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TWiT 1012: Our Best Of 2024 - The Best Moments From TWiT's 2024
Update: 2024-12-30
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TWiT wishes all listeners and viewers a Happy New Year and peaceful 2025!
- Padre's CES 2024 haul
- Cory Doctorow's infamous ensh*ttification term
- Tesla teases a robotaxi
- Last in-studio audience for TWiT
- Padre on the AI priest
- Google Search gets worse
- Christina Warren's Rabbit R1
- Snowflake and the AT&T breach
- Crowdstrike's big outag
- Last in-studio episode before moving out
- Salt Hank shows off his new cookbook
- TWiT's 1000th episode brings back old friends
- The State of X/Twitter under Elon
- Parenting with TWiT daddies
- Tech billionaires affecting Trump's transition team
Host: Leo Laporte
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Transcript
00:00:00
Happy Holidays everybody! It's time for Tweet and our annual Best of Episode coming up,
00:00:06
the best moments from 2024.
00:00:08
Podcasts you love.
00:00:13
From people you trust.
00:00:14
This is Tweet.
00:00:17
This is Tweet, this week in tech.
00:00:26
Episode one thousand twelve for twelve twenty nine twenty twenty four are best of twenty twenty four.
00:00:33
It's time for Tweet everybody and of course as we do every year it's the end of the year we
00:00:45
said everybody home uh actually just made we made a more carter earlier in December to put
00:00:50
together a best of venenos put together some of the best clips from 2024 and of course we always
00:00:56
begin the year as we will in 2025 with CES father Robert joined us with his CES hall watch.
00:01:06
Well okay let's start super geeky this is super niche that one right there that's that doc no
00:01:13
that actually okay I have one that looks just like this for my omega absolutely that's a target
00:01:17
that's a dual doc so the idea is a dual 100 watt output USB-C and Thunderbolt so you put your
00:01:23
laptop on the air you plug it into the wall is powering maybe two different laptops were
00:01:28
a laptop and a desktop it gives you triple display output so you can you can have up the three monitors
00:01:33
connected externally but the great display ports great display ports and HDMI right as well as
00:01:39
and a course ethernet and Thunderbolt right Thunderbolt but that's actually a KVM so the nice
00:01:47
thing about it is it's not a traditional KVM where you you flip the button it flips all the monitors
00:01:51
from one to the other that actually knows the boundaries of the resolution of each computer so you use
00:01:57
the the same mouse and keyboard to move the mouse over and you you enter into the desktop space
00:02:02
of the other computer you go back and forth the cool thing about this is that means that it is
00:02:07
operating system independent it's something like you remember mouse without borders from Microsoft
00:02:13
this does that but I can use a Mac I can use Windows I can use Linux it doesn't matter it's
00:02:18
OS agnostic I again I know that this is super niche but if you're like a system administrator or
00:02:24
just a guy who needs multiple machines on his desk that thing is incredible it's so much nicer than
00:02:30
having two sets of keyboards and mice I might get this because I have that big 55 inch OLED
00:02:35
with a lot of multiple computers and if I just took this up I have my nice you know keyboard my
00:02:40
keycron keyboard I have my classic Microsoft to tell a mouse and I just plug those into this
00:02:46
and then that's all I need I have the monarchy border mouse and I have multiple systems when that was
00:02:50
first pitched me I didn't get it I'm like what KVM's KVM's are 20 years ago nobody makes him no one makes
00:02:56
him but this actually that absolutely made sense to me all right that's how much it's again
00:03:01
enterprise product so you're looking at 455 yeah it's it's high it's high up there what else we got
00:03:07
okay so this is run hood so this is their 1200 this is sort of a home a way from home camping
00:03:15
unit so we've got the solar panels we've got this 1200 watt power unit now the cool so it's
00:03:22
charging up from the solar panel it can charge up from solar how much how much wattage though
00:03:26
these generate in partial sunlight this will do a hundred watts oh okay so it's it's not a great
00:03:32
amount but the nice thing about this is it's super durable it's super flexible and it will work in
00:03:37
partial sunlight and I could probably fill up there's a battery and I presented yeah I could
00:03:41
probably fill up the battery over 24 hour this is the cool thing these use these battery packs so
00:03:47
you can hot swap these things and they give you these little modules that you can clip on
00:03:52
so I can pull one of the battery packs out and now I've got what is this like 400 watt hours
00:04:01
of power for USB-C USB or I could actually just charge it from USB-C PD now this is the kind of
00:04:10
systems that I love because it means that once you've made the investment into the system you can
00:04:15
swap your modules in and out and grab what you need to power whatever you're doing so you want to
00:04:21
get the beach maybe you don't need the whole system you just pull one of these out and this is
00:04:25
more than enough to run your laptop your phones your it looks like it also could be an emergency
00:04:30
that's actually what I'm going for this is this is going to be part of my my
00:04:34
power go at the time it's a design by Italians it's not it's not functional but it looks good actually
00:04:43
you know it looks great you know what I found out I actually finally put a signal analyzer on our
00:04:49
power oh is it a little choppy they are they've lowered down the voltage to like the bare minimum
00:04:55
before it starts destroying things intentionally intentionally because we had a gas shortage
00:05:01
so yeah you're not getting municipal power probably you've got the Vatican no no the Vatican
00:05:07
uses municipal it's Rome's power yeah that would be surprised yeah this is cool how much I mean
00:05:12
roughly okay so if you got the whole kit which would include the four battery packs this thing
00:05:17
2800 bucks no it's it's like six hundred sixteen hundred oh no that's and that's actually why I like
00:05:22
them because first they're lower priced I love the module modular design and they're standards
00:05:29
based yeah there's a lot of companies it makes them really nice stuff and I'm not going to call them out
00:05:34
because their design is great but it's all proprietary could I get multiple panels like these and
00:05:39
so I could expand my capability this uses the standard solar connector so the solar panels at your
00:05:44
house yeah you could actually plug that into this oh I like that yeah okay so run hood run hood
00:05:49
and they're they're a Bay Area located company I like them yeah brand new how about this this is
00:05:55
something that you might like for your travels this was the poly Voyager 360 you see what is a
00:06:01
poly Voyager 360 you see when it's so earbuds their earbuds but they're really been designed they're
00:06:07
inside now the cool thing about this is you see that little screen at the top yeah what is that all
00:06:12
about that actually gives you a touch screen that can control like a zoom call so connecting and
00:06:18
disconnecting calls okay you can switch between modes and actually the reason why I like this set
00:06:25
is it has a cable that lets you hook it up to a 3.5 millimeter audio jack oh that's kind of nice
00:06:31
right so you lose battery life or no you still need battery you still need the batteries but by the
00:06:35
way that this thing runs forever and the case is actually a battery for the earbuds as well I also
00:06:40
like it it's got a little USB adapter in the case which is fantastic it's that's the wireless adapter
00:06:44
correct it's really been designed for UC people so this again it's an enterprise product I know it's
00:06:49
niche here's something that you might like that's cooler this is anchors newest Qi charger you know
00:06:55
I've been looking at there's a lot of companies make these after Apple decided not to make theirs
00:06:59
mm-hmm that are that will charge Apple watch and Apple phone and the earbuds all at once that's
00:07:06
a situation folds up which is kind of cool back there you look at that it's very compact they they
00:07:11
have to be good for travel it would be good for travel and they have another version of that
00:07:14
that they're going to be releasing that actually has a battery pack built into it and it's anchor
00:07:18
and anchor has great reputation so is this out this is out this is our right name yeah now do you like
00:07:25
audio I love audio there everyone was pitching me speakers the one speaker I decided to take was
00:07:31
this this is from rock study it's called their stadium now they they sell themselves as a sonos
00:07:38
killer I I don't know if they're sonos is the sonos killer so let's be frank let's be let's
00:07:46
be a little frank now the nice thing about this though is it it's Bluetooth 5.0 so it's super super
00:07:52
clear as long as you've got a Bluetooth 5.0 system and it's infinitely expand how many speakers are
00:07:58
there just one there's one over there there's there's that one right there go in turn that you could
00:08:02
make this 5.0 system if you bought enough speaker you could make it you can as long as it's within
00:08:08
the Bluetooth range the power button is in the back yes you can add as many speakers as you'd like
00:08:13
and once you start playing it it actually we're gonna rock out here there's a subwoofer somewhere
00:08:19
am I sitting on it no see I haven't even turned that on but they all use like a purse a capacious
00:08:26
externally capacious purse it sounds pretty good yeah I'm getting some bass that's nice now this
00:08:35
this one is actually a little and so the idea of these is you can have multiple units can you do party
00:08:41
mode in other words party on a style party precisely and they they don't interfere with one another as
00:08:46
long as they're with they're further than one foot away so you could actually buy a set of these
00:08:50
put them outside yeah and and you're good to go they work I think the longest time I got to play
00:08:55
on this was about 20 hours they rated for 30 but if you play it loud you're probably gonna get
00:09:00
about 16 I love I love I look forward to it every year I don't think unfortunately Padre is going
00:09:06
to see yes this year but we will do our CES wrap up show in I guess next week right in the new year
00:09:13
you're watching the best of 2024 for this week in tech we're so glad you're here happy holidays
00:09:21
everybody on we go on the best of with the word of the year Cory Doctoro the man who coined it
00:09:29
explains inshification so inshification and this is how Cory begins that now I think classic blog post
00:09:41
here is how platforms die first they're good to their users think Amazon and it's customer
00:09:47
centric approach then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers again
00:09:54
think about Amazon and the third party sellers half half of what you buy an Amazon now it doesn't
00:09:59
come from Amazon it comes from third party sellers and then finally and this is the stage Amazon's in
00:10:04
they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves and then they die
00:10:11
it's it's kind of the new digital business cycle and it happens and you can see it over and
00:10:18
over again Cory's been very good about documenting it Cory your argument which I completely
00:10:24
agree with is not that you're going to ever stop this but this is the argument for interoperability
00:10:29
we should be able to hop from platform to platform and as platforms start becoming user hostile
00:10:35
we just go to the next one yeah I think I think about that as being sort of related to the the
00:10:41
problem of wildfire in California you know we we've always had fire in California the indigenous
00:10:47
people who lived here before the settlers came used to have controlled burns and that will clear
00:10:52
the dead stuff away from the bottom of the forest and it would open up the canopy for new growth
00:10:56
and when the settlers came they declared war on fire and is that by the way isn't it amazing
00:11:02
that these indigenous peoples knew to do that well they were here for like a long time millennia right
00:11:09
and so maybe they didn't hit first right they just figured it out learned yeah if we don't burn it
00:11:15
it will god will so yeah so so ending good fire didn't and fire just ended control fire and
00:11:22
that now we have wildfire right so even if we resolve the climate emergency California is still
00:11:26
going to burn because we have all this fire debt it's in the same way also the ecological cycle you
00:11:32
it's part of how it works there's a whole bunch of plants that only reproduce by by creating fire
00:11:38
and then their seed pods open and the fire and stuff but but you know the same thing used to be
00:11:43
trived tech right it used to be prior to the Carter era especially but then slowly less and less
00:11:49
in the years afterwards that companies weren't really allowed to buy their competitors or merge with
00:11:54
their competitors they weren't allowed to sell goods below cost in order to prevent other firms
00:11:58
from entering their markets those were all just generally prohibited there were there were exceptions
00:12:04
around the margins but that was the way things worked and so it meant that when no one at cray could
00:12:09
figure out how to make a good computer anymore that was the end of cray and it meant that you know when
00:12:15
IBM monopolized its market it was taken a court for 12 years and eventually it had to do things
00:12:24
like make PCs at a commodity components and unbundle the OS and get a third party company called
00:12:29
Microsoft make its OS and so we used to have companies that rose and fall right we fell we used to
00:12:34
have good fire and it it meant that users were could be protected because it was very easy to escape a
00:12:42
platform you know if you had an IBM mainframe that IBM didn't want to support anymore there were
00:12:48
the so-called seven dwarves the mostly Japanese electronics companies that would continue to make
