This Week in Tech Episode 909 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word.
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Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT this week in Tech. First Show of the new year. Happy New Year everybody. And we've got a great panel for you. Stacy Higginbotham is here. She just got back from Vegas. A look at some of the most interesting products in Vegas, some of the weirdest and what's going on with home automation. Ian Thompson is also here to cast dispersions on c e s on CES from the register and all the way from the Aja State, from Hawaii Doc Rock. What a great show ahead TWiT is next. Podcasts you love

TWiT Intro (00:00:33):
From people you trust. Yes, is TWiT TWiT .

Leo Laporte (00:00:44):
This is TWiT this week in tech. Episode 9 0 9 Recorded Sunday, January 8th, 2023. So many beam this week in tech is brought to you by Express vpn. Make sure online activity and data is protected with the best VPN money can buy. Visit express vpn.com/TWiT right now and get three extra months free through our special link. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at TWiT tv and launch your campaign. Now it's time for TWiT . This week in Tech, the show. We cover the week's tech news with my favorite people. Stacey Higginbotham has taken time out of her busy Vegas schedule and is joining us. Actually, I guess you left Vegas

TWiT Intro (00:01:50):
<Laugh>. This is not my Vegas schedule, but yes,

Leo Laporte (00:01:51):
I left. Thank you for being here. She was in Vegas at c e s of course, a regular on this week in Google. So nice to see you. Also with us, Ian Thompson of the register where he is. What is your title now? News editor used to be US editor, but we're a flag structure. We don't really go on title. He does it all. Kids. What you do, does it all <laugh>? The register.com. The snar scariest but best news site on the internet. And that's very kind of you. Yeah, I love it. I read it every day. Doc Rock is also here from Hulu Community manager at E cam and a regular on many of our shows. Hi doc

Doc Rock (00:02:32):
Man. It's so good to be here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I'm just, I'm happy to be back stateside and having a good time.

Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
Where were you?

Doc Rock (00:02:39):
I was in Japan for the last two weeks of the year. It was Oh, so good. I I left there on New Year's Eve and got back home on New Year's Eve. So I almost got a chance to, you know, watch the countdown TWiTce. But then the plane took off early enough. Oh, you took the early flight instead of the later

Leo Laporte (00:02:55):
Flight. Oh, wouldn't that be, could you actually do that? The, the, the flight

Doc Rock (00:02:58):
Would, yeah, there Wow. Travel back because of the ti the, the international dateline. What would happen is I would stay in Japan, do the countdown, and then take the 5:00 AM flight out of Osaka, get back to Honolulu, go back to yesterday at 9:00 AM and then do it again. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
How long does it take to go from Osaka to Honolulu?

Doc Rock (00:03:19):
You know what's super funny? And, and this, this blows people's mind on the way there. It's a nine and a half, 10 hour flight. Whoa. It's still a long flight on the way back. It's a six hour flight. Whoa. He's like, well, how's it faster to come back? I'm, I don't know, Tony, maybe that route It's downhill. Is spinning.

Leo Laporte (00:03:33):
Yeah, it's downhill. Everybody knows that. No, it's the jet. So

Doc Rock (00:03:36):
Many people don't get it. I'm like, the globe is spinning underneath you, bro. Like jet stream

Leo Laporte (00:03:40):
Baby. It's pushing you home.

Doc Rock (00:03:42):
Wow. So good.

Iain Thomson (00:03:43):
So good. I've gotta ask cause I've always wanted to go. But does going to Japan ruin you for Japanese food? Anywhere else in the world?

Doc Rock (00:03:49):
180% <laugh>. Which why I have taken it upon myself to learn to cook Japanese food really well myself. But luckily I live in Honolulu because we have a very good Japanese contingency here. You can get good Japanese food here and you can get good Japanese food in the bay and you can get good Japanese food in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Iain Thomson (00:04:11):
So, well, no, I mean, I took my, I took my sister when she came over to a Japanese, a very good Japanese sushi bar in, in San Francisco. And she just looked at me and went, you've ruined me for London Sushi. And I'm wondering if it was the same for Japan, but Yes,

Doc Rock (00:04:26):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. So San Francisco has a pretty decent sushi culture. So does Seattle because the water is cold enough and, you know, good enough places that have warmer water with sushi culture. I was like, I don't think that works because what makes Japan sushi so good is that ice cold water just makes really good fatty tuna and, oh, stop, stop. Just stop. Just

Iain Thomson (00:04:48):
Stop. Yeah. Well

Stacey Higginbotham (00:04:49):
I was, so when I went to Japan, they have so many foods that obviously aren't sushi that are so freaking delicious. That's what I was gonna say. That's what I miss. It's,

Leo Laporte (00:04:57):
It's sushi's just a little corner of the Japanese squeeze.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:00):
It's tiny sliver.

Doc Rock (00:05:01):
Yeah, a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:02):
Hundred percent. Although, so my favorite hiking food is just gui cuz you know, you just wrap it up in the little rice mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it's, it's got everything you need and you can, it's so portable. And I finally found a place actually here on Bainbridge that makes it for, it like, does a good GUI that I could now pack my You

Doc Rock (00:05:18):
Can make it yourself. You gotta go

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:19):
Back. I know. I can

Doc Rock (00:05:21):
See the show when Leo and I talk about rice cookers. <Laugh> then, and then I'll give you some cool stuff to put in it. And if you live close enough to a Japanese market.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:31):
I, I live in Seattle.

Doc Rock (00:05:33):
Oh, U Uji U

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:35):
Uji Uji Maya

Doc Rock (00:05:37):
U Maya Uji Mya, that's the name of it. That's it. And u they have all of the right stuff you need to put in it. It's super easy. And you can actually get the good quality rice at, at the ujima over there as well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, oh my God, it's so simple. It's so simple. I Oh

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:51):
No, I know. It's

Doc Rock (00:05:52):
Easy. It's just outta leftovers.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:05:54):
<Laugh>. But I like it cuz like, you could walk into a gas gas station in Japan. They're just like, this is our gas station food. And I'm like, your gas station food is so much better than ours.

Doc Rock (00:06:03):
<Laugh> the convenience store of food

Leo Laporte (00:06:05):
In Japan. Oh, 7-Eleven in Japan

Doc Rock (00:06:06):
Is Michel is

Leo Laporte (00:06:07):
Oh my god. Gourmet dining man.

Doc Rock (00:06:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:06:10):
So

Iain Thomson (00:06:11):
Japan does kit cats like nobody else. I mean brick. I love my kick

Leo Laporte (00:06:15):
Sobi Kick Kats

Iain Thomson (00:06:16):
And yeah. Wasabi Green tea. Yeah. Teriyaki. It's just marvelous. So good. A friend of mine came back from Japan and bought Thoses. He said, you're gonna love this. Emptied out a big carrier bag of really weird Kit Kats on the table. That lasted us a week. And some, you know, indigestion. But it was interesting

Leo Laporte (00:06:34):
Is Hawaiian was Sobi kind of their version of Unagi? The It's the rice. Yeah.

Doc Rock (00:06:40):
So the, the Musubi started, the mobi started as a ing gik. But when we first started to get, you know, the quote unquote Hopa Right. Half Japanese, you know, because of people that moved here after the war. Yeah. That just became part of the culture. So you can get musabi with hot dogs. Chicken spam. You don't like spam. I mean, there's other musubi's as well. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:03):
And you know, from now on, instead of peeps, I want these every Easter. Oh, they're so cute. <Laugh>

Doc Rock (00:07:10):
Or Bento culture will blow your mind. Bento. Oh, I love Bentos. Very cool characters from like your kid's favorite TV show. They're shows to show you how to make those characters as bentos for your kids. And it's the clever way that Japanese mothers get their kids to love vegetables from the gate is they always do it in really cool

Leo Laporte (00:07:30):
When

Stacey Higginbotham (00:07:30):
We were Well and they're also pickled. And they're delicious.

Leo Laporte (00:07:32):
Oh yeah. Love that. Yes. When we were in Japan a couple of years ago, we went to like a lunch bar that had OK, Kono Miyaki, which is those pancakes

Doc Rock (00:07:43):
I went to. Ok. Kono

Leo Laporte (00:07:44):
Miyaki. And I watched these guys make, they make it in front of you with such pana. It is wild. Anyway,

Doc Rock (00:07:53):
See, I went to Okonomiyaki school in Hiroshima. No, and it is so much fun at the Oto fuku, you know, the sauce that you put on the top, the company that makes, it's called T Fuku. So they have a school you can go to to learn how to do it. It is such a blast. If you ever in Hiroshima, you get, not Hiroshima people [inaudible] If you ever get a chance to go there, just do that. It is the dopest experience. And

Leo Laporte (00:08:15):
Actually that's, that might be where we had it come to think of it. As in, it's

Doc Rock (00:08:18):
So good.

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
All right. That was our Japanese food segment. Thanks for joining us. <Laugh>.

Doc Rock (00:08:23):
You know, who you invite me is going to happen. Sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:25):
You, you know, I will say there is a Japanese food robot at ces. It's a brand new one for, let's see.

Doc Rock (00:08:33):
Oh, Sony.

Leo Laporte (00:08:34):
What's

Iain Thomson (00:08:34):
Up?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:35):
It's a ramen. It's, yeah, it's what

Leo Laporte (00:08:37):
It makes ramen. Okay,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:39):
Hold on. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's delicious.

Leo Laporte (00:08:41):
Jok. I've had it. Jok.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:43):
Jok. That's it. I was like, it's,

Leo Laporte (00:08:45):
It's a desktop Ramen robot. Oh, this

Iain Thomson (00:08:49):
Is of these things. Until I come to the US I'd never tasted Ramen and it, oh, I love, I'm now an

Leo Laporte (00:08:54):
Addict. Every culture has a noodle though. Noodle soup like this though. I think it's universal. Yes. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:08:59):
Yeah. All, all noodle soups are good. Fa but ramen is also

Leo Laporte (00:09:02):
Great Mat ball soup. But I love mine.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:04):
Matza

Doc Rock (00:09:05):
<Laugh>. The name is cool because Yoki are basically Poltergeist.

Leo Laporte (00:09:09):
Oh, so these are, there we go. These are ghosts in the machine. The making your, your ramen

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:15):
Ramen.

Leo Laporte (00:09:16):
I would rather just go to a ramen shop. There're quite a few Ramen shops in one of the Bay Area. I would just, I'll go down there.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:23):
So this is what they're for. They're designed for they, they started with a vending machine, a big one. And it was designed for like your hotel lobby. Like so you got into too late. That's okay. And you just

Leo Laporte (00:09:33):
Japanese for an airport this stuff, don't they?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:35):
Yes they

Leo Laporte (00:09:36):
Do. They you get the best. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:09:37):
Think Americans

Leo Laporte (00:09:38):
Do too. I guess so. But you, but the things you can get in a Japanese vending machine are unlike anywhere else in the world.

Doc Rock (00:09:44):
Oh, so good. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:09:46):
So good. They've got coffee, hot and cold. They've got, it's kind of amazing what you can get. You

Iain Thomson (00:09:52):
See the Dutch do this as well. They have vending machines built into the walls in Amsterdam, for example. Usually just outside smoking cafe as well. I was gonna say

Leo Laporte (00:10:01):
Very hungry. They're very starving. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (00:10:03):
But I mean, it's hot food in a, you know, in a vending machine and you put yourself in. But the Japanese take it to just the perfect level.

Leo Laporte (00:10:10):
Let's actually stay on food. Did you see any other food related stuff at CES there?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:17):
I, I saw the budget thermo mix.

Leo Laporte (00:10:19):
Oh, it's very exciting because I have the, unfortunately the expensive, just like you got me to buy the real June oven instead of the less expensive one they sell now.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:29):
Okay,

Leo Laporte (00:10:30):
So budget, Thermo Mix. Is it from Thermo

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:32):
Mix? That was early adopter.

Leo Laporte (00:10:33):
Yeah. I know it

Stacey Higginbotham (00:10:34):
Is not the thermo mix. Okay. It is, it is from another company. And

Leo Laporte (00:10:37):
How Thermo Mix is a, a weird device, which Stacy told me about. And of course I immediately purchased, that's a blender that heats up. You could cook anything in it. Soups. It makes the best mashed potatoes I've ever had in, in, in half an hour. It makes the best re so never

Iain Thomson (00:10:54):
Mother then, but No.

Leo Laporte (00:10:56):
Oh, we'll we'll have a mash potato off

Iain Thomson (00:10:59):
<Laugh>. I'll have to fly her over. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:11:02):
We're on. If she brings the bangers, I got the mash and <laugh>. So yeah, so the, I, you know, I think this is actually interesting because c e s used to be a lot of PCs and then there would be a car section which was like kind of, you know, car accessories. There'd be a sound section. But really, because computing has really migrated into every part port of your life. It's everything now, including and

Doc Rock (00:11:29):
So we electronics. Yeah. Actually it's read something more now. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:11:32):
Yeah, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:33):
It was, honestly, it's more than just overwhelming as like, like there's whole sections of the show I don't even care about, like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so if you don't ask me about all the, I mean, new whole new cars were launched

Leo Laporte (00:11:45):
There. Oh yeah. But we have Samal singing for that. You don't have to go into the North Hall at all. I was like, stay, stay out of the North hall. I did. Or actually the West Hall. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:54):
Yeah. And so broad picture, y'all,

Leo Laporte (00:11:58):
Broad picture,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:11:58):
No one was there. No one was at c What?

(00:12:01):
Really? There was only, so they said there was a, they were expecting a hundred thousand people, which is down from 170,000, which was, that's huge. CES 2020 before the pandemic. Right? Yeah. I cannot believe those people were actually all there. Like in, for anyone who goes to c e s when you're going, like in the Venetian for example, you know, you're going into, what was the Sands now they call it the Venetian expo. You are like wall to wall packed with people. It is a nightmare getting into these spaces. Nothing. Like, there were like, people could walk in groups like three abreast and you

Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
Could still very

Iain Thomson (00:12:38):
Bypass them. Wow. Oh, that's whole. Yeah. That's a whole different game. I mean, and then what was the cue like for press conferences? Cause it used to be, you'd have to cue two and a half hours press conferences. Nothing didn't get turned away. Oh. Or nothing. Just to take the shuttles, get back to your hotel. It was better to

Leo Laporte (00:12:52):
Walk, don't know. Oh, it was always awful. The cab lines. I don't know.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:12:55):
The cab lines weren't,

Leo Laporte (00:12:57):
They weren't bad. Cuz that's the metric for me. If you could get,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:00):
There weren't cab lines. Oh that's, I walked outta the airport and I just walked right there. Go straight there. I got my badge at the airport. Cuz I always do. But I didn't wait in line. Like I just walked right up back.

Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
Wow. For people who don't ghosttown do this. And of course it's a very specialized thing that, you know, mostly it's tech journalists, but

Iain Thomson (00:13:18):
Specialized form of masochism. But yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
It really is reason people like Ian say that is because it usually is very, very crowded. It's almost impossible to get around. You've got appointments that you just can't get to you. There are you, there are more things than you could see in a lifetime, let alone three or four days. It's still going on. It was late this year. Started on Wednesday. It's going through the end of the day today.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:42):
It's shorter too. So it started Wednesday. It's only four days. Usually it's five. Oh. So that's some of the thing. And then the floor space at like unveiled or pep com, which are these things where companies will pay

Leo Laporte (00:13:54):
For very expensive

Stacey Higginbotham (00:13:55):
Evening

Iain Thomson (00:13:56):
Events. Yeah. The the pep com piss up is one of those things you need to get through C e Es because it's good food, good cheap, good free

Leo Laporte (00:14:03):
Alcohol. Well, so the story behind this is there's these two of them, showstoppers and pep com. They're probably more CES has it unveiled as well. And, and the companies pay huge amounts of money to be there because they're smaller and there are a lot of lazy journalists in the world who go to showstoppers in pep com, file their stories, then go home. So if, and, and usually they file They did see that. Yeah. Yeah. They filed a story about the first thing they saw coming in the door. That's why you saw the vibrating haptic fork three years ago. Cuz it was the first thing. And, and it never became a product by the way. Nobody wanted last, when we went in 20 20, the last one before Covid, it was a toilet roll robot at the front door. Everybody covers.

Iain Thomson (00:14:47):
Oh God, I remember that one. Right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
And it never comes out. It's not a real product, but they spent 10 grand and Claude Pepper got his, or whatever his name is, got his money. They have chocolate fountains and food cuz journalists are are whores for food <laugh>. And and it's, I think it's kind of scammy to be

Iain Thomson (00:15:05):
Honest with you. Honestly, I think hoes is a bit strong because one thing I would say is with Vegas, when it comes to food, you've got good, cheap and available and pick two of those <laugh>. You know, it's just, you know, so you go to Pep because it's good food, it's free, it's the end of the day. You need to unwind. I've got, I've been to about 10 or or the other events. I've got two stories out of it. Yeah. One of which I have to say you're not a

Leo Laporte (00:15:32):
Cheesy journal. Yeah. You're not a cheesy journalist.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:35):
Hold on, hold up. Okay. Okay. Counterpoint. Yes.

Iain Thomson (00:15:38):
Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:15:38):
Counterpoint for someone who goes to ces. Yes. there was less there was definitely less. I like it because it's an easier way for me to talk to the people. Oh, absolutely. They have their executives there. Absolutely. Yes. That's, and so like, agree for the smart and there's always the smart home people. So I can always snag the CEO for like a minute.

Leo Laporte (00:15:57):
Ah, so the, so the stuff that, the stuff that you cover, you Okay. The stuff that you co Oh, we're, we're used to this. It happens all the time. The stuff that you, <laugh>, <laugh>,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:07):
Stacy can, I'm constantly eating. I can't breathe. I can't drink

Leo Laporte (00:16:11):
Anything. Something fluid in her mouth. Don't worry about it. She'll be fine. So this <laugh>, the stuff you cover is well covered I guess, at these shows, but it is a fraction of the total at ces. Oh yeah. It's 50 60 booths

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:26):
I can get. Oh no, it's, it's probably like 130 this year. It was like 130 sometimes. That's as many as 200. This year there were actually like, oh my gosh. There were like empty spaces and you could see they, oh dear. They spaced everyone. I mean, it was, it was definitely,

Doc Rock (00:16:40):
They had fade it out in order to fake it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:16:42):
They did. And then they had a whole media room. Have you ever seen a media room at No, I think it was pep com that because they don't have room, because that's like, they don't, they would never give away.

