This Week in Google 795: Alf's Hog is Skeeting

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Week in Google 795: Alf's Hog is Skeeting

Podcast Information:

• Title: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
• Host/Authors: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau
• Episode: This Week in Google 795: Alf's Hog is Skeeting
• Release Date: November 21, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 795 of "This Week in Google," hosted by Leo Laporte alongside guests Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor, and Paris Martineau from The Information, the trio delves into significant developments surrounding Google, Comcast's media strategies, and the burgeoning Blue Sky social platform. The discussion is rich with insights into antitrust concerns, media consolidation, AI innovations, and the evolving landscape of social media.

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1. DOJ's Antitrust Actions Against Google

The episode commences with a deep dive into the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) ongoing efforts to curtail Google's dominance in the search market. The DOJ's proposed remedy involves compelling Google to divest its Chrome browser, citing monopolistic practices.

• Key Points:

  • Monopolization Concerns: The DOJ argues that Google illegally monopolized the search engine market, leveraging Chrome's 60% browser market share to funnel users into its search ecosystem.
  • Feasibility Issues: The hosts question the practicality of selling Chrome, given its foundation on the open-source Chromium project and the potential interest from buyers.
  • Google's Defense: Lee Ann Mulholland, Google's VP of Regulatory Affairs, criticizes the DOJ's approach, labeling it as a "radical agenda" that may harm American technological leadership.
  • Political Underpinnings: Speculation arises that the DOJ aims to finalize actions before the upcoming presidential transition on January 20th, potentially influenced by figures like Elon Musk and Vivek Rajaswamy questioning Google's impartiality.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Jeff Jarvis [02:07]: "It's like telling GM, 'You've got to stop selling steering wheels.'"
  • Leo Laporte [06:15]: "The DOJ is telling Google, 'Hey, we're serious here.' Google reacts angrily to the report."
  • Leo Laporte [07:49]: "I really think that this is just the DOJ trying to bring things to a close before January 20th, don't you?"

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2. Comcast's Spin-Off of MSNBC and CNBC

Transitioning from antitrust issues, the conversation shifts to Comcast's strategic decision to spin off its media assets, including MSNBC and CNBC.

• Key Points:

  • Business Motivation: The primary driver behind Comcast's move appears to be business-oriented, aiming to streamline operations and potentially enhance shareholder value.
  • Impact on Media Landscape: This spin-off could signal a broader trend of dismantling traditional media conglomerates in favor of more specialized entities.
  • Potential Outcomes: Speculation includes possible acquisitions by other media giants like Rupert Murdoch's companies or Sinclair, further fragmenting the media ecosystem.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Jeff Jarvis [86:51]: "It's a huge story. It is a huge."
  • Leo Laporte [86:55]: "They’re not gonna. They’re gonna still own it. They’re still gonna be part of their."

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3. Google's Integration of Android into Chrome OS and the New Pixelbook

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to Google's strategic shift in its operating systems, particularly the integration of Android into Chrome OS and the development of a new Android-based laptop, the Pixelbook.

• Key Points:

  • Technical Integration: Google plans to migrate Chrome OS entirely over to the Android Linux kernel, incorporating Android frameworks and Bluetooth stacks.
  • Implications for Chromebooks: This move aims to unify Google's ecosystem, potentially enhancing AI innovations by reducing the need to develop separately for Chrome OS and Android.
  • Challenges: Hosts express concerns about user experience, noting that Android apps currently offer a subpar experience on Chromebooks, with issues in app integration and interface design.
  • Market Reception: The market's reaction remains uncertain, with Google's stock experiencing minor fluctuations amidst regulatory pressures.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Paris Martineau [11:00]: "Trump and Musk have alleged in all these conversations that they think Google is biased against conservatives and are going to crack down on it."
  • Leo Laporte [85:00]: "Google is reportedly fully migrating Chrome OS over to Android."

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4. Innovations in AI Scam Baiting: O2's Daisy

The discussion highlights innovative uses of AI in combating phone scams, spotlighting O2's new tool, Daisy.

• Key Points:

  • Functionality: Daisy mimics the voice of an elderly woman to engage and waste the time of scammers, preventing them from targeting real victims.
  • Technology Behind Daisy: Utilizing large language models, Daisy generates responses without operator input, effectively holding scammers on the line for extended periods.
  • Impact: According to O2, Daisy keeps fraudsters engaged for up to 40 minutes, significantly reducing their ability to scam genuine individuals.
  • Comparison to Human Efforts: The hosts reference Jim Browning's similar initiatives, emphasizing the effectiveness of AI-driven approaches in this domain.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Leo Laporte [53:00]: "AI generated video, but it is just obviously it's a phone call."
  • Jeff Jarvis [17:29]: "This is a case where O2 has done something really innovative."

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5. Emergence and Dynamics of Blue Sky Social Platform

A substantial segment is dedicated to Blue Sky, a decentralized social media platform akin to Mastodon and Twitter, examining its growth, features, and community dynamics.

• Key Points:

  • Starter Packs: Blue Sky introduces "starter packs," curated lists that allow users to follow themed groups of accounts, enhancing user engagement and network building.
  • Community Building: The platform emphasizes high-quality, customizable networks, addressing Twitter's historical challenges in user onboarding and content discovery.
  • Black Twitter Parallel: Blue Sky has attempted to cultivate safe spaces similar to Black Twitter, though initial efforts faced setbacks due to inadequate moderation responses.
  • Growth Metrics: With over 20 million daily active users, Blue Sky has swiftly emerged as a significant competitor in the social media landscape, occasionally surpassing platforms like Threads in active user counts.
  • Technical Challenges: The platform grapples with scalability and content moderation, especially as user influx strains existing infrastructure.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Paris Martineau [30:37]: "Blue Sky has taken off because of starter packs, which allow users to build high-quality, themed account networks."
  • Jeff Jarvis [43:07]: "It's getting so bad at Twitter. People are still there, they're still there."

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6. Stock Market Reactions to Tech Developments

The hosts briefly touch upon stock market movements in response to recent tech news.

• Key Points:

  • Google's Stock: Experiences minor fluctuations amid antitrust discussions.
  • Nvidia's Performance: Despite a massive 94% sales increase, profit reached $19.3 billion, yet the stock fell due to unmet expectations.
  • Overall Market Sentiment: The market remains watchful but not alarmed, suggesting resilience in the tech sector despite regulatory and market pressures.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Leo Laporte [16:54]: "Google stock is down 1.25% today."
  • Jeff Jarvis [22:07]: "Nvidia's results just came out, up 84%."

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7. Regulation of Big Tech: Section 230 and Beyond

The conversation delves into the broader regulatory landscape affecting major tech firms, focusing on potential changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

• Key Points:

  • Section 230 Repeal: Brendan Carr aims to eliminate immunities granted under Section 230, holding tech companies accountable for content moderation practices.
  • Implications for Content Moderation: Without Section 230, platforms like Google and Facebook could face increased legal challenges regarding user-generated content, affecting their operational policies.
  • Legislative Constraints: Jeff Jarvis emphasizes that Carr cannot unilaterally change Section 230; it requires Congressional action, limiting immediate impact.
  • Transparency Measures: Suggestions include enforcing transparent appeals processes for users contesting bans or demonetization, aligning with both regulatory expectations and user rights.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Leo Laporte [09:42]: "Brendan Carr is going to get rid of Section 230 as quick as he possibly can."
  • Jeff Jarvis [14:18]: "Tech companies should be regulated further to ensure that users are not being discriminated against."

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8. Technical Issues and Updates: Browser Challenges

The hosts discuss technical glitches affecting web functionalities, particularly focusing on a CSS library issue that disrupted text selection on major websites.

• Key Points:

  • CSS Library Bug: A change in Tailwind CSS caused problems with text highlighting on websites like The Verge and Bloomberg, impeding users' ability to copy-paste content.
  • Browser Responses: While Chrome addressed the issue in version 131, alternative browsers like Arc remained affected, highlighting dependencies on centralized CSS libraries.
  • Security Concerns: The reliance on third-party CSS libraries introduces security vulnerabilities, as malicious alterations can disrupt user experience and data integrity.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Leo Laporte [105:00]: "They're getting so busy, they're going for sex. So falling for that was the problem."
  • Jeff Jarvis [106:01]: "How do you break a CSS library? It gets updated or something."

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Conclusion

Episode 795 of "This Week in Google" offers a comprehensive exploration of pressing issues in the tech world. From antitrust battles and media consolidations to innovative AI applications and the rise of new social platforms like Blue Sky, the conversation underscores the dynamic and often contentious interplay between technology, regulation, and market forces. The hosts provide nuanced perspectives, balancing skepticism with recognition of technological advancements, all while navigating the complexities of an evolving digital landscape.

Join the Conversation: For more in-depth discussions and the latest tech news, tune into "This Week in Google" every Wednesday at 2 PM Pacific. Subscribe via your preferred podcast platform or visit Twit TV Twig for live streams and additional content.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Twig. This week in Google. Jeff Jarvis is here, professor of journalism at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Paris Martineau from the information dot com. We're going to talk about the Department of Justice and their plan to force Google to sell Chrome. How is that going to work? We'll also talk about Comcast, plan to spin off msnbc and CNBC is at the end of cable tv. Very possibly. Plus Google is about to develop a new laptop. It's not a Chromebook. It's based on Android. The Google Pixelbook. That and a whole lot more coming up next on Twig. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Twig. This week in Google. Episode 795 recorded Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Alf's Hog Skating. It's time for Twig. This week in Google the show. We cover the latest news from Google, the one hour late edition. That's going to be good news for you, Jeff Jarvis, because you'll get to your Cacio and Pepe. Oh, you got a cookie.

[Jeff Jarvis]

A CNN cookie.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks like a CNN cookie. Yeah, we saw you on. I got. I, I turned on the TV at 7:25. Oh my. To watch Jeff Jarvis in a round table.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Far too political to play here, but yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's like, who cares? Anyway, I guess you got to talk about something. If you're a 24 hour news network that you got to talk, I guess.

[Paris Martineau]

You gotta invite some guy on to talk about.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Jeff's great. And Jeff kicked the conversation off and pretty much nailed it. And that was that. But then they had to continue on for minutes and minutes and they gotta.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Have the right, the right and the left. And the guy. And somebody warned me, the people on the right, the guy in the cowboy warned me, the guy, two guys on the right, they're both trying out for the White House. So they're going to try to be as difficult as possible. One of them is just known for being difficult, Scott Jennings.

[Leo Laporte]

So he sneers, oh, Scott Jennings is so annoying. And then, and then the guy in the cowboy hats, the, the requisite podcaster.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right, right.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Jeff, you don't count.

[Leo Laporte]

You're not a podcaster. He's definitely, he was definitely a podcaster.

[Paris Martineau]

Jeff, you should get a cowboy hat.

[Leo Laporte]

You were clearly a professor in terms.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Of the arch as Jennings said. Professor.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he did. Professor, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Should have said you're a double professor as well as professor emeritus at the.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Jarvis. Professor. Well done, John The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York. He is now, of course, at Montclair College and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. So a new, a couple of new professorial jobs.

[Jeff Jarvis]

John was nervous about making that and he did it perfectly with no warning. That was great.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, see, and the other I told.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I told Jeff that if I didn't do it correctly, I would just walk away from the show.

[Leo Laporte]

Please.

[Paris Martineau]

So there was a lot riding on that.

[Leo Laporte]

And you were introduced on that CNN show as the author of the Gutenberg Parenthesis. I thought a very nice plug for you and the web. We. Yeah, that's Paris Martin O. The the youth of the show, the young person, the person who adds the energy, the spunk, the vim, the vigor.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm going to be bringing weird energy today because I've been up since 2:30 or 2:30 in the morning and I, you know, I had a lot of extra work to get done this morning. By 10. I did some math. I was like, well, this is what needs to happen. And I thought I'd honestly be feeling worse. The fact that I'm not feeling worse is concerning and probably indicates that something crazy is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How much caffeine have you had, Paris?

[Paris Martineau]

Honestly, not that much. I really gotten back into brewing my own coffee. So I had a couple cups this morning. But, you know, I stopped at my usual time.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You're sounding a little caffeinated.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I definitely am sounding and acting caffeinated, I'll give you that. I'm, I have, my energy is peaking in a way that suggests downfall is approaching. But.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, we better get this show on the road then. Let's get it over with. Paris, of course, writes for the Information. The information dot com. The. Well, let's see. I think the most interesting story is the Department of Justice has apparently decided that the remedy they're going to pursue. Remember, they won a court case. They were. This is a case that began under the Trump administration, continued for four years under the Biden administration. And the judge is now considering remedies. The court ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market to require measures related. Oh, this is, this is the remedy. The DOJ says sell. You know what your, your, your honor, you know what Google could do? They could sell Chrome. They could just sell it. And they, and by the way, the Bloomberg folks say it's worth 20 billion. I not sure. Well, look, let's say some Larry Ellison comes along and says here's $20 billion. What is he buying Chrome is based on an open source browser. That cannot be. It's, it's there, right? It's on here.

[Paris Martineau]

How would you monetize that?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you, you know, Google monetizes it quite well, but the way they do it is they pay $20 million for Apple and hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Mozilla and Samsung. And by doing so they encourage people to use Google Search and, and of course, most people do it through Chrome, which is about 60% of the browser market. So it's how they gather all the information about you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's like telling gm, you've got to, you can't sell steering wheels. The other thing is it's so 2009, so EU.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I think the argument that, well, at least on the Windows Weekly show earlier, Richard Campbell suggested is this is just the opening shot of a, of a negotiation which will end in a consent decree. But the DOJ is telling Google, hey, we're serious here. Google said, are they, what are they kidding? Lee Ann Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, says the Justice Department, quote, continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues. In this case, the government is putting its thumb on the scale in ways that would harm consumers, developers and American. Oh, this is important, by the way. This phrase is important. American technological leadership that precisely the moment it is most needed. Why is that an important phrase? Because in two months we're going to have a new president. A new president, by the way, who Sundar Pichai of Google, of Alphabet has been kissing up to, who hasn't been, but everybody has been, because nobody's a fool. A president who did in fact, under his administration, start this battle. But you know, Elon Musk is in now in the mix because he's got Doge. Vivek Rajaswamy is in the mix because he also has Doge. Because when you're talking Department of Government efficiency, you got to have two people running it. That's the most efficient.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's the most efficient.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I just, I really think that this is just the Justice Department trying to bring things to a close before January 20th, don't you?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I think they're trying to do a lot before then. And there's another, there was, there was another case today where Google's going to be under guidance, surveillance. We're going to be watching you, Google. And that struck me as they're trying a lot of regulatory things. Quickly, I wonder what, who was that?

[Leo Laporte]

Was that the doj too?

[Jeff Jarvis]

That was. No, that was the eu or was it the. No, there was something. No, it was something else. Where.

[Leo Laporte]

So many battles on so many, many fronts, isn't it?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did I put it in here? No.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway. Anyway, I, I think it's silly to even worry about this. I think Google thinks it's silly to worry about it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Google reacts angrily to report it, to have to sell Chrome. Google online.

[Leo Laporte]

They were pissed off. No, yeah. Read, read, read.

[Paris Martineau]

Google from the BBC, of all places, a very unusual place to have reacts angrily in the headline.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, that's true.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, putting their, their thumbs on the scale. But, but I think the most important thing is. And this is what Apple's going to say to President Trump, this is what Google's going to say is we are American companies. This is where American innovation happens. If you pour it for. Apple's worried about a tariff on Chinese parts of, of as much as 60% which would add hundreds of dollars to cost of an iPhone. They're going to say to them, all you're doing is helping Samsung. Do you want to do that, Mr. President?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

What Google's going to say is, all you're doing is knocking down an American company. Now, we'll work with you on the real. By the way, the real issues are things like censoring conservative ideas and things like that. By the way, Brendan Carr is going to get rid of section 230 as quick as he possibly can.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, he can't. It's not under his authority. He's talking all kinds of things. Congress.

[Leo Laporte]

Congress has to do it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He also can't regulate the Internet as it stands now. It's not. I mean, Google's not under the fcc, but they're going to try to, you know, push that. I've heard that Google has already gotten letters from car about, you know, what are you censoring? So the shots are across the bow already.

