This Week in Tech Episode 905 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT this week in Tech. Soon to be Papa Alex Wilhelm is here, his wife. Do any minute now? He may have to run away in the middle of the show. We'll see Also Ian Thompson from the register. Connie Guglielmo, editor in chief of cnet. Lots to talk about. The FTC says, hold on. Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever. Elon Musk says, prosecute Fauci China scraps. Its covid testing and Apple celebrates. Plus a big move from Apple to bring end to end encryption to iCloud. And then we'll talk about the word of the year. A lot of great stuff coming up next on TWiTtter.

TWiT Intro (00:00:39):
Podcasts

Leo Laporte (00:00:40):
You

TWiT Intro (00:00:40):
Love from people you trust. This is TWiTtch is TWiTt.

Leo Laporte (00:00:51):
This is TWiTt this week in Tech. Episode 905 recorded Sunday, December 11th, 2022. The last helicopter this week in Tech is brought to you by Mint Mobile for a limited time by any three month Mint mobile plan. And get three more months free by going to mint mobile.com/TWiTtch. And by express vpn, take yourself off the naughty list with a number one rated vpnn. Visit express vpn.com/TWiTt and get three extra months of express VPN for free with a one year package. And buy ZipRecruiter. Ziprecruiter can fill any job you are hiring for this holiday season. Four out of five ZipRecruiter employers. Get a quality candidate within the first day. Try free at ziprecruiter.com/TWiTt and buy wealthfront. Visit wealthfront.com/TWiTt to get started and get your free $50 bonus with an initial deposit of $500. That's wealthfront.com/TWiTt.

(00:02:04):
It's time Forwe. This week in tech, the show. We cover the weeks tech news with the best journalists in the business, or at least the ones that are available on a Sunday afternoon. <Laugh> <laugh>, Ian Thompson is in studio with us. It's so great to see you, us editor of the register.com now, and a longtime stalwart in the show. Oh, always fun to pop up. Lovely. See you. I appreciate you coming up. I think we've gotta get back into the office. These, you know, back into, in, into being in there these days. Everybody's getting sick all of a sudden. So I'm not sure you're right on that. Well, flu colds, but you know, it's, I'm nervous, man. I'm scared. Also with us from beautiful downtown. No, beautiful Lower East Side, Providence, Rhode Island. Mr. Alex Wilhelm. Fully shaved. Hey, everybody. You just nothing. There's no hair. No hair at all. I, it took a

Alex Wilhelm (00:02:58):
While. It hurt. I bled a little bit. Good. You looking

Leo Laporte (00:03:00):
Over here. You actually look good. Thank you.

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:03):
I tried. I I tried very hard for you, Leo. I knew you were gonna show up wearing something silly and I'm like, you know what? We'll go

Leo Laporte (00:03:08):
Serious. You look like a baby, like <laugh>,

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:13):
Like a very old

Leo Laporte (00:03:14):
Baby. Since a baby in your household is imminent. I thought you were just doing it in tribute.

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:20):
No, this is this is my usual mo actually find Jason Howell asked if I could come on next week's TWiTt. And I said, well, that's our due date. So probably not. Yeah, no. And he was like, well, how about the week before? And I'm like, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:03:30):
But I have already given you permission. I want everyone to know if, if the call should come, then you must leave. And you don't even have to say goodbye. You just get the hell out. You know? 

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:41):
Well that's, that's fine. But then if I get bored and just want to leave and I just bounce, people will expect me to arrive tomorrow morning with baby. So

Leo Laporte (00:03:47):
Just say, Hey, I'm the baby. That's all.

Iain Thomson (00:03:49):
The one piece of advice my dad gave me if I ever had kids, was when it ti comes, time to, you know, go and welcome the new version in Bring sandwiches cuz everyone's be hungry.

Leo Laporte (00:04:01):
Takes a while and everybody's gonna be hungry. <Laugh>. That's Connie. Good yamo, good to see you, Connie. Editor-In-Chief of cnet, the only person who has any right to speak about having babies in this panel. Hmm. I I might, I might submit. All right. Great.

Alex Wilhelm (00:04:16):
2, 2, 2 kids. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:04:17):
Yeah. Yeah. You my wife and every woman I know who's had a child gets mad when guys talk about the expense of birth, because we didn't, we just were, we're, we're bystanders.

Iain Thomson (00:04:31):
Absolutely. It's

Leo Laporte (00:04:32):
Like breakfast.

Connie Guglielmo (00:04:33):
You have an important role to play.

Leo Laporte (00:04:35):
Sandwiches. Sandwiches. That's beg. I brought coffee. I brought I read somewhere. This is so stupid. I'm such a stupid new father. I read somewhere that Meso Soup was a good choice, <laugh>. So I brought a thermos. Oh God. Meso

Iain Thomson (00:04:49):
Soup. I'm in, I'm in a foreign country. And

Leo Laporte (00:04:51):
Jennifer like, said, get that old. It's making me nauset. Get, get that outta here. <Laugh> wasn't a good idea. I also remember, this is how long ago? It was 30 years ago. I remember writing a HyperCard stack to time the contractions. And I realized later that was just my way of dealing with the anxiety. It was like, <laugh>,

Iain Thomson (00:05:10):
Please tell me you didn't tell, tell

Leo Laporte (00:05:12):
You, Jennifer. I told Jennifer. And she, she, she knew she was married to a nerd. And I said, well, if it hurts, just tell me. And all I made it. So he pressed the space bar, and there's, and it, and it says,

Iain Thomson (00:05:22):
I'm amazed to life.

Leo Laporte (00:05:24):
We didn't. Yeah, no, we didn't get very far with that pro, with that project. I got about four or five contractions in and that was it. It was all over <laugh>. All right, let us talk about the stuff that matters. The news. It's funny. On Wednesday, Paul Thot and I were talking on Windows Weekly, and we kind of came to the conclusion, well, there's a slight risk, you know, with Lena Khan in there at fcc, there's a slight risk. They could, they could hinder the acquisition, the 70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The very next day, the FCC sues they have decided to block it. Any thoughts on that? Connie is, you know, the Microsoft's contention is this, does, this makes us the number three gaming company. Come on. Come on. We're not dominant.

Connie Guglielmo (00:06:15):
Well, you know, whenever it comes to Microsoft and monopolies in any market, there's a little bit of history there that gets people nervous. <Laugh>, that said the FCC does face a little bit of an upward challenge because this is what's called a vertical merger where they don't directly compete a hundred percent. Yes. Microsoft has Xbox, you made the point, they'll be number three in the market, but arguably that's not Microsoft's largest business, even with the acquisition. But, you know, people are very skeptical of big tech these days. As we all know, there's a lot of power in these large companies. And anything that gets a large company even larger is gonna raise questions and suspicions. So we'll see how this plays out. Like I said, they're from a legal perspective, there's a vertical merger is not a, the same as a different you know, a monopoly making merger. But nonetheless, it's the air, the era of distrust in big tech.

Leo Laporte (00:07:10):
Microsoft did a little tour, a tour of Contrition. Can you have Contrition before the act where they went to Sony and said the fact they even said, wait, rich Turner said we, or no, Richard Spencer Phillips Spencer, I'm sorry, what's his name? Yeah, Phillip Spencer said, who was the head of Xbox said we would give them a forever contract, but we can't <laugh>. So we're gonna give Sony 10 year guarantee that Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation five. They went to, Nintendo did the same thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I think they went, did they go to Steam and do I think they did. They went to Steam and did the same thing. So they reassured everybody hoping that this would force all the fccs action. Like, and certainly this was one of Sony's biggest concerns is, well, if Microsoft owns Call of Duty, they're not gonna allow it on our PlayStation. And I think that's silly. Of course they are. If does it make money? Yes. Oh, good. <Laugh>, you can sell it. Alex, is that a big concern? I mean, certainly exclusives make a big difference in console gaming. I just don't feel like console gaming is Microsoft's biggest business.

Alex Wilhelm (00:08:14):
That's, that's where I wanted to go with this. I, I think we're right about the FTC and the kind of legal world that we live in, but my, my question is why do they really want it? And also, if we can't stop this style of acquisition what can we stop

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
On your way back? Yeah. Well, and, and Lena Kahn, who is the chair of the FCC was also a very, when she was a professor, was it Columbia? She was a very strong advocate of antitrust section. In fact. Oh,

Iain Thomson (00:08:45):
She wrote, I mean, she wrote her thesis on Amazon, and by the way, a Brit as well. So thumbs up. But yeah, I mean, she's she's got the tech industry running scared at the moment. Yeah. Because I mean, they're really gunning for this, and it's about time. We need some competition in the market.

Alex Wilhelm (00:09:00):
But, but what, why, why do they need it? Like Microsoft may become the number three gaming company with this, but keep in mind that between Xbox and pc, they at least support an enormous fraction of the gaming market, and they already make all the money in the world. Like, what, can someone really walk you through the positives of this deal from Microsoft? Because it seems to me that a lot of trouble over nothing if they're not even gonna get the exclusives out of it. What's the real draw? They,

Leo Laporte (00:09:23):
It's a a lot of money, isn't it? 70, 69 billion. It's the largest consumer tech acquisition in two years. It's

Iain Thomson (00:09:31):
Like one and a half ELAMs here. It's

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
The biggest that Microsoft's ever done. It was bigger than their acquisition of LinkedIn. That's a lot of money to spend. I I have to say that Microsoft has been a good steward of gaming mine. They bought Minecraft and have, have made it bigger and better than ever. Right. Well,

Iain Thomson (00:09:51):
Okay. I I don't play it, but I mean, have they developed it much or

Leo Laporte (00:09:55):
Is it Oh yeah. Quite a bit. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. They put a lot into it. So you were saying that there's a, that Connie, this, this doesn't end with the ftc. They now have to go to court.

Connie Guglielmo (00:10:06):
That's right. That's right. And look, I to your question about why do they want it, where else are they gonna put their money? They're, they're an enterprise cloud maker. They have an, you know, a business audience. That's where they make the bulk of their money, and they have failed business dismally at almost every consumer play they've ever made in the marketplace. We've gone through two years of a pandemic where people in lockdown, guess what, wanna play a lot of games. And fortunately, or hopefully we're getting out of that pandemic mindset, you know, current caseloads aside. But, you know, Microsoft is looking at the long game in the future. They need to win over a larger audience, younger audience, diversify their revenue. It's the same story. Blahdi, blah, blah. I, when they go look at anything else, gaming has had a lot of potential just recently. Although now it's a little bit sluggish. I know we might talk about eSports in that whole world, but you know, what, what are they gonna do? Go buy a social media network. I mean, they're looking at opportunities and places that have affinities with things that they're working on. So it's, you know, at the end of the day, a business decision. But, okay, go ahead,

Alex Wilhelm (00:11:14):
Alex. If they have, they have so much money, they're gonna drop 70 b on, on one gaming company. Why not do the world of favor and bring back Windows phone with that $70 billion <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (00:11:25):
Oh, wouldn't that be? No, you being facetious. But that a favor, that was tweet. That

Iain Thomson (00:11:29):
Would be a favor a week.

Leo Laporte (00:11:30):
That would be a favor. I agree with you. Was

Iain Thomson (00:11:32):
Talking about it wouldn't, I was saying I was seeing some chatter about it this week, but it was just like, windows phone was such a dire operating system.

Leo Laporte (00:11:40):
No, it was a, okay, wait a minute. Hold on. Whoa, whoa. No, it was, it was a great operating

Iain Thomson (00:11:45):
System. I'm sorry. You can't get, fail the mobile operating system and then do an upgrade and say, right, everything else is d is now junk. We're not gonna support it. This was,

Alex Wilhelm (00:11:53):
Don't think mad about Windows, windows phone, 7.5 Mango update, or whatever the hell it was. We'll live in, in infamy. My tiles were smart. I'm really tired of Bio

Iain Thomson (00:12:02):
West. Were smart. Yeah. And,

Alex Wilhelm (00:12:04):
And we

Leo Laporte (00:12:05):
Need Zoom competition. This is right now the biggest problem going on right now. Hang on, Alex,

Iain Thomson (00:12:09):
Did you just say Zoom?

Alex Wilhelm (00:12:11):
Yes. I, I, I owned a Zune. The Zoo Pass just ruined your credibility.

Iain Thomson (00:12:17):
We've been friends for so long, but I'm not sure

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
I can, I can it Brown. Was it Alex? Was it a brown Zon?

Alex Wilhelm (00:12:22):
I I had the black Zon. Okay. The blue trim. And I will tell you this, when I was working on a farm, the, the Zune could get me through a 12 or 13 hour shift driving harvesters on one charge. And at the time, my iPod couldn't do that. And so the zoo saved my bacon when I really needed it.

Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
I have to say, this was the last Zon. The Zune HD was actually really, really good. They finally got it right at the

Iain Thomson (00:12:42):
End. But this was the same problem with Windows

Leo Laporte (00:12:44):
Solid

Iain Thomson (00:12:44):
All phone. You know, the Nokia phones were absolutely fantastic. Amazing running, amazing cameras,

Leo Laporte (00:12:50):
Operating system,

Iain Thomson (00:12:51):
Running Windows phone. Thank you. But then they bought Nokia destroyed, the company gave up on it. And if they're gonna come back in again, they, it's gotta be good.

Leo Laporte (00:13:01):
I I don't think they're gonna, I don't think there's a chance in hell they're coming back to phones. But I would say this, first of all, they probably unfortunately would use Android because the real problem with Windows phone was they couldn't get the developers to support it. Yeah. And the phone companies to support it, if you don't put it in the store on the front desk as somebody's walking in, nobody's gonna ever buy

Iain Thomson (00:13:20):
It. It was the same with the Palm Prix. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:21):
And so they didn't get the, they didn't get the support they needed to make it a success. And that's, if, if Microsoft does a phone, in fact they do one the, I mean, they don't like to call it that, but the duo is a phone and it's running Android. Yeah. Which is disappointing. I do think I agree

Connie Guglielmo (00:13:35):
On this. So

Alex Wilhelm (00:13:36):
Let's talk

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
About, go ahead, Connie.

Connie Guglielmo (00:13:37):
Hmm. What, what is Microsoft buying? They're trying to buy an audience. They're trying to buy a customer base. Yeah. They're trying to buy developers. Right. And that's what Activision potentially can gives them. Right? Doesn't give them a great corporate culture at Activision. That all needs to be cleaned up, obviously. But they're trying to buy growth in audiences and in communities and developers. Yeah. Is it the smart move? I'm not gonna say it's the smart move. They have a lot of money. <Laugh> remember once Upon a time they wanted to buy Yahoo for 49 billion. And I forget what year that was. And that would've been an incredible acquisition 15 years or 20 years ago, whenever that was. But you know, you have companies that are looking at paths ahead, and I'm not gonna say that they're always making decisions in the best interest of what is the best technology, what's great, what do we wanna bring to the marketplace? So, okay.

Alex Wilhelm (00:14:24):
Okay. I, I love, I love that they bought GitHub, did very well with it. Yeah, they've

Leo Laporte (00:14:29):
Been actually stewards there. Yep.

Alex Wilhelm (00:14:30):
Yeah. They brought Linux to Windows. In fact, are

Leo Laporte (00:14:32):
They good stewards at LinkedIn? That was their biggest acquisition.

Alex Wilhelm (00:14:36):
Linkedin's not really developer focused though. That's more of a, more of a social,

Leo Laporte (00:14:39):
But that was doing what Connie was just talking about, which is buying community. Right?

Alex Wilhelm (00:14:42):
True. C But what if, instead of buying Activision, what if instead they bought Unity, which is public and very cheap right now. Cause their's stock price is falling off the cliff. And then they, they get the Unity engine, which powers most of the mobile gaming world created an avenue back to get developers on board, on a mobile sense for Microsoft. Bringing us back to Windows phone,

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
<Laugh>,

Iain Thomson (00:15:01):
<Laugh>. Wait, I follow that is a long in a away road, mate, that

Leo Laporte (00:15:06):
I'll take your word

Iain Thomson (00:15:07):
For.

Leo Laporte (00:15:08):
I just think that what we're seeing right now, this duopoly of Android and, and Apple, especially in the stores, the app stores is not good. And Apple's facing a lot of heat because of that. Google's facing a lot of heat in that in the US from Lena Con in the eu. It would, it would be the heat, the heat is off if Microsoft by it creates a competitive phone platform. I guess that's probably a non-starter.

Iain Thomson (00:15:33):
I I think from a software perspective, it's incredibly difficult because, you know, it's too late. You've got, I mean, for developers it's too late back then. Yeah. I mean, you either go mass market for Android and get very little money, or you go niche for Apple and get a bit more money. But trying to create a third software ecosystem in the mobile phone sphere is gonna be, you've gotta have something absolutely killer to get people to change

Leo Laporte (00:15:54):
In a way, maybe ch I could change this story. Microsoft's has shown a lot of discipline discipline that other companies lack gave up on phone phone quickly when it realized it was, look at how short lives the kin was. As soon as it realized the product wasn't going where it anywhere, it gave up, it gave up on Cortana. And now Amazon and Google are stuck with a very expensive voice assistance that they have all incredibly hard time to monetize. Clearly, Microsoft realized that early on, maybe they're showing good corporate discipline. But you raised an interesting question, Connie, about culture, because yes, Activision Blizzard has a horrific culture with harassment. But so does Microsoft. Microsoft last week re there was a report released about Microsoft's lack of attention to complaints from female executives about advances from Bill Gates and others. They've had a similarly bad corporate culture. So I mean, this

Connie Guglielmo (00:16:56):
Maybe not quite as bad as Activision, Activision was.

Leo Laporte (00:17:00):
Horrible <laugh>.

Connie Guglielmo (00:17:03):
But yeah, this is a problem. Tech companies in general, right? I guess so. Lack of advancement of women. So I guess they're smart enough to put widgets together, but they can't figure out how to promote half of the gender in the world. So that's another conversation for another day.

Leo Laporte (00:17:18):
Well, maybe not another day. It's

Iain Thomson (00:17:20):
A good conversation. I did a story about this earlier in the month. Yeah. Because after 47 years, Microsoft finally released its first sexual harassment report, 47. I

Leo Laporte (00:17:30):
Mean, they were forced to do it.

Iain Thomson (00:17:31):
Yeah. I mean, I, I spoke to Katie Missouri about this, and she was just like, well, I only took nearly half a century. You know, it's

Leo Laporte (00:17:39):
Just, and and one of the things that came out was that there were many cases where they just ignored the complaints of, and particularly with the, the highest level executives did not come out well for Bill Gates.

Iain Thomson (00:17:52):
No. Well, I mean, he's,

Leo Laporte (00:17:53):
He but kind of knew

Iain Thomson (00:17:54):
That he has a record. But I mean, this goes across pretty much every Silicon Valley firm as far as I

Leo Laporte (00:17:59):
Can see. Well, that's the interesting question. Yeah. It's just, it's just how it is in Silicon Valley. And, and it shouldn't be. It should do something about it, I guess. But

Iain Thomson (00:18:08):
It's changing. It's changing slowly, but it's changing way

Leo Laporte (00:18:11):
Too slowly. That's not gonna come into any consider a court's not gonna consider that. Ftcs not considering that. Right? I mean, it's just considering the market and the, and the amount of share that a market would get.

Alex Wilhelm (00:18:23):
Yeah. I'm still not, I'm still not sold on the deal. But I, I do think that Lena Conn flexing your muscles here is indicative of what we expected from her when she got the job.

Leo Laporte (00:18:31):
See, I feel like it's almost performative that politics these days is so performative. It's like, oh, not really necessarily there's a problem here, but I've got to say something cuz you know, I've got to show the flag.

