This Week in Tech Episode 922 Transcript

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

Devindra Hardawar (00:00:00):
Coming up on twi. I'm Davindra Hardwar, senior editor, and in gadget we've got Anthony Ha, doc Rock, and Nicholas Del Leon. We'll be talking about some new AI news, including Bloomberg's AI large language model, which is finally tuned to financial news. And of course, we'll be talking about the latest news from Elon Musk's Twitter. It turns out open sourcing a bunch of code didn't work out as well as he thought it did.

Leo Laporte (00:00:25):
Podcasts you love

TWIT introduction (00:00:27):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:29):
This, this is TWIT Twi.

Devindra Hardawar (00:00:38):
This is TWIT this week in tech. Episode 922 reported Sunday, April 9th, 2023. AI hustlers.

Leo Laporte (00:00:46):
This episode of this Week in Tech is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. With employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems as easy as birding cats. How do you Iranian in so many moving parts? The Meraki Cloud Managed Network. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit. And by ZipRecruiter, whether you're starting a new business or growing one, if you want to be successful, you need the most talented people on your team. That's where ZipRecruiter comes in right now. You could try it free at ziprecruiter.com/twit. And buy Miro. Miro is your team's visual platform to connect, collaborate, and create together. Tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team and get your first three boards for free to start creating your best work yet at miro.com/podcast.

Devindra Hardawar (00:01:52):
It's time for another twit this week in tech. I'm Davindra oi. Leo LaPorte is on vacation for a while now. I saw he was in Portugal and I think he Lisa, just like perusing around Europe at this point. But we've got a great panel this week. We've got Anthony Ha, VP of content at Antioch Ventures. Hey Anthony, what's up?

Anthony Ha (00:02:10):
Hey, I'm really excited to be here. It's great to see you

Devindra Hardawar (00:02:12):
Again. Super excited to chat. Yeah, I mean, I, I used to work with Anthony, so we, we were just gonna reminisce during this episode, but great to have you on TWIT for the first time. Amazing, Anthony.

Anthony Ha (00:02:22):
I know, it's so exciting.

Devindra Hardawar (00:02:24):
<Laugh>. We've got Doc Rock YouTube, superstar, doc Rock. What is up Doc?

Doc Rock (00:02:29):
How you doing? It is so good to be here and get to hang out with you guys today.

Devindra Hardawar (00:02:33):
You're gonna get what's up Doc, for I feel like for the rest of your life because Yeah,

Doc Rock (00:02:36):
It's a thing. It's a thing. I'm used to it

Devindra Hardawar (00:02:40):
<Laugh>, and we've got Nicholas De Leon, senior reporter at Consumer Reports. Hey, Nicholas, how's it going? Hey, how's it going? Doing okay. How are, how are things at Consumer Reports? Because I feel like that is a, that is a publication. People don't talk about enough, but I feel like it's still super valuable for many, many greeters, right? Yeah, no, we're, we're still kicking. I think we're, we're

Nicholas de Leon (00:02:58):
Nearly a hundred years old at this point. <Laugh> but yeah, still still kicking around. I primarily cover laptops and wireless routers and right to repair stuff and, and other fun stuff like that. But yeah, still around, still riding refrigerators and lawnmowers and, and cars and I guess EVs are now a thing now. 

Devindra Hardawar (00:03:19):
Evs I mean, listen, even, I'm like reviewing EVs now, so Yeah, I'm reviewing

Doc Rock (00:03:22):
E-Bikes right now, so I'm watching you

Devindra Hardawar (00:03:25):
<Laugh>. Nice. I mean, we're, we can talk about that if anybody's thinking about EVs or alternative means of transportation at some point. But yeah, so thank you Nicholas. And yeah, looking forward to this chat, guys. This is a great group of folks, and I feel like to kick things off it's one of two things it feels like every, every week. I do the In GAA podcast as well, and every week we were looking at the news and it's either, it's either AI or it's whatever the hell El Elon Musk is doing now, like how he's messing up. So, do you guys have a preference? Any, any votes here, AI or Elon Musk? Do we start with the good or the bad or I guess the in between?

Doc Rock (00:04:01):
I'm all about AI these days,

Devindra Hardawar (00:04:03):
So all about the ai. Okay. Doc Rock

Doc Rock (00:04:05):
Your socks

Devindra Hardawar (00:04:07):
<Laugh> there, there's a bunch of things happening. It's not as big as the past few weeks where I feel like, you know, we saw CH Chat we saw G P D four get announced, we saw Google release Bard to the public. And this week there is, there's like less major news, but a few like important things. I think something a lot of people were talking about was the news that President Biden basically says that you know, he's eyeing the dangerous around AI and is aware that this is a thing that we need to be paying attention to. And unfortunately, that Reuters article is is link blocked for me now. But I, I saw the story going around because it's interesting that Biden, I think has like through osmosis and through, you know, whatever people are telling him has, like, gathered enough around what's going on with ai. What do you guys feel about this response? Because I feel like this, this is, this is kind of how the government is viewing things now. It seems like they're aware of the danger, but also trying to tell companies to be a little more careful about how quickly they move forward. Any, any thoughts on this?

Doc Rock (00:05:07):
I, I think we're gonna see a slowdown starting. Hmm. because this first, it's not really the first six months, let's just be straight honest. We all know because we're in tech, this stuff has been popping for a while. All all myriad sorts of apps that we use. Even something as simple as, you know, taking a picture in any of the various phones and the phones, bless the picture before you decide to send it out. Like that's already doing mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So we've known 'em for a while, but to the Muggle verse, this is all relatively, relatively new to them. And the scary thing to them is the, the generative ai, it's mostly scary because the news is having fun, making it scary <laugh>. You know, I won't say,

Devindra Hardawar (00:05:47):
I mean, I, I think it is still, it could still be plenty scary too, but it has,

Doc Rock (00:05:50):
It has some fear stuff in it for the most part. Us general tech community people, we're, we're not looking to do anything Ill, we're trying to have fun and get to whatever our favorite sci-fi movie was back in the day. Team Star Wars. I think that now it is good that they're paying attention. I just hope that they don't do something weird, dumb knee jerk reaction and like, we're just gonna ban it like Italy Rather, rather than trying to figure it out, let's just come on and, you know, try to aloha Morek gone outta here. You know, like, I don't wanna see that. Right. I, I want to see it continue to move and do the amazing things that it can do. Unfortunately, our culture is greedy enough that there will always be people that try to buck the system.

Devindra Hardawar (00:06:41):
I mean, I, I totally see that Anthony Nicholas, like, what are your, what are your thoughts on Biden's response to ai? And I mean, where do you guys stand right now? Because things have gotten, it is wild. It is wild how quickly things have progressed. Like, you know, doc Rock. I, I hear you. We, we know certain things. We've seen computer vision, we've seen like Google Photos. We've seen our, you know, our iPhones like touching up our photos, but now it's like they're straight up just pulling the vast like, resources of human knowledge to talk to us in very human sounding ways and pull facts. And to me that is the point where it's getting a little scary. But yeah. Anthony, Nicholas, any, any thoughts on what Biden is saying?

Anthony Ha (00:07:17):
I mean, I'm not necessarily convinced that like, and there'll be like any immediate action, just cuz he's talked about it, right? I mean, my, my reaction really was, oh,

Devindra Hardawar (00:07:26):
Oh yeah, that's a thing. Even

Anthony Ha (00:07:27):
Knows this is hack, this stuff is happening. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, somebody is telling him what's going on, <laugh>. You know, certainly there are probably some people who have his ear who are like, oh, we should be concerned about this. I think that generally the, the, the lag between, oh, we make a statement of we are concerned to actual regula regulation is takes a while. I mean, certainly we've seen that with, you know, crypto, that there were a lot of statements, not a lot of actual action. Maybe that's starting to change. So I, I I think it was interesting. I'm, I'm not convinced that there's gonna be sort of any immediate steps taken from by the government.

Devindra Hardawar (00:08:01):
You government is not famously fast in America, especially when it comes to regulation or new tech. Nicholas, your thoughts? Yeah,

Nicholas de Leon (00:08:07):
No, I can't imagine Biden is devoting too much of his day to thinking about ai to be honest. It feels like he has bigger things on his plate than like chat G P T or any of the AI kind of hustlers out there. So I, I don't really have any not confidence, but I, i, it just feels like it's something that someone slipped under his desk.

Devindra Hardawar (00:08:29):
I'm, I'm sure somebody sent him the like, super cool Brandon photos, right? Or like the, the, the sort of like the Biden memes they're going around and I'm sure he's seen the Pope meme and I'm sure he just like, oh, this is the thing. And people are probably talked about the risks. But you know, doc, one of my favorite sci-fi you know, stories franchises is Battlestar Galactical. And famously there's no AI in Battlestar Galactical because they, they destroyed us. It was very bad. And that, that was kind of like a core point of that. I mean, that goes back to like foundation and so many other stories too. I don't wanna be too, too fearful here, but it does feel like, I, I feel like everyone is feeling the sort of whiplash that's happening. It's like, oh, this thing is cool, and oh, this thing is moving really fast, and oh, I can't, I can't keep up with what's happening. Oh, this thing is reshaping a huge portion of culture so quickly. It's, you know, mimicking the Pope in Balenciaga in a Balenciaga puffy jacket. It is doing things at a time when misinformation is so rampant and so dangerous. To me it's like all these things coming together that makes it kind of scary. Like, doc, do you think we're moving too quickly? Cuz you said you were worried about the slowdown

Doc Rock (00:09:34):
Aren't actually, I don't, the thing that I'm having a problem with, which is just me, is we don't wanna take responsibility for vetting our own facts. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, so misinformation kind of, sort of shouldn't exist because you can personally double check everything, double, triple check. And yes, there are cases where you can triple, triple, triple, triple check and then, you know, still miss, but people aren't even checking. They're just taking things at face value mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then trying to blame someone else for giving them the wrong information. And I'm like, yeah, no, that's, that's <laugh> that's not a thing.

Devindra Hardawar (00:10:18):
I mean, we get, we've already proven we're bad at finding, you know, de discerning facts and information, but I, the AI thing is just like, it is so easy. It makes it so easy. Like, you could be surfing Twitter and just be like, oh you get a flash of Alania of Pope and you're like, your brain doesn't have time to figure out if that's real or not. But flash forward to you at the bar with friends or something. You're like, oh yeah, is the Pope wearing puffy jackets Now

Doc Rock (00:10:39):
What is, here's the thing. Thelen pope, Pope one to me was funny because Yeah. Okay, so let's just take any octogenarian. Uncle <laugh>, who do you know at his age as rocking? Balenciaga. I mean, that was just, I mean, it's no no standard dude. Even the Pope, like, he's not, he doesn't know. Just like, just like Nick was said about Biden didn't knows his ai Wow. Man post, don't know what Balenciaga is. You know, he's been sheltered his whole life. He don't know.

Devindra Hardawar (00:11:08):
I mean, he's, he's up the, he is in Italy. He, he's in a pretty,

Doc Rock (00:11:13):
He's the

Devindra Hardawar (00:11:13):
Source.

Nicholas de Leon (00:11:15):
Funny. Yeah. Balenciaga was seen as like an upgrade over the pope's normal like robes, like normal robe one Pope, that Balenciaga jacket anyone could buy with enough money. So it's like, there you go. He's already got the most exclusive clothing items on the planet, so.

Devindra Hardawar (00:11:29):
Totally, totally. I, I feel like that's part of the thing we were like, part of me is like, no, that can't be real, but also could easily be real. Pope has access to like vast amounts of wealth. And the, the point is he doesn't show it, but we know the Vaticans like all, all dolled up with all sorts of stuff. So kind of in the AI news, we did see the story about Bloomberg announcing its own large language model. And this one's interesting because I feel like a lot of people don't realize, you know, Bloomberg at its core is a technology company. That's something Michael Bloomberg spent a lot of time talking about when he was mayor of New York and when I was covering startups there. And when I was on on the team with Anthony back then Bloomberg would always talk about like, yeah, he, he's the original data guy.

(00:12:14):
 For people who don't know, Bloomberg is more than just a news site or, you know, a, a newspaper. They are known for the Bloomberg terminals, which, you know track and offer vast amounts of financial data to, to investment bankers and all sorts of people. Those terminals cost tons of money to, to access. And that is Bloomberg's big money. So they announced a large language model, a 50 billion parameter language model that is totally tuned to financial tasks. And I just, I almost feel like, man, it took them, I guess it didn't take them that long, but I felt like this was inevitable because of all companies to do this. It would be the company that's already like, made its entire existence on data. Any, any thoughts on this and how this could change things for, for bankers or the financial, you know, sector?

Anthony Ha (00:13:01):
I will say that one concern I have is that what, what has been surprising to me in terms terms of this current wave of like chat g p t type examples and use cases is, is realizing how bad AI is at fact checking that. Like there are the things that I thought would be really in my head, like AI would always sound robotic. Yeah. But it would be like very factual. And it turn, that turns out to be the opposite of at least if we take, you know, chat, c p ts sort of the, the paradigm of current ai. Like, it's actually, it sounds very natural, but it's just full of BS and full of wrong facts. Now you imagine like you're somebody trying to, you know, trade stocks based on financial information and you're using this interface that half the time just gives you incorrect information. I feel like that could go pretty badly. I mean, I'm sure they, they've thought this through, but it's one of those things that sounds like a good fit. But like, actually, I, I don't know that I, I've never been <laugh>, you know, day trader or anything, but I, I would be a little bit concerned about using this too extensively right away.

Devindra Hardawar (00:14:05):
I feel like here, here's the

Doc Rock (00:14:06):
Difference though. So here's the difference in their dataset. Okay. So Chad, G P t I'm trying to help so many and my friends get their head around this Chad G P T right now is Doogie Hauser. Right. you guys might be way too young for that <laugh>. Anyway, so he was the, the, the doctor from like middle school, like 14 year old doctor graduated.

Devindra Hardawar (00:14:27):
Yeah. Even as a kid, I was like, I don't think this premise holds up, but Okay. <Laugh>.

Doc Rock (00:14:30):
Yeah. Well, let me let you know the real deal. Doogie Hauser Michael Wynn <affirmative> is across the street at Jefferson Medical School here at University of Hawaii. And he's already a doctor and he's what, 17 years old. So we actually have the real deal of Dougie Hauser across the street from me. Anyway, so this, this thing is like that he has all intelligence in the world, but not enough experience that he still needs coaching from the experienced people. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the premise of that show was always, he could do all these incredible things, but he's still a kid. So mom and dad, you know, friends and coworkers had to rally around him, help him out. This is where the AI model is right now. What Bloomberg is doing is working off a dataset that's very specific dataset. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with Chad G this

Devindra Hardawar (00:15:17):
Is primary stuff that only

Doc Rock (00:15:18):
Bloomberg has. Right. What chat GBT has done is comb the internet. So the reason why Chad g b t is so bad at fact checking is twofold. One, it combed the internet so it grabs all kind of crazy nonsense, but at the same token, people don't even know how to decide what's fact and fiction yet. People can be easily snowed. So there is a lot of information written by people in their brain as factual and they really, really mean it. We all have that one uncle or neighbor that really believes in the shadow people and Slender Man and whatever and love

Devindra Hardawar (00:15:56):
Them at best that I hope that's what they believe in the Slender Man and not other things.

