This Week in Tech 1024: Payday Loan Burrito

Summary

All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio) Episode: This Week in Tech 1024: Payday Loan Burrito
Release Date: March 24, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Harry McCracken (Fast Company), Father Robert Balasare (Vatican), Patrick Beja (France)

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Introduction

In this episode of This Week in Tech, host Leo Laporte engages with a diverse panel consisting of technology historian Harry McCracken, Father Robert Balasare from the Vatican, and Patrick Beja representing France. The discussion spans a wide array of topics including Intel's strategic direction, EU's regulatory actions against Big Tech, the future of social media platforms like TikTok, advancements in AI and robotics, and the recent release of Pavel Durov.

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Intel’s Strategic Shift and Leadership Change

Leo Laporte initiates the conversation with breaking news about Intel’s accelerated Vision Conference, signaling imminent strategic announcements from the new CEO, Lip Bhutan.

Patrick Beja comments on the uncertainty Intel has faced since the ousting of former CEO Pat Gelsinger:

"Uncertainty is always bad. So I think that's a pretty good. A pretty clever move on his part."
[04:37]

Harry McCracken reflects on past leadership maneuvers at Intel, emphasizing the challenges the company faces in regaining its footing:

"It's been trying to rectify that ever since. And you would think that if they were still going to follow Gelsinger's strategy, they would have Gelsinger doing that..."
[08:24]

The panel discusses potential strategies, including splitting Intel into separate entities for foundry and design, but skepticism remains about the company’s ability to leverage its assets effectively.

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Big Tech's Struggles and EU Regulations

The conversation shifts to the broader struggles of major tech companies in the current landscape. Father Robert Balasare underscores the burden of legacy systems:

"It's very hard to innovate when you're tied down to what you're expected to maintain."
[09:07]

Patrick Beja delves into the European Union’s stringent regulations aimed at fostering fair competition, particularly targeting Apple’s closed ecosystem:

"I think one element that is very much obfuscated in those discussions is that the issue is fair competition."
[14:50]

Leo Laporte highlights the impact of these regulations on platforms like Instagram and how they force Apple to open up certain functionalities, albeit with security concerns.

"In order to enable other entrants to compete, you need the access to those features."
[19:35]

Father Robert Balasare adds that while opening systems introduces security vulnerabilities, it also encourages faster patching and innovation:

"If you come from the open source background, you recognize that opening up a closed system will reveal security exploits and even more quickly it will help to patch those security exploits."
[20:00]

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Social Media Platforms and Content Moderation

A significant portion of the discussion centers on content moderation and the potential impact of removing Section 230 protections in the United States. Leo Laporte expresses concern over how smaller platforms would cope without these protections:

"If this passes, I will then shut down all of our interactive content, all of our chat rooms."
[58:29]

Patrick Beja emphasizes the bipartisan support for the bill and its detrimental effects on smaller forums and communities:

"The problem is that they can moderate without becoming essentially editors, right? Without becoming liable for the content."
[56:22]

Father Robert Balasare argues that Section 230 already provides mechanisms for removing illicit content without making platforms liable:

"There's a system at which you can submit a complaint and action needs to be taken against that content in a reasonable amount of time."
[52:08]

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Data Privacy and Algorithmic Influence: The TikTok Conundrum

The panel delves into the ongoing debate surrounding TikTok's potential acquisition and its implications for data privacy and algorithmic influence. Patrick Beja raises concerns about TikTok's role in shaping public opinion, particularly among youth:

"TikTok being a major source of information... tweaking the algorithm can present disinformation, misinformation... It is a political weapon."
[82:15]

Leo Laporte and Harry McCracken discuss the practical challenges and skepticism surrounding TikTok's influence compared to broader issues of data privacy and misinformation across all platforms.

"TikTok isn't collecting anything that China can't get otherwise. China has other ways to propagandize it. American youth, ample ways."
[81:33]

Father Robert Balasare emphasizes that the problem extends beyond TikTok to all social media platforms, highlighting the systemic nature of misinformation:

"The only issue is the influence that a massive media can have on society and on the opinions of people that consume it."
[82:08]

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Advancements in AI and Robotics

Harry McCracken brings attention to recent developments in robotics showcased at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), highlighting innovations that integrate AI with physical movement:

"Gemini Robotics... robots doing cart flips. And even more impressive than Boston Dynamics Atlas, even the new version is vastly improved."
[137:45]

The panel discusses the potential for AI-driven robotics to bridge the gap between digital intelligence and physical interaction, suggesting that such advancements could accelerate AI development by providing real-world feedback loops.

"They can train AIs faster than they could train the physical items in a sufficiently realistic environment, digital environment that they can do it really fast."
[141:19]

Patrick Beja envisions a future where robots become integral to everyday tasks, although acknowledging the current limitations in affordability and practicality.

