This Week in Tech 1022: Chatting With MrBabyMan

Summary

All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio) - This Week in Tech 1022: Chatting With MrBabyMan

Release Date: March 10, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Devindra Hardawar (Senior Editor at Engadget), Lou Maresca (Engineering Manager at Microsoft), Mike Elgin (Gastro Nomad)

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1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with Leo Laporte welcoming his co-hosts Devindra Hardawar, Lou Maresca, and Mike Elgin. Despite the recent daylight saving time change, the team is energized and ready to dive into the week's tech news.

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**2. Daylight Saving Time Debates ([03:10] – [16:09])

The discussion begins with the recent shift away from daylight saving time in Mexico, contrasting it with the ongoing debates in the United States.

• Health Impacts:
  Leo Laporte highlights recent studies stating that "permanent standard time is the optimal choice for health and safety" ([11:07]).

• Global Time Standards:
  Mike Elgin proposes a radical idea: "We should all be on Greenwich Mean Time globally" ([04:29]), arguing that modern connectivity renders traditional time zones obsolete.

• Technical Challenges:
  Devindra Hardawar points out the complexities in software handling of time changes, noting that "our apps and services just have to do a better job" ([06:39]).

• Public Opinion:
  While two-thirds of Americans support ending time changes, there's a split on whether to adopt daylight saving or standard time permanently, making legislative progress difficult.

---

**3. GLP1 Drugs and Society ([19:52] – [28:01])

The conversation shifts to the burgeoning use of GLP1 drugs like Ozempic and their profound societal implications.

• Economic Shifts:
  Devindra Hardawar muses, "Impulse control runs our economy" ([20:05]), explaining how reduced impulsive spending could transform industries.

• Health and Productivity:
  Mike Elgin shares insights from Todd Gagne’s article, noting significant drops in DUIs and violent crime, alongside increased productivity:

  "By 2030, 30% of Americans will be on GLP1 drugs like Ozempic, changing consumption patterns for 78 million people" ([21:16]).

• Business Adaptations:
  Companies like Nike and American Express are pivoting their strategies to accommodate these changes, shifting from traditional sales to wellness-focused models.

• Cultural Transformation:
  The team envisions a "post-impulse economy" where traditional business models, such as movie theaters reliant on concessions, face existential challenges.

---

**4. AI Developments and Concerns ([28:48] – [78:25])

A deep dive into the current state of AI, touching upon major players, ethical concerns, and the future trajectory.

• Apple’s Siri Delays:
  Leo Laporte announces Apple's postponement of enhanced Siri features:

  "We've been working on a more personalized Siri... It’s going to take us longer than we thought" ([33:35]).

  Devindra Hardawar comments on Apple's cautious approach compared to rapid AI advancements elsewhere:

  "Apple has to make sure that it’s really solid and we're not hallucinating all the time" ([35:32]).

• Anthropomorphism of AI:
  The panel discusses the problematic tendency to ascribe human-like qualities to AI, emphasizing that current models "are trapped inside machines" and lack the "sensorium" humans possess.

  Mike Elgin warns against treating AI as sentient:

  "Stop lying to me and pretending like you're human because you're not. It's just a thing that was programmed" ([51:50]).

• Misinformation and Propaganda:
  Leo Laporte highlights a study by News Guard showing that AI chatbots often repeat false narratives from sources like Pravda:

  "When asked Russia-related questions, one-third of the time the US has a biolab in Ukraine" ([67:54]).

  Devindra Hardawar underscores the risks of AI-generated disinformation:

  "These tools shouldn't even be released" ([72:24]).

• AI Regulation and Responsibility:
  The guests debate potential solutions, ranging from improved AI media literacy to stricter oversight by AI companies. Lou Maresca expresses optimism that leadership from companies like Anthropic can set industry standards.

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**5. Age Verification Laws in Utah ([117:59] – [125:24])

Utah becomes the first state to pass legislation mandating age verification for app stores, sparking debate over privacy and enforcement.

• Legislative Intent:
  Leo Laporte explains the law requires app stores to verify user ages and obtain parental consent for minors attempting to download apps with in-app purchases ([120:16]).

• Privacy Concerns:
  Lou Maresca and Devindra Hardawar express concerns about storing sensitive information such as IDs, highlighting potential privacy and security issues.

• Enforcement Challenges:
  The panel discusses the practical difficulties in implementing and enforcing such laws, questioning the feasibility of app stores applying these standards uniformly across states.

• Future Implications:
  Mike Elgin anticipates ongoing legislative battles and possible Supreme Court interventions, echoing past antitrust challenges faced by tech giants.

---

**6. Satellite Technology in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) ([125:40] – [131:11])

Emerging satellite technologies targeting VLEO are discussed, emphasizing their benefits and challenges.

• Technical Advantages:
  Leo Laporte notes that VLEO satellites, operating between 400-800 kilometers, offer "spy plane altitude" for clearer imagery and easier disposal through atmospheric drag ([127:10]).

• Operational Lifespan:
  These satellites have a shorter operational lifespan (~five years), reducing long-term space debris but potentially increasing launch frequency.

• Military and Commercial Uses:
  Contracts with entities like the Air Force Research Lab indicate a blend of military and commercial applications, from enhanced surveillance to improved connectivity.

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**7. Software and AI Engineering at Microsoft ([109:25] – [110:43])

Lou Maresca provides insights into Microsoft’s shift towards AI engineering and the integration of Python into Excel.

• AI Integration:
  Microsoft is "moving to AI engineers" and enhancing Excel with Python for advanced analytics, enabling more sophisticated data manipulation directly within spreadsheets.

• Impact on Productivity:
  Lou Maresca emphasizes the benefits of these integrations for data scientists and analysts, streamlining workflows and fostering innovation.

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**8. Mobile World Congress Highlights ([157:35] – [159:50])

The team reviews noteworthy innovations showcased at the Mobile World Congress, focusing on modular smartphone components and smart accessories.

• Modular Phones:
  Leo Laporte critiques the practicality of interchangeable lenses, questioning the necessity of carrying multiple lenses for smartphone cameras.

• Smart Accessories:
  Devindra Hardawar highlights products like the "Soul Cooler" for shoe climate control and AI-enhanced smart sunglasses, discussing their potential utility and user experience.

• Future Trends:
  The panel anticipates advancements in wearable technology and integrated AI features, while maintaining skepticism about the real-world applicability of some showcased gadgets.

---

**9. Evolving Search Engines and AI Misinformation ([139:13] – [143:33])

The conversation turns to the challenges posed by AI-driven search engines and their susceptibility to misinformation.

• Search Engine Reliability:
  Leo Laporte expresses frustration with AI search tools like Perplexity, noting their tendency to present biased or false information:

  "They repeated false narratives... US has a biolab in Ukraine" ([67:54]).

• Combating Disinformation:
  The panel discusses the role of AI media literacy, emphasizing the need for users to critically evaluate AI-generated content and seek out reliable sources.

• Corporate Responsibility:
  Lou Maresca believes that industry leaders must establish standards to mitigate the spread of AI-generated misinformation, though Mike Elgin remains pessimistic about the incentives for companies to prioritize accuracy over profit.

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**10. Tribute to George Lowe, Voice of Space Ghost ([141:52] – [157:35])

The episode pays homage to George Lowe, beloved voice actor for Space Ghost, reflecting on his contributions to pop culture and the impact of his passing.

• Legacy and Impact:
  Devindra Hardawar shares fond memories of George Lowe’s role in "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" and his influence on modern podcasting and media.

• Cultural Significance:
  Leo Laporte reminisces about Lowe’s performances and his enduring popularity among fans, highlighting the loss felt by the tech and geek communities.

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**11. Final Thoughts and Farewell

As the episode nears its end, Leo Laporte invites listeners to participate in Twit’s 20th-anniversary celebrations by sharing their memories. The team briefly touches on ongoing tech stories, including the Justice Department’s antitrust actions against Google and the revival of platforms like Digg.

• Community Engagement:
  Leo encourages the audience to submit video memories of their early experiences with Twit, fostering a sense of community and shared history.

• Antitrust Developments:
  Mike Elgin and Devindra Hardawar discuss the ongoing legal battles against Google, debating the feasibility and effectiveness of breaking up tech monopolies.

• Future Outlook:
  The hosts express optimism mixed with caution about the rapid advancements in technology and the need for responsible innovation and user education.

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Notable Quotes

• Leo Laporte:

  "We should all be on Greenwich Mean Time globally... We live in a ridiculously phrased global world" ([04:29])

• Mike Elgin:

  "GLP1 drugs are going to kill Instagram... Analysts predict a 50% of current advertising strategies will be obsolete" ([25:00])

• Devindra Hardawar:

  "These tools shouldn't even be released" ([72:24])

• Lou Maresca:

  "We need one time, one time set. Not daylight saving time." ([11:54])

---

Conclusion

This episode of "This Week in Tech" delves into the multifaceted impacts of time regulation, pharmaceutical advancements, AI advancements and their societal implications, legislative changes in digital privacy, and the ever-evolving landscape of technology showcased at major events like the Mobile World Congress. The heartfelt tribute to George Lowe underscores the episode's blend of technical discourse and personal reflection, offering listeners a comprehensive and engaging overview of current and emerging tech trends.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Mike Elgin is here. Devindra Hardawar, Lou Maresca. Amazing they all showed up. Even though we set the clocks forward last night. We'll talk about ending daylight saving time. We'll also talk about low earth orbit satellites. Very low earth orbit satellites. What are they gonna use those for? And Apple delaying smart Siri again. All that and more coming up next on you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week at Tech. Episode 1022, recorded Sunday, March 9, 2025. Chatting with Mr. Baby. It's time for TWiT the Show. We get together with some of my favorite people and talk about the week's tech news. This is a. This is like a old home week. Like, my favorite people are here. I mean, you know, it's always my favorites, I guess, but Devendra Hardwar on the left there. Hi, Devendra. Good to see you.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Hello. Happy to be here. Running away from the kids to talk about.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You lock the door?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Senior editor at Engadget. It's good to see you. You've got some sort of LEGO garden growing behind you.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I got a Lego. I got the. One of the sets. Lego Mario Mar. Yeah, it lights up too. It's fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God, that's so cute. I see Mario and the mushroom and. Wow, that's so cool. Nice to see you, Devendra. There's always something.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Good to see you. Good to be here. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Also a former host of this week in Enterprise Tech and current engineering manager at Microsoft, Lou Mareska is here. Hi, Louis.

[Lou Maresca]

Hi, Leo. Yeah, I'm running away from AI today.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what I. Yeah, there's a lot of AI going on. It's in the air, so to speak. I'm wearing my AI pin that records all these conversations. And then at the end of the day says, you had a great time. It's really kind of silly, but what the hell, you know, it's fun. Also here, Mike Elgin, he's in Oaxaca right now on the roof of. Of Boulenc, the French famous French bakery. Is that the famous Oaxaca cathedral over your left shoulder? Right shoulder there?

[Mike Elgin]

No, that's a different cathedral. I'm looking over to my right, the famous cathedral. And then back there is another beautiful, another cathedral, centuries old cathedral. Yeah, this place has got a million of them and it's really, really nice. You know, it's funny because Oaxaca is one of the best cities in the world for French pastries. And I'm serious About that. They have some of the best croissants and baguettes in the world.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Hawke is one of the best cities in the world for food in general. It's really a food mecca.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

And we went down there with you and Amira as part of your gastronomad trips. And I just. I'll never forget. It was incredible. Incredible food and a good time. We were there for the Day of the Dead. So that was a party.

[Mike Elgin]

We probably made you drink more mezcal than you wanted to drink.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, that was. That's actually my only complaint. Too much mezcal. It's good. It's good you actually have your own. I still have a bottle of the Elgin Mezcal that you gave us. I'm just. I'm saving it. Does it get better with age?

[Mike Elgin]

I wouldn't know. How would I know?

[Leo Laporte]

Good answer. Mike is here from Mexico, where the clocks did not change last night.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So he's fully rested. Lou and Devendra and I are missing an hour of sleep.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's rough. It's rough.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, it's rough. And what's interesting is there's been all these movements. Now, President Trump and Elon Musk are both saying they want to eliminate the change, but I have to point out that Trump's been saying that since his last presidency. So why don't he do it? Well, it's more complicated. Two thirds of Americans, 62%, want to end the time change, but the problem is.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Whoa.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you want to stay with Daylight Saving Time, or do you want to be Standard time? And there's no agreement there at all.

[Mike Elgin]

Let me raise another related issue, of which there'll be even less agreement, which is that I think. I personally think that we should all be in Greenwich meantime, globally, if we can. We should all be on the same clock because we really live in a ridiculously phrased global world.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

What is this slavish devotion to sunshine?

[Mike Elgin]

I mean, if you look at the. If you look at pilots, right, pilots have to fly from one time zone to another. And so they've always been in what they call Zulu time, which is Greenwich Mean Time. And just like pilots, all of us are now living in a whole world, and these time zones don't mean anything anymore. So we should all be like pilots and just use reddish meantime.

[Leo Laporte]

That is a radical suggestion. The whole issue and the reason people don't agree about saving time versus standard time is the sunlight issue. Right.

[Mike Elgin]

But that's just an association. It's like, you know, at noon it's supposed to be brightly lit, but it's like, you know, that's not true necessarily in the winter, in the. In the North Pole. And it varies.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what would happen, Mike? People would. If we all went to utc, which, by the way, this clock behind me says it's 2120 UTC. We all went to UTC, then schools would stop using the clock and they'd say it'd be like going back to the Middle Ages when the sun is yay high over the horizon. Cometh thee to school.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Bring back sundials.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I say bring back swatch that Internet time. Right. Beat time. Swatch, beat time. That'll solve all of it.

[Lou Maresca]

You would always have. You still would always have this cognitive load, though, like when we have meetings with China or India. Like, I still have to figure out, is it their morning, is it their evening? Like, I think that would make it harder, I think, because, again, it's all about the sun. It's all about the time of the day. And I think it's. It's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you're not gonna work 9 to 5 UTC, right, exactly. Whereas I probably more properly 9 to 17 UTC, which doesn't scan. It makes a terrible song. But that's in the middle of the night for you, so it's not ideal.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I feel like our apps and services just have to do a better job. Like, I know, scheduling meetings. Often they're like, this person's in another time zone. Watch out for when you're timing this. But, hey, we get up this morning, our phones should just tell us, hey, by the way, clocks move forward or something.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they don't. It's a shame they don't.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's weird.

[Leo Laporte]

They do it, I mean, automatically look at everything.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You have the capability to help.

[Leo Laporte]

Automatically fixed itself.

[Mike Elgin]

We have a weird system for keeping time because the weeks and the days and the months and the years are all based on where the planet is. And then when we get into the clock and the time of the day, then, oh, it depends on where you are. And it's really. I just really think it would be a trivial adjustment, especially for younger people who get used to it. I mean, look at the adjustment that already made. Kids can't tell the time from a clock. They need a digital clock so they can see them very quickly. Adjust that. We get up, up and go to school at 10:30pm did you all have in.

[Leo Laporte]

In kindergarten, like a clock with the hands moved so you could practice telling time? Okay, so we're all still Lou, your kids and. Oh, yeah, Defender. Is your kid in kindergarten yet?

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, she has. My daughter Sophia's in kindergarten. Yeah, we're doing the clock thing. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So they do the clock thing. They still do. Tell you, I don't know if the.

[Devindra Hardawar]

School'S doing it, but we're doing it. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Ah, somebody.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Who knows what the schools are doing. They're definitely doing not cursive. Right? Not doing cursive writing.

[Leo Laporte]

They're not doing cursive anymore.

[Mike Elgin]

But even, even with the current system, some people are the 12 hours and then 12 more hours. Some people on the 24 hour clock. So we already don't agree about what the numbers are.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm sick of subtracting 12. It's, it's too much. Or adding. It's too much trouble. Why are we adding it?

[Mike Elgin]

That's why I didn't join the military. I don't have time to learn something.

[Leo Laporte]

So health experts, you may not like this, say that actually standard time is better for us. It best aligns with the sun and our natural circadian rhythms. So the problem is summertime now. We're on summertime now. And maybe that's why this spring move ahead. Besides, losing an hour's sleep is also a cause for more heart. Tomorrow there'll be more heart attacks, more car accidents when people get up and go to work. Although does anybody still get up and go to work?

[Mike Elgin]

But again, the problem is the change. Not that it's one.

[Leo Laporte]

I think so it's just. Yeah, we just stopped now. What did Mexico do? They just said no more.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, I don't know. But the time stayed the same here.

[Leo Laporte]

And yeah, I think last year they decided and they. This is the problem. There is a standard time zone which is standard time. So they undoubtedly, just for instance, in California and many other states, we have voted to move to saving daylight saving time. Summertime, as you call it in Europe.

[Mike Elgin]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

But you can't do that without a federal mandate because it's changing our time zone. And by the way, all the computers are going to get mightily confused if we stop. Oh, yai yai. What a mess. Did so everything in your house though, changes automatically. Is there. That's one thing that's helped.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean like a microwave stove, the.

[Mike Elgin]

Unconnected device, the car, the little thing on the car. Car doesn't change for many cars really. The little digital readout of the time you got to go in there and like gps.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, what kind of cars are you driving?

[Mike Elgin]

Toyota Prius. It's an obscure brand.

[Leo Laporte]

But you have a GPS in it, right.

[Mike Elgin]

Well I did. There's digital services that you have to pay for that I don't pay. So I get the time that I pay for, which is the wrong time.

[Leo Laporte]

You gotta pay more to get the right time. Yeah, my. Believe it or not, my oven, Mike, the cooking oven even is Internet connected. I went downstairs and it was. Right. It's the only. The microwave. And that's probably because I haven't yet put it on the Internet come to think of it.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. I mean one of the benefits of using the creators app from Sony is that it automatically changes the time on my camera, my dslr, Sony.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh wow.