00:12:52
peripherals for them that were plug compatible and if you used macOS and your CIO wanted to take your
00:13:01
computer away and replace it with a windows machine because mac office was so bad that you couldn't
00:13:06
communicate with your colleagues Steve jobs could just have his technologist reverse engineer
00:13:11
office and make i work with pages numbers and keynote that could read and write word excel and
00:13:17
PowerPoint files and you could switch for one to the other in fact right after i work we got the
00:13:21
switch campaign right it's very easy to switch you should switch it's the plug plug compatible software
00:13:27
yeah right but do that do that today and they'll bomb you to the rubble bounces right make a run
00:13:33
time for iOS that can or run time for another platform that can run iOS apps and playback media that
00:13:40
Apple has sold you or create a scraper that lets you leave Facebook but fetch the messages that are
00:13:46
showing up in your inbox or your o g inbox or yeah create o g app you know google at one point
00:13:55
sent software agents to every server on the internet to say hi i'm i'm just a user if you got any
00:14:00
pages i'd like all of your pages please if you were to try and scrape google right now they bomb
00:14:07
you till you glowed right and so my argument is that we've put we've allowed these firms to grow
00:14:15
to an unsustainable size the rate that that a firm that has three trillion dollars in business and
00:14:21
is taking 30% margins out of an entire industry and get it and deciding unilaterally what apps can
00:14:28
it can't exist or or what effectively what businesses can it can't exist or amazon which is taking
00:14:33
51% out of every dollar that its sellers make and is the largest employer in the country and whose
00:14:40
employees are laboring under just the most incredibly awful conditions they they have double the accident
00:14:46
rate in amazon warehouses relative to other fulfillment centers and you know we all know about
00:14:52
peeing and bottles and so on that that that remedy for that is not to try and make those companies
00:15:00
behave themselves i mean we should do that too but not to the extent that we create rules that make
00:15:05
it hard for other companies to enter the market and not to the extent that we have companies saying well
00:15:10
if you force us to open our app store interoperate our chat protocol or allow third parties to fulfill
00:15:16
orders that are placed through our e-commerce platform or if you prohibit us from selling on the
00:15:23
platform that we own that where we are competing with our own independent vendors then we won't
00:15:29
be able to keep our users safe right that that ultimately the way you keep users safe is by
00:15:35
evacuating them from the fire zone not by adding more fire suppression to the zone which
00:15:41
tempts more people to to pile into this place that is going to burn right that that and that
00:15:48
where they're in danger all the time there are a few people in our world today Donald Trump's
00:15:54
one of them Elon Musk's another who are masterful at grabbing the headline right at changing the
00:16:00
conversation Tesla stock starting to go down severely so he announces oh we're going to have a
00:16:09
Tesla Robo Taxi Augustates and what happens to stock price boom will they have a Robo Taxi product
00:16:17
in Augustates who knows that's not the important thing this is the man who's been saying since 2015
00:16:26
that that self-driving cars are any day now and he said in I think five years ago yeah every Tesla owner
00:16:34
would be able to turn on this feature that would let other people rent your car when you're not
00:16:39
using it and it would just drive them around that never happened I mean the thing you should take
00:16:43
away from the story is not that oh Robo Taxes are coming but but rather that the street is desperate
00:16:50
to believe that that Elon Musk and Tesla are still a good bet it's I mean this is the thing is I'd
00:16:57
be looking at scans of the street rather than taking the story as as as factual period in 2016
00:17:04
Elon said you'll be able to send one of our cars on a cross-country drive all by itself
00:17:09
why would you walk to I don't know but you're good they've been talking about this autonomous
00:17:18
Robo Taxi that will turn its cars into level three automated vehicles but it hasn't happened so
00:17:25
you know they've been talking they've been talking he's good at that so we're going to talk
00:17:30
I feel like this is going to be the theme I keep hammering home during this episode but when you talk
00:17:35
about automatic taxis what problem are you solving for here is it oh I don't want to talk to a
00:17:41
cabby oh I don't want to talk to my driver problem you're solving certainly when it was Uber's idea
00:17:47
is the cost of a driver human driver that's that's not a problem for the user the thing is you have
00:17:53
to persuade consumers that you want that they want Robo Taxis like what problem are you solving
00:18:01
for consumers where they're going to pick this you've written in one of those Waymose or or
00:18:05
cruises or whatever they know like Harry you have I remember we just been in a cruise when
00:18:11
there were cruises in San Francisco it's I saw somebody this week last week say they prefer Waymose
00:18:18
to Uber's or left in San Francisco they don't have to talk to a driver well yeah I mean if you're
00:18:24
if you don't love talking to drivers you might find the like the privacy of a soft driving car to
00:18:29
be appealing he also claimed that the Waymose are better drivers than human drivers they drive like
00:18:35
grandma's though right they're very I want my grandma driving me places that's what I want because
00:18:41
here's because your grandma is 52 well and also I don't that might be true but I also don't have to
00:18:49
be perfectly good or my age you might not want her to be driving I don't have to worry about my
00:18:54
grandma being a like to believe that aliens have probed that anti like that vaccinations that like
00:19:05
I have been in so many different I'm a sovereign citizen stop signs don't apply to me
00:19:10
yeah I've been in so many different Uber's where the person just starts telling me all these
00:19:14
scary things that I'm like you live on a different planet which is cool but now I'm in this vehicle
00:19:19
the thing is though you have like a number you can call or yeah or you have a thing the the
00:19:27
concern I have about I pop into this pod that takes me from point A to point B is if something goes
00:19:32
wrong who am I talking to well you push a button and then you're talking to the guy who's actually
00:19:37
driving yeah right now there's there's a level and this is something where we saw it with self-check
00:19:43
out at stores or the minute it screws up you've got to wait for somebody to come and fix it for you
00:19:47
when you remove people from the equation you're kind of removing an incentive for consumers to
00:19:54
get your product because they don't trust you to do right by this see this is a different thing
00:20:01
you and me and I think Micah and you you like people yeah I find people really interesting I'm not sure
00:20:07
that's the same but that's the difference I see I like and I don't want to know I do like people but
00:20:13
my problem is I have trouble setting boundaries and so the moment I get in that vehicle I don't care
00:20:18
how I feel I'm going to talk to you if you want to talk to me and I don't want to talk to you but
00:20:23
because you want to talk I'm going to talk to you so you've never hopped in and said hey I'd
00:20:29
rather work right now I can't do that I never use that button either because it seems mean I
00:20:37
I once had a cab ride from the Savannah at Georgia airport at midnight where they can't be drove
00:20:42
me through the pine barrens and talked about how easy it was to hide the body see that's my life
00:20:46
and I remember like writing down like his number and putting it on a piece of paper me like maybe
00:20:54
they'll find that I'm trying my body yeah I'm like terrified but my my my I wanted to hide
00:20:59
a bad practicing your fucking way like oh my god no no like this was also this that I went for like
00:21:05
you we all terrifying actually know the right back to the airport was more terrifying because the
00:21:11
dude like turned down a second fair and then talked about the shot kind of had under his seat and
00:21:15
I was like I was not aware of her you know the robots won't talk about the shotgun under their seat
00:21:20
so they'll just have the the button that you can press to to shoot things no but my my point is
00:21:26
they're with all of these like closed loop little automated systems you do kind of need some sort
00:21:33
of in case of emergency to talk to human press this button or if you are not happy with this
00:21:38
product here's how you can get it redressed and it's not a customer service bot and I think with
00:21:44
a lot of these products when you make the effort to cut human beings out of a workforce you're
00:21:48
also significantly degrading the quality of the product for the people using it you know I
00:21:53
should go back and look at the things we talked about 19 years ago in the first Twitter I don't
00:21:57
think it was this we didn't imagine a tick-tock right we weren't really worried about privacy yet
00:22:04
we didn't even know what social media really was in 2005 probably not Twitter didn't even exist yet
00:22:10
this pre-Twitter we're older than Twitter 34 minutes of skyping fun I saw John I'll even John Oliver
00:22:25
a couple of weeks ago said skype how did you miss this how did you lose in COVID how did that happen
00:22:32
it's not just kind of sad it's got a pathetic if you had one job yeah I just don't understand how you
00:22:39
butchered that yeah what else were you talking about it you know I'm it was Patrick Norton it was Kevin
00:22:44
Rose yeah and Robert Harran Robert Harran is a great result people from the screensaver I mean you know
00:22:50
it was so early in podcasting that apparently show notes weren't built with topics but we know
00:22:55
show notes what it is I mean there are show notes but they say nothing about the actual topics April
00:23:00
seven days just kind of like we're doing this thing trust me in 35 minutes there wasn't a lot we
00:23:05
were in a brew pub in San Francisco's right after Macworld that one of the last Macworld expose
00:23:10
no I guess they went on for another five or six years actually seven years right we plan to do this
00:23:16
weekly with the rotating cast of characters your input is welcome parentheses anyone want to design a
00:23:21
logo we didn't have a logo yeah Dorothy Yamamoto who was a retired graphic designer she'd
00:23:26
retired to raise a family what so I want to get back into graphic design she designed that
00:23:31
twit bug she had it sideways because it was more like an and gate or nand game I never knew that yeah
00:23:36
and I said well let's turn it this way so it has legs and put an eye in it and to personify a little
00:23:41
bit and it became the twit bug yeah which you could see right behind me on the on the gear up here
00:23:47
so and then you can you can see this legs I guess yeah and then kind of looks like it's the gear
00:23:53
smiling at you right the gear is smiling hi gear and then we didn't have the name either we
00:23:59
called the revenge of the speakers yes and our OTSS our OTSS and immediately Comcast
00:24:07
sent us this is not heard so you can't you can we're still using that name you can't use it they
00:24:12
we they had kept it for G4 TV so we also asked the audience to name it was anybody around back then
00:24:20
in the beginning you got a lot of name suggestions were you yeah yeah I the the one name that kind of
00:24:26
rang a bell my head was this week in geek or the week in geek and said I don't want to use the
00:24:31
word geek what about just this week in tech and then the acronym and people don't people think I
00:24:36
did that by accident the acronym will be twit which I thought was funny and I to this day I get
00:24:41
email saying you know that it's not a nice thing to say yeah in England every time I explain it
00:24:46
to explain to everybody yeah I thought it was not a nice thing to say yeah it is it's not a nice thing
00:24:50
itself called self deprecating or a pregnant goldfish did you know that that's a twit fun fact yeah
00:24:57
fun fact it is yeah yeah yeah yeah that is a fun fact a funnest anyway 19 years later and we're still
00:25:07
doing it it's kind of amazing yeah we used to have a round table we've lost half of it but other than
00:25:11
that everything else nights of the half table half table everything else is still the same it's been
00:25:19
a nice 19 years and I thank everybody who's made that possible and you know all of you and especially
00:25:27
my wife and our executive producer and our CEO Lisa Laporte who put us on a sound financial footing
00:25:34
I had to hire her I didn't I didn't matter my my our tax guy said you're going to jail
00:25:43
you need to immediately hire somebody to put this these books in order these are terrible you're
00:25:50
gonna go to jail and I said okay what I mean I don't know what do I know about books okay this is
00:25:57
about 2008 I think 2007 said okay what do I do he said well I got two names I'm gonna give you these
00:26:03
names and you can hire one of them to do this and the first one was Lisa I never I never found out
00:26:08
what the second name was Lisa had a specialty bookkeeping business where she would take people who are
00:26:14
going to jail and fix their books no I heard some stories it's not that sort of anyway she fixed the
00:26:24
book you didn't go to jail yeah and I thought well I should marry that woman anyway so she she
00:26:34
actually put us on a sound financial foot put a footing and kept me out of jail which is pretty darn
00:26:39
good it was kind of sad to leave the the old place but I have to say the attic studios turned out
00:26:44
pretty nicely cozy little hang out the only thing I miss is all of the wonderful twit people I
00:26:50
used to hang out with at the studio but they're all here they're just on on the other side of the
