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This Week in Tech 1018: Self-Driving Government
02:49:57
Meta Torrents Books, Sideloading TikTok, Xbox Sales
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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Lisa Schmeisser is here from no Jitter. Daniel Rubino from Windows Central. Attorney Kathy Gellis. We just learned the United Kingdom is asking Apple for a backdoor into its end to end encryption. What will Apple do? We're going to talk about the Cosma bill, which is a plan by Congress to ban social media for all people under 13. And we'll talk a little bit about what Doge is doing and that and a whole lot more coming up next on TWIT podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week in Tech. Episode 1018, recorded Sunday, February 9, 2025. Self driving government. It's time for TWIT this Week at Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. Doing it a little early this week. Apologies to people who like to watch the stream live. I hope you got the message the memo arrived because there's apparently a football game on later in the day. Alicia Schmeisser, are you all excited about the big Super Bowl?
- [01:26]
Lisa Schmeiser
I like it better when the 49ers play. And the reason I like it better is because the road's empty out and I can go anywhere in the Bay Area without traffic.
- [01:33]
Leo Laporte
True. This one is going to be so low rated, I think because it's a replay of two years ago that I think your hike is off. Editor in Chief at no Jitter. It's great to see you. And I see more and more people using the Blue sky handle nowadays. El Schmeiser at the Blue Sky. Also here, Daniel Rubino. He's editor in chief of Windows Central. Hi, Daniel.
- [01:56]
Daniel Rubino
Hello.
- [01:56]
Leo Laporte
Good to see you. God, your hair looks good. Are you. Have you been. What's your conditioning routine like? I don't understand.
- [02:06]
Daniel Rubino
It is a complicated. Is it? Well, you know, you gotta, you gotta have a regime, right?
- [02:13]
Leo Laporte
You know, I just found out you can get a shampoo in a. In a bar like soap. Oh, and it saves plastic. I know.
- [02:23]
Daniel Rubino
With guys. Yeah, they make, they make shampoo, conditioner and body wash. Yeah, toothpaste.
- [02:31]
Leo Laporte
Irish Spring, 5 and 1. It cleans everything, including grout. Good to see you, Daniel. Thank you for being here. Also our attorney at large, IP attorney, a contributor to Tech Dirt. You probably reading her somewhat upset. What's the word? Posts on tick dirt critical. Cgcouncil.com Great to see you. Kathy Gellis.
- [02:58]
Kathy Gellis
Now I realize. Cgcounsel.
- [03:02]
Leo Laporte
Oh, we left out a C in the letter C. She's not a counselor. She's not. She's a counselor. That's right.
- [03:10]
Kathy Gellis
I also recommend never get a domain name that is like, oh, I forget if it's homonym or homophone. But it was a bad idea.
- [03:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Well, if you get CGCounsell, you have to get all the other spellings. C O U N C I L and all of that.
- [03:25]
Kathy Gellis
M O U S E. Oh, no, that too.
- [03:29]
Leo Laporte
Big story today. There are a lot of big stories today actually. We've got a jam to show, so we're going to jam along. UK has ordered Apple to give it access to encrypted cloud data. This is from the Financial Times. The British government has ordered Apple to grant it secret access. That's the interesting part. How do we know this? I think there was a leaker to its customers. Encrypted cloud storage. This is from the Snoopers Charter, which was a bill passed the UK Investigatory Powers act last month. Apple received a quote, technical capability notice requiring them to create a backdoor to iCloud. Now this was not. The government has not said this. Apple has not said this. They're not allowed to. It's one of those. According to people familiar with the matter, the move would enable uk. Well, you know, I started saying uk, but it isn't just uk. The move would enable global law enforcement and security services. Everybody would be affected. It's extraterritorial, which means UK law enforcement could access the encrypted data of Apple customers anywhere in the world, including in the United States. You know what, this has been going on for years. The FBI has been asking Apple to do it. Apple said no. FBI hasn't forced them to do it. Australia's tried this, but this is the first time a nation state has actually, as far as I know, told Apple explicitly. We need a back door.
- [05:09]
Kathy Gellis
I feel like it had happened before a number of years ago and I thought that it was kind of put to rest back then. So I was surprised to see this news where it just kind of came to the fore of like, oh yeah, we're revisiting this issue and ignoring every reason anyone ever told us for why it was a terrible idea.
- [05:24]
Leo Laporte
So wasn't there a big deal about.
- [05:26]
Lisa Schmeiser
This with the San Bernardino shooter?
- [05:28]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And Apple said no to the FBI? Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Daniel.
- [05:33]
Daniel Rubino
I was going to say, I think they used to have like, kind of like holes in their operating system where third party software was able to access this stuff and, and then Apple patched all that and like.
- [05:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, so Apple Apple has in the past been able to do this. In fact, they told the FBI in the case of the San Bernardino terrorists that, oh, if you had just taken his phone home, it would have uploaded the contents to iCloud and we could have given it to you. So as recently as whenever that was eight years ago, ten years ago, Apple would and did do that. They've done it in other situations as well. Trump's campaign Chief was using WhatsApp, which was encrypted to message, this is in the 2016 election. But WhatsApp uploaded unencrypted text to the Apple icloud, and the government got it. We know that that happened because if you read the indictment, they quoted his WhatsApp messages from iCloud. But Apple patched. They did. They patched that hole. They fully encrypted, as far as we know, they fully encrypted everything. In order for iCloud to work, they have to have a key because, you know, for a variety of reasons. If you have fully encrypted cloud storage, there's a lot of abilities that go away. Which is why most cloud storage companies, including I think Microsoft offer, correct me if I'm wrong, Daniel, kind of an enclave, an encrypted enclave, and then the rest of it, well, you know, we have the keys to it. Isn't that right?
- [07:07]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, they call like vaults. Yeah, vaults, yeah.
- [07:11]
Leo Laporte
Apple does not offer that. Apple just says, we have the keys, but we're not going to give them to anyone. This is a huge issue, as we know from back doors in the past. In fact, it's not been so long ago that it was revealed that Salt Typhoon Chinese hackers had access to the phones of many officials in government, high officials in government, because going way Back to the 90s, the government mandated that there would be wiretap capability in digital technologies. At the time, the FBI director said no, but don't worry, because this backdoor will never leak out. Well, it did. And as a result, we've got Chinese hackers in our phone network and can't do much about it, incidentally. So this is always a bad idea. I think every real security guru says there's no way backdoors stay secret.
- [08:11]
Kathy Gellis
All the security gurus this week, they're having a bad week.
- [08:15]
Leo Laporte
It's a bad week for security in general. Yeah, go ahead, Daniel.
- [08:19]
Daniel Rubino
Sorry. I was going to say that what's also scary about this is the fact that, and mentioned this earlier, that, you know, if they do this, then they can access data from Americans indirectly. Right, yes. And this is what the NSA has always done. NSA can't spy, and with the Patriot act, can't spy directly on Americans. But if they're spying on someone else in another country who happens to have access to Americans, that data gets collected as well. And so it's an indirect way. So I wouldn't be surprised if the US government is like, shrugging their shoulders, like, you know, we're not saying you guys shouldn't do this because it would probably help them as well. They want it, you know.
- [09:00]
Leo Laporte
A consultant advising the United States on encryption matters, according to the Washington Post, who broke this story, said Apple would be barred from warning its users if this happens. Apple, you know, rolled out and this is what started this couple of years ago, advanced data protection, a switch you could turn on. Most people don't because it. It eliminates some of, as I said, if some of the features of iCloud and other things. But they offered it and they specifically encouraged government officials to use it because they didn't even have the keys to this. This was fully encrypted. It had tried to do this a couple of years earlier, backed off after. According to the Post, after objections from the sbi, this was back in the first term of President Trump. The service is an available security option for Apple users in the US and elsewhere. I'm not sure if it's available in the uk. Probably what will happen is Apple will make it no longer available in the uk, but that doesn't solve the problem in the us. Ron Wyden. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the US has to dissuade Britain, Trump and American tech companies. Letting foreign governments secretly spy on Americans would be unconscionable, unmitigated disaster for. I know why you're laughing.
- [10:22]
Kathy Gellis
Sorry?
- [10:25]
Leo Laporte
I know why you're laughing. And I bet Ron Wyden knew what he was saying. Unmitigated disaster for Americans privacy and our national security Signal President Meredith Whitaker said using technical capability notices to weaken encryption around the globe is a shocking move that will position the UK as a tech pariah rather than a tech leader. If implemented, the directive will create a dangerous cybersecurity vulnerability in the nervous system of a global economy. And you know why Meredith Whitaker is commenting on this? Because next it's Signal. Because Signal. There's no backdoor in signal. The UK's obvious.
- [11:03]
Daniel Rubino
I like Meredith. Yeah, she fantastic, really. She writes a lot of great stuff on this topic.
- [11:08]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, this, you know, given all the news coming out of D.C. this will probably not get the coverage it should. But if you're watching our shows, you understand why this is such a big deal.
- [11:24]
Kathy Gellis
Well, I think it's up for Apple to somehow figure out how to resist on its own. We don't have a foreign policy at the moment. We barely have a domestic policy at the moment. So there's the conventional wisdom about how we would approach this is not available to us. This is not something where you get together, you speak to your government and you sort of point out like, okay, I know you're tempted, but here's the consequences of if this happens. This is not a government that is equipped to consider the consequences of decisions that it makes. And at this point, given how much power is embodied in any particular administration and getting exercised in any particular way, it's probably all for incursions for, you know, privacy. It seems to be the administration's position in an awful lot of technology areas these days.
- [12:20]
Leo Laporte
Android is also, at this point, end to end encrypted in its backups. It does not offer, it does not have the keys. So remember that this came out because of a leak. It's very likely that the same order went to Google and went to signal and went to meta for WhatsApp. Because, I mean, why would they just target Apple? Google's been encrypting backups for Android phones since 2018. Google declined. This is interesting. Google declined to say whether any government had sought a backdoor.
- [12:58]
Daniel Rubino
Google has turned into such a, like, weird company, right? They were like the good guys for so long. And then of course, they had that, you know, we don't do evil thing. And they got rid of that.
- [13:10]
Lisa Schmeiser
And now this week they're like, we think it's fine to use AI to make super smart weapons.
- [13:14]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [13:15]
Lisa Schmeiser
That's a line of forever in you.
- [13:16]
Daniel Rubino
They got rid of dei, going full blown like, no, it's like The Boys.
- [13:22]
Lisa Schmeiser
Season 5 is what's unfolding.
- [13:26]
Kathy Gellis
We don't do evil. Well, maybe a little evil. Now we're all about the evil.
- [13:30]
Lisa Schmeiser
Define evil.
- [13:33]
Leo Laporte
Well, to be fair, getting rid of DEI seems to be the thing. It's interesting because it's in anticipation of trouble from Washington. Nobody's told them to do that yet.
- [13:44]
Daniel Rubino
Right.
- [13:44]
Lisa Schmeiser
But Washington, compliance in advance.
- [13:46]
Kathy Gellis
It's compliance in advance and it's missing the states.
- [13:49]
Lisa Schmeiser
So what I really like to gently push back on is instead of calling it dei, which reduces it to an acronym and a buzzword, let's just point out that what companies are voluntarily doing right now is downplaying or eliminating efforts to make the workplace more diverse, more equitable and more inclusive. That's it. Companies are explicitly saying we no longer value diversity, we no longer value equity, we no longer value inclus conclusion. Like those are the words. Let's use the words, not the acronym.
- [14:18]
Leo Laporte
No, I agree with you. But why, and this is a softball. Why is it important that company like Google be diverse?
- [14:28]
Lisa Schmeiser
McKinsey has done ton. Okay, sorry, I'm going to pop off for a minute and I hope that's okay, everybody.
- [14:32]
Leo Laporte
That's why I asked the softball question.
- [14:35]
Lisa Schmeiser
Kathy and Daniel McKinsey has nearly a decade of research examining the performance of publicly traded companies. When you have a diverse workforce, especially diverse leadership from management up to C level and board of directors compared to companies with a homogenous culture, and the difference in profit is in the double digits percentage, as is the difference in employer retention and the difference in overall productivity. It's actually in the best interest of any shareholder to demand DEI because it boosts overall company performance and the bottom line. Why somebody would attack diversity, equity and inclusion and say we would prefer to take these out of our company. You're basically saying we'd like a company that's less profitable. And I think if we're going to talk about this, we need to talk about McKinsey's research. There's been research from Pew, there's been research from other institutes focused on taking a look at the participation of populations in the workforce and what the net effect and bottom line is. And the research, if you do a. What is it called when you take a look at multiple studies and come to the meta analysis. Yeah, it's. It's fairly unambiguous. Diversity, equity and inclusion brings to bear a wide variety of talents, of strengths, of viewpoints, of perception of market opportunities that homogenous populations simply don't have. It's better for business, it's better for society. It's a win win. That's why it matters.
- [16:10]
Leo Laporte
And our discord says that this administration is exchanging DEI for homogeneity, exclusion and inequity in labor, which interestingly is heil someone.
- [16:25]
Kathy Gellis
I wonder if that's pointed satirical commentary on it. But somebody also was saying how no DEI will just have merit. And I think what we need to push back on is this idea that DEI was foreclosing merit. DEI was a way of making sure you captured merit.
- [16:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So that's the point they're making. You should promote people. You should hire people based on ability alone, talent.
- [16:50]
Kathy Gellis
But that's how you get it, by making sure that you're tapping into population.
- [16:56]
Leo Laporte
I would also raise the point that if you're going to develop AI and you do it only with white men, you're going to have a problem that if you make games and you only have white men writing them, well, we already know what problems you have. In fact, Gamergate has now won. It's seven years later and Gamergate won.
- [17:15]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, let me take a look. I can remember going to CES a couple years and by the way, none of the companies that I'm going to mention, I'm not going to mention names, they're not in business, I've checked. But I can remember going and taking a look at. Just out of curiosity, there was somebody who's like, I have a smart sensor for a diaper. So when you attach it to a diaper, an alert goes off on your app. And this way, you know, to change the baby, which because you're in the.
- [17:42]
Leo Laporte
Other room in another state, you're out of town. What?
- [17:45]
Lisa Schmeiser
First of all, babies are not hesitant about letting you know when the doctor is uncomfortable.
- [17:49]
Leo Laporte
Trust me.
- [17:50]
Lisa Schmeiser
You know, I said, so does the sensor send an alert to every caregiver responsible for the baby? And they said, no, it's a closed ecosystem. So it's one sensor, one app, one phone. If you want multiple users, you have to attach multiple sensors. And I look great. Been in a household that functions with people.
- [18:13]
Leo Laporte
Why is that baby walking funny while she's got four sensors in her diaper?
- [18:16]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah, no, this guy thought this was a reasonably reason. Perfectly prominent solution is the word. And I was like, you don't have kids, do you? Or a partner or. And it was like, have you ever.
- [18:27]
Leo Laporte
Changed a diaper in your life?
- [18:29]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, it was just a lot of personal technologies where it solved a very specific problem for a very specific demographic. Or there was somebody who perceived a market need, but because they didn't have lived experience or access to people, people with lived experience, they went ahead and wasted time and money and effort creating something that was completely unusable for a target audience and amazing. This is a core problem when you have a homogenous workforce is a great example. They won't be able to perceive anything outside their experience and they won't even know how to get outside their experience.
- [18:57]
Kathy Gellis
After a while, I want to make sure that I get out the whole idea about why merit and DEI are synonymous and not paradoxical, because somebody is suggesting, well, skin pure pigment has nothing to do with merit. Well, ADI has more to do than just skin pigment. But sure, of course not. None of these qualities that DEI make sure are mixed up in our company so that you have all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life, physiology, culture, religion, etc. The fact that they can all come together and bring their contributions is important because it also produces, as Lisa was saying, a big more powerful company because it knows how. It has a bigger bag of tricks to pull from to be able to produce, to do its business. But also the reason why these efforts are important is because there are structural issues that prevent some of these populations from getting in the door to be able to make those contributions. And DEI was about removing those barriers to make sure that those people could be included because we need them to be included, because we'll have. Well, how better business? Well, I mean, selfishly, the businesses will make more money if they have access to more people with more ideas. And there's all sorts of things. When there's things interfering with that, it's good to knock down the things that are interfering with.
- [20:16]
Leo Laporte
What is the percentage of, we want.
- [20:18]
Kathy Gellis
A better culture and country that might be more mixed up and equal.
- [20:22]
Leo Laporte
What is the percentage of women CEOs in this country?
- [20:26]
Kathy Gellis
I don't know, but not high.
- [20:27]
Leo Laporte
It's very low single digit. So the other thing some have pointed out, and I agree with them, is that a lot of the companies that had so called DEI initiatives were just, it was lip service, basically. The companies are companies, Right. They're not. They don't have a heart, they don't have a conscience. They're there to maximize profits. That's almost their responsibility, their corporate responsibility. So when the wind blows one way and everybody says, oh, you got to do dei, they write up a thing and they put it in their mission statement and done.
- [20:58]
Lisa Schmeiser
They find the stock art where it's smiling people of different colors all around.
- [21:02]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Every front page of every website has a black person, a white person, a woman and a Chinese person. It's just what you do. But is it lip service or is it genuine? I think in Google's case it was somewhat genuine.
- [21:14]
Kathy Gellis
I think in a lot of the companies.
- [21:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Yeah.
- [21:18]
Kathy Gellis
I mean, even in terms of case, it was genuine. Like they had programs, they had shirts, they, they, they did LGBT outreach. Like they understood. One of the other things about being a business that values di, just as values and not just an acronym, is because they're your customers and they've got money and they could give you the money if they think that you're selling something worth them Giving you money for.
- [21:41]
Leo Laporte
I remember Martin Luther King Jr. S son on TV saying, well, if you include us, we're not going to include you. And I think that's a very important point too. A company that very kind of publicly says, ah, we're gonna roll back our hiring goals. And this is what Google did on Tuesday. They removed the language in their 10K to the SEC which said, quote, we are. And this is all they're saying. We are committed to making diversity, equity, inclusion part of everything we do and growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve. That seems pretty anodyne. It doesn't seem.
