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This Week in Tech 1021: Benito On High
02:52:45
Alexa Plus, Goodbye Skype, YouTube on TV
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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for TWiT this Week at Tech. Emily Forlini from PC Magazine joins us. Doc Rock is here. Janko, Rutgers and lots to talk about. Yanko and Emily both wrote about Amazon's new AI A Word. We'll talk about that and why Siri may not get smart until 2027. Plus, it's the end of the line for an old favorite. All of that and more coming up next on Twit. Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week in Tech. Episode 1021, recorded Sunday, March 2, 2025. Benito on High. It's time for TWIT this Week at Tech, the show. We cover the week's tech news. I have assembled a fabulous panel for you today. Doc Rock is here, our friend from Aloha. Doc rock from YouTube and eCamm. It's good to see you.
- [01:14]
Doc Rock
Thank you, brother. Good to see you as well.
- [01:16]
Leo Laporte
Wonderful to see you. It always is. I always. Is it beautiful. And right now in Honolulu.
- [01:22]
Doc Rock
Yeah, today is good. The last couple weeks have been a little weird, but today is flawless outside. So jealous.
- [01:28]
Leo Laporte
I'm so jealous. Emily Forlini is also here from PC magazine. And you're in beautiful New Jersey.
- [01:37]
Emily Forlini
The most beautiful place in the world. In the world.
- [01:40]
Leo Laporte
You know, it's the Garden State. Come on.
- [01:42]
Emily Forlini
Comparable to Hawaii.
- [01:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Ex. It's the Hawaii of the Mid Atlantic states.
- [01:49]
Emily Forlini
It's definitely not the densest state in the Union. It's definitely not super built up outside New York. But no.
- [01:56]
Leo Laporte
People, I think, have a bad impression of New Jersey because they, they do. They look over the river and they see New Jersey and they go, ew. But really it's the, it is the Garden State. It's beautiful farmland. It's beautiful.
- [02:07]
Emily Forlini
It's true. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm in a really, I would say desirable place to live. So I'm, I'm happy here.
- [02:12]
Leo Laporte
Good. It's great to see you. Also joining us, Janko Rutgers. Janko, are you in la? Where are you?
- [02:18]
Janko Rutgers
I'm in Oakland.
- [02:20]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's kind of the East. It's kind of the LA of the Northern California or. No, there, there's no.
- [02:26]
Janko Rutgers
I mean, sort of the East LA of. Yeah, the East LA of something like that.
- [02:32]
Leo Laporte
Anyway, great to see you. Lopass CC is Yonko's newsletter. Of course, you remember him from gigaom and, and I'm going to mention all the old places and variety and it's great to have you here on TWIT this week. Did anybody. Emily, you were nearby. Did you go to the Amazon Echo event?
- [02:55]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I did.
- [02:56]
Leo Laporte
I'm a little jealous they don't stream it.
- [02:59]
Emily Forlini
I know. It felt cool when they do that. It justifies me going there in person, so I kind of like that. But, yeah, it was a big event and they had tons of execs there. Andy Jassy, the CEO, was there, so I thought that kind of said a lot and how important the event was to the company. So, yeah, I'm sure we'll get into it, but, yeah, I was.
- [03:17]
Leo Laporte
No, we're into it now. This is it. So Panos. Panay, who came from Microsoft, was the guy who kept saying how pumped he was about the new Surface devices. Did he use the word pumped at all?
- [03:30]
Emily Forlini
So I didn't know the legend of Panos Panay. And so he walks on stage and he goes, remember the first moment that you asked Alexa a question? What a moment. And I was just sitting there by myself, and I said in my head, this guy is a wacko. Like, is this guy. And I didn't know he was wearing jewelry. And I mean, you know, I used to work at Amazon, so I was like, this guy is very. Not, like, cut from the Amazon cloth. And I was just trying to figure him out. So I wasn't on. On radar for the whole Pumped thing. I was just taking in everything else that comes with this guy.
- [04:10]
Leo Laporte
Good. Which means you were paying attention to the important stuff, not our silly little game.
- [04:15]
Emily Forlini
No, it would have been fun. You know, I could have been in the whole Pumped joke, but I was a total, like, novice.
- [04:22]
Leo Laporte
You immediately got Panos. Yeah, and I shouldn't knock it. Passion for the product. I think it was probably a smart move to hire him since Amazon's lost billions on Echo over the last decade. This is the beginning of the next kind of era of. And I'm trying to avoid. To say, saying the A word. A L, E, X, A.
- [04:45]
Emily Forlini
Yes.
- [04:46]
Leo Laporte
Because I don't want to trigger anybody's device, but does anybody really have an Alexa in their house anymore? I do.
- [04:56]
Emily Forlini
And it's a disaster. It's a disaster. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And I was thinking about that, the whole event, and I was like, the big question is, like, can they make Alexa cool again? Didn't come away from that event feeling like an affirmative. Yes, they can. You know, it was just the typical voice demos on stage, but it was. There were some things that were promising, like, okay, so I'll give them credit. It's interesting that it's going to be able to take actions for you. So instead of just doing, you know, Alexa set a timer, Alexa play music. You know, it should be more human, like, and then you can do things like say, text mom, I'm on my way, or what else. They give so many examples. They had crazy ones like you can call an Uber. Yeah. Get a mechanic to the house to fix my oven. And you can upload documents to it, like your kid's soccer schedule. And it'll remind you, like, hey, Jimmy, you're bringing oranges on Thursday. And so they just want to know everything about you and then they want to be able to take actions for you. And that's their assistant vision.
- [05:58]
Leo Laporte
Jennifer Pattison, too, was excited about that. She just reviewed a giant screen that does your family's, you know, soccer and lessons schedule and everything in the kitchen.
- [06:08]
Doc Rock
Skylight.
- [06:08]
Leo Laporte
Skylight. Thank you, Doc. You knew about Katie?
- [06:11]
Doc Rock
Well, Katie has one. Well, my manager at ecamm, she has one in her house and I love it and I kind of want one, but I kind of, I don't know, like, I just want one just because it looks really cool and it does work.
- [06:23]
Leo Laporte
So you know what I did?
- [06:24]
Doc Rock
I'm an idiot, responsible to pick up my niece or whatever.
- [06:27]
Leo Laporte
So I ordered the 21 inch Amazon Echo. There's a 21 inch screen which is basically like the Skylight. And because this is one of the new features of Alexa is this, you know, AI generated calendaring thing. By the way, it'll be $19.99 a month, which is a lot unless you're an Amazon prime member and then it's free.
- [06:55]
Janko Rutgers
So Nobody will pay 19.99amonth for it.
- [06:58]
Leo Laporte
Exactly. Prime is like $14 a month.
- [07:02]
Emily Forlini
Exactly. I did the math. So it's 139 a year for prime and it's 240 a year if you get it on its own. So who's going to do that? It's a little fishy. I think either they'll increase the cost of prime because it hasn't gone up since 2022, which is a lot happened since 2022. We got inflation. We're in a whole new world. And then the other thing they could do is they could only add the coolest features to the paid version. You know, like ChatGPT.
- [07:29]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, there might be a difference.
- [07:30]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, there might be a difference. And they were just trying to hype it and not make it. So all the press, people like me were harping on, you know, the differences between the two so they're just, they're just trying to be positive. But I think that we'll get more information about what's offered and where in probably the next couple weeks or months.
- [07:45]
Janko Rutgers
I could see them offer it through prime for maybe even a year or two and then slowly start to separate those things, get you hooked. Kind of like the same way they do it with prime video now. So you get Prime Video still as part of prime, but if you don't want to watch ads, you have to pay more.
- [08:00]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [08:01]
Janko Rutgers
And so they're starting to give you some stuff. They get you hooked. Exactly. And then they offer you an add on subscription for this and that and ring and whatnot. So I think they've gotten pretty good, they've gotten pretty good at using prime to get people into the door and for this I think that's actually the most interesting thing about Alexa. It's for the first time a voice assistant, LLM powered voice assistant, new generation of voice assistant that's available to millions of users out of the gate. And they don't have to go to like a chatbot web interface anymore. They don't have to like install something else. It's just going to be there for them for a lot of people and it's going to be free. So a lot more people are going to be exposed to this type of stuff.
- [08:46]
Doc Rock
I think the biggest problem so far with Echo has always been I know this is going to sound so mean. I know a lot of Muggles who have Echo because is the cheapest entry level like assistant device. But because of that's the baseline clientele, most people only know to check notifications for their package. Like they don't even use it to order stuff like Amazon thought they were going to do. I did in the beginning. I got a couple miss shipments and I was like, you know what, it's easier for me to do it on my phone right before you.
- [09:17]
Leo Laporte
I order all the time because they're running out of razor blades. And I go, hey, a word, order me some razor blades. And then she says, this is what you ordered last time. That shows you three or four. Would you like me to order those again? And I say yes. And it says, what's your, you know, code? I say my code and then it's done. I think it's a pretty. But Amazon themselves, Amazon says nobody does this. So I'm just right.
- [09:44]
Doc Rock
So that part, I think it works. But I think a lot of moguls don't do that. So like I've used it to Order things before and I do, you know, find out when packages are coming. But other than that, I think the primary thing I use Echo for is to do conversions that I can't do in my head just because I'm in.
- [10:00]
Leo Laporte
I do timers for cooking. We do. Lisa and I both do. Because it's in the kitchen.
- [10:05]
Doc Rock
Yeah. So I have the Echo in the kitchen and a dot in the living room and we have a big echo down here that we don't even use anymore. Because the HomePod sounds better. The HomePod mini sounds better.
- [10:14]
Leo Laporte
It's not great for music. Yeah, yeah.
- [10:17]
Doc Rock
So I mean legit, like it literally became notifications and timers. So if they can with this seemingly what they demoed, seems like some things that you might be able to get not just the Muggles in, but other people in. But Yanko's right because it is device that you can get into for 19 bucks anybody can get it. It doesn't require a 1500 dollar phone or $1000 phone or what is it now 599 like it is.
- [10:40]
Leo Laporte
Do you think people want AI in the house?
- [10:44]
Janko Rutgers
Well, they're going to have it, people. So that's.
- [10:48]
Leo Laporte
You may not want it, but you're going to get it.
- [10:51]
Janko Rutgers
But that's the thing. Like we all bought these smart speakers at one point. Like I have more Google devices around my house, but the same thing, I use them for timers, I asked them for the weather and that's pretty much it. Maybe you like to play some music, but it's also because they're so bad at any added complexity. And if you just make that a little bit better. And some of the demos that they show were pretty promising. Right. So this whole thing even like home device control where they were like, well, play music everywhere but don't wake up the baby. And then it deducts from that that it shouldn't use the speaker in the nursery without you having to explicitly say, oh, play it in this zone and move the music into that room. And that device has this name now. It got so complex with a lot of these things, like taking away a little bit of that complexity I think people will really appreciate. And then it doesn't really matter that much to the average consumer. Whether it's like the newest generation of AI or something. It's just. It works better. It's just using it.
- [11:45]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [11:46]
Emily Forlini
I think it just depends. There's a lot of people who are still feeling burned by the whole like, oh, it's listening to me. And maybe people who are interested in tech are more open to the AI. Not only, you know, having all these long standing issues with listening to you and whatever, we'll never know if that's true. But now it's saying, it's accelerating that saying we want to know everything about you, upload all your documents, tell us about your whole home. One of the demos even had a camera and it looked around the room and talked about what was in the room. So I think a lot of people actually don't like that. And maybe another issue for Amazon would be a lot of people don't even know how to use it. So they're going to have to teach people. So there's different customer segments and they're going to have to figure that out. They're going to be successful in making Amazon Alexa cool again, I think.
- [12:34]
Janko Rutgers
Sorry Leo, go ahead. The main thing that's going to hold it back is that they don't know enough about you. So they showed the demo where they were like upload your kid's soccer schedule. It sounds good but it starts with you having to find the document and having to upload it through some web interface or having to use a special email address. Even like for emails you have to send it to alexalexa.com I was told by Alexa, by Amazon spokesperson. When you compare that to Google's Gemini, they showed very similar things last year when they unveiled it at Google. I ought but it can search all your email because it already has all your emails. That's true, it can search through all. So instead of summarized as one document or summarized as one email, you can just tell her to summarize all the emails that you recently got from your kids school which is a really compelling demo to anybody who has squared children.
- [13:26]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, we'll see if Google, I mean, I'm sure Google is watching this and saying, all right, we're going to have their event where they're going to put Gemini in Google home. And so the big question is which one's going to be better? Right.
- [13:37]
Leo Laporte
Did Amazon address the privacy thing at all in the event?
- [13:41]
Emily Forlini
No, they put the foot on the gas and they were just like we're gonna.
- [13:44]
Leo Laporte
Quite the opposite.
- [13:45]
Emily Forlini
All your data. Quite the opposite.
- [13:46]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. That is, I've noticed in some of the stories what they consider a selling point and it's one of the problems Apple's having right now is they don't intend, they're trying to protect your privacy. And so unlike these other companies, Google and Amazon especially, they're not doubling down on hey, we know everything about You. Amazon said that, right? They said, you know, think of all the things we know about you. Isn't that a good. Isn't that a good.
- [14:13]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. And also, you can tell us more.
- [14:14]
Leo Laporte
And tell us your soccer schedule, tell.
- [14:18]
Emily Forlini
Us everything about your kids and, you know, all your medical information. Tell us what's in your house, what it looks like, who's doing what in what room, what you're buying, where you're going, who you're talking to, who you're emailing. That's what they want to know.
- [14:31]
Doc Rock
Will people sound crazy?
- [14:34]
Leo Laporte
Go ahead.
- [14:35]
Doc Rock
Yeah, I think. I think so. But this is going to sound crazy. You know the best way Amazon could get this to pick up? I think we didn't talk about this. I think a lot of people pulled back from the momentum that Echo had when it was going because all the TV channels, I mean, movies and stuff, were talking about it. It was ending up in all type of, you know, like, snl. And not just to make fun of it, but it became. Alexa became a verb, just like Google for a minute. Right? It was something that we all talked about. But when all of the stories came out about the mistreatment of workers, I think a lot of people also got soured on Amazon and they could easily fix it by just be like, listen, okay, we're going to go take better care of the people. And then that would allow more Muggles to want to buy into the whole Amazon thing. I have so many people.
- [15:20]
Emily Forlini
Can we talk about it before we.
- [15:21]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, those are the people who don't have magic, right, Doc?
- [15:24]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [15:25]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [15:25]
Doc Rock
You know, I. This might turn for, like, normal people that are not like those of us who came.
- [15:29]
Leo Laporte
Emily, tell me you read Harry Potter.
- [15:31]
Emily Forlini
Of course. I'm so jealous. You're using Muggle in a sentence and I'm. Oh, I always use your ways.
- [15:39]
Leo Laporte
We used to call them normies, right?
- [15:41]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I don't like regulars.
- [15:43]
Doc Rock
Yeah, that's even better. I don't use noise because I'm definitely not normal. And then I might sound like a diss, but I think. I think that, you know, it has such a. An opportunity. And I know so many people that hate the fact that they're relying on Amazon because they're mad at Amazon for some of their other stuff. And I'm like, if any one of these guys would clean that part up, they could just take over. And it's just.
- [16:06]
Emily Forlini
I think the tech is just bad. I think most people, like Amazon is so mass market. I think most people don't know or care about that stuff and I just think it's not that good.
- [16:20]
Leo Laporte
Interesting. I think it is anybody who I use AI like crazy and I've given up on privacy years ago. So to me it's become very clear that you want to give AI more information because it'll be more useful. Here's an example. I just took a picture of all my supplements and asked ChatGPT to analyze it and it did a great job. But now of course, somebody somewhere now knows all the supplements I take and. But I didn't care, you know, is.
- [16:53]
Doc Rock
That how we're gonna be or are.
- [16:54]
Leo Laporte
People gonna go the other way and go, no, I'm not giving them that information?
- [16:57]
Emily Forlini
Well, I don't know. And I think another thing about this does Amazon's vision actually is, is the same as every other tech company's vision in terms of these AI assistants. So all of them want to know as much about you as possible. All of them want their tech to be with you throughout the day as your assistant. And so that's the whole agentic AI buzzword that everyone hears. Like that's what it is. May be different because they have the physical device in the home versus a phone or computer based thing, but it's not unique to Amazon. This is just the direction the industry is going.
- [17:32]
Leo Laporte
Well, to that point. There's an interesting article. Every Sunday Mark Gurman, who's the rumor guy, the Apple rumor guy at Bloomberg, puts out his power on newsletter. And every Sunday there's this massive dump of stuff about Apple, some of which is well sourced. He's very good at that. Some of which is his own speculation. In this case, he's identified Apple's AI crisis and he is sourcing this from people who with knowledge of the situation. He's actually saying Apple is not going to get its full AI. What Amazon just announced in effect what other AI companies are already doing until 2027, until iOS 20, which is pushed.
- [18:16]
Emily Forlini
Back already to 2026. It was.
- [18:18]
Leo Laporte
Right?
- [18:19]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. So that's, that's bad.
- [18:21]
Leo Laporte
Is that bad news or is Apple gonna be.
- [18:24]
Doc Rock
I'm cool with it.
- [18:25]
Leo Laporte
Looking back and saying, see, we, we told you that stuff's crap.
- [18:29]
Doc Rock
Listen, I'm cool with it. You know why? Because Apple is suit if you do. You know this as well as I do. Apple is super famous for rolling into the party late, looking fly as hell. They're going to be suited and booted. When they walk in the door, they're going to be like open AI. You look like a nerd. Sit down. They're Going to be like Alexa. That outfit is played. Beat it, Google. All right, formidable, but move out of the way. They always walk into the door looking like Idris Elba.
- [18:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but they're so far behind this time. Gurman says Apple's half a decade late to the game and even bleaker timeline than many of us imagine. I'm reading from his newsletter. On top of that, Apple's rivals are not standing still given the speed at which they're operating now. Imagine where OpenAI and Google will be in two years.
- [19:14]
Janko Rutgers
I also think that's not necessarily true anymore, that Apple always waits and then rolls out the best product. Case in point, Vision Pro. I mean, it's a great visual device and so forth, but they really were like not there yet where they wanted to be too highly priced and so forth. And then the other thing, they're going to roll out, if the rumors are true, and I think Mark has reported on that quite a bit too, they're going to launch a smart display possibly as early as this year. So if the AI isn't ready, what's the smart display going to do? How smart could it be compared?
- [19:45]
Leo Laporte
Just be a pretty display as always, it'll be ally. But see, I think that 21 inch echo that I just bought already is a smart display. And in a couple of months. Do you think, by the way, Amazon reported that they were having trouble with the AI? In fact, last year they kind of punted. This year they said, we're going to have a meeting on February, a go or no go meeting on Valentine's Day, February 14th. That was a week before this event or two weeks before this event. And apparently that was a no go, which is why they weren't able to announce availability at this event. What did they say about availability, Emily? It sounded a little mushy.
- [20:27]
Emily Forlini
They said in the coming weeks, which is what everyone says, right?
- [20:29]
Leo Laporte
That's pretty mushy.
- [20:31]
Emily Forlini
That's what everyone says. I can't tell you how many times I write art articles and I quote coming soon or in the coming weeks. That's pretty standard. And the one thing was they did not allow us to interact with the product. That's telling hands on demos. And we tried and they were sketchy about it. They were like, come back in 10 minutes. Then we came back and they were like, yeah, no, you can't do it. And it was really weird and wow. So it's kind of like we don't know how much was canned and how much wasn't and we. But we definitely were not allowed to try it ourselves. So that was a bit sus.
- [21:03]
Leo Laporte
The good news, because all of the AI will be server side, virtually every Echo device made, even the old ones will work with this, right?
- [21:13]
Janko Rutgers
No, they're ruling a couple of ones out, like the first generation Echo show devices, not even super old ones like the Echo show devices. So the screen devices, not every of them will get it. I think third party devices with Alexa built in are generally not going to get it. So if you have.
- [21:30]
Emily Forlini
Well, they said it's only coming to Echo shows first, like probably the newer ones, which.
- [21:34]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's not coming to the dots. It's not. It has to have a display.
- [21:40]
Emily Forlini
There's no timeline for anything besides the shows right now.
- [21:43]
Janko Rutgers
And I talked to, I talked to one of the spokespeople there or emailed. I wasn't at the event, but I wrote about it for my newsletter. So I went back and forth over email quite a bit and she told me end of March is a. Is the timeline for the early access rollout.
- [21:59]
Leo Laporte
That's what I had heard as well. That's early access. So what does that mean? Normal people won't get it or you'll have to sign up for an early access version?