Alex Wilhelm (00:18:43):
No, no. Leo, come on. If she didn't try to stop this, what's her point? And so if she did try to stop it, she's doing what she said she was gonna do. I I think you're going one level two cynical on this. I think we have a reform-minded person in the chair. There's a big deal with a big company coming through. It'll make an even bigger company. And frankly put aside the fact that it's Microsoft, that it's Activision Blizzard, that it's big tech. Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world, period. And it wants to buy an enormous company that may change the competitive landscape. This is where we should have the government come in and be like, actually 2 trillion in market cap is sufficient. Like, come on, if we can't stop this, then what deal would not trip the, the red lines of corporate glomeration? This is the blog. Okay.

Connie Guglielmo (00:19:26):
And I'm laughing at your comment, Leo, that politics these days is performative <laugh> these days. Like what? Dude, wake

Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
Up. All of a sudden people are

Connie Guglielmo (00:19:37):
<Laugh>. Alex is Right. She came in on a platform to look at big tech. Yeah. That's literally what she came in and said. Yeah. Yeah. And we talked about her, her background. And so it's like, oh, should anybody be surprised? I'm sorry. Like no big tech has gotten big and the influence that it has over our lives, if you were uncertain about it before, certainly living through the pandemic has convinced you that these companies have a lot of power, have a lot of influence, have a lot of sway in your life, and it's all well and well and good until something happens that annoys you or inconveniences you, or you realize, wait a minute, that's not fair. Right. And so, I mean, we can talk about what's happening with TWiTtter and the fate of democracy, but Microsoft is a very, very large company. They wanna get bigger because their whole rationale is not the betterment of humanity. It's the betterment of profit. And they're looking for audience and people and opportunity. And why don't they buy unity? Cuz they're also looking for scale. How fast can we do it? Ooh, ouch.

Alex Wilhelm (00:20:37):
Ouch. Ouch, ouch. Brutal. I used to talk to the unity of CFO f after earnings, and then they stopped asking when their stock price fell by

Leo Laporte (00:20:43):
It's unreal engine all the way. Right? That's, it's just done. That's why, cuz it's unreal. Except for Apple. Because Unreal engine doesn't run an apple, cuz of epic apple. But but well,

Alex Wilhelm (00:20:53):
Unity powers a a big chunk of the mobile gaming world. I was joking mobile earlier about that. Mobile. Yeah, mobile. And, and that's why I tried to connect you to Windows phone earlier as a joke. But like,

Leo Laporte (00:21:02):
Oh, I finally got it, it up. Thank you for explaining that joke. I,

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:06):
Sorry, I thought, I thought I had a more sophisticated

Leo Laporte (00:21:08):
Audience. There is an issue.

Iain Thomson (00:21:10):
Meow. Ooh.

Leo Laporte (00:21:12):
Oh, I

Iain Thomson (00:21:12):
Just get

Leo Laporte (00:21:14):
Kissed there. Oh, that hurts right here.

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:16):
Rib. Here's the prop. Here's the problem. You guys are all in California. My state that I love, it's two 30 in the afternoon there. It's dinnertime here. And I'm gonna get hungrier and get hungrier

Leo Laporte (00:21:25):
Some food. Get a Snickers. I'm

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:26):
Out, I'm out in the shed. Leo, there's a wind snowstorm between me and the house.

Leo Laporte (00:21:31):
Your wife is rather large right now

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:35):
And she would not bring me food because she's my spouse, not my servant. So like, I'm just gonna be hungry.

Leo Laporte (00:21:39):
You're a modern man. That's very

Iain Thomson (00:21:42):
I'm right.

Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
Impressive.

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:44):
I aspire to be. I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:21:45):
Good for you.

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Tech politics is a little performative. Yes. <laugh>. And I do worry a little bit about performative actions against big tech. Okay. Maybe you should say you know, Activision, Microsoft, that's not a good idea. But look at all the state governments now banning TikTok.

Iain Thomson (00:22:04):
Oh, it's,

Leo Laporte (00:22:05):
That's performative, isn't it?

Iain Thomson (00:22:07):
Yeah. It, it's useless. I mean, it, it really

Leo Laporte (00:22:10):
Is Tennessee now.

Iain Thomson (00:22:11):
South Dakota.

Leo Laporte (00:22:12):
South Dakota, Christie no,

Iain Thomson (00:22:14):
A huge problem in South Dakota, Maryland. Rural poverty. No broadband. The rest of, but no, let's ban TikTok

Leo Laporte (00:22:20):
<Laugh>. And they aren't banning it for citizens. They're just banning it for state government. Cause that's all they can do. But that, I mean, it's pure performative, but, or maybe not. You know what probably the app shouldn't be on the phones of service members in the Pentagon. Shouldn't be on the phone of, you know, people with high profile jobs and security issues. Okay, that's fine.

Iain Thomson (00:22:40):
Well, no, I mean, we've seen this before with things like fitness trackers, which exposed us bases. We've had

Leo Laporte (00:22:47):
Strava. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (00:22:48):
Yeah. We've had, you know apparently the US government claims that they managed to send a hellfire drone after an Al-Qaeda senior level up, because somebody put a post, put a geo tagged picture on social

Leo Laporte (00:23:00):
Media. If you're an Al-Qaeda don't use TikTok. Probably good. A good idea not to use TikTok <laugh>. So there are people who shouldn't use it. But for regular citizens, how much of a threat is that? There is a commissioner of the FCC who says it should be banned. Well,

Alex Wilhelm (00:23:12):
He's, he's Dr. Performative. I track the fcc, but Mark Warner is

Leo Laporte (00:23:17):
Michael, right? Senator? Yeah, Senator Mark Warner also says it should be banned. 

Iain Thomson (00:23:22):
I mean, does everyone hear

Leo Laporte (00:23:23):
This is why I worry, this is why I worry about coming down on big tech as a general principle because it's, we've gotten a lot of benefits from big tech. We survived. 

Connie Guglielmo (00:23:36):
But Lee, Lee, are you ignoring why people are mentioning this and why we wanna, might, might not want TikTok on the mobile phones of government contractors or people in a position of power that affects our nuclear arsenal? It's because the Chinese government can be collecting data on the backend. We don't know what we don't know. How does that affect you and me and, and our everyday life? I don't know. Probably.

Leo Laporte (00:24:03):
Do you think TikTok is a hazard to you or your kids

Connie Guglielmo (00:24:07):
Don't know? I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:24:09):
Well, I, I could tell you, spending

Connie Guglielmo (00:24:11):
My life every day. There's

Leo Laporte (00:24:12):
Some Amer there's some American companies that are a hazard to you and your kids. Facebook. I

Connie Guglielmo (00:24:18):
Mean, it's all Fox. It's all scale. Just

Leo Laporte (00:24:20):
Cause it's Chinese doesn't mean it's a hazard.

Iain Thomson (00:24:23):
Okay. Out of interest of, of the panelists here, who has TikTok on their personal phones?

Leo Laporte (00:24:28):
Oh no, I, yeah, I do. Yeah, I think so. I take it off of Okay, we fine. I'm the only one Yeah. Know the Chinese I'm missiles are gonna hit me.

Iain Thomson (00:24:36):
No, I mean, I have it on a burner phone, but I won't have it on my

Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
Personal. Wow, you guys are paranoid.

Iain Thomson (00:24:40):
<Laugh>. Hey, only the panelists survive <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:24:43):
I, I think I stead Leo, we're, we're just aware of how information policy works with Chinese companies. No, I understand. And, and this is understand second regulation in reverse. I understand. Do you care about? But, but what are they gonna do with that information?

Iain Thomson (00:24:58):
Whatever they want. What?

Leo Laporte (00:24:59):
But what do they got? They know where I am. Maybe. No, I've turned off Lation services. What do they know? They don't know. Didly. This phone is not, this app is not giving up much. And there are far worse apps you guys are using already. By the way, does this reassure you, TikTok has announced that Oracle will now be storing all US citizens data. Are you happy about that <laugh>?

Iain Thomson (00:25:20):
No. Yes. I, I trust Larry Oracle.

Leo Laporte (00:25:23):
So wait a minute though. It's American.

Iain Thomson (00:25:25):
Well, no, but I mean, okay. We, we, we, we dis China for this. But let's fight under the Patriot Act. American companies are just as liable to hand over data to the government as Chinese companies are. So let's not be hypocritical about this. All hail the glorious leader. But I mean, it's, it's one of those things that if you're dealing with a national software, then you know, you, you have to, you have to accept. But I just, I'm not happy about sending that data to China.

Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
Okay. I'm worried that it might be more xenophobia, it might be anti-Chinese sentiment as opposed to actual legitimate fear. Well, don't well, don't conflate criticism of a totalitarian government with dislike of the people at Oppresses. No, of course not. And we're not saying that we're, cuz clearly the issue is that the Chinese government can see everything. You know, all they have to do is knock on the door and say, Hey TikTok, we wanna see what, what's going on.

Iain Thomson (00:26:16):
Right. Asking the American government with Gmail and

Leo Laporte (00:26:18):
Yeah. There's positions, there's, we are being our, if privacy's being invaded by a lot of people, TikTok is, is the least of your worries. What are they gonna do? I do. If you're a Chinese national, overseas Chinese national, don't use TikTok. Of course not. You shouldn't use WeChat either. No. Which you do, because that's how you stay in touch with your family. Yeah, I understand that. But me, you, Connie what, what are they getting that's so scary? They're

Connie Guglielmo (00:26:49):
Not getting, they're getting a psychographic profile of who you are. Oh. And what you're interested and what you like and what you don't like. And by the way, TikTok is making this big push around the world, not yet in the US to set up e-commerce shops so that you can buy stuff. Then I get even more data about you, what you liked and what you didn't like, and what you bought and what you didn't buy. And so they're creating a profile of you at a very, very minute level, starting with what kind of dance music you like to, or what Italy,

Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
But Instagram you like. So are you less worried about Instagram knowing all that? And by the way, they are selling stuff.

Connie Guglielmo (00:27:22):
So I'm gonna repeat what Ian said as journalists who followed this stuff. I'm nervous about all of it. Okay. You don't know what they're doing with it. And you know, Andy Grove is right. Only the paranoid survived <laugh>. But I, I do remember that app that everybody was so enamored with where you could put in your photo and then it would age you and show you what mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, what you look like as you got older. Oh, what's the big deal? It's just a game. Well, now that somebody's building a world's database of every face on the planet and well, how well

Leo Laporte (00:27:53):
Face recognition. I agree. I agree.

Iain Thomson (00:27:55):
Well, I mean, cl Clearview is, is doing this on a, on an industrial scale. I do get slightly peeved when I see these people. Oh, this is what an AI generator makes my face look like. It's like, right. So you've given that AI system six to eight pictures of your face. You think they're just gonna delete those. It it,

Alex Wilhelm (00:28:14):
It's <laugh> just, just

Leo Laporte (00:28:15):
Bonkers. I'm just more worried about American companies who are without any restriction, collecting information about us, which we allow cuz they're American. That seems to me as much of a danger, if not more. But the danger is they're gonna, you know, they're gonna try to sell you stuff. 

Alex Wilhelm (00:28:32):
Leo I'll compromise with you on this and I'll, I'll say I, I'm worried about TikTok. I'm also worried about American companies and I vote for stricter regulation on all of them. Yeah, yeah. But I think that, I think there were so lagging behind the technology here, but the regulatory structure, which to be clear, I know capitalism and it's important to have some free space at the Frontiers and blah, blah, blah. But like, you know, this stuff isn't new anymore. We should have better rules about it. But this came up in my life because having a kid, and we're trying to think about how we can share pictures of,

Leo Laporte (00:28:59):
Oh, get ready baby. And the hospital, the hospital will sell information about this birth.

Alex Wilhelm (00:29:05):
Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (00:29:06):
I'm not, and you and your child will be notified with a draft notice at the age of 18, thanks to the hospital. And at age 21, we'll start receiving mail saying, and now that you're 21, because everybody knows exact, all their, you know, this is amazing. Now, hospital's been selling that information.

Alex Wilhelm (00:29:21):
I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm trying to think of a way to share pictures of the kiddo with our extended network without either giving the information to a major platform or making it publicly accessible. And the answer appears to be printing out photographs and mailing them. So I, I'm a little disappointed by how Ad Tech is.

Leo Laporte (00:29:38):
So somebody in our chat room, burn Tech says, will, the reason this is a problem is cuz communism is gonna do with the data different than what Instagram or other US companies do with it. What is communism gonna do with all that data?

Iain Thomson (00:29:52):
Oh my God. Have you been to China? <Laugh>? I mean, seriously. Yes. The first, I mean, the first time

Leo Laporte (00:29:57):
I went to China are are you worried about religious persecution? No.

Iain Thomson (00:29:59):
No. It's what, when you go to China, you realize yeah, they are communist in terms of state control.

Leo Laporte (00:30:05):
They're very capitalistic

Iain Thomson (00:30:06):
When it comes to business. They're capitalistic and they're better at it than we are <laugh> cuz they have fewer Whoa, whoa, whoa. Alex,

Leo Laporte (00:30:13):
Are you having a baby? Oh, okay. He doesn't like that. Oh, wait,

Alex Wilhelm (00:30:16):
No, no. I, I was just complaining. I I didn't mean to cut you off. Nah, I feel terribly rude. I was just gonna complain about your capitalism point in China. But please, Ian, keep going.

Iain Thomson (00:30:24):
<Laugh>. No, all I'm saying is, I mean, they are hyper capitalist foot down on the floor all the way.

Leo Laporte (00:30:29):
Oh, it's amazing. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. But I mean, shopping in China is quite an experience,

Iain Thomson (00:30:33):
But with you know, the communist state control over it. But in terms of business, they have far fewer safeguards than we have in the US in terms of dealing with data. Dealing with,

Leo Laporte (00:30:43):
Yeah. They let, they, let, let Jack Ma do whatever he wanted until he, he went up against, until globally known and went against them. And then of course he's gone. Yeah. But I mean, that's really the big sin in China is not selling as much as you can.

Iain Thomson (00:30:56):
No, the big sin is going is is threatening state government any way at all. In which case you are absolutely

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
Screwed. I wanna move on. We got, we got, we got a lot to talk about and we have only about three or four hours to talk about it. <Laugh> No, I won't do that to you. It's so good to have all three of you. Thank you Connie Guo yamo for being here. Editor in chief at cnet. Ian Thompson, editor US editor. But that's in chief. Is there somebody higher than you in the us?

Iain Thomson (00:31:24):
We have an editor in chief, but yeah, we're basically, it's,

Leo Laporte (00:31:27):
It's a flat

Iain Thomson (00:31:28):
Honestly. It, it's, it's a very, you know, it's like, it's a title. They, you, you

Leo Laporte (00:31:32):
Actually have a title, but it's kind of like the Chinese poll borough. No, that's,

Iain Thomson (00:31:37):
I was gonna say I'm curious. <Laugh> No, but I mean, it's

Alex Wilhelm (00:31:39):
A flat Yeah. Finish that sentence.

Iain Thomson (00:31:41):
Everyone writes, edits or sell, so, you know, it's, that's what

Leo Laporte (00:31:44):
I'm saying. Yeah. and of course Alex Wilhelm, who is in fact editor-in-chief of Tech Crutch Plus, that's new, right? You stopped doing that. Now you're back doing that.

Alex Wilhelm (00:31:55):
Lu TechCrunch came back and then ended up hoping out run the this different side of the, of the site. Thank

Leo Laporte (00:32:01):
You for a while. You were just a reporter at TechCrunch.

Alex Wilhelm (00:32:03):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:32:04):
Yeah. Now

Alex Wilhelm (00:32:05):
You're a manager. Again,

Leo Laporte (00:32:05):
They keep pulling you in

Alex Wilhelm (00:32:08):
Once you've managed people once, people want you to keep doing it. Yeah. Because managing people, as I'm sure Connie knows, is is the funnest and, and most edifying thing, oh

Leo Laporte (00:32:16):
God.

Iain Thomson (00:32:17):
It is one of those weird dichotomies about journalism. It's, the better you get at it, the less they, the less the leader.

Leo Laporte (00:32:22):
It's the Peter principle. That's the Peter principle. People rise to their level of incompetence.

Alex Wilhelm (00:32:28):
<Laugh> and I, I have reached mine,

Leo Laporte (00:32:30):
<Laugh>, our show today, brought to you by Ryan Reynolds. No, by Mint Mobile. Although I have to say Ryan Reynolds, ads for Mint Mobile are fantastic. Oh, this holiday season, the best deal in wireless. Forget all those ads. You're gonna see all, oh, I guess I hate these ads where they get big celebrities and all these, you know, personalities saying how great they are. And this is why I love Ryan. He says, no, no, no, no. We're just gonna give you the best deal and, and spend the money. You know, forget the money we're spending on marketing and we're gonna give you the deal right now. When you switch to Mint Mobile, get this, and by any three month plan, just add another three months for free. For free. The first companies sell premium wireless service online only. And that means they save, they not only buy cheap ads, they, they don't have stores.

(00:33:19):
They don't waste money on a bunch of other stuff. They just, they just sell online. You can order and activate from your very home. In fact, now they support eim, which is great. You don't even have to get a sim mail to you. You can just put it in and you're gonna save tons in the phone plan. Now, people always come to me, say, I got a great deal. I'm only paying 75 bucks a month. I'm only paying 50 bucks a month. How about $15 a month for unlimited nationwide talk and text high speed data on the nation's largest 5G network. 15 bucks a month. Come on. Beat that. I guarantee you I've looked. No one can beat that. That is a great, great service. I've been using Mint Mobile now for two years. This would be a great time to switch. I gotta tell you, there's a sting when you get your cell bill from those other guys.

(00:34:07):
It's big and it seems to get bigger. And there's all those hidden fees and, you know, weird stuff they add to that. No Mint mobile. It's very simple. No hidden fees, no magic stuff. Just 15 bucks a month. And for a limited time by any three month plan, you get three more months free by going online only with eim Eli. Eliminating the cost of those stores. Mint mobile passes significant savings on to you. All their plans. Unlimited talk and text, high speed data. I'll tell you the secret, they're on T-Mobile. There are T-Mobile, M V M O and vno. So if you get good T-Mobile service, you're gonna get good mobile service. It's great. And by the way, yeah, I'm getting 5g. T-Mobile calls it uc, ultra capacity. Almost everywhere. Almost everywhere now. That's amazing. Bring your phone if you want. Switch effortlessly with eim.

(00:34:57):
If your phone supports it. If you need a new device, they sell cell phones too. A great place to get an iPhone SE or iPhone 14. And for a limited time, you'll get six months of service free. When you buy a select device and plan, wait a minute, they buried the lead half a year free. When you buy a phone from 'em, switch to Mint Mobile. You'll get premium wireless service, great service. 15 bucks a month. They have unlimited plans. They have other plans as well. 15 bucks a month is four gigabytes of data a month for most people. That's all you need. Why are you paying more? Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month for a limited time by any three month Mint mobile plan. Get three months more free. Go to mint mobile.com/TWiT mint mobile.com/TWiTt. This is absolutely the best deal in cell phones and there's just no reason not to do it.

