This Week in Tech Episode 894 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 weekend tech. Wow. Do we have a great show? Shelly. Brisbane, a newbie joins us, but she's gonna be great. Lisa Scheyer is here. Larry Magda. A long time friend. I've got the new apple watch ultra. We'll talk a little bit about that. The serial podcast claims it's victory and Nike will chicken. Why? The FDA probably should not have said anything about it. It's all coming up next on TWiT podcasts. You love

TWIT Intro (00:00:31):
From people you trust. This

Leo Laporte (00:00:34):
Is is TWiT. This week at tech episode, 894 recorded Sunday, September 25th, 2022 Jing. The stats

Leo Laporte (00:00:51):
This episode of this week at tech is brought to you by Shopify millions of the world's most successful brands. Trust Shopify to sell ship and process payments anywhere. Go to shopify.com/TWiTt, all lowercase to start your free trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features and buy express VPN it's 2022. You need to use a VPN every time you go online. If you don't have one yet, visit express vpn.com/TWiT. Take back your online privacy today. Use our link to get three extra months free with a one year package. And by zip recruiter, there are so many podcasts out right now, and it takes a team of people to bring 'em together. Whether you're hiring for a podcast or for your growing business, one place makes it easy ZipRecruiter. And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/TWiT and by audible audible lets you enjoy all of your audio entertainment in one app. Let audible help you discover new ways to laugh. Be inspired or be entertained. New members can try it free for 30 days. Visit audible.com/TWiT or text TWiT to 500, 500 it's time for TWiT this week in tech, the show we cover the latest tech news with the panel of tech aware reporters, people with their fingers on the pulse of tech people like Larry maggot, president CEO of connect safely.org. Hello Larry.

Larry Magid (00:02:32):
Hello Leo. How are you?

Leo Laporte (00:02:33):
What the hell happened to your mustache?

Larry Magid (00:02:35):
Oh yeah. Well it's a very long story, but I'll make nervous. So I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Yeah. And of the, so one of the things they told me I should do or not the doctor, but the internet told me I should do is to put tape over my mouth. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:02:49):
I do the taping.

Larry Magid (00:02:50):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You do. Yeah. Well the tape didn't stick to the mustache.

Leo Laporte (00:02:53):
No it won't.

Larry Magid (00:02:54):
I but it turns out the tape doesn't help me anyway. So you still do that.

Leo Laporte (00:02:58):
I did it. Cause I read a book called breath. Yes.

Larry Magid (00:03:01):
Right. That's the

Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
Book I read. Yeah. And that was a, it's a odd book. <laugh> yeah.

Larry Magid (00:03:07):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
But his premise is in a nutshell, breathe through your nose, not your mouth. Right? Right. Because your nose is filtering and air conditioning and stuff. And if you breathe through your mouth, he says, the mouth is a backup for an emergency. You shouldn't be using. So if you kind of got get in the habit of breathing through your nose, but the problem is at night, you you're asleep. You're unconscious. So you just use, I use a little 3m surgical tape and it's like a little,

Larry Magid (00:03:32):
Try it with a mustache. It's more challenging.

Leo Laporte (00:03:34):
Yeah. Well somebody actually somebody and I I'll find this for you. Somebody in our discord, our club TWiTt chat sent me one for people with beards. Oh, it's a lot more expensive. But if you wanna go must back. I bet your wife stop.

Larry Magid (00:03:47):
I stopped the tape and kept them. Did

Leo Laporte (00:03:50):
She say, who are you? Stranger?

Larry Magid (00:03:51):
Well, people say, I look younger. I don't think it's necessarily true. But if anybody wants to gimme any compliments, I'll take them. So, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:03:59):
Actually look like George Goble, but I don't, I won't. Oh, no worries. I won't rub that in

Larry Magid (00:04:03):
<laugh> oh good. Hang on Hollywood squares.

Leo Laporte (00:04:05):
Yeah. You know what? We should

Larry Magid (00:04:06):
Rearrange the, we should have to rearrange the monitors.

Leo Laporte (00:04:08):
Tell me if he does not look, I'm gonna show you a picture of George Goble. Tell me if he does not look like George Goble. Yeah. Oh no. <laugh> no, no. It's okay. You don't have to overlay the two laptop

Larry Magid (00:04:22):
Here ruin my day.

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
Oh, he's cute. Oh, it's the anyway. Great to have you. Thank you so much for being here. Also with this I haven't seen you in age is Lisa Scheyer. She's got a new job editor in chief of no jitter. Hi Lisa. Hi there in the studio.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:04:36):
It's so great to be back in the studio. Nice. I'm so happy to see everybody in person here too.

Leo Laporte (00:04:43):
It's missed the crew. The only reason I allowed you to come in studio is I thought you would bring girl scout cookies.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:04:47):
That will be Q1 20, 23, 3.

Leo Laporte (00:04:50):
That's the wrong time of year.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:04:51):
Yeah. Well we're selling nuts starting in October 1st, but not quite the same

Leo Laporte (00:04:55):
Time. You could have bring in girl scout nuts. Yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:04:56):
Well they do the sales differently then, but didn't

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
Come out right?

Larry Magid (00:05:01):
<laugh>

Lisa Schmeiser (00:05:04):
Upsetting.

Shelly Brisbin (00:05:06):
Don't

Leo Laporte (00:05:06):
Worry. Hey, it could be worse. It could have been boy scout nuts and then you really we'd have to stop the show and start over.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:05:12):
<laugh> no

Larry Magid (00:05:13):
I'm we were talking earlier about the FCC practices. Do we need to worry about that on the show

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
Also anyway. Great to have you also with us, somebody who's never appeared on TWiTtter before, but has been a part of our shows for a long time. Shelly Brisbane is here. Her I know from six colors.com and relay FM. She is a producer reporter for Texas, the Texas. Is it the Texas standard? I think it is.

Shelly Brisbin (00:05:37):
We answer to either, but it is the Texas standard. The national news show of Texas. We like to say

Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
<laugh> very Texan. It gets very Texan.

Shelly Brisbin (00:05:46):
I did, but it's absolutely on brand. And I put it in my signature for that

Leo Laporte (00:05:50):
Reason. It works. National news show for Texas people

Shelly Brisbin (00:05:53):
Read my emails. Would I say that? And in

Leo Laporte (00:05:55):
The bottom hysterical, is it a newspaper or is it just a website now?

Shelly Brisbin (00:06:00):
No, it's a radio show. A public radio show hosted at K U T public radio in Austin. We are on 30 stations across the state of Texas. We do have a website which I ran for about five years. I no longer do that. And we're a podcast. So if you're interested in the news of Texas standard.org where it's

Leo Laporte (00:06:17):
At, I think there's been a lot of news from Texas of late.

Shelly Brisbin (00:06:19):
A little bit. Yes. Just getting down there.

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Well I'm glad you're busting your news up to the north now. That's great, Texas. They're kidding. Texas standard dot. Oh

Shelly Brisbin (00:06:33):
My God. I'm gonna stay out of that. Kidding,

Leo Laporte (00:06:36):
Kidding. And just to let you know, cuz I think it's important that Shelly does a lot of accessibility stuff because she has low vision, which is a great thing for us to have. Cuz a lot of times we try to talk about accessibility without any experience of what it's like to try to use technology <affirmative> with a disability. So I'm really glad to have you on for that reason as well. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. And you have actually how many books on this issue subject?

Shelly Brisbin (00:07:05):
Well, this is the 10th anniversary of a book I write called iOS access for all. And I do that book each year with new iOS. And so I'm magic frantically working on the iOS 16 edition. I've written a whole bunch of other books just on tech generally and specifically Mac stuff. But for the past 10 years by project has been this giant comprehensive guide to accessibility for iOS

Leo Laporte (00:07:26):
Folks. That must be a nightmare. Every time I know iOS comes out, that's a lot. I

Shelly Brisbin (00:07:30):
Mean nightmares. It's the way I wanna say it on TWiTtter and then a way wait, no, I want people to buy the book, be excited about it.

Leo Laporte (00:07:36):
A joyous effort, a

Shelly Brisbin (00:07:38):
Labor it's a delightful thing. Every time apple adds new features. I'm like, yeah, bring 'em on.

Leo Laporte (00:07:43):
My sense is though apple has paid a lot of attention to accessibility in iOS is probably the premier platform. Mobile platform for accessibility. Yes.

Shelly Brisbin (00:07:52):
Yeah, it is. I think other platforms are coming along. And I also think that there is a tendency when I say things like that, that apple is the leader for everybody to think, well it's okay, they're done. It's completed, but that's really not the case. There are obviously things that need to be improved. And then there are things that come along every year that delight and surprises, which is what apple wants to do. So it's an adventure because I do try to say to people it's not done, accessibility is a half baked cake and apple just does a particularly good job of it, especially on the iOS platform, less still on the Mac. But

Leo Laporte (00:08:27):
I mean sometimes they take a step back. I remember I got a lot of calls a few versions ago when they took some features away from Siri, like Siri read my email. That was a big, I think mistake from an accessibility point of view,

Shelly Brisbin (00:08:42):
That happens occasionally more often. The issue with accessibility is some sort of bug because there's so much going on in the iOS operating system that sometimes new features will cause a bug to exist in voiceover or to exist when you're reading braille on a braille display. And so those don't tend to be show stopper, bugs. And so sometimes those bugs stay in a little longer than you would like. And so there's a pretty active group of people out there, both beta testers and just consumers of this stuff that will let apple know what they think. And usually it gets to resolve, but sometimes it takes a little while for that to happen.

Leo Laporte (00:09:17):
Last night I had a new bed partner a rather large wristwatch. I got the apple ultra wristwatch. It is it does it look it doesn't does this watch make my butt look big? Does it actually makes it look small? Doesn't it? It's a pretty hefty thing. But

Lisa Schmeiser (00:09:38):
You could watch a TV show on that watch.

Leo Laporte (00:09:40):
Well and wait. That's why I kind of like it.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:09:42):
Maybe not the Lord of the rings TV show. No, but I feel like one of those HBO prestig dramas without dragons, you could totally watch it on the watch.

Leo Laporte (00:09:49):
<laugh> as long as there are no dragons, I

Shelly Brisbin (00:09:50):
Mean, I'd consider it. I just like the idea that you can get large type on it. That makes me happy. There's some people who wanna think of it as an accessibility watch. I'm like, yeah, but I have tiny little woman wrists and I don't think

Leo Laporte (00:10:00):
That's really no. Yeah. It might not be great to wear, but it is a lot better to use this face for. They should

Lisa Schmeiser (00:10:04):
Give you wonder woman bracelets actually a

Shelly Brisbin (00:10:07):
Hundred percent. I like

Lisa Schmeiser (00:10:08):
It. Well, this is actually the thing is you take a look. The watch is a form factor that goes back a couple hundred years. So why aren't we updating our technology form factors for wearables to reflect what our stuff actually is meant to do as opposed to trying to mash these previously unheard of tasks and processes into things that were invented to reflect a much early

Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
Metaphor computer. I'll tell you why

Larry Magid (00:10:31):
Be doing that forever. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:10:32):
Go ahead please. Here's an example of a lady's fashion band on that watch. Oh, that's terrible. It doesn't look good. No, it doesn't look it's too thin.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:10:41):
Now give us the wonder woman risk cuffs,

Leo Laporte (00:10:43):
Man would be awesome. Like a match you woman

Lisa Schmeiser (00:10:45):
Cuff instead of into turn the watch into a risk cuff here's

Leo Laporte (00:10:50):
Sci here's some blame

Larry Magid (00:10:51):
Like Elise's point Leo, if you think about the original Macintosh desktop, <affirmative> what they were doing is they were taking a computer. Oh, I got one and using a very old physical metaphor, moving it over to the computer and actually not necessarily because it worked better, but cuz people were familiar with it, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:11:08):
That's called twoism right. And that's the thing we've kind of now started to S Q

Lisa Schmeiser (00:11:13):
Isn't it Xerox park that really began to conceive of the desktop metaphor and start mainstreaming it back in the seventies.

Leo Laporte (00:11:20):
They had to do that. Yeah, because this was all I'm used to files and folders. But now I think this is there you go. This is a very well

Lisa Schmeiser (00:11:29):
<laugh> ask anybody under the age of 20, the

Leo Laporte (00:11:32):
Free leopard elastic, cheetah printed beaded bracelet strap for the iWatch se and series ultra.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:11:38):
So how is this much? <laugh> I don't know, make those beats do stuff like the technology in Wakanda.

Leo Laporte (00:11:43):
Oh, so you want both <laugh>

Shelly Brisbin (00:11:46):
I'm glad to exist. I don't wanna own it personally, but I want,

Leo Laporte (00:11:49):
You want be a woman warrior with a watch.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:11:52):
I'm just saying, I think a watch is a horse buggy where it was a technology that worked really well for the demand it needed to meet. And what we expect to do with the technology we wear has changed substantially.

Leo Laporte (00:12:06):
So that's why this is, and this isn't a watch anymore than the iPhone is a phone. Yeah, exactly.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:12:10):
This

Leo Laporte (00:12:11):
Is a technology device. And in fact I can call people. I can send texts. This is actually a Dick Tracy watch. I could be on a hike and listening to music without my phone, listening to music, make a call fall and put, you wanna hear the alarm? Oh

Lisa Schmeiser (00:12:26):
Yeah. <laugh> absolutely

Shelly Brisbin (00:12:28):
Play it.

Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
Cover your ears, everybody. If

Shelly Brisbin (00:12:33):
You're in your car, you're not getting pulled over by the cops. Just to let you know

Leo Laporte (00:12:36):
If the cop's car is sound like this I'd be scared. This is <affirmative>. I think apple said what? 88 DB. So it's not so much intended to be super loud as detectable. If you fallen and the searchers know you're roughly in this area, you would set this off. You were saying there was a guy who had a heat stroke who passed away. Cuz yeah, he was feet from the path.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:12:59):
It was a really sad case and pleasant in last year where he was a distance runner. He went out stop. It was too hot stop. Thank

Leo Laporte (00:13:05):
You.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:13:06):
It's too hot. He got heatstroke. He passed out and because it's really hard to find people when they fall into underbrush. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:13:12):
That's what this is for.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:13:13):
Yeah. That's basically to alert folks.

Shelly Brisbin (00:13:16):
<affirmative> and see to me the sound of that alarm. I can't tell, cause I'm not in studio. I dunno how loud it is to you guys. It's not that, but it's not like an alarm. It's not an ambulance alarm. It's not like the European. It's not an alarm as one traditionally thinks of it. I'm not saying it's a pleasant sound, but it's an unusual enough sound and it's diffuse enough that it feels, I understand what they're saying. When they talk about how far the sound projects, how far it carries and

Leo Laporte (00:13:41):
It doesn't hurt your ears.

Shelly Brisbin (00:13:42):
People will do tests on it. But I felt positively toward it when I heard it in the video and you know, could tell

Leo Laporte (00:13:49):
What it is. Somebody says, I just scrambled a search and rescue team. I don't think so. I hope not. I'm fine. I'm just, I'm fine.

Shelly Brisbin (00:13:56):
Unless you have a great amount of power and you've configured it to do

Lisa Schmeiser (00:13:59):
That.

Leo Laporte (00:14:00):
<laugh> yeah. Well there are certain things it's hard to test. So the crash detection that would be hard to test, right? Yeah. Yeah. The new satellite feature

Shelly Brisbin (00:14:08):
Painful to test anyway.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:14:09):
Yeah. So there's actually this ties to my day job. Believe it or not. Cuz one of the big issues that's been emerging and percolating through communication is accurate nine one positioning and location. And we don't have a whole lot of time to get into laws that have just passed. But suffice say to say, there are now laws in place that require any address to be able to convey accurate geographic information to nine 11 dispatchers. And I was interviewing folks who run the emergency response services for a particular county in Tennessee. And this is a huge part of their job is trying to find people who are in peril and get accurate addresses so they can send out the right type of search and rescue operation. Is it fire? Is it an ambulance? Is it police? Whatever. And what I'm super curious about with this watch is in addition to the alarm, I wanna find out how search and rescue operations feel like if they're saying yes, this is something that has approvable effect on our ability to find people, especially in the outdoors because everything is United or everything is the rise of people who have been needed, who need to be rescued in the outdoors is actually shot up exponentially in part thanks to because of COVID well, GPS, devices, watches.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:15:23):
Everyone's like, oh I have two bars. I can go anywhere. This

Leo Laporte (00:15:26):
Watch makes me wanna climb a mountain scuba dive.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:15:29):
And you're like, I have GPS on it. I'm fine. You're not fine. You're not fine. You don't know how to climb a so

Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
No you're right. I should not be out there.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:15:37):
So I would love to find out from search and rescue folk, if something like this feature, which apple is selling as a way to push peace of mind will genuinely be effective for search and rescue operations. Or if it's something where you have a sense of safety, but it's a false sense of safety because it doesn't get you the desired outcome. We don't have the data yet, but I think that's gonna be something worth keeping in mind and asking folks who do this for a living, have you seen the measurable impact on this? The same way they've seen measurable impacts on we have had to take this person off a mountain because they got cold and called 9 1 1.

Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
And this has features that would tempt me. Yeah. <laugh> for instance, it's got a breadcrumb feature. I can push a button <affirmative> and as I'm walking around and it will leave a GPS marker. And then I could in theory and I know I would get lost immediately follow the watch back home. Then I might make me think, oh, I could go off trail because I'm, I'm gonna be able to figure out where I am. <laugh> maybe not such

Shelly Brisbin (00:16:35):
A good idea. And that's actually theoretically an accessibility feature because there's term by turn GPS that we all use. But if you are in a parking lot, never mind being off trail and you're trying to get from one place that you're familiar with to a place that you're not. And you somehow get lost along the way. You can theoretically retrace your steps. I don't know how it behaves in practice, but I can see that application,

Leo Laporte (00:16:57):
I guess I'll have to lose my car and try it. They actually do have

Lisa Schmeiser (00:16:59):
Airport, airport parking lots would be amazing for them.

Leo Laporte (00:17:02):
<affirmative> there is a button that you can do a way point for your car, your parked car. That's great. So they clearly know that that's maybe one of the uses for, I wonder how much they're influenced by accessibility that there they're building something for the extreme athlete, but really, maybe this is for everybody.

Shelly Brisbin (00:17:19):
There's a lot about, I

Larry Magid (00:17:20):
Mean, honestly that benefits people who don't need, who aren't necessarily have that disability, like curbs that ramps on curbs benefit people with strollers people on bicycles, roller skates. You don't have to be in wheelchair to benefit from that. Absolutely I'm sure.

Shelly Brisbin (00:17:38):
And those features too, tend to trickle down in some way. So if you don't feel like buying a minimum $800 watch, that is enormous. Maybe in the next couple of years, some of those features like the breadcrumb feature particularly, or some of the other ones that are not really like, you're probably not gonna a dive computer on your apple watch S se, but at some point your se or your nine or your 10 might have a breadcrumb feature if it proves to be popular and certainly from an accessibility point of view, that would be great to have on other, someone will steal the idea, maybe able to be on your Fitbit.

Leo Laporte (00:18:07):
It is kind funny when I'm setting it up, it asks you some questions about how you watch when the watch set up. And one of the questions is what would you like to know how deep you are and how cold the water is when you're diving? And of course I I'm never gonna use that. But I said, yes. Oh

Lisa Schmeiser (00:18:24):
My gosh. Yes,

Leo Laporte (00:18:25):
Of course I would just

Shelly Brisbin (00:18:26):
In case you've dive that

Leo Laporte (00:18:27):
I did fall off a ship and I'd like to know, well,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:18:30):
As I'm going under,

Shelly Brisbin (00:18:31):
As

Leo Laporte (00:18:31):
I'm going down, I'm getting deeper,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:18:33):
Right? Yeah, no,

Shelly Brisbin (00:18:34):
We found Leo and why wouldn't

Leo Laporte (00:18:36):
You turn that on?