- [22:17]
Lisa Schmeiser
No, because that tells you who they want to. That tells you who their target audience, the users are. I think you need to pay attention to that phrase.
- [22:23]
Leo Laporte
Ah, so, okay. By the way, Google's, Google's efforts did increase the number of women, the number of people of color working at Google, by a few percentage points. It didn't overnight make it equitable.
- [22:40]
Lisa Schmeiser
I think one of the things you're going to have to look for in the next year or two. They've had a return to office push too, haven't they?
- [22:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think so.
- [22:49]
Lisa Schmeiser
One of the emerging trends in workplace research, Slack has shown this. I wish I could pull the names of the vendors off the top of my head. But something that's coming up as people take a look at the impact of return to office policies is the impact disproportionately affects women, parents, queer folks, disabled folks and people of color. Where there is a suggestion that these policies are discouraging equitable participation in the workplace because as they come back to the office, it's not as productive or merit based in environment as it was when you were purely producing in a collaborative remote environment. There's external social stressors, especially if you're a parent, you're responsible for childcare, things like that. So this is something I'd be very, very curious to look at with Google over the next few years is they might be coasting on numbers that were boosted by previous diversity equity inclusion initiatives earlier. But let's see what those numbers look like in 2026 and 2027 after a full year of RTO and after a cultural downplaying of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Because I think you're going to see a change.
- [24:08]
Leo Laporte
Both Google and Microsoft have said hybrid's not going anywhere. But Google does say you got to come to work three days a week. And I think Microsoft. Is it the same at Microsoft, Daniel? Do you know? Because remember this is Amazon Said five days a week. Amazon said, you're back in the office, you're sitting at that desk.
- [24:28]
Lisa Schmeiser
Great way to shake people out.
- [24:30]
Kathy Gellis
Well, I wonder how many people they lost and whether that. What is the cost of having lost?
- [24:37]
Leo Laporte
I think that's why Google and Microsoft both.
- [24:39]
Kathy Gellis
Before you lose the people you want to shake out.
- [24:41]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [24:41]
Lisa Schmeiser
Like, the great thing about a layoff is you can target your cuts, whereas when you're trying to shake people by.
- [24:45]
Leo Laporte
Attrition, the best people leave. The best people say, no, I'm not coming back.
- [24:51]
Lisa Schmeiser
The best. The most hireable.
- [24:53]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's right. That's what I mean. Yeah. I'm not sure that that equates, but yes, it's the people who can get another job where they don't have to work in person or you're going to lose.
- [25:02]
Kathy Gellis
So I still have, I have two. There's. When you look at, okay, this is a collapse of a whole bunch of things that should not have collapsed. But let's look at where the pushback power is. And so one of the places that there's pushback power is among consumers and the public. And enough people outraged about it that it can certainly create some market force pressure, and we should look into doing that. But the other thing. Hi. As the lawyer, I want to know is these companies who thought it was in their interest to do it. I don't know if that quite plays out, because even if they thought that their business depended on the benevolent, the benevolence and quotes of Trump, that's not the only authority that governs them. They are still exposed to states, and states have laws, they have enforcement powers, and they've got courthouses that private aggrieved people who believe they've been discriminated against can still access. So all they've done is in trying to protect themselves against whatever they thought was going to happen or improve their position with respect to the Trump position administration, they've really undermined their position with respect to every other power and authority. And I don't quite know why they thought that the, you know, when they run the math on that, that they're going to be better off this way. And I think it's time to maybe make them see they are not, in fact, better off this way.
- [26:31]
Leo Laporte
All right.
- [26:32]
Lisa Schmeiser
I had with a friend this week because they were like, oh, I'm so worried that Apple is still sticking to DEI and so is Costco. And I was like, don't be. It's, it's a numbers game. And clearly they've done the math, they've run the math and decided that visibly sticking to this stance and appealing to a customer base is going to work out better for them than anything the Trump administration could possibly do. Like as Kathy pointed out, there's a cost benefit analysis to this and it is a little bit astonishing that a lot of these places aren't taking a look at how their, their initiative, how their public posturing is going to land with different state enforcements or even international enforcements. Because I mean the EU is not shy about regulation.
- [27:14]
Leo Laporte
I have to say there's a case to be made that EU regulation, especially their anti tech regulation like this UK law is harmful to the EU in terms of being an innovator. I think the EU is behind this is a. Let's go back to England for a moment. The British public wants. 87% of the British public would back a law requiring AI developers to prove their systems are safe before release. Which by the way eliminates every single public AI that's out there because all of them have been jailbroken. 60% are in favor of outlawing, outlawing the development of smarter than human AI models. Good luck.
- [28:01]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, good luck in developing the models too.
- [28:03]
Leo Laporte
Well, we can dispute that. I think it's pretty clear to me that by the end of this year AI coding will be equivalent of to the best coders out there right now. It will replace coders, coders will become something else. We'll see. We'll see. That's the low hanging fruit. I think there's a lot of things that AI can do better than a human. So maybe not in Britain.
- [28:31]
Lisa Schmeiser
Leah, when you launched the AI show, feel free to have me on as yourself.
- [28:34]
Leo Laporte
We did, we have, we took this week in Google and renamed it Intelligent Machines. And every week we're going to have a guest from the AI. This week we had a guy who was the head of sales at OpenAI. He was very aggressively, aggressively in favor of AI and AGI and all of that we're going to have in couple of weeks. Ray Kurzweil, who of course created the term intelligent machines on has been saying the singularity is near for decades. I do not disagree with him at this point. I think we've seen amazing progress, don't you think in AI human intelligence.
- [29:16]
Daniel Rubino
And the way thing about the AI stuff is once it gets to the point where it can recreate itself and create better AI from AI is going to be.
- [29:24]
Leo Laporte
That's why an AI coder might be the first step towards a singularity because then it's Writing its own code and it can iterate much faster.
- [29:34]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, the issue with all this is China. Right. Because the eu, UK can talk about, we need restrictions, we need laws, we need to slow this down, we got to monitor it, it's fine. Sounds great. United States, it's a little bit in between there because we stand the most to gain from having unrestricted AI. But China is just out there doing whatever it wants. And that's the problem. If you're going to have a system where everybody's like, we need to have rules and regulations and China's like, go ahead, knock yourself out. We're just going to go ahead and just do our thing. They're going to end up winning, whatever winning is here. The more advanced AI system, they're just going to get there first. And it's considered to be like the next nuclear arms race. Right. Whoever can get the best AI. And up to this point the United States has had, has been a leader in tech and Europe is far behind and China is rivaling the United States at this point. And you know, we saw with deep seek they have some tricks up their sleeves apparently now we can debate about how much of that was stolen or you know, some smoke and mirrors. But at the same time they created a pretty impressive generative AI system, you know, pretty quickly.
- [30:39]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well that's going to be any.
- [30:40]
Lisa Schmeiser
Long, any restrict destination for researchers at this point, since we are currently in the US embracing an administration and a culture of devaluing education and research investment. So where do you think the brains to develop this stuff are going to go?
- [30:57]
Kathy Gellis
Well, nobody's realizing there is a ceiling on what AI can do. And I really want to push back on the term of best AI. It could produce certain amounts of code that will run efficiently in a couple of contexts. But that doesn't make it best if the UI is terrible, if it doesn't understand all sorts of contextual parameters, if it doesn't understand how it ultimately interface interfaces with human behavior. Like you need the humans to be able to sort of direct it. You can't just kind of have it pull. We kind of treat it as a magic wand that just press this little button and all the problems that the human beings couldn't quite solve is going to magically be solved by a computer. And it can do some stuff, but it can't solve them because where is it even going to have learned the understanding that billions of people have installed, managed to figure out? So I think there's a, I would.
- [31:48]
Daniel Rubino
Just say best AI. Yeah, but best AI, I was just going to say is just simply who makes the most profit from it. Right now the systems aren't very profitable. Right.
- [31:58]
Leo Laporte
But that's what's interesting about China, right?
- [32:00]
Lisa Schmeiser
The story that's growing in enterprise AI is enterprise AI that there's been two years worth of dumping in all of this money and all these resources into co pilots and AI assistants and automated workflows and now so called agentic AI, but no one's buying and workers are super resistant to using AI. So that's, that's another part of the story too is it's not doing what people have been promised.
- [32:29]
Kathy Gellis
If you're not understanding the problems to solve, yeah, you're not going to solve them. And I shouldn't say none because there are certain API applications that have taken the trouble to sort of figure out here is the problem and here's how AI solves it. I don't want to stand in the way of those, but that is an not the buzz, that is not the thing that people are talking about, that is not where all the money is getting dumped into and all the essentially hysteria. We are growing the tulip bulbs around AI, which is not designed to be problem specific. It is designed to be magic wand specific. And if you think you've conjured one, I think you're going to be wrong. You're not going to solve the problems because you never understood the problems you were supposed to be solving in the first place.
- [33:11]
Lisa Schmeiser
The framing I like teaser on AI is Bloom's taxonomy of learning where you move from simply being able to remember and retain a piece of knowledge, to being able to apply that knowledge in contextually appropriate situations, to doing more cognitively complex things which depend on application, synthesis, analysis and contextual flexibility. And Kathy, I think we're in a little bit of agreement here. AI doesn't show a lot of ability to discern and adapt to specific contexts or to even understand that problems exists in different contexts and therefore would have different solutions depending. It's super great for highly structured automated tasks or for queries where you need to find patterns and looking at those patterns helps you find a solution. But with really complex things. I don't know that we're to the point where you have a set of artificial intelligence tools that are able to take a look at a problem like how do we free up more nitrogen growing agriculture again and understand the constituent parks, break it down, do the brute force computing and then put it all together.
- [34:22]
Kathy Gellis
And how do you abdicate so much control over our world to something that doesn't get hungry, doesn't get sad, doesn't grieve, doesn't love, doesn't have anything that, that is part of the human existence. It's going to be creating solutions where the solution may be offing like entire populations, but human beings in theory would react to that and say we've got a problem here.
- [34:46]
Leo Laporte
It's interest goes full circle back to our DEI. Except at this time we're gonna have to tell AIs to start including us. I need to take a break. We have a great panel and lots to talk about. Lisa Schmeiser is here. It's so nice to have you. From no jitter nojitter.com where she's the Editor in Chief. WindowsCentral.com is where you'll find Daniel Rubino, also editor in chief. Good to see you. And Kathy Gellis, who's a contributor at Detector and has been off the off the rails this week. I mean, no, I don't mean what's a good way to say that you have just been knocking it out of the park talking about what's going on with Doge and we'll, we'll get to that in a little bit. Lots more to talk about. You're watching this week in Tech. Our show today brought to you by Threat Locker. Love these guys because they are solving a massive issue with security. Imagine hardening your security and never have to worry about zero day exploits or supply chain attacks or ransomware ever again. 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You need this visit threatlocker.com, you'll get a 30 day trial and learn more how ThreatLocker can mitigate even zero days, even completely unknown threats and help you with compliance. Threatlocker.com we really like these guys and I think you need to visit threatlocker.com and if you're going to Zero Trust World, I wish you have a great time in Orlando this week. I wish I could be there. They're putting on a big conference with lots of great and interesting stuff. Threat Locker, you can find out more about it@0TrustWorld.threatlocker.com all right, thank you Threat Locker for supporting Twit super bowl later today. I thought this was really interesting. I tried to sign up. So as you may or may not know, only 38 states allow sport gambling betting on sports. We had a referendum in California and it failed. I thought it would win for sure because everybody likes to bet on games. And if you see the ads on the super bowl today and every football game, every sporting event, it looks like draftkings is legal everywhere. Not exactly. You have to go to Las Vegas and I think it was actually Las Vegas that got it overturning California. They want you to come there. Well, the crypto folks have found a way around it. I don't know how legal this is. Crypto.com and kalshi have both done an end around on regulations to allow you to bet on the super bowl because they call it a trade. Robinhood thought about doing this and decided not to. Crypto.com, a Singapore based company, was inviting users in the U.S. to quote, trade their own prediction. Note not, but the word betting is never used on sports events, including who will win the Super Bowl. So what happens is crypto.com has effectively created a contract, a swap contract. There's a market for yes or no positions in the outcome of the NFL playoffs. College football bowl games. For every yes, there's a corresponding no prices constantly move. Sounds a little bit like. Like betting in January. For example, a yes for the Kansas City Chiefs to win this afternoon's Super bowl cost $56.75. But if they do, you pay 100 bucks. The no side, $46.75. And you get 100 bucks if the Eagles win and crypto.com gets the vig. I'm sorry, that sounds like a betting term. They get $3.50. Fees. Fees. It's just fees.
- [40:36]
Kathy Gellis
I know. 2 comments to Make One. A lot of these. Ooh, make all this money or do this one thing with this one quick trip? Like, all these people keep, like, thinking they've discovered something and it turns out to be securities fraud. Like, not anymore.
- [40:53]
Leo Laporte
Not anymore, not anymore. We got rid of Gary Gensler. I don't think the SEC is going to get involved. I don't know. This is.
- [40:58]
Kathy Gellis
No, I mean, this is what they're doing.
- [41:00]
Leo Laporte
Right. They started this in December, right after the election.
- [41:03]
Kathy Gellis
Right. Well, so maybe nobody enforces it, but basically there's definitely this ethos of like, oh, look, I have innovated a solution. No, you've basically figured out something that already was against the law. All you didn't realize is that you didn't know what the law was.
- [41:18]
Leo Laporte
Well, I think that's why Robin Hood decided not to.
- [41:20]
Kathy Gellis
Right. That's possible.
- [41:22]
Leo Laporte
Maybe it's more of a PR hit, because I honestly don't think that the SEC as now constituted is going to do anything.
- [41:28]
Kathy Gellis
Well, that's a separate problem.
- [41:29]
Leo Laporte
In fact, I'm wondering if I should even file taxes this year.
- [41:32]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, yeah, that's a separate problem, too. But I had that thought from before.
- [41:36]
Daniel Rubino
Seriously.
- [41:36]
Kathy Gellis
And again, who's gonna.
- [41:38]
Leo Laporte
What's gonna happen if I don't?
- [41:41]
Kathy Gellis
A little too soon to make.
- [41:43]
Leo Laporte
Maybe wait a year. Okay, I'll try next.
- [41:45]
Daniel Rubino
No, no, no.
- [41:45]
Kathy Gellis
I mean, wait a week even, and see where we are.
- [41:48]
Leo Laporte
Will there be an IRS on April 15th? It's unknown at this point.
- [41:52]
Kathy Gellis
Do we have a Treasury Department? I think is exactly the bigger question.
- [41:56]
Leo Laporte
Well, the IRS is part of the treasury, right?
- [41:59]
Kathy Gellis
Well, they give the money to the treasury, even if they're that money.
- [42:03]
Leo Laporte
What department is the IRS under, Scott?
- [42:04]
Kathy Gellis
I think probably it's probably treasury, but I don't know. I didn't realize I needed to know. Anyway, that was one comment. I'm sure we'll swing around back to that.
- [42:12]
Leo Laporte
But the other comment, we'll definitely get back to that. You notice I'M burying it a little bit because I don't want people to tune out too quick.
- [42:20]
Kathy Gellis
So the other comment I was going to make is I'm really not enjoying this real life reenactment of Back to the Future too.
- [42:29]
Leo Laporte
I don't remember what happened in back.
- [42:31]
Kathy Gellis
It's the one where they go off the rails. It's dark Biff Tanner and he's basically made all this money illicitly because he.
- [42:37]
Leo Laporte
Was might be the CEO of crypto.com. i don't know. Crypto.com says, quote, we don't offer sports betting products. We offer tradable cryptocurrency commodities and tradable financial products which differ from products offered by sportsbooks. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. By the way, this is the number one betting day on the US calendar. Estimated $1.5 billion in legal wagers. On the super bowl, the Supreme Court struck down a federal prohibition, you might remember in 2018, creating this $15 billion industry. 38 states in Washington, D.C. allow it, and Americans now legally wager more than $12 billion a month.
- [43:32]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, the social effects are really, I.
- [43:35]
Leo Laporte
Have to think that this is, that gambling addiction is going to become a real problem. And you know what is interesting? This came from England. This came from the richest woman in England. I've talked about this before. Got rich because her dad owned, remember in England you can have these betting shops, right? These bookie shops and you can go and you could bet. And her dad owned a bunch of them. And she decided, well, let's get digital. But she did something that was super smart that ended up making her the richest woman in England, richer even than J.K. rowling or the Queen. I guess the Queen is no longer with us, but the king. So Denise Coates is trying to get in the United States, but she created the prop bet. And you've seen if you watch the ads on the football games, you'll see DraftKings and all these others Kevin Hart talking about. You can bet on whether that kick is going to be good. You can bet on whether they're going to. The snow will hit the ground. You can bet on almost anything instantly and get an instant reward. And to me, this is a recipe for disaster. You know, that's always been the story of somebody with a real gambling problem, is they'll bet on anything, anything at all.
- [44:58]
Daniel Rubino
You know, well, look at the positive side. The younger generation has no money to really bet.
- [45:03]
Kathy Gellis
So they're doing it on credit and debt.
- [45:07]
Leo Laporte
That's even Worse. Oh my God. And do you want to see this? The graph? This is the graph of legal sports betting starting in 2018 when the Supreme Court made it legal.
- [45:22]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, that's a big problem. There's very strong whiffs of things are going very wrong with the sports competitions themselves.
- [45:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, there's a lot of. There's. You know, my son, who is a huge fan of the Green Bay packers, is not going to watch the super bowl today. He says all rigged. Now, whether it is or not, the fact that the NFL profits from sports gambling, remember Pete Rose never got into the hall of Fame because he bet on baseball.
- [45:52]
Lisa Schmeiser
I think your son's a really handy bellwether for how gambling is just going to undermine the nature of sports fandom and further sever it from being a community original thing to being a come on, make me some money thing. Well, that's something to worry about.