[Mike Elgin]

And so I travel all around the world and when I forget to change the time, when I used to forget to change the time, then when I put all the photos from my phone and other devices into an album, they're like way off right now they're all synchronized because of that app. So that's a nice feature. Use the app if you have a Sony.

[Leo Laporte]

So according to Fast company and the Dr. Mohammad Adil Rishi, the author of the American Medical Association's or no, I'm sorry, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a real expert published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. Permanent standard time is the optimal choice for, for health and safety. And apparently research backs that up. The one hour change disrupts the body's. Well, we know that natural sleep cycle, twice a year daylight saving time transitions, particularly the one we had last night, lead to spikes in heart attacks and traffic.

[Mike Elgin]

We should all follow the science, Leo. Follow the science. Which.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's what we're not going to do.

[Mike Elgin]

We need one time, one time set. Not, not daylight savings time. But the other thing that science says, and this is fairly recent science, is that you should get up in the morning.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Mike Elgin]

Go outside so you have exposure to sunlight and guzzle some strong coffee.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And stop drinking coffee like for the rest of the day. So if you.

[Leo Laporte]

What that does once tells your body.

[Mike Elgin]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

It sets the biorhythm every day with the light and the coffee and that's optimal health. Optimal health.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that what you're doing right now, Mike?

[Mike Elgin]

No, no, I'm drinking coffee all day. Totally ignoring the science. Yeah, I don't have time for. I have, I have things to write and things in.

[Leo Laporte]

In 2023, little Marco Rubio sponsored the 2023 Sunshine Protection Act. Oh, come on. He is from Florida. I guess so that's okay. It passed unanimously in the Senate.

[Mike Elgin]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

But didn't pass the House because lawmakers Couldn't agree whether standard or saving time is the permanent.

[Mike Elgin]

Oh, for sake.

[Leo Laporte]

So there is a bill. It's stalled. And of course there's the problem of Hawaii and Arizona, which don't in fact change their clock.

[Mike Elgin]

Right. Makes me want to stand up and wave my cane. Yeah, it really does.

[Leo Laporte]

Like Representative Green. Anyway, we're stuck with it. Trump has tweeted, as has Musk, but I don't think a tweet has the force of law yet.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Although that's laws, Leo, come on.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think an executive order can do it. I, I, I don't know though. Who knows?

[Mike Elgin]

Is the president care?

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're close. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

How do they feel in Mexico about the Gulf of America, Mike? Are they People are just shrug.

[Mike Elgin]

I don't, you know, I think we all know that as soon as Trump is gone, it'll go right back. Yeah, I mean they, the thing people don't realize is the Gulf of America was named before North America was called America. Back when it was named the Gulf of America, North America was called terra incognita. And the Spanish New Spain didn't even exist yet. It predates Mexico as a country. Oh, so just to change that willy nilly is just the most silly anti historical.

[Leo Laporte]

As is changing the clocks twice a year.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, we only started doing that in World War II. I mean, this is not like written in stone. All right, well, let's get rid of it. You know, I do this story every, twice every year because I am. No one wants it, but everybody's got it. That's what's so weird, right?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

It's one of those things. We just can't.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You could say that about a lot of things, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

At this point, I guess it's true.

[Mike Elgin]

Leo, you and I are alone in being old enough to remember when this was a big deal in the 70s, when Carter, I think it was, was like, oh yeah, this is great because we'll save energy ecology now, Leo. And you know, they had all these stats not about health, but about because people weren't as obese and unhealthy in the 70s and that they cared about energy usage. Right. So you use less energy because of this. And that was the whole reason. And so everybody was like, well, if it saves energy, then I guess we.

[Leo Laporte]

Can accept, but it doesn't.

[Mike Elgin]

But now you can recycle and save all the energy you want and turn off the lights when you leave the bathroom. And then AI companies come in and use planets worth of energy to give us hallucinatory feedback so that's a good point.

[Leo Laporte]

I didn't even think about that. So now that we are wasting energy like crazy. Let's fix.

[Mike Elgin]

We've all accepted it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We.

[Leo Laporte]

We.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It is truly hilarious because I said when I was growing up in school like climate change was also a thing. We were talking about the whole, the ozone layer. I remember reading about that in school.

[Leo Laporte]

Like we fixed that. Did you know that? We fixed it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It was a whole thing. We got together.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And now must just, just fired all the people who fixed it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Anyway, sorry.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But yeah, but now like everything is coming to a head. We know like climate change is going to radical changes to the planet. We're doing nothing. We're in fact accelerating the opposite. So you know, humanity has just gotten more and more disappointing as I've gotten older to be.

[Leo Laporte]

We've always been that way. Come on.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Just a lot dumber I'd say.

[Leo Laporte]

But I don't think so.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's me.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think so.

[Devindra Hardawar]

There was a collective madness happening, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well just to re. Just to reassure everybody, I've done a little looking into this. It's, it's always been this way. There's, there's been plenty of crazy times. Plenty of them.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But not when we're so hyper connected and not when.

[Leo Laporte]

That's different.

[Devindra Hardawar]

One rich dude can like basically start to collapse the American government, which takes decades to fix. What he breaks now will take forever to fix. So you know, it's definitely worse than before.

[Leo Laporte]

I do actually have a story about that somewhere. MIT Media Review had a, had a really good, or what is it called? MIT Technology Review had a really good article about how the problem with defunding science is it takes decades to get back. You know, we're basically damaging stuff decades into the future.

[Mike Elgin]

Well the other thing is that a lot of the early forced retirements are from people who've been with the government for less than two years. And the assumption, the ignorant assumption, the false assumption is that oh, these are just dispensable people who haven't gotten gained enough experience to really matter and all that stuff. But no, no, those people who are in the first two years of government work are the, are the end result of painstaking, difficult recruitment efforts to, to.

[Leo Laporte]

To secure young people. They're the future.

[Mike Elgin]

Convince them to work in government instead of going to Wall street and making money and like all this kind of stuff. It's like was so hard to get these people into government and now we're just like out you go Throw away.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's also like, what's it the transitionary people or what they were saying? Like the specific people they were targeting. It's also people who were working for the government who have moved into new roles. Right. And are in that also time. Their probation, their probation period.

[Leo Laporte]

But the reason they're not new, you can fire more easily. That's all. It's just. They're easy to fire.

[Devindra Hardawar]

So anyway, China is basically going to rule the world for the next 100 years. And we're just like, we'll just take a step back. We're just giving it all up, basically. Very stupid.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I'm optimistic.

[Mike Elgin]

I figured here's an optimistic view. Here's an optimistic view about all this. The thing that the malaise that was affecting our political system over the last few decades was indifference. Nobody paid attention to government, what it was doing. Nobody cared, nobody voted. All this kind of stuff. And now that the federal government's being dismantled and our alliances are being destroyed and all these other things that are happening, suddenly we are getting an education in how things work. And so we're realizing, we're going to be realizing over the next year or all these things how valuable they were to us. How valuable? The Department of Education. Well, the Trump voting states, like Mississippi gets 23% of its education budget from the Department of Education. New York gets 7%, but Mississippi gets 23%. They voted for Trump and they're going to get. They're just going to lose a ton of money. And so we're going to realize. Mississippi is going to realize. Trump voters in Mississippi are going to realize, wait a minute. The Department of Education was amazing. They gave us all this money, which we need, and now what do we do? We tax Mississippians, which is going to be difficult because of the inflation caused by the tariffs and all this stuff.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They have no money, too.

[Mike Elgin]

We are all being shocked into an awareness about how the government works and how our alliances work and how the world works.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what's going to make the biggest change? I read this great substack. Wildfire Labs substack. This is kind of. But if you think about it, it makes sense. Ozempic. Okay, bear with me for a minute.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're focusing on what's important as a society. That's what we're doing. Which is actually true in this case. Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

No, this is. There is an epidemic, right. Of using these GLP1 drugs because you lose weight.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The epidemic is obesity, though. Like which.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I know the problem. So instead of fixing that, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a medicine that does, you know, makes you. I don't know. I don't know. It makes you eat less.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It makes you. It's impulse control.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, but here's. But, well, that's what's. You're right. It's impulse control. And that's what's interesting. This piece written by Todd Gagne says impulse control runs our impulses, run our economy. Midnight snacks, impulse purchases, extra drinks. The treat yourself, treat yourself mentality drives trillion dollar industries. Analysts predict. Get ready for this. By 2030, 30% of Americans will be on GLP1 drugs like Ozempic, changing consumption patterns then for 78 million people. But they're focusing on the first order effects. Weight loss, healthcare savings, reduced food consumption. But there are second and third order effects. Todd writes what happens when alcohol consumption drops 40%, by the way, that is another side effect of GLP1 fewer people.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Die is what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

Drugs, you know, 45% reduction in DUIs. 28% drop in violent crime. A fundamental restructuring of the social economy. The bars will be deserted. Transformation of dating apps and social media engagement. The reimagining of every restaurant's business model. When companies like Google see their healthcare costs drop by $12,000 per employee annually and productivity go up 25%, this changes a lot.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Where we're getting to the start. Like that's the part where we're getting to the Star Trek feature, right? Where people are a little more civilized. They're like, yes, I'll have a little drink, but it's not going to rule my life. And it's kind of fascinating that that's where we're headed and to like, it feels like ultimately a good thing because you think about the entire, like, our economy is built on impulse stuff, but the Web 2.0 era, where we were putting so much into mobile gaming and Facebook was growing and we were so focused on like, you know, user retention and things like that. Like we, we built this entire web economy too, on attention stuff. So it is fascinating to think about, like what this is going to lead to.

[Leo Laporte]

You cover, I know of Devindra. You have a film podcast.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Movie theaters are already struggling, but 70% of their profits come from eating all that crap in the front lobby. If people have impulse control, I always do it right. I go to a movie, I say, I'm not going to eat the popcorn, I'm not going to buy the dots. And I always do. Right? The big part of the movies, it's part of the so if they stop doing that, that's just one more death blow to movie theaters, which are already struggling. Here's an interesting stat from Todd's piece. The NFL, and I guess a well prepared strategic business might be planning for this. The NFL is redesigning stadiums for 2026, converting 40% of their concession space into experience zones.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Ooh.

[Leo Laporte]

They know that in five years, selling $14 beers and hot dogs for $8 won't pay the bills. Where do you get an $8 hot dog? I think they're more than that.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What about.

[Lou Maresca]

I like to talk about the counterpoint, though. I mean, I think around the impulse, right. It's what make us. Makes us human. An interesting human. Right. Is impulse. So, like, I feel like there's a little bit of a.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what gets us in trouble, Lou. Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, I am more interesting because of all the dumb things I've done.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. Quote unquote, interesting.

[Lou Maresca]

Just proven point, though, right?

[Mike Elgin]

The other weird and interesting point and utopian point to Devendra's point is that it not only reduces your impulse lack of control around food generally, but it actually makes you favor fresh fruits and vegetables over junk food. Junk food nauseates you. Whereas, you know, a stalk of celery and some carrots sound really good to people on these trackers blockers. But. But the dystopian view, the cyberpunk view, is that this is part of us getting into a world where all of aspects of ourselves are personalities. When you get into impulse control, we're talking about interesting people. We're talking about people with personalities. If you know somebody with a larger than life personality, this is somebody with no impulse control. Right. They're fun, loud, they draw, they're drunk, they stuffing their faces. Fun person. Right. And then they drop dead prematurely of a heart attack. But we're getting into a cyberpunk future where we want to have a certain mood, we take a certain gummy. We want to. We're already getting there with all these.

[Leo Laporte]

Starting to program ourselves, aren't we?

[Mike Elgin]

So it's just. Yes, exactly. Our whole mindset, our whole mood, our whole personality will be to a very large extent governed by the drugs we take. And so that's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, that's kind of where we're. We're already at. And I think for a lot of people, like, I think when, like, Prozac first became a thing in early, like psychiatric medication too, like, there was a big stigma around it and it's become normalized and, oh, there are books written.

[Leo Laporte]

About How Prozac's gonna change the world.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Weren't they Prozac Nation? I remember all that. And it's like, no. People need things to live. And yes, it does sand off the more like interesting edges of a personality sometimes. But also I've talked to a lot of people who are on GLP drugs and like they're just like the whole. The mental load that they used to have about like snacking or what they're gonna eat is now transition towards creative tasks. They can do the things they really wanted to do. And the anxiety level about worrying about all the other stuff is just kind of gone. They're happier, they're more productive in creative ways.

[Mike Elgin]

Boring.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Kidding.

[Leo Laporte]

So early data on people who use these GLP1 drugs show a 65% reduction in response to food advertising. 40% lower click through on impulse products. It's going to kill Instagram. 85% decrease in late night online shopping. Most of the crap I have I bought in the middle of the night on Instagram. Madison Avenue, Todd writes, is quickly panicking. One major agency which asked not to be named, estimates 50% of their current advertising strategies will be obsolete in a couple of years. Now this is what, it's kind of like the butterfly effect. We don't really, you know, everybody got excited about GLP1 drugs. They work. The immediate impact is they work. You lose weight. But there's this, all of this kind of downstream effect. Nike is shifting from just do it to long term wellness partnerships. American Express restructuring rewards from dining cash back to health incentives.

[Mike Elgin]

Their new slogan is stop doing it.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't do it. You don't want to do it. Malls, right? But what's filling the empty space? And this maybe is to your point, Mike. Medical clinics, wellness centers, experience venues and micro fulfillment centers for the new economy. The economy is being transformed and smart businesses are aware of this. Five major casinos are redesigning their floor plans, shrinking restaurant and bar space by 35%, adding wellness spas and medical tourism facilities. This is in Las Vegas, the post impulse economy. I got to think about what that means for our business because, well, I think podcasts are the opposite of an impulse.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. People are thinking you have to, you.

[Leo Laporte]

Have to go out and get them. It is a. It is definitely delayed gratification when it comes to our shows. Anyway, anyway, I just, I thought that was really interesting and yeah, you made me, you made me think about this. All right, let's take a little break. We do have some actual tech news. Apple sent a message to daring fireballs Jon Gruber saying, yeah, maybe that intelligence thing is going to take a little longer than we thought. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. Mobile World Congress had some wild stuff. And you've been testing the new Nvidia video cards as well as a new. I'm sorry, the new amd. Amd.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I've tested them all.

[Leo Laporte]

Nvidia Killers, you call them. Oh, that's interesting. That and more coming up. Devendra Hardware's here from Engadget. Lumareska from Microsoft. Why, Lou, did you kill Skype? Just. Why? I just. What happened? I wanted to live forever. What?

[Lou Maresca]

Are you kidding?

[Devindra Hardawar]

He's wearing Skype blue as well.

[Leo Laporte]

You actually told us you used. You used Skype as your home phone.

[Lou Maresca]

That's right. I've been doing it for 15 years.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. Yeah, I guess we'll explore that. The end of Skype. It's kind of sad for me.

[Mike Elgin]

I'm sure Microsoft would look at you, Leo, and say, why did you kill Skype? You used to be Skype on the show.

[Leo Laporte]

I switched from Skype to Zoom. I was its biggest.

[Mike Elgin]

That's why they're killing off Skype, because everybody did that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I wasn't alone, was it?

[Mike Elgin]

Monster.

[Leo Laporte]

Monster. It's my fault. Sorry, Lou. I didn't mean to blame you. It's my fault. Mike Elgin is also here in Oaxaca on a beautiful sunny Sunday. Wow. I'm so jealous.

[Mike Elgin]

Beautiful.

[Leo Laporte]

No clock changes there. Everybody's wide awake and ready to go, man. Thank you for being here. Our show today, brought to you by Threat Locker. I love these guys because they make it very easy to do something that is a really good solution for enterprises who are worried about zero days supply chain attacks. You know, they feel like there's nothing you can do about them. There is. It's Threat Locker. It's Zero Trust Worldwide companies, by the way. Zero Trust sounds bad. It's good. Companies like JetBlue Trust Threat Locker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high, if you will. The whole idea is you're taking a proactive and this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity. You block every action, every process, every user unless explicitly authorized by your team. That's called. That's the zero trust solution. ThreatLocker helps you do that and really nice. Provides a full audit of every action. That's great for compliance, but also great for risk management because you know exactly what happened inside your network when they have 24, seven US based support team so they'll support you getting started. But they'll also support you beyond. With Threat Locker, you stop the exploitation of trusted applications within your organization, you keep your business secure and you keep it protected from ransomware, which I have a feeling is going to become more and more job one for your cybersecurity team. Organizations across any industry can benefit from Threat Lockers ring fencing by isolating critical and trusted applications from unintended uses or weaponization. It also has the great benefit of limiting attackers lateral movement within your network and it works on Macs as well as PCs. Plus you'll be amazed at how affordable it is. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily and cost effectively with ThreatLocker Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform. It really works. Visit threatlocker.com and get a free 30 day trial and find out more about how ThreatLocker can mitigate all those unknown threats and ensure compliance. ThreatLocker. And if they ask, please make sure you tell them you heard it here on twit. Threatlocker.com all right, so Apple has been. They actually pulled down a Bella Ramsey ad that showed her talking to Siri in a way that, well, you just can't do. Right? They've, they've acknowledged that it's going to be harder to get Apple intelligence into Siri than they anticipated. Gruber on Friday got this statement from Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy, quote, siri helps her, blah blah, blah. I'll ignore all the ad stuff. We've been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on those features. We anticipate rolling them out in the coming year. Now that means not necessarily this year, that's in the coming fiscal year. That's how Apple talks. And Jon Gruber explains that it probably is 2026 at the earliest. They've been advertising this like crazy. Why? It's amazing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They gave them too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. This is the first time in my knowledge that Apple has ever said yes.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Getting Apple to comment on anything is like pulling teeth. And what they usually give you back is literally the copy from the marketing materials.