- [22:11]
Janko Rutgers
My understanding is that early access means only people who have certain devices out of the gate will get it. So later on it will be available on the Alexa app on your phone and so you don't even need to have an Echo necessarily to use it. But initially it will only be for people who have some of these screen devices in their houses. So that's early access, basically.
- [22:32]
Emily Forlini
You also need a Willy Wonka golden ticket.
- [22:37]
Leo Laporte
Do I have to sleep with Grandpa to get that?
- [22:42]
Emily Forlini
They're both at two ends of the bed. Terrible.
- [22:44]
Leo Laporte
No, I agree with you. So I'm looking. I have a 5 and 8 and a 10. It'll work on all the. On the 5, 8 and the 10, right? These are all ones I've purchased.
- [22:52]
Janko Rutgers
Look at that.
- [22:53]
Leo Laporte
This is ridiculous. I mean, there's something wrong with me. Look at this. Why do I have so many of these?
- [23:00]
Emily Forlini
I'm learning a lot about your consumption habits, Leo.
- [23:03]
Leo Laporte
See, I told you. I don't care. I got no privacy.
- [23:06]
Emily Forlini
So what are your supplements? Just kidding. I don't want to know.
- [23:09]
Doc Rock
Leo, listen, I love this comment from the chat because this drives me crazy more than anything else. You know, when you. The reason why we sit here walking around the words of the S lady and the A lady or whatever is because why is it 2025 and we can't name our devices.
- [23:23]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, I'm a big one on that.
- [23:25]
Doc Rock
No joke. Mine would be named Emily.
- [23:27]
Leo Laporte
Remember when the Moto X came out? When did the Moto X come out? That was like 10 years ago.
- [23:32]
Doc Rock
Yes.
- [23:33]
Leo Laporte
And you could say, you could change the. This was a Google device because it was when Google owned Motorola and you could change the wake word. I had mine be Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, because I figured if I. That's a good one. Because I'm not going to say that by accident unless we're watching Star Wars. I think we're okay.
- [23:52]
Janko Rutgers
So. So I looked at. Just circling back. I just looked it up again. You will have to have An Echo Show 8, 10, 15, anyone to get early access.
- [24:01]
Leo Laporte
So my fives will not.
- [24:02]
Janko Rutgers
Five is out of the gate, out of the door. Eventually.
- [24:04]
Leo Laporte
But it says eventually. They're gonna. They're gonna eventually have it for almost, quote, almost every.
- [24:11]
Emily Forlini
Well, actually, my colleague will Greenwald at PCMag made a good point that it's interesting that they didn't launch this us along with a new device that supports it, which is like what Apple did. Right. You have normally newest iPhones to get the best Siri and all this AI stuff, you have to have the 16 or a Pro 15. But Amazon didn't say that. I think I saw a report that they're going to come out with new devices to go with it. So that's kind of TBD too.
- [24:39]
Leo Laporte
Do you think the world, I mean, we're spending some time talking about this, but do you think the real world is even aware of this?
- [24:47]
Doc Rock
No, no.
- [24:48]
Leo Laporte
The tech world is.
- [24:50]
Doc Rock
Yes.
- [24:50]
Emily Forlini
No, I mean, I think it's sad for Apple. We've just totally glossed over them. I mean, do we even care?
- [24:56]
Leo Laporte
Well, Gurman says, despite what Apple has said, Apple says, for instance, iPhones sell better in markets where Apple intelligence is available. That may have nothing to do, by the way, with Apple intelligence. That may have a lot more to do with the. The affluence of that market. But Gurman says people aren't really excited about Apple Intelligence. No consumer is desperate to use it, and that's partly because it's crappy. I wonder if Echo plus is going to be a selling point or if people are going to care. Amazon may be stuck in that boat where they, you know, they lost $10 billion in the first 10 years of echo. Are. Have they done anything to make. Make a difference? Are they more likely to make money on this?
- [25:44]
Doc Rock
That's the whole problem. That was Emily's whole point, like the tech is just bad and. And honestly, even with Apple intelligence, I wish it was better. But I will say that the summary of emails that I can just get rid of without bother reading it is that does enough. Like I wish it did more, but that saves me so much time. And then even summaries of notifications on the home screen saves me so much time. It shouldn't be a whole big deal. It shouldn't be like any. You got to get to make it work. So hopefully whatever they decide to come up with in 2027 is better than that, but that itself is actually good. It's not that that's terrible.
- [26:20]
Leo Laporte
And incidentally, you can rename the Echo. It can be Alexa Computer Computer, which is even worse and it can be Echo.
- [26:30]
Emily Forlini
Well, do you guys think they're just followers? And maybe that's a bad sign because like I said, I feel like their vision is the same as the industries. I personally think voice assistants are bad tech and I have never liked them. I hate them. I hate them in cars. I mean crash into the media and you're trying to get it to do something basic. You know, like my Alexa's collecting dust. It can't connect to my Spotify has taken it five years to figure that out. You know, like I've never ever had a good experience with a voice assistant.
- [27:00]
Leo Laporte
It's often frustrating, isn't it?
- [27:01]
Emily Forlini
It feels very tone deaf to me.
- [27:03]
Doc Rock
That the disconnects from the WI fi often.
- [27:05]
Emily Forlini
Right. But yeah, so many issues and just the voice like Alexa set timer, want to do that? You know, like I've just, I'm out on this task.
- [27:17]
Janko Rutgers
But I think so the bar is so low that improving that just a little bit, making that just a little easier to have a more natural conversation with these devices. And that's what LLMs are great for, right? So if you cannot, if you don't have to remember these exact phrases anymore and like get it 100% right and otherwise Google is going to tell you, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do with that. Um, so the bar is so low that getting it better is actually not that hard, I think.
- [27:43]
Emily Forlini
Right. So it's just all the things they could invest in. I'm like, is this the right one? Is there momentum? Is there potential?
- [27:51]
Doc Rock
So you just brought up something very, very valuable. Jaco. I talk to Claude, Gemini, Chad, his name is Chad, all the time. And their ability to just talk like normal and answer like normal is so good. Why the heck the smart speakers don't work. So Google technically should be smoking everybody because talking to Gemini is phenomenal. I have it is business conversations with it all the time. I'm doing this project and I want to really define the customer avatar. So I'm like, interview me to make sure that we're on point with this, you know, new ad campaign that we're about to run on Twitter. So like, it gives me all of this great information that we can use and we use it all the time. So why is it that the device, it, my house can't do that. It drives me nuts.
- [28:40]
Janko Rutgers
Well, I think that the problem that everybody had in the industry is getting these conversations right with LLMs is not the hard part. The hard part is actually plugging into all the existing shit that you have around your house and making the device now. Also know how to control light bulbs, Also know how to like, deal with all your existing tech in your house. Also plug into the existing services. That was another part of the announcement where they're like, oh, it's also going to work with Spotify and, I don't know, Hulu and Netflix and all those things by using existing APIs. But they had to like retrofit it to work with all the existing stuff without reinventing the wheel. So that's the extra step that everybody had to go through just talking to Gemini on your phone. I agree it's incredibly impressive, but at the same time, until not too long ago, it would tell me, no, I can't turn on the light for you.
- [29:32]
Emily Forlini
And that's probably what's taking Apple a long time, because Apple wants it to be able to Centex and have its little tentacles and the whole Apple ecosystem. And they also want it to be privacy focused. And so I think if anything, all those integrations would be what's delaying it. But also Mark Gurman is the main voice saying it's delayed. So I know we trust him, but he's the only one who said it was 2026 instead of 2025 and then he said now it's 2027. So I don't think this. He could be wrong. It's not official from Apple. I just think that's important to point out.
- [30:05]
Leo Laporte
That's fair. Yeah, that's fair. He could be wrong. What do people want with their AI assistants? Do they really want to have a conversation with them? Emily, what do you use AI for anything?
- [30:15]
Emily Forlini
I use ChatGPT and Gemini for like researching and ideation.
- [30:19]
Leo Laporte
Do you talk to it or do you type to it?
- [30:21]
Emily Forlini
No, I think I'M just like so out on voice tech. I talk to it if I have to to write articles and I have had that moment like that Panos wanted me to have. I've had that with Google, Gemini and ChatGPT voice mode where I'm like, wow, I'm actually talking to a computer for real. Right. I think it's cool. But I'm, I think just using my, my good old fingers, just typing, texting like I'm getting done what I need to get done and using AI in other ways. So I haven't really found a reason.
- [30:50]
Leo Laporte
To talk to and I find myself talking to. I have set up on the iPhone the action button to talk to chat GPT and I do talk. I do. I will ask her. Or is it might be perplexity. That's the other one I use all the time is perplexity.
- [31:04]
Doc Rock
Plexity is good.
- [31:05]
Leo Laporte
I really like. I don't. That's what I use for search now instead of Google.
- [31:09]
Doc Rock
Yeah, same.
- [31:11]
Leo Laporte
You don't get a. What's hard is you don't get a link necessarily. You often just get a summary. But for a lot of things.
- [31:21]
Emily Forlini
For.
- [31:21]
Leo Laporte
A lot of reasons. Like last night we were watching the Brutalists trying to get ready for the Oscars tonight and I noticed that they had those construction. Those fixed position construction cranes which I thought were first used in New York City for skyscrapers. You know the ones with. It's just. And it rotates around and as the skyscraper gets taller, the crane gets taller. And I saw those in the background on this hill and I thought that's anachronistic. They didn't have those. And they certainly didn't have them unless you're building a high rise. They didn't have them in the 50s. So I did a long deep search on Perplexity and learned a lot about construction cranes in the process, but never once went to a web page, which I think is probably a bad thing.
- [32:04]
Emily Forlini
I have the same feeling after I, I do use chat CBT a lot and to Google or not even I said Google. You know that's. That's the word for researching. But I use it to get information. But it leaves me with a weird feeling like.
- [32:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, like ripped people off.
- [32:19]
Emily Forlini
You rip people off. And also like I actually can't fact check what you're saying because it's coming.
- [32:24]
Leo Laporte
That's a problem.
- [32:24]
Emily Forlini
Too many places. And so it's, it leaves you with it. Just a, just a twinge of doubt, I think.
- [32:30]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I have a whole thing on construction crane history on my Perplexity with videos and pictures. And this started in Mesopotamia in 3000 BC and those modern cranes, they have a specific name, I can't remember what it is. But fixed high rise cranes that use elevator shaft are called internal climbing tower cranes. So just so you know.
- [32:53]
Emily Forlini
All right, quick fact check people in the chat.
- [32:56]
Leo Laporte
Well see, and that's maybe my fault. I don't assume it's hallucinating, especially Perplexity because he's usually going out in the web to find answers and people tell me you should be fact checking. I guess if you're a journalist I would before using an article that affects.
- [33:15]
Emily Forlini
My opinion towards AI because I actually really need things to be right and it can create more time for me and so it could be why I'm a little more hesitant. It just doesn't really fit with my line of work. Right. Perfectly.
- [33:29]
Leo Laporte
That makes sense. Yeah.
- [33:30]
Doc Rock
Journalists, when you, when you ask it to do things like that, especially poor research, one of the key things you could always tell it to is to pull you the sources and I always tell it to double check its facts and then oftentimes catch itself and it's like oh yeah, sorry I pulled that one. But you should look at this one and it'll give you the link. So it still speeds it up because.
- [33:49]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, perplexity does that. It has footnotes.
- [33:50]
Doc Rock
It will build you a list and.
- [33:52]
Leo Laporte
You can tap the footnote to see where that came from.
- [33:54]
Emily Forlini
From Gemini too.
- [33:56]
Leo Laporte
It makes it fairly easy to.
- [33:58]
Doc Rock
Gemini would be real bad if it's giving you the wrong links because it.
- [34:01]
Emily Forlini
Is Google and it has, it often gives. One time I asked it a question and it, one of the links was a poster website like a poster related to my question and I was like, it was like posters dot com.
- [34:16]
Leo Laporte
That's not a good source probably. Yeah, I'm thinking.
- [34:19]
Emily Forlini
So I kind of use it as like a directional thing. Like I kind of. It's like a vibe giver like initial information and that can speed things up for sure. It's not useless, it's just I also have to use Google for sure and.
- [34:30]
Leo Laporte
See so that's the observation most experts have come up with is that AI is good, useful in conjunction with a human, that it is a partnership but the human's in charge. That's the problem I have with Amazon's Echo is there's no follow up or anything. You just talk into this box and you have to assume it's right. And I don't, I don't feel like you're in as Involved because of the way the interaction is set up.
- [34:56]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, Especially the one where it's like, bring a mechanic to the house to fix my oven.
- [35:00]
Leo Laporte
What the hell?
- [35:02]
Emily Forlini
I know all these Amazon execs have, like, tons of money that are. That they don't care who comes to the house, but any mechanic will do. I want quotes. Because mechanics, especially if anyone's ever done work on their house or, like, you don't know what the heck you're getting. And I definitely don't want Alexa sending some, like, Joe Schmo to my house and then I end up with a $750 bill in my house.
- [35:22]
Leo Laporte
I hear you. A bathroom remodel. Is that right?
- [35:25]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [35:26]
Leo Laporte
Well, even I did that, by the way, on the web. I was looking for somebody to repair my shower, and I got. And I made a mistake. I went to a site that I think was a bogus site from Angie's List, and I got, literally for the first next two weeks, five or six calls a day from people who said, I hear you want a bathroom remodel. No, I just wanted my shower fixed. No, we.
- [35:45]
Doc Rock
We had the AC go out the other day, and I called the company, and I know the owner of the company, and then he's like, okay, I'll send this by tomorrow. And it's like, yo, we have guys that work with him. That's what you need. Love and do the connection. And so he knows not to send the guys that we don't like, because that would just be a waste of time. Well, it's not we. It's the other person.
- [36:07]
Emily Forlini
Well, I mean, if it's a bad person, I just be like, talk to my Alexa. Like, I didn't call you.
- [36:11]
Leo Laporte
Hey, come here. Can you just work this out with Alexa? Because I don't want to have anything to do.
- [36:16]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I'm not feeling it. Seems like a bad, bad match. Also, she'll pick up the bill. You know, your site visit bill or whatever.
- [36:22]
Doc Rock
Okay, so, Leo, you asked the question. I'm going to answer it now. Thank you, Emily. She said, Leo said, what do you want your AI to do? I want my AI to sit on hold with Spectrum to tell them that I've been in text since Jesus walked to Nazareth. I know. I rebooted everything. I know. What's broken just restarted on your end. They will fight you for, like, three hours. And when they finally do it, they go, oh, look, that works.
- [36:45]
Leo Laporte
Worked.
- [36:45]
Doc Rock
So that's what I want Alexa to do. I want Alexa to fight with Spectrum until.
- [36:50]
Leo Laporte
Wasn't that the idea. Google announced this years ago.
- [36:54]
Doc Rock
Oh, yeah, that was like, years ago.
- [36:55]
Leo Laporte
It would call and intercede for you. And I don't think that went so well.
- [37:00]
Emily Forlini
That's what they're saying in this case is that they will call the mechanic. So I guess that mechanic is going to be bumbling around town in his van and he's going to get a phone call from an AI that's like, do you want to go fix an oven at 123 Downtown Street? And he's gonna be like, what? And this is gonna be the most just idiotic interaction of all time. And that's, I guess, the world that.
- [37:23]
Leo Laporte
People want put up the Alexa signal.
- [37:26]
Janko Rutgers
Did you all see the video where two AIs were talking to each other and then like, oh, now the AIs recognize that they're talking to each other. Instead they're switching to this weird tweet mode and they were just playing modem sounds to each other.
- [37:39]
Leo Laporte
Oh, wow, that was fun.
- [37:40]
Janko Rutgers
It was.
- [37:41]
Emily Forlini
It's like that. But the guy on the other end, I mean, I'm in Jersey, is some, like, Jersey IT contractor. And, you know, that's like oil and oil and water.
- [37:48]
Leo Laporte
They can't even calling me for.
- [37:50]
Emily Forlini
They can't even send an email. I mean, it's bad. I'm. I've gotten quotes that are like screenshots of a screenshot of a screenshot. And it's like, where the heck.
- [37:58]
Doc Rock
Who are you guys?
- [37:59]
Leo Laporte
Like, I had a plumber.
- [38:00]
Doc Rock
You have just discovered what a Muggle is.
- [38:03]
Leo Laporte
That's a no.
- [38:04]
Emily Forlini
I love that you use that from Jersey.
- [38:07]
Leo Laporte
I had a plumber come out and he said, boy, it was hard to find. I said, what do you mean? It's on the Google Maps. He said, oh, yeah, I don't have any of that stuff.
- [38:16]
Emily Forlini
Exactly. That's my point. They're saying they're going to call these guys to fix your oven.
- [38:21]
Leo Laporte
I don't know how to get there. Let me look at the Thomas Guide. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, yeah, we are having some fun now. Let's talk more about tech in just a bit with Emily Forlaney from PC Magazine. Doc Rock. The YouTube Doc Rock. That one not do crochet. That's a different one. Doc Rock also. Now, did you say that ecamm's gonna buy some ads? Because I heard you say that.
- [38:46]
Doc Rock
Yeah. What we're doing is like, we're running it through all of this stuff and coming up with a new marketing plan because, you know, oh, good.
- [38:51]
Leo Laporte
Twit's here for You. But that's not why Doc Rock is on. We love eCamm. In fact, we're using it right now. We use it with Zoom in conjunction. And so Benito, who's running the operation at his house because he's got 10 gigabit symmetric ethernet Internet, has Ecamm running on a Mac, which is also running the Zoom, which is this call. It's a complicated thing, but it works quite well. He's doing the switching with eCamm. Anyway, great to have you, Doc. And of course Janko, Ricker's longtime friend, going way back to the Giga Ohm days. Low Pass CC is a must read and I subscribe. Really must read. Is it substack? Who do you use for your newsletter?
- [39:35]
Janko Rutgers
I use Beehive and actually much better. Very happy with them.
- [39:38]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I hear very good things about Beehive. Good. Well, that's. Glad you got 17,000 people subscribing, give or take. That's very nice. Good for you, Janko. I think this is the future in so many ways. You know, a talented reporter who's made a name for himself and then does it on his own.
- [40:02]
Janko Rutgers
Why should I have a paid tier? And I also do ads, so if any ECAMM like company wants to do an ad in my newsletter, let's talk.
- [40:14]
Leo Laporte
We'll have more in just a bit. It's great to have you all here too. Our show today, brought to you by our good friends at thinkstone Canary. I've been talking about Things Canary for about eight years now. We even have a thinkscanary right over here. The idea is it's a honey pot. So the Things Canary looks like a, you know, like an external USB drive, Just a little black box about yay big, plugs into the wall, plugs into your network. You can then go into the console and you can give it a personality. Like it can be an SSH server or an IIS server, web server. It could be a Linux box, a Windows box. It could be a SCADA device. I mean, there's really. The sky's the limit. But these, these are not any of those devices. From the hacker's point of view, they're indistinguishable, but they are actually little honey pots just waiting, waiting for the bad guy to attack them. They can also create files, you know, you can spread around your network that looks like spreadsheets or PDFs or Word documents, whatever. I have a number of XLSX files that say things like payee information or employee information, the kind of stuff that A bad guy can't resist. So you sprinkle them around. And if, then if somebody accesses those Lore files or tries to brute force your fake internal SSH server, your thinks Canary goes woohoo and will immediately alert you that you have a problem. No false alerts, just the alerts that matter. Choose a profile for your things Canary device It's kind of fun. It's so easy to do. You might change it all. You know, you can change it every day. I change it from time to time. It's, it's got, it's indistinguishable from the actual device right down to the Mac address. Then you register with your hosted console for monitoring and notifications. By the way, notifications any way you want. Email, sms, you know, I guess you could get a fax, it supports web hooks, syslog, it supports, it has an API. Really any way you want it. Then you just sit and wait. An attacker who's inside has breached your network is inside. Or a malicious insider, an evil maid or that kind of thing. They make themselves known by accessing your bethinks Canary. They can't help themselves. They don't look vulnerable, they look valuable. They look I gotta get into that thing. The minute they do, you will know. Visit Canary Tools twit for just 7,500 bucks a year as an example, you'll get five thinkst canaries. You get your own hosted console, upgrade, support, maintenance. Oh and by the way, if you use the offer code Twit in the how did you hear about us? Box 10% off the price for not just for the first year, but forever for, for life. As long as you use your things to Canaries, you can always return your thanks to Canaries with their two month money back guarantee for a full refund. So there is absolutely no risk here you gotta try it. I should point out that in the eight years that thinks Canary has partnered with Twit, no one has ever asked for a refund. Not once. Because they work. Because you, once you get one you realize, oh, we've needed this all along. Visit Canary Tools TWIT enter the code twit and how'd you hear about us? Box for 10% off for life Canary Tool slash Twit for your own. Your very own Thinkst Canary. We thank him for their support of this week in tech. So we were going to talk about Apple, I guess we've kind of talked about Apple and, and, and it's LLM Siri we should say. Somebody said in the chat room, oh Apple Intelligence is here. Yeah, we're talking about smart Siri. Siri's not going to get smart for some time. She's actually gotten dumber, right?
