
Oh, you the at least they're going to throw in a flight from Honolulu to Lanai for
Leo Laporte (01:14:49):
Free. Well, they have to, it's not Lai. You can't,
Owen Thomas (01:14:52):
You can't get there.
Leo Laporte (01:14:53):
Otherwise can't get there from here. Does
Owen Thomas (01:14:55):
Larry own the airline too?
Leo Laporte (01:14:56):
Oh, it is expensive. Prime motions. Prime front room $2,776 a night. Wait a minute though. Wait a minute, though. If I'm willing to go with a garden view, it's only $1,500 a night. That's not
Paris Martineau (01:15:10):
How much is it? If you pay in Bitcoin?
Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
<Laugh> it's one Bitcoin a night. I wonder if I can pay in Bitcoin. <Laugh> these are nice. The Palais suite. Yeah, these are, these are the rooms. They don't tell you the price. If you have to ask you can't afford it. Just call us. We'll we'll get you. We'll get you set up.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:15:32):
Just, just give us
Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Your
Paris Martineau (01:15:34):
Black call them and ask
Sam Abuelsamid (01:15:35):
We'll take care of the rest.
Leo Laporte (01:15:36):
Yeah. Hello. I'm calling for who should I be calling? I'm calling for Mr. Bill gates. No, you Don. You don't wanna be that rich. Just kind of, sort of rich. I'm calling for Eric Adams, mayor of the New York city. I have a Bitcoin and I'm not afraid to use it.
Paris Martineau (01:15:52):
Wants to know how many seasons it would be if you doubled it up. Would that be eight seasons? Is
Leo Laporte (01:15:57):
That eight seasons you have now? All right, let's see.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:16:01):
You can get an Ohana ocean front suite in August for only $6,000 a night.
Leo Laporte (01:16:05):
Oh, that sounds great. That's August though is not great. Right? What happened? What's that? No. What
Paris Martineau (01:16:13):
Is think? My,
Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
Your S here's camera's dying. I'm
Paris Martineau (01:16:18):
It winds his,
Leo Laporte (01:16:19):
The
Sam Abuelsamid (01:16:19):
Camera, probably the sensor over
Leo Laporte (01:16:21):
You. All right. She was so proud of the fact that she had a cannon rebel camera for her camera, but it's apparently given up the ghost. It might have, it might have overheated. So let's take a break. You
Sam Abuelsamid (01:16:31):
Can't, you can't record video on those DSLs for that
Leo Laporte (01:16:33):
Things are cooling off. While we talk about it, pro TV more Paris, I feel terrible. Our show today brought to you by it pro TV, your it team needs the skills and knowledge to ensure your business' success. We talk about it pro TV all the time, as a great way to get into it. If you are not working in it, but you want to get the certifications that help you get that first job or get the training. But it's also great for people who are already it professionals, especially if you've got an it team, cuz you know, the business is constantly changing. There's there's always new stuff to learn. You want 'em to learn about security. You wanna learn about a cloud. This is a great way to get training for your team. Get 'em re-certified get 'em the education they need. And here's something you can get for your team that they will love more than 80% of it.
Leo Laporte (01:17:25):
Pro TV users who start a video, actually finish it. They love it. It's engaging. It's binge worthy content. The videos are 20 to 30 minutes long. So you can do it during a lunch break. You can do it. You know, at, at home you can do it anytime, anywhere they're the, the trainers at it pro TV are of course experts in the field, but they're also passionate. They love what they're talking about so much that they make it fun. They make it engaging. Look, the tech industry is changing rapidly, constantly evolving. Your team needs to evolve too. To keep up. There's a new software release. There's a new system upgrade. There's a new cyber threat. It pro TV offers the training that they need to keep up on these disruptions and they do it in a way. That's fun. That's easy to use. You can get all your training and search done in one place.
Leo Laporte (01:18:14):
Cuz they've got every vendor and skill you need for it. Team training, Microsoft, Cisco Linux, apple security cloud, and more and more 5,800 hours worth of training. And it's up to date. They've got seven studios running all day and all night. Well, not all night, but all day to create the content that goes in the library within 24 hours of its recording. So it's always up to date and you'll love the business plan dashboard with let you track your team results. You can manage seats on an assign and assign team members, access monthly usage reports, make sure your team's using it effectively. You see metrics like logins, then viewing time and tracks completed and more their reporting's great. So you could show the boss, look, we're getting the value outta this. People are learning. So you get the insight into your team's viewing patterns and progress with beautiful visual reports.
Leo Laporte (01:19:03):
You can assign full courses or individual episodes within the courses. Every course has a beautiful transcript. So it's easy to find the part of the course that your team needs training in. You can assign individuals, subsets of users, whole teams. And of course it pro TV has great individual plans to give your team the it development platform. They need to level up their skills while enjoying the journey for teams of two to a thousand and volume discounts start at five seats, go to it pro.tv/TWiT for 30% off or more on a business plan. And all you have to do is say TWiT 30 to your account executive and actually individuals that works too 30% off or more on a business plan. Just remember that offer code TWiT three, zero it pro.tv/TWiT. Let me thank 'em so much for their support of this week in tech, you support us too, by the way, when you use that offer code TWiT 30 and you go to that address. So they know you saw it here, it pro.tv/so what'd you do Paris. Did you, did you blow on it? Did you cool it off or
Paris Martineau (01:20:12):
I I just turned it on and turned it off. Oh, I turned it off and turned it on again. Gave it the old
Leo Laporte (01:20:17):
Router every hour and a half. It's gonna do that. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (01:20:21):
Listen. I mean, when the talk is this spicy, it
Leo Laporte (01:20:24):
Gets over it's it, it, it got all excited about going to Hawaii. Let's talk about this because we've got Sam here. Auto guy, Samal Sam principal research at guide house insights, podcast host at wheel bearings.media, the folks at the national highway transportation safety administration, we call 'em NITSA have put out their standing general order on crash reporting. They're investigating crashes on advanced driver assist systems Teslas. Are they particularly looking at Tesla or just all a
Sam Abuelsamid (01:21:05):
Systems? Well, this, this came the, the order originally came out a year ago after they started doing an investigation into a couple of dozen Teslas that had crashed into stationary firetruck and police vehicles,
Leo Laporte (01:21:20):
Emergency vehicle vehicles while
Sam Abuelsamid (01:21:22):
On while on autopilot. Yeah. Yeah. And so this particular order applies to all automakers suppliers and companies developing automated driving systems. So this includes companies like Waymo and cruise and Argo AI and, and others. And what they have to do is within 24 hours of finding out, they have to report any crashes that involve either driver assistance or automated driving system being active within 30 seconds of the crash. So if the system was active and then shuts off and, and then within 30 seconds you have a crash, they have to report
Leo Laporte (01:22:00):
That. Why then was it that anybody was, you know, switching 'em off right before a crash?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:22:07):
Well it's not so much that people were switching them off, but there's been a lot of speculation. You know, there's been a lot of reports over the years from Tesla owners in particular that got into crashes and they said you know, my, my car, it was an autopilot and it crashed. And you know, Tesla looked at the data and said, Nope, autopilot was not active at the time of the crash, but despite lots of questions over the years. And I know I asked Tesla multiple times over the years, you know, in any of these crashes was the system active, you know, a few seconds before the crash because the, the user interface in these cars is often not entirely clear what mode you're in. It's not, it's not obvious meant much of the time if the system has deactivated. And if you weren't paying enough attention that, you know, you might think that it was still active and then, you know, you get a crash and you think it's active, but it wasn't, which is why they, a, why NSA asked for it to be the data to be any, any time the system was active within 30 seconds of a crash
Leo Laporte (01:23:08):
I had heard, and maybe this is a scarless allegation that Tesla was intentionally doing that. So that Elon could say completely accurately as he has done many times self-driving was not turned on at the time of the crash. Is that, is that just scarless or is, or you think there's some merit in it?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:23:32):
I, I don't think that they would intentionally turn it off or, I mean, it's entirely possible. They might fudge the data. I, you know, I'm not accusing them of that, but I think what is very reasonable is that, you know, in a lot of these situations, the system did deactivate, you know, when the car was going down the road, the driver thought it was still active and, you know, did not take control when they should have, and then the car crashed. And this is why I think it's important to have this data. Unfortunately. the other thing that NSA did is they allowed these companies to declare certain bits of information confidential business information. And so while the, the data is reported to NSA when they, when NITSA finally released the first batch of this data this week you know, there were about 393 crashes that were reported 273 of which involved Tesla vehicles
Leo Laporte (01:24:31):
Here. Here's the graph. Is this because Tesla reports more accurately more often? Or is,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:24:38):
Is it more, more, I don't think so. Yeah. I, I think, I think it's, you know, that they're, they're just crashing more frequently
Leo Laporte (01:24:43):
Is that because, well, I mean, they have more cars with a S out there don't they?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:24:50):
No, no, not really. Not necessarily. You know, because this includes, you know, a wide variety of different systems and, you know, they're like, for example, the Hondas, you know, the, the next second highest number was Honda with 90. But you know, arguably the, you know, the Honda vehicles shouldn't have even been included in here because you know, what they call level two systems are systems that control both steering and speed. And if the if the you know, the Honda, the Honda system, the two systems, the, the steering control, the lane keeping assist and the speed control are, are separate systems. They're not consolidated. And, but, you know, the thing is I looked through the data and I read through the, the, the, the Excel file that they, that they released. And in the descriptions of the crashes, I looked at all the Honda crashes.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:25:39):
None of them were, none of the crashes were actually cases where the, the, a ask was the problem. It was always, you know, the car was, you know, had adaptive cruises control and lane keeping assist on, went through an intersection and a car ran, ran a stop sign and struck the car in the side, you know, things like that. So it was all unrelated stuff, but because NITSA allowed information to be redacted. I looked through all 273 Tesla related crashes. They redacted the descriptions. So we haven't, you know, NITSA has the data, but we cannot, we do not know what happened in those.
Leo Laporte (01:26:17):
So these gray wedges of this pie on on these crashes, unknown means not that NITSA doesn't know, but they're not telling
Sam Abuelsamid (01:26:27):
Well, in, in some, in some cases they, they actually don't know. Okay. You know, because it, it depends, you know, it depends on how the data was reported. So there's cases where they, they actually don't know what the root cause was. This
Leo Laporte (01:26:39):
Is a really interesting, I mean, very complete, I like driver assist systems. I've used them on Teslas. I've used them on Audi. I have it now in my Ford ma you know, that's adaptive cruise control. That's, that's an a ass system, isn't it?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:26:54):
Yeah, no, it absolutely is where
Leo Laporte (01:26:56):
It slows down. When the cars in front of you slow down and speeds up when they speed up lane changing is available in blue crews and GMs whatever crew they call that one super cruise, super cruise right. You, the automatic lane changing, that would be a DAS. Does anybody attempt to do as much as Tesla does though? The, their, their autopilot is works for instance, not just on highways, like super crews and blue crews, but on city streets, supposedly it, it sees stop signs and stoplights and, and reacts properly to them. Is anybody, anybody
Sam Abuelsamid (01:27:34):
Else sees them? It doesn't necessarily react
Leo Laporte (01:27:36):
Properly. I know sometimes it, doesn't,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:27:38):
There's two, two different things there. Yeah. yeah, nobody's gone.
Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
He sees is these speed limit signs and reacts to those? Yeah.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:27:45):
Yeah. I mean, no, no one has gone as far as what Tesla has done, at least from a marketing perspective.
Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
And maybe that's part of the problem is that
Sam Abuelsamid (01:27:56):
Tesla
Leo Laporte (01:27:56):
Tells you it's, it's an autopilot. So Tesla drivers,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:28:00):
And that is a rely, that's a fundamental problem here. Yeah. You is the way that they brand it. You know, both blue crews and super crews allow actual hands free driving. So you can take your hands off the wheel. You still have to watch the road technically with autopilot. You're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel at all times. It's not supposed to be hands free and they don't, which doesn't sound monitoring.
Leo Laporte (01:28:23):
Right. Sorry, owner Owen.
Owen Thomas (01:28:25):
Oh, it just, you know, autopilot suggests that like, right. You know, you can,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:28:30):
Which is exactly why you have these crashes because people assume that it's capable of more than it actually is.
Leo Laporte (01:28:38):
Yeah. That's, that's a marketing problem. Yeah, it shouldn't be called auto autopilot, blue crews, super crews. Those don't imply that the plane will fly itself.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:28:48):
Sam is,
Owen Thomas (01:28:49):
Is there a secrecy problem in the self-driving industry? Because I saw that Waymo has also been trying to redact crash data in this case it's data that it reported to the California DMV. Someone sought that data. And now Waymo's trying to redact it. It's, you know, are these, do you feel like these companies have a legitimate trade secrets argument here? Or is it just a smoke screen because they're embarrassed?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:29:17):
I think it's, I think it's a smoke screen. I don't, you know, when it comes to crashes I think that, you know, everything should be public. There, you know, especially with these types of systems, because we don't, we, no one has proven, you know, that these systems are actually even as safe as human drivers yet, you know, and we cannot prove that UN until we have this data you know, at least, you know, they are giving the data to government, to, to regulators. So at least the regulators have access to the data. But I think that, you know, it should be public. The, the, I think we have a right to know because these companies are doing experiments on public roads around other road users that have not consented to be part of an experiment. I mean, did you sign off saying, yeah, I'm okay with Tesla testing full self-driving around me or Waymo or cruise or anybody else. I certainly didn't. And so, you know, I think if they're going to test on public roads, around other users, all of this information about how and when, and why they crashed should be public. I think we have a right to know that information. I mean, we don't necessarily have a right to know, you know, all the, the source code and the specific, you know, all the details of necessarily why it crashed or what went wrong. But I think we should have a right to know what happened and, and where
Leo Laporte (01:30:43):
Well, and that's what it says standing general order says, right? You have to, you must report. Yes. And so now is everybody complying, presumably they are
Sam Abuelsamid (01:30:53):
To the best we can tell. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, te Tesla has submitted, you know, two reports on 273 crashes in the past 11 months. So that's, you know, that's a good start.
Leo Laporte (01:31:02):
I mean, there are tens of thousands of crashes. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> every month,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:31:07):
It's about, it's about six. This is about six and a half million crashes a year in the United States.
Leo Laporte (01:31:10):
Yeah. So, and, and worldwide, a million people die every year from auto mm-hmm <affirmative> crash. So it's, I mean, I doesn't mean these are not safe. They may be much safer than a human driver.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:31:25):
Well, you know, it depends, you know, it depends on you have to do, there's a lot of different driving scenarios, a lot of different conditions and not all are equally challenging some, but,
Leo Laporte (01:31:38):
But what this doesn't
Sam Abuelsamid (01:31:39):
Report
Leo Laporte (01:31:40):
Than others, how many lives were saved by ADA that a human driver might have, you know, caused a collision.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:31:48):
That's true. I mean, it's hard. We don't know that prove a negative. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to prove a negative. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:31:52):
You can't, we can't know that. I understand, you know, if, but it may be the case that infected it's saving lives. We don't know it. Maybe.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:31:59):
Yeah. We don't, we don't have any evidence to that, to that effect that to that's the problem. Yeah. You know, we need, we need more data to understand, you know, in the, in the scenarios where these systems are being used, are they actually safer? Cuz you know, I mean driving, driving in, you know, urban environments, you know, at relatively slow speeds, you tend to have a lot of crashes, but they tend not to be fatal. Right. Most, you know, half more than half of crashes are happening on rural
Leo Laporte (01:32:27):
Roads, but there's a lot of idiots <laugh> oh yeah. Driving 78 miles an hour down a down the highway causing wrecks, causing injuries and death humans. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so I, that, I guess we also
Sam Abuelsamid (01:32:42):
Drive over 3 trillion miles a year.
Leo Laporte (01:32:44):
Well I understand the United States. I GU I mean, but the, we can't, we don't know because we can't know if this is a, if a S is, is a positive or a negative, right. We don't know that, that this information doesn't. So it's important to remember that will Nitza use this information to regulate or what's the intent of this
Sam Abuelsamid (01:33:02):
That's that's the, that's the long term plan, you know, up to now, they've never really collected data on the efficacy of these driver assist systems. So this is the first time that they're really getting, you know, some hard data from the industry about how effective these systems actually are. And you know, so they're gonna be taking a, a close look at this data to try to understand, you know, where do they work? Where do these systems not work and you know, what, if anything needs to be regulated, right? How, or, or, you know, how do, how do we create standards for the performance of these
Leo Laporte (01:33:37):
Systems? We're somewhat immune because, because this happens all the time to the number of auto deaths, crashes and incidents that happen all the time constantly. And, and, and so it's, it's an easy thing to be fooled. For instance, when you talk about electric vehicle fires, it scares people until they remember that there are gas vehicle fires all the time. It's not
Sam Abuelsamid (01:34:05):
200,000 a year,
Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
200,000 a year. So <affirmative> it's really important to remember, yeah. 273 Tesla accidents, but put it in context. We, and this is the problem is that we don't, we just really don't know if a S is a net positive or a negative. We, and we can't know that we don't know how many accidents were avoided by a S my experience as a driver is, and, but the way I pay attention, cause I don't trust the damn thing <laugh> but, but I just wise, which is the right, I think the right way to use
Sam Abuelsamid (01:34:35):
It. No, no one should be trusting this. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:34:36):
No, that's the right way to use it, but it is a help and there have been many times, and I bet you, everybody watching has had an experience. If you have one of these cars that stops before you hit a car in front of you or a pedestrian, my daughter, how often are you accidentally? Almost heading pedestrian? Well, yeah, not a lot, but it happens. Right. Have you ever, well, do you drive Paris first of all, do you drive? I think you bicycle, so you don't. No
Paris Martineau (01:35:01):
It's yeah. I was gonna say, I can quiet during this as the Brooklyn or
Leo Laporte (01:35:04):
Who has a e-bike and, and,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:35:08):
Well, let's let's
Leo Laporte (01:35:08):
If there weren't so many cars
Sam Abuelsamid (01:35:09):
Everywhere, how many times have you almost been hit? Like a car? Yeah. There you
Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
Go. Oh, all the time. All the time. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and I, I think that these new technologies where cars stop before they, you know, I'll tell you what my car has stopped me two or three times from backing into traffic. It has a big beeper that says there's cross traffic. And I go, whoa, I didn't see that one. So I, I think you can probably make a strong case that these things used properly are a net plus.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:35:39):
And, and I think, you know, things like blind spot monitoring and cross traffic alert are huge. You know, they, they are truly valuable and they are truly beneficial and they're relatively low cost, but you know, some of the other stuff, especially if you treat it as if it's self-driving yeah. That's the, when it's not that's, that's
Leo Laporte (01:35:56):
My autopilot's a bad choice we had, there is a curve. We, I drive down on the way to San Francisco that my Tesla would invariably try to pull me into the wall because it just got confused. But I know that, and I had my hands on the wheel and when it started to veer out of the lane, I would pull it back into the lane. It'd be fine.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:36:14):
But, but look at the case of Walter Wong, the, the apple engineer, that's tragic, tragic who died in, in 2018. Yeah. Yeah. He drove his Tesla every day. He had multiple instances of on autopilot trying to pull him into that same spot, same divide on that media, that interchange yeah. Where he ultimately died. Yeah. You know, and he reported it to Tesla and, you know, and yet he continued to use the system.
Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
That's the
Sam Abuelsamid (01:36:39):
Problem in a way, you know, and that's yeah. The, the, you know, again, it comes back to the human behavior humans because of the, the expectation, the, the, the erroneous expectation we have about the capabilities of these systems.
Leo Laporte (01:36:51):
I have not, I'm just happy to say <laugh> the cause of any accidents in my life. I've been in a few, but it's always rear-ended or some, you know, somebody ran, ran into me. But I do use those, especially on highway stop and go traffic. I've used the Tesla lane change mechanism. I don't, I never had a full self driving Tesla, but I felt like those made me better drivers because it just, you know, and by the way, one of the best features of automatic cruise control is it, it actually keeps more, more car lengths between you and the car in front of you. It keeps the proper amount humans never do. Right. Humans are always tailgating because we don't, we're not, we can't adjust to the idea that you're not gonna be able to stop in 60 feet. You know, you you're going too fast. But the car knows it. And so I let the car determine the, the distance from the car ahead of me. And of course, I'm
Sam Abuelsamid (01:37:46):
Trying
Owen Thomas (01:37:46):
To remember, driver's ed aren't you, you know, is in like
Sam Abuelsamid (01:37:49):
Six seconds, 2, 2, 2 second rule
Leo Laporte (01:37:52):
Two second rule. Yeah. But I mean, how are you gonna
Sam Abuelsamid (01:37:54):
Time that, that, that distance, that distance depends on your speed. You know, what speed you're going, right. You know, the, the car
Leo Laporte (01:37:59):
Does it
Sam Abuelsamid (01:38:00):
Perfect a lot more ground in two seconds at 70 miles an hour than 20
Leo Laporte (01:38:03):
The car I'm presuming does it perfectly. And so I trust it and it's a lot farther than I do
Sam Abuelsamid (01:38:08):
Otherwise, unless it's not using radar. If it's only using cameras, which is what Tesla does now, they, they stopped using radar. Then, you know, then it is actually does actually actually doesn't do a very good job of, and can't do a very good job of distance measurement, which is also why they have a problem with PTO breaking interesting, randomly slamming on the brakes when there's nothing there
Leo Laporte (01:38:29):
That happened to at Lisa hated that that happened to her all the time in her Tesla in our Tesla. And she actually was the one who said, you can never buy another Tesla. <Laugh> because of a number of automated systems that failed her. <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (01:38:45):
I like in the in the chat, ch only says, if you leave the gap, a blue BMW will fill it.