[Leo Laporte]

He has vowed Trump's pick for the fcc. This is BC Magazine has vowed crackdown on big tech censorship.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Let's put air quotes around the word censorship, because I have noticed editing, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Have to point out a really good piece by Cory Doctorow in which he points out that these big tech companies, and you may not agree with this, Jeff, but he says have become so big that they are harmful to our country. They need to be. They're corrupt. He says they need to be. He's in favor of this kind of regulation, but he says one of the things that happens with a corrupt presidency is they pick and choose which corruption to weed out. And you see that With Putin, the oligarchs are corrupt. Until you don't support Putin and then you're out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What does Musk think of Google? Do we have any idea?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Musk's funny because he remember he was really pissed off at Apple because they stopped buying ads on X, but then Tim Cook invited him over and they had a cup of coffee and he came back saying, I love Apple. So Musk is somewhat like the president in which the president elect because yeah, to every last talked to him, whoever was made nicest to him. So Musk definitely doesn't like OpenAI, doesn't like Google in terms of their AI stuff. He thinks they're moving too fast, too dangerously. Of course he has his own AI. It's kind of like a kid in the back going, slow down, slow down.

[Paris Martineau]

No, actually, wait to your question. My colleague Aaron Wu last night reported that Musk joined the call between Trump and Sundar Pichai. Um, when Google, when Sundar had called Trump to congratulate him on the call with Trump was Elon Musk. And basically what Trump and Musk have alleged in all these conversations is, yeah, that they think Google is biased against conservatives and are going to crack down on it. So it is really interesting to see the way in which Elon Musk's influence is worming its way into every aspect of this.

[Leo Laporte]

Wu writes, Musk's appearance took Pachai by surprise. Oh, hi, Elon.

[Paris Martineau]

Hi, how are you?

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's like a mom coming along on a date.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Musk's been going along on a lot of the President's calls, including to Vladimir Zelensky. Musk, this is Aaron wu's reporting in the Information recently criticized Google for what he believes is liberal bias and how the company presents search results. Remember his tweet about that? He says there's part of a. It was part of a massive far left censorship. Trump said the same thing. You know, that's a good question. How do what, you know, what, what. A, what will Musk's influence be? And B, what does Musk think? What does Trump think Google should continue as? I mean, you know, Sundar Pichai is no fool. Say exactly what they're saying. We're an American company, we're an American band, and we're forward in American innovations. The same thing Tim Cook did when, when, of course, Tim Cook is threatened by threats of Chinese tariffs of as much as 60%, which would add hundreds of dollars to the cost of the iPhone. The way Cook got Trump to stop that last time was to point out that only benefits Samsung, a South Korean company. So I think Google's going to be fine. All Google's going to do is say so. So, but here's don't hurt question for.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Google is that it's one matter if you're, you know, MSNBC and you're liberal, but Google really isn't. Google really does be fair and they have, you know, ranking algorithms and every ranking is a decision that's made.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, that would be really hard.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right, to say that.

[Paris Martineau]

But the propaganda machine does not, does not care. I mean, does it does not believe that it's something. I mean, you can see if you read any of these extremely like far right wing websites. They argue that Google is incredibly biased against conservatives and propping up well for a while Harris's campaign and I'm sure there'll be some new target and I do think that until you take care of that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But what does it mean to take.

[Paris Martineau]

Care of Problems are not going to stop if the issue is you can't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You can't, you're in charge of search.

[Paris Martineau]

They're going to be in the crap forever because the well is poisoned against them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right. So, so you're in charge of search. Sundar comes and says, listen, we're not having this conversation but just, you know, get us out of trouble, make a little, few, a few adjustments. Remember that person is going to say to what?

[Leo Laporte]

Remember that Silicon Valley has a voice in this administration. It's not just Elon Musk, it's Peter Thiel.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, like that makes you feel better. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean actually none of them like Google, do they?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right, That's.

[Paris Martineau]

I do think that one thing Google could do to boost its relevance and boost its relevance to Donald Trump specifically is if Sundar Pichai legally changed his name to Mr. Google. I do think that that would make.

[Leo Laporte]

A difference in our Google Next to Tim Apple.

[Paris Martineau]

And then because, you know, you know, if I don't even think sooner Google because, you know, if Trump's having a hard time with Tim Cook, just, he probably just needs to have Mr. Google. He's got to get rid of his first name and he could solve a lot of problems for him.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that an Indian name? Sundar, Is that an Indian name?

[Jeff Jarvis]

They call me the Sun God. How's that?

[Leo Laporte]

No.

[Paris Martineau]

Could be good.

[Leo Laporte]

More recently, this is Aaron wu's reporting. Also, Trump has appeared more favorable to Google, saying that Google was treating him much better. Remember that?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

In October, Trump told Joe Rogan Sundar Pichai called him to say Trump's recent appearance. McDonald's was one of the biggest things we've had on Google. Nice jobs and, well, you know, you are one of them. Yeah. He also said in October, Trump said he would not break up Google if he won the election because China is afraid of Google.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that the, the breakup stuff can go away. I think we're going to say, here's the problem.

[Leo Laporte]

It's unknown. Right. And that's the thing that's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So it's uncertain, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Is. It's uncertain. I mean, it's ridiculous. And I think this has something to do with why the Biden administration's Department of justice says, well, you're gonna have to sell Chrome. They know that this January 20th is, is, is two months.

[Paris Martineau]

You can say whatever you want for the next two months.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So Google stock is down 1.25% today.

[Leo Laporte]

That's. The stock market's a little skittish.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Down. Yeah. Amazon's down just under a percent. So. Yeah, nothing, nothing awful. By way down.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, 22%. The consumer financial Protection Bureau.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's the one. Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Wants to place Google under federal supervision.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leo, this video says for Google, is not a bank, but they have Google Wallet. What's the wallet due to? Anything. How is there anything in financial pay?

[Leo Laporte]

This is from the Washington Post, where democracy dies in darkness. The exact scope of the CFPB's concerns with Google's financial products is not clear to be final.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, exactly. Wallet.

[Leo Laporte]

And by the way, Director Rohit chopra is gone January 20th.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

So, you know, this is why. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen. It might, it's very, I mean, it's unpredictable because it, there's so many different factors into this. I mean, just look at the Cabinet appointments. It's not predictable at this point. And I don't. I think Google, like every tech company, should just, you know, continue paddling. Say we're an American company. You don't want those ugly Chinese people to win, do you? And.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Or Kim Jong Un's enemies in South Korea.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. So anyway, I mean, we report the stories, but I think that we will just have to wait two months to know what any of this means.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. The reason I went to the stock market is I think if the stock market thought there were, there were really bad uncertainty, you'd see it, but they don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. When, When Vivek Rajaswamy said, oh, and by the way, we're going to have a free tax tool so you can report your taxes to the irs, which by the way is a very good idea.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Stock market punished Intuit and makers of turbo tax and HR block, the makers of the other tax program, like 5 to 7%.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean if Doge could do that, that would be good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This is why I, it's, you know, I'm almost don't even want to like complain about anything because we just don't know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, if we complain, then what are we doing here?

[Leo Laporte]

I know. What are we doing? What are we doing? Let's just go.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, net neutrality is another big question since you mentioned the FCC before.

[Leo Laporte]

My brand new car does not like.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It, but we've ridden that roller coaster and Comcast doesn't work. But other than that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

God, I just had a war flashback to Ajit Pai doing the Harlem shake.

[Leo Laporte]

Remember that?

[Paris Martineau]

That's What a dark time. What a dark time in our collective history.

[Leo Laporte]

I should mention I am on Starlink right now, so Elon could at any time pull the plus. That's the, that's the other thing that's unknown. Right. I think I kind of feel like from now on we shouldn't really do stories. Might, could, would. No, I think you're right. We should do did when something happens.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Even says will is not reliable because people say things no one knows. No one knows. And Elon says he's gonna, you know, have a self driving cab in a month. And until you see it, we live.

[Leo Laporte]

In a post fact world and I think we just have to accept that and kind of watch what's going on and report on it and we'll let you know. I honestly don't think that the tech sector as much as there's been rhetoric against them on both sides, I don't think the tech sector is going to suffer at this point. That it's too much a part of our gdp.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't you think? And, and, and if we're going to go in a trade war against China, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta, we can't. You know, I don't think the argument.

[Paris Martineau]

That it's too much of our GDP is necessarily the reason why nothing could happen to the tech sector. We have. The tech sector has undergone a period of immense growth and unrestrained or unregulated growth. And I do think it would make sense. Something's got to give at some point.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, what would be wrong with letting the market do that? Punish them? I mean, the real question, honestly, the real antitrust question is is are any of these companies so Big that you can't compete against them. And there's some evidence you can't compete in search, for instance.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But search is not the. See. But, but, but, yes, you can, because TikTok is now search.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Chat GPT is now search.

[Leo Laporte]

I've been using Perplexity AI for search. It's fascinating.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's the thing. And so it's always. That's why sell. The browser is so 2009, so Microsoft, so EU. It's three wars ago. Makes no sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So Nvidia's results just came out, up 84%.

[Leo Laporte]

Did they have a good quarter?

[Jeff Jarvis]

The sales were up 94%.

[Leo Laporte]

Almost doubled. Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Profit reached 19.3 billion. However, this is. The market fell 2% because it just wasn't quite as much as they wanted.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, Nvidia had really been overblown, overheated because of the words AI or the letters.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, and their chips have been overheating lately, too, which is the other issue.

[Leo Laporte]

So cooling in an overheated market, Is that what you're saying?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You know, it's funny because for a long time I've asked myself, should I report quarterly results, stock prices? Because that doesn't. It's a little bit removed from actually what a company's doing. How they're. And, you know, whether they're serving consumers, whether, you know, we get value out of them is a little divided of a different question. But the market has. There is the wisdom of the crowds. The market sentiment has some value, I guess. Maybe not. Maybe not anymore. I don't know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's interesting to watch. It's interesting to see what the results.

[Paris Martineau]

It's the same market that pumped everything that had the word blockchain on it for like a couple years. What is it? Long island blockchain tea or something?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they turned it Long island iced into Long Island Blockchain.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, That's.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I would argue it's an argument against the wisdom of the market.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it did very, very well. Brennan Carr did write the. You know, this is a funny story for me. So Newsweek points out that Brennan Carr, who will be the next chairman of the fcc, he is currently a GOP commissioner, so he doesn't even need Senate approval. He's just. He's in. He, it turns out, wrote one of the chapters of the Project 2025 report from the Heritage foundation, the blueprint for a conservative presidency. And I went, oh, no, here we go. And then I started reading it and I thought, well, actually, this isn't so bad.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's not as radical as I thought it was going to be. No.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The shadow banning, that kind of stuff. The complaints about censorship.

[Leo Laporte]

This is complaining, but it doesn't say anything. He also points out, you know, that there's not a lot you could do about it because of section 230. He says some of the immunities tech Companies have under 230 should be eliminated. But as you point out, Congress has to do that. Tech companies should be regulated further to. Although, you know, Chevron deference maybe means that they won't be able to regulate them to ensure that users are not being discriminated against. And I. This is the part I agreed with, in part. But making the companies offer a transparent appeals process for users to challenge their accounts being banned or demonetized. What's wrong with that? That's not saying they can't demonetize your ban. It's just saying that appeals. There has to be an appeals process and has to be transparent. I think that's good. He also supports banning TikTok. This is going to be controversial. It's really unknown that January 19th is the theoretical deadline for TikTok.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There's no way that's happening on January.

[Leo Laporte]

19Th, because the next day you'll have a new administration. Carr says TikTok provides Beijing with an opportunity to run a foreign influence campaign by determining the news and information the app feeds to millions of Americans. I should point out that China also uses Facebook X and Instagram to do exactly the same thing very effectively. Right. We know that Russians do, too. He supports increasing federal funding to an existing rip and replace program for network infrastructure. Getting rid of the Huawei stuff. That's fine. He is in favor of closing loopholes and further regulating Chinese tech firms in a variety of ways to prevent them from accessing American markets. Okay. He, he, he says Starlink is a technology. The FCC should promote. Starlink. Elon Musk.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying now. You bet.

[Leo Laporte]

Will have instant. He says the FCC should increase the pace it reviews and approves. Why bother reviewing if you're going to approve? It reviews and approves satellite launch applications. For now. This is good. Starlink and Amazon's Kuiper, which is a competitor to Starlink. Good. That's good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Kiper up and working.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

No. FCC should be more transparent about the decisions it makes. Part of the, part of the reason Kuiper is stymied a little bit is Elon is the only guy with the launch capacity. Oh, right. Starlink has SpaceX I'm actually curious where Amazon's Kuiper stands right now. They're not the only one considering a satellite network. Everything you need to know about Project Kuiper, Amazon's satellite broadband network. Okay. Mission launch and deployment, they have had secured. They're getting the European Space Agency to launch them. Oh, and Blue Origin and SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance. But they haven't. As far as I know, they haven't launched anything yet. So they've got people, they've got technology, they've got safety and sustainability and more than a thousand people are working on it. So maybe this is just the kick in the butt Amazon needs to get Kuiper off the ground. Which would be great. I'd love to have a second alternative to Starlink. Nothing wrong.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, actually what you need is a. A second backup. You need three.

[Paris Martineau]

I was going to say you do need. In case your Starlink goes out. We could have a 10 second delay.

[Leo Laporte]

Starlink is great. It never goes out. It's really good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I mean you're saying now you're saying that. Very good work, Leo. It's going to go out in 30 seconds. Do you still have that backpack in.

[Paris Martineau]

The room with us right now?

[Leo Laporte]

I like Starlink. In fact, I think Elon Musk, we got to give him credit for being the smartest man alive. He's a super genius reigning in big tech too. Yeah, he's a beautiful. He's a beautiful. Have you seen his son? He's a cutie. Carr argues that the largest technology companies, including Meta Alphabet and use content moderation techniques including shadow banning and demonetization. Bad. No. Good. Don't do that. The FCC should be more transparent about the decisions it makes. He argues it currently engages in wasteful broadband spending policies. I have to see what that means. And over regulates the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I mean, don't give it to poor people.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah. It means also don't tell Comcast what to do. He says agencies should look at eliminating outdated regulations or all regulations. Why not? But honestly, not a lot of this is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It wasn't. It wasn't exactly. Yeah, it wasn't.

[Leo Laporte]

He likes some stuff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He likes 25.

[Leo Laporte]

That was creepy. But this is not.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody's saying don't say anything bad about Elon. I said he was super genius. He can hear me. I would frustrate. By the way, the communications industry is not over regulated. If anything, we've given a duopoly to the cable companies of America and the phone companies, the cell phone companies.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's. That's Net neutrality. That's the belief that if we let. Just let them go, let them do.

[Paris Martineau]

What they want, the market will fix it all.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There. Paris has now installed the pod on her back, and she's like, good cat.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's take a little break. I. I honestly, I am. I am. I am neutral. I am. I am Leo neutral. I am net neutral. I'm gonna watch.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And there's other issues in the world, but I wouldn't say the tech is on the forefront of any issues.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a long pause.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I thought that was a break.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm just. I'm looking at the discord and all of the stuff that our producer, John Ashley is putting there, trying to get me taken down.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, he is. He is. John.

[Leo Laporte]

Taken down. He wants us to turn off Starlink.

[Paris Martineau]

We should yossify these photos of Elon Musk. Someone do that, please.

[Leo Laporte]

What does that mean? Yassify?

[Paris Martineau]

We've been over this before. Yes, it's. It's an aid. It's like a face filter that makes them look like beautiful Squidward, kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry, I forget. I forget all the young people, all.

[Paris Martineau]

The hip young terms. Listen, I've got a really good Blue sky term I'll teach you about. Oh, good show.

[Leo Laporte]

When we come back. Blue skies. Blue Sky's bigger than ever.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, we're loving it. Paris and I are loving.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you loving it?

[Paris Martineau]

Loving it? Yeah, we're.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We're.

[Paris Martineau]

Blue Sky's got the juice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm thinking about changing my lower third to my Blue Sky.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, geez, you've got.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay, if you do that, you've got to update your Blue sky handle to a domain, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I do. I do. Yes. Right. Don't do that.