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Clearview AI and Privacy Concerns

The discussion turns to Clearview AI’s controversial practices of scraping millions of online photos to train facial recognition systems, raising serious ethical and legal questions:

Harry McCracken notes:

"They spent a million dollars in a bid to purchase 690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos from all 50 states."
[118:03]

Leo Laporte expresses relief over Clearview AI’s failed acquisition attempt due to legal disputes:

"Thank goodness they didn't succeed. They have a legitimate beef because using pirated content is morally wrong."
[121:46]

Father Robert Balasare critiques the lack of transparency and cooperation from companies like Telegram in handling government requests:

"Well, we do need to be able to work together properly... if they use pirate content, it's a different issue."
[117:52]

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Self-Driving Cars and Infrastructure

The panel examines the state of self-driving technology, focusing on Waymo’s dominance and the practical challenges these vehicles face in complex urban environments:

Harry McCracken remarks on Waymo’s extensive presence in San Francisco:

"In theory, self-driving cars, because they drive rather cautiously, help improve [safety]."
[68:01]

Leo Laporte contrasts Waymo with Tesla’s ongoing issues with AI accuracy:

"Mark Rober drove several Teslas through a wall that was painted to look like a road like Wiley Coyote... it made it cute."
[69:29]

The conversation highlights the potential for AI-integrated robotics to enhance vehicle navigation but acknowledges the substantial hurdles in achieving reliable automation across varied global regions.

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Fraudulent Activities and Scam Texts

A growing concern is the surge in fraudulent activities, particularly toll-free scam texts, which have risen by over 600% according to the panel:

Leo Laporte outlines the nature of these scams:

"If you click this link, you get a place that looks just like easy pass. And of course, it's not."
[147:35]

Patrick Beja notes the international scope of such scams and the challenges in combating them effectively:

"We can do it [addressing larger issues], but if you talk about TikTok is a more specific issue that can be managed."
[88:51]

The panel discusses the ethical implications of scammers, many of whom may themselves be victims of larger systemic issues like human trafficking.

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Fusion Energy and AI Infrastructure

The guest panelists explore recent breakthroughs in fusion energy by French scientists, emphasizing the technological advancements and the lingering challenges in energy conversion:

Father Robert Balasare critiques the practicality of current fusion breakthroughs:

"The mechanism that we use to convert that into usable electrical power goes back to the steam engine. We haven't made any massive strides..."
[129:22]

Patrick Beja underscores the transformative potential of fusion energy, while acknowledging its long-term feasibility:

"It's a solution to a lot of our problems until we get fusion going."
[132:10]

Leo Laporte connects fusion advancements to AI infrastructure, highlighting the need for improved data storage and processing capabilities to enhance AI models.

"Advancements in AI infrastructure... if they get that working properly, that has ramifications beyond just in a better AI model."
[141:36]

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Classroom Technology and Student Well-Being

The panel discusses educational policies regarding smartphone usage in classrooms, evaluating their effectiveness based on recent studies:

Leo Laporte references a study from The Lancet indicating no significant improvement in student well-being or academic performance from restricting phone use:

"The researchers found no significant difference in the well being of students allowed to use their phones compared to those who were not."
[148:03]

Father Robert Balasare shares his organization’s approach to technology in education, emphasizing responsible usage over outright bans:

"It's more important to look at the attitudes that students develop around the use of their devices."
[150:00]

Patrick Beja concurs, highlighting the importance of teaching students to balance device utility with appropriate usage contexts.

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Final Thoughts: Societal Impacts and Future Outlook

As the episode winds down, the panelists reflect on the broader societal implications of technological advancements and regulatory measures. Leo Laporte expresses concern over the trajectory of societal dependence on credit systems exemplified by DoorDash’s partnership with Klarna for "Payday Loan Burritos":

"You have to ask if it's the person or the society that is in trouble when someone has to take out a loan to buy a burrito."
[154:21]

The discussion underscores the interconnectedness of technology, regulation, and societal well-being, advocating for thoughtful integration of innovations to mitigate adverse effects.

---

Conclusion

This episode of This Week in Tech offers a comprehensive exploration of pressing issues in the tech landscape, from corporate strategies and regulatory challenges to ethical considerations in AI and data privacy. The insightful dialogue among Leo Laporte, Harry McCracken, Father Robert Balasare, and Patrick Beja provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complexities shaping the future of technology.

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Notable Quotes:

• Patrick Beja on Intel’s strategic move:
  "Uncertainty is always bad. So I think that's a pretty good. A pretty clever move on his part."
  [04:37]

• Father Robert Balasare on open systems and security:
  "If you come from the open source background, you recognize that opening up a closed system will reveal security exploits and even more quickly it will help to patch those security exploits."
  [20:00]

• Patrick Beja on EU regulations fostering competition:
  "I think one element that is very much obfuscated in those discussions is that the issue is fair competition."
  [14:50]

• Leo Laporte on the impact of potential Section 230 repeal:
  "If this passes, I will then shut down all of our interactive content, all of our chat rooms."
  [58:29]

---

For those who haven't listened to the episode, this summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights shared by the panel, offering a clear and structured overview of the dynamic and multifaceted world of technology as of March 2025.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for TWiT this Week at Tech. Harry McCracken is here from Fast Company. Father Robert Balassaire from the Vatican and from France, Patrick Beja. We'll talk about the future of Intel, TikTok's future, who's going to buy it and what's going to happen. And finally, France has freed Pavel Durov. Our long nightmare is over. It's all coming up next with a whole lot more on Twitter, podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week in Tech, episode 1024 recorded Sunday, March 23, 2025. Payday Loan Burrito it's time for TWiT, the show where we cover the latest tech news this week in Tech. And three of my favorite people are here. The technologizer himself, Harry McCracken from Fast Company, who has in many ways you've become our Internet historian or a technology historian. I love that. Love all your wonderful pieces on old technology. Great to have you, Harry. Thank you for joining us.