Lisa Schmeiser (00:18:38):
So I have a girlfriend who's doing her project where she's hitting 50 different swimming holes around the state of California before she turns 50 and she's been blogging, her progress. And one of the pieces of equipment she takes with her while she does, this is a water thermometer, cuz she has limits on how cold the water's going to be. And I wonder how this watch might fit into that kind of project. If

Leo Laporte (00:18:58):
I can have there's a complication on this particular face that says water temperature. Yeah, exactly. So I could actually be monitoring that even when I'm. So

Lisa Schmeiser (00:19:06):
I wanna shout out a comment that CR one just made in the us, the apple watch should include your health insurance status. If you don't have insurance, the apple watch should ignore

Leo Laporte (00:19:16):
You. <laugh> oh, that's a very good point.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:19:17):
Well, what I'm wondering is why aren't insurance companies working harder to put together integrations that work on the apple watch certain Kaiser Permanente? Why aren't you I watch or

Leo Laporte (00:19:26):
Yeah, certainly there are a lot of hospitals doing research studies with the watch <affirmative> with watches. Yeah. Yeah. So

Shelly Brisbin (00:19:33):
Well, I mean there are employers that are giving people incentives for having the watch, which has some implications for their medical insurance and either incentives or their outright giving employees, apple watches in exchange for some sort of healthy behaviors. And actually I know a couple people who have had those experiences and I kind of wonder how positive it is because there's all that data. So you as the employee get the benefit of having the watch, but are you also sharing more data than you intend either with your company or with your

Leo Laporte (00:19:59):
Insurer? That was a plot point in billions and Showtime show. Billions was it at one point the new owner comes in and gives an apple watch to all the employees. <affirmative> you you're so great. Stick around. Here's your apple watch. Then it turns out he's got a dashboard and they're watching all the employees. And at one point the two of them are watching one employee having a heart attack and now they're going, God, what do we do? Should we,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:20:26):
Why wouldn't you

Leo Laporte (00:20:27):
Call? Because we didn't tell them we were gonna be monitoring them. So they did end up calling emergency service. The EMT shows up at wags is he's on a Peloton, nice plug for Peloton. He's on a Peloton pedaling. And the EMT show. He says, what are you doing here? I'm fi and he is, oh, it's kind of a stupid plot point. But it is that plot point, which is employers can monitor you.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:20:54):
Well, yeah. The question is how much of a reasonable right to privacy do you have? If you're consenting to put an employer, provided data

Leo Laporte (00:21:00):
General. I say apple prevents. Yeah. That kind of apple. I can't imagine there's an MDM. Yeah. That lets you monitor your employee's heart rate.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:21:10):
<laugh> well, it's not just that how many steps or if, for example, yeah, you block out on outlook. I'm in focus mode for four hours because outlook now lets you do that with Microsoft, Eva, and you're at focus mode, but your focus mode is you like running 15 K cuz you're training for a marathon. If can they now check and go, oh, somebody said they were in focus mode at work, but they've just done 25,000 steps.

Leo Laporte (00:21:31):
<laugh> by the way, wags or wags in this. And the show says, who called the EMT <laugh> and finally figures out, oh my God is his watch. And it immediately throws it out <laugh> so yeah,

Larry Magid (00:21:44):
Even though it might have saved his life,

Leo Laporte (00:21:46):
It saved his life.

Larry Magid (00:21:48):
But your privacy is more important than your life. Of course.

Leo Laporte (00:21:50):
Well, is it that's that's certainly how we act these. Yeah, I think

Lisa Schmeiser (00:21:53):
There are people's it the graves a fine and private place.

Leo Laporte (00:21:56):
Oh, I like it. <laugh> a great line. Isn't it?

Larry Magid (00:21:59):
This is a great segue. I was gonna talk about this later, but it's a good segue. So I just deal a piece about how I lost 15 pounds because of my Fitbit.

Leo Laporte (00:22:07):
<affirmative> wow. That's that's why you look like George Goble, maybe

Larry Magid (00:22:11):
So, but

Leo Laporte (00:22:12):
You lost weight.

Larry Magid (00:22:13):
Well, the thing is that unlike the apple watch, I can wear at 24 hours a day because it actually has a battery that lasts more than two hours <laugh> but the main thing is it tracks calories automatically. So for example, today's a horrible day. I so far burned only 964 calories, which is much. Yeah, I haven't done anything but it also, if it doesn't automatically record what you eat, we're not there yet. That's

Leo Laporte (00:22:36):
What I'm wait for. Cuz it's really a pain. I do log my food, but it's such a pain. I just want the watch to know what I'm eating. Yeah.

Larry Magid (00:22:43):
Because it also, are you able to, what I love about it is I'll look at my app and I'll say, oh gee, I can afford to eat a big dinner tonight because I've earned more than I've taken in by X number of calories. And for me it's working, but we'll have to say I've also lost weight and gained it back many times. So tune in next time, next year to see what happened but

Leo Laporte (00:23:05):
Happened. Yeah, yeah. With you. Yeah. This Apple's health app keeps track of steps and calories and then maybe

Larry Magid (00:23:15):
Apple could do some kind of dental appliance that keeps track of what you eat.

Leo Laporte (00:23:18):
I think the watch with machine learning could judge by just the weight of the

Lisa Schmeiser (00:23:22):
Spoon. Well, if you could actually do it with your camera, that would be great. Cause

Larry Magid (00:23:27):
Yeah, there is an picture

Lisa Schmeiser (00:23:28):
You're

Leo Laporte (00:23:28):
Eating. It's imperfect. Yeah. It's called hot dog or not. Oh, okay. No I'm kidding. <laugh> yeah. Clearly watch too much TV.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:23:35):
One of the biggest complaints I've had about food log, we are getting farfield here is at anytime I've I've done food logging where it hasn't just been me writing in a notebook to look for my trends. If I'm trying to enter, oh, I had this much salad where it's a salad that we've made at home, like a Kuku salad. Then I have to find an app. That's okay with me downloading the recipe. It has to recognize all the ingredients in the recipe and go from there. And just the burden of data entry is enormous. It

Larry Magid (00:24:03):
Is. I just over, I just overestimate

Leo Laporte (00:24:05):
After that. I do too. I'm very I'll pick something that's roughly. Yeah there but I'll

Larry Magid (00:24:10):
Add a little bit, just figure air on that. Honestly,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:13):
At this point I'm like, okay. Seven servings of fruit and vegetables every day, three servings of I really love that's a lot. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:24:20):
Well fruit and vegetables. Yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:22):
But it's good for you

Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
Figs.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:25):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
That would be fine.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:27):
Leo. I wish you would let me, we have a F tree and it's right, right now

Leo Laporte (00:24:30):
All for you. I forget the girl scout cookies. I

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:31):
Know. Right? We get

Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
Fixed fig.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:33):
Oh figs. We have fresh figs. <laugh> we have fresh figs.

Shelly Brisbin (00:24:37):
Make delicious cocktails with figs too.

Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
Oh, we're

Shelly Brisbin (00:24:40):
Talking about healthy stuff. I forgot

Leo Laporte (00:24:41):
Delicious cocktails with figs. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (00:24:45):
I'm that's a fair time activity of mine making delicious cocktail without

Leo Laporte (00:24:48):
Are a neologist. Oh, I

Lisa Schmeiser (00:24:50):
She's a mom. Do

Leo Laporte (00:24:51):
You use fig syrup or actual figs?

Shelly Brisbin (00:24:53):
I made fig syrup is what I did for a cocktail at one point, cuz I had a neighbor who had a fig tree and gave me just dumped a bunch of figs on my doorstep and it's like, well I could eat these or I could just make them into a nice syrup. So

Lisa Schmeiser (00:25:06):
That's what I did. Would you mind sending me the recipe later? Just cuz our no, our fig tree's crazy. At this point. I I've been giving away he to everybody. Oh. And I'm still like running. We have the possible lives in our yard at the point now where they're temple in the rat at the end of Charlotte's wet

Leo Laporte (00:25:21):
<laugh> well the worst thing is when the figs start to ferment, then you have drunk rats

Lisa Schmeiser (00:25:25):
In you. We have drunker foods. That's worse. Yeah. They get they're mean drunks <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:25:31):
So what is it I've read about figs. I don't want

Lisa Schmeiser (00:25:34):
Go wasps. It's the wasp

Leo Laporte (00:25:36):
The

Lisa Schmeiser (00:25:36):
Was figs. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:37):
Okay. <laugh> is that something I should worry about? No. Okay. Just don't think about it exactly when you're eating it. Yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:25:44):
The same reason you don't think about trips inside your strawberries. So, oh

Leo Laporte (00:25:47):
God. Now what? Nope. Strips inside my strawberries. Nope. Let me talk about something much less concerning. Are you worried Larry, that Fitbit is owned by Google and is eventually gonna require Google login?

Larry Magid (00:26:01):
Probably. I mean, I probably should be. I'm not so much sure about the login per se, but I am a little worried about the fact that I've got an Android phone. I use Gmail, I use Google docs. I have a Google owned watch. I feel like I have, they own a lot of information about me. I don't lose sleep over it, but I respect those who do worry. I mean, personally I figured out a long time ago that a lot of corporations know a lot about me and it even predated the internet. I mean, if you think about anybody who has insurance uses credit cards, <affirmative> makes telephone calls. They're already giving up a great deal of information about themselves. Even back in the sixties. Were there's

Leo Laporte (00:26:43):
Something very personal though about health information, especially weight exercise, that kind of thing. Well, I think one of the concerns would be that Google would then sell that to insurance companies.

Larry Magid (00:26:54):
Well, in fact, what really disturbed me is I think I got a note from my insurance company telling me that if I installed a certain gizmo in my car,

Leo Laporte (00:27:01):
That's

Larry Magid (00:27:01):
Right. I could get a discount, safe

Leo Laporte (00:27:03):
Driver discount driver,

Larry Magid (00:27:04):
Which means really I'm getting a penalty for being a bad driver. If the opposite is true. Well, and of course I like you, Leo. I drive in a pretty high tech electric car. I know you've

Leo Laporte (00:27:13):
Got a, it's monitoring you, your Tesla now I've got monitoring you. Yeah.

Larry Magid (00:27:17):
Oh they know. I mean they know what everything about me. Elon probably knows more about me than Sunar

Leo Laporte (00:27:25):
Does. I remember when our model X would, Lisa said a couple of times now I've gone into forward and it's gone backward. And I called them and they said, well, let's look at the logs. No you were in backward. They actually knew at that exact time what was going on <affirmative> which didn't exactly reassure me. I mean kind of, and we know this Elon Elon, not Elon, but Tesla knows has a log of everything that's going on in that vehicle all times. Yeah. Yeah.

Larry Magid (00:27:55):
No. And it's amazing.

Leo Laporte (00:27:58):
I guess with Google, you'd have to think that it would be such a problem for their business. If it came out that they were using that information, that they probably bend over backwards to protect

Lisa Schmeiser (00:28:10):
It. I don't think it would. I don't think Americans,

Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
They

Lisa Schmeiser (00:28:14):
Don't care. No, no. Because as long as they're getting services for free, a lot of them people say, oh, well I get this for free. So I don't care how they're collecting the data. That's just the

Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
People we talk to the people on our shows, the people who listen to our shows all care.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:28:29):
Yeah. I mean, we

Leo Laporte (00:28:30):
That's care. That's a weird sense. They

Larry Magid (00:28:31):
Really care. We

Lisa Schmeiser (00:28:32):
Care. We may, but <laugh>

Shelly Brisbin (00:28:34):
Always, well, we also make choices. We say we care, but if we're used to an ecosystem and if we like an apple watch or Fitbit or whatever device it is, we're gonna rationalize it in order to keep using it. And the other thing to me that this tells us is, and we know this because companies get acquired all the time. Let's say you have a product that you really love. Maybe it was a nest. Maybe it was a Fitbit. Oh, interesting. Both acquired by Google. But you bought those things before they were acquired. Whatever feeling you have about the company and whatever sort of emotional squishies you have. That's irrelevant because that company could be acquired and your data could go is completely out of your control from the moment that you provided to whomever you're providing. And I think that's the lesson that I wish people would take from these acquisitions.

Larry Magid (00:29:17):
And if you really wanna get paranoid, cuz a lot of people are concerned about the government getting information about them. There are ways that the government can get into corporate databases. They're called subpoenas and warrants. And there are ways that the government can change as the Italians are finding out today. And as we found out in 2016 and could in the future. So you do have to be concerned about the vast array of data that's out there about you. And I think I'm one of the people that like to talk about it as connect safely, we write books and articles about privacy all the time. But I have to confess that if you look at my behavior, yeah, I'm not doing much to protect my privacy.

Leo Laporte (00:29:54):
That's probably true of all of us, isn't it mm-hmm <affirmative> concerned, but we don't act upon our,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:30:00):
So we have an apple TV at home. That's our primary vector for watching television. And cuz you can hit all your different streaming services and YouTube and over the pandemic. One of our favorite family activities was to watch YouTube together. We'd pick out videos, but go into weird deep dives. That's cute. So for a long time, we were doing it while not being logged into YouTube. And part of the fund was seeing the algorithm, try to figure out what this unknown. But what we found is after a while the history of what we were watching would hard reset and it would start serving up all sorts of different stuff. And I thought, okay, maybe this is behavior. That's actually meant to incentivize us to log in or to create an account because this way the algorithm could serve

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Us. You want better recommendations.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:30:45):
Exactly. Yeah. And by YouTube continually wiping the slate of an anonymous user clean, you don't get the benefit of the fun of going down, worm holes in YouTube instead you're, you're incentivized to put your profile on there so that you can get your sweet algorithm fixed and they can get the data on

Leo Laporte (00:31:05):
You. That brings us to a very interesting story about YouTube in a recent study from Mozilla. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. What a great panel. We've learned everything from fig syrup <laugh> to what was that thing in St. Strawberries? No, maybe we should.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:31:21):
No, we're not talking about

Larry Magid (00:31:22):
What now

Leo Laporte (00:31:22):
<laugh> Larry maggot is here from connect safely.org. Do you still do some stuff for radio?

Larry Magid (00:31:28):
Oh yeah. I do two segments a week. It's called the connect safely report on CBS news and it's heard in more than 50 markets. So it's doing pretty well

Leo Laporte (00:31:36):
Also from radio, the Texas standard. It's great to have Shelley Brisbane on the, I can't believe we've never had you on TWiTtter. I totally

Shelly Brisbin (00:31:44):
Apologize. I know Leo and it doesn't hurt my feelings at all because you've had all my friends on TWiT many.

Leo Laporte (00:31:48):
I know

Shelly Brisbin (00:31:49):
We've been just including Lisa. Hello been on TWiTtter. And so I'm super excited to be here and maybe I should talk to Larry about being a guest on the Texas standard because we talk about privacy on the occasionally in tech I'm in charge of covering of text stuff.

Larry Magid (00:32:03):
You're like qualified look at I've got a good microphone. So I'm obviously calling.

Shelly Brisbin (00:32:06):
There you go. All right. I'm happy.

Leo Laporte (00:32:08):
Shelly is like the sweetheart of a Samoa cookie. I've been nibbling around the edges saving you.

Shelly Brisbin (00:32:17):
That is Samoa.

Leo Laporte (00:32:20):
Our girl scout cookie and Lisa schmeer. She has girl Scouts,

Shelly Brisbin (00:32:25):
Girl scout. She's

Leo Laporte (00:32:26):
Also scout leader. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> at her in chief now of a new place. No jitter. Yes. What is no jitter?

Lisa Schmeiser (00:32:32):
So no jitter is a website that covers communication. The whole stack. We own the stack all the way from plan telephony, wires up to unified communication platforms and the ways that people can communicate, connect and collaborate on those parts. Is

Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
It mostly enterprise focused?

Lisa Schmeiser (00:32:47):
It, you know what ostensibly? Yes, but an enterprise is only as good as the people inside it and are working together. And so we're focusing a little bit more on how people work inside these places and how human behavior shapes technology and vice versa.

Leo Laporte (00:33:01):
This is great. Actually. I'm really liking this. The stories I'm seeing here. Yeah. Well, it's great to have all three of you. Our show today brought to you by Shopify. Oh, it's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Grow your business with Shopify. Shopify unlocks the opportunities. Your business offers to more people every day. It's you see it's and this is important. It's more than just a store. Shopify lets you connect with your customers. You can sell in multiple places, web mobile, social media, online marketplaces, even brick and mortar locations and pop up shops. Shopify helps you drive sales by tirelessly, reinventing the tools of growth for millions of businesses. This is after all what they do, this is their focus and it's why so many people trust Shopify to help them succeed every day. You'll also love it because Shopify helps you get the job done.

Leo Laporte (00:33:57):
Manage your day to day with thousands of integrations, third party apps, everything from on demand, printing to accounting, advanced chat bots and beyond Shopify is so well known that everybody works with Shopify. And that's really the beauty of using a platform like Shopify. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. This is transformational technology. This what's made the world, I think a better place. So upstarts and startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere. Did you know that every 28 seconds an entrepreneur makes their first sale on Shopify every 28 seconds, somebody makes their first sale. Their first sale on Shopify scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. Synchronize online conduct in person sales and effortlessly stay informed. Shopify. Lisa went to a Halloween festival, a lot of local artists and talent Shopify was everywhere because it's the easiest way to do that.

Leo Laporte (00:35:02):
Even in person, they've got the tools and resources to make it easy for any business to succeed from down the street to around the globe. And nowadays, if you are down the street business, you have a global marketplace. You can take advantage of thanks to Shopify. It powers millions of businesses from that first sale to full scale, you can reach customers online across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps. I have to say I Shopify on Instagram is so good that not a night goes by that I haven't purchased something in the middle of the night on Shopify, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest gain insights. As you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and more information is power. Especially if you're selling online. There's no reason to be in the dark Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods.

Leo Laporte (00:35:53):
Of course it's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So supercharge your knowledge, your sales, your success. Go to shopify.com/TWiT all lowercase to start your free trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features S H O P I FY shopify.com/t I T all lowercase grow your business with Shopify today, go to shopify.com/TWiT right now Shopify it's another sale. I love it. <laugh> Steve Gibson has sound effects in his studio every once in a while we'll hear a Yaba DBA do, which means that he has sold another copy of his software as spin. Right? I love it. <laugh> I think it's mostly Fred for instance sounds so we were talking about YouTube and the YouTube algorithm. Of course, a lot of people complain that the YouTube algorithm drives you towards extremism. <affirmative> you start watch a channel about how to make a margarita with no animal products in it. <affirmative> and pretty soon it's hardcore veganism videos and pretty soon you're invading chicken farms. <laugh> I think that's pretty, I mean, think it happens

Lisa Schmeiser (00:37:09):
<affirmative> yeah, we certainly observed it when we were logging into YouTube anonymously. It's a good, yeah, it was a little disor

Leo Laporte (00:37:15):
Even anonymously. It's still pushing you in a direction.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:37:18):
It does because

Leo Laporte (00:37:19):
Its goal is, I mean, it's not doing it on purpose. It's not, somebody's written a program saying turn everybody into Nazis, optimizing for engagement.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:37:29):
And the problem is that engagement is context neutral,

Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
Right?

Lisa Schmeiser (00:37:34):
Because you just take a look at helping as

Leo Laporte (00:37:35):
Long as you keep watching.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:37:36):
Well, if you're watching, are you clicking? Like and subscribe?

Leo Laporte (00:37:39):
Yeah. Well here's an interesting thing. This is a Mozilla study <affirmative> they took video recommendations data for more than 20,000 YouTube users. Now remember this is from Mozilla. Mm-hmm a Chrome competitor. They're not fans of Google <laugh> but

Lisa Schmeiser (00:37:58):
Happily understated.

Leo Laporte (00:38:00):
So they actually found that when you hit the buttons like the down thumb or dislike, not interested, even things like stop recommending this channel or remove this from my watch history. It did almost nothing. According to Mozilla, even at their best, those buttons still allow through more than half of the recommendations. You said you don't want at their worst. The buttons do almost nothing to block similar videos.

Shelly Brisbin (00:38:30):
I'm curious to know how often people use those different features, the dislike button and the don't show me this channel. I find that I don't, unless I really have a very negative reaction or if it's something, if it's really a kind of content, if it's hardcore X, Y, Z, and it's extremist, I'll probably do it. But if it's just a little annoying, I'll move on to the next thing. And I won't necessarily think critically. And so I'd be interested to know whether that algorithm behavior is even trainable based on how much those options are used.