Leo Laporte (01:38:50):
Well, that by the way is exactly right. Cuz I leave exact, you know, it's sometimes it's five or six lengths and inevitably somebody says, oh, that's nice. Thank you for letting me in. And now I have to, to slow down, but
Sam Abuelsamid (01:39:02):
You're, you're you're mock E you know, one of the features it's using radar, it actually has, it has five radar sensors. It's got a long range radar in the front and then four medium range, corner radars. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that it uses to detect cut ins. So if a blue BMW or anybody else slow down, goes in there, you know, it will open up that gap and let them in.
Leo Laporte (01:39:21):
I, I feel much safer in my mock, but it doesn't attempt to do as much. I don't have blue cruise yet. It doesn't attempt to do as much. So
Owen Thomas (01:39:29):
The irony is the, those people who are weaving in and out and switching lanes. I remember a study. I read once that, like they don't gain any advantage. Of
Sam Abuelsamid (01:39:37):
Course,
Leo Laporte (01:39:38):
Knife,
Owen Thomas (01:39:38):
Like getting, getting where they're going any faster. So yeah, maybe we should let the com you know, let the robots just drive us and you know,
Leo Laporte (01:39:46):
I'm gonna get shot probably these days. Cause when somebody does that, they weave in and out of traffic and they go by me and, and then they're at the stoplight and I catch up with them. I always wave at them. <Laugh> I know that somebody's
Sam Abuelsamid (01:39:58):
You don't, you don't wanna do that. No
Leo Laporte (01:40:00):
Road rage is real. Ugh. Do <laugh> do you, do you have a driver's license Paris or you just completely CA or just,
Paris Martineau (01:40:09):
Oh, I have a driver's license. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:40:11):
So you could, if you wanted to
Paris Martineau (01:40:12):
People I know here I could, if I want to, I'd have no interest in driving in New York city.
Leo Laporte (01:40:16):
Cause you don't need, but you also don't need to there's good mass transit. There's. I mean, you don't need to, I would ride my bike everywhere if I didn't worry about people with aid ask hitting me. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (01:40:29):
I mean, I'm the one thing I'm really
Sam Abuelsamid (01:40:30):
Excited. It's only cuz there's so many Teslas in your area.
Leo Laporte (01:40:32):
Yeah. Right. Go ahead.
Paris Martineau (01:40:33):
I'm really excited to see what this technology does to the trucking industry over the next five.
Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
That's where we're gonna see. So I
Paris Martineau (01:40:39):
Think, I think that is the area where we're going to see leaps and bounds because I mean, that is one area we're talking about. Fatality rates trucking is a dangerous endeavor. I mean, for the people around the truck for truck drivers, they often end up falling asleep. They're paid very low wages, having a robust, not quite autopilot. Cause I think that's still even gonna be a ways off in five, 10 years, but having a robust driving assistant like program would make such noticeable difference in trucking
Leo Laporte (01:41:11):
Fatalities, wall street journal article this week, Christopher Mims self-driving big rigs are coming. Is America ready? Do these have safety drivers or are they com like there's no human involved to,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:41:23):
To today. They are still running with safety drivers. But by the end of 2023 or first half of 2024, there are several companies that are expecting to start driver out operations, at least in certain regions like around Texas, you know, around the Southwest where the, the weather's good, the roads are relatively flat. You've got good visibility.
Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
So there's an AI driving the truck the whole way.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:41:53):
It's, it's a combination of AI and deterministic software.
Leo Laporte (01:41:57):
Is there somebody back at the home office
Sam Abuelsamid (01:41:59):
Can get AI by its
Leo Laporte (01:42:00):
Own? Is there somebody at the home office who can take over or anything?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:42:04):
Yeah. They, they all, all of these systems, whether it's on a light duty vehicle or a big rig have tele some sort of teleoperation or remote operation capability so that, you know, if the truck gets into a situation that it doesn't know how to handle, it can basically call, call back to base and say, Hey, I need you to, to take control. And so remote operator will, in most cases, it'll, you know, it'll be, you know, looking at the sensor data and giving it some hints, you know, and this is designed for things like construction zones or, you know, other things like that, where it's not quite sure what it should be doing.
Leo Laporte (01:42:40):
And what happens when it gets to the offramp does it driver take over or does the
Sam Abuelsamid (01:42:45):
No. Well, I mean, you know, if there's no driver in the vehicle, there's nobody to take over. So these systems most right now, mostly are being designed to go hub to hub, you know, where the, the, the Depot is located close, relatively close to the off ramp. So within a half mile to a mile, the offramp, so it'll take the, offramp pull into a Depot and then, you know, maybe their a driver will, will jump depending on what it is. They may transfer freight to another vehicle or to, to smaller vehicles for last mile delivery. Or, you know, a human driver may take over to, to do the, the final leg of the trip.
Leo Laporte (01:43:23):
Wow. And I presume that these AI will be less aggressive than human drivers that they'll oh yeah. They'll be willing to
Sam Abuelsamid (01:43:32):
No, no mad max modes.
Leo Laporte (01:43:33):
Yeah. And they're gonna follow the speed limit and they're gonna stay on the right. You know, the worst thing is when you see a big rig passing other big rigs or other cars, even because he wants to go, the speed limit terrifies me.
Paris Martineau (01:43:48):
Yeah. I mean, and it's kind of a, a part of the issue is I guess, based on the fact that you have human drivers, that of course have to sleep and oftentimes are being paid, you know, by the mile or being paid based on whether or not they can get there in a certain amount of time. So you have all these things baked into the system that often lead to folks being forced to drive on little sleep and speed and pass cars on the left hand side. When they shouldn't be, if you have just a autonomous vehicle taking these sort of trips, it should be all baked in. There shouldn't be any unnecessary speeding, because it is leaving from point a to point B with no stops.
Leo Laporte (01:44:28):
And I want it to be passive <laugh> I don't want it to be aggressive. I want it to just say, okay, do Fifi, we'll get there eventually, by the way, how I drive,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:44:40):
Because if the truck's, you know, if it's driving at the truck speed limit you know, it's not, you know, the, the, the autonomous, system's not gonna get tired. It's not gonna get distracted. Yeah. You know, human driver, human truck drivers are they're limited to 10 hours a day of driving. Right. Right. And, you know, then they have to have a certain, there's a mandated break period before they can drive again. And they use electronic data loggers now for that. So, you know, automating that long haul part, you know, and you know, it's real, there's a shortage of truck drivers, which is part of the supply chain problem we have. And there has been a shortage.
Paris Martineau (01:45:16):
I mean, there's been a shortage since like the seventies or eighties, it's been an issue it's they deregulated the industry. Cause it's a
Sam Abuelsamid (01:45:22):
Really difficult job. Yeah. It's, hard's hard to recruit drivers. You know, they don't want, no people don't wanna do this job, or most people don't wanna do this job
Leo Laporte (01:45:27):
Blame that com or
Paris Martineau (01:45:28):
At least for the amount that they're being paid, because it's like Penns often it's
Leo Laporte (01:45:33):
Jimmy Carter's fault. And I blame him for deregulating. I always
Paris Martineau (01:45:36):
Blame
Leo Laporte (01:45:37):
Jimmy Carter, like Jimmy, my general life, somebody, the chat room says it being a trucker is a terrible job. Since that com Carter deregulated the industry alone. <Laugh>
Owen Thomas (01:45:47):
What if they that's that voice for the 67
Leo Laporte (01:45:50):
Year old? Yeah. Same one. <Laugh> by the way, took these I'm
Owen Thomas (01:45:53):
Five trucks.
Leo Laporte (01:45:54):
I should not mock 67 year olds. <Laugh> okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead Owen. Oh, sorry.
Owen Thomas (01:46:00):
What if they took these trucks and like linked them together and like, what if they put them on a dedicated,
Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
I believe that's called you're describing a train train. Yeah. It's it's called a train.
Owen Thomas (01:46:10):
I'm just waiting for reinvented. No, that's
Sam Abuelsamid (01:46:13):
Yeah. That's, that's a ridiculous idea. You, what you need to do is, is dig a hole in the ground and put them in there. There you
Leo Laporte (01:46:18):
Go. Tunnel tunnel all the way. Let's take a little break. I do wanna talk about AI cuz of course lamb does been in the news and we've talked about that already on the show, but I'm just, I feel like it's gonna sneak up us on, on us. And that's what really we're talking about. It's sneaking up on us bit by bit. So let's take a little break. We'll do that in just a second. I want to talk a little bit about user way.org. Very proud to have user way on our website@TWiT.tv. Because after all, not only do you have a legal obligation to users with disabilities, you have a moral obligation and a business reason to make your site accessible, watch user way.org. I'm talking about making your website, ADA compliant, accessible. Not only is it the right thing to do because you're opening up your website to a much larger group, 60 million plus people, you have a responsibility to make your site accessible.
Leo Laporte (01:47:16):
It's a public entity. So you gotta make it accessible. And with user way it's easy. That was my biggest concern was, oh, I can't afford it. Or it's gonna be too hard. No user way' really affordable. And it's really easy. An incredible it's AI powered it tirelessly enforces all the accessibility guidelines though. W C a G WCA guidelines. And I love this. So do our engineers. It's one line of JavaScript. That's it? Because user way is so good. It's used by more than a million websites, including the big guys Coca-Cola Disney eBay. These are companies that really have to be accessible and user way can do that. As you get bigger, they scale with you. If they can handle Disney, absolutely they can handle you. They make best in class enterprise level accessibility tools available to you, your small or medium sized business. And then as you scale, you need user way and you're ready.
Leo Laporte (01:48:08):
It just makes business sense. Some of the biggest problems, nav menus, very difficult. So the way this works, if you're blind or you're using accessibility tools, there is what they call an accessibility layer. That's what the screen reader sees. So really what user way does, is make sure that all the information available to the front page to the cited user is available to the browser in the accessibility layer. It changes colors. Now you've got your pan tone color for your business. Of course we do too. Doesn't change that, but it adjusts hu and luminance. So it's easier for people with vision issues to read. So user way will generate all tags. That's one of the reasons it needs AI. It can actually see the picture and generate an all tag that matches the picture automatically. You can go in if you want, you can modify it.
Leo Laporte (01:48:53):
Of course it fixes violations like vague links, fixes, broken links, make sure that your website uses accessible colors and you'll get a detailed report of all the violations that were fixed on your website. So you know exactly what it did. Plus you can work with it user way, integrates seamlessly with your site builder software, let user way help your business. Meet its compliance goals. Improve the experience for your users user way can make any website fully accessible, ADA compliant and everyone who visits can browse seamlessly, customize it to fit their needs. It's a great way to show your brand's commitment to the millions of people with disabilities. It's the right thing to do user way can make any website fully accessible and ADA compliant with user way. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly and customize its FA their needs. It's also a perfect way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities.