[Harry McCracken]

Great to be here, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Fr. Robert Balisair joins us from high atop Vatican. He is not in Vatican City. I can't quite figure it out. But you are overlooking St. Peter's Square, right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

So there's Vatican City and then there's, there's the land that the Vatican owns that's outside of Vatican City. I'm on one of those pieces of land. So it is the Vatican. It's just not Vatican City. And by the way, we are the history of technology here. We have all the oldest.

[Leo Laporte]

It's all here, baby. Yeah. In fact, it looks like you stole something from our studio with that, that thing behind you there. What?

[Father Robert Balasare]

There may be some elements of Twit.

[Leo Laporte]

The studio's officially gone now. We gave it back to the landlord. So it's over. Great to see you, Robert. And of course from. I think you're back in France, aren't you, Patrick? Baja.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah. Yes, yes, I'm back in France. So it's delightfully early here. Only 10pm early days.

[Leo Laporte]

I see you have the mythic quest sword in your kitchen, which is a little.

[Patrick Beja]

It is not the mythic quest sword. It's actually I used to work at Blizzard back when we thought, you know, it was a healthy company. And this is my five year sword, which I keep very proudly displayed.

[Leo Laporte]

They give you a sword after five years.

[Patrick Beja]

They give you a like a kind of big mug. What's a big beer thing? Old time.

[Leo Laporte]

A beer. Yes.

[Patrick Beja]

After two years, then the big one is the sword after five, then you get a shield after 10 and a crown after 15. No crown is 20 and the rain is 15. But I got the sword. I'm happy with that.

[Leo Laporte]

Is the sword an actual sword? I mean, could you.

[Patrick Beja]

It is. It's very sharp and it's very dangerous. So it's here at my studio, not where my kids can.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not the Minecraft sword that Father Robert is now wielding. Do you get that after five years of playing Minecraft, Father? I think so.

[Father Robert Balasare]

No, no. This is actually given to all the Swiss Guard.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. This guy's dressed so cute. By the way, I understand the Holy Father is out of the hospital. He's home just around the corner and doing better, and that's great.

[Father Robert Balasare]

He has a lot of work in Santa Marta. Yeah, he's resting. We're hoping. We're hoping that he will listen to the people around him. He is a workaholic and he just wants to get back at it. And we're all telling him, just be calm, relax, take it easy, and slowly come back.

[Leo Laporte]

Joe, by the way, says you're not at the Vatican Pro Max, you're at the Vatican plus.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Special edition.

[Leo Laporte]

A little Vatican Se. Yeah. Breaking news. This just came in moments ago. The new CEO, Lip Bhutan of Intel has decided to go ahead with the Intel Vision Conference at the end of the month. So they were going to be doing it much later in the year. They've moved it up and so I guess we will find out what is going to happen to intel in just a week or so.

[Patrick Beja]

Very good move, I think. A little bit surprising, but there's been so much uncertainty around intel in the past three months. What was it when Gelsinger was ousted? And whatever he says, I can't imagine that he would, you know, sell off the foundry business. It's such an opportunity now. But whatever he says, whatever they do, he has to announce the strategy for the next few years and whatever he says at least will know.

[Leo Laporte]

And uncertainty is the worst possible.

[Patrick Beja]

Exactly, yeah. Uncertainty is always bad. So I think that's a pretty good. A pretty clever move on his part.

[Harry McCracken]

I remember Pat Gelsinger tried to pull off something similar by announcing a big conference. But he was admired in the pandemic and I believe the big conference he announced, it ended up, they could not actually hold when they expected to. And I actually, I worked on a big story on him and they had rented out Fort Mason in San Francisco and then they had to cancel that, but they already had it. So I was like the one person who attended their big conference in order to talk to Pat and other than that they just broadcast from Fort Mason, but there was nobody there in person.

[Leo Laporte]

Intel's stock has actually recovered somewhat in the last few months after the announcement. You can see this is right around when they announced the new CEO a couple of weeks ago. There was quite a big dip. Although it isn't fully recovered from its heights of last year or even actually last February. So it's still pretty low. In fact, if you look at the five year, it's obviously people are, you know, intel was, you know, well over $60 a couple of years ago, is now just around $25. Not a lot of confidence. I'm surprised you think he might not break it up? It seems like that's the only possible strategy and integrated intel has not done well.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, no it hasn't. But it seemed like Gelsinger had the right idea because for which he was fired. Yes. I don't really understand. Well, maybe I' still on Gelsinger's plan and that's why I think he can't spin it off. I think probably for shareholders, which is maybe what he cares about. It could make sense to split the company in two and have two very competent companies instead of one. Middling. But it seems like if he can execute, there is so much need for not relying on Asian manufacturing in the chip space. And intel has huge assets in that field. I don't see how they could not leverage that now. Maybe technology wise they're behind. I don't know. It seems like such an asset. The foundry business seems like such an asset. And if they manage to turn it into a, you know, as Gelsinger wanted to do and has started doing, you know, manufacturer to order outlet, it would be hugely profitable because people want to have things manufactured more locally, especially in the U.S. but I don't know it. Maybe he has a. Obviously he knows the business better than I do, but it does.