Leo Laporte (00:39:02):
I wouldn't be surprised if that's why it doesn't work is cuz YouTube's learned, Hey, no point in paying attention to that.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:39:07):
Well, you raise a really good point also about how they did this study, which is you have to look at the motivation for why people might hit those don't show these buttons.

Leo Laporte (00:39:15):
Well, so the people that they were monitoring were using a browser extension from Mozilla. <affirmative> called what is it called? No regrets. <laugh> no download regrets reporter. Oh, regrets report. So I think it's somewhat of a self-selecting group. Okay. Yeah. So the idea is regrets reporter helps you eliminate harmful YouTube recommendations and avoid harmful content. You might put this on your kids' browser. For instance it does work with Chrome as well as Firefox. And so I guess what the data they got back was seeing people click this button. <affirmative> I think it's important. Honestly, I take it seriously when I'm reading apple news or Google news or looking at YouTube, I feel like it's important for me to give them the signals. When I see something I don't wanna see more of. Yeah. I wish it worked better, but I it's kind of been my experience. These signals as strong as they should be.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:40:20):
And it doesn't just have to be the white supremacist stuff that pops up after no, you watch one video on Viking, his history. I

Leo Laporte (00:40:26):
Don't wanna see Kim Kardashian content.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:40:28):
Well, to give you an example, we we're watching she hope together as a family and they're

Leo Laporte (00:40:34):
Attorney at law.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:40:35):
Yes. Great show. And there's of course, an episode with Madison. Why is not what you think? And she's constantly spoiling the show, the Sopranos. So we showed my daughter just the opening credit to Sopranos. You could understand the

Leo Laporte (00:40:48):
Song, wait on. She ho

Lisa Schmeiser (00:40:50):
They reference the Sopranos.

Leo Laporte (00:40:51):
They reference the Sopranos. Yeah. Wow. So not only they reference it, they spoil it.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:40:55):
Yes. Shock it. So we show her the opening sequence for the credits, which are very good and very dirty

Leo Laporte (00:41:02):
Show, self a gun there.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:41:04):
And then my feed was flooded with two dozen clips from the show. No, all of them around Adriana getting what? Not spoiling it, but all of them around three

Shelly Brisbin (00:41:14):
Bad things happening

Lisa Schmeiser (00:41:15):
All around things happening, Christopher. Oh my, yeah. Oh God. But I didn't

Leo Laporte (00:41:20):
Want, see, I interviewed her once. Really? Yeah. She did a podcast and they wanted to plug the podcast she was doing with her friend <laugh> and she brought up Christopher, Christopher. She said I got on the street. Everybody says Christopher. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, distracted.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:41:34):
But I didn't need two dozen clips of,

Leo Laporte (00:41:36):
Well, I've noticed that on YouTube. If you watch anything, a Johnny Carson clip, you will get all the Johnny Carson.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:41:41):
Well it's like Amazon's recommendations or, oh, you've bought an air conditioner. Congratulations on your new hobby of collecting air conditioners.

Shelly Brisbin (00:41:49):
Well, and there streams and I know Sopranos is one of them because I've ended up there accidentally too. <affirmative> where YouTube has a lot and has a lot to give you. And then there are other things I have obscure, weird rabbit holes that I go down and I want more because it's something odd that I've found. And there is. And so whenever there's a lot of it <affirmative> and whenever it's popular, you're gonna get more of it. Yeah. It's really hard to get it. Get away from it. YouTube

Leo Laporte (00:42:12):
Does it? Cuz it works. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (00:42:13):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:14):
I mean it, they're not doing stuff cuz it doesn't work. What's really changed in this era is this tight feedback loop that all of these programs have because they see everything you're doing so they can really respond. So I mean, I think you have to stipulate. They're doing it cuz it works well.

Larry Magid (00:42:30):
It's interesting. I don't, I'm not worried about being turned into a Nazi, but I do sometimes worry about, I do look at righTWiTng extremist websites. Cause I wanna see what they're publishing, but then I worry. Am I adding to their popularity? I won't somehow helping them. I won't go. Even though I'm not giving them

Leo Laporte (00:42:46):
Any money, I won't do it. Yeah. I won't go to the daily Stormer. That's just seems like a bad idea, but you need to do it for your job. Well,

Larry Magid (00:42:55):
I feel like I should at least look at Brightbart now. And some of these I won't even mention the names of 'em. I don't need to promote them, but I do feel like I need to look at 'em but it is true. I do worry about what benefit are they being getting? Well, the prime

Shelly Brisbin (00:43:09):
Created a separate Google account for just for that reason. And I sometimes am sometimes accidentally be in my own account and I'll be like, oh my God, it went to the wrong place.

Leo Laporte (00:43:20):
Crazy.com that's you? Huh? Well,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:43:22):
Again goes back.

Shelly Brisbin (00:43:23):
Don't tell everybody

Leo Laporte (00:43:24):
<laugh>

Lisa Schmeiser (00:43:25):
Well it goes back to the problem that engagement is completely divorced from context. And if these companies are tweaking their algorithms and the user experience, based on the premise, that engagement is the only good or the only end. It's really bad, both as a user experience thing. And as a product thing, let's in several different

Leo Laporte (00:43:44):
Aspects. It's also engagement all the way down because it's not only YouTube doing that. The sites are creating link baby headlines. I mean it goes, everybody is trying to grab your attention. Everybody is

Larry Magid (00:43:55):
<affirmative> sometimes I will actually, when I go into Google, I'll turn on my VPN. I'll go into incognito mode or in private mode and I'll do a search and then I'll do the same search with me logged in without the VPN. And it's amazing. The differences. One of the disappointing differences is that I don't come up as often. <laugh> when

Shelly Brisbin (00:44:12):
I

Larry Magid (00:44:12):
Do a search, if I'm on a VPN,

Leo Laporte (00:44:15):
Can I tell you ego searches when you're not logged in or not so much? I

Larry Magid (00:44:18):
Know it's paralegal saying, Ooh, Larry, we're gonna make you feel good about

Shelly Brisbin (00:44:22):
Yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Duck dot go. Doesn't like me as much as Google does. It's weird.

Leo Laporte (00:44:25):
<laugh>

Lisa Schmeiser (00:44:26):
Actually one of my favorite things to do on Google is take a look at what they think they know about me based on the ads, ads, where you can go through and they're like, oh, tweak your data. So it's more this and more that. And oddly enough, I've never been a 28 year old male military veteran, but

Larry Magid (00:44:40):
That you know of, right.

Leo Laporte (00:44:42):
It's okay. I've never watched the Kardashians. I still get recommendations

Lisa Schmeiser (00:44:47):
For. So this goes back to if engagement's the greater good, how flawed is the data that they're collecting and selling? It reminds me a lot of when Facebook was aggressively pushing videos and it turned out their sales department was completely juing the stats, as they'd say on also exploit HBO show the wire <laugh> juing the stats. And you did not know truthfully. And honestly how people were engaging with video on Facebook, but they were making all this money by saying, oh, we think it's like this. And I have to wonder, is this the same on YouTube? Is this the same on Google? At what point do you look at the data and say, this data's useless because it doesn't accurately measure what people are watching. It just accurately measures engagement, which is different than sitting down and watching a video from beginning to end.

Leo Laporte (00:45:34):
One of the lessons,

Larry Magid (00:45:35):
Your observation about collecting air conditioners is a good point because every time I buy something for the next six months I'm inundated. And the last thing I'm gonna do is buy that again. I just bought it. Yeah. Thank you very much. I don't need another air conditioner.

Leo Laporte (00:45:46):
Yeah. Yeah. One of the lessons fact, I just read an article about this referencing the wire <affirmative> is when you decide what the stats you're gonna monitor are. Yeah. You are tilting the whole thing <affirmative> towards those stats. And that was the point of the wire. Is you juke the stats and majors become kernels. Yeah, because they go, oh, all I have to do is bring down. In fact, there's a famous scene in the wire. <affirmative> where he tells McNulty don't bring me any murders. We're trying to get the stats up stats up. So I don't wanna know about any murders we want our solve, right. To be higher. That's exactly the wrong result. Yeah. Because you're ju in the stats. Well,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:46:27):
There was a great wall street journal piece this last week, talking about salary transparency. And it's based on a study that researchers did of the national hockey league. When these salaries of every single player were published in the Montreal Gazette back in the, I believe it's the seventies, this happened and a bunch of economists took a look at what happened afterwards. And what they noted is that the folks who were on the lower end of the salary scale, took a look at the folks on the higher end of the salary scale and noticed, Hey, they're not great team players, but they're great at racking up individual stats. So I'm not gonna focus on defense. I'm not gonna focus on passing. I'm not gonna focus on team first. I'm gonna focus on racking up my stats so that I have more value to the people paying money. Consequently, the quality of plate changed, but people got the people who played duke. The stats got the money. And the point to the economist was, well, you can have pay transparency or you can simply pay people what they're worth. And you have to decide worth based on, is it worth having teamwork, but this is the same thing where once you figure out what the metrics are, everyone performs to the metrics.

Leo Laporte (00:47:32):
So what's the solution. I mean, I've said a lot and I think it's probably the wrong solution, but I've always, I've said it a lot anyway is get rid of algorithms. Algorithms are the problem. <affirmative> right. They are in some places. I mean, I don't need an algorithm on Facebook. I wanna just follow the people I follow on TWiTtter. I wanna follow the people I follow. I don't need you to recommend stuff based on what you think I'm interested in, who do

Lisa Schmeiser (00:47:56):
Guess algorithms serve,

Leo Laporte (00:47:58):
Who do algorithms serve?

Shelly Brisbin (00:47:59):
I think it does kind of depend on the platform because I think Facebook and TWiTtter, those are perfect examples of, I have chosen to follow people. That's who I wanna follow. But YouTube and TikTok are examples of platforms where there's some joy in going down a rabbit hole hole and being shown things that you don't expect, partly because we're used to it. We've been trained to enjoy it. Well, partly you have nature that

Leo Laporte (00:48:21):
Platform, if you have a billion videos, discoverability is in problem. They're trying to solve a

Shelly Brisbin (00:48:25):
Hundred percent. I mean, I feel that way about television's

Larry Magid (00:48:28):
If you have a lot of felt, if you follow lot of people, it's also, so I had the situation on Facebook where I was getting bored by the fact that I kept seeing the same post over and over again from a limited number of people. And I said, okay, I'm gonna turn off that algorithm and make sure I see everything. And in chronological rivers, chronological order, then I got even more bored because I started hearing from people who I could share less about. That's

Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
What Theyre saying. That's why they ju the stats. They

Larry Magid (00:48:51):
Right. So, yeah. So I went back to turning, I turned the algorithm back on my point was that I hear what you say on the negative, but at the same time, it actually, it does create in my opinion, slightly better experience. Although that's

Leo Laporte (00:49:05):
Why I torpedoed my own argument the moment before

Shelly Brisbin (00:49:09):
It really. But

Leo Laporte (00:49:09):
What is the answer?

Shelly Brisbin (00:49:10):
Well, algorithms

Lisa Schmeiser (00:49:11):
Are algorithms are a mechanized substitution for the curatorial experience. Because when you think about the 20th century, you had a whole lot of

Leo Laporte (00:49:20):
The curation doesn't scale.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:49:20):
Well, yeah, exactly. And that's the challenge. That's what algorithms are supposed to be doing is you. One of my favorite side topics is the rise and fall of the condo NAS publishing empire. And I will read any them where I get my hands on about it. And most of the time it was like people got obscene amounts of money for being able to correctly put their thumb on the zeitgeist and then commodify those insights

Leo Laporte (00:49:43):
And a wind tour at Vogue

Lisa Schmeiser (00:49:45):
And a wind tour. Gradon Carter, Tina brown, Tina

Leo Laporte (00:49:47):
Brown classic

Lisa Schmeiser (00:49:48):
David Remick for a while. Oh, Ruth Reich over at gourmet. Yeah. Kim France with lucky magazine. But again, that doesn't scale and you can't make great whoopsy loads of cash from it. Algorithms are supposed to be doing that kind of curatorial work that give you a surprising combination of things. That's surprising to let you,

Leo Laporte (00:50:07):
But so is an algorithm better than Tina brown?

Lisa Schmeiser (00:50:09):
No, but that thing is

Larry Magid (00:50:11):
No that's the problem is

Shelly Brisbin (00:50:13):
We're because with a human you're paying for discernment, they're curating things, but that's based on that person's own experience. And based on that person's knowledge of the area, whether it's gourmet food or whether it's culture or fashion or whatever it is, and an algorithm is not gonna do that. Algorithm is going to present me literal clips from the Sopranos and Joe Bob's podcast and the podcast of the woman who said Christopher all at once. And I'm not gonna be able to make a choice unless I watch them all. And then the algorithm is gonna say, oh, give her more of all of it. <laugh>

Lisa Schmeiser (00:50:42):
Yeah. Cause taste and discernment don't scale. But they're also tremendously lucrative. What keeps Larry from getting bored with his

Leo Laporte (00:50:48):
Speech as Conde NA knows, cuz they don't know what they're gonna do when Anna Wood tour retires. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's that Vogue rises and falls on her shoulders and without her, what that's fashion is a very good example of that. Cause it's so taste maker driven.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:51:03):
Well, it's another industry that's in tremendous disruption right now too. I feel like we're gonna have an open revolt in the chat room where they're like, we came here to talk about technology,

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
But we are talking about technology.

Shelly Brisbin (00:51:12):
It is technology. This is exactly technology works. How it behaves for human beings impact on every single industry in the world, including

Lisa Schmeiser (00:51:19):
That's. It's actually been a huge problem in retailer over the fast few last few years cuz you haven't been able to move the needle or have a big breakout in trend shifting since every trend happens everywhere all at once now. Thanks the micro communities that aggregate around different algorithms driven through social media,

Leo Laporte (00:51:34):
Right? And by the way, I've always thought the chat was revolting. So, oh,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:51:38):
Ill find you delight.

Shelly Brisbin (00:51:41):
I,

Leo Laporte (00:51:43):
No, I'm just teasing boy. I'm a big, big trouble. Adobe 20 billion to save its business. I think right? <affirmative> by buying Figma, a company that's annual recurring revenue is a mere $400 million. Here's a opinion piece in the observer from this week by John non Adobe. Can't Photoshop out the fact that it's 20 billion Figma deal is a naked land. Grab the software giant paying vastly over the odds for a small, but strategically threatening company should alarm us regulators. Of course, this acquisition looks a lot like Facebook, mm-hmm buying Instagram <affirmative> or WhatsApp that the idea being we they're eating our lunch, it doesn't make any sense to pay 20 billion for a company that's never, it's gonna take more than 20 years to pay back that investment, but otherwise we're dead. Should the FTC allow this acquisition to go through or is it a chance for them to make up for their mistake with Instagram? <laugh> Lisa,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:52:54):
That's a good question. Since Figma solves a problem for a lot of Adobe users, which is there are too many things that I don't need.

Leo Laporte (00:53:04):
People love. Figma are very unhappy about the acquisition.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:53:07):
If you've ever used InDesign, it can be tremendously powerful if you've dedicated your life to indig. Yes

Leo Laporte (00:53:14):
<affirmative>. If you it's lock in though for an InDesign expert,

Lisa Schmeiser (00:53:16):
If you've taken the vows and joined the order and immersed yourself, it's great. But actually it's a problem similar to Microsoft's problem, where there are so many functions that you're like, I just wanna do this simple workflow. Please let me do that. Figma solved this problem and Figma is locked down. The user experience.

Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
People love it.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:53:36):
Well, it sounds to me very it's

Leo Laporte (00:53:37):
Similar to timely cuz a a collaborative design environment.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:53:41):
And it sounds to me really similar Microsoft made a failed bid for slack, right? Because they correctly guess that, Hey, this collaborative frictionless environment that people can transpose their workflow into is something we don't have and something we need a mind share on. It's the same thing. I feel terrible for the people who like Figma and our right to worry about what this will do for them.

Leo Laporte (00:54:07):
Should the go government block it

Lisa Schmeiser (00:54:10):
Can the government make a plausible case that what this is doing is this is

Leo Laporte (00:54:15):
There's lot of

Lisa Schmeiser (00:54:16):
Competition competition. There's

Leo Laporte (00:54:17):
Sketch there's canvas. There are other companies doing

Lisa Schmeiser (00:54:19):
This. Yeah. And the thing is there's another story you had for this week too, where slack is now introduced canvas, which is a collaborative documenting.

Leo Laporte (00:54:26):
Well, it does tie into that because yeah, cause

Lisa Schmeiser (00:54:28):
It's everybody collaborative, hosted collaborative processes are like a land grab right now. Anyway,

Leo Laporte (00:54:34):
Everybody and their brothers adding documents. Yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (00:54:37):
Well they're adding collaborative workflow cuz they all saw people using Gmail, not Gmail, Google docs and being like, oh I need to get done on that action. Cuz

Leo Laporte (00:54:43):
Even apples announced a new whiteboard app, which I think is their stealth entry into this collaborative

Lisa Schmeiser (00:54:49):
Space. Right? No. And you also know everybody to get back to everything we talked about. You also know that having a collaborative workspace gives people tons of raw data on how ideas get generated. Iterated manipulated,

Leo Laporte (00:55:02):
Oh, they're not watching what we're doing. Are they

Shelly Brisbin (00:55:06):
On? But it also locks people in as customers. So if I've committed as a company to, I mean we have work, we have the Adobe suite mostly because we use audition to make radio. And so we have Photoshop and use it. I can use InDesign. I don't make radio all day, right. With slack. If we've committed, we use slack. If we commit to that document if can the canvas document thing, we're probably gonna be more likely to continue a paid slack subscription. Yeah. Because the opportunity cost of going to something else would be high for us. And so it makes sense for the companies to do that. I don't believe it's always in the best interest, whether it's Figma or whether it's somebody who's using some other collaborative document methodology to be locked into these platforms. But that's the way platforms are now. You don't buy software and boxes anymore. You buy the platform seed licensing

Larry Magid (00:55:53):
Platform. I tell you, addition is a good example. I used to love addition when it was $59

Leo Laporte (00:55:58):
Audio editing program, actually they acquired it. It was cool at pro, right?

Shelly Brisbin (00:56:03):
You used to be

Larry Magid (00:56:03):
Really, it used to be a great little product.

Leo Laporte (00:56:05):
Everybody radio used it. Yeah.

Larry Magid (00:56:06):
I know. And I moved over to audacity because audition is too complicated and too expensive and over

Lisa Schmeiser (00:56:14):
What's story it's

Shelly Brisbin (00:56:14):
Too. Exactly. So, and they they've made it very Adobe. And truthfully I use, we do when we do multitrack and we put together complicated stories that are gonna be multi voice and with sound and with music, I use audition because I like the multitrack tools. But if I'm just editing an interview, that's a guest and a host I get into there's a tool on the Mac called Amadeus pro that I really like audacity works for that. I'm not personally a fan of audacity, but audacity has this wonderful advantage. It's free. Right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know the legal arguments. There's multiplatform. That's what I'd be most interested.

Leo Laporte (00:56:44):
We also crashes half the time. Yeah. I can't that use an editor. That's gonna crash. I me, because if it crashes and I've lost all the work I just did, I'm gonna be very unhappy. Yeah. Maybe it's more reliable than it used to be. Yeah. I used TWiTsted wave. I'm actually hopeful for these guys cuz they've just started a windows beta <affirmative> Lisa's starting her own podcast and called it's called host red ads. I love it. And I'm teaching her to use TWiTsted waves. So she was recording it in apple voice memos <laugh> oh no. And then on anchor FM and it was left channel only and nobody could figure out, well, I don't understand why it's only coming in one ear. And I explained the whole thing and I showed her how it TWiTsted wave to make it a mono mm-hmm <affirmative> file before you upload it and all that

Larry Magid (00:57:29):
Stuff. Oh, can I get some technical advice? Leo? Should my podcast be mono or stereo? Because they're just voice.

Leo Laporte (00:57:36):
Yeah. That's why I make our, is there mono

Shelly Brisbin (00:57:37):
There? Reason to go stereo mono, your files are small too. Make them mono.

Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
So you cut the file size in half. Yeah. Right. So a 64 kilobit mono is the same quality as 128 kilobit stereo. So that's one, I think Shelly, you can weigh in on this, but we're all radio people except for you Lisa. So if you've done radio,

Shelly Brisbin (00:57:57):
I wish I could.

Leo Laporte (00:57:57):
Should you have a beautiful voice? I

Shelly Brisbin (00:57:58):
Would love to.

Leo Laporte (00:58:00):
It's easy

Shelly Brisbin (00:58:00):
Have me on

Leo Laporte (00:58:01):
Larry. I think mono punches through better. So remember the Beatles when they first recorded, it was all mono and then they made terrible stereo mixes in the us. They were crazy stereo. Yeah. They were awful. And the Beatles never liked that. And in fact, Beatles collectors now prize those original mono versions of many of the first Beatles albums because that's how they were mixed and they that's how and they punched through. So I think one of the things, this is completely farfield. I apologize <laugh> but I think one of the things really important for voice only communications is that you're gonna be listening in all sorts of adverse environments, the car while you're washing the dishes, walking down the street with sirens going by. And so it's really important that the voice punches through and when I used to do am radio, we'd compress the hell out of it. That's the boss radio sound. Right. But that's the reason so that it, it's not actually louder, but it feels more present. And I think mono gives you some of that. I also think you should compress it to be honest with you. <laugh>

Shelly Brisbin (00:59:03):
Yeah. So I have arguments on both sides. The thing about mono is especially if you're doing a podcast, podcasters have a wide variety of audio quality in their podcasts. And if you do stereo, there's more of an opportunity for that badness to appear. And what Leo says about it punching through and mono makes sense. I will do stereo separations if I have four or five guests on my side. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:25):
That makes sense.

Shelly Brisbin (00:59:25):
Sure. And it does, I'll tell you, that's another thing that I found out when I started hanging out with blind podcasters that a lot of blind folks like to hear a stereo mix of multiple voices because can, it gives this sort of realistic sound of I'm over here on the left and Larry's on the right and Leo's a little bit left center and Lisa's right center. And it can be kind of a cool effect. You can go too far. There used to be a sort category of podcasting where people would they call 'em sound seeing tours and people would go around, remember that? Do their environments. You're walking

Leo Laporte (00:59:56):
Down the street. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (00:59:58):
And you'd have Boral microphones trip to that. Crazy. Yeah. I just think people got tired of weird sounding Boral microphones and because it was cool for a while that it was like, okay, I get it. There's a street and there's a person going by on the right. And there's a car on the left. And it's just a little much

Leo Laporte (01:00:14):
How funny I completely forgot about that. I have to

Shelly Brisbin (01:00:17):
Think about that podcast. Long timer Leo. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:20):
Because

Larry Magid (01:00:20):
When I record, I always record the guest in one channel and me and the other. So we are stereo to begin with, but did the guest really need to be sitting all the way to my left or all the

Leo Laporte (01:00:28):
Way? No, no. You wanna pan at extremes?

Shelly Brisbin (01:00:30):
No, but you can separately. You can do their levels and process their audio separately from your own

Leo Laporte (01:00:36):
We're stereo. Right. But we don't pan people's mics. So everybody's all we probably should. But everybody's all kind of coming in the same place. There are reasons not to do that. If you're in the car, for instance, all you're gonna get with too much space. It's great. If you're listening to headphones or in good sound system, but in a car, people are gonna be louder than other people. It's just gonna be, it's not gonna make a lot of sense. I don't know. I have mixed feelings. I prefer to make it sound like an am boss, jock from 1968 going

Larry Magid (01:01:10):
Wasn't that Jack is my youngster about

Leo Laporte (01:01:12):
It. <laugh> my God that,

Leo Laporte (01:01:15):
But yeah, we did a spacial audio podcast many years ago. That was really cool. Adobe. I'm sorry. Doby. It's easy to confuse. The two <laugh> doubly had a technology. They called Doby headphone. That didn't take off. It's gone now, but it was kind of like the atmo mix that they do now for that's what S spatial is an at most mix where you could place sounds anywhere in a sound stage. And we did a whole show using a Doby headphone that nobody could listen to. Cuz unless you had a Doby headphone to coder, didn't make any sense now big. Maybe we should do spatial mixes of our shows. I don't know. What do you think Shelly, would you? I

Shelly Brisbin (01:02:00):
Think that would be really trippy and I probably would just go back to mono myself. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:05):
Shelly's coming in from the upper, right, right. <laugh> leases in the lower left. I'm behind you and Larry's in front of you look

Shelly Brisbin (01:02:13):
Out, it

Larry Magid (01:02:14):
Doesn't work in my house. Cuz I have an Eichler with a pretty tall ceiling and the atmo gets just drowned out in there. Just

Leo Laporte (01:02:21):
Yeah, you can't have atmo. You need to have a flat, low, reflective, reflective ceiling unless you put speakers up there and then you make 'em loud enough so that it's gonna work. But that seems

Larry Magid (01:02:31):
Like one more thing for my wife to get know. Don't

Leo Laporte (01:02:33):
Do that in

Shelly Brisbin (01:02:33):
The eye. Claire sound design your house. That's a little modern.

Leo Laporte (01:02:36):
That's another point is how are people listening? So I'm gonna guess a lot of people are listening on mono speakers, right? They're listening on or

Larry Magid (01:02:45):
Headphones and the car,

Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
I guess ear buds. Yeah. You're

Shelly Brisbin (01:02:48):
Right. Well mono speakers. I mean think about voice assistance. They're listening on a lady boxes and Google boxes and that's true. Even we've because we've gone. Car radios used to be mono. They're not anymore. There are a lot of people. Most people have access to some sort of stereo based audio if they wanna listen to it. But how do we really listen to it? I listen to my show every day on a mono speaker because that's

Leo Laporte (01:03:08):
What I have. That's easy. Yeah. It's easy. I I'm just lazy. If I had energy <laugh> <affirmative> I would do a sound when I was a younger radio guy. I used love to mix in stuff. And I remember

Lisa Schmeiser (01:03:23):
The birds chipping in the background. If you're doing dancing.

Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
I mean, we do that when we make mixes,

Shelly Brisbin (01:03:29):
If I go out and I interview somebody, I love that. And I, or several people and we get ambient sound. We in fact, lay a track underneath that's the birds chirping or the gravel crunching or whatever. And you fade that in and you fade it out and it sounds really great, but you also have to be really, we record those in, we do multitrack and then we mix 'em down to stereo and they end up on the show in stereo. Most people don't get most of it, but some people are gonna hear the subtleties of it. And it's fun to do as long as you don't go crazy with it.

Larry Magid (01:04:00):
<affirmative> and as long as you're doing it, honestly long as the natural family's coming from where you are and not imported from another world,

Shelly Brisbin (01:04:07):
We wouldn't do that. No,

Larry Magid (01:04:09):
Of course you

Leo Laporte (01:04:09):
Wouldn't <laugh> but I

Larry Magid (01:04:11):
Had to take a whole ethics class about that. Well

Leo Laporte (01:04:13):
That's cuz you're doing journalism, but I mean there's also a whole sphere of shows that could be considered fiction. <affirmative> like serial. Oh yeah. <laugh> and

Larry Magid (01:04:24):
Then's huge for

Leo Laporte (01:04:25):
Example. And then you could or TWiT and then

Shelly Brisbin (01:04:29):
Might veil radio dramas night

Leo Laporte (01:04:30):
Fails a good example. They actually quite a

Lisa Schmeiser (01:04:32):
Cause that's they they've popularized radio dramas podcast.

Leo Laporte (01:04:35):
I love that. And I think I love the problem is it's a huge amount of work and its very time consuming.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:04:41):
It's almost like content doesn't scale that you need that

Leo Laporte (01:04:45):
You it's handcrafted.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:04:46):
Well. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (01:04:47):
Well they call it a sound design and I mean there are people who are quite expert at it and take a lot of care. And for 90% of the content that's out there not needed, but special effects and video, it's that extra Ooof that you add to content that needs it. But don't put it on my little radio stories about voting by mail or whatever it's writing.

Leo Laporte (01:05:09):
I actually made that conscious decision because I love that. And if I didn't have to make a living <affirmative> and I didn't have any other interests in the world, I might spend a lot of time doing sound design and creating Ken nor Dean's sound scapes and stuff.

Shelly Brisbin (01:05:26):
Oh my God love Ken Norde. I like turning younger people on to Ken Norde because people have never heard of him. And he's the amazing, oh

Leo Laporte (01:05:34):
Amazing. He's

Larry Magid (01:05:35):
One of the things I've learned from listening to an original series of a serial was all of the things that I used to do to make my podcast quote better were the very things that they weren't doing. I would cut out pauses and they would put in pauses and I would try to avoid ums and awes and all these things. And it actually, it turns out it can actually add to the authenticness of what you're doing.

Leo Laporte (01:05:59):
I've heard it's

Shelly Brisbin (01:06:01):
A thin line because it can sound affected and it can sound a little precious and bit different. I mean that's a very sort of public radio kind of sound said it I'm glad you said

Leo Laporte (01:06:15):
It before in Iris says there's 45 seconds beats and we edit it for those 45 second beats and we putting pauses and

Shelly Brisbin (01:06:23):
Our show is fairly new. I haven't been around for the entire entirety of the show, but when they debated the show, seven years ago, one of the goals was we're public radio, but we're not trying to sound like the NPR mothership. We wanna sound like what Texas sounds like. And that doesn't mean everybody says y'all all the time. It just means that there's a little more of a laid back of conversational aspect to it, but we're not going the other direction and being unserious or trying to be precious about sounding too folksy and too authentic. And it's a line and you just make editorial decisions about how do you want your show to sound? And what's authenticity. That's what it gets, gets down to is your perception of authenticity.

Leo Laporte (01:07:02):
So that was kind of the decision I made is that we want to do this as live as possible. It's one of the reasons we do it live with a live chat room and we used to have a live audience so that it's not edited. It's not sound design. It's the opposite. And for the content that we are doing, I thought that was the best way to do it. And also because I come from a live radio background <affirmative> but let me play. Let's introduce Shelly. Let's introduce people to Ken Norde. So he was he from, I think Chicago, Chicago,

Shelly Brisbin (01:07:32):
I

Leo Laporte (01:07:32):
Think. Yeah. Radio personality who had a very beautiful voice and was very influenced by the fifties jazz improvisation. Oh yeah. Hipster stuff. There's actually a ton of Ken Nordine stuff on YouTube. I hope this isn't gonna get us taken down. Let me play just, I was

Shelly Brisbin (01:07:50):
Gonna say what rabbit holes are gonna take you down Leo? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:07:53):
It's already in the rabbit hole. This is just, I'll play just a few seconds of this. This is from his word jazz album. It's called what time is it? Just you'll get an immediate idea of what we're talking about here.

Ken Nordine (01:08:05):
There was this guy who was a regular guy who lived a regular life, got up seven 30 every morning, had the same breakfast, kissed

Ken Nordine (01:08:14):
The same wife.

Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
I'll let you leave this as an exercise for the listener to pursue that. Look up Ken Norde. And you can find a lot of

Shelly Brisbin (01:08:23):
Stuff. I wanna know what his audio settings are. I'm so curious.

Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
Well, he had a beautiful, beautiful

Shelly Brisbin (01:08:29):
Film. I know he did, but there's some processing in there and it's great.

Leo Laporte (01:08:31):
Yeah. This is ultra high fidelity. It says <laugh> say stereo. However, yeah. So I don't don't know ultra

Shelly Brisbin (01:08:41):
Good

Leo Laporte (01:08:42):
Word ultra high. He was maybe you might say, I think I know that voice.

Shelly Brisbin (01:08:49):
He did ads too.

Leo Laporte (01:08:50):
He did a very famous and I'm gonna play a little bit of it. Levi's jeans.

Shelly Brisbin (01:08:54):
Yes. Yes.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:08:55):
Oh, somebody mentioned that in the

Leo Laporte (01:08:56):
Chat that was extremely popular in 19. I wanna say

Shelly Brisbin (01:09:01):
Early seventies,

Leo Laporte (01:09:02):
Early seventies, maybe let's play it. This is very trippy.

Ken Nordine (01:09:08):
There was a stranger who came into our town. He was tall and had eyes that could look right to the bottom of you. We might have welcomed him except for one thing, his pants

Leo Laporte (01:09:18):
<laugh>

Shelly Brisbin (01:09:20):
Leave. You

Leo Laporte (01:09:21):
I'll leave. You wondering

Lisa Schmeiser (01:09:22):
That commercial got a real Ralph Bashki feel

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
To it. It did the animation

Lisa Schmeiser (01:09:27):
With the rotoscoping and the animation. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:09:29):
It was a Levi's commercial.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:09:33):
Now I wanted watch very

Leo Laporte (01:09:34):
Trip. Yeah. The late legendary Ken Norde. Who does I agree with you, Shelly deserves a lot more attention. Well,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:09:41):
This is a Deloitte.

Leo Laporte (01:09:43):
<laugh> take a little break. We'll come back. There is a lot more to talk about and we're just getting to the heart of the matter. But first, since you were talking about a VPN and protecting yourself online, Larry, I thought I mentioned our VPN sponsor express VPN. It's the only VPN I use. It's one. I trust people, ask me all the time. How do you know that you could trust express VPN? This is important. The reason you will use a VPN of course is to, for se, there's really three good reasons to use a VPN to keep people from hacking you, watching what you're doing at a coffee shop. That's how we started using VPNs. Actually we started 'em in business so that you could use the company network safely. Even if you weren't on premises do you also use it? Sometimes people use it for geographic relocation.

Leo Laporte (01:10:36):
So you can watch videos on Netflix, UK, or watch all the Minea you want on Netflix Japan. But the reason a lot of people these days use it. And the reason you are using it, Larry is for privacy. But it's important to understand that, yes, your ISP can't see what you're doing. You're hiding yourself. You're using a different IP address when you visit a website, but the people who can see what you're doing are the VPN company, the server you're coming out of. So it's very important that you trust the VPN provider express VPN. I trust them implicitly. Now of course they have the third party audits, but they've actually engineered their own VPN N protocol. It's called lightweight to keep your data secure without sacrificing speed. And we know that they don't do any logging they use. And there was just an article about this on bleeping computer, a custom Debbie and distribution that wipes itself every day, every reboot everything's wiped from the drive.

Leo Laporte (01:11:34):
There's nothing there to in the logs and it launches its VPN server in memory in Ram. So that and the sandbox. So it can't write to the drive. So they take all these extra steps to make sure that there is zero logging. There they are not keeping track of what you're doing. Can't even if they wanted to express VPN is awesome. It is the way to protect yourself online. They do their own special protocol express VPN so fast. You can put it on your router. It actually works on a number of routers. The whole family protected. They won't even know because there's no speed degradation. It's really awesome. This level of bespoke technology is what allows express VPN to provide superior speeds and enhanced privacy and protection. They really care. They work really hard and light way. Their own protocol is open source. Of course it's been audited by third parties.

Leo Laporte (01:12:35):
You can look at it yourself. So if you're that's one way, I think you've gotta use software. That's open source. If you wanna protect your security and privacy. Otherwise who knows what kind of back doors are in there, not with express VPN it's 2022 folks in case you didn't know, you need to use a VPN. When you go online, you need to protect your privacy and your security. If you don't have one yet, even if you do, I want you to go to express vpn.com/TWiTt. When you buy a one year package, they're gonna give you three extra months free. That brings it down to below seven bucks a month. I think that's a very fair price for what you get. Please don't use free VPNs, cuz if they're not charging you, they're finding another way to make money. E X P R ESS vpn.com/TWiT and read up on all the technologies and all the things they're doing that. Well. I think reassure you as it has me that these guys are going the extra mile to give you a VPN that is truly private and secure express vpn.com/TWiT. We thank them so much for the support of our show. They've been a longtime supporter of the network only VPN I use in trust express, vpn.com. Thank you, express VPN. All right, let's see here. We'd never really to decide whether Figma should be the Figma acquisition should be allowed, but

Lisa Schmeiser (01:13:58):
That's for the lawyers.

Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
That's up

Lisa Schmeiser (01:14:00):
To the lawyers. I would love to see the argument for it where they're saying this represents a substantial threat to the market.

Leo Laporte (01:14:07):
We were talking about serial, the serial podcast. That's in the news this week because the serial subject of the very first series <affirmative> was released from prison. Yep.

Larry Magid (01:14:20):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:21):
Wow. I think that's the most success. Any podcast's ever achieved to actually get somebody? He, so what's the story. Cause I did not listen to serial. His name is Adan. He was a high school student when he was convicted of murdering his high school, sweetheart, he's been serving a life sentence. The judge said based, I think basically on the revelations from serial that the prosecution in the original trial withheld evidence, give him a fair trial. His own attorney who has since passed was maybe a little suspect as well. The judge didn't say, I acquit, you go be free. He just said, we need to give you a new trial and the interest of justice and fairness. You need a new trial. Now he may not ever get tried again. Prosecutors have 30 days to decide if they're gonna proceed with a new trial or just drop the charges. He's currently at home detention. Of course the family of his high school, sweetheart. Haman Lee is very unhappy because they believe he did it. Now. I didn't listen to anybody. Who's listened to Syria.

Larry Magid (01:15:37):
Yeah. I listened to a lot of those episodes.

Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
And what do you think?

Larry Magid (01:15:40):
Well, based on the episode and I've not independently researched the case, so I wanna be respectful of the family's concerns, but based on the podcast, it seemed like definitely he's doing a new trial because there was a lot of questions about who, whether someone else might have done it. They presented a lot of evidence, which I think most juries would agree would certainly put into question this guy's guilt. And yet he has been sitting in prison all this years. So it's a great example of, I don't know whether you call it investigative journalism or advocacy, journalism. I don't believe that the serial podcast took a position on guilt or innocence, but it kind of made the case that this guy probably at least deserves another trial. And I'm glad he is getting one. That

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
Seems fair. That seems fair. Not saying he's innocent. Although really I I've told that the joy of listening to this serial was debating. Oh, he didn't do it. Oh, he did it. No, he definitely didn't. No, he didn't do it. Yeah.

Larry Magid (01:16:37):
You were back forth.

Leo Laporte (01:16:38):
Yeah. 12 episodes back in 2014 the New York times has since purchased cereal. So they're putting out a new episode called addon is out <laugh> Sara Conig who did produce it really. I think in some ways, podcasting was already 10 years old. By the time she did this, but in some ways put podcasting on the

Larry Magid (01:17:00):
Map. Oh, it was huge. It actually had a big impact on CBS because people I've been pushing podcasting at CBS since the nineties. And they would basically laugh at me back then. And I think serial really opened up the eyes of the entire broadcast industry that this technology needs to be explored. So it was well,

Leo Laporte (01:17:19):
And it certainly

Lisa Schmeiser (01:17:20):
Is an audience that's worth recording, I think is what it proved.

Leo Laporte (01:17:23):
Well, and it was huge. It was millions. It was in the millions. So I mean that was, that's a substantial number. It also created a wave for better or worse of true crime podcasts.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:17:34):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:36):
Everybody was copying this. Right.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:17:39):
I wonder if serial serial came around at the right place in the right time, but it also was a sweet spot for people who are already habituated to crime as a narrative like you have on law order shows or the shows on the CSI shows or oh, what is that show that Keith Morris Nightline Dateline

Larry Magid (01:18:00):
Not yet Dateline. Oh,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:18:01):
So much better. I mean I hate date. Well, I always think of bill haters, impersonation of Keith Morris, which is just damaging because I'm sure Keith Morris is a fine journalist, but all I can see is bill <laugh>, but Americans, as an audience, love thinking of crime as a form of entertainment, whether it's puzzle box, mystery solving or straight forward morality place

Larry Magid (01:18:25):
And bridges do too. Yeah. British you watch Brit TV all over this kind

Shelly Brisbin (01:18:29):
Of stuff. True crime is this huge element of podcasting now <affirmative> and there's actually been a fair bit of backlash to serial because there are people who actually believe that serial did not give Abed a fair shake in terms of there is some evidence on serial that has since been disputed.