Doc Rock (00:16:01):
Yeah. Oh man, my neighbor really believes Slender Man is real <laugh>. I'm not even joking. Right. It's kind of a thing. We crack up laughing and he always talking about the parallel universe, this other crazy stuff. We're such a genuinely nice guy that we don't really make fun of him. But if he had a blog and he had been writing all of this stuff down for the last 10 years, that's part of the data set. And the model is too young to know how to filter the difference. But the model will grow up just like a, a, a teenager. I mean,

Devindra Hardawar (00:16:28):
T P D four is supposedly better than chat C p t with new CCPT 3.5. Right. So, and what, what they're saying here is the Bloomberg thing I forget which version of t p t it's specifically based on is four. It is based on four. But it is getting better, like the things you're talking about Anthony, like that, that does worry me too. Like we've adding gadget we've, we've tested out chat, t p T doing things like, Hey Bri, make me a table of specs comparing, you know, the iPhone 13 to the pixel seven or six or something. And sometimes those specs would be wrong for no reason. Like some it would just, it would give me wrong dimensions or wrong weight. And I'm like, where are you pulling this from? So that does kind of make somebody

Doc Rock (00:17:08):
Wrote it wrong on the net <laugh>. That's the part, that's the part that's crazy. Somebody actually wrote it wrong in the net mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Okay. Like for instance, right. When it's time to get a phone, right. That week that we're waiting, we already pre-ordered it, let's be honest, right? Sure. But that week that we waiting, what are we doing? We're watching, you know, you guys in the, the other contemporaries, you know, being the EX two O man, I was there back in the beginning. That's what we, people used to come into our content. We always blew up doing phone week. Which, which incredible to me, me is even then sometimes whoever has the phone and doing the report, they get stuff wrong from a conceptual level because there's amount of human in it. And it's not that it's a a, a speck or something.

(00:17:48):
It's the way they look at a particular feature and maybe not fully understand it. Because what people don't realize about the tech people, we get a box of stuff every week. We got so many things that we're doing and you kind of mix things together. You all, sometimes you got it in your hand for two days before Apple says give it back. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you didn't get a chance to dig all the way deep and you get to flame mores in the comments, I can't believe you missed this. Well, you'll come over here and try to write seven articles in three

Devindra Hardawar (00:18:13):
Album. Yeah. You can't do it all man with

Doc Rock (00:18:15):
The editor barking down your neck. Right. <laugh>. You know what I'm saying? So e that's why even some of the information it got itself is wrong because all of us have written something wrong in a, in a tech article at one point in time. Yep.

Devindra Hardawar (00:18:26):
That, that is also, I guess another reason not to be too afraid of any, any of these like generative chatbots because they're still dependent on information from us and they can't fully replace us yet. But who knows, who knows like where things will go. It feels like it is moving just so quickly. And to me that is my main concern. Cuz like guys, we, we, we have lived through the era of crypto dudes, you know, we've lived through the Web three era. Meta is still called meta because, you know, mark Zuckerberg really wanted to bank on the metaverse. And like, it felt like we've had these waves of like, oh, this is the next big thing. And hasn't really worked out well for a lot of those crowds. My fear is like, I'm looking at AI and being like, oh yeah, this, this is actually the thing.

(00:19:07):
This is the thing that is, that is going to make a big impact for the way we lose our lives. And we are utterly prepared for it as a society, as a, you know, the government isn't, these companies aren't, but the only thing kind of forcing this is open AI and like the, the competitive spirit, right? Everybody, everybody wants to be in on this, otherwise they're gonna be left behind. So that's why the Microsoft thing happens so quickly and that's why Google's being forced to push Bard out. There's some good analysis from Neiman Lab about the Bloomberg thing kind of putting a little bit of cold water on it. You know, the point is like we're gonna see a lot of these like very domain specific uses of large LA language models. A couple weeks ago, Adobe and Nvidia had a whole bunch of news announcing like how they were gonna make it easier for other companies to kind of build their own things based on their specific knowledge. So we're gonna see more of these things. We don't know how good they're gonna be and their usefulness is gonna depend on like the source data. The Bloomberg one is interesting because it's Bloomberg, it's fricking they have, they have like the financial data. They have so much information. I've never used a Bloomberg terminal. The extent that I, I've seen when in action I think is on the show industry on HBO o, which is a very good show. Are you guys watching Industry?

Doc Rock (00:20:19):
Oh na. Yeah. Still love it. Still in my succession mode. Wait

Devindra Hardawar (00:20:22):
Anthony, you're not watching industry cuz I feel like it is very much like among the things you guys would talk about on I feel

Anthony Ha (00:20:28):
Like succession scratches that itch for me. But I think once succession is overall catch up on industry.

Devindra Hardawar (00:20:33):
Yeah. So I will set this out. Every everybody knows Succession's a great show. Everyone's told you to watch succession, but industry on hbos like is very much like that vein. It's almost like they're in the same universe to be honest. But it's set in London at Investment Bank and it falls a young group of bankers like being terrible people basically. But also I think there's a lot of statements on like the, the sense of the state of banking right now and the world we're in. Doc Rock, you had mentioned that Italy announced that they want to ban chat G P T. We can definitely talk further about that. Believe they have done it Yes. Fully right. Went all the way in <laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and they, they did that because of privacy violations. And I feel okay may maybe a little too much, but also it is interesting that there's a government that's out there enough to be like, Hey, this, this is bad for privacy on many, many levels.

(00:21:25):
Like maybe we should do something. But I think for a lot of, as we've seen with like oh we've seen with like the European privacy rules, like sometimes they tend to go too far, but I'm kind of impressed they did something at all. Do you guys have any thoughts about this? Because I don't think it's ever gonna be banned fully in America. I feel like AI is something American companies are just like fully all in on. The government wants it to be a thing. We wanna defeat China, which is what everybody, you know, is is the main call to action right now. So I feel like this'll never happen in the US but any thoughts on Italy doing this?

Anthony Ha (00:21:59):
I mean, I guess if I think about it more just like domestically, I, I feel like the what we're likely more likely to see more of as like, you know, in, I mean this is a little bit old now, but the mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, New York schools ban chat G P T, right? And yeah. And I think like there may, it may be more like banned in certain contexts than you are likely to see it completely banned. I'll also,

Devindra Hardawar (00:22:18):
How do you ban chat G p T in the school, right? They're, they're gonna go home, they're gonna go to library wifi or something and you know, do whatever.

Anthony Ha (00:22:25):
Right. To do. And, and I mean, I think in general, my feeling is that, you know, that, that people are gonna find, get access to this in some way. These technologies are gonna be developed. And so you can maybe do something like this in the short term cuz you're just like, oh my God, like this is so scary. We need to figure it out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so let's ban it while we like put other rules in place. Maybe makes more sense, but

Devindra Hardawar (00:22:48):
It's like pulling the emergency breaks while we, while you try to figure it out, I guess. Yeah. Right.

Anthony Ha (00:22:52):
But the idea that like, you know, that's, that you're just like, well we're just gonna shut this out. And like the rest of the world will sort of just go on without us. Seems not like a long-term solution.

Devindra Hardawar (00:23:02):
Maybe not a great solution, I guess if you want to stay competitive, which is, which is the sort of like weird push and pull. Nicholas, do you have any thoughts on this? Cuz I, I, yeah,

Nicholas de Leon (00:23:10):
No, I would, if I were just an Italian person, I would kind of be bummed out that my government has audit, has just like banned. You can't use it anymore. It's like, okay, well that's, if I just moved across the border to Germany, can I use it? If, if I moved to like to you New York could use it. It doesn't, it doesn't, you know, I guess it feels like a, like you said, like an emergency break label. Let's just hold on for a second. So maybe that's okay. But just to kind of in indefinite band that seems like if I were an Italian entrepreneur, I would be like, well why am I even here then? Like, if I'm not gonna have access to the latest true latest that's true tools in tech, this place is no longer working for me. I'll go somewhere where I can develop my talents elsewhere. You know,

Devindra Hardawar (00:23:48):
It is funny how we're seeing different people approach this idea too. Cuz it was last week or two weeks ago, there was the, the letter from the what the Future of Humanity Institute, the, the, the thing that Elon Musk backs to say, Hey, let's put a six month pause on the AI on, you know, g p t beyond chat G p t or beyond G P T four. Because we haven't, my companies have not cut up yet. That is a lot of this always seems self-serving. But if a government does it, that just seems out of fear. I don't, I don't know, like fully like what the plan is. Are they just gonna sit back and see what happens before they allow it again? But here's

Doc Rock (00:24:20):
What's funny. This to me, my my niece goes to Kawasaki's olive mater. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and I would look at the date real quick. February 17th, they sent a letter to all the parents and I'm on the list as her uncle. I don't know how I got on the list, but my sister-in-law put me there <laugh>. And so I could email and it's from the chancellor and he's like, I know you guys read all this stuff and you're hearing about the fears of going, what's going on? You're hearing about schools in New York and other, you know, districts locking it down. Here's gonna be our approach at, at Yoani school. We are putting together a task force of teachers and senior students that will look at how we can effectively use this for the betterment of our students. We're not gonna ban it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but we are gonna take a responsible and sensible approach and we have an ever active team working.

(00:25:11):
Any parents that want to come and join you, if you wanna volunteer to be on this panel or whatever, please come in and we're gonna meet every week, you know, on Zoom and to see how it's going. So it's funny, right? The private school takes that approach and when they get out in the world, people get mad because, oh, how come the private school kids always have a leg up on, you know, the regular school kids because the, the current administrations in a lot of states, they don't wanna spend the time, or maybe they don't get paid enough to, they

Devindra Hardawar (00:25:42):
Don't literally

Doc Rock (00:25:43):
Actually don't get paid enough. They don't

Devindra Hardawar (00:25:45):
Get paid enough, right? There's no, this is, it's an impossible task. We're talking about rights a hundred percent. Like, hey, this thing that didn't exist six months ago you need to be an expert in it now. And you need also, we need to have a, we need to have a console. We need to figure out like how we integrate this into our, our like teaching, you know, regimen. It, it seems so rough. I can understand why Italy was just like, no, no thanks, or

Doc Rock (00:26:06):
Why no time, no time, no money. Nobody really understands it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. No. But the thing that I wonder and I have to call a couple of my, my classmates from college that live there. I'm like, yo, can you just pop through a p n and still get in? Because if you blocked it and the VPN still worked, then that's just boring. I

Devindra Hardawar (00:26:23):
Mean, usually, usually

Doc Rock (00:26:25):
Yes. Usually yes. Right? Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>,

Devindra Hardawar (00:26:28):
It's it, it's a weird thing. It is a weird thing. It's sort of like, I remember when the internet was becoming a thing in the mid nineties and I was like, I was lucky enough to have a computer at home and to spend time tinkering and playing around with HTML and doing stuff. So when I went to school the librarians would always be like, what, what are you doing? Like, why are, why are you going to websites so quickly? Why are you hitting refresh so often? Which is a question I have gotten because like, it's not loading fast enough. Having that opportunity at home gave me a leg up. And I do feel like having a chance to play with chat g p t in, in the actual school environment is gonna be kind of essential for kids moving forward. But we have no clue. We have no idea kind of how this stuff is gonna affect anything. Because the New York schools are worried about plagiarism, right? They're worried about kids using it just to like have a, have a paper written, written immediately or solve their homework problems super quickly, right? Like that seems fair to just pause it for now. I guess

Doc Rock (00:27:23):
I'm not a teacher. Yep. But this is my thoughts on it and I'm probably go to catch a lot of flag for this <laugh>, you know, in school we all had our favorite teachers, whether it was in high school or you know, in college or whatever, your favorite teachers, you normally did really good on the tests because they taught you, if I'm teaching you properly, you have no need to cheat on the test whatsoever. If you're prepared to play a sport or something at the height of its existence, you don't have to cheat Tom Brady. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But if you're slacking then you decide to start taking shortcuts. And again, I got it. This is partially on us because we're not paying them enough, which is a whole different conversation, but students don't even try to cheat on the teachers that they like.

Devindra Hardawar (00:28:11):
Well it's not even about teaching on cheating on like tests, right? This is like, you get homework, right? You get a weekend assignment of like, write 500 words, a thousand words on this book or something. Then, then it's like, okay, a lot of kids will want to engage on it, but maybe people will use Chad pt like, Hey, help help me break down the themes of this book. And then they go and, you know, write something on their own based on that. Like, we don't, we dunno what's success, what's acceptable. We dunno, like what counts as plagiarism or not. I guess I think it's gonna be really confusing. Do you guys have thoughts? Nicholas and Anthony?

Nicholas de Leon (00:28:42):
Yeah. I mean mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, oh, go ahead Nicholas. Oh yeah, no, I was just, it, it does feel that like chat G P T in particular is just gonna be something that people will put on a resume. Like you just, oh, Microsoft Office skill. It, it just feels like a thing that you're gonna kind of have to need to know how to use to just be competitive with the person next to you or just to get your foot in the door. So I do feel that I, I mean if, I mean, I get that teachers don't have the the resources to teach it, but if I were, like you said, if I were a student, I would wanna be messing with this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I would want, if I were a parent, I would want my kid messing with this all the time. Just so that they have the experience of using what is this potentially very important tool rather than just saying it's band, you can't use it.

(00:29:20):
 My adopted mother is a teacher college professor. I don't know what their chat G p t plans are. But if, if you're already talking about like banning it, I feel like the game's already over. Cuz if you, it's like, it, it's already in the ether now. It's like you're gonna have to like wrestle with the fact that this tool exists and maybe you should grade test differently. Or maybe you should not have tests or maybe you should like, evaluate knowledge in a different way than something that can be substituted for a quick little prompt, you know?

Doc Rock (00:29:50):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there you go. Right there. That's the, that's the joint Nicholas evaluate knowledge in a different way. Cuz we've all been proven that testing is just borderline useless.

Devindra Hardawar (00:29:58):
I mean, I, I don't, I don't disagree. And also homework, I, I feel like my kids are my daughter's four. My son had just turned one and it's like, I don't want them to be going to schools where, like, where I went to where I would be carry, I had a 50 pound book bag filled with books. I would have hours of homework every day. And I'm like, this is not, I was so great. I was so happy to be done with like, middle school and high school because that didn't seem useful or functional at all, really. So yeah, I'm, I'm very much like against like, busy work homework, but I, again, I feel for teachers, I feel for teachers who aren't supported. You know, Abbott Elementary is a really good show that really confronts like what public school teachers have to do with like, very limited systems right now.