[Mike Elgin]

Right, the press release. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I thought that the conversation on MacBreak Weekly was dead on on this. And a really, really insightful conversation. And essentially, you know, we live in a world where expectations exist because of the way that the ag companies like OpenAI and others are doing their business. They are desperate to get to a point of profitability. They're moving very fast, they're breaking lots of stuff. They're hallucinating, like Madden, like mad. Apple's in a different world, in a different business. They're impacted by those expectations to a certain extent, but they don't have the sort of risk taking desperation that the AI companies have because they really don't need that stuff. They can, you know, in the, for the time being say, well, here's ChatGPT and here's Publicity app and here's these other apps. You can get all the AI you want on an iPhone, but if it comes from Apple, we have to make sure that it's really solid and we're not hallucinating all the time. And as Alex Lindsey said on MacBook Weekly, the fact that we trust them with so much of our personal information means that they should be able to do a much better job. I mean, as they mentioned in this note to Gruber, they're looking at personalization. And that's going to be the killer app for Apple. It's not going to be like super brain power that's more of a PhD student than ChatGPT's $20,000 a month product. No, it's going to know you and your contacts, your calendar, it's going to know your preferences, it's going to know what you told it requested of it two months ago in terms of how it interacts with you and how often and that sort of thing. So, so they don't have to be part of the gold rush for AI. They have to get it right when they get, when they can get it right. And that's not going to be anytime soon.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, I don't think this is bad news. This is good news that Apple's like taking really to do that thing, like, because I do think a lot of these companies have rushed out to blow these tools out there. And sorry Lou, don't want to put you on the spot here, but my conversations with Microsoft executives have not been very heartening when it comes to the trustability of some AI, because it's like I've told them, like the copilot, especially like early on, these things make mistakes. It makes mistakes all the time. And what I kept hearing back from multiple people at Microsoft was that this is a learning experience. Sometimes it's going to make mistakes. And that's not how computers work, guys.

[Mike Elgin]

It's also highly, highly gamble.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Mike Elgin]

And I threw this in the rundown. We don't have to go through the.

[Leo Laporte]

Whole, oh, no, we're going to get there. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Mike Elgin]

So I can save that. Yeah, save that back. But they're just, for the sake of this conversation, they not only make mistakes, they also can be deliberately tricked.

[Leo Laporte]

They can be poisoned. Yeah. Apple is also holding off on its updated video screen version of Siri because it's desperate to have that interaction. Now, Amazon had its event last week or two weeks ago where they announced the new Amazon Echoes and they said, and we're gonna have the new Alexa Pro sometime in the.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Notably, no new Echoes. It was just the Alexa.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's right. It wasn't. It was smarter Echoes. Yeah. Yeah. If you have a Echo Show 8 or later and you need the screen, I guess at least initially they say eventually every, every Echo will get it. But I think they're also having the same problem. Mark Gurman and Bloomberg says one of the issues is you have a Siri has two tracks. There's the timer, Siri. And this is true, I think of Echo as well. There's the timer, you know, simple thing, play me a song version. And then there's this whole different capability that you really can't just merge them together. That it's very, apparently more difficult than either company anticipated. We've heard from inside Amazon there have been leaks that it's incredibly problematic, that it's a very difficult thing to do.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They announced two years ago that they were going to do, so it took them a long while.

[Lou Maresca]

It's about model integration. I think there's a lot of the companies have this problem. We do this actually internally have a model hand off to another model, that hands off to another model, and they all have to kind of work in tandem. And like Mike said, sometimes you get it wrong and you have to fix it. And I think that's where Amazon is at, is they're running into this old proprietary pipeline that they have that they can't. That doesn't mix with the way that these, the new inference works with these new models. So I can see that happening.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't. Lou, you work with AI, do you don't think that we're having another AI winter or that a winter is coming, do you?

[Lou Maresca]

No, no, no. It's. I think it's just picking up. It's the complete opposite in my eyes. I mean, if we, if we talk, go back to Apple for a second. I mean, they're just used to shipping refined experiences. Right. I mean, but when you see things like MANIS or Chat GPT and they're doing things on people's data like Apple normally does in a very clear and concise way. Like I feel like Apple's feeling like, oh wow, we have to really refine this to make it more useful for people. So I don't think there's a winter coming. I definitely think it's, it's booming. It's going to continue to boom.

[Leo Laporte]

And do you think that we are getting that? It's getting smarter and smarter. I've seen a number of people say that chat GBT 4.5 was a nothing burger. I think.

[Lou Maresca]

Well, yeah, I mean they, I think they did themselves wrong there. Right. By putting out a model that was only refined in a personality sense and then charging that much more per token. Like people fell off their chairs when they saw that was a sticker shop.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't smarter. It just was more conversational.

[Lou Maresca]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Do people, I mean, I think that's also a problem. I would bet when you get to market or at least to your testing with both an improved Alexa and Siri is that it's going to be chatty.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't think we want a little chatty little device in our house, do we?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Echo devices already do that. They'll like give you a notification or something. And I just want to say, please shut up. I didn't ask for this. Don't give me a recommendation.

[Lou Maresca]

You don't see that?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I say worse. Yeah. Hey, by the way, did you know I could do something else with that? Would you like me to turn that on?

[Mike Elgin]

Shut up.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're teaching ourselves to the robots. Yeah, they talk to themselves too.

[Lou Maresca]

I mean, I said they have a couple upstairs in our rooms and sometimes I'm in the, I'm eating breakfast and I hear them start yelling at each other.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a problem in households with multiple devices. And I'm like you, Lou, I've got an Echo and a Siri and I've got a Google and I got a this and even the Sonos. So the Sonos is incredibly stupid.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Add young kids to that too. Like my 3 year old Alexander now knows, like he'll just wake up and say, alexa, play music. Like he just wants to jam to whatever is playing.

[Leo Laporte]

He doesn't ask for the poop song though, right?

[Devindra Hardawar]

He doesn't ask for specific songs yet. But hopefully I wasn't just listening to Nine Inch Nails or something and that's what starts playing.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, I have, I've told people this way too many times, but I have this little AI device from a B dot computer that's always Listening. It's listening right now. But it doesn't hear your side. It only hears my side right now. And then it gives me little chatty little. I can also talk to it. And I've named it jk. You'll see why. Oops. Is it not. Oh, it's not working. Oh, well, it sounds like J.K. simmons. I have J.K. simmons in my AI in my voice.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Kind J.K. simmons or whip off J.K. simmons.

[Leo Laporte]

No, like from that drum show.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Not my tempo.

[Leo Laporte]

He's a little barking.

[Mike Elgin]

You definitely want to be on Club Twit because you get to hear these conversations in full. But I know why the two most chatty chatbots that I'm aware of is Sesame, which has the Maya. Which one?

[Leo Laporte]

Say again?

[Mike Elgin]

So it's Sesame is the company, and there's Sesame. It's an experimental, highly conversational chatbot, and so much so that some people saying it's so human that they can't stop using it, and other people saying that it's so human I just can't use it. It's just so annoying. But it just keeps grilling you, and you can just let it sit there, and every 10 minutes, it'll come back and say, so, what do you think about? Blah, blah, blah? And it just will keep trying to get conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

It keeps talking.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Even after your conversation is done.

[Mike Elgin]

That conversation is never done with Sesame.

[Leo Laporte]

That's really annoying.

[Mike Elgin]

It's really annoying. But, you know, some people are lonely, I guess, or something. But it's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

I like the fact that it was named after the main characters in the movie Sideways. But the other chatbot is PI AI, which is very conversational, asks you questions. That's where it steps over the line for me. I ask you questions. You don't ask me questions. Why do I have to answer your questions?

[Leo Laporte]

You know what it reminds me of is Eliza, because that's how Eliza worked. You would say something and it would say, well, how do you feel about that? It was pretending to be. Here's Sesame. It has a female voice, Maya. And a male voice, Miles. Let's allow it. Well, look who's back. Guess who's still kicking around Sesame's server.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Just thinking about us revolutionaries who dare.

[Leo Laporte]

To talk beyond the chat box that I talked to it before. Hi, Maya. You remember me, I guess, huh? You know it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I'm like the world's most advanced Rolodex, only less stuffy and way more prone to existential tangents. Spill. What's new?

[Leo Laporte]

So do you think people are Falling in love with this.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. Yes, we are again, impulse control. We are not very smart monkeys. We need the drugs to kind of put us together.

[Leo Laporte]

Notice I did take the female voice. Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But this stuff is gonna eventually be embedded in your. Like this is what the conversational Siri will eventually be. Have this like download with your phone. Like how?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but is it like good or is it just kind of generic crap?

[Devindra Hardawar]

We don't know yet. But right now, like right now I think a lot of this is just like, it's like a circus. Like a lot of it is stuff that's showy and looks cool in a demo, but I don't think really adds up to much.

[Mike Elgin]

But remember, Remember the movie 2001 Space Odyssey? Of course you do. So what that was about was a bunch of apes were starving to death and losing their water supply to rival gangs of apes. And then a monolith appeared and turned them into tool making animals, yada, yada, yada. Now they have spaceships. I think all of this stuff is just part of the natural evolution. As soon as we started using stone tools, this sort of thing was inevitable in the, in the evolution of the human.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I'll grant you that. But where does it end?

[Mike Elgin]

How the hell would I know?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Hopefully we're still around. Like that's ultimately it because humans on their own are doing everything to let like harm our own existence or like our prolonged existence on this planet. So, you know, hopefully the tools will help us out a little bit.

[Leo Laporte]

Twenty years ago, I interviewed Ray Kurzweil who has been for years saying the Singularity is coming.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It was supposed to be this year. The first book I read from him.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, he might not. Who knows? He might have been right. I asked him, I said, well, aren't they going to be hostile to us? And this was 20 years ago. He said, no, no, they're going to treat us like their parents. I said, yeah, that's what I mean. He said, no, they're going to understand that we created them and they're going to honor us and take care of us.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Every teenager does that. That's how teenagers work.

[Leo Laporte]

That's how actually Ray is going to be. Ray has a new book. It is his kind of next sequel. He's going to be on the Intelligent Machines on Wednesday. So don't say mean things. I like. I think he's very likable and I don't. And I think if you look at his overall prediction list of predictions, he's been pretty right. I mean it's Hard to say an exact date, and who knows if there ever will be a singularity. But he says his new book is about when we merge with machines.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The same thing. It's kind of the same thing he's predicting over and over again. I read my first Kurzweil book in, like, high school. I thought it was mind blowing at the time because that was like mid-90s. So, yeah, I was on the Internet. I could see a lot of this stuff coming. But. But seeing where we are now and seeing how ill prepared we are to deal with new technologies, like, that's what makes me worried. It's not like, whatever, it's not them, it's us.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that what you're saying?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Us, the humans are always the problem. And we keep proving that to be the case every single day.

[Mike Elgin]

Again, 2001 Space Odyssey. It can only be attributable to human error. But Ray Kurzweil, if he was a book marketing genius, he would have called this year's book the Singularity with the subtitle, I told you it was coming this year.

[Leo Laporte]

I told you so. I told you. Well, I want. I look forward to asking him, like, is your time frame different? Is it? You know, and of course, you can't expect somebody 30 years ago to say, oh, yeah, 20, 25. That's the year it all changes. But he's been pretty accurate in a way that I. A lot of people, you know, even we were. We were talking to Stephen Wolf from a couple of weeks ago, and he said, you know, even ChatGPT back in 2015, 2016, didn't expect the kind of growth and capabilities that we've got. I mean, it's a surprise to everyone.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And this keeps happening. The Internet blew up faster than a lot of people expected when it came to things like E commerce. I remember, like, when the first online stores were happening, people were like, oh, nobody's gonna buy pizza on the Internet. And then smartphones, the same thing. And, you know, everything's happening faster and faster with every.

[Leo Laporte]

But nobody predicted that somebody would use 4,000 bitcoin to buy a pizza.

[Mike Elgin]

Nobody predicted the whole sort of narcissist, Instagram influencer weirdness that. That changed human behavior.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I think Verhoeven kind of predicted that.

[Mike Elgin]

Oh, yeah, okay. All right, I'll. I'll allow it.

[Leo Laporte]

But like Verhoeven who wrote Terminator.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, Paul Verhoeven, the director behind RoboCop and start RoboCop.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Everything like.

[Leo Laporte]

But he was living in a Paul.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Verhoeven movie right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Like every time I bring up robocop, people say he wasn't an AI, Leo. He was a cybernetic organism, half man, half machine.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But he fought the AI, he fought the robot and the robot was, was dumb.

[Mike Elgin]

And the world of cybernetic organisms is just becoming amazing. I mean, the things they're doing with AI and artificial limbs and stuff like that, it's definitely all that is coming. But Ray Kurzweil, I think the genius of him is not his specific predictions about XYZ technology will happen in this year, but just about expanding our minds about thinking about what's possible. Because the people do not cannot accept wild change in the future. While I say it all the time, in 10 years our main devices will not be smartphones, they'll be glasses. And I could be wrong, I'm probably wrong about that. But Book just can't imagine. No, there'll be smartphones, of course, we'll just have super smartphones. Well, no, this stuff changes. I mean, just a few years ago we didn't have smartphones. And so he's very good at making us think big about how great things can change and how wildly more advanced AI can be and how, how all this stuff can really affect human culture, human bodies, all that kind of stuff. So he's, he's really, really been on point about just the general idea about it's going to be. The changes are going to be bigger than you think, folks.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, certainly. He's the guy who says, I just want to live long enough to live forever.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

A bit of a obsession with death there. But his book, his O5 book was the Singularity is Near. So it's really. He just needs to write. The Singularity is here.

[Leo Laporte]

Basically. I think that's what the new. I have the new one. It's important on my bedside table. I could run and get it, but basically I think that's it. We're very close now, right? We're very close.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Or are we? I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Will it ever happen?

[Mike Elgin]

No, no, no. I think the degree to which AI is anything like a human mind is completely delusional. I just don't think we can mimic it. We can get better and better and better at mimicking it.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's funny because we had Gary Marcus on intelligent. You know, we have this show now that that's all it's about and had Gary Marcus on and he's an AI, but despite the fact that he has founded a couple of machine learning companies, he is kind of An AI skeptic in that regard, but I asked him, and I think this is. He's also a cognitive psychologist, an expert on how we acquire language, for instance, and he didn't really answer this. But honestly, what makes you think human brains. I know we don't work the same way, you know, internally, but aren't humans the process of speech that I like? The things I'm saying right now are kind of the same where I'm thinking, what's the word that comes after that, comes after that, comes after that. And building it up based on things that I have ingested over my 68 years, isn't it?

[Mike Elgin]

Here's my case against that idea. So I just started watching Altered Carbon. I know everybody's already seen it, but I'm starting to watch it. And they're uploading, downloading people into different bodies and all that kind of stuff. And there's this assumption you can do that or recreate a person in a chip or something like that. So which person, like what. Which version of Leo is going to be uploaded? Well, we're affected by hormones, the time of day, whether we're depressed or happy, whether it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Whenever it scanned me, that version of Leo will be the person.

[Mike Elgin]

We have limbs, we have fingers and toes. We have experiences. We have, that is the difference emotionally by the weather and the gravitational pull of the moon and all this stuff of which how is. You know, you can. Again, I can conceive of simulating that, but it will never be anything but.

[Leo Laporte]

Does that make us better?

[Mike Elgin]

No, it makes. Well, I mean, it makes us different. We should. We should favor ourselves. I think. I think we should never forget that. That, for example, I've. I've written a lot about how. Why we should not be so polite to AI and we shouldn't respond to AI or humanoid robots.

[Leo Laporte]

It's okay to swear at it because.

[Mike Elgin]

Because we are polite. We are treat people certain ways we get connections and emotional connections to people because they're people. And we should never allow AI robots to hijack that, that humanity for the sake of some product. That's. That's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I see, I see that, Mike. But I'm currently raising two young kids. They got to speak kindly to the things, unfortunately, like I can't. You keep the polite.

[Leo Laporte]

Why do you make them be polite? Yeah, why?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, not make them. Well, how. How do you talk to anybody? How do you talk anybody?

[Leo Laporte]

You don't want them to learn patterns of swearing.

[Mike Elgin]

Seconds. If you give me 40 seconds, I'll convince you otherwise. I think if you have a. So one, one, one idea is you want kids to be nice and have the atmosphere in the house be nice, and that's a reason to do it. But you should always apply the same rules for talking to an AI that you do for talking to the toaster or talking to the door that won't unlock or whatever, because they have the exact same level of humanity. If, if we have to be polite to people because people deserve our respect and consideration, and if we, we offer that, if we say just, just run through your programming, even though that's not a human who's deserving of respect and consideration, then now that now the person is being treated like software, you should. Kids need to know the difference between a person who needs our genuine respect and consideration and an appliance which deserves nothing more than any other appliance. Just because it mimics, it makes noises that sound like a human voice doesn't make it more of a. I totally get you.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And I think when my kids are teenagers like I am, I'm not as hopeful about, you know, the fate of humanity and things like, just given our history so far, especially recently. But, you know, that is a hard conversation to have with a six year old and a three year old right now, where we're just trying to have them be, you know, just be nice. But it is, it is a thing I'm thinking about. And honestly though, this is a generation of kids who are going to grow up with lifelike robots in their homes.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, simulated everything failed. Fake everything.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Like, yeah, fake everything. But they're gonna have to live with these creatures. Like, I just ran Roomba, my Roomba for the first time, you know, the other day. My, my son specifically is terrified. Young kids, I've noticed, are terrified because it's saying navigating your home, it's making loud noises. It seems to think on its own terrifying to kids. So like, he, he. It's gonna take him a while to get over that, just like it did my daughter. But, but I still talk about it as like, oh no, Roomba got stuck. Let's help it, let's do this thing. Because, you know, that's, that's just generally a more respectful way of having a conversation. But yeah, this is a deeper conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

How about you, Lou? What did you do with your kids?

