This Week in Tech Episode 883 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. Oh, I love this panel. Amy Webb is back author of the Genesis machine, our quest to rewrite life in the age of synthetic biology. Also founder of the future today Institute and our favorite futurist. She joins Connie GMO, who is also very important in our lives editor in chief at CNET and dear friend, Dwight Silverman. There's gonna be a great panel from the Houston Chronicle. Yes, we have to talk about Elon. He says I'm not buying that TWiTtter thing. What went on? What went down and what is the future for TWiTtter? Also two big data laws passed in Europe. What does it mean for all of these all of these big tech companies in the us and the hacker who stole 1 billion records of Chinese citizens, is that story true? Amy has some thoughts. It's all coming up next on TWiTtter podcasts. You

TWIT intro (00:00:56):
Love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:01:09):
This is TWiT. This weekend tech episode, 883 recorded Sunday, July 10th, 2022 more data than sense. This weekend. Tech is brought to you by Indo Chino. If you've got a big day coming up, getting the perfect look is no big deal with Indo Chino. Get $50 off any purchase of 3 99 or more by using the promo code TWiT@indochinodotcomandbyuserway.org user way is the world's number one accessibility solution. And it's committed to enabling the fundamental human right of digital accessibility for everyone. When you're ready to make your site compliant, deciding which solution to use easy choice to make, go to user way.org/TWiT for 30% off user ways. AI powered accessibility solution and buy eight sleep, go to eight sleep.com/TWiT for exclusive 4th of July savings through July 10th. And if you're listening after July 10th, use the same URL to check out the pod pro cover and save $150 and check out and by worldwide technology with an innovative culture, thousands of it, engineers, application developers, unmatched labs and integration centers for testing and deploying technology at scale WWT helps customers bridge the gap between strategy and execution to learn more about WWT, visit wwt.com/TWiT it's time for TWiT this week at tech, the show we cover the weeks tech news with wonderful people, excellent journalists who will help us understand what the hell Elon Musks up to Amy. Amy Webb is here. Always exciting to get her on CEO of future today Institute and a futurist. Hi, Amy.

Amy Webb (00:03:07):
Alio. How are

Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
You? I'm great. Welcome back. You were in Amsterdam, how

Amy Webb (00:03:11):
Fun I was in Amsterdam in, in Italy. And then before that Aspen in San Francisco, I've been gone for weeks.

Leo Laporte (00:03:18):
Oh, were you at the Allen and company? Shindi

Amy Webb (00:03:21):
Not. That is sun valley. I was at the Aspen ideas festival and then at a world economic forum meeting,

Leo Laporte (00:03:27):
Actually probably much more interesting than Allen and co.

Amy Webb (00:03:29):
Yeah. You know, I just don't look good in a puffy vest <laugh> I feel like I wouldn't fit in to the Allen and company. 

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
I've you know, I just, I just, I watched the press looking through the chambering fence as they arrive in their Escalades in their puffy vests. And I think, ah, it just doesn't look like much fun. So we are

Amy Webb (00:03:49):
The, did, did you watch the, the show's succession? Yes. By any chance? I love pretty funny they're

Leo Laporte (00:03:54):
Parody. Yeah,

Amy Webb (00:03:55):
Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:03:56):
Yeah, yeah. And then we're all on puffy vests. Actually. That was

Amy Webb (00:03:59):
Pretty funny. Yeah, they were, they were, there's a whole scene where they sort of make fun of the vest.

Leo Laporte (00:04:02):
Yeah. And the, and the name tags and the billionaires don't wanna wear the name tags, but you gotta wear the name tags and oh, I love succession. I love, you know what I realize. I have a strange fetish for watching billionaires in action. And actually this show is gonna play right into this, but first let's introduce the rest of the panel. <Laugh> Connie Gimo is here. She is editor in chief of CNET, the big boss. Hi Connie.

Amy Webb (00:04:25):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (00:04:26):
Great to have you happy Sunday. I appreciate you being here on a Sunday. I know this is a difficult time to do a show, but we really appreciate it also of course, all the way from Houston. Our good friend, Dwight Silverman, who's been on TWiT for decades. It seems

Dwight Silverman (00:04:42):
It has been decades, I think. Yeah. Yeah. At least two,

Leo Laporte (00:04:45):
His new newsletter site isy.com/d Silverman, AUT, H O R y.com. How's that going?

Dwight Silverman (00:04:54):
It's doing very well. It's a, it's a great it's a service that you pay for and they you essentially can post everything you've ever written from any source. Ooh, I like that. It displays it nice. Oh, it's a great, it's great.

Leo Laporte (00:05:07):
So all your chronical columns and stuff were there and

Dwight Silverman (00:05:10):
Yes. And when the brief stand I was at Forbes is there and oh,

Leo Laporte (00:05:14):
That's great.

Dwight Silverman (00:05:15):
It's great. And this today, my column moved over my print column, moved over to the Sunday Houston Chronicle, which is good at publishes on Friday. So I'm happy to kind of be, be back home in the, in the technology part of the Houston club.

Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
You keep trying to retire. <Laugh>

Dwight Silverman (00:05:33):
I, you know, it's not happening. It's like, I don't feel, I don't feel retired, although I'm, this is funny. I'm taking a social media break for a month. Oh, I'm not on Facebook or Instagram. The only thing I'm doing is when I have a new column, I post post it there. And it's really weird cuz I've been doing social media nonstop since it started. And really before social media started with, with BPSs and blogs and I've never stopped and I'm not doing it this month. And it's really weird

Leo Laporte (00:06:05):
Getting going through a social media withdrawal is, is tough, but everybody I know who's done. It feels like they got a new life. Like suddenly the birds are singing. The sun is shining. The world is good.

Dwight Silverman (00:06:20):
Yes. Well it's you can't in, in July, in, in Houston, you can't really go outside for very long. It's 102 right now. And in Austin it's 108. Hmm. And but you know what I found the thing that has frustrated me most about it is that I really miss, like when I find a really good story, just sharing it on TWiTtter, on Facebook and not necessarily commenting on it, but not just being able to find something, say, Hey, look at this. And that's the thing I miss the most is kind of sharing stuff. But I'll be back probably in early August.

Leo Laporte (00:06:55):
Like the Terminator, he will be back,

Dwight Silverman (00:06:58):
Sorry, I'll be

Leo Laporte (00:06:58):
Back. So you know where I'm gonna start here. I have to, I don't want to, but I have to, Elon Musk says I am not buying TWiTtter. Oh my God. <Laugh> oh my God. To which TWiTtter responds in the, in the form of chairman of the board, Brett Taylor, the TWiTtter board is committed to closing the transaction on the price in terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal election, to enforce the merger agreement. We will, we are confident we will prevail in the Delaware court of Chancery, which is a little medieval, but now EV Williams, the one of the founders of TWiTtter tweeted, oh, come on, Brett. I know you feel like you have to say that, but can't we just let this all go. <Affirmative> Amy. It seems to me <laugh> and I've seen some other people say this. That is a kind of one billionaire to another statement, sort of like, oh, don't worry about the little people whose stock price has been depressed by this, these shenanigans. Let's just let Elon off the hook.

Amy Webb (00:08:07):
Right. So I will remind everybody people who have listened to me before know this, but for those of you who I haven't met yet I dropped out of law school right before starting. So I'm not a lawyer <laugh>

Amy Webb (00:08:23):
But I was qualified to go,

Leo Laporte (00:08:24):
You got into law school, but you didn't actually go to law school. So that's like,

Amy Webb (00:08:27):
I made a last minute decision. Not to yeah. Smart woman. Yeah. Anyways, so here's my, my two sons on what's happening. The, there is absolutely a lawsuit and that is because you can't Jack around another, you know, if you're gonna kill a company, you have to kill it dead. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:08:45):
You know, that's what they say. If you're gonna kill the king, you better not miss.

Amy Webb (00:08:49):
Right. So this is not a mostly dead yeah. Princess bride situation. And, and there are repercussions, the, this is a publicly traded company. Board members have fiduciary responsibility. The leadership of that company has a responsibility to its shareholders and its employees. And if an outsider comes in and files, paperwork, which he had to do saying that there was an intent, a good faith intent to buy, you know, that is legal paperwork. And to Rene on that at this point that there, there should and will be repercussions without a doubt.

Leo Laporte (00:09:28):
Yeah.

Amy Webb (00:09:28):
Can we also just say that, like, let's just like call it for what it is. Elon Musk likes the drama, he's a troll, all this is happening. He's a troll, all of this is happening around the same time that it's come to light that he is got TWiTns. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
That's

Amy Webb (00:09:44):
A good one with one of his employees. Yeah. So like, you know, and, and then got into a crazy, ridiculous argument on TWiTtter with somebody about the, oh, it was Nick cannon. The two of them are broing out about under population on the planet and that's why they're spreading their seeds. So

Leo Laporte (00:10:03):
Generously Elon, thank you for blessing us with your progeny us birth rate. There

Amy Webb (00:10:09):
Is, there is, there is something, this was, this was part of the what's this face, the, the horrible Epstein. There seems to be a common thread among men of men of a certain yes. Yeah. That there's this like compulsive need to spread their seed. Yeah. and, and, and part of the justification for that is under population. This is a, a crazy ego driven.

Leo Laporte (00:10:35):
Can I tell you what the real what's really the subtext of this, and it's kind of like replacement theory that the dumb people are reproducing at a fast rate. So we who are smarter than them must keep up. Otherwise, all that's left is dumb people. And so it comes from, I guarantee you, cuz I, I know people like

Amy Webb (00:10:54):
This. Yeah, no, no, no. I, I

Leo Laporte (00:10:55):
Think you're right. It comes from this point, this sense that I am a superior race. And so it is my obligation to spread my seed far and wide. So it has nothing to do with a fertility slump. I guarantee you, it

Amy Webb (00:11:09):
Has to no, but I mean, that's what, they'res what they're saying. It's

Leo Laporte (00:11:11):
Crypto racist is what it is crypto you know rich, purist, crypto classes, classes, there's the word. Yeah. 

Amy Webb (00:11:20):
There's just a certain amount of hubris here, hubris, just going back to the all thes, but, but, but there is a legal responsibility that as a signer he, he now bears and there, there, you know, the, the, the folks who are suing on behalf of shareholders and investors and just like company chaos are absolutely within their rights and are probably gonna prevail yeah. In court, if it's not settled outside

Leo Laporte (00:11:45):
There's Connie, go ahead.

Connie Guglielmo (00:11:45):
And I, I was gonna say there's a billion dollar breakup fee at stake here as well. And I think, I don't know what others feel, but the beginning of this whole Elon Musk wants to buy TWiTtter. If you were taking odds from folks who follow Elon Musk, we all knew that that deal wasn't gonna go through, especially when the stock prices for Tesla took a hit and his wealth was affected. And you know, you can say whatever you want about what you wanna do and what your feelings about it are. But at the end of the day to Amy's point, you have to put down some legal commitments and you have to put down some money. And then if you feel that you wanna, you know jerk around the S sec, which is what some people thought Musk was doing and jerk around TWiTtter, that's all well and good in TWiTtter. And it plays to the drama. And you like to be part of the drama, but there is shareholder accountability and there's money. There's a billion dollars breakup fee at stake that Elon Musk, you know, doesn't wanna pay. So that's, you know, it's all about money at this point. Twittter's

Leo Laporte (00:12:45):
Not this whole, TWiTtter's saying not, it's not a billion. We want 44 billion. You said you were gonna give us 44 billion. And by God you will. Although, you know, these things take time, it's gotta go to court. There will be lawsuits back and forth. The Delaware court of Chancery does move a little bit faster apparently in, in issues like this to protect and particular the corporations registered there like TWiTtter. So I suspect there may be an outcome quickly, but there, there there's been a lot of interesting speculation, especially about this billion dollar breakup fee. He could make a lot more than the billion dollar breakup fee just by a pump and dump scam on TWiTtter. He bought, remember he bought nine and a quarter percent of TWiTtter stock without revealing it breaking S C regulations at the time. Still no punishment on that.

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
Although they're investigating and then announced, even after he bought 9.2, 5% at a reduced amount, then announced he was gonna buy it thinking perhaps the stock price now would go straight up and he could sell all that stock did not happen. In fact, you're not alone, Connie, very, not only did pundits not believe he meant to buy it, the market didn't because at no time to TWiTtter's stock price go anywhere near what Elon was offering. In fact, right now it's $36. Elon's offering $54 and 20 cents. That's exactly the market saying, yeah, no, that's not gonna happen. Otherwise the price would go close to 54 20, wouldn't it?

Connie Guglielmo (00:14:15):
You're absolutely right. Yeah. Nobody believed it. <Laugh> nobody believed it. And so, you know, we're, we're just left with the mess basically. I mean, I, I know people who work at TWiTtter,

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
I feel so bad

Connie Guglielmo (00:14:28):
For them. Twittter, TWiTtter has been struggling trying to expand its membership. They have their challenges and issues, and you really don't need, you know, a boy billionaire with, you know you know, an ego about what he wants to say, screwing things up. And so now it is put up or set up time. Will, will he ultimately buy TWiTtter? Obviously that's not gonna happen. So it's really a question of how much does he have to pay for screwing around with a publicly traded company. And also remember, he's been in trouble with S E C many times he's done this to Tesla shareholders, right? Saying that he would take a buyout bid and then the S C slapped him with a fine. And then all of his tweets had to be reviewed by the S C. So he he's had a lot of pent up anger at S C and at the beginning, when this was all announced, people thought he was just trolling the S E C some more. So, yeah.

Amy Webb (00:15:20):
We'll, we'll see. I have a question cuz Brian and I, my husband and I had an argument about this whole thing over the weekend. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:15:25):
You guys are really interesting. <Laugh>

Amy Webb (00:15:28):
I know, right.

Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
Lisa and I are arguing about the, you know, what color the paint should be on the house and, and you're arguing about Elon. That's good. I like it. I like

Amy Webb (00:15:36):
It. We had a knockdown drag at arguing about this and he is an Elon apologist, no matter what, see there are those just asking questions. He's

Leo Laporte (00:15:44):
A stand,

Amy Webb (00:15:46):
He's a stand he's a total stand. And, and no matter what I said it was, but he disrupted the auto industry, but, and without him there wouldn't be electric cars. And he disrupted look at, you know, he disrupted space. And it was like, no, no measure of just practical facts applied. And then I, I said, well, you know, let's think about this in terms of like Jeff Bezos who gets no passes, everybody, like there's nobody to defend Bezos. And I would argue that Bezos has actually been more influential in changing global economic structures among other things. And every like, like Bezos makes mistakes. He has no slack. Elon keeps doing ridiculous things and there's just Legia of people ready to defend him, including my husband and I, I like can't gro why it, it, I don't maybe it's because I'm a woman. I don't know. I just, there, there is no way for me to get into the head space where I see the net positives, you know, that this guy is, is wielding at this point.

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
It's the state of the world today. Isn't it? That half the world goes, what's the deal? Why do you like this guy? And the other half says, he's God. And it's not, it's just not E not just Elon. I might add there's other people with orange or hair. And, and it's, it's like those of us who are in the skeptic camp, just, I don't understand it. I don't get it. Well,

Dwight Silverman (00:17:11):
Elon, Elon has kind of in the past has relied on his instincts as to what these to be done and has had successes with it. Spacex is a success. He has disrupted space electric cars. That's a success. And all of them kind of were the result of him going, you know, I think this is the way it should be done and I have the resource to do it, and we're gonna push for it. But he, that's kind of the same thing he did with TWiTtter. His experience on TWiTtter is not what your experience and my experience is on TWiTtter. It's one of the reasons why he's so obsessed with spam bots. You know, we occasionally see spam bots on TWiTtter and we block them and move on, but he's got millions and millions of followers and it's a completely different universe for him and he's obsessed with them.

Dwight Silverman (00:17:59):
So his, what he ha what he did with SpaceX and what he did with Tesla, he was trying to do the same thing. It was his instinct. I'm gonna buy this company. I'm going to make it the open ended town hall for the world, which was actually one of the things that, that TWiTtter talked about in some of its founders, talked about the pulse of the planet early on. And he says, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna save this. But, but when it turned out to not be what, as easy as he thought it was, and it's a completely different beast. And I like what Matt Levine said in his Bloomberg piece that he started it out kind of tongue in cheek, believed in it, but got bored. And now he's walked away from it. I think, I think the same instinct that brought him to Tesla and SpaceX brought him to TWiTtter, but it failed him.

Leo Laporte (00:18:54):
And I should point out and you might want to give Brian the book ludicrous by Edward Neer Meyer, which is about Elon Musk and Tesla Neer Meyer had an opinion piece in the New York times early in June when Elon Musk dreams, his employees have nightmares. He interviewed a hundred Tesla employees to do the book and really points out that as much as Elon, you know, took credit for SpaceX and took credit for Tesla. He was a pain in the butt for the employees, Mr. Musk reported that he had slept in. This is neither Myer writing slept in Tesla's factories during the, this period, which he called production hell what he left out of his self aggrandizing was the reality for his employees. His presence brought no real manufacturing expertise to bear just the overbearing pressure of a boss whose public shaming was punctuated by declarations, like quote, I could be on my own private island when naked supermodels drinking my ties, but I'm not <laugh>. And I have to say, you know, you hear the same stories about Elon sitting in on all night sessions, discussing the nozzles on SpaceX, Falcon heavy, but he's not a space engineer. And I'm sure his presence at those meetings was more of a burden than it was an asset. His money is welcome.