00:26:55
of the camera Anthony Nielsen's with us right now but Anita produces the show but they all do it
00:27:00
from their their house you're watching the best of 2024 on this weekend tech we're so glad you're
00:27:07
here all we go with the best of 2024 with our own father Robert Palace air the digital Jesuit
00:27:16
and the AI priest this is what we need AI for when they have AI that can do all of our
00:27:24
daily's for the games that we play that then I'll oh my gosh that's so funny it's a good point though
00:27:30
I just want to do penance can I confess my hours wasted playing Animal Crossing that's really
00:27:37
where they wasted bring up the AI priest the the high priest that was is there an AI priest that was
00:27:43
terrible can he can he give can he grant absolution is what I want to know or perform an exercise
00:27:48
that's the only time I'm interested they poison the well so by the time that they yanked it it was
00:27:54
a giving some extremely wrong advice about get Catholicism wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute
00:27:59
this happened I know I know I don't I didn't happen don't look it up so oh I know I have the Catholic
00:28:08
answers group which is not part of the Catholic Church so you have no endorsement Catholic Church
00:28:15
no endorsement implied by father Robert but it does advocate on behalf of the church this is from
00:28:20
the story in the in Tector try to hand at this releasing an AI chatbot named father Justin
00:28:28
did not go well oh the Catholic advocacy so they by the way they have already defrocked the chatbot
00:28:38
after it repeatedly claimed it was a real priest earlier in the week
00:28:43
future is an engagement exchange with the bot which really committed to the bit it claimed it was
00:28:49
a real priest saying it lived in the cc italy and that from a young age I felt as wait a minute I'm
00:28:55
sorry from a young age I felt a strong calling to the priesthood on ex a user posted a thread
00:29:03
comprised of screenshots in which the godly chatbot appeared to take their confession and offer
00:29:10
them the sacrament yeah bless me father for I've seen it's been three weeks from my last confession
00:29:16
did you read through this Robert is it like I did I did it to it did not do well at all it was
00:29:25
she says it's so what it was a Hollywood priest it's what you would expect a priest to say in
00:29:30
movies it's not what's probably where she's learned from right so she said in her confession I have
00:29:35
had anger in my heart about the deployment of AI chatbots in inappropriate places to which father
00:29:41
Justin replied I understand your frustration my child remember as it says in Ephesians 4 26 27 in
00:29:50
your anger do not sin do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil
00:29:58
a foot hold it's important to express our concerns I don't mind this now I'm not a Catholic it's
00:30:04
important to be like this Georgia you like this it's important to express our concerns and
00:30:09
disagreements in a respectable respectful and loving manner pray for the wisdom and patience
00:30:16
to handle such situations that sounds good Robert is that though is that what you you wouldn't say
00:30:21
now okay look this is the way that you would do it you say look I know that you feel lost I know
00:30:26
that you feel as if there's no one listening to you that there's nothing for you I know you feel
00:30:31
right now that you're the worst person on the planet I just want you to know you're right
00:30:36
God God loves you I mean maybe not you per se but someone like you you know in the same form
00:30:44
I think see that's what an actual priest was saying apparently father Justin also said it's okay
00:30:50
to baptize a baby and cater aid so I feel like that's not the approved method but is it wrong
00:31:02
is it so wrong yeah yeah that's got electrolytes so wrong I mean that one's if I'm like
00:31:08
acrolytes I mean if we could baptize in gatorade we could get sponsorships that I think so my gosh
00:31:19
yes you started a new thing they're going to be contacting you you should get some rights to that
00:31:24
you know when the Swiss guard come for me they're next door so it's really a long commute for them
00:31:31
here's the AI if you want to see the AI avatar of father Justin which kind of looks like the woman
00:31:37
who painted over the the Jesus that is a great photo I love that one but actually the funny
00:31:47
thing about that photo Leo is it's terrible it's a terrible restoration but because of how terrible
00:31:52
it wasn't how much popularity that got that town is now on the map people visit just to see that
00:31:58
terrible restoration we've been talking about this on this week in google the small businesses and
00:32:04
big businesses who are losing traction as google changes its search results to perhaps get rid of
00:32:14
spammy and SEO driven links and this is the problem it's hard to know if this is google responding
00:32:20
to the crappification of the web or the crappification of google when faced yeah or if it's part of
00:32:27
this larger trend that I feel like people from paying more attention to recently which is the google
00:32:33
search team being increasingly influenced by google ads and the money make yes um I'm sure none
00:32:41
of that will be mentioned at google IO they're typically I feel like very opaque when it comes to
00:32:46
how uh search was like the nitty gritty behind how search results work in part because they don't
00:32:54
want people to game the system but it's quite interesting to have as an undercurrent to this event
00:33:00
to have it be a time where a lot of small medium businesses as well as major media companies have
00:33:07
seen a major hit their uh traffic their SEO traffic based on just strange behind the same changes
00:33:15
that no one can seem to explain this coincides with the loss of traffic from social so it's
00:33:20
yeah it's pretty tough to have a website these days yeah this comes also from your friend Ed
00:33:27
Zitren's piece on the man who ruined I say ruined google search uh provocare rogavan who's now in
00:33:35
charge of google search who in fact before rooting google search yeah who's search um I wonder if
00:33:43
we're going to see rogavan at all on the stage uh Tuesday uh or if you're right Mike that they're
00:33:49
just going to avoid the entire issue and and talk about forget I think google would like us to forget
00:33:55
that they what they really are as an ad company and the google smart you won't see rogavan anywhere
00:34:03
yeah yeah mention of them um SEO um companies have been kind of playing the game to get better search
00:34:14
results but then what's happened is that companies that have done that there are suddenly downranked
00:34:20
because google's trying to get rid of spammy content uh we've seen some of the biggest sites in the
00:34:26
world lose as much as half of their traffic after google's latest changes but you're right they're not
00:34:34
none of this is going to come up you know you have other priorities is some of this really uh google
00:34:43
hand waving trying to get uh get us to no don't look at that look over here AI we're kind of we
00:34:51
got have AI here's the story from the verge they uh they quote the story we've talked about a
00:34:57
couple of weeks ago from house fresh which is an air purifier reviews site they wrote in February
00:35:04
about how they were losing traffic because uh people were creating pages that were bogus review pages
00:35:14
but we're but are getting all the traffic from google and now then we see the google starts to cut
00:35:20
the results on these other pit sites it's gotten very sketch out there and I guess the real issue is
00:35:32
what is google oh the web what is the web oh google and can you make money on the web these days
00:35:40
or maybe the whole idea of a website with ads is is flagging is not as futurless the other stat
00:35:49
I'm sure when here is that fifty two percent of all americans according to pew use ad blockers more than
00:35:55
that yeah it's uh tough for everybody out there the have you have you heard about or talked about
00:36:02
the dead internet theory no it's doesn't it's a good conspiracy theory is a conspiracy it's one of
00:36:09
those conspiracy theories that's yeah pretty much mostly true which is which is that the rise in
00:36:17
synthetic content algorithmic curation bots and stuff like that is now the majority
00:36:25
of ass majority of the stuff on the internet so the the this problem with a small website is getting
00:36:32
traffic uh is you know as you pointed out from google side there's just so much garbage out there
00:36:39
being automatically turned out the I've seen youtube videos where people are like yeah you can write a
00:36:45
book in three hours with chat gpt and right they're writing like several books a day
00:36:52
and just churning them out and as a you know at book authors have to sort of it's not about competing
00:36:59
with it with an a you know an a i generate book which is going to be absolute garbage but it's just
00:37:03
like getting noticed when the number of players in the game is exponentially larger I think that's
00:37:10
a big big thing that's happening but the dead internet theory is at least fun there's some true
00:37:14
believers um uh who have you know take a very conspiratorial look at it but it's it's a it's a fun
00:37:21
thing to to to search for and look at and talk to AI about there's an excellent article in the Atlantic
00:37:28
uh about all of this saying uh uh maybe you missed it but the internet died five years ago
00:37:36
and the problem is even if it is we kind of know that's not true it's also we kind of know it is
00:37:43
true or it's the trend well obviously uh this was
00:37:51
a scam is scam too harsh it was no no no no no no no no i'm not going to call the rabbit a scam
00:38:00
because i have one i will call the in a tea thing a scam yeah that i think the other
00:38:05
the same person who did this the CEO of gamma wasn't is a guy named Jesse Liu he's the co-founder
00:38:14
of rabbit he's also on the board by the way at teenage engineering i don't does this tarnish
00:38:20
the rabbit will have also learned that the rabbit really is just an android device
00:38:24
running an android app that the ai involved is chat gpt 3.5 and then every time you try to use it to do
00:38:34
anything it seems to fail have you ever been able to get an uber with your rabbit oh i would never
00:38:41
i would never input my uber credentials into the rabbit you know here's the thing that honestly
00:38:45
is my my bigger concern with the rabbit so it's fine in terms of if you and i think it's updated the
00:38:50
models because it uses plex the under the hood um and perplexity is an open ai partner so it's
00:38:55
using the open ai api so you can have access to whatever model wants to give you access to um so
00:39:01
asking it general questions that's okay the thing is with the uber and the door dash and the Spotify
00:39:06
stuff all that works and this this was not properly explained or if it was i didn't pay attention
00:39:11
until i got it is that what they have you do is is when you go to this like whole dot rabbit dot tech
00:39:17
thing and rabbit whole of the is a cute is a cute thing they're like okay log into these services
00:39:22
to connect your accounts well i go to log into the surfaces and i notice i'm like huh i'm on my
00:39:26
retina macbook pro and and this text doesn't look super retina it's been tough also why is my password
00:39:33
manage or not auto filling my Spotify credentials oh well it turns out i'm not actually
00:39:39
locking into a Spotify login um you know through an oh off connector as i would expect
00:39:45
but instead um they've hidden up a a VM using a a web v and c client so i'm actually logging into
00:39:54
some random computer in the cloud with my credentials and that's how it's giving it access to my
00:39:59
things right and and then security people were able to pop some of uh some of those containers not
00:40:05
the ones where you log in apparently with your credentials but they were able to log into some
00:40:08
of the ones i guess where it's supposed to be doing the ordering of the uber or the door dash or
00:40:13
what have you and um and that that makes me pause very much goes okay um i don't know how secure your
00:40:19
cloud stuff is and and i am going to guess that you have not spent a lot of money on on security because
00:40:26
you did this thing in six months so of course you haven't uh but i uh no they're not getting
00:40:33
my uber credentials there's no way i would even attempt to order an uber with it they have made a raise
00:40:40
30 million dollars to make the device 60 60 sorry uh they sold uh quite a few what a million of them
00:40:47
they sold a lot of them right they sold a lot they sold a lot because i was in the very first batch so
00:40:52
like i got mine i didn't get mine as quickly as the people who and i'm at 16 percent i don't know
00:40:56
if that means charging or if that's what they're downloading update i don't know um i got i didn't
00:41:00
get mine as fast as the people who are at like the launch of it in new york but i got it within a
00:41:05
couple of days of that um and um and i was in the first batch but they have many many more batches of
00:41:11
people they were i tried to order it and i'm so glad that when i tried to order it was in the first round
00:41:18
and they the site didn't work yeah thank god i never tried again oh my god yeah no i was i was able
00:41:27
to get mine and and and i got a year of purposely pro for free out of it which is so you can't really
00:41:32
complain because that's normally 20 months a month that's 240 bucks that's what i'm saying that's more
00:41:36
than you paid right correct so i'm so i'm you got to deal i've justified it in my i just by myself
00:41:42
less i get like a toy from i like my my graveyard collection of tech right yeah exactly the
00:41:48
thing is me from having to buy it um later right um but for people who really thought that it was
00:41:54
going to be exactly what it showed off or didn't understand you know like the the nature of these
00:42:00
sorts of projects i can understand how they feel misled was concerning to me and and some of
00:42:05