[Paris Martineau]

Vote now, everybody. Which domain do you want?

[Jeff Jarvis]

So should I use?

[Paris Martineau]

Should I use and domains are your handle on you? On Blue Sky. To be clear.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So do I use jeffjarvis.com or buzz machine.com? what do you think?

[Paris Martineau]

Fun. Kind of fun?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Jeff.

[Leo Laporte]

Jarvis.com. i told you to look at microblog.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I haven't yet.

[Leo Laporte]

It's your posse. Solution. Your post once syndicate everywhere solution. You have Jeff. Jeffjarvis.com it posts blue sky. It doesn't post to Twitter because they turned off the API.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

But post to everything else. Threads, Blue Sky, Mastodon. It's the best way to do it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What was the name again?

[Leo Laporte]

Micro Blog.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's where Leo FM is. That's my blog. I Moved it over there after we shut down the studio. Leo fm. But so I can post something on my phone, on Microblog and it will go to all of those places. So it becomes your little macro blog. Well, the idea was initially Manton Reese, the guy who created it, the idea was that he was going to kind of make up Activity Pub, Twitter, like Microblog. That's what Twitter is, a micro post. Right. But it's grown over the years. He's been doing that for about seven years. And it's grown into something with so many capabilities. It's really good. I use the. I use Aaron Parekhi's Quill utility to post, which makes it so good. You could put notes there, you could put short blog posts, long blog posts, and then it syndicates. You probably could syndicate the substack through it too. Anything. It's Activity Pub. It supports all those things. It's really wonderful.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Anyway, that's not the commercial.

[Leo Laporte]

That was not the commercial. I do have a video, though, that I want to share of Elon and Donald dancing. They're good. They're really good. Look at that.

[Paris Martineau]

That's your guy.

[Leo Laporte]

That's my guy, baby. Love you, Elon. Keep up the good work. Our show today, brought to you by Aunt Pruitt, says he got 500 new followers on Blue sky in just a couple.

[Paris Martineau]

You've got to be on a start starter pack somewhere. We can't check which starter packs were on because you can't see which starter packs you're in. Normally you can, because we're going to do this one brief digression and we're going to go to the ad we almost started. Normally you can, because there's this third party site called Clear sky that lets you show who any particular user is blocking or being blocked by. It also shows the lists you're on and starter packs are lists. But Blue sky has had too many signups over the last couple of weeks. So Clear sky has been busted and down because it's run by just some dude. But.

[Leo Laporte]

So we talked about this a little bit on. Well, yeah, let's hold that thought because I want to. I do want to talk. We'll talk about Blue sky when we come back. How about that? Yes, you're watching this week in Google. It's going to be a really short show today. I just want to let you know because we started an hour late and Jeff Jarvis has to get his cacio.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Don't blame it on me.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, Pepe. I haven't had anything to eat either. I'm living.

[Paris Martineau]

I have to go to bed.

[Leo Laporte]

Coffee and fumes. Just like Paris Martino.

[Paris Martineau]

How many times are we going to start this?

[Leo Laporte]

Adam?

[Paris Martineau]

Is this the fourth one?

[Leo Laporte]

I'm torturing you. That's all our show today, brought to you by our good friends at ACI Learning. You may say, well, how could they do you? I don't. That's the folks behind IT Pro tv. Oh those guys. Binge worthy, video on demand IT and cybersecurity training. And trust me, it's the best training anywhere with IT Pro. Now there are a couple of reasons you might want to use it. If you're an individual wants to get into it or you're already in IT and you want to add to your skill base or you're a company that has an IT team that you want to upskill, it's just a win all around. With IT Pro you'll get certification ready with access to their full video library. It is growing all the time now. 7250 hours of training. 7250 hours of training. You can also get a premium training plan which I would recommend because that gives you access to practice tests which is fantastic. If you're preparing for a certification test, you could take the exam before you pay for it. Make sure you're ready. It gives you the confidence that I know this stuff, I can do it. And it really helps your score a big big time. There's also virtual labs which have some really nice. You don't even have to have a Windows machine. You could do this in any browser. You can set up a Windows server. Windows clients do the whole thing. You break it, no big deal. You close the tab, you start over. It's great for MSPs too because you can set up a system and try software before you install it on your customers machines. Really nice. Those virtual labs are fantastic. IT Pro from ACI Learning. They make training fun. All the videos are produced in an engaging talk show format. They have a chat room going in the background just like we do. And their trainers are experts in the field, working professionals. But it's more than just that. More than just that. They have the knowledge, they have the passion. They love this stuff and their passion for it passes along to you. It makes you enjoy what you're learning. It's. They call it edutaining. Take your IT your cyber career to the next level. Be bold. Train smart with ACI Learning. Now you want to know more? Visit info.acilearning.com TWiT and please use that whole URL so that they know you saw it here. Info.acilearning.com twit There is a brand new offer code TWiT100. TWiT100. Use that at checkout. You'll save 30% on your first year. That's a huge savings of the IT Pro annual training plans. That's info aci learning.com twit the offer code TWiT100 thank you. ACI Learning a great partner they have been for many years for all of our shows. Blue Skies so we talked about this a little bit on twit. Alex Cantrowitz was on. He's the host of the big Technology podcast, the Big Technology Substack newsletter. He's written books about big technology. He thinks, and I, you know, I'm not sure he's wrong, that it's just like Clubhouse, for instance, where there's this huge adoption curve. People move there, they get excited about it, they post for a while and then they just go, yeah, bye, bye. Do you think that that's what's happening with Blue Sky? It's going to have a up clubhouse.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm trying to remember Clubhouse.

[Leo Laporte]

That was during COVID You would call audio.

[Jeff Jarvis]

One, See, that was where Andreessen got mad at people. Was that the place?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it was. But remember how hot it was? And everybody did it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I to them it was, it was.

[Paris Martineau]

Hot because everyone was stuck at home alone and missed the sound of voices that were not their own or their partners. Clubhouse was hot for a very specific reason. And it was you wanted to feel like you were in a room with other people and it gave you that experience through the audio format. I think Blue sky has the juice and I think it has the juice because it, I don't know. One, I found engagement there already to just be way higher than Twitter where I have significantly more followers. But two, and I think we've talked about this before, I think the thing that Bluesky has that other platforms are lacking is Starter packs, which is kind of a community based like list feature where, you know, you could go on there and follow the Twit starter pack or subscribe to it, which means you automatically follow everybody who's a podcast host on Twit. And it that feature where you can easily build a network of high quality kind of customizable themed accounts to follow, I think is going to do. I mean it's part of the reason why the platform is taking off like it is because that's a problem Twitter had for a long time that, you know, New users wouldn't really know how to get into it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I do think that the feature set that they built into it is. Is really good. There's missing things. Yeah. Including one of the most important things from my point of view and Cory Doctor's Point of View Federation. Right.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, it's getting there. It's.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they've small, but 90 years.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're damn busy right now.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, well, Leo, they, you know, suddenly have 200 million users. I think they're a team of what, like 20? They were not. The platform has grown at such a rapid pace that they were overwhelmed. There was a period of time where Blue sky was in beta, not because they were trying to do some mysterious thing, but because they could not handle a rapid influx of users. And the beta expanded so quickly that they had like, slow things down. It's a site that's a work in progress. I think that. I don't know for what it is right now. It's quite.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, my wife joined Blue sky seven minutes ago, so now I know it's real.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, now we go.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, I'm joining her right now. Hi, Lisa.

[Leo Laporte]

Follow Lisa. I'm Leolaporte Me on Blue sky. Actually one of the. I joined. I'm. I'm one of the first 5,000 people to join. I joined very early on, but haven't been all that active actually, you know, microblogs made it possible for me to be more active because everything I post on microblog goes to Bluesky as well as threads.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And so Lisa was already there and I was already following her. She just posted for the first time.

[Leo Laporte]

That's pretty funny that because. Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Does she have any 730 followers already?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but. But no posts. Just the one. Good for her. I actually really like her. Her post, it says, well, here we go, Blue Sky. We are still on X.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She responded in 2023 to I love our rice cooker. She said, oh, we do.

[Leo Laporte]

We do the Zoji Rushi recommended by Doc Rock. We. It's the rice cooker everybody uses.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, she started that.

[Paris Martineau]

And then I love my Zojirushi. Yeah, rice cooker. It's great.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like the brother laser that everybody has.

[Paris Martineau]

It's got fuzzy logic. Oh, I've got a cannon. Jeff has a brother.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I have a brother. How do you know that?

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the question we've had.

[Paris Martineau]

We've had this exact exchange before where I have casually said, because someone has mentioned Jeff as a brother. And I'm like, well, I have A canon and Jeff as a brother. And you guys, like, how do I do that? And I know that because we've talked about our different printers, and we not only talked about it, but the headline, the name of an episode was Paris's can, or, like, Jeff's brother Paris's cannon, or something like that.

[Leo Laporte]

So what does it mean to y Something? That's all I want to know. I just needed to know. Teasing, teasing. So here's the real question. People obviously are leaving X to go to Blue sky, right? That's why it's growing and its growth is outpaced now. Threads. It's about as big as threads.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So, but my question is, and I asked this on Sunday, too. Is it because we need something like Twitter? We have to have something like Twitter.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I do. I want it.

[Paris Martineau]

One of the things Lowe's hierarchy of needs, Twitter is pretty low.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it there, but it's not in the top?

[Paris Martineau]

No, it's definitely there.

[Leo Laporte]

So one of the things, Jeff, you said that is so important about X is Black Twitter, a place that black people can go and feel safe and communicate with one another. And there's been an effort now on Blue Sky. There is, in fact, something called Black sky, which is black users on the network, and they're trying to keep it safe. I think that that's. Yeah, that is a response to that, that issue.

[Jeff Jarvis]

In the very early days of Blue sky, they were very smart. They reached out to important people in Black Twitter, invited them in, listened to them, and then they screwed up because a few users used the N word in their usernames, and in the view of many, BlueSky, just simply didn't respond fast enough. And so people felt a lack of trust and safety. But the problem become. And also there are affordances that Black Twitter wants that don't exist. For example, this has been the issue with Mastodon, because you can't retweet there because the search doesn't exist there. Black Twitter said, it doesn't work for us. And this is what I heard in the Black Twitter Summit to which I had the privilege of playing host last year.

[Leo Laporte]

That might have changed, though. More now. Is it better now?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think it's getting so bad at Twitter. People are still there. They're still there. But the real issue is it's hard to move a community. It's easy for me as an individual to go somewhere and, hey, Leo's there, Paris is there. That's cool. And then it finally builds up. It's another matter when you have a whole structure of affordances and. And norms and memes and language, how do you restart that from scratch? That's not easy.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. I mean, I will say, I think part of the reason why I've had such a good experience at Blue sky so far is I joined because a lot of the weird online posters I follow had suddenly joined too. And I went there, and I immediately thought, oh, great. Like. Well, the fact is, the moment I knew that Blue sky was the platform for me is when Drill tried to join Blue sky, but then realized his handle was taken. And he was like, oh, I've used a different thing. And all the people who created Blue sky were like, no, no, no, Drill. We all. The first thing you get if you're a Blue sky employee is a printed hard cover book of your tweets. We reserved the handle for you, Drill, because we weren't. We weren't sure whether or not you'd come. And that's when I was like, this is. This is the place for me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. And Mike Maznick's on the board now, and he'll be.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, Mike's on the board. That's great.

[Leo Laporte]

So tell people why Drill is so important.

[Paris Martineau]

Drill is a canonical weird Twitter poster. There's, I guess, a more explicit version of the description of. But I don't want to hear the John. Hay. So I won't say it.

[Leo Laporte]

Have it ready just in case. All right.

[Paris Martineau]

He's just.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's a peremptory. A peremptory. Hay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hey.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, too late. I couldn't get it fast enough. Wow. Wow.

[Paris Martineau]

I thought it was gonna interrupt. I even, you know, went low, so it drowned it out. No, instead, you just got to hear me whisper that. And I hope that was good for all of you, John.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I see that, by the way. I see the S word on CNN all the time now. Everybody says it. They said it on your little round table thing today. It's. It's an okay word now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, it is. It is.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't. I'm not sure I like that. Yeah, I agree with you, John. S. Word is not okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hey, so you're saying you're giving me permission not to bleep it out in post?

[Leo Laporte]

No, you better bleep it out just in case.

[Paris Martineau]

Just a little whisper. We couldn't have children. Hear that?

[Leo Laporte]

No, we. You know, that's really our rationale is. What John was always saying is we do. We do have kids listening. We don't want their parents to say, oh, you can't listen to that show it's explicit. So that's why we do it. I think it's a good thing to do. Do you use Deck Blue or do you use the Canonical Blue Sky?

[Paris Martineau]

I found myself using Canonical Blue Sky a lot more, which is strange to me because I used to be a big Tweet Deck user, which Deck Blue is modeled after it. I do really like it. I have just found lately because I haven't. When I was using Tweetdeck, I had a really good system of like 24 different columns that I had figured out over, you know, years of kind of experimenting. And I haven't found that many yet right now, I think especially because the platform is still a little glitchy because so many people have signed up in the last like two weeks ago I was using Deck Dot Blue. This week some of my feeds are a little on the fritz because there's been a surge in users. So I haven't been as much, but I've still just been really enjoying using the various feeds on my homepage.

[Leo Laporte]

20 million users in its first year. Of course, Twitter has. We don't know, but roughly 300, 350 million monthly active users. But 20 million is getting there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh yeah, and it's enough for great interaction.

[Leo Laporte]

It is a critical mass.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm going to steal from my pick of the week one of them, which is a post one titled Blue Skies the Juice threads does not. But similar web did a kind of analysis of active users specifically they were kind of looking at, you know, the surge in interest that bluesky has gotten. And what they found is that bluesky daily active user numbers have now overtaken threads, which, I mean, low bar, but. Well, I do think it's kind of interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Threads had a huge advantage because everybody with an Instagram account has a threads account and a lot of people were just kind of migrated over. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

And I do think it is like a very interesting tech story as to how Mark Zuckerberg and just Meta et al totally screwed themselves on threads. They had everything set up for it to be the new Twitter, but they messed it up.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, the user interface there just does not make sense. To interact with stuff is really hard. There's too many barriers to.

[Paris Martineau]

They also deprioritize political content, they deprioritize links, and those are two huge buckets of content that power the core of Twitter. It's no surprise that Twitter a platform which, albeit small in comparison to something like Facebook or Instagram or, you know, any of these other platforms, but still it did Power the conversation in large part because it was a source of political and journalistic activity. Like, it's what got us Trump in many ways.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I just signed up to DeckBlue for the first time. Looks pretty nice.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it's nice. I mean, you have to basically add a bunch of different feeds in there. I really want to at some point start making my own algorithmic feeds when I have time and then putting that in there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But like right now, suddenly 156 new people are following me, and I don't know where that comes from. It's been happening in spurts.

[Paris Martineau]

It's because you're on a starter pack.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm on a starter pack. And again, you wish you knew where you were so you could thank people.

[Paris Martineau]

That's nice people out there. If you've got a good starter pack, add me to it. I gotta build. I gotta catch up with Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How much does Leo have there? Leo?

[Leo Laporte]

7,000, something like that.

[Paris Martineau]

I gotta catch up with Leo. I'm behind Leo, but I'm ahead of Leo. I'm posting.

[Leo Laporte]

I apparently am not on a starter pack, or at least not a good starter.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, you are. You're on.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, you are. You got like 7,000. John is sitting there saying, TV starter pack.

[Jeff Jarvis]

John saying, what did I do?

[Paris Martineau]

Chop liver.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Chop liver.

[Leo Laporte]

We did create a twitch starter pack. So you, you know, if you want to add all the twit people to the show, the twit starter pack will get you everybody. Lisa, Me, Micah, Richard Campbell, Andy, Anako, Jason Snell, Rosemary Orchard, Jeff Gutenberg, Parenthesis, Jarvis, Paris, Martin, Paul Thurat. Wow, that's a good everybody. Benito.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Looks like our whole team.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Because Blue sky is the juice.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the juice. I'm going to follow all of them.