[Leo Laporte]

It does seem like big technology companies are struggling in this new era. Yes. Apple announced last week that it wasn't going to be able to get its AI into the iPhones this year. I guess you could say Microsoft's doing okay. Although everybody I talk to loathes Windows.

[Harry McCracken]

I mean, unfortunately intel has been struggling ever since the Windows based PC stopped being the thing at the center of computing. So pretty much the moment smartphones came out and it had no smartphone story. It's been trying to rectify that ever since. And you would think that if they were still going to follow Gelsinger's strategy, they would have Gelsinger doing that, and that would suggest they will try something significantly different, whether it's truly splitting it up or making some other radical change to what Gelsinger was attempting to do, which I don't feel like they gave him enough time to do.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I mean, they're all struggling under the weight of their own legacy. Microsoft, Apple, Google.

[Leo Laporte]

Add Google to this.

[Father Robert Balasare]

All of them. Right.

[Harry McCracken]

It's.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's very hard to innovate when you're tied down to what you're expected to maintain. Yeah, but if you look at Tan's legacy, if you look at what. What his lineage is, he is a chip design guy. That's where.

[Leo Laporte]

So was Gelsinger, right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

I mean, yeah, but Gelsinger was more. I mean, he did chip design, but he was more on the administrative side.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Tan actually has a background where he understands what's going on, so he could. What I'm hoping is that this conference is not just going to be a hype cycle where some PR guy said, we need to get out there to stop the bleeding. And he's actually going to say, look, we have to stop. We have to look at what we need. We have to listen to our customers, we have to listen to our designers, we have to listen to the market, and we're going to design a new piece of silicon around that. And I'm with Patrick. I think if they sell off the foundries and tells us good is dead. If they. If they have to go out and design things out of house, they have no competitive advantage. As it is right now. They are so far behind that they. It will not do well enough for them to be incremental here. They have to announce that they are. They are shooting for a new processor fabric, or it's just going to be, oh, the next step is going to be slightly faster. And that's not going to cut it.

[Harry McCracken]

Gelsinger, who. He started intel, like, as an intern, I think maybe in the late 70s originally. He was the principal architect of the 486.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he was a real. In fact, I'm not sure Lipputan really was. He has a master's in nuclear engineering from MIT and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. He ran Cadence, which was a chip design firm from 2009 to 2021.

[Harry McCracken]

That they're like a chip design software company.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but that doesn't mean he was actually active. I mean, he ran it. He really. I think he's more of a money guy, so I don't. I Mean, he might be the guy you bring in if you wanted to sell off a company, to be honest.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Oh, God, please, no.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what happened to ge, right? GE just got so big, got out over its skis so far that they just ended up chopping it up into pieces, each of which has done fine. What would you chop intel up? Fab and design?

[Patrick Beja]

Well, that's the delineation that makes sense. There are many options. I mean, you can sell off one part and keep the other. Either would do. You can split the company in two and I don't know the technical financial terms, but essentially get stuck in both resulting companies. But again, maybe it's because I see this from the eu, where strategic independence in the area of chip manufacturing is absolutely essential. But I feel like the world has realized this with COVID right? When chips became less available, then everything stopped and every country has started thinking, okay, we need to bring back manufacturing locally to an extent. Maybe you don't necessarily need to become a leader, but you need to have some measure of independence. But maybe intel is so outpaced in that area that the partnerships with TSMC in the US Are enough. And TSMC got a big chunk of.

[Leo Laporte]

Change from the CHIPS Act. I don't know if they'll get to.

[Harry McCracken]

They did. Yeah. But, but now that. But now that is somewhat uncertain because Trump says. Trump says the CHIPS act is terrible, which is, as far as I can tell, he's saying only because it was a Biden thing. Given that in a lot of ways.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S what he wants to do. Which is bring chip manufacturing back to the world.

[Harry McCracken]

Exactly. I mean, Trump should love the chips.

[Leo Laporte]

Act, but Intel's market cap is only 100 billion. I mean, this in an environment where others are in the trillions. Its price to earnings ratio is in the negative. Is negative. So the market does not believe in intel at this point. Well, I think it might be a bargain.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends. The issue is the processes, right? With intel, they did. They had huge. They made huge technological bets, like mistakes, and they didn't go to whatever the process is that, oh, what's the Dutch company that they enable the euv, the extreme ultrasound ultraviolet process. But Gelsinger was saying, okay, we made a mistake there. We're going to switch to that technology that ended up being the one that everyone uses now. And. But maybe it's too late. Maybe intel is too far behind and by the time they implement that technology, you know, it will. It would take three or four years. And I don't know, maybe that's.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, Patrick, you could also say that American big tech is foundering because the EU is killing us. Right? I mean, Google.

[Patrick Beja]

No, you could not say. I mean, you could say it. You would be wrong.

[Leo Laporte]

Would we? Would we be wrong? Okay, yes.