- [43:52]
Doc Rock
Yes.
- [43:53]
Leo Laporte
That's the sad thing.
- [43:55]
Doc Rock
100%.
- [43:56]
Janko Rutgers
I like to think we all get smarter, but perspective, we're getting.
- [44:00]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, maybe we're getting dumber, too. I know as I age, I've forgotten more things than I knew. Google's founder. We were talking about Gemini. Larry. Larry, not Larry. Sergey Brin has tell the AI team stop building nanny products. You know, for a long time, one of the things AI companies have really worked on is AI safety. So that the AI wouldn't say something horrific or wouldn't teach you how to make bombs and so forth. But maybe that's holding you back. He sent a message to all the employees in Google's DeepMind division saying it's been, quote, it's been two years of the Gemini program. Gemini program and GDM, which is Google DeepMind. New York Times reported this. We have come a long way in that time with many efforts we should feel very proud of. He says at the same time, let me refresh this because I can't scroll it past that point.
- [45:12]
Emily Forlini
You've just been making it up this far.
- [45:14]
Leo Laporte
Thus far, I. I've been making it up. I can't read it. What is. At the same time. What. What's going on? Is the Verge turned off? Scrolling. All right, let me go to the.
- [45:24]
Janko Rutgers
It might be that paywall. You hit that paywall.
- [45:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh, do they have a paywall? Yeah, the Verge was free.
- [45:31]
Emily Forlini
No, they added a subscription tier.
- [45:34]
Leo Laporte
This is the problem. Now I have to pay for every source.
- [45:37]
Emily Forlini
Well, AI. I mean, someone.
- [45:39]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah. I could ask Perplexity. What Larry said. Does anybody. Can anybody see it? And tell me what Larry said.
- [45:45]
Emily Forlini
I feel like he said, stop making me any products.
- [45:48]
Leo Laporte
I think that's no more nanny products.
- [45:50]
Emily Forlini
What does that mean?
- [45:51]
Leo Laporte
He says, at the same time, competition accelerated immensely and the final race to AGI is. I can't read the rest of it is a foot.
- [46:01]
Janko Rutgers
What is it is a foot. And then he says, I think we have all the ingredients to win this race, but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts.
- [46:10]
Leo Laporte
What does it mean to stop building nanny products? Does that mean abandon AI safety?
- [46:18]
Emily Forlini
Okay, so I'm trying to think of the word nanny. Like, that's like someone who takes care of kids.
- [46:24]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know, sometimes they talk about nanny government. Right? A government that doesn't trust its people enough. So it has to tell them, you Got to wear a motorcycle helmet or you have to wear a seat belt that sometimes people say that's the nanny state.
- [46:38]
Emily Forlini
Both those things are really good ideas, by the way.
- [46:41]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not saying I agree with them, but that's. That's kind of the attitude. And I guess that's what Sergey Brin is. Is saying.
- [46:51]
Emily Forlini
Well, I think it's hip right now to hop on the, like, you know, less AI regulation train that kind of like the Trump administration is ushering into. And they, you know, went to the Paris AI Summit and the whole thing was like, less regulation, less regulation. And so it seems to be in vogue right now to talk about not, you know, being responsible, which I kind of feel like they're setting it up so people have to pick. Like, you should just have an innovative product that also doesn't, like, kill you or teach your kid how to make a bomb. And I guess that's too much to ask. I don't know.
- [47:27]
Janko Rutgers
I mean, there's something where you could make the argument without calling it a nanite. Nana. Yes, Nan I nanny product that they're sometimes overshooting it a little bit. When I was trying out the Ray Bans, metal Ray Bans, I was trying a couple of things where I would just take a photo of a car, and I was like, tell me about this type of car. And the AI was initially told me right away, oh, I can't identify this license plate and I can't talk about people's cars. I was like, I don't care who owns.
- [47:57]
Leo Laporte
Tell me the license.
- [47:58]
Janko Rutgers
Like, which year was this car made? Or something like that. Exactly.
- [48:02]
Leo Laporte
Well, here's the good news, because perplexity has gotten around the Verge paywall, and I have the rest. In the leaked internal memo, Brin expressed concern for Google's AI offerings are. Are, quote, overloaded with filters and various restrictions. Exactly what you were saying, Janko. And he said we have to trust our users rather than creating overly cautious products. He also said the AI team should be working 60 hours a week and should come in at least every weekday. Is that reasonable?
- [48:36]
Janko Rutgers
Nope.
- [48:37]
Leo Laporte
I think none of the people here even go into the office. Right, right.
- [48:41]
Doc Rock
No, listen, I am. I definitely bust my. You know, first of all, you know how long it would take me to commute every day to work? That's 13 hours a day, both directions. 26 hours a day. Doesn't work. Yeah. Who this thing? Years ago, Adobe had a thing called R O W E Results Only Work Environment. And they were working deep into this. This was way back in like 2014. As a matter of fact, the last conversation I had about it was at a coffee shop in San Francisco with O. Malik. How that, that's how long ago this was. That's how long ago this was. Talking about full circle and it was starting to catch on. And I was over here doing workshops, teaching companies in Hawaii because our traffic is so bad that this works. And people are more, you know, advantageous with their work because they're not thinking about their kids, what they need to get done because they're, they could do stuff. And couple years ago somebody said, oh, everybody needs to get back to work because they think everybody is lazy. And now everybody's going back to it. And it was so dumb. It's really, really stupid. Like it's. He says if you go to work, it doesn't matter.
- [49:49]
Leo Laporte
He says 60 hours a week is, quote, the sweet spot of productivity and allows for maximum output without risking burnout. That's five 12 hour days a week. I don't know. I think I'd be burnout.
- [50:02]
Janko Rutgers
I think what's happening here is that people at Google and Meta and so forth all have musk envy. They realized you can be an a hole. You can't treat the people terribly and maybe that accelerates your product a little bit. And then they build these to the point of how much AI safety you need. It's the same thing, right, where they build all these safeguards into their products and then Grok comes along and has an like, what's it called? A hole mode? Musk mode? I'm not sure, but yeah, exactly. There you go. That's a technical term, but really I think they're giving up too much here and they're like going way too far in the other direction.
- [50:39]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, it's like an a hole competition.
- [50:41]
Leo Laporte
But maybe are we lazy Americans and in other countries they're working those 12 hour days and are we afraid that China or India or Germany is going to exceed us, become better than we are?
- [50:58]
Emily Forlini
I think we're a little lazy for sure. I mean, if you think about like what our grandparents were doing, like both my grandfathers were war veterans and I'm, you know, at home on a podcast. And that's like the hardest thing. Oh, it's Sunday night, I have to get in a podcast. I mean we're, we're a little wimpy.
- [51:14]
Leo Laporte
You know, if they were the greatest generation, what would you call your generation?
- [51:19]
Emily Forlini
The soft Internet generation?
- [51:21]
Leo Laporte
The softies.
- [51:23]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. Maybe soft shelled turtles. I don't know.
- [51:26]
E
Yeah, this is Benito. This is the reason they did all that, though, so that you could have a life like this.
- [51:36]
Leo Laporte
They fart for your right to sit.
- [51:37]
Doc Rock
On your duff bonito. I want you to try that with lolo. I just really. I want to see you try that.
- [51:43]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. I mean, yeah, Like, I. I inherited a gun from my grandfather, who picked it up off a soldier in Japan in World War II. And I'm like, I've seen the gun. And I'm like, this couldn't be more different from my life.
- [51:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it is a very different life.
- [51:59]
Emily Forlini
But to bring it back down to Earth, I definitely. I'm of two minds about the, like, return to office. So, like, I actually moved from Chicago to New York because I wanted to be closer to the PCMAG office because I think it's important to feel a connection to your work and your coworkers. I do not think that means working 12 hours a day, but I think if you're spending your whole day doing something, you shouldn't just be talking to a computer. You should be talking to a person. So to me, that sounds like a healthy, balanced society. But I definitely think there's a. I think the crazy, like, you have to be in five days a week working 12 hours is. Is something different than that.
- [52:34]
Doc Rock
Yeah, that's true. Because, like, I do, on average, I'm out of here at least once a month to go either to headquarters or to meet them at some conference. So we just came back from Orlando and Pensacola, and I also went back to headquarters in Boston. So I see my team pretty much every month, if not every other month, which is important.
- [52:51]
Emily Forlini
Important. Yeah.
- [52:52]
Doc Rock
Which is important. Yeah. We have a blast because we get to see each other all the time. And it's always, like, we look forward to the time that we do get to work together. And I'm about to do Chicago, and then Nab. Nab is big for us. So. Yeah, I think you're right. Like, having that connection is fine, but just telling somebody, I got to see you every day for this amount of time of day or whatever, it's just.
- [53:11]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, that's actually unproductive, for sure. But sometimes it's almost like we talk.
- [53:15]
Doc Rock
About is Game of Thrones.
- [53:16]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, no one cares. It should only be insofar as it's beneficial to your work and your profession, your career. I don't necessarily need to know what everyone's doing on the weekend, but if we're working together in a company, there should be an element of what are we doing? And there should Be some ability to talk about that in a more casual setting, and it just gets lost over the computer.
- [53:36]
Leo Laporte
By the way, you're right. The Verge wants 50 bucks a year or 7 bucks a month for me to read the rest of that article.
- [53:42]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, but sometimes it's almost uncool to think that going into an office is smart. Like, there's just become this whole trend that it's like, if I want to be in the office, people like, oh, are you a boomer? It's like, no, I just want to be invested in my work.
- [53:54]
Leo Laporte
I kind of miss. I'll be honest, I miss having my colleagues around me in the studio. We're now a completely remote company.
- [54:02]
Janko Rutgers
I mean, there are remote first companies that are doing great. Right. So I don't think you can make a universal rule, like, people have different needs. Companies have different needs sometimes. Maybe it matters some for some other jobs. I always thought it was really distracting. I've worked, like, in both worlds. I've been. When I was a variety, I was remote just by the nature of me being up. Up north and all of those folks being down in la. When I was at Protocol, I went back to the office, and I always thought, like, I got the least amount of work done in an office because of the meeting. Somebody talk to you.
- [54:34]
Leo Laporte
And those doofuses who look over the barrier and say, hey, what you doing, Yanko? You're writing, you're doing anything.
- [54:42]
Janko Rutgers
So, you know, I always felt like if I really want to write and I want to get something done, I have to go home or I have to go to a coffee shop.
- [54:49]
Emily Forlini
So a lot of people feel like that. It's.
- [54:51]
Leo Laporte
I think writers do need some solitude. That's normal. Right?
- [54:55]
Emily Forlini
And it's also, like, different stages of your life. Like, if you're raising kids or you're taking care of an aging parent, or you have, like, responsibilities at home or even just, you know, someone you have to let in the mechanic that Amazon called. Like, there's reasons that you have to be home sometimes times. And it's like the black and white of this guy saying, like, you have to be in the office 12 hours a week is just like, do you even know how society works?
- [55:19]
Leo Laporte
That's a really good point. I mean, how are you going to get your laundry done? How are you going to bring the. What are you going to do with your kids? I mean, 60 hours is a lot to spend in an office.
- [55:29]
Emily Forlini
That's not good at all. Why would that. Why would we want that?
- [55:32]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, it's not good. Quality of life maybe. I mean it is in the old days of startups, the startup culture, Apple and so forth forth. The guys who designed this Macintosh behind me probably worked 80 or 90 hours a week while they were developing it. I mean, that's how Silicon Valley started, isn't it?
- [55:49]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, but then they got rich and then they stopped working. And there's different times of your life when you need different things and some blanket statement about you have to be in the office 12 hours a day the rest of your life is just dumb.
- [56:01]
Leo Laporte
Somebody is pointing out that our old studio is now a shared workspace for remote workers. It's true. Why do people, why do people do that? Do they. That's because people need some human contact though, right?
- [56:16]
Doc Rock
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The co working is, is the bomb. I mean, I had a coworking space for a while and it's, it's really a thing that is for that. Like so Yanko said, like you want to be by yourself, but every once in a while you want to be around people who will sort of push you. And that competitive spirit of like, I'm over here at that time writing for tua, I'm doing my articles and these kids are coding. All kind of crazy stuff. I'm like, damn, I'm just a low life tech writer right now. I kind of was jealous. I wanted to learn how to code and so it kept me, it kept me in the game. But also I was able to add some of what's going on in their world to our articles and our stories and things. So it was great. You know, it was, it was fun. And you know, the best thing I had of that, I dragged a bunch of coded kids with me to like the last Mac world, something they never would have thought about going to. And they, they all say like that was like one of their greatest experience. Right. So it's like the world as well.
- [57:06]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, you wouldn't have predicted that, you know, but if you're just at home and you have three recurring meetings that have been on your calendar for three years and you're just at home doing the meetings, that's not great.
- [57:20]
Leo Laporte
We are more isolated in this era, are we not? I mean, and that seems to be not a good thing for humans. It's been the trend in the industrial age to become more and more isolated and to be moving away from your, your family and your tribe. And you know, I, I don't, I feel like that's in the long run, maybe not good for our biology. Like we need that's why I go.
- [57:44]
Doc Rock
Live twice a week so that my tribe could come and hang out on Zoom. So, like, they're sitting in the back.
- [57:49]
Leo Laporte
Room, like, hanging out on. Look, I'm with you guys right now, but it's not the same as if we were sitting around having a beer and. And. And shooting the breeze is.
- [57:56]
Emily Forlini
It would be very fun. I would love.
- [57:58]
Leo Laporte
It would be more fun.
- [57:59]
Doc Rock
That would be a bless.
- [57:59]
Emily Forlini
I'd love to get a drink with you guys and talk about tech. Like, that'd be great.
- [58:02]
Leo Laporte
This is kind of sort of what this is, but it's. It's. It's the AI version of it. It's the.
- [58:07]
Doc Rock
No, you know, the best thing is Emily, go to Italian restaurant with Lisa. That's the party right there.
- [58:12]
Leo Laporte
When did you do that?
- [58:14]
Doc Rock
When we were in Denver, me and Lisa, Micah, Max.
- [58:17]
Leo Laporte
Was it wild?
- [58:18]
Doc Rock
That was so much fun.
- [58:19]
Leo Laporte
Yes. Well, that's the one. The three of them came home with.
- [58:21]
Doc Rock
COVID It wasn't my fault. I was good.
- [58:27]
Leo Laporte
I remember that.
- [58:29]
Doc Rock
Yeah, that's fine.
- [58:30]
Leo Laporte
Is that when this started is five years ago with the COVID epidemic? Is that when we all kind of started? Yeah. Right.
- [58:37]
Emily Forlini
Yes. The year is 2025. That was 2020.
- [58:40]
Doc Rock
It's so crazy, right? It doesn't seem like that long ago, but it is.
- [58:44]
Emily Forlini
I know.
- [58:45]
Leo Laporte
Well, in fact, it's exactly because March 17th is when California closed down. So it's exactly five years ago that we started to get the news right around now into February, Right. Early March.
- [58:57]
Janko Rutgers
I remember I wrote an article in late February where I was looking at people on Kickstarter delaying their campaigns out of China. And this guy somehow got. I got somehow in touch with somebody who was developing a hardware product in China, and he was sending me photos of himself going shopping with a mask and with gloves on. And I was like, that is crazy.
- [59:16]
Leo Laporte
Who would want to ever do that?
- [59:18]
Janko Rutgers
Exactly. And then two months later, that was us.
- [59:21]
Emily Forlini
Seattle was the first city to do the shutdowns as we had the first cases, because I lived there at that time, and everyone thought we were crazy. Like, what are you guys doing? Like, you guys totally overreacting. And then it spread, but it was.
- [59:36]
Leo Laporte
It was really bad in Seattle. That was the first place in the US that was really bad. Yeah, it was funny.
- [59:42]
Doc Rock
To me, everybody's a visceral reaction. I went to school in Japan, so, like, masking up is normal. Normal. Like, if you have a sniffle, you don't come to class sniffling in front of the whole class. You bash for the Whole class so you don't make everybody else sick. So, like, I already had the equipment and everything because we go to Japan a lot, but it was so weird. Everybody's a visceral reaction to, like, oh, you're gonna die from breathing in the mess. And I'm like, when you as a child, when you were coming out, your mom was in labor for, like, eight hours with you. You know what they were wearing? Mask. You're not gonna die. You came into the world looking at people in mask.
- [60:13]
Emily Forlini
You really took it all the way back to child.
- [60:16]
Leo Laporte
I just. I pray that I don't go out of this world looking at people wearing masks. That's not what I want.
- [60:21]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I would.
- [60:22]
Leo Laporte
I would like to see their faces.
- [60:24]
Emily Forlini
Bad for dentists. Like, no one would be getting dental work done.
- [60:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I didn't even think of that. How did that come up for you, Emily? Is your husband a dentist? What's going on?
- [60:35]
Emily Forlini
No, because I thought. I thought during COVID It was weird. You never saw people smile. Oh, and then that made me. I thought about that, and I thought I was nicer when people took the masks off because you can see, like, the full range of people's emotions. And then I thought about the dentist, and I thought about the dental industry, and then that comment came out.
- [60:52]
Doc Rock
I hang out with ugly people. I want them to put the mask back on.
- [60:57]
Leo Laporte
I just, for some reason, fixated on the thing that you said you had all the equipment. I just, you know, the equipment.
- [61:04]
Doc Rock
Masking gloves is, like, normal for me. Number one, I always had gloves. I was a paramedic, so.
- [61:08]
Leo Laporte
Remember, it turned out you didn't need gloves. Remember we were hosing down our groceries? We'd get groceries delivered, and I would wipe everything, everything down with alcohol swabs before bringing it in, Leave things outside.
- [61:19]
Doc Rock
For hours just to make sure that, you know, there's. Yeah, we did all of that. But, like, mass. I still have. I always have them on deck because, you know.
- [61:26]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I have them right over here.
- [61:27]
Doc Rock
I think the most frustrating thing, though, now, because I fly more, and maybe I notice it more because I'm always in an airport. How are we adults and we don't know to cover our. I might insert bad words on twit. Cover your mouth when you cough. People. So many people. I'm like, bro, like, what have we learned?
- [61:45]
Leo Laporte
Nothing.
- [61:46]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God, it drives me crazy.
- [61:47]
Leo Laporte
Crazy from the guardian. I want him to be prepared. Why parents are teaching their gen Alpha kids to use AI.
- [61:57]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, makes sense.
- [61:58]
Leo Laporte
Now you don't have Kids, Emily. And yeah, so none of us here have young people. But the.
- [62:06]
Doc Rock
But I teach my niece and my nephew. Like, I want them to know everything. And, you know, it used to be.
- [62:12]
Leo Laporte
That you would teach kids to code, Right. Now you teach them how to prompt.
- [62:17]
Doc Rock
Yes. And my nephew into making music.
- [62:21]
Leo Laporte
I would not. I think coding is going to be less important in time.
- [62:25]
Emily Forlini
I think, though, like, the curriculum's kind of just catching up. Like, it definitely wasn't standard to have computer science classes in school when I was in school. And now it's like, yeah, my niece is in, like, computer science class. And so it's kind of still catching up. I Maybe prompting you could add it in because it's supposed to be so natural. Everyone can do it. Maybe you don't need a class.
- [62:45]
Leo Laporte
It's also, though, they're doing more than just saying, here's how you use AI. They're teaching them how AI hallucinates, how to validate what you get. They talk about one father who exposed his child to AI's hallucinarity, hallucinatory flaws by having him debunk chat. GPT generated world record claims by verifying it with the Guinness Book of World Records.
- [63:09]
Emily Forlini
You know what's so funny? Like, when I was in school, they were teaching us the dangers of Wikipedia.
- [63:14]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's changed.
- [63:15]
Emily Forlini
Go and cite Wikipedia. And that is like, the number one source for all chatbots is Wikipedia.
- [63:20]
Leo Laporte
You were in school when Wikipedia was around?
- [63:25]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, actual paper. Young in Wikipedia. We were growing together.
- [63:31]
Leo Laporte
I have, in the other room, I have. Have the World Book encyclopedias that I foolishly bought my children when they were little, thinking that's what I grew up looking at, the World Book. They never, never needed that.