Amy Webb (00:20:15):
Let me, let me put in a, a sort of supportive plug for an outside in perspective on things, because you know, most of the time I'm in boardrooms with executives or their C suites and even very successful companies become very myopic over time. So it can be useful to have even a senior executive. Who's just an incredible leader who doesn't have domain expertise in that industry lead because it, because you get a valuable outside in perspective, but I think there's a maturity issue here. Mm. And there's a vast difference between an outside and perspective where you may lack domain expertise, but you're an incredible executive. You're, you're just an incredible chief executive. And, and what we're witnessing, which is just like, you know, billionaire boy immaturity, hubris stuff. And, you know, I, I don't think we should be celebrating somebody who got a hair up their rear end and decided they'd, you know, take over a company and then and then like change their mind. And in the process, you know, created all kinds of chaos in, in the wake of that. That's very un-American if you think about the, the structures that hold up, our economic functions in, in our society, like we should not be celebrating that.

Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
I just watched two great TV shows. One about Adam Newman and WeWork called we crashed on apple TV. Yeah.

Amy Webb (00:21:42):
It

Leo Laporte (00:21:42):
Was super good. And then the dropout, which is all about Elizabeth Holmes and the failure of theos, and both of them shared the same. And I suspect Elon and may. And, and both of 'em probably looking back to Steve jobs who did turn this kind of out of the box thinking and, and, and driving personality into a real success at apple. And I think, I think there is this kind of culture in Silicon valley that it's, that the unruly CEO is an advantage, not a disadvantage, just as you said Amy, but, but there's a line. You, Steve jobs kind of stuck to his knitting. Although I remember when they were making the Fremont factory for the Macintosh, he insisted all the machines be painted in a particular shade of what was it, red <laugh>. He really, he really liked that color. Elon. This is an article from three year, four years ago, and the intelligence are Tesla.

Leo Laporte (00:22:36):
Factory workers are in danger, cuz Elon Musk hates the color yellow. He refused, he had kind of gray lines on the assembly line that were hard to see instead of the traditional, you know, yellow stripes, caution stripes, cuz he doesn't like the color yellow lane lines on the factory floor are painted in shades of grain. Tesla denies it. He also is into not having too many signs and doesn't like the beeping sounds forklifts make when they go in reverse. And as a result, it's very dangerous. According to the intelligence there was very dangerous to work in the Tesla factory. I shouldn't laugh. 

Connie Guglielmo (00:23:13):
Well I, I wanna go back to what Amy just said about why people admire, why, why they admire personalities. And that's really what it's about. Right? We live in a society now with the cult personality and people are entertained by someone who's different and outrageous and you know, will we love it, say crazy things, right? Yeah. Some people definitely love it, but there's a difference between being a celebrity and being a business leader who has, you know, thousands of employees lives and livelihoods, you know, under his thumb, you know, or under his color choices, if you will, and being somebody who's a visionary. So we can say that Elon Musk had a definite vision about space and about electric cars and was able to follow through not easily. Right. Tesla was in the slam, done success that people, you know, thought it would be. And so he had to invest and he, he had to see through some of that vision, but not all of his, I wouldn't call him the most business savvy, certainly not the most ethical business leader or even the most forward thinking. One when I saw that he wants to cut or is in the process of cutting a lot of his staff and he's asked everyone, you know, post or mid pandemic or post pandemic, wherever you think we are to go back to work five days a week or turn in your

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
Insisted, your badge insisted they come

Connie Guglielmo (00:24:33):
Back. So, so there's a difference between what a personality is from an entertainment value. And we, we definitely see that with him and others in the political realm and outside of it. And then there's the, okay, let's talk real now. And there is no real talk <laugh> when you get to that point about what, what are you doing that makes sense? Why is it sensible? Why should we follow you? Why, why should you get a path? Certainly. So it's just, we live in a world where people, and maybe your husband is one of them just wants to put his blinders on about, well, he did these good things and you know, it's, it's like, you know, somebody who was convicted of a crime, the neighbors. Oh, but he was so nice. He was

Leo Laporte (00:25:12):
Such a nice mother. Quiet.

Amy Webb (00:25:14):
Yeah. I think that, that the point that you're making about personality is absolutely on. And I think a facet of that is speaking up in a way that some people feel like they can't being able to Jostle the status quo in a way that people feel like they can't. I mean, and people compare him to, to Tony stark. And I think that there's a certain amount of reverence for Tony stark. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, you know, for not having any superpowers, but through the sheer might of his own ideas and the will to carry through you know, that he's sort of

Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
Ironman challenged real.

Amy Webb (00:25:55):
No, but I can, but I,

Connie Guglielmo (00:25:56):
What,

Leo Laporte (00:25:57):
What

Amy Webb (00:25:58):
I'll tell you who, I don't hear defending Musk. I, I never hear, let me put it this way. The group that tends to defend him tends to be pretty homogenous, right? Yeah. It is white men tech bros. I, I don't, I well, so, but that's my, my husband's not a tech bro, but, but he, he he's a white man. And I just, when I hear him talk about it, it sounds like it's almost a yearning for, it's a character, it's a, it's a character, a personality. And I think people looked up up, up to cause they're doing things that people feel like they can't on their own does make

Leo Laporte (00:26:30):
Sense. It's a great man. I agree with you. And that's why Trump of course has his adherence. It's the great man hypothesis too, which we really believe, which is that Napoleon or Alexander, the great or Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, these great men stand up above the crowd to lead us into the future. And it's through their force of personality that they are able to do great things that the rest of us can only admire. I think that

Amy Webb (00:26:57):
That right. And it's hard during

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
The, hasn't it the great man hypothesis

Amy Webb (00:27:01):
It, I mean, yes, but the problem is the paradox of the present. It's very hard to decouple the traction that you feel for that personality at that moment. Yeah. And then sort of, you know what, so Jack Welsh, if you think back to, oh God GE and, and Jack Welsh and his disciples in that moment, he was hated. And there's some similarities here. He was his, he killed driving stock prices, way up. Yeah. Total cult. And in the aftermath of all of that, you know, he's been vilified, <laugh> like not a good guy, you know, by, and, and, and 

Leo Laporte (00:27:33):
There's a book about him, cult, the man who broke capitalism,

Amy Webb (00:27:37):
It's a tur by David gel. It's a terrific, terrific book. You should read it if you have it.

Leo Laporte (00:27:43):
And, and unfortunately capitalism has survived <laugh> but yeah. And actually Welch got a 417 million severance package from GE. So

Amy Webb (00:27:55):
Right. But the, but the problem is during the time everybody was like, oh, this guy could do no wrong. Yeah. You know, no apologizing. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
There were all

Amy Webb (00:28:02):
These books. Horrible, horrible. Yeah. Terrible behavior. But you know, with, with with some distance, we see things differently. And I think in time we will, you know, it, it happens all the time, right. To, to every character throughout history.

Leo Laporte (00:28:19):
Well, isn't that part of that cult of personality though, we love to build them up and knock them down. It's the plot

Dwight Silverman (00:28:25):
Of, and sometimes they knock themselves down well, as, which is what

Leo Laporte (00:28:27):
They give us is the ammunition often. Yeah. Right.

Dwight Silverman (00:28:30):
I, I have a question about, about the billion dollar termination fee. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Connie talked about this, but I'm curious about this. Why would TWiTtter make the statement? You know, basically Elon says I'm dropping the deal. And TWiTtter says, no, you, no, you aren't, we'll see you in court. Why not just say, all right, give us the billion dollars and go away and let us, let us go about our business. Why, why do the, I mean, it's probably, I'll tell you why end up with a settlement.

Leo Laporte (00:29:02):
I'll tell you why $36 and 81 cents. That's the TWiTtter stock price after this mess. And it's directly due to Elon Musk and TWiTtter wants to be made whole and a billion dollars. Ain't gonna make it whole Connie you're nodding. You agree?

Connie Guglielmo (00:29:19):
Yeah. I was also gonna say, I think that's just all legal chatter too. They have to show that they have a good faith effort to wanna continue the deal. And they believe that he, he has not acted in good faith by walking away from the deal complaining about bots and so forth. And so I think that's just legal maneuvering. I'm not a lawyer either. I did apply to lawsuit as well and decided to be a journalist. So I have that problem with you, Amy <laugh>. But from what I understand, it's that, you know, you have to, you have to, this is all about good faith efforts, right? So there's a good faith effort to close the deal. That's what TWiTtter is doing now. They're insisting you're right. The billion dollar doesn't cover the, the harm that they've felt, but also Musk doesn't wanna pay even the billion dollars. No, this is why he's termin at the agreement.

Leo Laporte (00:30:02):
Interestingly though, Connie his public. And by the way, I always have to remind myself it's legal to lie to the press, to the public on TWiTtter. His public stance is there's more than 5% of bots. That's unacceptable in the letter from his lawyers. And I'm gonna say the name, cause I love saying it's Skadden, ARP slate, meager and FLA <laugh> in the lawyer from his letter, from his lawyers. Did I mention their Skadden ARP slate, meager and FLA. They didn't mention the spam bots. They just said TWiTtter has been non cooperative and has not given us the information we've asked for in order to assess this problem. They are in fact, not giving any evidence that it's not 5%. They're not saying it's, it's more than 5%. They're just saying TWiTtter's not being cooperative. That's a different grounds. And by the way, a grounds, I don't think he's gonna win on because remember this deal was as, is he waved the right to all the due diligence that would normally accompany this kind of merger. He waved it. So, and TWiTtter, I think has been, I, and I think a judge will say, has been performative. They gave him the, the fire hose. They gave him every single tweet, half a billion tweets a day. What more could you give him than every bit of traffic on TWiTtter? I think they have been cooperative. So I don't, I think he's not gonna prevail. This is gonna be a problem.

Dwight Silverman (00:31:28):
I, I mentioned the Matt Levine article called Elon's out on Bloomberg. And in it, he goes, he puts a lot of that into context and talks about three different scenarios as to what he thinks is going on and incorporates. A lot of that letter.

Leo Laporte (00:31:46):
Levine is great detail. Levine is really good. I trust his, you know, he, he, he is a investment banker. He know, he entered the M and a he knows this stuff

Dwight Silverman (00:31:55):
And, and his, you know, of the three scenarios, he basically thinks that that Elon did this as a joke. Yeah. That it

Leo Laporte (00:32:04):
Basically got swept away

Dwight Silverman (00:32:06):
Fun and he got swept away in it. And and I think, I, I bet I bet you anything, that there will be a very short period of negotiation and they will settle this quickly.

Leo Laporte (00:32:18):
It's it's fascinating. Do you think it's possible also that we're underestimating Elon, that he was being smart about this there's one theory. This is from Yahoo finance, Aaron crater, how Elon's bizarre TWiTtter takeover saga could just have been a cover for him to sell eight and a half billion in Tesla stock. Maybe he's maybe as sly as a Fox. Maybe this was all a clever Rouse. Nobody believes that <laugh> <laugh>.

Amy Webb (00:32:50):
I think it's worth us. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Connie Guglielmo (00:32:54):
I was just gonna say, Elon Musk loves drama. He loves to be this, the center of drama. And I think Dwight's point is correct that he started this as kind of a joke. Well, Elon, will you come and save us and save free speech and whatever and buy TWiTtter. And he's like, yes, I will do that for you. Yeah. But then, you know, the rubber hits the road and it's like, wait a minute. Like just, yeah. There's money. I think it's at stake. Yeah.

Amy Webb (00:33:17):
I think it's worth, zooming out and asking what the next order implications of all of this will be. You, you know, we, I do some work with government and I, I hear often people saying that statesmanship is gone. So the way that, you know, government and politics is about politicing now and less about policy, the politicing is easier. The policy is hard. Yeah. That's true. And you just don't behave the way they used to. Yeah. I think there's something analogous to what we're seeing in the world of the newer world of business. You know, there's disrupting industries that have been reluctant to respond to emerging technologies, you know, and forces, but then there's also disrupting sort of the, the diplomacy of business or just how, you know, how we've operated. And another way to look at this is, you know, do, do, do other people start to have ideas about manipulating or influencing how companies operate? If Elon comes from for, you know, Elon, let's not forget there was doge coin. It, we we've seen patterns before, you know, what, if others emerge and start to do the same thing, that the chaos that this ensue, that, that ensues as a result, you know, changes the landscape in a way that I don't think is positive. I think there's positive disruption. And I think there's just like disruptive in a bad way, disruption. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:34:42):
It's not thoughtful and it, it doesn't have any future thinking it's really just, what can I do right now to get people's attention, to get people's vote, to get people's money. And it has no problem.

Amy Webb (00:34:56):
Right. And Connie planning, I think Connie's sort of opening salvo and all of this is right. You know, we're living in this age of sort of high drama all around. Yeah. And and that's, you know, the, again, like the, the next order impacts of that aren't purposeful or thoughtful. And I worry a little bit about the positioning what's left, right? Regardless of the, the place where it's happening.

Connie Guglielmo (00:35:20):
Well, I hope to go ahead. I hope to your point that what's left is people who wanna disrupt things, get away with the disruption. If sometimes it does have a positive impact and we can change laws and whatever, but if you're disrupting things and it doesn't work, you have the S sec, which remember forced him to step down as the chairman of a TWiTtter because of his tweets. He paid the 20 million fine, which to him is probably the spare change in his pocket. But nonetheless, there are enforcement vehicles. And so people will push and we allow them to get away with it unless there's a recourse. And I mean, this is what the January 6th hearings are all about. Right? You can do, you can say whatever you want, but at the end of the day, do some people go to jail for insurrection or manipulation. So will there be repercussions against Musk beyond he might have to negotiate with TWiTtter on a larger or smaller billion dollar breakup fee. That that's where the that's where the change is going to, you know, have some impact, but only if the institutions are willing to go through the trouble to

Leo Laporte (00:36:25):
Pursue well, and that's the grave risk because we're teetering right now. And if there is no consequence to behavior like this, people will lose faith. They'll lose faith in the rule of law, they'll lose faith in our institutions in norms, and then all bets are off. And, and by pushing it to the brink to see what's gonna happen. Yeah. I hope there are consequences, but if they're not, the consequences is far greater. And I think that's serious risk that there will be no consequences for any of this behavior, whether it's January 6th, Theon, Musk, or anything else. And if there are no, the SCC is, feels pretty toothless. And I think Musk thinks he's gonna get away with it, for sure. Right. And that's bad, right? I think accountability, you lose faith. Then, then the American people will lose faith in our institutions. And that's when it's all over

Dwight Silverman (00:37:20):
Is the S E C toothless or just slow. In other words, they did ultimately take action that caused him to

Leo Laporte (00:37:27):
20 million fine.

Dwight Silverman (00:37:29):
And step down as the chairman

Leo Laporte (00:37:31):
And insisting that he have a lawyer look at all his tweets, which is obviously not happening. And what is their response? I think we better investigate that they're under financed and they're, and they undermanned.

Dwight Silverman (00:37:43):
Yes. But, but, and

Leo Laporte (00:37:45):
This is the bigger problem. Our institutions are not prepared to handle norm breakers to this degree. We didn't expect anybody like Donald Trump. We weren't prepared for that. We weren't prepared for Elon. The S sec is not prepared for somebody who doesn't care, what you or I, or the S sec thinks we expect some level of norms. And when it, when somebody goes that far, I think like Mark Meadows, we freeze. We don't know what we,

Dwight Silverman (00:38:20):
I don't, you know, I'm not willing to ride off the S sec just yet.

Leo Laporte (00:38:24):
I

Dwight Silverman (00:38:24):
Hope not. I think it will be real interesting in the next few days to see what kind of words come out of there. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of criticism right now about merit Garland and and him not moving fast enough in the DOJ in the January 6th investigations. And I think that he, like a lot of lawyers is very careful. Yeah. And you don't, you don't Mount that case until, you know, you can win it. And I think that the, the se I want my S E C to be like that. I want them when they, when they step forward, they've got it. That's

Leo Laporte (00:39:03):
Fine. And if they're being 

Dwight Silverman (00:39:05):
If that's what they're

Leo Laporte (00:39:06):
Doing, yeah, yes, that's fine.

Dwight Silverman (00:39:07):
But they need to give some sign that that's, that that's, what's coming well. They

Leo Laporte (00:39:11):
Don't even need to do that, but they, they need to, at some point act, remember the point of the sec, the whole reason the SCC exists is so that people have faith in the stock market, that there is an insider trading going on. That the information you as a, as a individual investor are given is the same as everybody else, that it's an equal playing field. And as soon as people don't believe that, forget it, the whole financial system relies upon that trust. So the sec has a very important mandate.

Dwight Silverman (00:39:41):
Well, and I think they need to speak up quickly on this.

Leo Laporte (00:39:44):
Yeah.

Connie Guglielmo (00:39:44):
And let's also look at Musk. He made a bid for a company, and now all of this drama has ensued. And like you said, from the very beginning, Leo, the market didn't even believe it. If, if Elon Musk goes to make a bid on another company,

Leo Laporte (00:39:58):
Yeah. He's ruined his reputation.

Connie Guglielmo (00:40:00):
What, what are they gonna say? I mean, the, the talk about Musk and you know, bankers and everyone interested in him is if he takes SpaceX public, they would like to be part of that deal. But I just don't see him knocking on another door and everyone welcoming him in.