(00:30:42):
 Asking a public high school teacher to completely reshape their, the, the way they think of how they grade and judge kids. Because this new tech appeared six months ago not even six months ago, like four months ago. It just seems like, man, it seems so unfair. And I don't know, I, I I kind of don't know where we go from there with all this. Also kind of part of this story about, I guess the dangers of of generative ai. And we saw the story about Mid Journey announcing that they're ending their free trial after that. Partially that thing, the Balenciaga Pope story that picture went everywhere. They're also pictures of Donald Trump getting arrested, which were not real, which were, you know, generated by ai. It is funny to me that mid journey, a company that is, you know, became very famous by saying, Hey, we have created this amazing image tool that will <laugh> create, you know, make realistic images of whatever you type into you know, and we're gonna open it up to everybody for free. I believe. Nobody saw this coming. I don't know. Do you, do, do, do you guys feel like this was inevitable after the, after mid journey opening things up so quickly?

Doc Rock (00:31:55):
This one's a tough one. <Laugh>, and I'll tell you why. There's no way I looked at the, especially the police image and for one second thought that was a real image. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I mean, it didn't even take discerning I have a photographer or discerning, I have a creator. I have both. Yeah. I mean, it is so obviously fake. The reflections are wrong. Six fingers on people's hands. Like I, I gaze is like, you know, wallied fish or something. Yeah. I don't even know how anybody for one second would've said that looked, I mean,

Devindra Hardawar (00:32:32):
Listen, normal people get fooled by all sorts of things, and

Doc Rock (00:32:34):
This is true. I,

Devindra Hardawar (00:32:35):
Yeah. So I, to me like it is good enough, it is good enough to sway elections. It is good enough to sway the public. And to me that makes it a little

Doc Rock (00:32:43):
Dangerous. That's what makes this scary again. Yeah. I think we should, and granted tech has to be moderated, but I think this is a time for us to slow down and re and, and like go back to reeducating people. People need to take personal responsibility and maybe we have to find a way to incentivize that responsibility so that they can do it because Yeah. It's just, it's, it's, I know that's a long stretch, but

Devindra Hardawar (00:33:08):
It's, I mean, yeah. That, that is hopeless. That is ho a hopeless task when that hurts

Doc Rock (00:33:12):
My feelings, you know, that a world is getting that bad at people can't see how, obviously fake this is. It's

Anthony Ha (00:33:19):
Crazy. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I, I mean, but I, I guess I, I pushed back against that a little bit. I mean, I think we should accept responsibility for sure. And I think that there is a, a useful conversation to be had of like, even before AI that people should look with any sort of news article or anything they see with, with the degree of skepticism. Not because like, oh, it's like the evil liberal media or whatever, but just because any, any, you know, piece of content is going to be, is produ, you know, at least until now produced by people and is gonna be imperfect in some ways. And so you should have a little bit of that, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I think also the truth is, you know even people like us who I, you know, think were more sophisticated about the news about technology and everything, I'm sure there are things that show up in our social media feeds that we don't examine that closely.

(00:34:03):
Like you, like I don't think anyone can sort of live in a way where they just everything. I mean, and I'm somebody who's, you know, worked as a fact checker before, like actually like doing serious fact checking. That is a lot of work. There's like basic BS testing that you can do. But in terms of like, oh, like here's a quote that sounds kind of plausible from this person, let me like actually find the primary stories from where this comes from or this stat or whatever. That ac that actually is really difficult a lot of times because, especially on the internet, because things start to get repeated. And so figuring out where something actually came from is really hard. And so I think that I, I, and again, and maybe I don't necessarily disagree with Doc that much on the ultimate solution, which is I do think that as a person you have to take responsibility, especially if you're going to act on this information, whether that's buying stock, how you're gonna vote, things like that. But at the same time, I think there have to be sort of societal solutions as well because mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, none of us is perfect when it comes to actually assessing these things.

Devindra Hardawar (00:35:00):
Absolutely. I mean, people have other things going on in their lives. Like that's the thing. Like we, when we focus on fact checking and looking at media very very thoughtfully, that is, that is work that I feel like normal, normal citizens like, don't have time for, right. They're, they're busy taking care of picking up their kids from school. They're busy getting dinner ready. It is a super tough thing. I'm thinking, I I live outside of Atlanta now guys. I moved from Brooklyn at the start of the pandemic. And I've got a neighbor who is iffy on the concept of seat belts and he believes in personal responsibility for keeping himself safe in the car. And I just, this is person's an engineer. This person is very like, is is, you know, is a programmer, I assume like, is smart on some levels, but I have to be like, you know, maybe sometimes this is, this is why regulation exists. This is why like, I gotta protect you from yourself. I'm, I'm sorry. I was like, you have a child. This is insane.

Doc Rock (00:35:58):
Yeah. As a, as an ex paramedic. Trust me. Yeah. I used to be one of those guys, like, I don't need to wear on D Belt. I know how to drive. And after about my third or fourth bag, I'm like, okay, sea belt. It is, you know, because it, when a lot of people don't realize maybe you get in the rag, but when you get ejected from a car mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and then you hit another vehicle that hits another three other vehicles, it's not just you anymore. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know what I mean? And that's, so yeah. This is where the personal responsibility part of it does fail. See, it's, again, this is such a hard conversation because as a tech person, this time is so epic. Like, what's going right now is so epic. We're back at, you know, printing press level days and yet

Devindra Hardawar (00:36:43):
Interviews like how revolutionary all this stuff is. Yeah,

Doc Rock (00:36:45):
Yeah, yeah. But the level I think of like just industrial greed has made it that this can't grow the way it should because there's so much greed in mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, everybody wants things to be the way that they want it with no understanding of a bigger society. And I guess where it messes me up is I lived in Japan for a little while mm-hmm. <Affirmative> one, the large portion of the population is never gonna be everybody, but over 99% of the population will not do anything that was slightly convenient. Another person. That's just their culture in general. Yep. And that's what makes everybody fall in love with it when you go there,

Devindra Hardawar (00:37:25):
Even though it is, like, I, I've talked to people who've moved there, they're like, oh man, the garbage rules, the rules of like, when you put out the trash and like all those sorts of things seem really like stifling the society. But if it, if it makes everything work, I don't know.

Doc Rock (00:37:38):
It's stifling to, you know, what the opposite looks like. If you've grown up that way your whole life, you don't even know that anything else exists. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so you're cool with it. And I actually didn't liked it cuz you get to walk around and clean neighborhoods all the time. Yeah. There's some hidden gems that are really eept up that will look like, you know, anywhere else in, you know, major city us. They're hidden and they're hitting on purpose because they're trying to, you know, show the rest of the world that it's dope. But yeah, still it's just in general, I could go, you know, from class and put my laptop on the lunchroom table, go back to class mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for two and a half more hours and come back and my seat has been successfully reserved by my laptop and nobody would touch it. That's,

Devindra Hardawar (00:38:19):
That's

Doc Rock (00:38:20):
Amazing. You lived in New York. Athens in New York you can turn around to get a tissue and that suck it go

Devindra Hardawar (00:38:27):
<Laugh>. You know, it, it depends. It de I feel like compassion is shown in different ways in New York and we, we can always have this argument, but there is that fun show on Netflix old enough where it's just like two year old kids, two year old kids sent to do like basic shopping tasks for their parents. And it's easy, they can just do it. They could do it because the, the cars aren't zooming down the streets and people are aware of like children and society's built itself in the way to take care of kids and the most vulnerable people in that society. And hey, that's a beautiful thing. Doc to what you're saying, I feel like the whole personal responsibility thing just seems, it seems tough because it is individuals, right, who are up against everything going on their lives. And then these companies which are funded with tens of billions of dollars from the biggest, you know, technology companies in the world who want to just win this AI race, they wanna beat China, which is a thing a lot of people are thinking about.

(00:39:21):
 But they also want to be the dominant one. They feel like this is the new like ai the new social media race or the new, you know, the new, the big new tech. And if you don't get out there fast and if you don't like cement yourself there, you're gonna miss out entirely on it. I feel like Microsoft is looking at this being like, we're not gonna miss the smartphone again. Like, we're not gonna miss out on the iPhone, right. We're we gotta be here no matter what happens. And I do feel like we're just like, it's pedal, it's it's pedal to the floor, like just moving forward on it without really fully taking into account of like what it means for normal people. And I'll tell you guys my personal philosophy when I think about tech and when I write about tech, it's like I, I fight for the user, right? Like it all comes back to Tron. It really does. Like, I think about those people and what they have to do and who aren't following all this news and being like, well no, these images are just coming and your social media feeds and nothing is really stopping it. Right? Unless these companies decide the tools they themselves have made have to be stopped. And I guess that's what Mid Journey did. But yeah, we are in a strange place. Anthony Nicholas, any any other thoughts on this before we move on?

Nicholas de Leon (00:40:25):
One thing I was gonna add is that as we've all covered tech for a long time Yeah. On this on this pod this definitely feels like the most exciting time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in a very, I I would compare it to the iPhone you know, anything after the iPhone till this AI stuff. I mean, I don't know, social I don't, you know story Snapchat story, like none, none of this really, this AI stuff is the most excited I've been just as as a, someone interested in technology stuff. And I, and I had a conversation with someone in the ai and he, he definitely agreed like this, he wakes up every day excited again for tech and he has not had that feeling in kind of, kind of a long time. But the crypto stuff is interesting. Mobile stuff is interesting, but this AI stuff feel feels like this the most transformative thing. He was like, maybe even since like the days was like Windows 95, he was a slightly older than me. This, yeah. Yeah. This is, this is, you know, whether, whether we need more personal responsibility, whether we need more legislation, you know, we'll, I assume, I hope, you know, fingers crossed we'll figure it out. But regardless, this just feels like the most exciting and interesting thing. Like, I've never seen Microsoft move this quickly, seriously in a really long time, you know,

Devindra Hardawar (00:41:39):
<Laugh>, it's, it's just wild. Like, they, they invited me to this to the event where they were gonna announce it and I was on vacation, but they gave people basically a week, five days, six days of heads up time to go to that event. Wow. Okay. It's pretty wild. All right. Thanks guys. We're gonna be moving on to that horrible news from Elon Musk in a bit, but let's go on to an ad break from Le Laport.

Leo Laporte (00:41:56):
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(00:42:54):
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(00:43:55):
They also help with hot desking, right? You can reserve workspaces based on vacancy and employee profiles. It also makes it easy for employees to scout out a spot in a snap, reserve it, and have it ready for 'em when they arrive. And if you have a location in re restricted environments, it's gonna really help your security with advanced booking, time-based door access, things like that. When it comes to mobile device management, Meraki's got you covered too. With integrating devices and systems that allow it to manage, update, and troubleshoot company owned devices, even when the device and the employee are, oh, let's say on a cruise ship. <Laugh> for, turn any space into a place of productivity and empower your organization with the same exceptional experience no matter where they work. With Meraki and the Cisco suite of technology, learn how your organization can make hybrid work work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit. I gotta go cause the shuffleboard tournament's about to begin. But you should go to meraki.cisco.com/twit. We thank them so much for supporting this week in tech. And don't forget your support's just as important. You gotta go to that site so they know you saw it here. Meraki.Cisco.Com/Twin. Now back to this show.

Devindra Hardawar (00:45:13):
You know what? Let's let's go on to that terrible Elon Musk news, which I feel like we just gotta check in on every week and see what the heck is going on with Twitter. There was a great piece by Ina Fried over at at Axios just pointing out that, you know, Elon Musk's Twitter is not really about free speech. The guy who wanted to buy this company and always talked about like, man, Twitter is so bias a second towards liberals and was really proposing more free speech. It's not really, not really living up to that label, I guess. His, his Twitter is more restrictive than ever. There is the way he's pushing verification basically getting ready to strip it from people. We're, we're all kind of in the weird space right now, right? Because they announced that legacy Blue Checks are gonna be losing their checks eventually.

(00:46:01):
That was supposed to be April 1st. That didn't happen. There was report that this is actually a very manual process that Twitter has to do. So, like so many things Elm Musk talks about, it is much harder to, to actually do in practice and than just like flipping a switch. So yeah, we've seen several major accounts like the New York Times say that they're not gonna be paying for the, the much higher $1,000 monthly fee to keep their blue checks. So the New York Times said they wouldn't do that. They lost their check mark entirely. And that's a weird retaliatory move. We've also seen celebrities like LeBron James you know, other, other organizations, Washington Post, the LA Times have all said that they're not gonna pay for this. It seems like this is all kind of backfiring for Twitter and Elon Musk. Like, what are you, are you guys worried about I, I assume most of you guys have blue checks. Are you worried about this? Or are you just like, think this is is this a weird place that we've seen Twitter fall to? Thanks that Elon Musk.

Anthony Ha (00:46:58):
Honestly, it just feels funny at this point. It's hilarious. You know, like, yeah, just watch, watch it go down. Take my blue check mark, please. 

Devindra Hardawar (00:47:04):
Please.

Anthony Ha (00:47:06):
I, I just feel like at this point it's just pure keystone cops.

Doc Rock (00:47:09):
Have you guys noticed, right? So New York Times, their check is completely gone, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, New York Times books, arts, Chinese Cooking and food health Photo, New York Times World Science, New York Times travel all still got checks.

Devindra Hardawar (00:47:25):
I mean, that's too much work. It's too much work doc. Like, it's,

Doc Rock (00:47:27):
It's silly. It's super silly. Yeah, I'm with Anthony. A hundred percent.

Devindra Hardawar (00:47:32):
It is. It's funny. Nicholas said. Any broad thoughts before we like dive deeper into this?

Nicholas de Leon (00:47:36):
My broader thoughts are I moved to Tucson, Arizona BET three months ago. <Laugh>, I have more important things to do with my life than worry about whether or not my blue check is there or not. I loved, I think it was Thursday or Friday, the Twitter verified account was like manually unfollowing people. It had followed mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and it was like certain folks were reacting like it was a, like a five alarm fire or whatever. And I was like, I opened my door and I looked at Mount Lemon and I was like, I'm gonna go hike back tomorrow. That's what's important to me.

Devindra Hardawar (00:48:08):
<Laugh>. That sounds good. <Laugh>.

Nicholas de Leon (00:48:10):
So it does, I, I'm kind of joking, but I do think that this site has, like, if Twitter, if, if, if Elon were like truly benevolent, he would just shut it down at this point and like, free us from this insanity. Cuz we're all very small. Amen. Like it is taking up so much like, of our brain, collective brain.

Devindra Hardawar (00:48:28):
It is, it is bad. Like how he's confessed our brains. What's up man? Yeah.

Anthony Ha (00:48:32):
Yeah. I I would also say that in, just in terms of the big picture, like generally people, there, there is this sort of like hobby horse on, particularly people on the right who like, like to bang the drum about free speech. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think there are genuinely very difficult and thorny questions about how speech is moderated online, how it's moderated on social platforms generally, the people who are shouting about free speech have no interest in any of those questions. And Elon Musk is just a perfect example of that. That like, again, I think there's all kinds of difficult questions about how you would moderate speech on Twitter. He has no interest in that. He's just, you know, whatever his pet thing is at the moment, that's what, you know, all the remaining engineers at Twitter have to work on rather than like, real serious policy.