(00:35:52):
Mint mobile.com/TWiTt Thank you Mint Mobile for supporting this week in tech. You support us too. And this is very important by using that address that you know, extra little thing at the end slash TWiT cuz that's how they know you saw it here. Mitt mobile.com/TWiT. This surprised me. Connie, you just briefly mentioned this. Bloomberg had a story this week that eSports is fading. The hype around eSports is fading as investors and sponsors dry up. And I was just saying a couple of weeks ago, I thought eSports was about to take over from the N F L and FIFA and everybody, I guess I was wrong. Fund funding sources are dwindling. Signs abound. This is Cecilia Anastasio at Bloomberg Writing signs abound that athletic competition via video games, <laugh> doesn't have anywhere near the earning potential investors anticipated.

Iain Thomson (00:36:44):
Doesn't this, doesn't this come back to what you were saying, Connie, with, you know, we're coming out of lockdown now. So, you know, just sitting in playing games all, all the time just isn't, isn't the option that it was, you know, a couple of years ago.

Connie Guglielmo (00:36:58):
Well, I think people want to sit around and watch games as everybody I know has been watching the World Cup <laugh> week. But yes, I think the market is changing. But I also think one of the biggest changes is that the ad market is collapsing. And by that I mean a lot of advertisers are concerned about inflation and the recession, whether we're in a recession or not in a recession mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they've pulled back their ad spend. And that is affecting everyone. All media companies are seeing a massive shortfall in ad spending because companies who have the dollars are very cautious. And that obviously affects this eSports industry where advertising is gonna be a big chunk of their revenue. So if you don't have money to invest and there's no growth, well that causes a little bit of a problem no matter what business you're in,

Leo Laporte (00:37:42):
<Laugh>. Well, but that's a, so let me, that's an interesting question. Isn't this just a part of the economic cycle? It's down now, but it'll it'll come back. God, I hope it'll come back later. Cause we're seeing that too. And podcast ad sales. I

Iain Thomson (00:37:55):
Dunno. I mean, I, I think it's working in, in some regards. I mean, Alex and I are both not sure about the con, but I mean, we're both for Formula One fans and we're down in the down season at the moment, and now eSports is trying to take over. And you try watching some of these races. No, it's not. We're near

Leo Laporte (00:38:12):
As much fun. But I always think when I think of that, I think of how I enjoy cricket. <Laugh>, I don't know the game, so I don't Right. <Laugh>. And I think to some degree, frankly, I found the same thing with soccer. I, I mean that one, that that game between England and the US that ended with nothing, nothing tie that to me was like watching paint dry. But that's, I recognize that's probably because I don't have the same, you know, understanding of the sport. So maybe that's all that's missing in eSports. Maybe you need to learn more about Dota two.

Iain Thomson (00:38:45):
I think because it's virtual. You, you lose something, you know, if it's not, I, I've tried watching eSports racing and there's not that, you know, a car, two cars bumped together and the software, you know, puts a slows one down a bit and the rest of it, but it's not quite the same. I I think the same with football, the same with probably his own eSports baseball thing. But I mean, eSports cricket, I can't imagine anything worse.

Leo Laporte (00:39:12):
But nobody's doing eSports. Cricket. You're right. <Laugh>. But

Alex Wilhelm (00:39:16):
There were eSports baseball sounds like, like something that you have to do in hell No, no. I

Leo Laporte (00:39:20):
I think they're, they're doing League League of Legends. They're doing Dota two. Exactly. They're they're mostly doing mobs. They're doing games that are StarCraft that are exciting to watch that you can have a team. Alex are, you're a fan, right?

Alex Wilhelm (00:39:32):
I'm, I'm an enormous eSports fan and I'm also not surprised that this is where we're ending up right now mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because there was a, a boom of excitement in terms of what these teams might be worth, what these leaks might be able to put out, and it got ahead of the underlying strength of the industry. And so now we're seeing kind of the comeuppance of that. I agree that the apocalypse that every single one of us in the publishing world is staring down mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because publications are shutting down. Everyone's worried about ad sales. Of course it's gonna impact eSports, but really I just think that people put a little bit more capital than the industry could properly digest into it. And now we're seeing that kind of shakeout it's a disappointment. But here's what I'll say. 10 years ago if I had said, Leo, there's going to be League Legends tournaments that regularly Phil stadiums around the world, probably I would've been chuckled that and that would've been fine, but that's still happening. So the eSports boom is still here. It's just not gonna become the N f NFL 2.0 that people hoped for. But many things were a little bit overhyped in the last couple years and have, have come down since. So I, I don't think this is a uniquely eSports thing. I'll just say bummer. You know?

Leo Laporte (00:40:36):
Do you think it'll come back? Is it, because there, I mean, it's so funny because and maybe this is just a side effect of the, you know, the obsession with quarterly results and the way the stock market works, that it's, it's always what have you done for me lately? And there's no sense of long-term thinking. So it's down now, it's over, but it's normal for there to be ups and downs. We're all of tech is going down because it, there was such a high during Covid and now it's recovering probably not to the level even before Covid. I mean, if you look at stock prices, for the most part, they're still ahead of January, 2020. So I, I feel like it's a shortsighted thing to say, oh yeah, eSports is over. Or is it, is it really, is it Connie? I mean, isn't this just part of the ups and downs? I mean, yeah, we're all, you know, I'm sure C net's ad ad sales is, I, I'm not gonna put words in your mouth, but I know our ad sales are tightening. I think think that's just, but it's gonna, but I have a

Connie Guglielmo (00:41:34):
Faith. Is it, is it gonna come back? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:41:37):
I faith that it's gonna come back.

Connie Guglielmo (00:41:39):
I mean, I was just listening to everything that you were saying about just the quarterly cycle and people looking for revenue and somebody spent seven years covering public companies at Bloomberg. Yes. People want profit now. Instant gratification takes too long. Yeah. So is it gonna come back or not? Should it? I don't know the answer to that question cuz I am not an eSports fan. All credit to you, Alex, for doing it. I like to go outside, but, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:42:05):
<Laugh>. Whoa. This is good. The shots fired back and forth. I was going to apologize for taking a shot at Leo earlier, but now that I know the guns are out, I'm not ok. Ok, everybody

Connie Guglielmo (00:42:16):
Well, I'm just saying that cuz

Leo Laporte (00:42:17):
You're about knock everyone calm down. Calm down. No, you're right Connie. So that's good. I forget that you also covered business for a long time. So you really, you've seen this business cycle before.

Connie Guglielmo (00:42:27):
I, and I have to tell you, I have become extremely cynical about business in the US right now. Look, people want profits at all costs. And you know, this idea that we have to have so many billionaires and that that is the aspirational goal of people coming out of school, not to build something amazing, but to become a billionaire. That's sad. I mean, that kind of worries me and makes me mm-hmm. <Affirmative> very, very sad. What are we looking at right now in the tech industry in general? We're looking at companies laying off tons of people. Is it because those people were doing a great job and the market has shrunk? No, it's part of the correction of those companies. They grew too fast. They're, they're a little bit bloated. So they're taking an opportunity in the market to retrench, which is what every business does whenever there's a downturn, the economy, does that mean that you know, some businesses are not gonna suffer more than others.

(00:43:18):
Of course, some businesses will go away because the business market will dry it for them. So it is definitely, we live in a very unforgiving profit driven world. I mean, look at what happened at TWiTtter. Let's, let's save on you know, the single largest expense at any company is staff. So let's go into TWiTtter and eviscerate 50% of the team are, did they need to cut 50% of those people? Maybe. I don't know. I don't have the inside track on what everybody was doing at TWiTtter, but you know that there's a more reasonable way to do it than that. But this quest for the almighty dollar has really te and halt. And even, I'm gonna get off my soapbox in just a second. I was watching a doc documentary not too long ago about Hershey, the guy who started Hershey Chocolate, and he set up his company town in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and, you know, employed all of the people who actually also ran in town. And somebody, he went out one day to the field and someone was showing him a tractor and said, look at this. We can now have these tractors and they'll do the work of 40 men. And it was the start of the depression and he said, park the tractors and hire the 40 people. Hmm. Because it's more important that we keep those people's livelihood. Can you imagine any of our tech giants No. Having that argument with themselves today. No. It, so

Alex Wilhelm (00:44:31):
Yes,

Connie Guglielmo (00:44:32):
It is a quest for almighty dollar.

Leo Laporte (00:44:33):
The the, the tech companies are, I'm sorry, the analog of the tractor seller in this story. Right. <laugh> we're, they're selling the tractors. They want to, they wanna put, take people out of the job market. 

Iain Thomson (00:44:45):
Well on the, the, sorry, Alex,

Alex Wilhelm (00:44:46):
Go Sorry Ian, please.

Iain Thomson (00:44:47):
No, no. Off to you, Mike.

Alex Wilhelm (00:44:49):
Okay. I'll just say, can

Leo Laporte (00:44:50):
You start hating each other like, you hate me. Come on. No, you're being too friendly.

Alex Wilhelm (00:44:56):
Knock it off. He, he likes watching cars Go fast. I like watching cars. Go fast. Therefore we're brothers.

Leo Laporte (00:45:02):
You know what we're, you know what, you know what I'm doing in November of next year.

Iain Thomson (00:45:05):
What are you doing? Las

Leo Laporte (00:45:06):
Vegas? F1. Oh, got my tickets, got my hotel

Iain Thomson (00:45:10):
Room. My word. Okay, so

Leo Laporte (00:45:12):
I'm

Iain Thomson (00:45:13):
Gonna, so there I'm sorry, I'm I'm gonna have to mug you after the, after the trip. Very excited. Sorry, I just,

Leo Laporte (00:45:17):
We're gonna be sitting in the stands that are over the Bellagio fountains watching these cars. Sorry,

Iain Thomson (00:45:24):
Is that like getting

Leo Laporte (00:45:24):
Down Million

Iain Thomson (00:45:25):
Dollar <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (00:45:26):
Yeah. These million dollar cars traveling down the strip at 200 miles an hour. I cannot wait.

Alex Wilhelm (00:45:31):
That's, it's over. That's gonna be, that's gonna be excellent. But back to the, the Yes. No, no, you're fine. About tech companies and, and their approach to labor. I I, if you go to a lot of these major tech companies back in the day, you know, pre covid, a lot of their workers were essentially contracted out to third comp, third party companies. So that way they didn't have to employ them and, and kind of pay them. This was the bus drivers, the people who,

Leo Laporte (00:45:56):
It still happens. Microsoft has tons of contractors Yeah. People. So they build it through a third party company so they don't have to pay 'em benefits and,

Alex Wilhelm (00:46:03):
And they don't have to deal with labor issues. Right. And so forth. And I, I, I, I think it's a disgrace and I think it shows that American capitalism, which I am fund, I I I'm still net positive in favor of has some rot in it that we could exterminate. I, it it depresses me how we treat people. And back to the eSports point, it's, it's, it is cyclical, but I'll, I'll just say that I think it's gonna be here forever and it's not going to die. It'll just be a sad place for a couple years and it'll come back.

Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
Do you think term is the real question? Is, so then long term, can eSports truly be as engaging and as we, I don't wanna measure it in profit, but might as well profitable as the big sports today, NFL and NBA and

Iain Thomson (00:46:45):
Well, I mean, the major profit in sports is broadcasting and then ancillary services. Yeah. Now broadcasting eSports can take some of that, but, you know, there's an enormous amount of money goes into the stadiums into stuff that's sold live.

Leo Laporte (00:47:00):
That's true. I mean, there are eSports stadiums all over the country now. Yeah. Nice ones.

Iain Thomson (00:47:05):
Yeah. So,

Leo Laporte (00:47:06):
And I have to say, I watched I was watching the league of Legend, I think it was League of Legends finale in San Francisco. Did you see the, they had little NAS X in the opening show and everything. I, I think I played a little bit of that except probably was taken down on the show a couple of weeks ago. But what was impressing to me, impressive to me and bodes to me bodes well in long term is the, the announcers to five years ago eSports announcers were terrible. Right? They were, they they they were, they sucked the life out of the thing. Now they're good. Yeah. They're as good as any NFL or NBA announcer. They bring life to it. And they need to because these games are complicated, hard to understand. And they need to bring people in. There's also the problem of, and this may be a more intractable problem, the people playing these games don't look so good because when you're playing a game like Dota two, you're kind of slack shot and flashy eyed. Have you seen British rugby players? I mean No, they're good looking, hanging down. No, but they're good looking. These guys. They, I mean, watching somebody play a game is not ex I mean, that's bad right there. Well,

Alex Wilhelm (00:48:13):
You, you don't, you don't watch the eSports game to watch the players' faces a little player cam. So you can see that's

Leo Laporte (00:48:19):
A, a problem. That's, I mean, up what's what up close and personal. We need to get up close and personal with these guys.

Alex Wilhelm (00:48:25):
I, I will say that eSports announcements has gotten a lot better. It's really,

Leo Laporte (00:48:29):
And I do think ahead boy,

Alex Wilhelm (00:48:31):
Especially the, the League of Legends teams have some really, really insanely high levels of prep. I watched a a backstage type video of one league of Legends tournament and how they had the meetings talking about the matches that were coming up and what they were gonna talk about. Yeah. And it was just a level of preparation that I found just very professional and impressive. And so they put in the work. But I will say I haven't played League Legends in a couple years cause I've played other stuff and I came back to watching a little bit of the last world and I was like, <laugh>, they've changed everything. Oh no. What are, what are these symbols? And I, I felt like

Leo Laporte (00:49:03):
Now you know how I feel. Yeah. It's like, what's going on?

Alex Wilhelm (00:49:05):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, you have to stay current. And I think that's tough given the amount of competition out there. There's not that many sports that make it on TV Franklin,

Leo Laporte (00:49:13):
That's gonna hurt. That is gonna hurt eSports because you have to pick a winner. You have to, you can't have, there's 15 games that everybody plays. There's too many. You gotta pick one. No one's ever gonna launch an age of EMPAs eSports thing. Oh, I would. It's just, that's exciting. Yeah. But it takes hours. Oh, that's true. You swing it up. I gotta speak. So does a baseball

Alex Wilhelm (00:49:31):
Look at, at Connie's

Leo Laporte (00:49:32):
Cricket game takes weeks. So come on. Well, yeah, but you know, <laugh>,

Alex Wilhelm (00:49:37):
I, I think, I think we can take Connie's camera shot as, as indicative of what the audience feels about our eSport. She's so,

Leo Laporte (00:49:42):
She's so bored. So, I'm sorry. All right. No,

Alex Wilhelm (00:49:45):
Let's moving on. It's true. Yeah, it's

Leo Laporte (00:49:47):
True. Moving, moving on. Sorry. Nevermind. I'm sorry. I brought it up. Let's take a little break. We'll come back with more <laugh>. What <laugh> our show today, my friends brought to you by Express V P N. Now, I have to tell you, it comes up a lot for a lot of people where you're somewhere where you wanna watch, you know, that game, or you wanna watch that movie. But geographic restrictions prevent you from doing so. That's one of the three main reasons people use virtual private networks. The other reason, of course, you know, this is security. When you're on open wifi access point, it's a very good idea to encrypt all your traffic, not just some of your traffic. That's what a VPN does, so nobody can spy on you. And the third one is privacy. Now, maybe you've heard, but Santa Claus is coming to town, but Santa Claus keeps the most privacy invasive list in the world.

(00:50:45):
The naughty or nice list he is. He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you are awake, talk. Now you need a vpn. <Laugh>, you definitely, you, if you cannot avoid the all-seeing eye of your internet service provider, and by the way, it's completely legal in this country, and it is a widespread thing to do, to sell your information about what you do on the internet to third party marketers. That's, that's one of the, you know, Facebook isn't gonna sell it cuz they want to keep it to themselves. The but the internet service providers, they aren't ad companies. They aren't information gathering, sucking companies that wanna sell it to third parties this holiday season. Protect yourself online. Get the rid of the regional restrictions you, you don't need, and give yourself and your loved ones the gift of Privacy Express. Vp N you said, oh, I use privacy mode in my browser. <Laugh>.

(00:51:44):
No, that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean anything. It keeps it, all it does is it keeps your browser history invisible to people in your house. Your internet provider, at and t, Verizon, Comcast, they see everything you're doing, everything you're doing. They know how much time you spend on each site. They almost certainly sold it to advertisers with Express vpn. N all your traffic gets rerouted through an encrypted server, or your browsing activity remains entirely your business. Now I'm gonna add one more thing. There are many VPNs to choose from. Why do I prefer, why do I tell you you use Express V P N? Why do I use it myself? Because you also have to worry about your privacy with a VPN provider and a free VPN n provider is not protecting your privacy. They're making money on you express VPN's. Affordable, less than seven bucks a month with our offer.

(00:52:33):
But still that's, I think that's a good price. But you want a VPN provider that costs money. You want a VPN provider that guarantees your Privacy Express VPN is independently audited to make sure that they adhere to their privacy policy. In the independent auditors also said that Express VPN's trusted server technology works as advertised. I love this. They went the extra Mile Express VPN actually writes open source software for their own, use the trusted server software so that when you use the server, it spins up in Ram Sandbox. So can't write to the hard drive. And as soon as you leave the server, it closes, you get your very own trusted server and not a trace of your visit exists nowhere on the servers. They couldn't sell that information if they wanted to. They have actually taken the steps. Plus they run a special Debbie and distribution for all their servers that gets completely wiped every day.

(00:53:25):
So even if they somehow something got logged to the disc, it's gone by the next morning. We know this is true, not just from independent audits, but from governments. Not, not ours, but governments with no knock warrants who've taken these servers and said, oh, hmm, there's nothing on it. It's so easy to use Express v n as an app for everybody. Every phone, every operating system. They even have express VPN routers. Or you can put it on your existing router. In some cases, you know, you have to have a compatible router and that's great cuz then you gotta have whole house protection and express VPN n invests in their, this is the other reason why you, like, you want to use a express vpn. N they invest in their servers. So the speed is so good. You will never feel like, oh, I don't want to use this.

(00:54:07):
It's too slow. It's just as fast as your internet. They also, and this is a more technical thing, but they rotate their IP addresses. You, you may wonder, well, how do people know I'm on a p n? Because those addresses get known, right? And so the B B C I player says, well, I know that address. That's A V P N if you rotate your IP addresses, if you have fresh IP addresses all the time, that doesn't happen. Another reason to use Express VPN n take yourself off Santa's naughty list with the number one rated VPN service. Visit express vpn.com/TWiTt. Three extra months free. When you buy a one year plan that'll get down below seven bucks. I think that's a very good price. This is the one I use. X P R E s s vpn.com/TWiTt express vpn. We thank you so much for supporting our show and thank you for supporting the show by going to express vpn.com/TWiT.

(00:54:57):
You know what else you can do to support the show? You can join our club. I am meeting more and more Club TWiTT members. This is wonderful. I meet him in the Discord. I meet him in our Mastodon and on our TWiTt community. The club is seven bucks a month. It's one buck less than a blue check, which makes it a specialty. Good deal. <Laugh>, what do you get? You get ad free versions of every show. You wouldn't even hear this ad ad free versions of every show. You also get the Discord, which is the best darn community ever, and you get shows on the TWiTT plus feed that we don't put out anywhere else, including Micah Sergeant's, hands on McIntosh, Paul t's Hands on Windows, the Untitled Linnux Show with Jonathan Bennett Stacy's book Club. We're gonna do Project Hail Mary in January.

(00:55:37):
 The GIZ Fizz with Dick Bart. There's a whole lot of great content on the Club TWiTt Feed. Please. It helps us just like everybody else. Recession. Recession is looming, but we feel like if you support us, then we, we know we can keep going. Seven bucks a month, TWiTt.tv/club TWiTt. And let me tell you, this is a great gift for the holidays for the Geek in your life. We have a yearly plan that might be a nice gift. Twitt.Tv/Club. Thank you in advance. You're all on TWiTtter. Y'all on TWiTtter? Yep. So, yep. Yep. It's on. No, it's on. You know, we, we, I guess it's journalists. Yeah, we, we, we watched

Iain Thomson (00:56:22):
The show. You know, we'll watch how it goes.