[Paris Martineau]

You already are, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sure I am, but that's how easy it is if you have a starter pack. And that's. That is a nice feature.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was delighted to be on Mike Maznick's. I was. I was honored and happy. I was very nervous as I went through the list saying, am I here? Am I here? I'm here. There I am.

[Paris Martineau]

I know. I'm jealous.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, good news. Elon Musk and Vivek Wami Vami have decided to launch a podcast for the Department of Government Officials.

[Paris Martineau]

It wasn't efficient enough already. They need to do podcasting. The height of efficiency.

[Leo Laporte]

It feels like they're. They're spitting. They're doing a little bit more than they need to do for real efficiency. I'm just saying.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I think they should add another head.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I think David Sachs needs a job in the administration. I think Jason Calacanis would be great on this.

[Paris Martineau]

This week in government efficiency.

[Leo Laporte]

If they do it. If they do that, you're gonna, you're gonna have plots. I will. Plots. All right, we can, we can. I think every time we talk about Blue sky or Twitter, I feel like there's a large group, a large group of people who say, who cares?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Fine, don't do it. That's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

No, but. I know, but I just feel like we in the media and we care, but I think that it's not a. It's not a general purpose platform. Yeah, except that's where, you know, you get. You find out about dogecast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, we like to talk to people. That's what it is. I do not.

[Leo Laporte]

I talk to people all day. I'm ready.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, you're.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm done with this.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Once it turns off, you're done.

[Leo Laporte]

The last thing I want to do is create more content. Have you seen the AI granny that bores scammers? We talked about this.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I saw.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's O2, so it's a marketing thing. So O2 is a mobile operator in the UK and they say they created a AI generated scam baiter tool called Daisy. Mimics the voice of an elderly woman and it just tries to waste the time of fraudsters. The video is actually funny. I'm going to Skip ahead by O2.

[Jeff Jarvis]

To waste phone scammers time.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's her.

[Paris Martineau]

So W's then A dot 3 times W and then dot.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think your profession is bothering people.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm just trying to have a little chat. Nearly been an hour.

[Jeff Jarvis]

For the love of gosh, how time flying.

[Paris Martineau]

It's showing me a picture of my cat Fluffy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's showing you the picture of your cat Fluffy.

[Leo Laporte]

Stop calling me dear, you stupid.

[Paris Martineau]

Stop it dear.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because while they're busy talking to me.

[Paris Martineau]

They can't be scamming you.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it. I love it. I think it's real. I mean, I don't. I mean it's pretty funny actually using it. Yeah, they say they've been. This is according to PC magazine. Let me see. Let me give credit to Jabean Joseph, who wrote the article. Daisy's been taking calls from fraudsters for the past several weeks. O2 says by tricking the criminals into thinking they're defrauding a real person and playing on scammers biases about older people, Daisy has Prevented them from targeting real visited victims. I don't know if that slows it down, really. There's so many of these people. Yeah, I love the idea. It was trained with the help of a guy on YouTube, Jim Browning, who does the same thing for reels so he knows exactly what it is. It'll Hanoi annoying scammers the most. It transcribes the caller's voice to text and generates responses using a large language model, all without input from an operator. And at times, O2 says Daisy keeps fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes. Can you imagine how frustrating that must be? The video is. Yeah, AI generated video, but it is just obviously it's a. It's a phone call. Actually, there is a real tool you might like in your pixel phone. If you have a Pixel 6 or through 9. The real time scam detection for phone calls is rolling out now. You might have seen Google's demo of this@google IO. It listens. This might be a little creepy. I don't. It listens for conversation patterns commonly associated with scams. Is it listening to my phone call?

[Jeff Jarvis]

How else could it work?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, it's got to be that well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Detected for this call.

[Leo Laporte]

It might pick up and say.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Might pick it up locally.

[Leo Laporte]

Locally. And then you have. So you'll see a.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's why it's six through nine. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll see a pop up and then it'll. I don't know, folks.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm not. I'm not.

[Leo Laporte]

Hang up or not a scam. So it's powered by a local LLM on this Pixel 9, the Gemini Nano LLM.

[Paris Martineau]

Do you guys pick up phone calls? Just random phone calls?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody calls me.

[Paris Martineau]

John Does. Wow, Rough. Yeah, I don't, but I. I mean, I guess I should. I do if it's to my work number.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I mean, it's hard because I have to look if it's a 707 area code, my local area code, I have to think about it. Like, is this, you know, a vendor or you know, a contractor or something or somebody we've been talking to often? It's not often. It's a scam call.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We still have our fabled landline.

[Leo Laporte]

You do?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Worthless. You know, I have it.

[Paris Martineau]

How? How do you have it?

[Leo Laporte]

Do you use it to. Yes. Ify people? Oh, it's attached to your printer.

[Paris Martineau]

That's cute.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It is.

[Leo Laporte]

You have it for an alarm system? Is that why you have it?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, we just kind of haven't gotten rid of it.

[Leo Laporte]

You never Got rid of. See, every time I move, I get rid of it. I mean, you know, it's. It's been a long time since I've had a landline. We had1 maybe 10 years ago because the, because the burglar alarm needed it. Right now they use cell, so that doesn't need that anymore. Or they use.

[Paris Martineau]

My dad recently let me know that he switched the landline to an E on his phone and I was really proud of him for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, if power went out then that would still work.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But of course now I have bios, so it's on that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, doesn't matter. I told my mom that ages ago. I said, mom, keep your landline because it's powered by the central switching network, not by your ac. So if the power goes out, you can still make an emergency call if there's a hurricane or a snowstorm and the power goes out. But she didn't really understand that. And when she got. When Cox came in and gave her. Just like you, Jeff gave her VOIP phone calling, she didn't understand that. And, and the problem is a lot of times Verizon does this. They'll cut the copper. They'll say you don't need that anymore. Which means you can't have a copper based language.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah. No, absolutely not. Well, I finally, finally, finally got a ups. Two of them for my.

[Leo Laporte]

Supposed to put one in. When you have phone service through a.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Internet, what is that uninterruptible power?

[Leo Laporte]

Battery.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Battery. So, so now for my, for my router and my fiber intake, I have two of them. So if the power goes out and I have a generator, it picks up and I have no interruption of service.

[Leo Laporte]

I really think that, I think we're close to no more phone calls at all. It's like cash, right? I think we're close to the end. We are in the cut. We're. Yes, we're in the transitional career.

[Paris Martineau]

Phone calls are good. Actually. This is the person who used to hate phone calls. It's annoying to have to type back and forth in slack about something. I will just be like, can I call you?

[Leo Laporte]

You know, so funny. I think your generation, the younger generation, is now swinging the pendulum. Swinging. I definitely, I don't want to text anymore. I just want a phone call. I'm not going to call you. What are you talking about?

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, no, that is true. And I feel like in my generation people are really into voice memos, which is what we call friend podcasts, where, you know, if you've Got something to tell the group? Yeah. A friend podcast. If you've got something to tell the group that's maybe going to take a couple of paragraphs, instead you'll pull out voice memo. You'll do a brief friend podcast. If it goes on for a couple minutes, you'll do a second one. And then it's nice because everybody gets to read your little transcript and make fun of whatever things it gets wrong.

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff, that's another thing you like about microblog. You can do that. You can leave little voice recordings. It makes it a podcast. So you could do Jeff's. Jeff's, you know, shower thought.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Like, I'm not enough podcasts.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, just, you know, shower thoughts.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris, I want to know, be honest. How often do you stop listening before the friend cast is over?

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, well, so it's an interesting question because often.

[Leo Laporte]

Hi, Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

I will.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Joanne.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, if it's a one to one.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You won't believe what happened to me today. Sorry.

[Paris Martineau]

So I will go and look at the little transcript and if it's like short and I can kind of get the gist, I will usually just like read that instead of listening to it. But I will say this is. This is changing.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a text version of it you can read.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Have you ever graced memoir it? No, you don't text. It just automatically transcribes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So you can read.

[Paris Martineau]

Listen to the transcript, which is so much fun. But it's usually. It's usually not. I mean, sometimes it's like a good yarn someone's telling and you want to listen for the highs and lows.

[Leo Laporte]

Believe what happened. Like, you know, father and I were in Brazil for a wedding and they thought he was a movie star.

[Paris Martineau]

One of the best little voice memos, a mini friend podcast, you might say I'd ever received from the Skee Ball chat is our skeeball captain had a RSV and had lost her voice. And she woke up one day and was like, oh, I sound like Roz from Monsters, Inc. And to prove it, she just sent a voice memo of her going Mike Wazowski in, like, inner normal voice, but it sounded exactly like it. And so this just set off every single person doing their best raws impression and it was delightful.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, that's good. I need sound. Yeah, right.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, all right. I think that you have found a new medium. Do they do. When they do friend podcasts, do they. Is it to multiple people? So it's not just to you usually everybody.

[Paris Martineau]

It's usually In a group chat, I think it's. Frankly, me personally, I think it's rude to send a voice memo to a single person. It's like if we're texting, text me or call me, like. But if it is a group chat with like 10 people and you gotta communicate something, you don't want to take it up a lot of space in the group chat with a bunch of texts, you could just record a short two minute message and then we'll read it at our leisure. I will say my opinion towards longer messages has changed because up until Maybe the last iOS update or the one before that, Apple just clearly had never thought about the voice memo feature for more than a second. Because if you so much as glanced at your phone the wrong way, it would stop playing and start at the beginning. Like you had to keep the screen open and like active, like not dimmed, or else it would start over and it was awful. Now you can like listen to it while doing other stuff. It's lovely. Highly recommend sending a little voice memo to your friends.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, we've learned something. I think we've all learned something.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We have.

[Paris Martineau]

We really have.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm hoping that maybe Paris doesn't have enough of us that we could find ourselves and the three of us in a little voice chat society would, you.

[Paris Martineau]

Know, we just don't spend enough hours talking to each other.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Nope, not gonna do it. Nope. Wouldn't it be funny if I called in and said, hi guys, I just wanted to mention that this friend cast is brought to you by US Cloud, the number one Microsoft Unified Support. Actually, might as well do the ad. Let's do it. I was about to say, yeah, that was this friend podcast by US Cloud, the number one Microsoft Unified Support replacement. Actually, I would call you and tell you about this because if you're paying for Microsoft Enterprise Support, you're just paying too much. US Cloud is the global leader in third party Microsoft Enterprise Support and some of the biggest companies in the world use it. 50 of the Fortune 500 have switched to US Cloud. If you switch to US Cloud, you could save your business 30 to 50% on a true comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. Actually, they said comparable. I don't think. I think that's doing them a disservice. I think they're better, they're faster, smarter and less expensive. I try to convince them to make that their slogan, but they, they wouldn't do it. These guys are great. US Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack 24, 7, 365 days a year. They do respond faster and they resolve tickets quicker for clients all around the world. Here's the thing, you're going to always talk to real humans. I mean really good humans, expert level engineer humans. They recruit the best engineers with an average of 14.9 years. And that's for Break Fix or DSE. They're 100% US based, so your data never leaves the US. Of course they have clients all over the world, but I think a lot of people would appreciate that. And here's something Microsoft refuses to do but US Cloud will do. Financially backed SLAs on response time. That's because they know when your network's down. When Comcast has failed, your failover has failed, your hair is on fire. Minutes, seconds matter. Initial ticket response from US Cloud averages under four minutes. That's fast. In 2023, 94% of US Cloud's clients reported saving at least a third, at least a third when switching from Microsoft unified support to US Cloud. And we're talking Fortune 500 companies, large health systems, major financial institutions, even federal agencies have switched to US Cloud. US Cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for over 6 million users globally every day. I'm talking big brands like Caterpillar, HP uses US Cloud. Aflac, Dun and Bradstreet, Under Armour, KeyBank. Here's the best endorsement of all. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen US Cloud for their Microsoft support needs. I saw an interview with the Director of Information Technologies who said, quote and I'll quote this, and within an hour US Cloud responded with, I want to say, four engineers. So not only did they bring the right people to the call, they brought the cavalry. I felt like, wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I'd experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier. We made the right choice. And when it comes to compliance, no one gets it better than US Cloud. They are ISO GDPR ESG compliant. For US Cloud, it's not just a regulatory requirement, it's a strategic imperative that drives operational efficiency, legal compliance, risk management, and frankly, corporate reputation. These standards foster trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders. They attract investment, they ensure long term sustainability. You should, you should look for this, frankly, in whoever you're going to do business with. This is how you have success in a competitive global market. Uscloud.com they do it right. They are great. Book a call today. Find out how much your team can save us Cloud. Call them. Uscloud.com book a call, talk to them, See how much they can save. Save You. And by the way, it's not just saving money. It's better, faster, Microsoft Support or less. USCloud.com Go ahead and give them a call. And if they ask, would you please tell them you heard it on this Week in Google? That will help us quite a bit. Did you see Coca Cola's controversial AI generated ad? Did you?

[Paris Martineau]

What are you guys out there watching ads?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, we watch stories about ads.

[Leo Laporte]

I actually have not seen this, but I watch TV with adverts. Do you ever watch football?

[Paris Martineau]

No. What's that?

[Leo Laporte]

That's pretty much where I get my ad content every week. We, you know, the NFL has a lot of ads and they're usually the better ads. Coca Cola every year does a Christmas ad, right? And so this year they did one. I think it's pretty apparently AI generated. Let me play a little bit of it for you. So it's got the polar bear. They always do the polar bear. There's the Coca Cola truck. I mean, can you tell? If you look at this, you could tell it's. It's AI generated.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, yeah, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

But that. Do you have a problem with that? I think it looks cool.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't think any advertisement looks cool. I look at the same disdain that I would.

[Leo Laporte]

The holiday magic is coming.

[Paris Martineau]

Paris holiday magic of Coca Cola.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what? Let me tell you something. Coca Cola has four and a half million subscribers on its YouTube channel. Somebody is actually going to YouTube to watch Coca Cola commercials. Not somebody. Four and a half million people. I think there's a lot to be said for this. They took him three AI studios, Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card. This is, of course, according to Forbes, four different generative AI models. So there was a lot of human involvement in this, right?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Someone had to pick all those models.

[Leo Laporte]

And edit it together. And, you know, I'm sure the prompts. They had a right. This is not instant. Although, according to NBC News, the video drew criticism from creatives who argued it was distasteful for the company to use AI to create the video instead of using the work of artists. Oh, come on. Oh, come on. Really? They. Here's the tweet. Coca Cola is red because it's made from the blood of out of work artists. God.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, God.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, boy. That's rough. That's a rough one. I can't be on the same team as that. I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

It takes. I would bet that the team isn't much smaller that created this than if it were created by filmmakers. It's. I Don't know. It doesn't bother me at all.

[Paris Martineau]

I think they should have hired a real polar bear masterpiece, actually.

[Jeff Jarvis]

If you go to that masterpiece click you got right there. Yeah, that was last year's. It really. It's. I think it's better. It's really well done, and it's. And last year, we just called the cgi.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they call it cgi, Right? Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And clearly it's cgi. Although that might be a real human actor that I think is. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But you'll see it mixed in, and it's brilliantly mixed in. Here we go.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So there's a Picasso kind of winking at you. Oh, geez. Oh, it's reaching out for a bottle of Coke. It's an Andy Warhol painting.

[Paris Martineau]

Guys, the Coca Cola Corporation wins when we show ads on this video podcast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You were a capitalist now, and now you've lost the. We have to reprogram you again look.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't drink Coca Cola.

[Leo Laporte]

That stuff's poison. Just ask rfk.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, he had it.

[Leo Laporte]

He was drinking Coca Cola, wasn't he? On the. On the. On the Trump plane, I sat down.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And I actually added up the calories, sodium, fat, and of all that was on his tray. It was fun.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. But no fluoride. Fluoride free.

[Leo Laporte]

I just. As somebody who started his work life at McDonald's, I just want to represent.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, like Trump the. The same one that Trump worked out?

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, I just want to represent. I think McDonald's tastes pretty darn good. I understand it's not good for you, but neither is a hot dog, and I like an occasional hot dog.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's your order?