- [63:44]
Doc Rock
Dude. World Book in botanical. On Sundays after church, just in there reading about snakes. And I had the one with the color pictures. Like, I lived in those things.
- [63:52]
Leo Laporte
I loved that. It was a great way to learn stuff. But that was in an era where the other choice was to go to the library. There was no other way to get information.
- [64:01]
Doc Rock
Yep.
- [64:01]
Leo Laporte
You know, do you remember, like, when.
- [64:03]
Doc Rock
We got in Contra, or is that what it called in Contra, the.
- [64:06]
Leo Laporte
The World Book on Carter in Carta. The crappy one that they sold at grocery stores.
- [64:12]
Doc Rock
I thought I was in heaven. And I was like, that was based.
- [64:14]
Leo Laporte
On Collier's Encyclopedia, which was sold volume by volume every month. If you got enough grocery stamps, you would get it. You'd get here. Now this month is B. It's the B volume. And Microsoft was so cheap, they bought the lowest they didn't buy Britann, they didn't buy the World Book. They bought Collier's Encyclopedia and started Encarta. But yeah, I bet Emily, you must have had Anarta when you were little. Yeah, no, you, you.
- [64:42]
Emily Forlini
No, I remember that name. I know the name. I don't say I used it. Can't say I have memories, but remember.
- [64:47]
Janko Rutgers
About old people talking because it was.
- [64:48]
Doc Rock
In the case in the drawer. He never used it. It was just in the drawer from somebody.
- [64:53]
Leo Laporte
Do you remember CD ROMs, Emily?
- [64:55]
Emily Forlini
Yes, I had a CD case and it was like, like awesome.
- [64:59]
Leo Laporte
Was it music or was it games and stuff?
- [65:03]
Emily Forlini
Music, Music. Yeah, yeah, it was like Sum 41 and Avril Lavine and Evanescence, Skater Boy and All American Rejects and my, my, my burn CDs and.
- [65:16]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, I used to have a case full of burn CDs. Yeah, yeah, that. That didn't last that long. It didn't.
- [65:24]
Janko Rutgers
I think it's making a comeback as somebody who has teenagers at home. One of them collects CDs.
- [65:30]
Emily Forlini
It is. Yeah.
- [65:31]
Leo Laporte
It's so weird.
- [65:32]
Janko Rutgers
It's going to like a thrift store. She's big into thrifting anyway, so going to a thrift store, going through all these CDs and finding something that you can't find on Spotify, apparently, really gratifying.
- [65:44]
Leo Laporte
We have a record store in town. Yeah, but I saw this this morning, a review of a cassette player in Wired magazine and I thought, what the hell? Wired's reviewing a cassette player.
- [65:59]
Janko Rutgers
That is a good looking cassette player.
- [66:00]
Doc Rock
There's a bunch, there's a bunch of them coming out. Teenage engineering even has one coming out soon.
- [66:05]
Leo Laporte
But, but, but it's crazy. That's a terrible format for music.
- [66:11]
Doc Rock
Yeah, I'd rather them bring back the md.
- [66:14]
Leo Laporte
This, these, this does look very cool. It says we are rewind on the front.
- [66:19]
Emily Forlini
I mean, cassettes have been cool for like five years. They've been coming.
- [66:23]
Leo Laporte
Have they really?
- [66:24]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. That's not new.
- [66:26]
E
Hi, this is Benito. So the reason this is happening, I think my theory is that like vinyl is getting expensive now. Vinyl is expensive now. It's not cheap anymore. Like you used to be able to get cheap vinyl, but since are cheap. So now cassettes are cheap.
- [66:37]
Leo Laporte
So like worth every penny.
- [66:39]
E
So people are buying cassettes or, or CD. CDs are still cheap.
- [66:42]
Doc Rock
That makes sense. Benito, you're smart. You know, like maybe like two weeks ago I was. I had my niece, you know, I pick her back to school, I wouldn't go get froyo. And then she like, hey, can we go to the vinyl store? And I was like, the what video? It says right here. This. This place has a vinyl store. And I was like, you mean vinyl? And then she was like, oh, yeah. So you know what?
- [67:05]
Leo Laporte
Why do we pronounce it vinyl? It should be vineyard.
- [67:08]
Doc Rock
Listen, it was just cute to me and be being an ex DJ defective. My niece is in the vinyl. I'm about that life. I'm like, listen, I still have some, but I sold most of it, you know, know right before you were born. But I still have all the music in a server.
- [67:21]
Emily Forlini
You seem like you could be a dj. You had a good radio.
- [67:24]
Doc Rock
That was my job.
- [67:25]
Emily Forlini
Like, I trust my music life.
- [67:27]
Leo Laporte
Nailed it.
- [67:28]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [67:29]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [67:29]
Leo Laporte
But honestly, five years. Any recording medium where the trick to get good audio out of it is to boost the hiss when you record the cassette so that you can lower the hiss when you play back the cassette. That's Dolby Audio. That's not. That's not a good sign. That's not a good sign.
- [67:50]
Janko Rutgers
But the, the. The limitations that came with the tape that you have to like figure out how to get your perfect playlist for that special someone onto 45.
- [67:59]
Leo Laporte
That's true.
- [68:00]
Janko Rutgers
Mixtapes and like stick around.
- [68:02]
Leo Laporte
Like, you probably know every mixtape in seventh grade. Did a boy ever make a tape for you? No. He probably burned a CD for you.
- [68:11]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I burned a cd. Yeah. The only tape I ever, ever had, I won at a roller rink. It was a Backstreet Boys. I won the rink contest and I got a Backstreet Boys tape.
- [68:24]
Leo Laporte
Backstreet's back, baby.
- [68:26]
Doc Rock
I. I'm pretty sure Leo is the same, but I submitted my audition to KIK fm.
- [68:32]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah. Tape you had real to real tape. I used real. I had little 7 inch boxes. I made dozens of them. Them and would go to radio stations, say, here's my resume and yeah, here's my tape.
- [68:45]
Doc Rock
Y. So I use cassettes, but I had a Kai Realto real. But yeah, every day in school sitting there and trying to make a different mixtape for everybody that I know, like just pause and record and stop and then getting that right amount before the auto reverse so that it came into another song like it. That was.
- [69:03]
Janko Rutgers
That was technique, man.
- [69:05]
Doc Rock
That was technique. Yeah.
- [69:07]
Leo Laporte
You seem like the kind of guy who made mixtapes. You are definitely making mixtapes for the ladies.
- [69:12]
Doc Rock
Mixtape king. I was sleeping mixtapes.
- [69:15]
Leo Laporte
Did you call yourself back then?
- [69:18]
Doc Rock
No, no. I was DJ Yogi back then because I was smarter than you.
- [69:21]
Leo Laporte
Mixtapes.
- [69:23]
Emily Forlini
I think they still use the word Mixtapes, like I. I know that word. I just. They applied to CDs. It just wasn't tapes anymore. Just the word, you know, persisted.
- [69:32]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [69:33]
Doc Rock
Okay, so I got a question for Leo.
- [69:35]
Leo Laporte
And there's a great movie by the way with John Cusack called High Fidelity, in which he makes the perfect mixtape. And I suppose as long as people still know what that's all about, there's hope for this world. What were you going to say, Doc?
- [69:48]
Doc Rock
I got a question for you and Yanko. Did you have a brand that was like your go to brand? For me it was TSF Pro 2 crew.
- [69:57]
Janko Rutgers
I was kind of cheap. I bought TDK. Whatever.
- [70:03]
Leo Laporte
You guys are so old.
- [70:07]
Doc Rock
They had a thing when, when Emily's crew came around, Memorex tried to be hit because of LA looks and Swatch. So they had these plastic ones with red circle and a square and a triangle. And it was like. Looked like toy. And I was like, I'm never giving anybody one of those. It looks.
- [70:24]
Emily Forlini
I feel like you're acting like Emily, like when she was hatched. Like this little hatchling.
- [70:28]
Leo Laporte
This little young hatchling. Do you rem. Remember in the 70s Memorex had a ad for how good its tapes were with Ella Fitzgerald singing a high note and shattering a glass? Do you remember that?
- [70:43]
Doc Rock
Yes, 100%.
- [70:44]
Leo Laporte
We could watch it if you want. Can the amplified voice of Ella Fitzgerald shatter this glass? Believe it possible. With MRx2 oxide. The key is MRx2 oxide. It didn't. And that was also the one that had the guy sitting in the chair.
- [71:13]
Doc Rock
That's Maxel.
- [71:14]
Leo Laporte
That's Maxel. That's why I bought Maxel. I think you're right.
- [71:17]
Doc Rock
And those speakers that pass by him are B in not B.
- [71:21]
Leo Laporte
Those are JBL sentries. Right.
- [71:23]
Doc Rock
I think on this one, on one of the commercials, it's the 800, but. Yeah.
- [71:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah. The 801s are really good. Yeah. Yeah, but you could tell it's the JBL in front.
- [71:31]
Doc Rock
We are so old junk, but loud.
- [71:35]
Janko Rutgers
I still have a box or two of tapes in the basement somewhere that I feel.
- [71:40]
Doc Rock
Just take it out.
- [71:41]
Janko Rutgers
Can't get rid of it.
- [71:45]
Doc Rock
Let us know what's on there.
- [71:46]
Leo Laporte
Oh, save those. Now that you know that the tape's going to go bad. So you better get them digitized. Get them them digitized. You have to go out and buy mini.
- [71:55]
Doc Rock
This would come back instead of tape because at least many. This is recordable. But at least it sounded good.
- [72:00]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, Mini disc was higher quality because it was. It was digital. All right, time out. We're gonna take a break. Come back with more with the young Emily Forlini, the old Leo Laporte and the middle aged guys, Doc Rock and Yenko Records. Great to have you. I'm the old guy here. I. I've seen it. I've seen it all, my friend. Cringe.
- [72:18]
Doc Rock
I'm catching up. I'm pretty close.
- [72:19]
Emily Forlini
So with everything going on in the world, it's probably better to just be old. It's probably better to just.
- [72:24]
Leo Laporte
Well, my attitude is I'll be dead before it all comes. All the chickens come home.
- [72:28]
Emily Forlini
That's why you're giving all your information to AI. You're like a. Hi, here I am. And then you're just gonna exit.
- [72:34]
Leo Laporte
No, that's true. No, that. But you actually said something. Because I've been a broadcaster for 50 years and done so much in public, I feel like if anybody's gonna give it all and forget privacy, it'd be me. Because. Because I have no privacy and haven't had it for years. So I'm a good guinea pig. I wouldn't expect. I understand why anybody, especially you, Emily, would be reluctant to give over that information.
- [72:57]
Emily Forlini
You're like an organ donor for AI.
- [72:59]
Leo Laporte
I'm like an organ donor.
- [73:00]
Emily Forlini
Take My Organs show title.
- [73:04]
Janko Rutgers
You can have my organs, but I'm gonna keep my tapes. Or something like that.
- [73:08]
Emily Forlini
Have my organs, but they don't work so well.
- [73:12]
Leo Laporte
I like it. Organ donor for AI that's it.
- [73:14]
Doc Rock
Organ donor for AI.
- [73:17]
Leo Laporte
Our show today brought. Actually, if you do care about privacy, this sponsor is for you. It's brought to you by Delete Me. And I gotta tell you, we use Delete Me. And it all came down one day a couple of years ago when a text came out purporting to be from Lisa. Our CEO went to all of her direct reports saying, hey, I'm stuck in a meeting. I need to buy 100Amazon gift cards right now. Now, use your company card, buy those cards and send it to this address. Now, our employees are smart. They didn't fall for it. But what I realized is. Wait a minute. They know way too much. They know Lisa. They know our phone number, they know our direct reports, they know their phone numbers. They. I mean, they know. They know way too much. And what I realized is, this is why we need Delete me. If you've ever searched for your name online and you didn't like how much personal information was available, you know why you need to leave me? It's because there are data brokers out There. And it's perfectly legal. Who will sell any bit of information they can glean about you, down to and including your Social Security number. I just learned the other day that it's legal. It's legal for a data broker to sell your Social Security number. And by the way, it doesn't cost much, not much at all. So we signed up, by the way, for Delete Me and it worked. When we searched for the my name in the national public data broker breach. Remember that? And Steve Gibson's name, we found not only our name and address and phone number, but also our Social Security numbers. I then searched for Lisa's name. It wasn't there. Her Social Security number was protected. That's why you need Delete Me. And maintaining privacy is not just about individuals. It's about your company. It's about your family too. Delete Me has plans for every kind of group, including family plans, so you can ensure that everyone in your family feels safe online. Delete Me's very smart agents will, will help you reduce risk from identity theft, cybersecurity threats, harassment, and more by finding and removing your information from all the data brokers, hundreds of them. And it's really important because you want to use this service because, because it's hard to know who all these are. They make that their business and there's new ones every day. And they also make that their business. To find them, you can assign a unique data sheet to everybody in your family. It's tailored to them with easy to use controls. Account owners can manage privacy settings for the whole family. Then DeleteMe not only deletes that information, but it then continues to scan and remove your information regularly. That's really important because it will come back. Back. I'm talking addresses, photos, emails, relatives, phone numbers, social media, property value, yes, even Social Security numbers. Protect yourself. Reclaim your privacy. Visit joindeleteme.com TWiT joindeleteme.com twit offer code twit if you use the offer code twit, you'll get 20% off. Joindeleteme.com TWIT we thank them so much for supporting us and the job they did protecting us. You know, if you have a company, your managers should absolutely be using it. Joindeleteme.com well, this was a sad week. When we first started Twit back in the ought fives, we used Skype because at the time that was the best way for me to get people on from all over the country, all over the world. Eventually we built Colleen. Colleen Kelly did It she built something called Skypasaurus. You might remember this. In the early days of Twitter to it, we had a different Mac Mini for each person on the panel. So we would have three or four Mac Minis for this panel and then they would call into that Mac Mini. Then we would combine them all. That way we get separate channels for each person and I could mix out noise and so forth. Skype's coming to a close. After two decades, Skype is over. Microsoft bought it. They spent $8.5 billion buying it. 14 years ago. They announced they're killing it in a couple of months. It's going to be over in May and they're going to move everybody over to the much beloved Microsoft Teams. You're laughing, Janko?
- [77:39]
Janko Rutgers
Yeah, Everybody loves teams. Everybody's favorite product. Skype is kind of sad.
- [77:44]
Leo Laporte
It's very sad.
- [77:47]
Janko Rutgers
It was the really the thing for me as somebody who moved to the US and a little over 20 years ago that was the thing that kept me connected to my family back in Europe. And I used it all the time for call. I had a. Remember when they used to do the thing where you could buy phone numbers through Skype?
- [78:05]
Leo Laporte
I did that. My daughter in high school spent a year in France. For 90 bucks I was able to get unlimited video calls with her in France. And that's how we stay in school in Japan. Yeah.
- [78:18]
Doc Rock
Echo.
- [78:18]
Emily Forlini
Where are you from?
- [78:19]
Janko Rutgers
Germany.
- [78:20]
Emily Forlini
Nice.
- [78:23]
Leo Laporte
Skype was first released in August 2003. So it's 22 years old almost. Niklas Zenstrom, Janus Friess and four Estonian developers, remember ebay bought it briefly and then Microsoft bought it from eBay for eight and a half billion dollars.
- [78:43]
Janko Rutgers
The thing about Zenstrom and freezes, those are the guy who's who built Kazar, right. The Pfizer thing and Skype used the same technology. It was for the longest time. I don't know if it was in the end anymore. They probably switched out of Microsoft. But for the longest time it was a peer to peer product essentially where they had these. Not to nerd out on it too much, but I used to write a P2P blog. So they used to have this super note structure where they were basically like super users that had a couple hundred people under them. And, and how it peer to peer decentralized architecture so it would work without servers, which was really impressive for keeping a couple of million people online.
- [79:18]
Leo Laporte
I know this very well because we use Skype for a long, long time to run the network and we would have people turn off their super nodes, say don't be a super node because you need all the bandwidth. And we got really good at getting Skype to sound and look really good. But when Microsoft bought it. You're exactly right, Janko. They turned off the peer to peer feature. They started hosting all the calls. And frankly, that's when Skype's quality went downhill. It was better as a peer to peer network.
- [79:48]
Emily Forlini
I think Skype is no doubt like a very. Probably one of the most famous and important technologies in terms of Internet life. But I mean, we gotta admit, it's kind of past its prime. I mean, none of. Does anyone still use Skype. I think it's fair.
- [80:04]
Leo Laporte
In 2023, 36 million people used it data. Yeah.
- [80:08]
Emily Forlini
What? Who?
- [80:10]
Doc Rock
Yeah, so this is funny. I'm sorry. It's funny. Emily said that. So for. For ecamm, in the beginning, we ended up building our own interview part. But it used to be, if you wanted. If I wanted to interview Leo and I'm using eCamm, he would call in through Skype. But it got just problematic in mid-2020. So in 2021, we rolled out our own, like, interview situation, which was working kind of good, but then we just realized that everybody knows how to use Zoom Zoom. So Alex introduced me to Andy at nab.
- [80:42]
Leo Laporte
Andy Carluccio. Yes. We love it.
- [80:44]
Doc Rock
Yeah, Andy's in the chat. I think he's hanging out somewhere. And then I was like, yo, you need to talk to your nerds. Need to talk to my nerds. Yeah, we have now we have.
- [80:53]
Leo Laporte
We migrated to Zoom. One of the things that was missing was this independent channel thing for each audio channel and Zoom ISO, which Andy Carluccio wrote as an independent tenant developer. And then Zoom acquired his company, made it possible to have separate channels for everybody.
- [81:10]
Emily Forlini
But why does Skype not.
- [81:11]
Doc Rock
That was the death of Skype to me.
- [81:13]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, why did Skype not win that race?
- [81:15]
Leo Laporte
Isn't that a really good question?
- [81:17]
Doc Rock
I say the same thing about Citrix and WebEx as well, because they were prime. And then when they saw Zoom, Zoom and Blue Jeans was these two little companies that were making a lot of noise, but nobody was really using it. And I swear to you, three months before the pandemic hit hit, I built a conference room for my buddy who owns a construction electric company here. And we did it off of the Citrix product, like, go to room. Because it's like, oh, Zoom is a toy. Don't worry about it. Zoom went boom. And then I was like, oops, I go back and retrofit that whole thing.
- [81:52]
Emily Forlini
Zoom has a dorky name. Zoom. I mean, could be better and there's other tech out there, but it, okay, this is so dumb. But it zoomed ahead, you know, like won. Like how. How did this happen?
- [82:07]
Leo Laporte
It's funny because we have three experts in our, in our club. Twitch Chat right now. Andy Carluccio is there who works for Zoom. Alex Lindsay, who became, who became instrumental in moving us to Zoom. Along with Andy. We had Skype TX appliances from our, you know, from our Tricaster fellow fellows visit trying to get Skype to work in multiple. I mean we, we did everything to make Skype survive. And it just once Zoom took off, it was so much. Everybody knew how to use it. The qu. Look at the quality we're getting.
- [82:44]
Doc Rock
It's so good, it's amazing. What's funny to me about Zoom, Zoom matches almost Mike Tyson's little joke. Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. Everybody in the face.
- [82:55]
Leo Laporte
Richard Campbell's all the Big Dogs Went down from our Windows Weekly. He's a Microsoft expert. He says the audio video DDL that runs Skype is the same one Teams uses. So in some respects the Skype technology lives on in teams, but nobody likes teams that I know of. He says Microsoft had to migrate off the peer to peer product that we were talking about. Janko, too much liability. They didn't. You know, it makes sense for a big corporation to think, you know, these calls are being hosted by anonymous people all over the world. We don't even know them. He also said they took on Skype for 8.5 billion because they owned endpoints all over the world to access the telephone system Microsoft did. So buying Skype helped Microsoft turn into a kind of telco. I think that was a vision that has not survived over the last, what is that, 14 years?
- [83:54]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. So Microsoft's 50th anniversary is in early April. Oh, and I have to write a piece about what does the next 50 years look like. And it's just interesting when you think about this because it's kind of like, well, they kind of messed that up. So now Zoom kind of dethroned them and then they have their Office products and Google is competing with sheets and Docs and Gen Z really loves that web hosted service. So it's kind of like what's going to remain for what's next.
- [84:23]
Leo Laporte
You think there's something.
- [84:24]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [84:25]
Leo Laporte
Do you think there's something that'll beat Zoom?