Leo Laporte (01:49:50):
We're really proud to use user way on our pages, go to the bottom and you'll see that Vitruvian man, click on that and you'll see how many different ways you can make the page. Everybody can make the page easier to read user way.org/TWiT. Get 30% off user ways. AI powered accessibility solution user way, making the internet accessible for everyone user way.org/TWiTt. We thank him so much for the support of TWiTt Paris Martin. No is here from the information consistently the best $400 a year I spend <laugh> subscribing. Lovely. I love the information you guys do. Such a good job. Do you, will you ever get to do the Saturday piece? Cuz I love that
Paris Martineau (01:50:31):
I've been meaning to, it just requires me taking a minute away from the news we've we've started doing kind of a weekend section at the information, which is kind of magaziney. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:50:40):
I fantastic. Yeah. this week San Francisco's back sort of, I chose to be intentionally paranoid, a Adam Linsky, Ky navigates, AWS into MC cloudy future. So your startup died. This is my, one of my favorite stories for Corey. Yeah. You send it to C what
Paris Martineau (01:50:57):
Do you do? All that swag.
Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
Yeah. What do you do with all that swag? You send it to Christina Warren of course, inside the crypto stunt factory ABCs of summer. Good job. I love the information. Yeah. I wanna see you some of your stuff in there. You're busy. I guess you got,
Paris Martineau (01:51:13):
You know, yeah. I'd love that. Kate Clark. She just did this piece on kind of San Francisco being back, going into the startup land. Is it back though? Maybe? I mean, I don't know. I don't live there if you ask me probably dead, but <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (01:51:27):
It's one of the most beautiful cities. I love San Francisco. I lived there for a decade, loved living there, but that was a long time ago. 30
Paris Martineau (01:51:37):
I'll say years. Bring it back to our, I think pre-opening chat San Francisco features heavily in horizon forbidden west. Oh. And that everyone should play except for it's post postapocalyptic San Francisco. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:51:51):
I love San Francisco I'm and it, and there's things that make San Francisco fantastic. It's seven square miles. So it can't go beyond those borders. It's got beautiful views. It's got the bay, it's got the golden gate bridge. It's got great neighborhoods. It's of late been a little challenging to live there. I just, I, and I think some of that is because of income inequality, there's all these fabulously wealthy tech startup folks. And then there's a lot of, I mean, I
Paris Martineau (01:52:20):
Think it has to do with what you had just said. It's seven square miles. You've got very specific housing laws that are going to restrict the amount of kind of dense residential structures. So of course housing is very expensive because of that and a number of other reasons. And
Leo Laporte (01:52:37):
It's kinda like
Paris Martineau (01:52:38):
Brooklyn place to be kind of like Brooklyn.
Leo Laporte (01:52:40):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're, I mean, you know, don't cast too much shade because Brooklyn's gonna have the same problem. I, I think it's,
Paris Martineau (01:52:48):
Oh, Brooklyn, I mean,
Leo Laporte (01:52:49):
New York it's getting totally
Paris Martineau (01:52:50):
Ified. I think there was a recent report that the average apartment rent in Manhattan is $4,000 a month. Oh geez. For a one bedroom. And that one outta four new rentals has a bidding war going on. Wow. For the monthly rent. Wow. And I know anecdotally people who say they had their apartment, the rent raised by a thousand dollars, they went to go look for a new place. They put, they were like put down their application for an apartment. They were like, oh, sorry. Someone took it. Cuz they're willing to pay a thousand dollars more than the listed price.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:53:22):
That's 4,000. That's almost three times my mortgage payment.
Leo Laporte (01:53:26):
It's actually very close to what we pay here in the bay area, anywhere in the bay area. It's so expensive. Living
Paris Martineau (01:53:31):
Here. Love to just throw my money away
Leo Laporte (01:53:33):
Every month. Owen and Thomas loves this city, right? Owen and Thomas senior editor of protocol.
Owen Thomas (01:53:38):
Leo. I was practically late to late to the podcast because there were so many people on Columbus avenue. There was a street fair Christed
Leo Laporte (01:53:49):
I love north beach. North beach is I used to live on green in Montgomery. I love north beach.
Owen Thomas (01:53:55):
I, I mean you would, you would not have believed it. And
Leo Laporte (01:53:59):
It was beautiful.
Owen Thomas (01:54:00):
I bet it was yeah. Beautiful sunny day. Yeah. Streets were absolutely packed for this fair. Now the thing is though you get past the Transamerica pyramid and I mean it's a Sunday, so right there, there wouldn't be a lot of people downtown normally. But yeah, I mean the, the interesting thing is where we, where we are in the financial district, it is really busy actually on a, on a weekday. But when you cross market street down, you know, and get into Soma it's it does get a little dead like around, you know yeah. Around Salesforce tower. Yeah. A lot of, you know, the big tech companies who became the, you know, primary tenants of these office towers in, in the past decade, they're all on, you know, permanent remote or like hybrid very light on the office plans. And,
Sam Abuelsamid (01:54:49):
And maybe, maybe anybody wants to be there when the millennium tower falls over on <laugh>.
Owen Thomas (01:54:54):
Exactly. Oh my gosh. There's another tower that had like a flood. I don't know how
Leo Laporte (01:54:59):
The millennium tower we should explained is sinking because much of San Francisco is built on landfill from the gold rush days. And they're trying to shore it up. <Laugh> by digging underneath and putting sticks in there effectively.
Owen Thomas (01:55:14):
They didn't
Paris Martineau (01:55:15):
The phrase that the millennium tower is sinking into the landfill underneath San Francisco just really says a lot
Owen Thomas (01:55:21):
Sink
Sam Abuelsamid (01:55:21):
Sinking and tilting
Leo Laporte (01:55:22):
It's yeah. Well, part of it's, that's why it's tilting cuz one part's sinking faster than the other part. <Laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (01:55:29):
It's the new leaning tower of pizza.
Owen Thomas (01:55:32):
It's very horizon forbidden west.
Leo Laporte (01:55:34):
Yeah. I can't wait to play this game now that I know at San Francisco figures, large that's hysterical anyway.
Paris Martineau (01:55:40):
Takes a little bit to get there, but
Leo Laporte (01:55:43):
Okay. Well that gives me something to shoot for. That's the first one or the second one?
Paris Martineau (01:55:46):
That's the second
Leo Laporte (01:55:47):
One. Okay. The new one. Okay.
Paris Martineau (01:55:49):
Yeah, but there are a lot of other cities like there's post apocalyptic new like Las Vegas.
Leo Laporte (01:55:55):
Oh man. Las Vegas featured heavily and fallout. And that was a lot of fun to wander. Yeah. Wander through the post of
Paris Martineau (01:56:02):
ULA Las Vegas.
Leo Laporte (01:56:03):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Great to have you Owen senior editor protocol, which has become my, one of my everyday must reads really a great journal and it's free no, no pay wall, which I'm very grateful for. I do somes just
Sam Abuelsamid (01:56:19):
Sign up for our newsletters. Yep. That's a, that's all we
Leo Laporte (01:56:22):
Ask right now. Yep. That's great. And also Samal Sam, my car guy, principal researcher at guide house insights. He with Robbie and Nicole does that great wheel bearings podcast. If you love automobiles, you must get wheel bearings. Speaking of wheels, you were talking about carbon fiber wheels. Is that the next the next big thing?
Sam Abuelsamid (01:56:46):
Yeah. There's been a, a few cars that have been built with carbon fiber wheels. You can
Leo Laporte (01:56:51):
Rubber or just the wheels, not tires.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:56:54):
No, the wheel itself. Okay. So it's still rubber tires, but the wheel itself, instead of being made out of aluminum or steel is made out of carbon fiber.
Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
What's the benefit of that? It's lighter.
Sam Abuelsamid (01:57:03):
It's a lot lighter. It's stronger. It's actually more resistant to damage. And you know, for, for EVs, because efficiency is so important, ah, the, the rotational inertia is even more important oh. Than just, you know, moving
Leo Laporte (01:57:18):
Who would've thought of that. That's
Sam Abuelsamid (01:57:20):
Interesting. And so I think when I was talking to the CEO a couple of weeks ago, he told me you know, they're, they're working on they're, they're gonna have, they're gonna have their wheels on a new SUV coming out later this year saves about 60 kilograms, which is about 130, 140 pounds. Yeah. yeah, especially at the wheels you know, is, you know, as we get these bigger and bigger wheels on cars, you know, those 22 and 24 inch wheels, you ever pick one of those things up, they get pretty heavy. And so you know, carbon, fiber's an important material for that kind of, that sort of thing.
Leo Laporte (01:57:57):
You know, what else is lighter? You're STLE. I've been steepled Paris. You did this in your spare time.
Paris Martineau (01:58:06):
I did this during the ad read,
Leo Laporte (01:58:07):
What do you have a wood cut machine? How did you do
Paris Martineau (01:58:10):
That? I do. I've just, you know, got a little man with a wood chop written in the background of my apartment. No, the wall street journal apparently has something on your member page. If you have an account where you can, they have like a AI that will St you. So I uploaded a photo from you of you on the internet to the tipple
Leo Laporte (01:58:29):
AI. So that's an official w SJ stipple.
Paris Martineau (01:58:33):
I believe they call it a head cut. Technically, if there's any, a head cut WSJ heads out there,
Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Is that under member benefits?
Paris Martineau (01:58:40):
<Laugh> I think so genuinely it's called AI portrait for members only create your portrait.
Leo Laporte (01:58:48):
That's awesome. All right. Well, I subscribe. So thank you, Rupert. And thank you
Paris Martineau (01:58:55):
With the Murdocks are working on yeah. You Knowles for everyone. Foxs news money. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:58:59):
Democracy and, and, and headsets <laugh>
Paris Martineau (01:59:03):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:59:04):
<Laugh> wow. So we've already talked on the TWiT last week and on TWiTg, we spent a lot of time talking about Lambda and the you know, determination by one Google employee former. Now I think Google employee that Lambda had become sentient. And then Google's saying it's not sentient, and it's obvious that anybody who's ever, you know, played with this stuff that it isn't in fact sentient, but it's pretty impressive. But I, it also makes me start to think, and I've seen some articles along this line that AI is slowly creeping up on us. Do you think that, let me ask, I'll start with you Owen. Do you think that in the next few years, more and more things besides self-driving vehicles are gonna be powered by, I mean, real AI, not general intelligence, but, and not sentient intelligence, but AI that's doing stuff that we would normally think of as humans.
Owen Thomas (02:00:07):
I mean, I think like 90% of customer service is headed.
Leo Laporte (02:00:11):
It already, probably already is frankly.
Owen Thomas (02:00:13):
Right? Like you' yeah. You know, you're, you're chatting with someone or something. That seems like a kind of obvious application. You know, rather than making people like search for something on your website, you just chat them through. But you know, essentially,
Leo Laporte (02:00:29):
Is this
Owen Thomas (02:00:30):
Gonna be one search
Leo Laporte (02:00:30):
Flow, one of those technologies, like ATM's kind of crept up on us. When's the last time you went into a bank, right? You you're, you guys are too young to remember maybe Sam, you remember if you wanted money, the way you went to get the way you got money, you would go into a bank, your passport. Yeah. You would either give your passport or write a check. And they would like a human would count out money. Now nobody does it anymore. We're just like ATMs have just kind of gradually, I remember using my first ATM at bank of America in the eighties. And it was really primitive. It was like 40 characters by eight lines.