Leo Laporte (01:18:46):
Oh really?

Shelly Brisbin (01:18:47):
Yeah. And that's some of the backlash that sort came out this week and I'm not really up on all of that. I was a little surprised by it. But what's interesting about that is just the degree to which the perception is that they were going after a dramatic narrative and didn't necessarily do all of the homework that they should have been. There's been criticism of the New York times that they didn't do updates sooner. So there's a lot of moving parts to it. And I think that the true crime aspect of it and the degree to which the true true crime fascination is kind of a gentrified let's peel to a certain demographic demographic of people who are interested in crime podcasts <affirmative> is sort of an unfortunate side effect of

Leo Laporte (01:19:31):
It. And again, I didn't and still haven't listened to it. I probably should, but it strikes me. Sarah kig was a producer on this American life <affirmative> which is, I've always said the best radio show ever made except for the Texas standard, which is a fabulous six

Shelly Brisbin (01:19:48):
Leo

Leo Laporte (01:19:49):
<laugh>.

Shelly Brisbin (01:19:50):
You can come

Leo Laporte (01:19:51):
On too. The

Lisa Schmeiser (01:19:52):
California report is a really great audio. It is some show too.

Leo Laporte (01:19:56):
I also got the sense that the, her focus in Syria was telling a good story, <affirmative> it? And that's true about this American life as well. It's not journalism in the sense of, well, we wanna present you with the facts. It was let's make, there were cliff hangers. Let's make a gripping story. And that's when journalism bleeds into fiction or storytelling. And I don't know if I like that.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:20:23):
Well, the new Yorkers has done that with some long form reporting too. Yeah. My throw up there is when you reduce reporting, not reduce, but when you in include the element of entertainment in reporting sometimes the facts get in the way of a good story

Leo Laporte (01:20:43):
Because you focus on well entertaining, right? Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (01:20:45):
Well, and have you hit your cliffhanger, have number of episodes, maybe it's 13, whatever the series is, are you going to have a cliffhanger for every one of those episodes and how are you gonna come to a stop? Especially if the person you're focusing on is in jail and don't forget the person who lost her life still lost her life. However, your show comes out and whether this person is innocent or guilty, that family doesn't have a resolution yet I would

Lisa Schmeiser (01:21:11):
Podcast from the perspective of the people who are my loved one was turned into fodder for a true crime podcast.

Leo Laporte (01:21:16):
<affirmative> oh, wow. Wouldn't that be a show?

Lisa Schmeiser (01:21:17):
Well, we don't see those folks who are my loved one, had this terrible ending, the complexity of who they were, has been reduced to them being the object of someone else's story that is being presented as more interesting. And I have to constantly, re-litigate this experience as this podcast comes out every week, if you're going to have a true crime universe, you should point out the ripple effects. I think it should just be these stories about did so. And so do it pause,

Larry Magid (01:21:47):
But you remember date lines to catch a predator series back in the late, I think with the early two thousands. And it ended when one of their suspects committed suicide, they showed up with a vigilant squad and the guy killed himself and it probably wouldn't have happened if they let the police investigate that alleged child predator, rather than having a bunch of vigilantes and not particularly careful journalists do it.

Leo Laporte (01:22:13):
Yeah. I mean, we've seen citizen journalism and the ugly side of it on Reddit many, many times. Yes. So the

Larry Magid (01:22:23):
Election was stolen <laugh> yeah, we can prove it.

Leo Laporte (01:22:26):
So, so is it, it's certainly painted as in fiction and nonfiction and journalism, the case that the police, sometimes this is the duke and the stats are more interested in finding a resolution than finding the actual culprit. I don't know how true that is. If I were a police officer, I would not be looking for resolution unless I was sure that that was the person who did it, because then you're letting the person who did it walk free. Yeah. Right. That's bad. But I don't know. So that's one thing you get the impression that well, prosecutors and the police are just looking to for their stats. They're not trying to solve the crime. It's

Lisa Schmeiser (01:23:08):
Not proof is really, it can be an onerous duty. If you've ever gone to jury duty for a criminal trial, you will sit there. And the judge and the prosecutor will tell you our job that owing to the premise that you are innocent until found guilty. It is the burden of the prosecution to have to say this evidence points this conclusion and it cannot be beyond

Leo Laporte (01:23:32):
A reasonable

Lisa Schmeiser (01:23:32):
Doubt. Exactly. That's a high bar to clear, and I'm gonna argue that in some ways, it's good that it's a high bar it's

Leo Laporte (01:23:40):
Designed that way.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:23:40):
But what we saw

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
Yeah. Is it better? Is it, which

Lisa Schmeiser (01:23:43):
Is worse. We see though, is people who are trying to figure out ways to either walk around the bar or say, okay, we can carefully lift a leg over the bar in a technicality. Is

Leo Laporte (01:23:51):
It worse to falsely convict something, somebody of a crime or worse to let a criminal go free? And I think we've DEC as a country we have decided is better to err on the side of caution and not imprison somebody falsely. Right. Which means some criminals get go free. But I think a lot of police and prosecutors don't like that ID either.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:24:15):
Well, you know what also really that's all that time into doing your job. And you're like, Ugh, man, you, that would be the flip side of this is did you follow the Sherry PAI case? The woman who faked her own kidnapping <affirmative> up in Redding, California. Yeah. So this woman back in 2016 disappears and it was a hoax. Yeah. A month later she's like, oh, I was like, I was kidnapped by targeted minorities here. And oh, it was terrible. They tortured me and they branded me and it turned out that she and an ex-boyfriend had cooked up the whole thing, by

Leo Laporte (01:24:44):
The way, she's going to jail

Lisa Schmeiser (01:24:45):
Now. Yeah. She, she got sentences past week. The video of her interrogation has hit YouTube and <laugh>, I'm not proud of this. I was doing some really tedious inbox cleaning out and I had it playing in the background just because I was kind of curious, but listening to the process of interrogation where she's spitting her tail for the cops and every time she didn't have an answer to a question she's like, I just wanted to go home to my kids and watching them patiently and carefully attack her story from different angles and ask questions and tell her what they were. That's real, a real skill. Isn't it? And they were, were so calm and so patient and they kept trying to establish a rapport and it hit me the sheer volume of work that goes into developing those skills and being able to use them is really phenomenal. <affirmative> what's worrying though, is how many people have those experiences where they don't have folks who have that kind of experience coming in with them like that I think is where the real risk is, is that we just don't have the people, the skill and the time that we need to make sure that we are all presumed innocent

Shelly Brisbin (01:25:53):
And you have racial bias or you have other biases that impact all elements, whether it be the prosecutors or the police who the victim is, who the defendant is. And all of those things, the care that's taken is dependent on care basically, and is dependent on the time and the support that you have from the people that are over you and whether you're being pressured. And frankly, if it's a crime that has a victim by the victim's family, because the victim's family is desperate to solve this crime and find out who's done it. And so whether the pressure is that there's too much, that there's a quota or system, or whether there's a pressure that there's a mother who really wants to know who took her daughter's life. That's a difficult challenge for law

Leo Laporte (01:26:35):
Enforcement further made difficult by a true crime podcast about the whole thing stirring up questions, maybe that don't deserve to be asked. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I

Larry Magid (01:26:46):
Know a lot about this because I watch murder in the building on television. <laugh> I've learned all about

Leo Laporte (01:26:52):
Me, Martin Schwartz educate

Lisa Schmeiser (01:26:54):
Us. It is such a love letter to very specific type of New York experience. Isn't

Leo Laporte (01:26:58):
It? It's also, I think all about podcasting and about true crime podcast. Absolutely.

Larry Magid (01:27:04):
I hate showing it's not the interface behavior podcast to

Lisa Schmeiser (01:27:07):
Know that <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:27:08):
They all have such great apartments though. That's what kills me.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:27:11):
Right? I know the aesthetics of that show.

Shelly Brisbin (01:27:13):
Doesn't everybody in television have great apartments. I mean, you ever seen a really terrible apartment and

Leo Laporte (01:27:17):
I have been in Steve Martin's apartment in on the Ooh, just off central park west and it is Ooh, very nice. <laugh> so yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:27:27):
How was the art

Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
Apparently? Oh, the art's great. I actually asked him to gimme a tour and he was happy to do so. Oh, nice. You go in his library. <affirmative> which a beautiful, you know exactly as you'd imagine it, book lined mahogany library, leather couches. And there's two, not one, but two David hys on the wall. It's like, okay, fine. Okay. Fine. I'm we're sitting there. We're having dinner. He, is that a Picasso? He said, yeah, yeah,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:27:51):
Yeah. I like, yeah. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (01:27:53):
Oh

Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
Yeah. Very nice. And I remember standing, looking out at central park <affirmative> and he said, yeah, actually, I don't know if I should say this out loud. Oh, what the hell? You don't know Steve <laugh>. He said, when we bought this place, my first wife said we really gotta have a central park view. And he said, no, we don't need a central park view. He said, I'm glad we got the central park view. <laugh> yeah,

Larry Magid (01:28:16):
I remember that. The next time I buy an apartment in New York.

Leo Laporte (01:28:18):
Yeah. Get the central park view. If you

Lisa Schmeiser (01:28:21):
Live in an Eichler you're doing good. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:23):
Eichlers not. Don't Eichlers have internal courtyards that are,

Larry Magid (01:28:26):
By the way, my ocular, my ocular is 300,000 square feet in case

Leo Laporte (01:28:30):
300

Larry Magid (01:28:31):
Listening,

Leo Laporte (01:28:32):
300. Is that Donald Trump reckoning?

Larry Magid (01:28:34):
I wanna be able to get a billion dollar loan.

Leo Laporte (01:28:36):
Okay. Yeah. That's my thought.

Larry Magid (01:28:38):
But don't tell the IRS. I said

Lisa Schmeiser (01:28:40):
No, it's 300 for the IRS. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
Get the central park view. Even if it's an I'm just saying, I'm just

Lisa Schmeiser (01:28:47):
Trying to imagine the warping of time and space. You'd have to go into, get that <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:28:53):
All right. Let's take it.

Larry Magid (01:28:54):
No, I learned to exaggerate from Laeticia or from the

Leo Laporte (01:28:57):
Latisha. James <laugh>

Larry Magid (01:28:58):
James taught me how you're supposed to do this.

Leo Laporte (01:29:01):
Let's take a little break. I'm having fun with you guys. We're gonna talk more about TV movies. Do you Shelly, you do a TV movie podcast, right?

Shelly Brisbin (01:29:11):
I do a Mo classic movie podcast.

Leo Laporte (01:29:13):
Oh, even better. Really?

Shelly Brisbin (01:29:14):
Oh, I

Leo Laporte (01:29:15):
Love classic movies. Like a TCM podcast.

Shelly Brisbin (01:29:17):
Indeed. It's called lions powers and shields <laugh> and we talk AB we thank you, Leo. I appreciate it. We talk about one classic movie, each episode, and I've had the pleasure of having, do you put the pellet on several episodes?

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
Do you put the pellet in the pestle, in the mortar with the wait a minute, let me get, we

Shelly Brisbin (01:29:32):
Haven't gone to Danny Kay. Yet we just live. We did, we do a lot. We do a lot of and I'm always looking for fun guests, but a lot of incomparable panelists join me. And what's fun about the incomparable network is it's all these geeky, nerdy people who know about sci-fi and superheroes. And I know nothing about superheroes and could just do not. And so I was amazed and astounded when they not only welcomed me, but when they started coming on my show and talking about it, classic movies in really intelligent ways. So it's, it's been a lot

Leo Laporte (01:30:04):
Of fun's lion's towers and shields. And I love the album mark. Cause it looks like the old RKO.

Shelly Brisbin (01:30:09):
I know isn't it great. I

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:11):
Didn't it's black and

Leo Laporte (01:30:12):
Whites. I'm a TCM fanboy. I watch it. Me too. Every

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:16):
Day. Yeah. Shelly has let me indulge. My Barbara O'Neal fixation, which

Shelly Brisbin (01:30:19):
Oh my God. The Barbara with Memorial highway Barbara O'Neil

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:23):
Best. So Barbara O'Neil played scar little O'Hara's mother and gone with the win, but she also made a completely Bonker well she's made two completely bonkers movies. Yes. One of which we one

Shelly Brisbin (01:30:32):
Which we're gonna watch. Yes. We're not doing the other one.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:34):
We're not going to do the toy, the toy wife, because we're

Shelly Brisbin (01:30:37):
Not doing the toy wife. Oh, go ahead. That's

Leo Laporte (01:30:40):
Wait a minute. So do you watch the movie while you're doing the podcast? No, it's

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:43):
Not a live time.

Shelly Brisbin (01:30:44):
Oh, we have done a live commentary once, but no, we just have everybody watch and then we talk about it for that and hour, but Barbara. So go ahead and talk about Barbara.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:50):
Is she, what was it though? All that heaven will allow all

Shelly Brisbin (01:30:54):
This, all this in heaven, too.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:30:55):
All Elvis in heaven, too, where Betty Davis plays a button down, spinster, wildly casting against type who's who was hired as the nanny for Charles Boyer and Barbara O'Neil. Barbara O'Neil is just unhinged. She spends the entire movie just turned up to 11 with eyes, wide nostrils, flaring, skirts flying everywhere. She Flos in a high dungeon and she gives these great monologues about how everything that is mine rightfully so has been stoned in from me and frames. People from murder and there's poison involved. <laugh> and the first time we watched this movie, we were like, oh, she just keeps going. <laugh> like Betty Davis is just kind of clean to a corner of the screen. Wondering what happened <laugh> wow. Wow. And so Shelly was kind enough. Every time I suggest something for lion tower shields, I'm like, oh, you have to watch this because it's just bonkers. And Shelly's like, fine. <laugh>

Shelly Brisbin (01:31:49):
Well, no, the other. But see, the other side of that coin is a lot of times I will suggest a movie that I love an adore or that I think is crazy. And then I will convince all these nice people who haven't seen it <affirmative> to come and watch it with me. And there's always the Shelley. What have you gotten me into phase of the episode? And I enjoy that so much.

Leo Laporte (01:32:07):
So of the four angel face, all this in heaven, two, gone with the winner. I am the law. Which movie clips should I play? All this in

Lisa Schmeiser (01:32:14):
To

Shelly Brisbin (01:32:14):
All this in too. All this in heaven too.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:32:16):
Boy, man. Yeah,

Shelly Brisbin (01:32:18):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:32:18):
Yeah. Early in her long narrative flashback left. Oh, copyright Schmo, right?

Shelly Brisbin (01:32:24):
<laugh>

Larry Magid (01:32:25):
It's old enough cuz they'll copy. It's

Leo Laporte (01:32:26):
Just too. It's 1940. Is that, are we there? Yeah. I

Shelly Brisbin (01:32:29):
Don't know. Gonna have to send you. You're not out. And Warner's Warner brother still is. They

Leo Laporte (01:32:35):
Insist.

Larry Magid (01:32:35):
They figured it out.

Leo Laporte (01:32:38):
Never mind.

Shelly Brisbin (01:32:39):
I do wanna hear it. Appreciate that. We've

Leo Laporte (01:32:41):
Talked about you wanna hear it?

Shelly Brisbin (01:32:42):
You wanna

Leo Laporte (01:32:43):
Get me in trouble now?

Larry Magid (01:32:44):
S my sneaky way to take over your show.

Leo Laporte (01:32:47):
All this in heaven too. All right. Let me, I, it's not playing. Maybe it's trying to protect me from my worst inclination. Maybe it's maybe it's cuz I'm using firefi oh no. Here we go. Here we go. There's the beautiful SHA Boyer. It's just sitting there. Here we go. Spinning. We

Shelly Brisbin (01:33:06):
Theres go.

Leo Laporte (01:33:08):
Oh, there's Betty Davis.

Madam (01:33:11):
Yes.

Larry Magid (01:33:14):
What year with this?

Leo Laporte (01:33:16):
19 40, 19 40.

Shelly Brisbin (01:33:18):
Really?

Larry Magid (01:33:18):
Oh great. Great thing era you asked

Betty Davis (01:33:21):
Before. 11. Madam, what if I had been con conveniencing you?

Leo Laporte (01:33:24):
This is so against type for Betty Davis. You're right, right.

Shelly Brisbin (01:33:27):
Yes. That's why I wanted to do it. And then when I discovered Phil when I discovered Lisa's enjoyment of Barbara, I was like, all right, we have to do that.

Leo Laporte (01:33:35):
Does Betty Davis end up being a poisoner? No. Oh, she should.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:33:40):
No, she ends up being the poor. Put upon little, little sad,

Shelly Brisbin (01:33:44):
Right?

Lisa Schmeiser (01:33:44):
Little

Shelly Brisbin (01:33:45):
She's very mousey throughout. Oh yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:33:47):
No, it's the movie. The framing device is ridiculous in this movie, which is another reason I love it. But Barbara O'Neil like what you heard through the door. That is pretty much the note that she that's

Shelly Brisbin (01:33:58):
Repeatedly.

Larry Magid (01:33:59):
And do you tell people where they can stream these shows so you don't get, just get your

Leo Laporte (01:34:04):
Movies you're playing

Shelly Brisbin (01:34:05):
Sometimes. Yes. And sometimes no. I always give a streaming link as well as a media link every once in a while, because I actually have a rather large Plex library every once in a while I will put something up that isn't streamable. And so I have to help my panelists out a little bit with finding where they can stream it. But I always have just watch.com link to where you can stream it or where you can get the physical media.

Larry Magid (01:34:27):
I hate it when I all get all excited about something and I can't stream it. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:30):
You what same

Shelly Brisbin (01:34:31):
Here, which is why I collected physical media over the years. And you're glad do, especially for classic movies, it's very, and it's not predictable. It's very inconsistent. You'll say, oh, well, certain studio made it. Well, that doesn't mean that the legal rights were cleared, nor does it mean that the studio that made it continues to own it. It's all very complicated, especially for paramount movies, although it's much better than it used to be. And I don't even pretend to understand all of it. I just have to look them up on an individual basis and go, oh, that one isn't streaming. Maybe we won't do it. Or it is streaming. Let's do it. Now.

Leo Laporte (01:35:02):
I subscribe to the criterion channel, which has a lot of great old movies. It does. And obscure movies and things

Shelly Brisbin (01:35:10):
On well, and they do great Blueray releases. Oh yeah. There's some the criter I used

Leo Laporte (01:35:14):
To buy to have, I used to buy there laser discs. And that's why I got the chair. And so you can actually see their effort in the stream as well. So that's kind of nice. Yeah. Let's take a little break. I don't know how we got on that. We're testing content ID today on TWiT. And we'll see what happens. See if Warner brothers is worried about 1940s movies, our show today brought to you by zip recruiter. We use zip recruiter. We've hired so many people, frankly. There's only two ways you can get hired at TWiT either. We know somebody who knows you. I think how we hired Benino, right? Or do we use zip recruiter for you? Benino? I can't remember Jason. Jason. That's right. John moved next door. About 15 years, 15 anniversary, happy anniversary John, 15 years ago, he just moved next door.

Leo Laporte (01:36:02):
He said, they're gonna gimme a job if I just moved next door. And it did it worked on the other hand, we just lost our dear beloved continuity person took another job. Sometimes that happens, but that's a big loss because that person does a lot of work with copy and with working with the editors to make sure the ads get done right. Working with the clients to make sure they're getting their needs met. And we were down a person. We go to zip recruiter, look what we've got Viva. Who's wonderful. Zip recruiter. Lisa goes there every single time because it's just the easiest way to hire. It's also really effective.

Leo Laporte (01:36:42):
We have a lot, you wouldn't know it to watch this show, but we've got engineers. We've got editors. We've got producers, we've got a continuity department. We've got sales people. And almost in every case, ZipRecruiter has brought us those talented people. It's critical for us as business owners to get the right people in the right job. So whether you're hiring for a podcast or your own growing business, ZipRecruiter is the place to go for a couple of reasons. You post on ZipRecruiter. It goes to a hundred plus job sites plus social networks. So you're posting to everywhere. More people will see it. And the more people who see it, the more likely that right person, that needle on a haystack will see it. But how do you find that needle on a haystack? That's where ZipRecruiter really their technology really, really shines. All of the interest comes into your ZipRecruiter interface.