[Leo Laporte]

Buy them from the street vendor at. On New York City.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's harder to find a dirty water dog these days.

[Leo Laporte]

Those are delicious. They're not good for you. They shorten your life. What's your.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's your McDonald's order, Leo?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it just varies. You know, I used to be a big double cheese guy when I worked there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We.

[Leo Laporte]

We made double cheese. But then they. They stopped it. But I found out you could still order one. So for years, I ordered off the secret menu. Oh, get a double cheese. But I. You know what? I like a Big Mac every once in a while, too. I admit I was hooked as a youth. It's why I was I ever. Weight problem when I worked at McDonald's. The worst of it was the day the manager said, because, by the way, when I see McDonald's on a private jet, I know that, that food is at least an hour or two old, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh God, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

When we, when I worked at McDonald's and you make a Big Mac, they have a little. Now they probably have some sort of electronic means, but it's my, they had a little placard when I was a guy that put the minute that you made it, so it was four minutes after 10 or whatever, you put a four there and when it gets to eight, you throw it out, you waste it because you know you're not going to serve a four minute old Big Mac. Those were let alone two hours old. It congeals. It's terrible. Anyway, I, the manager said, look, I have all this food. The problem when you waste food is as a manager, that means you made too much for the rush. You're not a good manager. They don't throw it out. They put in a special white can, they call it the waste can. Then at the end of the day, gets inventory, it gets counted. Oh, look, they wasted 43 Big Macs. And that's a black mark against the manager. So the guy said, look, I'm going to give you a break, but you got to eat these five Big Macs.

[Paris Martineau]

You gotta hide my mistakes.

[Leo Laporte]

I did and it was good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So when I was the kitchen boss at Ponderosa Steakhouse.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The trick was to wait until 15 minutes before closing and then just happened to put in a whole new tray of these wonderful rolls they had.

[Leo Laporte]

Aren't you terrible?

[Jeff Jarvis]

And gosh, at the end of the evening you don't. They should go to waste.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we gotta eat them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Even, even back. And this was in 72, 71. They were very well run. They would cared a lot about their inventory.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, we had to count every, we had to count every little sour cream cup.

[Paris Martineau]

What?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, because we had to compare it to the red.

[Leo Laporte]

It costs money.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's three cents. They used to tell us that every packet, every ketchup.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't give them a handful of ketchups. You give them two ketchups.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I learned Paris that when you, when you bring the steak off and put it on the, on the, on the metal tray, on the ridiculous wooden thing and you're waiting there and you. Mushroom sauce is available. It's awful, just terrible. And you never said you want mushroom sauce. No, no, no. You have the steak here, you have it down, you are ready to pour the mushroom sauce. Mushroom sauce. And then they'll usually say yes, and you put it on up. That means another 15 cents added onto the bill.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you charge them? Oh yeah. Mushroom sauce ain't free, but oh yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Like the sour cream. I think you only got two butter pats free.

[Leo Laporte]

The worst thing is at one point we must have had a manager who cared about the planet back in the 70s, remember Earth Day started then and he went, he said, look, we got all this waste, all these wasted burgers in our waste can. And he contacted the local aspca, the dog pound, and said, look, we got all these great burgers, would you like some? And they said, no, there's not enough protein in them.

[Paris Martineau]

Doesn't say, yeah, we can't feed them to the dog. Probably bad for the dogs.

[Leo Laporte]

It's bad for the dogs, but it is. Look, I'm not going to knock it because it is delicious.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It is, it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris, did you ever work in the food service industry?

[Paris Martineau]

I did. I worked at a Starbucks. I also worked at a 24 hour donut place and my version of this is at Starbucks. At the end of the night you'd have to clean out the pastry case of all the kind of expiring pastries or there was a time when Starbucks pastry cases to be actually full of the pastries you would have out for people to order that day. I think now they've gotten rid of that because it did result in a lot of waste. But you're supposed to crush them up and throw them in the garbage. I would just get a bag and put them in the bag and then take a giant bag of pastries homes every night. And it was delicious.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And by the way, I don't think they actually expire because they're sort of preservatives at those.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, definitely. They definitely do not expire. Some of the bread related stuff might get a bit crunchy after a couple of days. But yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

If you did watch ads on the NFL, you might have noticed a rather large number of ads from Instagram saying, now you can have a fresh start. What does that say to you when Instagram says you could have a fresh start?

[Paris Martineau]

I think I've been spoiled. Yeah, they'll let you reset their recommendations.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. You can. They're testing a feature that will. I guess it's a big test because it's in the ads in the NFL that will allow users to reset the algorithmic suggestions that power the feed. They said it's a test, but it must have rolled out globally. Unless they know who's watching. Maybe they really know who's watching and they say, oh, Leo, you've already got this. Let Me. See, I want to reset. Where would I do that? Edit profile.

[Paris Martineau]

You want to get rid of all the weird, sexy women they recommend you.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't know why they think I want to see women in bikinis. I don't. I've never.

[Paris Martineau]

Bikinis and tech products that you'll buy and use once and never again. They could never have figured that out.

[Leo Laporte]

Have I told you about my Instagram chewing gum?

[Paris Martineau]

What?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No. No.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. It's remineralizing. It's good for your teeth. What does it mean?

[Jeff Jarvis]

To mineralize? What does that mean?

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know what this is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Sounds like you're putting oil on your teeth.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Such a sh.

[Paris Martineau]

You gotta wax them.

[Leo Laporte]

This is not, by the way, the setting to personalize ad preferences. This is separate. It doesn't. Meta says. It doesn't delete any of your data from the app. We still have all your data. Or change how we serve you ads. They say this is for teens, to bring safety to all users. We want to give teens new ways to shape their Instagram experience so it can continue to reflect their passions and interests as they evolve. I guess that's true. You change, don't you, as you. As you grow older. I want to. I want to know how to do this. Let me see if there's instructions. Reshape your Instagram. Okay, so you go into. I don't understand how you do it. It's too tiny. How does this work? Paris, can you help me? I want a fresh start in my Insta. Do you use Instagram? Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

You do? Fresh start.

[Leo Laporte]

I do. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

I just. I don't know how this feature works, honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it seems to be a manage button.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Be undone.

[Leo Laporte]

It can't be undone. Don't undo it.

[Paris Martineau]

It is kind of interesting because it does seem like this is more of a trend. Like, I. I know some friends. Hinge, the dating app, has this feature where they will reset your entire algorithm for recommendations as well as everyone you've ever matched with. So I do wonder if there is some sort of recommendation algorithm fatigue setting in among people.

[Leo Laporte]

I just don't understand why Instagram is serving me stuff like this. I don't understand.

[Paris Martineau]

How dare they?

[Leo Laporte]

What's going on there? I don't know. Seriously.

[Paris Martineau]

I can't say the S word, but we can show that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, Jeez.

[Leo Laporte]

Instagram showed it to me. And it's not the first time. That's what's really weird. They keep showing it to me. They must think I want that. Well, now. Okay, where Do I reset this? Because what I want to do is reset it and see if you, of.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All people should reset.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, it shows up again.

[Paris Martineau]

Maybe go into settings and search the word reset because it lets you search in there, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, good thinking. All right. Restricted. No. Accounts Center. Ad preferences. Account settings. Personal details. Ad preferences. I guess I don't have it yet.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, they've decided that you're stuck.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Too bad. We have to show you almost naked rear ends. It's the core.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not even just almost naked rear ends. It's some sort of weird gymnastics thing. Your information and permissions.

[Paris Martineau]

It would come up research. Recommend, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

Recommend. All right, let me try again.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't think.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this. Is this. What is this? What is. Why is. Yeah, I don't have it. Why are they doing this? What is this? Who does this?

[Jeff Jarvis]

People are pissed off that they're. They're not using it as much. They probably did a test and found that people got too deep into whatever it was recommended and they found the experience wasn't good. So a fresh start.

[Leo Laporte]

But honestly, look at Tick Tock. Tick Tock doesn't offer you that. I mean, TikTok just adjusts as you go.

[Paris Martineau]

No, Tick Tock did. This is from TechCrunch. The new addition is similar to a feature that Tick Tock rolled out last year that allows users to reset their for you feeds.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's great. Oh, I do want to do that on Tick Tock. I've ruined my Tick Tock mostly because I'm watching stuff Jeff tells me to watch. It's completely, completely ruined it. Meta did get a pretty hefty fine from the EU. 800 million euros.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And this was for what, classified something free to people?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, this is the last thing I would, I mean, fine them for privacy violations. They were fined after regulators accused Meta of stifling competition. Get this. By tying its free marketplace services with the social network.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is all very Craig Newmark, because if you put this in the us, the difference, of course, is the Facebook is there to make money. And Craig, you know, didn't. Wasn't really there.

[Leo Laporte]

Craig must have made money because he made money.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Of course. But I'm saying it wasn't. It wasn't. He wasn't competing, he was just undercutting by the nature of it. But the equivalent would be. No, no, no, you can't do that. We're going to fine you because you did something nice for people. And people have to stick with these newspapers that overcharge them. And so It's a protectionist scheme for media.

[Leo Laporte]

By linking. Margaret Vestiger said by linking Facebook with its classified ad services, Metta had imposed unfair trading conditions on other providers. So it was good for Facebook and bad for. Who are the other providers? Oh, newspapers. Yeah, you're right. This is regulatory.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. And then if you go to. I got the wrong line number here because we added things. 108.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, let me. Let me go to 108.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Another case exactly this week where Meta. Meta's reward for providing free Global communication and FTC lawsuit.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right. So WhatsApp is free. Free. But. Oh, no, no, no, you can't do that. How could. How dare you give people something free? There's two cases like this in the same week. It's just amazing. So how does this protect us? We get free classifieds and free communication in the world, and that's. Who. Who are you working for here? You ain't working for us. You're working for the company. The old.

[Leo Laporte]

So they're talking companies. There's. They're going after them for WhatsApp. Yeah, the FTC is. Oh, well, they're trying. No, no, they're trying to get them to divest WhatsApp and Instagram.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, then you couldn't have it for free because it's now part of a company. If WhatsApp became its own.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no. But they paid a billion dollars for Instagram because it was taking business away from Facebook and they wanted to kill the competition by buying it. That's what happened. And I think that's legitimate. That is anti transaction.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What about WhatsApp?

[Leo Laporte]

Same thing. They were concerned.

[Paris Martineau]

WhatsApp was. Yeah. A huge force in the rest of the globe where Instagram and Facebook had not taken root.

[Leo Laporte]

But it was called buying the competition. If you can't. If you can't kill them, or actually, usually if you can't buy them, you kill them. But if you can buy them, then you have to kill them. You just make them part of it. They paid a billion for Instagram, which was a. Was a bargain. Although I remember when it happened in 2012, we were going a billion dollars for an after zone.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, that's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, crazy like a fox. They did pay a lot more for WhatsApp. And I also remember in 20. What was it, 2014, when they bought WhatsApp. Going $19 billion for WhatsApp. That's crazy talk. In both cases, I think Metta probably did. Okay. I don't. I don't disagree with this. This is classic antitrust Behavior. You know, another example, if they're sneaking.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This in right now, it probably won't happen with. Yeah, and that's the other administration.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the other thing. Yeah. I don't think there's anything to worry about. As we talked about earlier. Weird. But before I talk about it, I just want to remind you you're watching this week in Google with Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau and John Ashley's cat. Thanks for watching Weird. Here's a weird story.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's weird?

[Leo Laporte]

Did they. When you were, when you were over there at cnn, was it the talk of the roundtable that Comcast wants to spin off MSNBC and cnbc?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, that was the next day when that happened.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a big story.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Huge story. It is a huge.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this. So how much of this is business and how much of it is politics?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think it's mainly business. Cable has cooties. Cable has cooties. Doesn't want it anywhere near their stock price and they want to get rid of it. Doesn't hurt.

[Leo Laporte]

They're not gonna. They're gonna still own it. They're still gonna be part of their.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're gonna. A third of it, I think. Okay, but. But Brian Roberts won't be on the board. He won't be anyway in charge of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Separate company. Like, I don't want any of this on me. And a lot of things happen here.

[Leo Laporte]

So Comcast stockholders will get stock in this new.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Company. They're gonna. It's not, by the way, just MSNBC and cnbc. It's USA Oxygen, E Sci Fi and the Golf Channel.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's everything except Bravo because Bravo is dependent. They need Bravo to feed the streaming service. The streaming service with the shows.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, Bravo is hot.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But there's a lot of things are going to happen out of this. One is that there's speculation in, I think, a Hollywood reporter that they're going to have to give up the branding, MSNBC and cnbc, that they're going to be loosed from whatever exists as NBC News. So what moves over or not is a big deal and things could get sold off in turn. I mean, this is the same thing that I wrote about in magazines where you saw what happened with Time Warner and eventually time is so valuable and then, oh, who wants this crap, Meredith, will you take us off our hands? And I think that's what's going to happen here. And the fear. When I was on cnbc, the one thing I did say that I think I can say here is that it's kind of the MSNBC is kind of the last clearly liberal media, I would argue.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's why I was asking if it's business or politics, but I think it's business.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But they're happy to get rid of that. And I think that there's a lot of issues here and if you, you know, we're not. What I was honestly and to talk about was Joe and Mika going to Mar a Lago, but I think there's business there too. I won't get into the politics of it, but the business is fascinating because Oliver D'Arcy reported that after the first hour, when they talked about this, the ratings fell into the second hour by 17%. Even much more with the key demographic. And so I think that they did it for business purposes. Oh, we gotta get back, people. We're pissing them off. In fact, they just peeved the last people who liked them.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And like what I've been saying about the New York Times. And so it's a really interesting business thing here. And I think it's gonna. I think. I think Joe and Mika are gonna struggle to get back up and then what happens about everybody else who's on the network? And then if they get. If they get pushed off. Rachel Maddow's contract is up very soon. I could see her going off and starting her own media company.

[Leo Laporte]

She should.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I could also see whatever the company.

[Leo Laporte]

That exists for Brian Williams because after he left msnbc, he really couldn't find a home. And the last time he was seen was during election night where he was doing coverage for Amazon Prime. I started to watch it and it was the worst amateur production I have ever seen in my life. Williams is great. I mean, he's. He's not great, he's polished. But they had the people. The team behind him was inept.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did they have a junior Karnaki at a junior big board?

[Leo Laporte]

No, they didn't. They weren't even that organized. It was. I mean, I didn't see enough of it to know, but it was. It was poorly produced with poor talent. It was. They were covering stuff at the wrong time when they should have been covering what was going on. It was really. I immediately turned tuned out anyway.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, so I think this is the death of cable. This is the death of linear cable. This is what happening. It's the death of mass media. We've seen magazines died, newspapers are dying, broadcast radio is dying, broadcast TV is dying. So this is just one more last thing to die. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it all going to YouTube? Where's it going?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, it's going to the Internet. It's going to Tick tock. It's going everywhere else. It's going.

[Leo Laporte]

Netflix is doing all right, but Disney plus is not.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, but that's the only streaming. Everybody's trying to be Netflix and they can't do it. So streaming is not working very well either. So it's YouTube.

[Leo Laporte]

It's TikTok and YouTube.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Which really makes you wonder if the real reason to want to kill TikTok is not geopolitics, but to benefit meta. Like get rid of TikTok. So Meta's reels can on Instagram can.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do better's reels is weak.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks just like TikTok. Half the time it is Tik Tok. It's. It's Tick tocks that are reposted. I know because that's what my son does. This is from Puck, which is a great source for information. William D. Cohen. Cable prepares for the value extraction era.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Milk, milk the cow till she falls over.

[Leo Laporte]

You sell off to private equity.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And then chainsaw Al Dunlop comes in and, you know, splits it up for parts.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's that. It's over.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And I think what could happen too is that you could see Murdoch or Sinclair or any number of players come in and buy msnbc.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And cnbc. And so, yeah, this is the end of mass media and the end of a key player in it.

[Leo Laporte]

The end of 24 hour news does not really bother me too much. I don't think it served.