Leo Laporte (00:56:24):
If you weren't a journalist, if you're just a normal person, you probably wouldn't even be on, you would've never been on TWiTtter. Probably. Yeah. <Laugh>. Wow.

Iain Thomson (00:56:31):
I mean, it was

Alex Wilhelm (00:56:33):
Trying to get normal people to use TWiTtter still is impossible. They're like, well, what would I post? And I'm like, I don't know. Whatever you're thinking, they're like, yeah, pass. I'm not gonna do that.

Iain Thomson (00:56:42):
It's kind of a valued thing though, because my parents aren't on TWiTtter. My my sister isn't on TWiTtter, so it's like they're, you know, Facebook Yeah. Still on it because it keeps me in contact with Europe. But you know, with TWiTtter you can just like, yeah, okay. You know, no one else is gonna read this and the family, so it's not gonna cover up the Christmas party. So, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
What is, so he, I I still don't understand why I guess Elon did this cuz he had to, right? He had no choice. Courts were gonna make him do it. So he just said, all right, fine. He didn't really want it. Now he's got it

Iain Thomson (00:57:14):
And now he's burning it to the ground. You know, it's

Leo Laporte (00:57:17):
Just 12 hours ago. He

Iain Thomson (00:57:19):
That post

Leo Laporte (00:57:19):
He's starting to come out. Just, he's starting to come out in public with his crazy qan on beliefs.

Iain Thomson (00:57:25):
Well, no, but if you, are you talking about the prosecute fauci?

Leo Laporte (00:57:29):
My pronouns are prosecute fauci. This is a unique tweet because it pisses people off in a variety of ways.

Iain Thomson (00:57:34):
You see, I if you looking at the prosecute stuff, he's done late

Leo Laporte (00:57:38):
Fauci for what?

Iain Thomson (00:57:39):
Yeah. Looking of all looking at the follow on tweet though. He's trying to put, portray this as, you know, I'm just checking to see I'm full what the bots are. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:57:48):
That's what the nut jabs do. They say, oh, he's joking. You know, it's just a joke. Why taking it so seriously?

Iain Thomson (00:57:53):
I know. It's just, I, I can only assume he was smoking heavily too, like yesterday.

Leo Laporte (00:57:56):
Oh, who? I don't want to give him any any excuses at all. I did you <laugh>. Now on the other hand, I am looking forward to buying one of TWiTtter's old coffee machines, <laugh>. So there's that. I guess he's figured out another way. <Laugh>

Iain Thomson (00:58:15):
Ano

Leo Laporte (00:58:16):
Another way to make money besides firing. Everybody is having a massive auction of all the TWiTtter stuff. Have you seen this? This goes on sale. I think it's a one day only sale from the Heritage Global Auction House. Yeah. Surplus corporate f sits of TWiTtter featuring kitchen equipment, electronics, furniture memorabilia. Look, they have a a hundred TWiTtter bird statues.

Alex Wilhelm (00:58:40):
I I, I would buy one of those. I

Leo Laporte (00:58:43):
Love that. Would, I can't tell how big it is.

Alex Wilhelm (00:58:45):
Yeah, that's the question. Can I put it like, as a living room? Like

Leo Laporte (00:58:48):
Feature? How about an at sign sculpture planner?

Alex Wilhelm (00:58:52):
Sold what? Send me this url. I, I'm gonna bit

Leo Laporte (00:58:56):
Spotter com. Beautiful. Eames chairs, molded plywood lounge chairs. Those are expensive. They're starting bids are low, but you know, they're, they'll go up quickly. It's only a 24 hour auction January 17th. But wait, there's more <laugh>. Look, here's a beautiful coffee machine that's a beautiful $25. Why are that into your house? You'll never have to go to Starbucks again. A marza is this is this a zako? There're quite a few of those, actually. Some Berg grinders. I think this is also performative to some degree, like Elon is showing how pampered and over indulged the employees

Iain Thomson (00:59:35):
Were. I think there's an element of that as, as someone of the in the forum is just noted. Christina Warren is gonna be onto this. Like, oh, she'll love this. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:59:43):
Under counter freezer drawers, they shut down the cafeteria. In fact, there was a sad tweet from the people who had been making food for TWiTtter employees for more than a decade, saying,

Alex Wilhelm (00:59:53):
Thanks. It's been fun.

Iain Thomson (00:59:54):
Goodbye. It was a good cafe. It has to be. So was it, I never, no. The food, the food there was very, very good. No, but I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
Elon's right. To close it down, you

Iain Thomson (01:00:03):
Know? Yeah. On the other hand, I mean, the point is <laugh>. Ooh, how about this? Cause I used to work a

Leo Laporte (01:00:08):
Gas deck type pizza oven. We could open a Pepe series.

Iain Thomson (01:00:12):
Have to say, that's not something you need in the office. But I

Leo Laporte (01:00:14):
Mean, <laugh>,

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:15):
Whoa. Hey, what's the point of being a ridiculously wealthy tech company if you can't have a pizza oven and an under, under dresser under dust.

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
It's kind amazing. Cuz TWiTtter only had, I think, one profitable quarter. Right? There wasn't, this was not a company making money over the last

Iain Thomson (01:00:32):
17 years. Well, San Francisco City authorities have gonna be slightly peeve because they gave TWiTtter this sweetheart deal on building bi tax deal on building the headquarters in Nin, tender Delo. And, and if the cafes shut down, then TWiTtter employees are gonna go out and have, have to go out and find food in the Tenderloin. Which

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:49):
It's not, it's not in the Tenderloin. It's, it's, it's nearby. Oh, co It's, it's on Market Street. It's on Market Street. Well, yeah. Well,

Iain Thomson (01:00:56):
So was, so was Un Plaza and I worked there for a year and a half. Oh, that was not fun. And that was, you know, when you see people No, I, I can't say it, it, it's too rude. But it's not a nice area.

Connie Guglielmo (01:01:08):
<Laugh>, the TWiTtter cafe is part of the dis against TWiTtter because they did get a discount and all sorts of tax credits from San Francisco to set up their headquarters on this corner of a marginally sketchy neighborhood. How about we call it that? Yes, that's fine. And the idea was that TWiTtter would get these tax breaks because they would help revitalize that neighborhood. But what they ended up doing was creating this onsite enclave Yeah. That nobody ever wanted to leave. Right. With excellent cafeteria and all sorts of foods and other perks. A Ruth gun. And so they, yeah. So they, there was, there were tweets. I mean, I'm sorry, there were protests outside, do you remember? And at some point mm-hmm. <Affirmative> TWiTtter employees threw fruit out the window with the protestors and people were like, great organic fruit <laugh>. So it never really helped vi revitalize that neighborhood. So there's been criticism of that deal as well. Oh, absolutely. That predates the current drama. That was, you know, that was,

Alex Wilhelm (01:02:05):
That's

Connie Guglielmo (01:02:06):
A Dorsey

Alex Wilhelm (01:02:06):
Deal. Valid. I hear you. But I will say, I will never listen to someone who has their own private jet. Tell me what other people shouldn't have when it comes to perks. That person

Connie Guglielmo (01:02:16):
Can, the world's richest man. Can't tell you to suck it up.

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
<Laugh> suck it up. Back up. All right, let's talk about the TWiTtter files, cuz that's the larger story of the week. Oh, God. Actually I thought TechCrunch Devin Colway had a very good piece. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Musk's TWiTtter. So, just to the background Musk has been teasing this for a week. He said, okay, 2:00 PM I'm gonna release all the secret moderation files that are gonna show how biased TWiTtter trust and safety was. And you know, the Hunter Biden laptop thing, being the chief of these, why did they make why did they take down those nude pictures of Hunter Biden? And then there's more you know, about people they had banned and so forth and so on. And I think Devin actually had a fairly reasonable take. He says Musk's TWiTtter files offer a glimpse of the raw, complicated and thankless task of moderation. Of course, I think Elon really wants to kind of create this as some sort of scandal. Is he succeeding, Connie, is it a scandal?

Connie Guglielmo (01:03:20):
It depends on who you talk to. I mean, Elon Musk has been leaking or sharing this these TWiTtter files, which I think Te Crunchie did an excellent job breaking down that the there that they thought was there that he's claiming is there is not there. That it shows a co a complicated issue. And people actually being very thoughtful about how to curate content in a, in a complex time. So anybody who actually reads that, we'll see, oh, whatever Musk and his acolytes are saying is false. But the problem is, most people won't read that. They don't read that what is actually

Leo Laporte (01:03:54):
There. They just read what Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss to right wing hacks have to say about it. So it's very biased, I think in its, well, you're laughing at me, Alex, is that, is that not appropriate to call Madden and Barry hacks?

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:10):
You, you, you mistake My laughter is aimed at you, Leo. Not at all. I'm just giggling because people will claim that TWiTtter was operating in a partisan manner to create a specific narrative. And then as they accused former TWiTtter of doing that, they're literally doing that again, because you are correct about Matt Taibbi and, and Barry Weiss and I, I find it really funny that Elon says he's like a centrist and wants to advocate for Ron DeSantis and also to be able to vote Republican in the last election. He's not moderate, he's not center. He's even a bit right for even the American political landscape, which is famously right-leaning already compared to Europe. And I, I think the TWiTtter files have been a, a flop in terms of driving any meaningful conversation about moderation. What they have done is, as Condi pointed out, create a, a foster clock of mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of people bouncing around or shouting and screaming and stamping their feet. And essentially anyone who has paid attention to this has just seen people repeat their priors afterwards come out. So it has moved the ball zero centimeters forward. And you could even say it's moved it backwards

Leo Laporte (01:05:11):
As Devin as David out with a screenshot. Among the things released in the TWiTtter files is the libs of TikTok, which is a notorious mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and, and problematic

Iain Thomson (01:05:21):
That's a polite way of putting

Leo Laporte (01:05:22):
It TWiTtter account, which has caused violence against birth control or other abortion clinics. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and transgender people has the big banner do not take action on user without consulting trust and safety. They're saying, don't ban this. What do mean? So it isn't the, the, I think the really more important story here, and I really think Devin gets a lot of credit for writing. This is what it shows you is how hard it is. Yeah. To do moderation at scale with 300 million daily or monthly active users.

Iain Thomson (01:05:57):
But I mean, if we we're all editors here, if, if a journalist had come to come to me with this story, I'd be like, so what's your hook? What cont content moderation is hard. That's,

Leo Laporte (01:06:07):
They blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post for a month a whole

Iain Thomson (01:06:11):
25. I got approach for under Biden laptop story. And I said, fine, show me the data. It's like, we can't show it to you, but you need to publish this in the next two weeks. Right. I'm not gonna do that. Right. You know, you've got, you've got to, you know, you've got to check these things out. You've got to understand what's going on. And it's just like, yeah, this was a completely unfounded claim at the time. As it turns out, I don't know. I, you know, but at the time itself, why should you amplify something like that?

Leo Laporte (01:06:38):
Right. In fact, they,

Alex Wilhelm (01:06:40):
And what are they advocating for as a replacement for this process that we saw, which was people trying to take on very complex questions at important times in a difficult moment. The, their response to how to fix this is let Elon make all the choices himself.

Leo Laporte (01:06:53):
That's why and the head of choices say, y'all Roth resigned. You'll said

Iain Thomson (01:06:58):
He's now being absolutely hounded, which

Leo Laporte (01:07:01):
Is sad. Elon's really being scathing about

Iain Thomson (01:07:03):
Yours. He's not being scathing. He's inciting violence. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. Call it what it is. You know, I know. He's,

Leo Laporte (01:07:08):
He was happy with y'all. I know, I know. Yous was supporting him and Yeah. Tweet. And as soon as y'all said, you know what? I can't, there's no need for trust and safety if one man makes all the decisions. So I'm leaving. He wa it wasn't even a mean thing, but it is mean. Now,

Iain Thomson (01:07:21):
Look, I, I know Elon's fond, fond of pedophilia references, but I mean, he's literally set the mob on this guy. It, it's ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (01:07:29):
And that's the Qan nine side of it, which is this absolutely absurd notion that the, the Democrats drink the blood of children. And this whole pedophilia thing is pure qan on. And I, it strikes me that Elon has been red pilled that he has, that he has, you know, been swayed onto the dark side. Which is a real problem when you have ownership and complete control over such a big platform as TWiTtter. Hmm. To me, this is the hair on fire problem. The good news is most, I think by now, most people have stopped, you know, worrying about <laugh>, believing anything they read. And I hope I, I presume that news, you know news accounts no longer quote tweets

Alex Wilhelm (01:08:14):
As, as much as they, I mean, they used to be, that's where they got the leads. Right. Is that the same? Is, has it changed had you treat TWiTtter differently now?

Iain Thomson (01:08:24):
Oh yeah. I mean, you <laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (01:08:27):
You see so much Well, time sigh. Yeah,

Iain Thomson (01:08:29):
I know. Sorry. I mean, you, you see so much stuff on the, you've always gotta check your sources. That's, that's what our job is to do, is to, is to check information rather than just spamming it out and, you know, trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator with whatever the, the juiciest story is. But I dunno, I dunno how everyone else is, but I, I just on TWiTtter in the last two or three weeks, a spammers through the roof, I'm getting a hell of a lot of weird, weird porn in the news stuff. And I'm getting tweets from people I have no interest in whatsoever. I dunno what's going on there. Like I say, last chopper, right. Of Saigon feeling.

Alex Wilhelm (01:09:09):
I'm, I'm curious what Connie thinks, because if you go to Connie's TWiTtter profile, it notes that Cena is the world's number one consumer tech news and advice site. And I feel like this is a question that we should ask, not from our perspectives, cause we're all way too online, but what is c saying to the, the regulars about this stuff?

Connie Guglielmo (01:09:25):
Well, so, I mean, I've been watching this dumpster fire along with the rest of you, and there's a couple of observations. People follow the people that they wanna follow, and it either they tr you trust them or you don't. Right. And so we're seeing the amplification of a lot of other weird, bizarre accounts for some backend business reason that I don't think any of us have figured out. But I also think it's because there has been a small percentage of TWiTtter users have kind of disengaged in our doubt now watching the fire mm-hmm. <Affirmative> rather than participating and burning the books. And Cena's advice. You know, we've done a timeline of everything that's happening at cnet, I mean, at TWiTtter, because it's just like, it's minute to minute, second by second, and it can take over your life here in tech. But in most of America, they don't care.

(01:10:16):
People don't care anything about what's happening at TWiTtter. The average person, what they care about is living their life and trying to pay their bills and being able to afford Christmas presents if they've just lost their job or what have you. And so there is a lot of attention by the media and by, you know, influencers who want to make this a an important story because it is just spectacular to watch this man who claims that he's all about free speech. And every time I hear him say that, I think of that Princess Bride line. I don't think that phrase means what you think it means, because obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about. So he, he's just manipulating people and who tweets out misinformation. And then TWiTtter itself has to correct his tweets. How many of those have we seen? So I think a lot of the wait and see, and the last helicopter is about can this be salvaged? What is the, what is, what is going to happen? Should it be Sal or is salvage it just gonna implode?

Leo Laporte (01:11:18):
Should it be salvaged? Is there value to it that we want to preserve?

Alex Wilhelm (01:11:21):
Yes. My TWiTtter account, I wanna preserve that. Alex,

Leo Laporte (01:11:24):
You spend good money to get a L E X as your handle. Well,

Alex Wilhelm (01:11:27):
No. Forget, forget the 60 bucks I paid back in the day. It's like, it's the, it's the 14 years and I mean, I have deleted hundreds of thousands of tweets from myself. And after my latest purge, I'm still like 120 k I can't help myself. I love it. It's like a service design for me. Don't take it away. It

Leo Laporte (01:11:43):
It is. Yeah. There is, and I, it's an endorphin. It, it, it, it's an endorphin thing. I mean, it's

Iain Thomson (01:11:48):
An addictive, it's, it's a great thing in itself. But I think Tony has a very good point. It's what the seventh biggest social network. It's very popular with journalists, very popular with politicians, and that's pretty much it. Yeah. You know, for your dayday, that's

Leo Laporte (01:12:01):
Why there's a disproportionate

Iain Thomson (01:12:02):
Yeah. But for your day-to-day operations, most people really don't care that much.

Leo Laporte (01:12:06):
Yeah. The real world doesn't.

Iain Thomson (01:12:09):
Yeah. But it's just,

Leo Laporte (01:12:10):
Yeah. Except for a while. It did. I mean, you would see the TWiTtter handle on the voice and, you know, I mean, on, on TV shows. And I mean, there were, for a while there, it really did matter. It was like, this is how you showed that you

Iain Thomson (01:12:23):
Were with me. Oh, no. I mean, one of my, one of my tweets, I, this is a shameless, a self-promotion, but one of my tweets actually appeared on a British comedy show because they were someone from the New York Times who was working in London got their house broken into, and they were like, oh, this is terrible. You know, it's like, has anyone El else got an experience as a petty crime that they'd like to share? <Laugh> and of course, bing British, we took the piss. So I just responded. Yes. Some monster put the milk in before the teabag. I called the police, but they were not interested. <Laugh>,

Alex Wilhelm (01:12:54):
Which, which comedy show were you on? <Laugh>?

Iain Thomson (01:12:57):
Oh, this was, oh, some British that's good.

Alex Wilhelm (01:13:01):
I

Iain Thomson (01:13:01):
Forget the

Alex Wilhelm (01:13:01):
Cats or

Iain Thomson (01:13:03):
No, no, no. This was some sketch show from the blonde hair comic. Oh, God. I can't remember his name now. It's on my TWiTtter feed as it happens. But <laugh>

Connie Guglielmo (01:13:13):
Well, I just wanna add it. It doesn't TWiTtter, what happens on TWiTtter doesn't matter to a lot of you know, people outside of that bubble, except that it does matter in that the media amplifies what's happening on TWiTtter. That's why, and you saw that during the presidential campaign, and you're seeing it now with, or we've seen it with misinformation about covid and vaccines. So it's, it's a pipeline that people then use, and then things that should not be amplified are, are able to be amplified. And why the former president was so distraught about being kicked off his free megaphone because it, the reach and the pr amplification of that service, you know, Al Dominguez and Trump

Leo Laporte (01:14:00):
Used TWiTtter masterfully. You agree?

Connie Guglielmo (01:14:04):
He he used it very effectively. Yeah. And I, and I think that you know, there's gonna be, the history books will write many compelling histories and analysis of what went wrong and what misinformation and disinformation means, and what it looked like during this period of time when people believed all sorts of really crazy things that they, that yeah, you still question why they believe it. Right. But you're also seeing now someone who has claimed that he wants to clean it up, and he just wants truth to prevail actually, in a very short amount of time. I mean, when did he take over TWiTtter in October swing from being, trying to be this voice of reason to this?

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
Yeah. I don't know

Connie Guglielmo (01:14:45):
What's going on. Disinformation.

Leo Laporte (01:14:46):
He, he reminds me of some ways of Donald Trump kind of an attention whore really. Like, I don't think he, I don't know if he cares about what he's saying. He just likes the attention. Oh,

Iain Thomson (01:14:56):
He's, he's post economic in terms of personal wealth. So he can do what he likes. But I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
Actually that's the dream man. Actually, though, can he, I mean, there, there is some issue with this. He's got $44 billion sunk into this. Not all his money, but he has a, at least a billion dollar a year interest payment. He's gonna have to Yeah. Pay. It's hurt Tesla stock significantly. It's hurt his own, he lost a hundred billion dollars in net worth in the, in the year alone. Now, anybody who's got more than a billion dollars in net worth is has to use Bill Gates phrase, virtually infinite wealthy. I mean, it's hard to spend that kind of money. So the fact that the only awe shs, he only has 90 billion big deal. But it could go worse. It could continue to, to struggle. Tesla's stock could continue to go down.