- [84:26]
Emily Forlini
Well, they're all in on, you know, AI. And Adela is like Pat himself on the back with his big chat GPT investment. And they're adding Copilot into all their products. Like, Excel has a copilot button and you can just ask it, like, write a formula for me. So they're.
- [84:41]
Leo Laporte
We have, for the first time ever, we've turned on Zoom's AI companion during the show. I'm very curious what we're going to get.
- [84:49]
Emily Forlini
Oh, man.
- [84:50]
Leo Laporte
We've never used it before. We always use our own after the fact. AI. So why did.
- [84:55]
Doc Rock
You know what. It's funny, Leo. Zoom is Patrick Mahomes. They're just really good. He's the dominated.
- [85:02]
Leo Laporte
It's the goat.
- [85:03]
Doc Rock
And people. People try to hate it, but no matter how much you try to hate it, they just come back and go again and again.
- [85:08]
Emily Forlini
I thought that the whole thing was. We all agreed that the whole goat discussion was completely gone for Patrick Mahomes after the Super Bowl.
- [85:15]
Doc Rock
Yeah, I hope so, because I'm a Raiders fan. I can't stand him. But I mean, like, fans.
- [85:22]
Leo Laporte
We're talking, by the way, about hand dance, sport, ball. But. But.
- [85:30]
Doc Rock
So it was just too good. So nobody can out Zoom.
- [85:32]
Leo Laporte
Zoom. The pandemic obviously put Zoom on the map, but you asked the right question, Emily. Why Zoom? Why not skype? Why not WebEx?
- [85:40]
Doc Rock
They were red. Moment came, and everybody else was trying to win off of their status of where they were. They weren't trying to hear what the people wanted. And Zoom was ready and highly flexible. And this is my opinion, the best thing that happened to Zoom was in that third or fourth week of everybody talking about it. They had, like, the naked people showing up at everybody's call.
- [86:02]
Leo Laporte
There was Zoom bombing. Remember the Zoom bombing?
- [86:05]
Doc Rock
The Zoom bombing. So they had to fix that. So what? They proved that nobody else would do. Sky would have problems and so would Citrix or whatever. Whatever. But Zoom was like, okay, we'll fix it. And they fixed it. Everybody else was still, we're Citrix. You're new. You don't know us. You do what we tell you. Well, also, remember listening.
- [86:22]
Leo Laporte
Remember Zoom kind of got dinged because they claimed they were end to end encrypted. And then people said, well, you're not. And then they had to. When they went out and they got hired people like Alex Stamos to. To fix it, they bought people and fixed it.
- [86:38]
Doc Rock
That's why. Because they listened and fixed it. Instead of standing their laurels and beat their chest like, we're the big tech guys. Shut up, Muggle.
- [86:44]
Janko Rutgers
I guess everybody else built products for conference rooms. Essentially, they were like, we're going to build this big enterprise product, and then Zoom built a product for everybody that worked for schools and homeschooling and all this stuff. And really, if you had put those people on, if. If I had to deal with my kids being on WebEx or something, or teams or Chime. Remember Chime? That just shut down the Amazon product.
- [87:07]
Leo Laporte
Yes. Amazon just shut down their version of this. So that's two.
- [87:11]
Janko Rutgers
That was a nightmare.
- [87:12]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I think they just didn't predict.
- [87:14]
Doc Rock
Leo said it. Leo said it, and Alex back it up, so I'll say it verbally. Zoom also went out and got good people. So when they saw what Andy was doing, they didn't get mad. A lot of companies would have got mad at what Andy was doing, but Zoom was like, oh, let's bring them in. And. And he definitely made Zoom better. So I'm going to back up my buddy Alex, because I don't want to have to fight when I get to.
- [87:35]
Leo Laporte
Zoom did something that, at this, I think, was one of the main reasons they succeeded, but it also was one of the main reasons not to like them. They installed. When you installed Zoom, they installed a background process that would always run on your computer. And that's one of the reasons Zoom was so quick and easy to use, because it was all. It never stopped running. And they actually. It became a problem on the Mac side because they were also running a web server. And when people figured it out, they kind of got mad. But it was the secret sauce to some degree. Zoom was ready the minute you wanted to make a call. It just popped up. Right.
- [88:16]
Emily Forlini
I feel like, okay, here's a wacky theory. Do you think part of it is kind of sociological? Like, people were just ready at that time for new tools. They were like, this whole pandemic thing is completely new. I need to reassess my whole life. I need the new thing. I have to meet the moment. And everyone was like, oh, it's Zoom. You need Zoom. You need Zoom. Zoom. Because I was just using Zoom because people were saying, you gotta use Zoom now. But if everyone was like, oh, you need Skype or you need WebEx, I would have just used that.
- [88:41]
Doc Rock
But it seemed like a pandemic. It. It caused so much trouble for us. It was always down, always broken, and always not working. And then we were technically probably losing people to just doing it with Zoom. And then. So, yeah, you know, the. I honestly think it. I think they were just good at the right time. And I swear to you, I stand on. I stand on this business because I really believe that they listened while everybody else was being cocky.
- [89:08]
Leo Laporte
Can I say something?
- [89:09]
Janko Rutgers
Oh. Malik wrote a story a couple days ago saying basically Skype died because they had too many middle managers and that was what they were relying on. And so that slowed them down to a crawl while Zoom was coming in and like super fast fixing things as they, as they came up.
- [89:26]
Leo Laporte
I think it could have been as simple as it had a better name.
- [89:31]
Emily Forlini
Well, I think Zoom.
- [89:32]
Leo Laporte
Doesn't Zoom sound like a great thing? Don't you want it?
- [89:35]
Emily Forlini
I think it sounds, I think it's.
- [89:36]
Doc Rock
Easy to remember it's not a tech word.
- [89:39]
Leo Laporte
If you think about Skype is a tech word.
- [89:41]
Doc Rock
Skype Zoom. Zoom is the only normal webex that's mogul ready? Yeah, Mogul ready.
- [89:46]
E
Hi, this is Benito.
- [89:48]
Leo Laporte
Tech Word Blue jeans sounds down market Bonito on high.
- [89:52]
E
So like what happened here is that Skype was garbage. Really. It just was garbage so no one could use it properly. I was working at Twit Twitch at the time and we were doing a lot of this kind of stuff also. And Skype just never worked. And that's really it. Like if Skype had just worked maybe 75 to 80% of the time, it wouldn't have lost.
- [90:13]
Janko Rutgers
And they started adding these weird features to it where suddenly there was news in your Skype feed or you had a Skype feed for some. Why would you need a Skype feed? You just wanted to talk to people. Right?
- [90:24]
Emily Forlini
So they didn't predict the trend. They were developing a product for something else. That the way things happened didn't end up being what people needed. And they didn't predict that we would all be using video chats all the time.
- [90:36]
Leo Laporte
Let me read what else Om said because I think it's really good. This is Om's blog. @ohm Co. Microsoft now talks about teams being their focus, showing that even today they haven't realized what made Skype a cultural consumer force. Microsoft Teams is a terrible product and I dread using it it. In the simplest terms, Teams is a perfect encapsulation of a bureaucratic, archaic and outdated 50 year old company that's trying to reinvent itself as an AI leader. Does Ohm hate Microsoft?
- [91:08]
Emily Forlini
I agree. I agree. That's what I was saying. I agree.
- [91:13]
Leo Laporte
He says for now, let's call it what it is. Microsoft bought and effectively killed Skype. I could write a PhD dissertation on this. For now, this is all I have to say. Microsoft didn't know how to nurture Skype. Skype and Its bureaucracy killed one of the most iconic brands of the new century.
- [91:30]
Doc Rock
Yes, that's actually.
- [91:33]
Leo Laporte
He's right, isn't it?
- [91:34]
Doc Rock
100. And so this was. Makes it funny because we said that Skype was a tech word, but at the time, that's what everybody was doing, making up these weird words, you know, your Skypes, your Googles, your Yahoos, your Not Linkos. What was it called? I forget. Anyway, people were making up these weird web 2.0 words and everybody was about that life. So it got so popular that Oprah would call people on Skype.
- [91:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [91:57]
Doc Rock
You know what I mean? So that's when I knew that they had made it. When I saw Oprah using it on the show. And then Microsoft bought it and crushed it also.
- [92:05]
Leo Laporte
And Yanko, your use, and my use with my daughter in France confirms this. It killed the long distance calling business. It was so much cheaper than a long distance call.
- [92:15]
Doc Rock
It was called Skype out number. Right. I remember, remember buying a Skype Out.
- [92:18]
Leo Laporte
Skype in and Skype Out.
- [92:20]
Doc Rock
And I was.
- [92:20]
Leo Laporte
And I had a Skype in number too. You could call me by phone.
- [92:24]
Doc Rock
And so when I got to Japan and I was able to call home all the time and just check to make sure everything was good. It was such an amazing situation. And I remember we were talking about this earlier, about that corny moment from panels. But I remember the first time I'm sitting on a call and we had at that time, my buddy Patrice was in Germany, and then I'm here, and then my other friend was in California. And we're having a conversation over Scott Skype. Right? The whole twit team. I'm sorry, to our team. And we're like, is this wild? We're in so many different places that we can have this conversation right now.
- [92:57]
Leo Laporte
Financial Times interviewed Nicholas Zenstrom, one of the founders, just the other day. He said Skype was a revolutionary product of its time. And I'll always be proud and grateful for the early team members and investors who took a chance on us. Now other firms are innovating in this space to offer new services for a whole new generation, many of whom will have no idea how expensive it used to be to call Australia. You don't remember this, Emily, but it used to be when you were calling long distance, you'd say, I gotta make this quick. It's long distance. Right.
- [93:30]
Doc Rock
It was.
- [93:31]
Leo Laporte
So calling home from Germany or calling Germany from America was a dollar a minute. It was hugely expensive.
- [93:39]
Emily Forlini
And the other way around, my grandma still thinks that's the case. When she calls me across the country.
- [93:44]
Leo Laporte
Emily, I can't talk long. I'm calling long distance.
- [93:49]
Janko Rutgers
There used to be this whole thing when I still lived in Germany where you had to call a number before you dialed the actual number to then pay another company. And like weird calling cards.
- [93:59]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, you'd have a calling card.
- [94:00]
Doc Rock
We had that calling card.
- [94:01]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, you call the calling card number so that you could get it down to a buck a minute instead of five bucks a minute or whatever.
- [94:09]
Doc Rock
Whatever.
- [94:09]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Mci. That's how MCI and, and the phone drop.
- [94:14]
Doc Rock
That's where we got spread the fo n because spread had the phone drop.
- [94:18]
Leo Laporte
F4 memory lane.
- [94:20]
Doc Rock
Kids phone cards.
- [94:21]
Leo Laporte
First cassettes, now Skype.
- [94:23]
Emily Forlini
Well, I think Skype, you know, you got a skill in life is you have to know when to say goodbye, when you got to hang up the hat. I think Skype did its time. It was amazing. Maybe someone on this call will write a book about Skype. We have some Skype official.
- [94:38]
Doc Rock
So Skype is Tyson and Zoom is.
- [94:40]
Emily Forlini
Logan pa. Yeah, yeah, I think it's over. It's okay. Like Microsoft has a new tech, they think they're going to make better, whatever. But why would they want to keep nursing this dying video conferencing software?
- [94:53]
Janko Rutgers
The thing I'm really sad about is that my father in law to this day calls it Skypy and I'm going to miss that. I think I'm going to miss that the most.
- [95:04]
Leo Laporte
I'm going to call you on Skypey. That's good. The other thing that was interesting, before Spotify, Skype was a European company. I. It was an Estonian company and that was pretty novel, at least in the US that there would be a European startup that was so dominant.
- [95:21]
Emily Forlini
You know, I actually saw that Estonia and ChatGPT made some kind of deal this week where they're giving all students in Estonian public schools chat GPT. And I'm not, I'm not kidding. This is real.
- [95:32]
Leo Laporte
Like Estonia is very digital first, you know, know like a lot of former Soviet satellites. They're trying to find their way in a new world. And they early on said, you know, our way forward is going to be digital, a digital economy. They have a digital ID card. It's actually a really cool country.
- [95:53]
Emily Forlini
Have you been there?
- [95:53]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Many times. Well, twice really. Two times. That's many times. One too many. Well, not many, almost many.
- [96:03]
Emily Forlini
I would say two times being to Estonia is many times.
- [96:07]
Leo Laporte
Well, it's not the. Yeah, exactly.
- [96:10]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. Maybe I'm sounding too American. I don't know. I just. I've never considered going there.
- [96:14]
Leo Laporte
It's a beautiful, beautiful. Tallinn is a beautiful city. I remember walking through it, Lisa and I. And a guy running up to me saying, oh, Leo, I've been looking for you. I knew you were in Estonia, and I guess it's small enough. He found me. Me. But he was going. He was going to Parliament because he had designed this year's Estonian Christmas card, and he was going up to Parliament to show it to them. I. I hope you're still listening. If you are, I remember you. Let's take a little break. More memory lane. I don't know. I have to look, but maybe. I hope you're enjoying the show. We are. Emily Forlini, Yonko Records. Doc Rock. Great to have all three of you. Our show today, brought to you by Zip Recruiter. Love ZipRecruiter. You know, look, I like being a podcaster, having my own shows, interviewing incredible guests. We had Stephen Wolfram on, on Wednesday and having a wonderful team, people like Bonito that helped make it happen. If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it as much as you do. And if you own your own business, that's the goal, right? That's what you're trying to do, to hire employees who love what they do, who love the work that. That makes everybody happy. They succeed, the business succeeds, and it makes it a great place to work, even if you're remote, like we are. So how do you find those passionate employees who are a good fit for all of your roles? Well, I'll tell you how we do it. ZipRecruiter right now. You can try it for free. ZipRecruiter ziprecruiter.com TWIT ZipRecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer the most, according to G2. But I will also say we love it. ZipRecruiter's smart technology starts showing your job to qualified candidates immediately. But even better, their powerful matching technology works to find the top talent that fit your requirements. They send you a list. They say, hey, hey. We have. We have resumes from people looking for work who seem like they'd be a good fit. What do you think? You go through it, you use ZipRecruiter's amazing screening technology with, you know, there are a variety of ways you can. It reformats all the resumes and makes it very easy to say, yeah, let's. Let's invite. And then you invite the ones you really like. The top Candidates to apply. Now, in a world where you're competing for the best people with many other companies, that's a real, really big asset because when you invite somebody to apply for your job, they're flattered. They, you go right to the top of the heap. They, they say, yeah, yeah, you want me? Well, I want you. I love it. They give you a pre written invite to apply message that you can. So you don't even have to write, write it right, that you can reach out to your favorite candidates. It's very nice, very personal. We've used it. We've used RipRecruiter. Anytime there's an opening, we use ZipRecruiter. And it really works fast to get you qualified people. Hire experienced people who are excited about what they do about what you do. With ZipRecruiter, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. For Lisa and me, it's often within the first hour or two. It's amazing. See for yourself. Go to our exclusive web address. Try it for free. Ziprecruiter.com TWIT please use that address so they know you saw it. Here, here. That's ZipRecruiter.com TWIT I will vouch for it. It really works. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire. We thank them so much for supporting our little show here and we are having some fun. You know, I think just to briefly go back to Skype, it was the technology that made Twit Positive possible and it was a technology we used for the first, I don't know, 10, 15 years of Twitter. We're going to be 20 years old next month. So I really, I feel a little sad. I think we use Zoom now and we've been using Zoom for, well, since the pandemic, so five years and it's been great. But Skype, thank you. Thank you, Nicholas, for a great product that we wouldn't be here without. So I just wanted to say that it's kind of sad to lose it, but again, we stopped using it years ago, so I can't really. I'm kind of. It's a little hypocritical of me, isn't it?
- [100:46]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I feel like I'm coming in as the, I don't know, hatchling naysayer. Like I didn't have the memories from it.
- [100:53]
Leo Laporte
You don't have any fondness for it at all?
- [100:56]
Emily Forlini
I do, I do have some fondness for it, of course, but not the Same way you guys do. I didn't build a business with Skype. And so. So my, like, unemotional view is just like, yeah, it's time to kill it.
- [101:06]
Leo Laporte
But I understand it's probably time to kill it. It is, yeah.
- [101:10]
Emily Forlini
But you can also, you know, give it a ceremonial burial, which I think.
- [101:15]
Leo Laporte
I mean, look, we've gotten rid of Skype a source. We got sold those machines off years ago. I mean, we don't, you know, we. The Skype TX machines we got rid of. So, you know, we've been Zoomed for a long time. And really, a lot of credit to Andy Carluch, you, for making it possible for us to use Zoom like this and to eCamm. Doc, I give you some credit because eCamm's integration with Zoom is a big part of why we still use Zoom. You know, it's just one of those.
- [101:41]
Doc Rock
Things that everybody knows how to do now. And I think that's that that greased the wheel. Like, even still, at some point, we had to teach people how to use Skype. Like you Zoom. You just click a link, you're good.
- [101:51]
Leo Laporte
Well, and look at network news. I mean, and I was reminiscing with Jeff Jarvis. He was on CNN not so long ago and I think last Wednesday actually. And he had to go in, and I remember going to be on cnn, you had to go to a satellite bureau and you'd sit there and you'd have the earpiece, and now it's all Zoom. Or actually, I guess they use WebEx. But whoever they made a deal with. But the aesthetic has changed, the technology has changed. You see people in their living rooms and kitchens.
- [102:27]
Emily Forlini
That can be weird.
- [102:29]
Leo Laporte
It is a little strange. It's hard, but getting used to that. And you see them wearing AirPods and.
- [102:35]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I'm doing a bi weekly segment on CBS for tech news. And I'm literally just in this room and then in a studio, like a huge, huge picture of me. And then there's like the anchor talking to me and I'm on Zoom and I'm just like, well, guys, where can we see that?
- [102:54]
Leo Laporte
I didn't know you were doing that.
- [102:55]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, it's just through. Through work. It's like a PC Mag opportunity.
- [102:59]
Doc Rock
So I've seen it on cbs. I can send you some things to make your studio, like, dope.
- [103:06]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, look at his studio. It's dope. But then they'll think you're like, DJ. What is it? MC DJ Rock?
- [103:13]
Doc Rock
No, she could be DJ M4 Info. Get it? Because you're Here for the info. Get it?
- [103:18]
Leo Laporte
Info.
- [103:18]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I love it.
- [103:19]
Leo Laporte
So who. Okay, whose studio do you like better? I mean, background. You like Doc rocks or you like this? Isn't this nice?
- [103:25]
Doc Rock
This is.
- [103:26]
Emily Forlini
You guys are definitely competing directly, I would say.
- [103:29]
Leo Laporte
I think this is pretty special what I got here.
- [103:32]
Doc Rock
I love it. We actually, we just did a show where we were talking about people building their studio rooms and I used yours as one of the examples.
- [103:39]
Leo Laporte
Oh, thank you.
- [103:40]
Doc Rock
I absolutely love it.
- [103:42]
Leo Laporte
Well, I have it. You know, I credit to Anthony Nielsen and Burke McCormick Quinn, who. And Russell Tammany, who put this all together. It doesn't look as nice from the other side, I have to tell you. It's kind of. Kind of dumpy, to be honest.
- [103:57]
Janko Rutgers
Oh, don't break the cloth.
- [103:58]
Doc Rock
We call that the cone of cleanliness.
- [104:02]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I had to get some trash out of the way, but you saw me grab it. Oh, my gum's sitting there. Never mind.
- [104:09]
Emily Forlini
Oh, well, I feel like document rock. Rock kind of looks like you have like a fog machine going or something.
- [104:14]
Leo Laporte
You should have a fog machine.
- [104:16]
Doc Rock
It's the DJ vibe. It's a DJ vibe. And now I know. You know what I have? I have what's called a black promise filter. And anybody that shoots video is like something you should do, especially when you pass. So you're not old enough yet. When you pass 50, you want a black promis filter.
- [104:32]
Leo Laporte
Oh God, I'm so far past 50. I need the. The double promis filter.
- [104:36]
Doc Rock
Black promis filter, like a 1.8 and you're good.
- [104:39]
Leo Laporte
Is that like Vaseline on the lens? What is that?
- [104:42]
Doc Rock
Almost like it adds highlation to the highlights and then it kind of like smooth things out.
- [104:46]
Leo Laporte
Can I get one of those? Anthony?
- [104:48]
Emily Forlini
Cuz look at me deceiving us.
- [104:50]
Leo Laporte
I look so old.
- [104:51]
Doc Rock
I'm old.
- [104:52]
Leo Laporte
Wrinkles.
- [104:55]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [104:56]
Janko Rutgers
What's going on?
- [104:56]
Leo Laporte
I need the filter.