[Paris Martineau]

You can't say that in front of Jeff. A man that has a screen showing MSNBC live glued to Joe and Mika.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you going to not watch Joe Mika anymore?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No. Well, I have to watch it because I'm a media. People get mad at me all the time. Why are you linking to the Washington Post? I'm a media critic. It's what I do.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I will go through them, but I'm trying to switch to.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why you watched Moonlighting back in the day. He didn't have a choice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I loved TV, but that was different TV.

[Leo Laporte]

Really? You think TV's worse now than it was then?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, God, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Petticoat now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I'm not going back that far. I wasn't TV critic then. I was TV critic from like, Cosby. LA Law.

[Leo Laporte]

Cosby.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hill Street Blues.

[Leo Laporte]

Hill Street Blues. Yeah. Cheers was okay. All right, love.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Cheers. Cheers.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris doesn't know about it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Has Paris have you watched any of those shows we just listed?

[Paris Martineau]

No, I know of Cheers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow, Norm.

[Leo Laporte]

Where everybody knows your name. Well, this is a. You know, it is interesting because it is for us old folks a real shift in the media landscape. But for you, Paris, it's. It probably doesn't change anything, right?

[Paris Martineau]

No, not at all.

[Leo Laporte]

You get your meetings.

[Paris Martineau]

I can't remember the last time I watched live.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you even have a TV?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do you even have a YouTube TV?

[Paris Martineau]

I don't have YouTube. I don't have like cable.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it a 13 inch Zenith?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, the way she rabbit ears cable? Oh, the nose is crinkled up.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't know that I cable.

[Leo Laporte]

So what do you want wnyc? I mean, what do you.

[Paris Martineau]

Right now I'm watching a lot of Nick Cage movies.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's right, it's Nick. Member? Tell us we gotta get an update. Wait, let me take a break and then we're going to come back and get an update on Paris Martino's Nicholas Cage journey through the month of November. You are watching this week in Google with Paris martino from the information dot com. Jeff Jarvis from jeffjarvis dot com. We're glad you're here. All right, Nick Vember, what movies have you watched? You watched a couple in October?

[Paris Martineau]

I've watched quite a few movies now. I got a little. I had a bit of a slowdown after the election because I then also had to finish in a draft. But yeah, my goal is to watch. You know, I had to work. I had about a 30. I'm trying to watch about 30 movies by the end of the month. I'm about a little over halfway there.

[Leo Laporte]

How many movies is Nicholas Cage made?

[Paris Martineau]

Well over a hundred. It was not hard. It was.

[Leo Laporte]

You just.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm doing the. I'm doing the best.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, movies over.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, over 130.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow. Now Paris, when you say best, I presume you mean the worst and most laughable.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay, yes and no. That screenshot from Face Off, I'd argue one of the best movies ever made.

[Leo Laporte]

Face off was a great movie.

[Paris Martineau]

Face off, phenomenal. It literally.

[Leo Laporte]

He and John Travolta trade faces.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, he and John Travolta trade faces. So then it is Nick Cage playing John Travolta playing Cage and then Hillet. It's so good. So that's kind of what made me decide to do this. Because I was such a big Face off fan. I started off with vampires kiss, a 1984 film. Ruled. I don't know, John has given us a half a Pep down. It's kind of like American Psycho but before American Psycho. And it rules Matchstick Men. Phenomenal film.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we talked about that. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Completely blind. Love that Peggy sue got married. Great movie. Birdie, Weird one.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that was the one that made him a star. That was his first.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I mean it was his first like serious and also like leading role.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. I love Raising Arizona. Did you? Did you?

[Paris Martineau]

Raising Arizona. Fantastic.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Great adaptation. I just watched a couple of days ago again. I'd seen it. I loved that film.

[Leo Laporte]

That is.

[Paris Martineau]

I also, I mean it is an all time classic.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

I also. His first ever appearance on like any, like any mainstream sort of Thing is a TV special from 1981 called the Best of Times where Nick Cage plays a jock. It's a bunch of different, like teenagers just talking about how it's like to be a teen with like little sketches, sketches like in between and weirdly musicals. And Nick Cage kills it. He is so good as like, how much screen time?

[Leo Laporte]

Just a few.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean It's. It's maybe 60 minutes and I'd say he's in probably at least like 15 of them. Like he has quite a few like good monologues.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How many of these things, what's the proportion of things you have or have not seen before?

[Paris Martineau]

Most of them I hadn't seen before.

[Leo Laporte]

I'd only seen here from Brandroid in our chat. Is a really good idea for getting through the Trump years. If you watch 30 Nicolas Cage movies every November, given his 116 acting credits, you'd be finished in four years.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a lot of stinkers after this year.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because he's going to have made a lot more movies in case there's a second term.

[Leo Laporte]

So you, you know, was National Treasure a good movie?

[Paris Martineau]

National Treasure, I mean, I think is a classic just in the.

[Leo Laporte]

I haven't seen that.

[Paris Martineau]

It is also got to see Con Air. Con Air Pig.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought I watched really good.

[Paris Martineau]

Truly. The worst movie I've seen was called Zandali and It was a 1991 Nick Cage movie where he plays a, I guess like chauvinistic painter who's she helped, like cheating on, like he's in an affair with somebody and it's just. It's bad. Truly would not recommend. I finished it only because I had.

[Leo Laporte]

To save for the last day, save for November 30th. I think this might be his most recent credit.

[Paris Martineau]

It's not, but I am saving it for the most recent. The. What is it called?

[Leo Laporte]

The unbearable weight of massive talent.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes. That is what I'm doing on the last day.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's the classic.

[Paris Martineau]

It is the perfect end of Nick Vember film.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Making fun of himself.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It's actually a really wonderful movie. And you. You think that he must be broke, that's why.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, no, no, he's actually not in his broke era. He did go through a era of a lot of pyramid related debt. I think he bought a couple pyramids.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh.

[Paris Martineau]

As well as a bunch of rare and exotic snakes and other things. And then he was in debt for quite some time. So that's where a lot of those 130 movies come from. Is from that rough spot. But would recommend it. You know, here's a Warner Herzog movie. He's in a David lynch film.

[Leo Laporte]

You saw Moonstruck. You saw, right?

[Paris Martineau]

Moonstruck is this weekend I was originally gonna watch on the election night. Then I went to bed, I drank a whole weed drink and then went to bed at 8pm What's a weed drink?

[Leo Laporte]

You mean with THC in it?

[Paris Martineau]

They now put marijuana in. In a little seltzer you can buy down the street. Oh, I just spilled water.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it get you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What kind of water was it good water or just water water that you spilled?

[Paris Martineau]

Just water water.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm really not so funny because when I was your age you had to sneak around. Jeff. Oh yeah. This was really so illegal. And now you just go out and you go to the local bodega and you get some weed water.

[Paris Martineau]

It's not even a bodega down the street from me. Like the fanciest bodega or the fanciest dispensary in the world opened and it's just like I can just like get off the subway, walk a couple blocks and I am suddenly able to buy any two.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Two blocks to drugs and queso.

[Paris Martineau]

What's what I know more could you want.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, they should be right next door to each other. Actually.

[Paris Martineau]

They. They are actually. They're very close to each other, which is dangerous.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, Paris.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We. I got a report well before we got on. You might want to know this Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She had her wonder queso and it was delicious wonders.

[Paris Martineau]

Queso really held up.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She's.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, wonder. Is that weird popup we were talking about last week twice?

[Paris Martineau]

Yes. I also did some. I did some more digging the food. I actually got some sort of like open face sandwich thing that was good. In addition to queso and a cornbread. All really delicious. However, I don't know if I'd recommend it for food just as a concept because they do. I guess how they work is they have some central kitchen location, I think Jersey in New York where they make all the food that day and then they send it out to the different wonder locations and they basically like reheat it then when you order so it's not being made fresh. That doesn't matter for queso. So I would really recommend it for that as someone.

[Leo Laporte]

Queso's better the second day.

[Paris Martineau]

Actually it's is definitely. And also New York City just has a dearth of queso options. This is long but a problem.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Whoever has enough that you get a second day, queso should be gone when it's made. That's it.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, the thing is, if you're. You're by yourself, you feel like I'm lactose intolerant. I probably shouldn't eat the whole queso. So then I try to break it up over a day.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't worry, there is no dairy in Velveeta. You're safe. I know they extract the dairy to make the Velveeta. Actually I, you know, it's so weird because when I was a young man and I wanted to smoke marijuana, we had to sneak around. I was paranoid the whole time. It was like scary. Now I. It's legal and I don't. I'm scared of doing it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I don't want to do.

[Paris Martineau]

Weed is way stronger now than your guys time. I would be afraid if I was you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So here's, here's my, my Jeff is a dork story. When I was in. I know there's many of them when I was in San Francisco and I was like, you know, a cool columnist, the young Herb Kane. And I would cover all kinds of concerts with Bill Graham, who was the impresario of all concerts in San Francisco. Rolling Stones, the Dead, everything. And I knew his press people as a result, because I was the columnist. And so I would get a supply from them of their cosmic brownies and I would order from them because they had the best guy making cosmic brownies. And then I would pay them because that was the deal. And I tried to write them a.

[Leo Laporte]

Check and they say, man, you can't write.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They laughed at me. They thought it was really quite cute.

[Leo Laporte]

Cash only, man. Cash on the barrel head, man. What are you talking about? You know, the feds would come down on us so fast. What are you trying to raise a check? Are you a fed, man? You want a paper trail?

[Paris Martineau]

I could tell it's baffling because the aesthetic of these new like legal dispensaries is insane. They all look like hyper. They all look like super Apple stores. Like everything is white and shiny and like minimalist.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Don't they look like. Like they were made by GPT? It looks like commercial.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, no, they do kind of look like the Coke commercial. It's just a very strange experience.

[Leo Laporte]

That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So, so being that Leo and I are old and haven't done this in a very long time, do you just eat less of a gummy or. Or do they have old folks?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, she's used to heavy duty stuff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What about us?

[Leo Laporte]

There was an Atlantic magazine piece on you can't honestly mid grade marijuana anymore because the people who use it now are so tolerant of it that they have to Only the only 80% of all marijuana is sold to daily users. So it has to be super strong. So you can't get the rag weed, the skunk weed that you and I dime bag. Remember that? Yeah, you can't get that. Okay.

[Paris Martineau]

What I would recommend for you guys though is what started all this off a weed drink. Like they now have it. It's like it's the equivalent of an edible. But you just like sip a little.

[Leo Laporte]

Self scare me because you can't control. You don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

Well no, no, no. You can control it now. If you buy it from a dispensary they do tell you exactly how much it is. So you could. You should start out with I'd say 2mg or 5 if you're 2mg if it's an edible that you actually chew. I feel like the weed drinks are just way chiller. So I would say you could probably do a 5:1.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm feeling so illegal. Aren't you Leo?

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want.

[Paris Martineau]

I can't.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like I don't. I can't even do it anymore. I don't. I've had in my medicine cabinet for a couple of years now. At least a little dropper thing. It's supposed to be for your sleep and it says how much is in it and you do how many drops you do. I'm just too scared. I can't do it.

[Paris Martineau]

The cops are going to burst down your door, right? They're coming. They're running right now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Here we have Young Paris is corrupting old us.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't man. I can't. Let's do the Google change log. What a crazy concept.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We have one.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you dig Up. Oh, we have the Scooter X Google Change log. I haven't put one together, but Scooter X, of course, who is, you could tell mildly. He's in our Discord chat. He's mildly irritated by the fact that we continually refuse to talk about Google. So he just in a kind of passive aggressive way, starts posting Google links into the Discord. Like, I dare you not to talk about this. You could be talking about this. So. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I've given John Ashley enough time to find the cart for the Google Change law.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The Google Change Log.

[Leo Laporte]

This is for you, Scooter. This is for you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

In my defense, I was ready to.

[Leo Laporte]

Go, but you were just.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was ready.

[Leo Laporte]

You were ready. You were ready. I have to say. And Scooter, I agree with you. There is a problem that has caused me no end of trouble all week for some. Well, I know exactly why you have not been able to, for the last week, copy and paste headlines from a number of websites, including the Verge and Bloomberg. But weirdly, it's because a CSS library that both these sites use I think was Tailwinds. CSS got changed.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you noticed this?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I noticed the Verge did not have any headlines for a while.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it wasn't a headline. So here I am on a Verge article and what I would normally do is I would copy and I would drag across this and copy and paste it into our bookmark, but I can't. Right. Except that it is. It's just not highlighting it. So I finally discovered that and. But the Verge admitted it. The Verge said, yeah, we know it's because of this CSS library, but they said they were going to fix it many days ago. And so if you have noticed, that's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So amazing that there's centralized C. I'm old enough to remember when I coded my own HTML and coded every website and then CSS was a big new thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Think that there's a central library that can go down. That's fascinating. That's central. The problems of centralization.

[Leo Laporte]

It is actually state open source, so apparently it hasn't been fixed since you still can't copy and paste from the Verge or Bloomberg or other places. So I thought it Maybe was a JavaScript thing. I turned off JavaScript. That didn't do it. It's a commonly used CSS library and nobody's fixed it yet. So.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How do you break a CSS library? It gets updated or something.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they change the behavior and there's a bug in it. And because the way most web pages now work, a lot of them. You can see this if you look at the source code. They load libraries in JavaScript or CSS. They load these libraries in as they're loading the page from another place. It's actually a massive security problem because they're getting it from another place and loading it in and you're running it in your browser.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, that was the whole point of Google.

[Leo Laporte]

Amp, baby. Thank you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Amp. Yeah, AMP was resident and you could call upon things that were resident that made it so much faster and less perilous.

[Leo Laporte]

The latest version of Chrome has addressed issues in the browser that broke the ability to highlight text on some websites over the weekend, according to Scott Westover of Google Veverge says we tested the change and we were able to highlight that. Apparently because I'm using arc, it isn't updated yet. But if you are using Chrome, if you get an up to date version of Chrome, you will be able to highlight. I can't do it. It's because the issue which crept up with Chrome 131 was related to the way this selection styling tool Tailwind CSS implemented text highlighting. Users affected by it could still select text, just wouldn't know. Anyway, it's still broken on arc, the browser that I'm using. So. But if you have the latest Chrome that's fixed. So you know what, that was a. That was a good change log. Thank you Scooter X. But we're not done. Oh no, there's more. Apparently some of the change log involves Facebook introducing AI backgrounds, HD video calls, noise suppression and more for messenger calling.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Scooter Rack.

[Leo Laporte]

Scooter.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The purity of change has just been violated. No, no.

[Paris Martineau]

You're never allowed to complain about us not doing this again. Sorry, it's over now.

[Leo Laporte]

The. The browser that I like and use, ARC from the browser company is now. Its Arc search has been on iOS for some time. They finally added ARC to Windows and now mobile browser ARC Search is generally available on Android. So if you want to use it. Although I wouldn't rush to use it because the browser company has announced we're not going to do ARC anymore. Oh Jesus. Really?

[Paris Martineau]

What are they doing then?

[Leo Laporte]

The startup valued at 550 million is thinking about building new products that are more palatable to a wider audience. Oh, I love arc and I and every boy. If you go to the ARC subreddit you will see a lot of unhappy people. But ARC still works and I'm going to continue to use it. Here's Another one from the Scooter X change log. Google Photos will no longer share images from other apps through partner sharing. I said Google Photos.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I tried to stifle a yawn and I failed.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She's tired, Dion.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't. I know. Spotted by tech issues today. Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know. Scooter X. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, this is the change. Why?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't really.

[Leo Laporte]

Google Chat rolling out a split pane UI on the web.

[Paris Martineau]

Google's talking back to you.

[Leo Laporte]

It says, okay, we're going, we're moving, we're moving. That was one. Plan your holiday drives with Google Maps trends. Google says to help you breeze through this year's festivities. Isn't that what we all want to do is just breeze through the festivities? Here are Google Maps traffic predictions, as well as the best and worst time to run errands.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The thing I hate most about television news is Thanksgiving. There's going to be a lot of people on the road. We're going to talk to people at the airport. Are you flying out because of holiday?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I hate holiday.

[Paris Martineau]

You could have delayed 24 hours, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it's not even that. It's local news.

[Leo Laporte]

It's local news.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What does have to say? It's going to be a new record, but gas prices are down this year, and that's good news for travelers. Oh, I hate that crap.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the same thing when the hurricanes were hitting North Carolina where you send your anchor out to stand in the wind and the rain.