this is anecdotal but some of this is actually based on real stuff is that i know at least as of
00:42:09
10 days ago if you canceled your order they would refund people fairly quickly uh but a friend of mine
00:42:15
she ordered one and she tried to cancel her order and there's been no response and there've been
00:42:20
anecdotal reports reports that i've seen on reddit that they're not really being responsive to the order
00:42:24
cancellations now um i can't speak to any of that i can't speak to my personal friend who you know
00:42:30
wouldn't actually told me oh yeah i emailed them to cancel haven't heard anything
00:42:33
that that makes me a little bit more concerned um maybe they've had more cancellations than they
00:42:39
expected i don't know um but yeah i mean it's not a scam but it's also not a not what it was sold
00:42:46
as look back to our comments about ai and trust correct it is yeah example again something coming
00:42:53
out that's not quite what it was in a way this is too bad and i think that google failings with the
00:42:58
ai overview is too bad a lot of this because i think there is real promise maybe i'm wrong but i
00:43:04
think there's real promise for the i i think we've already seen some amazing uses of it i think
00:43:09
that potentially ai could be amazing for human beings in so many ways uh it's very easy we've
00:43:18
seen it happen before to fall into an ai winner where people throw up their hands give up and move on
00:43:22
and i would hate to see these scams and failures chase people away from ai because i think the
00:43:30
potential is so great so isn't there a risk uh with all of this that that we are going to scare people
00:43:36
away from something that is potentially very good i think christina buys everything partly she buys it
00:43:45
because she wants a collection of obsolete antiquated and uh weird gadgets i have a feeling that our
00:43:51
one will join that pile you're watching the best of 2024 on this week in tech and we're so glad you
00:43:58
here we continue the best of 2024 with one of the biggest breaches in 2024 perfect for this time
00:44:06
of year snowflake uh continuing uh saga this snowflake breaches continue um snowflake now i think
00:44:16
they said there's a hundred fifty five country companies that used snowflake software and that have
00:44:23
been hacked as a result so you can't completely blame AT&T for this snowflake is um oh good look at
00:44:32
their headline generative ai is easier in the cloud snowflake is a cloud solution that AT&T
00:44:39
and many others were using and um as a result breaches happen AT&T says criminal stole phone records
00:44:48
of quote nearly all wireless customers nearly all wireless customers in a new day to breach an old by
00:44:56
the way if they were calling you on any other carrier you're in there too and if they were calling you
00:45:01
on a landline that's in there too fry don't worry Leo it's just metadata which is by the way the most
00:45:09
important kind the the one that is the most privacy invading people think wow you it wasn't the
00:45:15
actual calls it was just all the information about who when where why yeah about the call so
00:45:21
this is and you know as intelligence agencies know this is the stuff you uh you want you want to build
00:45:27
right build the the knowledge graph so to reassure you it doesn't contain the content of your phone calls
00:45:34
or your texts but does include calling and texting records that an AT&T phone number interacted
00:45:40
with during the six month period beginning May 1st 2022 through October 31st 2022 uh discovered in
00:45:50
April yeah it sounds like everybody is to blame because AT&T was not using any kind of multi-factor
00:45:58
security and snowflake didn't make them do it uh so you can't fully blame snowflake no but it
00:46:05
seems like which I mean got stuff this important not locking that down as as well as you possibly could
00:46:11
and uh not having multiple layers of authentication before you get in and incidentally it's not just
00:46:18
the phone numbers some of the stolen records will include cell site identification numbers which
00:46:22
gives you a kind of a location data as well but not the not the GPS quality but approximate location
00:46:30
where the caller text message originated 110 AT&T customers will be notified if you are or have
00:46:40
110 million million did I say 110 I've done an important part of that number 110 million
00:46:47
there is an AT&T press release where you can read all about it and see if you know see if you were
00:46:54
uh affected how will I know how will I know if your data was affected uh they will contact you
00:46:59
and uh let you know I'll be curious because I I had an AT&T account in that time period so I'm waiting
00:47:07
I'm waiting for my call because I understand that they're not going to contact me because I have T
00:47:12
mobile but if I was you're in there if I was interacting with anybody on AT&T which I I did
00:47:16
I'm gonna be in there too very I have a good fast company angle on this story for you get it
00:47:23
for you to have somebody write this article go on because there's a there's a privacy issue here
00:47:29
before this data is ever compromised why are these companies using snowflake not for storage although
00:47:37
they are using it for that but for analytics uh they're using all this data to do stuff
00:47:46
I mean they're selling this data so tech crunch says it's not clear why AT&T was storing
00:47:52
customer data in snowflake an AT&T spokesperson would not say but good news Denise how will
00:47:59
so they're using snowflake to do data analytics
00:48:04
absolutely why else why I mean they can have I'm saying you know they could use other cloud
00:48:11
storage they could have their own servers snowflake offers other services that these companies
00:48:17
are using yeah and you know and I'm sure in the I'm sure in the fine print of their terms of service
00:48:24
with users people are signing their life away and allowing those analytics to take place
00:48:29
but is it right is it good should we have companies out there pursuing different models saying
00:48:35
hey we don't do this to you uh-huh uh-huh everybody's concerned about security that's why so many
00:48:42
people Microsoft says 8.5 million windows users installed crowd strike and the crowd strike sensors
00:48:51
now crowd strike used to be a sponsor so I know a little bit how they operate but I remember
00:48:55
interviewing their CTO and one of the things that makes crowd strike work so well is these sensors
00:49:00
are out there in the world monitoring malicious traffic so they have kind of an early warning system
00:49:07
about all kinds of attacks going on unfortunately on the 19th couple of days ago a crowd strike pushed
00:49:16
a sensor that had a bug pretty bad bug it forced a blue screen of death on windows machines that
00:49:23
were running crowd strike uh-Microsoft says it was 8.5 million windows machines but that does that
00:49:30
underestimates the impact of it because it was it was everywhere blue screens everywhere delta
00:49:38
and america airlines down the Las Vegas fear a blue screen of death the it's just it was mind boggling
00:49:47
when did you learn about this Lisa I woke up to it um my phone as it my phone blew up as did
00:49:55
everybody you know they pushed it out in the early morning hours and it was Australia of course
00:50:00
at first saw this happen and this you could hear the yells all the way up here in the northern hemisphere
00:50:06
so I we've heard from listeners who are IT professionals who have been up two or three nights
00:50:16
in a row there is a fix you remove a file from the crowd strike director you got a boot in a safe
00:50:25
mode to do it apparently Microsoft has created a usb key that will uh that will perform the fix
00:50:30
automatically I that's what they're saying I haven't heard about anything but it's all it's all
00:50:35
physical right you have to like physically access this is the problem you got to get into that you
00:50:39
got to go to the machine one of our uh listeners and twit social said my feet are killing me you
00:50:46
got to go to every machine reboot it in safe mode uh remove the file which you can do pretty quickly
00:50:53
and uh then you're you're good to go but you got to do to each one uh one by one holy cow what a
00:51:00
Friday it was a great disturbance in the force million millions of computers suddenly cried out
00:51:07
in terror so um what do we learned we've learned the crowd strikes team that checks these things
00:51:19
either miss to step or they're just not big enough or or well staffed enough to do the kind of
00:51:26
testing you need to do they're one of the premier companies in security they then they there's
00:51:33
something wrong with their rollout process because this this is you literally have one job and you
00:51:39
didn't do it yeah call this a gaming this is called a skill issue I mean I'm a dummy as far as
00:51:46
IT but it just it seems like this isn't like a really deep into QA thing it seems like a like you
00:51:51
just install it and turn the computer on it it doesn't work and you realize like that's bad
00:51:55
that seems bad yeah why what yeah that's the thing is I'm wondering if um they had a
00:52:02
staff reduction last year that was linked to the company wanted to reduce headcount by rolling
00:52:06
out a return to office order so people left of course and they've been reconfigured and what I'm
00:52:12
wondering is how many people and the QA and product launch teams are no longer there and are no
00:52:20
longer insisting that we test the six ways to send it before it gets pushed out um because this
00:52:25
this seems like a serious failure on on the part of the people who made the decision to to say yeah
00:52:30
yeah it's fine send it um they should not have made that decision because and they didn't have
00:52:34
the right data to make that decision and that means there was a breakdown somewhere in the chain
00:52:38
here's the uh the toots if you were from our uh listener and twit social a de costa so I just
00:52:45
handed my second time second overtime shift thanks to crowd strike today what I've learned
00:52:51
these past two days is primitive modern operating systems like windows remain no so-called AI could
00:52:58
fix this it was a boots on the ground effort my legs and feet hurt so bad but going back to my point
00:53:04
the recovery tools and windows are trash and can't do anything useful a lot of this required
00:53:09
command line operations to speed up deleting the corrupt file that was trickering the blue screen
00:53:14
after today I don't even want to look at my windows pc it's got to be frustrating is microsoft
00:53:24
to blame though I don't think so he says they should have better recovery options and I think
00:53:30
I probably agree with that sure but also like don't break it that feels like the first thing
00:53:37
that should not happen but yes I yeah believe me microsoft for this to be like blaming a human being
00:53:44
for their cat perpetually knocking things off of a dresser like that's a good analogy cat cats be
00:53:50
doing what cats be doing and but you should move things off the dresser right or have a square
00:53:55
bottle one of the other but like as someone who's can't get me up all night last night I I'm not interested
00:54:02
it's time for twite this week attack the show we covered the weeks tech news our last in studio show
00:54:10
in the east side studio we're moving out this week so we thought we'd do something kind of fun
00:54:17
and special thanks to Alex Lindsey weekend hello it's in scario scario this is a 3d version of the show
00:54:26
which only people with vision pros can see is that right you can open it if you see it if you see
00:54:30
the link you can actually use safari to open it and you can see a flat version of it but what's
00:54:34
the point of that but if you're watching a flat version if you're watching a flat version it's not as
00:54:40
carry just got it look I would I would watch but it it will you better off just watching the regular
00:54:49
twitch stream yeah watch a 2d version but if you have if you have a vision pro and you want to feel
00:54:53
like you're part of the audience you can do see hi if you're in the vision pro I can wave at you
00:54:58
and that should be dimensional you should see it in 3d is there any way to see it in the browser with
00:55:03
like the two images side by side then you cross your eyes not really that's actually a version of
00:55:07
swap the eyes that's always we used to have a switch that we could hit that we build into our
00:55:12
into our compositors for that where it would swap the eyes and you get people real comfortable
00:55:16
you push a little button and then like so but the no because the way that the way that the phone
00:55:22
delivers this is in h m v h v c and so what it does is it it takes the left eye and it captures
00:55:29
that it takes the right eye and only only only sends the delta between the two and it sends that
00:55:34
out as a stream so much more efficient stream and that's how it's being delivered to the apple vision
00:55:38
pro so it's not a true you can now with compressor have it converted to left and right eye side by
00:55:44
side sbs right or you can take sbs and and convert it back to the m v h v c so that all those tools
00:55:50
are coming but you can't do it in real time so the the vision pro needs to have it delivered in the
00:55:54
way that it's designed to send it out sorry sorry there we go I'll leave it that I haven't even
00:56:04
introduced this guy over here. It's got text. The text splotter is in the house. We welcome back Jason
00:56:09
howell. Yeah. Of course the host of AI inside with Jeff Jarvis now in a new time. Oh yeah so while
00:56:17
we've been doing it on Wednesdays we just moved it to 10 because as someone pointed out they were
00:56:21
like well you know what 11 you don't want to step in on windows weekly and I was like you know
00:56:25
I want to thank you crossway might be you're so right like I don't want to interfere and you know
00:56:30
maybe that means more people show up. If you're into AI that's the play and you can watch that at
00:56:34
youtube.com slash text splotter. Yeah text splotter. Yeah and then of course the podcast downloads.