- [104:58]
Doc Rock
They, they say black don't crack, but it sure as hell wrinkles so good.
- [105:02]
Leo Laporte
No, you look really good. You look. You look like a young man.
- [105:05]
Doc Rock
Yeah. Now just use it for the highlation because it makes the lights, you know, look better and not so yelly in your face. Right. And that's why I wanted DJI Osborne. What do you call that little nick thing? I have it right here. That's why they. You. That's the most popular filter because it looks really good at night.
- [105:20]
Leo Laporte
I'm writing this down. I gotta order this sucker right now.
- [105:23]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I'm gonna have to redo my whole thing.
- [105:27]
Leo Laporte
You're moving. You just got there.
- [105:29]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. I know.
- [105:30]
Leo Laporte
Where are you moving to?
- [105:31]
Emily Forlini
I'm just moving like across town because we bought houses.
- [105:35]
Leo Laporte
Stay in New Jersey. Oh, congratulations.
- [105:37]
Emily Forlini
Thank you. Yeah. So just.
- [105:40]
Leo Laporte
Do you have a dog yet?
- [105:41]
Emily Forlini
No, we have a cat.
- [105:43]
Leo Laporte
Okay, so first you buy the house, then you get the dog. But you know what comes after that? I don't want to say, but.
- [105:52]
Emily Forlini
Yes.
- [105:53]
Leo Laporte
Did you say so? I don't want to say. I told you I don't want to say so. The biggest heist in. At first I was saying the biggest crypto heist, but I realized if it weren't for crypto, you would never steal. How would you steal $1.4 billion from a, you know, a armored car? You couldn't, right? Or from a bank. The biggest heist in history, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago. The Bybit crypto, I think they're the number two crypto exchange lost $1.4 billion in Ethereum. And now it is pretty clear it's. It's the North Korean government hacking group Lazarus Group that did it. They know that because it went to a wallet that Lazarus Group has used before. Law enforcement pretty much seems to agree. The same wallets used against Femex and Bingx and Polon X. This is in North Korea. Of course they have a problem with hard currency. Right. So one of the ways they get hard currency is by stealing cryptocurrency and converting it into. Into dollars and other hard currencies. So at least I guess that maybe is that a little reassuring that it wasn't just some guy?
- [107:14]
Emily Forlini
No, instead it was like an organized ring.
- [107:18]
Leo Laporte
Say it was a nation state. Hackers.
- [107:20]
Janko Rutgers
Yeah, that's reassuring.
- [107:21]
Emily Forlini
Really, Leo? Yeah.
- [107:26]
Leo Laporte
It was actually a very sophisticated heist because one of the things Bybit did to protect the wallet is they had multi signers. It was like in the nuclear facility when two people have to turn the keys in opposite sides of the room to launch the missiles. Multiple people had to have had only had part of the keys had to sign in. And they used a very sophisticated hack to get to fake that basically. So it's kind of impressive. Largest heist ever. The regime's hackers. Lazarus Group has been linked to 58, at least 58 crypto heists. And last year they stole $650 million in crypto hacks. This year, one hack, $1.4 billion.
- [108:11]
Emily Forlini
I think everyone just doesn't know what to do with all the hacks in the world. It just. Everyone feels so powerless. I mean, crypto, you maybe don't buy crypto but it's like every day there's a new hack, and there's just. That's probably why everyone's quiet. It's like, at this point, what do we say?
- [108:25]
Leo Laporte
What are you going to do? We want to.
- [108:27]
Emily Forlini
We just keep giving our data over, and we're all just kind of like, do, do, do hope this works out.
- [108:33]
Leo Laporte
Jimmy, in our YouTube chat, is saying, you could. You could steal $1.4 billion in diamonds. Okay, but has anyone ever done that, Jimmy?
- [108:43]
Doc Rock
Is the question only omission impossible. I saw the funniest meme the other day, and it was so funny, but yet it was so true. So. So, you know, you get these messages all the time. They're just like, hey. And then, you know, they expect you to start a conversation. Now we know better because, again, we're not Muggles. But somebody was like, hey, is that you? And the person in the meme said, you know what? Just send me this cam links already. I don't have time for this. Insert your favorite bad word. And that thing made me laugh so hard because I get, like, 20 of those freaking messages a day, and they drive me crazy. And then I signed up for one of those services like Leo was talking about, and it has slowed down, but they're just so obnoxious. And we know better than to answer them. But I. I know lots of people who answer them, and I'm like, please don't talk to them. I know you're just making it worse, but, oh, my God, it's super obnoxious.
- [109:37]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I got hit with one. This past two weeks, I've been getting calls from the same, like, scam operation, and now I'm just like, is this my new reality? Like, why does. Why do those things start and why do they end? It's just.
- [109:51]
Doc Rock
Oh, God. Obnoxious.
- [109:52]
Leo Laporte
So 12. So, speaking of the Trump meme coin, $12 billion in value lost. That's a lot of people who. I mean, that's another kind of heist, isn't it? $12 billion. Melania is even worse. But I think. I don't think as many people bought Melania, so. So that's maybe better, I guess.
- [110:18]
Emily Forlini
Melania, my girl, what are you doing?
- [110:22]
Leo Laporte
What are you doing? What are you doing? So there is Congress. This won't pass, but a California Democrat has introduced legislation to prohibit the company's top officials and their families from capitalizing on Meme coins. It's called, and I love this, the Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement Act. The MEME act would prohibit the president, vice president, members of Congress, senior executive branch officials, and their spouses and dependent children from issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing a security future commodity or digital asset.
- [111:03]
Emily Forlini
Well, that's good. I feel like the adults have entered the room on that one.
- [111:07]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know, first of all, he's never gonna get through Congress. But it seems like they shouldn't have to make a law to prevent that. There is the Emoluments act, which has been around like, as long as the country's been around.
- [111:21]
E
Yeah, they made Carter sell his peanut farm.
- [111:23]
Leo Laporte
You know, they made Jimmy sell his peanut farm. But no, you're dollar sign Trump. Let's make corruption criminal again. Said the congressperson. Our public offices belong to the public.
- [111:36]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, like the adults have entered the room. It's like a parent with a teenager. Like, you shouldn't have to tell them not to.
- [111:41]
Leo Laporte
You shouldn't have to say this banana.
- [111:43]
Emily Forlini
Peels all over the kitchen and pretend it's Mario Kart. But, you know, if they start putting banana peels, you gotta be like, by the way, you can't put banana peels everywhere. And that's kind of like the vibe with this whole situation.
- [111:55]
Leo Laporte
Wow. Now I do have to say, okay, so people are gonna say, leo, don't be political. But there I do want to say thank you. I never thought I'd say this to our new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbert. So you may remember that the uk, it was never fully confirmed by the uk, Told Apple that they would have to provide a backdoor to their advanced data protection end to end encryption. On icloud, this was leaked and a number of of publications reported it. Apple in effect, confirmed it by the next week, saying, yeah, we're not going to offer ADP to anybody in the UK anymore. Apparently there is an agreement between Washington and London not to do that. The Biden Justice Department kind of downplayed, according to the Washington Post, the demand for an Apple back door. On Tuesday, DNI director Tulsi Gabbard called the British demand an egregious violation of American rights. And on Wednesday, lawmakers asked the Justice Department to investigate. Right on. Right on. It turns out there was a kind of probably not publicized agreement that Britain wouldn't try to spy on Americans and America wouldn't try to spy on Britain's. But remember, this UK order wasn't just for UK citizens. It said, anyone in the world using advanced data protection. So good. I hope this administration takes this seriously and protects Our encryption, it is a little contrary to what previous administrations, previous directors of national Intelligence, previous FBI and CIA directors have said. They all have said they want end to end encryption to have a backdoor because that's how law enforcement has to work in order to catch bad guys, terrorists and, and pedophiles.
- [114:15]
Emily Forlini
So that's how it works. Like it's encrypted unless law enforcement wants access.
- [114:19]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So until Advanced Data Protection, Apple had the keys to icloud. And if law enforcement, and this happened again and again, in fact they just caught some guys. Do you remember the heist where some major sports figures like Travis Kelce got their houses broken into while they were on the road? You were on a televised football game. And then the bad guys broke into his house and stole all his fancy watches. Well they also made the mistake of taking selfies of each other with the contraband and posting it on their icloud. Right. And of course Apple turned it over to authorities. The authorities must have figured oh we think we know this and asked for it and they got busted. But they weren't using adp. If they were using adp, Apple would not have been able to do that. And in the UK now Apple will always be able to turn over anybody in the UK's information because they don't allow them to have end to end encryption.
- [115:21]
Emily Forlini
Sounds complex. It sounds like you want it to just work however benefits you most. Like if you committed a crime, you don't want it to them to be able to access the data because then know can't do.
- [115:33]
Leo Laporte
The problem is, and I think we've said this many times, that if you put a back door in, it never is. It never ends up being only for law enforcement. Any back door means that it's not going to work. Well and we know this from CALEA, the Law Enforcement act of what was that, 1996 or something where the director of the FBI at the time said we need a back door into to digital telephony. We need backdoor into phone systems because we can't wiretap the bad guys anymore cause they're using digital phone systems. Congress approved calea and oh well what a surprise, here we are in 2025 and the government's saying yeah, we can't get Chinese hackers out of our phone system. They used that same loophole, that same back door. So yeah, it was good for law enforcement, but it was also good for Chinese hackers who now live in our phone system system. And then the government has said yeah, it's going to be too expensive to, to get them out. We'd have to shut down the phone system, the national phone system for a day in order to get them out and upgrade all our equipment. And so we're not going to do that.
- [116:45]
Janko Rutgers
Maybe they can. You move, just move everybody over to Skype for a day before it shuts down.
- [116:52]
Leo Laporte
Just for a day. You all use Skype, trap the child.
- [116:55]
Janko Rutgers
Chinese there, the Chinese hackers. Oh, man.
- [116:58]
Leo Laporte
Then shut it down. They'll never get out anyway. I, I am often critical of the administration, but in this case I would and I don't. We'll see what happens. Because it is somewhat unpredictable, but at least Tulsi Gabbard understands that. The UK demanding that Apple eliminate its end to end encryption was a violation of an agreement that the Cloud Act's requirement that the terms of the agreement shall not create any obligation that providers be capable of decrypting data. If this administration stands up for end to end encryption, I'll be very happy. That will be something to laud them for and I want to make sure that I'm fair enough to laud them when it's due. On the other hand, maybe the reason that we don't have Restream anymore is because it's been shut down in Ukraine. I don't know. One thing I'm not thrilled about. Pete Hegseth, the new Secretary of Defense has ordered the Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions. We were hacking them. We were attempting to hack them because of course, Russia hacks us. Us all the time. In fact, it is widely considered that a lot of the ransomware gangs coming out of Russia are operating with the tacit support of the Russian government, the nsa.
- [118:27]
Emily Forlini
Sorry, why did he do that? I feel like I'm just missing something with this administration in Russia. Why is it not a problem that they are working so closely with Russia and they're telling people to react to Russia?
- [118:43]
Leo Laporte
Inquiring minds would like to know why would you shut that down? Furthermore, the cesa, the security folks who have been up to now very protective of our elections, has been basically shut down by Doge. Yeah, like that's kind of the CSA's place. Several members of the election Security group, especially those focused on misinformation and disinformation on administrative leave. The U.S. digital Service has been taken over by Doge. And there's a group, a government group that I don't, I did not know about that, I don't think is one widely known called. Was it F18. No, that's A. Yep, it's F18. It's F18. This is the group that, like the US Digital Services, helps the government with modern technologies, including the IRS Direct File system.
- [119:53]
Emily Forlini
Right. Which was a huge win for people to help.
- [119:56]
Leo Laporte
I think it's a win digitally.
- [119:57]
Emily Forlini
That was one of a very exciting.
- [119:59]
Leo Laporte
Thing, thing Elon tweeted about or Xed or whatever you call it about three weeks ago that they had shut down Direct File, which surprised me because of course, Direct File was a free tax filing system that for years, companies like TurboTax, Intuits, TurboTax and H& R Blocks tax prep software fought against because they wanted you to pay them to do your taxes.
- [120:29]
Emily Forlini
They pretended situation like.
- [120:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they lobbied hard against it.
- [120:33]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. But now they're. They're happy. They're thrilled.
- [120:35]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's what's interesting. The IRS had a trial last year with Direct File was very popular, I think 18 to 20 states. Very popular. I, when Elon said deleted, I immediately went to Direct File and started to file my taxes and it was fine. Fine. But apparently Elon knew a little bit more than I did about what was coming because now the company that wrote the software has been deleted. So maybe I don't.
- [121:02]
Emily Forlini
You can't use that for your taxes this year.
- [121:04]
Leo Laporte
Well, I don't know if it's still. If it's still up or not.
- [121:07]
Janko Rutgers
If it breaks it anymore.
- [121:09]
Leo Laporte
If it breaks, no one will fix it. Yeah, and it will.
- [121:12]
Doc Rock
You know, in the middle, people already started and then, you know, people who are early, they started. But then like anybody that comes now, you, you're not going to get in. Like, that would be absolute Ms. Well.
- [121:23]
Leo Laporte
And, and giving in to, you know, those companies the GSA has eliminated. This is the latest workforce action for the General Services Administration. The entire team of 90 employees who worked for 18F, a government tech consultancy that helps other agencies with their technology.
- [121:45]
Janko Rutgers
I saw today that Mark Cuban apparently offered to sort of fund them as an outside group with the logic that eventually everything's going to break and the government needs to hire them again and then they can become outside consultants and keep their jobs and do good work.
- [122:00]
Doc Rock
So, like, if you're going to privatize it, I would get as many of the people in the office, except, you know, Todd, because Todd's Todd and I would start a whole HR block, you know, hopefully with somebody, one of our friends from the Valley would keep them going because it was great. You know, it actually worked. It worked better than TurboTax and all.
- [122:20]
Emily Forlini
The rest of those things, well that's the thing. Like Elon is supposed to be pro tech and that was a, finally the government was getting techie and you could file your taxes instead of having to pay some other tech company to do it. So that was a real marker of the government becoming more tech forward. And so I, I, that seems like.
- [122:38]
Doc Rock
Something that they would change.
- [122:40]
Leo Laporte
Elon tweeted, that group has been deleted. Tweeted? He retweeted somebody who said it's a far left government wide computer office. I'm not sure how it's far left. It is now gone.
- [122:58]
Janko Rutgers
Everything that is free and publicly run is far left in the logic.
- [123:03]
Emily Forlini
Oh, okay. Is that it?
- [123:04]
Leo Laporte
It's like, well, I'm sure Intuit and H and R Block are thrilled. Right?
- [123:09]
Doc Rock
Well, and guarantee you those two H&R block and into it are definitely not far left. But it's just, it's funny. Like these guys get to the thing where it's like, okay listen, I have admitted it a hundred thousand times, I am a die hard Raiders fan, but I cannot be like, oh, Tom Brady's the worst quarterback that ever lived. That's just stupid. He's good. I can't stand them, but he was good. These guys can't do that. That's the part that makes it so upsetting is they would just pick a line because the line is there and put no normal some logic, whatever is and realize that in, in the end, if we start to make our government less tech capable, that makes us vulnerable.
- [123:51]
Emily Forlini
Absolutely.
- [123:52]
Leo Laporte
It is very odd that you would kill 18F given that it was, it was dedicated to keeping our, our government technology modern and secure and up to date. Same thing with C. Well, maybe what.
- [124:08]
Emily Forlini
He wants to do is it took his glory kind of like he wants to see that model and then like he wants to launch a new tax service and get the credit for it.
- [124:18]
Janko Rutgers
I also just googled this really quick. Apparently Intuit paid 1 million for the inauguration.
- [124:25]
Leo Laporte
So you know, they've lobbied hard for a long time against any government free filing. I guess, you know, if you don't, I mean, it's impossible to compute the intent or the reasons why. We just don't know enough about why you would do this. But it may be that if you feel all government is bad, that any way to file your taxes through the government would be bad, you should be done by free enterprise. But who's going to collect the taxes? The government? What does the tax money go to the government? I just don't understand, you know, There is. And I wonder if this will proceed because he's already fired 6,000 people from the Internal Revenue Service. Maybe we shouldn't just shouldn't file our taxes this year. Who's going to stop us, right?
- [125:18]
Doc Rock
You know, I heard something that was really good recently and it kind of nailed it. So the idea of government in theory for just about anybody is about service. And so I remember way back in the day when I was a little kid and I just got a chance to vote, I was like, oh, Ross Perot would be great for government because he's a business person. And you know, it made the most sense to me because I was going to school to be, you know, a business person. But it turns out that it can't be a government can't be profitable. Government's job is service. It's not to be profitable. So unless you're ready to run a service oriented business, is that intention is not to make a profit. We're going to always keep breaking stuff like, you know what I mean? Like it, it just doesn't work. Because if it worked then if it was profitable, just like, oh yeah, the ambulance will come if you pay first. Oh, the fire department will come if you pay first. You know, it's like, well, it used.
- [126:16]
Leo Laporte
To be, I don't know. Do you remember the Gangs of New York? Martin Scorsese's Great movie about 19th century New York City, Daniel Day. Yeah, with Daniel Day Lewis. It used to be fire departments were private. It, they would set fires in order to make some money. And worse would if there were a house on fire, the competing fire departments would show up and say, well, who are you going to pay to put that fire out and how much you're going to pay? They would auction off the cost of putting that fire out. So I don't know if private fire departments are such a good idea. I definitely don't want to. Private police force.
- [126:57]
Emily Forlini
Well, this one's like, I mean, I went to the, the library a couple years ago with my niece and the library was hosting a class on how to file your taxes because it's so complicated. And that was a service the library was providing. And you know, a lot of people there didn't speak English or you know, don't have money to pay for a private tax service. And there's a real swath of people that struggle to file their taxes.
- [127:22]
Leo Laporte
It's ridiculously complicated.
- [127:24]
Emily Forlini
Exactly. But if they don't do it, they're criminal. And so it's a real problem that the government created and it was trying to fix. And so I.
- [127:35]
Leo Laporte
Well, Janko, in Germany, you don't fill out a big tax form. The government tells you what you owe and you pay it. Probably they already took it.
- [127:43]
Janko Rutgers
You do have to file taxes. You do have to file things.
- [127:47]
Leo Laporte
In Scandinavia, they send you a postcard. I'm not sure what they do in Germany. Scandinavia, they send you a postcard. They say, according to our calculation, you made this much, you owe this much. Thank you. We already took it out of your account. I could see why people wouldn't like that idea. By the way, I did go to the direct file. My current tax return is, you know, it's still there. It's still online. I am still, you know, continuing my 2024 federal tax return. So it's not down. But I think you're. I think you kind of nailed it, Yanko, when you said, but if anything goes wrong, there's no one who wonders who could fix it because no one understands it.
- [128:28]
Emily Forlini
I think it just feels like there should be more accountability for, like, why a service that touched so many people just can get pulled like that. Like, it feels almost like your rights are being taken at that point. And it's. There's. Everyone's just so beside themselves with what's happening in Washington right now. And again, so powerless that. And people are also afraid of Elon Musk. Like, they don't want to speak out against him. So there's. People feel frozen on this topic and it's like someone just needs to break through and be like, what the heck is going on?
- [129:02]
Doc Rock
You just started a culture of hating taxes. Like, I don't know when that started because I don't remember it back when I was a little kid, but I remember it as, I guess sort of as a teenager. Like maybe it was 84 or whatever after Reagan. But like our whole culture of like trying to avoid paying taxes or I hate paying taxes or taxes are bad or whatever. It's kind of crazy because I, again, I've lived in a bunch of different countries and other countries just don't think that way. They just think it's something that you have to do. But like, we have an invisible reaction to it, even though we use things that are heavily tax subsidized on a daily basis and have no problem using this stuff. Yeah, I just don't want to pay for. For.
- [129:43]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, like roads.
- [129:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. The irony is Elon Musk's billions and Elon Musk's businesses all come from heavy government subsidy, including SpaceX and Tesla.
- [129:56]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. I think it's like almost 3 billion went to, has gone to Tesla for government subsidies.