Leo Laporte (00:16:51):
What do you need it for? So CS

Iain Thomson (00:16:55):
Used

Doc Rock (00:16:56):
To to be hard enough. Right. It'd be so crowded, just finding a good place to sit. I would always watch the creative ways people would find to, to

Leo Laporte (00:17:03):
See, oh, they up the carpet.

Doc Rock (00:17:05):
I just sat on the floor. Of course the the happening spot was, you know, they always overlapped AVN with cs because in the beginning of time,

Leo Laporte (00:17:14):
The adult video expert expo,

Doc Rock (00:17:17):
Right. When, at the beginning of time when we first got, you know, DVD ROM capabilities, right?

Leo Laporte (00:17:21):
It goes back earlier than that VHS tapes the first porno,

Doc Rock (00:17:26):
Right. When they, they would figure out, this is the way I can get my industry to talk to the nerd industry at the same time to make their industry better. Which is why of e-commerce, they were the sort of the biggest, and everybody always just blamed it on the fact that it was ill repute. But no, they were at the tent conferences all the time. They set themselves up perfectly. So it used to be this kind of like gap in the hallway between the main center and the flamingo center. And there was like a little bridge and you should just all watch all the nerds sit there to just sit there and get a gander and start.

Leo Laporte (00:17:55):
I'm so glad Walk by. They, they not only have moved offsite, they've now moved a different time of the year. And it

Doc Rock (00:18:01):
Goodness no. Was it was four through seven this year. I just looked it up. They

Leo Laporte (00:18:03):
Moved it back. They crisc crossed it again.

Doc Rock (00:18:05):
Yeah. They

Leo Laporte (00:18:06):
Cri crossed for a while. It was at a different time. It's

Doc Rock (00:18:09):
So crazy. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:10):
I didn't run into any adult performers. Thank

Leo Laporte (00:18:13):
You.

Doc Rock (00:18:13):
That, that means they moved into a different segment

Iain Thomson (00:18:15):
Industry. I mean about, what was it, seven years ago when they were still doing it in thing? I met an adult performer who built gaming PCs in the spare time. Oh yeah. 

Leo Laporte (00:18:25):
Oh yeah. I mean was this whole industry, especially the webcam industry is very techy. 

Doc Rock (00:18:31):
Well, it, it pushed, it pushed digital video. Yeah. And we'd be lying if we said it didn't like it really did. It made a big difference.

Leo Laporte (00:18:37):
So CES claims that there were 112,000 people there. But if you even just look

Iain Thomson (00:18:44):
At this, Stacey sang That's, look at this,

Leo Laporte (00:18:46):
Look at this picture of the Central Hall where there's actually room to walk. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:18:52):
Here. I'll show the, can I see, I think I can share a Google photo video with you. 

Iain Thomson (00:18:58):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:18:58):
Marvelous. We're gonna get fancy here, ladies and gentlemen. By the way, I love this vest you're wearing. What is that? That is so cool. This

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:05):
Is my Han solo vest. <Laugh>. I

Leo Laporte (00:19:07):
Know. That's great. Oh, it's very cool. You look like, yeah, just say, just do this for me. I got a bad feeling about this.

Doc Rock (00:19:14):
I'm just gonna say shamelessly say that. If you were using e camm, you could share anything you want right away.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:19):
I'm cre I'm just, I'm doing it via create a link. I've gotta copy it and I'm gonna put Stacey

Iain Thomson (00:19:24):
Shoot first. Where

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:25):
It, where am I going? Shoot first.

Doc Rock (00:19:28):
That

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:28):
Is so good. Oh God, that's It's terrible. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:19:32):
<Laugh>.

Iain Thomson (00:19:32):
I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:35):
No, no. It's,

Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
It looks good on you though. It really looks good on you. Yeah, I think it's a good, it's, I didn't realize it was on solo

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:41):
<Laugh>. It's, it's not really. It's just a, it's

Leo Laporte (00:19:44):
Cool. It's long vest. I like vest. It's like, is it leather? I like feds. It's leather.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:47):
It, no, it's leather.

Leo Laporte (00:19:49):
Well, that's good. You don't want any animals to die. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:19:51):
Good. Yeah. No animals died to make this vest.

Leo Laporte (00:19:53):
Some, some dead plastics. Some dead long molecules. Well,

Iain Thomson (00:19:58):
I suppose technically some animals did die in the terms of way,

Leo Laporte (00:20:01):
Way long time before we yelled,

Doc Rock (00:20:04):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:20:04):
Yelled,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:05):
You really? You really did that? Somebody yelled at me. Like, who that guy,

Leo Laporte (00:20:10):
Somebody yelled at me once because I said that oil was made outta dead dinosaurs. And they said No, no leono. The wasn't the dinosaurs. Mostly trees. Its trees, basically. These plants. There's no dinosaurs in there. So Okay, fine. <Laugh> all. Okay,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:23):
Fine. I think I, I put it in the rundown. I just had the, I have the,

Leo Laporte (00:20:28):
I have the, I have

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:29):
Rundown. So

Leo Laporte (00:20:30):
Wait a minute. You put, put it in the right spot. You put it in the TWiTnk rundown. That's not gonna, that's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:34):
Which run.

Leo Laporte (00:20:35):
I mean, I can get there.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:36):
I went to the wrong place initially, but I think I get there. I think I put it in the TWiT

Leo Laporte (00:20:39):
Rundown now. Okay. That would be better. Stacy, as you know, is a regular on the other show. And it has a rundown too, but it's not the same. <Laugh>. All right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:48):
Where did I, where'd you put it? Did I put it in the right spot?

Leo Laporte (00:20:51):
Oh, cool.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:53):
Cool. This is the other, oh, here? Yes. I did this next to my

Leo Laporte (00:20:56):
Name in Vegas without being in Vegas. That one. That was me. That

Stacey Higginbotham (00:20:59):
Was you? No, no, no, no. It's, it's literally next to my name up top. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:21:02):
Good. Good place to put it. Okay, here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, with a, this is your videos and it's sideways video. But that's okay. This is a view in the going down the hall. Oh, there's nobody there

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:15):
That is, that could grief. I mean, that is in between you. I

Leo Laporte (00:21:19):
Mean, that's, now people may look at that and they say, well that looks like Grand Central Station. But oh

Iain Thomson (00:21:24):
No, it's not even close.

Leo Laporte (00:21:25):
It could be so much worse. It could be such, no,

Iain Thomson (00:21:28):
I mean this that

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:29):
Is literally jam-packed with people.

Iain Thomson (00:21:31):
Sorry. I mean usually that conference hall really challenge you. Challenges you to, as a polite Brit because it's just like, excuse me, excuse me. And then after about two seconds you fuck coming through, you know? Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:42):
So

Leo Laporte (00:21:43):
Not a lot of people mask either. I might point out.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:46):
Yeah, I was. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:48):
Good.

Iain Thomson (00:21:48):
And how was the airport? Cause that's traditionally the standard of, you know, if you've got a queue for like four hours to get through security,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:21:57):
No one. No one. Wow. Anywhere. Huh? It was crazy.

Leo Laporte (00:22:01):
So maybe there's representing, so typically it's a hundred, 7,000 80,000 people. They're saying 112,000, which is, you know, that's

Iain Thomson (00:22:09):
A lot less than 12,000 people.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:10):
That is, that is Friday at like noon. Wow.

Iain Thomson (00:22:13):
Sheesh. That's peak time.

Leo Laporte (00:22:15):
But was it worth going, Stacy, was there stuff there that you're really glad you went to see?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:21):
I mean, I, okay. I got sick. That was my third respiratory infection in like three or two weeks. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:27):
Usually people get sick at Vegas, at cs, but then they come home and bring it and spread it. Yeah. But you got sick right there. There was like ster saying, there were several articles about how much pee there was on the show floor, so to speak. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:42):
So this pisses me off <laugh>. I knew it so bad about it though.

Leo Laporte (00:22:50):
Tell me, tell me, Stacy, tell me how you feel.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:22:54):
<Laugh> there was so much, I call it digital snake oil. Well, tech tech. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so why things and why things actually does try to get FDA approval for their stuff. And they're U scan thing. This is a urinalysis kit. It's made up of a reader that you stick in your toilet and then you stick these cartridges in that for 100. They, you could pee on it a hundred and tie a hundred times. Who's

Leo Laporte (00:23:19):
Does it count for you? Or do you have to keep track?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:21):
Well, there, is that an

Iain Thomson (00:23:22):
App for that

Leo Laporte (00:23:23):
<Laugh>? Yes. There's definitely an app.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:25):
There is an app for that. They, they use micro fluidic inside. So each test, I guess, I don't know if it goes down the toilet. That's a good question.

Leo Laporte (00:23:33):
Is this Elizabeth Holmes style testing? I mean, is it real?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:36):
Well, so they're applying for FDA approval, but they don't have it yet. Uhhuh wing's is a little bit more like they are

Leo Laporte (00:23:43):
Trying, I have a lot, a lot of their stuff truly active. I like why it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:47):
So they, they

Doc Rock (00:23:48):
Have, they're in Europe already, so I'm assuming we might get it here. So what does it do? Cause only a little bit more

Leo Laporte (00:23:54):
Strict. What does it do?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:23:56):
So you pee on it and there are two different types of tests that you can buy. One is a menstrual cycle test two is

Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
A to menstruate

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:05):
Diet test. No, no, no, no, no. The hormones,

Leo Laporte (00:24:09):
It goes into the pee. Okay. During your, I apologize to everybody for this subject, but we have to cover it because of cps. You

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:15):
Do not need to apologize.

Doc Rock (00:24:16):
Have to apologize. I want

Leo Laporte (00:24:18):
Everybody peace stuff. And at least half the world menstruate. So it's okay everybody. So it's okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:23):
I'm like, I'm

Leo Laporte (00:24:24):
So all you do and it's don't place, don't make the yell. You want, is it placed? I know. Is it placed strategic in your toilet so that you don't have to really aim it's just gonna get it? And they say it could tell the difference between toilet water and it can even distinguish.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:35):
Yes. They have an infrared sensor on it. So if it's warm, it's pee.

Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
Ah, that's smart. Okay. Unless you have a that works and a heated toilet. And then and it can distinguish people. Right? So multiple people can use it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:49):
Yes. Multiple people cannot use it. Only one person per reader. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:24:53):
Oh, okay. And

Stacey Higginbotham (00:24:55):
Part of that is, I mean, I guess multiple people could use it, but the test only go the, it only goes to the,

Leo Laporte (00:25:04):
You have to be pretty rich to have each person in the house have their own toilet. Well, also you'd have toilets in a house on them, put them off again. Surely. Because if it's one person, it does come with gloves. I don't wanna handle it. Gloves. Okay. Well that's perfectly awful. I mean,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:18):
So you don't, the reader goes in there and you change out the cartridge.

Doc Rock (00:25:21):
Here's, here's where it makes sense. And I notice gonna sound fighting to people, but like I had a diabetic in my family and one of the things exactly used to do is used to check Sure. For sugar, you know, different levels, sugar, urine tests. Right. So if it doesn't matter, the rest of us are going to use it. It would matter when my stepmom would use it because that way we would know and get early warnings. Yes. If she was having something that was long-term

Leo Laporte (00:25:47):
Than even if she wasn't doing finger pricks or anything else. Right. Right. In fact, that's what as I remember, that's what diabetes means. Gee or piece tastes terrific or something like that. It's sweet. That's how they describe it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:25:58):
That used to be an old

Leo Laporte (00:25:59):
Test. They would taste would taste

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:00):
It. They would taste the urine to see if to, okay, so yes, I'm a hundred percent with you on this, but instead they're going right now after this wellness fitness market that is less, they're not doing diabetes tests. They're not, maybe they will get their interesting and maybe, I mean, they're not right now that's not available. And then they're, they don't have a really good sense on privacy around Now they say they won't share. But obviously if like a lawyer or someone comes in, if law enforcement comes with a subpoena, they don't have an answer for how they would protect that data. Which

Leo Laporte (00:26:34):
Well, furthermore it could have Dobbs couldn't you put surreptitious drug tests in it? I mean, it seems like there's a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:41):
Yeah, I mean you could, you could stick the well, but you could also surreptitiously drug test your employees like anyway without this. I mean, you wouldn't know. Now if you were like a parent and wanted to surreptitiously drug

Leo Laporte (00:26:54):
Test.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:26:54):
Oh boy. But, but you can see it in the toilet. It's not like a secret.

Iain Thomson (00:26:58):
I was gonna say, I mean it's difficult to surreptitiously when you've got a distinctly pee on something. But I think you're, I mean the, the real market for this is companies doing drug tests mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or parents doing drug tests. I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:27:10):
Think there's a good market in like home healthcare or in like what are those group homes for elderly people?

Leo Laporte (00:27:18):
But it's interesting. They seem like they're going after the, the quantified self crew. The people who bought these Fitbits and the early Apple watches and stuff Yeah. Who are athletes or they just want to keep an eye on their, you know, medical

Iain Thomson (00:27:31):
Eat their athletes. Yeah.

Doc Rock (00:27:33):
The, the main thing they're doing about the medical ketones tests. Right. Ketones medical tests are vitamin C ketones, pH levels and specific gravity for water betters. So the ketones things is going to get all of the, you know, the athletic greens crowd, <laugh>, if you will.

Leo Laporte (00:27:50):
<Laugh>. So I you know for a while Steve Gibson, who was very hardcore ketosis guy told me that the Pete tests eventually become less reliable. That you ultimately, you have to do a blood finger prick to really know what your ketones level is. The blowing, the blowing ones, the little keto flutes and the p tests, your body adjusts. And so you don't, you don't see the ketones after a while. Right. When you

Doc Rock (00:28:20):
Look at all of the people that are selling, like always on glucose monitors through the back

Leo Laporte (00:28:25):
Of your arm. Yeah. I subscribe to that. Yeah. I have one.

Doc Rock (00:28:28):
Yeah. You know, and, and I, but

Leo Laporte (00:28:29):
That's useful cause I'm type two diabetic and that is useful. Right. And I agree

Doc Rock (00:28:33):
With them person. But you got weightlifters using it to try to you Oh

Leo Laporte (00:28:37):
Yeah. Know performance app

Doc Rock (00:28:38):
Increase their vanity.

Leo Laporte (00:28:39):
So what is so a as as it's coming out initially, Stacy, what is the UCAN test? What does it do?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:28:48):
It's testing for the, the first few tests that they have out are going to be for the diet, which is the, the ketones and pH and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I think vitamin C is coming but is not there yet.

Leo Laporte (00:28:58):
They say vitamin deficiencies. You know what would be good is d is a big one actually.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:03):
Well, so there's, I mean, so

Leo Laporte (00:29:05):
Here's vitamin C like crazy. So I don't know. Well,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:08):
That's of us get way too much, I mean, plenty over vitamin

Leo Laporte (00:29:13):
C let's say plenty.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:14):
No one's getting scurvy these days unless

Leo Laporte (00:29:16):
You're like, no

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:16):
Scurvy college freshman who's only eating Doritos.

Leo Laporte (00:29:19):
So you cha if you change the cartridge in this, it has, you could change the test in other words is what you said.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:23):
Test. Yes. And then the other test is looking for, it's, it's female reproductive health is what they're calling it. And

Leo Laporte (00:29:31):
So you could tell if you were

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:32):
Pregnant tracking menstrual cycles you could, you certainly could tell if you're pregnant. I mean that's,

Leo Laporte (00:29:36):
That'd be a silly reason to get it.

Iain Thomson (00:29:38):
Sort of when, when you are sort

Leo Laporte (00:29:40):
Of the the Oh, when you're fertile. Cuz when you're ovulating. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's, it's tracking. So you could do that. Oh yeah. I think that's kind of ni that's kind of nice. That's hundred percent right. Well we,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:29:50):
We but that's we've,

Leo Laporte (00:29:51):
That Apple watched does something called retroactive ovulation, which strikes me is That's great. A little too late <laugh>. So

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:01):
For ovulation you can use body temperature. Sure.

Leo Laporte (00:30:04):
Your your It's the rhythm method. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:06):
And you, okay. The rhythm method is just tracking days

Leo Laporte (00:30:11):
For the most part. I thought people

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:12):
Also did, I mean rhythm method is anything that is like

Leo Laporte (00:30:16):
Calendar,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:16):
Not hormonal.

Leo Laporte (00:30:17):
And occasionally this calendar. Yeah. Tell me about it was the rule that too many of us played in comedy. I can tell you right now, y'all lost, I wouldn't be here if the rhythm method worked. Let's just put it that way. <Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:28):
But you, you can track pretty granularly when you ovulate now. In too, too quite like to the day in sometimes even time of day. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:38):
So that's useful. Whether you're trying to get pregnant or not. That's useful. I could see that. Sure. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:30:44):
With the urine tracking hormones in your urine. I don't know how exact it is. And they don't actually know, cuz they don't have the, they're not publishing that data right now, but they're, they're saying it's accurate enough that you can track your fertility with that. And that

Leo Laporte (00:30:59):
This isn't the only one. Here's another one. This is yes, a yellow, it's called yellow sis. A Korean company. It was a Samsung incubator. This is just like a P stick on a, on a thing that you Oh, it's, I forget it. I don't even wanna talk about this.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:17):
It looks like my chlorine test strips.

Leo Laporte (00:31:18):
It does, it looks exactly what I use in the hot tub. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, hey. Hello. What is this? The Viv? It's a a toilet mounted hardware. Oh God. I swear to God. Yes. I Why was basically so hard to go? Is it because, I'm sorry. Apple owns is the news wearables steps. Apple owns the, the wearables. Basically it's Apple and Fitbit and then everybody else. So they're finding some other area. Is that it?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:45):
I I think it's No, you can, I mean, you can accurately test for new things using urine.

Leo Laporte (00:31:51):
Okay. That's true. That's true.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:31:53):
So that's, that's what these efforts are different biomarkers. And there is a lot of, there is real interest in the medical space for urinalysis.

Leo Laporte (00:32:05):
I think that makes sense. That

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:06):
Is FDA approved. Yeah. But none of these are that. And that's really important to say because like, even even from a f FDA approval, only AFib on your Apple watch is approved. So everything else like Right. Ox, blood ox, all that. That's just, that's marketing.

Leo Laporte (00:32:22):
Let's, let's move on <laugh>, because I think we've, we've, we've plumbed this subject sufficiently. We've taken the piss out of it enough. Yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:31):
<Laugh>. Well do you, do you not wanna know about the $19,000 smart toilet from Kohler?