Paris Martineau (02:01:05):
That's was some mechanical Turk. Yeah. Was there like a little man inside?
Leo Laporte (02:01:09):
He's really, really in primitive. But you could get money. And it was like, at the time you went, wow, this is pretty cool. Now it's sec, you know, I don't think Paris. You probably ever went into a bank.
Paris Martineau (02:01:20):
<Laugh> I went into a bank often. I would have to get checks. Okay. I would've to deposit you
Owen Thomas (02:01:25):
Still gotta go in there to set
Leo Laporte (02:01:26):
Up your account. Do you write
Paris Martineau (02:01:28):
Checks? I, I do. Because when I FOYA police departments, a lot of you send 'em check municipal, like local governments do not take online
Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
Payment. Plus you're kind of retro for that. You have your kinda
Paris Martineau (02:01:41):
Retro, you know, I have my full speakers. I've gotta
Leo Laporte (02:01:44):
Turn table Mannes checks.
Paris Martineau (02:01:46):
Yeah. Checks are back in guys.
Leo Laporte (02:01:47):
Oh yeah. All the hipsters in Dumbo are writing checks now.
Owen Thomas (02:01:51):
I mean, yeah. Yeah. Leo I'll I'll I'll I'll tell you one better. How many people are not going to ATMs because they don't use cash who
Leo Laporte (02:01:59):
Uses cash. That's right. That's the next thing
Owen Thomas (02:02:02):
They're tapping. They tap my phone. My, why do
Leo Laporte (02:02:04):
You need cash? I don't. Yeah, I don't. You know what? The only time, the reason I get cash, I do go to the ATM once a week, cuz I like to tip service workers with cash so that they don't have to declare it and give the government any of it. <Laugh>
Owen Thomas (02:02:20):
Once we go to a us central bank, digital currency,
Leo Laporte (02:02:23):
It's not gonna happen anymore. Here's a Bitcoin. Thanks. You can't for the bird.
Paris Martineau (02:02:26):
Yeah. Can't Miami coin.
Leo Laporte (02:02:28):
Yeah. Miami coin. Here's a, yeah. I wish I could though.
Owen Thomas (02:02:31):
<Laugh> I mean good. You'll
Leo Laporte (02:02:37):
It's
Owen Thomas (02:02:37):
You made out what you yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:02:40):
I still write a couple of checks a year. Yeah, exactly. And, and then occasionally I have to deposit a check for something. I, I Venmo IEL I PayPal, I credit card. I do a lot of tapping in my apple watch. It's funny how that's scratched up on us really. Right. I mean, when that's two, three years ago, I mocked it. I said, well, how is that easier than getting a credit card outta your wallet? It's not that much of a difference.
Paris Martineau (02:03:05):
It's so much, it's
Leo Laporte (02:03:06):
So much easier. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:03:08):
I've done a similar
Leo Laporte (02:03:09):
Recently. What's that first.
Paris Martineau (02:03:11):
Oh, I've done a similar thing recently. And just that I recently from dangerous things. The biohacker website. I recently got a Promark easy. I think that
Leo Laporte (02:03:21):
Here, wait a minute. What is going on? I don't know what that is.
Paris Martineau (02:03:24):
Loan my work ID card. If you're our building security department, don't listen to this to clone my work ID card and I put it on this ring. So now all I have to do to get to my work is just tap the ring. It's very fun.
Leo Laporte (02:03:39):
You have a magic ring.
Paris Martineau (02:03:42):
I do the magic ring,
Leo Laporte (02:03:43):
The magic ring magic MIFA one K. So, okay. Here's another example. I bought something like this on Kickstarter years ago, I got, did
Paris Martineau (02:03:56):
It ever arrive?
Leo Laporte (02:03:57):
It came, but it never did anything. <Laugh> but it was the same idea. Right? So this has an R F I D chip in it. And it's got this my far one K magic gen two chip, which I guess is reprogrammable.
Paris Martineau (02:04:12):
Yeah. So it is two different chips in it. They're reprogrammable. You use this thing. It's kinda like a sniffer. Oh, I, I need to hold up. You use this thing, you connect to your computer and put your ID on it. You scan for the correct frequency. Copy. The most of these chips are, I didn't realize very insecure. They're just like nine numbers to copy those nine numbers over to this clear and it works.
Leo Laporte (02:04:35):
<Laugh> okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. But you can only do one thing with it or two things if it's got two chips, right. Two
Paris Martineau (02:04:41):
Things. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:04:42):
So that ring can let you into work, but nothing else.
Paris Martineau (02:04:46):
And I mean, if I had, if I lived in a fancy building where I yeah. Had to have a key fob, it would work for that. If I had a garage, you could, you know, put your garage door, click
Leo Laporte (02:04:57):
On. Could I do on it? Could my car key fob on
Paris Martineau (02:04:59):
That? Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. It depends. What sort of the chip is I? The one thing I know you can't do on these yet is payments.
Leo Laporte (02:05:07):
Right? You, you can already reopen your car with your phone anyway, Leo. Yeah. But it's unreliable. I've ended up, you know, a lot of forts have key pads on the door. I've ended up just using that. And I just, you know, you have to look around, make sure nobody's getting your number. <Laugh> they get in the car, but
Paris Martineau (02:05:23):
I'd be worried that I'd wear out the keys and then somebody could just get in my car by looking at it.
Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
Oh, I didn't even think of that. Oh yeah. Cuz my don't ever wash my car. So there's definitely marks in the dust <laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:05:35):
But,
Leo Laporte (02:05:36):
But what I mostly worry about is if it doesn't work and one time it didn't and then you're really like, you can't it's like, I can't do anything. I can't get in my car. So this does 125 kilohertz work, badges, key fobs and access cards. So they have to be
Paris Martineau (02:05:54):
On yeah. A little device is called a prox mark three
Leo Laporte (02:05:57):
Easy. So you need the reader too to, to, so yeah, you can get that as well.
Paris Martineau (02:06:04):
And even for someone I don't code, but I had to learn some basics for it, for this. And it was really easy
Leo Laporte (02:06:10):
Hundred 86 plus
Paris Martineau (02:06:11):
Online walkthrough
Leo Laporte (02:06:12):
Hundred 86, 84 for both the reader and the kit.
Paris Martineau (02:06:17):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:06:18):
I dunno if you need, I
Paris Martineau (02:06:19):
Dunno if you need the access kit, but I used the prox mark three. I am living in the future the other day. I did it and there were some other people in the elevator and there were all fancy businessmen and their suits. And they were like, oh my God, what is that? I was
Leo Laporte (02:06:31):
Like, dude, how do you do it? You like, is there a little show off you? Like you go,
Paris Martineau (02:06:36):
I, you know, like I had to TWiTst a little bit to get in the right side and I was like, wave just a wave, a nice tap. You know, it's much better than getting your card out of your wallet. I'll tell you that.
Leo Laporte (02:06:47):
Wow. I, I, we've all learned something today. Maybe not everybody, but I have dangerous things. Magic rings
Paris Martineau (02:06:53):
At day. I know I'm about a year away from getting a chip implanted in my thumb.
Leo Laporte (02:06:58):
I know why don't just get a chip
Paris Martineau (02:07:01):
Because then I'm like, there's gonna be a better chip. Oh's right. What am I gonna do with the old chip?
Leo Laporte (02:07:05):
Oh, why don't you just take it out?
Paris Martineau (02:07:06):
There'll always be a better chick. <Laugh> that's my worry. It's
Leo Laporte (02:07:09):
Like the us the same thing with the USBC. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Paris Martineau (02:07:12):
It's like, I can't, you know, go in on one.
Leo Laporte (02:07:15):
So this is what I mean, we're kind of gradually creeping up on horizon west. <Laugh> we're gradually creeping
Paris Martineau (02:07:23):
Up. I mean, you need to learn a bit more about what happens at the end that game to before you make it. But I mean, yes. Well, for those
Leo Laporte (02:07:29):
Who know, it's the 31st century, so we got a little time, but we, but, but, but for somebody as old as me, who's watched this go from, you know a, a time X Sinclair to magic rings from dangerous things. I'm kind of living in a magical future. And when a, do you think it's accelerating? Do you feel like it's accelerating?
Paris Martineau (02:07:52):
Certainly. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think that probably whatever the technology powering, this is only going to get smaller and more efficient, assuming we don't continue to have cascading supply chain issues.
Leo Laporte (02:08:05):
Well, that is true.
Paris Martineau (02:08:06):
Probably going to get, you know, easily
Leo Laporte (02:08:08):
To get that's that's the other thing we we're learning is that we're living on the very tip of a house of cards, toing, and
Paris Martineau (02:08:15):
We're living in the millennium tower and we're sinking into garbage, but only one side.
Leo Laporte (02:08:20):
But if we make it, it's gonna be great, but we, but it's possible. It's gonna collapse, you know, in a, he we're just gonna hold on saying, please let's go to the future. So I'm really thinking that there will be a cliff at one point where we'll wake up and go. Yeah. You know, a lot of the, like, like the temperature in my house is controlled by a limited, but, but AI things are starting to happen that the, an AI controls, do you think that's gonna ha Sam? I mean, the cars are really the forefront of this and Vidia is designing all of these chips that are becoming more and more powerful. Self-Driving is definitely the cutting edge of this,
Sam Abuelsamid (02:09:01):
But a AI has very significant limitations. And you know, the, the, the truth is, you know, I mean, going back to, you know, the, the Lambda thing, it's very, it's good at mimicking intelligence. It's not intelligence and it still doesn't work the same way that the human brain does in perceiving the world around us. And I, you know, like in, in, in self-driving cars, you have to have, you have to give it guardrails because you know, it can go very wrong in very unexpected ways. You know, for a lot of stuff, you know, like things like customer service, chat bots. Yeah. It's fine. You know, if it makes a mistake, it's not a big deal. Nobody dies, you know, in a safety critical system, like an airplane or a car, it's a very different scenario. And so you have to build in those deter, those rules based guidelines that say, you know, if the AI makes the wrong decision, you know, it, you're not gonna allow it to go past these, these limits to try to minimize the, the consequences of those mistakes.
Leo Laporte (02:10:15):
Yeah. I mean, I think that that's always true is that when new technologies come along, you get both the positives and the negatives mm-hmm <affirmative> right. And you have, and in fact, you don't really know what the negatives are gonna be until you're, until you're soaking in it. And then you go, this is not fun
Sam Abuelsamid (02:10:29):
Or, well, you know, ano another aspect of this is, you know, we keep they keep realizing that the computing power that we have is still nowhere near enough to do what they're trying to do. You know, if you go back, you know, six years or so with Nvidia, for example, you know, when they, they are, I think it was about 2015, they launched their first drive PX computer for developing automated driving. You know, that thing had about one and a half or two Terra ops of computing capability. A couple of years later, they launched the Xavier chip, you know, which had 30 Terra ops. And they thought, okay, this is gonna be good enough to do level four autonomy. Now then couple years after that they launched the, or which has 250 Terra ops and said, yeah, this is gonna be good enough to do level four autonomy. Now, last year they launched the Atlan, which has a thousand Terra ops <laugh>. And that this is gonna be the one, you know, so it, they, the, we don't know what we don't know, and this, you know, this, this, all this stuff is proving to be a lot harder to do than anybody really imagined. Yeah. And we need more and more computing power eventually we'll, we'll probably get there, but yeah, we're not there yet.
