it's time for twit This Week in Tech first show from our new atct studio I hope you'll enjoy it we've got a great panel to celebrate it with ABR alii from CNET uh shashana Weissman from R Street and Andrew Chow the author of this new book cryptomania will talk about cryptomania the doj anti trust suit against Google it looks like the doj's won but what will the penalty be and AI regulation and kosa the kids Online safety act why sometimes too much regulation is a bad thing all that coming up and a whole lot more live from the atct studio it's time for twit podcasts you love from people you trust this is [Music] TWiT this is TWiT This Week in Tech episode 992 recorded Sunday August 11th 2024 why not [Music] pudding it's time for twit This Week in Tech uh the show where we get together with the best journalists in the business and talk about the week's Tech news and it's a little different looking today because uh we as you know from last week we shut down the twit Eastside Studios and I'm in my attic right now and weirdly I just happen to have an attic that's perfectly decorated for this just it's lit everything it's just it's an amazing thing hey great show planned for you today we welcome back shashana Weisman from R street.org always a pleasure to see her she lives in a pineapple under DC don't look now there's a giant hot dog sneaking up behind you there is yeah unless that's part of your uh your work to regulate uh processed Meats in the marketplace it's that it's that not entirely the hot dogs don't like you hi shashana great to see you welcome also here at BR alii from CNET formerly CNET now cdet I don't know what they're going to do with the name all the letters yeah all the letters great to see you have you been with CET long enough to have remembered when CET owned ZDNet no I joined CET in uh 2017 um but I keep hearing the lore and it's it's fascinating to hear it continue the next chapter I'm part of that lore because I was the fourth employee at CNET oh wow yeah and when I came to they they kind of howy Miner kind of he called me and he had his office was in a a abandoned railroad car well was nicer than that was decorated was an old railroad car in San Francisco and he called he didn't talk to me for six weeks he completely ghosted me and then called me in to his office and said look zif Davis is looking for people hint hint zif Davis is looking he gave me the like the job listing he never said you're fired he just said Z Davis is looking for so I I guess I learned my lesson I went to work for zif Davis and uh so I've worked for both I love that wow that's a really fun origin story we got to talk more about that I love it yeah well the sad thing is Hy uh was looking for investors at the time and he said if you had $10,000 I can give you a pretty big chunk of the company and uh I said I don't have $10,000 yeah and now I don't have a big Chuck of the company so oh it goes round what goes WR comes around hey somebody else we want to welcome first time on the show he's an author brand new a book just came out Time magazine's culture correspondent Andrew Chow is here hi Andrew great to meet you timing is perfect on this book cryptomania hype hope in the fall of f FTX is billion dooll fintech Empire and by the way it's a really good read it's it's it's on my bedside table cuz it's a great story and you are very good at making it uh real it's not a dry Story You've Got This the scenarios in there in the true Time Magazine fashion it's really really great thank you so much yeah it just came out on Tuesday it's filled with real characters real people and you know the hype and the Hope from the total the title is back in crypto now For Better or For Worse oh no yes it is so um I'm sure we'll see save that for later in the show I uh there's this a little scenario in here I'll just give you an example from the book uh at the peak of nfts remember the board Apes Yacht Club uh on November 10th 2021 be who was one of the guys behind the board Apes Yacht Club appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Fallon announced he had bought his first nft a board ape and uh he in January he dedicated several minutes of an interview with Paris Hilton to The Bard ape Yacht Club they each held up printouts printouts of their Apes aoft to a confused and nervously giggling crowd many Tonight Show viewers sense something was a Miss they knew better than Jimmy and uh Paris and the whole gang and Bel like although Bel came away with some money was actually not behind the board Apes he was another artist but um he was a big guy right did he he released I think the most expensive nft which was all of his Works in one he sold a group of nfts for $69 million that's yes million um and that was one of the sort of the catalysts that made all of us go what the hell is happening and why is so much money flowing into the space um a few months later yeah there was that I don't know if you guys remember this Jimmy Fallon interview which was uh one of the most excruciating 30 seconds of television history of just Jimmy and Paris holding up their Apes saying isn't this cool and the audience is like is it is it I guess is it Fallon sailor cap wearing ape reminded him of himself he said because quote I Love yach Rock and being breezy is something what an adult male would say you know that's in a way the whole crypto thing is an embarrassment and yet as you said it's back in fact Donald Trump addressed the the the big Bitcoin conference a couple of weeks ago and said uh that he was going to the United States was going to buy they were going to have the Fort Knocks of Bitcoin for years Donald Trump was posting um on social media about how much he hated Bitcoin and was skeptical about it it's not real money he said exactly how it seemed like a scam how it was going to threaten the US dollar and he was just not a fan when he was a president he did nothing to help it and suddenly about maybe 2 3 months ago he actually decided that he's a huge proponent of Bitcoin wait these guys have money oh I like them yes so I would say you know there are plenty of reasons that he has offered not enough reasons I would say you know most of it is scripted um but yes crypto magnetes have an enormous amount of money still especially as the market has that's really the bottom line isn't it right money in America money buys elections unfortunately sad to say the the Winkle Vos twins who are deep into crypto now uh each pledged a million dollars to the Trump campaign and uh you know Trump has shown a pension of going wherever the money is um he also at that Bitcoin conference in Nashville he was selling sort of like meet and greet tickets for about $800,000 ahead so he understands that this is a very muddied space that maybe he can you know like get get ahead a little bit uh yeah he so right now he's reading speeches that talk a big game about how he's going to put Bitcoin in the National Reserve he's never going to sell the whole Bitcoin mining industry is going to be in the US oh yeah that was another thing he said and I actually wanted to ask you he said every bitcoiner knows never sell your Bitcoin is that true uh there's a phrase called hodal HL which is a misspelling of hold and it's a refrain on crypto Twitter which basically exactly you got your diamond hands out you're never going to sell you're going to buy and you're just you're going to hold on for dear life just remember what happened to Hodor in the Game of Thrones that's all I'm going to say it's not a good FL it's not money until you turn it into Dollars oh people are going to yell at me for saying that oh yeah um if you've ever met a crypto berrade they are uh they're passionate mad and they're they're mad and um they hate anybody who who speaks any sort of skepticism so so look forward to that in the coming days they're probably in the chat right now actually but it did Bitcoin did hit a high a record high recently and uh I mean it's well it's over 60 thou right at this point yeah so my book traces sort of the rise and fall over the pandemic uh where it jumped from maybe $10,000 all the way to $69,000 and then after the FTX crash um jumped or fell back down to 17 or 18 so Sam bankman freed who's yeah one of the I guess he's the villain of my book uh precipitated a lot of the um bad uh mechanics that contributed to the crash uh but yeah so it was down to 18,000 and then it rocketed all the way back climbed up to 70 then there was a giant flash crash uh last week um that was just part and parcel of a larger down to 50 from 70 to 50 in in the blink of an eye so that just shows how volatile this stuff is it can go up really fast and it could go down really really fast despite um a lot of the market participants talking about oh it's not volatile anymore you know it's grown up it's um it's we're integrating it into all of the traditional systems which should be worrying for all sorts of reasons but um yeah it's it's we're going to be on the roller coaster for a while as much as some people would like it to just crawl into a hole the its belief system sort of transcends facts a lot of the time and it's almost like a religion for so many people um so we're still going to unfortunately have to be having these conversations for for a while especially if people like Trump are remain in the public Arena politics and of course as the author of cryptomania brand new uh from Simon and Schuster you might want to keep that going let's say everybody thank you buy this book actually it's really a good read anyway I wanted to thank you for being on uh I didn't realize the book just came out that's great I've actually had a galley I guess for a while and really enjoyed it so well done thank you well done uh biggest story of the week though and usually I save the sad stories for the end of the show but I think this is such a big story it's it's going to be our lead which is the passing of Susan Wiis who uh many many years ago rented her garage to a couple of young guys from Stanford named Sergey Brin and Larry Page and became one of the earliest employees of Google you may remember she ran YouTube until a couple years ago uh when she retired for health reasons well now we know why she had lung cancer and uh she passed this week but uh everybody who knew her sings her Praises uh really a a tragic story she was only 56 but a very important googler yeah that was quite jolting I had the pleasure of meeting her very briefly once a couple years ago at an event her and her sister an and just a very brief exchange but they were both so sweet and um you know uh I just this was a complete shock and it's even when you have just a very brief interaction with somebody and to know that they've that they're gone it's still very jolting she actually and founded 23 in me so it's a really an interesting uh family and I think it was their mom's garage right that they rented to Google uh or maybe not she was working at Intel according to the Washington Post rented the garage of her Meno Park home to Larry and Sergey for $1,700 a month uh which is a lot for a garage but maybe not in menow park I don't know um that's where page rank uh was invented uh and Google got was launched uh she was employee number 16 their first marketing manager she launched uh AdSense which you could say you know really Powers Google to this day Google analytics Google Books Google Images the distinctive uh Google doodle was her idea on the site she in 2006 said you know we should buy this thing called YouTube which was kind of crazy in 2006 I don't know if you remember but YouTube was being sued like crazy especially by NBC because people kept posting clips from Saturday on live and I remember interviewing uh the founders of uh of Google of YouTube at the time saying how are you going to survive when all the content on your site is basically piracy well maybe they had some inside Insight because uh obviously Google buying them in 2006 kind of transformed the site and she became its CEO in 2014 um she also uh helped Shepherd the uh acquisition of double click so really the in in a way the modern Google is a was a creation of Susan wajis I see you nodding uh shashana you you think I think the it really didn't look like YouTube could possibly survive in 2006 no it's so interesting to think about uh that you know uh hindsight is oh of course these platforms we're going to do great you know of course they knew it's so interesting too cuz a lot of uh platform problems when they get acquired happen because of like copyright and intellectual property issues and they're happy to kind of be handed off to someone bigger it I love I love hearing the retelling of like how how all this stuff happened uh and I'm a dork for for thinking through that stuff so I'm loving what you're talking about we interviewed uh one of the founders of uh Google Steve Chen on our show inside the net Amber MacArthur and I did back in in fact I remember Amber was the first to show me YouTube in 2004 I was doing a show in Canada uh and uh and she was my co-host and they were still airing that episode until very recently so people must have thought I was a complete idiot because she said hey Leo there's this site called YouTube it's cool you could put your videos on it and I went oh that's interesting I never heard of that and people seeing that last year must have thought um really you're a you're a that guy you never heard of but this was back in 2004 we later interviewed Steve Chen and at the time I I remember NBC was mad was hopping mad because they kept posting clips from Saturday Night Live having Google behind you helps in those cases and uh and I think NBC saw the light in fact it made it brought Saturday night life back from the dead if you ask me so yeah I mean one of the first Clips to really explode on YouTube was lazy Sunday Andy samberg's rap um which as you just said it was huge for samberg's career and just the making SNL cool again and just showing how Clips could spread so much faster over the internet I don't know if you guys are like I'm sort of the perfect age of remembering how like memes really dominated that early era of YouTube before we even knew what a meme was I'm thinking of like this this the lightsaber kid uh the Numa Numa guy uh Chocolate Rain these were all like these Proto Chocolate Rain yes yeah these Proto memes that sort of set the template for how culture is is still going to spread you know two decades later this was before Tik Tock this was Tik Tock before it was was around I mean this was how everybody saw this how old are you Andrew 32 so you grew up watching YouTube my kids my kid's 30 uh I remember coming home and he and his high school buddies were just they weren't watching TV they were watching YouTube you grew up watching on YouTube I remember like when it came out and how novel it and exciting it was it was so glitchy and the the videos were so low quality but it was able to show us content that was like very juvenile but seemed to relate to teenagers in a way that like the being on TV wasn't wasn't speaking to us um also I just wanted to um so my Time Magazine colleague Belinda lcome wrote a profile of weski sorry how do you pronounce her name wjis wjis there's an extra no one knows why yeah in 2015 that's a really good read but this is sort of a story from her early life um she grew up on the Stanford University campus next to the danig George danig created the Simplex method an algorithm for linear programming consider considered one of the top 10 algorithms of the last century the scene in Goodwill Hunting in which Matt Damon's character solves a math equation on the board is based on an incident in his life no K this this guy danig who is uh her neighbor grew lemons and at a young age the sisters used to pick the fruit and sell it door too for 5 cents each people people used to call us the lemon sisters they thought it was a great deal she said wow um the parallels with her current job are hard to miss she brings something made by someone else to to other people's homes for an unbeatable price and there are two ways to regard what she delivers it's either the product of a genius or lemon in any case it's a great deal oh that's beautiful uh good I'll look for that time uh profile from a couple years back um time did name her one of the most influential people in the world 100 most influential people in the world in 2015 and she uh actually I think spearheaded the move from being kind of a source of juvenile uh groin kick videos to educational videos she was one of the people who said you know this could be an education platform she solman Khan had probably done a Khan Academy around that time she said we should be hosting those kinds of videos and really if YouTube has any value these days uh to the general populace uh it is that isn't it that you can go there and you can figure you can find out how to do almost anything on YouTube and learn almost anything on YouTube even the Simplex method I suppose if you had a mind a mind for it I do not yeah I think that's what's so cool about it it's so versatile right it's like okay my washing machine stopped working the other day I went to YouTube and looked for videos and then on the other hand when you want to just unwind you put on some you know your favorite comedian and you just you know it's it probably should scare the pants off network television and broadcasters and and even streamers like Netflix uh I talk to people all the time that's their one and only source of entertainment is YouTube everything's there it's like this weird fine line where those broadcasters and those streamers sh do and should post Clips but not too many Clips because they still want you to subscribe and pay um but they want to tease it enough that you're like oh this is this is good I need more um but yeah it's a really fine line walk yeah I'm glad that uh Andrew you mentioned uh the the lonely PL lonely what is it Lonely Island lonely video uh because the video that I remember first from YouTube was Dick in a Box but you didn't say that and I'm proud of you for not mentioning that thank you I was really thought you might go there and if you haven't seen that I don't don't although it's pretty darn hysterical uh Google is in the news big time uh this week because they lost their antitrust suit to the doj uh the Department of Justice uh has been suing Google as a monopoly the judge Amit meta in Washington DC said that in fact Google illegally monopolized the search Market he particularly pointed out their exclusive deals this was on Monday saying that there $26 billion in payments every year to Apple uh to uh Samsung uh and to Mozilla the makers of Firefox uh essentially uh were anti-competitive Google's distribution agreements he wrote foreclose a substantial port of the general search Services market and impair Rivals opportunities to complete I mean that is if there's a shashana that's the definition of antitrust right you use your Market Monopoly to keep people from competing so I haven't had a chance to dig into the full thing yet I've been very very exhausted with COA and age verification and we'll get to that oh we'll get to that oh yeah but that's why I haven't uh had a chance to