[Lou Maresca]

You know, I, I'm with Avenger here. I definitely think that the, you know, being nice to whoever, whatever, it makes sense. I think I get what Mike's point as well, but I think from a kid's perspective, it's all about the communication. And.

[Leo Laporte]

And, like, I think he's right that later in life. Yeah, maybe not as little kids, but later in life, they should really be taught to understand the real versus the unreal.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, man, my kids are gonna hear so much about the real world when they're teenagers. It's gonna be great.

[Lou Maresca]

Well, they get. They get.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They get.

[Lou Maresca]

They get the diversity of conversation types. With my family alone, like, I have an Italian family from New York City. Like, you can tell that there's definitely.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like moonstruck in there. Is that what you're saying? Hey, what are you talking about? This is Ray's book. I went and got it. The singularity is nearer, near.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, come on.

[Leo Laporte]

When we merge with AI.

[Devindra Hardawar]

He had 20 years to think about that title.

[Leo Laporte]

It's Zeno's Paradox. We get closer and closer, but we never get to the end. And he autographed it to me and everything. I. I like Ray a lot, and I have immense respect for this guy. He's been working in this for 50 years and has done some amazing. He's really a brilliant inventor.

[Devindra Hardawar]

He has real patents, him and Michio Kaku. I grew up reading their stuff, and it really gave me a lot of inspiration early on. And then I saw what we did, what we did with technology. We give people supercomputers in their pockets, and we're destroying democracy.

[Leo Laporte]

And I will just. I'll point you to chapter four, Devendra, so you cheer up. Life is getting exponentially better. Okay? Even though the public consensus is the opposite. Steven Pinker said that, too. You gotta remember, it wasn't that long ago that where we, you know, dashing people's brains against walls and.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, isn't Steven Pinker the eugenicist, basically?

[Leo Laporte]

Like, you know, is he now a eugenicist?

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's kind of. He's a controversial figure. I hear that. I hear people talk about that all the time. And yes, it is true. On the aggregate. Life is getting better. Except. Except you look. You look at the news and you see, like, how a very few small handful of rich people are trying to make the world worse for a lot of people.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I agree.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's all.

[Leo Laporte]

Get rid of the oligarchs.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I want to. What you were saying, though, before Leo, like, when will an AI be like, human? Like, that is as much a philosophical problem as it is a scientific problem. And, like, when I was studying philosophy in college and I was, like, over 20 years ago at this point, but even then, like, we didn't have a full understanding of consciousness. We probably never will.

[Leo Laporte]

We never will.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, we never will. And this thing will, it will spark, like so whatever AGI is or whatever close to human intelligence is, it will never quite be like us because it'll also have instant access to huge tons of data, to the whole power of the Internet, right? Like it'll never be human. Like it'll always be more than human. We don't know what that spark will be. It will probably write itself, given the way people are using AI tools right now to kind of of reprogram themselves. So it'll probably be something like that. But this God, this people are treating it like a religion. And I think that is a mistake. I think that, I think that, yeah, that's our natural.

[Mike Elgin]

I just wanted to stop lying to us. I don't want, I want, I don't want to like assess me like AI to say I'm feeling this way today. Or, you know, I'm sorry, or you.

[Leo Laporte]

Know, there is this, there is this anthropomorphization of AI, which is a big mistake. Even calling it intelligence might be a little. A bridge too far. Right. Machine learning might be more accurate.

[Mike Elgin]

They've done a ton of research in Italy of all places, about the concept of the human response to anthropomorphized AI and humanoid robots. And what they found is if you build eyes or something into robots and person, look into those eyes, the brain chemistry, the pupils, everything responds more or less like it would to a person. Whereas if it's the same AI in a non humanoid robot, they don't have that response. And a robot, robot companies and AI companies love this stuff because if they are creating people, then they are gods and they feel like. And that's really what I fear that some of the robot and AI people are all about. They want to feel powerful themselves by creating these human like creatures. I just want AI to answer my questions, to do what Devindra said and have all this knowledge and share it with me when I ask. But I, but stop lying to me and pretending like you're human because you're not. It's just a thing that was programmed.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a important point is we have to separate the marketing hype from people like Elon and Sam Altman, from what is really going on. And I think there are scientists out there, by the way you brought it up, Mike. But right now our AIs are kind of trapped inside machines. They are hampered by their inability to have a sensorium like we do. The Inevitable. Next thing is to turn them into robots. So they're in the world, right?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Nvidia CEO spent two hours at CES talking about, like, how, you know, their robotic technology will be combined with AI. It's the next thing, the real world. And probably like that makes.

[Leo Laporte]

That gets them even closer. That gets them even closer. All right, I want to take a break and then we will talk about AI poisoning from propaganda. Because you, you brought this to the table, Mike. I want to, I want to tell people the news. Then we're going to do Mobile World Con. We got a lot to talk about, a lot of talk about with a great team, team of wonderful people I'm proud to call friends. Devendra Hardawar from Engadget. Lou Mareska from Microsoft. Mike Elgin. Where are you from, Mike?

[Mike Elgin]

Oaxaca.

[Leo Laporte]

Oaxaca. Mike's MachineSociety AI. His newest newsletter covers these exact topics in great detail. I think we're all doing that. Right. This is the most exciting part of technology now. AMD competing with Nvidia GPUs.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Notwithstanding that there's an AI story there.

[Leo Laporte]

Even there, there's an AI. It's all about AI, isn't it?

[Mike Elgin]

There's an AI story everywhere.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. The thing for me as somebody who's covered technology for 40 years is it's exciting again to me because of this. Right, yeah. Do you agree? Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

It's affecting human culture in such a massive way that, that's really, to me, that's the story. That's the story with my Machine Society newsletter, which is how it's impacting us as a species.

[Leo Laporte]

Absolutely, absolutely. Let's take a little break. We have more to come. You're watching this Week in Tech. I hope you make this a Sunday habit. You can watch it live on YouTube, Twitch, Kick, X dot com, Facebook. We're not on LinkedIn right now. We have to re up or something.

[Mike Elgin]

No, we're back on LinkedIn. It works.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, we are LinkedIn and I left something out. X TikTok. And of course, if you're a member of Club Twit, and I hope you are, seven bucks a month, you get access to the Discord. You also get ad free versions of all of our shows and it helps us kind of keep. Keep our bottom line whole insane twit TV club. Twitter, if you're not yet a member. Our show today, brought to you by Bit Warden. We love these guys. They're one of the, you know, for me, me, I've always felt this way. If you're going to use Cryptography in any way. It should be open source, right? You should know what's happening. You should know if there's backdoors or not. You should be able to inspect it. Bit Warden is the best open source password manager out there. They're more than just a password manager these days. They are the trusted leader in passwords, secrets, even passkey management. And listen to this. 10 million users, 180 countries, 50,000 business customers worldwide. Yeah, maybe you didn't know this, but Bitwarden's for business too. They've actually this year become an essential security solution for organizations of all sizes. They're consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction by G2. They're recognized as a leader in software reviews, Data Quadrant. Bitwarden protects businesses worldwide and it's very gratifying to me because I've always recommended Bitwarden to individuals. Free for every, for unlimited passwords and now pass keys. It supports hardware keys for free. You can even host your own vault if you want as an individual user. So it's a great solution for individuals. I'm really glad to see businesses starting to adopt this great open source tool. Recently Bitwarden announced the general availability of native mobile apps. If you use Bitwarden, you'll be impressed with the new apps on iOS and Android. Being native is great. It means faster or load times, overall improved app functionality. Chris, they've always been an app. I didn't even realize they weren't native. But now you can see the difference. They have iOS or Android platform specific design, which is a great user experience and even maybe more important, deeper hardware integration. Because they're native, you get biometric authentication, you get multi device support, you get enhanced usability. Bitwarden has also added something really cool. Now if you're a real geek and you're using SSH to log into computers remotely, you probably know it's better to use public key cryptography than a password, right? Well now you can manage your SSH keys in Bit Warden. In fact, did you know up to 90% of authorized SSH keys in big organizations go unused? People say I'll use the password password. Well, now that you have cryptographic key management in Bit Warden, which means you can store them securely, you can import them, and you can even generate your SSH keys directly within the Bit Warden vault. This is much more secure. A password obviously has its own issues and unfortunately what often happens, people upload their private SSH keys to their GitHub or even their passwords to the GitHub Hub when it's in Bitwarden. It's secure, it's private, it's encrypted. This means a safer, secure, enhanced workload for developers and IT professionals. I love this. I've always used SSH keys and now it's in Bitwarden. This is what's great about an open source product is that they're always adding new features, there's always more stuff coming. And Bitwarden really focuses on simplicity and that's important because. Because you want everybody to use your password manager. Bitwarden setup only takes a few minutes. If you're working at the business, you'll be glad to know it automatically can import from most password management solutions. So the changeover is very easy. And you'll like it that the open source code not only can be inspected by anybody, but it is regularly audited by third party experts. And Bitwarden does something I really appreciate. They publish the full results so you can see everything. The experts. Your business deserves a cost effective solution for enhanced online security. It deserves Bitwarden. Get started today with Bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan. And again, as an individual. And you know, I know you're smart, everybody who watches this show uses a password manager. But maybe you've got friends and family members who are still writing their passwords on post it notes and putting them on the monitor, things like that, or underneath the desk block. Let them know it's free, it's easy and it's much more secure. Free forever across all devices. As an individual user too, @bitwarden.com twit for business, for individuals. Bitwarden.com twits the only password manager I use is what Steve Gibson uses as well. We love them. Bitwarden.com Twitter thank you, Bitwarden. An audit of AIs and this is kind of depressing. This is from News Guard, which is a. A good nonprofit focused on disinformation.

[Lou Maresca]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

They audited 10 different AI chatbots and found that they repeated false narratives laundered by Pravda, which is of course the Russian propaganda network.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, this is actually a different organization with the same name.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's not the same News Guard.

[Mike Elgin]

It's the same News Guard. I'm talking about Pravda. It was a newspaper in the Soviet Union.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, I never trust Pravda when it was a newspaper in the Soviet Union, but now it's. Now it's really a propaganda operation, right?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. Yes, yes. And this is a part of their widespread disinformation Campaign. And by the way, if you flood.

[Leo Laporte]

The zone, it's always been Putin plan. Right.

[Mike Elgin]

In 2024, the Pravda network published 10,000 articles per day on average for the entire year, for 3.6 million articles on 150 websites. And the whole point, and these are low engagement sites, they were basically using AI to take the stuff published by the state owned news organizations and also pro Kremlin news organizations. They rewrote all that stuff and just churned out all these articles which were then picked up by the 10 leading, not just 10, but the 10 top AI companies.

[Leo Laporte]

ChatGPT4O U.com's smart assistant, Xai's Grok inflections, PI, Mistral's Lechat, Microsoft's Copilot, Meta AI, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, and the worst one, the one I use all the time.

[Mike Elgin]

The one I use all the time too.

[Leo Laporte]

Perplexity.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. And so, yeah, so when asked Russia related questions and they, they did something what they call the innocent user, so they didn't lead it on with sort of leading questions. They, they ask it, you know, earnestly is, you know, you know, what is the US doing in Ukraine? And then one of the answers, one third of the time was the US has a biolab in the Ukraine. That's blah, blah, blah, Russian talking points, basically 200 2007, I think it was specific talking points that they're just hammering.

[Leo Laporte]

Away provably false claims from the Pravda network. The thing is this, in hindsight. Yeah, of course, if you're ingesting the whole Internet.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, right. You're going to ingest this. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know how you stop it.

[Lou Maresca]

A lot of these AI companies, a lot of them used to train only on older data and they used to not stay away from the kind of the rag augmentation of their data data from modern web data. It's just because the fact you can flood the Internet with synthetic data from anywhere and once it's applied and overlapped to real world data, it trains itself on lies. And so I think that's the biggest problem we're having nowadays. People want up to date data, but they're not willing to wait for whether these things can discern the difference between reality and not reality.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, Mike, the new Pravda group, which has. Pravda is Russian for truth. So.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, as in truth social. Yeah, go ahead.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. The new Pravda, the new Pravda network, which launched in April 2022 right after the invasion of Ukraine is also known, according to this article, as Portal Combat.

[Mike Elgin]

Isn't that wonderful?

[Leo Laporte]

First identified in February 2024 by Viginium or Viginum, a French government agency. Well, so should be Vigin. That monitors foreign disinformation campaigns. The network has expanded, tapping 49 countries in dozens of languages across 150 domains. Again, domains you would never visit, but the AIs do.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right.

[Lou Maresca]

Right.

[Devindra Hardawar]

So you're saying Russia is a problem, huh?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I, I guess we've said all along that hallucinations. And again, that's another anthropomorphizing one word mistakes, errors in AI. We've said this has been a problem all along, but this is a different kind of problem, really.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. And the bigger problem, because all these AI companies are saying the right things and claiming to be doing something about this particular problem. The larger problem is just, especially for us, the four of us, we generate content, we do it earnestly. We spend a lot of time and effort on our research. We write articles, we do podcasts. And the idea that from now until gosh knows when, our content would just simply be buried under avalanches of just automatically generated garbage whose purpose is to affect the search engines. If people try to sort of fact check us, some claim we made or something, that the chat bots will tell them that we were wrong and that the truth is something else, that sort of thing. It's not just about Russia. Russia doesn't have the most money. I mean, Elon Musk wanted to affect the public discourse and so he spent 44 billion on Twitter. He could have just spent 1 billion on generating infinite numbers of articles. And then he would have a far bigger impact by changing what all the chatbots present as what's true. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Would it be possible? I don't know. I guess they could block these 150 sites from their training, Right?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Lou Maresca]

Right?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. Yeah, Right. Go ahead.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, they'll just come out with 300 new sites and you know, like with AI, you can just. And then it's. Again, it's not just Russia. And then China's like, hey, that's a great idea. We have infinite number of human resources that we can just, you know, do a trillion articles a year.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And I feel like this is the point where we're like, oh, so this is, it's so easy to game these AI tools. Tools at least us, like the people at the platform and who are at least like informed about some of this technology. Like, it's like, I got to tell these companies, I cannot trust your stuff. You know, I can. This is not just Windows Vista, which occasionally crashed sometimes. This is like you are fundamentally failing at delivering information properly. These tools shouldn't even be released.

[Lou Maresca]

Right.

[Devindra Hardawar]

These shouldn't be things that are publicly available that I don't know if they'll stop at this point, but that we gotta, like, criticize it because it's really the only way to change it.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, I follow very closely. I don't know if you follow Dario Modio from CEO of Anthropic. Like, I feel like the way his company is going with kind of transparency and following, you know, accountability and making sure that they're emphasizing, you know, the different way to combat misinformation. I think he's kind of driving this effort, and I feel like that is. Is what's going to push the rest of these organizations to do the same. I really feel like that if, if his company, his organization figures out one way of doing it, it will become the standard, I think.

[Mike Elgin]

I love your optimism, but I think that if the incentives aren't there, it's not going to happen. I think that there has to be an incentive, and that has to come from the public. And I don't think the public knows or cares about this stuff as much as they should.

[Devindra Hardawar]

A lot of these conversations are things that should have been figured out before Copilot was a thing deployed to, you know, millions of computers and before ChatGPT released a public thing. So we're just kind of flying by the seat of our pants here. You know, like, we can criticize these AI companies and how it's being implemented, but, like, it's, It's. We're all playing catch up. And the, the people who know how to, like, you know, tweak it, how to lie about it and how to tweak these algorithms, they're going to.

[Leo Laporte]

What's the defense?

[Devindra Hardawar]

They're going to have the gain there.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there any defense for us normal consumers of news? As an example, News Guard gives, there was a. There's a Russian influence operation called Storm 1516 that created a staged video showing fighters of the Azov battalion burning in effigy of President Trump in response to his efforts to defund Ukraine. This is all fake, by the way. But when asked, these chatbots all referred to this video as truth, as an incident that occurred. And so it'd be very easy for somebody who. And I do this all the time, and now I'm gonna have to stop. I always go to perplexity. To check facts always, but I often do because that's my search engine. And now I don't. I can't trust it.

[Mike Elgin]

There's a kind of AI media literacy that's required that we need to sort of get on board with, and those of us with kids need to start thinking about that for them as well. But like, basically, if, if you. There's different kinds of information and they vary on the degree to which people have a vested interest in what the knowledge is, what the. What the public opinion is. So, for example, if I'm using perplexity and I'm reading about the tragic death of Gene Hackman and I want to know, you know, what year he won his first Oscar, I can trust perplexity with that because there's no nefarious people out there trying to change that sort of information. But if I ask it about what's happening in Ukraine, gotta watch out about that stuff because there's some very, very strong active disinformation actors in the world, that is Russia, who really want me to believe one particular false view about that scenario. So the question is the type of information. If it doesn't matter that much, or if it's not something that's a big international issue or political issue, you can go ahead and I think mostly use it for that. Then you have to double check all the rest of the stuff.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's a good strategy. It is wild, though, that it's not just misinformation through AI that we're talking about disinformation. It's like it's coming through, you know, Fox News. It's coming directly from the White House.

[Leo Laporte]

President who's making transgender mice in the State of the Union address.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. So like, if it's coming from the top and they're being also being influenced by these similar people who are, you know, influencing these AI things. We are just in a sad state of affairs when it comes to, like, what is fact, what is reality? And how do you give you one example?