Leo Laporte (00:32:36):
Are you kidding? Kohler showed this last year and the year before. They've been showing this forever.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:32:39):
This is the second generation. Oh. And this time it's real

Leo Laporte (00:32:44):
<Laugh> this

Iain Thomson (00:32:45):
Time you can trust

Leo Laporte (00:32:45):
This one by the way, should be the slogan for CES this time. It's real. Because most of the time it's not, frankly.

Iain Thomson (00:32:53):
Oh, I looked at some of the concept cars and it's like it'll all end in tires. It's

Leo Laporte (00:32:57):
Crazy. So what this Kohler, this is a big trend. Smart toilet. For how much? 19,000.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:04):
I believe it's 19,000. Holy.

Iain Thomson (00:33:06):
Oh, first world problems are what?

Leo Laporte (00:33:09):
Yeah,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:10):
Really two toilet. But so, so here's the big trend that I thought was fun. It's CES not fun. Fun. And just the, maybe the whole bathroom suite was 19,000. Yeah. Oh no, the, I'm sorry. The toilet is 11,500.

Leo Laporte (00:33:24):
Oh,

Iain Thomson (00:33:25):
Oh my bad. Hopefully reasonable. There.

Leo Laporte (00:33:26):
There you go. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:28):
Sorry. I I'm, I'm really sorry. I believe the other stuff also like they have a whole suite. Okay. So this is this idea of smart things getting built into your home. Like into the home infrastructure. I saw lots of people, this is less sexy, but everybody and their dog now has what, like a fin or a water home monitoring and shutoff thing, which actually is hugely

Leo Laporte (00:33:49):
Valuable. Those are cool. Cause they detect leaks without knowing where the leak is. Is amazing how that works. They detect leaks. Yeah, I saw that a

Stacey Higginbotham (00:33:55):
Couple years ago. Many of them have auto shutoff. What we saw at CS this year was tons of companies now offering it not to consumers, but to home builders. And so

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
That's smart. Yep.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:06):
Smart. But it's also a little weird because you're like, Hey if your builder's gonna offer this, how do you get the app? How do you resell it? What is the, what is the, it's just why would they spend the money on this? Because

Leo Laporte (00:34:18):
When, if you go into a development these days, this is how they compete. The list of smart homes features that we offer. You know.

Iain Thomson (00:34:27):
But that comes with a massive disadvantage though because when the companies that make those smart homes smart home devices go bust, you're now left with an unsupported product.

Leo Laporte (00:34:38):
You know that, I know that. Nobody knows it better than Stacy. This is marketing. This is not

Iain Thomson (00:34:44):
No, it's comp. I I agree with Stacy. It's complete marketing bull. Really give people, I'm sorry. Game. There's a reason why a lot of, a lot of techies don't have these devices in their homes because they're fundamentally unsound and unsecured.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:34:57):
And it's unfortunate because a lot of these are quite like I actually, my my fin water thing fin is brilliant and I have it plugged in. Yeah, well these are, these are actually I, the things here are actually easier cuz you don't have to install them yourself. They already come with your house. So you have the app, but you do have to connect it. But when you like, I don't know how long that's going to work. Right now I've had my fin for three years. In two or three it might go out, you know, or like they might stop supporting it or

Leo Laporte (00:35:23):
They might, the idea this thing is you put it on a pipe somewhere in the house and it could detect water leaks anywhere in the house or water left on it's p h Y n.com.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:35:33):
Yes. And alarm.com was showing off. They have Water dragon, which I hear uses Z-Wave long range, which I tell you interesting later. But no one will care. Interesting. there was several startups with their own options there. And then, so also being built in the house, I'll give you one sexy thing and then I'll give you one thing that is just crazy and we can talk about it. So my sexy thing is energy management. So Schneider showed off their whole energy management kit, started with a smart breaker board, an integrated battery, an EV charger, and it goes all the way down to their smart, their wiser smart switches. And 

Leo Laporte (00:36:09):
So this is something that, this is me turning builder would want to install. You wouldn't do this retrofit.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:14):
I wouldn't. So you will see. So, and, and there were tons of things like this. We've actually seen smart breaker boxes at CD and some other places in the last few years. What's coming to a head is the, it's a trifecta. It's climate change causing us to need like resilience with like power outages and everything else. Right. it is electrification. So as climate change worsens, we're all buying more electric and we're putting more, we're requiring more amps, employing more

Leo Laporte (00:36:41):
Electricity from our homes. Heat pumps and things like that. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:36:43):
Heat pumps. Yes. And EVs and whatever else. Yes, that's right. And then the unreliable unreliability, the non, the dyna dyna dynamicism. This is why I don't do video. This is why I'm a writer. <Laugh> the dynamic, the dynamic nature of renewable energy means we're going to have to store and use the load at times when it's convenient for us. Even though the sun may not be shining or the wind blowing. Yeah. Yeah. So all those three trends are coming together and what's happened and what has really hit the ground running this year is we're seeing a lot of solutions to store the energy to manage the load. Either at the breaker box or with Samsungs talking about their smart things like energy AI platform. And we also saw the Home Connectivity Alliance, which is a group of appliance companies getting together to pitch ways to inter-operate in the cloud. Like have your washing machine talk to your water pump and then be able to control for a utility to control all of the washing machines or dryers out there to lower their temperature during

Leo Laporte (00:37:49):
Day. Oh, interesting. Wow. Yes. They turn, they

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:52):
Got spots. Yeah. That's a really big

Leo Laporte (00:37:53):
Cool trend. Like you can get home and your closer wet and they say, yeah, we turned down your dryer for you.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:37:58):
The

Leo Laporte (00:37:59):
Idea is you might have to right. To to to might. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:38:03):
But also if your appliances are smart enough, and this is where I do think smart thing is like smart home stuff does come into play. It's not as sexy as like colored lights, but it's important is I can say, Hey look, you can always turn my thermostat down by this amount. I will delay drying my clothes. Yeah. I will put my fridge in eco mode cuz I don't care. Yeah. but I've got a dead body in my outside freezer, so I need that to stay as cold as possible. So don't

Leo Laporte (00:38:32):
Have that.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:38:33):
And then, you

Doc Rock (00:38:35):
Know what's funny Beth? Is Yeah, we're missing some, we're missing some parts of Detecto. Again, sorry, I just came back so it's fresh in my head since I was in school in Japan back in 2006, they've had washer dryers that are a single unit. Right. So you put everything in there and it will, when it's ready to turn on, it will fill up, put laundry detergent in it, wash the clothes, and dry the clothes in a single unit. We still don't have those very prominently here in the us but those are primed for, let me just throw this load in. And when the grid says, okay, the price has gone down and the heavy usage in my neighborhood has chilled out, it would turn on do its thing while you're sleeping and when you wake up, everything's done. So we are, we're getting part of that, which is monitor the grid, use the grid when it's optimal. But we still don't have the convenience of like a single box that can do everything. And it's funny to me because I know it exists. I've used them, they work fantastically. They're very common in Europe. Yeah. Very common in Europe. We, I think Japan and, and, and UK work hand hand together for a lot of things. And so yeah. It's just one of those things that here in the US we still don't have,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:39:49):
We don't have it cuz we want massive washers and dryers and like for no reason. Like anytime I'm in Europe, when I was in Japan I was like, oh, how qua these people must not wash their <laugh>. You used the Q

Doc Rock (00:40:01):
Wood damnit <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:04):
I'm like, what? These people don't have 4,500 square feet of laundry.

Leo Laporte (00:40:08):
I like to, what's wrong with it? Like, sock today and then I'll do the other sock tomorrow.

Doc Rock (00:40:13):
And the the thing too, they don't use as much water.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:40:16):
Right? I know. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:40:18):
Huge. But that's that though. That

Doc Rock (00:40:21):
Is what's, which is the

Leo Laporte (00:40:22):
Cost of

Doc Rock (00:40:22):
Power. Gotta call chat real quick. Yeah. The the chat is saying we have larger families Bs and we have different types of clothes bs I'm gonna just call that unless you've been there. Please don't say stuff like that. We

Leo Laporte (00:40:33):
Just have to get used to it. But you know what's forcing, it's not the same. Economics are forcing it because power's getting more expensive. Water's getting scarr. We're, you know, we're gonna have to face it. The Japanese have lived in an environment where they're very tightly packed and, and the resources are scarce. Well, we still strained. Yeah. And so they, you know, they've really been able, they've been smart about using resources. Well, we're soon gonna be, we've had a lot of room for a long time. We're soon gonna be facing these kinds of ec economic restraints anyway. And that's, that's good. That's why there is, that's why there's all this stuff I would guess. Stacy, what about matter? Was matter. There did matter. Matter.

Doc Rock (00:41:10):
Oh wait, did it matter?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:11):
Matter. Matter is gonna matter. But first I'm gonna tell you one more thing Yes. About being built into your house. Yes. This is the Masonite door with power with the, oh, this is

Leo Laporte (00:41:19):
Nuts. Doorbell. No, no, no, no, no.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:21):
Okay, hold on, hold on. I'm just, I'm, I just make an argument's coming up.

Leo Laporte (00:41:25):
We'll see how much, first of all, the smart door, the Mpower

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:28):
Door. 6,000. Okay. It's $6,500 for the Mpower door. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Leo Laporte (00:41:33):
And, and what does it do? Stacy <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:37):
It has the, here's the key

Leo Laporte (00:41:39):
Thing is it's the door. You have to charge ladies and gentlemen.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:41:42):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't charge it. It is a door. Actually, I took a video of this door. If you, I I can, there's an integrated power cord that's built in, so it's pulling power again, this is something built into your home.

Leo Laporte (00:41:55):
So you do have to have a, a door Jan, whenever you call that opening, that's near a plug. But somehow, or you, well it's not

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:03):
A, the plug, it's when you build the home reno, it's when you build the home. It's, let me,

Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
I'll show. So this is not for aftermarket, this is for, it's a new, if

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:11):
You renovate it or renovate your house will have power there. Yeah, yeah. Here, tool bells.

Leo Laporte (00:42:15):
Put it in the same place that you put the other one and I'll I'll click it.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:20):
Sorry. Share. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:42:21):
Wait. You don't have to share someone just

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:22):
Being it's

Iain Thomson (00:42:23):
Ahow off last night. Then how does it work if the power doesn't on go?

Leo Laporte (00:42:27):
It has a battery in it, so it has

Iain Thomson (00:42:29):
The battery in wood for a while, but then,

Leo Laporte (00:42:30):
Then you're stuck. You have to stay inside and outside depending on where you were last

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:34):
You got stuck <laugh>. Ok. What happens? It has integrated lights. 

Leo Laporte (00:42:40):
It's got a doorbell, right. All of that stuff. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:43):
It's got a, it's got an integrated doorbell. It's got a connected lock now the lock will still open if your power's out. Ah-Huh. All you need is like a little nine volt battery. It'll start the,

Leo Laporte (00:42:53):
So you carry that with you at all times. A little nine volt battery.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:42:57):
Most people like, I don't know about you, but apparently Kevin keeps a nine volt battery somewhere. Flint secreted around his house. It's not the key under the door jam. Sorry.

Iain Thomson (00:43:05):
How is carrying a nine volt battery less of a problem than carrying a key? I mean, golly, old fashioned, but you know, I've got a pretty strong lock on the door and it seems to work pretty well.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:15):
Yeah, you don't, you don't carry it. 

Leo Laporte (00:43:18):
You put it under the mat to be I've got an nine volt under the mat or maybe, you know,

Doc Rock (00:43:24):
Something, a

Leo Laporte (00:43:24):
Fake

Doc Rock (00:43:24):
Rock that people, I I always wonder this cuz the, the SLO gives me well enough warning or slo if we wanna be fancy, gives me well enough warning before the batteries are going to die. And you could also hear when it closes, he goes, when he goes, you're like, okay, time to change the battery <laugh>. But I always wonder like, couldn't we have it where you could just stick your phone somewhere and plug it in? No data, but just let your phone power it in an emergency. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:43:53):
If you would carry a nine one battery,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:43:55):
That's the nine volt

Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
Is Yes. You wouldn't have this problem. I'm just carrying a nine vol.

Doc Rock (00:43:58):
But your phone, your phone is in your pocket. The nine volt, that's a different story. <Laugh>. Right? Like I got my phone, I got my watch this, these

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:05):
So I, I put the photo

Leo Laporte (00:44:06):
In. Oh good. These mpower smart doors. It says Masonite says are coming soon to the Home Depot.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:12):
To Home Depot. Yes. And this is a replacement front door. You can get it in different colors, you can get it in different light or different window things. What? See, so that is the power cord going from your house to the door. And the door is actually very nice. So someone who's recently bought a front

Leo Laporte (00:44:27):
Door, it's a fiberglass. That's your door. Okay.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:30):
Yeah. It's a, a fiberglass door. Yeah. I I did not show you the, there's there's plenty of pictures on the internet of the actual door.

Leo Laporte (00:44:37):
Yeah. We get the idea. So it is, and

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:39):
The integrated lighting is nice.

Leo Laporte (00:44:40):
Yeah. It's got lights. So like when somebody leaves a package, it lights up. It has a welcome l e d welcome. It's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:48):
Light, it's got lights all along the, the top, the

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Bottle. It's got a ring doorbell built, built in. So I guess

Stacey Higginbotham (00:44:54):
Here's my issue. Yeah. I hate the fact that it's got the ring stuff built in and I hate the fact that there isn't a size standard. Like an is a, not a, I wanna say an OSHA standard, but like a building standard for the size of like your connected doorbell. Because then you could slot any doorbell in there. Yeah. Like I hate the fact that you've got doors with holes in them. That in, I mean they don't see, I haven't had a doorbell that lasts more than four

Leo Laporte (00:45:18):
Years. Yeah. Yeah. I just kind of glue mine onto the door. Jammer <laugh> around the door like a normal human. I don't, it doesn't have to be built in. Although the smart lock does. Right. They, they show it with a Yale, but it says shown with the ale, which sounds like you could put other smart locks in there. Is that a standard

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:34):
You can, that's not a standard yet either. No. Oh wow. It's shown with the a You can choose other doors. I think they manufacture it though with the other locks. Okay. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:45:42):
Like it has a door state sensor. So if you're one of those people said, did I close the door? You can see if it's closed.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:45:49):
It's a nice idea. I think it's a nice idea for like, I think there's like in an apartment complex, this might be be sure Yeah. Kind of compelling. I know that it, they're designed for the home, but I feel like it's just a little too soon and this is where matter comes in and the, we don't have enough standards yet, both on the physical side and we don't have enough laws to protect us on the, the digital side for keeping this stuff in. And we don't have interoperability between all of our systems yet for everything. So it's too soon to start building this stuff into our homes at

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
This level. You could see though how there might be pressure from these builders to start standardizing so that they could do this. I mean I Oh yeah, yeah. I can see where that's coming from. Yeah. Not so much consumers, I think consumers have just thrown up their hands and said it's a tower of babble. It's, it's always gonna have some extra hub and something's not gonna talk to something else. I give up. Is matter gonna change that? That's really was the premise.

Doc Rock (00:46:49):
The hub thing is pretty incredible because I saw a couple of cool hubs. I think one was might've been Samsung, Stacey, you'll be able to fill us in the

Stacey Higginbotham (00:46:57):
New Smart station.

Doc Rock (00:46:58):
Yeah, the smart station. That's what it was. And it, it starts to like be a translator, if you will, going back to the House of Bvo

Leo Laporte (00:47:05):
Situation. Yeah. That's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:06):
What you need. So that's, that's what matter is. Matter is designed to be a translator between certain devices. So they will translate between Apple's ecosystem, Google. So any ecosystem basically is. So if you have,

Leo Laporte (00:47:18):
And Samsung is a member of Matter and these smart things Yes. Station. Is that a matter device? Is that how it works?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:25):
It is a matter, yes. It, it does not exist. It doesn't matter yet.

Leo Laporte (00:47:29):
That

Iain Thomson (00:47:29):
Was interesting. That works because you know, we are gonna have to deal with this interoperability problem for so many years to come. And anything that can fix that is welcome.

Leo Laporte (00:47:38):
That's the whole point of matter. Right.

Doc Rock (00:47:40):
Well, p people, although Stacy, with

Leo Laporte (00:47:42):
The last time you were on

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:43):
Six matter hubs.

Leo Laporte (00:47:44):
Yeah. The yeah. The last time you were on TWiTg, you said Matter is maybe not a high enough level solution to solve that, that it's more of a lower level solution. Is that it's

Stacey Higginbotham (00:47:53):
A lower level solution. Yeah. Yes. The, it is, it is good for some things. Your light bulbs are gonna, like you could buy any light bulb, any matter light bulb is gonna work with any matter system and that's not gonna be a problem for you. Right. But where it starts getting weird is, oh, okay. Well cool. I can tell Madame A to turn off my lights, but if you wanted to like set up some cool like light bulb thing where like when I enter a room and this motion detector senses me turn on the lights, you're still gonna have to program that. And that's where people are gonna be like, oh, I thought matter was gonna solve all this, but it's really not yet.

Doc Rock (00:48:26):
Yes. You know who had a really cool one and I'm going mowing. You know like the the faucet people? The faucet folks, they have a sensor that says, when I walk into the room and sit down in my reading chair, which I have in my bedroom, turn on my reading light unless I roll into the room at 10 30 and Karen's already asleep. It's like, not gonna turn the light on.

Leo Laporte (00:48:50):
Wait minute your water faucet turns on your light.

Doc Rock (00:48:52):
No, no, no. They made a little sensor that you put in your room. Oh, okay. But it's, it's, it is weird that it's made by mowing. That's the only part that threw me off. I had to double check Stacy cuz I was like,

Leo Laporte (00:49:01):
When she moved from Austin, left behind all of her fancy faucets. Right. Stacy?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:49:06):
I did, I replaced my fancy faucets. Okay. But this is, this is just standalone sensor. Oh, okay.

Doc Rock (00:49:10):
It's a really cool sensor, because again, like yes, I, I love the fact that if I walk into my bedroom and I sit in, I have this, you know, Sherlock Holmes chair in my bedroom that, I don't know where we got it from, but it's amazing. And it's like old Victorian chair. I love this chair. So when you sit in and it's a big high back with the wings on the side, and like for it to automatically turn on my Apple TV and turn on the little lamp that's right next to it so I can sit down and watch my shows and not pay attention and do stuff on my iPad, perfect. But if it did that every time I walked in the room and she's already asleep, yo, I'm gonna get cursed out, hit with something, <laugh>, whatever. So this thing is smart enough to know that someone's sleeping and it'll do the other thing's smart enough to know is that if someone moves, but it's not a big enough move to turn on the, the panic light. It won't turn it on. So it won't get tricked by breathing or the cat walking in stuff according

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:04):
To, are you sure that's the Moen sensor?