- [46:09]
Kathy Gellis
One of the things also, I was thinking with that prop bet thing, you already have problems even with the stock markets, which in their own way is their own form of betting, but at least there's some form of asset underneath it. You have issues where the speed by which the information can get exchanged and the bet can be placed has distorting values. And there's money to be made by arbitraging the advantages that somebody has based on the speed that they're able to get things done. And we're talking like speed in terms of split seconds. So for all of these things, it's not that you're truly dealing with natural odds, you're dealing with something that is inherently those odds are flexing based on advantages built in that people aren't calculating for and are not getting calculated for. So they aren't fair bet.
- [47:02]
Leo Laporte
Well, I mean, that's also the stock market.
- [47:04]
Kathy Gellis
It's also. But it becomes a big problem and it becomes a problem that the stock market actually has to try to solve for.
- [47:10]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's true. Now these companies are regulated by the commodities, the cftc. What does that stand for? The Commodities Something Trading Commission, which is a separate governmental organization which by the way, Elon Musk is trying to dissolve right now. The Commodities Future Trading Commission did actually sign off on what they call events contracts, allowing people to trade on whether Taylor Swift would announce her next album or whether a new movie would tank at the box office. Crypto.com submitted filings to the CFTC. They didn't ask permission, by the way. This doesn't work that way. They informed the commission of their intent and then it's Kind of there's a fast track process. These companies get to self certify their derivatives contracts and then the cftc, if they decided to, could shut it down. Nobody did, of course. The firm filed its paperwork five days before Christmas, probably thinking, you know, no, nobody's going to be there. Actually, it was the day before the big government, the threat of a government shutdown. They picked the timing pretty wisely, said Peter Malashev, a partner at a D.C. law firm, right before Christmas, after the elections. So anyway, I thought, well, let me see if I can get a crypto.com account quick so that I can just show you what it looks like to trade on the result of the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, after submitting a picture of my driver's license, a video of me turning my head left and right, giving them my cell phone number, they said, we'll get back to you in one to five business days. So I don't think I'm going to get to bet on the super bowl today.
- [49:12]
Daniel Rubino
Well, he's got that, so there's some security.
- [49:17]
Leo Laporte
Hey, good news. There's going to be some good ads on the game, the big game. OpenAI is doing its first ad. There were, I think, three different AI ads last year, including anthropic, but no open AI. Google, of course, talked about its AI. This year Google was going to run a Super bowl ad. I think they still are. That said that Gouda was the world's most popular cheese. According to Gemini, it is not. It does not make up 50 to 60% of the world's cheese consumption. That is not true.
- [49:54]
Lisa Schmeiser
I was going to say how many rocks are in it isn't part of the group.
- [49:57]
Daniel Rubino
Right.
- [49:58]
Leo Laporte
Is there Elmer's Glue anywhere? Google has edited Gemini's AI response in a Super bowl commercial. This is according to the Verge. To remove that incorrect statistic. The ad shows a small business owner using Gemini to write a website description about Gouda. In the edited video, Gemini's response now skips over the specifics and just says gouda is one of the most popular cheeses in the world.
- [50:23]
Kathy Gellis
At this point I doubt that, but.
- [50:25]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, you know why? Because you know those little red wax covered baby bells? That's Gouda.
- [50:30]
Lisa Schmeiser
Ah, well, there you go.
- [50:34]
Leo Laporte
And it's delicious, by the way.
- [50:37]
Kathy Gellis
And you're accepting sponsorship offers from Baby Bell.
- [50:42]
Leo Laporte
Baby Bell. I would love some cheese. I'll take my money in cheese. Google Cloud Apps president Jerry Dishler said it's not a hallucination. That's not. Remember Martin Short used to do that lying Lawyer. It was smoking all the time and had this sweaty lip. I knew that. I always knew that. It's not a hallucination. It's grounded in the web. Apparently. This came from a website called cheese.com which is filled with, according to the Verge, what seems to be SEO optimized blogs. Gouda is, according to the E.V. baker professor of Agricultural Economics at Cornell, most assuredly not the most widely consumed cheese in the world. So they've edited it out. So you will see the ad on the super bowl if you watch that. But no, in fact, that business owner was real, the website was real. And he has now removed the Gouda claim as well.
- [51:50]
Kathy Gellis
For the camera wasn't on me, but I'm sure our listeners could hear my eyes roll when you were talking about this in the SEO optimized blog.
- [51:59]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, cheese.com, apparently not the Cheese authority you might have thought disclaimer beneath Gemini's response says it's not intended to be factual. So maybe you're right about AI.
- [52:12]
Lisa Schmeiser
Why would you.
- [52:13]
Daniel Rubino
Reminds me of Humane. Remember Humane had their.
- [52:17]
Leo Laporte
The Humane pin and it made the.
- [52:19]
Daniel Rubino
Prediction it had something to do with the stars and an eclipse or something.
- [52:25]
Leo Laporte
Well, Google rolled out Gemini. The demo had incorrect facts. Gemini hallucinated in its rollout. Now Gemini 2 just after that. Yeah, Gemini 2 just came out this week and people are saying great things about it. I don't know. See, I'm. I just, I'm. I don't want to poo poo, you guys. We will find out. But I honestly think that we are seeing such amazing progress with AI that it is almost inevitable that we are going to see human level intelligence in the next few years. Maybe sooner or later.
- [53:01]
Kathy Gellis
I think something, but I am not entirely sure what that something is.
- [53:05]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I could be wrong.
- [53:06]
Kathy Gellis
We should actually want.
- [53:07]
Lisa Schmeiser
AI can be as confidently wrong as people are.
- [53:12]
Kathy Gellis
From a pure computing standpoint, this stuff is cool. Like, and we are on the amazing. We've not seen anything like this in the terms of is it it anything intelligence? Is it anything that can substitute for intelligence? Is it anything that is useful, valuable and also not dangerous? I. I would not put, you know, all my chips on that prediction.
- [53:36]
Leo Laporte
I'm not putting all my chips on it, but I am. I feel fairly. You know, I wear now I want to put. I keep showing this. This is this announced at ces. This is the B computer. It's recording this conversation and everything that happens to me and then it gives me an AI summary at the end of every day with action Items and all this stuff. And yeah, it makes a lot of dumb mistakes. When I was watching a movie the other night and it thinks I'm rehearsing for a role in Richard iii. So it's a little confused because I'm not. But there's some stuff in it that's kind of amazing and it's. I feel like it's making my journal for me. I wish, I honestly wish I'd had this for my whole life because it would be so cool. But there are mistakes in it. You just, you have to, I think you have to understand how to use it. Really.
- [54:27]
Kathy Gellis
I don't mind it as a tool that the humans wield What I, yes, what I bristle at is this idea that it is going to be the tool that can just have a certain degree of autonomy, that humans do not need to wield it anymore.
- [54:40]
Leo Laporte
And especially when it comes to atomic weapons.
- [54:43]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, you also talk about transparency should be part of that too. At least with a human workflow you do have certain levels of built in accountability, either in an implicit in social way or in an explicit organizational way. And one of the things that's super disturbing about the way we're mainstreaming AI utilization in general is, is the whole. It's a black box. Don't you worry you're pretty little monkey heads about how it works.
- [55:09]
Leo Laporte
No, I agree with you there.
- [55:10]
Lisa Schmeiser
But it's, well, transparency and accountability. And not in a give us your trade secrets way, but rather when you do have a screw up like glue pizza. What are you doing about this? How did it happen? How, how can we be sure it will never happen again?
- [55:24]
Leo Laporte
No, I think that's the wrong attitude, to be honest. I just, I respectfully disagree because that, first of all, you can't fix that. It is a black box. Even to the guys who are writing this stuff. It's. They don't know exactly how it comes to these conclusions. And I think AI safety is a mistake. What we, you can't expect the first of all, we know it doesn't work. Every AI has been jailbroken. We did a whole show on it on Tuesday with Steve Gibson. It's almost impossible to have AI safety. What it requires is human intelligence intermediating it. So I agree with you. You should not give control of our nuclear arsenal to an AI. There's gotta be a human in between the AI and the launch button. But I don't think you can make the AI not make mistakes, not hallucinate or be safe. I think that there just needs to.
- [56:16]
Lisa Schmeiser
Be a Built in level of review and accountability that's currently lacking.
- [56:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. But I think what we have to do is train humans, train ourselves to use AI appropriately. I really like the idea of DEI for AI, by the way. I'm gonna.
- [56:30]
Lisa Schmeiser
Diverse equity inclusion for AI. It comes down to data sets. Well, who responsible for picking the data sets for training and more importantly, how is their work being checked?
- [56:40]
Leo Laporte
But this was the breakthrough, I think, that made this all possible, is that we have we human. I remember 30 years ago, I did stories on it. There was a woman who was trying to create an AI and had an army of 100 stenographers typing in every fact she could find. Well, in the intervening three years, we did it for her. We created the Internet and put everything we could think of into it. And then the AI has access to it. So I don't think it's a question of data sets as much. I mean, it might be for face recognition, things like that, but general AIs.
- [57:16]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, it's whatever they can get their hands on. Right. Kind of segue.
- [57:20]
Leo Laporte
Well, actually, that's one of our stories is Meta.
- [57:22]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. With meta in the books and torrenting.
- [57:25]
Leo Laporte
So, meta, Meta. What's the story here?
- [57:28]
Lisa Schmeiser
There's a really, really great book that I want to recommend to anyone who wants to talk about AI, called Codependent by Wired reporter Madhumida Murgia. And she travels the country and the globe and goes to different countries where AI sweatshops are set up, where people are specifically tagging images or specifically tagging different pieces of data to train the AI. And she points out there is no. Unless you have people who dig into this, you have no idea how. What data is being used to train. You have no idea how it's being tagged. You have no idea how it's being structured or if it can be even used. As we get to more and more sophisticated iterations of AI because structured versus.
- [58:11]
Leo Laporte
Unstructured, I think we've run out of. I think we've. Actually, the biggest problem is we've run out of stuff to train AI with.
- [58:18]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, then let's get to your next story, which is a doozy. Oh, my gosh.
- [58:22]
Leo Laporte
Hold on.
- [58:23]
Kathy Gellis
Hold that thought. Doozier things than the doozies we've done.
- [58:26]
Leo Laporte
Oh, we got big. You know what? This, like, show is like a mountain. We've started at the little tip of the iceberg. We're getting to the middle. There is some stuff to talk about. What's going on in Washington, D.C. is somewhat shocking. Kathy, you've written Quite a bit about that. We have lots more to talk about. Great panel. Well, it's good to have you. Kathy Gellis, writing for Tech Dirt. Read her articles this week. I'm amazed that you're not apoplectic, that you're not like bouncing off the walls here.
- [58:54]
Kathy Gellis
I am apoplectic. I'm just amazed that I am still sitting here.
- [58:58]
Leo Laporte
But give it time, I can see the apoplexy forming. Also here from Windows Central, Daniel Rubino, Editor in chief. Always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you, Daniel. And of course, Lisa Schmeisser from no Jitter, our show today, brought to you by Coda. Have you used Coda? Coda is so cool. Turning your back of a napkin idea into a billion dollar startup. You know, have you ever thought about that? It's going to take countless hours of collaboration, of teamwork, and it's hard to build that team, the team that's aligned on everything from values to workflow. But there is a tool that helps. It's exactly what Coda was made to do. Coda, C O D A. It's an all in one collaborative workspace. It started literally itself as a napkin sketch. And now in the five years since launching in beta, Coda has helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. With Coda, you get the flexibility. Actually, let me give you the address right now because I know you want to just look at it and you can Coda IO Coda IO twit. And while you're looking, let me explain. With Coda, you get the flexibility of docs, the structure of spreadsheets, the power of applications and the intelligence of AI all together in a seamless workspace built for enterprise. It facilitates deeper collaboration, quicker creativity, gives you more time to build. You gotta take a look at this. It's really mind blowing. It's incredible. If you're a startup team and you're looking to increase alignment and agility, it's a really hard thing to do. Especially, I mean, you can say return to office, but frankly, most of us are still remote, right? Coda brings you all together. Instead of a physical office, you have a virtual workspace that everybody's involved with, is attached to, is Utilizing Coda can help you move from planning to execution in record time. You gotta try it for yourself. Here's the good news. Now you're at Coda IO Twit, right? You're looking. This is interesting. How about six months free? Six months free of the team plan for startups. What about that? Six months half A year free. Coda IO Twit. That's enough to get that napkin pretty far along the line to a startup to a unicorn. Get started for free. Get six free months of the team plan. That's the best offer ever. Coda IO, Twitter, we love these guys. Thank you, Coda, for supporting us. Thank you, Coda. So let's talk about this Meta story. Actually, I'm not really kind of sure what happened. Of course Meta, like every other AI company, is trying to train on as much data as possible. There is a rich trove of data that isn't in fact on the Internet. It's called books. And if you could ingest a library, right, it'd be good for your AI to train on every possible book out there. And of course, authors and publishers not too happy about it. There is a copyright case against Meta raised by book authors. They allege Meta illegally trained its AI models not on books it bought, but on pirated books. Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting controversial data set known as Libjen. It has tens of millions of pirated books. We kind of knew this because you were able to find bits and pieces of those books in Meta. In llama yesterday, Meta's un. Well, actually it was, I think Thursday. Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The evidence is meta torrented 81.7 terabytes of data through the site Anna's Archive, including 35.7 terabytes of data from Z Library and Libgen. The court filing said Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from Libgen, all onto a laptop. Turreting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right, says Nikolai Bala, a Meta research engineer, writing in April. This was the message 2023 message adding a smiley emoji. In the same message, he expressed concern about using Meta IP addresses to load through Torrent's pirate content. By September, Bashlikov dropped the emojis, consulting the legal team directly and emphasizing in an email that quote, using torrents would entail seeding the files, I.e. sharing the content outside. That's what you don't have to do that. But that's kind of the, you know, polite thing to do. This could be, he said he wrote legally, not okay, man, this is why companies don't want you to put this stuff in emails. Emails prove that Meta knew it was illegal. Bashlikov's warnings landed on deaf ears. The authors who are suing say the evidence showed Meta chose instead to hide its turning as best it could while downloading and seeding. They did. In fact, you don't have to seed, by the way, if you download, but they did seeding terabytes of data from multiple shadow libraries as recently as April of last year. They didn't use Facebook servers while downloading the data set to, quote, avoid the risk of anyone tracing the Cedar downloader. This is from an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang. He described the work as being in stealth mode. They modified settings so that the smallest amount of seating possible could occur. Oh well, I think they're busted. Mark Zuckerberg said, I didn't do it. I didn't know anything about it.
- [65:09]
Lisa Schmeiser
But come on, Mark, where's that masculine energy that would to meet the moment?
- [65:15]
Leo Laporte
He claimed to have no involvement in the decisions to use Libgen to train AI models.
- [65:20]
Kathy Gellis
Well, it wouldn't really matter, I think, whether he did or he did. He is the CEO so much the person of the CEO. There's some open questions whether the Persona of the company really can be separate from some of its leaders, especially when their personal actions are so closely tied to them in a way that corporate structures are not really operable. For him, he's in better shape than, say, musk up the road. But that raises a question I don't think somebody will, I'm sure, try to pick at that. I have a couple of concerns about the story and things that are in the story.
- [65:56]
Leo Laporte
This is. By the way, I'll give credit to Ashley Belanger, senior policy reporter at Ars Technica, writing this story.
- [66:02]
Kathy Gellis
Go ahead. So if they seated I do kind of face palm at them, but a couple of. I don't necessarily have the same concern if they downloaded because I don't think there should be a distinctive Is that.
- [66:17]
Leo Laporte
The right to read you've spoken about?
- [66:19]
Kathy Gellis
It would still go into that, like if you were allowed to.
- [66:22]
Leo Laporte
Does it change it that it's pirated material?
- [66:25]
Kathy Gellis
No, because I don't think it's something that it essentially would be that the copyright holder could say, no, you can't read this book unless you've paid. But the copyright really only applies to making copies of it itself. Maybe it kind of.
- [66:38]
Leo Laporte
But is an AI ingesting something? Making a copy? Isn't that making a copy?
- [66:42]
Kathy Gellis
I don't. I don't think so. And the lawyers who are defending these companies are very clear that what you really have is not making a copy. You really have it learning and just storing no different than what it learned.
- [66:54]
Leo Laporte
Than me reading and remembering something I read. I'M not making my copy of my brain.
- [66:59]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, the lawyers are arguing that, but I think based on how the technology actually behaves, that it's really more of a learning function. In which case if the, if you're trying to create an artificial intelligence, it's going to function and learn the way a human intelligence would and store information that it's gleaned in some way that it can use it again. So in that sense, I think the downloading is not particularly dispositive. The seeding, you know, I take, I don't, I don't represent meta, so I can throw stones at it as much as I want, but oh yeah, my, my legal senses are like, oh, seriously, dude. Like, okay, fine, if I had to defend it, I'd defend it. But I think it's a harder. It's a harder.
- [67:38]
Leo Laporte
I also, I have torn it for years. You don't have to cede.
- [67:45]
Kathy Gellis
As the lawyer, I don't want to blur these two things together. I think the legal analysis of whether downloading was okay is a different legal analysis for whether seating was okay. And that's the point. I think it is definitely more okay that they downloaded and a little more of a reach for that they ceded. But one thing that bothers me about this case is some earlier reporting where the, some of these emails had been privileged and the privilege was essentially punctured through assertions of the crime fraud exception to attorney client privilege. And I'm a little bit uncomfortable with, and maybe more than a little, but there would be more details about that happening.
- [68:24]
Leo Laporte
You're an attorney and of course you're thinking like an attorney and that is important in the trial, but it's not important to our discussion, right?
- [68:33]
Kathy Gellis
No, but it kind of let's.
- [68:34]
Leo Laporte
Well, no, let's stipulate that they did in fact. BitTorrent a bunch of pirated books. I mean, the discussion we're having, is that okay or not? You say it's okay.