Leo Laporte (00:40:16):
He is damaged. He is damaged Tesla's value as well. In fact, it's estimate it's not, not completely clear, but you know, all of the a lot of the money he was putting up was borrowed against Tesla stock on margin, but Tesla stock price. If it goes below, it's thought somewhere around 7 25, it's very close right now that margin would be called Elon would suddenly have to put up all that money. I mean, he is, he, look, you can't say he is not a brave fellow. He is put up,

Amy Webb (00:40:44):
There are bankers on the lines. So this is not, and there's another part of this story, which is the financing on this was not just his, he wasn't his,

Leo Laporte (00:40:52):
There were a lot of people. Yes.

Amy Webb (00:40:54):
There were banks

Leo Laporte (00:40:56):
That were in sovereign, the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia.

Amy Webb (00:40:59):
Right. So I have to ask where all of these other stakeholders are <laugh>. Can you imagine in

Leo Laporte (00:41:06):
The middle of this calls

Amy Webb (00:41:07):
Walking away and was it his unilateral decision to walk away? And if so, like how much has that really screwed over all of these other potential future investors for investors, for other venture, you know, SpaceX or whatever. I, there, there are next order consequences here that I just, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:41:24):
And what, what if TWiTtter, what happens now with TWiTtter? Let's say, all right, Elon walks away. It's over. Twittter's gonna just continue on as, as always by the way, there's also, I think, a fairly credible story that this was the plan all along Jack Dorsey, remember endorsed the Elon acquisition. It said that Jack put in agro wall as the CEOs kind of not the ideal guy to run this challenging company. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> because he knew Musk was gonna come along. He wanted a weak CEO. The board has no dog in this hunt. They are very, they have very small amount of TWiTtter stock. Jack has the most with only 2%. It, there are those conspiracy theory minded that this was the plan all along to, to, to, you know, Palm it off on Musk. Now, what if it fails now? What, where, where, whether TWiTtter,

Amy Webb (00:42:12):
This, this, so the business model for this company was never salient and I'm listen, I'm, I'm in a, one of the OGs. So I've been on since service launched. Yep. And I, I loved using it up until probably two years ago when I think things are when things changed. But, but the business model never quite worked. It was never gonna make sense for this to be ad supported. They did some M and a activity, but then, you know, when they, they acquired nuzzle for example, and rather than monetizing that, which they should have done, because it was a terrific, it could have been a terrific product to work alongside it. They killed it, integrated some of it and, and made it worse. So you know, the amount, the, the price was already inflated. I think the stock price was already inflated. And, and what was the TWiTtter has a fraction of the number of Maus compared to others in its category. So, you know, there's that

Leo Laporte (00:43:08):
Apparently Elon is planted down the puffy jacket and fly to sun valley. Soon I could just, I, he,

Amy Webb (00:43:13):
Oh, he was there, there, did you hear, he was, he was there and it was like the, you know, there's no media inside, but from what people heard who were there, like he just, yeah, he kind of got grilled.

Leo Laporte (00:43:26):
Ah, see, that's what I was wondering, standing ovation or booze. So booze. Interesting.

Amy Webb (00:43:33):
I mean, I don't, I don't know that people were actually booing, but I know that the, that this go well for him. What, what I

Leo Laporte (00:43:40):
Should go well for him, that's disruptive to the markets in general. It's disruptive the whole system. Fascinating. I, I, for one hope TWiTtter survives. I think TWiTtter. Yeah. It's not, it's not a good business, but I think it has huge value to our society. And I hope, you know, I don't know what should it be? A a, should it be a public interest Corp? What should it be? I don't know. It should somehow survive.

Amy Webb (00:44:07):
Well, I, my original idea years ago was that news organizations should pool together and turn it into a 21st century version of res or AP and monetize it, but also keep it open for everybody. I mean, that, to me, would've made the most sense. And at that point, this was before TWiTtter went public that, that would've been more of a utility play. And I think that would've been a longer term, a better, longer term oper like a better, longer term plan.

Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
Maybe Jeff Bezos will sweep in and turn into a public benefit com corporation. And I don't know,

Amy Webb (00:44:47):
<Laugh>, I don't, I think he's distracted with other things right

Leo Laporte (00:44:50):
Now. Bezos made the deal for the Washington post at the Allen and co confab some years ago. So that's where those deals get made. Maybe Elon will come away with something besides a bloody nose. <Laugh> all

Amy Webb (00:45:04):
Right. No, they so if you, I just looked it up. Reuters has the story about Elon Musk, captivating sun valley

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
Valley captivating

Amy Webb (00:45:12):
Captivating him. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:45:13):
You gotta imagine if he walks in the door, he's the he's the object of a lot of interest at the, I mean,

Amy Webb (00:45:20):
He was interviewed by Sam Altman who's now the CEO of open AI. Yeah. And yeah, it was wow.

Leo Laporte (00:45:29):
Yeah. Wow. I would love, I hate

Amy Webb (00:45:31):
One of the quotes was I'd hate to be TWiTtter where you have to take this guy seriously. Anyways,

Leo Laporte (00:45:38):
I think TWiTtter needs a new board. They need a new CEO and they need to be somehow funded in such a way that they can be a public benefit corporation and not a, a new mission as well. A new mission. Yeah. Yeah. Cause they do. I mean, there's still, I have to say since the Elon thing, I spent a lot more time on TWiTtter and it's, it there's so much valuable information there. There's a lot of garbage, but there's a lot of, lot of valuable information and you kind of are in control of it. And I think since their acquisition of nozzle, I mean to that point, Amy, they've actually done a good job with the, with the topics,

Amy Webb (00:46:08):
Oh, the new blue service. I, I was a power user on nuzzle. I had made hundreds of

Leo Laporte (00:46:12):
Customer me. I

Amy Webb (00:46:13):
Loved it. And I was using it as a way of aggregating signal data. And

Leo Laporte (00:46:16):
It was

Amy Webb (00:46:17):
Sad. What's what's resulted is totally, I mean, I pay for the TWiTtter blue service. It's a shadow

Leo Laporte (00:46:22):
Of the

Amy Webb (00:46:23):
Original, it's a shadow of what it used to be

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
Nozzle. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But it it's something. And I have to say the top articles section, and now they've added people besides people you follow, they've added a nozzle, like people that the people you follow follow tab, which is exactly the same, cuz I guess I follow the same people <laugh> who follow the other people who follow the same people. But anyway I think that's a value that recognizes the importance of TWiTtter as kind of a news feed as the dial tone of the,

Amy Webb (00:46:51):
This is a product that, that basically has not evolved. Yeah. Not, not seriously since it's launched. So there's a certain also, I mean, I I had some conversations with them about why they weren't evolving and the answer I always got was, well, the, the DNA of the place was let's just build it and see what happens. There was no real planning. And you know, that may be true in the beginning, but if you're trying to grow and scale a company, at some point you have to do longer term planning and you have to be able to execute against that plan.

Leo Laporte (00:47:23):
Dust was created by Jonathan Abrams who was creator ster. And 

Amy Webb (00:47:28):
Yeah. He's he's have you ever met him? Yeah, I've

Leo Laporte (00:47:30):
Interviewed him. Awesome. I

Amy Webb (00:47:31):
Love him. I love that guy. Yeah. He's always like slightly too ahead of the market.

Leo Laporte (00:47:36):
Yeah. And I don't think when he made nuzzle, I don't think he was trying to make a the, you know, huge business. I just think he thought it was kind of cool and interesting. And I, that was what I gathered. We interviewed him. I think he was on triangulation some years ago when he, cuz I was a big nuzzle

Amy Webb (00:47:51):
Fan. He's very, very smart. He's a, he's a great guy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
I, I still can use top articles. Like I used nuzzle. In fact, I still can use TWiTtter as I use nuzzle, which is essentially to see what's going on for the shows and to bookmark important stories for the shows. And it's, it's still a good Fe of news if you follow the right people and all that. So I hope TWiTtter survives this FKA.

Dwight Silverman (00:48:14):
I certainly miss it in in the couple of weeks where I have been off of it. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't get a chance to, I don't get a chance to share stuff, but I've also have had to try to find alternate ways of finding the news when you're covering and paying attention to tech, it's kind of the best way to get there. And and I've suddenly I'm subscribed to a lot more newsletters than I had

Leo Laporte (00:48:39):
Before. So interesting. That's helping, that's the new, that's the new way, isn't

Dwight Silverman (00:48:43):
It? Yeah. But it's still slower. You know, you wait for the newsletter to come to you. Right. And with TWiTtter, you know, it's just, it's just there in your, it's just there in your

Leo Laporte (00:48:51):
Feed. I often I find myself watching TV or doing stuff, cooking and I'll have TWiTtter scrolling just to kinda keep an eye out. You feel you do. I mean, don't, doesn't everybody feel like that that's the buzz that's where things are happening. And if something happens, you're gonna know about it first on TWiTtter,

Dwight Silverman (00:49:09):
Particularly in text, I think this, I think there's, I think, you know, you gotta remember that most people are not on TWiTtter and that's not how they find out about things and no, but

Leo Laporte (00:49:19):
Every year news organization, every every

Dwight Silverman (00:49:21):
News

Leo Laporte (00:49:21):
Organization, I mean for, go ahead, Connie. You were gonna say something.

Connie Guglielmo (00:49:25):
No, Amy was gonna say something. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:49:27):
Amy was gonna say,

Amy Webb (00:49:28):
I was, I was more just gonna say, I think the difference in the year 20, 22 versus the year, whatever 2006 is just diffusion. We don't have a small concentration of networks. Right? All the journalists that I'm friends with have, you know, moved on and you've got discord, you've got Keybase, you've got all of these other places now. And vehicles like media has consolidated the channels for distribution have changed, you know? And so I think it's a little harder to find those important pockets of what's happening and the people who are talking about them.

Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
But TWiTtter, is it? I mean, you don't go to Facebook. I mean, I don't, no one I know, goes to Facebook for news. I, I actually normal people probably do in great numbers.

Connie Guglielmo (00:50:13):
So TWiTtter to, to both points being made is a great place to find out what's going on. If you follow certain people, but then you, first of all, create your own filter bubble, right? So that's an, an aside, but there is no one place to go to find out, you know, everything that's happening and the advantage of a place like TWiTtter, at least at the beginning was that it, it allowed people to know what was going on as quickly as insiders did. Right. I worked for Bloomberg for many years and they had the headline service, which was basically TWiTtter right before TWiTtter.

Leo Laporte (00:50:45):
But you had to have a very expensive Bloomberg terminal to, to watch,

Connie Guglielmo (00:50:48):
Correct. You had to pay for that information and then you, it was all about making money, right? No one, well

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
They made money on it cuz people needed it. They wanted

Connie Guglielmo (00:50:56):
It ahead of the market. Right. And so the potential for TWiTtter to tell you what's happening in the world quickly. And to have that information disseminated, you know, equally to anybody who subscribes is there, but obviously that business model and also the use of social media has been so corrupted that you almost have to hit a reset button, I think yeah. On what it needs to be. And I agreed that if there was a moment in time where it could have been a utility for news surface, the utility for new services to be that wire service to the world free that people could find out what was happening. And they would see quickly that might have changed some of the way public discourse has gone on in this country. But,

Leo Laporte (00:51:37):
Well, that's a missed opportunity. We're not there. Mike Bloomberg made a little bit of money on those terminals. What do you think that the term is the terminal as important and successful as it used to be?

Connie Guglielmo (00:51:46):
I mean, it, it is to people who are setting up trades and want to act instantly on news because in the world of the stock market and others can speak to this as well. It's about, you know, having a, you know, microsecond advantage and when you're buying something, if it's going up and if it's going down, so there's a lot of automated trades in that system, right. Set up to react on news. So in terms of what's happening generally in the world, I think you can find out that, you know, the former prime prime minister of Japan was assassinated on TWiTtter. You don't need a Bloomberg or voer terminal anymore to do that. But from a financial perspective, mm-hmm, <affirmative> where seconds or milliseconds or fractions of a second matter with these automated trades, there is an advantage, which is why people still buy

Leo Laporte (00:52:32):
2000 a month, 24,000 a year. It seems like TWiTtter missed a boat there. They could have, they could have had something speaking of boats, by the way. Wonderful having the three of you. I love it when we can get great smart people on Dwight Silverman formerly of the Houston Chronicle still, I guess, of the Houston Chronicle, all three.com/d Silverman still riding there. Yes. Still there. They won't let him retire try as he might. <Laugh> Connie Gomo editor in SHEF of CNET. Okay. You'll get better than that top person at CNET and Amy Webb, futurist, and always a pleasure to have all three of you on the show. I'm gonna be on a boat on Saturday much. <Laugh>, I'm a little worried <laugh> we thought COVID would be over by now, but I but we're going on a TWiT cruise with a hundred TWiT followers, which is great.

Leo Laporte (00:53:24):
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Leo Laporte (00:54:08):
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Leo Laporte (00:55:03):
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Leo Laporte (00:55:58):
In fact, right now you're gonna get $50 off any purchase of $399 or more just use the promo code TWiTt. So we'll help you out in this new look of yours. Indo chino.com $50 off a purchase of 3 99 or more. I N D C H I o.com. And don't forget to use zip code TWiTt. So they know that you saw it here. And if you're on the cruise with me next week, look for a guy in a sharp purple tuxedo. <Laugh> it really looks good. I know when I say purple doesn't sound good. It really looks good. I think <laugh>, I can't wait. I wanted it to be a little, I wanted it to be a little bit fun. Alright. Back to the news enough, Elon spent an hour on that, but I thought, you know, it's a fascinating story. That's why, by the way, I guess if you're saying, you know, that everything's heading towards this kind of drama it's because we in the press love it. It makes great headlines. It attract, it drives traffic, right? Connie.

Connie Guglielmo (00:56:56):
It does, but I would be happy for some quiet times

Leo Laporte (00:56:59):
Myself. <Laugh> no, not gonna happen. Never gonna happen. I'm sorry to say we, Amy was in Portofino when the do's decision came down and, and I've apologized for harassing you in, in Italy, Amy, cuz I really wanted to get some women on to talk about that. Yeah. there is of course a lot of consequences in the, in the tech world to this Google has now said they are going to stop tracking location tracking when you go somewhere sensitive, like say an abortion clinic. That is a real problem because that information is, is, is being sold and fairly easy to get by third party data brokers. And I can just imagine, in fact the president Biden the white house put out a warning to women saying if you're in one of the states where abortion is illegal, stop using period tracker apps, is that really the way to solve this?

Leo Laporte (00:58:02):
Or maybe we need some better privacy protections E the EU at least is doing something about it. The EU has passed now two new regulations, the DSA, the digital services act. And the, is it the D ma digital, oh, now I've, I've lost track of the two different regulations. Yeah, the DMA these are not they're related, but did cover different things. The digital markets act, the DMA is going to require companies like Google to stop, stop self dealing, for instance it's going to affect apple and Google's app store. For instance, the DSA is a little bit and at least among geeks a little bit more controversial because although it seems to mostly be aimed at interoperability, letting, making messaging apps, for instance, interoperate. If you, and only if you have 45 million monthly active users, so you have to be a big guide. So it's, it's a, it's about WhatsApp, apple companies like that, but there's some concern that the DSA, oh, no, I'm sorry. The DMA is gatekeepers the D so confusing. There's some concern that this interoperability solution will impact end to end encryption Amy. I know you're a fan because you mentioned once again Keybase, which was all about end to end encryption, and you're using it as a, a messaging system. It is end end encrypted messaging. Right,

Amy Webb (00:59:53):
Right. So here's what I, you know, China and the United States are very far ahead of the rest of the world. In certain areas of tech, for example, artificial intelligence. And I like to say that the EU primary contribution in terms of innovation is like policy and regulation. So this is, this has been coming for a while, but as with other especially privately related regs, you know, in enforcement and compliance has always been a real challenge. And we already saw that with GDPR. What would it actually take for the DMA portion of this to be enforced? I think the European commission has set up some type of task force with a couple dozen people. But you know, they don't just have organizations within Europe and businesses it's anybody who's dealing in any type of information anywhere around the world in, in that territory. And so while it's certainly laudable to make everything interoperable, the question really becomes like, how do they actually enforce this? Will they have the people to do that? I think they're also setting up some type of commission on or special transport some type of special group on algorithmic transparency. Yeah. So again, which is

Leo Laporte (01:01:19):
Crazy, they somehow wanna know what's the algorithm right. And you know,

Amy Webb (01:01:26):
That's from a, I think, I think this is gonna result in you know, lots of lawsuits the, you know, certainly the big tech companies challenging this or, or trying to mitigate some of the damage there, there, there's also an advertising piece of this. I think the D SA is now banning any type of content that could be considered advertising to minors. Yep. As well as any

Leo Laporte (01:01:53):
Of dark patterns,

Amy Webb (01:01:54):
Dark patterns, and also PIs. So any type of identifiable information that might be used to target you, let's say in a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad based on your gender, your gender, or your location or things like that. And that's not even an opt in, I think it's an, just an outright ban and it also includes politics. So I'm not sure what the fate of political advertising now looks like in Europe going forward. So this could be, it's a pretty big game

Leo Laporte (01:02:21):
Changer. Yeah. A monkey wrench in the business model for so many companies. Right. And even though it's only EU as EU goes, so goes, we've learned from GDPR. So I mean, how many cookie banners did you see this week? You know, that's not a law in the United States, but because of GDPR and European regulations, we, every site that has European visitors has to adhere to this law. So this is dramatic. And by the way, the fines for the DSA are 6% of your worldwide revenue up to 6%. It could be significant and more, if you failed double that if you fail to comply, the DMA is a mere 4% of global revenue. <Laugh> so CNET, let me ask about CNET, Connie. I, I know you're on the news side, but still you're a you're global, right? You're not gonna say you're not gonna put up a banner that somebody coming in from the EU, oh, sorry. You can't read our stuff. That would be bad for a lot of reasons.