[Patrick Beja]

I have a lot to say about this, but I will let you.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, in some way, you know, I have to say, if you're a privacy advocate in the United States, you're grateful for GDPR, the EU's privacy regulations, because we don't seem to be able to make any privacy regulations here in the US but on the other hand, I mean, Apple, Microsoft, Google, everybody's getting fined dramatically by the eu. I can't seem to get it together.

[Patrick Beja]

I wouldn't say dramatically. But yes, there are very large fines that are possible if you don't follow the new rules. Especially the DSA and the MA are quite stringent.

[Leo Laporte]

And the Digital Markets act and the Digital Services act, both of which are both Apple and Google's stores are in trouble with that many social networks in trouble with the dma. Right.

[Patrick Beja]

It touches on a lot of things. I think the most prominent one, the most visible one, is the way that Apple has been forced to open up iOS. And there's been a story in the past week that is kind of things are heating up between Apple and the European Commission because now the latest from the European Commission is that Apple has to open every function of iOS that is privately available to Apple to its competitors. And this is like the first time when even me, I'm thinking, oh, okay, this is pretty big. The thing is, this is trying. I think it's being discussed a lot in the US Especially under the impression that this is just to annoy Apple and to get back at them, because we're so angry that, you know, the Americans have managed to have such success in tech. And I mean, maybe there's some of that, but this is not what these regulations are about. I think one element that is very much obfuscated in those discussions. Discussions is that the issue is fair competition. If you don't have free and open competition in a market, which is actually, I think, the basis of the free market and capitalism, then the machine is stuck and it doesn't work. And currently we have several markets where competition is arguably not free and open. New entrants have a very, very difficult time entering a. And one of those, to take the example of Apple and iOS, is the smartphone market. And maybe it's not in numbers, a monopoly. It's certainly there's a case to be made that it's monopsony, meaning if you're a developer and you want to make money, you have to be on Apple's platforms so they can set up their rules. But in order to. Breaking open is a, I guess a loaded term a little bit. But in order to enable other entrants to compete, not even in the smartphone market, but in adjacent markets, connected devices, watches, all of that, if Apple restricts the functionalities that you have access to, then you're never going to be able to compete. And so the sort of free open competition doesn't work. And what the EU is saying is you have to open everything. Like for example, one of the things that Apple is very angry about, or at least we believe they are, because they've communicated in a very strange way through a letter sent to media outlets that are usually sympathetic to them and nothing public. So we don't know the details of what they don't like. But one thing they've been saying is if you enable third party watchmakers to access notifications, then it's a privacy nightmare and everyone can access all of your information and suck it up. And Meta has been asking for this and it's unconscionable. I understand the idea that opening up enabling notifications to be available to any third party actor could be a privacy issue, but if you take the problem from the competition aspect, in order for someone else than Apple to be able to compete, then you need the access to those features. It's not a ridiculous idea, even though it does have some drawbacks, which again, the reason you agree to those drawbacks is that you have a market that is completely closed now with Apple's dominance.

[Leo Laporte]

In that space, Apple's defense is always, well, it will make it insecure and it's starting to frankly, wear a little thin. Patrick. I'm sorry, Father Robert, you are standing like a colossus with a foot astride both continents, but you're also a security expert. Can you. Is there any credibility to what Apple's saying?

[Father Robert Balasare]

I mean, yes, anytime you open up a closed system, of course there's going to be security exploits. There's going to be the possibility that you are making a closed environment open to attack. But that's not necessarily a reason not to make it open. I mean, if you come from the open source background, which most of my compatriots do, you recognize that opening up a closed system will reveal security exploits and even more quickly it will help to patch those security exploits. So that whole idea of the security sky is falling. While it makes for really, really good press, when you're trying to explain why you won't do X, Y or Z. I mean, remember, this goes back to the original iPhone and jailbreaking it. The ability to install your own apps was one of these things. They said, oh, no, no, no, that's, that's so insecure. And we're just trying to protect the users. Oh, and we can't open up these features, we can't let you use your, your phone as a hotspot without charging you because it's allowing people to access parts of the operating system that they shouldn't have to ask. I mean, this goes back more than a decade. This, this goes back to the, to the foundation of Apple's ascendancy in the tech space. And unfortunately we've just heard it far too many times. I'm with Patrick here. I think, yes, I understand why Apple wants to keep it closed and at the same time I understand why the EU really does want to open it. Not to punish Apple, but to spark competition in the space which just doesn't exist with the juggernauts of Apple and Samsung on the other side.

[Patrick Beja]

And I think another aspect of this is the way Apple is doing things is absolutely awesome and I love it. And I think in a world where Apple. The irony of all of this is that the reason Apple is so dominant is because they have made this closed, convenient, super controlled system and users do love it and that's why they're so strong in that field, at least partly why. And I love that proposition for the user. The problem is they're so dominant that competition doesn't exist anymore. So you can.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you punish a company that's that success because they're successful?

[Patrick Beja]

No, you don't punish them. You hope you enable competition. And it's not about punishing Apple, it's about enabling competition, which is the bedrock of capitalism. You know, you should be the ones defending this, not me.