- [68:45]
Kathy Gellis
No, I think it does matter because the whole way that you could puncturing privilege is a really.
- [68:50]
Leo Laporte
No, I understand from a legal point of view that's important, but it doesn't matter. We can still talk about it, but.
- [68:56]
Kathy Gellis
It'S predicated on the idea that it is so wrong what was being protected by this privilege that you could then have this. That could be the consequence of it. And I'm thinking that, I'm not sure it is wrong enough that it should have had that collateral consequence.
- [69:11]
Leo Laporte
It may get them off the hook. We're not debating whether they should be what should happen to the trial. We're just talking about the fact that they did it and whether that's okay. Do you think it's okay, Lisa?
- [69:23]
Lisa Schmeiser
You know, I am just going to be quiet and let the lawyer and let the LEO talk to each other about it.
- [69:30]
Leo Laporte
You're going to to stay out of it. How about you, Daniel?
- [69:32]
Lisa Schmeiser
No, this is, this is a real lesson for me. This is, this is a masterclass in legal excellence. I'm just here to learn.
- [69:38]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I've learned from Kathy about this so called right to read, which I think is very interesting. And if you say an AI is is not copying but learning from something, that's something we do well. Kathy, is it illegal for me to read a pirated book?
- [69:55]
Kathy Gellis
I don't know what right the copyright holder would be able to assert against you. They might try to say that your personal.
- [70:03]
Leo Laporte
They could go after the piracy site.
- [70:07]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, I think a lot of the file sharing litigation originally had been more that making available the thing that stepped on the copyright when it came to music. Reading is a lot harder.
- [70:19]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [70:20]
Daniel Rubino
They never went after people for listening.
- [70:22]
Kathy Gellis
To and it's a much harder reach to be able to do that because that's not controlling the copying in the same way. It's more.
- [70:31]
Daniel Rubino
It's a video games. Everything that was torn today never went after the people who were just downloading it and getting back to leo. You kept pointing us out. The seating part, that's the uncomfortable issue. It's just like your ISP. If it catches you using BitTorrent, it's not so much because you're downloading, it's because you're seeding and you're sharing copyrighted material. That's the legality. So when it comes to this issue here with Meta and Facebook and book books, it's the seating that feels a little uncomfortable that they're doing. But the ability to. And I think the courts have already kind of upheld this a little bit. Just came back to that, you know, ability to read. It's true. AI, if you could ask AI like Copilot or Gemini, be like, you know, give me the print up the entire book for Stephen King, his latest book, and it gave you the entire thing. Okay, that would be an issue. Right, because that would be then distributing the entire book for free, you know.
- [71:24]
Leo Laporte
But it doesn't do that. And really without a lot of New York Times says that OpenAI did in fact regurgitate New York Times articles. But in order to do that they had to jump through hoops. They had to print the first two paragraphs and say what would the third paragraph be? Things like that.
- [71:40]
Daniel Rubino
Right.
- [71:41]
Leo Laporte
So I, Yeah, I'm not convinced that AI is there to or is even able to make. You know, you can't get War and Peace out of an AI way.
- [71:49]
Kathy Gellis
It's also worth talking. Well, actually, I guess it was the Copyright Office came out with a study on its second level of study on AI and where copyright law needs to be. Although I think actually the one that just came out wasn't on liability for output. I think it was based on potential protection available for output. And it basically said it's going to be case specific and you have to look at how much originality went into causing it to generate something. Thanks.
- [72:18]
Leo Laporte
It's just fascinating stuff. By the way, Amazon is going to have a big event revealing something we've all been waiting for. February 26th, you're going to see Panos Panay, the former beloved devices guy from Microsoft, show the new Amazon echoes with AI, I think. Right. This is Panos. How many people has Panos stolen from Microsoft? Didn't more people follow him over to Amazon?
- [72:51]
Daniel Rubino
Ralph Green recently went over there, their head designer. So we should see more German brutalist designs for Alexa devices, which I'm also square.
- [73:00]
Lisa Schmeiser
It's like you. How is that bad? That sounds pretty awesome.
- [73:03]
Leo Laporte
It says now three by two. Because that's.
- [73:06]
Daniel Rubino
Ralph Green's an awesome designer.
- [73:07]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah.
- [73:08]
Leo Laporte
No, I love how surfaces look. I think they're great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [73:11]
Daniel Rubino
This is interesting only because Panos Panay and Ralph Grain are now part of that division because they do have some amazing ideas and they tend to be very innovative. And if anything, you know, Amazon and Alexa needs a real kick in the pants because they have some real issues. Their products are fine, but the whole.
- [73:30]
Leo Laporte
Point they're better than Siri, which isn't saying much.
- [73:32]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, which isn't saying much. But the whole point was to get you to use Alexa to buy more stuff from Amazon or supposed to be a shopping that didn't work. Everybody just ends up using it as a timer to play music and they're losing money on all the hardware, so there's no reason to use it. Yeah, yeah.
- [73:48]
Leo Laporte
They've lost. They got to figure out 10 billion or something. Over. Over.
- [73:51]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, they got to figure out how to make this interesting enough to. Especially to charge. Right. They said now in this article they're saying they're not going to charge initially, but they've explored charging people 5 to $10 a month for that was the rumor.
- [74:05]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [74:06]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, so, like, they gotta monetize this, right? So how useful is this gonna be in your house versus what's on your smartphone, which is real. You know, that's where the real war has been. But you have Android has theirs, and of course you have Apple has theirs. But there's no room there for Amazon, just like there was no room for Microsoft a lot of ways.
- [74:24]
Leo Laporte
Would you. I don't know, would you. Panel. Would you pay 5. Let's say it's $5 for a smarter Amazon Echo.
- [74:33]
Kathy Gellis
I pay $0 for. I don't want an Echo.
- [74:37]
Leo Laporte
You don't have any echoes anyway. I have echoes.
- [74:39]
Lisa Schmeiser
I don't have any smart home devices because I don't trust the companies enough in terms of protecting my data or respecting my privacy.
- [74:48]
Leo Laporte
Every room in my house has a Siri, has an Echo, and has a Google Voice assistant. Every room in my house.
- [74:56]
Lisa Schmeiser
And I think that's great.
- [74:57]
Leo Laporte
And I wear this bracelet that's sending everything that happens to some unknown AI in the sky. I don't even know where it goes. We're going to, by the way, interview the creators of this on the 19th of February, and that's the first thing I'm asking him is where is this going?
- [75:11]
Daniel Rubino
I think the privacy thing. Is that always. The privacy thing is an interesting discussion because it is, in theory, extremely important. In reality, though, it's not. We've seen over and over again, after years reporting on this stuff, that people really just don't kind of care. They'd rather have convenience. Or people are already saying they already put all their information out there online. There's not a week that goes by where most of us don't get a letter in the mail saying your data has been breached somewhere. Right? Like this is.
- [75:41]
Leo Laporte
I stand in front of my Echo show and dance naked just for the fun of it.
- [75:45]
Lisa Schmeiser
Right?
- [75:45]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, exactly.
- [75:46]
Leo Laporte
Hoping somebody in China is forced to watch it.
- [75:49]
Daniel Rubino
Here's that joke, right? With the younger generations, they put so much out there when they're young that, like, you know, for myself, if something came out from photos of me in college, doing some things today would be a little embarrassing, right? Because of my generation. But if you're younger, you've already put everything out there and exposed yourself. There's nothing left you can really do. Even nudity is not that big of a deal anymore.
- [76:12]
Leo Laporte
We live in.
- [76:14]
Daniel Rubino
There is an interesting counter argument to this, which is if you completely expose yourself as much as possible, there really is no risk of your data leaking ever, or privacy concerns. Right? You just let it all go but.
- [76:27]
Leo Laporte
People will be want that Amazon Pentagon's been talking about this for a while. It's been slowed down because according to reports it was incredibly stupid and just really was like so bad that they couldn't release it. According to Reuters, executives have scheduled a go no go meeting for putting AI into Echo for Valentine's Day. Reuters says there they will make a final decision on the street readiness of Echo's generative AI revamp according to the people and an internal planning document seen by Reuters. So it isn't yet known whether they'll release this and there have been, you know, there have been reports of it not being very good. I couldn't get worse than Siri. Siri has literally gotten worse with Apple intelligence than it was before. Jon Gruber and another blogger post asked Siri to tell it at who won every Super bowl from zero through 60. And it was horrible. It was terribly wrong. Whereas in the past it would have just said, I don't know, but look, here's what I found on the web about that which would have been accurate.
- [77:38]
Kathy Gellis
There's a lot that's gotten bad as AI has been at minimum sucking all the oxygen in the room, but also now also getting embedded in all sorts of software. I think if you counted what has not gotten worse, let alone what has actually gotten better, the the count very little has not gotten worse from all this.
- [78:01]
Leo Laporte
Well, remember you were talking about eating rocks and putting Elmer's glue on pizza? That was a Google search result. Google has now again started testing a new search AI mode internally. And the reason is there's intense pressure. I don't use Google anymore. I use Perplexity. I use AI search and I bet a lot of people do. The search results are better. Google's gotta see this as an existential threat to its business.
- [78:28]
Kathy Gellis
Google is selling ads.
- [78:30]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah.
- [78:30]
Kathy Gellis
Google's existential threat is making its search engine, which had been industry leading now crap. That's true.
- [78:37]
Leo Laporte
They did it to themselves, didn't they?
- [78:38]
Kathy Gellis
They did it themselves. They were doing. They produced a really good product for years and years and years and years and then decided, let's not, let's go change it. Let's give up on everything that made it good. And instead of trying to make it better, we will just make it different. And they've made it different in a way that just can't compete with what they originally had. But they keep trying anyway and it's terrible and people just lose trust with the company and we don't like it as an AI company and we don't even like it as a search engine anymore.
- [79:05]
Leo Laporte
From 9 to 5 Google. Here's a screenshot of. It's powered by Gemini 2.0 which is the new Google model, which is pretty good. How many boxes of spaghetti should I buy to feed six adults and 10 children and have enough for seconds?
- [79:20]
Daniel Rubino
Are they American or European children?
- [79:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, really Americans. You need like 80 bucks. Adding the children's portions and the adults portions gives you a total estimate of 38 to 54 ounces. Increasing this by 25 to 50% per second servings puts you in the range of 47.5 to 81 ounces. Most boxes of spaghetti are one pound anyway. It says you should get three to five boxes of standard size spaghetti to feed six adults. This is an example. Yeah, yeah. Or compare wool down and synthetic jackets in terms of insulation, water resistance and durability. That, you know, that is the kind of search we would prefer to do than, you know, where can I buy down jackets? Yeah. Or what's the best down jacket?
- [80:06]
Lisa Schmeiser
Which we know there's, there's an, you know, you point that out though and now I'm thinking there's like Wirecutter and Tom's Guide and all of these other sites that are making their bones on, on offering that kind of evaluative buying advice is journalism based expert.
- [80:25]
Leo Laporte
They should be threatened now.
- [80:26]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah, no, that's the same thing. Yeah.
- [80:28]
Leo Laporte
Because this AI will combine all of those results it might give.
- [80:31]
Lisa Schmeiser
AI will take their content and mash it up and spit it out.
- [80:34]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, but badly so actually. And as long as it's bad, no, they shouldn't be scared. Except it's very annoying because it's hard to find. My favorite way of searching Google is basically to ask a natural language question and then ideally have Google be smart enough to send me to the site that best answers the natural language question.
- [80:53]
Leo Laporte
How's that working for you?
- [80:55]
Kathy Gellis
Reasonably well. I mean maybe I'm only using a narrow range of questions and it seems to go better with some than others and sometimes that may be based on what is available. So I think the more interesting thing is what if, when there's something not on, if there's something on point, I really don't want Google to get in the way of it. If there's nothing on point, then the question is what should Google do, if anything to gap fill that.
- [81:18]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [81:19]
Lisa Schmeiser
The other issue that's going to come up with something like this though is you're going to see, I mean you're already seeing a Flood of AI Glurish in terms of content writing, where there are companies devoted to using generative AI models to pump out things that can rank very highly in search results and say absolutely nothing of use or value. There's no primary sources, there's no reporting, there's no nothing. And when with this kind of search, that result that you've put in there, Leo. I didn't see any sources for citations. I didn't see any facts that backed it up. And it.
- [81:55]
Leo Laporte
That actually was a screenshot from Google, by the way. Was it?
- [81:57]
Lisa Schmeiser
I didn't make it up, but no, no. I'm just saying it's super easy to game the results just by. You know, just by having AI generate all sorts of. Of. Of all sorts of content that gets tossed into the pool of training data or gets tossed into the pool of results that any sort of AI is use to try to aggregate, synthesize, and put back a good answer.
- [82:22]
Leo Laporte
I just saw an ad.
- [82:23]
Lisa Schmeiser
You have to take a look at the data and see where it's coming from. You really do garbage.
- [82:27]
Leo Laporte
And garbage running in the background. I just saw an ad for a company called Ramp, featuring Saquon Barclay. And the whole thing it does is it looks at all the things you do. Like in his case, he had a leg day, and it said, well, we didn't get a receipt. Give me the receipt for that leg day. And Zay quote one took a picture of it and said, okay, got it. Now that's done with AI. But it's. But it's more than just AI. It's AI that's also watching you every moment of the day to see what you're up to. So it can say, hey, you just took an Uber. Where's that receipt?
- [83:04]
Daniel Rubino
This.
- [83:04]
Leo Laporte
This is the world we're getting into. And I. I think you were right when you said people, Daniel. People don't care. People.
- [83:11]
Daniel Rubino
Well, I hate filing expenses.
- [83:14]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah.
- [83:17]
Leo Laporte
Hey, where's the receipt for that? And I take a picture. I'm happy. Yeah.
- [83:20]
Daniel Rubino
Yes.
- [83:21]
Leo Laporte
Right?
- [83:21]
Daniel Rubino
Yes. I need someone to nag me on certain things in life, and I'll gladly take that.
- [83:25]
Lisa Schmeiser
So. Oh, my gosh.
- [83:26]
Leo Laporte
Let's. Let's take a break. I gotta take a break. We have more. You're gonna have plenty of time to smash AI. We got lots more AI coming up, including. Well, I. I don't want to tease. I. I'll. I'll let you stay tuned. We still haven't talked about TikTok, Kathy. We got a lot to do. We got talking to do. Cybersecurity Senator Josh Hawley's proposed jail time for people who download Deep seek not, not an insignificant amount of daytime. It's jail time. It's the Decoupling America's Artificial intelligence capabilities from China Act D a I. Oh, you could have done better, Josh.
- [84:09]
Kathy Gellis
You could have done better so many ways.
- [84:11]
Leo Laporte
So many, so many ways. You could be fined not more than a million dollars and imprisoned for not more than 20 years.
- [84:21]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, well, how merciful of him.
- [84:25]
Leo Laporte
No more than 20 years. Okay, just for downloading Deepseek, which I have done now on many of my devices. That's the Chinese AI that apparently Josh is very worried about. Great to have all I wish this should be an eight hour show. There is so much to talk talk about. Last night I said, oh, do I have enough stories? And then I looked and I went, oh my God.
- [84:44]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, you sweet summer child.
- [84:46]
Lisa Schmeiser
What were you thinking?
- [84:47]
Leo Laporte
Oh, my God, do we have enough stories? But we also want to get out of here in an hour because there's some, I don't know, some football game going to happen a little later on. You're watching this Week in Tech with Lisa schmeiser of no jitter.com, daniel Rubino, Windows Central, and our own personal attorney, Kathy Gellis from Tech Dirt. Good to have all of you, by the way, not just tech dirt. Rstreet.org too. Right. You wrote a nice piece for them.
- [85:15]
Kathy Gellis
That was really cool. I'm a erstwhile fellow with them and I wrote a white paper.
- [85:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I didn't realize you were a fellow there.
- [85:24]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, partially. I don't know if I have a permanent title, but I did fellow under the auspices of a fellowship. I wrote a white paper about jawboning and the dmca, by the way, apparently.
- [85:36]
Leo Laporte
Jawboning, whatever that is, has a little bit to do with the TikTok case as well. Yep, I read your article. We'll talk about it when we return. But first, a word from our sponsor. A sponsor I'm very proud to say I not only use Steve Gibson uses. And we recommend heartily Bitwarden, the best password manager. Well, more than a password manager. They're a trusted leader in passwords, secret secrets and passkey management. By the way, I love passkeys. I wish more sites used it. When it first came out, you had passkeys on your phone, you had passkeys on your computer. Now, that bit warden supports passkeys. Wherever you have bit warden, you have your passkeys. And that has been a big improvement in how passkeys Works for me. Bit warden now has 10 million users in 180 countries. This is an open source success story. Over 50,000 business customers too. In fact, they've entered 2025 as the essential security solution for businesses of all sizes. Consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction by G2, recognized as a leader by Software Reviews Data Quadrant. Bitwarden continues to protect businesses worldwide. One of the reasons I love Bit Warden and I think it's because they're open source. They're always expanding their capabilities, they're always improving. Recently they announced the general availability of their native mobile apps for iOS and Android. I did not realize this. I'd been using Bitwarden for years, but it wasn't a native app on iOS. I had no idea. And it's made a huge difference. You know, I guess it was a, it was an Electron app or a View, a webview app. Key benefits of the native mobile app include on iOS and Android, faster load time, improved overall app functionality, iOS and Android platform specific design. So it really, you know, it looks like it belongs on the platform. Much better hardware integration. In fact that includes biometric authentication and multi device support. So that's really enhanced usability. I love it when I can just do the face ID and my Bit Warden and it's unlocked. They have strengthened their password manager now with ssh. This is really important. So if you use SSH as I do and you use use a key to log into ssh, you can now store your authorized SSH keys in Bitwarden. This is huge. Up to 90% of authorized SSH keys in large organizations just go unused because it's not convenient. Well now this new update centralizes cryptographic key management. Not just SSH but in general enabling secure storage import. You can even generate your SSH keys directly within the Bitwarden vault, which is a huge improvement for developers and IT professionals. I'm thrilled. I mean I used to have to do a whole bunch of command line foo. What sets Bitwarden apart is that they prioritize simplicity because they understand if a security tool isn't easy to use, isn't simple, people aren't going to use it right. Bit Warden's setup only takes a few minutes. You can easily import from most password management solutions. And of course because it's open source, that means Bit Warden source code can be inspected by anyone. They undergo regular or third party audits and very importantly they publish the full report. So you can see everything going on within Bitwarden and be reassured that it is absolutely secure. Look, your business deserves a cost effective solution for enhanced online security. See for yourself. Get started today with Bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan. Or get started for free across all devices as an individual user. Bitwarden.com twit that's bitwarden.com twit and by the way, let me underscore this because they're open source. If you're an individual user, it's free and you get all the capabilities, unlimited Passwords, Unlimited Devices, iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux. You also get pass keys. You also get hardware security keys. All of that in a free version, free forever for life. And that's nice. Bitwarden.com TWIT all right, let's talk TikTok, since that's still an ongoing thing, right?