Connie Guglielmo (01:03:23):
No, I mean, we like everyone else has to put up a disclaimer asking people to approve cookies or how their information is collected or shared so that, you know 

Leo Laporte (01:03:33):
That's GDPR right

Connie Guglielmo (01:03:34):
There. That's GDPR. And that's an extension. These, these two knew the DMA and DSA. I think of them slightly differently. The DMA is about competition and protecting competition from protecting companies who wanna compete in digital marketplaces in the DSA to me is more about consumer protection and some of the negative effects of, you know, data collection there. But nonetheless you know, Amy spot on, you can do whatever you want. And I, I get, I applaud the EU for taking the lead, but these are complicated issues. And if it takes years to levy fines or litigate, you're not gonna change behavior right away. Right. People are not gonna stand up and do the right thing. But

Leo Laporte (01:04:14):
GDPR did. I mean, people, even though there hasn't been a lot of

Connie Guglielmo (01:04:17):
It's a while though

Leo Laporte (01:04:18):
It took a while, but yet, well, it's only a few years and, and there haven't been a lot of big fines. So some people are saying, well, they're not gonna enforce it, or who cares, but it has an effect. People pay good, good actors anyway, on the internet pay attention.

Connie Guglielmo (01:04:33):
Now, I'm glad that this, these issues are being discussed because you started this question talking about the implications of the, you know, the us throwing out Roe V Wade and what effect that has on data collection. And we're seeing that what a mess basically has ensued and who's interpreting it. And what information and should is your, is your phone, is that data you, or now, is that a weapon that can be used against you? If you're looking for health information you know, the most personal health information that you could possibly look for. So it's just, we're at the beginning of an absolute utter mess in terms of how these regulations and laws come into plan. I, the who's the winners in all of this, the lawyers, because there's gonna

Leo Laporte (01:05:16):
Be a lot of lawsuit, lawsuits, always lawyers. See you guys, you should have gone to law school. <Laugh> the lawyers always win. Actually the only the happiest lawyers I know are former lawyers. So <laugh> just, I'll just throw that out there. Yeah, president Biden, I don't know how effective it, it will be, but put out an executive order. As I mentioned urging the FTC and other executive entities to examine and reinforce data protection policies. I mean, it's an executive order. It's not an act of Congress. And it could, it could be more performative, political poppycock but it's definitely an issue and maybe Congress needs to act, but again legislation and that we have this conversation a lot. We have people on all areas of the spectrum on this subject, including some who say that nothing government could do will be of value. I'm kind of more look, maybe government's not perfect, but this is the O society's chief way of expressing its need from these tech companies and, and letting the tech companies decide is the worst idea. We, so we've gotta do something, but,

Amy Webb (01:06:30):
Well, there's an interesting paradox. That's gonna gonna have to get resolved because up until row tech companies were very much on the side of you know, not controlling, not not allowing a lot of transparency into the flow of data and information. And, and suddenly this is, you know, this is like COVID in a way, cuz it's, it's forcing them into a sea change overnight. There, there are states including, I think the state of Indiana and South Carolina that are actively now working to create laws that will punish anybody for traveling out of state for an abortion. You know, trying to use some of the, the human trafficking, I think laws as a backbone for that. And part of how they're gonna do that is by using license plate scanning technology, and then to the extent they can purchase or get ahold of those third party data to, to track people using mobile phones. So I think this is gonna for force companies finally, to come to terms with who exactly, you know, are they custodians of, of data who gets access to the data? How transparent are they gonna be about who's sharing data? You

Leo Laporte (01:07:42):
Know, well, here's an example. This is from tech crunch writing about the presidential Devon cold way writing about the presidential proclamation or executive order. HIPAA is a, is a perfect example of the health insurance portability and something act which protects your privacy of medical records. So that's a federal non-disclosure law comes in direct conflict with state forced disclosure laws states are saying, no, no, no, we need to know, you know, who went to that abortion clinic? That's a federal versus state thing. I don't know this is gonna go on in the courts for years. 

Amy Webb (01:08:26):
This is Kippa has been sort of like Canon undisputable. Yeah. Like that, that is the one thing that nobody is willing to violate 

Leo Laporte (01:08:33):
Except except these state legislatures. So we'll see what the, and I guess it, you know, this isn't, this is one, I guess that's gonna be decided in court and far too much of this is decided in court at this point,

Dwight Silverman (01:08:45):
Leo, I live in, I happen to live in one of those red states that where a lot of this is going on. And in fact, there's that there's the law here in Texas, that anybody can Sue anyone else for helping someone else get an abortion, which was the you know, essentially taking taking that and putting it in the hands of civil courts. And and it's been, it was fairly effective even before Roe versus Wade and major chilling effect and the legislature legislators that, that put that bill forward and voted on it are kind of salivating at what they're gonna be able to do when the Texas legislature meets in January, they meet on odd numbered years. And and there is talk about going after companies like Google and apple who want to pay the travel expenses for their employees to go out of state to get abortions. And and obviously in order to find out about some of that, they're looking at data and it's it's gonna be quite the fight in January.

Leo Laporte (01:09:51):
Wow. And meanwhile,

Amy Webb (01:09:53):
I don't know if I, I, can I just say one quick thing, please?

Leo Laporte (01:09:57):
Yes. Amy

Amy Webb (01:09:57):
Politics aside, this, this will have dire economic consequences for every single state that is pursuing the, the edge cases of, of enforcing or even expanding on this law or the, the change in, in law change in policy. You know, what, what are the, what are the knock on impacts? You're gonna have businesses you're gonna have changes in workforce. There may be people who decide to stay in the state, but you're definitely gonna have people who will look to go elsewhere.

Leo Laporte (01:10:33):
Google has said, you may relocate people who are for any reason, and we won't deny it. You don't have to. Yeah.

Amy Webb (01:10:38):
You'll have people who don't like think of the state of Texas. You've got some pretty terrific universities. You know, if you have a choice to go to rice for medical school or to go anywhere else, you know, because this isn't, there are other, there are research related consequences to this as well. Like I just, I don't think people have fully thought through the long term economic impacts. This is gonna bring on their states and communities. So there's a, like in addition to everything else, there, there was a, there was a business case and an economic case to be made for why this was such a stupid, stupid idea and, and pursuing it the way now that, that the states of Indiana and some other states are just tells me that the people who are in charge are incapable of playing out what the future might look like forward. You know, I,

Leo Laporte (01:11:26):
I would do it. I would, I would put it another way I would say. And by the way obviously I am in favor of I'm, I'm very much pro-choice. And if I weren't, my wife would kill me. I would say there is a mismatch, it's an impedance mismatch. You're asking for long-term strategic planning. The, the legislatures who are passing these bills are not thinking about in, I think, actively not thinking about long term economic consequences, they are trying to save the lives of these unborn children. And from their point of view, unless they're very cynical and I'm gonna give them credit for not being cynical. This is merely a way of stopping this murderous practice of abortion. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And so there it's, it's a mismatch. You're not, you're asking to think strategically, but even if you say that, well, what about the economic consequences Senator they'll say, well, it doesn't matter. We're saving the lives of children. Wait,

Amy Webb (01:12:24):
But this is the result of strategy, a very, very effective, long term strategy. Yes. That was master. So, so that's, that's like the weird paradox here, but

Leo Laporte (01:12:34):
I'm gonna give very same. Should I give them credit though? Still for, yes, they look it, the Republicans of the plan is for 30, since Alito was, was put up, you know, in the Supreme courts, clearly a very successful long term strategy. But I still say, I don't wanna say they're cynical in this. I'm gonna say they're doing this cuz they deeply believe in their heart of hearts. That abortion is wrong.

Dwight Silverman (01:12:56):
But if they're going to come into one of the big conflicts are gonna come into, particularly in states like Texas and North Carolina, where they have actively recruited California based technology companies, you know, there's a huge apple presence in Austin. There's a huge Google presence in Austin and in Dallas and Houston. And they have been recruiting them here. HPE moved to Houston. They their headquarters are now here. And and they're all saying, you know, we will, will pay this. And it was a major effort on the part of multiple governors to get them here. And now suddenly you're going to be saying, well, if you're here, you can't do this action humane action for your employees. And it's, you know, you talk about economic consequences. Yeah. You're right. Because you are gonna start having people leave.

Leo Laporte (01:13:51):
Yeah. But that's what I'm saying is they're not thinking about that or maybe they are, I mean Tabby, they

Dwight Silverman (01:13:57):
Don't care, you know, they don't care Don. And I think, I think I, I kind of agree that, that at the base of what you're saying, Leo, that they, they they're saving babies. But I also think at this point it's become sport and and they're enjoying the strategy of playing whackamole.

Connie Guglielmo (01:14:17):
Yeah.

Connie Guglielmo (01:14:17):
I don't know. I just want, I just wanna say there's a all good points from my columnist and I agree with all of you, but let's remember HIPAA is your privacy. It protects your privacy when it comes to medical procedures. And when, what we know is when laws are passed, people look for loopholes, right. And ways to you know, change the, the way that law was meant to be, to suit their own purposes. And so there's gonna be repercussions there cuz it's your personal you know, health decisions. We've seen that thrown out under the guise of some people wanna protect some life and discard the life of others. I don't, I don't think it's about saving babies. I think it's about supposedly saving babies, but at the expense of, if you're not gonna make exemptions for the life of the mother rape or incense, then you're ranking life and you're yeah. That's, you're deciding which life that you want to choose. That is not pro-life,

Leo Laporte (01:15:14):
There's a lot of places on that scale. I mean, not every legislature is saying that.

Connie Guglielmo (01:15:18):
No, but there's, there's definitely now a movement where some of these regulations are abandoned, no abortions and in whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So you have the privacy issues around HIPAA, which is, is, is established law. And these states are going to start to mess with that because they can, or they want to, or they they're on some sort of a,

Leo Laporte (01:15:38):
Because we have Supreme court that doesn't care about established law. Right.

Connie Guglielmo (01:15:42):
Right. And then you do have these issues about data collection. If this device can now be used as a weapon against you, that has far reaching implications. Yeah. Not just on businesses and where they wanna really. Okay. But how you might wanna use this thing in the future and suddenly purging all of your apps and walking away and maybe it will lead to terms of service that we can actually all understand. Right. Which is, you know, coinciding with what the EU is doing and trying to raise awareness about privacy. Right. So it's a messy path that we're on with lots of implications. And it's just, it started in the wrong place. I I'm a, I was a constitutional law major before I decided I to go to law school and the throwing away a 50 years of precedent and taking back a constitutional right is already unprecedented. And so it wasn't well thought through 

Leo Laporte (01:16:36):
Oh no, wait a minute. What about brown versus board education? We, we have overturned judicial precedent in the past. Look, I'm the

Connie Guglielmo (01:16:44):
Constitutional right. That was granted. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
Yeah. I don't, I don't wanna get in the, I don't wanna be on the other side of that argument. But I also I think it's important to just bring up these arguments against it so that we, you know, I don't know. Well,

Amy Webb (01:16:59):
I think first of all, I wanna

Leo Laporte (01:17:01):
Say, I wanna go home tonight, so I've gotta be very careful here.

Amy Webb (01:17:06):
I think, I think Connie and I are our sisters somehow from a, what something mother made sense in my head. It doesn't make sense. As I'm saying it out loud, I wanted to be solicitor general.

Leo Laporte (01:17:16):
Oh good. That's

Amy Webb (01:17:17):
That's why I wanna do it to law school.

Leo Laporte (01:17:19):
That's the government lawyer who argues in front of the Supreme court on behalf of the government. Yeah. That's a good job on

Amy Webb (01:17:24):
Constitutional law. Yeah. It is a good job. But again, if we think about here, here's the, here's the rub for companies. So it's, you know, sometimes these events happen that are so disruptive. They force us to confront the status quo in a way that can be very productive. So if you think about COVID, which was horrible, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, COVID forced us to confront things like the use of messenger RNA, which had existed for a long time, but didn't have a business case and, you know, global supply chain volatility and all, all different types of things like that. You know, in a way, one of the, you know, this is a horrific change in America, however not just BEC like, like abortion aside, this just undermines people's beliefs and institutions even more. And it, it, in a way takes away from what the Supreme court is.

Amy Webb (01:18:17):
And does the court can't seem can't can't waffle like this, especially. And if you read like Clarence Thomas's opinion, it's, it's even like worse. However, when positive outcome might be that we're, we're forced to confront in a very visceral way with data are being collected and safeguarded. And this could be something that winds up helping apple in a weird way. People may I've, you know, I'm actually considering going back to an apple device really because of differential interest, privacy interest. Yeah. Yeah. And it could change, it could force a change in browser usage, you know, maybe people will switch over to brave if they can figure out how to use it, you know, or they'll switch over to safari and they'll think

Leo Laporte (01:19:01):
They often come, at least with our tech savvy audience, that transition has already occurred. I mean, we, our audience is very privacy aware and I would say

Amy Webb (01:19:10):
This audience is, but I'm talking about like my sister general. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:14):
Well, that's where it starts. Right. Cause your sister then asks you, well, gosh, I wanna protect my privacy. How do I do that? And so it starts with the tech, you know, the techno savvy who are, you know, very privacy focused. I think there's a, a general move towards privacy. I was honestly, I was a little bit on the fence saying, well, what's the harm if you're just targeting advertising, the only harm I foresaw is if you had a malicious government that would use the information big tech had gathered about you against you and now it's happening. So I think now you have a pretty good argument for keeping your stuff private. It's not a just advertising

Amy Webb (01:19:56):
One other quick thing. So right now a lot of digital privacy, it ha is, is decided on by the states. So one of the most restrictive states in the country is Illinois which

Leo Laporte (01:20:09):
They have a biometric restriction. Right?

Amy Webb (01:20:11):
They do. So again, if I start thinking through, let's set aside abortion for a moment, but the knock on effects of data and tracing, you know, if I'm a business this is just gonna make it very challenging to do business across state lines. So should

Leo Laporte (01:20:28):
Businesses just acknowledge? Yeah. People want privacy, I guess we should stop.

Amy Webb (01:20:33):
Now. I think now is a, an interesting moment. First of all, businesses have to really think through their cybersecurity, their data hygiene, all the super sexy stuff that all of us like to think about, but <laugh> most organizations don't and certainly not their boards of directors. But, but, but I think this is, this is an opportunity to sort of shape the future in a, in a good way. I agree. And it, I agree, you know? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:21:02):
Yeah. It's an inflection point and, and it's uncomfortable and it's difficult, but it's an opportunity too, and that's the right way to look at it. I think you know, who doesn't want to talk about it? The Chinese government apparently the S is that the Shanghai police force left their personal information of a billion Chinese citizens online unprotected for a year. And a hacker says, I got 'em and I'll sell. 'em Just a few Bitcoin. The news of this has been suppressed all over China, which makes me think it's a real deal, right? 23 terabytes of data for 10 Bitcoin, the Shanghai national police database leaked because it was stored it was, it was secured, but the interface was not <laugh> and somebody discovered it. And I guess over the last year has been exfiltrating all those terabytes of 23 terabytes of information. Any reports about this in China have been, are being suppressed. Probably this podcast will now be suppressed in China. <Laugh> I remember being in China watching CNN and there was a story about wages. Well, at least I think there was because CNN just went black for three minutes and then came back as if nothing had happened. So maybe if this podcast goes dark for three minutes, you'll know, you'll know why you lived in China for a long time. What do you think, Amy?

Amy Webb (01:22:42):
I, I find this story in a way really hard to believe. I, if I think through the, the failure, the system level failures that would've had to have happened, it's really, really bizarre that, that it's, it's really bizarre to me that this was a, like, that this happened.

Leo Laporte (01:23:01):
It was stored on the, apparently on the Alibaba cloud we've seen as three buckets be poorly secured on Amazon. I mean, this is not hard to do.

Amy Webb (01:23:12):
Yeah. So it just, it's a, it's a strange story. I will tell you that anybody that was involved in this their lives are effectively over. Yeah. and I follow a couple of, obviously I'm not on Wabo, but I'm a, I follow some people who have access to Wabo and then, you know, publish what they're seeing. And yeah, the, the lack of like, this is immediately being censored. Everything is immediately being taken down. I mean, it's kind of China, it it's, it's one of these great contradictions, you know, elite hackers are in China and they left their own store UN minded. Yeah. Is kind of funny.

Leo Laporte (01:23:49):
There's some debate over whether this is accurate data. Some users writing on a cyber crime form. This is according to the financial times, said the data sample include details on picking up packages, selections, suggesting it's not, it's just a delivery company's database. The wall street journal said at least some of the information provided was real. And then Chung bang, J who is the chief executive of Binance tweeted that the company Binance had detected the hack and speculated that a government developer had inadvertently posted credentials to access the database in an online forum. So we'll probably never

Amy Webb (01:24:25):
C know cynical part of me. Yeah. I mean, the cynical part of me Alibaba is so you know, there have been lots of problems. And the CCP, the Chinese communist party, which ones the government has, has really had a magnifying glass in Alibaba and, and you know, all kinds of problems like has been causing problems for their executive leadership. Alibaba, as everybody knows, has become this incredibly profitable formidable company. So another part of like a cynical part of me that wonders if this was in sort of the CCP is intentionally doing this, or maybe the hack was somehow from within as a way of knocking Alibaba a little bit more off of its pedestal. Oh, interesting signal to Alibaba, trying to get them to comply.