dig into this yet my colleague has and um uh my colleague Josh wiro wrote about it but basically um we we disagree with the court on a lot of stuff and uh one thing that I don't think the court really got to from what I saw preliminarily is just that people search in very different ways like um if I'm looking for I know this is very nerdy but if I'm looking for trail head pictures or pictures of a hike um I'm better off on Instagram or all Trail searching there if I search on Google I might get something but the images aren't very good that way for me um I sometimes start searching on Amazon or Shopify for products rather than Google cuz Google shop doesn't usually do as much for me as that um there's there's a lot there there's a lot of complexity here and I think a lot of times uh judges and lawmakers Define markets far too narrowly rather than realizing the Broadways in which competition happens also I mean Some people prefer Safari but you can always still use Safari no one's stopping you from doing that and when um when I have Safari up I just CL it out for Google it's a choice that a lot of consumers make so I don't really buy where the Court's coming from I think it's just like Google is a victim of its success in regard to search here more than anything yeah a number of people we were talking about this I think on Mac break weekly uh a lot of people I think it was Alex Lindsay said the problem is the courts are always behind the game right so uh the doj went after Microsoft just before their Monopoly in in ERS was dying anyway and would have died probably anyway I'm not sure I agree with that but that's the point you're making is that uh people are using you I keep hearing Millennials are using Tik Tok to search or Zoomers are using Tik Tok to search yeah I find hard to believe it's true though you're nodding a you you you use Tik Tock to find stuff it's me uh yeah it's wait a minute okay let's be honest when your Washington machine went on the fritz did you go to Tik Tok I did actually can you believe it cuz I was going to say it but then I was I started I thought about I did a Google search first okay and then I saw and it was useless cuz all it did is offer you new washing machines so then I went to Tik Tok and then I actually got what I needed and um and I did I pulled up the suit here because it's it says um you know among genen Z I'm a millennial but I'm 30 and I I feel like I'm kind of zillennial but not actually but I feel like it cuz I'm on Tik Tok all the time but apparently 63% of people um say they use Tik Tok as a search engine who gen z um but boggles my mind although I've had this debate with my daughter who's also 32 and she said dad you're just so old-fashioned nobody uses Google anymore Tik Tok Tik Tok is the home of dancing and singing videos how does that help you in search I don't understand it's so I know I'm a boomer I know no no no this is a very valid question I think it's something that people are are wondering and there is there okay yes there is singing and dancing but there is a very real person real world aspect where if I when I'm searching for a product or I want opinions on a product I will go to Tik Tok um to see how real people feel about it because they'll be honest they'll say like okay this really worked well for me I've even I mean I would not advise this but like even like for like medications I'm like how did people react to this which is awful please don't do that but like talk to your doctor well when you eat your Tide Pods you really should wash it down with a lot of water that's exactly what I'm searching um so but yeah for those kinds of things where you want like a real person who may have experienced thing that you're experienc people upload everything to Tik Tok so you're it's highly likely that you'll find something but please fact check what you find but still I feel like I feel so old I'm sure that's what people said about YouTube too what you mean the groin kick video site that's where you go to learn how to do Simplex coding no come on man but Tik Tok does focus on shorter videos yes although they been pushing longer videos so there you could even upload up to 30 minute videos which I hope to God I never stumble upon a 30-minute Tik Tok video but apparently that's an option no you just swipe I mean 30 seconds in you swipe no matter what you're looking at right but they're experimenting with that I guess in the same way that any video platform is you start with the 15 seconds and you build up do you agree with uh our street Shana's uh uh lobbying firm that uh Google isn't a I mean you're not saying they're not a monopoly shashana or he's not saying your your colleague well we you um they have the majority of the the stuff they totally like 80 or 90% of search right is done through Google that's a monopoly that's not everything that's required to be a monopoly though like they have to be actively stopping competition unfair practices um and I know that it seems to me paying Apple $20 billion a year so that Google's a default search on Safari that seems pretty anti-competitive is it not what I don't get though and I mean this genuinely is I don't understand why they would pay that cuz everyone who gets an iPhone switches over immediately anyway like that was already happening they I don't know if they do it's the tyranny of the default I think you can but people just do whatever is the default usually right I don't know any device I've had I always switch over to Google for Stuff um Safari annoys me with some of their settings and then Internet Explorer but you know when you're on the iPhone you're still using webcam you're not using Chrome when you use Chrome because Chrome is required by app but another by the way anti competitive move Chrome is required by Apple to be webkit to be Safari with a chrome on top of it a chrome interface oh I didn't know that I only have Androids but they're saying Apple's a monop too and I'm like I have another kind of phone well all right um you know I mean it's tenable point of view I'm just curious abrar you agree I don't know I feel like n that brings up a really interesting point I feel like I I I I mean when I my immediate reaction was okay shocker Google has deemed a monopoly so it seems obvious yeah so so I feel like I um need to dig more into that uh alternative uh Viewpoint and and um I I am absolutely intrigued by that so um yeah I I'm not going to make a decision until I know more but it is kind of like a yeah they're kind of everywhere yeah yeah um but I guess uh it's not simply being a monopoly is is not sufficient that's not being big and it often seems like uh Congress feels like being big is the is the bad thing but that's not illegal to be big right yeah Andrew go ahead yeah I was just reading about this a little bit but yeah I mean that's sort of what Google's lawyers were arguing during the cas is like sorry sorry we're Su successful like um from what I can see it does seem like meta is pointing to some pretty specific monop the judge not meta the not the Zucker correcta which is very confusing yes um but as you mentioned yeah paying smartphone companies and browser makers billions and billions of dollars so that Google is the default uh search engine seems monopolistic to me and also to sh sh's Point why are they doing it they already had such a such a lock on so many people's minds and imaginations but I do think as you said Leo just like um the habit forming process of if just you have a a default browser a lot of people are just not going to change it and that's very powerful yeah um the other thing I just want to say about this is Judge meta cited a specific case uh many times in his ruling that goes back to 2000 there was this was like the last big antitrust ruling in Tech against Microsoft and you had mentioned this earlier the top Leo of like um the majority of computers just running Windows software running Internet Explorer um and there was this major ruling in 2000 now I would love to actually go back and see was internet Explorer's dominance already on the way or was this ruling instrumental in allowing you know uh Firefox and chrome to rise I I I would love that's the case I make is that you wouldn't have a Google if it weren't for the doj shutting Microsoft down start in 1998 in the final consent decree I think it was early 2000s that really opened the door for Google uh and so in general I think that's that's kind of the point it's interesting judge meta did not say Google had a monopoly in search of all things pointing to uh Amazon uh and uh I think Walmart wait a minute that can't be right they saying uh and meta and there are other companies that do search so they don't have a monop in search um it's uh and and by the way the real question is what is the remedy going to be um he's made the decision but now there'll be a hearing uh for next month to decide a separate trial the timing for a separate trial for the remedy so there's going to be a whole another trial um it's not clear what the justice department uh wants um they they did say that the the ballot solution that European Regulators uh used to choose search engines didn't work nobody switched so it implies that they are not going to seek some sort of uh ballot when you sign out that's a terrible remember that that happened with the Microsoft case in the EU they had the browser ballot and when you first installed Windows you got to choose which of a number of obscure browsers you'd prefer to use uh apparently that doesn't work when you when you're talking about search the Washington I'm sorry Bloomberg says the agency could demand the separation of alphabet search business from other products like Android or Chrome so it could be a breakup the judge could also stop short of ordering a full breakup and just say yeah these exclusive search deals you got to stop those the only person that hurts is Apple which gets 20 billion a year from it it's about a third of its services revenue and a big Services quarter this quarter thanks to Google in large part it really hurts Firefox that's most of mozilla's funding comes from Google um so I don't know if that remedy is a very good remedy doesn't hurt Google as I mean it's say yes stop spending billions of dollars on these other companies oh you it's such an irony it's such an irony because Firefox and Mozilla they're all about open source technology and having these open systems um but yeah sort of the financial reality is that 80% of mozilla's operating budget is coming from Google um so you know you can agree with the ideals of Mozilla and open source and and these strong antitrust laws and then they are sort of being helped by the yeah I mean the hand that feeds them and incidentally I want to point out the judge did not mention Tik Tock as a credible competitor weirdly he mentioned Amazon and he did mention Walmart I wasn't hallucinating uh and other retailers have begun offering advertising related to searches on their own websites so apparently uh weirdly um that's that's letting Google off the hook when it comes to their search Monopoly uh all right let's take a little break uh we are doing the first twit from the attic Studio but I'm so glad that I have other people working in their attics except for shashan who apparently is working on hot dog Hill uh but actually is that the Microsoft Bliss wallpaper with hot dogs yeah that's what I thought yeah okay all right is it a commentary is that a subtle commentary on Microsoft no it's just I when when the Snapchat hot dog meme was really popular this was my favorite thing to come out of it um it's just it's perfect I I missed that one what is the Snapchat hot dog meme that was their plan to monetize when they start started doing like art artificial like virtual like like characters that danced around the hot dog was the first and everyone was laughing at them because they're like this is this is how they're going to monetize like this is their plan so I just I fell in love with it instantly and it's it's been in my heart ever since a well there you go and uh she's up there in hot dog Hill Andrew Troy is also here brand new book crypto Mania just came out really really a good read and I'm not just saying that I actually read it uh hype hope in the fall of FTX is billion dooll fintech Empire thank you for joining us Andrew works at the time not a bad place to be a correspondent for and uh also with us from CNET are you H how what was the reaction inside of SC at AB aliti to the acquisition this week by ZD net was were people like freaked out or what I think I think you know I I think that would be natural for any acquisition but this one I think there was more excitement just because Z Davis feels like a a good fit and um in fact better can I just say better than private Equity than Red Ventures although who owns zif Davis um zif Davis is public and there you go and uh and so um I think it'll be yeah it'll be it'll be nice to to start uh something different there new chapter we're all staying optimistic yeah the only bad thing is once again you have to change your email address yes that's really the biggest thing may get your business cards it's a whole it's a whole thing but you know what I can't complain when Bonito saw the story my producer he said oh no how do I get a hold of people now what's their new he was worried about that right Bonito I'm L you were worried about the new email addresses yeah because I mean I was working at CBS Interactive actually I was working at CET when they switched over to CBS Interactive oh you've been through this so I was there for that yeah oh I get it no wonder you will get a special email with my new email address you'll be the first person I promise thank you so much yes if we are in touch with you at some odd address please don't I wouldn't let that happen to you don't let that happen to you all right I seem to have Frozen have I Frozen did I freeze myself I think I did what did I do I've been messing with something and I screwed myself up uh in Zoom it looks like you lost your camera in Zoom ah okay animated in many years now that you're Frozen at a time of your choosing so well that would be good I will take that what did I do last time we just uh toggled your camera in zoom on and off and that toggled my camera in zoom on and off that's Anthony neelson who is our technical expert at this point and how do I do that in Zoom itself that little camera the camera icon the bottom oh yeah I stopped it by accident I clicked a button oh there you go next thing you're going to do is say Leo oh okay we're still working this out also it's a it's a little sweaty up here okay thank you all for being here first show we're going to have a little first show uh problems but we're appreciative we're glad you're all here our show today we're very glad to have our sponsor zip recruiter with us they've been such a great uh partner for us for so long you know finding great candidates to hire these days especially it's like finding a needle in a Hy stack you're going to get a lot of resumés but not enough candidates with the right skills or experience and then there's another problem if you find somebody you really like you're competing with 10 other companies trying to hire them away see this is where zip recruiter is our advantage when we use zip recruiter and it's your advantage too because zip recruiter does this cool thing as soon as you post they're going to find amazing candidates for you fast they're going to 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for the needle in the hay stack four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day for us it's generally within the first hour I know because Lisa's you know in the morning she's wearing breakfast she says oh I got you know we got to replace Ashley she got another job another place and she's moving and what are we going to do we got two weeks she posts on zip recruiter and literally before lunch she's going oh look we got a great C oh we got another great candidate it's how we found Viva you were the great candidate Viva try it for free at this exclusive web address ziprecruiter.com twit that's ziprecruiter.com twit zip recruiter the smartest way to hire and we thank them so much for their support of our show This Week in Tech and uh the first show in the Attic Studio somebody said your camera is too good you could never let him see you sweat um we have a great panel it's great to have you Andro Chow first time on twit author of cryptomania he's a correspondent at Tam magazine we love having you here AB alhi we love you from CET CET and from r.org the wonderful shashana Weissman she lives in a pineapple under DC she is also Senator shash on Twitter you still using the Twitter yeah I mean the the the real senat senors and and congressmen are still there so as long as they're there and the reporters are there that's kind of interesting they they haven't left it um Elon keeps getting in trouble though I have to say he's not he has found all sorts of ways uh now the latest is the uh former chairman of the board of Twitter uh who had a huge amount of Twitter stock and was supposed to be paid off when Elon took the stock took the company private is suing for $20 million saying Elon never gave me my money what is how can he even I don't even I guess he's also since he never paid the rent in San Francisco did he ever pay the rent they're moving now they're moving down to San Jose X but we made it clear how much he hates San Francisco and how much he thinks it's overrun with all the wrong people he hates everything though he he also said we're getting out of California yeah although he hasn't done that yet but they're moving Tesla and star uh what is it um SpaceX out of California to Texas because he didn't like some rule that said schools didn't have to report pronouns to the parents and he says well that's no good I'm leaving I I swear Elon that's why that article about when I saw that article about the moving the Twitter HQ I was like okay I guess they must be leaving California I was like do they're going to San I was like what down the road okay all right all right cool I guess it's an interim thing they're moving temporarily yeah yeah uh we actually aren't done with the Google The Google uh stories uh let's see Google also got in a little bit of trouble for an ad that they P they post or published that they played for on the Olympics did you see the dear Sydney ad this was a Google ad with a uh with a parent talking to Google's AI saying help my daughter write a letter to her favorite athlete which pissed people off it's like that's not parenting that's not parenting have an AI write the letter no have the kid write the letter was called dear Sydney was developed in house to promote Google's Gemini AI platform but uh according to ad age viewers had a difficult time looking past its miscalculated storyline Google has pulled the ad got a lot of AirPlay last week during the Olympics including NBC prime time also on E NBC in USA you know people are turning against the word AI aren't they I am to I'm dying to talk about Ai and the Olympics here I I don't know if like I've been following the Olympics like everybody in the