Doc Rock (00:50:08):
I think that's what it was. The Moen smart sensor. You went there. Don't ask me

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:11):
<Laugh>. Well, no, cuz I, I, I don't recall seeing it and I'm looking for it. I, I, this exists.

Doc Rock (00:50:17):
I think it was,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:18):
What you're describing exists. I just didn't, I'm like, really? Moen did it.

Doc Rock (00:50:24):
But it's, it's just weird that it came from the faucet company. That's the part that threw me off, I think.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:28):
Well, that's what's throwing me off too. So's

Leo Laporte (00:50:31):
Moan was there, according to Stacy on Iott with new sprinkle air and soil soil sensors. Maybe that's what you're confusing them with. <Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (00:50:39):
<Laugh>. Well, yeah, they totally had that. And bless their hearts, they were just totally like, I was like, Hey, is this soil sensor that's pretty cool. Work with my other stuff. And they're like, no, we're using a proprietary system.

Leo Laporte (00:50:49):
Oh God. Have we learned?

Doc Rock (00:50:51):
Maybe I was wrong. I gotta find out who made it. But it was really cool because those, those kind of things will come in really handy me nano Right now the sensors are too sensitive. My kitchen one drives me crazy. Like it comes on for no reason. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:05):
So Nano Leaf actually offers, they launched. This is not, here's a good example of where Matter is not gonna go as far Nano Leaf launched something called Sense Plus Controls, and it is a light switch that's wired or unwired. It's gonna be out, I think I'll just say later, next year. I think it's the third quarter of next year. They

Leo Laporte (00:51:25):
Have an odd slogan. The only buttons not meant to be pushed.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:51:32):
Yeah. So the, I that is exact what he's talking about. What Doc Rock is talking about is exactly what they're trying to do. They created something called Nala. It is the Nano Leaf Automated learning. No nano leaf AI learning automations or something. Anyway, the point is, it's, they're basically applying smart rules to their lights and eventually possibly other lights that you're gonna bring in to the an leaf

Leo Laporte (00:51:56):
System. So I know the name Anna Leaf, in fact you introduced it to us. Cuz they make those things on the wall that do the shapes and all that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but they's, they're now doing, is this new for them or were they always doing this? And we just never, this

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:07):
Is new. This is brand new from c s is the, and they're doing this because now they have the bandwidth. So I had the CEO of Naif on the podcast, Jimmy Chu, and he was like, yeah, we couldn't, we were spending so much time, you know, modifying for Apple, modifying for, you know, no kidding pickle. And now, now we can actually do this, which is pretty cool. Here I'll show you the cool thing.

Leo Laporte (00:52:29):
This is from I have your picture from your blog with the Sense Plus controls.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:34):
Oh, here I

Leo Laporte (00:52:34):
Took, yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:36):
Oh yeah, that's there. But this is their new, this is just fun. So that's a new fun. They're trying to bring color into everyday lighting in your house. And this is their ceiling option, which, oh, it's

Leo Laporte (00:52:47):
So cool. Are you, did you, you're doing something, are you putting a link in, into the, I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:52:52):
I put the link. I I just, I'm just swapping out links left and right

Leo Laporte (00:52:55):
There. Good. Oh, this is kind of, so this is that gone back to that geometry thing.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:00):
So that's ceiling that's, that's in your ceiling. This ceiling is what they're trying to show you.

Leo Laporte (00:53:03):
Who

Iain Thomson (00:53:04):
Wouldn't, if you can shrink those down, you could get some quite high resolution stuff. I mean, who wouldn't want to go to sleep with the io sa going over them?

Leo Laporte (00:53:11):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:53:12):
Okay. Well, so that's one of the things, and this is, this is big picture, but, and, and I'm kind of, I'm having had nano leafs in my life for a long time. He's, Hey, look, we're gonna, the next step in lighting is color because it's, it's cheap, it's easy. Right. But hu done now just have

Leo Laporte (00:53:29):
To stick figure. That's what Hughes started doing.

Doc Rock (00:53:32):
Hugh, Hugh has always had the one problem of, and it's gonna sound crazy, they had really bad design. And so what happens is their light bulbs, when they spit fall off out the falloff is just odd. And that matters in light, like how it shapes and how the light looks, where it hits the wall and things like that. Their bulb shape is just odd. So it calls for bad lighting patterns and their white lights have always been so yellow. Yeah, I'm sorry. So there's

Leo Laporte (00:54:01):
A hu I have that light. I have that, I have those, those are all the little, the little can, the little canned spotlights. I have like a dozen,

Doc Rock (00:54:09):
I have like 54 of them. Yeah. And I, I love them. And then I got, somebody gave me a life as bulb thinking they were doing me a favor and I'm like, oh, the shape of this is automatically makes for better light and it's not as yellow. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I did not

Leo Laporte (00:54:23):
Even know this. Although, because I've

Doc Rock (00:54:25):
Product's good. Yeah. The, I, I have, I have like over 60 of them. The product is, is basically flawless except for their design is bad. And as soon as you notice something else, you know the difference. It goes back to that. It's interesting, once you had a a five Wu steak, you realize that the rib buyer from Root Chris is a joke.

Leo Laporte (00:54:41):
Yes. <laugh> and I would agree with you.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:54:43):
Or, or the sushi in Japan versus the sushi in South Florida. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
Is that how you get this purple background behind you? Doc Rock is the

Doc Rock (00:54:51):
I'm using nano lights. No hu's actually bad for video people because they, they look at it first. The minute that you use a, you lose a sync timing, they will flicker like crazy. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:55:02):
That's not,

Doc Rock (00:55:03):
So have all video lights, including that fake light bulb right there. It's an actual professional video light because they, they're designed to sync with your

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Sugar speeds. Ah, we're learning so much here. So on the, the total sum of it all, Stacy, do you feel like I've gone many years in thinking home automation is not getting simpler, it's not getting easier. It's not, it's getting crazier. Do you feel like we're starting to make progress?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:55:37):
No, I think we're still over complicating it. Yeah. No, there we're, we're taking small steps in some areas and not doing things right in others. So I think we see a lot of good ideas. I think there's some really important things, like the energy management is really important, right? Yes. Agree. I think that's gonna agree, actually. Agree, yes. Affect things and, and we're gonna do some really good stuff. I think matter help bring, you know, a lot of smart home stuff to more people that want it. I don't think there's a really compelling reason still for a lot of people to want this because there's not, other than like using your voice to turn on your lights. Like, who cares? But if you can have things like the smarter stuff that Doc Rock's talking like what Natalie Leafs was talking about. Yeah. Then it becomes much more compelling. It's, it's, and then I will, it's

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
Not much different than the clap on, clap off. Yeah. Basically

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:32):
<Laugh>, we're still in our clap

Doc Rock (00:56:33):
For ear. We're still there. Yeah. <laugh>, that's so funny. You

Leo Laporte (00:56:36):
Did a great podcast with the, hold on a sec. You did a great podcast with Kevin Tofu. Of course the Stacy on iot website has it. Stacy on iot.com. Their IOT podcast is great. You and Kevin we're at CS together. So you have all that coverage and as you mentioned, you have the nano leaf guy on Jimmy Chu or Guy or gal. Guy Jimmy

Stacey Higginbotham (00:56:58):
Mention Jimmys guy. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:56:59):
And so this is definitely worth listening to. If you want to know more about this, we did talk earlier today with Salmon Bull Salmon about cars at ces. There were a lot of interesting things, including that new Honda Sony collaboration called the Athe, which has a built-in PlayStation five <laugh> <laugh>

Doc Rock (00:57:17):
Worst front name ever. By the way, Ophelia, I

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:21):
Don't even know about that thing.

Leo Laporte (00:57:22):
If you're interested in that, Sam talked for about 20 minutes with us on Ask the Tech Guys our first episode. That's TWiT ter TV slash atg. Father Robert also had a very nice cutdown where he showed like 800 products at five minutes. That was on the Asthe Tech Guys show as well. And Robert will be on next week to talk more. He kind of, I think ended up seeing a lot more kind of goofy stuff <laugh> than, than you did. 

Stacey Higginbotham (00:57:49):
I bypassed the, I I had limited time cuz I was sick for a full day. So I was like goofy. Skip.

Leo Laporte (00:57:53):
It ain't got no time for Goofy. Yeah. Do you, on, on balance, do you think c e s was worth it this year? Are you glad you went?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:01):
I mean, I like seeing Kevin <laugh>. I'd like getting outta the house.

Leo Laporte (00:58:06):
<Laugh>. That's, that's what mostly, mostly I hear basically the rationale for CS is I get to see my friends. It's fun. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's a social,

Doc Rock (00:58:13):
Locon is the sa is the main reason why we go to these things.

Leo Laporte (00:58:17):
So yeah. Lobby con the where were you meet in the lobby? Yeah,

Doc Rock (00:58:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lobby Con. I love that. Yeah. Did you see the GE profile mixer? Cause that thing had me,

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:26):
So I was just gonna to bring that up. Oh,

Doc Rock (00:58:28):
That's all Ive been wanting to ask you this entire time. We would know about that as well. Yeah. But Le Leo wouldn't let you.

Leo Laporte (00:58:33):
I have a house full of GE profile crap that breaks more than any of the stuff ever I've ever had <laugh>, but, okay. Okay. Proud American. Tell me about the GE profile. Smart Mixer with Auto Sense. The smartest mixer in America.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:58:49):
This is, this isn't, this is a thousand dollars mixer. I'm just gonna tell everybody so you can get,

Leo Laporte (00:58:54):
So I have a very nice KitchenAid that has lasted 40 freaking years.

Doc Rock (00:58:59):
My KitchenAid's 30 years old, but it was 500 bucks. 500 bucks, 30 years, but worth it

Leo Laporte (00:59:04):
A lot. But worth it cuz it never broke. This looks like it's not gonna last. Is it gonna last as long? We'll see, I would replace my KitchenAid if it did better. What does it do better?

Doc Rock (00:59:16):
Yeah. I, I don't know the math Leo, but if I think about it, seriously, 30 years ago when we paid five, 600 bucks for that thing, that equals more than a thousand dollars now. But

Leo Laporte (00:59:24):
It lasted. That's the point.

Doc Rock (00:59:25):
It lasted. It has definitely lasted. Who

Leo Laporte (00:59:27):
Knows?

Iain Thomson (00:59:27):
You know, this thing is gonna break down if is

Leo Laporte (00:59:30):
Exactly, it's not Okay. Go ahead, <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:33):
No, I, I like so, I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:59:35):
We don't know. We have, it's not out yet, so we don't know. Hot.

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:39):
You can buy it from c Creighton Barrel. And I saw it and I saw it in action and they, they also offered

Leo Laporte (00:59:44):
Macaroons. All they're showing is it, it's a dough hook mixing cookie dough, which is great for you Stacy. But does it do anything else <laugh>?

Stacey Higginbotham (00:59:52):
It does, it does everything your mixer would do. The thing it's using that makes it interesting. And this is actually, this is just the reason why we spent $1,500 on the Jew oven. Right. It's smart in the sense that it lets you become an expert.

Leo Laporte (01:00:06):
Ah, it has a scale.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:07):
It smarts augment you. Okay. So it has a scale. Nice. You throw in ingredients. That's nice. It also uses it, it's built an algorithm that's basically checking torque on the motor. And based on that, it's understanding if you're dough is needed or if your meringue is, or your egg

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
White serve. So you could say

Doc Rock (01:00:26):
Put the meringue is ung.

Leo Laporte (01:00:28):
I, well for instance, it's very easy to go from whipped cream to cream to whipped cream to butter. If it would say, yeah. It's whipped cream. Do you want butter? No. So it stops and it stops. Yeah. That's good.

Iain Thomson (01:00:38):
Okay. These are gonna have to banned from British bakeoff because that would completely skew the competition.

Leo Laporte (01:00:44):
<Laugh>. I meant to make <laugh>.

Doc Rock (01:00:48):
Imagine

Stacey Higginbotham (01:00:49):
If you did that and then you have a smart oven that told you when your sponge was Exactly

Leo Laporte (01:00:54):
Right. I do like this

Iain Thomson (01:00:55):
Little fun out of it.

Leo Laporte (01:00:56):
<Laugh>. No, I do like that. I have to say the Thermo makes has a scale in it. My June oven has a scale in it. Those things really make,

Iain Thomson (01:01:01):
Having a scale in those look is a really good idea.

Doc Rock (01:01:04):
Well, yeah, because baking is science according to Autumn, brown in, you know, it is. And

Leo Laporte (01:01:09):
You know, American bakers really like to put cups of flour in and everywhere else in the world, they measure it by, oh,

Iain Thomson (01:01:14):
Don't get me started on your, I I've been cooking over Christmas. I went on extended rant with my family about the use of cups. The use of ounces. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:01:23):
The

Iain Thomson (01:01:23):
Ridiculous use of fluid ounces over here. Go match.

Doc Rock (01:01:27):
Like please number one thing that ruins recipes in is tablespoons and teaspoons. Because unless you use one that is quote unquote measured to the amount it's wrong. And if you're doing a tablespoon and teaspoon of a dry ingredient, you're just guessing. Right. Right. Because nobody takes the thinging and, and does that level

Leo Laporte (01:01:47):
It off? Perfect holidays every time. But I mean, that's good. I want this.

Iain Thomson (01:01:51):
You've got the same problem with cups in the, you know, a cup of sliced mushrooms. Well, how do we slice the mushrooms? We do them broad. Do we mince them down The nerds enormous. The

Leo Laporte (01:02:00):
Gigs have turned into the show for technology are really good. Yeah. We're really losing it.

Doc Rock (01:02:05):
<Laugh>. Hey, geek's gotta eat too. Geek

Leo Laporte (01:02:07):
Geek's gotta eat. Makes the difference. Geek's gotta eat, you know. Okay, so Stacey, yeah. You kind of maybe have convinced me much the same way you convinced me to buy a $1,500 toaster reference.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:02:16):
Well, hold on, hold on. Before you go out and do this. Yes. Some things to know. Yes. You will build up the experience over time in baking in a way. I don't think you do. That's true in the oven. That's true. Because you're physically touching and seeing these things. Yeah. Yeah. So it is a lot to pay to like, for those first few classes. If, if that makes sense. Like I think it's a really

Leo Laporte (01:02:42):
Yeah, cuz I could get it right now. Like I wish, I don't need, I never make butter. I always put the right amount of flour in my breads and all of that

Doc Rock (01:02:48):
Stuff. The thing that they added though, that I don't know if it's worth that much money, but it's worth a lot. We, have you ever changed the hook on your KitchenAid mid? Yeah, I do it all. The 10. That thing is a pain and a butt. The fact that they have a release <laugh>, that's quick release a lot. Alright.

Leo Laporte (01:03:06):
The quick release. But you know what they don't

Doc Rock (01:03:07):
Have, the other thing is when your hand is jacked up, cuz I'm doing something with the meat now and I need to do something with the mixer, I can just lean back and be like, okay, can you mix it slow for blah, blah, blah. And

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:18):
That is true.

Doc Rock (01:03:19):
That's also good because when you're in the, you're cooking by yourself in the smaller kitchen, it's a pain in the butt. You gotta stop what you're doing. Watch your hands.

Leo Laporte (01:03:26):
Let me ask this cuz I am very reliant on the accessory thing on my KitchenAid. I use it to make pasta. I use it to spiralize. Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:35):
You're not gonna have that yet. I

Leo Laporte (01:03:36):
Lose it. They don't have that yet. Okay. It looks like they've got something in the front where it says profile that you could maybe release and stick in there. But they don't have those.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:44):
I I think that's the plan. They don't have those. Yeah. For, and that's

Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
One of the great things about the KitchenAid. You my mom made sausage. Yes. She had a meat grinder that she would attach to her.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:53):
Kitchenaid. Remember the KitchenAid? What was that? The snow cone maker that we did?

Doc Rock (01:03:58):
Oh yes.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:03:58):
That I, I chose one of my picks for the week. That's right. Yeah. We still use that. I

Leo Laporte (01:04:01):
Mean, do you? Yeah. It's like, okay, I have an entire appliance to make snow cones. But when you need it, do they have a shave ice?

Doc Rock (01:04:08):
A guy Hawaii. That's hilarious. Shave ice. San Francisco down the street. Shave ice everywhere.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:13):
Yeah. Well, yeah. Seattle No shave ice. Ice shave ice though.

Leo Laporte (01:04:17):
So here's the,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:18):
We don't have that in Seattle.

Leo Laporte (01:04:19):
No. Nor in San Francisco that GE says, watch the ge smart mixer. Whip it. Whip it. Good <laugh>. So we're gonna, here it goes. It's whipping. See to me, this is a mixer. It's gonna be a little, you got, okay. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta do a little more than just have a scale in the feet. And sensing how much tension

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:41):
I think. But like, so the Jew oven started at 1500, now it's 500. No, you're right. This can start at a thousand. Get down to five. At $500. I would a hundred.

Leo Laporte (01:04:50):
Everything in my house from my front door to my toilet to my mixer. Gonna require a separate app. That's where we're headed.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:04:57):
Yes. That is where we headed.

Doc Rock (01:04:58):
That part is crazy. This is true. The too many apps, part of it is insane. And I, I agree with Stacy. I think right now it's a good start and they have to start somewhere and they have to start and have the companies that do this stuff have to be willing to be a joke Yes. In everybody's humor initially for like Yes. Two to three years. And then they go back and go, look who's laughing? And if you don't believe me, iPhone. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:05:23):
Yeah. I mean I sound like a, like a ludeye on this, but I do think there is, you've raised a very serious point in that at what point does the convenience of these devices get lost in the amount of updating and upkeeping and cross-platform support that you need to do to actually run them? I suspect people are gonna basically pick the devices they want, just stick with those. And a lot of these are gonna get left, you know, in, in the garbage.