[Leo Laporte]

I defend it, believe me, I defend. I'm not taking a dog, I'm not picking a dog in this hunt. Martin Piers, writing for the Information this weekend, says that Apple's troubles actually might be good for them in fighting off these antitrust issues, both in the US and in the eu. Antitrust regulators might have a harder time proving Apple's market power because Apple's struggling both in AI, they're struggling with the Vision Pro. And he's pointing out Spotify leaves Apple Music in the dust. Yeah, Apple Apple Music has 100 million subscribers Spotify, 263 million paying subscribers. I mean, that's a big difference. And by the way, it is Spotify that is complaining about Apple in the eu, right?

[Patrick Beja]

I think software is complaining about Apple.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Harry McCracken]

I think software is a little bit. Software is a little bit different than hardware, though. It is possible to really establish yourself on Apple's platform as an app such as Spotify and compete, even though Apple does even have some advantages there. But Eric Mitzikovsky, that the pebble smartwatch.

[Leo Laporte]

Guy, he's been complaining.

[Harry McCracken]

He had a good post that went up right before the EU announcement about how he can't make a Pebble smartwatch awesome on iOS because he simply does not have access to the same stuff that the Apple Watch people do.

[Leo Laporte]

Pebbles releasing. In fact, you could place orders now, I think, for their new Pebble Watches. Migovsky kind of bought the company back. He was the original creator. But he has complained that while they'll be powerful and sophisticated if you use it with an Android phone, it won't do nearly as much if you use it with an iPhone. This is a long time story, right? I mean, this has always been the case, not just for pebble, but for a lot of things.

[Harry McCracken]

Yeah. I mean, I had a Garmin Watch for a couple of years, which in a lot of ways I like, but it was dependent on Bluetooth to talk to my iPhone, which is always going to be a little bit flaky. And when I switched to an Apple Watch, it was just so clear that there's this extremely reliable communications bandwidth between two Apple devices that you just don't get access to if you're not Apple.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's interesting because on the one hand Apple says, well, we're doing that because we make a better product and it's closed, and that makes it more secure and better. But then on the other hand, people like Eric Menzikovsky and Pebble say, yeah, but that means no one else can make something as good.

[Harry McCracken]

Apple also says, I mean, Apple also says, if you don't like what we're doing and you want it to be.

[Leo Laporte]

More open, you can use Android.

[Harry McCracken]

You have it, great. Use Android. It exists and it actually has vastly larger market share worldwide than we do.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and you know what, with the failure of Apple AI and the success of Google's Gemini AI, maybe people are starting to say, hmm, maybe I shouldn't buy an iPhone. Should Apple be worried?

[Harry McCracken]

I think AI is this inflection point that is still in the process of playing out. And it is at least conceivable that on the other end, smartphones will look quite different and Google will have a lead in terms of innovation on the experience standpoint that it has not had historically.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, but I think if that happens, if Apple falls on its face with AI, then that will be. And let's say in five years, iPhone sales decline because the AI products that Apple is creating aren't up to par with what Google is creating. I doubt that will happen. They have such an established base, they have a dominant platform now. But maybe if that happens, then the decline in market share for Apple or in revenue share, you know, that's the main thing in that market will be because Apple failed on AI, not because the. Maybe that's opened up the OS enough that pebble is able to do a decent watch.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what free marketers would say is just let the market decide this. And the market is.

[Patrick Beja]

No, I mean the free marketers would say free market awesome all the time. Except when there's a monopoly. That's the, that's the basic.

[Leo Laporte]

Even Adam Smith said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Mijikovsky's post from March 17. Apple restricts pebble from being awesome with iPhones and he points out that their app is stuck. And this is really one of the big complaints people, a lot of developers have about Apple is the App Store process is arcane, is opaque, is challenging, frustrating. And he's having a hard time with that because Apple won't let his App Store app through to the App Store. Well, you know, I love, see I'm sitting here with a daily driver, which is the iPhone. And like mo. Like many users, we love what Apple has done. But I also understand the issue, especially for third party developers, that Apple is maybe over controlling.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So I worked with a company that has exhibited at ces. I'm going to leave their name out of it, but they designed a product that works for both iOS and for Android and they said they were able to work with some very competent Apple engineers on getting the product to work. What took them the longest time was getting Apple marketing to approve everything from the packaging to the font.

[Leo Laporte]

They're very.

[Father Robert Balasare]

To how they write the instruction manual.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So that's, that's actually another level of the difficulty to work inside of a closed system. Apple is.

[Leo Laporte]

But they say they're protecting users. They're protecting the user experience by delaying.

[Father Robert Balasare]

A product for eight months until they get the right color on the box.

[Patrick Beja]

But I think, you know this. If Apple wants to function that way, I think it is absolutely their prerogative you know, it is their company, their products. And while we could discuss the frustrations that developers and partners have with Apple, I think they've proved time and time again that it works really well for them because it works really well for their customers. And, you know, I have an iPhone. I've had an iPhone for a very long time. I use a PC, but I also use a Mac. I have an Apple Watch. I have. I have AirPods frauds. I'm in the Apple ecosystem mostly, except for work. But this is not the issue that the EU is trying to address. Here. Again, monopoly slash monopsony. That's the problem. And we can complain about the way Apple handles their developers for marketing reasons, and those complaints are valid, but they're separate from the things that the EU is trying to achieve with these, except.