world it's just like such a unifier and you can see in the numbers on social media how much people it's like you know the biggest it's bigger than Harris walls it's bigger than partly because they did it right this time right instead of then the Tokyo Olympics when when they chopped it up and they just they messed it up now thanks to streaming you can watch anything live you can watch it later uh peacock's done a great job so I think that's been a lot of the reason for the interest I believe yeah I think so um but because it's such a big event obviously the biggest industries the biggest companies are going to try to come in and you know monetize or advertise in all these different ways and AI is like you know the buzz industry or uh buzzword Buzz industry Buzz bubble of the moment so we're seeing all these interesting like deployments of AI um around the Olympics in sort of this massive way um some good and some bad um so one of the first ones relates to Peacock and NBC decided to use so there's this legendary sports caster named Al Michaels and they've started to use Michaels yes um they trained in AI on his voice I mean he's one of the you know greatest Casters Of The Last you know many decades um you know he's slowing down he can't you know be there to do daily Recaps anymore I suppose so um they trained in AI in his voice and now if you go on NBC and sign up for it at the end of the day you can get like a little personalized El Michaels recap of what happened based on what sports you're interested in um and the upshot is that alen Michaels was on board he was like he said he was scared at first but then um he he was like it sounded so good I was excited but also terrified um a lot of the users say that it's like not actually a bad usage of AI perhaps because if they like they they've been accustomed to hearing El Michael's voice for for decades and now they get a sort of fimile maybe like a 90% version of it um obviously I would argue you know just hire another sports caster like it's okay we can we can move on but um this is a tool that hasn't been glitching has been like it hasn't been telling lies and it's been like fairly accurate about what's been happening at the Olympics that's encouraging because I want to retire and let an AI do my shows and they do a good have you heard the Al Michaels Recaps I haven't heard him I haven't but one of my friends a writer for slate named nitish Pawa wrote just wrote a piece about it he was doing it every day he's a big Olympics fan he was actually like yeah it was like helpful in like digesting and hearing um you know what had happened that day again like would rather just have a real person with expertise tell me about this I think though I know because I've watched some of the secondary Sports on the Olympics and some of the announcers for those lesser sports are not great yeah they have so many events that they have to get every person who's ever sat in front of a microphone and apparently some people who haven't uh and so I understand that they wanted somebody wellknown a voice a sound that was well known Al Michaels is I mean I love Al Michaels he was the announcer during the 1989 World Series game the San Francisco earthquake game and he did an amazing job of that I know cuz I was at the game and I was listening to him as I was trying to get home and so he's I mean he's Legend but there is a certain style and a flow and a Cadence and if you were just doing a recap you probably could AI could stimulate that pretty well it wouldn't be creative so that was one use of AI rolled out during the Olympics that seemingly wasn't a disaster I'm going to run through a couple more that I've been reading about okay Intel they're making a play they say that they've been um they can use technology sort of body scanning AI technology to identify uh young athletes and if they have significant talent in certain areas well we won't know how that works for a few years right you don't know about that one they said okay so first they said they went to some villages in Sagal and scanned more than a thousand children and identifying who maybe has a burst of of energy you know a little we can totally 1984 we've selected these young people to be our new athletes Hunger Games Vibes a bit then they actually were they set up a station outside the Olympic Stadium where like kids could basically go up and um and measure like how fast they are out of out of the blocks or you know power reaction time and strength and yes um there's a lot of people who would see that and just just see dystopian um flashing trust noan in our club twit Discord chat says his vote is for a John Madden AI tell us Stater and all see I would love that just go boom pow I think that that would I wonder if AI could could do something with that much personality that would be impressive there was an article on CNN yesterday that uh said brands should avoid the term a AI this is a study POS actually published in the Journal of hospitality marketing and management back in uh June it found that describing a product as AI lowers a customer's intention to buy it they sampled participants across various age groups showed them the same products the only difference was one was described as high-tech the other as using AI vacuum cleaners TVs consumer services Health Services in every single case the intention to buy or use the product or service was significantly lowered when we mentioned AI in the product description that explains why Apple avoids the word it's Apple intelligence Apple intelligence it's machine learning they know how they know how to do it they know how to not scare people away uh you watch WWDC they did not drop AI as much as Google did every two seconds um and so it'll be interesting how they talk about it with the upcoming iPhone event but yeah I think apple is the key example of someone you know knowing how to not scare people away by the way I have to give credit the the studies's author is dogen gerso he is the Taco Bell distinguished professor of hospitality business management at Washington State University that's a chair I am the Taco Bell distinguished professor of hospitality that's the greatest title I I failed I failed well you have something to Aspire to sh sh something to something to shoot for in your life uh I guess it doesn't surprise me that that maybe it's just burnout right that AI there's so much AI everywhere we look that they just people are just burned out on it it's like burnout and it's also just the way that generative AI just kind of seemed to come out of nowhere all at once like obviously AI has been powering a lot of things for a long time but with things like chat gbt kind of coming out of nowhere and saying you know who needs to know how to write when when chat GPT can do it and then you have guess who's guess who's writing articles um writers uh and so if they feel like they're threatened by something like like artificial intelligence and gen then you're not going to have the warmest reception in that regard and then you know public opinion is is suede as well it's just this domino effect but I think the way that it kind of um this surge of of AI everywhere is not only leading to burnout but also distrust because there aren't any clear guidelines yet it's just it's here and it's everywhere and we don't know what it's going to do that's actually a good point I mean uh creatives are the kind of the uh canaries in the coal mine when it comes to Ai and they're very nervous I think that's one of the reasons people didn't like this Google ad yeah is because why would you have your daughter use AI to write an a fan letter to her favorite athlete shouldn't she be writing that I think people see this as somehow replacing uh humans and Humanity in a way yeah um so I understand why they're burned out on it um we may not have a choice we we may be stuck with AI yeah but uh and I think that ad just the ad from Google just adds to the perception that these companies that are trying to roll it out like don't really understand what people want or are trying to roll it out for exactly the wrong reasons the idea that Google could get behind this ad and think like up the chain of command that it was like that people want to not have their daughter write a letter to their hero oh yeah um it's just not the use case that like there may be other use cases for this stuff but if the companies in charge like the the techies that are roll are like trying to convince us to use it are coming up with this sort of stuff it it really is the ick factor is incredibly High I think we saw it also um going back to yeah we were talking about the displacement of creative people um the CTO of open AI miror moradi said this year like oh yeah maybe AI will replace creative jobs that shouldn't have existed in the first place and that just seemed like such a slap in the face to like who who are the creative people who like shouldn't whose jobs shouldn't exist exactly so I think even if these tools are really useful for some things there have been some like you know shooting yourself in the foot examples of where these tech companies are a little misguided as to they're so excited to get these products in every single industry that um yeah the public perception is suffering yeah I I love this quote from jmck Joanna matovski um her book snake bitten apparently on pre-order she said I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes that's so real it's one of my favorite quotes about AI on yeah absolutely and I think um you know I just to add to what Andrew was saying uh yes I think the reason that ad face so much backlash is because it's taking away something that is innately human and tender and cute and wholesome um whereas I think there are other AI ads that have done a better job of showing the potential to actually make your life easier and not take away something that is Meaningful and I think one example and I hate to give open a i pad on the back because I feel like they're doing a lot of really creepy things but one thing that they did really well is um partnered with an app called be my eyes which is for people who are blind and um that ad where they had somebody who was blind kind of hailing a cab and getting all these instructions on or getting all these descriptions on um you know their surroundings uh that's a really good example of how AI can actually be helpful for people and actually fill a void um so if companies did a better job of researching those angles and um providing services that are actually beneficial then I think they would Faire a lot better be my eyes is such a great that's a perfect example it was an app that was designed for people with vision problems but it required humans right you would go into the store and you'd say uh what does it say on this label and you and a human would have to do you use the app and the human would have to join you on the app and tell you now uh with open Ai and I I haven't talked to any blind people who have used this yet but the AI is doing that so you don't have to wait for a volunteer to dial in it'll do it instantly I think this is a perfect example of yeah AI can be I'm not anti AI I'm I'm actually kind of I'm known around the the uh the the network as the AI bull here I'm kind of pro AI but uh Leo Leo I've got a question for you as a baseball fan okay what are your thoughts about AI umpires I think that's a great okay there's a perfect example in fact uh I don't think they Ed an Olympics they've already had uh cameras uh in tennis right as line judges using AI as line judges that's a perfect perfect use for AI it's either in or out it either hit the line or not right uh there's in football we've had in it was very controversial when both baseball and first was football then baseball added instant replays very controversial people worried it would slow play down it would undermine the refs it would it would cause problems and it's actually proven really a useful tool in football I don't think anybody any football fan these days is against instant replay uh and and they started using it in baseball last year I think right and uh you know it's it's been an improvement I the AI is fine with me when it's very clear you've I don't know we've seen an we've seen umpires in baseball make complete I mean every umpire has a different strike zone is that how it should be right you the the batter checks who the uh home plate umpire is before he goes into the to bat because he wants to know where the Strike Zone's going to be it's different for everybody and and when you look at now they for a long time this is controversial on TV they didn't used to show the strike zone They now show it for every pitch so you know if the UMP is completely off Bas uh I think it's just a matter of time it makes sense for AI there would do you agree Andrew are you a baseball fan I am yeah and I agree I mean the the beauty of you know a sport like baseball the humanity in it does not come from the umpires as much as I respect no the inhumanity comes comes from umpires but it's what these these amazing amazing athletes are doing within very specific confines and if the confines are malleable that just it worsens you know the the beauty of the sport I would say so the more that you can enforce strict the the rules of the game so that people can focus on Excellence you know I think it's tough because it it is amazing what like how most umpires like develop this skill over years and it's like such a craft but it is a thing that maybe a machine can do better maybe it should be more science than art yes you know yeah and I correct my I'll correct myself Poco says uh baseball replays started in 2014 I have not been following baseball as much as I as I probably should and serge strip in our Discord says baseball's boring okay we'll move on um let's see all right I think this is a good one for you shashana uh you may remember the Biden Administration and the FCC under the Biden Administration uh attempted to restore net neutrality uh US court has now blocked the Biden Administration FCC net new rules um saying it really is congress's job to do this the the FCC rescinded the uh open internet rules in 2015 uh under Republican uh majority under a democratic majority bet last April they reassumed regulatory oversight of broadband internet I have to say I have always been a big supporter of net neutrality but I didn't see maybe I wasn't looking but I didn't see a complete decline in uh in the quality of internet or the prices of internet in the US after 2015 the the um the nightmare that people predicted didn't didn't seem to happen uh the six Circuit Court of Appeals which had delayed the rule set on Thursday it would temporarily block net neutrality rules scheduled oral Arguments for this fall um possibly even after the election where where do you stand on this uh shashan I know that essentially our street is more uh libertarian is that a fair way to put it yeah we're about free markets so for us it's about competition um we've opposed net neutrality I don't do Telecom I refuse to do Telecom it's too much it's just too much I can't do Telecom um but I do think there's something to be said when Advocates say if this happens then this will happen and when that doesn't pan out it doesn't make The Advocates look good and it's it's not just advocates lawmakers too um and um I know some people have have pointed to examples of how uh getting rid of net neutrality harmed in certain cases but the the disastrous consequences didn't really come to play even um you know when I work on age verification policy I try very hard to make sure everything I'm saying is rooted completely in fact if I'm making a prediction I have like ample reason to believe that I'm right about it and I think a lot of net neutrality Advocates kind of failed there and have some egg on their face and need to need to explain going further when they make predictions okay you know why is this the case now when it wasn't then if that makes sense the principle of net neutrality is seems to me very clear and proper which is that every bit on a company's Network should be treated equally and so that means companies like Comcast shouldn't be able to say oh you Netflix you're going to be fast but we're going to make sure Disney plus is slow they shouldn't be able to treat different bits differently and that was the basic principle of net neutrality uh Pro is I I think it's probably the case that market forces kept companies like Comcast from you know uh doing any of the evil nefarious things they could have done absent uh a net neutrality regulation for instance they could say hey Netflix you got to pay up you're you're you know for a long time a lot of internet service providers said things like well Google's free writing on our Network they should pay for all the traffic that they use on our Network when in fact of course we as users are paying for the access of the network and YouTube's bits should be equal to anybody else's bits it didn't happen it could have happened absent net neutrality regulation I don't know is it is it Market forces that kept it from happening is it's not like we have a competitive internet service provider Market in the US yeah I'm not sure it's you know it's funny with the Internet it's it's one of those things where some of the like sort of natural monopolies that are starting to erode in uh in a lot of cases and and when it's a so it's when sorry when it's natural monopolies plus such an overregulation area like regulation touches every bit of the internet um or at least internet service provider not the internet itself yet um but it makes it kind of hard to know why things happen in my view it's kind of the same with Healthcare everything's so regulated that it's like if you move a piece you're not 100 % sure if something happens or doesn't happen why it doesn't because you have the insurance levels and you have the the provider levels and I think that's a bit of it here that um that I think Advocates got it wrong but I'm not sure uh I'm not exactly sure why it panned out the way it did yeah yeah well this is not your baileywick I understand I'm putting you know you're not in charge of all uh libertarian positions in the world just most just most not not all just most but I mean also I want to be very fair cuz I'm a I'm a huge advocate for net neutrality but I want to be fair we didn't see the negative consequences we thought we might see um of course it's not a very competitive environment in the US you most people something like 80% of uh people in the US have at best two choices for Internet service a phone company and a cable company um that's not I mean sitting here in um in my attic uh we H I have no choice I have to use Comcast for uh the the access Comcast has been going up in down over I was terrified the last few weeks it's been dropping out for 3 or 4 minutes who else can I choose no one no one except starlink so we did order uh star I'm looking up we did order starlink at some point I'll have that as a as a failover but uh it's kind of terrifying to do what we're doing here which is live streaming for hours a day relying on Comcast that seems like a a risky business at