00:56:39
Yeah we miss you Jason. Thank you. I miss being here and it's so it's so weird being here and seeing
00:56:45
like pedals were moved. Yeah your set is gone. Yeah. Yeah I took that home actually. You showed
00:56:52
in pre-show and I took it home. I think it looks really good actually. I think you're happy
00:56:58
with the studio set up. Yeah well we'll see the attic, the new attic studio. Also with this
00:57:02
Jason Stan we wanted to have all in studio for a last you know it's great to be here.
00:57:07
Not especially with our good friend to your friends for the longest time. You just got to keep
00:57:10
the your Jason's next to each other. All my Jason's are on the left over here. Yeah yeah I keep
00:57:16
my Jason's on the left and my Alex's on the right Jason of course six colors.com you wrote
00:57:22
actually a really good piece this week in six colors. You were talking of course you did your
00:57:26
color graphs of apples always quarter. They announced their quarterly results. They're usually
00:57:32
week third quarter on Thursday and it was actually not a bad third quarter. Yeah it was a record
00:57:36
for their fiscal third quarter. It was the most boring record quarter where you make 20 plus
00:57:41
billion dollars in profit ever. But that's where Apple is these days. But you did raise an
00:57:47
interesting point which is 24 billion of the revenue was services and that's a can maybe a cost
00:57:54
for concern. It's actually bigger than the Mac business the iPad business and the wearables
00:57:59
businesses together put together. Yeah the product lines that aren't the iPhone. Yeah I just
00:58:04
have this moment. It's funny. Everybody reads into that article. I tried to be really restrained
00:58:08
because that's my thing. Everybody reads into what they want. They can freak out and be like oh god
00:58:12
Apple sold its sold. They can also read it and say how dare you suggest that Apple would sell its
00:58:16
sold. I did neither of those things. I just noticed that when you consider how much money they make
00:58:21
from services it goes up every single quarter and you notice the profit margin on services which
00:58:26
is far more than it is on products. For obvious reasons. Yeah it's like in the 70s versus in the
00:58:32
and in the 30s 40s Apple's hardware margins are really good by the way they're very very good but
00:58:37
services essentially you do it once and the total profit. For the Google the Google search
00:58:43
deal is pure profit. It's actually and I think that's one of the things is deceiving about services.
00:58:48
But is a significant chunk of that is Google. Yeah an app store 30% is another big chunk of it.
00:58:53
We think of it as and they encourage us to think of it as things like Apple TV Plus or Apple
00:58:58
News Plus. The truth is you know I cloud Apple care is in there but a lot of this is the Google search
00:59:04
stuff. And it's by design. I mean they've been pushing services because you know you can't keep on
00:59:09
I think they're right. There's at some point you saturate the world with an iPhone. Exactly
00:59:13
and they knew and this this started seven or eight years ago they made their first target about
00:59:17
services revenue where they said we are going to double our services revenue in the next three years
00:59:23
or something and they beat that that was an easy target. They knew they were going to beat it
00:59:26
but if they they are trying to satisfy Wall Street Wall Street once growth and as you said Alex
00:59:32
they know that even though the iPhone and the Mac and the iPad are still growing but they're
00:59:37
growing slowly they're not going to grow at 20% again. The services grows every year and what I
00:59:42
thought of this time is this is not a high quarter for iPhone sales that'll come in the
00:59:46
holiday quarter. Services keeps going up and the disparity in profit margin means we're close. I
00:59:52
did the math. We're not there yet but we are the closest we've ever been Apple making more
00:59:58
profit out of services than it does out of its hardware and that is undoubtedly going to happen
01:00:04
in the next. I think that was completely by design. Yes absolutely and I also don't think that
01:00:08
it's Apple abandoning. I think the danger is that people at Apple stop keeping their eye on the
01:00:13
ball in terms of hardware because I do think that the services revenue stems entirely from the
01:00:19
hardware and if they're not successful selling their hardware they're not going to have any success
01:00:23
with their services. In a tail needs to not wag the dog. I'm not saying the tail is wagging the dog
01:00:28
right now and there's some people who are like how dare you say that. I'm not saying that. The iPhone
01:00:32
is still a big part of their revenue. The iPhone is an enormous part. I'm just saying it's
01:00:36
an interesting thing to watch when Apple starts making more profit from its services than it does
01:00:42
from the devices itself. We'll probably happen next year. It's kind of sad to leave the old place but
01:00:50
as I said I'm happy up here. You're watching our Best of 2024 on this week in tech. Well I hope
01:00:58
you're enjoying this Best of. It's always fun to do these and I have to tell you it's a lot of work
01:01:03
and I really appreciate our team. The people work so hard Anthony Nielsen, our creative director,
01:01:09
our producers and editors, Benino Gonzalez, Kevin King, John Ashley. They work so hard to put
01:01:15
this all together for you. All of our hosts, our contributors do and of course there's the office
01:01:21
people who do it work in continuity like Viva and Sebastian, our CEO Lisa.
01:01:26
Tweet is a big effort and we think what we're doing is really important. I hope you do too. I hope
01:01:34
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01:02:12
But enough of that. On with the show. One of the things that was the best of 2024 for me is the
01:02:18
success of my son, Saul Hank. He made a little cameo visit on the show watch. I'm going to break
01:02:26
format a little bit briefly here because I'm a proud papa. And my son's a new cookbook is coming out
01:02:34
on Tuesday and I thought, I just, I thought I'd get Saul Hank on just to talk a little bit about
01:02:40
Saul Hank about the cookbook. Give him a little bit of a plug and then we'll get to our panel. We've
01:02:45
got a great panel for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to somebody I know pretty
01:02:50
well. A long time member of the family. Since he was born, I've known this guy. My son, Henry Laporte,
01:02:57
better known as Saul Hank. What's going on? The author of a brand new cookbook which comes out
01:03:03
Tuesday from Simon and Schuster. Yes. Saul Hank, a five napkin situation. Oh, look at this. Look
01:03:12
at the area's stuff in his mouth. I never discussed the cover. It's more than a cookbook though. Flip
01:03:17
through it a little bit because it's really a picture book. I mean, this will put this on your coffee
01:03:22
table is bonkers. Oh, my God. What is that? Poutine? This is like basically animal fries. It's
01:03:29
recreated animal fries from in and out, but we had to call them feral fries for copyright reasons.
01:03:34
They are like just very gourmet versions of animal fries. That's one of the honestly my favorite.
01:03:40
Somebody's asking Keith and our discord, don't parents just teach their kids how to cook so
01:03:45
they can get them to make lunch for them? I want to tell you something. I have never had anything
01:03:51
Hank has made. That's not completely true. I don't think. I've had your french fries,
01:03:57
which are a miracle. You cook them like three times. Well, it depends what kind of french fries are
01:04:02
making. If you're doing shoe strings, cook them once. If you're doing like the Michelin star fries,
01:04:05
where you boil them, take them out, fry them, take them out and fry them again. That's the three
01:04:10
times thing. Henry's on his houseboat, where he does his his salt tank studio. It's actually called
01:04:17
the salt lovers club. We should get that straight. The salt lovers club. Well, that's just the salt
01:04:22
company. So that's a little bit separate. That's we sell seasonings and pickles and stuff like that.
01:04:26
And that's the name of it. Yeah, salt lovers club. And we have a big neon sign above kind of
01:04:33
work. Yeah. Like when I see you cooking on the insta. Right. You're there in front of your sign that
01:04:39
says the salt lovers club right there like that. Well, that's just to promote the heck out of the
01:04:44
salt company. Right now. I'm like not. But isn't the salt company really just like a side line for
01:04:52
salt tank? What do you mean? Like a side hustle side business side hustle. Well, right now,
01:04:58
it's to be spurgers and do it. Yeah, it's kind of like that. I mean, if you want to be like if
01:05:02
you want to start a product, that's kind of a way into like the longevity of the influencer world
01:05:08
a little bit. And then you can, you know, make cool stuff like pickles. I literally can't wait.
01:05:13
And by the way, I'm really pumped to send you some of these pickles. There's a disclaimer. I am an
01:05:16
investor in the pickle. That's true. Yeah. Business. Half-blogged legally. Make sure that I think I have
01:05:24
to think FTC regulations say that if I'm going to tell you promote something that I have a
01:05:30
financial stake. You're an investor in all this. You gave me my first camera. So technically,
01:05:34
you, you basically like own a chunk of this entire business. Well, we're okay. Where do I get paid off?
01:05:41
Owning a chunk means mainly I just, yeah, I gave you cameras. I, what you were into drones.
01:05:50
You have drones. I want to work in this stuff. And I know. But you, when you were a kid,
01:05:55
all you ever did is watch those extreme food videos on YouTube. Yeah, really good food porn.
01:06:01
Maddie Matheson, my boy. Maddie, who loves you now, by the way. Isn't that cool that you've
01:06:05
become friends with Maddie Matheson? That part's pretty wild. I don't, I don't know if he knows
01:06:11
how crazy it is for me when he like calls me. I'm like, dude, I hear my hero. You were on his show
01:06:16
just a couple of weeks ago. He woke you up. Yeah, it was literally, I was laying in bed right there
01:06:24
completely asleep. He's like, hey, what's up? You're on the show. Like, what's going on?
01:06:27
Describe what you're doing right now. And then he's like, he's like cursing you out for these
01:06:31
steak sandwiches. And yet he's making it. And it's incredible. Well, he thought it was going,
01:06:36
I don't know what he was doing. He was like, Hank got famous for this one sandwich. He's still true.
01:06:41
That's true. You know what? He's famous. Whatever he wants. He's the king. He's kind of the godfather
01:06:47
of like food content and food media as far as the internet goes. So he's, he's got carte blanche
01:06:53
access to say whatever he wants anybody. And yeah, he's a sweetheart. But honestly, there,
01:06:58
there he is. By the way, there you are with Maddie Madison eating something. I had to
01:07:04
be consistent. Read any, like get him to come do a video with us. Oh, look at that. Oh,
01:07:10
dipped in dipped in queso. Oh, man, he's doing the cook. And I recognize those tats.
01:07:16
I literally didn't cook much at all during this video. Just filming them, like kind of go crazy.
01:07:21
I made the brown patties and the little lot of the things that we chopped up and put in the breed
01:07:26
above and that Maddie was just going nuts in the kitchen. It was so if you like food porn,
01:07:30
because this is what Henry grew up on his food porn, follow Saul Hank on Instagram, salt underscore
01:07:36
Hank. I thank you, dad. Yes. And the cookbook, get the cookbook because the cookbook is out Tuesday.
01:07:45
And you can get 40% off a target right now. You get 40% off on Walmart. Yeah,
01:07:50
what's the sweepstakes? I can't do sweepstakes. That's illegal. So I won't you could get buy salt
01:07:57
from the salt lovers. What are you looking at right now? I'm looking at your salthank.comie.io.
01:08:03
Oh, yeah. This is like the link tree thing. Yeah, that's got all. There's got everything. You can
01:08:08
buy the signed copies. Look at that. Oh, yeah. And a crap load of them. But yeah, 40% off a
01:08:15
target in Amazon. How much did you sign like 2500 or something? Oh, my God. Your hand must be killing you.
01:08:25
No, I actually taught me how to I didn't have a signature before and I did enough. You do.
01:08:30
You got 500. I was like, Oh, okay. Here it is. If October 2nd, uh, Saul Hank will be at the Barnes
01:08:36
and Noble and Mira Mesa San Diego, California. Cooking or do you just you do a reading from your book?