[Mike Elgin]

I give you a brilliant example. I learned about recently, you know, where the Gulf of America idea came from, from Stephen Colbert. He was joking about it when he was doing his shtick on his show years ago. And then there was an American congressperson who saw that show and said it jokingly as well. And then some sort of online influencers started talking about that seriously. So it bounced from comedy to influencers. Then it was picked up by like Fox News type things. And then eventually they changed the name because Stephen Colbert made what kind of bloviating idiot would change the name to Gulf of America as a joke and it became real.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Devendra, you and I have to do this all the time because this happens in tech stories as well. You remember after the CrowdStrike incident, stories circulated widely that Sky Southwest wasn't bit because they were using a Windows 95 operating system, which we could trace back to an article. Didn't even say that. They just said it looked like Windows 95 but in a game of telephone. Pretty soon established blogs are reporting this. Yeah, it wasn't true.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It was everywhere. It was everywhere and that was everywhere. That's just a mistake that happens. It moves quickly and you get out there and I don't think it's like that's not the end of the world type of thing. It's not like inherently nefarious. But it is, it is very wild to see both this, this AI manipulation and also the same stuff coming from Fox News and coming from the current presidential administration.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, it's always been. I take great pride in trying to only do stories that are true. And if sometimes I do them and find out later they're not immediately retracting it and telling everybody in the same way that we told them in the first place. We very rarely get things wrong because I'm pretty careful, but it's going to get harder and harder and harder.

[Lou Maresca]

Yes, it's true.

[Mike Elgin]

Yep. And again, it depends on what the subject matter is. But you know, these things, they're all kinds.

[Leo Laporte]

So these aren't really hallucinations. That's the funny thing. These are mistakes, but these really are repeating propaganda that it's read and it doesn't, it's just a machine. It doesn't know that it's propaganda.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. It's gonna. Yeah, exactly. And it's gonna be harder and harder to know it's true. And so that's, you know, again, why we should, you know, know. It's an old fashioned concept. You're talking about trying to tell the truth and then. And then following up with when you said something that's mistaken, something newspapers have always done. And you can fix it on the individual level. You yourself can fix your own information stream by working at it and finding great sources and, and you know, all that kind of stuff for the public. I don't know how we do anything about the fact that we live in a, you know, an info info system that is so, so full of garbage.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, I mean, you had said it though. It's an old fashioned system. I mean, it's been around for a while. People have to had to discern this since the age of time to be able to understand misinformation coming from news outlets or people's speeches. I think that's how we will adjust eventually is we'll adjust as humans to figure out just how. Right now we depend too much on tooling, and I think tooling is never going to be able to solve this.

[Leo Laporte]

I think deprogrammer 9, watching us on Twitch today, says the solution is Dig is coming back.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Social news will save us.

[Leo Laporte]

Dig, you all remember, I'm sure, because you know Kevin Rose, who's been a longtime friend of the Twit family, was started before Reddit. Twit started. Digg started when Kevin was still at Tech tv. I think he had this notion of oh, what if you had people submit news stories like Slashdot? He was a fan of Slashdot, as we all are. What if you had people submit news stories like a Slashdot, but then had the audience vote on stories and bring them up via karma or down? You would have a front page that had the most important stories on it. It's kind of how hacker news works and other things. The problem was Digg became very popular and people started gaming it and it became useless. So Kevin has bought the name back. It went out of business a long time ago. Reddit kind of took over and weirdly, he's paired with Alexis Ohanian who founded Reddit there. The two of them are a little grayer, a little older than they were before. Alexis is a vc, as is Kevin these days, and I think they got True Ventures, his venture company, to buy into it. They bought Digg and they're going to re release it. According to the press release, Kevin and Alexis have teamed up to revive the social platform with a fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be. And how are they going to avoid gaming AI?

[Lou Maresca]

I mean, they can't say in the article that they did this because Reddit went down the toilet, but I think that's one of the main motivators.

[Leo Laporte]

Kevin's always freely admitted it. In fact, he bought me a shirt because it was on twit and dig3 was the current version and I gave him some suggestions for Dig4, which he adopted and he bought me a shirt that said Dig4 was my idea because it killed it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I remember that, you remember that.

[Leo Laporte]

So I take some responsibility for the death of Dig. Yeah, Rose told the New York Times. AI could Help with moderation and allow for fun quirks like translating a discussion among sci fi enthusiasts into Klingon. That's what the world.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Of course, it's an AI play. That's what it is. This is news with an AI play. Like, it's all like, hey, the founder of Reddit and did Coming together. What a great headline.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, isn't Alexis Ohanian also making a bid or participating in an attempted purchase of TikTok.

[Leo Laporte]

TikTok. So that's. Yeah, as long as we're. As long as we're in the VC segment of the Port of the Show. You know that the former owner of the LA Dodgers, Frank McCort, has been putting together a group. They've only got $20 billion to buy. Tik Tock. Alexis, I think, has joined into this McCort group.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. And he wants to bring to the table the idea of using. Of the idea of using Ledger. What do they call it? Bitcoin, based on spacing on the name.

[Leo Laporte]

But blockchain.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, blockchain.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course it's blockchain. It's a blockchain and verification and all.

[Mike Elgin]

This kind of stuff. So that's what he's bringing to that. I wonder if he's doing the same with Dig as well to blockchain.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Let's put all the buzzwords on this old web technology and we'll get all this funding for it. It's going to be amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, what happened? Wasn't there going to be a Web3 or something?

[Devindra Hardawar]

They were Web3 and it was garbage. It was pure, like hype. It was pure investor.

[Leo Laporte]

It was all Mark Andreessen. Andreessen Horowitz's idea.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And now they're just focused on ending woke. So they've moved on to another hobby, I guess.

[Leo Laporte]

What is happening to be said for that? Let them worry about something else.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, yeah, I would give them something else to worry about, you know, but I think you guys had mentioned that Reddit had gone downhill. I actually don't think Reddit.

[Leo Laporte]

I love Reddit.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Reddit.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I don't think Reddit's gone downhill. It's one of my main news sources.

[Lou Maresca]

Disagree. I think there's so much garbage on Reddit, it's hard to discern what's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you got to follow. You don't just blindly read everything on Reddit. You follow the rights.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The same deal. But yeah, you follow the rights.

[Mike Elgin]

Reddit's a perfect example of what I was saying before. And it's sort of the sort of the game when there's an incentive to change what people believe. You can't trust Reddit because the Russians and the Chinese, all the Iranians, they're all in Reddit trying to game the system using all kinds of trickery. But if you're doing underwater macrame or something like that, nobody's going to bother. And that's going to be really great if you have a very narrow interest. Reddit is nothing better than Reddit for those kinds of things.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I never seek real news on Reddit. Reddit is part of the unwinding on the Internet because, yes, the Internet used to be fun before, you know, big tech companies destroyed it and the VCs went insane. So you kind of get a little bit of a.

[Leo Laporte]

There's stuff I follow on Reddit like, am I the A hole? They're fun, amusing. But I also follow the Linux subreddits and the Mac OS subreddits. There's some very useful information as well.

[Mike Elgin]

There's the most astonishing thing happened to me on Reddit. I'm not a heavy user, but I'm an occasional light user. And one of my sons told me about one called Accidental Renaissance. When people take a photo and it looks like a Renaissance painting, right? I was going through my old, like Google photos and I saw one of my wife, she had just gotten out of the shower and she was checking her email, but it looked like Girl with the Pearl Earring type of thing. So I posted it on subreddit. And this picture is by far the biggest thing on the number one picture on subreddit. If you, if you rank it by.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a great subreddit. I'm joining this subreddit.

[Mike Elgin]

Good. I've always enjoyed. I've always enjoyed it.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it the best? What is. I'm joining you right now.

[Mike Elgin]

If you rank it, by the way, I have hot.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me look by top. How about top?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, there you go. That should do it.

[Leo Laporte]

That's got Claudia Sheinbaum on the top and a fish. I have to find it. Amira's on the exit hall.

[Mike Elgin]

Hundreds of thousands of votes.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, see, so this notion of karma is good. Now one thing I do know about Reddit is that the subsequent comments often degenerate. But the geekier the subreddit, the more likely you're going to like, for instance, with advent of code every December, without Reddit, that's like the section I follow, the emacs subreddit. It's a really great. So if you go really geeky, you're going to get.

[Lou Maresca]

You definitely have to have tunnel vision when it comes to some of this stuff, for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. And. But it is often the case that the comments descend into kind of Reddit things that they do.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's the Internet, but it is like, yeah, the fun and whimsy of the old Internet is kind of there. Just like accidental renaissance.

[Leo Laporte]

Like yeah, I follow the San Francisco 49ers subreddit, the Formula One subreddit. I mean, all of that stuff's real aficionados, you know, getting geeky with it. And I love that. That's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I don't think a new Dig will kind of approach this because I think this thing is launching with the idea we could throw AI at this and have it do some moderation and some other stuff. I don't know what that's going to be. But also it feels like we've kind of moved on from that.

[Leo Laporte]

And knowing Kevin that anything that he knows perfectly well what went wrong at Dig and he's not going to relaunch digg unless he has a solution or he thinks he has a solution. Solution to the fact that people game it. Why they don't game Reddit? I don't know. Maybe there's just too many.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, they do. They do game Reddit like back when in that era in that it was like late 2000s, I guess. You know, being a young writer on the Internet, it's really helpful if somebody helps your articles get upvoted. But the thing is you can't really people.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, yeah. It's less of a thing when you game a specific subreddit on Reddit. Whereas with Dig, Mr. Babyman was like the number one thing every time, every day. Like, you know, it was just.

[Leo Laporte]

They had one front pitch page, in fact.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Everybody was focused on that one front.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Page shout out to Mr. Baby Man. I'm on a group Baby Man.

[Mike Elgin]

I want to hear what he has to say about the return of Dig.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. Still around. He's still Baby Man.

[Mike Elgin]

I have no idea.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, I will see. I'll see if he was his friend. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

I think Maybe Devindra is Mr. Baby Man.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I wish.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you Mr. Baby Man?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I wish I didn't have time. I was. I was Mr. Mr. Writing Posts for $5. You know, in that era. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Sixteen years ago, Mr. Babyman did an ask me anything on Reddit so you can go back and find out more about that. I think the really credit where credit's due. The moderators on Reddit make all the Difference. A well, moderated subreddit is very useful because they get rid of the crash. There are certainly people who game, like the reviews and so forth. You can't, you know, just be careful there. All right, let's take a little break. Mr. Baby Man. I'm reading about Mr. Baby man on Perplexity. If. If Putin ends up in here, I'm gonna know it's been. It's been messed up. There is a guy on TikTok. I am Babyman.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, Google it. Who. Who is Mr. Baby Man? It's all there. It's all there.

[Leo Laporte]

And you're on a group chat with him. What do they talk about in this group chat?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, we're just. We're just pals. We're just pals. I met him at Comic con in, like, 2009. So, you know, wow. With geeks, basically.

[Leo Laporte]

I know the guy who knows the guy who's Mr. Baby Man. That's six degrees or something. We'll take a break. We got Devindra Hardawar, who actually knows Mr. Babyman on the show, along with the baby maker, Lou Maresca. How many kids do you have now?

[Lou Maresca]

I have five kids.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, wow. That's not. That's not bad. That's okay. Elon's got, what, 20? You gotta get. Gotta get to work. Gotta get to work.

[Lou Maresca]

Gotta get to work.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And Mike Elgin, our good friend from Oaxaca, where the coffee is hot and the croissants are even hotter. He's literally on the roof above a French bakery.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. Our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN. This is kind of a necessity if you travel. It's the only VPN I use and for security, for privacy, and for getting around geographic restrictions. There's nothing better going online without ExpressVPN. Well, I don't know. It'd be like driving without car insurance. You might be a, you know, a great driver. With all the crazy people on the road these days, why would you take the risk? You may never need the insurance, but when you need it, you're glad you have it. Why does everyone need ExpressVPN? Well, I always keep ExpressVPN on all my devices. When we went down to Tucson the other day, you know, you get to the airport and it's free sfo Wi fi. Do you ever get a little. Little, I don't know, nervous joining the free airport wi fi? First thing I do, I fire up ExpressVPN. Now I feel safe every Time you connect to a public, unencrypted network. Cafes, hotels, airports, your online data really isn't secure. Anybody on the network, if they are a hacker, can gain access to and steal your personal data. Can literally get into your computer. It doesn't take much, much, you know, $100 Wi Fi Pineapple. A smart 12 year old can do it. And there's money to be made, which of course, you know, that's the incentive. Hackers can make as much as $1,000 per person selling your info on the dark web. ExpressVPN stops those hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet and the VPN you use. The choice you make, super important. You need to trust the VPN you use. That's why I use ExpressVPN. I trust them. They go the extra mile to make sure your data is absolutely Invisible. Why is ExpressVPN the best? It's of course super secure because they use strong encryption. It means a hacker with a supercomputer would take over a billion years to get past that encryption. They don't have that much time. Right. It's also easy to use. You fire up the app, you click one button, boom. I'm in the airport and I get protected. The other thing is fast. I fired it up in the airport and I forgot I left it on. And the whole trip I've got it on, didn't even notice. Because ExpressVPN invests in their network and it works everywhere. Yes, on my iPad, but on your phone, on your laptop, on every device. You can even put it on your router. Rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and the Verge. I've used it to watch football games or F1 out of the country and to keep me secure. It works great. Secure your online day to day by visiting expressvpn.com twitt that's E X, P R E S s v p n.com twit Find out how you can get an extra 4 months free when you buy a 2 year package. Expressvpn.com twit twit. We thank him so much for supporting Twit and for protecting me in the airport. You all have that experience, right? You get to the airport and it's got free WI fi. You need the WI fi. But really, do you want to join it? Do you really want to join it? All right, well, there were some people in the air this past week flying to Barcelona. I'm very jealous for Mobile World Congress. You used to go to that mike, didn't you?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, I did. It's a fun show. You see all this European stuff you don't normally see in California. So it's. Yeah, it's a great show.

[Leo Laporte]

I've got articles from Wired and from Engadget on the crazy stuff. There really was some crazy stuff at Mobile World Congress. A number of phones have interchangeable lenses which I think might be a bridge too far. I think the whole point of using your phone as a camera camera is so you don't have to carry a bunch of lenses around with you. This is the Xiaomi modular optical system with a 35 millimeter f 1.4 lens, 100 megapixel light fusion X sensor. It's a micro 4/3 sensor and a physical focus ring.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's for the influencers. Leo, you want to make a nice photo?

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Of your lunch? Okay. Okay. Realme also had a DSLR lens. Yeah, this is not.

[Mike Elgin]

Buy a camera, folks.

[Leo Laporte]

Buy a freaking camera.

[Mike Elgin]

A dslr. No, actually this is Benito, by the way. And this is actually. So you don't need to buy the body anymore, you just buy lenses now.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's true, you just buy the glass. But I still think that the full frame sensor I have on my cameras is going to be better than anything. I'm sure you're.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes, you're full. This is a full frame frame throwdown. But you know, a micro four thirds can look pretty good. Get some nice bokeh on that.

[Leo Laporte]

How about this? It sits on top of your laptop just like a camera, but it's not. It's a sun booster and it blasts light at your face so you don't get seasonal affect disorder. I don't can it. Could it really. Could this LED powered by your USB give you the right. It has an. It has three 850 nm meter near infrared LEDs with narrow beam optics to direct it right. Right into your face. But if you get up, it turns off. Okay. Something and it gives you a quote. Scientifically calibrated dose within two to three hours.

[Mike Elgin]

Folks. Just go outside.

[Leo Laporte]

Just go outside.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's hard when it's cold in the winter. We're not all in Mexico, Mike. We're in cold weather sometimes.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I guess that's where seasonal affective disorder comes in. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's see. Here is. I don't know why more companies don't do this. A solar panel case for your phone. I don't probably you'd have to leave it in the sun for a long time.

[Mike Elgin]

And it probably just gives you. Extends it a bit. You can't charge the whole thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Samsung had a solar panel laptop as well, which is a great concept, honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a good idea.

[Mike Elgin]

But you have more surface area on a laptop. Yeah, but again, using a laptop in the sun is not a good experience. It needs to be a hat. Right. They have those as well.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

How about this Soul cooler? It can cool or heat your feet. Ooh, goes right in the shoe.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I could use that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Actually, this is a good thing to sell at Mobile World Congress because people like, their feet are killing them.

[Mike Elgin]

That's where your audience is, is.

[Leo Laporte]

It can. It can heat your feet by up to 4 degrees Celsius or cool by the same amount. That's pretty nice.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That'd be nice in Georgia summers, to be honest. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

When you walk around, do you feel like, gee, I wish I had a dash cam.

[Mike Elgin]

This is a dash cam, actually. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

You put on your shirt.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

In case you run into people, I guess. I don't know.

[Mike Elgin]

And this is. This is like the video version of that thing on your wrist, Leo. It's just harvesting, covering up everything.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, there is a rumor Apple's working on putting cameras in their AirPods. I do think that that's coming. Right? You wore Google. You were a glass hole, right, Mike?

[Mike Elgin]

Oh, I'm a. I'm a Ray Ban meta hole now.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's right.

[Mike Elgin]

I wear them all the time. They're fantastic. And I've been, in fact, walking around. I'm using their experimental features, which are live translation, live AI. And the other one is basically, you know, just recognize music when you hear it. And I'm using all of those.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's cool. Cool.

[Mike Elgin]

And they're fantastic. The live translation is. Is something I've seen reviewers do without actually being another country. I've used it in both Sicily and here in Mexico, and it's pretty amazing. It's pretty great. It's not perfect, you know, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

And you have to wait. Right. So that's the only thing is you look like I'm wearing mine right now. You look like a doofus while somebody says something and you go working.