- [89:54]
Kathy Gellis
I mean, we never resolved it. We just did something really stupid and here we are.
- [90:02]
Leo Laporte
So just to fill you in, this is the best previously on this Week in Tech. Kathy is a adamant supporter of the First Amendment, as we all should be, and says that TikTok is protected by the First Amendment. Not just TikTok itself, but every user of TikTok is exercising their right to free speech. There are many who say that or believe that TikTok is a security problem because it is a Chinese company presumably gives access. In fact, we had a OpenAI guy on Wednesday on the show said nobody should have. I don't have TikTok on my phone. You'd be crazy to have TikTok on your phone or Deep Seek or any of these apps.
- [90:44]
Kathy Gellis
And I'm not disputing that. I don't have it either, and for similar reasons. So let's just, you know, stipulate that TikTok is as much of a privacy menace as it's been accused. That notwithstanding, the question is, what does the government get to do about that? And I think the First Amendment says not to this. But the Supreme Court disagreed, although they disagreed very narrowly.
- [91:10]
Leo Laporte
But it was nine nothing. Right, Kathy? Were you surprised that it was unanimous? We should mention Kathy was in the court during the oral arguments we had you on. Shortly after that, she's admitted to the Supreme Court, to the bar.
- [91:27]
Kathy Gellis
So I wrote an amicus brief in the case arguing this is not how anything works. And I attended the oral argument listening to it. I was cautiously optimistic because it sort of, I think they kind of understood what the First Amendment issues were. But the whole thing was a mess.
- [91:45]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's even messier now.
- [91:47]
Kathy Gellis
It's even messier now. And so you ask about the 9 nothing and I think the 9 nothing is kind of a byproduct of they just wanted to get it all off its docket for whatever reason. And one of the things that concerns me is I don't know why they thought they were unable to stop the clock on this and provide and enjoin things and then have things being briefed at a proper pace when they could read all the briefs and get all the full argument to get all the amici to have time, not over their Christmas break, to be able to weigh in. So they ended up, because they didn't do that, they ended up with everything on a very accelerated schedule. And then we're kind of like, well, we heard the case, we got to do something. And I have a sense that the 90 decision that they came out with was the only thing they could kind of get everybody to agree on to get something out the door. So it's got a lot of framing to say, be really careful. We're only speaking to this particular situation as it applies to TikTok. You know, don't read too widely. We want to be cautious about not, you know, hurting technology. This and the other thing, they kind of acknowledge that they might be wrong, but they were wrong and they made a mess. And the only thing that I think is somewhat good about it is I think they could have made a worse mess, depending on what their reasoning was. But they made a pretty big mess anyway, both legally, in terms of how do we interpret First Amendment law going forward, but also in terms of what now happens to TikTok itself and all of its users. And that is a practical mess that has not been resolved. But basically it is unavailable in the United States and American users can't use it. But some of them are. Well, they're doing.
- [93:21]
Leo Laporte
Wait a minute. Didn't the President say we can't.
- [93:24]
Kathy Gellis
He can't say that. It doesn't help, and he did.
- [93:28]
Leo Laporte
Well, okay, I got it on here.
- [93:32]
Kathy Gellis
He is capable of saying many things. There are many words that he is able to project from his mouth. But in terms of any sort of lawful beneficence that he is legally and constitutionally and lawfully allowed to bestow, no. And it doesn't solve the problem, because as you were alluding to, the whole TikTok ban is yet another example of jawboning, because one of the things it does.
- [93:55]
Leo Laporte
What is jawboning?
- [93:56]
Kathy Gellis
Jawboning is going after, instead of going after the actual speaker that you're unhappy with and trying to regulate, which you may not be able to do. Thanks to the First Amendment, it's to put pressure on an intermediary they depend on and make it so that that intermediary can't do business and, and support the actual speaker. So it's a way of hurting a speaker by sticking it to somebody in the middle. And that is basically what jawboning is. That's what they were complaining about had happened with the Biden administration allegedly leaning on the platforms to turn to delete some speech and delete some users. That whole bit of if you didn't like it, you didn't go after those users. So because you couldn't because that would be unlawful, unconstitutional. So instead you went after the platforms and told them to do it and you can.
- [94:45]
Leo Laporte
Both Apple and Google have removed TikTok and all the other ByteDance apps for that matter from their store. TikTok is now telling Android users you can sideload the app, you can't get it on a Mac, I mean on an iPhone in any form or fashion.
- [95:01]
Kathy Gellis
Right. So the question, so TikTok can't do stuff in the United States, but nobody in the United states can help TikTok do anything, including the app stores who had been providing it.
- [95:13]
Leo Laporte
Couldn't though. Couldn't Apple say, well the President said it's okay so we're going to put it back in the store.
- [95:19]
Kathy Gellis
I would not. If I'm their in house counsel, what's the risk? Everything that there's no way he could actually make that, make it so that is lawful. He the law.
- [95:29]
Leo Laporte
The law which was upheld by the Supreme Court has pretty substantial fines.
- [95:33]
Kathy Gellis
It has pretty substantial. He can't forgive them of those fines. He doesn't have that power.
- [95:38]
Leo Laporte
But who's going to prosecute them?
- [95:42]
Kathy Gellis
You are playing a lot of Russian roulette. If you basically rely on, on Trump's representation and the fact that you think that Pam Bondi is going to just sort of let you get away with it and she is. That may be true as a practical standpoint now, but it's a rather corrupt result. So you can bet your eyes on it.
- [96:01]
Leo Laporte
I understand why Apple and Google aren't because why take the chance, right? There's no, there's no downside to not having in the store. There's definitely a potential downside for having in the store.
- [96:13]
Kathy Gellis
And it's not just Google. The app stores is the easiest target, but it also targets any other web hosts. So there's also the issue of the CDNs and stuff, although I thought maybe one of them did come back online to help TikTok. But I think it's a really questionable, questionable move. And it was based on a promise that Trump had at least originally made.
- [96:33]
Leo Laporte
I can go right now to TikTok.com download and download this. You have to do it on an Android device because it allows you to sideline load. Apple iPhones do not. Presumably there's a web host somewhere. I don't know if it's in China. There's a CDN probably as well. I don't know where it is.
- [96:55]
Kathy Gellis
Well, I think what kids today are doing is VPNing and trying to get it from Canada. But you have to. A lot of. Well, to do that, you have to go through a lot of hoops to be able to do it. But in theory, all of this is unlawful because it's not just the app stores, but also anybody who's involved with hosting also is running afoul of the law. And they also had to go down even if they could rely on Trump's representation. He made the representation before he was technically president, so they were accruing potential liability.
- [97:24]
Leo Laporte
Oh, come on. That's a technicality.
- [97:26]
Kathy Gellis
And, you know, if his presidency doesn't last four years, you may be inside the statute of limitations. You know, it's a bet the company decision on something that just really isn't worth it. But it also is reason why the law was. Was jawboning and bad on that regard. Because the way we decided to solve the problem of impinging on certain user speech is to. Or. Or even TikTok itself, like the people that we wanted to go after, we did it by going after middlemen to make it impossible, you know, to just mess with the people that we were really going.
- [97:58]
Leo Laporte
So I just did a. Who is on TikTok? And it is. The registrar is gandhi.net. it is on Akamai is their CDN.
- [98:11]
Kathy Gellis
I think Akamai is playing chicken with law. But at this point, this is not the biggest kettle of fish to. For anybody to worry about.
- [98:19]
Leo Laporte
I just don't think Bambondi is going to go.
- [98:22]
Kathy Gellis
I don't think you can rely on anything. And including, like, I think I made the argument in my Tech Turk post to say, okay, let's look at what the math would be for how much you would potentially owe if you were found.
- [98:33]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's outrageous. Yeah.
- [98:35]
Kathy Gellis
So in theory, they can extract enough money, just a dollar less than that, and it's a huge amount of money. And just for this, and this is one law, what's the next law going to look like that this idea that you could basically hope for their benevolence when this is really extremely a corrupt offer to have been made. And the idea that, oh, we can rely on this and we'll be okay, it's not rational. And quite frankly, if I'm shareholders, I'm going to start wondering what these companies were thinking of. This is. I don't think this level of decision making is cleared by the business judgment rule.
- [99:10]
Leo Laporte
Daniel, should, should Microsoft buy TikTok? By the way, they're one of the companies that's being mentioned. Microsoft, Oracle. Elon says, no, I don't want it.
- [99:23]
Daniel Rubino
But you never know with Elon.
- [99:25]
Leo Laporte
He didn't want Twitter either. So I don't know.
- [99:28]
Daniel Rubino
So I've joked about Microsoft buying them. Whether it's good or bad depends on your opinion of TikTok, if you like TikTok.
- [99:36]
Leo Laporte
But you wouldn't get the algorithm. So that's part of the problem. The Chinese government says the algorithm is not for sale and apparently they control that. So you wouldn't really get the users though. And that's not in an insignificant.
- [99:49]
Lisa Schmeiser
They're going to be looking for something new. Yeah, yeah.
- [99:52]
Kathy Gellis
You're not getting.
- [99:53]
Daniel Rubino
Preventing AI would be huge.
- [99:54]
Leo Laporte
You're not getting the users.
- [99:55]
Lisa Schmeiser
No, you're not the users.
- [99:57]
Kathy Gellis
I mean, I'm speaking of the list of posts in my head which have not actually been published on Tech Turn yet because I have to finish writing them. I really think there's a question about how alienable a platform actually is, about how when you sell it, how much can you sell? Because platforms are really not just a corporate asset, they are also. They are essentially the community and the community is not only vulnerable and all those choices.
- [100:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but if you.
- [100:25]
Lisa Schmeiser
No to jump off, to jump off of Kathy's point, we don't have in 20 odd years of Internet community aggregation and dissipation, social platforms rising and falling, we have no good example of any company successfully acquiring or monetizing a social network and having remain half.
- [100:46]
Leo Laporte
Elon Musk bought, bought Twitter and got all of the Twitter users.
- [100:52]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, Daniel, I could argue though that LinkedIn, it's a social network in the capacity that people use it to network with each other to get jobs. But with something like MySpace or something like Twitter or something like TikTok, the value was in being part of what felt like a bigger community of affinity or a bigger community of lifestyle or a bigger community of social connection. And, and the shutdown. The shutdown and revival of TikTok has already rocked people where they're like, oh, this isn't a tenable way to make a living. This isn't a tenable way to have a community. What have I been doing with my time? Like, the bubble has already burst, socially speaking. All of these people are going to be looking for new places to go.
- [101:34]
Kathy Gellis
And even if we accept LinkedIn as a rare counter example, I would even say it's not a counterexample because a lot of what LinkedIn has grown to be now maybe have been while it's been a Microsoft property anyway, that we probably did see a dip. But to the extent that it's something interesting and viable now, it's interesting and viable under Microsoft stewardship. And if Microsoft divested and sold it to somebody else, we would see a shakeout and lose something really integral, not just in terms of what we can count on the platform operator to deliver, but that the community itself will be shattered and lose the value proposition for why they're there in the first place.
- [102:11]
Daniel Rubino
So what about WhatsApp and Instacart? Instagram?
- [102:14]
Lisa Schmeiser
Instagram's.
- [102:16]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah, but they were both Instagram.
- [102:19]
Leo Laporte
Meta bought Instagram and actually grew. I think if Microsoft or some credible company bought Tick Tock, there's no reason people would leave Tick Tock.
- [102:27]
Lisa Schmeiser
Well, the reasons people aren't building communities of affinity on Instagram the same way they were. It's a business channel now, which is.
- [102:34]
Leo Laporte
Fine, but, well, that's, that's how it's been mismanaged by Meta. I don't think that's because Meta bought.
- [102:38]
Kathy Gellis
Them, but that's always the risk.
- [102:40]
Daniel Rubino
The issue with Tick Tock is mostly about. It's about where they're storing the data, right?
- [102:44]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah.
- [102:44]
Daniel Rubino
And that's the whole argument here is that they want the data stored in the United States. So the US has control over consumer data due to security reasons.
- [102:52]
Leo Laporte
JD Vance has been put in charge of the acquisition or sale or whatever it is. Trump has talked about creating a sovereign wealth fund the US does not have.
- [103:02]
Kathy Gellis
All of this is unlawful.
- [103:03]
Leo Laporte
Saudi Arabia has shouldn't be given the.
- [103:05]
Kathy Gellis
Time of day, all these things.
- [103:07]
Leo Laporte
Who's going to stop him?
- [103:08]
Kathy Gellis
Well, that's a separate problem. But assuming we still have any some sort of constitutional order and functioning law.
- [103:13]
Leo Laporte
We don't.
- [103:14]
Kathy Gellis
Well, I'm not willing to surrender that yet.
- [103:17]
Leo Laporte
I'm not either. But what are you going to do about it?
- [103:20]
Kathy Gellis
We are going to look for what vectors of power we still have to exert over things and just sort of saying, well that's good.
- [103:28]
Leo Laporte
No, it's more than are the federal marshals going to.
- [103:31]
Kathy Gellis
We have, we have things like, we still have the ability to protest. We still have the ability to put.
- [103:37]
Leo Laporte
That's all we've got. So what happens if a court rules, if a court rules something and then President Trump says, yeah, no, Ag Bondi, General Bondi, are you gonna do anything about it? No.
- [103:50]
Kathy Gellis
Well, then we say goodbye to the union. But we are not there yet. And I think there's a lot of people whose allyship they're counting on who are not going to necessarily go along with that. But we'll see. But one of the other things. So we have, have, you know, just civil. We still have power as a people. We have power to protest. We also have state power. And then we also have. And so this was the other bits that I was writing on Tector. There is the ability, there are other avenues to. If we act soon and we start to impose and there's vectors of doing this legal liability on the people that Trump and Musk are counting on to do their, their bidding, they may see that it's not going to be worth their while. Because if they have liability judgments against them, even if the courts can't, even if the federal courts can't enforce it themselves, those judgments are enforceable in states where they have assets. And that is a really critical leverage vector of power that we still have over these people. They can only take our country if they have enough people to make willing to help them do it. And if we act now, I think there's some avenues of attack that we can make it not worth the while of the people that they're depending on do it.
- [105:00]
Leo Laporte
So Congress has introduced something called we had cosa. Now we have cosma, a law that. This came out of committee. I don't know whether it has much chance of surviving Congress. I have a feeling it might in the current climate, preventing anybody under the age of 13 from using social media just as it is in Australia, period. This also is applicable to a case that the Supreme Court just heard oral arguments about and it's in the state of Texas. Free Speech Coalition versus Texas AG Paxton. Texas passed a law requiring the age gating of certain Internet sites. Do you think a the Supreme Court will overturn that law, which would probably then make moot any attempt to block social media for people under 13.
- [105:53]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, is this the Texas law that you just had?
- [105:55]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah.
- [105:56]
Kathy Gellis
So one interesting thing is just the other day they managed to get at the district court an injunction of yet another age gating law that came out of Texas that had been challenged by, I think Nat Choice was probably the plaintiff. It was, I think, the same lawyers. The thing that's at the Supreme Court right now is I do not like the level of comfort that too many of the justices seem to have about whether age getting was appropriate for. For Internet. For the Internet. But what Justice Sotomayor pointed out was that is not the issue before them. The issue before them was that when it went to the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the fifth Circuit used, I think, a rational basis test for it. Maybe it was intermediate scrutiny, but it was, it was definitely not the level of scrutiny that attacks on First Amendment rights normally requires. And all we need the Supreme Court to do right now is say it was supposed to be strict scrutiny. Go back 5th Circuit, try again. Now you review the district court and use the right standard.
- [106:58]
Leo Laporte
Because they didn't do that with TikTok.
- [107:00]
Kathy Gellis
They didn't do it in. Well, so they sort of did it with TikTok, kind of. So what happened at the district court, at the appeals court in TikTok, which is where it started because Congress short circuited the whole path and it began the challenge at the district, at the court of appeals was the. That court said, yeah, First Amendment rights are implicated. And we will presume without deciding that strict scrutiny, the highest level, was appropriate to have to use to decide whether the ban was constitutional or not. But then using that, allegedly using that standard, they then decided, yeah, it was totally fine. Which basically guts the utility of this very strict standard because very little should be able to. To leap over those obstacles.
- [107:48]
Leo Laporte
I don't want to have people to have to have a law degree to understand the conversation. So we'll kind of hold it at that point. But something we've talked about quite a bit in the past with you, Kathy, and I think I'm starting to understand it. But these are legal niceties and I don't know how much they have to do with what's happening in the political.
- [108:09]
Kathy Gellis
Sphere, but they do have a lot.
- [108:11]
Leo Laporte
Well, I do, I understand, but I don't know if that's going to make.
- [108:14]
Kathy Gellis
Any difference because of every. Because the timing of when we all shrug and say, oh my gosh, we're screwed. There may be a point where that is true, but it is really important not to just shrug too soon and give up when we still have legal organs and legal principles that may still be operative. So the details do matter because they also matter for when and how and where. When and how to get upset and how to base best apply. That being Upset.