Iain Thomson (01:15:41):
I gotta say, I mean, if you look at the kind of people that are buying Teslas, they're not gonna be happy about the way TWiTtter is going. Yeah. it's, it's not doing this.

Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
I'll tell you where I'd be unhappy is that he's pulling in all these Tesla engineers who by all rights should be working on making full self-driving actually work to work on TWiTtter. I, in fact, there's a lawsuit on that. There's also a lawsuit on his compensation. He's paid $56 billion last year by Tesla. There's

Iain Thomson (01:16:08):
Also a

Leo Laporte (01:16:08):
A and now he's got three companies to be running.

Iain Thomson (01:16:11):
I mean, there, there's a clear double standard on this because, you know, oh, I'm just trying to open TWiTtter up and make it available for all voices. Have you tried going on par or Gab or read social conservative or anything like that? Yeah. And if you express anything, which is outside of the prescribed line, you are Instagram.

Leo Laporte (01:16:29):
It's all tribal now, you know? So

Iain Thomson (01:16:31):
It's just like, yeah, you know, we've got this guy. Literally, if you can throw 44 billion at something like this, that's an argument maybe for higher taxation. I know that's a terrible thing to say, but, you know, maybe people shouldn't have that much money and be that unstable. Yeah. All I'm saying, look,

Alex Wilhelm (01:16:50):
Yeah, that's all incredibly reasonable and thank you, and blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, let's go back to the whole thing. You can't spend a billion dollars because I could, because I'm Yeah. To build my

Leo Laporte (01:16:59):
Own. But you're not gonna go, you're not gonna be in the poorhouse,

Iain Thomson (01:17:01):
Say, remake a brewster's millions with Alex's billions, but

Leo Laporte (01:17:04):
<Laugh>. Well, as long as we're, as long as we're slandering Elon, let's go through a few of the other Slanders LA Times business section had a big story. Oh, crud. Now I have to log in and pay for Oh,

Iain Thomson (01:17:17):
The pay. Yeah. Having to pay journalist is a really, oh, so

Leo Laporte (01:17:21):
Annoying. The headline. I can still read that. Tesla says it's self-driving technology, maybe a failure, but it is not a fraud. Now Alex, I, I did read the story before it locked me out, so I can tell you you what it said. Which is that he's being sued right now because Tesla has claimed full self-driving. In fact, he's opened it up this week. He opened up full self-driving to all Tesla. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> owners. Very famously there is something called the painted black video, which is still on the Tesla site, which I think six years ago was put up on the site as an example of how a Tesla could drive autonomously. It says on the, on the video, there's a disclaimer saying, yeah, there's a driver for legal reasons, you have to have somebody in the seat, but he's not driving. And they showed this v video of the Tesla driving blindly all over town.

(01:18:11):
And later we've learned, and by the way, it's still on the site Tesla employees have revealed that the actual video was highly edited. They took out all the driving failures, including one case of the car driving into a fence in order to make it look like the d the car was effectively self-driving. Elon has been saying for years, he said, by 2020, Tesla owners will be able to l let full self-driving be so good. They'll be able to let other people use their car, basically start a car sharing service or their own private Uber and make $30,000 a year letting others use their car autonomously by 2020. Even today, I just talked to Sam Bull Salmon, who's our car guy who took a ride in a full self-driving Tesla this week. He said we had to take over almost, you know, constantly to keep the car from doing crazy things.

(01:19:05):
 It's not a full self-driving vehicle. Elon has claimed it is. He's being sued over this. And his lawyers say, well, it's not fraud that he charged you five to $15,000 for the right to buy. It's not fraud. He was just over ambitious. He was just, it was, it was just him saying, you know, kinda like Elizabeth Holmes saying her blood drop testing technology would work when it didn't. When it didn't. Now she was, by the way, she and Sonny Balani are, are going to jail for many, many years, not for a failure of vision, but for fraud. <Laugh>. Well,

Iain Thomson (01:19:44):
If you steal from rich people in America, then

Leo Laporte (01:19:47):
Oh, there's the key. Don't steal from George Schultzer, you're going to jail. Yeah. So this, I think, I mean, look, that's their defense. Elon was just ambitious, overly ambitious, and it failed. We didn't, we couldn't do it. By the way, Elon is not saying stop selling it as full self-driving $15,000. This whole argument's crap. Yeah. It's infuriating.

Connie Guglielmo (01:20:08):
Sorry, Congress. They, I would also say this case is about more than just their claims. You know, there's a difference between PR and then what you will say in court, right. And the claims that you make from a PR perspective and the claims that you make from in a, in the courtroom, which you are legally liable to. But what's interesting about the case is that there's this case because Tesla has forced people who have had accidents and or have had been injured because of these self-driving claims, they're forced into, this is not gonna sound sexy, but I just wanna say it into arbitration. And then you don't, that's

Leo Laporte (01:20:42):
Actually in the contract. What happened? You have to, that's in the contract. You cannot sue.

Connie Guglielmo (01:20:47):
So then we don't know a lot of what's actually happening and what claims are not what, what's PR and what's reality unless these cases come forward. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so that is also part of what is so interesting about this moment in time, is that's another example of the company not wanting to have information come to light. And so you know, somebody who wants to be Oh, so transparent and enable Yeah. You know, the, the man on the street or what's his term for, you know, the everyday person really has a very strong track record of quashing. Anybody trying to criticize or say anything, not just at Tesla when it comes to self-driving, but we, we've seen in other aspects of the various businesses because people get fired if they wanna say stuff. So

Leo Laporte (01:21:30):
I also should point out that in the, in the four months ending in October 11 crashed deaths due to automated tech vehicles. Every single one. A Tesla. Yeah. No, I mean, it's not just move fraud great things, but unfortunately it's your drivers. You're braking. It's killing people. Actually, the 11th one was a Ford pickup <laugh>. Oh it's, it's, it's deadly. No, I mean, if you tell somebody, you know, if you sell the whole marketing is that this is this futuristic system, which is self-driving. It is nick. Great people are gonna use it and take the piss full self-driving is an unambiguous label. It's not, yeah. It's not an aspirational label anywhere. I knew when I bought my Model X and it had a bio weapon defense system, it was just a HEPA filter that was obvious <laugh>. Right. I didn't drive into, you know, a mustard gas attack with it.

(01:22:25):
But when you see full self-driving and you pay $15,000 for it it's reasonable to assume it. Well, I can, I can look, take my hands more than that. I can get in the backseat cuz it's full self-driving. Anyway, that's one problem. There's another case going on this time. It's federal investigation of Neurolink. Elon had his Neuralink event. Oh God. I'm gonna get some hate for this, but I actually support neural link on this one. Oh, good. Okay. Neurolink. Good. I'm glad. So we won't look biased. <Laugh> Neuralink is Elon's attempt to create a bio interface, human machine interface. By the way, many exist already, far more sophisticated than anything Elon has shown for PE paraplegics and others. But he is he's now under federal investigation for animal abuse. Well, let's, let's, <laugh> Reuters is reporting that Musk is sa said at his event that Neuralink will be ready for human trials in the next six months. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:23:31):
But this is a musk deadline, so not three years.

Leo Laporte (01:23:32):
You might wanna get in your self-driving vehicle and drive on over to get that. He's now being investigated by the US Department of Agriculture. Neuralink has killed 1500 animals during testing since 2018. And it's not merely that they've killed that many animals. Animals are killed in testing all the time as, as horrible Yes. As that is. But that maybe they were killed unnecessarily. Current and former Neurolink employees told Reuters, they worked under a constant state of pressure with Musk repeatedly demanding they work faster and encouraging them to quote, imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads or threatening to trigger a market failure at the company if they didn't meet his goals. And this is the, this

Iain Thomson (01:24:15):
Is the, what A lovely boss is

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
The complaint of the U S D A. As a result, animal testing was often rushed, meaning the data sometimes contained errors and tests that had to be repeated causing unnecessary deaths. Other times there were human errors during the surgeries to implant neurolink chips, which employees attributed a lack of preparation. So it's not merely that they've killed 1500 chimps, but they, that many of them were perhaps unnecessary. Defend that.

Iain Thomson (01:24:40):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:24:41):
You don't like chimps?

Iain Thomson (01:24:43):
First off, they weren't chimps. They were largely Macs. Oh, pardon me. Okay. But I mean, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:24:47):
Glad you know the difference,

Iain Thomson (01:24:49):
<Laugh>, that's good. Well, near ancestors,

Leo Laporte (01:24:50):
A mac is like a monkey though, right?

Iain Thomson (01:24:52):
Yeah. Look, anybody who's wearing lipstick using shampoo, they've been responsible to the death

Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
Of

Iain Thomson (01:25:00):
Animals. Yeah, I understand. Now, if they've rushed it and they've been un unnecessarily causing harm, fine prosecute them. But I'm sorry. Animal testing is a thing, particularly for something like this. And you cannot have it unless you do animal testing. Yes. And animals are gonna die on this. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:17):
Before you put this in my brain, I want you to kill a couple of the acts.

Iain Thomson (01:25:20):
Well, look, I mean, NASA deliberately breaks mic's limbs sends them into space to see how they react. Yeah. Euthanizes them, brings them back down to see how bones will work in zero gravity will mend in zero gravity. That's something we definitely need to know if we're gonna become a space, they, a space faring civilization. I'm not reflexly against an against animal testing. All I'm saying is if you're gonna do it, do it efficiently and where you can get software to go against it. But I'm sorry for a lot of advances. Sooner or later, some animals are gonna have to die for that.

Leo Laporte (01:25:58):
Okay. I won't argue that although unnecessary animal testing, we would all

Iain Thomson (01:26:02):
No, no, I'm with you on that.

Leo Laporte (01:26:03):
A terrible thing. And frankly, you can buy, I all my makeup is not tested on animals because by now they know Yeah. This is gonna hurt somebody. This is not gonna hurt somebody. They don't need to risk an animal's health to test that.

Iain Thomson (01:26:17):
Yeah. But I mean, you've gotta test me. You've gotta test medicines on animals. Yeah. and it's not entirely effective because different animals have different reactions to, to medicines than, than humans do. But you do the best you can, but it's, it's one of, it's, it's, you don't wanna see how the sausage is made, but the sausage has to get made.

Leo Laporte (01:26:34):
All right.

Alex Wilhelm (01:26:35):
Companies in the country that makes black pudding. I mean, come on, <laugh>. Listen. It's not even

Leo Laporte (01:26:40):
Sausage by the, the way

Iain Thomson (01:26:41):
That pudding is fantastic. I will not hearing word set against it

Alex Wilhelm (01:26:45):
<Laugh>, you know what's even worse than black pudding, white pudding? Because it's, it's still just as gross. Look, I I'm gonna make a distinction between mice and acks and between lower and higher primates in terms of level of intelligence. And I think this does matter. And when you are dealing with increasingly intelligent creatures that are increasingly human-like in their ability to have emotions and language and so forth you have to have higher standards. And so to me I think you can say all you want to say about the importance for limited animal testing as a species. Sure. But given what we hear in this case and the sheer number of deaths it's, it's to the point in which I actually do care. And I, I, I try to keep a, a lower bar than I might otherwise so I can engage in the modern world. But this seemed to be highly abusive and unnecessary and

Leo Laporte (01:27:31):
Unnecessary. Tea death Yeah. Yeah. Is bad.

Iain Thomson (01:27:34):
Yeah. No, I mean you, it has to be necessary. But at the same time, you know, I mean, I dunno if anyone here is a vegetarian, but, you know, it's not great in a slaughterhouse either, but, you know, at that's for

Leo Laporte (01:27:46):
Food. I agree.

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:48):
I mean, to our

Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
Attorneys,

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:49):
I'm critical of that too. Yeah. Like, I mean, we can sit here and say factory farming is bad, and the way we process chickens is ridiculously evil. And that Elon Musk shouldn't be killing monkeys. And that Yes. Some limited animal testing is fine. You can have all those at the same time. They're not contradictory. Absolutely.

Iain Thomson (01:28:05):
Well said. 

Alex Wilhelm (01:28:06):
And I'm gonna just throw us in there. Really excited about brain computer interfaces. I don't want them to be brought to the market on the back of a, a unnecessary string of, of dead animals. I just want them to work.

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
And I suppose that the ones that are being used now for instance, the, for a paraplegic to be able to type with their brain or to move limbs, I suppose those probably were tested on on animals before they were tested on humans, or

Iain Thomson (01:28:35):
I'm, I'm kind of of kind of iffy about that argument because we've had legitimate scientific research doing this for 10 years. Yeah. And, and working towards it. What I worry is Elon Musk is gonna get in there and say just, oh, who cares about that? Just get it done fast. And that's what it looks like, like they did with Tesla. You know, I'm like, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:52):
That's what it looks like. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:28:54):
It's amazing how much we have to talk about Elon Musk on a day-to-day basis. I'm, I'm really tired of the,

Leo Laporte (01:28:58):
I am so tired of that too. Do I feel like we kind of can't just ignore it either though, right? No,

Alex Wilhelm (01:29:04):
No. We're stuck. I mean, like, this is

Leo Laporte (01:29:05):
The Correct. That's what he wanted.

Alex Wilhelm (01:29:07):
Rundown of articles. Talk about that. I was actually very impressed with the TWiTt staff who put together today's agenda. I was just bummed out that one dude is so central to it. Yeah. I mean, I thought the point of capitalism was to engender a competition, not faux monarch sitting in a top of a pile of wealth.

Iain Thomson (01:29:20):
Oh, but come on, this is America. You've given up on competition years ago. Duopoly Monopoly. That's where the profit goes. So, you know, this is

Alex Wilhelm (01:29:27):
Why I was in favor of Lena Khan taking over at the

Iain Thomson (01:29:29):
Ftc. I'm with you. Totally. I think she break them up, y'all. Let's be great. Yeah. Let's get some decent competition in here. Let's get a mobile services.

Alex Wilhelm (01:29:37):
Let's bring back Windows phone.

Leo Laporte (01:29:39):
So did you yeah,

Iain Thomson (01:29:40):
Let's

Leo Laporte (01:29:41):
Go too far. Alice. The Harry and Meghan show.

Iain Thomson (01:29:43):
I knew this was gonna come up and so Yes. I wasted an hour of my life. I did too. I, watching the first episode of Harry

Leo Laporte (01:29:50):
Yesterday, I said, Ian's gonna be on. We have to watch this thing.

Iain Thomson (01:29:53):
It's just, okay. It's not fist bitingly bad, but it's,

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
No, it's boring. It's

Iain Thomson (01:30:00):
Just dumb. It's infomercial for, you know, at home with a Sussex

Leo Laporte (01:30:03):
Chest. But you know, they're really in love. You can tell,

Iain Thomson (01:30:05):
You can tell they're in love, certainly <laugh>. It

Leo Laporte (01:30:09):
Does. They made a point of saying that many times.

Iain Thomson (01:30:11):
Many, many. In fact, if I hear Harry say, I have to protect my family one more time, I swear I'm just gonna just, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:30:18):
It's, I know you're, I know you loved the queen and we all loved the queen. She, but isn't it She

Iain Thomson (01:30:23):
Did, did a lousy job Very well.

Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
Is <laugh>. Is is, isn't it time just to get rid of this whole waste of money and, and, and

Iain Thomson (01:30:30):
Actually we make a profit outta the royal family. We make a

Leo Laporte (01:30:33):
Significant profit. That's not an excuse for her.

Iain Thomson (01:30:35):
No. What I hate about

Leo Laporte (01:30:36):
The Royal, you know, what really makes a profit, the royal family makes a profit. I do pretty

Iain Thomson (01:30:41):
Well. Well, Charleston's Cornwall, that really helps, you know, <laugh>, it's just but you know, I mean, it's,

Leo Laporte (01:30:48):
It feels very medieval.

Iain Thomson (01:30:50):
Oh, it is totally medieval. Okay. And it props up a, a class system, which is totally logically unsupportable. I mean, the very idea of choosing the head of the state, the head of the armed forces and the head of the established church out of, out of a womb lottery is just bonkers. It, it makes no sense whatsoever. Logically. but

Leo Laporte (01:31:11):
It's not about logic. It's

Iain Thomson (01:31:12):
About No, but I mean art, all, all, I mean all credit to Harry for getting out of the firm. I think his mother would've been proud of him for doing that. Really? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:20):
I don't think she was proud when he did it.

Iain Thomson (01:31:23):
Look, Diana, well, she

Leo Laporte (01:31:24):
Was dead. Oh, his mother. Sorry. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:31:26):
Not his grandmother. No, no, no. His grandmother. No. Yeah. 

Leo Laporte (01:31:29):
Oh, Diana. But Diane, so if you're watching the Crown <laugh> and who isn't Diana's being portrayed as kind of a nut? Well, she, she was, she was she a nut

Iain Thomson (01:31:43):
You never really know, because, you know, this is all, all done through the, through

Leo Laporte (01:31:46):
The prison. I feel like it would be a horrible life to be every time you emerged. It's surrounded by paparazzi. They, that's what killed her in the long run. And then,

Iain Thomson (01:31:55):
And there's flee No Wearing a seatbelt had something to do with

Leo Laporte (01:31:57):
It. Yeah. But they were a fleeing

Iain Thomson (01:31:59):
From the paparazzi. And look, four people were in the car. One person survived the one person who's wearing a seatbelt. Oh. You know, it's kind of like, it's Akins razor. The Crown Estates make 300 million a year for the government. Yeah. And then they give 10% back to the king to run the estates. Exactly. We make a profit outta them. Plus there's a tourism angle. And everyone likes seeing the people in the beast. I admit the big, I went to fucking palace and watched

Alex Wilhelm (01:32:22):
The changing of the God. Yes. But here's the question I have. Why are Americans so obsessed with British royalty? We literally told them to go f off back in the day, had to fight war to get them to go away. Yeah. And now we are keeping the entire, here's the float, our love of the

Iain Thomson (01:32:38):
You're becoming like us. I thought because, because Queen Elizabeth did a bad job with such grace and charm and, and, and Yeah. She was great at it was, and really was, was had on heart. She was given a pass. But Charles

Alex Wilhelm (01:32:55):
Is

Iain Thomson (01:32:55):
Turning out to be a little bit of a just kind of a, a, a

Alex Wilhelm (01:32:58):
Upper class TWiTst. What we expected.

Iain Thomson (01:33:00):
Yes. I was gonna say, I mean, he's the idiot son, but I mean, before Americans Christian. So I feel like the royal family isn't going to have the the gra earth, the the and, and, and the distance that they were given, the, the permission they were given. Mm. Thanks to the, the grace of the Queen. I think people are not gonna give them that. That with the, my worry is that Charles has plans to try and rule rather than just be the figure that he's supposed to be. Really? well, he's been writing letters to, I mean, the royal family has the ability to kill legislation, which have affect them personally, but they're not supposed to ever do. No. They do it a fair bit, in fact. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like taxes on certain things and that sort of thing. They will just, like, we're taking that out. There's a problem that's very anti-democratic. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:33:44):
But I mean, they have the House of Lords <laugh>. Like, there's, there's some work

Iain Thomson (01:33:47):
To do. Ok. But Alex, before you start criticizing, remember GW Bush, it's not, you know, when you've got the idiot son of a former leader who gets the job basically by birth, you know, it's not that different from the royal family. They just call it something different.