Leo Laporte (01:37:34):
So they reformat the resume. So you can scan through them easily. They allow you to add screening questions so that you can eliminate people who just don't fit your needs. They also take all the phone calls. You would get all the inbox, email, you would get put that into the interface. So you don't get bombarded. You just go when you have some time and look at the ZipRecruiter interface, but then ZipRecruiter does something that's so cool because they already have a million resumes on file. People come to ZipRecruiter, looking for work. They go through those resumes and match them to your job. So they find the candidates, people with the qualifications you need and then send you their names and you can invite them to apply whoever, whichever ones that you like. Now, the reason that's so successful is when you get invi, imagine you're applying for a job and a company comes to you and says, we'd like to hire you. You're much more likely to follow through on the process. It's just a great way to start a relationship. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter will get a quality candidate within the first day. I would say for us, it's within hours every single time. And when you're down a person every hour counts, you wanna get that job filled. Look, if you love our shows, you love the people who make our shows. You're gonna wanna try ZipRecruiter for free today. You need to remember our special URL though. ziprecruiter.com/TWiT at ziprecruiter.com/t.

Leo Laporte (01:39:04):
My wife, Lisa says it every time, ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. It's where we get our best employees. We're very happy to have you'all ziprecruiter.com/TWiT. Alright, moving right along, do not make chicken with Nyquill

Lisa Schmeiser (01:39:23):
<laugh> there go G

Leo Laporte (01:39:28):
Very important. It's

Lisa Schmeiser (01:39:29):
Such an expensive ingredient. Why would you wasted branding a chicken breast? It

Leo Laporte (01:39:34):
Turns out nobody was till the FDA put out a press release. Oh

Lisa Schmeiser (01:39:38):
My gosh. Oh, that's poor mention

Leo Laporte (01:39:41):
People, NyQuil chicken. The notion of cooking chicken and NyQuil, which of needless to say is a very bad idea, right? Yes, yes. Right? We all agree. First of all, it's gonna turn out bright green second it's poison. Okay. Maybe

Lisa Schmeiser (01:39:54):
If you're, but other than that,

Leo Laporte (01:39:55):
Barbara Stanwick or Betty Davis,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:39:58):
If you pick your milk, the end of all, that have a little left. Yeah. But voer is dying of NyQuil poisoning,

Leo Laporte (01:40:05):
NyQuil poisoning.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:40:06):
I's dying. That was in this chicken.

Leo Laporte (01:40:08):
Some reason. Why is its bites clean some reason. So it was put in a, as a joke on four Chan it's five years ago.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:40:20):
Oh my, oh my gosh. Five years ago.

Leo Laporte (01:40:22):
Wow. And then apparently some people had made talks about it, but for some reason last week we mentioned this on TWiTg, the FDA released a press release saying it's was titled a recipe for danger, the social media.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:40:36):
I would watch that movie,

Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
A recipe for James. You know what? That would be

Lisa Schmeiser (01:40:41):
A good movie. You know, say that. And teenagers are like, yes. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:43):
What is it? Well, that's the problem. Yes.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:40:45):
Let's find out

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
That's the

Lisa Schmeiser (01:40:47):
Problem. Oh my gosh.

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
The FDA referred to it as a recent trend. They cite no recent examples. According to end gadget were, so this press release went out on September 15th on September 14th. The day before the notice, there were five searches for NyQuil chicken in the app. The day after the release, there were 7,000. <laugh> literally an increase of 1400 times. We know this as the Streisand effect. This

Lisa Schmeiser (01:41:19):
Is hilarious until you realize that what's gonna happen is you are gonna have a genuine public health hazard. And the FDA may wanna say something and everyone be like is this not well, checking all over again? Like

Shelly Brisbin (01:41:31):
Your FDA, please get a subscription to know your meme.

Leo Laporte (01:41:34):
<laugh> there you go.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:41:35):
Well, yeah, I mean, there you

Leo Laporte (01:41:36):
Go.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:41:36):
Well, this is a problem.

Shelly Brisbin (01:41:38):
Can't make fun of them out of context, but there are ways you could suss it out and figure out whether in fact this is a real thing or not. And know your meme is certainly one of the places I'm

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
That you're so they're not wrong. It's a bad idea. Does

Lisa Schmeiser (01:41:49):
This point to a wider disconnect between the information ecosystem on different social media apps compared to how folks in the government are able to keep on top of that information and put it into context? <affirmative> yes. That plus we're all extremely online. So we're all like, oh my God, the minute you see something on TikTok, like final, legitimate source. But what if you've got somebody who has only heard about the tickety talk from a friend of a friend and they are genuinely concerned about someone comes and goes, did you hear teenagers on the tickety talk or cooking things? Right?

Shelly Brisbin (01:42:25):
Because remember tide pods and that happened, and there was criticism for why didn't anybody do anything about this? And so somebody at the FDA thought we need to get on top of this and somebody else at theba the FDA thought, oh my God, look at all the clicks, my press releases.

Leo Laporte (01:42:40):
<laugh>

Larry Magid (01:42:40):
Yeah, no. And then you add in misinformation and distrust of government and I'm sure somebody is going to tell us that Niel chicken will cure C and they don't wanna feel,

Leo Laporte (01:42:49):
Oh God. Yeah. Inject Nico bill gates.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:42:52):
You're gonna end up being like cited. You're your whole face there just got turned into a screen grab for some Facebook group that says, journalist says that Michael chicken.

Shelly Brisbin (01:43:01):
Oh,

Larry Magid (01:43:01):
I'm famous. I'll be famous fighting. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:03):
You can't fault the NDAs intent.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:43:05):
The algorithm is spoken

Leo Laporte (01:43:06):
<laugh> it is a recipe for danger <affirmative> oh, absolutely. But there is also a risk that by publicizing it now the good news is no one has died of NyQuil chicken to, as we go to press apparently the FDA's

Larry Magid (01:43:21):
Can help you sleep better though. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
Larry.

Larry Magid (01:43:26):
Okay. You're curious,

Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
Larry. No. Oh, okay. The FDA has if you didn't want that, you could use DayQuil though. I think Lord. No, the FDA's only posted once before about a viral Chan challenge. And that was the deadly Benadryl challenge. Oh yeah. In 2020.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:43:42):
I don't know what that is. And I'm not sure I want us to be if I wish be popularize.

Larry Magid (01:43:46):
Well, I know that

Shelly Brisbin (01:43:47):
I there's somebody who tends to cook things. I'm go

Leo Laporte (01:43:51):
Ahead. Do not cook with Benadryl. No. Yeah.

Larry Magid (01:43:53):
They're more and more over the counter drugs. When you go to the drugstore that are actually behind a lock case. Right. Because people are buying these things for all sorts of inappropriate reasons. So yeah. I do not recommend that you cook with NyQuil. I just wanna be very clear about that.

Shelly Brisbin (01:44:07):
No, yeah. Do not.

Leo Laporte (01:44:08):
No, I see. We can cut that part out so we don't have to worry about what

Lisa Schmeiser (01:44:11):
<laugh>. Every time I have to sign the form in California, you have to sign a form. If you're buying a bottle of the good Sudafed the stuff that actually

Leo Laporte (01:44:18):
Works because people make meth out of it.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:44:19):
And every time I do it, I always have

Leo Laporte (01:44:21):
That from breaking bad.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:44:22):
I have to bite the urge to talk about how I'm I'm I'm making small batch, artisanal meth. <laugh> like,

Shelly Brisbin (01:44:28):
See, I have to bite cooking properties of Nyquill and I'm, I'm not gonna say of them because they're funny, but I'm not doing it.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:44:35):
Yeah, no, no. Like the devil of my shoulders, go ahead. Make the joke. It's the bay area, but

Shelly Brisbin (01:44:40):
Artisanal, small Al me. Well also you're not on a podcast at that point, so it's fine.

Leo Laporte (01:44:46):
So you all watch a lot of TV. Do you think breaking bad actually gave you a recipe for making really high quality meth? Or was that just made up?

Shelly Brisbin (01:44:55):
I don't know. I <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:44:57):
Okay. I'm just

Shelly Brisbin (01:44:58):
Asking. I wasn't watching it for that for first time. I didn't actually watch breaking bad. So I, no,

Leo Laporte (01:45:03):
Shelly, one of the great shows of all time,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:45:05):
There's only so many anti-hero shows that you can watch. Right?

Shelly Brisbin (01:45:08):
I mean, I watched mad men come on. I did that. Oh, I

Leo Laporte (01:45:10):
Love that.

Shelly Brisbin (01:45:11):
Oh, my one I love that

Lisa Schmeiser (01:45:12):
Actually is, so this is a recommendation. We watched Fletch last night, the new Fletch movie with, is it good? It is such a fun way to spend your time.

Leo Laporte (01:45:19):
So he's kind of shaking these Chevy chase. Well, he's stigma against fle.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:45:24):
Yeah. He's made it his own, his own. And my husband loves the books, loves, loves the books and gave it his stamp of approval. And Ham's casting is really perfect. And they had a really solid supporting

Leo Laporte (01:45:34):
Cast. John ham, who was in madman. Yeah. Is now

Lisa Schmeiser (01:45:37):
Playing for John SL Johns

Leo Laporte (01:45:39):
SL flattery is in it too.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:45:40):
As his pissy pissy editor and love it. It's just a delight. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (01:45:43):
<laugh> I love it. That Hammond Slattery are in stuff together. It so

Lisa Schmeiser (01:45:47):
Terrible. They

Shelly Brisbin (01:45:47):
Always are. Sounds

Leo Laporte (01:45:48):
Like my favorite breakfast. Hammond, flattery, Hammond

Shelly Brisbin (01:45:51):
Sounds very English. You might have it. If you went to London, can

Leo Laporte (01:45:54):
I do it? You have to tomato and beans without ham slapping <laugh> Getty images has banned the use of AI generated content over fields of legal challenge. Now this has really been, I think, a fascinating, I called it a Cambrian explosion of AI with, of course it started with Dolly two <affirmative> and then a stable effusion broke it open because you could download it running on your own computer. <affirmative> there are others. They make amazing images, but a <laugh> quite reasonably is a little upset because all of these AI generators train on publicly available image sets. And apparently

Lisa Schmeiser (01:46:35):
Who owns those images.

Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
It's not unusual. According to Emmy that you'll find or Getty rather that you will find the Getty images watermark in images created by these AI art generators, because so many of them have been trained on Getty images. Oh, watermark, Getty,

Shelly Brisbin (01:46:53):
Donald Trump looks much better in that picture than he does in any other photograph I've ever seen

Lisa Schmeiser (01:46:57):
Yet. <laugh> when he shared that story with us. I thought about the end of William Gibson's novel count zero, where a curator is tasked by a billionaire to find the elusive artist who has been doing remixed collages and mixed media. And she discovers, well, the novels like 40 years old, we can play. She discovers it's an AI. That's creating the art. And I find it really interesting that we're now getting to the point where we're basically taking these suite of technologies that we call AI and pointing it at a data set, known as images and saying here, mix and match and find a way to recombine them in exciting new ways. And we'll find a way to use that. What you come up with,

Leo Laporte (01:47:38):
Who's the artist. Is it his name? Who does Greg Gutowski? Wow. Does these beautiful? You see him on the covers of science fiction works and so forth? Yeah,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:47:51):
That does look real science fiction.

Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
He is upset because he is often used how these work is. You give them a text phrase to describe it and then they draw it. His name appears very commonly in a lot of these illustrations, cuz they're looking to get it in that style. He's Polish he's created fantasy scenes for Dungeons and dragons and magic. He's

Lisa Schmeiser (01:48:19):
Got a really distinctive style,

Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
Very beautiful, I think light and so forth. He's kind of like a Kincaid, the master of light, who is another name who appears a lot, apparently in the descriptions <affirmative> stable diffusion, which is the one that's open sourced. And you can install yourself is trained on 5 billion image, text pairings. Although Andy bio, we talked about this when he did it a few weeks ago, analyzed 12 million of the 5 billion and found many come from sites like pin trust and fine art America. And there is some suspicion that OWS key's work was actually scraped from his portfolio on art station. And so he's a little upset. He's a little upset. He says AI should exclude living artists from its database. And instead focus on works under the public domain. There's a huge financial issue in evolving AI from being non-profit research to a commercial product project without asking artists from permission.

Shelly Brisbin (01:49:24):
I think a lot about this because my former job at Texas standard was to run the website. And so a lot of times I was looking for images and we had paid sources of images, but we would, a lot of times go to Wikipedia or to flicker with CC writes stuff. So if all sorts of different ways to get images and we had to be very careful. And in fact, we've gotten a few takedowns because something was labeled incorrectly. And so when I saw the, and we don't have a Getty subscription, cuz it's kind of pricey, a lot of journalistic entities do your, a AP and NPR and various, most newspapers typically have Getty. And so I feel like it's kind of a protection for the lowly website person who just really needs a picture of the president or of the border fence or of the latest, terrible incident that happened that we need a photograph of.

Shelly Brisbin (01:50:14):
And doesn't necessarily know the Providence of it. It's hard enough when theoretically there are credit lines and the source of a piece of art or piece of imagery, whether it's a photograph or whether it's an art, but piece of art, but then you go and you add the AI element. And there are, as I know, because I've read an awful lot of flicker creative commons listings a lot of images, they say you have permission to remix it with credit or you don't have permission to remix it at all. Or you can remix it up to this point. And all of that assumes art or photographs that were created by actual humans. But you get AI in the mix and it's really hard for somebody to know. <affirmative> if they're being honest, they're trying to only use things that you have permission to use and to give full credit where it's due, but you don't necessarily have any sort of realistic expectation that you are being accurate when you give that credit.

Leo Laporte (01:51:08):
I kind of think of it more as a fair use. <affirmative> you're you're dwindle in our chat room says as an artist, I've studied the work of other artists. That's how I learned how to do things. Why shouldn't AI be willing to do it's not an exact duplicate of the work of art. Yeah. It's influenced by or it's styled. Yeah. I don't think that should be fine. So

Lisa Schmeiser (01:51:29):
Harvard university has something called the studio habits of mind where they've broken down, how artists work. And one of there are eight studio habits of mind you have. And one of them is to actually immerse yourself into an art world so that you become familiar with it. And then observe also I desperately need to address your chat because there's somebody named add a sync there at a sync. We have two different William Gibson novels with two different cases of hunting down an artist in count zero it's Marley, Christo, the curator who goes to look for the AI winter mute. Who's making the little boxes and pastiche in pattern recognition. It's case Pollard who finds the video artist. Nora who's doing video remixes two completely different. They're very similar in that. Well God Bravo very similar in that. You're hunting down somebody. But in this case I was specifically referencing the winter mute built collages in count zero for a reason

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
<laugh> there you go. Thank

Lisa Schmeiser (01:52:24):
You. I'm sorry. I just had to get that on my

Leo Laporte (01:52:26):
Screen. Are we excited about the peripheral being made into a TV show?

Lisa Schmeiser (01:52:29):
My gosh, I'm so excited. I plan on plan on assessing own merits, but I'm also really looking forward to seeing how Gibson gets adapted as a serial format.

Leo Laporte (01:52:38):
I love William Gibson course. He wrote neuro answer, which was transformation.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:52:41):
My gosh,

Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
Cyber punk.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:52:43):
I would argue the blue trilogy is probably the most accurate future casting of the 21st century that we've seen so far, the blue pattern recognition spook country. And oh my gosh. I'm black.

Leo Laporte (01:52:54):
I'm reading the peripheral now. I didn't read it before. Cause I wanna read before TV show comes out,

Lisa Schmeiser (01:52:59):
Had

Leo Laporte (01:52:59):
A sink. You're crazy. He has a great this concept of PTs, which are Polter guys basically share spirits from another previous world, I guess <affirmative> and being used in our world, which is fascinating. He's a very anyway, back to AI. I'm sorry. Yeah. You were talking about Harvard.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:53:14):
Yeah. Harvard has something called the studio habits of mind. They're eight separate habits that they argue contribute to an active daily practice of craft and creation. And among those eight habits of mind, you do have immerse yourself in the art community so you can understand it better. Yeah. So that's a question we all. How does

Leo Laporte (01:53:36):
AI do that? As you said, I I've seen farther than others because I stood on the shoulder of giants. We all learn from our predecessors and I learned from Ken Norde <affirmative> I wish I were as good as Ken Norde, but if you said, oh, you can't sound anything like Ken Norde. Well, come on how art works. This is

Lisa Schmeiser (01:53:56):
But now I've seen, we saw a soy murdered, an ax murderer on as our Friday night family movie. And I it's such a San Francisco little movie, but Ken Nordine, I was like, oh my God. That's what my fire is. No, but that's what Mike Myers does as a jazz poet. Oh, cause Mike Myers is, you say, you can tell it's fiction is Mike Myers is gainfully employed as a jazz poet and <laugh> see

Leo Laporte (01:54:17):
When black beret and

Lisa Schmeiser (01:54:18):
He does, but there's the snapping. And really, I like when you introduce me to Nordine, I was like, oh my God, I've heard this before. And I just realized it was a paste tribute.

Leo Laporte (01:54:29):
Oh

Lisa Schmeiser (01:54:29):
My gosh.

Shelly Brisbin (01:54:30):
I love when those things click in your head. It's so much, I know

Lisa Schmeiser (01:54:33):
It's so

Leo Laporte (01:54:33):
Exciting. But to address what you were talking about, Shelly, I think you should be able to use AI generators as a small blog for illustrations. Here's what Ben Thompson on his blog, Strat tech, oh's such a good blog normally illustrates with napkin drawings. <laugh> yeah. He went to mid journey. So he is writing about his first job as a paperboy. He went to mid journey and created an image. I think these are beautiful. Well, I don't think

Larry Magid (01:54:56):
It's so much it's so somewhere to a DJ mixing sounds to mixes mix their music. I mean, we sort of a long tradition of integrating other people's work into our work. Some of which is legitimate, some of which isn't

Shelly Brisbin (01:55:10):
And I guess the point I was trying to make was not so much that it shouldn't exist, but that there should be full disclosure about the Providence of something. So that whether your goal is to protect the interests of a living artist or whether you're just trying to give credit where credit is due or whether you find something beautiful and wanna know whether you're allowed to use it or not what the source is. And I think what specifically referencing what Getty's doing is that, I mean, they're banning it because frankly they probably don't know enough about it. And they're probably saying, well, we need to make it go away until either we figure it out or until the culture at large figures it out. And then we can be sort of a trailing edge because, oh, that makes sense. The Getty and they make an awful lot of money doing this stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:55:51):
They, they don't want pre group Casky coming after them. And I don't.

Shelly Brisbin (01:55:54):
And I'm thinking about it as a user and as a potential Getty customer and thinking, I appreciate that. It doesn't mean that I'm being a Lu eye in terms of whether AI art is a good or a bad thing. It just means let's understand the implications of it before we throw it out there in the context for, we don't have full rights, I

Leo Laporte (01:56:13):
Screw rights. I'm all of course I just played four movie cuts that I, but honestly, in fact, I even said we need to install stable diffusion on a computer here <affirmative> so we could start using it for thumbnails, for our shows or <affirmative> album art stuff. I mean, look, we hired and used a very good design company to redo our album art a few weeks ago, we paid a lot of money for it and I'm glad to do it. And I wouldn't wanna replace the human artists to me. The bigger question is like, are these gonna get so good that you don't need humans to do it? <affirmative> I don't think that's a problem, but I'm not worried about appropriation. I think this is art. This is something Larry Lessig. When he started creative commons and Cory doctor have talked a lot about no artist creates in a vacuum.

Leo Laporte (01:56:58):
No. And that's why stuff has to go out of copyright. That's why you need a public domain because Disney did the brims fairy tales. Right. And of course, as soon as Disney made those movies, he made sure that no one else would do it. He pulled the ladder right up, out behind him, but that's not how it works. It should work. We continue to that's the grist for the mill. So I don't think I have a problem at all with these even just because they're AIS. I mean, I don't think that's a that's problematic. Let's let 'em go. And I think it's really interesting how it's exploded as soon as people could install it on their own computer, right? When it was a limited access to Dolly and you know, have to get in I've I applied for an invitation. I've never gotten an invitation years.