- [108:41]
Leo Laporte
I am not going marching downtown with a sign that says, apply strict scrutiny.
- [108:46]
Kathy Gellis
I probably would, but, I mean, that may not be the thing that is necessarily going to save. Look, the TikTok thing is also from the aftermath of the end of the Biden administration, and now we are kind of in a whole new world. So if you want to say, like, does the TikTok ban matter? I mean, so many other things have overtaken it, where we have bigger fish to fry. I agree. But under the old fish market rules, the old fish market is they really made a mess of things, and that was a sort of mess. That is why things like what we're seeing in now are more able to take root, but at least, like, we're able to talk to each other, organize, still have access to the Internet to do these things, because the First Amendment wasn't completely undermined when it came to. When it came to Internet speech. And so that's why, like, those details really matter. Because if we were still living in the old fish market, I really want to hold the line to not make it too easy for the things the government wants to do to be too easy for it to do. Because if it can do them, then Trump legitimately, legitimately can do them for us. Right now, he's doing them illegitimately. And that is really a significant difference in terms of what we're fighting for and what tools we have to do that. Fighting with.
- [109:55]
Leo Laporte
The Senate Commerce Committee approved Kosma, the Kids Off Social Media act on Wednesday to ban children under 13 from social media. Lisa, you've got a young person in your home. Should kids be blocked from social media under 13?
- [110:18]
Lisa Schmeiser
The reason I'm hesitant to say blanket yes or blanket no is because I think it would be a disservice to any young person to block them. And as opposed to teaching them responsible agree and modeling responsible use.
- [110:41]
Leo Laporte
And who better than the parents to do that? What I would say, 13 is an arbitrary number. A parent knows best what a kid can and cannot handle.
- [110:50]
Lisa Schmeiser
Also, you have to point out a lot of parents are not responsible social media users.
- [110:55]
Leo Laporte
Well, whether that will work well or not, I don't know. Yeah, but.
- [110:59]
Lisa Schmeiser
But one of the things I would point out is a lot of apps and services aimed explicitly at children are designed to boost engagement and addictive behavior.
- [111:14]
Leo Laporte
And we banned advertising to children on children's TV shows. I mean, we've done advertising.
- [111:21]
Lisa Schmeiser
I just remember sitting in a briefing with the head. I was sitting in a session one time where the person who was then the head of the YouTube Kids app was happily chattering about how great it was that they had figured out a way to boost engagement. So kids just kept clicking on videos and watching. And to them, this was a sign that the app was succeeding. Like, it didn't matter what was getting poured into the heads of the kids. It didn't matter that there's a clear trade off. And if you're spending this much time online consuming other people's content, that's time away. Like, they were. Like, we've succeeded with this app.
- [111:56]
Leo Laporte
I understand that, but I don't think government should get involved.
- [111:59]
Lisa Schmeiser
No. I do think, though, that you've posed an interesting question, which is, if you have apps that are specifically designed to boost engagement independent of what's actually being consumed, is there a point where there should be regulation or there should be limits? The same way there were limits on advertising to kids or the content of children's cartoon programs?
- [112:20]
Kathy Gellis
This is why, when I'm getting to talk about strict scrutiny, it matters because if you're going to speak in broad terms of is there a point those levels of scrutiny help you figure out where constitutionally you can get to that point? Because sometimes things can, can survive strict scrutiny where we have a compelling state, compelling reason for the government to act, and they've narrowly tailored the way they're going to act so that it, like, best deals with the problem they're trying to solve and without collateral damage to the rest of the right. That's why strict scrutiny when it comes to the First Amendment and free speech principles is so important. And that's why I'm like, apoplectic, as the word is, about what happened with TikTok, because at the D.C. circuit, they said they were using strict scrutiny, but they used something that was much, much lower. They're like, yeah, the government had a reason. I'm sure everything they did was fine and they didn't look for any narrow tailoring. And then what they did, it's. The Supreme Court is they used.
- [113:17]
Leo Laporte
They even said, we don't know what the reason is, but I'm sure it's a good one.
- [113:21]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, I mean, they, they did a little bit better defending it, but I don't want to give them that many, many props. And then what the Supreme Court did, which I think is both good and bad, is they still allowed it, but they used intermediate scrutiny. And I'm really concerned that they used the lesser standard. I think the situation really called for the higher standard, but they didn't ruin the higher standard by doing what the D.C. court of Appeals had done which was to use the very difficult standard and then just making it open season in which case we don't have a really strict scan.
- [113:55]
Leo Laporte
Cosma Kids off social media act was sponsored by Ted Cruz and Hawaii's Brian Schatz. Debbie Democrat and Schatz said when you got Ted Cruz and myself in agreement on something, you pretty much captured the ideological spectrum of a whole.
- [114:15]
Kathy Gellis
He should be rethinking what he's doing.
- [114:18]
Leo Laporte
No, no, I'm afraid not. I'm afraid not.
- [114:22]
Daniel Rubino
Honestly think, I think this law should go into effect that people want and parent. It's going to help parents out. I don't see a problem with it. We have arbitrary laws for youth all the time. Not they got it pornography you can't buy. They can't. They can't buy cigarettes, they can't join the army, they can't drive a car. We have tons of these restrictions in place for youth.
- [114:44]
Kathy Gellis
So not just willy nilly.
- [114:46]
Lisa Schmeiser
One of the things that I find really interesting, the feedback every law is willy nilly. The feeling I get from kids is that they're actually kind of relieved when teachers take their phones in school.
- [114:58]
Daniel Rubino
Yes.
- [114:58]
Lisa Schmeiser
And the feedback that my daughter and her friends had of the TikTok ban was, was good. The people we know who are always on TikTok are super unhappy anyway. Maybe this gives them a chance to reset. It was really interesting to me that the, the law, the proposed law seems to be more vibes rather than data like you know, with shots and cruise.
- [115:18]
Kathy Gellis
It's not supposed to be how to run the railroad.
- [115:20]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah, it's more vibes but data. But I would love to see some data that backs up when you have the people who are being targeted by the law going yeah, get the phones out of my hands. I don't want them. I want an excuse not to have them in school. Find us the data that explains why the vibe.
- [115:36]
Kathy Gellis
Why the vibe it is there. We do have the data. We have the data that a suggests that the negativity is maybe overstated and we also have the data to suggest that there's a ton of positive and so basically now we're looking at a season where we are about to lose our constitutional democracy and everybody needs to be able to kind of come together and push back against it. And we're talking about taking away the tools to do it. I mean that's lunacy. If we think this is a problem, if we think dictatorship is bad, why would we make it that the dictator can lawfully suppress the ability of the people to come together and speak out against it. And even.
- [116:11]
Leo Laporte
Even if you're under 13.
- [116:13]
Kathy Gellis
Well it isn't about under 13, it's about 13 to 18. So you actually are dealing with people who are growing into adults, very eminently adults. There's no gradation between ages and at 13 are world aware enough to be able to start to make decisions both about their own well being and also the world that they're living in.
- [116:32]
Leo Laporte
Australia's law is 16 and under and I be very. It goes into effect later this year. I'd be very interested to see what happens.
- [116:38]
Kathy Gellis
Australia does not have a First Amendment or any equivalent, so a lot more can happen.
- [116:43]
Leo Laporte
Do they have strict scrutiny?
- [116:44]
Kathy Gellis
No, they don't even have like an embodied right of free speech.
- [116:48]
Leo Laporte
They have wallabies though.
- [116:49]
Daniel Rubino
That's.
- [116:49]
Kathy Gellis
They have wallabies.
- [116:51]
Daniel Rubino
What's with the First Amendment here though? Like I don't understand is it for. We're talking about first amendment for the corporations or. Because as a 14 year old, I'm not sure. What right do you have.
- [117:00]
Kathy Gellis
14 year olds have first amendment rights. This is not new ground to travel. Sure.
- [117:04]
Daniel Rubino
But to post to Instagram, potentially.
- [117:08]
Kathy Gellis
Potentially.
- [117:08]
Daniel Rubino
That's speech.
- [117:10]
Leo Laporte
Isn't that speech?
- [117:11]
Kathy Gellis
It is speech. It's expression. And the idea that youth don't have the rights of free expression, that has never.
- [117:17]
Daniel Rubino
Does Instagram have right to moderate that.
- [117:19]
Kathy Gellis
Free speech Then there's also First Amendment rights to moderate that speech. That the platform.
- [117:24]
Daniel Rubino
At the end of the day though, their speech is moderated, which is not protecting their.
- [117:28]
Kathy Gellis
It's moderated by private parties. That is.
- [117:31]
Leo Laporte
That's the difference. Not by the government.
- [117:33]
Kathy Gellis
Right. The First Amendment speaks to the government cannot come in and decide what speech is good and what speech is bad. But a private party, like I just had to delete a troll on my Facebook page. Like I get to.
- [117:44]
Leo Laporte
I have the right to cut your mic, but I won't. But it's my right. But President Trump cannot come in here and say cut her mic.
- [117:52]
Kathy Gellis
Right.
- [117:53]
Leo Laporte
That would be. That's against the Constitution of the United States. Such as it is. You can keep it.
- [117:59]
Kathy Gellis
You are allowed to card me, but he's not allowed to come in and card me and he's not allowed to say if he's carded me that. Oh you.
- [118:08]
Leo Laporte
Is Elon Musk allowed to come in here now?
- [118:11]
Kathy Gellis
He. There's a really interesting thing about whether he has now merged himself in a way that he is a state actor so. Well, no, he wouldn't.
- [118:21]
Leo Laporte
I hope he's a State actor. Because if he's not, how come he has access to our private information in the Treasury Department and the opm? And I hope he's a state actor. You think he's not a state actor?
- [118:33]
Kathy Gellis
I don't know if I necessarily want him to be a state actor. I don't know if he necessarily is. But even if he's a state actor, he's not a state actor. Enough.
- [118:40]
Leo Laporte
If he's not, then he's in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, as you point out.
- [118:44]
Kathy Gellis
I have been touting that as a legal theory, and one of the reasons why I've been pushing it is because we talked about how I don't want everybody to shrug and give up too soon because we do have leverages of power, and one of the leverages of power power is if we can impose civil liability and get money damages from any of the people who are helping with this nonsense that are then enforceable. Not in federal court, but it's state courts, including blue states, where they may have assets that can scare the crap out of them. Hopefully enough that they back off.
- [119:16]
Leo Laporte
Hold this thought, because I do want to talk about Dosh in just a minute. We got to take a break.
- [119:19]
Lisa Schmeiser
Oh, do we have to?
- [119:22]
Leo Laporte
Not for long. You can exercise your free speech rights just a little bit. We don't have to. We could skip right over it. I feel like there is a tech angle a little bit.
- [119:37]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, a huge tech angle, Absolutely.
- [119:39]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [119:40]
Leo Laporte
We'll stick with that part. We won't talk politics so much. Kathy Gellis is here. She is an impassioned advocate of strict school scrutiny. Okay.
- [119:53]
Kathy Gellis
Fundamental rights like free speech.
- [119:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. No. And so, as I understand it now, strict scrutiny, really? You have the First Amendment rights, but there are some things that might curtail those rights, and it seems sensible that that should be a very high bar.
- [120:09]
Kathy Gellis
Right, exactly.
- [120:10]
Leo Laporte
And that's all you're saying. Strict scrutiny is the highest possible bar before you take away somebody's free speech rights.
- [120:16]
Kathy Gellis
Right. Because we don't want to just say, oh, well, we like, you know, it was kind of where the discussion was going. Well, we've made exceptions for advertisement length and this. Then the other thing, and it's like the fact that we have made exceptions doesn't mean we just get to always ignore it. What it means is that we looked at each exception and kind of quizzed it for what is the reason, and is it narrowly tailored enough and then based on what the answers to those questions were decided. Whether. Nope. Unconstitutional. You don't get to do it. Or, or, okay, fine, we will make this very, very, very narrow exception. But just because we made an exception once doesn't mean that we always get to make exceptions. They all have to be tested.
- [120:55]
Leo Laporte
I think that's a very good way to put it. Thank you, Kathy. Also here, Daniel Rubino, who thinks kids are stupid and should be off social media right away. Do you have kids, Daniel?
- [121:06]
Daniel Rubino
Hell, no.
- [121:09]
Leo Laporte
Come on.
- [121:10]
Daniel Rubino
Avoiding that whole mess.
- [121:12]
Leo Laporte
Editor in chief, smart man. Editor in chief, Windows Central. You know, I mean, your argument, completely credible. This is why this is so tough, this stuff. It is not an easy thing to understand or act upon. And that's why we, you know, we chew it out here. That's the whole point of this. Lisa Schmeisser is also here from jitter.com I had a little jitter in my. No, jitter. Little jitter. No jitter. Just because of this kombucha. It really causes jitter. Have to stop the kombucha. Our show today, brought to you by, I'm very happy to say, ExpressVPN. Have you ever browsed in incognito mode? Probably not as incognito as you might think. In fact, Google even admitted it. They just settled a $5 billion lawsuit after being accused of secretly tracking users in incognito mode. Google's defense. Oh, incognito doesn't mean invisible. Well, in fact, all your online activity is still 100% visible to third parties, unless you use ExpressVPN, the only VPN I use. I trust you better believe when I go online, especially when I'm traveling in airports, coffee shops in other countries, ExpressVPN is my go to. Why does everyone need ExpressVPN? Well, without ExpressVPN, third parties can still see every website you visit, even in incognito mode. That means your isp, your mobile network provider, the admin of that WI fi network you've discovered. Why is ExpressVPN the best? Because it hides your IP address, rerouting 100% of your traffic through secure, encrypted servers. Easy to use. Just fire up the app, click one button to get protected. It works on all devices, iPhone, phones, Android phones, laptops, tablets, and more. So you can stay private on the go. And it's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and the Verge. Protect your online privacy today. Visit expressvpn.com twit that's E X P R-E-S-S vpn.com twit you get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package. Expressvpn.com express/twit. We thank him so much for supporting this show, this contentious program. Actually it's really good. I don't, I hate it when a show. Everybody's just kind of. Yeah, well whatever. I think it's really important to fight for these issues. We really have a fight on our hands right now and, and we need to, and we need to kind of think about it and talk about it. There's a little, I have a little concern about the young people. People Elon is putting in are government institutions. Now some of them are really geniuses. One of the Doge interns is the kid who decoded those scrolls. Remember it was the $700,000 Vesuvius challenge. Ancient scrolls that had been buried in volcanic dust dust, the Herculaneum scrolls. And he used AI and scanning technique to actually read those. I mean that's a pretty smart kid. 23 year old Luke Ferriter. So there's a guy, smart guy. But some of the team is not maybe the best in the world. One of the Doge teens is a former. This is from Krebs on security. Former denizen. That's a loaded word of the comm which, which is an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels Brian Krebs writes that function as a kind of distributed cyber criminal social network. And in fact there's some evidence that this kid, Edward Karostein, who is maybe you've seen him in the news as big balls. He founded when he was 16 years old. Tesla, Sexy Lloyd LLC, which controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian registered domains. One of those domains which is still active, offers a serv. This is the kid who's in our. The Treasury Department right now offers a service called Healthy, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market. It's something that would have come up in a security clearance review but of course there are no security clearance reviews for the Doge kids. He also someone using a telegram handle tied to him solicited a DDoS for hire service in 2022. And he worked for a short time, got fired from as it turns out, a company that specializes in protecting companies from DDoS attacks. But this company, Packet Ware or Diamond CD was actually full of former hackers DDoS in fact experts because they had set up quite a few DDoS operations. Corestein's LinkedIn profile said he worked at an anti DDoS company called Path Networks Wired. You might have read the Wired article described it as a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed black hat hackers. Anyway, it goes on and on. I recommend reading the Krebs article because there's a lot of stuff that would be at very least cause for concern.
- [126:53]
Kathy Gellis
All of it. All of it. I think there's, I think there's nothing that should be, you know, if they. Just the fact that they didn't maybe smash everything is no relief. The entire incursion and the mode and the method that the incursion was made, if not outright unlawful, was at least unwise and, and I think unlawful because we, we have obsessed about keeping our most sensitive systems as protected as possible. We've passed laws that tried to punish incursions into them that were unauthorized. And what we have basically done is handed the kings to the kingdom of our most, you know, sensitive systems and our most sensitive data. And we've handed it to people who did not have appropriate authorization in the way the law requires. Requires. That is bad. That is a problem. It has caused harm. And we just don't necessarily know yet the full measure of that harm, but we know it's accrued and we know it's accruing.
- [127:47]
Leo Laporte
To add to that, we had heard that the resignation, the fork in the road resignation emails would not apply to CISA staffers. In fact, it did. And this is cisa, of course, very important, important part of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, initially excluded from those fork in the road deferred resignation offers. However, on Wednesday, some CESA staffers were given the offer. That gives them one day to decide, by the way, just hours, in fact, to decide whether to accept it. This is according to three sources who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity. Sisa, I think everybody who listens to us knows, knows, is extremely important to national security and perhaps a problem for those Doge staffers who've been entering the State Department, the Treasury Department, opm, opm, usaid, usaid.
- [128:51]
Kathy Gellis
Now they're GSA and nih. And I think their sights are set on basically everything.
- [128:56]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah, I mean, so remember that the Doge, no one associated with Doge has any loyalty to national security whatsoever. Not they're not operating in the interest of the country. They're operating in the interest of the whims of Elon Musk. And what he's doing is the same thing that was extensively documented in the excellent Ryan Mack Katie Conger book Character Limit, where they talked about how when he took over Twitter, the, the primary Driving force behind everything he did was to reduce, to eliminate, to, to, to get rid of things and call it change and call it transformation, when instead all it was was just breaking things with no understanding of what he was breaking and no consequence. That's what's happening here too. And we can talk about the kid who decoded the scrolls, but just because you happen to be very good at one specific data problem doesn't make you smart. Smart in solving. In solving a question that shouldn't have to be asked, which is how can we eliminate entire departments of the government?