[Paris Martineau]

Hey, no, that's a public service.

[Leo Laporte]

I kind of hope they get blown away. Don't you think people are watching it, hoping, like, something will happen?

[Paris Martineau]

I do think that they should do kind of like a lottery system where one each storm, one public anchor should be equipped with a squirrel suit. So they just get on his step out and they're immediately just gone. It's kind of like, you know, from news Age.

[Leo Laporte]

Holly Ellen Bargain is out at the site right now. Holly, what's. Oh, God.

[Paris Martineau]

She just got hit by a stop sign. Holly, stop.

[Leo Laporte]

Please stop. Okay? Just stop. Don't. Don't send your anchors or anybody. Anybody out there. So Google Map trends now has popular times and the busiest and least busy times to visit places in the US.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I put something more interesting in the change log. I want to add. There was one thing in the change log which I put there.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, let's go see Jeff's change log.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Scooter X. I'm just going to try to rescue you here.

[Leo Laporte]

Google Lens can now Check prices in inventory when shopping in the real world.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's kind of interesting. And I imagine stores will hate it.

[Leo Laporte]

They will, because that what happens. You know what happens? Somebody goes in the last camera shop in all of Northern California, takes a picture of the camera, and finds a cheaper place to buy it online than leaves.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So when I did some work for Best Buy many, many years ago, and this trend was starting, we talked about a strategy of basically standing by the door and saying, I know what you did, and that's okay. Tell me what you're getting and let me try to help you here.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me match the price or something. Yeah, there it is. It is a rabbinical sin. It's called the shopkeepers. What is it? Sin? Not sin. I don't think they have the concept of sin in the Jewish religion.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, they do.

[Leo Laporte]

It's called.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right, John, you're not Jewish. Okay, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

But I remember being told that. That it's considered a bad thing. Let's say a bad thing. We don't know if it's a shonda. Ashanda to go into a shop, waste the shopkeeper's time. He tells you everything there is to know about that rutabaga, and you go, thanks a lot, and you go buy it at the shop down the street because it's cheaper. That is a shonda. Just saying. Yeah. Mobile brow. We are the goyim. That's all I can say. Mobile browser arcs. No, we already did that one. What did you put in? I don't see anything.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That was the one. You just did it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that was it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That was mine? Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, how nice. How nice. Let's go back to mine. Was the thing you skipped over the scooter exchange log. Pixel weather is rolling out pollen count. And as if that weren't enough, immersive vibrations. This is in the October feature drop.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're getting so desperate, they're going for sex.

[Leo Laporte]

Immersive weather vibrations. Your device will vibrate along with the weather animations when available.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, geez.

[Leo Laporte]

You'Re right. They're running out of features.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Ping for your raindrops. Coming down.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, it seems like a hurricane is coming.

[Leo Laporte]

What would be the vibration for a hurricane?

[Paris Martineau]

What is this segment?

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's the. What's the weather thing you're going. What's the weather thing you're going on right now on the West Coast? That's called a what? A what?

[Paris Martineau]

Bomb cyclone.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, bomb cyclone.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Now that. That is a vibration.

[Leo Laporte]

I gotta say, though, we used to have heavy rain, but the wet. I feel like the Weather people. And this is. Again, this is another thing that the mass media has had to do. Have had to cook up starlink and.

[Paris Martineau]

You start raging against the mass media.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry. Continue the excitement around weather with atmospheric. With what do we. This is called an atmospheric flood or the bomb cyclone.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, they gotta name the storms.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, yes, but also, weather is getting more extreme because of climate change.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, there's that. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, here's. Wait a minute. I'm sorry, I missed the big story of the week. Google rebrands Switcher app to allure iPhone users to Android.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, I'm so glad we didn't forget.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That brilliant Google branding.

[Leo Laporte]

It was called Switch to Android. They've now changed it to Android Switch.

[Paris Martineau]

That can't be real.

[Leo Laporte]

That is not made up.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Julie Clover wrote that as a story.

[Leo Laporte]

Julie Clover said, you know, this is part of a rebranding effort to lure iPhone users. Our tests are. We did a lot of focus groups and the iPhone users hated the name Switch to Android, but they like Android Switch.

[Jeff Jarvis]

AB test.

[Paris Martineau]

There need to be fewer people working at Google. They got to. They got to get Doge in on that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The Google Maps location. There's so much in the Google change log now, thanks to Scooter X. You can thank him. Oh, my. I'm seeing my. Is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, you're okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. The Google Maps location. He understands. Glitch. I speak glitch. The Google Maps location, history, timeline change is still rolling out.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, my God. I was wondering if we needed to call someone. We needed to call emergencies, medical services.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leo's glitching.

[Leo Laporte]

It's still rolling out. Just thought you'd like to know the things they call news these days. I think. I think. Unless I'm. Unless.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think you hit the bottom at the beginning.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no. Google is reportedly fully migrating Chrome OS over to Android.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay. This, I thought was beyond Changelog. This is a story I wanted to talk about.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, thank you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because, yes, not only that, the rumor mill has it up in the rundown there that Google might actually be making a new Pixel Machine based on Android as the os.

[Leo Laporte]

So what's going on then? Is not that they are. Are they phasing out Chrome os? Are they making Android be the question Desktop operating system?

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's the question. I mean, and we've. We've speculated about this for years. Why do they have two. Why don't they consolidate them? This could be the beginning. And the irony, of course, is at the time when the government is telling them to sell Chrome. Oh, okay. We don't care anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

We don't need you. Well, the government is also talking about selling Android, spelling off Android, so it's not really. Oh, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, Jesus.

[Leo Laporte]

Chrome and Android, because both are used to support the ad business, which is what they really want to hit.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're such idiots.

[Leo Laporte]

So apparently Chrome OS will be. And Google's announced this earlier, will be using the Android Linux kernel, Android frameworks, Android's Bluetooth stack, Google. Oh, it must.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You did that just to irritate me, didn't you?

[Leo Laporte]

No, the sun went down. It says those are audio.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It just went to dark mode.

[Leo Laporte]

It's sunset. My computer goes to dark mode at sunset.

[Paris Martineau]

Dark mode is beautiful.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it is lovely. From the. Let's see what else in terms of why Google said this will accelerate the pace of AI innovation at the core of Chrome os. Yeah, because we don't have to do AI for both Android and Chrome os.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I see.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, I think you might not be too happy about this in the long run.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Really? Me? Well, no, because they're also talking about doing a new flagship, but it would look like Android.

[Leo Laporte]

Google. According to Android authority, Google wants future Chromebooks to ship with Android OS in the future. So if they do a new one, it might have. Well, you wouldn't mind that, would you, Jeff?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, I think if it works, if it does what it's supposed to do, if I still have my browser and the government hasn't messed that up. If I can still use Docs.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

In fact, Android apps don't work with a darn right now on Chromebooks. It's just. It's bs. It's just. It's an awful experience.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, part of that is the aspect ratio of the screen. Right. I mean, they'd have to make. The problem with Android is it's really designed for a phone. Form factor. It doesn't work that well in a tablet or even a desktop.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I have to go in all the time and turn off. You know what should you open with this link? Should you open the so and so's app or should you open the browser?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I hate that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And when it opens the app, it's just awful.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And drives me crazy. And doesn't work very well. So it's not integrated. So maybe it makes it worse. I don't know. But yeah. The next story down, Android headlines says, exclusive Google Pixel Laptop in development. Exclamation point. That does. That's a headline that deserves an exclamation point.

[Leo Laporte]

Yay. It would be called a Pixel. Interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Bringing back The Pixel brand.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm actually. My daughter has worn out her Chromebook. Every time I talk to her, it's got a new keyboard malfunction. Now when she types a P, it types colon P. She has no question mark, so she just keeps it on the clipboard and pastes it in when she needs a question mark. I said, abby, would you let me buy you a new Chromebook? They're not expensive. She says, no, no, no. And then she says, oh, and it's not holding a charge. I have to. It's like, come on, it's time for a new one.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I'm debating whether to get the. I now gotta wait for this one. Because I was debating whether to get the new Samsung, but there's two problems with it actually.

[Leo Laporte]

I was gonna get her the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah. But put on this facocta numeric pad.

[Leo Laporte]

On the right and it's bright red.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, no, no, no. That's the one I have. It's blue. It's, it's, it's. Look it up.

[Leo Laporte]

No, this is a pretty red. Do you like your red one?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, this one. The fan is loud enough to be a jet engine. I hate that about it.

[Leo Laporte]

So according to. And this is again from Android Headlines, which I've never heard of. Alexandra Maxim writing. And according to an internal email, the code name for the laptop is Snowy. Maybe it'll be white. It's. They say they want it to be like a MacBook Pro or a Dell XPS or a Surface. The product is green lit, says Android Headlines. Means it's beyond the concept phase. They have a team working on it. I don't know. When would we. When would it come out? Did you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know, because now I gotta wait. I was gonna, I was, I was almost gonna buy the Samsung. Yeah, the problem with the other problem with Samsung, I don't know how loud the fan is. Jason was, was using one and he said it's not very loud as far as he can tell. But the other problem is there's no touchscreen. Why they would have done that, I don't know. Screen looks beautiful, keyboard's nice, except you're. You're off because you have the numeric. You're offset.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I'm feeling like it's. It's getting to be pretty close to Kacho and Pepe time or maybe just a. A weed based seltzer. So let us take the final.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't think Paris is going to need any help going to sleep tonight.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I know.

[Paris Martineau]

I could fall asleep right now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay. This was above and beyond the call our parents.

[Leo Laporte]

We want to watch you sleep. Isn't that not creepy, is it?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, totally not creepy. Just two.

[Leo Laporte]

What was the whole premise of Jenny Cam? Right. Do you remember Jenny Cam was probably before your time as well.

[Paris Martineau]

I know Jenny Cam.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I know. The Internet has precursor to Twitch. Twitch was a successor. It was the same people who did Jenny Cam and people would just watch this young woman and basically a lot of it was watching her sleep. That is creepy now that I think of it.

[Paris Martineau]

Very Truman show pretum.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah. That was the whole idea, wasn't it?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know which came first, but you're watching this week at Google. Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martin. Now let's kick off the.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, and that's the scoop of change log.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And the universe would not have been in order.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We not allowed. John.

[Paris Martineau]

Goodbye.

[Leo Laporte]

Hi everybody. Yes, that was the Google change log. I'm glad you enjoyed it. And now we could take a break. Actually, before we go into the picks of the week, I do want to say we would love you to join the club. There are people watching this show who are not yet members of Club Twit. In fact, about 98% of you are not yet members of Club Twit. I would love if we could get 5%. That's all. It would take 5% of the people who watch our shows to join the club. At merely seven bucks a month, we would not need to worry about advertisers. We could actually do new shows, grow the shows. We could expand. All it take is 5%. So do me a favor, join the club. We've done a couple of things to make it more appealing. There's two weeks free, so if you, you know, what do I get? You can see for yourself. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to our club to Discord. That would be a good way to use your trial period. Just hang out in there for a while because I think you'll love it. They're great people, great conversations. All day, all night. You also get special events like Micah's creative Corner. Coming up a little bit later on Club Twit, we have Stacy's Book Club. Early next month we have Chris Marquardt's photo corner. We're going to do a cough, another coffee show. People seem to like that. All of those are streamed on our eight different platforms thanks to our club members and then made available on the Twit plus feed in the club. The club is important to us because it's. It smooths out the ups and downs, really, the hills and valleys of advertiser support. Just between you and me, I would love to just do the club and not have to worry about ads that would.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Please, please.

[Leo Laporte]

That. That is our. That is my personal goal. Nothing wrong with the advertisers. But isn't it make sense that the people who listen to the shows should be the ones who support it? We don't want to do a paywall. I never want to do a paywall because I want to make it available to anybody. That's why we don't need a hundred percent. We don't even need 90%. We need 95% free and 5 public radio of geeks. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Come on, people, be the in the world. We're not gonna waste money on tote bags or crap. You're gonna. You're gonna buy new shirts for Leo. That's important.

[Leo Laporte]

Twit, tv, club, Twitter now. You know what? My money. I'm living on my retirement now. I'm not getting any money in this. This is. These shirts I buy with my own retirement funds because we want all the money that comes in through the club to go to paying.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leo is a pensioner.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Although I haven't. I haven't taken my Social Security yet. And now I'm thinking if Dr. Oz is going to be in charge of it, maybe I should cash that in right now while you can. Yeah, get all I can. No, we. Look, I'm fine. I'm doing all right. But I want you to help us out so we can have everybody else be part of the family. Twit. TV club. Twit.

[Jeff Jarvis]

When the Guardian started its contribution structure, they surveyed their users, their readers. We called them in the old days and they said, we want to be able to pay. So the guardian stays free.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because the world.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the way to say it. Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And that's what this is about.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's start with Paris's pick of the week. Is it going to be Switzerland's AI Jesus.

[Paris Martineau]

This is going to be a bit of a tonal shift from that beautiful plea. This is something I realized Jeff didn't know about before the show. And now I'm going to ask you, Leo, have you spent any time on Blue sky recently?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

You said no or. Yeah. Have you heard about something? Did the words alpha do anything to you? Of Course. Oh, you understand what Alphog is, then?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

Jeff didn't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I didn't.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you haven't. In the early days of Blue sky, everybody was posting pictures of that little puppet. That was the alien on the TV show alf. Right.

[Paris Martineau]

But sexy photos of Elf. If you go to know your meme, they have a know your meme called Sensual Elf that. I'm just going to read the first paragraph for you because I think it's delightful.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what got me off Blue Sky. I waited till that trend went over.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, there's. There's an update. Sensual Alf refers to a trend on Blue sky in May of 2023, which involved posting sensual and even not safe for work pictures of the 1980s cartoon character Alf.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, first of all, that's wrong. It's not a cartoon character.

[Paris Martineau]

It's definitely not cartoon.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no.

[Paris Martineau]

ALF was a nude imagery of Alf predated Blue sky appearing on other platforms in the years before alf. Posting reached unprecedented levels in the new decentralized protocol is literally why I hated.

[Leo Laporte]

Blue sky when it first started.

[Paris Martineau]

I think that's very reasonable. Elf posting kind of a lot. However, last week, Slate wrote up a little piece on Blue sky talking about how, you know, you're sick of asking Elon Musk.

[Leo Laporte]

They didn't know, did they?

[Jeff Jarvis]

They.

[Paris Martineau]

They didn't know. And they described. They were like, oh, this guy is so fun. They say it's even given, like, people are really engaged. I'll quote from the piece. They've even given Blue sky its own lore. A foundational piece for any social media site that hopes to become anything. If you arrive on Blue sky this month, you'll see some posts about a sensual hog named Alf. It's just part of the place. And for those who might want to know, it's not the hog in alf. Hog is not referring to Alf being the hog, so himself. This resulted in what I would say the best correction of all time. Correction, Nov. 13, 2024. This piece originally misstated that a piece of Blue sky lore referred to a sensual hog named Alfred. The meme is actually a reference to the genitalia of the 1980s sitcom character Alf. And, you know, that's. That's beautiful, baby.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That is.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Lord. Yeah, this was. I'm glad they've gotten over that era. I'm still a little hot under the collar about the word skeet, but I.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Guess I don't hear anybody using it. I hear no one use that skeet.

[Paris Martineau]

On sky kind of to troll.

[Leo Laporte]

We don't do that. Anymore. Yeah. Okay.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, a little bit. No, I mean, part of skate started for the lore of this is, I think it was last spring when a lot of people started getting on Blue Sky. They were trying to figure out what are we going to be calling, you know, posts on Blue Sky. Tweet used to be what we'd describe it.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paris Martineau]

And someone suggested let's do skeet. A combination of sky and tweet that also has a very different meaning. And the thing that sealed the deal is the CEO of Blue Sky, Jay Jay Graber, quote, tweeted and said something along the steps. Guys, come on. We can't do skeet. We can't. I love decentralized decision making, but we can't do it. Do you remember scoot? Let's try scoot. And when the CEO of a company begs you not to use skeet, you kind of do have to use it. So there's a big.