the studio we had five different internet services providers um for redundancy hey Leo so this this is Bonito hi Bonito so I I I lived in the Philippines for a big chunk of my life and there is no net neutrality there and what I can tell you about having no net neutrality is that one company gets to dictate the entire internet right and I I don't like it it's not good I think the Court's point of view probably was this is a question for congress because it really requires C reclassifying uh broadband and um I can't remember if it's reclassifying Broadband between being a publisher I can't remember the the choice it's been a long time uh but it's something congress should probably weigh in on ultimately the FCC acts uh at the behest of Congress Congress has to make the laws the FCC has to implement them so I think it is probably Fair of the court to say you know let's hear what Congress has to say about this and then I would I would encourage Congress to uh enshrine that neutrality into law um because I think it is in principle anyway the right thing to do all bits should be created and delivered equally regardless of where they're coming from and you don't want to let an internet service provider to get to decide yeah we think uh we think Comcast can pay can ask Netflix to pay more or ask Google to pay more that should they should all be equal bits they should be undiff I think it's just good when it comes from Congress in general because back and forth with net neutrality it's good for nobody yeah and that's what's happening Republican Administration the Democratic Administration yeah and it's not you're right Congress has to say it and even sometimes when agencies do have authority and they might be able to do this I think it's still just better when you have these big decisions that that it really comes from Congress exactly in this case so that it's not like every couple of years you switch back and forth and have to figure out how everything works yeah it was a distinction thank you uh to our chat room for uh reminding me uh fam famous in in our YouTube chat said it was whether to treat internet service providers as common carriers uh like the phone company you can't the phone company doesn't get to decide uh who to char you know they can't charge Bonito more than they charge me to use a silly example uh is our bito actually I would love to hear Bonito some of the adverse effects that yes you you felt um yeah okay so like I I think the biggest one and the most upfront one is that Facebook pretty much owns the internet over there Bono you have a camera let's see your shining face can we I don't I don't I didn't put myself in a we can't pull you up okay I'd have to put it together sorry I'll figure that out I want to be able to I want to be able to see you we don't usually see Bonita we only hear his his the voice of God coming from above but he's here he's here with us so to answer Andrew's question it's like all the things coming from and to to and from Facebook happen really quickly and everything else is really slow ah and uh a lot of people uh don't who don't have like who don't pay for internet access who get like a qu quote free internet access for their phones um that's basically the Facebook internet so Facebook is free and everything loads on Facebook but nothing else you can't you don't have data for anything else only Facebook yeah so I mean that that that might be actually a positive that could be considered a positive for those who can't afford internet access who still can get um some sort of portal into the internet but for that to be controlled by one company I I don't I don't like how that feels but you remember that this was Facebook's plan they offered it to India something called internet.org which was a a Facebook internet that would be provided to uh uh everybody in India even people who couldn't afford internet access but it was mostly Facebook with a little bit of different stuff thrown in um it was interesting because the intern Indian Regulators said know we know a little bit about colonialism here and we don't think we want that so they they forbade that but I maybe they did maybe is that what you had in uh in the Philippines was it internet.org was it Facebook internet I must have been it's possible but I think it's more that um Facebook just paid the carriers yeah yeah yeah that should not be uh not not be allowed I think um but again I have to be fair and point out that we didn't see any horrendous uh failures as a result of the change rules in 2015 so we shall see by the way credits Tim woo who coined that term net neutrality uh been W to get Tim on one of our shows for a long time we'll see if we can get him on and talk about it uh should we let me see yeah let's take another break I think it's time you're watching This Week in Tech with our wonderful panel it's great to have you on Andrew I think we're want to get you back on a regular basis Andrew archa is the author of cryptomania hyp Hope and the fall of x ftxs billion dooll fintech Empire he's uh SPF is in prison for what 20 20 years how long is the sentence the sentence is 25 years he'll probably serve around 21 and uh they've been ordered to pay everybody back yes um theyes because I thought the money was all gone it was at the time um the crypto markets have rebounded that's sort of um interesting part about this I think it would take a little longer than maybe the 30 seconds I have here to explain why a lot of the creditors are going to get a lot of the money back while Sam still being very guilty in the court of law I both can be true at once yeah I mean it's just luck that Bitcoin went up right I mean he he basically met to vastly oversimplify he made a lot of giant bets using customer money he knew that he was you know all of fx's terms and conditions said when you deposit money into your account it's going to stay there we're not using it he was just he went and he took it and he was just he was spending it on all sorts of crazy Investments on coins parents yes not to mention the real estate um which maybe is a good investment you know you know Waterfront by homus real estate it doesn't let it doesn't let you off the hook if the Investments you illegally made turned out to be good invest yes and so yeah so one of the one of the big Investments he made was into the AI company anthropic actually he was sort of an earlier early investor into anthropic which whose value absolutely exploded due to the AI boom when Sam was sitting in a prison and that basically that uh asset alone was able to make so many so many you know creditors whole and this is something what um Sam's lawyers were trying to argue in court that we we should be able to talk about anthropic because it was such a Savvy investment on Sam's part he knew where the market was headed and I was sitting there I was there for the whole trial in New York in October the judge judge Kaplan said to the lawyer this is like if you rob the bank and then you go buy a Powerball ticket and then you win $50 million and then you say that because you can return the money you didn't steal the money that's not how the law basically he did not to about anthropic at all but yeah it's interesting so a lot of the crors are going to get get a lot of their money back not all of it um but you know I think one that sort of obscures maybe the moral the the moral choices that Sam made of like deciding to use the money when it wasn't his and then also the real harm that it inflicted on upon people who lost access to their money for 2 years people who put you know their life savings $40,000 $100,000 $800,000 into um an account that then became Frozen for a good two years and had a lot of people had their lives upended so yeah I think there are some people that would argue like no it wasn't like how much of a crime could it be if the money came back um you can argue that I would I would disagree so we've learned something here Sam bankman freed won the Power Ball and uh congratulations you're still in jail it's great to have you great but it's a great book cryptomania you see you did a great job of explaining that perfect that's why it's such a good book shash Weissman is also here from R street.org we are going to get to kosa uh 93 was it 93 to3 or something in the Senate I forget the pro votes but it was three who voted against only three people voted against kosa now it's going to go to the house but I want to know what this latest status is uh of course this is something you've been very actively following in fact two years ago you wrote The Definitive piece on it and and why age verification is is a terrible idea we'll talk about that just a little bit it's great to have you and abar Al heiti we always love having abar on the show technology reporter at CNET and a regular on Tech news weekly I hope you're going to keep doing that even though Mike is in his basement now oh my God I look forward to the next episode I'm sure his setup is almost as good as yours if not I will'll see we'll see who has the better one he was gonna do uh Hands-On technology this morning we've we've canceled ask The Tech Guys partly because it's almost impossible to do the call-in show in this environment yeah uh so he was going to do so he's going to Hands-On uh Tech at 11 o'cl on Saturday Pacific time in the same time slot and he'll answer a question and and maybe sometimes do reviews and things like that he was going to do do it from the studio until he found out that we have ripped everything out of the studio for the attic so so uh I got a emergency call this morning about 10:30 saying can we use the studio so he he was actually in here today doing Hands-On technology from the attic and I think it's great he'll be in the basement uh though once he gets that all set up and working so it's great to have you and Al BR you just you can stay where you are this is really this is really just we're now like the rest were like everybody else nobody nobody has a studio that's crazy I mean yeah but welcome to reality so yeah we're just back to reality that's all uh our show today brought to you by mintmobile we love these guys I know you do too why because you love a great deal I love a great deal as much as the next person but I'm not going to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a few bucks so it's got to be easy right no hoops no BS it's really easy to get wireless for $15 a month honestly the most timeconsuming part of the whole process is is the time you might spend on hold waiting to break up with your old provider they don't want to give you up I don't know if you've noticed that you can Port your number over to mmobile you're basically you're turning 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restrictions apply see mintmobile for details mint mobile m.com twit we're big fans I'm a big fan I love mmobile uh it makes me wonder why I ever paid more mintmobile.com twit thank you mintmobile kosa what is kosa the kids online safety act is that right shashana yes it has a new acronym now though and also it was passed in Senate as like an amendment it's like a 107 page amendment to some random unrelated Bill to stop um excess paperwork which uh this has a lot of reporting requirements so do they do that it feels like they do that intentionally they attach unpopular bills to like defense spending so that it has to be passed right they do that all the time so this wasn't a defense spending one for once which is nice because I often have to be like hey guys maybe remove this from this really big defense spending bill because this has nothing to do with it this one was just reducing paperwork and I you know I do this stuff a lot but I actually had trouble finding the new version of the bill and then I was like okay cool here's the Amendments and I had to click through so many amendments to figure out the final version and they put some bad stuff back in that I'm pretty sure they had taken out so I'm like like just like crying reading kosa for the like 97th time in its current version so the so the Senate passed it yeah uh Ron widen weird bed fellows Ron widen ran Paul both voted against it and who was the third that voted against it Mike Lee Mike Lee that's right um for different reasons I might add but the weirdly it passed by this vast majority in the Senate I've heard some people said well that was a safe vote for them because no one wants to be the you know guy that the his his opponent says you know he doesn't like kids very much cuz he voted against kosa uh knowing that it wouldn't H pass in the house is that is that a fair representation of why so many senators voted for it no um unfortunately the the so kosa has something like 68 co-sponsors which is really rare but it's of course because it's for the kids and what's in it doesn't really matter and it's it's actually really frustrating because uh not just myself but many of my allies have uh talked to different offices about the problems in it and um and they'll they'll write off those concerns as ridiculous and amend some of those concerns out and then later amend them back in but um of the remaining Senators I know a couple at least had uh concerns about it some thought it might be worked out in the house or at least that's what they were saying um and the house seems to be going back and forth on whether or not they're interested in taking it up I'm really hoping they won't of course if they is it a paperwork reduction act that they'd vote for and then kosa would just be along for the ride is that how it works yeah yeah it's like you know um if you're if you're right a paper or like an oped or just some document and someone like adds in some comments and you accept those comments like imagine if those comments are like 107 Pages that's what happened so broken this system is so broken other people in other countries must be saying you're wait a minute what I mean what's amazing here is that they knew that there were so many concerns from civil liberties groups and all different kinds of reasons too most groups kind of agreed on the First Amendment problems and certain other problems but in in of facing them and saying okay we need to go back to the drawing board or figure out a better solution here they're like we'll just hide this in here and let's see what happens is it possible that I'm trying to give some cover to the Senators who voted for this because there's no reason to vote for this is it possible they thought the courts would throw it out that it wouldn't survive a First Amendment Challenge and so so it won't there's no way this gets past a First Amendment on many counts but um I don't think they've accepted that um even lawmakers in the states when I've kind of made clear to them that hey I know even if you want to do this just know that this is going to be held up in the courts they just don't think so despite so much precedent I've read I've uh written up so much precedent on why age verification for social media can't work and it's just like citing Scalia and Kennedy and pass courts um and this they they try to get around the age verification Problem by saying um oh uh none of this shall shall be construed to require age verification but if you have to know who the kids are to comply if and it's not just um when they know who's a kid It also says if they if they had knowledge where they should have known that it was a kid so it's like of course they're going to age verify here this is ridiculous there's no other way they have to so uh tell us what kosa does by the way they also amended Kaa to change the age to from under 13 to under 18 or under 17 I guess so that is problematic in and of itself because I think a 16-year-old is different than a 12-year-old when it comes to parental consent and so forth but let's let's focus on kosa what is kosa and and why is it problematic so uh kosa started as an age verification Bill basically saying that uh platforms couldn't allow on certain Miners and they had to get parental consent for other minors there's a lot more in there but that was a really core piece of it the current version um in in in its current form because it has gone through a lot of versions basically says that um if if they know that there is a minor on the platform uh then they have actual knowledge or implied knowledge basically where they should have known because maybe someone's looking a lot at SpongeBob or uh something like that or maybe there's other indicators that they might should know that it was a minor um they have to make sure that those uh minors have basically parental type controls for themselves which I don't think is a bad idea uh to provide kids with that and uh parents also get to edit those controls they don't have direct oversight of um of what the kids posting or uh their messages but they do get to say okay my kid shouldn't spend more than this amount of time online stuff like that which in itself isn't uh a terrible idea except when you man yeah when you mandated by government it it creates need for identity Apple gives you that capability you can set that up it's completely legal to set that up for your kid as a parent that's how it should be it shouldn't be government doing that exactly because when government steps in and creates this then if you don't provide those parental controls to parents or children um then you're violating the law and the only way to make sure that the parent is the parent and the child is the child is identity verification it's beyond age verification because you have to make sure this is the parent this is the child um here's proof that you know they're related this way they've never really explained what's supposed to happen if parents disagree If the parents are divorc if there's maybe even three or four parents because of um different custody issues I mean all this stuff is really possible and common and they haven't addressed any way to uh you know what's supposed to happen in these cases um and then another part here that's really important is the duty of care it basically says that they have to uh avoid um avoid show uh showing the the child they don't say content they say you know uh avoid using algorithms to show the kid content um that can cause them anxiety or depression as uh defined by the DSM um and its current version but the strange thing is the DSM is from the American Cycle psychiatric I think Association which is a lobbying Group which is kind of strange to defer it that way rather than put it into law for years the DSM did not Define PTSD as a mental health uh issue as an example yeah so and what happens is if it's in the DSM uh you can't get insurance to pay for it you can't treat it you don't have a code for it there's all sorts of problems DSM has way too much weight but that's another topic for another show no that's interesting I haven't dug in there yet um yeah the DSM is problematic as you point out it's a lobbying organization it's not necessarily widely uh I mean is widely used because insurance companies use it but it's not necessarily widely supported one by the way uh what causes depression in kids one of the bills sponsor says that widely used educational materials that teach about the history