Leo Laporte (01:05:47):
Well

Stacey Higginbotham (01:05:48):
That you will. And I will tell you, I've got, I mean, I buy the stupidest, like I have a smart, I have a GE cafe up in that is smart and I bought a smart pan that actually teaches us how to cook. But the, the pan, I will not use it cuz it is a lot of maintenance. My husband still uses it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> cuz and I also know how to cook. So I'm like, eh. But what I think will happen is the most successful devices you won't need the app for. And like with the June oven, even with this GE Yeah. I don't need the Yes, they're apps that you

Leo Laporte (01:06:17):
Can use. You're right. You're

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:18):
Right. But you don't actually have to use

Leo Laporte (01:06:19):
That. No, no, I don't.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:20):
So I, that's where I think we'll see more value. A lot of that. And there is value in downloading the app, you know, setting it up so you can talk to it. Like voice is great in the kitchen. I tell my oven to preheat, you know, if I told my mixer to like, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:06:36):
Needs, I love it. That used to be able to go to your faucet, say gimme a cup of water and it would do it. Exactly. Yeah. That was pretty cool.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:06:42):
And those, those are things that are really like compelling. Yeah. And once you set those up, they tend to work. You get used to them for quite some time. I mean, yes. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. And you get used to them and you will keep them. But, so I think people will add them ad hoc, which is why interoperability is so important. And if it's useful, they'll keep using it otherwise. Right. The, the first time it falls offline, like my dryer fall fell offline. Like after the second or third time my dryer fell offline. I was like, why? I don't care. Yeah. You know, I'm not connecting it again. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:07:13):
I mean there was some, there was some interesting stuff in terms of sort of in interoperable standards. I saw the new Qi QA chi two standards coming out on, on wireless charging with Apple backing it, which is really ironic considering that Apple booked that standard on its own devices for so many years. But you know, it's the, they the industry has got together and said, look, no point having two competing standards for wireless charging and now Apple of all people is on board. That was really encouraging.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:44):
Yeah. I mean that's, that's what's happened with matter. That's, it'll keep happening. We are just in the early days and we want things to move. We

Leo Laporte (01:07:50):
The early days for 20 freaking years,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:07:54):
Well think about how long electrification took. This is not like smartphone adoption. This is like electrification.

Leo Laporte (01:08:01):
It's true. This, this makes sense. All right, let's take a little break. I think that's it for cs. Yes. Anything. Last chance, do you wanna talk about the bird buddy? Smart hummingbird feeder that can identify 350 different species of honeymoon birds going, going. Do you wanna

Iain Thomson (01:08:16):
Talk speed The birds?

Leo Laporte (01:08:17):
Do you wanna talk about the smart pen? The nua that has four ca three cameras in it. And we'll record what you're writing and then turn it into, I don't know what a picture do you want? I

Iain Thomson (01:08:31):
Do, I do miss a couple of years ago when they had these smart hairbrush and we ran the main attraction headline, but no, it's,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:38):
Did you see the 3D printed skin gummies where you take a picture and they use this quote unquote AI to analyze your skin issues. And then it 3d it's like Neutrogen is making these, then it 3D prints vitamins. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:08:49):
That's

Iain Thomson (01:08:49):
Cool. It's reef

Stacey Higginbotham (01:08:50):
On demand. It is not cool. Leo. That is stupid. It it's a waste of

Iain Thomson (01:08:55):
Money. Nothing. Big bullets. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:08:57):
<Laugh>. Wasn't there also at least one, maybe more devices that smelled. Did you see these? That's

Stacey Higginbotham (01:09:05):
So much

Leo Laporte (01:09:06):
Smelling. There was a lot of smelling. Yes. This is this is the aroma shooter. This is the aroma shooter which this is

Iain Thomson (01:09:17):
Its VC funding for this rub <laugh>. I mean, there are people starving in the world for goodness.

Leo Laporte (01:09:21):
It uses solid state cartridges in a variety of flavors. Papaya, camile, and soy sauce. And then it, it, it, it, it has of course an app, the aroma player that, that shoots smells into the air. <Laugh>, you wanna see a video? Oh, by the way, thanks. I gotta, I gotta have a lot of credit to Katie Wickens at at PC Gamer who went around and found all the stupidest stuff at c e s. This is the aroma shooter and the aroma player. The official N F W trailer.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:00):
Yeah, I was gonna say, do you wanna show an NSF

Leo Laporte (01:10:02):
Show? Maybe? I don't wanna show that. I don't know. Maybe not. What's going on? All right, let's stop it right now. Before it kill. It gets Kill it, kill it with fire. Oh, see it, see look, it's like a mixer. Like like logic only. Instead of mixing music, you're mixing aromas. So you've got orange, dark chocolate, peppermint, floral, soap, perfume, and natural forest. And then while you're watching your video, the aroma shooter, which looks like, I hate to say it, it looks like it goes on your head and shoots at your nose, will shoot these smells at you as you're watching the video. Am I, am I

Iain Thomson (01:10:40):
Sounds incredibly

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:41):
Annoyed. No, that's that. Yes. That's what happens. <Laugh>. And then you saw like Moen launched a K-Cup kind of thing for, or was it It may have been Kohler, I can't remember if it was Moen or Kohler. I think it's Kohler actually. Kohler's doing K-cups. Aromatherapy K-cups for your showers.

Leo Laporte (01:10:58):
<Laugh>

Stacey Higginbotham (01:10:59):
Needle robotics is doing aromatherapy things that you stick in your vacuum cleaners. So when your Roomba, it's not your, it's your needle vacuums running around. It's people apparently feel like they smell bad and their world smells bad because that was definitely a theme we saw at ces.

Iain Thomson (01:11:16):
Isn't that funny? You know, deodorant's only about a hundred years old, you know, it was, it was invented and there it was just like, let's find a market for this. So they went up to women, then they went up to men, and now we're all wearing deodorant and it's just, this wasn't an issue. Yeah. But do

Leo Laporte (01:11:30):
You remember what the world smelled like a hundred years ago?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:11:32):
I'm okay with deodorant, <laugh>. I lived in Texas for like 40 years. Deodorant is really

Doc Rock (01:11:38):
Important. Just living in the bay, man. The, the amount of people that thought Peti was an excellent like God coverup for Old Spice. Oh yeah. It's like, no man, PETI is fine by itself, but Peti in funk. No fam

Iain Thomson (01:11:52):
No. It's like when you come in someone's house and incenses everywhere and it's just like, I get you like the smell, but not all the time.

Leo Laporte (01:11:59):
Why is it that if I see a guy with dreadlocks, I almost am sure they're gonna smell like peti. Why is that

Doc Rock (01:12:05):
<Laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:12:06):
What is, what is that call?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:12:08):
If they're wearing that poncho too, it's a hundred percent gonna happen.

Iain Thomson (01:12:11):
<Laugh>,

Doc Rock (01:12:12):
By the way, that knit part,

Leo Laporte (01:12:14):
That was me in high school. I'm just gonna say <laugh>, but I didn't know any better. Then I found club I my life changed. Yeah. You don't know. Let's take a little break. We've got lots more non CES material with our wonderful panel. It's great to, this is a good way to begin the new year, I think. Our first official show of the new year. I hope you enjoyed the best of in the holiday episode we've done for the last two weeks. But it's good to get back in the saddle. Doc Rock is here. E cam ambassador extraordinaire, community manager there. Doc Rock, great to see you. Ian Thompson from the register. Always a pleasure. Ian at Ian Thompson. Always

Iain Thomson (01:12:55):
Fun.

Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
We were debating whether Ian should come up or not. And I think after last night's it was either a bowling alley or a war zone, but I don't know. Was it like that in San Francisco? It was. We had lightning.

Iain Thomson (01:13:09):
Oh, I, I posted a photo on posted a video on TWiT ter. I mean, in, in retrospect, looking at the forecast, probably not a good idea in coming. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
Glad you

Iain Thomson (01:13:17):
Cause coming back down. It's gonna be pretty brutal on the freeway. Yeah. The California drivers do not know how to drive in the rain.

Leo Laporte (01:13:24):
It never rains, but it pours. Here's Ian's video from A rainy day. A rainy night in San Francisco. It was a full moon, but you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to tell. And then we wake up this morning to a crystal clear blue sky in that full moon. That moon. Yeah. Just hanging there. So, but it was crazy. We, we had, I mean, I I did not sleep well last night cuz it was, it was like, we don't get thunder and lightning here either. You get it in North Carolina, right? You

Stacey Higginbotham (01:13:51):
Were used to it was like Texas.

Leo Laporte (01:13:53):
It was like Texas. It was like summer in Texas or summer in Kaki. But we don't, we're not used to that here. And

Iain Thomson (01:14:00):
It's winter. There's a lot of trees down in the neighborhood at the moment. I'm a member of the local cert team and we, we've been getting alerts all day. Oh wow. Sorry. So as a community emergency response, not

Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
The computer one, but yeah. Yeah. nice. Yeah. Good for you. It's good you do that. Also here, Stacy Higginbotham from beautiful, the beautiful Pacific Northwest where you have a drought up there too. I hope you get some rain.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:14:26):
It's raining right now. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:14:27):
Oh, it's, it's raining for the next week. It looks nice and green when we set it up your way. Our show today brought to you by, I'm happy to say our great friends at Express p n When Lisa and I were in Mexico this past week, we really wanted to watch Thursday night football on on Amazon. And and I said, oh, I know what to do. Express VPN n fired that sucker up. I said, I think we're in Miami tonight. We were able to watch the football game. Express. P n is the best VPN service out there for a number of reasons. First of all, they are absolutely pure as the driven snow. They do not collect, they do not log. They do not collect any information about you. And they go the extra mile to make sure your privacy is 100%.

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They use a custom Devin distribution on all their servers all over the world. That refreshes itself every day, wipes the drive and starts over when you go to an express VPN server. When we went to that server in Miami press the connect button on the express VPN app, it spun up an entirely new instance of their trusted server software. It runs in RAM and it is completely isolated from the rest of the system. It's, it's, it's firewalled off so that it cannot right to the disc, it's sandboxed, so it cannot right to the disc. And then when you're done, you close the express VPN n and poof, it's gone. And there's no trace of your presence. Now that's what you need in the VPN server. Virtual private network. They do three things. One, of course they improve your security on open wifi. Actually we kept Express VPN n Open the whole time at the hotel cuz we were on hotel wifi.

(01:16:08):
But I knew, I felt secure. And the nice thing about leaving Express VPN on is they invest in their servers. They invest in their bandwidth. So they, you never feel like you're sluggish, you're slow. We are able to watch HD video just fine. And, and, and you do it also to protect your privacy because even your internet service provider is collecting data and selling it onto to data brokers. Those data brokers are one of the most vile things that has happened in this internet era. They collect information about you from all sorts of sources, your browsing history, your online searches, your location data, then sell it off to, to the highest bidder. Which includes, by the way, the US government, the Department of Homeland Security. And we've just learned the IRS as well. Privacy is important to you if security's important to you, and if you'd like to watch a football game in another country or another jurisdiction, express VPN n express VPN at and hide your IP address, you're using their IP address.

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(01:18:01):
We thank you for their support express vpn.com/TWiT . We've been spending a lot of time over the last week talking about the last pass breach. Steve Gibson did a, an entire episode on it, which I'll give you a hint. He tied the leaving last pass earlier today on Asthe tech guy. We, we talked about how to export your data from last pass, but also the risks. I don't, there is a, a, a lawsuit which the plaintiff hopes to turn into a class action lawsuit. I don't think he's got class status yet. He claims he lost I think $53,000 because of a last, the last pass breach. We don't know much about what happened because last pass hasn't been super forthcoming. But

Iain Thomson (01:18:53):
It's quite the opposite from a journalistic point of view. I have to say they've been absolutely closed minded about

Leo Laporte (01:18:58):
It unless they Okay. Let's be

Iain Thomson (01:18:59):
Fair. Forced to make a statement.

Leo Laporte (01:19:00):
Yeah. the only thing that they said, well, in July they said, oh yeah, social engineering guy got into our source code. Okay, fine. Then a couple months later say, oh, and by the way, after that guy got in the source code, he used what he learned there to get into our systems and some cons, customer information, some they didn't say what. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> customer information was released. Now three days before Christmas. Interesting timing. They said, oh, you know what, actually the guy got the entire backup of all the encrypted vaults. Yep. That's about as bad as it can get. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:19:38):
I mean thankfully your password too. Sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:19:40):
Yeah. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:19:41):
We'll know what

Leo Laporte (01:19:42):
I was gonna say. <Laugh>? Yeah. I mean they have to crack those vaults. They are encrypted using a ES two AEs

Iain Thomson (01:19:48):
2 56. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:50):
Although Steve talked about this early on when last pass first started years ago and when we first started talking about 'em, they were using a hashing function called PBK DF two to hash the passwords or the master password and only 500 iterations. Or maybe it it was 5,000, but it was far, it was fine then 5,000 was fine then. But 5,000 today is way too low. It really does open you up to brute forcing last pass advance that to 100,100 a couple of years ago. But not everybody got automatically advanced. And we, and we don't know the last pass vault that was the vaults that were exfiltrated, we don't know when they were backed up or how many of them had the, the higher number of hashes you need at least a hundred thousand these days. In fact, OASP recommends 300,000 iterations of PD pbk DF two to protect your master password. So there is some real concern. Legitimate, I think real concern that what's gonna happen now that this, we don't know when it happened. We don't know how much they got Steve. I said Steve, but

Doc Rock (01:20:55):
It's the crown jewels it, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:20:57):
The one thing that they have to protect. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:21:00):
It's their one job. Yep. You job pushing secret comes in. Sorry. No, no. I'm saying for those of us that are like one password, like even if you got my vault, you ain't doing nothing with my vault because you still need the secret key. So let's

Leo Laporte (01:21:15):
The same with last pass my vault pass. Same with last pass. The problem is, there are a couple problems here. Once you have the vault, you can apply every bit of brute force. You wish. Right Now if it's we, if you had a good master password that was really long and if was properly hashed, probably you're okay. But there are gonna be people out there whose master password cuz you have to remember it. Remember is monkey 1, 2, 3, they're gonna be people

Doc Rock (01:21:42):
Out there. That's the funny part about, well my clients, I get everybody, my family, my everybody, I get them one, one password. Right. I have, I had last pass two for a minute from a team that I worked with and they insisted on using that cuz at the time they were the, they were more, they were

Leo Laporte (01:21:57):
The best. That's why we, they we, they advertised with us for years. They were a

Doc Rock (01:22:00):
Studio. Yeah. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, they they worked on all the platforms. That's

Leo Laporte (01:22:03):
What I, and they're completely cross-platform. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:22:06):
But but then eventually one password became cross-platform. But I've always got my clients on that and I always get irritated when I go on and the client has the one password, password taped to the monitor. Yeah. I was like, that wasn't the whole point jerk face. Yeah. Or, but

Leo Laporte (01:22:20):
I understand that. Cause you have to remember that password. Once you're using a password manager. The good news is from now on, you use each password is a new fresh password just for that site. And it's long and strong and non memorable. But you do still have to have that master password and you still have to remember that and you enter it all the time. I asked Steve, I said, look, I use a Yuki, I've used a YubiKey for years to, for two two factor. If people use two factor, are they safer? And he said no, unfortunately. And he said the the person who has these vaults doesn't need the two factor to un to get your master password and open the vault. That's only for you when you're logging in. Or if a bad guy's logging in on your machine, then the two factor ha is handy. So we're pretty vulnerable. I I don't know what's gonna happen. I, but I, I wonder if we're gonna start to see over the next few months more and more people say, oh I've, you know, my, somebody's got my passwords. 

Doc Rock (01:23:19):
Well, well wait now I thought, okay, so this may be me being confused. I thought the thing about for, for instance, for one password, even if you know the master password when you first put it on the machine before you could do anything, you gotta get through the secret key.

Leo Laporte (01:23:34):
Yeah. That's because

Doc Rock (01:23:35):
Not actually stored there. And that's where,

Leo Laporte (01:23:37):
That's because server, you are logging in now to ma last pass a server to get the vault, the vault downloaded to your machine. The guy has the vault. He doesn't need that second factor. He has the vault. All he has to do is it's like he took the safe home and gets to work. He has the safe in his house.

Doc Rock (01:23:57):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:23:57):
I got, so that's why this is, don't

Doc Rock (01:23:59):
Know why that didn't, that didn't cross through the old Melin skis over here, but hey it's, it's still full of Japanese food

Leo Laporte (01:24:06):
<Laugh>. No, no, no. You're not alone. In fact, one of the reasons we've been talking about it on all the shows is cuz I want people to understand the risks here. If they have your vault, if you had a last pass account, and by the way, because they haven't been forthcoming on Okay, they said somebody got our vault backups. Okay, but when were they backed up from? Were they from a year ago, two years ago. Last month. They didn't say I had a last pass account for years. I deleted my vault about two years ago. But if the backup predated that, then they have my vault. Right. So it's not Yeah, if you reuse passwords, then that's like, that's even worse. Huge hope. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm hoping I deleted my vault and he wasn't in the backup this guy got, but for many people who are using last pass now or whoever use last pass at this point you're just crossing your fingers or you do what I've told everybody, by the way, we use Last Pass enterprise here. So we're, we're still last pass users. My wife uses it. I said Lisa, what you have to do at this point is change all your passwords. The most important passwords, start with the ones that don't have two factor. Those have to be changed. And then if you are using two factor, well that's good news because the bad guy would still have to use two factor to get into your bank or whatever. But you should eventually change that as well. That's a

Doc Rock (01:25:21):
Yeah. People gotta gotta remember to change them. Change them like in a time basis as well. Yeah. Because if you're, okay, like for instance, if you're using all of the password managers tell you like every couple of months that you should change these

Leo Laporte (01:25:32):
Passwords, that's wrong by the way. No, and I think that's wrong. This used to recommend this, this was a bad recommendation. They recommended a rotating passwords and, and it's not necessary unless you're thinking your password vaults be regularly being stolen <laugh> fuck. I mean maybe you should, maybe now that is good advice.