[Father Robert Balasare]

When they use those marketing hurdles as punitive. So the company that I was working with, in order to make all the issues go away, they took out the packaging that said that it works with both iOS and Android, and it said only iOS and then suddenly everything went through.

[Leo Laporte]

It says, oh, fine, right now, they.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Can'T prove it, but it feels punitive.

[Leo Laporte]

It does.

[Patrick Beja]

That's another aspect of this, of this whole thing, is that, did they demand an apology?

[Leo Laporte]

Robert?

[Patrick Beja]

Apple isn't shy about using all of these advantages or specificities or quirks to gain competitive advantage, which is normal. That's what any company would do, obviously. But again, when there's a monopoly, rules are different.

[Leo Laporte]

Mitchakovsky says, we're going to try anyway. The problem is 40% of everyone who signed up still uses for the new pebble watch. RePEBBLE.com still uses an iPhone. So we're going to make a damn iOS app. He says, I guess we're gluttons for punishment. Apple will never change their ways unless you, the pebble curious iPhone user, complain loudly or switch to Android, which is also hard because Apple tries its best to lock you into their platform.

[Harry McCracken]

And the Apple Watch is one of the best tools they have to lock you in. I mean, the Apple Watch is literally kind of the only thing that if I were to go to Android permanently, I would really miss my Apple Watch. I think everything else I could figure out a suitable alternative on Android.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's take a little break. Great conversation. It's nice to have some people from across the pond, as it were. Patrick Beja, representing the EU today. Sorry to put you in that position.

[Patrick Beja]

I was angry at all of these ideas for such a long time, and I was the one saying but look, we have Android, we have the alternative, the open alternative.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, Android sells better in the eu, does it not?

[Patrick Beja]

Well, the issue is it doesn't matter if it sells better because the money is in iOS.

[Leo Laporte]

The profit.

[Patrick Beja]

The profit. And for developers, financial monopoly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, it's great to have you. NotPatrick.com he has, as many of us have now, abandoned X.com formerly Twitter, and is on BlueSkyotPatrick.com Follow him there. Father Robert Balasaire, you are. Where are you these days? You're on. You're on Blue Sky. I see.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I am on Blue Sky. I mean, it just became so toxic on Twitter about six months ago. And so I just gradually pulled away and at the end of the last year I just pulled the plug entirely. And I've actually been very happy on Blue Sky.

[Leo Laporte]

Blue sky is as close to the old Twitter.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

As anything for now.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I haven't really had a bot problem. I haven't had a problem with people coming into a conversation just to be in a nuisance. So fingers crossed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I stopped posting on Twitter when Elon bought it. I kind of saw the future. But I finally this week deleted the Twitter, the X app from all my devices because I kept going to it and I, you know, I kept. It's like a traffic wreck. You can't. I kept looking at it. I said, stop it.

[Patrick Beja]

I gotta go to it too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard not to look at it. But I realized the things I was seeing were not good for me or other. Other living things.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So I am so much health here emotionally now that I don't go to Twitter.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. And Harry McCracken from Fast Company, you are also on Bluesky.

[Harry McCracken]

Well, I use this app called Open Vibe, which lets me post to Blue Sky, Mastodon and Threads. So I use them all a little bit. I'd say probably Blue sky the most. Mastodon a little bit behind and Threads somewhat. And I'm off Twitter and I found it remarkably easy to not keep returning to what I do. Look at it occasionally. Just because if you're writing about tech.

[Leo Laporte]

It'S kind of have to.

[Harry McCracken]