- [130:02]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, let's take a little break. We need a little subsidy from our sponsor. We'll have more with Yanko Records Stock rock. Emily Forlini, you're watching this Week in Tech, brought to you this week by Zscaler, the leader in cloud security. Enterprises to date have spent billions of dollars on security measures that aren't working anymore. Firewalls, perimeter protections to keep the bad guys from getting in. And then of course you have to have a VPN so your employees can get in. It hasn't helped. Breaches continue to rise. There's been an 18% year over year increase in ransomware attacks in 2024, a record $75 million payout. And, and honestly it probably is a lot more, but people just don't want to admit that they got bit. The problem is that these traditional security tools are expanding your attack surface. VPNs have public facing IP that somewhere a bad guy can hang their hat. And they can do it more easily than ever, faster than ever, with AI tools writing the malware. Plus once a bad guy gets into your network, you make the assumption, well, you know, anybody inside the network's gotta be an employee, it's gotta be safe, right? So they're able to move laterally within the network. Look for all the places you back things up and start exfiltrating things you probably don't want the public to see. Like, like your customers information or your private emails. And those VPNs struggle to inspect encrypted traffic at scale, allowing complete compromise. It's not a good situation. Hackers are exploiting traditional security infrastructure, using AI to outpace your defenses. It's time to rethink your security. We can't let the bad guys win. They're innovating faster than we are and exploiting your defenses. But there's good news. The solution is zero trust Zscaler. Zero trust plus AI. It doesn't assume that anybody in the network is a good guy. It eliminates lateral movement within the network, connecting users only to the specific apps they are authorized to connect to and not everything else. It also hides your attack surface, making apps and IPs invisible. Plus it continuously verifies every request based on identity and context, simplifying security management with AI powered automation. And they need the AI because Zscaler analyzes over half a trillion daily transactions, most of those completely legitimate. But you need AI to find those needles in the haystack. The transactions that are fraudulent or malware or attempts to break in zero days etc. Hackers can. This is the bottom line. Hackers can't attack what they can't see. Protect your organization with Zscaler zero trust plus AI. It really works. Learn more@Zscaler.com Security Zscaler.com Security I did not see this. Do you use Instagram? Apparently it was flooded with violent content. Meta has apologized for an error that that filled some users reel feeds with graphic videos of people getting killed. This happened on Wednesday. What kind of error?
- [133:28]
Emily Forlini
Zuckerberg pressed Share Screen Share screen.
- [133:32]
Leo Laporte
The videos which were recommended on some users reels tab included. Well, I don't even want to. I don't even want to say what it was, let alone show you pictures of it. Some of the videos had sensitive content warnings, but others did not. Not Wall Street Journal had this story saying A Wall Street Journal reporter's account features scores of videos of people being shot, mangled my machinery, ejected from theme park rides, often back to back.
- [134:02]
Emily Forlini
What, they just backed up the garbage truck and just dumped it on everyone?
- [134:08]
Leo Laporte
View counts on Some of the promoted videos suggested that Instagram's recommendations had massively boosted their viewership. View counts going into the millions.
- [134:20]
Emily Forlini
Maybe that was it. They just, they. It was like a machine learning thing where it was just trying to get the most views and it accidentally tapped.
- [134:28]
Leo Laporte
Some sort of file. Yeah. A Instagram spokesperson said, we apologize for the mistake.
- [134:36]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I'm sure they did.
- [134:38]
Leo Laporte
We have fixed an error by the way. Even after Meta admitted it and said they fixed it, this Wall Street Journal's reporters feel feed was still full of horrific, horrific stuff appearing, some appearing next to advertisements for law firms, massage studios and temu, which is if you don't know. A Chinese e commerce spokesperson said that the torrent of videos was unrelated to the company's decision to adjust its content moderation policies.
- [135:15]
Emily Forlini
I feel like you could sue them for harassment or emotional distress if you.
- [135:20]
Leo Laporte
Have bad dreams and you can't sleep well at night because of it. Yeah, yeah. I mean Meta removed more than 10 million pieces of. But what's interesting is they had these videos, right?
- [135:31]
Emily Forlini
Right.
- [135:31]
Leo Laporte
If they were in the system.
- [135:33]
Emily Forlini
There's a trove. There's a trove.
- [135:35]
Leo Laporte
It's a treasure trove of violent imagery.
- [135:39]
Emily Forlini
I mean, that does not sound good. I mean that's what's going on.
- [135:43]
Leo Laporte
They say they removed more than 10 million pieces of violent and graphic content from Instagram in the July through September period of last year. That was in its transparency report.
- [135:54]
Janko Rutgers
Now we know how the people who used to moderate stuff, for instance.
- [135:58]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [135:58]
Janko Rutgers
Felt like. Because that was basically there 9 to 5. Yeah, just these videos non stop.
- [136:03]
Doc Rock
There's a great report I saw recently about the. These people having problems now because they had to do all of that vetting.
- [136:11]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's traumatic.
- [136:12]
Doc Rock
They had to watch so much of it like just like completely checked out and you know, fighting for their. What is it like trying, you know, you're trying to get a company to pay for their health stuff. But a lot of these guys got fight fired. Right. And then like so they're trying. They're Cobra. That's the word I'm looking for. Fighting for cobra exchanges and things like that. Because like they're still effed up but their cobras going away.
- [136:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. And meta says. Well, sorry.
- [136:37]
Doc Rock
Yeah, that's the word I was trying to say.
- [136:39]
Emily Forlini
Well, by the way, COBRA is also garbage and crazy expensive.
- [136:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, that's the. After you lose your job, the six months continuation of your health benefits consolidated.
- [136:50]
Doc Rock
But you have to pay for benefits Act.
- [136:54]
Leo Laporte
That's good. You left out an R there somewhere.
- [136:56]
Doc Rock
I said I'm sorry. Consolidated Omnibus Benefits Reconciliation act cobra.
- [137:01]
Leo Laporte
Wow. I'm impressed. You're better than an AI doc. Rock. That's good. How did you know that I'm impressed.
- [137:09]
Doc Rock
My brain is broken, bro.
- [137:12]
Leo Laporte
Grant Rob. The journal quotes one person, a 25 year old who works in the supply niche and is industry saying he was shocked to see graphic videos of people getting shot and run over on reels on Wednesday. It's hard to comprehend. This is what I'm being served. I watched 10 people die today. What?
- [137:30]
Doc Rock
What?
- [137:30]
Leo Laporte
You kept scrolling. What? That. Oh. Oh my. Oh. Robinson said similar videos are being surfaced to all his male friends aged 22 to 27.
- [137:43]
Emily Forlini
Oh, that's.
- [137:44]
Doc Rock
That's why I didn't see Nine.
- [137:46]
Leo Laporte
We were not in the right demographic. It's the Joe Rogan crowd.
- [137:51]
Emily Forlini
Radicalize our young men out here one day at a time.
- [137:54]
Leo Laporte
Fascinating. By the way, YouTube says it now has more than 1 billion monthly view. One billion monthly viewers of podcasts.
- [138:03]
Doc Rock
100%.
- [138:05]
Leo Laporte
Wow. This is from Variety, your old home.
- [138:08]
Doc Rock
No, no, this. This actually came from the CEO. I'm himself. And yeah, he said it. Yeah, broke it down. Here's what's crazy. This. So I've been preaching this forever because I coach YouTubers, right? And I've been telling everybody like, yeah, short is cool and short is a nice flash in the pan, but you really want to stick to your long form content and you need to remember that people are watching this on tv. So not only do they have that much people in podcast, but they have over 1 billion hours of people watching podcast on TVs. So just like when.
- [138:40]
Leo Laporte
Not on their phones, not on their computers, but on their televisions in the living television.
- [138:45]
Doc Rock
So like Emily, when you're doing. When you're doing the Bay News, kpix, whatever. Yeah, the. That like people are watching that on YouTube on their 65 at home, like so. It's good.
- [138:57]
Leo Laporte
You look so great, Emily, for leaning and have a full for us.
- [139:01]
Doc Rock
We have a face for radio. But I think that's true. Super impressive because it finally beat the other streaming platforms or device. I'm sorry. It used to be, oh, everyone's watching on your phone. And that. That. That conversation is gone. Most people are watching on TV in.
- [139:14]
Emily Forlini
The U.S. it's kind of nice. It kind of feels like we defeated the vertical video trend in parts. Like, there's life beyond.
- [139:21]
Leo Laporte
More than that. We're defeating tv, we're defeating the networks, we're defeating television. What's funny? It cracks me up though, because he says podcasts with video are more than just a trend.
- [139:36]
Doc Rock
That's funny.
- [139:37]
Leo Laporte
We've been doing video since 2008. People mocked me for doing video. They said, you're a podcast. What are you doing video for?
- [139:47]
Doc Rock
Yo, I'm at a podcast event last month and I fought for your honor because people are like, oh, you know, it's not a podcast because YouTube doesn't have an RSS feed and Blasey Bl and videos. Just a fad. I'm like, bro, we've been doing video. We had a video podcast that's about to be 20 years old. We've been doing this mess forever. And I was like, Leo was one of the first thank you back in the day. And I'm like, you.
- [140:08]
Leo Laporte
You said Leo, or did you say, I know this guy who was.
- [140:11]
Doc Rock
No, I said Leo. You know why? Because Tim, you remember Tim Stewart, right? He got a pod.
- [140:17]
Leo Laporte
Tim Street, a podcast.
- [140:19]
Doc Rock
He got a podcaster hall of fame award. And so we were talking about it, and so we were trying to defend in. Because the audio guys are mad that, like, podcasting and video is getting so big.
- [140:29]
Leo Laporte
You know what to worry. There's still plenty of people who listen to audio podcasts.
- [140:35]
Doc Rock
100. It's not that they don't listen. These guys don't want to do video because they think it's more work. I'm like, video is technically easier if you ask me.
- [140:41]
Leo Laporte
Well, I Don't know. I mean, it's more expensive, that's for sure.
- [140:44]
Doc Rock
Definitely more expensive.
- [140:45]
Leo Laporte
How much do you think that costs? You know, I mean, it's not cheap, this stuff. Tim street, though, let me just point out, because I've been around for a while. I've known Tim since back in the day. He ran French, made tv. You remember that?
- [140:58]
Doc Rock
Yes, he did. So good.
- [141:01]
Leo Laporte
It was women. I don't know if it was good. It was women dressed as French maids explaining stuff. Right?
- [141:09]
Doc Rock
Y. That's so old school.
- [141:12]
Janko Rutgers
That was on Blip or something like that, Right? Remember Blip?
- [141:15]
Emily Forlini
TV are just waiting for me to comment on that. No, no, like there's just. They're just waiting.
- [141:23]
Leo Laporte
In the early days of podcasting, there was a lot of experimentation, I would say.
- [141:28]
Doc Rock
Yes. A lot of weird stuff.
- [141:29]
Leo Laporte
He tried a lot of weird. Remember Tiki bar? Tiki. Tiki bar. Tv. That was great. Loved that. That was video.
- [141:39]
Emily Forlini
I think video is a big trend these days. Like that. Video podcasts are a big trend.
- [141:44]
Leo Laporte
We are now on doing video. We used to do only audio on Spotify. We now upload all our videos to Spotify.
- [141:52]
E
Yeah, I worked for CNET in 2008. We were doing all of our podcast video already back.
- [141:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, that's because CNET was a television network.
- [141:59]
Doc Rock
CNET was. Seen it.
- [142:01]
Leo Laporte
So they had. They had all the equipment, right?
- [142:03]
E
No, no, we had to.
- [142:04]
Leo Laporte
We had.
- [142:04]
Janko Rutgers
We had.
- [142:05]
E
We had to build a new podcast studio. I had to build a studio. Yeah, we built this.
- [142:08]
Doc Rock
Yo, I was doing this mess when they had all equipped equipment in my living room. I had to make it. It wasn't. But it's still, I guess because my family owned an electronic store, so we had video games, but still.
- [142:18]
Emily Forlini
Oh, that's cool.
- [142:19]
Doc Rock
It. It's always been easier because of this. Like, I can see you guys when I'm talking to you and that's different from just being in your ear. Right.
- [142:26]
Leo Laporte
According to YouTube, 31% of weekly podcast listeners choose YouTube as their preferred service. 27% Spotify, Apple Podcasts only 15%. Actually, that's not YouTube. That's Edison, which has been doing podcast metrics forever and ever. And I think it's fairly reliable. YouTube would be, with 1 billion monthly podcast users, would be far bigger than Spotify, which all told, had 675 monthly active users for music and video at the end of 2024.
- [142:58]
Emily Forlini
So, Leo, how does this make you feel about the future of the podcast biz?
- [143:03]
Leo Laporte
Podcasts are old hat.
- [143:05]
Emily Forlini
Well, we need a new word like A podcast. Video.
- [143:09]
Leo Laporte
I. Hey, I was lobbying against the word podcast Forever. Since 2005, I've been saying, yeah, what it's. What. What medium do you. Why would you call it a podcast? That's focusing on the fact that you're listening to it on an ipod. That's not what it's about.
- [143:25]
Janko Rutgers
How about I want to call them.
- [143:26]
Leo Laporte
Netcasts, because you get them over there over the Internet.
- [143:30]
Doc Rock
You hate.
- [143:30]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but.
- [143:31]
Janko Rutgers
Okay, I have a different idea. How about we just call it tv?
- [143:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, we're not even tv. It's their shows, video. And you consume them in a variety of ways. You might listen. People probably listen to them on the telephone. I don't know. There's lots of ways to consume it. And you shouldn't focus on how it's getting delivered. You should focus on the fact that it's. Of its content, what it's delivering.
- [143:53]
Emily Forlini
So if. If they filled the Coliseum in Rome with people and they played Twitch in the middle, what would you call it?
- [144:00]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. A podcast.
- [144:01]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [144:03]
Doc Rock
Are we not entertained?
- [144:07]
E
I think it's the arena cast. Like, podcast is just. It's a format now. It's not really. It's like a genre. So it's not a method delivery or anything like that.
- [144:16]
Leo Laporte
I wish that died. It's not a. It's not a good name.
- [144:20]
Doc Rock
Especially the ipod is going on high. I gotta say. I agree with you.
- [144:26]
Leo Laporte
Not many shows have a bonito on high. So that's.
- [144:28]
Doc Rock
As a. As a person who was doing music back in the day, like, I hated the conversation where some people call it rap and some people call it hip hop. Right. Like, they're the same, but they're not. But hip hop is the overarching culture. And one of the styles of music in there is. Is rap, but there's a bunch of other styles of music in there as well. And it was always that fight for the definition. So I kind of agree with you. It's more of a genre genre than anything else.
- [144:56]
Emily Forlini
I still think we need a new word for the. The video podcast.
- [145:01]
Leo Laporte
It's a show. Mock show.
- [145:04]
Emily Forlini
It's a show. We're back to talk shows. It's a talk show.
- [145:08]
Leo Laporte
It's a show with talking.
- [145:09]
E
This is basically talk radio. This is basically talk radio.
- [145:12]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, we're doing talk radio. That's right.
- [145:14]
Emily Forlini
Wow.
- [145:15]
Doc Rock
I like vodcasts. That's my favorite word.
- [145:17]
Leo Laporte
Vodcasts.
- [145:18]
Doc Rock
Video on demand. Because I can listen to it when I feel like it.
- [145:21]
Emily Forlini
What about pidio?
- [145:26]
Doc Rock
Welcome to our video.
- [145:29]
Emily Forlini
Kind of sounds a little Too much like a ped.
- [145:33]
Leo Laporte
Pedio. Let's see what else is going. Are you going to watch the Oscars tonight? We're going to get out of here because it's. I think the show's already begun. Conan O'Brien on it. There's a little bit. There's controversy about a number of the nominees for best picture. Here's what's an interesting one. The Brutalist list, which starred, I thought, was quite wonderful, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones as Hungarian refugees after World War II who escaped the Nazi death camps and managed to make it to America, where he became an architect. Well, he was an architect where he resumed his career as an architect. They speak HUNGARIAN TO each other and even though they had dialogue coaches, they wanted to make the Hungarian that they were speaking more accurate. So they used an AI tool from a Ukrainian specialist called Re Speecher to tweak Brody and Jones Hungarian dialogue in the film to make it sound more authentic. That has sparked outrage among the ancients who run the Hollywood that they would dare. They would dare use AI in any form or fashion. Passion. In fact, some suggested it should disqualify it for awards consideration. There's so much fear of AI in Hollywood, isn't there, right now among creatives in general?
- [147:05]
Emily Forlini
There is. And I feel like the industry is very much going towards. At least some part of the movie is made with technology. It's so.
- [147:16]
Leo Laporte
So it is technology. I mean, however you make it, it's technology.
- [147:20]
Janko Rutgers
We had visual effects for such a long time, right? Nobody is outraged because something shot in front of a green screen or something like that. Where's the real art here?
- [147:30]
Leo Laporte
Much of the film's dialogue is in Hungarian and apparently I don't speak Hungarian. But the Hungarian that Brody and Jones speak is very accurate. Accurate. It's a difficult language to pronounce and they were able to do it. It was. It's a very. By the way, it's a three and a half almost. It's three hours and 20 minutes. Very long. There is a mandatory 15 minute intermission in the middle. It's that long. Only cost $10 million to make. It was kind of a low. That. For now, it. For a Hollywood film that's a low budget film.
- [148:08]
E
Yeah, extremely low.
- [148:09]
Doc Rock
Low.
- [148:10]
E
Extremely low.
- [148:11]
Leo Laporte
It was shot on VistaVision. When they. When they. When the movie came on, I watched it at home. I didn't want to go in the theater. It said VistaVision. I thought, wow, I didn't even know that was still around. I found out, though. I watched an interview with the cinematographer from Vanity Fair. And he said all VistaVision is. Is 35 millimeter port. You know, film like you would use in your camera, turned on its side so it's wide. And. And so the, the normally film cameras, I guess run up and down. I didn't know. Know this. That makes sense. They've got a spool and it goes through this bracket like this. They run it this way. The spools are on the side and they run it across. So It's. It's still 35 millimeter, but it's wide angle. It's beautiful. It's a gorgeous film with an interesting, really interesting soundtrack. And I don't think that a little bit of AI to make the Hungarian sound better is. Oh, wait a minute. There was also some generative AI used for a sequence at the end of the film. Film.
- [149:07]
Janko Rutgers
But I think also just to generate a couple of buildings or something like that. Draw architectural essentially assets or so that.
- [149:14]
Leo Laporte
They would use because they had drawings at the. I don't think it'll spoil it to say at the end is a retrospective of his work as an architect. And they have drawings and they were not drawn by a human, but they were generated.
- [149:26]
Emily Forlini
I mean, I do think there is some, some line. Like the deep fakes in Hollywood are an issue. Like, okay, there's a formula one movie coming out. Brad Pitt stars in it. If we found out that the Brad Pitt we were looking at was actually just an AI recreation of him, that'd be creepy. Feel like we'd be like violated as viewers. You'd be like, wait, what the heck? We would feel betrayed. So there is some line, but what you're describing, I don't think crosses it. And as far as I'm concerned.
- [149:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
- [149:54]
Doc Rock
You definitely don't want to. I don't know, like, it's just so weird because we watch so many things and a lot of us, especially the nurse, like you ask any of us our favorite movies, we're like Star Trek, Star wars, like all kinds of sci fi oriented things. Tron, even the cgi, like the movie wouldn't happen without it.
- [150:12]
Leo Laporte
So you couldn't do Tron without some sort of special effect.
- [150:16]
Doc Rock
I don't think that's us though. And I like what Sandra said. The reason why they're mad is because they only spend 10 million and they're nominated. Everybody else's budgets was, well, if you.
- [150:25]
Leo Laporte
Want the real deal, you should go to Netflix House.
- [150:28]
Doc Rock
House.
- [150:29]
Leo Laporte
Janko, tell us about Netflix House.
- [150:32]
Janko Rutgers
Yeah, so that's actually something that's going to come later this year. Netflix is opening two locations in malls where you can go and there's going to be a restaurant, there's going to be live experience so you can play a squid game without dying and then you can go to a store and buy also some merchandise for your favorite Netflix shows. It's basically like a mini theme park. Park in a mall, which is really interesting. And Netflix has sort of worked its way towards this with. They had some pop ups around a bunch of shows like Stranger Things. They had a pop up restaurant that just opened in Las Vegas. A permanent restaurant called.
- [151:11]
Leo Laporte
It's called Netflix Bites. You can go there and have at the MGM Grand. I want to go there.
- [151:19]
Janko Rutgers
You can buy your chicken and waffles there with like 11 stranger things tie in somehow.
- [151:26]
Leo Laporte
So it's food from Netflix shows.
- [151:29]
Janko Rutgers
Yeah, essentially it's. It's all themed around Netflix shows.
- [151:32]
Leo Laporte
Well, wait a minute. I want to see the menu.
- [151:33]
Doc Rock
Let's.
- [151:34]
Leo Laporte
Let's see our menu.
- [151:35]
Doc Rock
Cool.
- [151:36]
Emily Forlini
I am kind of hungry. Right?