Connie Guglielmo (01:34:02):
But, so I haven't watched Harry and Megan, I'm sorry. I was extraordinary attorney Wu. That's what I watched on Netflix. Recognize it.

Iain Thomson (01:34:09):
Oh, that's much better.

Connie Guglielmo (01:34:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I give them credit for capitalizing on their celebrity and not having just other people capitalize on it. That's a very American, what do they do? Yeah. Yes. How they live in California now, right? Yeah. And I'm, what were they paying a hundred million dollars or something? I mean, I'm outrage now

Iain Thomson (01:34:27):
My watch. Yes. I played to them. You know what? Well, what's he gonna do? I mean, it's like, yeah, that's right. He can't get a job. He he's not the smartest tool in the box. He can fly a helicopter. No. He, he acted as Gunner on the helicopter. Oh, okay. He can shoot out of a helicopter. Yes. He can shoot out of a helicopter. That's, it's not really a mock. Still. You can do the same job Kyle Rittenhouse can do, basically. Whoa. Oh God. Did you see his tweet by the way, yesterday? No,

Alex Wilhelm (01:34:50):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's,

Connie Guglielmo (01:34:51):
Let's not go there.

Iain Thomson (01:34:52):
Okay. Fair enough. Look, he's, now I'm gonna check Fair, fair, fair play to them. But, you know and I'm glad they're out of it because it's a horrible system. And for all the fresh prints of LA jokes, which are, were being made in the bri the British media has gone nuts over this over the last week and a half because they're basically saying, you know, the paparazzi and the British tabloid media were racists against my wife, which they quite clearly were. Were Yes, absolutely.

Leo Laporte (01:35:23):
Although she's the whitest black woman I've ever seen.

Iain Thomson (01:35:27):
I, you know, I don't care. It's, it's just some of the stuff that was coming out was Danny Baker, a BBC Radio five presenter, actually, thank God got fired because he printed out a new picture of the royal baby with a picture of a monkey.

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
Oh my

Iain Thomson (01:35:42):
God. You know, it's just the, the, the, the blatant racism was,

Leo Laporte (01:35:47):
It's still there. Some lady in waiting asked.

Iain Thomson (01:35:51):
Oh, yeah. Did you see this?

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
Oh,

Iain Thomson (01:35:53):
That was her, her response was, so f she, sorry, go on.

Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
<Laugh>. I'm trying to remember who it, who it was. It was a, it was a black member of Parliament,

Iain Thomson (01:36:00):
Or No, no. She's, she runs a, a, a nonprofit in the uk.

Leo Laporte (01:36:03):
She was an ngo and she was at a reception at the Palace. Yeah. And, and one of the, we don't know who, but we think

Iain Thomson (01:36:09):
I, no, she's resigned. We know

Leo Laporte (01:36:11):
Who she resigned. So we know who said, well, what, what is your nationality, dear? She says, I'm born, I was born in Manchester. I'm English. Mm-Hmm. No, no, no. I don't mean that. You are obviously not English. Where are your people

Iain Thomson (01:36:24):
From? <Laugh>. Her response was fantastic though. It's like, I don't know. They didn't keep records when they brought me over here.

Leo Laporte (01:36:30):
Oh, burn. Wow. I times are changing. Right? I mean, this kind of behavior, it's kind of anathema now. And I, I feel like the Royal Family Pro kind of is protecting that somewhat, you know

Alex Wilhelm (01:36:45):
Hereditary monarchy is bad. It's bad. Yeah. Thank, but it's, it's good for Netflix's business, making it a text story for Netflix will good for the British

Leo Laporte (01:36:52):
Netflix Treasury.

Alex Wilhelm (01:36:54):
Although, what, what I'll say is if you wanna have some fun you can just watch the show Wednesday, which is lovely and delightful and does not involve any royal figures whatsoever. And you don't have to deal with Tories on TWiTtter telling you that Meghan Merkel is a bad person, because I don't care what they think. And I'll just say this, I hate celebrity culture. And the monarchy is the, the epitome of it. It's the worst. And it's, it's because they're not even pretty or smart or talented. No. They're just there. They're that by class, it showed up.

Leo Laporte (01:37:19):
Yeah. Right. Let's take a break now.

Alex Wilhelm (01:37:21):
Show at least celebrities are hot. All right.

Leo Laporte (01:37:24):
<Laugh>.

Iain Thomson (01:37:24):
Wow. Oh,

Alex Wilhelm (01:37:27):
Good God. I thought that was a relatively PG comment. <Laugh> Connie's giving me your look. All right. I take it back.

Connie Guglielmo (01:37:32):
I, I endorse your endorsement of Wednesday Adams. That was a fun series.

Leo Laporte (01:37:36):
That's a good show. Yeah. Lovely.

Connie Guglielmo (01:37:37):
I'm, I'm gonna stop there.

Leo Laporte (01:37:39):
Did you see the behind the scenes of thing,

Connie Guglielmo (01:37:42):
The Hands, the character actor who had to do and Wear Express

Leo Laporte (01:37:46):
Wears suit, and then his hand, and they, they, so they can mad him out? Oh,

Iain Thomson (01:37:50):
Good.

Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
Great. And he's like a dancer. I mean, he's like, really? It's quite impressive when he's doing,

Connie Guglielmo (01:37:54):
And if you want more innovation GU del Toro put up his version of Pinocchio.

Leo Laporte (01:37:59):
Is that good? Have

Connie Guglielmo (01:38:00):
You seen it? It's, it's not a kid's Pinocchio, a Mussolini

Leo Laporte (01:38:05):
Spoiler. Well, as you know,

Connie Guglielmo (01:38:06):
Pinocchio that shoot the puppet at one point. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (01:38:09):
<Laugh> Yeah, no, as you know Pinocchio was in fact a fascist novel. <Laugh>

Connie Guglielmo (01:38:15):
No, it was, it was pre fascist. Pre fascist 18, 18 80 something. But stop motion and what he's trying to do, technically, the story.

Leo Laporte (01:38:24):
So did he tell the original stories very dark? Did he do the original style Pinocchio? Not the Disney Pinocchio.

Connie Guglielmo (01:38:30):
Oh, it's not Disney Pinoc. This is not, kids do not have your kids <laugh> watch this Pinocchio unless they're older and you have a very long conversation with them about really death Wow. And fascism and loss.

Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
Yeah. Yeah. It isn't remarkable how many children's fairy tales have really, really dark stuff. If you look at the original versions, rather than Disneyfied versions of it, you know, it's like Cinderella. Her sisters cut their toes off to try and get their, you know, the, their feet into the slipper. And Little Red Riding Hood is just, don't read the original to the kids. Just really don't it's fairly dog <laugh>. Now, I'm now, now I want to go home once from the forums. Now I They are pretty grim. Yeah. Well, played the well, well played Grim Grims. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's take a little break. We will come back with lots more. I wanna talk about China a little bit. T S M C planning now to triple its investment in Arizona. Apple, you know, telling the Wall Street Journal, you can't, you can't attribute this to Apple, but we're gonna get out of there.

(01:39:37):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And now China is actually responding by scrapping its Covid zero policy, which is very interesting. Well, that's all coming up in just a little bit. And then we have lots of, lots of lovely little fun stories to tell you. But first, this week in Tech is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. It's the holiday season. Have you noticed <laugh> Santa threw up on our studio, that's for sure. Many businesses hiring for festive jobs These are actual listings from ZipRecruiter, Turkey Catcher, <laugh>, bilingual, Santa Claus. Okay, that I get coffee and nut gift basket assembler. And there is literally a listing on ZipRecruiter for Reindeer Wrangler. This is the beauty of ZipRecruiter. It can fill any job, any job. What roles can't they fill? If you're hiring, ZipRecruiter is there to help you find your dream candidates. What we use to hire, we have been using for years to hire, and it really works beautifully.

(01:40:38):
So the first part, of course, is that when you post on ZipRecruiter, you're not just posting a ZipRecruiter. Lots of lots of job hunters go there, but you're also posting on a hundred other job boards plus social networks. You're really putting out casting the widest net. And then, then the beauty of this is all of those applicants don't go to your email or your phone. No, no, no, that would be horrific. They go into your ZipRecruiter inbox, which has all these tools for filtering, scanning. The, for instance, they reformat all the resumes. So that makes it easy to read. They give you sc you know, questions to, to eliminate people who are just not starters. You know, they yes, no true false multiple choice. Even essay questions. So you can, you know, strain out the candidates that don't fit, but then they do something really cool.

(01:41:27):
People come to ZipRecruiter looking for work. They go through those resumes in with the software and look for people whose qualifications match your requirements. That's all. Then they give you a list of those people and you can look at them and say, oh, I like this one. I like this one. And ask them to apply. I have to say, our experience has been when you invite somebody to apply to your job, it, there's something about it. I mean, they feel, you know, honored, flatter, that you were interested. And so they're much more likely to show up, do the interview resp. It's really fantastic. All of this. In fact, our experience has been you post on ZipRecruiter, we're gonna get within a a, a few hours at least three or four really qualified candidates. Four out of five employers, 80% report that they'll get a quality candidate within the first day, within the first day. It really, really works. We love ZipRecruiter. You will too. Let ZipRecruiter help you find qualified candidates fast. You could try it for free. Ziprecruiter.Com/T W i t ziprecruiter.com/t w I there fan. Fantastic. Thank you ZipRecruiter, for your support and for helping us find such great people like Ava Viva, I always call her Ava Viva and others. Thank you. Zip.

(01:42:46):
So it's funny, we were talking about this last week. The Wall Street Journal publishes a story saying, yeah, Apple's thinking of getting outta China <laugh>, they're moving faster to get outta China. And somebody, I can't remember who it was, maybe it was Jason Sell, said, okay, this is a really good example of how Apple will go to the Wall Street Journal and say, no, you can't attribute it to us, but we think you should write a story <laugh>. We would like you to write a story. They get that kind of inside. And I think this, somebody said, this is exactly what, what happened there. Nevertheless, I think Apple's trying to send signals. Yeah, we understand. It's problematic. Iphone production down 40% this month because of riots. Anti Covid, zero policy, riots. Riots at the Foxcon iPhone factory. They call it iPhone City. 300,000 people work their building your iPhone. And they're, they're unhappy. I don't blame 'em for they're rushing at the moment. Right? for a couple of reasons. One, the, the COVID policy, but two, they weren't given the bonus they were promised. Hmm. the Chinese Communist Party is going to veterans

Iain Thomson (01:43:51):
And others saying, can you go work at this factory? We need to keep the production going. The China understands this production is very important to their economy as important to their economy as, as to apples. There were lots of protests and now President Xi has announced they are dropping their covid testing quarantine requirements. A big pivot. I Is that victory? Is that victory for the Chinese protestors? I guess it is. Well, I mean, part of, part of the, of the reason for the anger over this is that there was fire in an apartment building where people were lock, were there, were welded into the building. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno, I've heard so many wild stories coming out of China over the last year. I dunno what to believe on it. Yes. But I think, to be honest, onshoring production of chips and the rest of it, that's an absolutely essential thing.

(01:44:49):
 We've become far too dependent on a very few number of manufacturers, and both from a human rights economics and national security basis that needs to stop. And that needs to, we need to onshore this stuff. T S M C, the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturer. Oh, I guess I'm so angry. What? They're building it in Arizona, the most water stress state in the United States. Oh. And it does use a lot of water. And they're building two huge fabs there. Yeah. Intel is building them in and, and cuz they're getting tax breaks for it. Right. But where's the water gonna come from? Sorry. Well, we know where the money's coming from. The chip sack. A lot of it's coming from the US Yeah, yeah. I mean mean taxpayers. But that is good. I think it's good. It's important for America that we take this, some of this manufacture home. Yeah. We're never gonna take the assembly home. I mean, imagine where would you put a, a factory with 300,000 workers getting paid minimum wage to assemble iPhones. There's nowhere in the United States you could do

Connie Guglielmo (01:45:45):
That. So, so this is a story of someone who was an Apple reporter for a very long time at Bloomberg and Forbes. Don't put all your iPhones in one basket. Right. We've moved, apple, moved all of its manufacturing, as did, by the way, a lot of the other consumer electronics companies. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to Asia because of the war of cheap labor. And do you remember back in 2016, 2017, can't remember maybe 2015, all of those suicides at these factories, right? Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:46:11):
They put nets up to catch people jumping outta windows

Connie Guglielmo (01:46:15):
Because the working conditions were so badly. So this is just more an evolution of the working conditions in places where you're trying to exploit cheap labor. It's coupled with the fact that we just went through the pandemic, which exposed the problems of having the supply chain mm-hmm. <Affirmative> all outside the US and companies like Apple have, and under Tim Koch, who is by the way, the, the Chief operating officer who moved a lot of their facilities there. Right. To maximize their profits. Now recognizing that you can't have it all in one place, you know, whether or not it's in Arizona or some other state, we do need to bring some of that back. Not all of it will come back cuz there are many other countries where that labor can be exploited.

Iain Thomson (01:46:56):
Vietnam or Brazil,

Connie Guglielmo (01:46:58):
India advantaged or what have you, if you will. But it's about diversifying that. And right now, China, for a variety of reasons, is not a popular country for American businesses to wanna do business with. And this is just another example. Apple certainly has the cash to do whatever they want in terms of where they wanna set up production, where they want to set, set up manufacturing. How long does that take? Right. They, they've invested a lot, not just in outsourcing the manufacturing there, but they've actually set up supply chains and systems to make sure that they get priority building those factory lines. They, they put a lot of cash overseas to set those up. And so they're not gonna a hundred percent detangle from that. But it is the start of diversifying, not just, I think for Apple, but for a lot of other companies who are caught short because of you can't have everything in one place. Or, and if a tsunami hits or an earthquake hits or a pandemic hits, then you're outta wa out of luck.

Iain Thomson (01:47:58):
Well, also, I mean, Taiwan is gonna fall to China at some point. It that's really, you think that's a, that's a given. That's a no, that's, that's a given. It's like Hong, Hong Kong. Wow. They're coming for it. And there's quite frankly, nothing anyone can do. Much like Hong Kong. Where you, you, you, Hong a while, I mean, Hong Kong, we agreed to hand it over. Yeah. And they promised to make sure that, you know, it stayed a democracy. And we've seen how that worked. Taiwan, you know, there's nothing anyone can do. America can't defend Taiwan. They got the, you know, you think it's a mistake, Biden said, we will defend Taiwan. You think that's a mistake? Seriously, the first time you send a couple of aircraft carriers that way in a war situation, they're gonna get sunk. Yeah. And you know, it's, Americans won't stand for it.

(01:48:37):
Well, I, China China's been preparing for this for the last 20 years. Yeah. Whereas we're still fighting wars from 30 years ago. Right. So, but I mean, in terms of, in terms of Apple coming back to, coming back to that point, you know, apple put a lot of pressure on t on T S M C to actually do more advanced chips at this Arizona plant. Cause originally they were going to do, you know, gonna do, you know, high anatomy to processes. And now they're just saying, no, we need the newer stuff over here, please. So it is, as Connie said about supply chain and, but just Arizona. Seriously. Put it in Maine, put it in ver Vermont, <laugh>, put it somewhere with water.

Alex Wilhelm (01:49:18):
You know what we have a lot of in Rhode Island? What's that? Got a lot. Lot of water here. Lot of water. Like two, we're like two thirds underwater. So like, just put the plant here.

Iain Thomson (01:49:26):
Lot of water. But also, I mean, up north you can use air cooling. You know what I mean? This is, so we we're doing a whole series of features on the rudge about this, about, you know, data center cooling methods and building data centers in the middle of a desert. Makes no sense whatsoever. I, I love capitalism, but it's very clear that there are misaligned incentives built in Yeah. To capitalism.

Leo Laporte (01:49:47):
And one of the misaligned incentives is make money, but, but at the cost of a, of a sensible <laugh>, you know, long-term strategy. Right. Oh, well, I mean, there's a classic paper from Goldman Sachs last year where they pointed out that actually developing cures is much less profitable than developing treatments. That's right. So, you know, you should avoid, we don't wanna cure anybody. Yeah. You don't, you shouldn focus, focus on curing stuff. You should focus on treating it. That's sad. You know, it's, it's massive. Apparently. According to the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago, the r one of the reasons she ended the zero covid policy was from a letter from Terry Gal, the founder of who warned that strict Covid controls would threatened China's position in global supply chains. Duh. And and, and it's interesting the power of economics in, even in the Chinese Communist party. Right. Didn't help Jack Ma though, did it? No. let me ask Connie, the longtime 12 years Apple Reporter in those years, I'm sure many times you wrote about Apple's Titan Car Project, their desire to create a self-driving vehicle. Yes. You love that story. You can't wait to talk more about it.

Connie Guglielmo (01:51:02):
I, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think at one point I was much more bullish that they might do it. But honestly, I think, you know, Tim Cook is very smart and very pragmatic about what Apple knows and doesn't know and where they can add value. Certainly they figured out they could add value to the entertainment system. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:51:22):
Yeah. Through them. Very well

Connie Guglielmo (01:51:23):
Use of Yep. You know, building a self-driving car. You know what, what do we all know about Apple? They're never first into the marketplace. Right. They wait for everyone else to go in, take all the risks, and they come in and do it in a more elegant, streamlined way. And so, I don't know, it's expensive. They, they certainly have the cash if they want to do it. They have more cash than most countries on the planet. But

Leo Laporte (01:51:48):
They're planning though. They have to plan, they have to, and Tim knows this, they have to plan for the next big thing, right. That the iPhone isn't gonna carry him forever. They

Connie Guglielmo (01:51:57):
Have to figure. So this is where the augmented reality and VR headset that seems more likely.

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
I'm wondering, <laugh>, I mean, I'm wondering at this point, it's certainly certain not, not looking that good for Metaverse. Well, coming back to our original point, I'll say point blank. There will never be an Apple car in the way that it's there. According to Markman, the car project has been in limbo No. For the past several months. As Apple executives grappled with the reality. Yeah. That it's vision for a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals is not feasible with current technology. They don't want to go down the, it's current technology. It looks like current regulation. Yeah. I mean, you can't put these stuff on the streets without a budget. So they're dumping the autonomy. It never happen. According to Germin they're now planning a less ambitious design that will include a steering wheel and pedals only one. But still pedals and on. No, they'll have multiple and only support full autonomous capabilities on highways. That's what right now many that which to do right now and GM are doing. And they won't get there until 20, 26, 40 years.

Iain Thomson (01:53:04):
They're gonna sell the division off. They're gonna shut it down. Yeah. That that's the way. And

Alex Wilhelm (01:53:08):
Sell and sell it to

Leo Laporte (01:53:08):
Who? And they're, well,

Iain Thomson (01:53:10):
This is it. Very few people buying at the moment. Yeah. Maybe the software might sell, but that's about it.

Leo Laporte (01:53:15):
I

Alex Wilhelm (01:53:15):
Think. Can I just say how, how let down I am by this entire autonomy situation? If you go back a couple of years, basically anything in lidar autonomy was raising just oodles of venture capital. Highest paid engineers out there, talent war. Everyone was doing the self-driving project. I had such hope that I was not gonna have to relearn how to drive <laugh>. And now everyone has let me down and my stupid butt has to relearn how to drive a car. And we have an automatic, now, I don't know how to drive automatics. It's like two fricking pedals. Where do you shift? It's terrifying. <Laugh>. But anyways, apple. Apple, listen, move the island production to some other countries. Take all the money, put in self-driving cars, because I need one. Please. Lord.