Leo Laporte (01:57:45):
Scene feels like years and months later but I can run mid journey. I can run a stable diffusion on my own computer. Now open AI has open sourced, a speech recognition system. And I think we're gonna maybe see the same explosion that Cambrian explosion we've seen of art with this it's called whisper. It has a variety of different training models. I guess this, I have to go to the site to see this. You can download it. It's written in Python and it's a command line, but apparently for people who have been using it, it's better than anything Google or apple or anybody else is doing. Wow. Now there are people transcriptionists who say, well, that's now I'm out of a job. There's Otter AI and other companies that are selling this that's life.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:58:41):
The thing I'm super curious about is how well will they handle accents

Leo Laporte (01:58:47):
Apparently very well.

Lisa Schmeiser (01:58:48):
Well, do they handle speech impediments

Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
That I don't know, but apparently it's surprisingly from the reviews I've read surprisingly good at accented speech, you have a multilingual models. So that means you could translate from one language into another and transcribe it. I don't know. I think this is very interesting. 680,000 hours of audio collected from the internet. They can have all my shifts

Shelly Brisbin (01:59:16):
And there are questions about how much of what they've collected is fully representative, whether it's accents or whether it's speakers in different countries with different sort, not dialects so much as just different patterns of, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:59:33):
It might be Castilian Spanish versus Mexican Spanish,

Shelly Brisbin (01:59:36):
Spanish. Yeah. And so there are potential issues. I think the open source is the secret sauce of it, because exactly there are lots of people who are very critical of Google's captions. For example, they are affectionately referred to in the hearing impaired community as captions <laugh> and then people are skeptical about Apple's got this live captions thing coming out. I don't think we really know yet how good it is, but for the people who use it as an accessibility tool, the ability to have text converted to speech is it's maze balls. And it's also really problematic cuz it doesn't work nearly as well as it should. And the idea of this being open sourced is that somebody who really wants to train it and make it highly tuned to the needs of somebody who is relying on this to understand material in variety of context, because what I like about Apple's doing, and I don't know what Apple's doing, I don't know how well they're gonna do it is they basically said anything that comes outta your computer. We can turn into speech any or into text rather. And that's ambitious. It doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be good, but the idea of this being open sources, that it can be applied all over the place and we can, it can continue to learn.

Larry Magid (02:00:50):
That's the advantage. How did that impact, right? I've thought about, for example, I have a lot of audible books and once in a while I kind wanna read the book now the easy solution to go out and buy the book right on Kindle. But I always wondered, could I record the auto, could I do a transcription of the audible book? Would that be legal? If I did it for my own purposes, it'd be cumbersome. But what are the rights issues when you transfer from one medium to another?

Shelly Brisbin (02:01:15):
Well, I don't know about that, but what is interesting is that happens constantly because screen reader, technology or apps that turn the reverse, you turn text into speech are super common. And so people are taking material that exists in book form, and they're listening to it as transcription or, but

Larry Magid (02:01:35):
Shelly, if there there're a special copyright provision for materials for

Shelly Brisbin (02:01:39):
Clients, but, but that stuff is not always handled under those provisions. They exist that way, but it happens outside of it. And the quality varies a lot. And people who rely on that technology have to be used to things like synthetic voices, which are getting better. I know we're sort of talking about the reverse of what whisper is doing

Lisa Schmeiser (02:01:59):
Well. No, but you bring up a really interesting point, which is right now when I'm reading the tech crunch thing is about transcription and or captions to give an example of, there was a little bit of a K fluffle at my daughter's school cuz when the principal sends out messages, their robo it's a robo voice and not her real voice. And people were complaining about this until she said in the PTA meeting, look, we serve families who speak 12 different languages in this school. So wow. She said, so when I send out the robo thing, what they found is it's easier to translate and have those play in native languages than it would be if she spoke with her natural rhythms, intonations and dialects. Wow. So there's something going on with the technology that makes robots easier to read and scan and <affirmative>, it seems like that would be kind of a natural compliment to this story because if you've got an open source thing that can recognize speech and transcribe it, it would not be that hard to slap on another module that then translates it back into audience. That makes sense.

Shelly Brisbin (02:02:58):
Somebody that makes

Larry Magid (02:02:59):
A lot. So Google actually does already. Yeah. Google does that on, they have an Android app that does that right. Where you can speak in one language and it will speak back in another language. Right?

Leo Laporte (02:03:08):
Isn't this though. A great test of open source versus commercial. Yes. I personally think by opensourcing it open AI is gonna improves the improve at a much faster rate. <affirmative> just because same with stable diffusion because people are training in on new data, they're adding new data, they're adding new languages. I love that. And frankly, I've been, I'm curious actually what the blind community thinks, but I've been very disappointed with the progress Google, apple, Microsoft have made with their transcription stuff. It could be so much better. I mean, it's good.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:03:43):
It should have been better. Once we all started working at Hellman 20, it

Leo Laporte (02:03:46):
Should have been better. It's showing that

Shelly Brisbin (02:03:48):
Your sense. Well before that, because there's no reason it couldn't have been better and not. I think what's improved is artificial intelligence and machine learning. The actual ability to transcribe, given pristine text, to turn it into speech or given speech that is easily understandable and is well recorded and turned into text. A lot of those nuts and bolts have existed and what's changed is we need to use AI because we have accents. And because we have so many different languages and because we wanna do it faster and all that stuff <affirmative> and it feels like it predates the pandemic. The pandemic is sort of a good opportunity to say there's more and more use for it because now it's really required that if you have zoom or Microsoft teams or something like that, that early on in the pandemic, zoom got better captioning ability than it had before. And it was because people with disabilities were like, Hey, I'm in zoom meetings. And I can't hear what's being said, I need captioning. And so zoom had to hurry up and improve their captioning ability.

Leo Laporte (02:04:50):
So this would be a hard thing to caption passengers on a recent American airlines flight were puzzled

Leo Laporte (02:05:01):
<laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:05:02):
By what seemed to be a hack of their PA system. Let me see if I can play this for you. I don't know if this video has been removed. Now, here it is. This is a guy on the weirdest flight ever. His name is Emerson Collins. These sounds started on the Intercom before takeoff continued throughout the flight. The flight deck said as far as we could tell, it's no danger to us. So we're just gonna keep on going. Listen, you tell me what you think these sounds are.

Ghost (02:05:35):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:05:44):
Coming through the PA system, it's upsetting. Somebody's having a really good or really bad day. It's very upsetting. They couldn't figure. Now

Leo Laporte (02:05:54):
Listen, cuz the captain's gonna come on here. Wait a minute.

Ghost (02:05:57):
The gentleman we realize there is an extremely irritating sound coming over. The public announcements. The flight deck is trying to troubleshoot, trying to turn it off. So please be patient with us. We know this is a very odd anomaly and none of us are enjoying it. So we do appreciate your attention just for a few more moments.

Leo Laporte (02:06:15):
It lasted the whole flight <laugh> wow. That's like a form of sex plus and then American airlines, a wow said who is having a pew. Ya <laugh> no, they did not say that. Oh wow. I don't know what that is. Tell me it sounds terrible. Whatever it is. It's terrible.

Leo Laporte (02:06:40):
American airlines in a press release or whatever said well, let me read this to you cuz I want to give them the PA system is wired. It's not wifi. It's not Bluetooth. American airlines inspected the Boeing 7 37, 800 as well as the PA system. When the plane landed maintenance, determined, the sounds were caused by an issue with the PA amplifier. There was no access to the system.

Shelly Brisbin (02:07:15):
My favorite detail was that it started right after one of those credit card ads

Leo Laporte (02:07:19):
<laugh> flight. It

Leo Laporte (02:07:21):
Happened at the very end of the credit card offer announcement <affirmative> before the attendant could hang up the phone. I hate that they do that on the planes. They try to, in fact, I fell for it once and another story she didn't know what to do since it happened basically while she was on three supervisors or air American Alliance management just went on board before first class. And so they couldn't figure it out and they still, as far as I know, haven't figured it out. In fact, some have tweeted something similar happened on an Airbus. So I don't John is do you know of any way that an analog amplifier could be modified and make it sound like a human going

Leo Laporte (02:08:00):
<laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:08:01):
I don't think so. Let me play it one more time because I want you to listen and be the judge.

Leo Laporte (02:08:10):
I love this guy's facial expression. Oh, <laugh> no idea.

Leo Laporte (02:08:21):
I don't know. Maybe this'll be a mystery

Leo Laporte (02:08:23):
Messed up. That's messed up. But without him it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. You gotta watch. You can't tell you can do it

Leo Laporte (02:08:31):
One more commercial before I have a few extra stories, but we're about ready to wrap it up. If you're wondering <affirmative> I know we got the house of the dragon to watch. We got places to be things to do our show today brought you though. And I gotta give him a lot of credit by audible audio books from audible saved my life. When we came back from the concert, John on Friday night and I was driving back, Lisa and I were reminiscing about commutes. I used to commute for 13 years from San Francisco to Petaluma an hour. If there's no traffic, if there's traffic two hours, each way that says from two to four hours a day sitting in a car, I got so sick of listening to the radio. Then audible came along and I joined audible 22 years ago and it saved my life.

Leo Laporte (02:09:20):
Audiobooks from audible are the best way you can spend time in the car, washing dishes, walking the dog, anytime you can't hold a book, you can listen to audiobooks on audible in every genre, from best sellers to new releases, to celebrity memoirs, to mysteries and thrillers, to motivation, wellness, business, and more there's audible originals. For in fact, I'm thrilled because audible has in their frontier series resurrected some of the great science fiction novels that were never audio and have put them on audio and done such a good job, recording them. They have the sand manual game and Sandman far better than the TV show to listen to the radio, play that Neil put together incredible parts. One and two, Steve Martin, his born standing up is you have to listen to the audio book version. It's so good. Renowned experts, exciting new voices and audio, even podcasts, commercial free as an audible member, you get to choose a title of months to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. But then you also get access to audible originals podcast. Two, you can listen to all you want mortgage added every month. It's a great selection. In fact, I'm really thrilled because Steve Gibson's been telling me about this great science fiction series that he's loving called the silver ships by SJ UJA. There are, I think, let me just see. I think there's like 20 of them, right? It's just a very, very, very long series. And Steve likes these. Yeah. There's like 20 of them.

Leo Laporte (02:10:57):
So I bought the first one, loving it. Then I discovered that many of the rest of them are already in my audible libraries. Part of the audible originals. That's so exciting. That's just one of the great things about audible. I've never run out of great things to listen to as an audible member for 22 years, they stay in your library. You can listen to them anytime. And I just, whether it's fiction or non-fiction I love the sound plus music stuff. They do, you know, listen to an artist talking about her music and then they play the music. It's just fantastic. In fact, I'm gonna add a few William Gibson novels to my audible list. Larry, you said you were listening to something.

Larry Magid (02:11:40):
I listen to I'm listening to John, Jonathan LA Ramirez at the big lie.

Leo Laporte (02:11:44):
Oh, I

Larry Magid (02:11:45):
Listen to a lot of fiction. I mostly like fiction on audible, but I listen to everything.

Leo Laporte (02:11:50):
You know what I do? I alternate.

Larry Magid (02:11:51):
Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (02:11:52):
Pretty much because I listen, if I listen to a lot of fiction, then I want hear some non-fiction and vice versa. <affirmative> lately I've been on a bit of a science fiction binge,

Larry Magid (02:12:02):
But what's great. Is I talked earlier about my Fitbit diet and it means I do a lot of walking to exactly calibration that's when I listen walking

Leo Laporte (02:12:09):
So good for you. Yeah. And my favorite day of the month is the 22nd cuz that's when I get my audible credit. In fact, I think for me, the retention's even better. There's some audio books on audible that I think are the life of pie I listened to. And instead of reading and I was sobbing at the end, it came alive for me. I really identified with it. You can listen to the audible app anywhere. Anytime I even have audible. Now my new watch and I downloaded the silver ships to my watch. So I put in my AirPods and I can go for a walk. Don't even have to have my phone and listen to my audio books while traveling, working out, walking, doing chores, let audible help you discover new ways to laugh. Be inspired or be entertained if you've not yet joined audible.

Leo Laporte (02:12:55):
And God knows we've been talking about it for 22 years. It feels like you can do it for 30 days free. When you go to audible.com/TWiT a U D I B L e.com/TWiTt or text TWiTt to 500, 500. If you've seen my interviews with Andy Weir, who wrote the amazing the Martian and his latest project, hail Mary, the Martian. So good, but let me tell you, the audio books are even better because the guy he gets to read his audio books has that ex he's got this snarky style and sound it's so, so good. I love it. Text TWiT to 500, 500 to try audible for free for 30 days or go to audible.com/TWiT. Oh, okay. I could go on and on for audible for hours. You listen, you Shelly, you must listen to audio books. Yeah. Oh

Shelly Brisbin (02:13:49):
Yeah. Yeah. I listen to quite a bit of audio

Leo Laporte (02:13:52):
Books. I love it. As I get older, my eyes get tireder. It's the only, and I try to read a book in bed at night. I get one page and then it hits me in the nose. So it's just really better. I think it's a better way to enjoy reading.

Larry Magid (02:14:10):
Qui chicken. Chicken.

Leo Laporte (02:14:11):
Yeah. It's the, yes, it is much. Definitely better than NY oil. Chicken. <laugh>

Larry Magid (02:14:20):
I'm

Shelly Brisbin (02:14:20):
Sure that's Audible's new slogan. Better than NyQuil chicken. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:14:23):
That's good. I like it.

Larry Magid (02:14:25):
I like it. I wanna cut that one.

Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
James Earl Jones. The voice of OB one Kenobi. No James Earl Jones.

Larry Magid (02:14:34):
He's

Shelly Brisbin (02:14:34):
Gonna nerd. Are you

Leo Laporte (02:14:36):
Okay? Forget it. Let's

Larry Magid (02:14:39):
Let

Shelly Brisbin (02:14:40):
Get us somewhere from the greatest Guinness. My shop liver, Leo,

Leo Laporte (02:14:43):
Leo. I actually wanna ask you about, well, alright first I gotta show you the promo. I forgot. This is what you missed. If you missed a minute of TWiT this week, watch.

Larry Magid (02:14:54):
Okay. It's called it's bananas. Yeah. And it is the monkey tail game. You get two monkey tails and then it comes with a belt and the belt goes around. You have to wear it. Yeah. You gotta wear your monkey tail. And now you have to walk around and bend down and loop and right. All right, I'm getting this. It's that's all riot. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:15:21):
Previously on TWiT

Paul Thurrott (02:15:23):
Coming up next on hands on windows. We're gonna finally take a look at windows setup and what has changed in windows 11, version 22 H two. Some of it may surprise you

Leo Laporte (02:15:35):
This week in enterprise tech,

Curt Franklin (02:15:37):
40% of survey data scientists, business analysts and students have scaled back their use of open source components since vulnerabilities and open source components have forced them to reevaluate the code frequently used in analysis and the creation of machine learning models.

Leo Laporte (02:15:55):
All about Android.

Florence Ion (02:15:57):
Here is my Z fold four. Oh, looks so S as you see, I have a cute Kate spade case on it. It is a portable tablet device to the point that using it when it's closed, might feel a little awkward because this is a slightly more narrow phone than what you're used to in the Android world. It it's like this slightly thinner brick. You can look through

Larry Magid (02:16:22):
It. TWiT

Florence Ion (02:16:23):
<laugh>

Larry Magid (02:16:24):
<laugh> geez.

Curt Franklin (02:16:25):
Like a Viewmaster

Florence Ion (02:16:26):
Flows all the way. I can definitely see through it.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:16:29):
Oh, that's weird.

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
They all have folds. I'm so jealous. Make sure you bought, what

Lisa Schmeiser (02:16:34):
Does that monkey tail

Leo Laporte (02:16:36):
Is that a stupidest? I bought one immediately after you showed it <laugh> oh, you know why? It's actually a good reason when the family gets together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, we need something so that we don't talk about politics, right? No. So we always have a stupid game that gets everybody laughing in this case, a monkey tail that you have to hook stuff with is nuts. So we always have this stupid game so that nobody will talk politics

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:04):
If you're looking for another stupid game. Yes. Exploding kittens game.

Leo Laporte (02:17:09):
Oh, that's wonderful. I

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:10):
Poetry poetry for Neanderthals.

Leo Laporte (02:17:12):
Oh,

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:12):
Because the deal, it's a game where you have to describe a word on a, you have to describe the word in the card using only one syllable words. <laugh> so if it's marshmallow bass sweet, sweet, soft

Leo Laporte (02:17:25):
Square. That's great. I'm

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:26):
Ordering it. And the thing is the thing. If you deviate from the one syllable, the opposing team gets to hit you with a giant inflatable bat called the no-no club. Okay. So it's highly recommend for poetry

Leo Laporte (02:17:37):
For caveman. Yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:39):
I'm poetry for Neanderthals. Yes. So although my nephews who were in high school, I'm gonna enjoy hitting them on the head with it is we played with a bunch of people who are smart enough to get into UC Berkeley. And they were like, stumped that, oh

Leo Laporte (02:17:53):
Yeah. Single syllables. Yes.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:55):
What's that? Exactly. It was a delight. I

Leo Laporte (02:17:57):
Don't know any words of what? So I'm

Lisa Schmeiser (02:17:59):
IUC Berkeley. I don't think I'm that smart.

Leo Laporte (02:18:00):
<laugh> my trainer went to Cal and he can't count to 20, at least when I'm lifting weights. He can't. So every time he says, how many is that? I don't know. <affirmative> so we were talking about James Earl Jones, not Alec Guinness, although I do love every Alec Guinness movie ever made the man in the gray suit or white suit, even

Lisa Schmeiser (02:18:23):
Murder

Leo Laporte (02:18:23):
By death, murder by death. That's a, not that's a later one, but James Earl Jones, I just learned from the chatroom's first movie was anybody

Lisa Schmeiser (02:18:33):
Great. White hope?

Leo Laporte (02:18:34):
No. Or no older than that. He had a bit part in a very famous movie. You might know as Dr. Strange love.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:18:42):
Oh, that right. I should know that. Bob fusing

Leo Laporte (02:18:44):
Master safety

Lisa Schmeiser (02:18:45):
On electronics.

Leo Laporte (02:18:46):
No spoilers. Hi, I'm Annie. That's a is

James Earl Jones (02:18:49):
To confusing mass safety on

Lisa Schmeiser (02:18:52):
Nice.

Leo Laporte (02:18:52):
Isn't that amazing, man. His very, I

Lisa Schmeiser (02:18:55):
Knew that somewhere in the back of my brain and I forgot it. I

Leo Laporte (02:18:58):
Will Lieutenant Luther my Luther Zog

Lisa Schmeiser (02:19:00):
Or on trivia

Leo Laporte (02:19:01):
<laugh> so he's also, as you point out the voice of O OB come, no jar Vader. <laugh> I just doing that to make you crazy. But of course, he's 91 now, which I didn't realize. Yes. And his voice is not the one you're used to <affirmative>. So there is a company in Ukraine. This is from vanity fair. <affirmative> there are, company's called speecher, by the way, they're doing some of this work from bomb shelters because they're in Keve and Lavi and so forth. That is working on voice synthesis for James Earl Jones for future cuz Darth Vader's voice can't change <affirmative> for future star wars, TV and movies. The last time he had actual dialogue was in the rise of Skywalker. And at that point he told Lucas, he said or Disney, I guess he's looking at winding down. So they hired Reese speecher and James Earl Jones has given them full license to duplicate his voice. In fact Jones family told them how pleased they were with the result of the work, giving his voice back to the galactic.

Larry Magid (02:20:19):
I'm really glad that they have a license to do that. They're just not bootlegging his voice.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:20:24):
Yes. And they're not saying well, you and that he benefit benefits wants we own you.