[Leo Laporte]

That was the problem, wasn't it?

[Paris Martineau]

That was the problem. If she'd ignored it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

I don't think it would have got any.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, it was also at Mastodon. It was toot.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The problem is the German still is Toot by the German founder. Didn't realize that it was a fart joke.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. Because elephants toot. Oh. And I didn't either. Okay, now I get it.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, you didn't.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just a sound. Elephant. Elephant.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And so do we all, Leo. So do we all.

[Leo Laporte]

That kind of thing. It's a toot. I don't like skeet. That was another. Another thing that got me.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, those are both valid concerns. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Alf. Alf and skeeting. Now I used to be able to.

[Paris Martineau]

Get a show title.

[Leo Laporte]

Alf song and skating.

[Paris Martineau]

Hey.

[Leo Laporte]

But that's gone. Right? They don't do. Yeah. So maybe, you know, maybe I should do more. I am posting because I'm using microblog and it posts automatically.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But are you interacting with what's happen happening then on Blue Sky?

[Paris Martineau]

I will say the thing I like about being on Blue sky is seeing all the interaction interact.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's great interaction.

[Leo Laporte]

I should interact because I just post and I don't just use it there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. And I would actually use Blue sky plane. I think. I think Deckblue is nice, but it doesn't have the same feel that I get out of Blue sky itself, which is really good.

[Leo Laporte]

One of the things that's cool about microblog is it does pump the reactions back into your microblog. So you do get to see. You do get to See those? If I go here and look at my post here, I think somewhere they've got the retorts. Yeah, here we go. And they're coming from a variety of different places, so. Including Blue Sky. So I think that's kind of cool anyway.

[Paris Martineau]

That is very cool.

[Leo Laporte]

So I do interact a little bit, but I noticed when I go to Blue sky that there were a lot more likes and so forth and I should probably have.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, it's. I get a lot of interaction there. That's nice interaction. And block works as block. It feels so good to block on Blue Sky.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Goodbye, sucker.

[Paris Martineau]

And that's the thing is if you don't want to see anybody use the word skate or post about alpha, you can mute or block those words. And it works quite well. It's not like Twitter, where despite all of my attempts to block moo dang content from getting my feedback, my feet is all that freaking hippo. But Blue sky doesn't have that problem.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they still doing the mudang on the. On the.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I don't know because I think I finally solved it, but it took weeks. It took weeks of me trying to put it on mute for mudang to stop appearing on my feet.

[Leo Laporte]

I agree with you. That was an excellent. I did see that correction in Salon and I agree with you. It was kind of fun to laugh at them as old time.

[Paris Martineau]

It's just the sort of thing that, you know, they had to call their editor and explain that and it's really. That's really just a moment you wish you could kind of crystallize.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

For future generations.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you know, because you probably, you know, you never have to do that yourself, but you probably know what it's like to have to say, hey, I.

[Paris Martineau]

Mean, yeah, a correction is honestly, something goes into your review. It's just very funny that that person's review is going to include Alpha.

[Leo Laporte]

Mr. Jeff Jarvis, your pick of the week.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I've got one that's perfect for the prior discussion. But maybe first, I think you sensed you wanted to do AI Jesus.

[Leo Laporte]

You could do AI Jesus.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We could do AI Jesus. Real quickly. So the Deutsche Welle has written about AI Jesus. So Jesus, by the way, speaks German. They set up an AI Jesus. But Germany being Germany with its privacy obsession, you have to sign off first. And you have to say to AI Jesus that you're not going to say anything personal, but it's a confessional.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How do you not do something? So you have to, you have to sign off all that off.

[Leo Laporte]

So there is a website or. I mean.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, no. It's a guy's church. If you go to the story.

[Leo Laporte]

It's actually a church.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's in the church, they have a. They have their own deus en machina. They got a geek. The other booth where the pastor would be, the priest would be, is a screen. And so you see Jesus through the. Whatever they call it.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. The confessional. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

So not even priests are safe from AI.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And there's Jesus behind.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. You even see his face.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But you can't say anything personal.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well. Because it's warning you. Because of Germany, Switzerland, and privacy laws.

[Leo Laporte]

Excuse me, laws, probably. People say, okay, I was. Anything personal. And then they say, a friend of mine.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm asking for a friend. Jesus.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. A friend of mine lying to AI.

[Paris Martineau]

Jesus. That's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. Only in Switzerland. Friends.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. But the story that's right for this week.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is YouTuber Rosanna Pansino smokes cannabis grown from her father's ashes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh. Oh, please, Abby and Henry, do not do that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no.

[Paris Martineau]

Just a tiny bit of ash.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. It was the dying wish of her father.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Papa Pizza.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Papa Pizza said, this is a YouTube family.

[Leo Laporte]

I want you to take my ashes, fertilize your marijuana farm. And then on your ridiculous podcast, Smoke.

[Paris Martineau]

Me, she titled the opening episode Smoking My Dead dad. Oh, that's great.

[Leo Laporte]

And then she said, it tasted so good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, well, I'm sorry about your dad, and I'm glad you fulfilled his final wish. I just want to be clear. I do not wish that to happen.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Kids.

[Leo Laporte]

Kids. Abby and Henry.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

Where would you like your ashes scattered, Jeff Jarvis?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm not sure that I'm going for the.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you want to be liquefied and fed to the trees?

[Paris Martineau]

You want to be buried?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, I think. I think I'm from a family. Well, not my family. My family is in boxes of ashes. My wife's family is. You should go to the cemetery.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Paris Martineau]

You want to space in the ground.

[Leo Laporte]

You want to be in a box that they put in the ground.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I. What are they?

[Paris Martineau]

We're not trying to shame you.

[Leo Laporte]

We're not trying to rush you either.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thank you very much.

[Paris Martineau]

You've only got, like, a week or two to decide, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Watch it. It could be. It could be my wife's family. The German roots of her family. I remember we visited. We found out there was an old family feud that existed because evidently, in the German cemeteries, you buy a certain amount of time. And unless you re up.

[Leo Laporte]

What, do they dig you up?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, they kind of. Yeah, they. You know.

[Paris Martineau]

Or they bury someone on top of you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes. Yeah. And so there was a family feud because the local. The relatives who were still in Germany didn't pay up. And the American, my wife's grandmother, was really pissed that the parents got evicted and they didn't talk.

[Leo Laporte]

I always wondered, because you can buy eternal care at most cemeteries.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's the. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Eternal. Really? Because, you know, in 400 years, you're just going to put a. You know, a bank there or something. It's not. Yeah. So how about you, Paris? What are your final moments going to be?

[Paris Martineau]

I don't care what happens to me after I die. That's not.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, no one does. We'll be gone.

[Paris Martineau]

That's for the people.

[Leo Laporte]

You're supposed to tell people ahead of time so they know.

[Paris Martineau]

I. My thought would be whatever you're feeling feels right for you because that's a decision for you and not.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Because they're the ones. Right.

[Paris Martineau]

I have no interest in it whatsoever. I mean, I just.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you might when you get a little older, maybe. My. Both my mom and dad have told me what they want. My dad actually sent me the certificate from the Neptune Society.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Yeah, that's. My parents did it for the cremation. Yeah, they come. It actually was a pain in the butt because we had to go through some strange place in Brooklyn to get them dealt with.

[Leo Laporte]

There is a boat. If you go to Pier 39 in San Francisco, the Neptune Society boat is right there. And they. They take your ashes out to the past, the Farallons. And that's it.

[Paris Martineau]

I do think it would be kind of cool to have, like, a Viking funeral where they, like, put you on a pyre and light you with flame and, like, push it out to sea. That could be fun.

[Leo Laporte]

See, you are thinking about this.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, you got it going.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. We'll build a little barge, cover it with Tinder.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I'm feeling my mortality. I went to a memorial service for an old editor of mine at People, and my sister, the Reverend Jarvis, officiated in the memorial service. She's very good at that. And Princeton Chapel. He was Princeton, class of 66. Princeton Chapel was filled with, like, 250 people. I realized I cock off tomorrow. I don't know anybody. Nobody's coming. Paris might come because we're close by. I think she. And she's so nice.

[Paris Martineau]

Jeff, if you clock off tomorrow, your chapel would be full of 250 people.

[Leo Laporte]

I got an idea. I got an idea. Oh, yeah, we would. We would make sure we put the word out, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And then I also wanted. I always thought because I'm a newspaper guy, I'd get an obit, but now I'm calling the Brooklyn Times all the time. I won't get a no bit at the time.

[Leo Laporte]

You won't get a no bit there. Have they called you to interview you for your. Your pre op?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, God, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, then you're not gonna get one.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I did help a friend of mine, and I did help my former people editor get his obit in the Times, which was kind of cool.

[Leo Laporte]

That's nice. I think you should do what John Hinkle Jr. Did, age 38.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's that?

[Leo Laporte]

He. He bowled a perfect game using a ball containing his dad's ashes.

[Paris Martineau]

I was shaking. I had tears in my eyes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

It was the last couple balls.

[Leo Laporte]

I knew what it meant to my dad.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Was it containing the ashes or made of the ashes it contained? Fabricated, or were they poured in? You know, it's his dashes in the thumb.

[Paris Martineau]

In the thumb hole. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

So I even did this without a thumb hole. That's even more impressive. Wow, this guy's good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Good. Holy. Yeah, we just saw a strike there, folks.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he's a champion. That's why he says my dad never bowled a perfect game until now.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, jeez.

[Leo Laporte]

I. Well, this. This is food for thought, by the way. Thank you to Butch. Butch Henderson and our. I'm sorry. Pretty fly for a CIS guy in our Discord chat for providing that link. But it gave me an idea. Skee ball.

[Paris Martineau]

I was about to say skee ball would be a pretty good thing to get memorial.

[Leo Laporte]

You could make a skee ball out of your ashes and give it to your team.

[Jeff Jarvis]

When the. When the ball lands in the bullseye, ashes fly up.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, that's fun. That's kind of a interactive multimedia.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody wants his ashes to fly into the game.

[Paris Martineau]

Just did that. Just in the bar. Yeah. You could be standing by with your beer, get a little bit of ashes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

One of the great lore stories from the newsroom of the Detroit Free Press when I worked there was that a widow lady came in one day at the city room, because this is what you could do with a newspaper in the city room. And she said, I'm so upset. I'm so upset. My dear. My dear husband Bill died, and I paid all the money to the funeral home, and they cremated him in luck. And she opened a cigar box. It's all these chunks. They did a terrible job.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, God.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And so the reporter said, I'm Mrs. Mrs. Jones. I'm going to look into this for you and I'm going to report on this, but can you leave Bill here so I can talk to you? Yes, absolutely. You need to look into this. So Bill became a mascot of the newsroom for a while. They put a little cigarette in the. In the lip of the. Of the cigar box and put a sign under it. Bill's no more. Put a little hat on him and do all kinds of stories. Occasionally, they would open up the baggie and part of Bill would go out into the newsroom.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay, actually, I want that. I want to be in a newsroom with a cigar in my box.

[Leo Laporte]

We can make the ink and the pens. Oh, they don't use pens anymore. Oh, well, finally, I will do a little plug. You put it in your picks, Jeff, but I'm going to steal it from you because Mike Masnick deserves a little plug for his newest card game. It is on Kickstarter, 1 billion users, the social media card game. As you know, Mike, besides being the founder of Tech Dirt, is now on the board at Blue Sky. So this might be something he's learned. He did write for Elon Musk a special post on speedrunning the moderation curve. He probably knows a little bit about this kind of stuff. So here it is. A card game where you're in charge of your own social network for two to four players. Lasts about 30 minutes. Players compete to build the most successful social network. It sounds like a lot of fun.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. Mike did a prior game for moderation to teach you how. How impossible. Moderation.

[Leo Laporte]

We played that on Twig.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Good on Mike. He's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Mike is the best. He's.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know where he gets all his energy from, but he is. He is a very active guy. Yeah. And you can pledge and back it on Kickstarter Cop. One copy of the One Billion Users box game is $27, but there are other. You can get five copies and so forth. So I don't know if there are any stretch goals, but you can get a million copies. Yeah. Good for you, Mike. One billion users, a social media card game. Hey, it's time for Paris to go to bed and for Jeff to go have some delicious supper and for me to wish you all a very fond good night. We do this week in Google every Wednesday if we are not delayed by an extraordinarily lengthy Windows weekly. We should start at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 2200 UTC. All of our all of my live shows now are streaming on eight different platforms. Discord. Of course, for our club Twitter members, there's a special club to it, Discord. But also Twitch TV, YouTube.com twitch live. We're on Kik, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com and tick tock. So whatever you know, if you're around 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon to Pacific, tune in. Watch us live. If you if and you all the swears will be will be completely left intact. Hey. Hey. Otherwise, if you want the bowlerized version of the show, we make that available on our website, Twit TV Twig. There's a link there to the YouTube channel where the video lives. You can. That's a great way to share a little clip. If you've got a elderly parent and you want to make some suggestions about their final wishes, you could just send them that clip. That'll really inspire them. That's at Twig TV Twig. You can also find a podcast client. Doesn't matter which one. Overcast Pocket, Cast, My Pod or whatever it is Apple's podcast. But subscribe. That's our preferred solution because that way you get it automatically every Wednesday evening or Thursday morning after we've edited out all the swear words. Come on. I'm trying. Thank you all for being here. Thank you especially to our club members for making this possible. Jeff Jarvis is of [e-mail] where you can get his book the Web We Weave.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And if you're around San Francisco on December 4, you can come to the Commonwealth Club and see me talk about the web weave. And if you're not in San Francisco, you can watch other video.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, Commonwealth Club has it on their website. You can buy tickets. We've got. You will not be here on that show, the December 4th show, because you're going to be there. And I may not be there because I'll be doing this here. But if, I don't know, maybe I can make it down. If we did Paris and I should do a very short show anyway the way that'll be fun. Jeff Jarvis, how we reclaim the Internet. It's not too late and they do have online tickets as well as in person tickets. Joe Esposito says he's going to be there in person. That means he's flying out from Manhattan. Oh, no, wait a minute. Joe isn't in Manhattan. He's up the road a piece. That's right. So he could come down from Northern California.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thank you, Joe.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, say hi to him, Joe. Did I show you what? He made me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I didn't show you yet.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Joe, for this. He did an actual physical poster says Live from the Attic tv. And it made it my wallpaper on. On my pewter because he sent me the digital versions of it as well. So I'll show you my wall if I can get out of wherever I am. I'm in too many different things. Can I show you my wallpaper? I don't know. Apparently not.

[Paris Martineau]

It's okay. You can find it back there.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know how it works there. Oh, it isn't my gold computer. What happened? It was my wallpaper. Now a bunch of trees. I don't like that one. Cotton picking bit. Joe. I will make it my wallpaper. Thank you. What else? I think that's it. Oh, Paris Martino, she'[e-mail]. but you stayed up all night writing your story, so that's good. I like that she got up really.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Early to write the story.

[Leo Laporte]

She's in the Weekend Edition.

[Paris Martineau]

Difference.

[Leo Laporte]

If you have a tip, Signal her at martino01. You know, you inspired me because I've been using my phone number for signal. So I decided and it's right there in this, in the profile. I'm Leaport24 LeolaPort24. So I don't know. I don't want any tips. But you know, maybe if you have just in case.

[Paris Martineau]

Just in case you need.

[Leo Laporte]

If you need a friend.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You don't want to tell Leo secrets he talks for.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's true. Paris knows that. I feel so bad. I apologize for revealing your secret.

[Paris Martineau]

But yeah, you know, my secret is that I'm sleepy.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you both.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She's. She's. She's corrupting old men with drugs. That's your secret.

[Paris Martineau]

That's true. That is. That is true. The police will be there any moment.

[Leo Laporte]

Kids, be cool. Stay in school, don't use drugs. I don't drink. I don't drug. And look at me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You too.

[Leo Laporte]

You too could be like this.

[Paris Martineau]

You too could be a podcaster.

[Leo Laporte]

You could be a podcaster if you really, really stay cool, man. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time this week in Google. Bye.

[Paris Martineau]

Bye.

[Leo Laporte]

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