Leo Laporte (01:53:55):
What about me? I'm, I'm getting old. I'm, I don't wanna, I don't wanna have to Dr. I don't wanna, the worst thing is having Lisa Drive and me sitting in the, in the passenger seat.

Iain Thomson (01:54:06):
You see, I've driven with you and you're a very careful driver.

Leo Laporte (01:54:08):
I'm a very careful driver.

Iain Thomson (01:54:09):
Driving with Elisa might be

Leo Laporte (01:54:11):
Slightly <laugh>.

Iain Thomson (01:54:13):
You might find my fingerprints in the armrest.

Leo Laporte (01:54:15):
I'd rather have te I'd rather have Elon Drive.

Iain Thomson (01:54:17):
No, I get the feeling. She's got foot. She's a foot to the floor. Very good. She's very good driver, but she's very

Leo Laporte (01:54:22):
Good to the floor. Never had an accident. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. She scares me. Apple apparently according to the National Labor Relations Board, pursued illegal anti-union tactics. The company either settles or they're gonna issue a complaint. The union itself is upset cwa communi communications. Workers of America says Apple thinks the rules don't apply to them. The N L R B concluded that in the Atlanta region anyway, apple held mandatory anti-union meetings during which management made coercive statements. In other words, the investigation's over. And they're saying pay up, or we sue Apple did not have a a response. Shockingly. Yeah. It's interesting because in Maryland where the or I'm sorry, St. Louis where the union workers wanted to join the aerospace union, <laugh>, the iam they, they withdrew the petition. The iam the union said it because it was cuz of the company. The the worker said, yeah, we, we actually, nobody wanted it. <Laugh>. any, it's an interesting situation. Apple has clearly adopted some of the strong arm tactics that were, you know, better known in the day of Henry Ford.

Iain Thomson (01:55:47):
Oh, no. Okay. They're not hiring pig. They're

Leo Laporte (01:55:49):
Bringing the pinkertons.

Iain Thomson (01:55:49):
I was gonna say, they're not hiring Pinkertons to break heads or bring the army in to shoot up the miners as they used to in the 1920s. But, you know, it's,

Leo Laporte (01:55:57):
They're a big company.

Iain Thomson (01:55:58):
If you, if you, they should treat your staff. If you treat your staff stuff. Look, I was a member of a union for many years simply cause it gave me certain, you know, you get a press card in the UK and you get full legal cover, which is great. But for people like factory workers for re apple retail staff for that sort of thing, the only way you are gonna get management to listen to you if, if that only, if you only choice, you have Oh, no. If the only choice you have is to go through all the hassle and heartbreak of joining, of forming and joining a union, it's a sign of bad management. Yeah. You know, if, if you're not treating a staff, if you're treating a staff so badly Right. That they want to form a union, you've really mucked up.

Alex Wilhelm (01:56:41):
Also, if you don't wanna have unions, don't hire tons of people that work in a retail store, for example. Or if you're Amazon warehouses. Yeah. I mean, like, these people expect that their policies that work with technology workers will work with

Leo Laporte (01:56:56):
Ah,

Alex Wilhelm (01:56:56):
That's interesting. Other sorts of jobs. Yeah. And it's not the case. Yeah. I've always found the argument that tech workers shouldn't unionize because they're more compensated to be specious because I, it's ridiculous and stupid and overly corporate least subservient. But, you know, come on. These are retail workers. Let 'em unionize. And every time that, that a company that has hundreds of billions of dollars says that No, you can't. And then breaks the rules in these ways. It, it, it, it's, it strikes me that the, the core, the company's soul must be really rotten. And it's just

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
Sad. I did, I did see an interesting article some weeks ago, I can't remember where that said, tech, some tech CEOs were rooting for Elon because he was taking the entitled engineers down at Peg. Mm-Hmm. But that, that, this is one of the big problems of companies like Apple and Google with the, with the engineers, is they have so much power because they're so important and so scarce because

Iain Thomson (01:57:50):
They do the work. <Laugh>, you

Leo Laporte (01:57:52):
Know, there

Alex Wilhelm (01:57:52):
You go. There

Iain Thomson (01:57:53):
It's any number, any nu you can have any number of managers and HR people and, and the rest of it. But when it comes down to it, if you are doing the work, which makes all that money, you should get a fair share of it. That's why we have

Leo Laporte (01:58:06):
Pizza ovens and espresso machines.

Iain Thomson (01:58:09):
<Laugh>, listen, you can take your pizza oven and shut. Okay. Look, give people a decent wage and some dignity at work. That's all they're looking for.

Leo Laporte (01:58:17):
I guess they probably do the pizza ovens hoping that they could pay them less, but at least you get free pizza. Well, but I mean, there's a certain group of people that, but actually be a good

Iain Thomson (01:58:25):
Deal. No, I had a friend who joined Google and they're like, oh honey, I'm taking the Google bus down to work. And you're like, oh, that's great. Safe and commute. It's like, yeah, but you're respected to work when you're on the bus. Oh. So now I've got an extra two hours of work on my day. At

Leo Laporte (01:58:37):
Least Google didn't put bedrooms in the conference room plugged <laugh>. I

Alex Wilhelm (01:58:41):
Can, I can I can I make a a point here? I, yes. I think it's ironic that a lot of these people that we're talking about that are, that are praising Elon are anti remote work because they think people will do more work in the office, which he

Leo Laporte (01:58:50):
Is as well. No,

Alex Wilhelm (01:58:51):
I, I, which is so strange to me because when I, I, I work from home cause I work in, you know, Providence, which is not a, not a tech or journalism city. And I eat at my desk every day. And when I worked in an office, I had friends who were around and we would go places and eat and sit.

Leo Laporte (01:59:08):
But that's you, you like having friends. Oh, but you, you're saying we were getting work done <laugh>. You were, it was less. Yeah. Because there's that guy who comes around in the cubicle says, how you doing? And then you're trying to work and he's bothering you. And then there's the meeting that the middle manager has to do to prove his ex worth in existence. Yeah. That takes an hour out of your life. You'll never get back. You're right. Go home, work at home. I agree with you. I happen to, yeah. I, the whole quarantine I worked here, but so I kind of like coming into work, but not everybody does. And for those who don't, you shouldn't have to. This is it. Connie, have you been working from home over the pandemic or?

Connie Guglielmo (01:59:45):
I, I have. I mean, I ran the scene, editorial team with in my pajamas for my dining room table for the first two years. <Laugh>. We are now back in the office two days a week for most half. But we still have a lot of flexibility because once you run your business remotely, you can show that you can run your business remotely. Yeah. Yeah. So then the argument is why do you need to do it in person? Well, I will say there are definitely some advantages, having people together. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you like brainstorming and there's camaraderie and conversations might happen, but on, there's nothing, there's no reason every anything has to be in either or black or white. They don't have to all work in person hybrid. Right. I don't think you're doing your job. Right. Hybrid

Leo Laporte (02:00:27):
Is a, a hybrid. Yeah. Forever going forward. You

Connie Guglielmo (02:00:29):
Know, factory workers have to touch things. Right. Unfortunately. And have to be in the factory. I get that. Or you work at a coffee shop where you're pulling coffee. Yeah. Right. Unless there's a remote or there's a coffee machine in the cafeteria that by the way, you are fully trained on how to use, because those things are not two seconds to use great respect to baristas. It takes some skill to know how to use those coffee machines. So it's about flexibility. But I think to the larger point, it's about treating people as people and what, what do you need in order to be successful as a company today? And if it's only profit because the five founders or two founders, or one founder wants to be a billionaire, well how many billions do you need? Yeah. Right. And so it goes back

Alex Wilhelm (02:01:12):
To 10 12

Leo Laporte (02:01:14):
<Laugh>. But

Connie Guglielmo (02:01:15):
It goes back to that. I'd

Leo Laporte (02:01:16):
Take one. What is I'd be happy with one, 1 billion. What

Connie Guglielmo (02:01:19):
Is the purpose of capitalism? Right. What is, if you're not paying people Right. Henry Ford make the cars affordable because the people making them in the factories won't ever be able to buy one. Right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:30):
And he paid his stuff for Hershey as well. As long as I what? Right. <laugh>. Right.

Connie Guglielmo (02:01:35):
So I, it just, you know, I love

Leo Laporte (02:01:36):
That Hershey story by

Connie Guglielmo (02:01:37):
The way

Leo Laporte (02:01:37):
Cycle. That's a a great story. I have to watch that show. Go look it up. Yes. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (02:01:41):
Yeah. Well the same thing happened in the uk. We have Bourneville chocolate. They built an entire company town and they didn't include any pubs with it because he was a Quaker and didn't believe in it. But that kind of stuff used to go on and it's still going on. Google is building a campus with housing down in South San San Francisco at the moment.

Leo Laporte (02:01:59):
But there's no chocolate.

Iain Thomson (02:02:00):
No chocolate. No, no. Although,

Leo Laporte (02:02:03):
Oh God. There is booze. There's lots of

Iain Thomson (02:02:05):
Booze. Well, we used to, on the ranch, we used to perform

Leo Laporte (02:02:06):
Cucumber water. What is it about, what is it about chocolate magnets? Those are the nice people. The people who make chocolate. They're very nice. <Laugh>. Well, not Nestle. Oh well

Iain Thomson (02:02:16):
No,

Leo Laporte (02:02:17):
True. They're Swiss. So that's another story entirely. Hey, there is, I want to give Apple props cuz there is a, an apple story that is a, I think a bigger story than than it's been getting coverage for. It deserves that Apple is turning on end-to-end encryption for more things, including iCloud backups. And that is huge. They're gonna turn on end-to-end encryption for notes for iCloud drive, for photos, reminders, safari bookmark series shortcuts, voice memos, and wallet passes. In fact, the only major categories not covered by this advanced data protection are iCloud mail contacts and calendar. And that's just cause they have to interoperate with other calendar systems. This is huge. And you know, their f fbi I is not happy.

Iain Thomson (02:03:06):
Well, apparently, I mean, I was, I was reading, I think it was Matt was it Matt Greens talking about this? They've had this capability since about 2016.

Leo Laporte (02:03:14):
16, yeah. Apparently the FBI told him not to turn it on. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (02:03:17):
Well you remember the San Bernard Bernardino shooting where they went heads to with

Leo Laporte (02:03:21):
The fbi. Right. Apple's response, by the way, when the F FBI called and said, we have this phone, we can't unlock it. You have to help us. Was all you have to do is bring the phone back to his apartment where it will get on the wifi, uploaded the iCloud, and we will give you everything. Hmm. Because Apple for years has had the keys to iCloud and been willing to give, law enforcement had to give law enforcement anything they wanted. And that was always their, their out. 

Iain Thomson (02:03:46):
My understanding is they screwed the pooch on that. Cause they tried to open it with various different pathways.

Leo Laporte (02:03:50):
Yeah. The, the, I screwed up. Yeah. Yeah. So that's been a long standing thing. So it's very interesting for me to hear that Apple is, is going to, is going to go up against the fbi, the UK government as well. The Australian government as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and make it so that when a lawful subpoena comes from these law enforcement agencies, apple can say, Hey, we'd love to give it to you. We can't, it's encrypted and we don't hold the keys that I can understand why Apple might want that, but they're gonna good, good on them. By the way. We as users should all want that. That's real privacy. I guess. They decided that it was better to make the users happy than the fbi. They're gonna get some heat. And what are they gonna do in China? Cuz China's not gonna like this. Well, they're not gonna have this

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:36):
Function function the same way in China, I presume. But I will say points to Apple here. I

Leo Laporte (02:04:40):
Agree. This,

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:41):
By the way,

Leo Laporte (02:04:41):
Is great. According to the Wall Street Journal rolls out in China in early 2023

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:45):
<Laugh>. Whoa. That's, I hope they moved the production by 2023.

Leo Laporte (02:04:49):
Very surprised. That's Chinese government would be saying, nice factories you've got, there would be a shame if something happened to them. Cuz I mean, Apple's big thing is, yeah, we keep your data secure. We keep your data private. Asterisk offer does not apply in China. Well, but look what so look what Edwin Foxconn's founder wrote to President c she and say, you know what? This thing is gonna cost you. She backed down on Covid zero. That's a big deal. I think China probably, I mean, Apple's kind of thinking to himself, maybe this is the time to say, look, you want to keep those factories in in, in in J Joe. You wanna keep iPhone city going. This is our demand. I think it's gonna be very interesting to see what happens. Here. They also dropped, and this is also good news, their plans to do on phone scanning for Csam child sexual abuse imagery. Remember when they announced that there was an uproar, a fewer over that saying, look, no one's fa in favor of child sexual abuse imagery. But you can't, there's no way to do this. That doesn't compromise everybody's privacy as a side effect. So that's, that's fantastic news. Apple also announced support now for the Pasky system. Good for Apple.

Alex Wilhelm (02:06:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:06:10):
Right.

Alex Wilhelm (02:06:10):
I mean, this is why I have, I mean like Apple stance on, on generally privacy is better than most because they are not an AD first business. That's changing, I think as we've seen Apple evolve as a company. But you know, if you want to have a slightly more secure device, it just seems to be reasonable to be an iOS, which is why I I'm an iPhone user have been forever. So, points that doesn't take away the other stuff we've talked about. But yeah, I'll give him some points. Sir.

Leo Laporte (02:06:35):
Connie, how do you think Tim Cook finally said, all right we are gonna actually live up to our promise of what, what is, what what's on the iPhone? Stays on the iPhone.

Connie Guglielmo (02:06:45):
Hey, I think Apple has tried to carve out a place for itself in the marketplace as being very privacy forward and being privacy. But

Leo Laporte (02:06:52):
Some have said, and sometimes it seems that it's a marketing strategy rather than a real, real.

Connie Guglielmo (02:06:56):
Yeah. But I, I think that they have tried, I mean this is an example of them pushing the buckets. Yeah. I think your theory about how they, they're using it to coerce the Chinese government is interesting as that comes out. Well, you know, that's the story. I'll read <laugh> and see how it plays, but Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think them going up against the fbi Whenev in that San Bernardino case was also a, an example of them saying this is slippery slope and we need to, we need to stop before we go too far down that slope.

Leo Laporte (02:07:23):
They've had this capability for years. They didn't do it for years. Why now? What do you think? Because the heats died down after the San Bernardino thing. I think, here's what I think Apple was starting to get a lot of heat over the last six months over i, over the ads that they were starting to put in there. And Yeah. And evidence that apple was in fact sending lots of information back to the home office and so forth. It was starting to look like that. It was, this privacy thing was merely a marketing push. They weren't living up to it. And I think they realized that that's gonna hurt them in the long run. They're getting a lot of heat over the, of our other things like the app store. This was their chance to become a white knight and to, and to stand up for it.

(02:08:08):
Cuz this is exactly what people like Matthew Greens say, you gotta do end to end encryption. You don't hold the keys. We hold the keys. I think they also, by the way, are probably making the calculus that most users will not turn on advanced data protection. That they will still, in many cases be able to turn that information over to law enforcement. Cuz it is a separate, I think it's gonna be a separate setting and you will sacrifice some capabilities because if it's end-to-end encrypted, there's things Apple can't do because they can't see into your files. What do you think, Connie? Why now?

Connie Guglielmo (02:08:45):
Why now? I think you, you said it right. They, they've been getting pressure from a lot of different areas. The they needed to. The app store was Yeah. Is not going away. Right? Yeah. They have a, you know, they had a black eye over Epic. Yep. People have been talking about that still. Yep. They have been talking about privacy and touting privacy and at some point you have to, this is what you say. Now show us what you do. So I I give them points on this one. I think timing. Look, most of us keep our phones now for longer than we ever have. Right. And do you want, and it's come down to just a very few players in the marketplace, Microsoft, on side. And so they need a reason to get people to wanna lock into their ecosystem and be on that path to either upgrade every year or every other year and have a, a reason to wanna come back.

(02:09:36):
And if privacy and we, we add privacy things is part of their sales pitch. Why not? The, the market is not everybody on the planet pretty much has a phone. So in the US the, the sales of smartphones, you know, continue to decline because people are just stretching how much longer they have their phones as Alex is showing us. And so it's part of a story to try to make it more compelling to pick this platform over another. Cuz you're not just picking the iPhone, right? As we've all said, you're picking their ecosystem. Yep. And all the services and everything that go in with them.

Leo Laporte (02:10:13):
Good for them. I hope I'm not being too cynical and saying, well, oh, they just said this is, you know, good pr that they really are committed to this. And I'm glad they did it even though it took 'em years. I'm glad they did it. It's, I hope, I hope they are as well. But yeah, we're gonna have to see you on that and turn off, turn on advanced data protection when it becomes available on your iPhone next year. Let's take a little break. Final words, final thoughts coming up. Some of the best stories of the show are always at the end. Mm-Hmm. I should mm-hmm. I should mention the fun ones. Like, for instance, the word of the year from Oxford English Dictionary. <Laugh> Stay here. Our show today brought to you by Wealth Front Wealth Front's goal is to make building long-term wealth easy.

(02:10:55):
And they do it in two ways now. We've always talked about the automated investing accounts. Now they also have high yield savings and all of it inside this beautifully designed interface. I just love the Wealthfront app. Is your bank keeping money that could be yours if you're earning less than wealth fronts. Wow. Get this 3.3% a p y I think they might be taking a little bit more. Federal interest rates have been going up, right? Banks have been earning more on your savings. But are they given that money back to you? According to the F D I C, the average US Bank has only raised the rates. They pay to you to 0.21% this year, 0.21%. This year, wealth front's actually offering their clients a rate that's fif almost 15 times higher. With a Wealth Front cash account, it's easy to sign up.

(02:11:47):
Plus we'll get unlimited transfers that are completely fee free and up to 2 million in F D I C insurance through partner banks. There are no account fees, no minimum balance. If you sign up@wealthfront.com slash TWiT right now, they're gonna give you a free $50 bonus with an initial deposit of 500 bucks. That's nice. So just one more reason to love Wealth Front. Don't let your bank keep the interest you could be earning. Move your savings to a high yield account like Wealthfront and earn 3.3% a p y. That's pretty amazing. Join nearly half a million people who already use Wealthfront to earn 15 times more than the average US Bank. Go to wealthfront.com/TWiTt to get started and get your free $50 bonus with an initial deposit of $500. Wealthfront.Com/Twitt wealthfront.com/TWiTt has been a paid endorsement for Wealthfront. And we thank you Wealthfront for your support here at TWiTt. And all of you who use that address are supporting us too. So thank you. What awake this week was we have a lovely handcrafted video for you describing all that you might have missed. I, this is a cozy little sweater. I bet. Sweaty happy holidays with a clippy and that Okay. Button tempted. It's right over my left breast. So girls, stay away. Don't, don't be tempted there. 