Doc Rock (01:25:52):
Yeah. And like maybe that is good advice. Yeah. But, but that's what I was thinking. I was thinking the backup would be old. Right. So that even if they got the password, it's still wrong. Right. But yeah, most people don't change it unless you have. But

Leo Laporte (01:26:02):
I've certainly let point this out. Some places make you do it the whatever the master password was when that vault was backed up, that's still the master password. No matter what you do, you're not changing that vault. You're only changing your current vault. The one, the bad, the vault the bad guys brought home, it's whatever the password was then it's whatever the P B K df two iterations were then it's however weak it was then Nothing you do today will make that go away. Except changing all the passwords in that old vault so that when if they do break into it, they can't break into your stuff. It's kind of a mess. It's a huge mess. It's as bad as you can

Doc Rock (01:26:41):
Get. Dad's killing me. We gotta make it the p is your password <laugh>? I gotta, I gotta check my account. Hold on. I gotta go to the bathroom. So you're over there. Why, why are you drinking all of this water? Look man, I gotta pay my taxes. I can't get in <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:26:58):
You want, you wanna take a break and change all your passwords? You can do that if you, if you need to <laugh>

Iain Thomson (01:27:02):
It's okay. I've gotta say this really sort of brings back the, the importance of occasionally analog password stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. For really important passwords, I don't put them in the password manager. I write them down and I hide them somewhere in the house in a way that, in somewhere that themes would never look i e books. So, you know, if there's a book in there, it's got your passwords and then, then you just update them at the time. And you don't have to put those key passwords out

Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
There. I'll never forget going to Target and looking in the notebook section and there's a notebook nice tall one that says passwords on it. <Laugh> Oh yes. Was gold leaf. But honestly the, the old folks like my mom who've been writing down their passwords, they're safer cuz you'd have to break into her house. Yeah. As long as she didn't reuse them and made good ones, they're actually safer. So, and that's one reason a number of people, and I'm con going back and forth on this our sponsor bit warden lets you host your own vault so that it's not in the bit warden.

Iain Thomson (01:28:03):
See that's the more sensible operation.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:05):
I don't know. I mean, asking someone to host their own stuff, I mean, I'm not an expert

Leo Laporte (01:28:10):
That Yeah. That's why I've always let last pass and now bit warden host it because I figure well there's security gurus but that didn't work out so well for last pass users. Right?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:21):
Well, I mean yes for something like that, it's a one-time thing. 

Leo Laporte (01:28:26):
Also the thing the the risk is that last pass is a cent is a single point of failure. Right. They have 'em all. Right. Right. If it's you and it's on Dropbox, somebody has to be going after your Dropbox and getting your vault there and they still have to go through the decryption process. So I changed my tune. I used to say let them host it cuz they're experts. I'm not and I could do something stupid. But now I'm thinking maybe you have an advantage of a little bit of security through obscurity by not having your vault in a central location. You'd have to run a last unless

Stacey Higginbotham (01:28:53):
You're someone like a journalist.

Leo Laporte (01:28:55):
Yeah, yeah. What do you do? I mean like what do you do if you're vulnerable? You're

Stacey Higginbotham (01:29:00):
That you vulnerable, you have a higher

Leo Laporte (01:29:01):
Risk per Well that's what I mean. Yeah. What if, yeah, what, what if you're, you know, it depends on what your, your threat profile is. But if you're a dissident or a journalist or you live somewhere where it's not okay to be you but then what do you do?

Iain Thomson (01:29:14):
Well, I mean, I was part of the Google's advanced protection system that they introduced for journalists when they first brought it out. So you've got a UBI key and you've got a Bluetooth thing and you have to log in. You know, if you're coming in to your existing account on a new computer, you've gotta have this with you. Otherwise you're locked out. It's a bit of a pain in the ass if you actually lose the key. But it's actually a pretty good security system. But you know, for mass market people just don't do this. I mean, Google introduced two-factor authentication for Gmail for example, and 10 years later, less than 20% of people were actually using it. They

Leo Laporte (01:29:54):
Actually started forcing people, didn't they?

Iain Thomson (01:29:56):
Yeah, they had to. Yeah. Because as I say, this is not that people want convenience, not security. And this is part of the problem I have with password managers in that it sounds like a great solution until the last pass thing happens and then it all goes to help. So

Leo Laporte (01:30:14):
I I have to say even if you're using LastPass, you're still better off in most cases because most users reuse passwords.

Doc Rock (01:30:23):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
And that's the worst case. It's true scenario, right?

Iain Thomson (01:30:27):
It's true.

Doc Rock (01:30:28):
Yeah. There there's this thing on Netflix right now. It's called Kaleidoscope. And it's an interesting show premise because you could jump in at any one of the, I think 12 episodes. You could watch 'em in any order. But it tells like, you know, the story of a heist from like multiple angles, <laugh>. And one of the things they had in there, which was really funny is that the guy who they're trying to break into his vault, he had a gate detection <laugh>. So the vault is down the hallway and as you're walking down the hallway, it knows it's not him because everybody has a unique gate. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:31:01):
Gate. Like g a i t, like how you walk. Oh that's interesting. Yeah. Google's been

Doc Rock (01:31:07):
Doing that actually an interesting like thing to come up with. But

Leo Laporte (01:31:11):
No, its real.

Doc Rock (01:31:11):
Right before I went to Japan,

Leo Laporte (01:31:12):
It's real, Google's been studying this. Yeah, yeah. Really?

Doc Rock (01:31:15):
Yes. Well see that was funny to me cuz right before I went to Japan, I accidentally like literally hours before I got on a plane, I accidentally kicked the couch in full blast and broke my toe.

Leo Laporte (01:31:25):
So you got a different gate now baby.

Doc Rock (01:31:27):
So that means I wouldn't be able to get into my <laugh> thing to get my stocks. Funny buns.

Leo Laporte (01:31:32):
I remember when I was in college, I was going walking down the street and a guy said, Hey Leo and I, it was like a hundred feet away. I said, how did you know it was me? He said, I could tell by how you walk, you have a distinctive, I don't know what I, it was a silly walk or what, but you have a distinctive gate and Google says everybody does and your phone can detect it because of the accelerometers. Right.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:31:54):
We had the guy from, we had the former or something of either the FBI or the CIA a at one of our tructure conferences like in 2014. And he got up on stage and he was like, we love Fitbit. We can totally tell who different people are based on their gate. And everyone was like, oh my gosh, it's, and then they forgot about it promptly. So Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:32:13):
No, and it's, it's also got applications to the kind of health things that we're talking about from ces. I mean, Billy Connolly, the famous Scottish comedian, was diagnosed with his terminal medical condition simply because he was walking across a room. Wow. And a doctor who knew what he was talking about. Wow. Said, hang on a second, you are showing signs of this particular illness. Isn't that interest need to go and see your doctor right now. This is a all incredibly valuable stuff. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:32:40):
It's what we're, I mean honestly that's what we're learning from smartwatches. More and more we're hearing stories about people whose Apple watches saved their lives because it detected AFib or some other heart condition and and said you should see your doctor I'm sure gait will be the next thing that's

Iain Thomson (01:32:55):
It has. Although in on terms of the gate thing, but Apple headquarters in particular, when the, the I, you know, when the watches first came out, they got this thing that it's good to walk around for 10 minutes every hour, which is perfectly valid. But the problem was they were automatically set for the last 10 minutes of every

Leo Laporte (01:33:12):
Hour. Everybody gets up,

Iain Thomson (01:33:13):
They do an Apple hq, <laugh> 10 to the hour. Everyone

Doc Rock (01:33:16):
They fixed it up and walk through. No, I

Leo Laporte (01:33:18):
Noticed that in the early days of the stand detection, everybody had to get up at 10 minutes till the hour. Yep. Have they fixed that? Is

Doc Rock (01:33:24):
It now staggered? Nope. It still comes on at 50 to me. I swear it comes on at the 50. It's always the minute. 50 every time. It's so hysterical. Time to get up.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:33:32):
You know what, that's because you haven't done it yet. I mean it, how else would you do it?

Doc Rock (01:33:36):
True sir. Well, one of the things that's funny to

Leo Laporte (01:33:39):
Me, I guess you're right, it's the end. It's coming up to the end of the hours is what you're saying, Stacy. So yeah, you haven't done it yet. Have you sat that whole hour? So that really is only a problem with people like us who are completely sedentary doc.

Doc Rock (01:33:49):
We're always sitting down, we're just sitting.

Leo Laporte (01:33:51):
I,

Doc Rock (01:33:51):
I find one of the strangest things to me, and this is maybe it's not the problem where you live, but here locally, many of the state or local services that I have to log in to do something, they still have like eight to 16 character password limits. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I'm like, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:34:07):
Dress me

Doc Rock (01:34:07):
Nuts. You crazy. And I'm like, yo, you are the city like tax office. Right. Or the, the conveyance office and I can't make a complicated password. So those ones are probably some of the first level that these people who are into this kind of like it sex stuff get into is going through. Everybody has to deal with their state locally entities at some point and a lot of them still have weak password requirements and that's super obnoxious. So I would hope that somewhere on the federal level, after enough people get in trouble maybe they should fix that sort of thing, you know, and they're still yelling at the big tech, which I get, but they gotta look at their own subject.

Leo Laporte (01:34:49):
We, we had the story on Mac break weekly this week when the Apple fall detection first came out, remember people on roller coasters were accidentally calling 9 1 1. Now it turns out skiers the ski season who wear Apple watches, there was a huge increase in Colorado. Fake or false or not real. 9 1 1 calls from their Apple watches because they were going down the slopes and they didn't notice cuz they probably had, you know, gloves and stuff on. They didn't notice that their watch was calling 9 1 1. And that's a big problem in <laugh> in in these towns in Colorado. I mean,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:23):
They'll fix it. Oh yeah. And oh yeah. I mean, so still, I mean that's

Leo Laporte (01:35:27):
How this stuff unbalance. It's great right? Saves people lunch. It totally days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got my mama an Apple watch cuz she's 90 and if she falls, I, I want her to have help

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:38):
As someone who passes out on the regular, I almost switched the Apple ecosystem just for that feature, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
<Laugh>, you'd rather just pass out you. But the thing is you wake up.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:52):
I yeah, eventually I'll get up. It's fine. <Laugh>, you

Leo Laporte (01:35:55):
Probably don't

Stacey Higginbotham (01:35:55):
Pass out. It's not a life-threatening thing.

Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
Yeah. You probably don't want nine one. I mean, emergency services coming every single time you pass out. That wouldn't be good.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:03):
No, I I actually tell people never call 9 1 1 if I pass out unless I'm bleeding or something's totally

Leo Laporte (01:36:08):
Wrong. Do you, are you, are you having epileptic seizures or something or

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:12):
No, I just have pots. I just pass out

Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
Pots. It's,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:16):
It's what I do. 

Leo Laporte (01:36:17):
Play pass out. It's terminal now

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:20):
It's post, post osteo something, something syndrome. Someone will know what it is. Interesting. It's basically when you stand up too quickly you get lightheaded. Oh yeah. When I stand up too, my heart rate doesn't, yeah, it doesn't push enough blood and it just goes soup.

Leo Laporte (01:36:34):
Yeah. You should stand up more slowly Stacy. I'm just saying. Or don't stand up at all.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:36:38):
Yes. Cuz I'm such a slow, impatient person.

Leo Laporte (01:36:42):
<Laugh>, even the F b I says you maybe you ought to use a an ad blocker. This always cracks me up because law enforcement on the one hand really wouldn't prefer you, you know, not be private, not encrypt, not protect yourself in any way. On the other hand, gosh, you guys gotta protect yourselves out there. The f b i in a pre-holiday PSA said that cyber criminals are buying ads. You know, like the ads that show up on your websites to impersonate legit brands like, oh, guess what? Cryptocurrency exchanges they often show up as the top of a search results. They can look identical to the brands. They're impersonating, you know, all of these, this ad sales stuff is automated, right? There's no person saying, oh, let me see, would you like to buy and add at the top of the search? All right. It'll be $50. It's all completely automated so that means bad guys can take advantage of it. Malicious ads are also used to trick victims in installing malware designed disguised as genuine apps. The FBI's recommendation install an ad blocker. So I agree. Install an ad blocker. Don't block our ads. If you would, I was gonna

Iain Thomson (01:37:54):
Say, say I've got skin in this game <laugh>, so can I present deals position maybe? Yes. Yes. Yes. Certainly ads have been used for years now to push malware out, to push false stuff out as well. And I have no problem with people using ad blockers, but if you trust the site, you should disable them for that particular site. Good point. Because I like to eat. Yes. but I mean, advertising supported copy is still a major force on the internet. Yes, it can be used to push malware out, but if you've got an ounce of sense then, you know it's a tricky case actually

Leo Laporte (01:38:32):
Related to this the Irish Irish, the Irish privacy regulators have fined meta over 400 million for forcing users to accept targeted ads and told meta they can no longer do ad targeting unless they get permission from their users, which of course, nobody on Facebook. When asked, this is the, this is what happened with Apple's at t. As soon as Apple said Hey, you want this app to track you? Everybody said, well, no,

Iain Thomson (01:39:05):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:39:06):
<Laugh>, no thank you. So this is gonna be a big issue. I mean, yes, on the one hand, I, I support your right to choose, but for, for people like Ian and me if, if you can't sell ads against your audience, that's problematic. Right? That's problem.

Iain Thomson (01:39:23):
You've had to vote. Now, our funding sources, that's Google.

Leo Laporte (01:39:25):
But

Iain Thomson (01:39:25):
Yeah, I've gotta say also, I mean, I applaud the Irish authorities for doing this, and it does seem like they,

Leo Laporte (01:39:33):
By

Iain Thomson (01:39:33):
The way, prepare and actually try to do

Leo Laporte (01:39:35):
It, but they didn't want

Iain Thomson (01:39:36):
To a billion to,

Leo Laporte (01:39:37):
They didn't want to. They were forced to.

Iain Thomson (01:39:40):
Yeah. I mean, 400 million though, for, I know this is, that's nothing. This, you know, down the back of the sofa change.

Leo Laporte (01:39:46):
But more importantly, they're gonna change the rules and say, you know, the, the Irish have ruled that you have to ask for permission. And the, if I presume that's more than just Facebook, that would be everybody who wants to do personalized ads. You have to ask permission now, and

Iain Thomson (01:40:00):
You have to, and there is a big crack honor it. I was gonna, I was gonna say there is a big crackdown, but it's not that big because I think France find Apple 8 million euros.

Leo Laporte (01:40:10):
Yeah. These are tiny.

Iain Thomson (01:40:11):
And we actually looked at the figures. That's 40 minutes profit. Yeah. No. Now I don't, this is a business expense at this point,

Leo Laporte (01:40:17):
But they can charge more. GDPR allows 'em to charge a significant percentage of global revenue in the long run. If

Iain Thomson (01:40:22):
They enforce it.

Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
Yeah. If, yeah. If they really want to get you know, by the, but so before you applaud, I, the I Irish regulators, they didn't wanna do this. The European Data Protection Board forced them to, right. But they, and nevertheless, they did it. And it isn't a huge fine, it's ha almost half a billion dollars, which sounds like a lot to you and me. Probably not a lot to meta, but I think it's more concerning that there is, and maybe not concerning, maybe everybody's applauding this. Shouldn't we be asked if we want our information to be sold?

Iain Thomson (01:40:57):
Damn. Right. Or have they actually asked people? Sorry.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:02):
Oh, no, I was gonna say, I mean, well, yeah, you go ahead,

Doc Rock (01:41:06):
<Laugh>.

Iain Thomson (01:41:07):
We'll all be, I've

Stacey Higginbotham (01:41:08):
Talked a lot.

Iain Thomson (01:41:08):
I'm done just, but I mean Leo, you and I have argued about this in the past. You hate those cookie oh,

Leo Laporte (01:41:15):
The cookie banners, which I

Doc Rock (01:41:16):
Hate, hate. I can't stand them,

Iain Thomson (01:41:18):
Honestly. I like 'em because you can actually choose this stuff and you can

Doc Rock (01:41:23):
Set this down. The problem is they're, they're broken. They sometimes you accept it and you come right back on a same device, same site. Later they ask you again because they're not properly implemented

Leo Laporte (01:41:33):
Because they didn't save a cookie. There is that to say that you said, I don't want you to save cookies.

Doc Rock (01:41:37):
Yeah. So it's a catch 22. Like, I'm, I agree with you. Like I, I understand what they're for and why they work, but they still can't get a good implementation. And so what happens is when we come up with plans or policies to try to force something that's protectionary, but we don't think it all the way through. People end up just not wearing the seatbelt.

Leo Laporte (01:41:57):
That's exactly right.

Doc Rock (01:41:58):
Mm-Hmm. Remember, sit, remember Camry sit? Yeah. Used to get in. Yeah. And you shut the door and it goes like this. Oh God, I glad they got rid of that. Yeah. They had to because it was like, you was choking me

Iain Thomson (01:42:09):
<Laugh>. So,

Doc Rock (01:42:10):
So it's funny because it, the idea is great, but can we ever just think it all the way through so we have a way so that it works and it works Well?

Leo Laporte (01:42:20):
I, I think it,

Iain Thomson (01:42:21):
But mean also, companies are actually playing against this in that, if you will say, right, I will only accept this cookie or this cookie in a number of sites, and I won't name names. But if you do that, it'll be like, okay, we shall just update your platform, and then you'll get the spinning wheel for 30, for 60 minutes. Sorry, 60 seconds to encourage people just go, okay. All the way. So, you know, there's there there's more than one element to this.

Doc Rock (01:42:49):
Yes. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:42:51):
What were you gonna say no to Stacy?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:54):
I have no idea. But I agree. I I think it was probably along those lines.

Leo Laporte (01:42:58):
No, there,

Stacey Higginbotham (01:42:59):
There's an incentive. There's a no, there's an incentive not to, there's an incentive not to implement it in a way that is user friendly. And there's also always going to be unintended consequences. And that's, that's the, I mean, yeah. Jeff does this a lot on this weekend, Google, and he's, he's constantly like, we can't make laws because it'll hurt these people. It might. And we have to, like, we have to stop thinking about laws as like a universal good and start thinking of them as tradeoffs between Yes. Different competing sections and Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:43:29):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:43:30):
Yeah. Or even like convenience versus security. And so, I mean, part like in the media, that's how we should be talking about these things. And we're

Doc Rock (01:43:39):
Not a hundred percent there.

Iain Thomson (01:43:40):
Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:43:40):
I hate when they make, this is a, this is a trans unto our freedom. And I'm like, how did you get to this thing to complain about the freedom? Well, I drove and you drove using what? A car. And in order to drive the car, you need a what? A license. Oh, freedom <laugh>. Like, come on dude. Can we get off of this ball

Leo Laporte (01:43:59):
Sentence? As long as we're talking about this Doc Rock, did you know that your auto warranty has expired? And <laugh>,

Doc Rock (01:44:06):
I love those calls. These

Leo Laporte (01:44:08):
Worst.

Doc Rock (01:44:08):
I have to play with those people.