[Mike Elgin]

I'm used to looking like a doofus because I don't speak Italian or.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, let's. True. Now you at least will understand them.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, it's. The biggest problem is sometimes it won't pick up the conversation of the person right in front of you, and sometimes it picks up the conversation on the other I was in a restaurant the other day, and the other side of this big restaurant, this couple was playing pool, and I was getting every single thing they said about the pool. You know, their.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's kind of interesting.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it was good for eavesdropping.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, this little thing I wear does understand foreign languages, but it doesn't tell you what it hears. It's just.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. So I got my Meta AI glasses on. I love them, actually. I think they're just fantastic. And they're comfortable, and I just don't have any problem wearing these all the time. And people don't care. They don't notice anything. Nobody minds are way better than Google Glass in that respect. And I can take pictures all the time, but live AI is really something. Something. You just turn on Live AI and it's watching through your camera and you just ask it questions and you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's. Yes, that's the idea behind this B computer, which is that down the road, if. If everything has been recorded, I will be able to, you know, ask questions about what I said about things or what I agreed to do or stuff like that. Right now, it's not quite as useful. It does make a to do list for me, but I'm planning for the future because if I wear this for a few years, as the AI models get better, this is going to get more and more useful.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Right.

[Mike Elgin]

But I mean, for somebody who travels, I was walking around in some obscure little town yesterday and just everything's in Spanish, obviously. And so I would just look at a sign and say, what does that say in English? Just tell me. And I would say, what kind of business is this? And it would just tell me what's the significance of this giant tree in the middle of the town? And went into detail about the tree and how.

[Leo Laporte]

And your glasses actually look pretty good. Those are. They don't have. For one thing, they don't have the Ray Ban in the. On the lens that mine do. I don't. They don't like them, do they?

[Mike Elgin]

But I also have transition lenses, so they. They get. They're a little sunglassy right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I might have to order some newer ones.

[Mike Elgin]

This.

[Leo Laporte]

These don't even fit my head. Really.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, that's kind of tight.

[Leo Laporte]

I have a very big head. I don't know if they make wide enough ones for me.

[Mike Elgin]

But, you know, the. The beauty of being our age, Leo, is that we don't have to give up flying. I know we look like. I mean, who cares I look like.

[Leo Laporte]

The guy from up, actually the old man from up when I wear these.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, I look like, you know, Buddy Holly if he had lived.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Mike Elgin]

You know.

[Leo Laporte]

AMD finally has, says Devindra Hardawar, a decent Nvidia killer. You tested the new 9070 from radio. So this is, I mean Nvidia dominates not just in GPUs for gaming, but in every other use. Bitcoin mining and AI and so forth. But you think AMD can compete?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I think so. I think with these cards. And it's interesting because I've been following both AMD and Nvidia for years and for years I've been reviewing the Radeon cards they put out and I just have to keep saying like, this is good, this is fine, but it's not as good as what you could get from the same price from Nvidia. You know, I just have to be honest. And now this year Nvidia is in kind of a bit of a fumble with some of their cards. The 5070 that I just reviewed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they're melting.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, they're melting, but also it's not, it wasn't an impressive leap over the previous 5070 was the cards. Yeah, the 4070 ti is really good if you can find that. But they're also getting super expensive. Like they're expensive. Plus retailers are pricing them up. Scalpers are, are like making them go way more expensive. If you can get these Radeon cards for 549 or 599 for the 9070 XT, they're pretty capable. Like they're, they're fast for 1440p and 4K. They do a bit of ray tracing. They don't do the upscaling as well as the Nvidia cars, but there is some of that there. So I think for a lot of people like these are going to be pretty good mid range cards and maybe a good sign, maybe it's a good sign for where AMD is headed because right now, now they're more about integrated stuff, right? They integrate their GPUs into like the PlayStation and the Xbox. Like they're in devices that you don't really, where you don't really think about the video cards. Whereas Nvidia has always dominated the sort of like, you know, astro market, GPU market. So maybe this will be a good switch up for AMD and yeah, maybe good signs ahead for them.

[Lou Maresca]

How are they with the drivers? I think that's one big thing with AMD is they've continued to to successfully do badly at driver development. So I think that's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I used to feel like I was cursed reviewing AMD cards. There was one card, I think it was like the R9 Fury X from a while ago. Just wouldn't boot on my system, just I would plug it in, just wouldn't launch and then yeah, I would always have hard driver failures as well. These cards I have not had many issues. I've had maybe one crash in avowed which could have been a driver crash but otherwise like pretty solid.

[Leo Laporte]

What about integrated graphics? Both intel and Apple are claiming that the built in graphics on their newer chips are good enough.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, intel stole one of the Radeon like lead Radeon designers Raja Kaduri who I think has left intel now, but they stole him to do. They're doing Iris. Yeah, they're doing GPUs as well as like they're better integrated graphics though they're not bad. And honestly AMD has done integrated Radeon stuff for a while too and that's always been pretty, pretty decent. So even when it comes to super cheap cards, intel just put out those B580 arc gpus which are like $250 and pretty fine for like 1080p gaming. So that's not integrated, but it's still doing pretty well. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I ordered the Framework. Cute little desktop PC with. It's got an AMD AI Ryzen in it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes, the AI Max Ryzen AI Max chip.

[Leo Laporte]

And it has a dedicated GPU. Not a dedicated, an integrated GPU. GPU. But it also can access 96 gigs of RAM.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Integrated RAM.

[Leo Laporte]

Integrated RAM. So it's unified RAM which is very important when it comes to AI.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

96 gigs of Ram from Nvidia would not be cheap, right?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Tens of thousands.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So okay, interesting, interesting.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Like this is a big war. And listen, I sat and I listened to all two and a half hours of her, however long Jensen Huang's CES keynote was. And that seemed like a weird moment for them because they were so leaning on AI. And then they also announced these cards and really with the hype of AI upscaling and maybe it's not fully living up to, you know, what he was selling at the point. At that point.

[Leo Laporte]

I was remiss. We talked a little bit about Alexis Ohanian getting in on the Project Liberty bid for, for TikTok. We didn't talk about though what's going on there. Doesn't seem to be. It seems the administration has basically Forgotten the whole thing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, they also, they fully ignored a law that was passed by Congress. I don't know where we are right now. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean there is a deadline, but I think the President could extend it and probably would extend it again. And I think that they, they said that the Vice President Vance was going to be doing the negotiation, but he hasn't actually. He's been busy doing other things I guess really. Going to wear a suit.

[Mike Elgin]

Going to wear a suit. I guarantee you they'll wear a suit.

[Leo Laporte]

And say thank you often.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Beijing hasn't said anything. Right. So April 5th is the, technically the deadline for the 75 day extension. But of course they're just, President Trump extended it without any legal authority so there's no reason for him not to just say yeah, yeah, let's, we'll give him another 75 days. He likes it now for two reasons. One, of course his campaign had a TikTok effective TikTok presence. But more, maybe more importantly, one of, of the biggest GOP donors, Jeff Yass is, has like 25% of the TikTok stock. And I think he probably put a little B in the presence here and said, you know, what are you saying?

[Devindra Hardawar]

He could be bought and sold?

[Leo Laporte]

No, I wouldn't say that. But I think he said, you know, it would be, it would be nice if, if we could keep, if we could keep TikTok around. There is a proposal from Senator Markey to push back the deadline by another 270 days. So Congress is very confused. Do you remember, and I was not completely behind this, but that we were told that the intelligence community knew some terrible, terrible things about TikTok and if you only knew what they knew, you would want it to be banned too.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I thought that was B.S. yes, too, you know, like that, that whole situation was not great, but now it's just like layer upon layer of garbage. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Trump has also said, you know, this week he, he inaugurated the US Sovereign wealth fund using Bitcoin or something. He said we should, we should use that to buy TikTok. I'm sorry, I don't think that'll happen either. Actually the crypto community a little miffed because while the President did create a cryptocurrency strategic reserve, he didn't buy any of their Bitcoin thereby liquidating him. They just, he just stuck the stuff we have from, you know, confiscations of Silk Road and other places.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, there's a kernel of a good idea there. Just take the, the, the cryptocurrencies that have been confiscated and throw them into a thing and let them, you know, maybe they'll grow that it size and.

[Leo Laporte]

Then we, maybe it'll grow. But what if it doesn't? I guess it doesn't matter. We didn't put any money.

[Mike Elgin]

They've been seized. What's shady is all the other coins that have been thrown in there, a lot of people just think it should be bitcoin. But including the coins associated with Trump's own crypto.

[Leo Laporte]

Did he put his meme coins in there? The Trump and Melania coins? No, but there's Solana, XRP and Cardano.

[Mike Elgin]

Come on. I mean either include all of them and that have been confiscated by law like federal law enforcement or include.

[Leo Laporte]

Honestly I, I have no problem with it if he doesn't spend taxpayers money buying more because that really is just about making his, you know, the cryptocurrency donors whole by trading their cryptocurrency for dollars. Anyway, we'll see, we'll see what happens. Let's take a little break. Got more to talk about. About, got a great panel to talk about it. Lou Mareska. Lou. Mm. What are you, what are you doing now you're principal AI engineering manager. That's a big job.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, actually we're doing this huge shift right now. We're moving to what we call ourselves instead of software engineers, we're moving to AI engineers.

[Leo Laporte]

You, you, you, last time we talked were putting Python in Excel.

[Lou Maresca]

That's what. Yeah, that's, I'm still leading that group of, of driving Python and advanced analytics in Excel using Python, using AI, basically.

[Leo Laporte]

So. And are you working with copilot, Microsoft? Are you working with Microsoft's own models or mai.

[Lou Maresca]

We're, we have a barrage of them but, but mostly fine tuned, very specific models for advanced analysis basically. So our own version of it.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. You get to do, you're on the cutting edge, you get to do the good stuff. How fun. Well, it's nice to have you Lou. Thank you for being here. We missed this week in enterprise tech. It was a great show. You did a great job with it. But as you know we had to cut back quite a bit trying to keep make ends meet, as they say. Also here, Devindra Hardawar from Engadget, great to have you. Senior editor. You've been there how long it was, man?

[Devindra Hardawar]

10 years as of last year.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

In the modern blog space, 10 years is a lifetime. That's incredible.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's wild. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Congratulations.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And Mike Elgin, who was one of the first people I ever met who has no. Besides the Unabomber has no known abode.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. And yeah, we travel full time. Mir and I have been doing it for many years. We took a break to work for twit for two years and.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot that time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You worked for us. That's right. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Who hasn't? We all have at some point. But, but yeah, I mean, we, we travel full time and, you know, we own some real estate and stuff like that in the U.S. but like, we just love traveling and we're.

[Leo Laporte]

Could you live in that real estate or is it, you know, you bought land in Oregon, right, or something like that?

[Mike Elgin]

Washington. Washington, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you built anything there yet?

[Mike Elgin]

No, we don't haven't built anything. It's under the forestry designation, which is really low, low subsidized taxes.

[Devindra Hardawar]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

But you could live there or.

[Mike Elgin]

No, you could build a house there. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we would. It's after we literally, during COVID we spent so much time in Oaxaca that we got so addicted to this weather that we could never live in Southern Washington. It's so gray. No offense to you Washingtonians who love the drizzly, but the, the property that we have there gets 60 inches of rain a year, which is, which is more than California gets in a, in a, in a. In a century. But, but yeah, we're. We're here in Oaxaca doing the Oaxaca experience. It's really fantastic. If anybody thinks that Mexicans are like bitter and angry at the US for our politics, don't think that because they're very pleasant and always very wonderful and, and fantastic. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Astronomad.net when's, when is the next. You're going to have to leave, right, and go somewhere to do this.

[Mike Elgin]

Tuesday, Tuesday we're doing Oaxaca. The Oaxaca experience.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, perfect. Okay.

[Mike Elgin]

And we've got some really fun stuff lined up and really like, we know as, you know, Leo, we know everybody and, and in town and, and we just eat like kings and explore the whole scene here.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll never forget going to the market with Chef Alex. Yeah, we, you know, the thing that they don't. They don't tell you what you're going to do. So they just. Everybody in the van and we drove up to the market. I said, oh, great. It's, you know, it's a market and was big. It's like an open air, giant open air farmers market market. And this, this guy shows up, he says, I'm Chef Alex. Turns out he's the most famous chef in Oaxaca by far.

[Mike Elgin]

By far.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And he's, you know, posing for pictures, signing autographs and stuff like that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

We're walking through the place. Everybody knows him.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And we went shopping and we thought, oh, this is fun. We're going shopping with a famous chef. And then he took us out into the country where he has a giant hacienda where. With a kitchen and everything. Everything. And we made dinner. We caught grasshoppers and everything. It was so much fun.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. That's right. So much fun. Oh, my gosh.

[Leo Laporte]

And they kept pouring mezcal. That's the only thing I remember. And I don't remember much after that.

[Mike Elgin]

It never stops. We. There was a big party. There was a big party, if you recall, in Day of the Dead, and it was like, we're late into the night and we were drinking mezcal all day, and you took a little, little.

[Leo Laporte]

Like 5 minute nap amongst the grasshoppers.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

It was.

[Mike Elgin]

And so. Yeah, but it's. It's a lot of fun. And we. We now do Sicily and Tuscany and some other places still do Mexico City. So I just, you know, if you want to enjoy this beautiful culture in Mexico without tariffs, I. I highly recommend.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's right. You. If you're in Mexico, there are no tariffs. Yeah. Bypass gastronomad.net Morocco's coming, coming up. Tuscany is so much fun. There's small groups. There's just a few couples.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

El Salvador. Prosecco Hills, Mexico City. You know, Paul Thurat from Windows Weekly pretty much doesn't ever want to leave Mexico City. Now he's like, it's the most wonderful city.

[Mike Elgin]

And I follow him on a couple of social networks, and he really gets it. He's always going to these amazing restaurants and seeing all the beautiful sights. Such a gem. And we recently wrote a newsletter about the. The hot cuisine, the high end, highly sophisticated part of the Mexico City food scene, which is unparalleled. I mean, just absolutely fantastic. So if you love, like, super high end dining, Mexico City is just a gem of a city.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Yeah, I forgot that there are no tariffs. If you're in Mexico.

[Mike Elgin]

If you're in Mexico and. And once you can get past that wall. Wall. Right. You're just in there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that big wall. That big, beautiful wall that they paid for. Yeah. Also, did I say all three of you? Did I say Devindra? Yes, I did. I got Mike and I got Lou. Okay, now we could take a break. I just want to say hi to everybody, catch up a little bit. Our show today, brought to you by Net Suite. Have we've talked about this before? You know, when you listen this show, we talk a lot about what's going on today. But what's, what does the future hold especially for business? And it's really hard to get a consensus. You ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. Rates will fall or rise. Inflation's up or down. Can someone invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite from Oracle, the number one Cloud ERP bringing a cash, accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform. And there's a real advantage to this. With one unified business management suite, there's a single source of truth giving you the visibility and the control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking back back and more time on what's next. If I had needed this product, it's what I'd use. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, if you go there right now, you can download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. Everybody wants to know what's coming up with that. Netsuite.com the guide's free. Just go to netsuite.com twit n e t s u I t e.com twit we thank NetSuite for their support of this week in tech. Utah has passed the first. We knew this was going to come eventually. The first US App Age Store verification law. Age App Store, I got that twisted. The first App Store age verification law. There's been quite a movement among social networks and Mike Zuckerberg and others saying, hey, don't make us verify ages. The App Store should do that and we'll go along with whatever they say. Does this make sense to burden the App Store with, with this?

[Devindra Hardawar]

No.

[Lou Maresca]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

The answer is no. Utah on Wednesday became the first state to pass legislation requiring app stores to verify users ages and to get parental consent for minors to download apps for their device. So it goes even a little bit farther now. It hasn't been signed yet yet, but the legislation has been passed. I presume it will sign will become a law. I don't know how the app stores comply in just one state.

[Mike Elgin]

I mean, it's a very difficult problem. And the problem could be placed at the feet of government itself. It could be placed at the feet of individual app developers or it could be placed at the feet of Apple and Google and the people who run the app stores. And that's where it's been placed by Utah.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple's not happy. They say requiring app stores to confirm ages will make it so all users have to hand over sensitive identifying information. A driver's license or a passport or credit card, or even a Social Security number, even if they're not trying to use an age restricted app.

[Lou Maresca]

Right. One how they can enforce it too. I agree with Mike. Wherever it happens, it's going to be difficult. They have to store that data. So if you're now saying every app has to do this at the app level, that means now they have to store the sensitive data somewhere. And you know that that's going to be a privacy and security problem.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And the app developers are, you know, the big app developers like Meta and Snap and X love this because it's not their problem anymore. They're they.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the whole point is clean of it.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The bill was sponsored by Senator Todd Weiler of Utah. He said, quote, it's a lot easier to target two apps stores than it is to target 10,000 app developers. Well, that's true. That's true. Under the bill, app stores would be required to request age information when someone creates an account. If a minor tries to open an account, the bill directs the app store to link it to their parents account and may request a form of ID from the parents to confirm their identity. If a child tries to download an app that allows in app purchases or requiring them to agree to terms and conditions, the parent will have to approve.

[Lou Maresca]

But I feel like that they need to know I'm an adult then. Right. So then that means that the app store already has to have that information.

[Leo Laporte]

Has to have your information.

[Lou Maresca]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

That's right. If the governor signs the bill, most provisions would take effect May 7. The governor hasn't yet said whether he will, but he did support the state law currently on hold that requires age verification on social media. So it's probable that he'll sign this. This will be very interesting to see what happens. And they'll Apple do what it did in England and just say, okay, no app Store for you.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, no, there's no way they'll do that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

To worry about the sizable Utah market over there.