- [130:08]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, exactly. And the loyalties matter. I mean, what's ridiculous if we just got through banning TikTok by bending the Constitution possibly to a breaking point because we were worried about national security and China slurping its data, and so then when we just went and handed all of the data to a gang of Nazis. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
- [130:28]
Leo Laporte
So we have people in our chat room who say they're acting in our best interest despite your disapproval. They say it's, you know, it's. Nothing scares Democrats more than full transparency. We don't have the transparency, and I don't think I would.
- [130:43]
Lisa Schmeiser
Transparent exactly. What, what in any part of this decision process has been transparent. Also, it's a fairly rich allegation to make whatever the entire show screaming about AI and the government's not wasteful, though, if you take a look, the one government that consistently fails audit is the Department of Defense. That's where your waste is. That's where the lack of transparency is. I don't see doge sweeping through there. They're going after places that are teeny tiny percentages of the US I disagree.
- [131:10]
Leo Laporte
And push back, but I would stipulate the government can be wasteful and has been wasteful. And undoubtedly there are government programs that are pork, that are boondoggles that Congress put in that there to benefit, you know, their constituency.
- [131:25]
Kathy Gellis
But they are.
- [131:26]
Leo Laporte
I mean, but there's a legal way. There's a legal way to go through these, and there's an illegal way to go through these.
- [131:32]
Daniel Rubino
This is what happens when you have 40 years of Democrats, Republicans exploiting government, growing the federal government, despite the fact Republicans forever were like against federalism, you know, against large governments. And then they got into power, of course, and they spent like crazy as well and continue to grow. And we grew these institutions and recruited bureaucracies. And the number one job of a bureaucracy is to protect itself. It's to make sure it's still needed.
- [132:00]
Leo Laporte
So are you in favor of this? Is this a Good way to cut.
- [132:03]
Daniel Rubino
Favor of it, theoretically. Like this idea of going through and cleaning out and getting rid of all stuff in a government and just being super aggressive. I'm for it the way they're doing it now. No, I'm not. The way that I don't care for Elon Musk, I don't trust him. I feel like a lot, a lot of the things that they're going after are self serving and I'm really worried.
- [132:22]
Leo Laporte
About firing the director of the FAA, for instance, because he was the one who stopped SpaceX's launches because they, they were unsafe.
- [132:30]
Daniel Rubino
Congress is, you know, the problem.
- [132:33]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, sorry, go ahead.
- [132:34]
Daniel Rubino
I was just going to say the issue here is one thing I learned, you know, a major in political science many years ago, but you study the French Revolution. The problem is, is whenever you have a system going to one extreme for a very long time is there's always a counter revolution is often just as extreme and negative. And that's what we're seeing.
- [132:53]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, the Reign of Terror was not, was not a great improvement over Louis xvi, even though it was about freedom.
- [133:01]
Daniel Rubino
Right.
- [133:01]
Kathy Gellis
But I wouldn't stipulate to that pretense that that's what's going on here. Even if Congress was wrong, its job is to raise money and decide where it gets spent. And that's supposed to happen until we decide to elect different members of Congress.
- [133:14]
Daniel Rubino
Right.
- [133:14]
Kathy Gellis
We didn't, you know, we did that slightly, but we didn't do that very much. But that's only the part thing because you're talking about, oh well, we maybe we' overspent, but we're also looking at Keynesian economics which talk about that what we spend also has beneficial effects on the economy. And the real question really needs to be whether in terms of when we evaluate whether we're overspending or not, is whether we're getting value for the money. And all of these programs that they're deciding are waste and want to gut are things where we're, we're spending this money and it's producing value to America's own interests. I mean, even if you just do it with how much we spend on, you know, we pay American farmers for their rice so that we can feed hungry people around the world, which not only gives money to the farmers, but also make sure that we don't have starving people and people like America a little bit more. So the only question of its waste is are we spending money and getting no value out of it? But we're clearly spending the money and getting value out of it. So the whole idea, I don't want.
- [134:09]
Leo Laporte
To debate that because honestly, now this is political. So let's go back to the technology Monday morning, Thomas Shed, who was appointed Technology Transformation Services director and ally of Elon Musk, told GSA workers that the agency's new administrator is pursuing an AI first strategy. He wants, he wants. It's not, it's not a question of AI coming in and finding where the fat is. It's actually AI running the agency. Agency, the gsa, the government Services agency. What does it do? It does a lot. In what he described as an AI first strategy, sources say Shed provided a handful of examples of projects the GSA acting administrator is looking to prioritize, including the development of AI coding agents that would be available for all agencies. GSA provides government services. Right. He made it clear that he believes much of the work at TTS and the broader government, particularly around finance tasks, could be automated automate the accounting, a cybersecurity expert told Wired on Monday. This reds raises red flags. Automating the government's not the same as and as, I don't know, self driving cars. People, especially people who aren't experts in the subject domain coming into projects, often think this is dumb and then find out how hard the thing is. Really, honestly, I wouldn't let a Tesla drive me around. I definitely don't want a self driving government.
- [135:55]
Kathy Gellis
No. I mean we're government biased, the people for the people. And this is we had systems for how it was supposed to work and we have systems for how to change it if we don't like the way it's working. And none of them are this, this is something else. This is a lot of power that was usurped by people who don't have the authority to usurp as much power they've helped themselves.
- [136:13]
Leo Laporte
Can the president give them that authority?
- [136:14]
Kathy Gellis
No. I think the answer is no. There are statutes that constrain his power, plus the text of the Constitution itself, which tells him that his job is to enforce the law, not to ignore it. Between the constitutional text and the law that's actually been written that prescribes how he can use his power, he doesn't have the power to say yeah, you guys are fine, go do whatever you want. Because there are laws that say that's not how it works. Because the Congress representing the people supposed to be able to observe and keep track of what's going on and make sure that the power is being wielded in ways that the people approve of.
- [136:49]
Leo Laporte
It is concerning that this is happening in invisibly.
- [136:52]
Kathy Gellis
It's happening invisibly without any transparency or without any transparency. Because that's. And that's what the allegations that DOGE is illegal is that there were rules about. If you wanted to empower certain people to do certain things, there were rules that had to be followed manifest in different laws about which people and how do you empower them, and what boxes do you have to check? And it wasn't just bureaucracy. It was just. It was to make sure that there would be that supervisory capacity to figure out how power was getting wielded and none of what DOGE is empowered to do comply with any of those rules. And that matters for what I wrote about on Tech Dirt, which gets back into the technical, which is, I think that the authority that the DOGE brothers have wielded in these systems potentially makes them personally liable for Computer Fraud and Abuse act violations. Because I think it is inherently without authorization that they've been in there and demanded that access. And if. Because the power that was given to them was not lawfully given to them, in which case they're there like any other wrongful hacker would be there, they just happen to have gone through the front door. And if that is true.
- [138:01]
Daniel Rubino
The problem with all this, though, is it's perception. There's a reason why people aren't in the streets protesting all this right now is because no one likes the federal government and a lot of people don't believe it works for them. And this is a perspective, perception, messaging issue. Right? Because people aren't upset that a lot of these institutions are being undermined, destroyed. Granted, we haven't seen the ramifications of it, which I think could be definitely.
- [138:25]
Leo Laporte
They might have a different opinion when FEMA doesn't come to bail them out.
- [138:29]
Daniel Rubino
Especially for the people who are. Especially for people who are at the lower rungs of society, I think will be mostly affected. But the reason why this stuff is happening is because Democrats have not done anything the last 20 years to help stem government, make it more efficient, bring it down in size. There's a lot talk, you know, and.
- [138:47]
Kathy Gellis
People kept electing Democrats. And the thing is, they were in the street. There was a protest in front of treasury that took place.
- [138:54]
Leo Laporte
There's been a lot of protests.
- [138:55]
Kathy Gellis
And with Congress trying to get in the door and being shut out of a building that Congress funds to shut out the. The officials that we've duly elected to run our country and not be allowed to be in the building that they fund, like that is a problem there. And you walk the street and we're.
- [139:13]
Leo Laporte
Daniel has a point. There hasn't been a huge out outcry about this.
- [139:17]
Lisa Schmeiser
There's been, you know, but I think Daniel makes a really good point where there's a public perception that the Democrats are the problem because they made this government that's not working. So, oh, thank God there's change. Right.
- [139:33]
Leo Laporte
Any change would be better than people just want action.
- [139:35]
Lisa Schmeiser
But, you know, it goes back to the whole thing in character limit, where Elon Musk is like, look at me, I'm changing Twitter. You are, but you're not improving it. You're just taking things away and then claiming that that's an improve. Those are two completely for the records.
- [139:50]
Daniel Rubino
I do not like Trump. Okay? But no, no, no.
- [139:53]
Lisa Schmeiser
No one is.
- [139:53]
Daniel Rubino
Since his term, his second term in office here, he's done a lot. It's been very busy, we can say. I'm not saying that's not a judgmental call, whether it's good or bad, but he's doing. He's creating action. And for a lot of Americans, they've just seen, no matter who we've elected year after year, it's always the same. They don't see change in their lives. And I think that's what people are voting for or wanting to see, see now, whether it's going to happen, it's going to benefit them. I'm, you know, real skeptical of that. Right. I think this could be a lot. Going a lot of bad directions, but that's why people are going along.
- [140:29]
Leo Laporte
I completely agree with you. There's a complete dissatisfaction with government and a sense of helplessness, and it's pretty universal. I don't blame the Democrats.
- [140:40]
Lisa Schmeiser
There were a lot of elections.
- [140:41]
Leo Laporte
Ronald Reagan started it with bisection, saying the, you know, the worst, scariest words in the English language are, I'm the government. We're here to help. Which is a funny and probably popular thing to say. But I got to tell you, if Hurricane Helene devastated your community and FEMA came to help feed you and get you housed, that is help and same issue. You're right, Daniel. I understand completely. Dissatisfaction. I think you're exactly right. I also think I fear the consequences. We'll find out. We're gonna find out. We're gonna get to see. We're gonna take a break. Enough of that. We have other things to talk about, including Xbox sales. What the hell, man? I threw that in for you, Daniel. You're watching this week in Tech. Alicia Schmeisser, Daniel Rubino, Kathy Gellis. Great to have all three of you. This has been an excellent conversation. I think of very important one too. Our show today brought to you by netsuite. Name you probably know well, what does the future hold? I mean, we're just talking about it, especially if you're in business. Ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. Rates are going to rise. Oh, no, wait a minute. Maybe rates are going to fall. Oh, inflation's up. Oh no, inflation's down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one Cloud ERP. It brings accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. And with real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. It is a crystal crystal ball. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backward, more time on what's next. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. If I had needed this product, it's what I'd use. Oh, speaking of opportunities, you can download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. Now this is a something you need and it's free at netsuite.com TWIT N E T S U-I-T E netsuite.com TWIT get the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning. This is something we all need to understand better@netsuite.com TWIT thank you Netsuite for supporting the show and thank you, dear listener, dear viewer, for supporting us by going to that address. Netsuite A hearty thank you too to all of our Club Twit members who make this show and all the shows we do possible. Yeah, we have ads, but ads don't cover all the costs and, and that's where Club Twit really makes a big difference. We're so glad to have 12,000 plus members. It's only $7 a month. The reason they're members. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You're giving us money. We don't have to show you ads. You wouldn't even see this. A little moment of begging. You also get special programming that we don't do anywhere else. We had a great Chris Marquardt photo segment Last week on Thursday. And that's on the Twit plus feed available to club members. We've got other events coming up. Micah's Crafting Corner, Stacy's Book Club. I think it's a great way to join a fantastic community. And don't forget the Discord Place. You can hang out with all the other Club Twit members. It really is a good place for conversation. Conversation even when the shows aren't on about all of the things geeks are interested in. If you're interested, I hope you are. It makes a big difference to us. It keeps the shows flowing, it keeps our staff paid, keeps the lights on. Twitt tv Club Twit. And thank you in advance. Because of our club members, we're able to stream our live shows on eight different platforms now in the Club Twit, Discord, YouTube, Twitch, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Facebook and Kick. And I'm missing one. Did I say TikTok? Did I say X? Yeah, everywhere. So watch the shows live if you want. Sunday. This show is Sunday afternoon, usually 2 to 5pm Pacific. We start a little early today because of the Super Bowl. That's 5 to 8pm Eastern. That's a 2200 UTC. If you want to watch live, of course, you don't have to. You can always download a copy. Copy of the show. Crypto. Huh?
- [145:11]
Daniel Rubino
Did you say Kick? Yeah, Kick. Where.
- [145:15]
Leo Laporte
Where all the Nazis are. So I haven't done. I've heard like.
- [145:20]
Daniel Rubino
I remember kick from like 2012.
- [145:22]
Leo Laporte
Kick's still around. Kick's still around.
- [145:24]
Daniel Rubino
That's funny.
- [145:24]
Leo Laporte
Let me see if I can get it right. Discord, YouTube, Twitch. I think I left out Twitch, TikTok, X dot com, LinkedIn, Facebook and Kick. Yeah, there's the.
- [145:33]
Lisa Schmeiser
Wow.
- [145:34]
Leo Laporte
We basically stream anywhere that allows us to, you know, to strength our pipe to their. Their stream. Because we, you know, and we see the chat. I see the chat from all the different places. We don't get a lot of people from Kick saying hi in the chat, but I see a lot of people from YouTube. It's great. How many Bonito. Do we know how many people are watching right now? Is there a figure? 1249 people, it looks like, on those eight platforms. Platforms. So the vast majority of the audience doesn't watch live, but if you want to, it's nice. We get. I like the interaction. It's. It's very useful. Speaking of X, German civil activists have won a victory against Elon Musk's X. They sued, saying we want information so we can Track the spread of election swaying information on the network. This is an urgent filing because Germany has a national election February 23rd and that's as you know, Elon has kind of weighed in on the election in favor of the right leaning right leaning far right. ADF Party Berlin District Court said you've got to give civil rights groups the information so that they can the data so they can track misinformation and disinformation. X did not want to do that. And if they continue to not help, I don't know what's going to happen. They have to pay $6,200. That can't be right. Please tell me that's not right. I think that's just the court costs. There is one court case that has gone away. President Trump has ended his legal challenge over his ban on Twitter after January 6th. This was a long running legal fight. The notice was released late Friday. Doesn't say how the case was resolved. I guess it was just one of those handshake deals. Trump's lawyer declined to comment. X has declined to comment. It's over.
- [147:43]
Kathy Gellis
The one loan from Facebook also went away with that $25 million.
- [147:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Wasn't that something?
- [147:49]
Kathy Gellis
I don't.
- [147:50]
Leo Laporte
That's an expensive dinner at Mar a Lago that Mark Zuckerberg had there.
- [147:53]
Kathy Gellis
I don't know. I think that the business judgment rule protects Zuckerberg from shareholder action for that and it's a stretch of an argument maybe, but I think it will be really interesting to see if somebody tries. That seemed to be. It was a winnable case by Facebook and I don't. They would have spent vastly.
- [148:10]
Leo Laporte
So was the CBS case.
- [148:11]
Kathy Gellis
So was the cbs.
- [148:12]
Leo Laporte
So was. I mean there have been.
- [148:14]
Kathy Gellis
BBS wants the benevolent overlord to bless their murder.
- [148:17]
Leo Laporte
That's what it is. So does Elon. I mean so does Mark. So does Zuckerberg. I mean this is because you have a strong executive.
- [148:27]
Kathy Gellis
It's not a strong executive. That is not the word to use. That is a lawless executive. And is the word.
- [148:33]
Leo Laporte
You have a scary. How about a scary executive?
- [148:35]
Kathy Gellis
And then you fight. Then you fight because if you surrender you will be paying. It will not just be the 25 million, it will be 25 million and 25 million and 25 million. And then that's going to come right out of shareholders profits and pockets.
- [148:48]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well the shareholders get to stand up if they want.
- [148:52]
Kathy Gellis
I hope they do.
- [148:53]
Leo Laporte
Crypto stealing apps have been found in the Apple App Store. This is the very first time there have been malware and Apple Apps in the past, Android and iOS apps contain a malicious software development kit designed to steal cryptocurrency wallet recovery phases. Let me say that again because it came out wrong. Completely. Cryptocurrency wallet recovery phone phrases. That made a lot more sense. It's an OCR stealer. So the whole idea is you pop up your wallet and it's looking at the screen and it's stealing your recovery key. Here's the scary part. The infected apps were downloaded more than a quarter million times on Google Play. Unfortunately, we don't have numbers for Apple's app store, but I imagine it's a similar number anyway. Sometimes this stuff sneaks through, right? We will learn this week. I think if Apple's going to release a new iPhone SE, that's probably going to happen this week, according to Mark Gurman, the rumor guru at Bloomberg. Okay, nothing to say there. This is very popular.
- [150:11]
Lisa Schmeiser
I think I thought that was walked by. Walked back.
- [150:15]
Leo Laporte
Was it?
- [150:16]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah. Yeah.
- [150:17]
Leo Laporte
Well, it was just a rumor. Apple never announces pre announces anything. So maybe Apple said it's not going to happen. Or did Gurman walk it back? There are telltale signs. There are telltale signs. A spokesperson for Apple. Decline to comment.
- [150:33]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah.
- [150:34]
Leo Laporte
Oh, if it was walked back then I'm sorry. I was getting all excited. And here's a nice little apology from an iOS engineer who leaked information about coming products to the Wall Street Journal. And the information he was compelled. They settled with Apple. He's. He's of course not working there anymore and apparently was compelled to post the following apologies on X. I spent nearly eight years as a software engineer at Apple. During that time, I was given access to sensitive internal Apple information, including what were then unreleased products and features. But instead of keeping this information secret, I made the mistake of sharing this information with journalists who covered the company. I didn't realize at the time, but it turned out to be a profound and expensive mistake. Hundreds of professional relationships I'd spent years building were ruined and my otherwise successful career as a software engineer was derailed. And it will likely be very difficult to rebuild it. Kids leaking was not worth it. I sincerely apologize. I added the kids. Okay. I sincerely apologize to my former colleagues who not only worked tirelessly on projects for Apple, worked hard to keep them secret, they deserve better, I have to say. I'm just going to say to you, blink twice if you're being held hostage. Hostage.