Leo Laporte (01:44:09):
The robocall campaign, the FCC has now proposed a record $300 million fine, because those auto warranty robocalls, they almost all came from one group. One company, what? Two men. That's crazy. Two men. Yeah. That's funny. Roy Cox Jr. And Michael Aaron Jones. Since 20 18, 2 guys orchestrated the scam that send billions and billions of calls using a network of domestic. I

Doc Rock (01:44:42):
Wonder how much they made. Like, I really think they made a, this is mean. I know this is mean. I'm sorry if you wanted them, but I wonder who is stupid enough to buy working from these people. <Laugh>. And it had to work because they did it for how many years. That's how much

Leo Laporte (01:44:58):
They made it the investigation.

Iain Thomson (01:45:00):
Enough things out at low cost.

Leo Laporte (01:45:02):
That's exactly right.

Iain Thomson (01:45:03):
Some idiot will, will, will do it. And this is the way of it. I mean, honestly, I thought the fine was too little. I would prefer them to have been kept in a room. And everyone who's received a robo call, Kevin has slapped them in the face once a year. <Laugh>

Doc Rock (01:45:17):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:45:17):
They they reached more than half a billion US phone numbers. Wait a minute. How many? There's how many people? There

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:24):
Are 330 million people in the

Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
United States, but 500 million US phone numbers. So basically everybody,

Iain Thomson (01:45:30):
Yeah. But people have mobile and

Leo Laporte (01:45:31):
Fixed, and most of you got called TWiTce with more than 6 billion calls in the first three 6 billion calls in the first three months of 2021. 6 billion. So half a billion phone number, 6 billion calls That, that, you know what though? Number got 12 calls.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:45:52):
I have an Android phone. Yeah. And I never got one of them. None of them ever made it through Google's voicemail. Spam thing

Leo Laporte (01:45:58):
Was awesome. It does work really well. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:46:00):
It really works very well. Indeed. You

Doc Rock (01:46:02):
Was funny. The at and t Protect thing and remember being in, in a situation where my friends and I were having lunch, and I got one of those calls, and then as soon as I hung up from the person, because it was starting to learn how to get an 8 0 8 area code, right? That's been the most crazy one. And being a, a business owner at the time, I gotta answer the phone, gotta see who it is. And then I hung up and then my buddy's phone rang, and then my other buddy's phone ring. And the last, I was like, wait a minute, everybody here got at and t. And they were like, yeah. And then, so that was the craziest thing to me, is to be in a situation to have all the, the rob cost happen to a group of people at a lunch table. That was just weird, huh?

Leo Laporte (01:46:44):
But

Iain Thomson (01:46:44):
Coast have a, have an inbuilt bias in terms of not dealing with this. And they make a small amount of money from each call. So you know

Leo Laporte (01:46:52):
How scammers work there, right? Right. Spam, spam

Iain Thomson (01:46:55):
Doesn't, they need to get their act together and actually say,

Doc Rock (01:46:57):
Look, an at and t charges you for Robo Protect, which is,

Leo Laporte (01:47:00):
Here's the good

Doc Rock (01:47:00):
Now. I think it's free now, but before it used to be five.

Leo Laporte (01:47:03):
The FCC is finally, they've been doing very slowly, but they finally moved towards making this illegal. They have that stir and shaken protocol, and they're slowly moving overseas carriers into off of this protected list. So that mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and requiring at t Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon to block calls that are not authenticated. So it, it, according to the fcc, the number of robocalls dropped 99%. Once this shaken and stirred framework was implemented according to robo Killer, which is a service that kills these robocalls have remained at a lower level since we reviewed trends in October, 2022, which leaves us hopeful. This is the final nail in the coffin for the infamous car warranty robocall. But what's happens is it's just one or two people that does all of this. The F'S previous record fine was against a telemarketer in Texas, 225 million in November. The agency took action against a voice service provider, earth Access U R T H, earth Access, 40% of October's student loan debt relief scam calls. Did you get any of those? I did. I haven't. I don't have a student loan. 40% came from one company. And eventually these, these, I think these companies will be removed from the network entirely, which, let's

Doc Rock (01:48:27):
Hope so. Are you a anybody getting texts now instead of

Leo Laporte (01:48:30):
The calls? Yeah. That's why

Doc Rock (01:48:32):
The text ones are more funny. Cause they're al we're cracked them about the text every time. And I've just been taking shots after them and posting on my IG from time to time. They'll be good. And they'll miss one stupid typo <laugh>, or they'll gap something. And I was like, you freaking idiots. If you got that one little part right, and you catch more people, like, I almost wanna consult them on how not to do it. But the, it's always, oh, we got a package waiting for you. And I'm always getting packaged, so I have to look at it again. And like, yeah, D Hhl is not gonna text me from some weird, stupid number to tell me that my package from small rig is coming in late. But it's, it's really funny to see the typos and stuff that they put in and it's like, oh my God, if you guys knew how to spell, you might catch more people.

Leo Laporte (01:49:18):
They call this, by the way, smishing, cuz this is fishing via

Doc Rock (01:49:23):
Sms. Sms, Phish,

Leo Laporte (01:49:25):
Smishing. They, when I say they, I'm gonna put that in air quote. They call it Smishing.

Iain Thomson (01:49:30):
But this is why I was so encouraged to see Lena Kahn, you know, as, as head of the fcc, because she takes this stuff seriously. And the FCC has finally got out as gridlock and is starting to move on this. And yeah, they will face the wrath of Khan and she knows what she's talking about and knows where the weak spots are. So all power, let's get it done. Did

Leo Laporte (01:49:51):
Any of

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:51):
You see that's the ftc.

Iain Thomson (01:49:53):
Ftc Oh, damnit

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:54):
TC and the FTC is Rose

Leo Laporte (01:49:56):
Wars Jessica War. But

Stacey Higginbotham (01:49:57):
You know what? Yeah. Ah, we are waiting for Gigi soon to be Gigi. Brian

Leo Laporte (01:50:01):
Fc. They, they've made the nomination. They still have, not they, but now that we control the Senate, Gigi has a shot. Let's see.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:50:08):
So yeah, on the ffc. Yeah. Did you, did you, everything you said about Conis right, though, did you

Iain Thomson (01:50:13):
See the

Leo Laporte (01:50:14):
Movie yesterday? Remember that movie yesterday where guy gets hit in the head and the beat and wakes up and The Beatles never existed and, but he remembers all the Beatles songs. So suddenly he starts to become a superstar. Singing yesterday and other Beatles songs. You ever, it's a great movie. If you saw the trailer, well, if you saw the trailer, you might have said, oh, it's, it's a new Anna Demus film, except that even though she was in the trailer, she was cut out of the movie. So somebody sued saying, wait a minute, I went to see that movie, expected to see Anna Dharma and she wasn't in it. US District Judge Steven Wilson says, yes, you can sue Universal Set to throw out the lawsuit saying First Amendment First Amendment. That's an artistic expressive work. The judge said, well, the trailer is commercial speech subject to California's false advertising law. Universal is correct. The judge wrote, the trailers involve some creativity and editorial discretion, but this creativity does not outweigh the commercial nature of a trailer. And it's core trailers. An advertisement design is sell a movie by providing consumers of the preview of the movie. And if you've got somebody in the trailer that isn't in the movie, that's false advertising. So there, Hmm. So there can you

Iain Thomson (01:51:36):
Sue them for giving away the whole story in the trailer? <Laugh>? Oh God. If we could, that'd be Bollywood would be bankrupt. The

Leo Laporte (01:51:42):
Plaintiffs each paid $3 and 99 cents to rent yesterday on Amazon Prime. They're seeking 5 million in compensation. Wow. The class

Iain Thomson (01:51:55):
Trailers,

Leo Laporte (01:51:56):
The class section,

Iain Thomson (01:51:56):
I mean, there are whole section, there are whole sections of Rogue One in the trailer, which don't appear in the actual film. So,

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
You know, <laugh>, the judge said there's, that's okay. There's some things that are okay, but if you put a, a known face in the trailer and, and she's not in the movie <laugh>, that's, that's going too far. Tesla, this happened in I think it happened in the bay Air, no, no, I'm sorry, happened in Germany. A driver in Germany.

Iain Thomson (01:52:22):
Oh. The driver

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
Fell asleep at the wheel and led a, a medium speed chase for many miles. He

Iain Thomson (01:52:29):
Fell, fell asleep, is a little bit generous. He was stone stoned off his bump,

Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
Stoned off his cord.

Stacey Higginbotham (01:52:34):
Oh, okay. I was like, wow. Was he stoned?

Leo Laporte (01:52:37):
Yes. December 29th. Yes. 12:00 PM local time police spotted at Tesla driving down auto bond 70, leaving Bamberg heading towards Beirut. Officers attempted to stop the Tesla. The vehicle did not pull over. The car was traveling at exactly 70 miles an hour. <Laugh> and did not slow down or speed up. <Laugh> just kept. The Tesla says the officers kept the same distance from the patrol car in front. They put a patrol fire in front of it. The patrol officer slowed down the car slows down, speeds up the car, speeds up. Officers pulled up next to the Tesla's driver's side window, noticed the driver only identified as a 45 year old male reclined in his seat with his eyes closed and his hands off the steering wheel. Now you may know, I know you do Stacy cuz you have a Tesla that his Tesla periodically says, keep your hands in the wheel, reminds you to jiggle the wheel. He had a weight <laugh> attached to the wheel, hank from it so that it wouldn't bother him while he took his knee. The driver is being investigated for criminal endangerment and his license has been

Stacey Higginbotham (01:53:40):
Suspended. I mean, sure, but Tesla this is why they really should not be allowed, like talk about false

Leo Laporte (01:53:47):
Advertising. Well, in California, yeah. They can no longer California. They can no longer advertise full self-driving. Cuz that's not what it is Exactly. Because it isn't, you know, <laugh>, I mean it's as simple as that. That feels fair. You're the expo on this. That, that seems fair. Yeah. alright. Right. I wanna take a little break and remind everybody that this show had one ad today. And I'm sorry to say the ad market is getting tougher. The verse just had an article saying, podcast advertising has dropped off the face of the earth for a variety of reasons. Recession, covid, other things, maybe the large number of podcasts. We saw this coming. That's why two years ago, almost two years ago, we started Club TWiT . We knew that in order to keep TWiT going, to keep starting new shows, to keep growing, we needed to get our audience to support us.

(01:54:35):
And Club TWiT has been a huge success. I wanna thank everybody who joined and I wanna encourage those of you who are not yet members to please join Club TWiT . What do you get? No ads to start with. Ad free versions of every one of our shows, plus shows you can't get elsewhere. Like our Hands on Macintosh show with Micah Sergeant Hands on Windows with Paul Throt, the Untitled Linux Show. The Gizz Fizz is now in the club. We use the club to launch shows too. This week in space launched, so to speak, out of club TWiT . That TWiT plus feed has material that you can't get anywhere else, including stuff before and after shows. And then of course there's our wonderful Club, TWiT Discord, which is a social network in its own right. A wonderful place to hang out. Mar might not include it. I don't know why. <Laugh>, I don't.

(01:55:25):
 And yes, double O Heaven says, where's our Minecraft server? We do have a special three Minecraft servers for Club TWiT members. I will, I will kick them. They're over. I see them over there sitting next to Ant right now. Ant by the way, is our community manager puts a lot of effort into events on Club TWiT . In fact, there's some coming up. Hello? Hello everybody. There's some coming up. Stacey Higginbotham's book Club. I love her. This Thursday, January 12th, Stacy will be and I will be there and Anne will be there. We'll be talking about it. Andy Weirs. Ru did you like the novel Stacy Project Hail Mary?

Stacey Higginbotham (01:56:00):
I liked it until the very end and then I was like, oh my God. Stop throwing new plot points in

Leo Laporte (01:56:06):
<Laugh>. End it. Yeah, the end is a little. Okay. I the Optimist. Twit ter. Good. I love yeah, Artemis so well. Anyway, there's lots to talk about. You can tell <laugh> we will be talking about it this Thursday. We are Lisa and I will be doing an inside TWiT ter week from Thursday. That's the chance to hear what's really going on inside TWiT . Lisa is surprisingly forthright and as you know, I have no filters. So boy oh boy. And then Wintu Dao, who is one of the hosts of all about Andrew. It'll do a fireside chat. There's lots more coming up, including if you were a fan of Daniel Suarez's novels, demon and Freedom tm. We're gonna do a very special interview with Daniel Suarez early next month. He's gonna be in studio. Parts of that interview will of course air on Ask the Tech guys and on triangulation, but it will be a club event.

(01:56:50):
So club members will get the first first crack at asking your questions of Daniel. We're trying to make it a fun place to be. It's not expensive. It's a dollar lesson, a blue check on TWiT ter, and I promise it will always be, at least I'm much more useful. <Laugh> much more useful. Only seven bucks a month. There is a yearly plan. There are corporate memberships as well. It helps us an awful lot. So let me encourage you, there are a lot of benefits. I think the benefits are great. And yes, I will kick the Minecraft server as soon as I get off today, so you can go on in there. But there's a lot more and I really appreciate it. So thank you in advance. If you wanna join TWiT TV slash club TWiT . There's one other bit of business I will mention, which is we have a survey, we do this once a year every January.

(01:57:40):
We we survey our audience to get to know you better. It helps us find advertisers. So it's important because we don't want to, we don't use trackers, we don't wanna track you, but the advertisers do wanna know, well, who's listening, but we also wanna know more about you so we know what kinds of shows you like and what we should do going forward. It should only take a few minutes. It's of course completely optional. Every question is optional as well. Go to TWiT .tv/survey 23 runs through the rest of the month. But if you would do that sooner than later, that would be great, cuz I know it's easy to forget and put these things off. Twit TV slash survey 23. Hey everybody. Leo LaPorte here. I am the founder and one of the hosts at the TWiT Podcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at TWiT because I think it's unique and I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do Here at TWiT , we've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product.

(01:58:48):
Our mission statement is TWiT , is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. Wait, already. You should be, your ears should be perking up at that because highly engaged is good for you. Tech enthusiasts, if that's who you're looking for, this is the place we do it by offering 'em the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world. And I hear from our audience all the time. Part of that knowledge comes from our advertisers. We are very careful. We pick advertisers with great products, great services with integrity and introduce them to our audience with authenticity and genuine enthusiasm. And that makes our host Red Ads different from anything else you can buy. We are literally bringing you to the attention of our audience and giving you a big fat endorsement. We like to create partnerships with trusted brands, brands who are in it for the long run, long-term partners that want to grow with us.

(01:59:48):
And we have so many great success stories. Tim Broom, who founded it Pro TV in 2013, started advertising with us on day one, has been with us ever since. He said quote, we would not be where we are today without the TWiT network. I think the proof is in the pudding. Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work. And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with TWiT . We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this.

(02:00:40):
We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that our other hosts will chime in on the ads saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>. That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great. We deliver always overdeliver on impressions. So you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working.

(02:01:30):
You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent to thousands of fans, engaged fans who really wanna see this stuff. We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too. So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience. Visit TWiT tv slash advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary is the c e o of authentic. You probably know him one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on TWiT ch shows.

(02:02:25):
I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted. I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today@advertiseatTWiT .tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host shred ads on TWiT . Do TV visit TWiT tv slash advertise for more details. Or you can email us, advertise at TWiT . Do TV if you're ready to launch your campaign now. I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. Last week was a different week on TWiT because it was our best ofs the holiday week. But we've put together, we had some fun earlier this week too. A little promo to tell you all about what happened this past week on TWiT watch.
<Laugh>. Thank you. The great immortal Jim Cutler and his little horn. Here's a picture of Doc Rock. You weren't in Vegas doc, but you were featured in a panel in Las Vegas. There you are wielding your light saber on the beach.

Doc Rock (02:05:22):
It is so funny. And that's a Sony panel. And that photo was taken with a Nikon. Ah,

Leo Laporte (02:05:27):
Can you tell? It's a, can you tell it's a Nikon.

Doc Rock (02:05:30):
Oh no, I just know because my friend took the photo and he's

Leo Laporte (02:05:33):
Holding the guy in the shot is is holding a Sony but the

Doc Rock (02:05:36):
Guy Yeah, that's Sydney. The young Zong. He's, he's a awesome creator. Especially if you're a Sony camera person. You should definitely am. Tell Sydnee I will. An amazing creator. I'm the Sony guy myself. It's like in

Leo Laporte (02:05:45):
The follow up button right now.

Doc Rock (02:05:46):
Our friend was there with his Nikon, but in order to take a picture of the two Sony guys, he had to use the Z six to take a picture of us. And it ends up in the Sony panel on the thing. Before we switch, I just gotta say one of my, one of my Discord members and she's actually the person who helps me manage my discord. Her name is Discord for Creators. Cute name. She just said she wants Stacey to be her best friend. So agree. I just had to agree to pass it along. Agree.

Leo Laporte (02:06:10):
Who doesn't? Keely

Doc Rock (02:06:11):
Said <laugh>. Yeah, Keely said that you're a rockstar. Yes. And she's Canadian and cranky. So she's the, the rare

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:17):
Canadians are cranky.

Doc Rock (02:06:19):
No, that's why Keri

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:20):
Special. Oh, that's why

Doc Rock (02:06:21):
She's special. She's special. Cause she's

Leo Laporte (02:06:23):
Cranky. Is she cranky? I like cranky. She's apologetic. And I should be

Doc Rock (02:06:27):
Canadian. Yeah, dude, she's amazing. She was actually on Alex's office hours last week talking about why more people should be jumping into the Discord game because Oh yeah. Of what's going on with meta and Facebook groups and how horrible it is. So she's a really, really awesome person. And so I just had to say that so that way I don't get in trouble.

Iain Thomson (02:06:43):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:44):
Oh, well maybe she should do ours. Cuz Kevin and I were talking about doing a Discord and Oh, you

Doc Rock (02:06:48):
Saying I'll link you two together and you probably will end up being best

Leo Laporte (02:06:51):
Friends. I really

Stacey Higginbotham (02:06:53):
We, we basically were like, we're not social enough. We don't have an Aunt

Doc Rock (02:06:57):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Discord is amazing.