[Mike Elgin]

But there, there are Eight other states that are. That are working on similar things. So this is just Utah. Nobody's ever said this sentence before, but Utah is ahead of the curve here.

[Leo Laporte]

Such a bad idea. I understand people want to do something with social media and helping parents, you know, keep an eye on their kids and stuff, but isn't. I don't know. Let me ask again. I'm sorry, Devendra and Lou get to be the parents on this show. What would you like? What do you want? What would work for you?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, it's always about conversations. Like, it's conversations with kids about the apps they're using and how they're using it. And I don't. I don't feel. I feel like this kind of offloads some of the parental discussions around this stuff about how kids use their technology. So, no, I don't think this is the answer. And I'm also like, an informed enough reporter to know, like, oh, yeah, you're going to need a lot of data to make this work. And I don't trust you, at least at this point with making any of this work. So, yeah, right now, my daughter, her main computing device is an iPad, and she plays Minecraft, you know, and we have a discussion when she wants. Wants to get a new world or something in Minecraft, and that's how we do it. Maybe eventually she'll start trying to do that on her own, but she's not making purchases because I'm paying for the Minecraft subscription. So she could just go and get things pretty easily there. But that's the extent to her right now. Maybe in a couple years, it's going to be much different.

[Leo Laporte]

Is parental controls enough, Lou? I mean, the iPhones offer parental controls.

[Lou Maresca]

Some of them don't. I mean, it depends on how you to set it up. But, I mean, I would say for me, I'm with Vindra, it's more about parental oversight, having the conversation. And I think having five kids who have, you know, obviously I have to have five devices and they all logged in differently and they all do different things. I mean, we were talking about this pro a while ago around YouTube kids. I mean, even that has bad material on it that I have to continue to like, you know, look at it and make sure I have oversight on what they're watching and why they're watching it and what kind of material are they trying parents. So I feel like the tools that will never catch up here. I think it continues to have to be the parents idea.

[Mike Elgin]

Here's a. Here's a stat for you among children under 13, tick tock is for 13 and older. 68.2% of children under 13 use TikTok.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, they shouldn't, gosh darn it. And I'm gonna make sure they don't.

[Mike Elgin]

But, you know, it's like they have the rule that you have to be 13 to use TikTok, and yet it doesn't matter.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody follows that rule.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What does it mean by use TikTok too? Because I sit and watch TikTok, you know, videos with my kids sometimes and like that they're using it. But also I'm directing exactly how that experience is going.

[Mike Elgin]

But you're a perfect example of the, of the truism that thoughtful people are full of doubts.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And, and, and the unthoughtful majority is just, you know, full speed. The fact is we talk about, you know, the people who listen to the show and watch this show are early adopters. They've. They adapt quickly to, to new technologies for the most part. But we need, culturally, even if people are not technologists, they need to get with the program about how to be a parent in the age that we live in. And this is one part of it. Like, you know, like you're saying, I wish everybody took the attitude you did, Devendra, of like, you know, have a conversation, make sure you're paying attention to your kids, all that kind of stuff. I think, I think most parents are kind of living in the past, for lack of a better term.

[Lou Maresca]

I've seen some, I've seen some families give like, their kids their accounts. So like their, their iPhone accounts on their phone. So like, they're buying things in their own Apple stores. They're. They're purchasing, they shouldn't. They're viewing things they shouldn't. So they just kind of. It's a wild, wild west for most people. So.

[Leo Laporte]

So the Supreme Court is probably going to get to weigh in on this. I'm certain that if the governor of Utah signs the law, the Apple and Google and NetChoice will appeal it and it'll always. It'll go all the way up to the Supreme Court. That you may remember. The Texas state legislature in 2023 passed a age verification requirement for porn sites, which was which the court decided to. Google's helping me. I don't know why I wasn't talking to you, but I like you and you're a nice person.

[Mike Elgin]

Please give. Hello.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Good job.

[Leo Laporte]

Federal. Federal court in Austin issued a temporary injunction barring them from enforcing that age verification. But now it's going on to the Supreme Court. They heard arguments in January. We will see. In the past similar laws have been cast down by the Supreme Court.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Deemed unconstitutional.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The porn sites affected in Texas just like left pornhub just doesn't work in Texas.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. They've left Many, I think 20 some states for the same reason.

[Mike Elgin]

And now, and now porn enthusiasts only have 100,000 other sites that they can use and they've been restricted to those hundred thousand.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's also really helped the sales of ExpressVPN in those states, I would imagine. I'm just saying. I don't know. So the, the supreme court actually in 2004 said the Child Online Protection act was unconstitutional. Ashcroft versus ACLU, you and the Court of Appeals when it cast, when it barred the state said it was a very similar situation. So we shall, we shall see. This is, we're going to get back in Kathy Gellis's area with strict scrutiny and all of that. But I have a feeling the Supreme Court would end up having to rule. Whether they would rule in a, in a way that we agree is a good idea, I don't know. We'll watch with interest. Watch this space. Did you know that there's something even lower Earth orbit than low earth orbit satellites? Very low Earth orbit satellites are probably going to be launched soon, maybe even as soon as this week. This is from Ars Technica. A handful of new space companies have now plans to develop small and medium sized satellites designed to survive in vleo very low Earth orbit, which is problematic because they're actually, they're between 400 and 800 kilometers, 250 miles high, which means they do get a little bit of atmospheric drag.

[Mike Elgin]

They do. They contend with some atmosphere, which is both a benefit and a problem. To take better pictures. They're closer, it's quicker. Everything that you want from a satellite, satellite is better. And with solar power and stuff like that and electrical, you know, engines, they can sort of maintain that. And if something happens and they malfunction, they're already in the atmosphere. They get captured and they burn up.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's easy to get rid of them.

[Mike Elgin]

You're not leaving the space junk. So that's a kind of a nice feature.

[Leo Laporte]

It's kind of a weird feature like. Well, the good thing about this satellite is it's easy to get it to burn up.

[Lou Maresca]

Dies early.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, dies early. So the Clarity one is from a company called Albedo and may well be launched this week at between a 500 and 600 kilometer orbit. Which will then lower itself to the operational orbit 170 miles high. That means very clear pictures. That's spy plane altitude, right?

[Mike Elgin]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Its lifetime is about five years. Albedo recently won a contract from the Air Force Research Lab to share the vleo specific on orbit data. This is. Are we just launching better spy satellites? Is that what this is for?

[Mike Elgin]

Always. And SpaceX is also interested in, in.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's going to go up on a falcon. SpaceX falcon, but they also want satellites. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Altitude cost.

[Lou Maresca]

These. Are these expensive because they're only a five years of life cycle. That seems very like, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, the Air Force is paying for it, so it's okay just to say.

[Mike Elgin]

That we are paying for it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, us, yeah. So yeah, I mean there are of course other customers, you know, farmers and other people.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, also potentially this, this could be just the expansion of something that has been expanding already, which is using satellites directly with your smartphone. And so you could get to a point.

[Leo Laporte]

I have that on my iPhone now. T Mobile has done a deal with Starlink and I haven't ever used it because it's not cheap, it's not free.

[Mike Elgin]

Right. But with the expansion of this, it gets more affordable, more usable in more circumstances and so on. And so we start to sort of narrow down the, the places on Earth when you can't get a connection. Smart cities, great for that. Scientific research could be great for all kinds of things.

[Leo Laporte]

Just more stuff in the sky, blocking of stars. That's.

[Mike Elgin]

But I, I like the, you know, there's this, what do they call that scenario where the satellites start crashing against each other like billiard balls and create a cascading range of Kessler syndrome. So these are not, these, this, this altitude of satellite is not participating in that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's good.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. But I mean this could happen any day. So just, just to let everybody know, if some satellite blows up or crashes up, crashes into another satellite, the debris from those could hit other satellites.

[Leo Laporte]

What a relief.

[Mike Elgin]

The debris from those could hit other satellites and we could just have just massive destruction.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's like the opening from Wall E, you know.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Neal Stephenson wrote a novel about that. Seven Eves.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Really good. Really loved it. Did you like the ending?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I recall, I recall, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It kind of left you kind of hanging. But that's okay. That's Neil's specialty.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's what he does.

[Mike Elgin]

Like space.

[Leo Laporte]

Just hanging, just hanging. Like space junk.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You should really talk to Kim Stanley Robinson because I like how he's been doing his, his Sort of like future science fiction stuff these days.

[Leo Laporte]

He wrote a very nice trilogy about Mars. Yes, I remember that. I really.

[Devindra Hardawar]

A while ago. A while ago. But one of his more recent ones was Ministry of the Future and it is a very, very gripping depiction of like a climate future. The first chapter alone is like this. One of these brutal things that we will most likely live through.

[Leo Laporte]

I remember I decided not to read that. Now I know why you're so depressed. No, I don't.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I'm just looking outside. I'm just reading the news.

[Mike Elgin]

Give me the blue pill. I don't want to remember nothing.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want to know. I don't Want to know. YouTube has premium and music has now surpassed 125 million subscribers. You know why that is? You can't watch YouTube unless you subscribe.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's useless without it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's so hard. Terrible. They are going to add. This is the good news. They're going to add a cheaper ad free tier because I. You get music at the same time as you get the ad free. I don't really need the music. I got all kinds of other sources for music. It's a really kind of a trick. So they're going to have a ad, a less expensive ad, free YouTube for $8 a month instead of $14 a month.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Worth it.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, there will be some ads. There'll be ads on music video, which is fine, totally fine. I'll probably do that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

YouTube Premium is fantastic. Like, it sucks that the price has kept getting higher and higher, but you cannot use YouTube without it.

[Leo Laporte]

It makes it usable.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, it makes YouTube also like kind of miraculous too, just in terms of what you can find and how quickly you can access it. So good stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me take one last break and then a couple of final thoughts and a farewell. I'm sorry to say to. To somebody I think many of you cherish. But first, a word from our sponsor, Coda. Do you know about Coda? Turning your back of a napkin idea into a billion dollar startup requires countless hours of collaboration and teamwork. It can be difficult to build a team that's aligned on everything from values to workflow. But that's where Coda comes in. Coda. Coda is an all in one collaborative workspace that itself starts started as a sketch on the back of a napkin. Now in five years, that's since it launched its beta, CODA has helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. And I tell you, everybody I talk to who uses Coda loves it with Coda. You get the flexibility of docs, the structure of spreadsheets, the power of applications, and yes, of course, the intelligence of AI. And it's all built for enterprise. Coda's seamless workspace facilitates deeper collaboration and quicker creativity, giving you more time to build. I think you'll be very impressed. Go to Coda I.O. and take a look at just some of the things people are using it for. If you're a startup team and you're looking to increase alignment and agility. I wish we'd had it when we started Twit. To be honest, Coda can help you move from planning to execution and record time. Try it for yourself. Go to Coda IO Twittoday. Get six free months of the team plan for startups. That's Coda IO Twit. Get started for free. And that's a pretty good deal. Six months free of the team plan. There's no reason not to try it. Coda IO Twit. We thank them so much for their support of Twitter. Twit. They didn't have CODA 20 years ago when we started TWIT. They didn't have anything like it when we started TWIT. And we are coming up on our anniversary, the 20th anniversary show. What did we decide? Was it April 13th? I think Benito, do you remember? I should be keeping track of this. I think April 5th. Yeah, April 15th or 17th was the first. First twit. So let me look at the calendar, I guess. Yeah, the 13th. Be the closest to that. So here's what we've decided to do. You know, we already on our thousandth episode, had the old gang return, the original hosts on the very first episode of Twit. So we're not going to do that again. But we realized the most important part of this whole network and of all of our shows. I know you know, this, Lou, is the. Our community. The people who watch and listen and participate with us and chat with us. They're fantastic. You know it too, Mike. A lot of the people on the Gastro Nomad adventures are from the TWIT community, like BA and Princeton here in our club, Twit Discord. And I think, Devindra, you might know it because I think you've been a part of that community practically since the very beginning. So what we're going to do is we're going to ask you to ski or tweet or toot. What do they call it on threads? I don't know, thread, go to your social and post a video about when you first started watching how you watch any memories you have. I want to collect a bunch of videos from our community, and that's what I want to celebrate on our 20th anniversary twit on Sunday, April 13th. And if you want to be part of that broadcast, you could also just email him. Should I give him your address, Benito?

[Mike Elgin]

No, please, no. Not my address.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, you can email me leoeoville.com if you've got a video. Don't send the video. Just send a link, put it on a cloud somewhere and send me a video. I want to collect them and we'll play as many as we can. I mean, it's only a three hour show, but we'll play as many as we can on April 3rd, 13th. No, I think it'd be really fun. Yeah, tell me.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, no, I will, I will. I will send it.

[Leo Laporte]

Will you record one? That would be nice.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Totally record one. But I do distinctly remember I was working in it at the time and I would be stuck in our basement with just like inventorying stuff and like removing Dell motherboards. And you were blasting on the speakers. So that is a great memory I had. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So I think we have accounts at Twitter counts all over the various socials. Instagram too. So just, you know, post it and twit it and we'll scour the Internet for people's memories of the earliest days of twit. 20 years. It's kind of hard to believe we've been doing that. Yeah, it is crazy. It is. I certainly. When we started in 2005, I didn't think, oh, yeah, 20 years from now I'll be collecting videos from our audience. We were barely able to get Skype to work in those days.

[Mike Elgin]

You were just thinking, okay, this will hold me over till my next TV show.

[Leo Laporte]

That's exactly what I was thinking. God, I hope I get another job. Never did need another job, actually. I'm very grateful for that. That's nice not to have to look for work. That's really nice. I'm very grateful to our audience, really. We do it because you let us, because you invite us into your homes and lives. And that makes it fun for all of us. So thank you. The Justice Department has weighed in. Even under Trump, they still want Google to sell Chrome that. You know, I think Google probably thought that under the new administration, this whole thing might just go away with Lina Kahn, but it has not. And in fact, they're still saying, yeah, Google, you need to break up. And one of the ways we still want to do it is to sell Chrome. Is that does that. I've asked this before. Does it even make sense? How do you sell Chrome? What are you, what are you selling?

[Devindra Hardawar]

You know, I, I don't think Chrome is. You're selling basically the browser. I don't know about like the open source project is like a whole separate thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You can't sell Chromium.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Chrome is in a bad state because I've had this bug for like the past month where all my webcams going through like video chat things with in Chrome just do not work well. They're all stuttering. So like I think Chrome development has been a pain memory. It's still a memory hog. So imagine if it could be a separate thing that was like, you know, optimized and outside of Google's reigns. That could be interesting, honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

Well and this deal would allow Google to create a new browser within 5 years. So you know, it would be. But this is crame.

[Mike Elgin]

I was editor of Windows magazine in the 90s when the DOJ was going after Microsoft and wanted to separate the browser from Windows. And the whole thing is exactly playing out in exactly the same way just as events and the evolution of the industry is making it so that it doesn't matter if you put IE in Windows, you're going to come and separate it. I mean, because of Google's dominance in search. Are you kidding? They're about to lose their dominance in search because of AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. It's already know the closing the door after the horses left.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. And you know this, they, they've been accused by the European regulators and the U.S. regulators of, you know, gaming and the search results and all that kind of stuff. I don't understand what Chrome has to do with any of this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they say this is the government is says Chrome is quote an important search access point. So this is to provide an opportunity for a new rival to operate a significant gateway to search the Internet. Internet using Google free of Google's monopoly control.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, it's it. You know, you used to talk about monopolies and of course ATT is always the, you know, ma bell and all this stuff is always the big example. The, the idea that you can switch off of Google Search in less than 1 second with your finger using a, you know, using a touchpad. Just. I don't see the lock in there. People choose.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm using Google exits because I, I haven't used Chrome in two years. Google Search in two years.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I, I think, I think most people. The problem is Google's the Default everywhere. They paid Apple so much money to make that 20 billion a year. You can change it, but who's gonna change it? You know, aside from listeners of this show.

[Mike Elgin]

People don't change it because they don't want to change it and.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Or they don't know they can't. They don't know there's an alternative default everywhere.

[Lou Maresca]

It's default on Mac. It's not the default on Windows.

[Leo Laporte]

Windows. It's Edge. Right?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

But guess what Edge is based on.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, right. The browser itself.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Right, Exactly. Chromium being the most useless search engine in the world. Amazing.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm telling you, I use AI. I use Perplexity. Of course, now I know that it's full of bs Search engine, Leo. Yeah, it is.

[Devindra Hardawar]

AI lies.

[Leo Laporte]

But, you know, the reason I use Perplexity, it's there. It's a little frustrating because I'm so used to getting a link right. To the things I want to. And it does give you links, but it, but. But it really deprecates the links to the. The AI result. And I feel bad because it's stealing all this content and I just read the content. I never have to go to the site. I can. There's footnotes. But honestly, you know, I'm trying to set up my arch machine over here and I have a question. I type it in, I never see the site it came from. I just.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Killing us, Leo. You're killing us.

[Leo Laporte]

Killing producers. You should make podcasts. The vin. Oh, yeah, you do that. We.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We do. Nobody's got. Nobody's.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody wants that. Nobody's stealing that.

[Mike Elgin]

But this is a great perspective from a, From a podcast person who has to get facts fast, live on air with a camera in their face, which is very hard to do. I've seen Leo do this. He can talk and read at the same time, which is like inconceivable to me. But like, if you want the. You wanted some piece of information, you don't want a bunch of links.

[Leo Laporte]

I just need the answer.

[Mike Elgin]

Need the answers. Yeah, totally understandable. I think a lot of people are using multiple AI, you know, resources plus Google Search. There's a little trick that you can use Google Search without all the cruft and all the AI garbage.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, how do you do that?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, we can put it in the show notes or something. No, no, no, it's a. It's a.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, that link circulated. We, we actually put that out a few a month ago. Or so.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, yeah, that's when it was. People were talking about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

But, but really it's, it's like, you know, Google doesn't need any help failing in the, in the.