Devindra Hardawar (00:49:20):
Who do you guys think? They're, they're at some point somebody's gonna dramatize like this the fall of Twitter and like Elon Musk, like this whole thing. Hopefully in a limited series and not a movie. Because I feel like the story's too wild and expansive. Who should play Elon Musk? That is the lot's done been on my mind lately. That

Doc Rock (00:49:36):
Is good. You know, after social network was so good. It was

Devindra Hardawar (00:49:40):
Very good.

Doc Rock (00:49:42):
Right. That's the one on H B O, right? I I'm mixing No, well, the, sorry,

Devindra Hardawar (00:49:46):
Thinking a Silicon Valley. Yeah.

Doc Rock (00:49:47):
Silicon Valley. That's what I mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. That was so good. <Laugh>. It was so well done. I would love to see them come back now with all the craziness that's going on in tech. But who could play Elon Musk?

Devindra Hardawar (00:50:01):
Just, just, just struck me. I know is is Will Ferrell, I think let's

Doc Rock (00:50:08):
Oh, you wanna go? You wanna go

Devindra Hardawar (00:50:09):
Comedic? I'm not even saying go comedic. I'm just saying this thing is hilarious. Everything Elam Musk does now is a comedy. So like, will Ferrell in like, you know, he has done a few serious movies, but like Will Ferrell would sort of like be able to tap into the like insane brain that Theam Musk is dealing with right now. Do you guys have, we're gonna go Jude Law and take it back to a No, that's too toy. Too nice. Too nice to Elam Musk. No, sir. Like

Nicholas de Leon (00:50:34):
Steve Corll would be interesting cuz he's kind of, especially the character from the office where he's just kinda like, laugh. The only one laughing at his own jokes and you're just kind of like, well, he's the boss. I guess we gotta have to, you know, that would be interesting. I'm gonna say Jeremy Strong office.

Devindra Hardawar (00:50:49):
<Laugh>

Nicholas de Leon (00:50:49):
OG office. You gotta get Ricky J Oh yeah, okay. That would be good actually.

Devindra Hardawar (00:50:54):
Ricky Jase would be good. Any, any of the cringe humor people. But honestly, Jeremy Strong from succession, who is, who has done a good job of also living the cringe life apparently. <Laugh>, I that's a good one. That's a good one. Think. But I do feel like people would tune in for the the Elon Musk, the Twitter files you know, limited series starring Will Ferrell. I think people would tune in just to be like, what, what is this? Should I, should I watch this? I don't know. So Twitter did something else too. They open sourced a part of their algorithm, which is something Elon Musk was also complaining about for a while. And it turns out it's not actually much of it. The open source part of the algorithm that was used for the for you tab. So that's like their recommendation algorithm.

(00:51:36):
 We've seen a couple revelations from this, but not, not actually much. Right. there was the, some people noticed that there were specific groups for Democrats and Republicans to kinda sort people into that. Elon Musk apparently had his own like, specific category. So those, those specific things he didn't know why that was there and he was sort of like questioning this in real time. But Chris Abel over in and Gadget wrote a good piece. Just kind of compiling things trying to figure out like what we actually learned from this. Turns out not much. Turns out like a lot of the, the open source code out there is a very small part of what Twitter does. Doesn't actually like give us a full look at the company. And it's all like, yeah. It, it's a whole lot of nothing like so much from Elon Musk's mouth these days. Like it is the thing he clamor for and doesn't actually give us much details. I have you guys looked at this? Or like, the revelations from the open sourcing of the code?

Nicholas de Leon (00:52:30):
I just that a little bit. And it was interesting that pretty, that links were kind of, you would be ding for having a link in there. You know, replies didn't count as much as retweets or likes. So that was, I mean, that was kind of interesting. But I think, you know, again, list of us in media have known forever basically that Twitter Yeah. Is not a super great driver of traffic. I mean, Facebook was back in the day. I don't know about nowadays as much but like Twitter was never at Twitter is basically just like, I, it's, it's a, I mean it's weird now, but like, it was never a traffic driver. So it doesn't, it doesn't I've always treated it as just like Seinfeld gifts and like sports rumors and stuff. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> a very, like, very casual approach to Twitter. But yeah, the actual open source, I mean, I guess he said he was gonna do it and he did it kind of, he, so

Devindra Hardawar (00:53:17):
That's, he did part of it.

Nicholas de Leon (00:53:18):
Yeah. I mean that's star, I guess a gold star there.

Devindra Hardawar (00:53:23):
We also saw that the Twitter is down ranking posts related to the Ukraine crisis. So that's like a whole other thing. Although

Anthony Ha (00:53:32):
It seemed like, actually that might be specifically Twitter spaces. Twitter spaces, yes. But again, again, it's like very confusing and, and it's not totally clear what it means. The

Devindra Hardawar (00:53:40):
Why of it is all very confusing. Yeah. And apparent. I I am also still shocked with Twitter spaces are still up and running cuz I feel like that's a very complex part of the company and we are waiting for pieces to fall off of Twitter and people are still hosting spaces and that seems to be going fine, I guess. Yeah, there was something else. Did you guys notice the Doge The Doge on Twitter this week?

Anthony Ha (00:54:00):
I will say, as much as I like to complain about Elon Musk Twitter, I thought that was fun. That was, you know what? Like, it was cute. It brought a smile to my face.

Devindra Hardawar (00:54:07):
I mean, listen, don't I feel like he's ruining Sheba news for all of us, but it is one of those things like, oh, this guy, this guy just, he can just, he owns Twitter. He could just do this. He could just put the, the Dogecoin dog that he's also, he's been pumping Doge for a while and he's being sued by people around that. But he could just put the Deutche coin dog up on Twitter and we'll have to live with that <laugh>.

Anthony Ha (00:54:31):
And I, I mean, I, I think overall it's just like all this stuff is a reminder that this is, that Twitter is now like, control, you know, this weird pet in incredibly expensive pet project owned by this one guy, and it's just gonna be whatever his weird preferences are, that's what's gonna happen. And I, you know, it does act as in like some interesting, if not particularly revelatory things come out of the open sourcing, but even when he makes gestures towards it, fundamentally this is his pet project. Like, don't think of it as anything but that.

Devindra Hardawar (00:55:01):
Yeah. Which I, I don't know if we fully, if Twit has fully had like a eulogy for Twitter, but I mean for me personally, like it was a super useful tool for, for many, many years. Like, it, it was my favorite social media platform for a reason. And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but there are a lot of media, Twitter, a lot of, like other reporters have been doing, we're doing spaces like early on when Twitter took over ownership of like, oh my God, it's all falling apart and isn't this really sad? And a lot of it was very navel g but also like, yeah, Twitter. Twitter played a very big role in my life, in my career, and it is, it really does stink to see it being like turned into this tool, you know, for a billionaire who has no idea what to do with it other than troll people with Dogecoin pitchers. So that's, that's funny. I guess, I don't know. I just,

Nicholas de Leon (00:55:45):
I'll say on the other side of that, I, I still see plenty of people just using Twitter as if nothing happened. Yeah, I'm a huge sports fan. I still see plenty of sports supporters just tweeting their scoops you know, guys talking about what happened last night in the game. So there still appears to be plenty of like ordinary use of Twitter notwithstanding a lot of the folks getting upset over whatever Elon does this week. It's you know who's to say what happens in the future? Time will tell, I guess. But I still still see like a critical face of kinda like normal usage, so to speak. And to me that's kind of like, that would be the canary if like, if those guys stop tweeting, if those guys stop talking about the, the bad ref call or things like that. If that goes away, then I'll be like, okay, maybe Twitter is dying. But for now, I, I still see a lot of that.

Devindra Hardawar (00:56:30):
I'm saying like a lot of meaty people moving over to Mastodon and I, I, I'm kind of splitting my time and trying to like spend more time on Ma Dawn, but it is one of those things where it's like a lot of the voices I really liked than Twitter are just not there anymore. So it's, it's starting to feel more and more of a ghost town. But I'm sure specific niches like sports Yeah. All the sports people are probably still using it just fine Right

Doc Rock (00:56:49):
Now. I feel like Maxon is heavy tech. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because we got it right away with, I, I never even made mine yet because I was like, no, Twitter's gonna make it. It'll be alright, <laugh>. No it's not. Oh God, I called that one wrong. So it's still

Devindra Hardawar (00:57:02):
Good. It's still good.

Doc Rock (00:57:03):
Yeah, it's still there, but I'm with you. Like, I missed the part where Twitter, you know, was good. It was a good place to, you know, to share your stories and, you know, connect with companies and apps and things like that. And now, yes, it's a, it's a little bit, you know, psycho, but I still use it just because like, if you're not calling your own shots on Twitter, somebody else might call them for you mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So, but I don't put the effort in time I used to in it because it's just not gonna, the outcome is not gonna be there. Yeah. So yeah, it is a very strange place, but it's almost like one of those things, if you ignore it long enough, you go to pick those up to put them in the laundry and you like, whoa, what did I do? I never put that over there again. Right. Yeah. So you gotta do that. You can't what

Devindra Hardawar (00:57:45):
Kind of funk just grew on this thing Exactly. If you Twitter for a while. Exactly. And exactly. Every in these funkier every, every week. And it makes me sad cuz it, it, hey, I was, I started in like 2008. I started a movie podcast like way back then, and thanks to Twitter I was, you know, we were able to get bring on directors and guests and film critics and like, that was a big part of like how my podcast grew. That's a part, this is a big part of like how media people kind of evolved and worked over the last decade or more, actually 15 years now. So I think

Doc Rock (00:58:14):
Twitter helped make regular people start paying attention to the text space a little more. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, before it was just us, right. We were all kind of sort of talking to each other. Right. and then around the time of like right when we were starting to slow down and we were getting closed, right. We basically involved to gadget completely. And that was about the time that the general public was starting to come in, which is I part of the reason why I think a AOL made the decision to shut down ua mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like stick us all together was because more people were gonna come in and they weren't gonna go to two sites because the phone was getting big enough that it wasn't a Mac site in a PC site and then a random phone site. It was like everybody, in

Devindra Hardawar (00:58:59):
Retrospect, probably not, not the best decision. Aol I feel like a lot of,

Doc Rock (00:59:04):
Yeah. It cost me a job that

Nicholas de Leon (00:59:06):
That's a whole separate episode, a

Doc Rock (00:59:07):
Whole separate thing. Yep. Yeah. But I think that was really at the time that I started to hear some of my regular friends, like, you know, talk about, oh, I heard this on, you know, in Gadget, I heard this on Virg, like, what do you know about any gadget or the Verge or, you know, back then gets motor or whatever. And it was that what was it, the iPhone fours the one that got away in the bar and that's when normal people started

Devindra Hardawar (00:59:31):
Playing iPhone four. Yeah,

Doc Rock (00:59:33):
Yeah, iPhone four. Okay. That was when I think regular people started paying attention and it kind of grew from there. And then I agree with you now, it's very sad to what it is now. Yep. It's like seeing one of your friends from high school that's just

Devindra Hardawar (00:59:44):
Exactly. It's like, oh, you look at their Facebook, it's like, oh no, you fallen afar. This is very sad. <Laugh>.

Anthony Ha (00:59:50):
Although, again, to be fair to Elon, who again I think is doing a terrible job and Sure. And is ruining Twitter in a lot of ways. Twitter was having a lot of trouble for that. And Twitter was a lot less fun for me even before Elon bought it. Some of that is just, you know, I'm Yeah. 40 now. I was 25 when I got on on Twitter. Like the amount of time I

Devindra Hardawar (01:00:09):
Have the glorious days of our twenties and on Twitter <laugh>

Anthony Ha (01:00:11):
Yeah. To just like say dumb stuff online is is less. But I think there were also, you know, when Twitter became a public company and there's like pressure to grow it, and then they're like just cycling through all these different things that will save Twitter, whether it was spaces or video or all these things, you know, it was, it, it was clearly something they, they were struggling and that was why Elon was able to buy them. So it, it's not like it was great Elon Yeah. Bought it and then that's what destroyed it. It was that like, Elon buying, this is the whole company end of this, or like the, was just the next step in this like death spiral or whatever.

Devindra Hardawar (01:00:46):
I am mad at everybody. Like the, there's the Twitter leadership at the time and, and Jack Dorsey too, like the, the people who were like quick to cash out because Twitter was kind of flailing and El El was just like, Hey, I'm gonna overpay for this thing. Yeah. No. Yeah. And remember

Anthony Ha (01:00:59):
Shame the thing that's really hilarious to me, and I remember that Twitter sued to force Elon to buy it. Yeah. Yep. Like, it wasn't like Elon wanted to back out. Yep. Whether he did or whether he was, it was just ne negotiating tactic to lower the price. I don't know. But like, it, there was a period where he was like, I'm gonna walk away. And Twitter's like, no,

Devindra Hardawar (01:01:14):
You're doing no taxiing. Taxis. Yeah. <Laugh>. Oh man. That was, we are truly living in the dumbest timeline. And I feel like whenever we talk about Twitter and Elon Musk news, like it's just a reminder, reminder of that it is it's not great. You know, who we don't talk about very much these days is, is meta, remember meta, or at least the Metaverse. I'm trying to think of like much news that's been happening around meta these days. And I guess that's like one good thing about Twitter kind of soaking up a lot of these social media controversy side of things. But I mean, there were a couple stories we're looking at, like Meta is potentially considering a political ad ban in the EU because of new regulations coming up there. There's news analysis showing like hey, people are benefiting quite a bit from Twitter except I believe the news show that links new posts with news links get less than 3% of Facebook use.

(01:02:08):
So it is funny that this post that they put out there are showing like how useful TWIT Facebook is, meta is for, you know, for actual news sources and their actual news spreading is not actually true anymore. I feel like it was a lot more. And there was a story earlier this this month about Clearview ai admitting that scraped 30 billion images from Facebook and other social media sites to give them the cops. And remember Clearview ai, that's the company that's working on you know, facial recognition and software. They licensed it to police and we're kind of all on a basically perpetual police lineup thanks to this company. So that's that, that's the meta report. I don't know if you guys have any feelings about like where Meta is or where it could be going, because it does seem like nobody's talking about the Metaverse anymore. Thanks to ai.

Doc Rock (01:02:57):
I think meta, I never reminds me of Looney Tunes when pick your random character had both hands and both feet blocking the water coming through the wall, Uhhuh <affirmative>, and then another water would break through the wall. And they like, they gotta move in there all of a sudden just juggling really fast. I think after their initial debacle, they've been doing that the entire time and there's not enough hands to block all of the holes in the wall. They had the perfect opportunity when Elon started just messing up Twitter to come in and be like, remember us. We're sorry. We'll take you back. We went and fixed everything, we're gonna be better. And they kind of hose that too. It was working for a minute, but they just couldn't manage to like, you know, just be right. So in a way, I'm gonna talk about a person who kind of fits the personality of Facebook and they stole his name at a world piece, hands down, one of the best defenders ever in the game. One of the best ballers in the game, but he could never just behave and do. Right. And if he could just get out of his own way and behave and do Right. He'd be definitely top five, you know, dead or alive, but he could not do. Right. I feel like meta, firstly, he should have sued them for stealing his name, <laugh>. But then, no,

Devindra Hardawar (01:04:24):
There, there was another company called Meta before there was headsets. Yeah, that's

Doc Rock (01:04:29):
Hundred

Devindra Hardawar (01:04:29):
Percent true. Exactly. Headset or ar headset at the time.