- [151:59]
Daniel Rubino
Clearly lesson learned is you just have to be better at leaking material.
- [152:03]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, don't get caught.
- [152:04]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, don't get caught.
- [152:05]
Leo Laporte
Why do I mean, you're journalists at least Lisa and Daniel, you are. I guess you are too. Kathy, I don't know if you take tips or leaks.
- [152:15]
Kathy Gellis
Why do people.
- [152:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't. You know what, I occasionally will get an offer and I always turn it down because I don't.
- [152:23]
Kathy Gellis
I will defend the journalists ability to promise anonymity.
- [152:29]
Leo Laporte
Of course they're immune. Daniel, you said you, you, you depend on leaks.
- [152:32]
Daniel Rubino
Oh yeah, well, no, we've exclusively been doing leaks for over a decade now. I mean that's how I kind of cut my teeth in this industry. I used to leak Nokia stuff all the time and things for Windows Phone back in the day.
- [152:45]
Leo Laporte
That's too wide of consumers to know, Right. I understand why companies don't want them to know, but if you're about to buy a phone and you find out that Tuesday Apple's going to release an iPhone SE, for instance, that's a benefit to you. And then you have the right to know that. Why do people leak to you though, Daniel? Why does somebody at the company, given the risk, why do they.
- [153:05]
Daniel Rubino
A couple reasons. There's one reason is simply that employee is unhappy with decisions that have been made maybe for a product and thought thinks it should go another way. Right. So they're leaking as a dissatisfaction, satisfaction because I know others will be upset about this and they're hoping that the blowback kind of influences decision making. The other one, of course is sometimes there are internal conflicts on a topic within a company, on a product or a project. And so one group is trying to sort of get favoritism. Right. So if something gets leaked and people are like that's awesome, they should totally do that. They can literally go like back to a meeting and we know this happens and they'll cite an article of ours and read the comments and people like, look, people actually do really want this. Right. So you're help shaping the narrative there. Sometimes there are controlled leaks. You never really know about these. Right.
- [153:59]
Leo Laporte
But I think a lot of times Apple goes to the Wall Street Journal, for instance, and says, you know, don't tell anybody I said this, but. And yeah, they control the narrative. Exactly.
- [154:11]
Daniel Rubino
And some people do it because they think it's what they do is cool and they want to share it with other people. It's just literally that. Right. They know I've met a lot of people. They're just super fans of the products that they on and they're excited about them and they kind of want to get momentum going. A lot of times it works in our Favor. Like, we reported in 2018 that Microsoft and its partners are going to start working on dual screen and foldable laptops and PCs. And it happened. It was many years later, of course, but we helped start shaping that narrative for them by getting that info out there. So that when it happened, it wasn't even like people were starting to get prepared for this idea of like, there will be these devices. Right. So there are benefits to this leaking stuff. But I totally understand why. Like I can tell you for a fact, the Surface division absolutely hated us for. I've had personal calls from Microsoft over them and they are absolutely not happy. Xbox and the gaming teams, way cooler though, you know, they're.
- [155:15]
Leo Laporte
They're not, they're just happy anybody's interested.
- [155:18]
Daniel Rubino
Right? Yeah. So you have different groups that are also like, like I said, Panos. Panay is a. He's good at what he does, but he absolutely does not like or appreciate leaking stuff to the media at all.
- [155:31]
Leo Laporte
He very famously was doing a Microsoft Surface event and Paul Tharat tells a story, came up to Paul and took his laptop and started to use it. You probably were there.
- [155:46]
Daniel Rubino
Um, he's a great guy.
- [155:48]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, He's a fascinating guy. I'm not crazy about how pumped he is about everything. I mean, he's a little bit weird.
- [155:56]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, it's. I, I've always told people I've had a personal, you know, when he does those presentations on stage. I've had a personal one of that. It was for, I believe, Surface Pro 7. It was just me, him and like 12 other PR enhancers in a row. And he personally gave me the, the whole like Panos experience and it was awesome. But he's just very passion this stuff.
- [156:19]
Leo Laporte
So it's genuine. Yeah.
- [156:20]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, 100%. And whenever you talk to him, he's one of the most sincere people I've ever met. Like, and like talking to him, it's almost like it's intense but like it's all in a good way. Right. It's just someone who's really enjoys his job. I mean the whole. We've reported that one of the reasons why he left Microsoft was because they want to get rid of the Surface duo and the Neo projects, which were his sort of his. It was the number one thing he was actually really, really enthused about working on. And they said, no, you can't do those. He's like, well, if I can't do what I want, then I'm going to leave.
- [156:56]
Leo Laporte
The duo was the phone, right, that had the dual screen the hinge tool. I bought one, I thought it was really interesting but they never.
- [157:02]
Daniel Rubino
Ton of potential.
- [157:03]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And they completely lost the thread on that and the Neo never got released.
- [157:09]
Daniel Rubino
Right. Yeah.
- [157:11]
Leo Laporte
Another dual screen, right? Was it another dual screen?
- [157:13]
Daniel Rubino
Yes, that was another dual screen PC. And with the phone they were going to go to a single screen foldable there. Like that was the third, third iteration they were going to do and they were, they were improving dramatically. Like had they got to a third one they would have been in a place where I think they would have been in a much better position. But like all things Microsoft, they have brilliant ideas that get cut off way too early and it allow them to mature, you know. And so a lot of times they're so far ahead of things that they, they, they cut them back and then they miss the opportunity. And that's the story of mobile for them, period.
- [157:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting how mobile has Microsoft just fumbled mobile when it has turned out to be probably the most important part of computing. Right. People don't buy PCs anymore. They don't buy laptops even they've got a phone.
- [158:04]
Daniel Rubino
Although you could argue that smartphones themselves. The market has flattened too. Right. Because everybody has.
- [158:09]
Leo Laporte
But it has flattened at 2.25 billion units. It ain't too bad.
- [158:17]
Daniel Rubino
Laptops and PCs still do extremely well because they're extremely critical to everyday tasks. But these are both are now flat markets. We're not expecting necessarily although I would say growth For PC Market 2025 will be a thing just to refresh cycles for corporations and enterprise.
- [158:33]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's interesting. We talk about this a lot on Windows Weekly and it was a very kind of anemic growth in the PC market this quarter. And it really is Paul's theory that it's just people aren't buying compute businesses have to still refresh every five to six.
- [158:48]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, we're coming on the five year cycle from the pandemic boom which was huge. Windows 10 is expiring. Right. So if you're a consumer, not necessarily a big deal. If you're an enterprise it's a really big deal and you can't upgrade a lot of your computers to Windows 11. So you have those two things. Things and then the more dubious but I would say still critical AI PC aspect with NPU as being more critical to these computers for enterprise, again more of a big deal. So I think you'll start to see this stuff, you'll see growth in 2025. It won't be huge but they are expecting all the companies I talked to, positive growth in 20, 25 and 26.
- [159:25]
Leo Laporte
Sometimes it's not a leak, it's a partner that accidentally reveals things. In this case, Take two, the game publisher Nintendo.
- [159:35]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [159:35]
Leo Laporte
Kind of reveal a little something about Xbox sales. Right. Microsoft doesn't report Xbox sales. They stopped reporting that nine years ago. Which tells you a little bit. A little bit something, something there. Take two, in their Q3 earnings report, said 94 million consoles from the current generation, not including the Switch, are estimated have been sold as of November. Since Sony has announced that it shipped 65 and a half million PlayStation 5. It would probably mean that the Xbox has sold, I don't know, 28 million, about a third that number. Is that a surprise? Not really. Right?
- [160:28]
Daniel Rubino
No. And Microsoft reported 29% revenue decline in hardware for games.
- [160:34]
Leo Laporte
They've been doing an ad campaign lately saying Xbox is everywhere, implying that you don't need the console. You could use it on your phone, your laptop, a tablet.
- [160:42]
Daniel Rubino
Right. Cloud gaming for them. And the Game Pass grew 2%. And they are seeing a lot of growth in cloud cloud gaming, which is really kind of, you know, Microsoft strategy for gaming, I would say, is more focused on one studios. Right. They have Call of Duty now, which has done huge. So they're making. They're doing very well with its publishing arm for gaming due to the Blizzard acquisition. Their game pass is doing very well too, which isn't just Xbox, because you can get it with PC gaming, which still continues to grow. And then you have handheld gaming, which is still very small, but it is definitely growing. We've seen a lot of creation of new handheld handheld gaming systems this year. So there's still a lot of momentum here. Consoles themselves, though, are kind of, you know, we're pretty old right now, you know, old in quotes. By a couple of years into the consoles for this generation.
- [161:33]
Leo Laporte
Will there be another Xbox console, you think?
- [161:36]
Daniel Rubino
I think there will be, but I think it's going to. It might be conceptually a bit different in terms of what they're doing with hardware. I think they started this back with the Series X, you know, this idea of merging or moving closer towards the PC model for console. I think they really want to have Xbox not be as distinct from PC gaming as it has been historically, which would save them money in the bottom, but.
- [162:01]
Kathy Gellis
Right.
- [162:02]
Daniel Rubino
They're trying to do what's called like, play anywhere. This idea of like a game is coded for both Xbox as a console, but also PC. If you buy it once, you can play on both systems. So I think that's really going to be their value. I think console gaming is. It'll always, always be there. But it's always been razor thin margins on the hardware end. Right. It's always been about the game licensing and selling the games. That's really been the. Where you make money on consoles. Hey, this is Benito. There's also always Nintendo. Nintendo will always make consoles. Sure.
- [162:30]
Leo Laporte
And then. Are you going to make a new Switch? The new Switch will be coming out in a month or two and I'll probably buy it.
- [162:36]
Daniel Rubino
They just ride on their ip, Right. Their IP is just.
- [162:39]
Leo Laporte
Who doesn't want to play Final Fantasy, or in my case, Animal Crossings?
- [162:45]
Kathy Gellis
I want to play the Atari 800 I have sitting in a closet.
- [162:48]
Leo Laporte
You have one. I'll buy it from you.
- [162:50]
Kathy Gellis
Oh, I grew up with one, but I can't find the floppy drive. But otherwise, oh yeah, I got one.
- [162:57]
Leo Laporte
Don't you have cartridges?
- [162:58]
Kathy Gellis
I have a few cartridges, but most of the games we played were on floppies. And I think I may have the floppies themselves, but I. We couldn't find the bit in the attic that had the. How do you actually get the program off the floppy and get to play it? So I made be missing parts.
- [163:15]
Leo Laporte
Well, I'm going to. Go ahead.
- [163:19]
Daniel Rubino
I was going to say there's a ton of like, I remember years ago I was going to buy a Colecovision and it was People will vision.
- [163:26]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [163:27]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. And they completely restore them. They take them apart, clean them, replace the wires.
- [163:31]
Leo Laporte
Wasn't that the one that had the stringy floppy? Wasn't that the. Wasn't that the storage. It was a. Like a cassette, they call it. Oh, they have a cartridge.
- [163:39]
Kathy Gellis
All right. We had a cassette too. And then I think I do have. But it was too slow. We didn't play the games off the cassette. Play the games off the floppy drive. But yeah, actually the option key or the select key got sticky at some point, so it will need a little bit of PLC.
- [163:55]
Leo Laporte
So Tuesday Civilization 7 comes out and I'm going to take the rest of the week off. No, I'm going. Actually, I'm going to be gone Wednesday through Saturday because I'm going to the. I'm taking Lisa to the Tucson Interaction International Gem and Mineral Show. A rock show. So it's not a rock concert, It's a rock show. So I will not be here for Wednesday's shows, but Micah will be filling in for me on Windows Weekly and Twig. And maybe I will play a little Civ 7 while I'm gone. I don't know.
- [164:31]
Daniel Rubino
We gave it a very good review.
- [164:33]
Leo Laporte
Did you? People are getting really excited about it. I am. I've never been a civ player because turn based games. Never. I always like real time strategy. Like I was a huge Age of Empires fan, but Bonito's convinced me I have to.
- [164:45]
Kathy Gellis
I do not like that I cannot play my Age of Empires which I lawfully purchased and will not run on my machine.
- [164:52]
Leo Laporte
I think, well, you need an iPad because they just released it for iOS.
- [164:56]
Kathy Gellis
I have to buy it again to play the software I lawfully purchased from Microsoft.
- [165:00]
Leo Laporte
I bought Agent many times.
- [165:03]
Daniel Rubino
Purchased a license to play that game.
- [165:04]
Leo Laporte
Which they revoked many, many times.
- [165:07]
Kathy Gellis
Did they even revoke? Where's my notice of that revocation?
- [165:10]
Leo Laporte
Always the lawyer, Kathy Gellis.
- [165:12]
Kathy Gellis
I want to play that game. I missed it and I know what.
- [165:15]
Leo Laporte
A great game is. That wasn't it a great game?
- [165:19]
Daniel Rubino
It was remastered, so it's even better now.
- [165:22]
Leo Laporte
AOE 2 is incredible. Yeah.
- [165:24]
Kathy Gellis
I don't always like the newfangled animations that some of the remastered games are. I kind of like the stuff that's not fully picked pixelated, but like closer to that style. The ones that are like so detailed. I bought an Age of Empires four and I. Because I wanted ooh up fight like three. I better like four and I returned it in the return window. I just found it so garish that I didn't want to play it anymore.
- [165:49]
Leo Laporte
It gets me because I'm watching the trailer for Civ 7 and it's all cutscenes. This is not what the game looks like. Give me a break.
- [166:00]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, this is. This is always lies.
- [166:02]
Leo Laporte
It's kind of deceptive really. You want to know what the game looks like? Let me see if. Yeah, just like click, click. It's a top down. You're looking at the. You know. Anyway, I still look forward to it. That's not it either. What the hell. There it is. This is a little closer to the real thing. Anyway, thank you, Kathy, for being here. Thank you for the work you do at Tech Dirt. Try not to bust a aneurysm or something. Something. Just breathe deep and go look at the San Francisco Bay. It's gorgeous today. I really appreciate everything you do. Cgcouncil.com she's on Blue Sky. Kathy with a C. Gellis.
- [166:41]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah, well, that's why I write what I write. I think that a lot of people are really upset and don't really know how things work. And if I can explain how things work, I think that will help Focus people. Help them take a breath and then organize their strength to use it in usable ways.
- [166:57]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm frustrated. I don't know what to do and I don't feel like there's much we can do. But I will keep reading you. I will read.
- [167:07]
Lisa Schmeiser
Keep calling your congress people. Let them.
- [167:09]
Leo Laporte
We live in California. Our congress people are not, you know, they're not the bad guys.
- [167:15]
Kathy Gellis
No, but they know they need to.
- [167:17]
Lisa Schmeiser
It's data that they can use and say, hey, call volume has surged.
- [167:21]
Leo Laporte
60 calls a day. Right.
- [167:24]
Lisa Schmeiser
Or they keep a record of, of what matters to you as well and.
- [167:29]
Kathy Gellis
They'Ll hold the line. And the senators in particular. And yeah, it's even Adam Schiff especially.
- [167:36]
Lisa Schmeiser
Needs to hear from you. Yeah.
- [167:37]
Kathy Gellis
Yeah.
- [167:37]
Leo Laporte
Okay. Well, he's my senator.
- [167:39]
Lisa Schmeiser
Yeah.
- [167:40]
Leo Laporte
Thank you for being here, Kathy. Thank you. Lisa Schmeiser, no jitter.com. you're the editor in chief. Tell me about no jitter.
- [167:48]
Lisa Schmeiser
The quick elevator pitch is we cover the technologies that help move information from point A to point B and allow everybody to act on that information. So it's communication and collaboration technologies from personal workspaces all the way up to enterprise networking and contact centers.
- [168:05]
Leo Laporte
That's pretty important stuff. It sounds like it's great to have you on the show and I appreciate it and everybody should immediately hi thee to no jitter.com. you can sign up for the newsletters and stay on top of communication and the workplace. Daniel Rubino, editor in chief of Windows Central. Also part of my regular daily news check every day. Something good@windowscentral.com thank you for being here, Daniel. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks to all of you for being here. You can go watch the super bowl now. I think we got it done just in time. This is normally 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern. Excuse me, 2200 UTC to watch the show on those eight live streams. But of course, it's a podcast, which means you can get a copy of it at our website, Twit TV or YouTube where you'll see the video. That's a great way to share clips from the show. And finally, of course, best thing to do, subscribe in your favorite podcast player. Just because you have it doesn't mean you have to listen to it. But it would be nice if you downloaded it and it'd be even nicer if you listen to it. We appreciate it. Thanks again to all of our club members who make the show possible. Thanks to Benito Gonzalez, who is our technical director producer. Great job, Benito. Kevin King will be editing the show later today. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We're celebrating our 20th year as a podcast. In fact, April will be the 20th anniversary of the first twit. And as I've said for the last 20 years, hard to believe. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. Another TWIT is in the can. Bye Bye. He's amazing.
- [169:58]
Daniel Rubino
Like your favorite startup's growth curve, T Mobile's coverage keeps scaling because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart.
- [170:04]
Leo Laporte
Of Portland to right where you are.
- [170:05]
Daniel Rubino
On America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile.
- [170:09]
Lisa Schmeiser
Will pay it off at the $800.
- [170:10]
Daniel Rubino
Per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com backslash keepandswitch up to four lines of a virtual prepaid card. Laugh 15 days qualified unlock device credit.
- [170:20]
Leo Laporte
Service port in 90 plus days device.
- [170:22]
Daniel Rubino
Knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required Card.
- [170:23]
Leo Laporte
Is no cash access and expires in six months.