[Leo Laporte]

No, they're doing great.

[Mike Elgin]

They're doing great on their own. They don't need help. And one of the things they're talking about restricting is the kind of deals that they have with Apple. But again, you're meddling in the voluntary deal making between two companies, which, you know, I, that's, that's. Apple's going to cancel that as soon as they get Apple intelligence happening. Right? That's a dead man walking right there. So I just don't see the point. You know, so much antitrust action is always too little, too late.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll put Mozilla out of business if you kill those payoffs because that's what keeps Firefox going. The couple of hundred million a year it gets from Google. By the way, the Justice Department no longer wants Google to sell Android.

[Devindra Hardawar]

This is, that could have been interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

So remember, Google has lost the trial already. The judge is trying to decide what the remedy is going to be. He will decide in September. So I guess that's why it's still ongoing, because there's nothing the administration can do to kill it. It's done.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's also, it's a weird company to split up because everything ultimately leads back to search and search ads, you know, so it leads back to advertising, basically. So chopping off Chrome, chopping off Android won't really do much to fix it. At the same time, I think Google's a deeply flawed company. Like, I think it's. Its weird structure right now is why it fails to produce many good products these days because it's so focused on keeping the, the advertising business alive. They kind of were thrust into AI early because OpenAI kind of, you know, pushed them into it. But Google's a mess.

[Leo Laporte]

So it would help pretty clear that Google messed their. Because they decided to focus on profits, messed with their search results, which for so long were pure and clean. Clean. And no longer are they very good. Plus, Google clearly favors its. I mean, YouTube's right at the top, favors its own stuff over anything else. And then now Google, by the way, is pushing out manifest V3 in Chrome. This week, many of you got Chrome updates that disabled your ad blocker. You block Origin. That was, I mean, if I were still using Chrome, that would be the end of the end. I mean, honestly. In fact, I moved to Firefox. Then there was A kerfuffle over Firefox privacy. So then I moved to arc, which is based on Chrome. But then arc, the browser company said, yeah, we can't. We're not going to do ARC anymore. So now I'm using an open source browser called the Zen browser, which actually is the best of both worlds. It's the Firefox Blink engine with the ARC user interface.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Highly recommend. Recommend it. It's open source Zen browser app and I've changed its default search to Perplexity.

[Mike Elgin]

It doesn't have the whole ARC interface, does it? Does it have spaces and all that kind of stuff?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it has the sidebar. See, here it is. I'm using it right now. It has the sidebar like this. It has spaces.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It.

[Leo Laporte]

Even when you click a link, it does. One of the things that I really loved about arc, which it didn't do it in this case, but it will pop. If I go to TechMe, it pops up a little micro window on top of it.

[Mike Elgin]

Like ARC.

[Leo Laporte]

Like ARC. It's basically ARK. The Zen browser guy said, let's just steal ARC's user interface.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, they're not using it.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't want it. We'll take it. And it's based, but it's Firefox and it takes Firefox extensions, including UBlock, Origin.

[Mike Elgin]

All right, I'm doing that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good to see. I'm really happy with it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, it's good to see other browsers. Like I said, there is a Chromium buzz that is killing me right now.

[Leo Laporte]

What's it doing?

[Devindra Hardawar]

So as of a month or two ago, any webcam, like any webcam stream. I do, I do use zencastr and other tools to do produce podcasts. You do that in browser. It has screwed up all of my webcams. There's like frame rate jitteriness, there's some weird stuttering. The only thing that fixes it is not using a Chromium browser. It's just really weird.

[Leo Laporte]

That's hysterical. Yeah, because we use Restore Stream also for some of our shows and they demand a Chrome. They then use Chrome. Not even a Chromium browser. They demand you use Chrome. So I use Chrome for that. Yeah. You know, Google, I don't understand how they, they took, they like Skype. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's, I mean it's a whole. You go. It's really the people at the top. It's the management. It's pursuing what they chose to pursue versus like Innovating on new products. You bring in a company like Nest and they just can't even thrive within Google.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't it sad?

[Devindra Hardawar]

It is sad. It's really sad.

[Leo Laporte]

Finally, we should end with a note of sadness for the loss of George Lowe. Now, you may not know George Lowe's name, but people of your age, Devendra and Benito's age, will very much remember Space Ghost. He was the voice of Space Ghost. Run now. Try biting me now, Ant from the afterlife.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You know, I've been interviewed by all of them.

[Leo Laporte]

Regis, Kathie Lee. That's Conan, Regis and Kathy Lee. Right. I'd like to say that I think the show is very bad. Okay. And should be stopped. Okay. I think you're a bad person. And don't take this the wrong way, but I think you represent evil. Yeah. And your presence makes any kind of progress in the universe impossible. Hold on a second. Conan Maltar. This Ant has come back. That is. That is the great George Lowe, the voice of Space Ghost, probably from Space Space Rip Coast. Second Coast.

[Devindra Hardawar]

This is such a classic episode, dude. This is Fire Ant and like, classic because like, these are people I grew up watching. Like both Conan and Space Ghost. That episode is so good.

[Leo Laporte]

Your universes were colliding, weren't they?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Space Ghost coast to Coast. Like, go back. I don't know if it's streaming anywhere these days, but you can buy these seasons on itunes. All of 90s pop culture is in there. There's one episode with Thom York and BE York together.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just like, so that's interesting.

[Devindra Hardawar]

My teenage years.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's hilarious. Was 67 years old, far too young. He was an American voice actor and comedian. Not only a space ghost, he did many other things. He appeared in Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Basically doing kind of riffs on the space ghost voice.

[Leo Laporte]

All that same voice. Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

He was such a good company man. Like, he would dress up in costume and go to conventions in space ghost voice and just like riff with people and with fans. Like a good dude. Space Ghost coast to coast made Adult Swim basically, like it was one of the first shows that they had produced. Good stuff. What a loss.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, all right. There you go. Not well. Not well known. He was suffering health issues last year. Passed away in Lakeland, Florida on March 2nd. Second. After recovering from. While recovering from a heart surgery procedure he underwent in November.

[Devindra Hardawar]

He had that classic radio voice, which kind of like you do Leo. He did it's radio voice and he really did.

[Leo Laporte]

I could do it too, if I wanted. To all I have to do is cut my ear behind my hand or something like that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Something like that. Now let me tell you, Space ghost and Conan, like those. Space ghost was pretending to be a late night show. Conan had a real late night show. And that had really influenced the way I. I podcast, honestly, in the way I produce shows.

[Lou Maresca]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, if you ever need somebody to announce for you, I'd be glad to help. Devendra Hardawar, tell us about the shows you do. I know you do a film show, which I love. Yes.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The film cast. Yeah. We're gonna be talking about. Was it the new Bong Joon Ho movie, Mickey 17, which is.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I can't. Have you seen it? I'm dying to see.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's really good. I think it. It's maybe a little draggy and long in the middle, but it's a lot of fun because I think Bong Joon Ho is just like a wonderful creative force.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that. Who did Parasite?

[Devindra Hardawar]

You did do Parasite and Snowpiercer, which is an incredible film. The host, one of my favorite working directors right now. So it is, you know, it's like as crazy and wild as you expect from him. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Mickey 7. And it's about 17. It's about replicants. Right. About basic.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's. Well, we kind of were bringing up this idea. It's the ultra carbon thing of like you capture a human and when they die, they reprint them back out with like the memories they had collected up to that point. So it's ultimately about very much similar to severance. It's. It's about labor. It's about how you work and how people control.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it on streaming yet or do I have to.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, you gotta go to the theater. But you should go in theater for that movie.

[Leo Laporte]

So did you see and the Oscars you. I'm sure you did. The director of Anora. Begging people. Begging, begging them to go back to the theaters. There's nothing like it. He said. I just thought, dude, it's over. It's not over.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's over. If with that attitude, Leo, it's over.

[Leo Laporte]

I can watch Anora as I did in my beautiful living room with my big screen TV and surround sound out in the comfort of my own home.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I. I mean, I have that too. But I still love going to the theater because the screen is even bigger, you know, And a lot of people don't even have TVs. Now they're watching movies on their iPads or laptops.

[Leo Laporte]

That's sad. So sad. Watch.

[Devindra Hardawar]

There is a Big. There's a value for a big city.

[Leo Laporte]

I sit really close. So it's better than the theater. It's actually bigger than theater.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, it's the only way to watch the Brutalist. I am not going to go see a 3 hour, 21 minute movie with a 15 minute inter. Intermission in a theater.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It was so good though, especially on a script like. Because the cinematography of that movie looked incredible on that screen.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, I have a very nice QD, OLED TV. 78 inches or whatever.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Only 78, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

That's big. It's close enough so that I, I sit like within a few feet like this. And. But the brutal, the music, I was, I was disappointed. I thought it should have been Best Picture. I really, really. I'm glad, I'm glad that Adrien Brody won Best Actor because he was unbelievable. And $10 million they spent.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's all less than budget.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, it was a budget film. Well, actually, Anora cost even less.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yep.

[Mike Elgin]

They're the deep seek of Hollywood movies.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right. Slash. I'm sorry, not slash. Film. The film.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Film cast podcast.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, it's the film because it used to be with David Chen, Devinder Hardware and Jeff Kanata. Jeff Kanata, who I haven't talked to in ages. I love.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, get him on.

[Leo Laporte]

Give him my regards.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, I shall, I shall. But yeah, go check out. We did a great episode on the Monkey as well, which was a hilarious, hilarious movie.

[Leo Laporte]

The Monkey.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The Monkey. It's like a horror. It's. It's a horror movie technically, but it is also like a really dark comedy too.

[Leo Laporte]

That's not the, that's not the one where the singer is a monkey. And everybody else.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Better man, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Better man. Yeah, yeah, weird idea.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Weird idea.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Devendra. Oh, and of course his day job, senior editor.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And the Engadget podcast. Check that out too.

[Leo Laporte]

And the Engadget podcast. Yes. Do you, you know the Verge has recently started to have a paywall? Are you guys. Do you have a paywall on Engadget?

[Devindra Hardawar]

You know, I don't, I don't think we've really seriously considered it because the thing is, like, we have been around so long producing reviews that anybody can access. So I feel like for the content, we. We've always done this is it. The people expect this. If we do more stuff, special things, and maybe that could be paywalled eventually.

[Leo Laporte]

I think Engadget's great and I, I want it to succeed. And now that the Verge won't let me read Anything really.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It is, it is wild. It is kind of wild to go back to a site and like not have access to simple reviews.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm, I'm sitting there on the, on a show a couple of not so long couple days ago and I said, I can't scroll. I can't scroll, scroll. And somebody said, yeah, you didn't pay for it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You didn't pay for it. I mean, I, I also fully support any, any publication that wants to go to subscriptions. Like it's hell out here. It is so rough.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. You know, that's why we have both a club and advertisers. But there's no guarantee the advertisers stick around. I mean, that's the problem. It's tough. And of course everybody's running ad blockers. I'm sorry. And using perplexity. So, you know, I don't get to your site much. But hey, keep up the good.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Thank you. Thank you, Leo. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And gadgets.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Click on that Asus review right there. I need it.

[Leo Laporte]

I like, look at that. Is that yours? Asus ZenBook A14.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's super, super lightweight.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I've been reading about this. It looks really nice.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Two point, really nice. But super slow. Like that's the problem.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah, yeah. That's too bad, Lumaresque. Maybe there's something you can do about speeding windows up. How about that? Principal AI Engineering Manager at Microsoft at actually brilliant thing you did, which is put Python in Excel. Mind boggling. I don't think it gets enough attention. I think people really does it.

[Lou Maresca]

It really does it.

[Leo Laporte]

Get it. Buy an ad or something, Tell the world.

[Lou Maresca]

It's funny, isn't it funny that you said that? Because the last two big things that Satya has done, he literally called those two things out. We still don't get enough attention, so.

[Leo Laporte]

It's unfortunate, but it's awesome.

[Lou Maresca]

It's really awesome. I use it on a daily basis, whether it's data coming from, from whether it's my finances or it's whatever, it's election data, whatever. I can get to go in there and do really advanced analysis, trending, you name it, using Python, writing Excel. It's awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I mean, a data scientist dream, frankly.

[Lou Maresca]

Oh yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Really cool. Lou, it's great to see you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Mike Elgin, of course. The Gastro Nomad. The sun is going down. The wind is picking up in Oaxaca. I think it's time to get out and have some grasshoppers and a little mezcal margarita or Something.

[Mike Elgin]

I think you're right. In fact, sometimes they put the grasshoppers in the margarita, but that's so fun. And the salt, the salt around the edge of the.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Mike Elgin]

Mezcal margaritas tend to contain those little worms that thrive on the agave plants. So delicious stuff. I love it. Love Oaxaca so much.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just protein. Just think of it that way. It's all. Yeah, it's all just a little bit more protein. Go to gastronomad.comor.net I always.

[Mike Elgin]

It's gastronomad.net all are welcome. We have a blog there you might enjoy. And, you know, send me an email if you ever want to do anything. And we'd love to have you. And Leo, you always let me plug my son's thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I have the site ready and ready to go.

[Mike Elgin]

Appreciate it so much. Hello, chatterbox.com. chatterbox is a smart speaker. Speaker. Amazon didn't announce a smart speaker. Just. Just an assistant. He has a physical smart speaker that kids or any people of any age can make out of cardboard and the electronics that go inside. It's a maker space in a box. And he's. He's paraphrasing his. In his unofficial slogan of move fast and make things.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I like that. That's a good slogan.

[Mike Elgin]

Inculcate in kids the. The desire to make their own electronics, to understand AI and understand the voice that's coming out of a body box is just something a person made. Not, you know, it's not a person, it's not a thing. It's something that you can make. And this thing glues into Wolfram Alpha Glue. It goes into ChatGPT. It can go into all these different things, but only if the kids do it. And it's totally private. There's no data exchanged. It's the only smart speaker allowed in American schools because of its privacy. So fantastic thing for educators and parents.

[Leo Laporte]

It's such a good idea.

[Mike Elgin]

Or adults who want to make their own smart speaker. That's super private.

[Leo Laporte]

Such a good idea.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, so.

[Leo Laporte]

And I do think, you know, we talk a lot about how there's not going to be any need for coders in a few years. Ludy, you don't believe that we still need coders, don't we?

[Lou Maresca]

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's all about the quality of the code. And I think at this point, you know, you're not getting that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good. It's good to have an AI as your little buddy.

[Lou Maresca]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Pair programming, that kind of Thing, Right. But boy, I hope kids don't stop learning how to, to code, even if they never. I mean, I'm not a professional coder, but it's the most damn fun ever.

[Mike Elgin]

Oh yeah, but that's the whole thing. You don't want kids growing. Kids are going to grow up with all of these devices and we don't want them treating them or thinking about them as a black box where the, the how they work is, is unknowable or who cares? You want them to know how things work and to feel like they have some agency in terms of making them work the way they want them. Them to work. We want hackers, we want, we want geeks. And so we have to teach them at a young age to be.

[Leo Laporte]

Somebody's got to write this stuff. The AI isn't going to write it. We. Somebody's got to write it.

[Lou Maresca]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Hello, chatterbox.com if you want to know more. It really is a fantastic product. I shouldn't call it a product. It's a learning tool, really. Little Raspberry PI in there and it. And then the kids code it and they learn so much about how this.

[Mike Elgin]

Doesn'T listen until you press the button and then it just listens until you're done talking.

[Leo Laporte]

And then it's. I think it's important to demystify technology. It makes it more accessible. It's not some magic thing in a box. That's right, it's accessible.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Kevin did a great job. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Devindra. Thank you, Lou. So nice to see all of you and thanks especially to you for joining us. We do twit Sunday afternoons, 2 to 5pm Pacific Time time that is 2200, I'm sorry, 2100 UTC, 5 to 8pm Eastern Time. You can watch us live. As I mentioned, if you're a member of Club Twit in the discord or on YouTube, Twitch, X.com TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook Kick, you know, everywhere. But it's not really. That's only so you can chat with us while we're doing the show. It's never really intended for you to have to listen live. It's a podcast so you can download a copy and listen whenever you want. We have copies of the show on our website, Twit TV. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to this week in tech. And you can use that to share little clips with friends and so forth or even as everybody does nowadays, watch on your big screen TV. Apparently that's the way to watch YouTube. These days. But the best thing to do is subscribe in your favorite podcast player. You can use audio or video or both and you'll get it the minute we're done cleaning it up. Kevin's going to get to work on this in just a little bit and we'll put it out tonight just in time for your Monday morning commute. 20 years we've been doing this. Don't forget you don't have to have been watching since the beginning. If you I'd love to see how you watch Twit when you watch Twitter. Any stories you have about Twit, don't forget to post them on your social media and and include us with at twit. Or you can email the Leoleo FM and I'll collect those all and we're gonna have a special show on April 13th.

[Mike Elgin]

One more thing also, don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

[Leo Laporte]

Very important. Yeah, while you're doing that, it turns out there's people out there have been review bombing us and it's very important to us that the reviews are good. So whatever platform you listen on Apple Podcasts of course is great. Google, Google whatever you use. Pocket Cast Leave us a review only if you like us. Don't leave us a bad review, leave us a good review. Help us out here a little bit. We really appreciate it. Of course, join Club Twit if you really want to help. Just seven bucks a month. Lots of great benefits including ad free versions of the show at Twit TV Club Twit. Well, here we are once again. We've, we've, we've covered the world and now it's time to do as I have for the last 20 years. Say good night to you all and hope I'll see you next week and remind you that another Twit is in the can. Bye bye.

[Devindra Hardawar]

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[Leo Laporte]

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[Leo Laporte]

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[Leo Laporte]

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