Leo Laporte (02:20:27):
Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (02:20:28):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:20:31):
And

Shelly Brisbin (02:20:31):
I don't know if his contract is better because he is James Earl Jones and has the ability to benefit from it and sign off on it than somebody else who was hired as a voice actor and something. And then their character goes on to become important and they wanna reuse it. He was sure has happened many times. Ken

Leo Laporte (02:20:46):
Was for a long time, as I remember pissed off about CNN,

Lisa Schmeiser (02:20:50):
This was CNN Lewis

Leo Laporte (02:20:52):
Is the world's whatever <affirmative>. Yeah. Apparently he was there doing an interview or something and somebody kind of said, Hey, could you say, oh really? Yeah. The world's most important news network or something. I can't remember what it is. They haven't used it lately.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:21:04):
So they basically did in boing where you kind of accidentally captured the

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
They got him to say it to a microphone and then used it. Wow. And he was a little M they eventually yeah. Made him whole, they settled.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:21:15):
Well, this can we do, does the article go into detail about the tremendous amount of tech expertise that goes into generating his voice? Both from a here's how we did perspective and also a here's how we did it while our country is currently being shell perspective.

Leo Laporte (02:21:30):
Yeah, they do.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:21:31):
Because that's what I'm interested in. They do people maintain a phenomenal continuity of it operations while they were being shelled. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:21:37):
Bogden and I wonder be EEV was working from home when the air raid sirens went off, begins the article they had. Wow. Been heard in the city of Liv since world war II, but it was February 24th in Russia had just invaded Ukraine. When we heard that missiles were attacking and that our internet connection was dropping for parts of the country we got into shelter says Boda. And that meant him, his wife, their dog, and two cats huddling in the center of their building. It's a shelter in quotes because it was actually our bathroom. Oh wow. There's a rule of two walls. Get ready for this. You need to be behind two walls. The first wall takes the impact. The second one stops the small shrapnel but for Belle, the work continued because he needed it to people on the other side of the world were relying on them. The project was a culmination of passion he'd had since childhood star wars. He's a synthetic speech artist at the Ukrainian startup re speecher. They use archival recordings in a proprietary AI algorithm to create new dialogue with the voices of performers from long ago, maybe

Larry Magid (02:22:39):
They can get KA Putin to a surrender

Leo Laporte (02:22:42):
Speech just Hey, flat <laugh>. They worked with Lucas film to generate the voice of a young Luke Skywalker for the book of Bobba fit. They needed to make James Earl Jones sound like Darth Vader from 45 years ago for the OB one Kenobi series. And even though they were under invasion in shelters all over the country they continued working because

Larry Magid (02:23:10):
You realize this means that the TWiT can go on for the next 200 years.

Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
I am so thrilled about that. They can, I have version of thousands of hours of my voice if they can't fake it by now. I love it. I love it. Mozilla has said that despite the fact that Google's Chrome and all the chromium derivatives are going to a new manifest manifest V3, which will effectively make it impossible for AdBlockers to work. I wonder why Google would do that. I don't know. Yeah. Mozilla has said Firefox will continue to maintain compatibility with manifest V2, which means for instance, that you block origin, which is the ad blocker. I recommend we all use around here will continue to work. Not with Chrome, not with edge, not with any other chromium based browser, but we'll continue to work. It's the web request API they need so that they can see the content as it's coming through and block it appropriately. So there are manifest V3 compatible ad blockers, but it's operation is somewhat limited by the lack of that API.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:24:28):
What's the market share that?

Leo Laporte (02:24:30):
Well, no one knows cause he gives it away.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:24:32):
Well, no, I was gonna say in terms of who's using what browser do we have

Leo Laporte (02:24:36):
That oh yes. I'm sure there is. I think Mozilla is a laggard.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:24:39):
Yeah. Cause it's fantastic technology. But if it's fantastic technology that doesn't significantly impact a huge percentage of web users.

Leo Laporte (02:24:49):
As you can see here using Firefox and I've used it for years. So that line at the very top of the graph, that green line 70%, what do you think that is? That's Chrome. This is globally. According to yeah. Or I'm sorry. Sta counter.com. Chrome is 65% of the browser market. Yeah. Number two safari, because you've got no choice. It's on

Lisa Schmeiser (02:25:09):
IPhones. It's on phones and tablets. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:25:12):
18%. And then there's a big clump at the bottom, starting with Firefox 3% as of last month,

Lisa Schmeiser (02:25:19):
It's kind of hilarious. This is how safari has managed to actually keep any position as well. We dominate the mobiles.

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
Yeah. We just lock you in. You can't use anything but safari, even if you're using Chrome yeah. On iOS, you're using web kits. So <affirmative> I use Firefox for that reason also. I wanna make sure that it is not a monoculture in the browser world. We need some competition. Yeah,

Lisa Schmeiser (02:25:37):
I do too. And I've been happy with it. It's making a point, but it's also a really good browser. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:25:43):
I love everything

Lisa Schmeiser (02:25:44):
Extens that I parks. Those

Leo Laporte (02:25:46):
Are exactly. Yeah.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:25:48):
Does the story basically mean the end of effective ad blocking technology for people on the world's number one browser or are on the number one browser share? Well,

Leo Laporte (02:25:55):
This is an interesting question because Safari's done somewhat something the same similar, right? <affirmative> and you, the ad blockers on safari in my opinion are very weak. <laugh> right. You can get 'em. But I think because they've done something similar now Google's excuse is gonna be, well, this is a security thing. We don't want third party extensions to be able to watch your traffic <affirmative> but if you want an ad blocker that's that's kind of a necessity <affirmative> so

Larry Magid (02:26:23):
Like Apple's excuse for controlling the app store. Not letting independent

Leo Laporte (02:26:27):
Security.

Larry Magid (02:26:27):
<affirmative> yeah. It's all about security protected

Leo Laporte (02:26:29):
Children. Yeah. We're doing it for you

Larry Magid (02:26:31):
Taking children. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:26:32):
All right. One last, since we're talking movies, one last star Trek, the motion picture finally done. Now you may think <laugh> you saw star Trek, the motion picture 43 years ago but it was a now Robert Wise who directed it always thought it was thin gr he eventually released a director's cut in the year, 2000 on DVD. But even then it wasn't what he intended. The reason is there were so many, there were so many theaters that were expecting star Trek, the motion picture, which incidentally was scheduled to come out just right before this thing called star wars <laugh> and they literally could not let it slip. In fact when they had the preview, Robert Wise delivered the last real reel of the film, literally wet with the chemicals from the developer <affirmative> he says he flew to Washington DC for the premiere, slept with the film under his bed that night and brought it into the theater.

Leo Laporte (02:27:38):
And the problem was it was a rough cut. And there's actually this great article in rocks talking about what a rough cut is. It's the first pass at the editing where you're just getting everything in order. And then you're gonna tighten it up. You're gonna shorten by a frame or two or many. You're gonna have it work better. They never got to do that. So if you've been waiting for it, there's a fella who has been editing this ever since he says 1500 additional edits. And this is his name is David fine. Robert Weiss died about 15 years ago has been working on this ever since he's they've been releasing a 4k disc, which is important too, because the original effects were not 4k. So they remastered the effects which are done by Douglas Trumble. The guy who wrote this article said, Mike Ryan, who's a senior entertainment writer at up rock said, this is the most gorgeous, stunning creation. Literally one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. So I can't wait 15 or so a hundred edits or so he says the motion picture star Trek. The motion picture is finally a film that feels properly. Pasted looks stunning and no longer keeps a viewers at arms length. So maybe that should be, that's a vintage film 43 years ago.

Shelly Brisbin (02:29:03):
I mean, this article sounded almost hyperbolic because it did my memory. And I it's been a really long time since I've seen star Trek, the motion picture. And I felt like most people do, man. Especially when you see the wrath of afterwards. And you're like, oh, that's how we do star. Exactly. And so reading this, I guess I'm having trouble thinking about editing and pacing and even improvements visually making that so much better a movie. I would absolutely watch it a hundred percent. And as we joke over on the incomparable, that's entirely too new a movie for my show. <laugh> will watch it on somebody else's show

Leo Laporte (02:29:40):
Kind of mind boggling that it's 43 years old. That to me is,

Shelly Brisbin (02:29:44):
Are you everything mine boggles that it's 40 years old. Yeah. I've been watching a fair number of seventies and eighties movies recently just for giggles and yeah, the age of them relative to my own life experiences is just annoying.

Leo Laporte (02:29:56):
They also looked pretty dated. I have to say there was a period that film went through where it really was just more dated than even older films for some reason. Yeah.

Shelly Brisbin (02:30:04):
Well you have expectations once you get into and black and white, I think changes it too. You're like, okay, I'm in a different world. I'm in a black and white movie, but if you see a dated looking color movie from the seventies, especially just something like with science, with sci-fi and special effects and stuff like that, I think that's probably more annoying than just of some sort of family drama from the mid fifties. It's black and white.

Larry Magid (02:30:27):
I still early check of color. I mean, I don't know. I'm the sucker for

Leo Laporte (02:30:30):
That. There is a look to it.

Larry Magid (02:30:32):
Saturated. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:30:32):
Yeah, yeah, sure. There's a look to it, but I love anyway. I thought I mentioned that I'm a star Trek fan. I'm sure many of our listeners are it is on, it's going to come out on D V on UHD, but I will hope that the streamers will pick it up at some point, cuz I haven't bought a DVD in a long time.

Larry Magid (02:30:47):
Yeah, me neither. My Blueray player broke and I haven't even replaced it

Leo Laporte (02:30:50):
Were, we went to Lisa and I went to see, I think mentioned this before Motley crew and Def Leppard and the Shriners were circulating raising money and they were selling Cru CDs. And so Lisa being a good citizen bought one. And so of the people sitting around us and then we all looked at 'em and said, what are we gonna do with these? We don't

Shelly Brisbin (02:31:14):
Have

Leo Laporte (02:31:15):
A CD player. Where are we gonna

Lisa Schmeiser (02:31:18):
Put this? Well, how the hipsters and the early OS got into vinyl really into vinyl. Do you

Leo Laporte (02:31:23):
Think they're getting the CDs?

Lisa Schmeiser (02:31:24):
I would love it. If the next generation of hipsters decided that CDs was like their thing to ironically embrace is authenticity.

Leo Laporte (02:31:31):
Oh God. I hope I certain certainly hope. I

Lisa Schmeiser (02:31:35):
Don't know. Oh my gosh. I could. I just see it now. I wrote like little soul patches and CDs.

Larry Magid (02:31:40):
<laugh> that means, that means guys. My age you'll have to start revising eight tracks. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:31:46):
Yes.

Lisa Schmeiser (02:31:46):
Oh God, I guess.

Larry Magid (02:31:50):
And I never had an eight track, but I had a lot of cassettes.

Leo Laporte (02:31:51):
Lisa, you're gonna be busy in just a few days. You've got enterprise connect coming up September 28th. Why don't you give a plug for this? What is it?

Lisa Schmeiser (02:31:59):
Sure thing. Enterprise connect is an in person show every March where we spend four days diving into the complexities of the communications stack. Again from basic level networking all the way up through demands on call centers, contact centers, up to collaborative communication systems and unified communication systems. We've done a lot with zoom, slack. Microsoft teams has been a big thing for us. One of the topics that we've seen a great amount of interest from our audience is on hybrid work. Namely they're the folks who are responsible for making it work. If you're working at home and you need to troubleshoot zoom, my readers are the ones who are gonna be the folks that make sure that your meetings still run. If you're in a hybrid situation, like we are here where we've got two folks. Yes

Leo Laporte (02:32:45):
We are. Aren't we? Yeah,

Lisa Schmeiser (02:32:45):
Exactly. I didn't think of that. And it's a whole new way of working and having conversations. We're pleased to be holding a big virtual event around this. We've got some really great sessions on how to identify the issues in the hybrid workplace, what it means to set up a meeting room. So it's accessible and giving everybody an equality of experience, what it means to be transforming a contact center when you no longer have a bunch of people in a bullpen, but they're all over the place. And more importantly, how new nine one regulations are gonna work when your workforce is distributed, but you're still under obligation to make sure oh that if the worst happens search and rescue can get them

Leo Laporte (02:33:29):
In time. Oh, I didn't even think of that. If you're working at home, you're still an employee and the company still has a responsibility. <affirmative> yeah. Holy cow. Yeah. Well, that's gonna be interesting enterprise connect <affirmative> you can go to enterprise connect.com and register for free. It's free. Yes. It's coming up. He's come September 28th, 1130 am to 6:00 PM. And you're the director of the program. So I bet it's gonna

Lisa Schmeiser (02:33:51):
Be really good. My boss, Eric crap is the one who put this one together. I'm the program co-chair for the live of too. Okay. But I have been helping to coordinate coverage of this before the show

Leo Laporte (02:34:00):
Smart. <affirmative> very political. Gotta give your boss credit for credit too. Absolutely. Lisa Scheyer writes for no jitter.com edits it in charge of it. <affirmative> you're editor in chief. Yep. Thank you so much for being here. It's so great to see you and your family's here. So I know. Hello family. Are you you, are you the girl scout? Where's my cookies. Oh, poor girl. Now I'm putting her on the spot.

Shelly Brisbin (02:34:22):
You'll have to say you'll have 'em in the winter, sweetie.

Leo Laporte (02:34:25):
Do you have some nuts for me anyway? No, not until October. Oh, okay. Next, next month. Okay. Next month. Yeah. Nice to see. They came to pick you up. Rides here. Lisa, we're gonna let you go. <affirmative> thank you, Larry. Magid connect safely.org. <laugh> you just put out I'm I shouldn't laugh. The new connect safely guy to teen sex extortion. Oh

Larry Magid (02:34:48):
God. It's not funny, but it's serious. I mean, if you're you have a teenage boy who is getting nude pictures from a teenage girl. Well, it probably isn't a girl. It probably isn't

Leo Laporte (02:34:59):
Teenage. Oh no.

Larry Magid (02:35:00):
And don't reciprocate by sending a picture cuz that person or that crime syndicate may very well get back to you with a financial demand.

Leo Laporte (02:35:09):
That's a nightmare because you would be liable a holy cow.

Larry Magid (02:35:13):
Oh a serious stuff. On a brighter note. We have a, if you go to our explore by topic section, you'll find a lot of other new stuff, including a lot of stuff on the metaverse. We are. We're not sure how the metaverse is gonna turn out or what exactly what it is, but we will try to make it a favor.

Leo Laporte (02:35:27):
You just be sure it'll be bad for teens. That's all. Well it'll, it'll be

Larry Magid (02:35:31):
More immersive. What it does.

Leo Laporte (02:35:32):
No,

Shelly Brisbin (02:35:33):
We can talk a whole nother hour.

Leo Laporte (02:35:34):
I don't want if I had I'm so glad my kids are grown 30 and 27 cuz <affirmative> I don't know what I would do if I had young kids these days. I don't know how you guys do it, but you're good parents. So, well

Shelly Brisbin (02:35:45):
We luck out with the one we have. So that helps a lot.

Larry Magid (02:35:47):
We'll check you.

Leo Laporte (02:35:48):
Yeah. It's adorable.

Larry Magid (02:35:50):
AOR. I'd like to think you'd be a regular reader of connect safely. Gluten.

Leo Laporte (02:35:54):
So I'm sure Lisa does it. All right. You've got quick guides there. Educator guides, parent guides. <affirmative> it also in Spanish. Lots of information. I think you do a Leo

Larry Magid (02:36:03):
For you. We do have a guide for online safety for seniors. So don't feel

Leo Laporte (02:36:06):
Oh, thank you. Wow. I appreciate that. Hey, can you tell me and for me how to use my apple watch

Larry Magid (02:36:14):
That's you

Leo Laporte (02:36:14):
Can't figure it out. Thank you, Larry. Always great to see you.

Larry Magid (02:36:18):
My pleasure.

Leo Laporte (02:36:19):
I like the new look. You do look about 20 years younger. You look fantastic. Yeah. You got your hair shortened a little bit. No more mustache. 20 pounds.

Larry Magid (02:36:27):
Barber shops down. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:29):
Going back to

Larry Magid (02:36:29):
Barber. You great. My own haircuts. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:32):
It's

Larry Magid (02:36:32):
Great.

Leo Laporte (02:36:33):
And Shelly boy, it's great to finally meet you and have you on a show, please come back again and again you are fantastic.

Shelly Brisbin (02:36:41):
Aw, thanks Leo. It was my pleasure. I really had a good time.

Leo Laporte (02:36:44):
Producer and reporter at Texas standard, Texas standard.org, cuz it's a nonprofit radio show all about Texas. And of course it's six colors.com and you've got a great show on relay.fm. All about old movies.

Shelly Brisbin (02:37:02):
May I plug my book as well? Oh just for

Leo Laporte (02:37:04):
Fun. Yeah. The new one is coming out when,

Shelly Brisbin (02:37:06):
But the new one probably early November, this is the iOS 16 version. It's called iOS access for all over@iosaccessbook.com and it covers all of the accessibility features in iOS in an exhaustive way. It's it's pretty comprehensive. And the deal I offer is that if you buy the book after apple has released iOS 16, which they did very recently then you will get a free copy of the iOS 16 version when it's released. So you get an old book now, but a new book will come to you for free. Oh, when it's available.

Leo Laporte (02:37:37):
So by the iOS 15 book now, cause a lot of that stuff, you get the new one. Stuff's still good. And then you'll get the new one. Yeah, totally ready. That's actually very good idea. And do you have braille additions or you have audio books? It's

Shelly Brisbin (02:37:49):
Bub or PDF people have asked me for both of those things and braille is very time consuming. Yeah. The audio is just fun because I can imagine myself sitting in my little podcast closet reading for hours and hours, but no UB, which is a very accessible format PDF, which I make accessible, but is less accessible than UB. So if you want the absolute best accessible format and it works on a devices that are specifically intended for blind folks like the da VI Victor reader stream, it's a Daisy compatible format. So EUB will fit your accessibility needs. Perfect.

Leo Laporte (02:38:19):
Hopefully I bet those voices are getting better pretty soon. You're gonna have yes. James Earl Jones reading to you. That'll be right.

Leo Laporte (02:38:27):
Thank you, Shelly. Great to have you. Thank you. Keep up the good work. All three of you. We do TWiT Sunday afternoons about 2:00 PM Pacific 5:00 PM. Eastern 2100 UTC. If you're really in a hurry, you can watch us do it live@live.TWiT.tv. And if you're watching live, please chat with us in the chat room, irc.TWiT.tv. After the fact we make on demand versions of all of our shows available@TWiTt.tv, the website or on YouTube, there's a dedicated channel for every show. That's a good way to share clips from the show. As long as YouTube, doesn't take it down. Fingers crossed and we also have of course it's a podcast on demand versions. You can subscribe to in your favorite podcast player and you'll get it that way automatically just in time for your Monday morning commute. We also invite you to take a look at club TWiT an ad free version of all of our shows club TWiT is $7 a month, but I think you get, it's a good deal.

Leo Laporte (02:39:24):
Not only you get ad free versions of all the shows you get access to the discord. Our club TWiT discord is a really great place to hang out. I feel like it's more than just a chat room about our shows. It's chatting about everything going on in the world from coding to cooking, to photography, to ham radio and hardware even travel space and sport ball. It's all in there. Plus from time to time, I'll play a video game on the stream. There we've been playing satisfactory lately, which is a lot of fun and we have our own Minecraft servers and so forth. So it's really a great community. You also get access to the TWiT plus feed, which is a lot of content that doesn't make it to the podcast, including shows that we don't put out in public because the club pays for them in effect, brand new shows like hands on Mac with my Sergeant, hands on windows with Paul Thra, the untitled Linux show with Jonathan Bennett, the GI fizz with Dickie Bartolo, Stacey Higginbotham's book club.

Leo Laporte (02:40:31):
We get a lot of stuff back our book clubs coming up next month. The book is the long way to a small angry planet. Oh, so that's gonna be a lot of fun. So Stacy and I and aunt and Pruit, of course, the club cheerleader. He's the manager there, the community manager at club TWiT seven bucks a month. Let's see. That's pretty good deal. Go to TWiT.tv/club TWiT there's monthly plans, annual plans and enterprise plans. Plus if you have one show and only one show you listen to, you can buy ad free subscription ad free versions of that show for just $2 and 99 cents. TWiTt.tv/club. Thank you everybody for joining us. I think it's just time to say have a great evening. We'll see you next week. Another TWiT is in can.