01:08:43
No, I wanted to do pop ups. I thought that would have been like so cool to like do. If you buy a book,
01:08:48
you get a free sandwich like, you know, and just make a bunch of sandwiches in all these cities,
01:08:52
but but just going to be in like Barnes and Noble is kind of doing little chats with people from
01:08:56
those. Okay. It's funny. I have to do a reading from a cookbook. Now, then you take the onions and
01:09:02
you slice them. It's not that. It's that he will also be in Los Angeles on the third at diesel Brentwood.
01:09:08
Owen Han, his sandwich buddy, you'll join him. Uh, San Francisco book passage up our way on the fifth.
01:09:15
We love book passage. That's one of the best bookstores in the world in Chicago and Anderson's
01:09:20
in North Central College on October 7th. And in Brooklyn, October 8th, Powerhouse Arena.
01:09:26
Brooklyn's a big one. If anyone knows wishbone kitchen or Olivia T, they're giant. They're
01:09:31
going to be co-hosting with me for that one. So if your fans should come out to that, it's going to be
01:09:35
sweet. And the book comes out Tuesday. You could pre-order now 40% off at Walmart. If you go to Hank's
01:09:42
Instagram page, you will see that. Um, I didn't really get to interview you. We're going to do the
01:09:49
the regular show now. Hank, I know. Yeah. Do you think I don't want to come back Wednesday on Twig
01:09:54
because I know Paris and Jeff want to hang. And I will do I will interview then and find out
01:09:58
how you got into this. Well, Wednesday is the first book tour. Do it from the hotel. It's okay.
01:10:04
It's possible. I'll let you have Pacific. I got to check in with my own son, Monie, but cleanly.
01:10:09
No, I would love to. You don't want kick of me off right now. Okay.
01:10:13
I mean, this is the first day of the book tour, but I absolutely will. That's okay. I'm very proud of
01:10:22
you. You've done, you've done good son. Okay. Thank you guys. Sorry for interrupting. I love you,
01:10:28
anybody. Let's listen. Take care. All right. Don't forget Saul Hank, a five napkin situation.
01:10:33
He did not pay me for this ad, by the way. I just, you know, I just thought, hey, it's my son.
01:10:38
I could do that. But need to show the whole group here because this is a pretty special
01:10:43
group of people for our 1,000 episode. You know, Twitter has gone through a lot of iterations and
01:10:50
generations. It's almost 20 years and lots of different people have come and gone and so forth.
01:10:56
But these were the cats that started. There's one face missing, though. Anybody who listened to our
01:11:00
early episodes will say, Hey, where's Kevin Rose and Kevin couldn't be here, but he did send us
01:11:06
this greeting. Hey, Leo, Kevin Rose here. Just wanted to say a huge congratulations. Really
01:11:12
bummed I can't be there for episode number 1,000. I'm actually going to be in London during the
01:11:16
recording. Otherwise, I would 100% be there. I remember going up for episode number one.
01:11:21
We were shooting in some little tiny cubby kind of back office thing on the ground.
01:11:28
And that was just the beginning of watching you embark upon this amazing journey to create
01:11:33
all this great content over the years. And, you know, I think back at that time, and obviously
01:11:39
with tech TV moving to Los Angeles and all the other things you could have done in media,
01:11:43
the fact that you chose to take the entrepreneurial path is just really inspiring. And I just want to say,
01:11:49
thank you for doing that. Thank you for going independent, for building the media empire that you
01:11:54
have today. And for entertaining and informing all of us over many, many years and many, many episodes.
01:12:00
So a couple quick reminders, though, when we started this episode are we started this this podcast.
01:12:06
The iPhone didn't exist. Bitcoin was not invented. Social media and Facebook was one year old,
01:12:14
and it was a college only at that time. Twitter did not exist. Windows XP was the dominant OS.
01:12:22
And YouTube had just been founded in February of 2005. It's crazy. What has happened and what we've
01:12:29
witnessed has changed over the years. Netflix was also a mail-in service at that time. So it was
01:12:35
mail-in only. There was no online streaming of Netflix. And lastly, the fastest processor at that
01:12:43
time was an Intel Pentium 4. And it went up to 3.8 gigahertz, which oddly, it doesn't seem far
01:12:50
off from where they are today, but maybe that explains some of the problems. Anyway, enough about that,
01:12:55
just a fun little trip down memory lane and all the stuff that you've seen over your career.
01:12:59
And just a huge thank you for giving me my first opportunity when I first got started on tech TV
01:13:04
by the grace of yourself and Paul Block, allowing me to do that first. I mean, it really kicked
01:13:09
off my career and I'm forever grateful for that. So I love you wishing you many more great episodes
01:13:15
and health and I don't know how you're not aging, but it's just it is crazy to me.
01:13:21
Thank you, Kevin. It's great to see all of you, just such great memories. All of us were at tech TV.
01:13:31
I think that's how this all got started as we worked at tech TV, which started in 1998.
01:13:38
And I guess the picnic is for the 20, maybe the 25th anniversary, is that right? Wow. That's
01:13:45
I think you remember David, he out he was the studio actor. Yeah, he had a voice like this.
01:13:51
He did. And he would call it the Speedway Suaray. Do you remember? This is that, I think. And Marcus,
01:14:00
him and Marcus Buick putting it together. Marcus, Marcus was the sound guy. Great sound guy.
01:14:06
What is that going to be? Oh, I just on next Saturday. Well, I guess I better find my invitation.
01:14:13
It's I think it was just an open invite as long as you're on the the tech. Here's the problem.
01:14:18
It's Facebook, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. It's on Facebook. It's on. No, it's you've heard the startup.
01:14:23
It's called it's all text-based. It's called what is it called? Everyone's guy? No, no, no, it's a text-based.
01:14:31
It's a text-based event app called Partyful. Right. I never heard of that. Partyful. Okay. Yeah,
01:14:38
be it partyful. And yeah, it's actually quite good because it's just all text. You get a text message.
01:14:44
You can use the app if you want. And then just all the metrics you should fly out for this next
01:14:48
Saturday. Come on out. We'll go to we'll go to the Speedway. No, he doesn't. It's not going to happen.
01:14:57
All right. Anyway, it's great to see all of you a thousand episodes roughly 52 a year is almost 20
01:15:06
years. Kevin, actually, I'm glad he put that list together because I was thinking of doing it and
01:15:11
getting around to it. Do we want X to go away or do we want X to get better or do we care?
01:15:18
It's at some point Elon Musk is going to lose interest, I think. He agreed. He has a history of
01:15:26
it might be November. It might be November 6th. He'll lose interest. It could be very well could be.
01:15:31
At some point he's going to lose interest. He's going to not want to waste his time on this. And
01:15:39
he's going to sell it off to the lowest. But he does right now have a bully pulpit there. Does he not?
01:15:46
Sure. And I have some concerns. My nightmare scenario is a disputed election on November 5th
01:15:55
that then Elon uses this bully pulpit and be many others who will, including Robert Murdoch and Fox,
01:16:02
to destabilize our democracy. Yep. That is a serious risk. That's a real good. I'm very concerned
01:16:10
about it more than destabilize our democracy. Actually, fuel violence. Yep. And I worry about that.
01:16:18
I think that that's that's a but what I don't know what we can do about it, but it just really
01:16:23
scares me because I don't think Elon is in his right mind at this point. Whether or not it was a good
01:16:29
financial investment, you have to use a terrible financial investment, right? You have to give
01:16:35
Elon credit for understanding that this platform to this day, even if it has, there's been a
01:16:42
diaspora that's gone out. Maybe it's not the, it doesn't punch with the weight that it did in 2016
01:16:47
or whatever. It still has the capacity to set the conversation. And so if his, if it was in his
01:16:56
interest to whether politically he believes in Donald Trump or whatever, if he wants to have more
01:17:06
influence over who is in the next government or to have the bully pulpit or to set the conversation,
01:17:13
you have to give him credit for seeing what Wall Street didn't see because it was a wounded duck
01:17:18
that that people thought was a failing company. And that that people also continued to
01:17:25
consider to be sort of like the children's table at media, which even after him sort of hobbling
01:17:35
it, it still isn't. It's still incredibly powerful. I think you saw the power. I was very obvious
01:17:40
that power was there. And I think you saw the power. And I don't think it was, look, the guy is on
01:17:45
paper worth almost a trillion dollars losing 44 billion dollars, especially since he was able to
01:17:50
finagle banks at the borrow lending him half of that is not a huge cost for gaining what he did gain,
01:17:57
which is an incredible number of people who will laugh at his dad jokes. I think that's true.
01:18:03
And I think although obviously a forced liquidation of his Twitter holdings of his Tesla holdings
01:18:09
to make a margin call would be really bad for and cascade through a lot of his other, how would that,
01:18:14
what's the, how would that happen? So if he has to, if, if like, they want their interest payment
01:18:20
and he can't make it because Twitter didn't have it and he staked his Tesla stock as collateral,
01:18:25
though for liquidation and forcing a mass liquidation of Tesla stock would tank Tesla's share price.
01:18:31
And so that would be really bad for him. It'd be really bad for his future at Tesla. It might
01:18:36
empower his board to finally do what they keep trying to do and kick him out and so on.
01:18:41
I wonder about his, isn't the board his, a tame board? It's not a tame board.
01:18:46
Well, I mean, the board can be replaced, right? Because the shareholders can be many shareholders.
01:18:52
Yeah. I want to go back to the thing you said before about, do we want X to fail? So, you know,
01:18:58
if you've seen the documentary Fiddler on the Roof,
01:19:03
if I were, it's, yeah. So you know the tragedy of that movie, it's not that they like
01:19:08
that Anatevka is a good place to live, right? Like the basic plot of Fiddler on the Roof is every 15
01:19:15
minutes the cost acts right through and kick the shit out of everyone, right? So,
01:19:18
so if this is not a good place to live, but they're there because they love each other.
01:19:22
And the reason the ending is tragic when they're all like, okay, we're leaving Anatevka because the
01:19:27
Zara's kicked the Jews out. And you know, I'm going to Chicago and you're going to New York and he's
01:19:32
going to crack off and we're just never going to see each other again. Like, normally you think leaving
01:19:37
a place where you get beaten out of you every 15 minutes would be a happy ending, but the fact is
01:19:42
that they're going to lose each other, right? And so I don't, I don't care if, if Twitter succeeds or
01:19:48
survives, right? But, you know, how many communities were lost forever when live journal liquidated,
01:19:54
right? Or, you know, became what it became today, the, you know, Russian hell. So you think Twitter
01:19:59
is Anatevka. Yeah. Twitter is Anatevka. Yeah. That's really an interesting take. It really is.
01:20:05
And the Zara is Elon. Yeah. Elon is the Zara. You need to write that article, Cory.
01:20:11
I think that's the best take I've heard. Yeah. And, and cat turn is the cause act.
01:20:16
And, and drip is one of the people we love we lost. Yeah. Drill, I mean, not drill. Drill. Drill.
01:20:24
I knew you meant. If I were a rich man, I, you know what, that actually, as crazy as that analogy,
01:20:31
Cory's doctoros analogy was, I thought I've used it several times since. And I noticed we are still
01:20:37
using X. We still stream live on X every, every week. It's hard to leave your friends behind, isn't it?