Leo Laporte (02:14:46):
A fun week that was. Lots more still to come. It's, it's gonna be a great week. A reminder, the way we're handling the holidays as usual means that because this year, Christmas and New Year's Day are both on Sundays. So how we're gonna do this is Christmas will have our holiday episode, which is gonna feature the old timers, Jeff Jarvis, Paul Throt, Steve Gibson, and Doc Surles and me. We'll do a little fun kind of round table looking back at the year 2022. And then January 1st will be our best of episode. The week of January 27th for every other show will be our best of episodes. So we can give this staff the last week of the year off. So best of episodes coming January 27th. The TWiTt holiday special. January 20, I'm sorry, December 25th. Did I say January, December for both the best ofs and the holiday special. Very excited about that. Let's see. NASA Awards a 57 million contract to build roads on the moon. The future is now. I'm very excited. This is a company you might have seen videos, TOS of them. Icon. It's an advanced construction technology. They do 3D concrete, 3D printed homes. Have you seen that extrusion machine that has

Iain Thomson (02:16:12):
The print? It's, it's, it's the wave of the future. And also Orion Space Capsule landed back yes. On a day

Leo Laporte (02:16:19):
Ryan's

Iain Thomson (02:16:19):
Home. Yep. after replicating a mission that America first canceled, carried out 54 years ago. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:16:25):
But just to show we can do it again. Yeah, yeah. We're older, we're wiser. <Laugh> no, I, Ryan was very fun and very excited. Did you see, I have

Iain Thomson (02:16:34):
To show you, but I mean, the, the moon thing is, is just, we're gonna have to build there. Cause you can't transport stuff there. You've gotta build with the, the rock

Leo Laporte (02:16:40):
You've got. So they're using regolith, lunar regolith to make this concrete. They'll use it for roads, habitats. They'll build, they'll extrude the habitats with conduits already for wiring and piping. I think. I mean, this is just 57 million is just to test it, right? Mm-Hmm. But I think a really a cool idea. So you were talking about Orion and Rod Pile sent me a great he was watching the Lockheed Martin video. Remember with Orion you could say, oh, don't show it yet. Don't show it yet. Let me explain it first. You could send a message that would be displayed on the iPad in the Orion capsule. This was a joint venture with Lockheed Martin and Amazon Echo Division and WebEx. And so they would have to approve it. Obviously you couldn't send, you know spam up there or anything like that. They'd have to approve it. But obviously somebody at Lockheed Martin has a sense of humor because they did accept this message. At 264,883 miles away from the Earth. Now you can show up bonito. We've been trying to reach you about your spacecraft's extended warranty <laugh> sent by blocked,

Iain Thomson (02:17:51):
I thought it was gonna be hot singles in your area with zero temperature

Leo Laporte (02:17:55):
Outside. They did block all of those. But they, I think they, they must have realized this is this is actually pretty funny. So nice. Nice job. Somebody I probably, anybody who submitted that would've thought, there's no way this is getting through. It did. It did. Well done. Let's see what else. In just the, you know, the, the bottom of the barrel on these stories, San Francisco, it's, we're happy to report, has decided not to authorize explosive killer robots.

Iain Thomson (02:18:25):
Yes. Yes, indeed. It's thank goodness they one could say they've terminated the plan. Indeed.

Leo Laporte (02:18:29):
Last week we recorded that

Iain Thomson (02:18:32):
<Laugh> clay, this

Leo Laporte (02:18:34):
Boom. Okay. Citizen, back to your homes. <Laugh>. they last week had approved the idea of using the, they got, this is military technology, so it has to have the approval of the supervisors that the San Francisco's police Department could use these 17 bomb disposal robots. Mm. and could, it could empower them with lethal force if there were no other way around. <Laugh>

Iain Thomson (02:18:59):
Around. But no guns, only explosives.

Leo Laporte (02:19:01):
That was the wild thing. Just like a bomb. So it could just go in there and blow the bad guy. Yeah, but

Iain Thomson (02:19:06):
I mean, that's been done already. Dallas in 2016, they killed a, those was a, a guy who shot, what is it, five or six police officers. They got him cornered into a building. They basically grabbed us some explosives, put it on the front of a police robot, drove it up to him and blew him up. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:19:21):
Actually, honestly, I don't think this is such a bad idea. I think about Aldi, the police weren't willing to go in and save those kids. Send a bomb. Oh no. I guess you couldn't send a bomb. No,

Alex Wilhelm (02:19:29):
No. You can't send a bomb into school. That's not, no. And, and their ladies and gentlemen is my beef with this idea because we'll get a little ambitious with it. Also, can I just ask, what did they think people were going to say? Oh yeah, that sounds a great idea. Let's do that. Yeah, let's give, let's give the S f p d robot bombs.

Iain Thomson (02:19:46):
This is it. In, in a few very, very tiny circumstances. This makes sense. Which would happen maybe once every five or 10 years problem.

Leo Laporte (02:19:54):
I think people are right here. Afraid abused. Yeah. Afraid of abuse by an an over police

Alex Wilhelm (02:20:00):
Department. What could go wrong? What could

Leo Laporte (02:20:02):
Possibly go

Alex Wilhelm (02:20:02):
Wrong? What could go wrong? Terminate

Leo Laporte (02:20:04):
The killer. Robots.

Alex Wilhelm (02:20:06):
Did you know everybody that we have a military here in the United States that has bomb and things to blow things up. We don't need to give the cops robot bomb. We have a military. Yeah, they just bomb.

Leo Laporte (02:20:16):
Call the army. Have the army, dude. Yeah, yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:20:18):
Or the Navy, Marines, air Force, air National Guard, sea Patrol, whatever.

Leo Laporte (02:20:22):
Another story from the register. It's the end of an area. You ever flown a 7 47? The last 7 47 rolls off the production line. And I like Brandon. I dunno if Brandon wrote this or you did he on Boeing. Boeing gone.

Iain Thomson (02:20:38):
Actually that was Chris, my editor. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:20:40):
Nice job. Yeah,

Iain Thomson (02:20:41):
They he's, he's the class on. It's, it, it really did feel, because I mean, I've flown seven four sevens ever since I've been flying.

Leo Laporte (02:20:47):
Love

Iain Thomson (02:20:47):
Them. You know, it's

Leo Laporte (02:20:50):
That's the one that had the piano lounge upstairs in the Oh yeah. Very first versions. Remember though they had ads that they'd have people standing around at a bar and playing piano and singing on the airplane.

Iain Thomson (02:21:02):
If you look at their 1970s and the sixties and seventies stuff, they were just like, yeah, they'd got a bow. They've got a piano.

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
Now it's just more seats. More money. More money. Well,

Iain Thomson (02:21:11):
I don't know. Virgin still has a bar on this. Some of the, the 7 47 s. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:21:16):
I like sitting upstairs on a trip on a 7 47. It's kind of a Oh no, it's a smaller little Yeah.

Iain Thomson (02:21:22):
But the, the, the luggage racks are much smaller. Ah. sorry. I I, I was an aviation journalist for

Leo Laporte (02:21:28):
A year. Spent, spent a lot of time in the 7 47 <laugh>. Yeah. It's the 1574th plane. Be the last one assembled. They will still likely stay in service for at least another decade or two. These planes, oh, couple of days don't wear out. Yeah. the final craft is a 7 47 8 freighter, which will be delivered to the cargo company Atlas Air in early 2023.

Iain Thomson (02:21:54):
Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (02:21:55):
End of the line. Now. We have triple 77 s, which are

Iain Thomson (02:21:57):
Reasonable. Triple 77 s are good. I mean, I flew the A three 80 the last time I

Leo Laporte (02:22:00):
Came back. I love the A three 80. Isn't that too big though? I mean, most airports can't even handle it.

Iain Thomson (02:22:05):
Yeah. This is, it. It's kind, it's kind like Concord. It's limited to certain roots. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:22:10):
We flew a, a 3 88 of San Francisco and half the plane boards upstairs and half the downstairs is the, the boarding is on two different levels of the airport because it's such a big, it's crazy.

Iain Thomson (02:22:20):
Well, some of the luxury ones are, God, Virgin Airways did this horrible advertising campaign when they got the A three 80. Cause they put double bed cabins in the upper deck <laugh> and a casino.

Leo Laporte (02:22:32):
No, very

Iain Thomson (02:22:33):
Frustrated. That's awesome. Yeah. But Richard Branson's cheeky smokey comment to the news was, now you can get lucky TWiTce on a virgin of oh

Leo Laporte (02:22:42):
Oh. And

Iain Thomson (02:22:43):
It was just like, oh, for goodness. Thank Matt. Self respect.

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):
Here's

Alex Wilhelm (02:22:47):
The, that's the last thing that should happen on an airplane with other people.

Leo Laporte (02:22:50):
Here's the Emirate's first class shower spa on an A three 80 just for you.

Iain Thomson (02:22:56):
Honestly, I'm gonna say no,

Alex Wilhelm (02:22:58):
That's depressing. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:22:59):
Depressing.

Iain Thomson (02:23:01):
I'm, I'm gonna say I think it's Sarah Milin said this, so we were gonna see you later in the year. And she's just like, people talk about the Mile High Club as though it's, you know, something, it's not exotic. No. You've just had sex in a chemical toilet. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:23:14):
You don't really, it's not, it's not glamorous. It's highly overrated. And I'm not speaking of somebody who's Oh, had an experience of it, <laugh>. I haven't. Absolutely, absolutely not. Final story the Oxford Word of the Year I actually was voting for Metaverse, which is not yet in the Oxford English dictionary. I thought that's a shuan. But it no, the public vote, 93% voted for something I had never heard of. Goblin mode. I've never heard of that. What is that?

Alex Wilhelm (02:23:51):
Well, I mean, can Leo did you have the story pull up? Cause the the actual definition is better than I can do myself. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:23:56):
But I want, this is from the Atlantic. Oxford defines goblin mode as a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, elephant dungeon, indulgent, lazy slovenly or greedy typically in a way that rejects norms or expectations.

Alex Wilhelm (02:24:15):
Yes. So goblin mode is, for example, when you take your roommates food and you sit on the couch in sco and blankets all day and refuse to like wash your socks because you're going goblin mode <laugh>. And it's, it's what we all retreated to in the early covid days before we realized this was gonna be a multi-year incarceration in our domiciles. And I, I think it's actually kind of the, the extreme version of self-care. Cause it's a little bit selfish and a little bit greedy. And I, I adore it. And this is what weakens are for <laugh>. And I, I go gobbling boat as often as I can. It's, it's fantastic. I can recommend it. Do it.

Leo Laporte (02:24:48):
This is what the Atlantic wrote. The ability to go goblin mode was a necessary evolution. Forged in trauma. But it now remains with us as a superpower. As we emerge from our caves after that long hibernation, our goblin selves lurk somewhere deep inside us, beckoning us back home to vibe out. <Laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (02:25:10):
Yeah, mine, mine's not that hidden. Mine's kind of right, right at surface level <laugh>. Whenever people are like, put on pants and I'm like, I don't know, man, I haven't worn hard pants in a long time.

Leo Laporte (02:25:20):
You know, I, you know, I I was wrong. You know, Denise Howell said on our maid on put the three words. One was metaverse, one was goblin mode, and I can't remember what the third one was. And and I said, oh, metaverse is just an, I don't understand. I don't even know what goblin I've never, and I, everybody shouted me down and said, what? Everybody knows goblin mode.

Iain Thomson (02:25:46):
She, I maybe I'm, I'm weird about this, but

Leo Laporte (02:25:49):
I, the other one by the way was hashtag this one is definitely not a starter, a non non-starter hashtag I stand with. No. What? That's not a word of the year. No, no. Metaverse is a word of the year. I don't like it. But it's a word of the year. It's a word that's gonna be used again and again over the next decade. How often are we gonna use goblin mode? I

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:10):
Dunno. Well, we've just done a whole segment about it. So several times. Apparently <laugh> every time on TWiTtter

Leo Laporte (02:26:15):
<Laugh>, it's only a matter of time before there's in a goblin mode emoji now. Right.

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:21):
I, I think that the idea of investing a little bit more in what makes you happy versus going out in the world and doing performative things for the sake of being part of norms is, is the underlying tension that makes go mode interesting to me. And I think, I think as I try to relearn how to be social and so forth, I think I'm just a fundamentally different person. And I'm a bit more goblin Moes than I was pre covid. Yeah.

Connie Guglielmo (02:26:46):
Perfect. I think this is so great that you're saying this cuz you're just about to have a goblin who's gonna take all your goblin mode. Oh,

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:53):
So

Leo Laporte (02:26:54):
True. So true. No more goblin mode for you <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:58):
I'm trying to, I'm trying to do as much self-indulgent crap. Oh my gosh. Why isn't I went to the library today. We read books by the fire. Like we're trying to do all this pleasant stuff because we know like in some number of hours

Leo Laporte (02:27:08):
You'll be serving an infant goblin the next 18 to 30 years.

Iain Thomson (02:27:14):
I, I've dunno if you found this, Alex, but you know, your, your friends with kids have for years have been telling you, oh, it's so fulfilling. It's the most wonderful thing you can ever do. They, and then when you announced the pregnancy, like you're never gonna sleep

Alex Wilhelm (02:27:26):
Again.

Leo Laporte (02:27:26):
<Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (02:27:27):
This, this was the most ridiculous thing because everyone was like, oh my gosh, you guys are gonna be such lovely parents. We're so excited. You know, and then the moment we actually, we had a fertility journey and the mo when we were finally pregnant, they were like, ha ha and welcome to hell kid. And I was like, I feel vaguely tricked by this. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:27:43):
No, no. It's wonderful. You are gonna love it. You're gonna love that baby more than you loved anything ever in your life.

Alex Wilhelm (02:27:50):
And I'm looking forward to it. But I I will say when I come back on TWiTtter the next time let's go for like seven hours. Cause it's gonna be after I'm like done with parental leave and I'm gonna want,

Leo Laporte (02:27:59):
It will be a while from now. Yeah, you didn't, you're not gonna, I know I've seen this happen. Devendra harder war. I've seen it happen again and again to our hosts. You are no davindra. You are on for the last time for some time.

Alex Wilhelm (02:28:10):
That's a you know what, I'm ready though. I'm ready for the next stage of life. This is gonna be fun. We're gonna have a couple kids

Leo Laporte (02:28:15):
And, and you know what? They were right. You two are gonna be fantastic parents. I'm very, very happy for both

Alex Wilhelm (02:28:20):
Of you. You should see all the cute hats we own for this baby <laugh>. She's gonna be the most fat people send us so many onesies. We have like math onesies from our math friends. Like it's gonna be, we're so excited. Oh great. But not yet. Oh, yet. Couple days.

Iain Thomson (02:28:35):
I wish Microsoft still did these cause I'd sell sunny one, but I I got one for a friend of mine. I was, I put red the Redman campus for what? The 2008 server launch and in the Microsoft shop they had baby onesies. Oh. Clippy on the front with it looks like you are having a baby. Can I help

Leo Laporte (02:28:52):
<Laugh>? Oh God.

Iain Thomson (02:28:52):
And I wish they,

Leo Laporte (02:28:53):
They still did. Let me tell you, you my experience joke onesies are not a good idea. Okay. Oh really? Yeah, I don't recommend it. Oh,

Iain Thomson (02:29:01):
Okay. What's the problem?

Leo Laporte (02:29:02):
Just, yeah, you wear it once and then, you know, ah,

Iain Thomson (02:29:05):
Okay. The joke west

Leo Laporte (02:29:06):
Thick, the joke wears thin. That's actually a pretty good one. That's pretty funny.

Alex Wilhelm (02:29:09):
We, we have a lot of joke ones is the problem is we have so much clothes for like zero to three months, three to six, six to nine. And then after that, like clothes aren't as cute. So people don't buy them for you Yeah. For your shower

Leo Laporte (02:29:20):
And stuff. Just get to know people with older kids. See they're, you'll be on the handy me down drain. That is a very real thing. Hand-Me-Downs are a lifesaver.

Alex Wilhelm (02:29:27):
Yeah. My, my friends in town or had one kid and stopped and cuz they, they just wanted to have one and so they gave us a bunch of their stuff. So my baby Bjorn that we have is from them and we have a little, little mini bathtub for her. And so yeah, we we've been hitting that up. But like, I, I just, I I'm, I'm curious to see how hard this is because my wife's a doctor. We have family nearby. We are super prepped.

Leo Laporte (02:29:50):
You're gonna be in great shape. And Connie, Connie, we can pull it off. Connie may not know this, but this baby's nursery is in my mom's former weaving room. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:30:00):
Oh, that's great. That's

Leo Laporte (02:30:01):
Great. They live in my childhood house where I grew up. Total coincidence. So I know very well. I, I, I went this summer I visited, I saw where the nursery's gonna be. It's I this thrilled. I asked my, did I tell you this Alex? I asked my mom, I said, did you know there was a stare up into the attic from your weaving room? She said, no, there wasn't. I said, yes, there was <laugh>. There is, there is. I saw it. She said, no, no, no. I said, yeah, that's where she put all her wools. So she probably never saw the stairs. <Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (02:30:31):
That is, is now a repository for all the really beautiful dresses we have for Ada. Oh. Like all of Liza's childhood baby clothes, her mom saved. And so we have like this amazing rough of attire for this child. Everything from like heavy metal onesies to like freely dresses. This kid's gonna have everything. It's

Leo Laporte (02:30:49):
Gonna be great. I lived in that house from the age about, oh, I'd say six or seven to the age of 14. I'm

Iain Thomson (02:30:55):
Still slightly freaked out by the concept of a weaving room, to be honest.

Leo Laporte (02:30:58):
<Laugh>? Well, she was a weaver <laugh>. Oh, right, okay. Which meant I wore a lot of scratchy wool punches.

Alex Wilhelm (02:31:04):
<Laugh> Nah.

Leo Laporte (02:31:05):
Thank you so much, Alex. All the best to you and Liza. Have a w I'm glad you made it through the show without an emergency. Go take good care of her. Her feet are swollen and she's tired and she's ready to have a baby. And you're gonna have a wonderful, she's, she's ready to be done being pregnant and we're ready to hold the kids. So I will see everyone. So happy for you with family in like March, April, somewhere in there. Yeah, we'll see. Good luck rush. Pushing fingers and toes for you, mate. Yeah, yeah. <Laugh> Crunch, plus editor-in-chief, Alex Wilhelm. Thank you, Ian. So great. Of course, as always have even Thompson in here, us editor@theregister.com our expert in all things English <laugh>, and he's actually Scottish, which is why I gave him Irish whiskey, and that's confusing as hell, honestly. It's whiskey. Who cares? <Laugh>. Hope you have a wonderful holiday and you too. And my love to you and Monica both. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. All right. And to you and Lisa, take care. Kmo, you're wonderful. We always love having you on editor-in-chief at cnet, where you're working harder. You, when do you get to take off some time? I hope soon.

Connie Guglielmo (02:32:06):
I I hope so too. Next week, the week after Christmas. Yeah. Yay.

Leo Laporte (02:32:11):
Take that week off. Enjoy, and have a very nice holiday. It was wonderful having you.

Connie Guglielmo (02:32:17):
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Merry holidays everyone.

Leo Laporte (02:32:20):
Merry holidays. Thank you all for being here. We do TWiTt every Sunday 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern Time. That's 2200 utc. You can wa I say that because you can watch us live if you want. Live, do TWiTt.tv. We stream audio and video there. People watching live often like to chat with us. You can do that in our irc. That's open to all irc.TWiTt.tv. Also great to chat with us in our Discord, which is a, a lovely place to hang out. With all the other Club TWiTT members. Please join us there. <Laugh>, there's, there's, that's Gola mode, I believe. <Laugh> right there. You can also watch the show after the fact. Download a copy from our website, TWiTt tv or watch it on YouTube. There's a video. Actually, most of the shows have video dedicated YouTube channels. There's video there you can watch. Good way to share video too with people if you want to clip out something and send it off to a friend. And of course, the easiest thing to do is subscribe in your favorite podcast player, and that way you'll get it immediately the moment it's available, so you have it in time for your Monday morning commute, wherever it is you go on Monday morning. Thank you all for being here. We'll see you next time. Another TWiTt. It's in the can. Bye-Bye everybody.