Doc Rock (01:04:32):
But they're living up to Mr. Artes. They're in like, as a company. It brought our test was a company, it'd be Facebook.

Devindra Hardawar (01:04:39):
It is there, there is probably like some sort of like weird like dark comedy to make about like social media over the past five years too. Because so much of it was Facebook basically chasing everybody, right. Like copying Snapchat, copying copying Twitter whenever they could too. Pretty much everybody, like you had to bring in all the new features to Instagram, Facebook seems so desperate for so long. And then the whole metaverse thing was just like Zuckerberg like putting his foot down, being like, this is the future. And either Have you guys spent any time in, in the metaverse in doing Metaverse meetings or doing like the, the meta demos that had been out there? I,

Nicholas de Leon (01:05:16):
I played Horizon Worlds around Christmas time. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, I mean, it wasn't for me. And I'm a huge gamer. Like I love, I've played Lord knows an inordinate amount of World of Warcraft and, and like, so I'm like primed to like, enjoy online communities. And it was just kind of boring. The graphics were bad. I was like, why would I, why would I play with this? There's no, there's no compelling reason to, to be here, actually. So I don't, it it's so funny that like ev you know, Facebook meta is is talking about the Metaverse and then, and then all of a sudden everyone's talking about AI and they're like oh. Oh no. Oops. Yeah. It just kind of like the ground shifted completely underneath them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and no one, yeah, I don't know.

(01:05:56):
I don't, I don't see a whole lot of consum like regular, I mean like, consumer reports. I don't know that I see a whole lot of everyday consumer interest in like, VR stuff or like the Metaverse. I will say that I, I, I do see a lot of activity. I mean Facebook Marketplace has, I I think basically replaced Craigslist from that. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. You know, people use the groups for like, you know, again, I just moved, I still, I see people use Facebook groups to, to talk about Arizona and stuff going on restaurant recommendations. And so that does appear to be like a lot of folks like active on the less exciting aspects of fa it, it just kind of feels like a, it's

Devindra Hardawar (01:06:31):
Still boring. It, it's still a decent social network, right. Like it is, you can find most people there. You can find your high school friends there or the, the people you hated in high school. So I, yeah, the, the push away from from it just seemed funny. So I did over in gad, I've, I've, I've covered Horizon worlds. I covered like the virtual meeting stuff and it was kind of cool. But I will tell you guys like what I did one of those things in Zuckerberg, like piped in, in his little his little metaverse avatar and he was sitting right next to my little avatar. Oh. And it was a weird thing of like, oh, am I sitting next to Mark Zuckerberg? Is this weird <laugh>? Is this, it is weird because like if I, if I turned my head and I was wearing the Oculus quest too, it would be my avatar staring at him.

(01:07:14):
It's like, oh, that's, that's bad. That's, that's not good. We shouldn't do that. That's, that's, you know, socially not great. So I was like trying not to hold the controllers badly too. So my arms weren't doing weird things. And if you go look at footage from that, which is, some of that is in the in gadget piece and in other tight pieces, cuz they got like recorded footage. My hands are just doing like crazy gymnast motions because the meta quests hand tracking is so bad. Like, or at least the motion tracking didn't understand what I was trying to do when I put the controllers down. It was, it like lost tracking. It just went crazy. So, you know, that was his time to show off like what you could do with Meta metaverse meetings. And it is cool. I actually do like taking meetings in the Metaverse, but it is, nobody's gonna buy VR headsets just for that. You know, it's kind of a weird thing. But we are, we're also all waiting for Apple to talk about their thing. Right. So is the Metaverse completely dead? I don't, are you guys anticipating like whatever Apple is gonna debut at dub dub

Doc Rock (01:08:06):
As a diehard Apple person? I have both issue, not issue. I have reservations about it and yet I'm interested to see what the way that we do it. Right. I'm an ex Apple employee. I should just say that right away. Oh wow. Okay. but one of the things to me that even during the AI conversation, I'm like, yo, apple has been like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> completely hiding from the AI conversation. And I feel like when they decide to come in, they're going to kick in the door, wave in the four, four <laugh>, like Biggie. I don't know how, I don't know why, but whenever they, it's

Devindra Hardawar (01:08:43):
Be, it's gonna be like a supers. It's gonna be Superpowered Siri. That's what it has to be. Right. Right. With like g pt, five level smarts and like, it'll be the smartest thing in the world. That's the only way Apple could make it good because Siri is

Doc Rock (01:08:54):
Awful. Or don't just stay out of it completely. You can't,

Devindra Hardawar (01:08:57):
You can't do that,

Doc Rock (01:08:58):
Unfortunately. That's exactly, so this is what I've been going to. And then the other thing, Tim, with the, with you, we've been talking about Apples ar headsets for I feel like Uhhuh, you remember when well who was it? Minci Quo would always talk about Apple tv. Like we were gonna get a physical, you know, tv like the one back there and it's gonna have Apple TV built in. Yo mc is still not out yet. So <laugh>,

Devindra Hardawar (01:09:23):
I'm I'm sure they tested it. Like I'm sure Apple played with G guarantee.

Doc Rock (01:09:25):
Yeah. I can't, I can't neither I caner what is that agree or not, not firm. Firm or I, I, I can't speak on that, but yes, it is definitely interesting to see. But already the rumor mills like, oh, it's gonna be $3,000. And it's like they're not gonna come out with a $3,000 headset. They could, if the competition is 200. Do you

Devindra Hardawar (01:09:47):
Figure I

Doc Rock (01:09:48):
Mean

Devindra Hardawar (01:09:48):
Cap? If that, if that's the market right? And like it Yeah, it, it's, it's interesting like cuz I feel like Meta is playing one game and Apple's like, okay, where we, where's this market can be in five years, you know, how do we prepare for that? That's, and it's like a 3000 pair, a $3,000 pair of like VR or augmented reality glasses that are good for developers because how much does a Mac Pro cost? You know, like a Mac Pro starts at 5,000 plus, you know, like that is pro-grade hardware not meant for everybody. I make fun of Apple pricing all the time. There is the studio monitor.

Doc Rock (01:10:19):
I know I yell at you every time. The

Devindra Hardawar (01:10:21):
Fame, the studio monitor with the $1,000 stand. Are you kidding me?

Doc Rock (01:10:25):
Okay. I'll tell you why. Yeah. This is funny. I was explain this. I was explain this please. Finally so people can let it go. Uhhuh <affirmative>, do you know who builds the Bja? Veran <laugh>?

Devindra Hardawar (01:10:35):
No.

Doc Rock (01:10:36):
Volkswagen Uhhuh <affirmative>. They build the viron as a proof of concept to get all the research and development and the people that have the money to buy that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> basically pay for the r and d. Yeah. They pay for the proof of concept and then now they can take that and bring it back. Nissan builds some of the dopest G t P cars on the planet. Yes. Yep. So that your Nissan that you have to carry your children's around in has amazing anti-lock braking system that was invented at my college in Japan. I was with the kids. I wasn't in the class, but I used to stalk them cuz I thought it was so cool that they were building G T P car in the middle of a university mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But a lot of that technology has made it down. So those, those crazy products that everyone loves to make fun of are twofold. That's the proof of concept so that you can get it down to an everyday person and not So

Devindra Hardawar (01:11:25):
That's the VR headset you're saying? Or the,

Doc Rock (01:11:28):
That's if they come out with a $3,000 vr I agree headset. I agree. It's going to be built for those of us bleeding edges to pay for it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and then they'll whittle it down to where the general people can get at it. And then it's not so crazy anymore. The tech,

Devindra Hardawar (01:11:41):
The tech is also

Doc Rock (01:11:42):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, sorry. One, the reason why the Airmen watch existed is so that we could get ultra today it's higher than the others and it's a very particular crowd.

Devindra Hardawar (01:11:54):
I disagree, but

Doc Rock (01:11:55):
Yeah. And it's okay. <Laugh>, but also celebrities were really starting to jump onto the Apple train. So it was a good play. It wasn't intended for any of us to go and buy a Aires or a Gold Edition. It was intended for Beyonce and mm-hmm. Jay-Z and everybody who bought Gold Editions or Aires edition. Yeah.

Devindra Hardawar (01:12:11):
I mean it did, it didn't hurt Apple to do those things. But those, those were vanity products, right? Like the, the, the Ermez Apple Watch was functionally no better than the the intro?

Doc Rock (01:12:19):
No, not at all. But it proved that somebody would pay for. Yeah. So I believe the function was, it proved that certain people will pay more mm-hmm. <Affirmative> if it hits a switch. And I think that's what I meant by the, the Yeah.

Devindra Hardawar (01:12:29):
Yeah. I feel like it's the push on phones like the iPhone pro getting to close to $1,500 in many configurations where it's like, yeah, phones aren't just 500 bucks anymore. Right. So it's like, I feel like Apple has seen like people just wanna pay for that. I mean doc I thought you were gonna try to excuse $1,000 monitor stand.

Doc Rock (01:12:47):
No, it's still, yeah, it's no, it's there for, it is there to get an idea of, you know, the kind of people that play. Now also, you have to remember every company, every store, everywhere, somewhere has a product that's just kind of like crazy. Right? Remember the serendipity like thousand dollars dessert. Like, it exists because that's what gets people to talk about your restaurant, right? Yeah. The TV places, the, the production houses that will actually buy those, they don't care because it's all part Yeah.

Devindra Hardawar (01:13:15):
They have arms budget, they have arms to mount those monitors on. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:13:18):
Right. You know what I'm saying? So they'll, they'll spend money on stuff like that. Cause it's just part of the budget, you know? It is, it is. I mean, it

Devindra Hardawar (01:13:25):
Was silly. It's one of those things where I'm like, I can't, I can't like give apple praise for certain things that they do. Like I think some things can be, you know, cheaper. Like the, I think the iPhone SE is a good play. I think like a lot of, you know, there, there are a lot of things that can be great plays and inexpensive and good deals, but then we may see things like that monitor stand and still, it still makes me so angry. Doc <laugh>, I'm so mad at it. <Laugh>, but okay. Okay. I don't think the Metaverse is dead yet, but it certainly, like whatever Meta was trying to get at probably is not gonna be coming anytime soon. But yeah. We'll stay tuned folks. Like we are gonna be keeping an eye on like the Apple stuff or whatever's there. Honestly, I'm going, I hope I'm gonna get to go to dub dub and check this thing out in person, but we will be right back. Let's move on to another ad from Leo. Let me,

Doc Rock (01:14:09):
If I can,

Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
I just, hello everybody. Leo here. I know I'm not here, but I am here right now to tell you about our sponsor for this episode of this week in tech. Ziprecruiter. They want me to do that because we use ZipRecruiter and I know intimately how great ZipRecruiter is. Whether you're starting a new business, whether you're growing a business, if you wanna be successful, you need the most talented people on your team. A company's made of the people you hire. And that's where a ZipRecruiter comes in right now. You can try it free ziprecruiter.com/twit. We don't have openings very often here, but when we do, it's always a crisis, right? Oh no. We gotta work extra hours to fill in the, the, the hole. It's gonna take us forever to find a great employee, right? <Laugh> and Lisa will go, I can, I can tell you it's happened many times at breakfast.

(01:14:55):
She'll say, oh no, this happened when Ashley quit from continuity. She got a better job closer to home, right? So we love her. She gave us two weeks notice. That was nice. But two weeks is pretty quick to find a replacement for somebody as great as Ashley, right? So Lisa, that morning goes to ziprecruiter.com/TWIT types in the job opening immediately with a click of a mouse. That job opening goes to more than a hundred other job boards, plus social networks reaches out the widest net. And then the thing we loved about ZipRecruiter is she's not gonna get phone calls. Her inbox is not gonna get flooded. It all goes into the ZipRecruiter interface where it's very easy to screen out people. You can have yes, no questions. Multiple choice. Even essay questions automatically screen out people who don't have the right qualifications.

(01:15:40):
You can reformat all of the resumes. So it's very easy to scan them and, and, and, and it makes it very easy to rank all your candidates and pick the right one fast. But, but I have to say, ZipRecruiter does one more thing that's really miraculous. Ziprecruiter has millions of resumes on Fox. People come to ZipRecruiter looking for work, right? So they scan through those, looking for candidates that match the qualifications, your requirements for the job you've got opening. And then they'll find those candidates and send them to you and say, here, here's some people we think would match. You. Look at the resumes and you invite the people you want. Now I have to tell you, when you invite somebody to, to, to apply for your job, that's like the golden ticket. I mean, they are so happy to be invited. They show up, they do the interviews, all of that stuff.

(01:16:27):
It's a really great way to begin that process. And then of course, <laugh>, you get a wonderful person. And we did. That's how we met Viva, who replaced Ashley and is wonderful. Thank you ZipRecruiter. Ziprecruiter also will let you do things to your posting with like little labels that speak to things like job flexibility. They may say things like remote training provided or urgent. If you're an and you are always urgent when you're trying to fill a position, right? It really helps your job stand out. It's just one more way. Ziprecruiter makes it easier to find the right person fast. Let ZipRecruiter fill all your roles with the right candidates like us. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. For us, it's usually before lunch. It's usually in a couple of hours. Say for yourself, go to this exclusive web address, try ZipRecruiter for free. And if you use this address, that's good for us. Cuz then they know you saw it here. Ziprecruiter.Com/Twit ziprecruiter.com/t W I t I can vouch for it. Ziprecruiter the smartest way to hire. Now don't any of you quit cuz we're on vacation, okay? Stay here <laugh>. At least until we get back. Now it's back to this week in tech. Thanks guys.

Devindra Hardawar (01:17:46):
Oh, I hope he's having some good food over wherever he is in Europe right now. I've lo I've lost track of of Leo. I think he was on a ship at some point. So hopefully Leo's having a good time. But we've still got some news to talk about here. We've got a great panel too. Nicholas de Leon from Consumer Reports Doc Rock YouTube master Anthony Hah from Antioch Ventures. What's up everybody? How are you guys doing? We are, we are at the tail end of the show. I know at least one of you is a first timer here. I I hope everyone's good. Got your new stamina up. Let's move on to some news from Google cuz Google is again, not, not as much in the news as some of these other companies. How many files do you guys think you have in your Google Drive? Do you have 5 million? Do you have over over 5 million files

Doc Rock (01:18:30):
In your Google Drive? I sure don't. Feels like a lot, but

Devindra Hardawar (01:18:34):
Seems like a lot. I mean, Google Drive has been around for a long time and I think people on Reddit and Google's don't support site. Like we're noticing that they just couldn't add a certain amount of files anymore. Google has announced that they've reduced that or removed that limit entirely. Just a really interesting thing to think about. Like given how long Google Drive has been there, I, how do you guys, have you guys been using Google Drive and Gmail? Like guess since they've been out?