Leo Laporte (01:25:15):
You just don't know whatever there's. Yeah. There's wheels within wheels. Let's take a little break. Great. To have the three of you. We have lots more to talk about. I'm way behind <laugh> on commercials, cuz I'm having so much fun talking about this. Our show today brought to you by user way.org. And I am a big fan of this company and what they do. In fact, if you go to the TWiTt page in the lower right hand corner, you'll see the little user way, but click that. If you wanna see what user way can do, you should know the Americans with disabilities act requires every website without exception to be accessible they're public entities and the courts have ruled no, no you've gotta be accessible. There was a, actually a famous case where a pizza company said, well, we have a phone number on our webpage.

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Now, if you have an enterprise level website, you'll be glad to know. I mean, even, you know, thousands of pages, they have a managed solution. Their team can handle everything for you. In fact, user way is used by over a million websites. It's easily. The number one accessibility solution globally Coca-Cola Disney eBay FedEx use user way and use their enterprise solution. But user way also makes its best in class enterprise level accessibility tools available as small and medium businesses as well for as little as $49 a month, less than I pay for the web fonts on our webpage, you can be fully accessible, ADA compliant, which by the way is not just, you know, the law requiring it. It's good for business. You'll reach more customers. You'll build loyalty. We're gonna give you 30% off. There are billion people in the world with disabilities, 13% of the population who can't use your site.

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
If you're not accessible your way opens that site up to them. Just think about it by not being compliant. Fines, revenue loss will cost you money for $49 a month. Gain a huge audience. User weighs the number one accessibility solution. 61% market share the biggest in the world on the cutting edge. They work hard to create innovative accessibility technologies. For instance, they've got image recognition. That'll automatically generate the alt tanks for your images. You can add to it, but it'll get you started. They can remediate complex nav menus ensure that all popups are accessible. They make sure your website uses accessible colors without, you know, changing your color palette well remaining true to your brand. And you'll also get when you run user way, a detailed report of all the violations fixed. And of course you can always go in there. It makes it very easy for you to adjust to refine, but it gets you started completely platform agnostic. They've got tools that work easily with WordPress Shopify, Wix site, core SharePoint, even my little site, a line of JavaScript it's done. Just ask the voice of Siri, Susan Bennett, what she thinks about user way.

Susan Bennett (01:28:52):
Hi, I'm Susan Bennett, the original voice of Siri. You won't hear me say something like this too often. I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're looking for, but every day that's what the internet is like for millions of people with disabilities user way fixes all of that with just one line of code

Leo Laporte (01:29:14):
User way, it can make any website fully accessible and ADA compliant with user way. Everyone that visits your site can browse seamlessly, customize it to fit their needs. It's a great way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities, go to user way.org/TWiT, get 30% off user way's AI powered accessibility solution, user way, making the internet accessible for everyone. And we love it. Thank you user way for your support and you support us by going to user way.org/TWiT. You'll get 30% off. They'll know you saw it here. That's important. So please do that user way. Dot org slash TWiT. Thank you user way. Speaking of China wall street journal, big article about the super app. And of course they're thinking about line. We chat WBO the apps that in Japan and China are, you know, do everything for you. The headline from Christopher Mims, what the heck is a super app and why are Elon Musk, Evan Spiegel and Jack Dorsey. So interested tell us Amy, cuz you've, you've got an intimate experience with this. What these apps do, why they're so popular in Asia?

Amy Webb (01:30:31):
I think from my point of view, I think it's one stop shopping. So a lot of those apps you can make payments from, you can connect, you can shop, you can do all, you

Leo Laporte (01:30:45):
Could buy train tickets, right? I mean, yeah,

Amy Webb (01:30:47):
You can do all different types of things. You know, and if it's a single interface, I mean, in a way it's the same reason that Amazon digitally succeeded, right? It was just

Leo Laporte (01:30:57):
One shop, shop one stop shop. Yeah.

Amy Webb (01:31:00):
Right, right. So I think, you know, and there's out on a lot of these apps. You can, you can perform multiple functions. You don't have to keep switching in and out of things, you don't have to remember different pace. You know, passwords. It's just easier. I think

Leo Laporte (01:31:13):
When he was talking TWiTtter employees, Elon Musk said he wanted to turn TWiTtter into a, a WeChat like super app. Evan Spiegel, CEO of snap is called his ideas. Elon's ideas compelling in may block executive block, a horse Jack Dorsey's company, Nick Moar told investors, the company plans to turn the combination of its cash app. And after pay, by now pay later service into a super app. Paypal said they're gonna make a super app, but I have to say, I don't think Americans want a super app. What do you think, Connie? Do we want one app that does it all?

Amy Webb (01:31:50):
Oh my, I don't wanna interrupt Amy. So let

Leo Laporte (01:31:52):
Her finish Amy. And then you Connie.

Amy Webb (01:31:54):
Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say, I absolutely think people want this. I think the is market consolidation. I mean, it, it goes back to like windows, internet, Explorer, territory, but the average person making life easier for them. Absolutely. They want it.

Connie Guglielmo (01:32:10):
I, I, I agree with that. Except people want things easier until they find out that it's not good for them. Right? Like there's a reason that people use PayPal to pay for purchases or cross sites cuz they don't wanna log in and give their credit card data. So they definitely want the ease of use the question that, you know, we face here in the us because you have so many brands now that have become brands and have built these massive platforms. Is who do you trust that you wanna work with Amazon built trust in the early days to your point, Leo, because of not just one place to do it, but because they had that one click purchased, do you remember that? That

Leo Laporte (01:32:46):
Was brilliant. They had, they

Connie Guglielmo (01:32:47):
Owned it for many years, right? Like it just what is it? And friction free shopping mm-hmm <affirmative> so this idea of managing your life and doing a lot of different things, you know, in a friction free is great. But then the downside is do you trust these companies? Do you trust Evan Spiegel or Uber or Elon Musk with all of your purchase history and your data? And we were just talking about when it comes to your healthcare, if they turn over your location data to a state that, you know threatens them. So it's complicated. It is on

Leo Laporte (01:33:20):
The one hand and that's my point.

Connie Guglielmo (01:33:21):
Utility is good.

Leo Laporte (01:33:22):
Yeah. It's too complicated. It makes it hard to use. Right. If it does everything, I mean then it's what do you think you, you D you look at consumer tech all the time, Dwight do you think hu Americans anyway are interested in one app that does everything,

Dwight Silverman (01:33:38):
You know, I don't know. They've not seen one app that does everything. Yeah. there are a couple of companies that have, have made noises that that's what they'd want to do outside of, of what you know, you mentioned Facebook obviously as kind of trying to make its app and along with messenger and WhatsApp a Swiss army knife, you know, they've got a shopping component, they have a messaging component, but it's it's so diffused throughout the app and, and people I think go to Facebook for primarily to, to connect with other people. I, you know, I don't know that Facebook does it. Apple is kind of quietly building that into iMessage. Some of the features that are coming in iOS 16 kind of have a whiff of that. And they've been, you know, one of the, one of the things that they did, I don't think anybody's really taken that much advantage of it is that they opened iMessage up to companies who wanted to do tech support and other kinds of support through it. And I don't think a lot of PE a lot of companies took advantage of that. So they played with it a little bit, but I, you know, to me, I think a lot of Americans think they want the right tool for the job. And that may not be a Swiss army

Leo Laporte (01:34:46):
Knife. Yeah. I mean, I come from the good old days, the Unix background where you had one thing that did one little thing, and all you did is had fors that would allow you to pipe that simple app to another happened, another app and another app, and kind of build your own super app for one time only. What about the argument that apple already is the super app that it's the iPhone and you, and to your point, Amy, we trust apple with our privacy. Apple's certainly trying to make it even stronger with a, with application tracking transparency and all of those switches. It seems like apple could do this, put pay, you know, they've got apple pay, put apple pay in every app. Apple could be the backend for it in a way that's what your iPhone is. Isn't it?

Amy Webb (01:35:31):
Well, I don't have an iPhone anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:35:33):
Oh, that's right. Buy an iPhone. You, you have no idea. Android is not.

Amy Webb (01:35:37):
I have other Android. I have other products. Android

Leo Laporte (01:35:39):
Is too heterogeneous it's too. It's it's just a mishmosh of stuff.

Amy Webb (01:35:43):
Right. I, I think the better way to think about this is open versus closed ecosystems. You know, apple has a so Mac O S that's what it's called for the mobile devices still. Right. Is it still, is everything is Mac O S O right?

Leo Laporte (01:35:56):
Yes. No. It's iOS. Well, no, it's

Amy Webb (01:35:58):
Mac OS

Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
For the desktop's. Oh, it's the other way around for each thing. There's watch OS TV, OS Mac O S IO. Okay. <Laugh> I like that OS everything is, but you're right underneath. It's all Mac OS

Amy Webb (01:36:10):
It's and it's a closed ecosystem, I think is the difference. So and you know, apple doesn't always play nicely with, with third parties. So I think that they are, I, I would say that what my observation is that apple is moving more toward making that X OS more closed and more like a super app, at least in terms of its overall offerings. But there is still a core difference, you know, if you're on WeChat which nobody in the United States is gonna be on. Cuz it's, you have to, you know, it's hard to get an account and you have to speak Chinese. Have you used it?

Leo Laporte (01:36:46):
Did you use it when you were in

Amy Webb (01:36:47):
China? I, I have, yeah. Yeah. I mean it, my living there predates me, but yes, I, I have. Yeah. and line, which is a Japanese social media app, which has way less functionality. The, the place to really look at is China, not, not Japan or some

Leo Laporte (01:37:01):
Yet some say it's because certainly it's true in Japan. People had smartphones before they had PCs.

Amy Webb (01:37:07):
Oh, well we had something called a peachy.

Leo Laporte (01:37:10):
I've heard you talk about this before

Amy Webb (01:37:12):
Somewhere. Do you have your peachy? Like I <laugh>, I do have my look for

Leo Laporte (01:37:17):
Your peachy.

Amy Webb (01:37:18):
Let me see. I can

Leo Laporte (01:37:19):
Not peachy. We had in high school with two he's.

Amy Webb (01:37:23):
No, this was, it actually stood for something and I don't remember the acronym was peachy and I don't remember what it stands for now, but it was a it was, it was a smartphone. It, it didn't, it had a, a it didn't have a gooey interface, but it did have like a, a file tree interface that you moved around with a little tiny mouse. Right. it was a little PC on send tickets on it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll somewhere over here. Also.

Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
I have a picture of one, I guess I can show here's a young girl in the Zuko district with her peachy in 2008. 

Amy Webb (01:38:00):
Oh, mine was even smaller than that. Mine really was like a, a large thumb drive.

Leo Laporte (01:38:04):
Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, so

Amy Webb (01:38:07):
Small. And and there were two, there were, there were competing interfaces and competing software and systems. And basically this was like a, I mean, yeah, it was like a pretty smart phone for the, at the time that I had it. This was like in, this was like 1998. So this is going back pretty far.

Leo Laporte (01:38:26):
Yeah. Before Android, before iOS this was when Nokia flip phones were ascended in the us. But yeah, I think that some of that might have also been why line and WeChat were so big. Cuz you had to do everything on a small device. Right? You, you, you didn't have a computer at home.

Amy Webb (01:38:45):
Well also you know, in Japan there's not a lot of English in Japan, so they kind of built their own ecosystem in line, which I use because I've got friends in Japan. I, I can't stand, I don't like the interface. I don't understand the stickers, you know? But I, I think it's an acknowledgement that it would make sense that there's kind of a diaspora of, of how, you know, connectivity spread and what makes sense in different countries. But the payment part of WeChat and I think is, is sort of the killer function. It's easy. Everything is integrated. You don't have to click out the messaging part almost is secondary.

Leo Laporte (01:39:24):
Yeah. I don't want one big monolithic app, but I think if, if you've got a backend like apple pay and face recognition that every app supports then each app on your iPhone is a, is a part of a larger ecosystem. That's kind of a super app that, so in other words, I think the smartphone is the super app in the us. Maybe not, I don't know. Have you Connie, have you ever used WeChat or, or

Connie Guglielmo (01:39:56):
Line I haven't, but I, I think Amy's point about closed systems is right. I mean, that's the appeal of apple to people who are not tech savvy, right? Is that you don't have to be

Leo Laporte (01:40:05):
A, you trust them

Connie Guglielmo (01:40:06):
Expert. You just log on, everything works together. And for a long time you didn't have to worry about even viruses and the like, so there's definitely appeal to having that closed ecosystem because it, it handles a lot of things for you until something goes wrong. And then, and that's when the

Leo Laporte (01:40:24):
Questions or until your period of tracking app starts selling your information to the Texas Rangers.

Amy Webb (01:40:31):
And then I just, I, I don't see that as, I don't know, I, I don't see any of these apps willingly. Do you remember the San Bernadino shooting that happened?

Leo Laporte (01:40:43):
Happened? Yes. FBI demanding the

Amy Webb (01:40:44):
FBI kind of got into it. Yeah. Right. I just don't that, that I see more of that happening. I, I don't see companies trying to earn a like quick cash by selling like ratting out women.

Leo Laporte (01:40:57):
I hope

Amy Webb (01:40:57):
Not. You know, and their menstrual cycles that doesn't make sense to me. I think it, it more becomes like, can, can a local authority compel a company to hand over that type of data?

Leo Laporte (01:41:11):
Well, they may not have to because a lot because Google and other companies who have this data sell it to data brokers. Yeah. Data brokers, and then the, and the investigators go to the data brokers and buy it for 170. They don't have to compel anybody. Right. And that's the thing it's leaky, it's a leaky system cuz of this data broker thing and companies are happy to do that. We, we sell your, we, we provide your information to third parties in order to improve our services. Like make a little money on the side. Yeah. I mean that's in every agreement. All right. I gonna take a little break. I do want to talk about web three and NFTs. Was that in your, was that in your future today report at the futures today Institute,

Amy Webb (01:42:02):
It was only because we believe that the thing that matters is the underlying infrastructure

Leo Laporte (01:42:10):
Technology.

Amy Webb (01:42:11):
Yes. but if I had a, if I had a nickel for every bro waxing lovingly about his NFT, you know, I would have, I would have so many nipples <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:42:24):
And not one NFT. The future today Institute

Amy Webb (01:42:27):
My, my nickel, all my nickels would be worth more than that process.

Leo Laporte (01:42:30):
That bro future today institute.com, they publish their tech trends report 15 years now they've been doing it. It's a really great, you can download it yourself. It's a really great report with lots of information. Amy is not a soothsayer, as she will tell you, she doesn't predict the future, but she talks about strategic trends. And it's really fascinating. Also with this Connie GU Yamo who covers the day to day two and fro of the tech world as editor in chief of CNET, which is a lofty position. And we're thrilled to have you here, the lofty Congo Yamo and Dwight Silverman, who is not lofty. He's just cute. <Laugh> I have that's the been a long time since he won, described me as cute. He's just cute Leo, but I'll take it. You, somebody saying in the chat room, you look like their favorite science fiction author. I don't who is that? I don't know. I'll have to. He said I just tuned in the video and my God <laugh> it's full of stars. No, he says it's it's what did he say? What is whose name was it? Anyway? I'll find it if I can. Yeah. You look like a, a well known science fiction author. I gotta get on that. Yeah. Our show today brought to you by our fine sponsor. Eight sleep. Now, Amy, I credit you with getting me on the eight sleep train.

Amy Webb (01:43:59):
I love that. I, I I, and this is not like a product endorsement or product placement or anything, but I, I have been sleeping on it for, we had a chili sleep before then. And I, I don't have their mattress cause I like our mattress, but we have the, no,

Leo Laporte (01:44:15):
We have the pod, the pod cover. Yeah. Same thing.

Amy Webb (01:44:17):
Yeah. I, I gotta tell you, I, I am sleeping better than I've ever slept in my entire life.

Leo Laporte (01:44:24):
Unsolicited ladies and gentlemen. Totally

Amy Webb (01:44:26):
Unsolicited. I, I and I do not sleep well without it. Yeah. It has totally, I'm more rested. I'm getting better sleep. My quality of sleep is better. I, I love this thing.

Leo Laporte (01:44:38):
And you learned about it on this show from Kevin Rose, as I remember. Yep.

Amy Webb (01:44:41):
Kevin was <laugh> yeah. Yeah. Kevin, like we had a little side chat and he was like, you gotta like, get one of these. He was

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
Right. We got ours about eight months ago. And just like you I'm, I'm like we're, I'm dreading going on this cruise. Cuz I won my eight sleep. Good sleep obviously so important. And maybe, maybe you're lucky. You're young. You sleep like a baby. You don't know yet. But but there will come a time in your life where sleep is hard to come by and it is rotten. It ruins your life. In fact, lots of studies say that sleep reduces good sleep, reduces the likelihood of serious health issues. It decreases your risk of heart disease. It lowers your blood pressure. It can even reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. And so many of us 30 it's estimated 30% of Americans struggle with sleep. You know what? The number one issue is it's too hot or it's too cold. Temperature is why we love the eight sleep pod pro cover.

Leo Laporte (01:45:38):
Yes, they sell a mattress. We happen to have a lovely mattress that we don't want to change. So we got the cover. You put it on any mattress and it controls the temperature from as low as 55 degrees, which is pretty chilly or as high as 110 degrees, which is pretty warm. And it changes it through the night. The eight sleep cover actually watches your sleep. And based on your sleep stages on your biometrics, on the bedroom temperature, it actually reacts intelligently to create an optimal sleep environment. Clinical data shows that eight sleep users experience up to 19% increase in recovery and 32% improvement in sleep quality. 34% more deep sleep for me, deep sleep is the holy grail. I, you know, if I can get more than half an hour deep sleep every night and you can find that out by the way, from the eight sleep app.