- [151:37]
Leo Laporte
It's a well designed. I know it's getting to be.
- [151:40]
Emily Forlini
Go for a Fab 5 avocado delay or a Queen Charlotte's fruit tree.
- [151:45]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's from Bridgerton. Right. I don't know what the Fab Five is. Beef and eggs.
- [151:52]
Janko Rutgers
But essentially. So I wrote about this for Sherwood News. They're building this whole life experiences business but they're doing it different than Disney does because Disney has the big theme parks that are billions of dollars of build outs and Netflix does these small things like in a mall, relatively cheap because malls have too much space to give away now. And it's potentially a lot more scalable where you could have one of these in every city essentially. And then you can go to your Netflix house after you watch a movie or whatever during the weekend. And so it's a very different model. I call it the anti Disneyland. But I think it's a smart model where they really like get instead of going to Disneyland once or twice in your life or maybe a few more times, but many people go only once. I guess you could go to this multiple times per year and they can swap out things and really make this sort of more like a movie theater experience, essentially.
- [152:52]
Leo Laporte
Isn't that funny? You don't go to a movie theater to see the show, but you will go to a venue to experience the tea. Regency Tea from Bridgerton with finger sandwiches, scones and pastries themed to the favorite family families of the ton. Oh, I get it. You call Bridgerton the ton served with a paper menu designed by Lady Whistledown herself. Wow.
- [153:22]
Emily Forlini
Netflix is apparently very confident their shows are going to be good in five years from now, which I am not so confident.
- [153:29]
Leo Laporte
They made some very good movies and yet to have won best Picture. Roma was amazing. I mean, so many good movies coming out of Netflix. They spend a lot of money, but Hollywood, guess what, doesn't want to give them an award. They're trying to save movie theaters. I think it's too late. Hey, we have to take one more break before we wrap it up and let you go watch the Oscars and let you go have something to eat because I know it's late in New Jersey. It's great to have you here, though. Thank you, Emily and Janko and Doc. It's good to have all three of you. Our show today brought to you by Express vpn. Have you ever browsed in incognito mode? You know, it's probably not as incognito as you think. Google just settled a 5 billion dollar. 5 billion with a B dollar lawsuit after being accused of secretly tracking users in incognito mode. Google's defense or incognito doesn't mean invisible. In fact, all of your online activity is still 100% visible to third parties, even in incognito mode. Unless you use ExpressVPN. That's the one I use, the only one I trust. And you better believe when we were traveling, went down to Santa Fe for the gem show, you get to the airport and it says free airport WI fi. Do you kind of get a squeamish feeling knowing no using that? Right? Like, how safe is it? Well, I just. All I did, I used my iPad, fired up ExpressVPN and used the airport WI fi. And I forgot to turn it off. And I got to the hotel, I was still using it. Good news. I'm safe in the hotel WI Fi in the coffee shop. In other countries. I love having ExpressVPN on all my devices. Everybody should. Why does everyone need ExpressVPN? Well, without ExpressVPN, third parties, even if you're using SSL, can still see every website, especially in incognito mode. And when I see third parties, I mean your Internet service provider or mobile network provider, the people adminning the sfo, free WI fi, they know exactly what you're doing. And guess what? It's legal for them to capture it and sell it on. And they do. It's a profit center. Why do you think the WI fi is free at the airport. Why is ExpressVPN the best? Of course. It hides your IP address, routes 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers. They're all over the world, I think over a hundred countries now. Very easy to use. I use it on iOS, Android, Linux, Macs, Windows. You can even use it on your routers. And it's so fast, nobody's going to say, oh, it's so slow now, what's going on? You won't know. Like I said, I accidentally left it on the whole trip because I didn't even notice the slowdown. I was downloading stuff, iOS updates and stuff. 100 megabytes a second. I mean, it was incredible. Just fire up the app, click one button, you'll be protected. And it's on every device. Phone, laptop, tablets. Stay private on the go. Rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and the Verge. It's the only one I use. Protect your online privacy today. Visit expressvpn.com twit that's e x p r e s s vpn.com twitch if you go there right now, you'll get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package. It's a great deal. ExpressVPN.com twits the only one I use. Let's see final stories here. A small microbial system is formed on the International Space Station. Maybe we don't want to go into that so much. Did you watch the moon landing last night at midnight, Firefly? I didn't stay up till midnight, but. Very cool, you know. You did know that there was a lunar lander last night that landed on the moon, right? No. You see, we don't care about space anymore, Elon notwithstanding. Blue Ghost Lunar lander was launched January 15th. It landed last night in the Mare Crisium, a region on the moon's near side. 10 NASA instruments aboard, including a drill to assess thermal flow and an electrodynamic dust shield. Firefly is the first private company to land on the successfully land on the moon. Blue Ghost Mission 1.
- [158:05]
Doc Rock
So when they did the launch, we had just got to Orlando for this podcast event and Ken was trying to get me to go with him, and I was like, dude, I just flew.
- [158:15]
Leo Laporte
I'm tired. I want to go to bed.
- [158:17]
Doc Rock
Right. Here's a picture. Watched it. I'm like, yeah, I'm not getting up.
- [158:24]
Leo Laporte
It's, it's, it's pretty awesome.
- [158:27]
Emily Forlini
That is pretty cool.
- [158:28]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. We're back on the moon. There it is.
- [158:30]
Emily Forlini
You see that? Bezos Sending his new wife to space. All female crew.
- [158:38]
Leo Laporte
I want to make a terrible joke about her, but I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna say good, have a good time. She's. He's not going. They're not going into orbit. Yeah.
- [158:49]
Emily Forlini
I don't know what.
- [158:50]
Leo Laporte
No, it's a. So it just goes up and that's the one Shatner went on. It just goes up and down.
- [158:54]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [158:55]
Leo Laporte
Gets pretty high.
- [158:56]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. I mean, I don't really like that. It's like, oh, it's an all female crew. It's kind of like. I don't really think that your husband funding this. I mean, we could go into that, but I don't think she's a feminist icon because she's date. I mean, enough said.
- [159:11]
Janko Rutgers
Astronauts. It would be a little bit. Would be different story.
- [159:15]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I just, just going, going to the moon and an all female crew. It's like, okay, you're not inspiring me.
- [159:21]
Leo Laporte
So. So the crew includes, by the way, not just Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry, Gayle King from CBS Mornings, your colleague Aisha Bo, who's a former NASA rocket scientist, Amanda Wynn, who's a bioastronautics research scientist, and Carrie Anne Flynn, who's a film producer. It will launch in the spring, the 11th human flight for New Shepard. I'm not going to make the obvious joke that the new shepherd looks somewhat phallic. So I'm just not going to make that joke. Okay.
- [160:03]
Emily Forlini
I think you just did.
- [160:04]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I did.
- [160:05]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [160:06]
Leo Laporte
It does though, doesn't it?
- [160:07]
Emily Forlini
They all do.
- [160:09]
Leo Laporte
Well, no, this one more than. All right, I should probably.
- [160:13]
Janko Rutgers
How are we glad Restream is doing down?
- [160:15]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [160:19]
Leo Laporte
All right, I'm going to show you a picture of the new shepherd rocket and you tell me if you feel like.
- [160:28]
Emily Forlini
No, I think you, you need to describe why you think it looks phallic.
- [160:33]
Leo Laporte
I mean, I agree all rockets are roughly that shape.
- [160:37]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, but what are the details you have in mind?
- [160:39]
Doc Rock
Mind it. Well, rockets are a common name brand used for such.
- [160:46]
Leo Laporte
No, it's not because of that. Let me find a good picture of it so you can hear.
- [160:51]
Emily Forlini
You're not helping.
- [160:52]
Doc Rock
Did you know that the rocket company when we were kids.
- [160:55]
Leo Laporte
What does that look like to you there?
- [160:58]
Doc Rock
It looks like a rocket.
- [160:59]
Emily Forlini
Looks like every other rocket.
- [161:00]
Doc Rock
Model rocket sells a model version of the blue or.
- [161:04]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, you can get a model. Model 1. It's an Estes rocket kit. I, I have. I used to. I love those. Those are so much fun.
- [161:15]
Doc Rock
The heck out of those things I put. They had the first One payload. It had like a little clear tube. You could put stuff in it. And I put cockroach in it.
- [161:24]
Leo Laporte
The first cockroach in space.
- [161:26]
Doc Rock
It was super dumb.
- [161:29]
Leo Laporte
Did, did you recover the cockroach after the launch?
- [161:32]
Doc Rock
No. Oh, because you know what the hardest part is like if you. Those things caught a win, you had to go too far to pick them up.
- [161:38]
Leo Laporte
So they go way down.
- [161:40]
Doc Rock
Yeah, just leave it then go buy another one.
- [161:42]
Janko Rutgers
Maybe it's still up there somewhere. Who knows?
- [161:45]
Leo Laporte
It still is. The cockroach said, wow, that was a. That was a trip that was wild.
- [161:49]
Doc Rock
Well, we eventually end up doing was putting the rocket motors on like, you know, model cars and just running them straight across the parking lot, which is also stupid. Almost started in couple fires.
- [161:58]
Leo Laporte
Then they go really fast, don't they?
- [162:00]
Doc Rock
Yeah, it's really fast until they hit a bump because it grinding smooth and then it's just a mess.
- [162:05]
Leo Laporte
All right. All 50 states have now introduced right to repair legislation. It hasn't passed everywhere, but I feel like the right to repair movement has really gotten a lot of traction. I think that's great. It's. The time has come. Right. Wisconsin on Thursday became the final state in the country to introduce a right to repair law. So far, laws have been passed in Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, California, Colorado, Colorado and Oregon. Here's the map from iFixit. Actually, this is from 404 Media, but the map, I think was generated by iFixit. The dark red is current, active and past. The pink is historic, and the black is past. I don't know why I can't read this map. I don't know what it means, but anyway. That's good.
- [162:57]
Emily Forlini
That's good, that's good.
- [162:59]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, we think it is time to conclude this gripping edition of this Week in Tech. Emily Forlini writes for PC magazine. Not just cars anymore, though. Yeah, everything.
- [163:15]
Emily Forlini
Everything. All emerging tech topics.
- [163:18]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Do you drive an ev?
- [163:21]
Emily Forlini
No.
- [163:23]
Leo Laporte
You have a gas vehicle? Are you interested in driving an EV since you cover them?
- [163:31]
Emily Forlini
I mean, I've driven so many. I get press cars all the time and stuff. They're so, so, so nice.
- [163:38]
Leo Laporte
I love it. Once you drive an ev, it's hard to drive a gas vehicle.
- [163:42]
Emily Forlini
Yeah, I just think in a cold area like I live, if it's my only vehicle, I wouldn't.
- [163:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Well, it's so nice to see you. Thank you for joining us. Emily Forlini. Now on. On all the socials, anything you want to plug? What is that orange thing behind you? I've been Dying to know what that is.
- [164:00]
Emily Forlini
I bought that to be an intriguing object.
- [164:03]
Leo Laporte
It is intriguing. Specifically, it looks like a Dyson TikTok machine or something.
- [164:08]
Emily Forlini
It's so dark in that corner. Yeah.
- [164:09]
E
You need to hit it with a light. You need to hit it with a light.
- [164:12]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. If you want it to be intriguing back. If you back off, it's your shadow back up and we can see it. Yeah. See. What does it do?
- [164:20]
Emily Forlini
It's a lamp. Hold on.
- [164:23]
Leo Laporte
It come.
- [164:23]
Doc Rock
It's intriguing. A lamp.
- [164:26]
Leo Laporte
It is a weird looking lamp. Where does the light. Where does the light come from?
- [164:31]
Emily Forlini
It's charged right now. But.
- [164:40]
Leo Laporte
Wait a minute. So they're magnets. They're magnets.
- [164:43]
Emily Forlini
I got this from the MoMA Design Store which I really recommend if you're looking for like household objects.
- [164:48]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I see. It glows around the ring and it has two magnetic balls in the middle.
- [164:53]
Emily Forlini
That turn it on and off.
- [164:54]
Leo Laporte
Oh my God.
- [164:56]
Doc Rock
Need, need.
- [164:58]
Leo Laporte
That is cool.
- [164:59]
Emily Forlini
Yeah.
- [165:00]
Leo Laporte
So that's a work of art.
- [165:02]
Emily Forlini
Like if you want to. I mean. Yeah. For your setup or your, you know. Yeah, anything. Kitchen, home. They just have tons of cool stuff at the design store. Yeah. And I wanted intriguing object. So I'm so glad you were intrigued.
- [165:14]
Leo Laporte
I was. Thank you. Emily.
- [165:15]
Emily Forlini
Yes.
- [165:16]
Leo Laporte
Doc Rock is studio full of intriguing objects.
- [165:20]
Doc Rock
Yeah, I'm intriguing. Every time I go to Japan, especially in Kyoto. One of my favorite places, the MoMA Design Store. It is so crazy. You could find the coolest things there. So now I'm in trouble because I'm going shopping.
- [165:32]
Leo Laporte
Are those lights behind you synchronized to your voice? It feels like. Oh, they are.
- [165:38]
Doc Rock
Yes, they are.
- [165:40]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's really cool.
- [165:42]
Doc Rock
They're Govee curtain lights. But now they just came out with a new model that is actually. Actually nine feet. So I can cover a whole lot.
- [165:48]
Leo Laporte
Fill up the wall.
- [165:50]
Doc Rock
I'm going to get rid of these and get the new ones. I just looked it up yesterday.
- [165:53]
Leo Laporte
I'm so tempted to just add more and more things behind me and I'm just going to stop because I think it's. It's just want to keep it the way it is. It's just nice. Doc Rock is of course on YouTube. YouTube.com Doc Rock. He's also director of strategic partnerships at eCamm. We're very grateful to eCamm. They. They make the software that we use to switch the show remotely. Bonito is running ECAMM as we speak. Thank you, Doc.
- [166:17]
Doc Rock
Hi. You must address him properly. It's Benito on high.
- [166:22]
Emily Forlini
Don't get it twisted.
- [166:23]
Leo Laporte
Benito On High.
- [166:25]
Doc Rock
Put some spec on his name.
- [166:28]
Emily Forlini
Aloha repent.
- [166:30]
Doc Rock
Thank you.
- [166:32]
Leo Laporte
I am Bonito On High. Yanko Records has a great and I highly recommend it newsletter called Low Pass. It's at Low Pass there is a free tier so you don't have to pay but I.
- [166:45]
Janko Rutgers
There's a free tier. I'm gonna do one more thing. I'm gonna just paste a link for a one month free trial into the chat. So if you want to try it out, give it a try.
- [166:55]
Leo Laporte
And if you for our club members, give the club members a little bonus there their one month free trial. Thank you, that's very nice of you.
- [167:05]
Janko Rutgers
Sure thing.
- [167:06]
Leo Laporte
SFBA Social. He's on the Mastodon at Jank 0 because he's leet. Thank you. Yeah, it's great to see you.
- [167:14]
Janko Rutgers
20 something year old, very neat.
- [167:18]
Emily Forlini
I guess I want to plug. I'm you know, looking for Blue sky followers. Oh, good act with people on Blue Sky. I still go on X a couple times a week so you can follow me there too.
- [167:29]
Leo Laporte
But don't, don't. Just don't. I like Blue Sky. It's everything. Twitter. Twitter used to be.
- [167:37]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. I'm excited about connecting with people on bluesky and some people I followed recently through my work or my podcast appearances I do keep up with and they comment on my stuff and I talk to them and it's just been fun. So I guess I'll plug if you want to follow me on bluesky. I'd love to see you there.
- [167:54]
Leo Laporte
Good. Emily Forlini. Let me do this. E M I L Y F O R L I N I There she is. Beastguy, social emerging tech reporter for PC magazine. That's nice. Nice. Former Amazon person. And I'm not following you. I'm going to follow you right now. Look at that. Make Blue sky better by following the good people. Yeah, yeah. I think it's getting very close now to being a good Twitter replacement. Are you on bluesky Doc Rock?
- [168:28]
Doc Rock
Yes, I am.
- [168:29]
Leo Laporte
What's your.
- [168:30]
Doc Rock
Is it just Doc learn how to type for Lean. Even though I know how to type, my fingers were not behaving.
- [168:35]
Leo Laporte
F O R L I N. I wouldn't follow.
- [168:38]
Doc Rock
I am Doc Rocket. B Sky. Not social.
- [168:41]
Leo Laporte
There are a lot of Doc rocks on here.
- [168:43]
Doc Rock
Yeah, those guys are not me.
- [168:45]
Leo Laporte
This is the real Doc Rock. Content coach, podcaster, whiskey and coffee lover. There you go. Am I following you? Let me see. Yes, I hope so. And Yanko, is it just Mastodon for you or do you also.
- [169:00]
Janko Rutgers
I'm also Blue Sky I'm not super active, but same same name with the 0. Also on Blue sky from my old Twitter days.
- [169:07]
Leo Laporte
I don't feel a strong need for a Twitter replacement, but if there. If I did, this is a very weak endorsement. If I did feel a strong need for a Twitter replacement, it would be Blue Sky. How about that? He. He is there, right there. Yonko Rickers.
- [169:24]
Emily Forlini
I mean, I feel like we could just all take a break from social media as well, but.
- [169:28]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Oh, I'm not following you either. I better follow you.
- [169:31]
Emily Forlini
We're gonna be on it. That's the place I find the least.
- [169:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Right now, as it. As it matures, is getting more of the negatives of the old Twitter as well as the positives.
- [169:42]
Emily Forlini
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [169:43]
Leo Laporte
Unfortunately.
- [169:47]
Emily Forlini
Yeah. We'll have. We're having fun for the moment and we'll see what the next thing is and.
- [169:51]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know, there's a reason to ask because I'm about to go watch the Oscars. I'll be tape delaying it, I guess because I missed the first hour, but I like to watch. I used to love to watch Twitter while I was watching the Oscars and that I'm not going to do with Twitter.
- [170:05]
Janko Rutgers
If you tape delay at the Best Choices threads because they're only going to have the updates tomorrow. So you're going to be ahead of time.
- [170:13]
Leo Laporte
I'll watch it tomorrow and use a live feed on threads. That's a good idea. Thank. Thank you, Yanko. Thank you, Emily. Thank you, Doc Rock. Thank you all for watching. A special thanks to our club members. You got a little benefit there with that free month of Lowpass CC. Our club is $7 a month, gets you ad free versions of all of our shows. It also gets you access to the Discord and a lot more fun. We had Stacy's Book Club last week, Micah's Crafting Corners. Coming up Thursday, we're going to do our photo segment with Chris Marquard. All of that just as a way of thanking you for doing what the club does so well, which is support our network. If you'd like to know more, Twitter Club Twit if you want to watch live. We lost the stream halfway through Restream. Some somehow cut us off for most of the streams. I think TikTok and the Discord were still up. But if you do want to watch live normally, you can on all of those eight channels. YouTube, YouTube, Twitch, X.com TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Kik, and of course in our club, Twit, Discord. Every Sunday afternoon 2 to 5pm Pacific. That's 5 to 8pm Eastern Time, 2200 UTC. But you don't have to watch live because we are. What do we decide to call it? A vodcast.
- [171:31]
Emily Forlini
We are A pity.
- [171:34]
Leo Laporte
We're a pidio. You can watch the video, whatever that that is, by either going to the.
- [171:41]
Emily Forlini
Website what it is.
- [171:42]
Leo Laporte
That's the whole idea. We don't know. Yeah, you go to the website TWiT TV or the YouTube channel dedicated this week in tech. Or best thing, get your favorite Pidio player. They used to call it podcast players. And subscribe. You could do it on YouTube too. Subscribe and that way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Just in time for your Monday morning commute. Next month, our 20th anniversary. That's pretty exciting. It's a long time to be doing video. If you. If you want to celebrate with us, we'll. Do we have anything planned? I don't think we do. Bonito on high. I think we have to plan something for April. Whatever. 15th. But I have to say good night now. And as I have said for the last 20 years, at the end of every show. Show. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. Another twit is in the can. Bye.
- [172:34]
Doc Rock
Bye.
- [172:45]
Emily Forlini
With the American Express Gold Card, I can earn four times membership rewards points at US Supermarkets.
- [172:52]
Doc Rock
So I'll grab some chili oil points.
- [172:56]
Leo Laporte
Tent fish packed with points. Bucatini.
- [173:01]
Emily Forlini
That's a lot of points. Heirloom tomatoes, perfectly ripe and packed with points.
- [173:07]
Leo Laporte
Get more than just your groceries with the American Express Gold Card.
- [173:11]
Emily Forlini
Learn more@americanexpress.com US Explore Gold Terms and points Cap apply.