Leo Laporte (02:11:44):
It is, you know, it is simultaneously harder than we thought and it's happening faster than we expect. So it's kind of a weird Stupot of expectations. We're sitting in former Amazon engineer convicted of stealing 100,000, I'm sorry, 100 million records from the capital one hack, one of the biggest security breaches ever in the us page Thompson wrote a tool to scan Amazon web services for misconfigured accounts, as one does she found capital one's database of users infiltrated it downloaded a hundred million people's data in the us, 6 million in Canada. She says, I'm an ethical hacker. I was just pen testing. The jury said, no, you're a hacker hacker and convicted her of a pretty significant she's got up to 20 years of prison time. She's facing for wire fraud. And up to five years for each charge of illegally accessing a protected computer she could go to jail for a long time. Sentencing is in September.
Leo Laporte (02:13:05):
The, you remember we talked about this a couple of weeks ago that the justice department said that, well, we're not gonna, we're not gonna use a computer fraud and abuse act to abuse people as we have in the past, if very famously his wire and Schwartz killed himself because he was being hounded by the feds. Her lawyers said she used the same tools and methods that ethical hackers used. But I think when you download a hundred million records, even if you don't do anything with it, eh, maybe you shouldn't have done that. What do you think? Any, any extenuating circumstances I remember downloading it is a bit of a complicated think yeah. Way to go about it. Yeah. I remember when this happened, I was really suspicious because we never saw this information on the dark web. And I said, well, to me, that means it's a nation state that isn't trying to make money off of this information, but use somebody like China or Russia using it, you know, for further comma or co or, you know, just whatever it is China does with all that TikTok information, but no, in a nation state, or is it page or it's page it's, <laugh>, it's either page Thompson or a nation state.
Owen Thomas (02:14:22):
I mean, also, you know, she was working at Amazon. Did Amazon ask her to do this? Right. I think that's, you know, you know, very questionable there's
Leo Laporte (02:14:32):
A phrase cause of there's we have a good friend, Randall Schwartz who for a long time hosted this the floss show for us open source show. He's a Pearl wizard. He also was convicted of hacking many years ago, worked at Intel and thought there was a security issue, not in his division, but in another division pen tested it. I don't think he did anything. He's always said I wasn't hacking. I was exploring I, and I found a flaw and I reported it to Intel and he was immediately arrested and prosecuted and jailed. So there is a long history of, yeah, we don't want you, you know, pro probing these weaknesses
Owen Thomas (02:15:16):
Security through
Leo Laporte (02:15:17):
Security. Yeah. So, but that, I don't, I don't know if, if that's what happened here,
Owen Thomas (02:15:24):
Right? I mean, you don't want to discourage security research. Right. but you know, is it, is it creating this kind of, you know, umbrella under which people who are not doing security research can hide
Leo Laporte (02:15:39):
Incidentally 10 years later and I should add this to the story. It's very important. 10 years after his conviction, his he was cleared and his his conviction was expunged. So I only tell this story cuz he tells it, he's not, he's very public about it, but that gives you a, you know, a really good example of, and Randall was always that way when we <laugh>, we used to go on geek cruises, I've gone on geek cruises with him. And at the time the cruise ships wifi was not encrypted. So <laugh>, I remember him coming up and handing me a piece of paper saying, is this your email password? <Laugh> I went it is yes. He said, well, I thought you should know. So, you know, he's doing me a favor, but it's also like, I mean, <laugh>, I can see why people might have been kind of freaked out. He used a program at Intel to crack the passwords of colleagues at the Intel supercomputer systems division who
Paris Martineau (02:16:40):
Set up a geek, cruise and thought unencrypted wifi is,
Leo Laporte (02:16:45):
This was back in the day when nobody knew
Paris Martineau (02:16:49):
Anything when people were building their internet with pencils and rocks.
Leo Laporte (02:16:52):
Yeah. Well you can tell it was because there is no email system in the world today that doesn't use HG TPSs you can't interact with it and send password in the clear, right? I mean, if you log into your Gmail that password's not floating through the air, even if your wifi was unencrypted, but in back in those days, both the wifi was unencrypted and it was HTTP. It was an unencrypted connection.
Owen Thomas (02:17:14):
So this reminds me of the, the tales. I've heard about Def con where yes, if you, if you go in there and your OPSEC is not a hundred percent tight, like there are people just waiting pounds.
Leo Laporte (02:17:24):
That's when I changed my password for monkey 1, 2, 3 to monkey 1, 2, 3, 4. And and it's been secure ever since that extra, all the difference. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:17:34):
I mean, that's the difference between weak and strong <laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:17:39):
Apple is unionizing. This is guy has got to be scary for Tim cook, but I would say, you know, if you don't want your employees to unionize treat 'em right. Apple workers at Towson Maryland's apple store, the first apple entity to unionize two thirds of employees voted to unionize, even though well, apple tried really hard to talk them out of it. Even recording a video from Apple's retail, head Deidre, O'Brien saying we're a family, <laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:18:14):
You? Oh, that argument always really works well. When it comes to workers uprising, we, we move
Leo Laporte (02:18:19):
Quickly. You don't need anybody in between you and us negotiating. They even
Paris Martineau (02:18:25):
Was was that video taken from Apple's giant glass headquarters <laugh> yes.
Leo Laporte (02:18:32):
And at some point, somebody running along in track shorts through a giant hammer through it, no, not someone that's another video <laugh> they did raise their wages from $20 an hour to $22 a starting at wage. Although you might make the argument, they did that in response to the unionization effort, proving <laugh> that apple could have done that a long time ago. And didn't they are now a member of core, which stands for, I get, get it apple core, the apple coalition of organized retail employees, which will be part of the international association of machinists and aerospace workers. So that's okay. I'm in the screen,
Owen Thomas (02:19:16):
It makes sense for the, you know, the genius bar workers who are facing
Leo Laporte (02:19:19):
Your life aerospace. Sure. Yeah. Machin us. I'm just, you know, Bravo, this has been a trend. Starbucks has fought utilizations. They've hired as apple did law firms to, you know, discourage unionization. And yet Starbucks stores are one by one becoming unionized, and this is the first apple store to become unionized. And I think that's fine. I think that's great if that's, you know what good.
Paris Martineau (02:19:43):
I think it'd be really fun to look at how much they're paying these big law firms and union investing companies. Yeah. And then divide that by the number of workers that they have in these one stores and compare that with the $2 an hour wage and great.
Leo Laporte (02:19:56):
Exactly. Well, think, imagine what Amazon has spent to keep the unions out of the warehouses. Oh, I mean, it's so
Paris Martineau (02:20:02):
Much
Leo Laporte (02:20:03):
You, that's your beat, right? You cover that.
Paris Martineau (02:20:06):
Yeah. They've spent a considerable amount and they really spread the, but with the New York warehouse and it seems like that trend could continue.
Leo Laporte (02:20:15):
Are they gonna get in trouble with the NLRB or,
Paris Martineau (02:20:19):
I mean, they're trying to, right now they are fighting tooth and nail against kind of the unionization that had happened at their New York city warehouse specifically arguing that the NLRB was acting in a biased manner. In addition to the union workers acting in a biased manner. That's okay. It's a very complicated
Leo Laporte (02:20:37):
Affair. Wow. The national labor relations board, which protects your right to vote for a union and does very much circumscribe what a company can do to fight a union. Although companies like Amazon have these compulsory meetings where they, you know, Harang you basically and give you all the reasons we're family. Where, why would you wanna do this to your family?
Paris Martineau (02:21:00):
Yes. Bezos is your big Papa.
Leo Laporte (02:21:02):
Yeah. Let big Papa choose your salary. <Laugh>
Owen Thomas (02:21:05):
Can I throw out a crazy idea here?
Leo Laporte (02:21:07):
Yes.
Owen Thomas (02:21:08):
Could unionization be the best thing that ever happened to Amazon? Because they have a labor crisis that is so bad. They did a study, an internal study about where they're going to run out of workers. They can even hire. And you know, they're already there in some markets and they're, you know, they're thinking about where they open up a warehouse, they're even studying, like what's the labor market there. They've got crazy turnover you know, of more than a hundred percent, which means, you know, they churn, you know, like the average employee doesn't even last a year in an Amazon warehouse. So maybe if these unions come along and insist on better working conditions, Amazon might save more money in, you know, not having to hunt down you know, new recruits and train them. Then they'll ever pay in Sal, you know, increase salary and benefits that they negotiate with unions. Just a crazy scenario.
Leo Laporte (02:22:06):
What, why doesn't Amazon do? That's a really
Owen Thomas (02:22:08):
Good idea. Well,
Paris Martineau (02:22:09):
The reason why doesn't from Amazon's perspective, the reason why they're anti-union despite, you know, I mean is because Amazon's whole ecosystem, it's kind of like our current supply chain crisis. It was all kind of hanging on by a single thread. Amazon at every quarter would increase the number of workers or decrease it dramatically, depending on their kind of needs during the fourth quarter of the year, the holiday season, Amazon needs a considerable amount. Like they have to add hundreds of thousands of people to their workforce every fourth quarter. And then normally the first quarter they fire a lot of those people or pay them to quit is kind of the program or they'll pay you to never work in an Amazon place again. But they can't do that. If there's a union, they can't continue to kind of have their cake and eat it too. When it comes to labor market of just have enough employees for every single moment and not have too many during the other quarters, if they have an intermediate force that is looking out for the benefits of the workers and looking to make sure that these workers stay on for more than a year, because that would mean you'd have this huge surplus of workers, which isn't good for an efficiency standpoint,
Leo Laporte (02:23:21):
Because you cover Amazon Paris, you know, better than most, you know, the, you know, what's like to work at Amazon and whether it's a fair company, a good company, let me ask you, given what, you know, do you shop at Amazon?
Paris Martineau (02:23:38):
I will occasionally buy stuff from Amazon, but I also, I mean, selfishly, I think as someone who covers Amazon reports in a lot of aspects of it, if anybody can shop at Amazon, it can be me. <Laugh>, it's
Leo Laporte (02:23:50):
Also,
Paris Martineau (02:23:50):
It's part of my job just in the sense that sometimes I'll be like looking through something at Amazon, I'll be like, huh, I've noticed something different about the way this is working. Yeah. Let me figure out the inside story. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:23:59):
You need
Paris Martineau (02:23:59):
To yeah. Having that brand exposure kind of helps, but I also, I mean, I don't know. I think that ultimately all corporations are a bit inherently evil if you're thinking about it on a purely human big, big goodness. Yeah. Big, big corporations. Yeah. I mean like way that not TWiT, you know, all companies, big corporations. Yeah. You know, big corporations with larger acronyms than four letters. Yes. yes.