Leo Laporte (01:46:29):
Cause it's gonna tell you, I know I will have a great day and if I get less, I will not that's cuz that deep sleep is where your brain is recovering. It's the garbage clear out on your brain. Getting rid of all those pre ons and, and expelling them is so important. The eight sleep I everybody's different, but I, I, I have this complete made up theory of evolutionary science that I made up that in history, we've always gone to bed. You know the fires, we stoked the fire. You go to bed, it's still warm. Maybe you even have one of those colonial times. They had those bed warmers. They put some coals in and they put in the, so you go to bed, you're in a nice warm, cozy bed. You fall asleep. And then over the night it gets chillier and chillier, which is fine.

Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
That's when you go into your deep sleep cycle. And then in the morning, if you're lucky, you get a nice cup cup of coffee and you wake up. This is in a way to, to duplicate that experience. What I think we're biologically programmed to. So I have it warm when I get in bed and then I have the temperature slowly decline as I go into deep sleep. It helps me deep sleep. And then it goes back up again to wake me up. There's even a little vibration that you could put in there to so that you gently wake up, which I love. Eight sleep is amazing and we're gonna get you very good. 4Th of July savings, but it's only, oh gosh, you gotta go today through July 10th. This is it. This is it. Eight sleep E I G HT SL E E p.com/TWiT. Those 4th of July savings run out today. Cool. Down this summer with eight sleep, they shipped to the us Canada and the UK. And this is new select countries in the EU. And now Australia. Woohoo, you gotta get this thing

Amy Webb (01:48:14):
<Laugh> do you do you have it to, I have mine to cook me awake. Yes. So I, yeah, I haven't used an actual alarm clock to wake me up outside of my house in over a year and

Leo Laporte (01:48:25):
Just wake up. Cook implies that you're sweating and uncomfortable. It's really nice. It's like, oh, it's getting warm. I'm ready to get I'm. And, and you know, the worst thing by the way, when it's really hot is it has been this summer. You turn it down a little bit and it's cool and relaxing. And then when it's cold, as it was last winter, you turn it up a little bit and it's nice and toasty. You completely control it. There's even a sleep doctor in the app that will notice, you know, always tossing and turning let's let's let's adjust this. It really works. If you were listening after July 10th, I apologize. This was kinda last minute, but we have a great hundred $50 discount. So you can still get that eight sleep.com/TWiTt, check out the pod pro cover. That's what Amy and I have. I think, I feel like Kevin might have had the mattress cuz you know, I

Amy Webb (01:49:11):
Think he had the mattress.

Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
He's an all in kind of guy eight sleep.com/TWiT. You heard it here? I didn't ask. I didn't tell Amy at time she just volunteered. I didn't make you right. I've never met you before. Nothing up my sleeves.

Amy Webb (01:49:27):
<Laugh> that's

Leo Laporte (01:49:28):
Right. Yep. Eight sleep.com/TWiTt were big fans. Speaking of Kevin Rose, haven't had 'em on lately cuz I'm so many of my good friends, people I really trust and respect have gone down the web three NFT rabbit hole. And I don't, I, I wanna consult with you all, cuz I don't know. I don't wanna promote NFTs. I don't wanna promote even cryptocurrency right now on our shows. We've had some crypto advertisers. Well, I'll give you example. One of them block fi they have a credit card, you get Bitcoin. They just practically went belly up. They got bought up by FTX, which is gonna be the last man standing in all of this. So many, there it is estimated $2 billion in hacks this year alone on web three projects. What happened? <Laugh> and am I, should I have these guys back on, I mean, Connie, what do you, what's your take on web three and, and FTS and all of that cryptocurrency?

Connie Guglielmo (01:50:42):
Well, you know, there's a difference between the underlying technology and distributed distributed technology as a counter to close networks, which I think underpins blockchain and NFTs and then there's crypto and NFTs as a source of scams and concerns and hype. So those are two different, two different things. Obviously there's a lot of hype and a lot of distrust of people, hyping, crypto, currencies, and NFTs. And I'm sorry if you bought an NFT for $50,000 and now it's only worth a thousand. I don't, I don't know what to tell you, but underlying all of that is a new way of looking at technology in the world that I think a lot of people say is a valid way to

Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
The future. I hear it, but I'm not convinced of it. I, I mean, I'll grant you I'm well get I'll grant, you know, maybe there's some value to B to blockchain and so forth, although it's hard to show a compelling need for this. But it's very clear that cryptocurrency is, you know, I just saw a stat, which kind of was depressing that the number of black people who own cryptocurrency is like TWiTce as high as white people kind of makes sense. Maybe if you're black, you feel disenfranchised. You don't feel like C you know, red linings been a huge problem. Central banking system, not your friend. So you invest in crypto Bitcoin primarily. And what happens? You lose your shirt, this isn't social justice, this sets up just being more of the same,

Connie Guglielmo (01:52:29):
Which is why I, I say there's a, there's a separation that we have to look at. Cryptocurrencies is definitely the wave of the future. And when the us government and governments weigh in and set up government backed currencies, that's different, but we're in the wild, wild west period. And that's the unfortunate part of this

Leo Laporte (01:52:50):
Story, but even stablecoin, which is what governments would presumably do has stablecoin has not been so stable

Connie Guglielmo (01:52:58):
Because there's no regulation. We're still in the wild, wild west yeah. Of what's going on. Right. So people are making up their own rules. There's a lot of hype, there is distrust of government, which is what was driving the whole interest in Bitcoin in the first place. But I think also there is some bad marketing and PR, celebrities Hawking things and folks saying, I don't know what it's about, but I missed everything else. So I just wanna get in on this. Right. So that, that plays to part of it as well. Yeah. unfortunately

Amy Webb (01:53:31):
We'll say that financial institutions, cuz we work with a lot of them are trying are, are thinking creatively right now about value creation and you know, what, what might the future look like? Where many things generate value and you can use that value in different ways. What if there was an exchange where there were different types of value that, you know so I, I think this is like the beg the opening sort of beginning experimentation phase. But if you talk to a lot of people, especially people in tech about blockchains, you know, oftentimes this, the, the use case that people are coming up with for blockchains is like way overly complicated and existing technology will do just fine. But beyond that, they're, you know, opening it's, it's just the beginning,

Leo Laporte (01:54:24):
I'll quote a current affairs article from may, which talks to a Berkeley professor, Nicholas Weaver, who says he's a senior staff researcher at the international computer science Institute lecturer in the UC Berkeley computer science department is a, has been studying cryptocurrency for years. And he says, all cryptocurrencies should die in a fire. He says, cryptocurrencies, although a seemingly interesting idea are simply not fit for purpose. They do not work as currencies. They are grossly inefficient. They are not meaningfully distributed in terms of trust risks involving cryptocurrencies occur in four major areas. And, and by the way, he wrote this in may, but this has all come true technical risks to participants economic risks, to participants, systemic risks to the cryptocurrency system and societal risks when we're just starting to see the societal risks. He said in the lecture this year, this is a virus.

Leo Laporte (01:55:23):
Its harms are substantial. It has enabled billion dollar criminal enterprises. For instance, I, I don't think ransomware would be the business. It is if it weren't for the easy way to, to anonymously collect Bitcoin going on with his quote, it has enabled venture capitalists to do securities fraud as their business. It has sucked people in, so either avoid it or helped me make it die in a fire. So I, I have also said that argument, oh, there's the, the underlying technology that is of interest blockchains of interest decentralized ledgers of an interest, maybe a, a stable coin, a, a digital currency for a governmental currency, maybe that's of interest, but his, he says, you know, there's nothing good to come out of. This Bitcoin uses the energy of a small to mid-sized country. <Laugh> anyway, do you wanna defend at anybody? Is he wrong? Should we all be paying attention? I,

Dwight Silverman (01:56:29):
I think that the, the when this started, when the kind of the recent implosion started, I, I tweeted that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are essentially approaching their true value, which is zero. Yeah. There's no, there's no true value to them. They are, their value is only what people put into them and are willing to expand on it. And, but at its base, there's nothing there. And I agree that the, the whole idea that once governments get in and back it, the reason we believe in the dollar and, and Fiat currencies is that governments back, it there's something there, but there's no there, there, and it it goes up until it approaches its true value, which is zero.

Leo Laporte (01:57:21):
Do you think Amy Banks will become more decentralized that the notion of a centralized banking system is a mistake?

Amy Webb (01:57:31):
No, I don't think that's gonna happen. I can't, I mean, I can't get into too much detail, but we work with banks and key players in the financial ecosystem. We're too deeply entrenched to totally disenfranchise our current banking structure. You could argue though, does a credit card need to exist in the future if there are other means of transferring and storing value. So I, again, I think this is we're just in process on an evolution. Yeah. and you know, 10 years from now, you could, I could see distributed computing systems in our kitchens where our, the unused compute from our connected refrigerators are earning fractions of a penny. And maybe our Comcast or, you know, some third party has come in and built a system where we earn credits back. And you know, everybody's creating value. I think that there are platforms like Roblox that have current, you know, Roblox second life. They've got currencies within those ecosystems already.

Leo Laporte (01:58:41):
Yeah. Maybe the metaverse is gonna become the, the driving force in all this.

Amy Webb (01:58:47):
I, I think the biggest winner out of all of this might be China which is eager to see the not, not, you know, have an alternative to the dollar as the Curr that other currencies are pegged to. So, and peg two. So that might be one offshoot, but I true decentralization doesn't work within the existing structures of society. So

Leo Laporte (01:59:12):
Let me, maybe you are the only person in the world who knows what web 3.0 is. I'm looking at the page from your trends tech trends, 2022, you say web 3.0, enables people, organizations and systems around the globe to be seamlessly interconnected while acting independently, allowing for more equitable access to asset ownership and investment. That sounds pretty good.

Amy Webb (01:59:37):
Yeah. But again, I, we see this as an evolution. I was actually talking to Dan Sturman, who's the CTO of Roblox a couple weeks ago. He's a really real, he's super interesting. He's a super interesting guy, but he had an interesting take on web three hype. You know, he said web three is a lot like web one, which is to say infrastructure layer it's web four. So the thing that comes afterwards that is in a way more compelling or as

Leo Laporte (02:00:05):
Jack Dorsey would call it web five <laugh>

Amy Webb (02:00:08):
Layer comes in. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (02:00:12):
I guess he just wanted to skip four entire, you just wanna skip for entire entire,

Amy Webb (02:00:15):
I guess, I

Leo Laporte (02:00:16):
Guess. Do you think governments are hostile to all of this because after all 

Amy Webb (02:00:25):
Yeah, it

Leo Laporte (02:00:26):
Deals them out, doesn't it

Amy Webb (02:00:28):
Like, just like, I think governments have been asleep at the wheel to be per many governments. Certainly ours that was not true of China and, and other governments around the world in 2020, I was at in Davos world economic forum and there was a whole entire track on blockchains and cryptos. And at that point Facebook's currency was still called Lera. Right. That was the

Leo Laporte (02:00:52):
Original name of it. Yeah. They killed it, but yeah,

Amy Webb (02:00:54):
They killed it. They killed it shortly after that, but you know, there was a lot of argument in the room about what they were trying to build. I was in a session after that with the head of Singapore, Singapore was moving ahead on its own CBDC so I, I think a lot of governments have been dancing around this, but their interpretation of what's being built. And I think the sort of conversation on Reddit's pretty big chasm. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:25):
Well, unfortunately the conversation on Reddit is what has driven all the markets, right? Yeah. And people have lost money and you know, but there is, I guess there's, I could see a world where authentication and Providence is reliable where there's a decentralized financial system that isn't dependent on any individual company or even government. I could see the advantage, but

Amy Webb (02:01:54):
It, but it will be, I, nothing will listen. I, somebody still has to like manage and maintain the pipes. Right. So there is no such thing as true decentralization in the way, in the way that I hear people talking about it. Somebody is still making decisions. There's gotta be a protocol layer.

Leo Laporte (02:02:09):
Well, that's what you saw within somebody making, if open C de lists, the NFT, it no longer exists.

Amy Webb (02:02:14):
Right? So, so there are entities with control. This is not a control list, totally egalitarian future. That's not possible.

Leo Laporte (02:02:25):
The you, I actually and I know this was you wrote this tech trends before the crypto crash, but I think this, this chapter is actually great and there's a lot of interesting stuff. And so for the people, you know, and I've been very negative about crypto and NFTs and web three, but that's, as it is presenting today, and for people who are curious about what potential might have in the future, the tech tech, tech trends report is actually very, very valuable and does, and does, I think bring up some very important we know the cons brings up the important pros. How about that? Is that fair? Is there anything you would change six months later?

Amy Webb (02:03:07):
I actually did not write that part of the report. One of the people who we've got a team that specializes in that you know, I, I, I don't know. I might have, I don't think so. I mean, I think we might have explored other infrastructure more, but the it's a snapshot in a, in a moment of time, the NFT piece of this doesn't change tokens are still a thing. Yeah. And they matter I think the current modality, which is digital collectibles is, you know, is ultimately what change is going forward. They're, you know, the, I, I think the, the sort of FOMO attached to all of that is what drove yes. The volatility. Yes. And would also crash it back down. So,

Leo Laporte (02:03:52):
Yes. Yeah. That's probably my criticism of people who are flogging it. And really most of them stand to gain. You know, when you, once you invest in this stuff, you gotta get somebody else to buy it, or it's not worth anything. And as it starts to crash, then you really have to get somebody to buy it. So the drum beat gets louder and louder.

Amy Webb (02:04:11):
Yeah. I gotta say Leo between our earlier conversation about Elon Musk and now bashing crypto bros and NFTs, I'm assuming we're all gonna get a lot of really loving messages on social media this week. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:04:23):
I, I have good news. I'm sure those everybody's

Amy Webb (02:04:26):
Gonna be like, Hey, this was awesome. Thank you so much for this show. This

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
Here's the good news by now. Those people are, have abandoned ship. They're not listening to our shows anymore. They

Amy Webb (02:04:36):
Are hate listening to us. Now. Maybe

Leo Laporte (02:04:38):
They hate, hate listening. You think that hate

Amy Webb (02:04:40):
Is what's happening?

Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Why I ought? Well, how about, I'm glad I'm off. I'm glad I'm taking my break. Don't answer any email or don't visit TWiTtter and be careful what you're at replies say close your DMS. At least you'll be able to get Starlink on your yacht for mere $5,000 a month.

Amy Webb (02:04:59):
Yeah. And you can listen to hauling notes.

Leo Laporte (02:05:01):
Question on your yacht rock yacht,

Amy Webb (02:05:02):
Rock <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:05:03):
Yeah. Starling. So I here's another example of me being complete wide-eyed optimist Pollyanna now faced with the facts. I thought Starlink was gonna bring internet access to every corner of the globe who was gonna transform the world by making internet access widely available at a low cost. I guess Elon had a different plan. He is

Amy Webb (02:05:30):
You, are you feeling sad for all the yacht owners that their internet is gonna cost $5,000? Well,

Leo Laporte (02:05:35):
They can afford it. If you ought a yacht, five grand,

Amy Webb (02:05:37):
Nothing, are you upset that it's not free for the, for the yacht people?

Leo Laporte (02:05:42):
I mean, I would, I would be thrilled if Elon would then take that money and then offer Starlink for free in areas where people are underserved. I don't see him doing that, but maybe,

Amy Webb (02:05:54):
Well, all of Roger, like Canada is completely offline. Yeah. Canada, as we speak, Canada would be good. Starlink exists there. Maybe he can flip a switch and be the salvation that connects need.

Leo Laporte (02:06:05):
I have to say he has come through in, in a number of places where it's been incredibly valuable to have Starlink the fires when we had the wildfires up here. Where was it? Haiti? that he offered Starlink. So he has Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, he's putting terminals. So let's encourage Elon. I take everything back. It's fine. Make $5,000 a month off every yacht in the ocean. As long as you provide terminals for low cost in areas that are underserved, that would be

Connie Guglielmo (02:06:40):
Good. I mean, it's 5,000 a month after you spend 10,000 on the hardware. Oh, that's not first there's, you're gonna buy the upfront hardware for 10,000. And then it's 5,000.

Leo Laporte (02:06:50):
You know, I'm just bitter because I was really looking forward to a day where I could live on a boat and do this show and that ain't gonna happen. <Laugh> didn't Starlink also just release a version aimed at RV owners. Yeah. Yeah. So there much, is that, how much is that? I don't know. Initially the idea of Starlink was you had to have a fixed address but they always promised that at some point they would be able to do it in mobile environments. Let me look Starlink for RVs. Let's see how much it costs right now.

Connie Guglielmo (02:07:20):
$600 for the hardware, nothing, and then 135 bucks a month.

Leo Laporte (02:07:25):
So it's a little more expensive than land-based non mobile, non mobile star link, which by the way, whose price has gone up, it is now $110 a month, but for an extra $25, you could be you could be driving around in your RV. I think there's a market for that.

Dwight Silverman (02:07:42):
That's not a bad price, actually.

Leo Laporte (02:07:44):
No, and it's pretty fast. Although people with Starlink who've been owners for a long time are saying that while the price is going up, the speeds are going down. I guess, as more people are using it, of course, they're launching more satellites. They're launching satellites tonight in a couple hours, they're gonna launch some satellites. So they're more Starlink on your yacht. So hot, right? Tech crunch. <Laugh> thank you, Andrew Menez for that headline. <Laugh> let's see. The max studio shows the power of the M one chips, but is not for mere mortals says Dwight Silverman. I love my max studio, but you're right. It was a little expensive.