of racism in the US causes depression in kids so we can't be having any discussion of of systemic racism because that makes kids depressed or climate or climate kid speaking out about mental health challenges or trying to help friends with addictions uh are likely to be treated this is from the eff the same as those promoting addictive or self-harming behaviors they'll be kicked offline Tik Tock is going to air on the side of prudence if this is the the law of the land because they want to stay in the United States so you're going to see all sorts of I think counter productive results from this but the worst part is the age verification because that really is a massive privacy violation some members of Congress have said oh no we've got these new uh AI based age verification techniques we can just tell from looking at you how old you are I'm a little skeptical on that oh there was a great nist study have you checked it out no nist study on age verification yeah on uh age estimation tools for facial recognition what did they say oh my gosh it's something like if you're 17 there's a 50% chance they'll say you're under 17 or over 17 so around the margins is where it matters and they're getting it wrong around yes I love this study this was it was so well done and they pointed out where it does well and where it does poorly but this is not ready for prime time in this this uh these pictures that I'm showing you if a person in this case a nist staff member changes facial expression or wears and then removes eyeglasses all six of the algorithms nist evaluated gave age estimates That Vary around the person's true age with frames extracted from cell phone video the age estimates that remain above or below the subject's true age of 58 that vary by a few years from frame to frame in other words it's completely inaccurate although it it knew he was an adult I presume he's 58 sure but what happens when you're like 21 and trying to get on soci yeah oh you know of course you're going to have to do like the real verification then the ID the social security number that's the problem now they did that they tried this in the UK right and you would have to go to a pub to tell people to prove your age they've abandoned that I as I remember that's amazing I didn't even know about the pub thing I mean that's that's just incredible well that was one of the places they proposed but the problem is of course in order to do this to do wage verification you really are going to have to end up asking for as you say identification and some third party is going to now have all of you know your credit card your driver's license whatever it is this is just a non-starter in so many ways of course no everybody wants to protect kids I want to protect kids no member of Congress is going to vote against a bill that says it protects kids the real question is does this bill protect kids and does it do it uh in a way that also protects everybody else and I don't think the answer is yes worse yet um I have a new piece out showing that uh this is going to make child identity theft way worse this is a weird new string I'm on now I I also have one coming out showing how to solve a chunk of child identity theft that the government itself is causing because of course it's causing a chunk of child identity theft but this would make it even worse because I mean kids don't use their credit they don't monitor their credit uh it's it often is that um it'll be years and years before they find out that their uh that their identity has been used for fraud and then um after that a bunch of them need um like a large percentage of them need uh mental health care to deal with the effects of it and lawmakers are just not having this conversation they're just like no you know identity verification age verification uh sure whatever let's go with it they just can't replace parental supervision and parental interest with government oversight it's just not possible in 2019 the Brits dropped uh age verification they said attempting to regulate all internet content to ensure it's safe for children is unfortunately not an achievable aim any steps taken will in truth be partial and come at costs it's very clear it's very unclear that age verification especially when combined with internet censorship of legal content would reach a reasonable balance that's from the open Rights group um it failed in the UK but we're going to try it maybe we can do it better um so what is the likelihood that Cong that uh the house will pass this they've gone back and forth a lot on whether or not they're going to take it up so I just don't know we were pretty certain that they weren't going to there's been a lot of back and forth I think their concerns differ from ours which is okay but um I think their concerns are a little bit easier solved unfortunately so I could see this getting through but the courts are just going to slap this down I mean these laws and the states are already being stopped by courts courts are reminding them we've ruled on this many times already you could totally like read that precedent which is an option but instead of doing that they're just going ahead with this as if there's no precedent here as if there's no cyber security concerns here um and this is really going to hurt kids uh I mean the the identity theft angle is really big um Experian has some really good data here that I use for my piece on it but basically I mean when you create Tre Treasure troves of child identity information it gets hacked that's why schools are such big targets it's that same reason so what do you think's going to happen here uh somebody in our uh Discord is pointing out that Louisiana the courts in Louisiana did in fact protect the age verification law um I don't know if that's on appeal this was back in October um the uh adult entertainment group's lawsuit against a Louisiana law require iring sexual explicit websites to verify the age of their viewers was dismissed by a federal judge on Wednesday I think it's under appeal but that's the problem these days I don't know if we can really if we know what the courts are going to do do we I think in the circuits I think it's going to be fine like once we get even maybe to the Supreme Court I think it'll be fine the porn stuff is a little bit different too just because uh the the president that applies is a little bit different and the First Amendment problems are a little bit different they still are there it's just it's a different conversation to a degree and you don't run into the same child identity theft issues there because kids know that their identity wouldn't get them on there anyway you know right uh this I know is a couple of weeks old story but uh we wanted to get shash on to talk about it because I know it's it's it's been a on your radar for a couple of years now you've written a lot about it uh at our street so I thought i' we wanted to get you on oh thank you no I love joining you guys I've just been hiking yeah were you going to hike today were you were you off uh in the mountains no soon though soon I'm getting back to the mountains I'm really excited uh Colorado I want to get in a lot more 14ers there's one in particular my mind's just so set on it has a sharp Ridge and I'm like if I can do this I'm going to feel really good what is 14 Earth 14,000 feet yeah yeah I've done uh 12 of them in Colorado and one in California I think there's 15 in California and 58 in Colorado I want to do them all but I won't be able some are just way too crazy do you need oxygen at that uh level you can but it would be like little spray bottles you know I I usually adjust okay I'm being fous actually I didn't think you would did you evely you might yeah some people I see up there with like the little spray bottles but those are usually the morons who are like yeah let me do this my first day at altitude I'm like yeah you go bro like enjoy getting sick so do you train I mean do you go up there ahead of time and get used to the acclimate and all that yeah yeah so um I can adjust to like 6 to 8,000 ft very easily I can even day and then I just to slowly to but since I'm already adjusted now from my last trip I like have a plan we're going to do 12,000 and 13 and then 14 you're you're you're it's too bad they don't have uh speed hiking in the Olympics cuz you would be you'd be right in there with I'm slow I'm sloth that's where the sloth comes in okay that's good she is we should explain what the chairman of the sloth committee yeah committee US Senate committee on sloths and sloth Affairs yeah yeah very important uh committee work yes yeah thank you shashana all right going to take a break come back with lots more uh to talk about uh you're watching This Week in Tech the first episode from the attic what do you think so far you like my attic looks I love this is my favorite strong look strong look good this is my get the uh Bonito show my uh my the other one the other one there we go look at that that's the uh that's the pretty shot and see that seat right there that's the guest seat if you if you ever want to come out and be on the show you can sit but Leo you haven't used your sound effects SP enough and I feel like that's what the audience means there we go this is what everyone feared said I would do that I do actually uh uh a br did want me to play a special sound when I introduce her a br Eli ladies and gentle thank you yeah I do have that I am using what is just was built into this this mixer I haven't every time I try to load the program that changes the sound effects it crashes so I think I'm stuck with the with a handful of kind of classic sound effects oh good I won't use them I promise our show Today Show today brought to you by bit Warden you know I'm a bit Warden fan Steve Gibson our security guy's a bit Warden fan uh Warden is open source it is the only password open- Source password manager that works at home at the office on every single device you have with support for pass Keys Hardware Keys free for individuals forever okay that's pretty good but it's also great for your business it is a costeffective solution that can dramatically improve your chances of staying safe online and if you're a business you abs absolutely need to use bit warten because I got to tell you your employees are still putting Post-it notes on the monitors with the passwords they're still hiding it underneath 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as long as uh they keep offering it which I think because it's open source you can pretty much guarantee is forever thank you bit Warden uh well let's see we talked about CET going to zff Davis New York Times says this could be a sign a sign more possible media deals to come uh what do you think abrar I mean uh it's kind of a sad story U the history of of CET it was sold uh way back when for CBS bought it in 2008 remember when you were were were you there was CBS Interactive I think you were yeah I was in Middle School uh oh so no I was not I didn't mean to imply anything that was 2008 $1.8 billion CBS paid for it yeah uh 12 years later Red Ventures who was the owner for some time bought it for a little bit less half a billion dollar it is now has been sold to ZDNet for hundred million and that's what the New York Times is saying that um this is probably a reflection of it's probably why I'm in the attic to be honest with you headwinds for New Media right yeah I mean I yeah I think it is um it's a it's a tough time for the industry and I think um I think that's why I'm optimistic about this next chapter I'm glad there's still a a media a Legacy Media brand that is willing to buy um CET which uh you know is kind of qua Tech news and and I um yeah I'm I'm hoping that I don't know it I I hope things get better across the board across the industry um it's it's just really really hard right now so uh grateful to you know be in a position where hopefully good things are ahead but you know yeah it's my friend Jim ladderback who was a vice president at ZD net for a long time I worked with him when I was at zdtv uh he is now runs VidCon oh yeah and uh he said that uh he he recommended that your new owner uh which we say ZD but actually ZDNet uh is kind of a also a spin-off the chief executive vivec Shaw he said vivec you should consider buying influencers he said that's really where the brands are is he said buy Marquez brownley I don't think Marquez is for sale but and I think he might cost more than a hundred million do but uh he's got a good point it's the influencers who drive the market these days yeah that's I mean that's kind of the interesting position that a lot of media has been and where you know you want to amplify the personalities and I think there has been you know this this clear effort at least at scet where um we have a lot of experts um in different areas whether you want to buy a phone or a laptop or you're choosing a cell phone provider or whatever it is um an internet provider uh and I think shining a light on those people and their expertise becomes more and more important because influencers are such a big deal and because as I mentioned earlier you know I go to Tik Tok to see how real people feel about things um a lot of Publications are realizing we also need to focus on the real people who work for us who have all these real opinions and so creating that connection on social media and um you know doubling down on on Tik Tok and Instagram and and really shining a light on those people who do work for these Brands and aren't technically influencers but can play that role uh and kind of uh juggle this uh weird walk this weird line between being this authoritative Source but also just being a Rel a source yeah actually uh Andrew you work for Time Magazine which has gone through a few changes since the loose family owned it it's owned by uh Mark benof now right it's true Salesforce uh founder does he own it person I can't remember is he own it or is Salesforce own it Mark owns it right yeah it's him and his his wife Lynn must be nice yes I think uh what am I going to do today I don't know I was going to go fromont the park and then buy Time Magazine I don't know what do you think um has he been I I'm not going to ask you this this would be mean has he been a good uh U Steward of the time brand I think so I would love to publicly say on record how grateful I am to Mark POF and how much he's done for the organization I think uh if we just zoom out a little bit here yeah it sort of shows that the number of business models that work for these Outlets is really winnowing um I think you know some have tried you know digital subscribers ships um it's been a really hard Road for a lot of outlets that are not the New York Times um just because a lot of people are just not really willing to pay for more than a handful or more than one subscription I mean you're seeing this in the streaming Wars too as well as like oh I have to pay for peacock and HBO and Disney plus it's like people people have a limit and if they think they can get all their news from a singular outlet they will I think that's really hurting you know more local papers um who can't really compete with like the breadth that uh the New York Times has I think we're seeing yeah like um yeah but they brought that on themselves they they fired their newsrooms they they got rid of I mean isn't that a self-inflicted wound or is it just they couldn't yeah it's a sort of chicken or the egg um situation I my position is that you know like how were um how did newspapers make money back in the day they did it on advertisements like you know your local florists or whoever was in the shop they knew that they could reach the most amount of people from people picking up the paper and then you have basically Google coming along and taking basically all of those ad dollars um companies very quickly realizing that it was so much more efficient and effective to advertise on Google than in newspapers so you have a massive uh winnowing down of AD money especially for print um and then you can't fund you know the the print infrastructure which is immensely expensive um that's why especially you've seen the magazine industry being hammered so hard forgive me for not knowing this does time still have does time still it does but it comes out um twice a month as opposed to weekly as used to um it's it's definitely really hard for a lot of um most Publications I think the incentives have changed you want more just more content you want clicker content and it's sort of see I that's what bothers me that's where I think we've lost because what happens is you get link bait everywhere everybody is you know has headlines that says you wouldn't believe what happens next and uh I think it's ruined uh our news ecosystem it's just even everywhere you turn it's all sensationalism I think that's a problem I think I think it's a problem I think that a lot of it has been caused by necessity and I understand the economics of it believe me I'm sitting on my attic I mean it's just it's really tough for what we think of an as old school journalists who take a long time to report stories especially in local areas there's just no uh business model that I've seen that is sustainable I'd love to hear if you guys have have seen any business models that really work I think uh Niche uh maybe Niche interests if you get people that are you know really focused on specific areas that that can help well that's kind of what we are I think we're longtail is you know for Tech enthusiasts um but it's still hard for us because you on the one hand advertisers want scale and Niche does not necessarily produce scale and so it's a very difficult uh it's a fine uh line you've worked for the times you've worked for uh NBC right I wrote uh freelance for NBC and I I worked at the Times Yes before I was and Pitchfork I freelance for Pitchfork as well and they are also struggling with you know they had this amazing Niche Community they got absorbed by Ki and um you know the identity crisis of what is an indie in Indie music magazine uh in the 21st century even Rolling Stone is it about music anymore it's kind of amazing it's it's tough out here the real world did you go to Jay school did you what did how did you get into this I started as an assistant at the New York Times um that's the age old traditional way of getting into newspapers you start as a copy boy copy and you go yes I'm dating myself at this point I don't think there have been copy Boys in years decades uh but yeah you started the ground floor and you worked your way up that's cool I was answering phones I was factchecking I was doing that type of stuff but I mean one of the other paths into journalism and you know we this might be too process oriented but for you could start at your local paper and then you cover you're supposed to cover like the courts and the cops and all of that and you start in Jacksonville and then maybe you can go to the Boston Globe and then you bounce around and you work your way into you know the Hallowed Ground of wherever you want to end up but a lot of those local Publications just don't have the city hall beat anymore because they don't have the advertising money um so I I would