Leo Laporte (02:24:29):
<Laugh>.
Paris Martineau (02:24:30):
Yeah, but I mean, I, I think that I
Leo Laporte (02:24:31):
Feel really guilty buying stuff at Amazon, but I I'm afraid I have I'm I'm addicted,
Paris Martineau (02:24:37):
But I mean, I think the thing is like, people say that, but then they go buy a like furniture from Wayfair fair
Leo Laporte (02:24:44):
Buy. It would be better to go to Wayfair or Walmart. I
Paris Martineau (02:24:46):
Agree. Like they buy from these, the other options that we have are often Walmart's worse in a similar way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what measure you're using to define worse or better in these sort of situations, but you're, you're like, I don't know the whole thing with sheen, the fast fashion company, it's like, we don't know where these pieces of clothing are coming from. You
Leo Laporte (02:25:07):
Kind of figure it's made by slave labor in a camp in China. You know, it is a $2 shirt. <Laugh> it's, you know, that there's
Paris Martineau (02:25:15):
No way wired had a really great kind of, I think it was maybe a profile piece about Chan kind of going through how it became what it was. It was in the last couple of months. And she had a certain like, or at least people who were very senior in, she and spoke to this reporter admitted, like they don't really know where a lot of their stuff comes from. They just kind of have contracts with a lot of different companies and they just say, give us a hundred of something. And then if that hundred sells out, they're like, give us more. Right. And they don't have that much of an insight into where it's coming from. And I think that's happening all throughout the supply chain. And obviously Amazon is one example of that, but there are also so many, the reason why I find it fascinating to focus on Amazon is cause it is obviously such a huge presence in our life. And like focusing on this one aspect of it is obviously you, you notice trends that have a larger impact than smaller
Leo Laporte (02:26:04):
Companies. Well, and half the time when you buy from Amazon, literally half the time you're buying from a third party that probably has buying its stuff from sheen <laugh> or, and sheen like companies. Oh, probably right. So yeah. Yeah. I get it both ways. I'm, I'm participating in this marvelous capitalist economy. <Laugh> full throttle. Let's take a little break. We're gonna, we're close to, I mean, we've been going on for a while. I just love these guys and I don't wanna stop talking Samal wheel bearings.media Paris Martino the information from protocol.com. The wonderful when Thomas as always a great and thoughtful show brought to you today, as often, it is by ZipRecruiter. We have hired, we use ZipRecruiter to hire summer is here packed with the activities. And frankly it's also a time when a lot of people are looking for work, students coming outta school and so forth.
Leo Laporte (02:26:59):
If you're a business owner and you need to hire, you probably don't wanna spend your free time going through unqualified candidates. When you could be spending time at the pool or barbecuing, you know, it's father's day, enjoy, redo your deck, do some gardening, go on vacation. That's why you need ZipRecruiter to find great candidates. They do the work for you. And now you could try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/TWiT zip recruiters. Technology finds the right candidates for your job and then tells you about them. So you can invite your top choices to apply. And let me tell you, and I can tell you from personal experience, when you invite somebody to apply for a job, they look at you as like, oh, you want me? You like me. You bet. They show up for the interview. They become great employees. No wonder four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
Leo Laporte (02:27:53):
And they hire the best people. Fast. Zip recruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2 satisfaction ratings. As of January 1st, 2022, you can get that person, get that job filled. And I know there are a lot of jobs that need to be filled fast and go back to the barbecue this summer. Let ZipRecruiter do the work. Try it for free ziprecruiter.com/TWiT ziprecruiter.com/t w I T. Ziprecruiter. We love you. Thank you for doing a great job for us. Ziprecruiter. The smartest way to hire what a great week. This was on TWiT. We've got a mini movie to show you the highlights. Good. We could find boom. Now that's a booming voice. Everyone. Quick talk about, 'em say things about headphones in yet. He looks like he needs this, this brush this over here. <Laugh> well, yeah. Is that weathered or grizzled? What are we gonna call it? That's weathered. <Laugh> previously on TWiT. I didn't know they were dis now I stumbled upon a proof that we are indeed living in a simulation. When you attempt to plug in one of those original us B style plugs, the plug's orientation would be wrong. Only half the time. The first time we attempt to plug in one of those, it is almost always, always wrong. Always, always. Isn't it. Windows weekly.
Leo Laporte (02:29:34):
Balloon store. <Laugh> it's not supposed to be fun. This weekend, Google nonsense on stilts Laia is not sentient. Not even slightly. It's just a matter of time before a deep fake is created. That's so good that we don't know. Is it if it's a deep, fake or not, we have empathy modules. I think you gave yourself away there. When you said we have empathy modules, TWiT <laugh> Stacy, is there anything you wanna do? Us bot has spoken. We have empathy modules, empathy modules are on full, turn them up all the way. Couple more stories. I wanna wrap it up, but I, but I can't resist. <Laugh> saying thank God. The white house has launched a task force to curb online abuse. I think we consider this problem solved.
Leo Laporte (02:30:26):
I thought millennia from been at least 30 seconds. I don't know what a task force is gonna do to solve online abuse, but I think it's probably gonna do no more than neon Musk will. Let's put it that way. Let's see what else? Corey doctoral great piece. By the way, I love Corey's blog. We're gonna get Corey on TWiTtter again very soon. Great piece about prop 22. Remember this in the California. Oh, and I'm sure you remember it. Well, this was, they spent Uber and Lyft spent hundreds of millions of dollars to Vince, California voters that people like working for Uber and Lyft. And you should pass a proposition that allows gig work. Remember that proposition pass? Oh yeah. By a landslide. Turns out. Corey says the lawyers who drafted it <laugh> really blew it. <Laugh> it's unconstitutional. And the California superior court has voided prop two in its entirety.
Leo Laporte (02:31:33):
The $225 million that Uber and Lyft spent to get it passed wasted. In fact, I think they, they took that same legislation and went to Massachusetts. They probably have gone to New York as well. They love this idea. Anyway, <laugh> of course he says, I can't imagine how you go ahead with a hundred million dollar ballot initiative campaign without gaming out how it'll play in court. I mean, sure. Your boss is gonna freak out if you fairly describe the ballot. Initiative's lopsided language in the voter guide summary. But the lawyer's job is to explain that failing to do so could wreck the whole thing and it did.
Paris Martineau (02:32:15):
Hey, listen, a lot of people got big bonuses that year. That's right. That's all that
Leo Laporte (02:32:18):
Matters. That's all that it is. It's that short term, that short term thing,
Paris Martineau (02:32:23):
Bird term gains, you know? Yep. But
Sam Abuelsamid (02:32:25):
By Uber standards, you know, blowing $225 million is peanuts. I mean, you know, they've, they burned through tens of billions
Leo Laporte (02:32:33):
Over. That's a good point. That's
Paris Martineau (02:32:34):
It's not like they're trying to make money here.
Leo Laporte (02:32:37):
<Laugh>
Owen Thomas (02:32:38):
Have you watched wheat crashed?
Leo Laporte (02:32:39):
Have you been watching wheat crashed with a Hathaway and Jared letter?
Paris Martineau (02:32:43):
No, because my life is thinking about, oh
Leo Laporte (02:32:45):
Yeah. Companies wouldn't be entertaining
Paris Martineau (02:32:47):
My free time. <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:32:48):
Plus you know, so much you'd look at it and go, well, that's wrong, but I have to say, I am. It is hysterical. Just watch the first episode. It's the end. You start to
Paris Martineau (02:32:59):
Start with the end. What service is that one on
Leo Laporte (02:33:02):
Apple
Owen Thomas (02:33:02):
TV. Apple TV? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
Yeah. Have you watched it on one, another one? That, another one you can't?
Owen Thomas (02:33:07):
No, I, I, I I really got into Hulu's the dropout. Oh. But my husband refused to refuse to watch it with me. What, because he says, wow, you talk about that stuff too much as it is.
Leo Laporte (02:33:19):
Yeah. He has the same thing.
Paris Martineau (02:33:21):
Have you shown him the video of her dancing in the little office?
Leo Laporte (02:33:26):
She dances like a
Owen Thomas (02:33:27):
Lame. So
Leo Laporte (02:33:29):
Feld. So you failed.
Paris Martineau (02:33:30):
It was really good.
Leo Laporte (02:33:32):
And the
Paris Martineau (02:33:32):
Tape with the puffy vest on and the
Leo Laporte (02:33:34):
Puffy vest I guess her sentencing, they finished the sunny trial. Did he get convicted? I don't. It's like,
Owen Thomas (02:33:41):
No, it's fi let's see. Final arguments actually are Tuesday. They got pushed back
Leo Laporte (02:33:47):
This week. It'll finish.
Owen Thomas (02:33:48):
Okay. Her her sentence, like is not until I believe September,
Leo Laporte (02:33:51):
Right? This fall. Yeah. Yeah. So sunny Bani her one time boyfriend and chief operating officer, I think at Theranos was also tried, but they were tried separately. So correct. We shall see what happens. Good news. You don't have to go naked into the metaverse. Meta is launching this week, a digital clothing store where you could purchase outfits for your avatars.
Paris Martineau (02:34:19):
It's the lamest thing I've ever seen in my life. But wait, this looks worse than second life.
Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
Wait, it does. This is a funny thing. 20 years ago, we could do this. But these are not just any outfits. These are from Balanga Prada, Tom brown. These are designer. Look, it says Balanga on her designer, sweatshirt.
Owen Thomas (02:34:39):
Okay, this is going to date me, but I keep thinking of that rap hit from about 10 years ago. That's like Gucci, Gucci, Fendi, Fendi, <laugh> Louis, Louie Prada.
Leo Laporte (02:34:50):
You know that your brand it's did you watch Hala? Gucci? There's another great one, man. Jared luau again with the worst Italian accent. It's like, Hey, it's a me Mario. <Laugh> in a fat suit. No less, but
Paris Martineau (02:35:04):
Oh no guys, we can't be doing fat suits made.
Leo Laporte (02:35:08):
Well, he's a skinny, skinny guy.
Paris Martineau (02:35:10):
Get someone else.
Leo Laporte (02:35:12):
Fat guy. I, as a fat man, I feel like they're discriminating against us. And we, they should let people of a certain GU play the, the, the, the chubby roles anyway. Oh, Gucci, perfect example. By the time you are selling fake clothing in a metaverse, your brand is shot, right? Gucci. Now they put their brand on anything, right. It's just shot. And I have to think this does not reflect well on Blanca Prada and Tom brown, Tom brown also has special Samsung watch styles if you want. So
Paris Martineau (02:35:46):
I just wanna think, like, what was that meeting in between like meta people and Balenciaga or Prada? What was that meeting like where they were like, we've got a really great opportunity for you. We want you to brand in the metaphors said, you know, they, oh, wow. You know what
Leo Laporte (02:36:00):
They said? They said, money, <laugh> give the money. Please give me the money. I mean, honestly this has got to be, they've gotta be looking. I mean, second life for all its dopiness. People made a lot of Lindon dollars. I don't know if they ever made money on it, but they, I mean,
Paris Martineau (02:36:20):
Lindon dollars were used to do a lot of money laundering also, but
Leo Laporte (02:36:23):
Were they really,
Paris Martineau (02:36:24):
I think, I mean, hope I'm not slandering the Lindon good name, but I thought that
Leo Laporte (02:36:28):
It all started with second life, baby. It all started there.