Iain Thomson (02:06:59):
Mean we're currently investigating whether or not to do a master and server ourselves. And it's, it's, there's a lot of stuff to, to learn from that. But beyond,

Leo Laporte (02:07:07):
I know a little bit about both. I will say to you, Stacy and Kevin, if you don't wanna start your own server, you can always, we could create a home automation or we could ca case Kevin and Stacy section in our Discord server. You'd be more than welcome to use it. That might be easier for you. We we're happy to host you if you'd like to, but I think it's easy and free to start a Discord server. It just depends on how much you wanna manage it. That's all. We have an ant. I

Stacey Higginbotham (02:07:30):
Don't wanna mention it all. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:07:31):
<Laugh>. And as for ma on, I know a little bit about Mastodon because we run our own maed on server. That's one of the things that you do Indeed. Yeah. Helps pay for at TWiT social. And I strongly encourage you to do so. If you have a community mast is a great way to to talk to that community. We

Iain Thomson (02:07:50):
Have a community, unfortunately, about 5% of them are completely bonkers. So

Doc Rock (02:07:55):
<Laugh>. But you know, Leo touched on this with the, with the talk about club TWiT . People who are starting these things are, especially podcast people, you really need to go membership. Like membership is better than waiting for the Apple platforms or these other platforms. Or even if you have a site that say open to the public, giving people a chance to support you through something like a membership with a couple of extra things. It really does change the whole entire makeup and allows you to have better control over your creative process.

Leo Laporte (02:08:24):
And the thing I would say, there's actually an interesting article about a creatives words at the times of the New Yorker about how really there's unfortunately no longer a middle class of creators. There is just the people who make all the money. The Logan Pauls of the world, and then the people who are struggling. And I think we do need to work in some, some way to make it possible for people to be creators and make a living at least doing that. But, but I have to say the number one job for anybody who's a creator and was certainly something I realized coming out of broadcasting into podcasting, is you have to build a community. It's all about community. It's not about audience, it's about community. And it

Doc Rock (02:09:06):
Takes a digital village. Yeah. Audience is fle community is not <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:09:09):
And we, boy yeah, our community tells you that. And I mean we have people been with us for 20 years. It's fantastic. And I think they enjoy being there. You, you include yourself, doc Rock, and

Doc Rock (02:09:21):
Yeah. Been there since day one. Nice. Thank you. I remember when, when you had normal looking hair

Leo Laporte (02:09:25):
<Laugh>,

Doc Rock (02:09:26):
It's ow. Meow Kitty has clothes. Oh, actually had hair. So, hey, back then I had you.

Leo Laporte (02:09:32):
Okay, well now I remember you and you had hair. There you go. Exactly.

(02:09:36):
 so it really is, I think it's really the case that if you're gonna be a creator, you have to learn how to grow and manage a community. Cuz that's what sustains you. It's not the advertisers, it's the, it's the community. And and it's hard, which took me a while cuz I'm a broadcaster, right? Broadcasting's all about audience. You don't know who you're talking to. Fortunately I've done talk radio for so long that kind of got a sense of, you know, people were able to talk back to me. So I kind of got a sense of how important that is. I, I love our community. I tell you it's the

Stacey Higginbotham (02:10:05):
Greatest well in as a journalist who has not maybe been like, you know, I came into journalism thinking I was gonna be like some sort of crusader. Right? But even in like your, if you do create a community, it's very nice because you actually know who you're speaking to. Yes. And you're actually helping those people about Yes. Not always. I mean, sometimes they're just doing wrong thing. You gotta be like, look, I'm gonna help you see the air of your ways. But like, it, it does give you some meaning in your job when you're like, like

Doc Rock (02:10:33):
Recording about P <laugh>. Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:10:36):
We all grew up in an envi in a world where it was the platinum records and the superstars and the movie stars and the celebrities, that that was the goal. Like, or even a superstar journalist, right? That was the goal to become the big celebrity. And I think we've all learned a, that's not so much fun and you just talk to some of these celebrities, they hate it. Cuz you can't, you're no longer a normal life, but b it's not, it's not really a healthy, normal relationship when you do it this way. If you, it's so much better. It's smaller, admittedly. But if you have a few thousand fans that you communicate with regularly back and forth, it is the most sustaining, wonderful thing in the world. And everybody should understand that. Yep. That's

Doc Rock (02:11:18):
The way to, as a, as a person who coaches people on getting into this and like how to run their business, I tell 'em every way. Like, if you're planning on coming into this to do this as some sort of side hustle, let's just cancel that right away. I don't believe in the side hustle. I believe in the side. Helpful. As long as

Leo Laporte (02:11:33):
That, as you're

Doc Rock (02:11:33):
Helping

Iain Thomson (02:11:33):
People. I like that, that it,

Doc Rock (02:11:35):
It's complete game changer. If you can find a way to be helpful and provide a positive impact on people, it's, it's all you need. You're good to go. They'll be with you forever. But if you're just trying to like, figure out another way to coin up, it's just not gonna work. It's very unsustainable. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:11:49):
You c coining up, people know you're coining up. Coin up. Don't coin up, man. <Laugh>.

Iain Thomson (02:11:54):
I've

Doc Rock (02:11:54):
Gotta say those. You can use that one. Stacy. I'll give you a, a limited license and then I'll, I'll raise the lifetime license in a couple years. Like Phil Moore did change it.

Iain Thomson (02:12:05):
But I mean, it's interesting how this has developed with digital to analog and you know, the first newspapers started out as people writing paid for newsletters, which went out to people who wanted to know what was going on. That evolved into full-time newspapers. Then the internet came along and everyone started giving away for free. And now we're switching back to a more, you know, you pay for what you get, you know, if it's free, ask yourself who's paying for it. The most important lesson my history teacher ever taught me was if you read any document, ask yourselves three questions. Who wrote it? Why did they write it? And who paid for it to be written? And if it's the people that support you and that nurture the publication that are helping pay for that so much, the better.

Leo Laporte (02:12:51):
I know our community knows the name Creative Labs. Right? You remember the Sound blaster?

Doc Rock (02:12:59):
Oh yes. Sound Blaster.

Leo Laporte (02:13:01):
Sound Blaster. I got,

Iain Thomson (02:13:03):
It's the worst menu system on an MP3 player ever, but <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:13:07):
But it was, you know, a breakthrough in its time. Yeah. I got an actually it was interesting. I got an email from one of our community, Sheung, who is I believe Malaysian who said, don't forget to mention Sim Wong. Who, who was the founder? Oh,

Iain Thomson (02:13:25):
This was Project

Leo Laporte (02:13:26):
Passed away. He was Young 67. 

Iain Thomson (02:13:29):
And a marathon runner. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:13:31):
In good shape. It was kind of it's, it's not clear what happened, but it's a very sad passed away created technology, which

Iain Thomson (02:13:41):
Was known as created Rio player and said, make it work.

Leo Laporte (02:13:44):
Remember that was my first three player was a diamond reel Rio.

Iain Thomson (02:13:47):
300. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:13:49):
Yeah. The Rio. They very famously were, were sued by Apple. Apple had invented the iPod, shipped it in 2006, creative sued saying, Hey, wait a minute, <laugh>, we invented the the MP3 player. Actually she sent me an interesting interview that SIM did with C N B C saying it was something we had to do because Apple did not just infringe our patent. Steve, this is interesting. Steve Jobs came to our booth. They were doing the Zen player at the time, saw our products, liked the product, he saw the future of Apple there. He asked our people to go to his headquarters to present it to him. Our people went to look for some collaboration, unfortunately, and I was not there. I was in Singapore. Maybe if I were there, maybe history would've changed. He was trying to work something together, but it didn't turn out. Jobs said no deal and released the iPod shortly after they won a, they settled with the Apple for a hundred million dollars. 

Iain Thomson (02:14:53):
Sorry. Sorry. Leo. Are you saying that Apple actually stole someone with his technology? Never, except for their own personal, never shocked, shocked. I am. Something

Leo Laporte (02:15:02):
Apparently like that had a real affinity for Mr. Sim because he sent me some pictures of him talking with him. He had an old Cubic, which was I guess an early creative product. He decided to donate it to Simpson was very happy about about getting that. So anyway I thought it was a good way to to end the show is to, as we often do at the end of the show, is a little, IM memoriam somebody who was really important in the early days of the computer industry. Many of us had sound blasters sound cards in our early PCs. Right? many of us

Iain Thomson (02:15:40):
Thought he looked after his staff as well. I mean, creative has one of the best reputations I've come across of companies that actually looked after their staff management. Took you seriously? I think only Nokia is probably the better one. But they did give a a monkeys

Leo Laporte (02:15:57):
<Laugh> A monkeys. What do you wanna do? You wanna finish that sentence? No, don't.

Iain Thomson (02:16:02):
Oh, no. I mean sorry. British give a monkeys means actually, you know, care give something, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:16:08):
I feel like there's more to that sentence, but Okay.

Iain Thomson (02:16:10):
Yeah.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:11):
I I believe there would be more. Yes. The British a

Iain Thomson (02:16:15):
Word. It's a family show. I don't want to say thank you. The next stage

Leo Laporte (02:16:20):
We invite you on specifically so we can learn more about this thing called British <laugh>. A visionary, an inventor and entrepreneur,

Iain Thomson (02:16:27):
Family shenanigans than you really don't want it.

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
<Laugh> Sim Wong who 1955 through January 4th, 2023 as as it says on the creative site, a visionary, inventor and entrepreneur who gave the PC a voice. I think it's time to say goodnight to all our family. Stacy, I'm glad you're home and feeling better. I hope we will see, see you on Wednesday on this week weekend. Google question mark.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:16:55):
Yes. I'll be here Wednesday and Thursday. That's what I was saying. It's like seven hours of TWiTg all week.

Leo Laporte (02:16:59):
Oh, you're sick of us already, aren't you? I'm sorry we're not sitting here. No.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:02):
Y'all gonna get sick of me. No,

Leo Laporte (02:17:05):
No. We love having you on. Thank you Stacy. Stacy on iott.com is the website. Check out the events. She does some great events. Subscribe to the newsletter, it's free. And of course, the podcast she does with Kevin Tofl. This week's especially is all about matter and and CES and home automation and so forth. Thank you Stacy. Really appreciate It's great to have you go get some waffles or whatever it is. I don't know what you eat on Sundays. I know what eat.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:30):
I have fresh cupcakes. My, my child just baked lemon cupcakes with a strawberry ice icing and

Leo Laporte (02:17:38):
Ooh. And they say teenagers are bad. That's really

Doc Rock (02:17:42):
Gotta learn

Iain Thomson (02:17:43):
How

Leo Laporte (02:17:44):
<Laugh>.

Stacey Higginbotham (02:17:45):
Totally. You know, we were talking about the G profile.

Leo Laporte (02:17:48):
Beaver <laugh>.

Iain Thomson (02:17:50):
Ah, okay. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:17:52):
Ian Thompson, the register.com. Always a pleasure. It's great to see you, my friend. In your Hawaiian shirt.

Iain Thomson (02:17:59):
Any oh, well, you know, I like to dress up

Leo Laporte (02:18:01):
<Laugh> <laugh>. You have the best Hawaiian shirts. Anything going on in the world that you wanna plug? 

Iain Thomson (02:18:09):
I would just say avoid any news about the British royal family for the next two weeks.

Leo Laporte (02:18:14):
Lord, it's gonna get really brutal. Yep.

Iain Thomson (02:18:18):
Tech-Wise, we're now into the post CES boom where everyone who's been holding this stuff back until the show had ended is now gonna go whaf.

Leo Laporte (02:18:27):
Really? Is that the case that people hold back until after ces?

Iain Thomson (02:18:32):
Smart ones do. Yeah. That's interesting. If you launch new's company, you go to ces. Oh. But if actually launching a serious product, you wait until everyone's back at their desks looking around for news and then you look, push it. So there's the Post CS rush.

Leo Laporte (02:18:47):
Nice. I'm looking forward to it.

Iain Thomson (02:18:50):
Oh, we're gonna have some fun.

Leo Laporte (02:18:52):
<Laugh> from the Aloha State just down the road from the beautiful Aloha Tower in Honolulu Doc Rock community manager at E Cam. Always a pleasure. Mr. Dr. Roter.

Doc Rock (02:19:03):
Thank you. You know that in, and I did not plan this at all, but I do find it Apropo. He's rocking Hawaiian shirt and I'm rocking to Manchester United Jet.

Leo Laporte (02:19:11):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Wow. And Stacy's dressed as Hansel s Han. See

Doc Rock (02:19:20):
Shot first. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Iain Thomson (02:19:21):
Yeah. It's great in outfits around, but I gotta say, man, this is weird though. <Laugh>, it used to be Manchester United fans in America were, you know, were quite common, but now everyone shifted to Arsenal for some reason. Isn't

Leo Laporte (02:19:33):
Kevin Tofu an arsenal? Man? I think he is. Or is he man?

Stacey Higginbotham (02:19:36):
No, he likes

Leo Laporte (02:19:37):
Manu. He's man used.

Doc Rock (02:19:39):
Yeah. Okay. Kevin's cool. Remember about to start calling Kevin names <laugh>. I'll be like Kevin, I'm gonna call you names, but we're cool man. Leo, this is so great. You know what's funny? I swear Jason reached out to me like three times towards the end of the year. And I was traveling. I was traveling, I was traveling. And then he hits me up and he is like, Hey, are you gonna be home? This was like last week or whatever. And I was like, nah man, I'm gonna be in Japan. He's like, all right. Dang it. How about at the beginning of the year, I was like, okay, I'm in. Yeah. But it's super funny because I missed episode 8 0 8 a weekly, which would've been perfect. Living

Leo Laporte (02:20:13):
In 8 0 8 area code. You're in the 8 0 8. I'm not

Doc Rock (02:20:16):
Home. I'm in Massachusetts. I'm on the road and we didn't want to chance to like dorky hotel, internet, so, you know, I'm glad to be here whenever I can. You was Aaron Spirit. I'm with Stacey

Leo Laporte (02:20:26):
Ien the end. You were there in spirit. Why aunt did you post a animated giff of a English breakfast? That's for Mr. Ian. That's for

Iain Thomson (02:20:37):
Ian. Oh my God. He

Leo Laporte (02:20:38):
Love likes the beans and

Iain Thomson (02:20:39):
Bacon. He ridiculously bad. <Laugh>

Doc Rock (02:20:41):
A little in toast, man.

Iain Thomson (02:20:42):
<Laugh>. I, I'm, I'm, I'm a, I'm a moderator and a British fryer post and that's just re Oh God. So many beans. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:20:51):
So many beans.

Iain Thomson (02:20:52):
You don't do that.

Leo Laporte (02:20:54):
<Laugh>,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:20:55):
Why are there beans in the first place?

Leo Laporte (02:20:57):
Beans drag?

Iain Thomson (02:21:00):
No. No, seriously, you can't have a fryer without beans. But that many, you know, that's kind of like doing biscuits and gravy and having this whole plate done with gravy. Yeah. Can

Leo Laporte (02:21:11):
You use what's wrong with that?

Iain Thomson (02:21:14):
No. No. Okay. Right. First

Stacey Higginbotham (02:21:16):
Off, are you saying the beans are like gravy,

Iain Thomson (02:21:19):
<Laugh> the beans provide the moisture that you use with the bubble and squeak. And so like the black coat bubble place

Doc Rock (02:21:26):
For the coat, I love this,

Iain Thomson (02:21:28):
But you use a, a small amount of beans with a sausage bean dam to keep them back from everything else. And then the bubble and sweet started black pudding gets see

Leo Laporte (02:21:39):
Started. I thought we were gonna go down this soccer hole rabbit hole. No. Instead

Doc Rock (02:21:45):
We got a bubble.

Leo Laporte (02:21:46):
We got a bean dam.

Doc Rock (02:21:48):
Wait,

Leo Laporte (02:21:48):
What is,

Doc Rock (02:21:49):
Do you have, do you have to wash it down with PG tips?

Iain Thomson (02:21:53):
Oh, of, well, okay's

Leo Laporte (02:21:55):
Your goal. York's your goal.

Iain Thomson (02:21:56):
Pgx is my, is my standard. Yeah. okay. Bubble and squeak to explain is

Leo Laporte (02:22:02):
We started the show with cooking. We might as well they were cooking,

Iain Thomson (02:22:05):
Right? Boiled, boiled cabbage and you mix them together and fry them. So it's kind of like hash browns, but with a bit of greenery in there. 

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:14):
Cabbage and potato.

Iain Thomson (02:22:15):
Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (02:22:16):
Then fried up. And the where do the beans come in?

Iain Thomson (02:22:20):
Well, Heinz baked beans, which are,

Stacey Higginbotham (02:22:21):
It's like ketchup, <laugh>, except it's a

Iain Thomson (02:22:24):
Beans. No, this

Leo Laporte (02:22:26):
Is, you put it on your bubble in

Iain Thomson (02:22:27):
Squeak. I mean, Hines is an American company and yet getting Heinz baked beans over here is ridiculously difficult. Right. You all have these bacon filled fat beans that sit, sit on the store. But getting proper Heinz bait beans. I buy them from my local supermarket because they have an ethnic food section and baked British baked beans are in there. And I actually met a Brit as we were both buying a can. He goes, yeah, I know they're $5 a can, but it makes me feel posh to actually eat them at, at that, at that state. But yeah, you gotta have bacon, egg beans, sausage bubble mushrooms. Yeah. And black pudding. If you can get it and piece sauce here,

Leo Laporte (02:23:08):
This is, you gotta get pizza off mix. I have had enough of it. You guys go home, eat whatever it is you eat. Bubble and squeak. Beans, waffles, lemon cupcakes. I will, I We're done. I'm done with you. Thank you Stacy. Thank you Ian.

Iain Thomson (02:23:24):
Thank

Leo Laporte (02:23:25):
You Dr. This weekend. Brecky. This weekend done British Brecky is done <laugh>. We do TWiT ter every Sunday. We're back now for 2023. 2:00 PM Pacific. 5:00 PM Eastern. 2200 U t c. You know what? Tune in earlier because a Micah and I now do ask the tech guys starting at 11 M Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern time right before TWiT so you can get a whole Sunday of good stuff all day long. Live TWiT tv to watch the stream. If you're watching live, you should chat live in irc.TWiT.tv or in our club TWiT Discord where the bubble and squeak just never stops. You can also who you can also download shows on demand after the fact on the website. Twit do TV on YouTube. We have a whole bunch of YouTube channels. Go to TWiT tv, I'm sorry, youtube.com/TWiT and you can find all the channels that way. But you know the best thing to do, subscribe in your favorite podcast player so you get it automatically the minute it's available. This has been a great way to start a new year. And I think a new year that begins this strong is gonna be a great your happy New Year everybody. Happy New Year guys. We'll see you next time. Another TWiT is in the can. Bye.