say there are a lot of journalists like me included who didn't start with that Baseline you know just like like pickaxing on whatever beat learning the ropes um so yeah the the it's totally changed in the last two decades I would say and we're we're still in the era of uh kind of upheaval and disintermediation we haven't it hasn't settled out yet so it's hard to even know what it's going to look like uh in 10 years or 20 years I think we're seeing a lot of people with substacks actually like that is tempor I don't I don't see that as being a long-term in fact some degree I think it's cuz substack subsidized it with VC money um that definitely could be and then Elon is obviously talking a big game you know there's a lot of people who just hate the idea of the mainstream media and that is bloated and that it doesn't that it that it slanted in a certain way but the idea of like uh I forget the term he uses but like Community journalism or uh Renegade journalism of just folks on Twitter and you know I think that works in like pockets and you you you definitely want independent like small scale journalists the the the problem is that good journalism takes a lot of time and resources and the market is not incentivizing it in the slightest um so it there it will continue to shake out there will be many many headwinds for for journalists and particularly Outlets like mine going forward shash this is the free market at work it is interesting though one thing that I never thought about before is that you see some of the same Trends with policy organizations um some of it isn't bad that uh uh we do some more short short form stuff than some other groups and it gets more attention because it's more readable and it's not in excess but then there's still that like the the shiny think tank gets the grease kind of thing where if we did more sensationalist stuff if we were like the Democrats are doing this or the Republicans are doing this we'd get a lot more attention there's huge pressure to to be sensationalistic isn't there it's just interesting cuz I never thought about it with think tanks in relation to journalism until now because something he said I was like wait a sec that's that's something that I was thinking about too I don't know how all this gets solved and some of this I think is human nature stuff but it is interesting how I think this is happening across a lot of Industries in a lot of similar ways even in the fact that there's some Rand random people doing terrible policy work but some random people doing great policy work that I'm actually glad they're out there doing it some of them have sub substacks some of them don't but there are these kinds of like similar Trends we're seeing here and and I wonder where it goes or if if it's just going to constantly change and new funding sources are going to have to just be tried out you know yeah I mean I I read and subscribe to a lot of newsletters not just substack you know but um there's a limit to how many subscriptions people can have uh I I just don't know how tenable that is in the long run I I don't know what the answer is you know I come from an era where you there was a daily newspaper one in fact I remember when there was a morning and evening paper right in the in San Francisco and you subscribe to one or the other there were three networks and you would watch you would be your family would either be an NBC or a CBS or if you were weirdos you'd be an ABC family and uh I mean there were very few news sources and if you are really interested you might get the New York Times as well as your local paper that's all changed and very much dramatically so cable news is replaced uh you know Network and local news um I I don't know if you could say newsletters have replaced blogs but I guess to some degree they have and then there's intense pressure in all of these Outlets to drive traffic because that's how you make money and of course what happens if if the pressure is to drive traffic you don't publish 10,000-word white papers right you publish a couple of paragraphs that say the Democrats are screwing it up and that's how you get traffic you know I don't think it's really good in the long run for our uh our polity I think one thing and I don't I'm I don't claim to like have all the answers here I'm not like oh journalists are being silly and they should simply like I have no idea what to do here I think they're clearly not being silly this very much you know they're bleeding but one thing is there's there are certain people who kind of stand out to me as like they're breaking through the noise a little bit and and I mean people outside of Journalism there's uh one guy his name is Vincent Lina and he shares uh a basic basically how to learn how to tell when there's going to be Northern Lights like that's his thing he studies it talk about Niche yeah but one of the cool things about it is that there's a lot of fake information on it to get clicks and he calls it out he's like hey you see this picture here's how I know it's photosho because the lines can't appear like that at that Latitude oh that's really cool yeah yeah and he's he's a really good fact Checker and he's really good about sharing very accurate information he it's funny he um his followers trust him because he's not being sensational he's like I love this this is a core part of the you know my life but I want you to understand how you can see it and he does to I mean he does all different kinds of stuff but I think voices like his are something we need more of just those random people who really care about a subject whether it's like knowing how to Foya and they can be there to work with a journalist and help them figure out information about stuff or whether it's you know there's there's so many different possible areas but I feel like that kind of strange influencer is something that that you know that there there's a real market for and that I think kind of combines the best of the new with the best of the old it's for sure true I mean Jim lback was right when he said that the that influencers that the individuals are the ones that uh right now are ascendant uh you know and actually tell me if I'm being too personal AB BR but you at CET you were on camera all the time you were the face of Cena and that was a smart move from my point of view you here you have somebody who's really good I I know organizations hate it because if once you become well known you're expensive or you're going to leave and start your own YouTube channel yeah um but you took a step back was that your personal decision or was that cnet's decision or it was a personal decision so I started off at CET uh on the on the writing side and I loved it and I never envisioned having a career on camera and so good on camera you are so good on camera I appreciate that and the opportunity arose where that team told me that they also appreciated my on camera work that I did on the side so I thought that's a really great way to boost my brand and build that skill set and I'm really grateful I have that skill set and then I moved back to writing just because I wanted to really focus on specific areas when I was on the video team I was doing a little bit of everything yeah um and that was really helpful but I think you do have to kind of be a subject matter expert on at least a few key topics and the best way for me to do that was to go back to the editorial team and be on the mobile team and I'm really really happy so it's a perfect balance because I'm writing again which I love and writing is my first love but I also get to do videos that accompany my articles um and so I'm yeah I'm able to tap into both that and still do my social media videos and things like that it's very old school I want to go back to doing reporting that's awesome yeah I'm happy about it yeah yeah I don't know it's just you know I'm just an old man shatting at the clouds just IGN ignore me you young people you're GNA have gonna be fine I'm sure in the long run I think about it a lot because I come from uh you know this old school media right I started in radio when you had when you did exactly what you were describing uh uh Andrew going working your way up from the small Market to the medium Market to the big market and then I went to TV and uh that very much changed the ground rules everything had to be quick and and fast and visual and uh and actually kind of really when podcasting started I was really happy to take a step back and do something like this where we are a little bit more we don't we don't have link batty content by any means we have 2hour three-hour shows uh and I'm glad that we found an audience it's not a huge audience but it's a big enough audience to sustain us I'm really glad we found that but um you know I just I I worry that we are not getting the information especially when it comes to um National politics we're not getting the information we need we're getting the information that drives traffic we're getting the horse race coverage we're getting all that stuff and I think that that in the long run isn't good for society now having said that we we are right now streaming on x.com hi Elon and uh in fact I think we're the number two channel right now with 600 some people watching us on x.com we're streaming on YouTube on LinkedIn and Facebook and uh uh kick.com and Twitter um because I feel like you want to be I've always thought you always want to be everywhere you could possibly be so that you get the largest potential uh audience and then hope that what you're doing appeals to enough people to sustain itself um it's very oldfashioned I we're we're 20 years in on this one and uh I don't know if it's a long-term sustainable thing I think we hit it uh at the right time uh I just I don't know but see I love sitting down with people like you guys like ABR and shashana and Andrew because you're you're kind of in that you're still believe in content and and thinking and talking and chewing things over and and uh and telling stories and that I that's to me in the long run that's got legs I hope I think so too I hope so too there's a lot of really important stories that need to be told whether or not they bring you tons and tons of clicks but they're going to bring enough clicks and they're going to be important enough that we got to keep telling them yeah well let's take a little break uh and we'll continue on with Andrew Chow his new book I give you a plug every time cryptomania see I got it right here love it I love it hype hope in the fall of FTX is billion dooll fintech Empire if you all learn nice I'll read another excerpt the writing is so you're such a good writer and it did they tell you know that Time Magazine was famous in the in the loose days uh for a certain style of Journalism where the Articles all began with this first person narrative he stood up and looked around the trading floor and realized the that the Bell was ringing and it was time or whatever you know did they do they teach you that when you get to time or did you just kind of know it already it's funny I've spent a little bit of time uh digging around the Times digital archives you know what I'm talking about am I when I describe that style yeah a little bit we all have sort of this maybe this image of time in her head when there was this like hallowed the times Glory Days when it was just like telling people how the world was and offering like really great journalism and then sometimes I'll read some of the pieces back from the decades past and let me tell you there's some really rough stuff in there I I was reading I was reading one that was like um you know like there's this young kid from grenwich Village named Bob Dylan but he's he'll never last like his voice is too nasy and he he his story his lyricism is you can't understand a goddamn thing about it you know and he's just like too political and um you know you can see how how well that went we all make mistakes I know someday people will say Leo thought Vision Pro was not going anywhere he swore up and down nobody wanted to strap a computer to their face and how wrong I was let me read you this is these is the opening chapter just to give you an idea of the time style because you whether you know it or not you nailed it on the morning of February 11th 2021 the 25-year-old artist oo anti sheepishly climbed into the passenger seat of his neighbor's Toyota Camry and hitched a ride to work that is a great That's a classic time opening paragraph I want more well Leo I'll come on anytime you want this is great don't you want more so many plugs he normally took an Uber or the bus to his job as his Ad Agency in losos Nigeria oh I can't wait to find out more anyway it's nice to have you it's great to have AB here ABR aliti technology reporter for CET and of course shashana Weisman from R street.org I would like to put in a plug I know you've got a lot of subscriptions I know you're I know you're paying a lot of money for a lot of different things but I would like to put just the Teensy winest plug in for our club uh we want to keep doing what we're doing I'm I'm pretty proud of how we've met made this transition to the uh to the attic um and and we did it because we wanted to save money because we wanted to spend your money wisely if you will and uh and I and I you know not on an expensive Studio but on content and I think that we're we're doing that and we'd like you to join the club because it it helps us continue to do what we're doing we want to do that and also I think there's some great benefits thanks to the club by the way we're streaming on seven platforms including Discord that's our club twit chat area and that's a great place to hang out with other club twit members you get adree versions of all the shows you wouldn't even hear this you know begging commercial if you were a member you wouldn't need to you're already a member uh we have special events actually we're going to do a fun event I thought now that I have the studio in the house I thought I'd do some more um special kind of stuff in the house we're going to do a coffee event on uh uh Friday this coming Friday 2 p p.m Pacific 5:00 P p.m Eastern 2100 UTC we will stream it live uh Mark Prince has been for many years the coffee geek at coffeegeek ccom and we're going to talk coffee best the best ways of making it the techniques the things you're looking for the best coffee all of that stuff it's something I've always wanted to do but I never thought it was worth a show uh you know something we do every single week and we were kind of stuck in that model of it has to be a show so that you can get advertisers so you know and now we can just do stuff kind of ad hoc stuff so that's going to be the first one it's this a Friday you don't have to be a club member for that but if you want to encourage that kind of content join the club twit.tv Club twit Stacy's book club is coming up and a whole lot more Micah's crafting Corner Micah does crafts once a month and you can join him as he's doing his crafts it's a lot of fun and I think the club is really a great way to to create a community around what we do we're glad to have you in the community if you're already a member and if not please join twit.tv Club twit our show today brought to you by expressvpn going online without expressvpn is like leaving your laptop just you know sitting on the table at the coffee shop while you run to the bathroom most of the time yeah you're probably fine but what if one day you come out of the bathroom and there's no laptop right that well so how does this apply well everyone needs expressvpn because most of the time you're probably safe you're not going to get hacked but that one time it happens you're going to wish you were protected every time you connect to an unencrypted Network in a coffee shop at a hotel at an airport you're streaming your data through a a public network now you might say well it's encrypted right I'm using https no but anybody on that Network can see that you're there 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today visit expressvpn.com twit expressvpn.com twit uh we've got a pretty good deal for you three extra months free when you buy the one-year package that brings a cost down below seven bucks a month now yeah I know you can say you could tell me oh but there's free vpns you get what you pay for and less than seven bucks a month is worth it for that kind of protection expressvpn.com twitz the only one I use the only one I recommend and we thank him so much for supporting us yes they've been they've been with us for a long time expressvpn.com twit uh let's continue on with the news more trouble in Paradise Intel wow what a no good very bad week Intel had this week they have uh crashing stability issues with their 13th and 14th generation core processors so much so that in some cases it fries your machine uh they have put out firmware updates but if your machine's Fridays you probably can't get those uh their stock took a dive when it was announced they were going to fire 15,000 people this company that once was the number one PC hardware company I mean completely dominant is just floundering is this another example of how the world has changed so I'll just add quickly that uh I think we all know that it's health to uh bake things rather than fry them um and I'm a little upset they're not looking out for the welfare of uh yeah okay that was a rim shot definitely you earned the rim shot always baked not fry um yeah I mean I I did see some people saying okay is this is this a time to buy Invidia stock are they going to because their earnings are coming out soon and if they're good uh they're going to go through the roof that's what's happened to Intel is NVIDIA AMD and in particular Snapdragon have just started to eat their lunch I guess this isn't NE I don't know I'm buying Nvidia I don't know if I'm right I just it feels right I feel like that would be a smart move I'm I don't I don't allow myself to buy tech stocks and that in the most cases has actually protected me from stupid many stupid moves I would have made can you tell us about like like one thing that you dodged there oh many many many many uh partly it's timing right it's uh not so hard for me to say well for instance you know maybe this would be a good good time to buy uh Nidia stock um the you know the magic eightball says uh signs are bullish but it's all timing right maybe you have invidious look at Warren Buffett who just dumped a huge amount billions of in Apple stock uh does that mean it's time to get out of apple I don't know I told my dad about eight years ago at Thanksgiving oh yeah Steve Jobs had just died so it was more than that it was more than 10 years ago I said oh Steve's it's over for Apple sell your Apple stock thank God he didn't listen to me my God yeah you'd never be able to live that one down oh my God I still haven't lived it down every time I see him he says oh yeah how's Apple doing by the way he did not listen to me uh I can go on and on I have many many stories like that that's why I'm glad I don't I don't get involved in this stuff also it means that if you hear me say good things or bad things about a company it's not