Doc Rock (01:18:59):
Yes. Yeah, I remember remember reporting the launch and being very excited to be, yeah. Ray, do you remember back when you had to get like invites from somebody and then people were selling them on e I spent

Devindra Hardawar (01:19:11):
$5 on eBay for a Gmail invite. So that is

Doc Rock (01:19:13):
How I got it. That's so funny. I got my first Google, I mean I got my Gmail invite from Kevin Rose. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And at that time, like I was just, you know, in the chat first like, you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, he's like, guys, we got five to give away and they're doing like a show. It wasn't even live. It was like we were so

Devindra Hardawar (01:19:30):
Excited for Gmail.

Doc Rock (01:19:31):
Oh my God. Changed the

Devindra Hardawar (01:19:32):
World

Anthony Ha (01:19:33):
<Laugh>. I remember being so furious at whatever Google employee was also named Anthony Ha because he had claimed anthony hot gmail.com so I couldn't do it, which was, I'm still angry about,

Devindra Hardawar (01:19:44):
I'm sorry. Maybe one day you'll be able to chase him down and reclaim that email address. I don't know.

Anthony Ha (01:19:48):
<Laugh> I'll give you wherever you are. I'll give you $5 for it.

Devindra Hardawar (01:19:52):
Yeah. Anthony. Huh? Out there. You guys

Doc Rock (01:19:53):
Probably guys remember two guys. The thing that made Gmail amazing was you got 25 gigs of space. Was it

Devindra Hardawar (01:20:02):
25 worth like

Doc Rock (01:20:03):
Two? I I think it might have been like it was two. Two accident. It was two gig about two. You're correct, right? You're correct.

Devindra Hardawar (01:20:07):
This was like 2005, 2006. I was out of college and working in it and like it was a perfect time to be like, oh, this, this is cool as hell cuz I can talk to people about this. Like also the idea of like web-based email was, was still a little like fresh and new right? Because all we had was Hotmail. Yeah. And a couple

Doc Rock (01:20:26):
Others. The IMAP was still, yeah, it wasn't new, but as far as being used by a majority of the population. Yeah. actually it wasn't even the majority, it was the beginning of it was like we were using imap. Yeah. Other people were still on pop and wondering why, why do I bring up email here and it's missing you here.

Devindra Hardawar (01:20:42):
Acronyms back to me, doc. Like the things I used to have to set up like, oh, why, why do you want IMAP over pop three? And what about my exchange server? How do you connect all those things together? Man, it it is wild to think, oh, and now I actually,

Nicholas de Leon (01:20:55):
Yeah, Gmail launched in 2004 and it was one gigabyte and it was April 1st. I remember reading the slash do slash dot story still live. So I remember reading this when I was I guess I was technically still in high school when it launched. Yeah. But everyone was like a gigabyte. This is obviously a

Doc Rock (01:21:10):
Gigabyte.

Devindra Hardawar (01:21:10):
Was that

Nicholas de Leon (01:21:11):
Real? Was that the

Devindra Hardawar (01:21:12):
Private launch? Because for some reason I have two gigabytes embedded in my, in my birth. Yeah.

Doc Rock (01:21:16):
I have two in my

Nicholas de Leon (01:21:18):
First, I don't, I don't remember the, the private public.

Devindra Hardawar (01:21:22):
And there was in beta for forever, but man, that was just that that, that like changed the world, right? And like after Gmail, I just stopped configuring email clients altogether. Right. Like a, I guess post 2008, like when I left it and when I moved to New York, if you're just using Gmail for email, why would you configure that in your like desktop client? Just, just go to the website. Okay. I found it much easier

Doc Rock (01:21:43):
April 1st, 2005. Yes. To increase it to, to two gigabytes by Juan Carlos Peres. He wrote this article because that bananas people <laugh> absolutely bananas. It's crazy. And and you remember at that time if you were a Mac user, if your U or Outlook database, right? Cause we had the PST file, if it got to around two gigs, it started to get really like, messed up and wouldn't really work. Right? And so it was a big deal that you had two gigabytes and it would actually

Devindra Hardawar (01:22:16):
Work. Oh man, this is, yeah. And the idea in Google Drive just seems like this limitless limits storage box for you to like, share whatever you want. Legal stuff, illegal stuff. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna judge. See that does point out that Google was kind of unique compared to OneDrive Dropbox in other sites. Like they, they actually had a file number limit, which was like irrespective of your whatever storage you were paying for. So that limit when that limit, they started rolling out a drive limit in February and I think that's when people started noticing this restriction. Just a weird thing. And it seems like you're Google, you're worried about people having too many small files in their drive holders. I feel like you've got more pressing things to worry about. Google. Google's worried about ai, Google's worried about Bard and according because of this apparently too, they're gonna have fewer micro kitchens in their office. So, sorry, Googlers. No free, no free lunch, no more free lunches for you thanks to ai. I guess,

Anthony Ha (01:23:15):
Wait, what was the actual rationale?

Doc Rock (01:23:17):
I bo

Devindra Hardawar (01:23:17):
That is the reporting I have seen, I'm looking at a post here story here from Washington Post. They haven't said if an actual like reasoning, but all we know is like Google is focusing so much on Bard and so many other things. So they're cutting micro kitchens that populate their office with three snacks, cereal, sel, espresso, selzer water, stuff like that. They're also laying off a ton of people too. Right. So Google is in like a major cost cutting mode right now. So is Microsoft. So is pretty much every major tech company

Doc Rock (01:23:50):
We talked about Matter back break weekly, we talked about Apple doing it. Yep.

Devindra Hardawar (01:23:55):
I mean yeah, apple doing it too. I think Tim Cook like famously took a major pay cut right. As part of this or like wasn't getting a major pay. Yes.

Anthony Ha (01:24:03):
Although he's still making tens of millions of dollars. Yes. He'll be okay.

Devindra Hardawar (01:24:05):
He'll be okay. He has stock, he will be perfectly fine. But yeah, that was the thing. And also hearing that news compared to like what we've seen from some Japanese companies too. Like Nintendo being like, we'll just pay you guys more. Things are hard out here. We understand you employees. Here's more money instead of ticking away your jobs and your Christmas. So that's, that's something man,

Doc Rock (01:24:27):
Man is really interesting is to think about. Like I never, again, maybe just, you know, during the time being in Texas long, I never thought we'd get to the point where we're talking about the thing, if you will. Trying to cut costs. That part just seems absolutely bananas to me. Cuz you know, back when I was at corporate, the, the lavish just random things that would happen. I remember going into the cafeteria one day and like, oh, we have a sushi bar now. Yep. And the chef, we've flown in from Japan, <laugh>, you know, and it was cool. I speak Japanese, right? So it was cool to go to the counter and order my food in Japanese and he was so excited. That's cool to like be able to talk to some employee in Japanese. And it is just weird. I never thought we'd be talking about these guys cutting costs. And it does seem a little silly because yeah, they're still the richest companies out there. So

Devindra Hardawar (01:25:21):
For sure. Like they, they were still I have not seen Google's earnings. I mean, everybody was worried about profits slowing. I don't know if profits have actually dipped for Google. Anthony, you may be paying closer attention to that sort of thing, but I don't like Microsoft, like was was seeing they they have been so high in cloud earnings for a while and that dipped a little bit and everybody freaked out. So I don't know. I, I don't know what's going on here. But another, another indignity to Google employees. They may be issued a Chromebook instead of a MacBook. Yeah. the next time they get a new computer. So I find that just hilarious. Not the biggest Chromebook fan in the world. But yeah, that, that is like a, so many different things, cost cutting measures all over the place. And related to like all of this too related to the layoffs, Google workers in London, in London also staged a walkout a walkout protest over this stuff too. So It is, it is very weird. Like I'm sure we're gonna look at Google and see like, oh yeah. Their, their revenues are still like killing it. 

Anthony Ha (01:26:23):
I mean, I think that weird place, it's, it's easy also to focus on sort of some of the more kind of fun headlines mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like the micro kitchens Chromebooks instead of a MacBook. Yeah. Although I would, I would definitely struggle with that. I think many,

Devindra Hardawar (01:26:36):
Yeah,

Anthony Ha (01:26:37):
<Laugh> the challenge I, or I guess the bigger question and, and, and this is also the docs point, right? Is like, it's not just the companies could spend lavishly because yes, they were, you know, pampering their engineers and whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but it was also about the idea that they were doing well enough and Wall Street investors were, were impressed with them enough that they could be like, Hey, we're gonna invest in these projects and they're not gonna pay off for 10 years and we're just g but we think it's important for where the future is going. And and we can spend billions of dollars on this. And, you know, sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. But I think that if you go to a situation where, you know, Google, Facebook, you know, Fang has to be just super, super hyper focused on like, what is the quarterly earnings report look like? Have we cut costs enough? Yeah. That like the analyst will be happy with us. That is I think a, a yeah, I mean that, that that's just a very, very different environment and, and I think that really changes the culture of these companies and their ability to you know, build for the future. And, and to think long term.

Devindra Hardawar (01:27:37):
I must wonder how much of this is a response to, to people just saying like, they, they want to work remotely more too. Like, you're not gonna have as many office perks at all. Although Google and a lot of other companies are trying to get people back into the office at least part of the week too. So this is a weird pusha pull thing happening over on the Google side of things. It kind of is funny to me to think that going to Chromebooks is kind of a downsizing for Google employees too, but also now everybody needs a MacBook, so I get it. I totally get it. It is also weird as somebody I used to have to, you know, figure out the it purchasing plan for a small college and like, I took that seriously. It was like, okay, I want my users to have the good stuff that they can actually use that will be functional for them. It's gonna be hard to justify Chromebooks just for some people, but I guess if you work at Google, that's most of your work, right? You probably don't need too many other apps.

Anthony Ha (01:28:25):
Just imagine like being at the Google office and suddenly having a MacBook. Is Uhhuh <affirmative> the status symbol? Cause I imagine there's some people that they're not, they're gonna be like, no, I'm keeping this computer get the hell away from me. <Laugh>,

Devindra Hardawar (01:28:35):
<Laugh>. I have to make art, I have to do all sorts of stuff. Yeah, the Chromebook is not enough. Hey, I, I love the idea of Chromebooks. I love the idea of cheap Chromebooks, but man, when they started getting expensive, when they started becoming premium computers, I, I just had to raise my hand and call shenanigans on some of that stuff. Okay. Moving on from Google, what do you guys feel about E three? I don't know if Twit has talked about this yet, but this is something we have been talking about in Gadget quite a bit because we were trying to figure out like, hey, E three is the big video game trade show. You know, typically happens annually in la although I think I forget if there was actually a live one last year and after, you know, in 2020 it was canceled because of the pandemic. They've been virtual for a little while as I recall. But E 3 20 23 is officially canceled. And to me this signal's like a huge sea change for the video game industry and like the media landscape around gaming to any thoughts on this before we dive further? I

Nicholas de Leon (01:29:34):
Will say video games were the first kind of tech thing that I cared about as a kid. I remember reading about E three and, and Game Pro and Nintendo Power. I, I I, it sounded like Disney. It was like, oh my God, I have to get to E three. Mm-Hmm. I was lucky enough to report on E three for a couple years for various publications. Yeah, and I agree, it, it feels like this is, you know, they haven't said that E three is canceled forever, but this year is canceled. And you know, the reasons why our, our, there's multiple, you know, all the publishers have their own Twitch streams, Nintendo, you know, Nintendo directs. They don't really need to pay the e s a site fee to tell the world about the new Zelda game or to tell the world about the new assassins Creed or whatever it may be.

(01:30:16):
 So I do think that the idea of kind of like a centralized trade show to show trailers for new games is kind of, you know, especially if you're like cost cutting or like looking at like, mm, do we really just spend all that money, fly these people out? It's like, it doesn't make a ton of sense when you can get just as much engagement for free on Twitch or YouTube or whatever the case may be, or hosting your own event where you're kind of like what Apple does, which Apple doesn't go to Macworld anymore. They have their own shows. You know, they control the production from A to Z. So if you're electronic arts, if you're Microsoft an Xbox at most, why don't we just have our own show where we control everything and we can keep the cost so to where we like them. So yeah, it does feel, you know, as, as a, as a rapidly aging gamer it does feel a little sad that it's, it's all, it's like, oh man, yeah, E three is like, it used to be really cool. Like, it's hard to, you know, if you're, if you're 18 years old today, you probably don't understand what E three was is

Devindra Hardawar (01:31:12):
Kids these days are so spoiled. They have a perfectly realistic Mario movie that they can go see that looks exactly a, which I saw

Nicholas de Leon (01:31:19):
Yesterday was awesome of his grid nose enough like man service in there to make me happy. But yeah, it does feel sad that E three, like the shiny event, our Oscars, our like big event of the year is now like kind of going away.

Devindra Hardawar (01:31:32):
It's kind of depressing. Anthony Knock. No, it's funny. Yep.

Doc Rock (01:31:35):
What's funny, Nicholas, is I was gonna say to me one of the saddest moments of my life in tech was the day that we're all walking outta Moscone at the very last Mac World <laugh>. Now the last three were already, apple wasn't even coming. Yeah. It was mostly all of us guys from, you know, Gizmoto and Gadget to you know, all the other sites out there, Mac, Oskin, Merlin Mann, you know, all of the top guys, Brett Turk and everybody. We would all get together, hang out, enjoy each other's company, see new tech that was coming out, enjoy all of the 1300 cases. <Laugh>, that was the joke at the time was it's like, you know, case fest and it was like, ah, sad to see you go, but we'll be all. And I swear to you every since then, we get together about the same time every year and start messaging us, man, I miss you, bro.

(01:32:25):
I wish I could see you. Or you know, it's kind of funny. And you know Gloria, the foreman in Callie Lewis, like, I talked to her literally every day and you know, Mac was when, you know, we would see each other in real life and, and you know, get, get to hang out. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, that part of it is going to suck, but you are so right. They could do so much better with their own. And once you know Google io and you know, Facebook's event and then again, you know, ww d c that has already proven that everybody, that you should kind of just run your own event. If you're big enough, it's so much better. Yeah. If you're big enough. Yeah. So where it hurts is it hurts the small guys, the guys that are creating things to move the industry along and a lot of comp, this is so crazy now, a lot of companies come from that last back wall where the tiny little small companies I work for one of those companies now <laugh> that used to be on the back wall.

(01:33:19):
They, they made a cool plugin for printer called Protopia and now we're Eche m live in, you know, Skype call Recorder and one of the best live streaming platforms. But I remember when those guys were teenagers with the little table in the corner, and after I worked with them and I got to meet them again, I was like, man, I swear I met these guys before, just happened to be cleaning the Mac world, like business card box. And I found Glen's card and I was like, Glen, I did interview back in like 2013, I interviewed you about like print topia or eyeglasses. And it's funny that I worked there with them now. And so, so many good companies came from that small, you know, back wall speed anchor could even, you know, they were just mm-hmm. <Affirmative> tiny guys in the corner, and now they're beams, you know, it

Devindra Hardawar (01:34:05):
Does feel like we're losing something. Right. So, like, Nicholas, like I'm, I'm right there with you. Like, I, my formative tech moment was, I was probably five years old, and I saw Super Mario Brothers won at my cousin's house, and I was like, oh, like lightning struck my brain. And I was like, oh, everything is different after this. So I remember like crying and wailing and like, not wanting to leave that room at all. And I got an NEA shortly after. But yeah, games were always my first tech love. So I also read about E three in Game Pro as a kid. It was like in the nineties be like, oh, this is the coolest thing. I'd love to go here at some point. In high school, I was an electronic sales associate at Office OfficeMax, which made me industry. I was like, oh man, I was, I was just excited about the possibility of even getting, potentially getting to go.