Dwight Silverman (02:08:28):
Yeah. I, I got an email from a friend of mine who, after reading this, who had just bought one and he kind of, he, he almost like gave me a spreadsheet, amortizing it out over time, how much he says, he's 68 and it's the last machine he'll buy. And so it was worth it to him. I, you know, I look at it and it's, it was a really impressive system and it certainly is fast, but, and if you're a creative and if you're rendering video or creating you know, animation or doing something where you really need that power, it's, you know, it's a great machine, but just for everyday use for the way most people use a Mac, it's probably way overkill. What's really interesting. I thought when they launched this and they still haven't done it is they have not kind of really updated the Mac mini, which I think is eventually is coming, but it's, it is going to it will be the machine I'd be even more interested in. Yeah. Particularly if they, if they bulk, if they do a lot of the ports on the back end, I have a 20, 20, 27 inch iMac, the last Intel IM

Leo Laporte (02:09:45):
Oh, it's time to get rid of those. That's

Dwight Silverman (02:09:46):
For sure. Oh, I love it. I love it. You love it. I couldn't wait. Yes. Yes. And I couldn't, I mean, just doing stuff day to day, I can't tell any difference between the smack studio and this machine. And, and I like an, an all in one better kind of the side, the bulk of the, of the Mac studio on my desk was kind of annoying when you're used to it all in one, I'm really hoping for a 27 inch. 

Leo Laporte (02:10:12):
There is a

Dwight Silverman (02:10:13):
Rumor Silicon

Leo Laporte (02:10:13):
Machine of an iMac pro coming around the corner.

Dwight Silverman (02:10:16):
Yeah. I'll spend for that. I

Leo Laporte (02:10:18):
Think that's the secret that nobody in tech, no tech reviewer really wants to admit, which is most users can't tell the difference between any of this stuff. All of the differences are in benchmarks. You could tell the difference in price.

Dwight Silverman (02:10:32):
Yes. <laugh> and apple has a really good opportunity for gaming here that, that either they're blowing or they can't convince developers to, to jump on it quickly enough, but these machines would be great for high end, you know, triple a gaming. And you just not seeing it yet

Leo Laporte (02:10:53):
Because apple it's kind of, yeah, they have to, they, they've now abandoned Nvidia and radiant cards. So they have to provide the GPU. That'll do it. Developers don't wanna learn a new, you know, have to start writing the metal instead of direct X or whatever they're using open GL. I, I just, I think apple is, is, has gone its own way. They've taken that fork in the road and, and it's gonna be up to them to get game developers to follow. But I

Dwight Silverman (02:11:17):
Think that's why well, and they, they do have game developers working on iOS games, casual

Leo Laporte (02:11:22):
Games, you bet they own it. They own them.

Dwight Silverman (02:11:24):
Yes. And, and there are some really good 3d games and action games for the iPhone and the iPad and those, you know, try porting those over to, to an M one chip and see what happens. I think if, if you had a hit there, that could be really

Leo Laporte (02:11:41):
Interesting. We will, of course talk about this on Mac break weekly on Tuesday with our brand new panel member. I'll, I'll let you tune in Tuesday to meet that person. But there have been some criticisms of Apple's latest chip. The M two on Friday orders began for the MacBook air based on the M two chip, a redesign in for colors. And almost immediately the ship dates went out a month. I'm sure they're out even farther now. Which means probably Apple's just subject to the same supply chain issues that every other PC manufacturer is subject to finally. But there have been some complaints about the heat problems with the M two. So it'll be interesting to see as more and more of these M two based computers, the MacBook pro 13 inch in the MacBook air come out how people respond to that. But we'll talk more about that on on Tuesday, apple is in the, in very active bidding. They added Friday night baseball. They're in very active bidding to get NFL Sunday ticket, the commiss, is it still Roger Goodell says, we'll know. Yeah, Roger Goodell. He says, we'll know, by this fall of the fate of NFL's Sunday ticket, but he does say, I really believe we'll be moving to a streaming service in other words, a way.

Amy Webb (02:13:06):
So I, that is, I, I, it is hard to over describe how devastating this is to broadcast media.

Leo Laporte (02:13:16):
No kidding. Yeah,

Amy Webb (02:13:18):
We, so we have worked with and advised some of the, some of the networks and the amount of money that this brings in the, these are long contracts. So the talk about like, not being willing to confront your cherish beliefs a couple years ago, we said, Hey, what if a streamer wins out during the next contract renegotiation? And just like, none of them would hear of it. It was really, it was INCORE, it wasn't just like incomprehensible. It was like silly. This

Leo Laporte (02:13:49):
Is conceivable,

Amy Webb (02:13:49):
Right? Yeah. <Laugh> right. The, the devastation that this is gonna result in for networks is, is like, there's no way to sugar coat it. 

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
It's really an interesting way for apple to become a player here. It's a, it's a reports are that it's $2 billion a year direct TV.

Amy Webb (02:14:11):
Yeah. They're gonna overpay.

Leo Laporte (02:14:12):
They're gonna overpay direct TV, bought it some years ago for one and a half billion dollars Sunday. Tickets important because aside from the games you can see on your local markets in your local broadcasts, if you wanna see any other games, you need Sunday ticket so serious football fans, this is a big, big deal,

Amy Webb (02:14:33):
Right. And what's happening is what used to be scarcity in the market, you know, doesn't exist anymore. And so for sports, especially where you kind of wanna see the game when it's on or where, you know, the, the amount of money that this, that they're able to, to to make, especially from streamers right now, which are looking for additional differentiators is like insane, insane.

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
And the presumably the NFL at some point will do their own app. Right. Major league baseball post, but

Amy Webb (02:15:01):
MLB has a super app. Yeah. Cause I think you guys know I I'm a baseball fan. Yeah. It's a horrible experience. Yeah. It's a, it's as bad of, as an experience as continuing to sit through nine innings in the year 20, 22. So terrible David,

Leo Laporte (02:15:17):
I thought you were a baseball fan.

Amy Webb (02:15:19):
I am a baseball fan fan. What do you

Leo Laporte (02:15:21):
Wanna have a

Amy Webb (02:15:22):
With my daughter?

Leo Laporte (02:15:23):
<Laugh>

Amy Webb (02:15:24):
That the game is too.

Leo Laporte (02:15:25):
It's too long.

Amy Webb (02:15:26):
It's time to modernize. Yeah. Yeah's too long. We probably don't need nine. We could have a whole separate conversation.

Leo Laporte (02:15:33):
I, you know what I'm with you. I love baseball, but a baseball fan since youth, since childhood. Right. And even I <laugh>, I just, it, by the eighth inning, it's like, give me another beer. I can't. Right. Where's the hot dogs.

Amy Webb (02:15:47):
I'm

Leo Laporte (02:15:47):
In a

Amy Webb (02:15:47):
Coma. I took my daughter. I was very excited. Cause I grew up up with the Cubs and I, the Cubs were in Baltimore. So I went to a that's the only place you can see the Cubs is at, at, at, at the Orioles in Baltimore where literally nobody goes to see the Orioles. Right. and she was just, you know, she was totally done like second inning. She was just, she was just done. Wow. Anyways, but the app is terrible. Could the NFL make more in a DET like a direct to consumer play? Probably, but, but a lot of that overall revenue is still coming from advertising. So

Leo Laporte (02:16:23):
Even cricket is attempting to modernize and cut the games down from two or three days to a mere a few hours. Yeah. Our attention span is getting awfully short. I don't know if anybody under 25 has the patience to sit at a nine inning three hour baseball game, especially because football, even though honestly, somebody did the math, there's only 11 minutes of action in a three hour football game, at least there's action. <Laugh> it's just somehow more exciting. And of course the networks are very good at producing it. Ha Amy, have you watched any of the apple Friday night baseball broadcast as a baseball fan?

Amy Webb (02:17:01):
No, I haven't.

Leo Laporte (02:17:02):
They're terrible. They're terrible. They're awful. Yeah. They make, make, I'm

Amy Webb (02:17:06):
Watching

Leo Laporte (02:17:07):
Like a even slower, even more boring, hard to believe.

Amy Webb (02:17:10):
I mean, I grew up in a household where WGN was on constantly. Oh wow. And so there was, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:17:16):
And that was when the cuts just had lost for decades were,

Amy Webb (02:17:20):
Were terrible. Like there

Leo Laporte (02:17:21):
Right now were worst. They were the worst, but that's it a long suffering cubbies fan. Yeah. I'll ne one of the highlights of my baseball life is going to Wrigley and watching. What's his name? Practically fall out the booth during the seven things stretch.

Amy Webb (02:17:39):
Harry, Carrie,

Leo Laporte (02:17:40):
Harry, Carrie Harry care man to the bar by the seventh inning, Harry Kerry, six sheets to the wind. He would lean out the booth and lead the, the fans in singing it stretch. And every time you looked like he was gonna just fall out, I mean, he was just, eh, okay, I wanna hear you. Great Harry Carey, but that's, that's Chicago baseball. That's, that's a, a great sport. C wisely,

Dwight Silverman (02:18:06):
Apples, apples announcers are just horrible.

Leo Laporte (02:18:09):
Oh, they kill the,

Dwight Silverman (02:18:10):
And if I were the NFL, that would give me pause. Well, I,

Leo Laporte (02:18:15):
The NFL hires them. I don't think apple hires them. I don't know what's going

Dwight Silverman (02:18:21):
On. MLB hires

Leo Laporte (02:18:22):
Them. I mean, MLB, not a, yeah. Wouldn't that be funny at the end? No, MLB. Those are MLB employees. I believe.

Amy Webb (02:18:28):
What, what makes them so bad? I'm curious.

Dwight Silverman (02:18:31):
Oh, they're just, you know, I've, I've watched two games and, and only part of the games and I wound up turning the sound off, so I didn't have to hear them cuz they were awful. I just used subtitles. I watched two, a couple of Astros games and they talk about themselves more than the game. They everything is, you know, relatable and personable. And I don't want to hear that. I wanna hear details about the players. I want to hear back stories and, but you don't get that. You get kind of how they feel about the

Leo Laporte (02:19:01):
Game. They're doing their thing. Apple and I guess MLB is trying to appeal to the millennials. So these are young they're wo there's two women and two guys they're very young by the way, this is very apple. ESPN on the Mike flags would have a big legible ESPN. Can you read what's on these mic flags? No, no. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's if you,

Amy Webb (02:19:22):
I have to think that there's an enormous amount of data that went into selecting the, these people and I'm sure

Leo Laporte (02:19:27):
That they more data than sense.

Amy Webb (02:19:30):
Right? Right.

Leo Laporte (02:19:31):
That's the problem.

Amy Webb (02:19:33):
Listen, if it attracts more young people to the sport. Great. Because it's effectively gonna die. Otherwise there's just not enough young people who are my kid. Won't watch it. You know? It's,

Leo Laporte (02:19:44):
It's sick long. It's boring. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody in the IRC says the only way kids watch baseball these days is they go, they watch the highlights on their Amazon echo. Yeah. That's pretty much it.

Connie Guglielmo (02:19:55):
That's pretty much how people watch most sports,

Leo Laporte (02:19:58):
Everything, sports, life, everything. Yeah. I just want the highlights. I don't have time. All one more break and then we're gonna wrap things up as I, you guys are very patient. I my problem is when I've got a great panel, I just don't wanna stop. And you guys are fantastic. Amy Webb future today Institute Connie GMO editor in chief CNET, E I C at C N E T Yuko. Yuko. You got the new logo on there, up there on the sign. Did you have to, did you have to revamp all your logo edge in your house too?

Connie Guglielmo (02:20:33):
Well, that's the only logo edge in my house. Okay. But yes, we did have to revamp the whole logo on.

Leo Laporte (02:20:39):
So what's the reaction been? Because I have to say, you know, I, I worked for CNET when it was Halsey minor and you know, Shelby and just a couple of people. He was the guy who came up with that C bar, N E this is a big deal redesign@cnet.com. What's the reaction been?

Connie Guglielmo (02:20:58):
I mean, you have your people who love it and people who hate it, but for the most part, people have liked it because they think it's kind of retro and kind of forward looking

Leo Laporte (02:21:07):
Like this. When you, when you refresh the page, it wrote, Ooh, cool.

Connie Guglielmo (02:21:11):
<Laugh> they like to see the line go. That was dating us, I guess. And it's still red still seeing that we didn't change the names.

Leo Laporte (02:21:19):
You know, at first I I'll be honest. I wasn't crazy about it, but I like the, the clean kind of open nature of the page. Now there's a lot of it breathes a little bit more. It's a, it's good. It's very modern. I feel

Connie Guglielmo (02:21:31):
Well, thank

Leo Laporte (02:21:32):
You. Yeah. What's the name of this font?

Connie Guglielmo (02:21:35):
Oh, I, it was created for us. I can't remember what it's called off of my head. Just oh, that the I'll look it up and let

Leo Laporte (02:21:41):
You know the headline font is unique. You have a hell VEA for the it's many syrups. Yeah, but it's a, it's an Interestings font. It almost looks like a derivation of the old rolling stone font. Oh, maybe, but I have to turn this off. I'm running an extension called Tucan that translates random words into Spanish on every webpage. So I apologize. Usually I turn it off before the shows. CNET is not half Spanish now. It's just me. That's just my, that's just me also with us from the Houston Chronicle and three.com Dwight Silverman. Great to have you as always my dear friend, always great to be back. Our show today brought to you by the worldwide technology. These are, these are the last, this was great. The last place Lisa and I went March 2nd, 20, 20. <Laugh> we we, yeah, this, this, this flu that's going around.

Leo Laporte (02:22:34):
He'll be all right. We flew to St. Louis and saw WWT. And actually I'm really glad. In fact, as soon as the pandemic lets up, sometime within the next five, six years, we were gonna go back to St. Louis, cuz I wanna visit the advanced technology center. This was the coolest place we saw worldwide technology. They sell enterprise technology and at the heart of what they do as their advanced technology center, they started building this a decade ago because of course their engineers needed to try new enterprise technologies. They needed to spin up proofs of concept. They needed to do integration so that they could advise their clients on. What's good. What's bad. What works, what doesn't work, what works with what you've got now the ATC, I mean, it's just grown from it's several buildings. Now it is a research and testing lab that brings together more than half a billion dollars in enterprise technology from the big OEMs and the little disruptors.

Leo Laporte (02:23:32):
It's exactly what you need. If you are adding technology or adding to your technology stack and enterprise, and here's the best part you can use it just like those WWT engineers use it. The ATC offers hundreds of on demand and schedulable labs featuring solutions that include technologies represented by the newest advances in cloud and security and networking primary and secondary storage, data analytics and AI. Devops is so much more when we were at the ATC, it's just rack after rack of the coolest latest stuff all lit up. It's really cool. I asked the engineers, you love working here. They said, this is, this is a dream job. We get to work with the latest stuff. I said, what's that over there, there was a, there was a whole like three racks in a cage, completely isolated. Oh they said, that's where we do our AV and ransomware testing.

Leo Laporte (02:24:21):
That is completely isolated from the rest of the the building. You have to get special permission to go in there, but that's how committed they are. They actually built a whole area just so they could try security solutions with ATC. You can do the same. You could test out products and solutions before you go to market. It's not just the labs. It's technical articles, expert insights. They've got demonstration videos. They've got white papers, all the tools you need to stay up to date with the latest technology. This is why people, when you know, when they start using WWT, they never stop. This is a trusted partner. That's with you. They understand that business is about strategy, not technology, but technology supports the strategy. They're very clear. They understand that. So they come in and they help you completely fulfill your business purpose by choosing the right technology.

Leo Laporte (02:25:13):
It's strategy first, I think this is so fantastic. And I'm so glad they've made this available. You don't even have to go to St. Louis. It's available anywhere in the world. 365 days a year, while you're at the website, by the way, check out the events they've got going on. We did a panel. It was so much fun. When we go back, we'll do another panel communities. Lou ESKA who does our this week in enterprise tech just recently did a panel at WWT. It's a great way to learn about technology trends here, the latest research and insights from their experts, whatever your business needs, WWT, worldwide technology can deliver scalable, tried and tested, tailored solutions. They are the partner you want the part you, you need that could bring strategy and execution together to make this exciting new world happen. To learn more about WWT, the advanced technology center to get access to all these resources absolutely free.

Leo Laporte (02:26:04):
Did I mention that? Absolutely free go to wwt.com/TWiT. You create that free account. It's all there for you. Wwt.Com/TWiTt. We thank these guys would love these guys that can't wait to go out in St. Louis, have some fried ravioli again. Wwt.Com/TWiT. We brought Mary Jo Foley last time. I think we're gonna have to bring Paul next time. Wwt.Com/TWiT. Thank you for your support. We had a great week this week on TWiT. You know what let's let's let's take a look at this little movie we made here. The two tech guys are Leo Laport here,

Mikah Sargent (02:26:44):
And Mica Sergeant here,

Leo Laporte (02:26:46):
Michael will be all on his own next week. So please help him

Mikah Sargent (02:26:49):
Be kind

Leo Laporte (02:26:50):
All your printer questions next week with Mica Sergeant previously on TWiTtter, Mac break weekly, the

Rene Ritchie (02:26:59):
Best advice I can give is the advice we always give. And that is with, if you buy a new Mac, put it through everything you're gonna do, put it through the hardest things you're gonna do. And if you have any problems, take it back. But like, like do your workload

Leo Laporte (02:27:09):
Tech news weekly,

Ian Sherr (02:27:10):
They created a new type of feature for the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac that they call lockdown mode. And what it does is it basically puts an extreme security measure on your phone. They're trying to kind of reduce the tax surface is what they call it. That could be used to target at these individual people

Leo Laporte (02:27:30):
This weekend, Google you actually asked the artificial intelligence, G P T three, to write an op-ed.