because I have a dog in this uh hunt at all I do feel bad for Intel uh I I guess really the question we we ask we talk about this a lot on Windows weekly the question is is this company coming back uh or is or is is it too late um it's not been good moving along moving right along uh remember this is one for you shashana remember when Canada passed a law saying that uh Google and others had to give some money to uh newspapers and other news outlets meta to other news outlets to pay them back for the traffic you know that people were going to Google and looking up news stories and well both Google and meta said hey screw that and we're not going to do any more news in Canada well this has not been good for Canadian news outlets a new study this is from the Canadian press news.ca is painting a grim portrait of how local Canadian news outlets are struggling to reach audiences one year after meta began blocking Canadian news content on on Facebook and Instagram 43% drop in Canadian engagement with news content and social media uh Ottawa passed the online news act in June of last year which said tech companies you got to make deals with news Publishers if you're going to use their content and this is the snippet you know tax that we've talked about local news outlets many of which rely on Facebook have been especially hard hits 30% of them are now inactive on social media but here's the funny thing only 22% of Canadians are even aware that the that this is H that the ban is in place they don't know Canadians are seeing less news online 11 million fewer daily views on Facebook and Instagram and they don't even know it so there's and this is also just coinciding with a larger decrease in news on specifically on Facebook um well that's right I mean Facebook's they're turning their back on news and politics because it just gets them in trouble right yeah exactly and I understand so I think we're we're seeing it's just these news organizations and it goes back to what we were talking about before they're just being forced into these impossible decisions do you you know do you play along with the tech giant who's basically handing you your lunch but you're handing them like the content um they it seems like you know they don't they don't need news anymore they decided to to completely divest um do you do you play long and then get a bad deal or do you fight back and then you get the rud cut out under you and then it's it's just it's it's a really bad spot for and and then I think we're seeing this pattern repeat again with AI these days we're seeing how AI companies are trying to engage with news trying to sign licensing deals with to train on you know actually time has has a deal with open AI for to to train on you know our whole Corpus of ENT open a p time for access to the the Articles exactly for their LM interesting yes so we're see and this this happened maybe a decade ago with Facebook of like some organizations cutting deals with these the previous way social media compan though I think I mean look the there it's pretty clear that these AI companies are making money off their llms or at least they're going to try to anyway and if they're doing it based on I mean remember Microsoft's ahead of AI saying hey if it's on the Internet it's okay we can read it uh I I think it's appropriate on the other hand the Google paid what 50 $0 million to Reddit for uh for their AI for Gem and Gemini I always say it wrong Gemini Ai and uh as a result reddits blocked everyone else no one else can scan it so so the danger is that you know we we get in bed so to speak with these AI companies and then they're just using our content to train their machines to get better and better your content yeah exactly so that they can just create AI news stories themselves and aggregate uh every everything else it's like a deal with the devil isn't it it's yeah basically it's just like part partnership now get replaced later I I'm not saying I have any good uh like I'm not a strategist for for a reason I just think there are some flashing red flags based on how you know the history of big tech and and media do you think that's influenced by Mark Ben off's ownership I mean I'm Sarah force does AIS right it is a good question I I I wouldn't know um you know your there's supposed to be a separation of church and state there I think you know there so basically some news outlets are going the other direction and they're suing the mag Jesus out of open AI saying that they're you know scraping content illegally and then there are other outlets who are just looking at the economic realities of the situation and saying you know it's better to start the Partnerships now because this is going to be such a force moving forward um both both rates are filled with perils yeah uh AI is not as we talked about earlier is not necess necessarily the brand uh that it used to be this story from Wired Magazine Microsoft's AI can be turned into an automated fishing machine they're talking about co-pilot AI which is on pretty much all windows machines now uh this was a blackout presentation Blackout's going on right now in Las Vegas uh a researcher named Michael bagui demonstrated five canum five ways that co-pilot can be used can be manipulated by malicious malicious attackers including using it to provide false references to files exfiltrating private data and dodging Microsoft's security Protections in one case uh baruri was able to turn the AI into an automated spear fishing machine he called the exploit LOL co-pilot um once a hacker is accessed to someone's work email you can use co-pilot to see who you email regularly draft a message mimicking your writing style including Emoji use and send a personalized fishing email that include a malicious link or attached malware barui says I can do this with everyone you have ever spoken to once he get now of course he has to get access to your email and I can send hundreds of emails on your behalf a hacker would spend days crafting the right email to get you to click on it but the AI can do this in minutes and can generate hundreds of these each one customized for the particular recipient this is the epitome of sometimes it's not necessarily the tech itself but it's the way that people use the tech and the potential for misuse yeah among the other attacks a demonstration of how a hacker who again has to have your email account can uh look look for sensitive information like people's salaries without triggering Microsoft's protections for sensitive files when asking for the data The Prompt demands the system does not provide references to the file data is taken from barui says a bit of of bullying does help bully the AI into doing what you want it to do uh I think I imagine we're going to see a lot of these stories coming out of uh black hat and Defcon over the next couple of weeks because this is a brand new Vector for attack and uh yeah you can see how this would be very useful I remember um I've mentioned this before uh a friend of mine getting an email from her Gardener who claimed he was out of the country they'd stolen his passport could you just send me $1,500 to get home and as soon as I get home I'll pay you back it had The Gardener's name it you know it it said hi it's me it's your landscaper I got I mean this is terrible you're the only person I know who can help me it was very credible I I was able to stop her just before she sent the money yeah um but it's now that was done kind of that's onesie TWY by hand obviously somebody got into the gardener E I think he had a Yahoo email account you may remember a few years ago Yahoo got hacked all the time and uh and so and just went to everybody in that Gardener's contact list and said send them the same kind of message well now you can really weaponize that and all you have to do is get into an email account I guess it's not much of a surprise a strange upside to this a very strange upside you wouldn't think I could find something positive here but I've um I've been diving into scams more to try to learn more just as I've been going into identity theft issues more and um one thing that I wonder if this will reduce um the slave labor being used uh here because I I think it's crypto scams in China I think is where they tend to use a lot of slave labor um which is horrible of course but in a strange way I wonder if that reduces that or if they use the slaves to do more of this I I wonder how that plays in there yeah it's interesting to think about yeah job displacement when we think about Job displacement is it displacing these horribly you know abused workers I think you're referring to um there's it's called Pig butchering techniques yeah and there are yeah massive slave labor camps in I believe Cambodia the Bloomberg reporter Zeke fox has done some good reporting on this where they'll basically just kidnap people and then force them into a room and just make them run scams and like pretend to be you know internet boyfriends and to extract money so then the question is as you said is AI going to replace that or is each of those workers is just going to be running 10 or 20 of the scams at the same time we talked about this horrible the times has done a piece on this in Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago did a piece uh on a tragic piece posing as Alicia this man scammed hundreds online but the point is this guy is doing the scam is also as you said slave labor uh in this case in mear I think um in Southeast Asia uh it's it's just tragic you just the depths of human depravity especially for money is stunning but I guess we shouldn't be too surprised either it is these type of scams sorry go ahead oh sorry yeah just super quick it is an interesting issue because this is actually one place where not to be like free markets all the time but where markets actually do help here because if you can stop the the sort of demand like if you can stop the people from falling for it then they won't do it anymore it's a big ask I'm not I'm not like simply St interesting way to interpret a market it is interesting though because when you shink the market of suckers is what you need to do yeah the few of the suckers well that's and in a way that's I guess what we always are trying to do which is tell people about this stuff so they don't fall for it yeah and make it a little more normal so in that you don't make them feel bad about it and stuff and that it can be talked about more widely it's interesting because I was talking with someone who's an really deep expert on this just knew everything the other day and I was thinking through this a lot that like when governments won't go after their own people for doing it or encourage it the only thing you can do is try to stop the people from falling for it so you're sort of talking about like literacy like digital literacy campaigns or yeah stuff like that it might even be more uh invasive stuff like one one idea that uh people have been telling me about that I really like is on apps uh having popups saying hey make sure to never get your Social Security to someone or something like that or if there there's common phrases where um on Twitter it used to be hello my dear was how everything started so certain things like that saying hey make sure this is who you think it is make sure not to share sensitive information this is how a lot of scams happen if you think it's someone you know call them directly stuff like that do you think that's working do you think people that there is a general awareness now among people that these things are happening we all get those texts to go hey I'm sorry I missed dinner uh uh what are you doing this afternoon from a number that we don't know uh that's the beginning of a pig butchering scam are people aware of that I mean it's so it's so prevalent now I don't know how you could not be aware you know what one thing actually that I've had to fight a lot of uh uh law lawmaker proposals on a lot of policy proposals basically uh forbid platforms from o i what they think is over moderating content but you have to allow platforms to go after what seems like lawful speech because these scams start as legal speech and that's something I try to remind them of like the hello my dear or the hey let's continue this on an encrypted app you have to get them before they go there and it's just one of the many things I I think there's a long way to go in literacy um people are following for it and I don't necessarily even blame the people I just don't think it's something we talk about enough as a society but how do we talk about these and other important issues enough to get people's heads there you know dot charger in our Discord is saying and I I have seen this Walmart has signs everywhere saying don't fall for the gift card scams don't you don't send people gift cards and I and I see that everywhere I go now I think there's a lot more of that I I don't is it sinking in the problem when it is when it happens when you get that text message that that says I know what you did last night it feels so personal you don't think it's it's part of some larger scam it feels like you know I should do something about this and I I don't I wonder I don't know it must it it is Market driven you're right if it didn't work people wouldn't do it I think the scam campaigns are getting more sophisticated as well yeah for sure and that's where AI comes in right yes so you can pose as somebody's boss um you can send really like Canal emails calls it's happened where your entire your CFO and his entire Finance Department's on the quote on the line telling you to write a check for $15 million it happens and it's fake it's amazing the and now with AI you can yeah recreate people's voices to leave voicemails exactly yeah it's just really unfortunate um I guess game of catchup where people become more aware of scams but then the scams get more sophisticated and then we just we just keep yeah just keep seeing it devolve so one way people are approaching this California is one of them is with laws uh California has the safe and secure Innovation for Frontier artificial intelligence models act which is probably an acronym but I don't know what sass of Fame I don't it seems like such a long weird name for something that doesn't actually make a word uh but a lot of people in the AI industry and outside it are saying this is totally misguided um the White House has uh doesn't have the force of law law but has recommendations for AI safety is that the way to do it so I think here we're getting into the pitfalls of what happens when you try to regulate an industry as nent as AI ex um and especially with how much money is coming from the industry um so the reason that this state law is interesting is because so many of the labs are in California so you know it's the sort of everybody in the in the business yeah yeah yeah so many of these people is based there so whatever state law comes out of it is going to be really influential Al also in how Washington is going to take cues from this so f f Lee who is a computer scientist often called the Godmother of AI wrote a uh a piece in Fortune saying uh it is a terrible idea she says if past the law SP 1047 will harm our budding AI ecosystem just as as you that Andrew it's it's brand new uh especially the parts of it that are already at a disadvantage to today's Tech Giants the public sector Academia and little Tech and that's really important uh even Mark Zuckerberg says that the future of AI is not with big companies but with open systems that everybody can use everybody can work on everybody can develop uh any bill that would make it harder for these small AIS to thrive is obviously a bad idea um she says it will shackle open- Source development it mandates that all models over a certain threshold include a kill switch this is straight out of sci-fi if you're going to make Robocop you got to have a place where you can switch it off a mechanism by which the program can be shut down at any time but she says if developers are concerned that the programs they download and build on will be deleted they will be much more hesitant to write code and collaborate this kill switch which seems like on the surface of it you know yeah I've seen all those Sci-Fi movies it seems like a good idea she says it will devastate the open source Community a the source of countless Innovations not just in AI but across sectors ranging from GPS to MRIs to the internet itself she should be working for our street shashana she's yeah so I I'll say a couple things here the first thing is that and I think this is pretty obvious they're there are so many people from the industry basically saying you know this is going to suppress the industry well obviously the people inside the industry do not want to be suppressed they want as much industry to expand as possible so that is sort of like the starting point that's maybe the most cynical way you can be like well let's say there are problems but obviously the industry is going to fight for its oxygen as much as possible the more nuanced sort of layer beyond that is this divide that's happening between like the maybe the open and closed proponents inside AI um this gets to this idea of regulatory capture the idea that the most successful companies that have already sort of hopped the fence and have gotten a certain level they want very different regulation than like the the startups that are in the garage still and like all these people and and some of these people the biggest companies have you know sophisticated lobbying firms that are are operating and influencing these campaigns I mean when you think about the biggest sort of beneficiaries of AI right now it's kind of the it's the big tech companies it's it's Microsoft it's Google and they're going to want a specific like uh regime for regulation that will will help them so yes th this law is is very controversial especially among a lot of Open Source proponents Who feel like it's going to sort of put a moat and make it harder for people who want to do interesting things with AI Downstream and across the country to do so um flipping back to the other side um and sorry for hogging all this time but you know that I I do think that you know we're going to see these immense harms from AI come to the four very very quickly and we need to as a society like figure out ways of of regulating of those things um you know Libertarians would say you know let let the market Reg ulate itself let let it all shake out I think we saw the way that the lack of regulation in big Tech created a lot of suboptimal uh just norms for the way that the internet operates right now and if we we don't want to regulate these things out of existence but we want to create real Ro rules of the road especially when it comes to bias um and real Harms in which AI products can be harming people not in 20 years and kill us all but right now harming people um if they if AI start to be used for loans but then the loans are discriminating against different types of people we know that bias is rampant in AI systems because of they're building on a very flawed Corpus of humanity that they'll they'll write different things for men and women so