Paris Martineau (02:36:32):
Yeah. The creator's second life gotta be kicking themselves. Like we just had to call it the metaverses.
Owen Thomas (02:36:38):
Why aren't these outfits NFTs? Am I missing something?
Leo Laporte (02:36:41):
Oh yeah. If you really want to capitalize on it. Sure. There are games now with the NFTs.
Owen Thomas (02:36:49):
And the, the best thing is like, if you buy and sell this stuff, you end up with a massive tax bill. At the end of the year, <laugh> like
Leo Laporte (02:36:56):
Transactions. You've got a URL and a massive tax bill. Congratulations. Speaking of games and loot boxes, Diablo imortal came out on the iPad and the apple iPhone just two weeks ago. It's funny. The reviews were very positive for it. Users hate it because it is really a pay to play game it's free to download, but there is so much stuff that you have to buy. I actually think it's a fun game cause I love Diablo. And it's fun to have it on my iPad.
Paris Martineau (02:37:32):
But how much have you spent on micro transactions?
Leo Laporte (02:37:34):
I have spent nothing, but I am one of the few because they made in the first two weeks, 24 million on micro transactions
Paris Martineau (02:37:44):
Question, if you, I guess make one of these transactions while playing on your iPad, is that a macro transaction? <Laugh>
Leo Laporte (02:37:50):
I just wanna point out that of the 24 million. They only got 16 because apple gets eight.
Paris Martineau (02:37:59):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:38:00):
Right. So I don't know what to say after that. <Laugh> there you go. Nice, nice work if you get it, you know,
Paris Martineau (02:38:11):
Freaking
Leo Laporte (02:38:11):
Out. Yeah. Freaking out. Alright. I think we, I think I'm looking what else? I don't think we care about the nothing phone. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:38:22):
What,
Leo Laporte (02:38:23):
There is a phone
Paris Martineau (02:38:24):
Who decided that was a good name for a
Leo Laporte (02:38:26):
Product Carl pay, who was the former head of one plus left one. Plus when APO bought it, brought it back in house. I think it was an APO operation all along, but they brought it back in house and he left. He bought the, I think he bought the assets of Andy Rubin's essential, which was another failed pH. And he announced we're gonna make a phone called nothing and we're gonna <laugh> and we're gonna reveal it July 12th. Except there was, I think so little interest that they then now leaked the design. Oh, because come on really guys. It's
Paris Martineau (02:39:00):
It's gonna be great. Wait, it's called the one,
Leo Laporte (02:39:03):
The phone one by nothing
Paris Martineau (02:39:05):
Sad.
Leo Laporte (02:39:06):
It's it. They've they've run out of ideas. The
Paris Martineau (02:39:08):
Essential, the plus
Leo Laporte (02:39:09):
One they've run out of ideas. Here it is with its central L E D lights strip. I don't, I don't know what's going on. I don't know. What is that? What's happening? Light strip. Do you
Owen Thomas (02:39:21):
Remember, was it a handing visor or a or a Palm pilot? That was, it was handspring that transparent. A transparent case
Leo Laporte (02:39:29):
On the, oh, I loved that. That was, I have one in the other room. Yeah, those are great. And my wife had one for a while. Yeah. Those weren't bad. They were basically pilots, right? Yeah. That was a good device with, with the visor module. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> all right. You guys rock I've kept you here way too long, much longer than you ever thought. You'd be stuck in a square box on the TWiTt set, but I am a mega corporation and you are my slaves do not unionize. Oh, look at that. There's a little Corgie. Hello? To little Corgie. He looks so sad. He said, can daddy come out and play? Well, we're gonna let you go. Sam bull, Sam principal, researcher guide, house insights. You must listen to the wheel brings podcast course. Sam's on our radio show. Every Sunday, talking about car stuff.
Sam Abuelsamid (02:40:15):
The, the episode coming out tomorrow morning will have my comparison of the F Ford F-150 lightning and the Rivian R one T. And Nicole will be talking about the the Ford Bronco Raptor, and Robbie got to go to the GM tech center to drive the new lunar Rover in the simulator.
Leo Laporte (02:40:37):
Oh, I miss Robbie. Would you tell him that we've been trying to get him on TWiT. I want him back on TWiT. I just love him. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Talking about pie <laugh>
Sam Abuelsamid (02:40:51):
That was last week.
Leo Laporte (02:40:52):
Yes, that was last week. We, we,
Sam Abuelsamid (02:40:54):
We had a question from a listener about why Robbie and I never talk about pie. Nicole talks about pie a lot.
Leo Laporte (02:41:00):
Nicole Wakeland loves pie. Roberto Baldwin is
Sam Abuelsamid (02:41:04):
We all love PI. We just
Leo Laporte (02:41:06):
Talk about it personal secret. And by the way,
Paris Martineau (02:41:10):
Yeah. How often would you describe your conversations about pie? Are you a frequent pie talker or an infrequent?
Sam Abuelsamid (02:41:16):
Me Leo, I would say relatively infrequent.
Leo Laporte (02:41:20):
I would talk about pie, but I prefer to eat it rather than talk. I can't eat it and I would like to eat it. We have a place. Are
Paris Martineau (02:41:25):
You being shadow band
Leo Laporte (02:41:26):
I'm from pie <laugh> yeah. We have a place in Petaluma called the Petaluma pie company. Pie's all they do. It's pie all day savory. Sweet nut pies, holiday pies we'll even ship you pies. So there that's more pie content than we've had on this show since March 14th. Thank you, Sam. And by the way, Sam's comparison of the Rivian and the F-150 lightning will also be part of our tech break. He set us a great review. We're editing it right now and we'll put it out probably this week. So thank you for that. I appreciate it, Sam. My
Sam Abuelsamid (02:41:59):
Pleasure
Leo Laporte (02:42:00):
Paris Martin O is our resident, Brooklyn hipster. She is awesome in every respect has a ring that lets her in places. She also, from time to time reports at the information about big tech, anything you wanna plug Paris, anything at all?
Paris Martineau (02:42:20):
Ah, I think I wanna plug same thing. I did last time, which is my signal number. If you are an employee at Amazon or a current former thinking about it, reach out to me. We can chat. This worked quite well last time. So I'd love for you to join the fold. Really?
Leo Laporte (02:42:35):
Yeah, you got last, you got some tips.
Paris Martineau (02:42:38):
It was a nice time. You know, love to see it. My you can contact me on signal WhatsApp SMS at 2 6 7 7 9 7 8 6 5 5 2 6 7 7 9 7 8 6 5 5 8, 6 50. It's also on my TWiTtter handle. Look
Leo Laporte (02:42:58):
It up or go to at Paris Martin on the TWiTtter and you can, and you can get her phone
Paris Martineau (02:43:01):
Number. Yeah, the TWiTtter is where I'm at. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (02:43:04):
That's not her phone number, gentleman. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:43:07):
It is not my phone number. It's a work
Leo Laporte (02:43:08):
Number. Do not call her. It's signal her. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:43:12):
Only call me if you wanna talk about hot tips,
Leo Laporte (02:43:15):
Hot. What? Don't use the word hot.
Paris Martineau (02:43:18):
Not hot. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:43:19):
Good tips.
Paris Martineau (02:43:20):
Tepid tips. Yeah. Good
Leo Laporte (02:43:21):
Tips. If you wanna call her her number's eight six seven five three oh nine. <Laugh>
Paris Martineau (02:43:26):
Maybe
Leo Laporte (02:43:26):
Call anytime <laugh> there it is. We just put it on the lower third. So wow. Next time you're on. We just have to put that there the whole time. So tips honestly, love it. Get those tipster. That's great. Thank you. Paris. You rock and you roll and I know you have a sequin mannequin there, but I'm not gonna make you show it this time.
Paris Martineau (02:43:46):
<Laugh> thank you. You know, we can just keep that between
Leo Laporte (02:43:49):
Us. It's just our, our little secret Owen Owen, Owen. Haven't seen you in person since pre pandemic. Maybe someday we can go down the golden gate theater on beautiful market street, Dodge, the bums, and see a show. What do you say?
Owen Thomas (02:44:06):
You know, I am always down for a
Leo Laporte (02:44:08):
<Laugh> me too. Me too. Senior editor at a protocol. Owen Thomas at Owen Thomas. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us in my regards to Megan Moroni. I will, there's a, we've had some other people on from protocol. Who else do we have on? She was great. I can't remember, but protocol. You got some great people working over there. It's good stuff.
Owen Thomas (02:44:28):
Yeah. We had some good scoops from ISI OWK and, and Kramer Yako, Rutgers. Nice. They've been, they've been crushing.
Leo Laporte (02:44:39):
Oh, I was good. Actually had a Yako story I was gonna talk about, but we've run out of time. I'll save that for next time. He's doing a great job. I'm glad you hired him away from variety. He was a giga home before that great guy.
Owen Thomas (02:44:50):
There are some, there's an ex GIGO mafia at at protocol.
Leo Laporte (02:44:54):
Well, that's a good place to light. I think actually we do TWiT every Sunday around two 30 Pacific five 30 Eastern, 2130 UTC. I mentioned that because you can watch us live. There's a live video stream of everything we do here. Video or audio@livedotTWiT.tv. If you're watching live, please join us in the chatroom, irc.Twit.tv, but be warned if you say something funny, I'm gonna steal it. Cuz basically those are my joke writers in there. <Laugh> irc.Twit.tv. And I may or not may not credit you. We also have a chat room for our club members in our discord. If you're not a member, seven bucks a month, add free versions of all of our shows, access to the discord, the TWiT plus feed special shows. We just did. You saw a little bit of Stacy's book club which we just did on Thursday. That was a lot of fun.
Leo Laporte (02:45:45):
That was for members only seven bucks a month go to TWiTt.tv/club TWiTt. But of course we still offer ads, supported versions of everything we do free at our website, TWiT.tv. There's also for every show, a dedicated YouTube channel. That's a good way to share clips from shows cuz YouTube makes that easy. And of course the best thing to do would be subscribe. Your favorite podcast player, undoubtedly as a copy of this, the longest running tech podcast in the world now in its 18th year I don't know how that's possible, but it's the case. Subscribing you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. And if you can, if that podcast player you're using has a review function, leave us a five star review cuz after 18 years, a lot of people have forgotten. We're we're even here. John, I see you pulling over the microphone. Do you need to do need to say anything? No. All right, John, Lenina our technical director. We thank Jason. How our producer, thanks to all of you for joining us. We'll see you next time. Another TWiT is in the can!