(01:34:48):
 Never actually went in high school. No. but yeah, I, I, I enjoyed going to the show. Like, it was really cool to like, see these events, see some of the booths. I went shortly after the switch launch, so I saw like a whole bunch of stuff, and the head of like Mario Odyssey, Nin had like a crazy booth for that. It, it is like, it's an incredible thing. That's also a weird thing because it is a trade show. It's a place made for business deals. It's not really the place where you always go to see the shiny new things. It it, it's a weird thing. It's a very strange thing because yeah, all the companies can do their own stuff now. And also you've got packs, you've got other ways. You've got the summer game show. You've got Jeff Keely, like doing his own shows and premiering trailers all the time and being really like, buddy-buddy with developers. So the landscape is just so different. E like, there is no room for E three anymore, sort of, and I understand why. I'm just sad about it personally. Yeah.

Anthony Ha (01:35:42):
Same. Yeah.

Devindra Hardawar (01:35:43):
Yep. Anthony, any thoughts? I don't know if E three was on your radar at all.

Anthony Ha (01:35:48):
Not, I mean, it was definitely, I had the same experience as you guys as a kid. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> where I would, I would read about it a lot and think about going. I think that once I got into writing about tech professionally, the, the, the game, the gaming world was sort of so separate that I didn't really spend a lot of time there. But my sense of it was also that it was like a beast, right? It was just so big. And it's

Devindra Hardawar (01:36:11):
Interesting. So many, so many people. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Ha (01:36:12):
<Laugh>. And it's interesting to wonder about, you know, like you guys were talking about, there's so many other game events on the calendar. I I imagine others will come up as sort of filling that vacuum for, for E three, but to what, where is there still room for like, the giant trade show that like, is just a giant convention center? Yeah. That you have to, like, you get hired, you know, just walking from one end to the other.

Devindra Hardawar (01:36:33):
I feel like that that's Gamescom. So that's the thing in Clone Germany, which is bigger than E three, like Commons. Interesting. Freaking huge. And I've done Gamescom, I did one year, and that was a horrible trip. But Gamescom itself was kind of cool. But yeah, that, that is a thing that still exists, I think. And that was always like, apl a better place for your European and Asian developers to kind of join up and talk to each other. So, right. I think that'll still be the thing. But I, I will miss E three, E three, like represented so much of gaming for me, but yeah, things are just so, so different. Now let's head back to Leo for another sponsor.

Leo Laporte (01:37:05):
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Devindra Hardawar (01:40:06):
Thanks Leo. I am so jealous. And let's check out what else is happening on the TWIT network this week,

Devindra Hardawar (01:41:57):
And we're back. And you know what guys, we were just talking about the Super Mario Brothers movie Nicholas, you, it sounds like you've seen already, Anthony. Yes. Doc. Have you guys seen it yet? Not

Nicholas de Leon (01:42:07):
Yet. Not

Anthony Ha (01:42:08):
Yet. I wanted to see Dungeons and Dragons instead. Also Good Choice, which I highly

Devindra Hardawar (01:42:11):
Recommend. Yeah, that movie, that movie. I'm waiting. We are weird spoiled for great movies right now, guys. John Wick four, all this stuff. Yeah, yeah. Just wanna point out like I think a lot of us expected the Super Myer Brothers movie to be big, but it is apparently a phenomenon. It is huge. Over its five day opening weekend. It's raked in $146 million domestically which makes it the biggest release of the year. And the global debut, the global like box office is 377.5 million. I've read globally. That is the largest debut, the largest opening for an animated movie. But I'm seeing like com com conflicting stats there. That's a lot of money. It's doing pretty well, certainly better than the Live action Meyer Brothers movie from what, 91, 92. So minute. Yeah, <laugh>, I saw that as a kid and it broke my heart and I saw this one as like, okay, not, not perfect.

(01:43:05):
 I reviewed it over at a gadget. But it is certainly like the, the animation is beautiful. Like, I think it's funny enough and I think like Jack Black as Bowser Perfect. That was a great choice. Not all the casting is good. I'm not, not a huge fan of Chris Pratt. But good, a good thing for Mario. I'm probably like a good thing for whatever Nintendo decides to do moving forward. I seem to, I've read that there was a Zelda movie in the works. Thoughts, guys. Like is it, is it a good thing that this movie, which is not the best movie out there, but seems good enough for kids, you know, is a good or bad thing that's being so successful?

Nicholas de Leon (01:43:38):
I think it's kind of speaks to Nintendo's kind of expertise at like stewarding their, their IP to sound like a Wall Street Journal article. They're really good at that type of, they just opened up the the theme park in California. It was a very good movie. It, you know, for kids for 40 year old kids. It, it, it hit pretty much hit all the notes for me. There was enough like fan service and kinda like inside references that unless you really played the Games of death, you wouldn't have noticed. Yeah. but yeah, I think it was just really well executed and yeah, I, I, you know, let there be more, I I would look forward to a Zelda movie a Mario too, like the Donkey Con was in there. It, they seem to, this is, I don't know, this is about as good as it was gonna be. I think. 

Devindra Hardawar (01:44:19):
It's, yeah, I'd say it's very basic and sort of like, my thing is, it's also like very safe, right? I almost feel like Nintendo, like, was there like Nintendo executives were there approving every single decision. Like whatever happened here is like, we cannot have another Mario movie failure, right? We have to, it has to be perfect. It has to be exactly what the fans want. And I do kind of feel like it's a bit constrained by that because ultimately it is. Mario goes to the Mushroom Kingdom with Luigi and you know, they defeat Bowser. Like, that's it, it's everything we've seen before. You hit some super, you hit some Smash Brothers references, you got some Mario Card stuff in there. You have Seth Rogan, his Donkey Kong, good casting. I don't think he, he was actually doing that much, but you know, Jack Black is Bowser not going full meatloaf, but certainly Bowser doing a few like rock ballads on the, on the piano.

(01:45:07):
Like that one's fun, fun enough, I feel like is a thing. I'm hoping like moving forward, like they, Nintendo lets them actually stretch a little, maybe creatively, I don't know, like maybe I compare everything to the Lego movie, which is a fricking masterpiece, right? And we've had so many good animated movies mainly because of Christopher Miller and Philip Lord. I mean they were partially behind into the Spider versus Rel so really anything those guys touch is gold, but we're a little spoiled. And then I do not understand the abject hate from some of the reviews for this movie, cuz I've seen, I have a lot of film critic friends and some people like want to destroy this movie even though I'm like, guys, I, I sat through Space Jam too, you know, I've sat through far worse movies aimed at kids that activate far fewer brain cells in this thing. So, I don't know, I was totally fine with it. Anthony Doc, like, will you guys ever end up seeing it? You think

Doc Rock (01:45:59):
I'll probably have no choice cuz of my niece, but I'm just glad to hear somebody else say that they're not a fan of Chris Pratt. I, I

Devindra Hardawar (01:46:08):
<Laugh>. I mean, listen, say yeah. That, that's a whole online controversy. I think he's perfectly fine. The internet kind of turned on him at one point. I loved him Parks and Rec. I loved him in the first Two Guardians of the Galaxy movies. And then I think it was Jurassic World where everybody was like, oh no. What, what we, if we allowed Chris Pratt to turn into and I hate Jurassic World so much. Yes. all

Doc Rock (01:46:29):
Right, cool. We're on the same page. Oh, right, right down the list. You covered it. <Laugh>

Devindra Hardawar (01:46:33):
<Laugh>, that's like the whole, the whole thing. I I think the thing is there was a lot of controversy around his casting, right? And mainly because people were like, he didn't, he just voice a cartoon man. Like he, he was also the lead in the Lego movie, which is a very good movie. His Maori voice is kind of uninspired. And this movie also had a big delay. And I think we don't fully know like what was the cause of that delay if it was like story work or whatever. But it could have been something as simple as like having to redo the lines. And there were stories that his original Mario voice was a little like Tony Soprano esque and maybe intended didn't want that. Understandable. I guess. Yeah. The next one

Doc Rock (01:47:11):
Will be voiced by 11 labs. So I guess we gotta take crap while we

Devindra Hardawar (01:47:15):
Here. Oh my God. I mean, char Charles Martine is in the movie The Voice of Mario as we know him but not playing. He's playing Mario's dad, another character. I'll keep a little secret. The fun little fun little surprise. But yeah, he's literally Mario's dad. So anyway, ma movie is a thing. Hugely successful. Take that sonic, I guess. I don't know. It's more successful than Sonic, except I think that movie is actually more fun and took more creative risks because it had Jim Carey in full on like Jim Carey's zaney mode. So man, I, it is a weird thing to think about, but I guess also take ahead far less to lose, right?

Doc Rock (01:47:52):
It's

Devindra Hardawar (01:47:52):
True. Kind of in other gaming news. Something I wanna mention too that broke towards the end of this week, there was a report from Insider Gaming about a new PlayStation handheld and a very confusing one cuz according to the, to the report, it is an eight, it has an eight inch screen. It is an, all it does is remote play from the PlayStation five. That's at least according to the report, it is a screen that you hold with a game controller and apparently has like dual sense. It has like the dual sense motion stuff and the haptic feedback, but it is just a, a dummy screen for the remote play on the PS five. We don't know if this is actually going to be a thing. But looking at Sony as a company, I am always deeply frustrated with, I'm like, this sounds like a dumb thing Sony would do. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Thoughts, guys, if this actually ends up being a remote play device only,

Nicholas de Leon (01:48:43):
I will say that I'm surprised at how popular remote play and kind of local game streaming is. I did not to, like, you don't have to go far online to, to find people talking about how awesome it is. So that is, that was kind of surprising to me. But yeah, I guess if Sony wants, I mean they've seen the success of the switch, the steam deck, which to me was the gadget.

Devindra Hardawar (01:49:01):
It's really a steam deck

Nicholas de Leon (01:49:02):
2020 I guess gadget last year mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it is really kind of changed the way that I play games pretty substantially actually. And then there are, there are smaller kind of Chinese cubs, NIC retro that kind of or go that, that like produced these handheld devices that unlock the ability to play stream games either from the cloud or from your local network. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that was not a thing five years ago, certainly 10 years ago. So yeah, I guess I would also agree that I'm a little bit frustrated with what Sony does. It's like, why can't you just make the Vita too? That would be nice.

Devindra Hardawar (01:49:33):
I case you just be good. Why can't you can't

Nicholas de Leon (01:49:34):
You just be normal? So

Devindra Hardawar (01:49:36):
It's just be normal. I reviewed, I think two or three years ago I reviewed some next speakers that Sony made, which were literally like, it was like a, a cow collar that sits around your neck and they're just speakers that point up and they didn't support Bluetooth. They were requiring this weird like wired dongle. And they were very clunky and they didn't sound good. And they cost like think over $300. And the entire time I was writing my writeup of that thing, I was like, what are you doing Sony? Like you are Sony. You gave us the Walkman you gave us the PlayStation, nobody wants next speakers. What are you doing? Meanwhile they can still produce some of the like, best headphones out there. The noise canceling stuff are still really good. It's, it's just funny to me, like I, yeah, I would not be surprised if Sony made a thing like this. The only thing is if it was a hundred dollars or less, I could see that being useful to people if they just want to remote play from their PlayStation five. Otherwise just you could probably get any, any sort of like game streaming. Sure. You know, handheld that would cost 200 ish and would also be able to use cloud streaming. Which I think to a lot of people would be more useful. Right.

Nicholas de Leon (01:50:46):
Yeah. That was one of the bigger criticisms of the Logitech

Devindra Hardawar (01:50:49):
Right.

Nicholas de Leon (01:50:51):
From last year where it was like really cool device, but it was like, eh, it was like a hundred dollars too expensive for what it does. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So pricing seems to be for the, if you, if you're just releasing a screen, basically you have to price that appropriately. If it's not like a full powered console or whatever and you're just selling a screen with some buttons attached to it people are aware of what that should cost. And especially Sony, I mean they had just launched the PSVR two, which doesn't appear to have gone super well, at least early indications. Yeah. so yeah, I don't know what they're do in hardware wise,

Devindra Hardawar (01:51:22):
Slow, slow sales error. And I reviewed the PSVR two and my, my main complaint there was like, oh my God, this hardware is amazing. Why is it more expensive than the PlayStation five? So it's, what are you doing? It is strange. I mean the tech, the tech and the PSV are two is very good. Like compared to a lot of other VR headsets, I'm sure they're, they're probably already selling that at a loss. But if they want this thing to actually succeed, I, Sony kinda has to bite the bullet a little more. I'd say. Anthony, have you partake in any of these little handheld gaming devices? Cuz I, I don't know, I don't think you have a PC that would play games, but these things like solve a lot of problems for you and people who want to play games. Yeah.

Anthony Ha (01:52:01):
Honestly, like I think that most of my gaming at this point is yeah, like on my Mac or on my iPad. So I'm not like a super serious gamer. I did own the original PlayStation P S P and, and that is actually the one Sony device, I mean gaming device that I've ever purchased <laugh>. So, you know, bring back the, the P S P, why not? But I, yeah, I, I think like the steam deck obviously is the one that is the most interesting to me. And, and I felt like at first a lot of the reviews were saying, Hey, it's not quite there. This is really for you know, people who want, who really wanna be on the bleeding edge. Yeah. And now it seems like it's starting to get to the point where I'm, I am considering it. I'm not very seriously.

Devindra Hardawar (01:52:41):
Yeah. With, with the price breaks. I do feel like for, for you Anthony, and for like a lot of people who can't justify gaming PC or even like a game console, something like that, it's just like, well you could use it as sort of a console. You could dock it to your tv but also it would give you access to so many games that you're probably hearing people talk about. And you have no easy way to play. You know, and with cloud streaming you could play games that are even too powerful for that handheld system to handle. So what

Doc Rock (01:53:04):
Was cool about the PSP when it was, when it was out and very popular at the time was during my time in college in Japan. And then, so the amount of people see, people forget that, you know, Sony, although it's a globalist company, they're still a Japanese company at heart. Yes. So two things that come to mind. Number one, it's if, if I hired AME and I'm the boss, it's hard for me to fire him because it makes me look like I did something dumb. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So what they might do is put him on the project in the corner like, I need you to make next speakers Uhhuh <affirmative> and after you make those next speakers in, they're hot trash. Good. That was dumb idea. Anthony Uhk. Wow.

Devindra Hardawar (01:53:48):
Wow.