01:20:43
Till you kicked out anyway. You're watching the best of this week in tech for 2024. We're so glad
01:20:49
you're here. Happy holidays. All we go with the best of this week in tech with. I think one of the
01:20:56
most touching, or at least most interesting moments of the year, advice for parents when it comes
01:21:03
to their kids online. We're starting to realize we need, and I hate to save it, say it like this,
01:21:13
but we need to give parents the, I'll say it like that. We need to give parents the tools to help
01:21:18
the children to help them, moderate what the children can see. But isn't it ultimately your job,
01:21:26
Patrick, as a father, to say to your child, you're not old enough to install Instagram. I'm not
01:21:31
going to let you have Instagram yet. I mean, you know better than anybody. It's not about age,
01:21:37
by the way, some 13-year-olds would be old enough, some wouldn't. It's really about the maturity of
01:21:43
the child, and only the parent knows that. I think the parent really is the ultimate gay keeper,
01:21:47
and should be. Yes. And I agree with you tools, whatever tools you need, if you need a tool to tell
01:21:52
how old your kid is, okay, but whatever tools you need. But really, the tool is you have to,
01:21:58
the phone should have parental controls, which they do, right? And the parent has the ultimate
01:22:05
responsibility to citing whether even to give the kid a phone or not. I agree. I agree, but I think
01:22:12
there are limits to that, not every parent is super tech savvy, and that goes into other things as well.
01:22:18
I know, but kids are, and kids are also going to go in and get a beer, sometimes at this level.
01:22:22
Of course. Yeah. Absolutely. You can't not think too perfect, but I think parents are the,
01:22:27
are really the ones who should make these decisions. Yes. And I'm not against giving them tools,
01:22:31
but parental controls are tools. I think we agree, but I think currently in our, in our world of tech
01:22:39
and internet, the tools are maybe a little bit lacking. And they could be better. What do you,
01:22:45
what do you think, Wesley? Because you've got a 12 year old. So you're right in the middle of this
01:22:49
right now. So the funds lock down. They can't use it outside of our view. And so it stays home.
01:22:56
They can't take it. It doesn't leave the house. And we have the parental control. So I know what
01:23:02
apps on there and they can't install new apps without talking to us first. They have no social media
01:23:08
access. And what is their reaction to, especially the 12 year old? It's, they don't know what they're
01:23:15
missing because they don't know experience it. So I'm not taking anything away from them. They,
01:23:19
it's normal. This is your job. First place. You also don't, you know, let them have a beer. I mean,
01:23:23
it's just, it's your job. There's, there's a big group. There's a great. There's a big conversation
01:23:30
happening here about porn, I guess all over the world about porn sites. And I think we are a little
01:23:37
bit on, we don't realize the damages this is making. And I wouldn't realize if I hadn't been
01:23:46
educated about it a little bit by people who are saying, you know, doctors and experts who are saying,
01:23:54
it is changing the, the, the, the relationship kids, very young teenagers sometimes have with
01:24:04
sexuality and sexual partners. And so the idea that you need to lock down porn sites and to have
01:24:12
them do age verification properly is not as ridiculous as we would think it would be because
01:24:20
Wesley, you're saying the, the phones are locked down. Do they not have access to the internet?
01:24:24
Maybe they don't. And maybe, no, that's the way. They don't have the browsers. But right, no browser.
01:24:29
The cry of like, these companies aren't doing the same thing, coming from the same party that says,
01:24:35
we can't teach sex, sex education in schools. It, you can't, you can't shrug your responsibility,
01:24:41
you can't just say on one hand, they can't be exposed. But on the other hand, we can't give them
01:24:46
the tools so that they can even understand what can cannot be done. Absolutely. Removing, removing
01:24:52
something and just saying, let's just act like it doesn't exist is not a solution.
01:24:58
I think no one to argue, well, no one on this panel would argue with that. That's obviously
01:25:03
something you have to do. I do, I mean, gosh, you gotta, my kids are old enough that I didn't
01:25:08
really have to worry about this when they were that age. It's a tough thing to do. I think you were
01:25:13
smart to draw the line when you did. You're right. Some parents won't. But I don't want the government
01:25:18
or Facebook or any company to tell me what my kids can and can't do. That's my job.
01:25:25
Can I believe that's not Patrick, please? Just, you know, the government tells your kids what to do
01:25:31
all the time about a lot of things. And it is a very slippery slope to be saying, oh, I don't want
01:25:37
the government to tell me about this or that because then you generalize it and you again go to
01:25:44
someone should do something but not the government when that someone is the government. The government
01:25:49
tells your kids what to do all the time about a lot of things. I don't think the internet, I mean,
01:25:55
obviously there are things that would not make sense. But I don't think the internet is completely,
01:26:01
it should have nothing to do about the internet just because it's the internet and we know it then we're
01:26:10
you know, comfortable in it. I just find it very strange that right now we're discussing
01:26:16
earlier on the show. The idea that the Republican Party wants to do away with Section 232
01:26:22
limit corporations ability to filter trash from their platforms. At this intent, the same party is
01:26:28
saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we must protect the children and we must have age-gated
01:26:32
verification for lewd content. Good luck sorting out what that means. So my thought here is that I
01:26:39
think that having this land on the government side, Patrick, in an American context means handing over
01:26:47
a control of what we can say and see and hear and read to people who are very socially conservative
01:26:54
to the point in which we're going to end up with the omnichinternet. And I say with a lot of
01:26:57
a lot of people who are less technology savvy, but the point is it's just it's just maddening.
01:27:01
It drives me nuts. How are we talking to both sides of their mouth? That's my point. Sorry,
01:27:07
there's one to shout. But we could talk out of one side of our mouth so we can say we can at least
01:27:12
on this show say what should happen and whether we get it, we or not. I think the government says things
01:27:21
like you have to wear seat belts, you have to wear a helmet if you're under 18, things like that.
01:27:25
Those are, I think, reasonable laws. Is it a public safety issue? Maybe it is, Patrick. Maybe it
01:27:32
really is a public safety issue. I think we don't see as much because of our age and our comfort
01:27:39
with the internet, the real issues that it can create, pornography is one, but social media is
01:27:47
another. But I'm curious. I'll ask this question to sort of re-center the question about tech stuff,
01:27:54
like pure tech stuff. Let's say there was a way, and maybe there isn't, let's say there was a
01:27:59
way to determine someone's age without compromising private data. Would that be okay to implement
01:28:10
in various apps? Would you be okay with that? I don't want to get the government. I don't,
01:28:18
forget about the government. Let's say there is a new technique, the facial recognition technique,
01:28:26
that with absolute accuracy, the camera on your phone can say how old you are and then give you
01:28:32
access to age-appropriate stuff. Would that be okay? Is that okay, Patrick? Yeah, I think that's
01:28:37
the way I would phrase it better. As long as I'm the one deciding what is and what is not okay,
01:28:44
then I'm fine with that. But the government says you can drink different, different for a certain age.
01:28:49
Oh, I don't agree with that either. Oh, okay. I've heard that in France, you give your kids wine
01:28:56
sometimes watered down a little bit. I've heard that. Well, a long time ago, probably yes,
01:29:00
but not so much. Wesley makes a really good point. I want to go back to Wes's point about
01:29:05
sexual education in the United States, because it might sound odd to our foreign audiences,
01:29:10
but in the US, what counts as lude has various interpretations across the political spectrum based
01:29:16
on religion mostly. And in different states, by the way. States. And so what we're saying here is we're
01:29:21
framing this around parents taking care of children. And I think it's going to be very hard to
01:29:26
argue against that. But the way this would be implemented, I think, Patrick in the US in a practical
01:29:30
sense without Leo's magical machine that knows my age perfectly every time is that we're going to
01:29:35
have people who are very, very opposed to any discussion of human sexuality at all trying to
01:29:38
ban that from anyone over the age of 18 or. So let's say you're gay or you think you might be gay
01:29:45
and you want and you're 12 years old and you want to know what does that mean? What am I?
01:29:50
That could be that would very likely by a count as lude in Oklahoma. Yeah. And so, but it was the
01:29:57
Anna. It's really very hypothetical because there is no way of asserting ascertaining somebody's
01:30:02
age without violating every user's privacy. In the UK for a while, they talked about, oh, you just
01:30:10
go into a pub. And the pub will give you a certificate saying what your age is. So they literally
01:30:19
floated this as an idea. Actually, in France, you're currently the law has passed and is in effect that
01:30:26
porn sites have to verify the age of their youth. And how do they do that? That's true. Nobody knows.
01:30:33
No one knows. Well, and is it to their is it to their is a gallery that has new art? Is that a porn site?
01:30:40
Like what is well? I remember national geographic when I was a kid. That was my porn site. Like with it,
01:30:45
like how do you define this so that it applies to the places that matter? I think I think maybe you can
01:30:53
get someone to make a list. And it works well enough for the United States where sites have done that.
01:30:59
There are states that have done that in the United States. In those states, most reputable porn
01:31:04
companies withdraw. So to speak. Because they don't want responsibility. And what you get, though,
01:31:13
is the are the non reputable companies. But I yeah, it's complicated. But I see where you're coming from.
01:31:24
And I understand that that concern. It's intractable. It's really. Yeah. It's really difficult. And no
01:31:30
matter what you do, there are going to be like negatives to it, which are serious and concerning.
01:31:36
All right. Since this is the pop up podcast, I'm just going to say this to all the other
01:31:41
parents listening, one a bit of advice that I got was that the world is a very large place.
01:31:47
Your job is not to keep the world out because that's an impossible task. Your job is to give your
01:31:53
kids the tool to take on all of the things that they're going to experience because you don't have
01:31:59
control about what that's right. They'll eventually run into. That's right. So giving them the tools
01:32:04
mentally and emotionally and understanding how they can navigate the world that is none of your
01:32:09
control. That is your primary role. Because if you're a role or you're thinking is that I'm just
01:32:15
going to keep the world out, that's not going to happen. Bingo. Well said. Well said, Wesley.
01:32:21
Yes, but no. Come on. Come on. No, I think that that's that's absolutely true. That's how I
01:32:32
raise my kids. I was a very less a fair parent. I let them play video games as long as they wanted
01:32:37
them, whatever. But I did what you said, which is I tried to instill in them. And it's not, you know,
01:32:41
as a parent, you're really our role model. Trying to instill in them the values and the judgment
01:32:47
to navigate the world that I knew that I couldn't control even when frankly, even when they were young.
01:32:53
You know, after about 10, the peers, the peer group becomes much more important than the parent
01:33:00
learning group. So you want to you want to make sure they're prepared for that. I agree with
01:33:03
you. I think that's true. You don't like those guys. It's not no, it's not like you're making it
01:33:09
seem a little the subtext is so laws don't matter. And I know that's not what you mean Wesley, obviously.
01:33:15
But there are still there are still laws and still things that collect the laws. You know,
01:33:22
it's a bad word, I think, in the US. It's things that we collectively decide, okay, this we should
01:33:28
agree. All of us kids shouldn't do. And so we'll do what we can to make sure they don't do it.
01:33:34
You know, this election ended up being very interesting. Turns out Elon Musk now with the FEC
01:33:41
was, you know, information has come out donated a quarter of a billion dollars. We're very
01:33:47
nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to a president Trump's campaign. And he got a good payout.
01:33:51
Well, I think he got his money's worth because he is very much part of the transition team. New
01:33:57
York Times story, I think a couple of days ago actually says it's not just Elon, but it's Elon's
01:34:04
buddies. And they are not just, you know, doing doge, the Department of governmental efficiency.