Mikah Sargent (02:27:37):
I asked him to write three things. I asked him to write an op-ed about moral panic. Then I asked him to write a short story with a hero about moral panic. And then I asked him to write a blurb for my book about moral panic,

Leo Laporte (02:27:48):
Moral panic over the internet is nothing new in the early days of the internet. People were concerned, quote that children would be exposed to pornography and violence to it. It never ends that quote by the way.

Rene Ritchie (02:28:02):
That sounds just like Mr. Jarvis.

Leo Laporte (02:28:03):
Yeah, <laugh> you're the laziest man in, in literature. He's just gonna let G T three write everything from now on that was an interesting piece on tech news weekly about lockdown mode. IUR writing for CNET, apple lockdown mode, a new level of security for your iPhone. This is a, this is kind of going along the line of what we're talking about and making apple, you know, kind of the trusted place for all your stuff. I don't know if they expect everyone to use it. It's really for people who are targeted by things like Pegasus the NSO groups you know, very, very powerful zero click hack. Any thoughts? What's your thought Connie on lockdown mode is this,

Connie Guglielmo (02:28:48):
Well, this is apple really just like you said trying to own the market for privacy on a device. And it's, you know, it's been going on for many years, the, the San Bernardino trial that we mentioned when they stood up to the government and said, we won't share data because we believe in privacy that, you know, it's been a long long time coming. All of this message lockdown mode is like the extreme, right? It prevents you from get even hooking up with utilities or peripherals. It really is lockdown mode. I mean, I, the name says it all right there, but it allows apple to really put a very strong stake in the ground that they don't just talk about privacy, that they're doing something about it. And lockdown mode is coming in the next version of the mobile operating system for the iPhone, which is in September iOS 16.

Leo Laporte (02:29:39):
Will you turn it on?

Connie Guglielmo (02:29:42):
I will definitely turn it on to see what it's like. Yeah. How intrusive, how intrusive it is. If I'm constantly getting asked, you know, to turn it off or I can't do things you know, day to day, then I, then I would evaluate, but sure. I would definitely turn it on and see what it's

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
Like. In fact, it looks like it turns off some of the things that apple touts as a convenience features, ability to share things with your computer and your phone you know, Mo so here's what apple says. Lockdown mode will do most message. Attachments are blocked, features like link previews are disabled. We know that's a, that is probably how the NSL group got into the phones of the dissidents and the journalists and the bad guys too, that that Pegasus was used against Z you know, a messages is a big, a big open hole web technologies. Like just in time, JavaScript, compilation are disabled. Google did a study actually of just in time. Javascript found that most browser security flaws were as a result of JT, compilation of JavaScript. And I think Google offers on Chrome a way to turn it off, but it sure breaks it. <Laugh> a lot of things. Incoming invitations and service requests, like FaceTime calls are blocked, but only if you've never called the person before I would ju I will hope that apple makes this granular enough that I could just turn that on. You know, I don't know this person. I don't wanna hear from, I mean, we're,

Connie Guglielmo (02:31:07):
We're all gonna be beta testing it, right? Yeah. Ios 16 beta is coming out shortly or the public. Yeah. Public beta

Leo Laporte (02:31:14):
Of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Connie Guglielmo (02:31:15):
This this very shortly. Yeah. And so then, yeah, we we'll do all

Amy Webb (02:31:18):
The beta testing for apple as

Leo Laporte (02:31:20):
Usual shared albums in photos removed again, a feature apple touts tells people about a WWDC. Look, you can share your photos. Mm-Hmm any new invitations for shared albums blocked, sorry, mom. Any wired connections between your phone and computer Orri blocked configuration profiles. Like the ones for apple public beta cannot be installed. So you just said, maybe we could do this in the public beta. I'm thinking as soon as you turn it on, you can't use the public beta.

Amy Webb (02:31:52):
I don't know. We'll

Leo Laporte (02:31:53):
Find out. Yeah. and you cannot, you can' update to the next version. You can't. Yeah. Right. Your device cannot. What's the name for the in mobile device management.

Amy Webb (02:32:02):
Amy what's. Does that mean that like third party testing apps? I'm trying to remember the name

Leo Laporte (02:32:06):
Of it.

Amy Webb (02:32:06):
It was test flight here, something

Leo Laporte (02:32:07):
Test flight, test flight. Does

Amy Webb (02:32:08):
That mean that's that's doesn't work anymore.

Leo Laporte (02:32:10):
Yeah. Plus, well, for instance, I use a really great service next DNS. That's a DNS provider, but also does a lot of malware blocking in order for it to work on an iPhone. I install a profile. You download the profile. Apple says, you wanna allow this? You do, that's gone. But those things are inherently dangerous. You have to really know this is from the person who said, and I trust this person. And yeah. I mean, cuz it's that thing. Same with mobile device management MDM. In fact, remember one of the parental blocking tools on the apple store was got in trouble because they were using MDM, which is intended for enterprise environments, not for child protection. They were using MDM and apple got mad at 'em pulled it out, then put it back, said, sorry, it's it's been controversial. So lockdown mode will be any apple device that can run iOS 16, iPad OS 16 or Ventura. Ooh. Sounds like you can run it on your desktop too. I don't think any of that on your, on your apple, Silicon desktop. Yeah. And one, I don't think any or two, I don't think any of us are targets of, well, maybe you are Amy. Actually you should run it. You're probably a target of a nation state.

Amy Webb (02:33:29):
I'm. I don't know

Leo Laporte (02:33:30):
When you go to the Pentagon, they take your phone, right?

Amy Webb (02:33:35):
Depends on where I go. Sometimes, well, during COVID I'm not,

Leo Laporte (02:33:40):
You can't go anywhere,

Amy Webb (02:33:41):
Still kind of remote, but yeah, if I go to a skiff, there's a little lockbox thing outside the room and everybody has to put all their devices into it. Which I've always felt uncomfortable about. Cuz then it's like, well, who else has a key to this?

Leo Laporte (02:33:56):
<Laugh>

Amy Webb (02:33:57):
But you know, I, I don't think I'm interesting enough for anybody to be truly surveilling in that way. So

Leo Laporte (02:34:04):
I don't know. I don't know if they're just watching your location. They're thinking this, this woman has access to food.

Amy Webb (02:34:11):
I think this woman spends a lot of time at Rita's getting so of ice cream. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:34:16):
Did you okay.

Amy Webb (02:34:17):
That's that's what they're thinking.

Leo Laporte (02:34:19):
So

Amy Webb (02:34:20):
Why isn't she heavier? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:34:24):
Let's go to Rita as they, as they get your health data, let's go to Rita. Wasn't there. Wasn't there a snack shop inside the Pentagon.

Amy Webb (02:34:34):
Oh, there's there's actually a whole, the Pentagon's huge. Yeah. And there's there's actually a ton of restaurants. Food is pretty, pretty bad. There's a dry, cleaner. There's there's everything you need in, you know, inside of it,

Leo Laporte (02:34:48):
They they actually closed it. I remember the story. It was called cafe ground zero. And it was a little here's a picture. I think here's a picture of it. Let me see if I can find it here. It is. It was a little, oh shoot. The, the web is crumbling. It was. Yeah. Well maybe, maybe maybe our firewall is blocking me or not letting me go to archive.defense.gov, but here's a little thumbnail. <Laugh> here's a little thumbnail. There was a little snack shack check a hotdog stand right in the middle. Yeah. And remember the reason they closed it is because satellite images would show us military officers going in and out of the same time every day. And the Soviets thought it was the most secret meeting room in the whole Pentagon

Amy Webb (02:35:41):
<Laugh> so that's a true story. And it's in the center park area outside outside the so like

Leo Laporte (02:35:47):
It's not in the rings Pentagon. It's not inside the ring. Yes.

Amy Webb (02:35:50):
Ah, it is inside.

Leo Laporte (02:35:51):
It is inside. That's why. Yeah. The Soviets said who, whatever this is, must be. There's a bigger picture. This is from, we are the mighty.com. All the of officers go in there at noon every day must be important. It is said, get this the us the Soviet union had at least two nuclear missiles pointed at it at all times. <Laugh>

Amy Webb (02:36:20):
Hot dogs are dangerous. They are hot. Dogs can kill you. That's the mess they can and will kill you.

Leo Laporte (02:36:27):
I'm mad at my wife cuz she told me the other day that every hot dog I eat takes 30 minutes off my life. That just spoiled it for me. Let's see, what else? Anything else we should talk about before we re oh Tuesday? Very exciting. James Webb fully unfurled will be. I think they've already sent the pictures back. I think NASA's just being coy, but NASA

Amy Webb (02:36:54):
It's a live stream.

Leo Laporte (02:36:55):
Is it a live stream?

Amy Webb (02:36:57):
It'll be a, I think it's like a

Leo Laporte (02:36:58):
10 39 30 our time, 1230 year a presentation. I'm sorry. 7, 7, 7 30, 10 30 Eastern. I know cuz I have to get up really early. We're gonna stream it rod pile our spaceman and I will stream coverage of the NASA event, Tuesday 10 30 Eastern, seven 30 Pacific with the first images from the James Webb. Which

Amy Webb (02:37:22):
I just, I think it's so cool. I mean, this is like, it's so cool. It's such an, there's so much happening, but this is, this is like one of these incredible moments that it's good, man. We're we're gonna be alive to, to see this happen. It's literally going to change reality.

Leo Laporte (02:37:36):
Yeah, this is actually what I was saying to rod this morning is that for all the bad stuff we talk about all the time and I'm, I've kind of made a pledge to myself to stop, to start being, putting some more positive stuff. But we are on some in a very interesting time for science. So the web telescope is so good that it's gonna be able to take the most distant pictures ever take it in the universe so far away that this is light. That is only about 120, 120 million years older than the beginning of the universe. We're essentially gonna be able to see the very earliest big BA right after the big bang moments of the universe. Fascinating. Can't wait, we're gonna see that at two. And then the, the particle accelerate accelerator lab at CERN has just turned on the large Hadron Collider for the third time, with even more power than before. And they're already finding mysterious particles. Although there was some concern I remember on Reddit among some people that the end of the world was ni that, you know, they were gonna discover something that was gonna cause the universe to collapse or something. I'm happy to say that did not happen yet. Ah

Amy Webb (02:38:58):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:39:00):
Yeah. For the last three years, engineers have been upgrading the colliders so it could detect more data run at higher speeds. It's running at the highest energy level ever. 13.6 trillion electron volts. So we live in yes, Amy, thank you. We live in exciting times and I am thrilled to have had this time together with you Amy Webb future today Institute, I feel like I kind of pressured you into doing this show. I just wanna apologize.

Amy Webb (02:39:33):
Didn't pressure him. I love being here all the time. I get really to be cool people.

Leo Laporte (02:39:38):
You're so busy

Amy Webb (02:39:39):
You to speak in a Russian accent. Yes,

Leo Laporte (02:39:41):
It's

Amy Webb (02:39:41):
Right. Where else would I be? The

Leo Laporte (02:39:43):
Wonderful Amy WBB. She's great. <Laugh> I've been watching lately the chess tournaments, the candidate us, I'm sorry, the world fee day chess candidates tournament just ended to pick the next challenger for Magnus Carlson and next year's world championship match. It'll be nipple NIPPO Nachi the Russian, except he doesn't play under the Russian flag because no one does anymore except he's Russian. So you know, he is Russian, but he has to play under some fake. It's so silly. It's like the Olympic athletes. They play under some. Oh, he is he's not Russian. He's playing under the fi day flag. But as a result, I'm seeing a lot of Russian commentators <laugh> and I'm afraid my Russian's gotten worse. <Laugh> sounds pretty good to me. Well, that's right, because you don't speak Russian <laugh>. My favorite person to watch is Judi Polgar who's a very famous greatest woman, grand master of all time. She, her father was a chess trainer who took her and her sister and forced him to study chess their whole childhood, but it paid off. She's very good. <Laugh> anyway, she has, I think she's Hungarian or Polish or something Eastern European. So her action, a little accent, a little different. Thank you, Amy. We please come back. I promise not to. I promise no more pressure. No more DMing you on the TWiTtter saying please come on the show

Connie Guglielmo (02:41:15):
Please. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:41:16):
Thank you, Amy. And my regards to Brian, thank you for letting your, to your family for letting us have you for this Sunday evening. Same to you, Connie GMO she's editor in chief of seen it give us something to plug what's hot and happening unseen it now. Anything new?

Connie Guglielmo (02:41:35):
Well, we are getting ready to see if Amazon's gonna deliver on prime day, which is coming up this week. People looking for deals because everyone is looking for deal. The economy is bad. If you, if you want a robot vacuum, this might be the week <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:41:49):
I forgot to mention prime day. Are you like the wire cutter and wired magazine, but they all, and I remember I'm more used to this. It's like all hands on deck. They work 24, 7 for three days rating all the prime day. Are you gonna do that?

Connie Guglielmo (02:42:04):
Yeah, we have a team 24 or my God seven because we have offices around the world. So,

Leo Laporte (02:42:09):
Oh, well that's good. We

Connie Guglielmo (02:42:10):
Have a, we just are doing handoffs from time zone to time zone.

Leo Laporte (02:42:15):
You're already, it's already started one minute ago. Amazon prime day, 2022 best deals so far posted one minute ago@cnet.com Jared de pay. I have to he's working.

Connie Guglielmo (02:42:26):
I have to say I've already bought my voice activated light bulbs. They were on sale.

Leo Laporte (02:42:32):
Oh nice. <Laugh> I you remember Amazon had these first day gadgets that you could order and then, then, and they wouldn't make, 'em all just the ones that most people ordered. I ordered a Amazon thermal printer that prints out sticky notes from my Amazon echo. I ordered it like a year ago. Finally came the other day. It's like, wow, look at that. So now I can, oh, you can. I could say Madame print, my shopping list and goes,

Connie Guglielmo (02:43:02):
I was gonna say it's a safe path that anything that Amazon makes is gonna be on sale. Yeah. So I would just hold off and check

Leo Laporte (02:43:10):
Best prime day deals will go to cnet.com to get all those best prime day deals. Prime day begins July 12th, Tuesday. So there's two things to look forward to pictures of the stars at the farthest end of the galaxy and prime day deals. <Laugh> Mr. Dwight Silverman. They, he tries to retire every time he is on he's trying to retire. They never do let him, he writes it. Of course the Houston Chronicle. They won't let him go. They won't let him stop. And you can get all of his stuff at all. Three, a UT H O R y.com/d Silverman. Do you, is there, is it 30 years of columns there?

Dwight Silverman (02:43:52):
It goes back pretty far. Wow. you know, it, it picks up the old chron.com stuff. It picks up the stuff from my old blog. So we, in fact, when I'm looking for something, I go there and search for it instead of on the Chronicles website. By the way, I wanna say that I have been on with a lot of panels and Amy and Connie are my favorite. Oh, I was, I really enjoyed this. And when the all of us should get together again and do this as the same panel, I really like,

Leo Laporte (02:44:23):
You know, we don't normally do that, but I think, you know, sometimes it clicks and we go, oh, we gotta have them back again. And this is definitely one of them. So. Good suggestion. Thank you, Dwight. We'll we'll note that. Thank you, Dwight. We'll note that down in my, in my little notebook on my, in my EAX org mode journal, I'll write that. Write down. Dwight Silverman, Connie Gil. Yamo Amy Webb. Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you for watching. Be silly for us to sit around, talk, and if nobody were watching we do TWiT and you can watch us do it live every Sunday about 2:00 PM, Pacific 5:00 PM, Eastern 2100 UTC, the livestream, audio and video@livedotTWiT.tv. People watching live like to chat live@ircdotTWiT.tv, unless you're in the club. If you're a special person and you're in club TWiTt, we've got our very own discord, which is really fun, a great social network.

Leo Laporte (02:45:21):
You get that access to that. <Laugh> all the animated gifts you can eat. You also get ad free versions of all the shows, cuz you're giving us seven bucks a month. So we give you ad free versions of all the shows and the TWiTt plus feed with unique stuff. Pleased. If you're not yet a member of club TWiTt, you can join monthly $7. You can join an annual plan, $7 times 12. We have corporate memberships. It really helps us keep making great programming. And I think now more than ever we really appreciate your support TWiTt.tv/club TWiT. We'd love it if you join, but don't worry. Free versions of the show and supporter will always be available@TWiT.tv. There's a YouTube channel for every show. In this case, it's youtube.com/this week in tech, you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast client.

Leo Laporte (02:46:13):
You get it automatically that way for free audio or video. But it, there is a fee. I have a little request. If you do have a podcast client that has reviews, could you leave us a five star review? We've been, we've been doing this weekend tech since 2005. We are almost 18 years old now. And there's some people who forgot. We even exist. I get this all the time, which is Joe Rogan was just on Joe Rogan, Leo Laport. Is he still working? Is he still alive? So leave a five star review. Let the world know this weekend. Tech is still going strong after 18 years. Thank you everybody. And I hope you'll come back again next week. Another TWiT is in the can!