Doc Rock (01:53:49):
So I'm assuming those are, those are like the, it's sweating, imagining this <laugh>, those, those are se pku jobs. Right? I'm imagining. But to me that device was so good and so I traveled from basically nearby Giza, a place called Eddo Gulab Bashi every day to Congo to go to my university. And so that time in the train everybody was, you know, with their psps or at that time the DS was very popular. Yeah. And everybody What year was

Devindra Hardawar (01:54:15):
This? Was this like a five

Doc Rock (01:54:17):
Playing? Oh six.

Devindra Hardawar (01:54:17):
Oh six, okay.

Doc Rock (01:54:18):
Yeah. Oh 5 0 6. Yeah. So everybody's there playing all of the games and it was fantastic. You would go to these stores, you would meet people outside and you know, discuss new games and you know, trade gamer handles and things like that. You know, it was a really cool situation. The phone brought a lot of that level stuff, but the controls are junk. So when steel and these other guys made boxes, you could wrap your phone with mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that would do it. Or the last update that allows us to just connect a dual shot controller or an Xbox Elite controller to your phone and go to town that kind of like covered it. But there was something so dope about a device that was just for gaming. Yep.

Devindra Hardawar (01:54:59):
If your

Doc Rock (01:55:00):
Pocket switch is doing so good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I would love for Sony to get out of their own way and come back and even Microsoft, cuz I'm actually a little bit more Xbox these days. Uhhuh, <affirmative>, I would appreciate them coming up with the switch level device. And the hardest part of that right now, I believe is the only people that make a processor dope enough to do all of that and giving them the processor. And that's my team. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they gotta keep, they gotta come up with a processor that's, you know, MX oriented that will allow them to bring all of that fire power to such a small device.

Devindra Hardawar (01:55:36):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I mean one of the reasons the Steam deck has done so well is because of you know, better radi on like mobile graphics. That's, that's kind of it. Like, and the GPU's getting better for handheld. So I could, I could see Microsoft dipping their toes in this there, there have been rumors about that too. But at the same time, like man, I, I sometimes just pick up my Vita and look at that thing and was like, this is a beautiful object. This is a beautiful piece of consumer electronics and I really wish Sony had given it more of a chance. You know, whoever,

Doc Rock (01:56:04):
Whoever gets in bed with Nvidia and locks them down will bring it to the table. Cuz Nvidia is the closest right now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Nvidia just has some amazing stuff. So whoever can like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> without them trying to do their own thing because they're not good at doing that. Right. They need to work with a legacy partner. And I feel if Sony and or Microsoft would jump in with Nvidia and be like, let's lock this down and not lose it, they could take on and just bury the switch.

Devindra Hardawar (01:56:32):
It could be, I mean that, that could be something. I do feel like everyone's looking at Amm D now because the PlayStation five, the Xbox, all the Xboxes are powered by AM MD and AMD is much better at integrated hardware rather than So True story. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll see. I would love to see that. I would just love to see Sony succeed again because I wrote a piece a couple years ago I think on Sony's like one of Sony's major anniversaries and they would not talk to me for that piece. And the piece ended up being will Sony ever be like a consumer electronics king or Titan again? Cuz it doesn't seem like it, like they're a company held up entirely by PlayStation and Spider-Man at this point. Pretty much

Doc Rock (01:57:09):
Like the mini, this battle broke my heart. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I have a stack right there. I have a massive stack of being this and my player finally gave out. But to me that was one of the dopest pieces of tech. And somebody's mentioning in the chat how that the p the PS p ran on mini disk. Yo I was heavy into my music creation at the time.

Devindra Hardawar (01:57:28):
I was so in high school I would look at the mini disks and be like, this is cool, this is the future. Cuz it would also occasionally pop up in anime. Right. And I was like, Japan's just another planet because the tech that they have is just far beyond whatever I was living with at the time. So. Okay, that's great. Well we'll see, we'll see what's gonna happen with this potential

Doc Rock (01:57:48):
Dream in Japan. You can actually rent them, you know, so you wanted to hear a new album and it was like a lot of final Fantasy game soundtracks or whatever you would just go to satay and Rin your little mini dis and listen to that on the train on the way to Clutch. You know, it was so cool and I was really sad to see it go.

Devindra Hardawar (01:58:05):
That's a shame. That's a shame. You know what, like yeah, I'm hoping Sony comes back with something. By the way, this thing's reportedly called the Q Light and if that is the name then it does make sense. It's just like a remote streaming box. So that's kind of a thing. That totally makes sense. And you know what, I also co-host the Gadget podcast guys. And what I like to do at the end of my show is, is to like talk to you all about what you're watching and what you're experiencing right now. So is there anything that's making you happy these days? Any pop culture, any media you wanna shout out to, to tell the world about on Twitter?

Anthony Ha (01:58:35):
I just started watching Beef on Netflixs.

Doc Rock (01:58:38):
Yeah.

Anthony Ha (01:58:39):
And it is, it's hard to watch cuz so much tension mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and it's like so real in a lot of ways. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But like, it's in like, not to get super deep or anything, but like, you know, I'm an Asian American guy, like, and I'm in therapy right now. One of the things we talk a lot about is like being an Asian American and anger and repression and like, this is perfect. Like literally I want my next therapy session to just be like, Hey, can we just like watch together and talk about it? Uhhuh <affirmative>. But even if that's not you, I think it's a great show. I mean it's just like, like the acting is amazing. Like, it's like really weird too. And, and everything feels like perfectly observed. Highly, highly recommend beef.

Devindra Hardawar (01:59:17):
Just to frame it. Beef is Stephen Yune versus Ali Wong and like an epic, epic beef battle, which starts off with a road rage incident and just like gets, gets more and more crazy and kind of wild. A critic I really enjoy and one of my friends works on Haddadi her review at Vulture is Beef feels bad, but she loves it. So it's a positive review, but it feel it's bad vibes because of like how tense the show makes you. So that is a really good one. Thank you Anthony. You guys have anything else you wanna shout?

Doc Rock (01:59:47):
It's funny, I'm, I'm watching Beef. Of course. Here's, here's something that you guys might not know most of my, my crowd knows I was adopted by Korean family. So I grew up mostly in Asian culture and went to college in Japan. I live in Hawaii which is, you know, 76% Asian population. So I fully understand the, what's going on in beef and it's kind of hilarious to me cuz I'm like, if my dad was still alive, he would look at Steven and be like, that's you when you drive, you know, <laugh>, my dad always get mad at me cause I'm such a road ranger. But my road rage would come from Hawaii. People just drive bad. And you know, growing up in the East Coast, like I was around bad people that actually knew how to drive in Hawaii, they're bad people that can't drive <laugh>.

(02:00:36):
So, and my dad used to always give me so much crap cuz I was always yelling at people, you know, they can't hear you so if you gonna yell at them, road out the window so they can hear you. And I'm like, then we're gonna have to get into a fight. And so yeah, beef is trip, but for me it, I don't know why cuz it's so campy and it's so cheesy, but it's the best thing running. It's like water is not special mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But when you're super thirsty, a ice cold glass of water is so refreshing. And to me, Ted lasso is water. Mm. Like, it, it, he's getting better, you know? And now they're teasing us with this being the end. And yet they might, you know, there's a lot of like side conversation about there might be back with another four lasso is just so good. And it just lets you know that TV can be great and doesn't have to be so messed up and controversial. Whatever you can touch on issues without being campy about it. And I think again, you know, secret sauce, I've been far removed from the Fruit Farm, but I'm rooting for us as Aru a streaming service. So, you know, winning 11 Emmys and having them do so well. And then, you know, when you're done with that you can watch shrinkage you know, like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So

Devindra Hardawar (02:01:48):
Yeah. Shrinking, shrinking shrinkage is something else. <Laugh>

Nicholas de Leon (02:01:51):
<Laugh>, right. Def

Doc Rock (02:01:54):
So you are the one old guy. He says dumb stuff. But yeah, it's, it's so good. And I hope that they can continue and I'm ready to see some of the spinoffs because I feel it has positively impacted so, so many people. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and that's just rare in TV nowadays.

Devindra Hardawar (02:02:12):
Yeah. It's, I mean, it's a sweet show. It's about people trying to be better people and kinder and nicer to each other, even though they're like, they're swearing. There are adult situations and there's like conflict in there too. It's such a rare show. But I, I'll throw another shout out to Shrinking Doc because I've been watching that too. That's co-created by Brett Goldstein you know, who's also on Ted Lasso and also writer on Ted Lasso. And also Bill Lawrence, who co-created Ted Lasso and also was the creator of Scrubs. So if anybody, if you like the Vibes of Scrubs, if you like that another feel good show, awesome show still like holds up today if you rewatch it. Shrinking is a show about a therapist who kind of has like an existential crisis is dealing with the grief of the death of his wife. And it's about him trying to piece his life back together. And it's very much like Ted Lasso in that it is kind of a sad story about somebody who's kind of hurt, but it's really about everybody coming together to help them and then trying to like find their purpose in life. So shrinking also really good. Like, shout out Bill Lawrence. Thank you. Thank you for bringing

Doc Rock (02:03:14):
Tv.

Devindra Hardawar (02:03:15):
Thanks. Nicholas, anything you wanna shout out?

Nicholas de Leon (02:03:17):
Yeah, there is a local game story here in Tucson that will be having a Game of Thrones trivia night in a few weeks. Oh wow. And I am now watching Game of Thrones more or less for the first time this, this, this. Wow. Big Shot people. Yeah. I, I feel like I saw some of the episodes when it first came out, but not, not really basically. And so I'm just about to wrap up Season one. It helps to have the subtitles on Uhhuh <affirmative> but it is very good. I'm enjoying it so far. So that is, that's this hot new show that I'm watching. <Laugh> Game of Throne in Season One.

Anthony Ha (02:03:51):
How far are you gonna try to get for the trivia night <laugh>? 

Nicholas de Leon (02:03:53):
I think I got two weeks. I feel like I could finish a season. What is it? It's been like two or three days, so, I don't know. Probably at least half I'm shooting for, I mean, I don't anticipate doing well in trivia to be honest. But that yeah, that's what I'm up to.

Devindra Hardawar (02:04:07):
I mean, you're, you're gonna power through the good seasons. I think you'll have a good time with that. Well, all right folks. Well, thank you so much. Anthony Ha from Antioch Ventures. How are things going in Harlem and New York, Anthony?

Anthony Ha (02:04:20):
Things are good. You know, I, I think sometimes you hear things about how New York, I mean, cities are crazy now. New York is great and not everything's perfect. I mean, rent is still insane. Don't get me started on that. But

Devindra Hardawar (02:04:32):
Good. Another reason I I I probably can't live live in the city again with a family, but Yeah. Yeah. I

Anthony Ha (02:04:37):
Don't know. I feel like things, yeah, things just have to get a little bit worse and the nitty rent will get better. We'll see. Finger fingers crossed,

Devindra Hardawar (02:04:43):
<Laugh>. All right. We've got Doc Rock from YouTube and Hawaii and now I'm so jealous. Doc Rock of like your life in Hawaii. Thank you so much for

Doc Rock (02:04:52):
Joining us. It's good. It's good for the weather. There are other reasons why I wish I was able to go somewhere closer. Cause I'm going to na b in in a couple days and it's just always a trek, you know, like at, at when I'm in home in the mainland, like it's a, I'm just right there. But here it's, it's like a whole trek. And so yeah buddy, we were talking about conferences. I'm fixing to go to a conference that is not gonna be, you know, as fun as E three, but I'm ready to go. <Laugh>

Devindra Hardawar (02:05:17):
Ready to go. Awesome. And actually I forgot to ask but Doc, where can we find you on the internet these days?

Doc Rock (02:05:23):
I'm Doc Rock on just about anything. Anything. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I do a lot of stuff on e cam Live channel on YouTube and on my own personal channel on YouTube. And I mostly talk about trying to get people who run businesses to understand that creating is probably the best way to really connect with your customers. Hmm. And so if you miss the social media boat or whatever, don't worry about it. I can teach people how to get their creative juices form to connect with their community and stuff like that because it is just amazing when you guys do your podcast and it's, it's live and we all get to watch. It's it, to me that's the interaction that people are missing. And you could tell by the chat, look at all these lovely people in the chat hanging out with us today on Easter. Thank you.

Devindra Hardawar (02:06:04):
Chat. Thank

Doc Rock (02:06:05):
You. You know what I mean? So yeah. Big ups to those guys.

Devindra Hardawar (02:06:08):
And Anthony, where can we find you online, by the way?

Anthony Ha (02:06:10):
I'm at Anthony Ha most places though, not on Gmail cause, which I'm still good about. I also would, I guess if you're, if you're a founder and, and interested in talking to me in my ENaC capacity, we're just enac.vc. And then I have a podcast where we review streaming shows original content.

Devindra Hardawar (02:06:28):
Original content. Love it. Nicholas de Leone from consumer Reports. Yeah. How are you doing? You know, and doing Find you online? Yeah,

Nicholas de Leon (02:06:35):
Yeah. No consumer Reports, I have nothing in particular to plug Just consumer reports.org all this stuff is there. I do have a personal project the Hour Time show, which is a podcast about like the watch industry, so like Rolex and seko Oh, cool. And that type of thing, if folks wanna check it out. But yeah, just cr.org. And I'm working on some, a lot of home office stuff recently. Some I can't talk about right now, but nothing in particular to plug. So just search Consumer Reports and, and that'll do it.

Devindra Hardawar (02:07:03):
And I think we can find you on Twitter too, right, Nicholas? Yeah,

Nicholas de Leon (02:07:05):
I'm on Twitter. Yeah. And I, and I mo it's mostly like sports stuff and video games, so it's don't come for like cr advice <laugh>, but please go to the email. I feel like I field questions via email from folks kind of frequently. I'm happy to answer any question that I can, that it's within kind of my remit or point you in the right direction of the, of the person who's, who does the car stuff or who does like the refrigerator stuff. Just reach out to me. I'm happy to help basically in any capacity that I can.

Devindra Hardawar (02:07:31):
So. Great. Thank you so much. You I love this crew. Cool. What's up doc?

Doc Rock (02:07:36):
I say who knew he was a horror. That's cool. I actually like that.

Devindra Hardawar (02:07:40):
That's super cool. I also thought that word always confuses me is like, is that a new frame for just w people who really like horror movies? It's no, it's, yes.

Doc Rock (02:07:48):
Oh, I, nevermind. Never find, I thought you were asking. That is so bad. <Laugh>.

Devindra Hardawar (02:07:54):
That's a whole other thing. You guys can find me. I'm Davindra Hardwire, I'm a senior editor and in Gadget I review PCs, all sorts of fun stuff. And I also co-host the In Gadget podcast there with Sherly Lowe. And yeah, we talk about Tech and News Weekly. I also talk about movies in tv on the film cast@thefilmcast.com. So if you liked our little pop cultural conversation, you wanna hear more of that that's where you'll go to find it. And yeah. Anthony, we have to have you back on at some point and all you guys, well I wanna get you on at some point. Okay.

Doc Rock (02:08:23):
I'd love that. Let's go.

Devindra Hardawar (02:08:25):
Alright, thanks folks. Twit records every Sunday at twit.tv/twit. Another twit is in the camp