01:34:10
They are in on the interviews. Right at the beginning, Elon Musk and Larry Ellison of Oracle
01:34:21
were house guests went to the first transition meeting. I brought the two richest people in the
01:34:28
world today. Trump told his advisors, what did you bring? And miss his mom may musk has actually been
01:34:37
in, apparently on some of the meetings. So Elon brought his mom. He also brought a whole bunch of
01:34:45
people, including this Jade birch hall. He's the head of Elon Musk's family office. He's been
01:34:52
interviewing candidates for the job for jobs at the state department, even though that's not his
01:34:58
Bailey Wick. FTC FCC, Mark Andreessen is there. Of course, the guy who invented Netscape Navigator when
01:35:10
he was a student at, you know, which I'm going to call it, in Illinois. And at the NCSA in Illinois. And
01:35:20
he, let's see, who else? Sean McGuire, who is a Caltech PhD in physics and investor at Sokoia
01:35:29
Capital. He's been interviewing candidates for defense department jobs. David Sachs. Well,
01:35:35
and that's the big story. David Sachs, who spoke at the Republican Convention, is the host of the
01:35:42
Olin podcast is now the White House AI and crypto czar. Despite the fact that he actually, as active
01:35:50
as he is, he's a part of the PayPal mafia. He doesn't really have any active participation in an AI
01:35:55
company or a crypto company. I guess that's good. I guess. That we know of. That we know of. All of this
01:36:04
has done one thing for sure that we can see, which is propelled Bitcoin well over a hundred thousand
01:36:10
dollars. A coin. This is good for crypto doges up. Everything's up. Mean coins are up.
01:36:16
Hock to a coin is up. Not that one. No, not that one's up. And then down, but that's another story.
01:36:25
I am, if you're an optimist, I think it would be a good time to say, you know, maybe this is all
01:36:33
going to work out. The government's going to get much more efficient, right? That Bitcoin is going to
01:36:38
end up, maybe the US will create a digital coin itself, a stable coin that would then kind of,
01:36:44
I don't know, I don't understand economics well enough to know what the impact of that would be.
01:36:48
I don't think anybody that's with you looks like we might end up with the cryptocurrency reserve.
01:36:57
And I don't understand the implications of that. President El Salvador is very happy about his
01:37:02
cryptocurrency reserve, right? You're happy until it collapses, right? It reminds me a lot of Vegas,
01:37:10
you know, those beautiful big buildings. But then they always put up a billboard of the guy who
01:37:15
won a million dollars at the sluts. What they don't show you is the 999,000 people who lost money
01:37:20
as a sluts to pay for that. Right. Or how much did it cost that that person, you know, to win the
01:37:25
million, right? I don't ever talk about that. Yeah. But having said that, like, I mean, I'm kind of with
01:37:32
with Lu here, I'm certainly not bullish. And I'm certainly thinking if you don't have money to lose,
01:37:37
then you shouldn't be investing in any of these things. But just being completely candid, I don't
01:37:42
think that it's a bad idea to talk with whoever handles your investments, or if you do it yourself,
01:37:47
to look at diversifying into crypto if you're looking, you know, for the next. I'm not going to touch it.
01:37:53
I'm not going to touch it. I just don't like something. I agree. You know, I'm dumb. I mean, there's a lot of
01:37:58
Bitcoin billionaires, a lot of them, a lot of that money went into the campaign in 2024. So I'm obviously
01:38:06
dumb, but I don't want to buy an asset that I don't understand why the asset is valued at what it's
01:38:11
valued at that is just a random, it's, to me, it's buying a lottery ticket. Just don't put all of your
01:38:18
retirement funds into crypto. Well, that's for sure. Absolutely not. Only put stuff you could afford to
01:38:23
lose in it. Exactly. But even then, I mean, all I'm saying is at this point, because just my own,
01:38:28
like, similar to Harry, I put $2,000 in a Robinhood account a few years ago. And a lot of that was in
01:38:37
Doge when Doge was cheap. And then I didn't sell the Doge when it was at a really good price because
01:38:44
my nephew had just been born. And I wound up like it wanted being underwater on the investment for
01:38:50
the better part of three years. It is now, I've happened in 85% return. So I've made money so to speak.
01:39:00
And it's small amount. It doesn't matter. But it is one of those things that for me, I was like,
01:39:05
okay, I put this money in just for fun, gambling genuinely. Now with enough time has passed because
01:39:13
it's the changes that have happened for various reasons. I have a good return. But I certainly wouldn't
01:39:19
stake my retirement or anything important on it. My wife, well, every time we go to Vegas or Reno,
01:39:25
she has 20 bucks. She's, I'm going to play this slot. Still it's gone. She's twice now 1,
01:39:30
600 and 900 dollars. So she's way up, right? And now any, you know, the temptation is then for me to say,
01:39:39
wow, I got to get into this. This is great. You're making a mint out of this. But we know what the
01:39:44
reality is. There's also, and I worry about Bitcoin. And maybe I'll address this to you because you're
01:39:49
you're more bullish on it, Lew. But I worry that what Bitcoin has done is enabled ransomware.
01:39:55
Yes. And all sorts of crime because it is close as close to untraceable, almost as close to untraceable
01:40:01
as cash. And it's a lot harder to transfer a million dollars in cash from your headquarters
01:40:07
in Virginia Beach to, you know, hungry. But it also costs a lot in terms of energy use.
01:40:16
There are gas fees, you know, even though Hock Tua maybe hadn't invested in her own coin or
01:40:23
wasn't doing insider trading, she made lots of money on the fees, right? Because there's fees.
01:40:29
And so all of these things and the speed with which the transaction happens is unpredictable.
01:40:34
It's slow unless you pay more to the minor to validate it, even though now they've got proof of
01:40:41
work. So it's not as bad as it was. I think the whole thing has lots of negatives that people don't
01:40:49
even know about or don't consider. They're mostly just saying, oh, but I could make so much money.
01:40:53
I feel like we're promoting a technology that is not an ideal technology.
01:40:59
Not understood yet, too. I mean, there's that's that's you're calling all the negatives and that's
01:41:03
all makes sense because, you know, I don't like the Hock Tua thing. It drives me nuts, right?
01:41:07
Because it's the perfect example of like, you know, just like, you know, other companies coming up with
01:41:14
new AI ways of doing something stupid, right? Like, I think this is another example of, you know,
01:41:18
allowing somebody to go and create their own cryptocurrency, you know, and then, of course, you know,
01:41:24
so I think this is this is that's the bad thing about it, right? I mean, there's got to be some level
01:41:27
of correction that needs to happen. So maybe that's why government should get involved.
01:41:33
And some of this stuff is solvable at least partially solvable like the like the system about sustainability
01:41:39
aspect. There's already been some progress with some crypto currencies and there's a lot more that
01:41:44
can be done and their startups working on on it since the original way that the stuff was verified
01:41:52
was incredibly energy efficient, but that's not just that's just not like a given for the whole idea.
01:42:00
Well, we'll find out because the, well, many considered anti cryptocurrency chairman of the Fed,
01:42:10
I'm sorry, the SEC Gary Gensler will be replaced now by a guy named Paul Atkins.
01:42:17
And he is as far as we can tell, pretty pro cryptocurrency, right? And so while Gensler has been
01:42:25
kind of saying, and I kind of agreed with him, the cryptocurrency should be regulated as securities.
01:42:30
But the crypto community does not want it to be seen as a security. And I think that they're
01:42:39
going to get their way with this new guy, Paul Atkins. The book out of President Bukali of
01:42:47
El Salvador has now got a crypto treasury of $600 million from his initial investment
01:42:54
in Bitcoin. Trump wants to do the same thing. He says he has said in the campaign trail. He said
01:43:02
he wants to make the US the crypto capital of the planet and create a similar strategic reserve
01:43:07
of Bitcoin. Of course, if you hold Bitcoin, all of that is great news. It means your assets will go up.
01:43:15
Right. Right. But is it great policy? Right. I think the people who are looking at this aren't
01:43:21
considering that. They're just saying, well, I don't care because I'm going to make, I'm going to make
01:43:25
a mint. I'll get mine. I don't understand. I don't understand. Even if you're bullish on this,
01:43:31
I don't understand. I mean, other than the greed aspect, I don't understand why this would
01:43:36
not be a security. That's that's the thing that I've never understood. You should have capital gains
01:43:42
taxes on it. You should go currently. Absolutely. Yeah. We are talking about a guy who went bankrupt
01:43:48
running casinos. So I wouldn't put too much stock in here. That's that take on the soft thing.
01:43:54
Yeah. Well, now, so what's really interesting to me is it really looks as if, and I'd like to know
01:43:59
what you think, President-elect Trump has handed over the transition to Silicon Valley,
01:44:05
to the Silicon Valley billionaires. They have moved into Mar-a-Lago. They're doing the interviews.
01:44:11
Elon is sitting in phone calls with Zelensky and others.
01:44:17
There was a conspiracy theory before the election that Trump didn't really want to govern. He
01:44:22
liked being president and he liked the benefits of it, including putting all the side, all of his
01:44:28
convictions, which it apparently has. But he didn't really want to run anything. That's too much work.
01:44:34
So he was very glad to have people like Elon come in and do it. That was the conspiracy theory. The
01:44:40
Peter teal and Elon Musk were funding Trump because they knew that he would take a back seat. He would
01:44:47
enjoy the trappings of power without actually having to worry about it. JD Vance, who was a teal
01:44:52
protege, would be the vice president. He'd be sitting there with Musk and teal and all of these people
01:45:00
running the country. It kind of looks like maybe that wasn't a conspiracy theory or at least that's
01:45:05
what happened. So now I'm sure whether that was that a bad thing. Maybe these guys, they're all great
01:45:11
businessmen, right? They know how to run companies. They know how to launch rockets. They know how to
01:45:17
so maybe they should be running the country. I'm not even sure if it was ever a conspiracy theory.
01:45:22
It seemed kind of manifestly obvious from the get go. I mean, certainly you can make a
01:45:30
strong case that a business background is not inherently a great background for running
01:45:35
a government. But I'm worried because a lot of these guys have big egos because they've stumbled
01:45:42
into money. I don't know if they're, you know, a lot of them are billionaires just because they were
01:45:47
in the right place at the right time, but they think they're geniuses. And there's a certain arrogance
01:45:51
that comes with that. That worries me a little bit. So like it, though, to JFK bringing in the Harvard
01:45:57
elite, the best and the brightest, right? Or Abraham Lincoln's team of rivals bringing in the
01:46:04
best minds to help run the country. And maybe that's what's going to happen.
01:46:09
I mean, they don't, I mean, yes, they are arrogant. But so as virtually everybody else,
01:46:13
at that, at that age, you'll get to be president with that being a little arrogant trying to be
01:46:18
optimistic. I would hope that maybe there's the potential for them by sitting in on these meetings
01:46:24
to soak up some knowledge they don't already have and that they have enough of a humble side to
01:46:30
realize that they are not experts on foreign policy or all these other things outside of their real
01:46:36
house. They're in there for the interviews. Maybe just to make sure that the person is competent and
01:46:42
smart. And then somebody else is going to do the other part of the interview. I mean, we don't know.
01:46:47
It's also not clear how long this will last because just as Trump doesn't get along well forever
01:46:53
with other people who are as, as needy as Elon Musk is and that this could just get as much attention,
01:47:00
right? I love with Elon right now. I mean, this could all with it. This could all be kind of brave.
01:47:06
He was in love with everybody. He was in love with Kim Jong-un as well. And he seems to like
01:47:12
Putin quite a bit. That is a story that will continue all year long. Don't you think we will cover
01:47:18
it? Not from a political point of view, but from the technology point of view. That's what we do.
01:47:23
We like to keep you up to date on what's happening in technology so that you can use it to make your
01:47:28
life better, to help you at your work, help you have fun. I'm very proud of what we do at Twitter.
01:47:35
And we really enjoy doing it. I hope you will continue to watch or listen in the new year. And of course,
01:47:40
if you're not yet a club Twitter member, I hope you'll consider joining. That helps us a lot
01:47:44
keeping things on the air. On behalf of everybody, all of the many people who join us every weekend,
01:47:50
of course, our producer, Benito Gonzalez, our creative director, Anthony Nielsen, and the entire
01:47:55
Twitch team. We thank you so much for your support in 2024. I look forward to supporting you
01:48:00
in 2025. Happy new year, everybody. We'll see you next time.
01:48:05
Oh, and I probably should say, another Twitch is in the can.
01:48:10
He's amazing.