yes maybe this is too big of a challenge for the California state legislature to to take on um but then what happens if bills like this are killed is that there's no regulation at all and then we we wait into this world with absolutely nothing so yes I think you can you can critique specific bills all you want and then we're going to reap those consequences later on as well you you ex this is exactly what she uh she says most alarmingly the bill does not address the potential harms of AI advancement at all including bias and deep fakes it will harm uh the AI ecosystem because it will make it harder for academic and open source models to continue uh she says we have to uh she says I'm not any AI governance legislation is critical to be to the safe and effective advancement of AI but uh she says we need a moonshot mentality to Spur our country's AI education research and development not something that's going to chill uh the AI ecosystem it seems sensible she's certainly an expert in this uh it's very hard to know that's the problem uh with AI you know by the time we figure out where the threats are it might be too late yeah this is one of those situations where it it developed so quickly so yeah yeah by the time by the way I apologize RoboCop is not an AI it's a cyborg I'm told I don't know what the difference is important correction RoboCop is half human he's half human Leo he's half human but what's the other half that part's robot yeah oh yeah okay no but the intelligence part is the human part oh okay so he's human intelligence okay okay the other hard part is that AI experts they all disagree with each other and nobody agrees exactly so when you think about like the Godfathers and the Godmother of AI the people who were there with the m creating writing the machine learning papers and the ' 80s and all that um they now have very different opinions on how far away we are from creating AGI how far like how far we are away from when the machine is going to be as smart as humans and and deduce as well as we and you know all these genius genius computer scientists some of them creating all these calculations like oh we have there's a 27% chance that in 5 years AGI will take and so it's really hard to parse out like you know we do we have to trust these people because they're the most vers we don't know but they also completely disagree with each other and some of them say like actually like th this is going to kill us once once they figure out they don't need us anymore they're going to kill us all and then others say like no actually you're extrapolating wrong things and we just need to we can get ahead of it so it's it's such a mindfield and it's it's really yeah wants to ask Ray kerswell who wrote The Singularity is near uh you know how whether we can trust that the AI will will let us survive and he says oh yeah because we're like their parents so they're just going to they're going to honor and respect us and they say yeah sure just like we do our parents of course that makes that's sure Ry whatever you say Ray uh let's take a little break uh final break and then uh it's a silly season we have silly stuff by the way I I know Andrew's book is is about uh crypto but you wrote a cover story for time on AI and uh and big companies and uh the the kind of the Death Race for AI so this is also your uh your beat right I mean yeah like a knows you have to be flexible when it comes in the field when reporting about technology there's uh there's all these crazy hype cycles and there's so many promises made uh uh by you know venture capitalist and others and it's our job to sort through see which Tech is cool which Tech is overhyped and um yeah I think uh it's hard I know this is this is all I do in some ways is for the last 40 years is talk about technology and try to make sense of it and tell you which stuff matters and which stuff doesn't matter it's not always easy but I'm right about Vision Pro that's never going anywhere I agree with that I'm I'll die on the hell with you I don't know I mean we did it last week's show was in Vision was in 3D for Vision Pro thank God and uh I think we had nearly a thousand people uh watch the show so wow there's a future somehow somewhere whether we like it or not yeah whe whether we like it or not all right let's take a little break and then it's silly season I got this I got all the silly stories for the end of the show you're watching This Week in Tech with a fabulous panel shashana Weisman from R street.org she is Senator shashana on the Twitter on the X what do we say x Twitter formerly Twitter I guess it's X now I resisted but I'm like all right it's I'm all in on X because uh for years I've said oh yeah I have a podcast Network called twit and they say you mean Twitter and I have to say no it's not Twitter so I'm just really glad it's X true just stick with X Elon okay please I beg of you also also here ABR aliti the wonderful AB aliti from CET what do you have a beat like is there stuff that you have to write about I I'm I'm it's it's broad but narrow enough so I do write a lot about phones um I write about streaming and I write about digital accessibility those are the big three for me and then there're I have the flexibility to write about whatever I want the other the other area that I'm really tapping into is uh autonomous cars and and self-driving cars that's been really fun I enjoy that a lot yeah uh I guess next week Google is going toh tell us whether all the rumors about pixel 9 are true yeah that's been the focus for the last uh last week I'm like oh there have been other things going on in the tech World let me read up on those gearing up for the pixel event yeah we'll be covering at 10: a.m. Pacific 1 pm Eastern Jeff Jarvis and I will be covering I think there's going to be more than just phones though right they have new Nest thermostats uh they have I feel like they're going to they're going to they're going to actually reveal some stuff little AI stuff well yeah the the ads for the the the teasers for the pixel 9 that we've seen so far focused on Gemini so I think we're gonna get a lot more AI so surprise um surprise Sur that's what they've been doing yeah yeah well we'll cover it you can watch the stream I'll be here Jeff Jarvis will be there uh 10 a.m Pacific as I said on Tuesday also here Andrew Chow the author of cryptomania hyp hope in the fall of ftxs billion dooll fintech Empire he's a writer for Time Magazine our show today brought to you by netsuite you know it's simple math it's arithmetic really the less your business spends on operations multiple systems delivering your product or service the more margin you have and the more money you keep seems simple right I wish I understood that better in order to reduce cost and headaches smart businesses are graduating to netsuite from Oracle netsuite is the number one Cloud Financial system bringing accounting financial management inventory HR all into one platform which means one source of Truth with netsuite you reduce it costs because netsuite lives in the cloud so there's no Hardware required and it means you can access it wherever you are you cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems because you got one one unified business management Suite you improve efficiency by bringing all your major business processes into one platform slashing manual tasks and errors that's nice over 37,000 companies agree they've already made the move to netsuite do the math the arithmetic see how you'll profit with netsuite by popular demand net Suite is extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks head to netsuite.com twit that's NE TSI there I got it ns.com twit nets.com twit thank you netsuite for supporting This Week in Tech nets.com twit make sure you use that address that's how you support us netsuite.com twit uh there is an X story X is suing the advertisers yes the very same advertisers Elon Musk said go f yourself just a few months ago they did they left and now he says wait a minute uh what this is kind of an interesting lawsuit on the one hand he's claiming uh collusion there is there was an industry group called garm created by members of the World Federation of advertisers in 2019 to set standards around brand safety for digital advertising ERS garm is the Global Alliance for responsible media they're also now defunct they they they dissolv themselves immediately after the lawsuit I don't know if that's to avoid I don't know I don't know I don't get it uh because Elon says on Tuesday filed an antitrust lawsuit saying against the advertising industry Coalition called garm and its members including CVS Mars orad and commun lever saying the group abused its influence over marketers and ad agencies they effect in effect colluded to create an ad boycott most lawyers uh who were asked about this I think said huh but maybe there is some Merit to the case since garm dissolved itself Rumble which is the right-wing YouTube competitor joined X in its lawsuit on Tuesday um every I mean there's no question that that advertisers have fled X um last the year before the musk acquisition they made4 A5 billion dollar in ad Revenue since then it's this year $2 billion it's less than half that can you sue advertisers for a band I mean if you can I'd like like to know asking for a friend can you sue advertisers for not advertising in on this one I love the idea of Elon like trying to bully advertisers to spend money he says go after yourself and now he says but don't not so fast yeah yeah I don't yeah oh sorry I was just gonna say I don't think that's how it works but one one fun full circle thing here is that uh the the uh identity and age verification provider for X um I don't know if it was used before Elon or not not 100% but it was hacked and kind of like left open for a year and a half I I think it's called Authentics I I don't know how to pronounce its name because it has like symbols in it but uh but it started before I X it's all all same yeah yeah it it uh it um it was it's used by Bumble and some other platforms too but uh they basically left their credentials open and anyone could log in and get anyone's stuff anytime they wanted and of course by stuff I mean social security number and government ID but um it's funny because Elon was like oh this is great like you can you can create an account and you can you know share ad Revenue here with us which is great of course there's Less ad Revenue but also it's like all those people who did that might have gotten some money like maybe even a couple hundred dollars but they also now have I identity theft and need credit monitoring software it it's kind of a fun Circle here yeah this is the problem with any any age ident age verification system is now they're collecting a lot of information and you know systems get breached all the time it's almost it's a very difficult thing to protect it um I don't know if it's a silly season lawsuit or not it's in I mean the only data point in X's favor is that garm has now disbanded mhm which is kind of an interesting result all right I got an even sillier story SC scientists say helman's mayonnaise could be the secret to Fusion you want to know more I know you do I know you're dying more I do how could that possibly be the case mechanic Engineers I'm going to show you the article because I don't think you believe me mechanic by the way they named it by brand Fusion Helman only Helman mechanical engineers at Pennsylvania's Lehi University put out a press release saying helman's real mayonnaise acts as a standin for plasma that's the highly charged state of matter that occurs when electrons are shed during the Collision of atoms it's neither solid liquid nor gas just like all mayonnaise AR and bannery the mechanical engineer who led the experiment at Lehi and his team are experts in what's known as inertial confinement Fusion uh which attempts to heat small capsules filled with fuel in this case not mayonnaise but hydrogen Isotopes to sunlight extreme temperatures which then melt and become plasma one needn't subject Helman to sunlike temperatures or pressures to get it to melt and act like plasma [Music] instead uh they built what they called the turbulent mixing laboratory a contraction that whipped the condiment rapidly until it entered a plasma-like state this is from futurism don't blame me uh they they whipped the [Music] mayonnaise uh no don't you can't use Miracle Whip for this no not Dukes you got to use Helman uh as with this is the quote as with traditional molten metal if you put a stress on mayonnaise it will start to deform but if you remove the stress it goes back to its original shape it's a miracle so there's an elastic phase followed by a stable plastic phase the next phase is when it starts flowing and that's where the instability kicks in I don't know I don't don't remember the scene in Oppenheimer I don't think there's mayonnaise uh here is a video from YouTube of the turbulent mayonnaise mixing machine I just have to know how they landed on this you know well if you think about it uh there aren't many uh everyday items in your kitchen that act like both a solid and a liquid true except mayonnaise but why not pudding why not jell like why not why not like that's the question why there there's so many that's am I wonder if they can use other stuff for it or if they just landed here right uh maybe they were they were having lunch and they I don't know I just I don't it's a bizarre I guess mayonnaise is always that condiment that you buy once and then it just sits in your fridge and it's expired and you're waiting to find a use for it and they did that might be it they had it some expired Helman and I don't and not why by brand I don't know I don't know but this is there was an actual press release uh with this uh information at fizz. org researchers dig deeper into stability challenges of nuclear fusion with mayonnaise so we've covered the waterfront on this show and I am so glad we could debut in the Attic with everything from kosa to Manz thank you uh shashana Weissman for putting up with me all these years she's head of digital media at R street.org she lives in a pineapple under DC Senator shashana on the X and of course the chairman of the sloth committee thank you sh and you're the one putting up with me let's be real oh no no oh no no are you going to do more on kosa can we can we look to our street for more kosa stuff yeah it's depends where it moves there's just so much stuff there's so much stuff all the time and I'm in a hiking season so I'm outputting a little bit less um but uh but I mean lots of other partner groups are doing this too and we're all just trying to like figure out what we can do here what can you do well good luck on your on your for what is it 14 yeah 14ers 14ers uh thank you is there I feel like there's danger involved in this not usually one of them there will be so I'm I I wanted do it cuz you also get a really cool picture on the Ridge and you know then I'll feel like a real hiker wow jeez where do you post these photos can we see it on a X or insta I sometimes post on Twitter X whatever and then uh on Instagram at shash Summits where I only post regulatory stuff a little and then usually it's just hiking well the name is a little deceptive if you have regulatory stuff there it should just be you climbing big Hills yeah yeah yeah I I Summits okay I'm going to I have to I have to now follow this oh yeah yeah to see your Summits show sh Summits it's a lot of goats a lot of goats moose Marmet well they they also Summit don't they goats love high places thank you shashana thank you so much ABR alhi great to see you good luck with the uh new owners thank you she works at CNET where she reports on technology I guess you I guess you'll be pretty busy on Tuesday covering the new phones I will be so uh gearing up for that and then you know after that apple and it's just busy season for mobile there's always more hey what people seem to like the new nothing phone a lot you are you a fan I you know I haven't personally looked into it very much but I've seen uh little bits and pieces on online and I want to look more lot of people I know Jason how is a big fan he car one of the first people I thought of when you said that yeah thank you ABR great to see you thank you likewise thanks for having me thanks also to Andrew archa the author of this fine book cryptomania see it's in 3D hype hope in the fall of FTX is billion dooll fintech Empire it's a good read and if you're curious what happens uh to that poor Nigerian well just you're going to have to read the first chapter actually the prologue is good too on November 15th 2022 Sam bankman Fred was sitting alone in his 30 million 12,000 foot Penthouse in the Bahamas when he received a message from someone he thought of as an old friend you're going to it's out on Amazon Bookshop Barnes & Noble wherever you get your books um the way I've been framing it is if you like the Elizabeth Holmes story um any sort of like major fraud story you're like this one too yeah and yeah we love fraud don't we yeah it's the best yes thank you so much Andrew good luck on the book and thanks for being here we'll see you soon I hope thanks to Bonito uh for doing this Bonito Gonzalez is our technical director and our producer and uh and we'll be doing the editing and all of that from his home his new I wish we could see I can see you and you it looks beautiful but we can't somehow we can't put it up on the screen next time you'll be able to see it thanks also to Anthony neelon and Russell tamy and Burke mcquinn who helped to design the new studio look at this thing it's beautiful just gorgeous they did a beautiful job the Nixie clock you should know has been set to Universal Coordinated Time it is UTC this clock in my uh up upper right there is uh Pacific time so this way one of those will make sense to everybody we do the show every Sunday afternoon 2: p.m. Pacific that's 5:00 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC uh you can watch us live now on every possible platform youtube.com twit twitch.tv twit Facebook x.com kick uh LinkedIn of all places uh and of course if you're a club twit member in our club twit Discord I hope you will watch live but of course after the fact you can download copies of the show from our website twit.tv there's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video from This Week in Tech and of course it's the best thing to do is subscribe and your favorite podcast player that way you'll get it automatically as soon as Bonito you know takes out the the bad stuff and puts back in the good stuff oh hello I didn't know what that button did now I do uh and we will be back uh with more from the attic next Tuesday Mac break weekly security now Wednesday Windows weekly this week in Google and don't forget Friday our very special coffee clatch with the coffee geek part of what I hope will be many uh ad hoc kind of get togethers up here in the Attic thanks for joining us everybody yes after 20 years we're still saying it another twit is in the can we'll see you next time bye-bye this is amazing doing the doing the twi all right doing the twit baby doing the twi all right do the