You kind of need to look at it sometimes. But I thought I would be quietly still addicted, which turned out not to be the case at all.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, it is palpably worse. I mean, it's not, you know, there's still a lot of people I respect there, like Cory Doctorow, but I've noticed on this show there's been this gradual move. This is the first Time, I think on this show that nobody is on Twitter at all. Gradually, our panelists have slowly been moving away from it. So there you have it. Let's take a little break. When we come back, lots more news with our fabulous panel this week in Tech brought to you by Monarch Money. I've been using this, I really like this, a website. There's also an app that is a really great way to keep track of what's going on in your financial life. Finances can be confusing and messy. We're getting close to tax time. Talk about messy. Monarch Money acts kind of like your personal cfo, your chief financial officer, giving you full visibility and control so you could stop earning and start growing. Okay, think of it that way. It's more than your average budgeting app. It does that, of course, but Monarch Money is a complete financial command center for your accounts, your investments, your goals, your net worth. Don't just manage your money. Start building wealth with 50% off your first year for our listeners, because honestly, they know you're going to get hooked. I have moved completely to Monarch Money. Now it's all I use. And 50% off is fantastic. But you have to go to the website for that monarchmoney.com and use the offer code TWIT. Once you do that and you link your accounts, by the way, that's a completely secure way to do it. And it's the easiest way I've found of any, any app to, to, to link all your finances, then it just kind of updates itself. Remember in the early days of computers, one of the things people said, oh, why do you get a personal computer? So you could balance your checkbook. And we, we all had checkbook balancing apps. That's silly. I, I never found the bank making an error. I never did. So that was a silly reason. And I didn't like all the manual entry or the importing. Monarch Money just does it. It's easy. It's clear. You know exactly where your money's going. You know exactly what you could do to start earning, start managing your finances to build a life you actually want. If you don't have a clear financial picture, your financial dreams just are nebulous. They're, they're kind of out there, out of reach. But Monarch makes managing money simple. Even if you're busy, it's got all your accounts, your credit cards, your investment accounts, your home, all your net worth. You always know where your money stands without the hassle. You could track your spendings, your savings, your investments, effortlessly, literally. You don't have to do anything. It just happens. So you could focus on what matters most, making your biggest life goals a reality. It's a financial tool people actually love. Over a million households now using Monarch Money. I had never heard of it, but then Wall Street Journal said it's the best budgeting app of 2025. I said, I gotta try this. It is now the top recommended personal finance app by users and experts. 30,000 5 star reviews and now you can get half off. Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Just use the code [e-mail] you do that in your browser. That's the only way you can get this half off your first year. 50% off your first year. Monarchmoney.com the offer code is twit. I could not recommend this more highly and there is, there is a try before you buy if you want, but I absolutely think this is the tool. I've settled on this one. I love it. Monarchmoney.com, the offer code TWIT at the website. Thank you, Monarch Money for supporting the show. We appreciate it. Google says it is testing removing its European News content for 1% of users. Did this for 8 EU countries. And guess what? That's what the data shows, according to Google, that people visited Google only slightly less often when news was removed. And more importantly, from Google's point of view, ad revenue did not significantly change. This is the reason for this blog post at Google's keyword blog is to set governments on notice that, hey, you could start trying to make us pay for news links. We'll just leave. It's not going to hurt us, it's going to hurt you. They did it in Australia, they did it in Spain first.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's amazing how often this story keeps popping back up because I remember, I remember covering the Spain thing when I was still living in California, right? And it's, it's like no one learns they don't need you. They don't have to have to rank your content. If you want them to take you off, they can take you off and they'll be perfectly happy. So why would you turn away free advertising for your content?

[Leo Laporte]

This is, this is, it's, you know, I think Rupert Murdoch started this in, in Australia, the link tax, where, hey, you, Google are making money off of our content. So when you link to us, you need to give us money. Australia passed that law, Canada passed a law to do that. Spain did. Google withdrew, Facebook's withdrawn pretty much from Canada and it turned out these companies don't really need the. They don't need the traffic. The newspapers need the traffic.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Google writes, during our negotiations to comply with the European Copyright Directive, we've seen a number of inaccurate reports that vastly overestimate the value of news content to Google. So we did a little experiment, and it wasn't good for you guys.

[Patrick Beja]

I, I think it's easy to see this as Google marketing, and especially in the context of, you know, it doesn't reduce our ad revenue, which obviously, you know, Google is gigantic. It's not this one thing that's gonna affect it. So I think they put it in a context, in a context that's favorable to them. But I do think this argument from the newspaper industry comes back so often, and it doesn't seem to ever die, that I think they wanted to have a piece of data that they could earnestly show the newspaper industry to say, you keep saying that you provide value to us. We assure you that's not the case. You don't have the cards. To paraphrase someone in the Oval Office a few weeks ago, in this case, that's completely true. The newspaper industry has no leverage on Google, the one thing they can demand. Recently, the argument has morphed into, you have to pay us if you use our links. But also you have to use our links. Like, you can't not link to us anymore, like, because the argument has morphed because Google is like, okay, fine, if you want us to pay you, we won't include you in Google News or we'll shut down Google News. And the newspaper industry doesn't seem to understand what is happening there. So I think they really wanted to have an experiment, somewhat academic, to say, look here, it doesn't change our bottom line. We won't cave. That being said, in all of those negotiations, there was usually, and I think actually always money that Google would cough up. And they referenced that in that very short blog post. They referenced the fact that they give money to the newspapers.

[Leo Laporte]

They gave Canadian news outlets $100 million, and they gave continue to do so a year, which is not a lot from Google's point of view. Meta. Famously, when Canada passed the Online News act in 2023, said, Fine, no more news for you. And the impact has not been on meta. It's been on Canadian news publishers who faced substantial declines in online traffic. But there is a consequence, and this is kind of an interesting side effect, Canadians are consuming less news as a result of the ban. So when you take the news out of the search engines, out of the social Networks. Sure, it doesn't cost the social networks or the search engines, but it does maybe cost something to the Canadian people.

[Father Robert Balasare]

How much of that is the change in the news industry itself? I mean, if you go back 15 years, the landscape of report reporting across the, across the world was very different. You still had a lot of independent reporting, you still had a couple of new shops that were really good at their jobs at investigation. Now all outlets basically parrot the same talking points, they get the same releases. Sometimes the wordings are the same on two top ranked sites. So it's not as if I need to use your search engine to find the story that's going to end up on your site anyways.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, in the long run, honestly, I feel like Google is in trouble anyway. I don't go to Google for news. I guess some people still do, but I use AI Now, I was going to say that's the real threat.

[Harry McCracken]

I think that the news outlets do have at least somewhat of a better claim with AI because, you know, because the deal, whether you wanted to be part of the deal or not with Google was always you'd get traffic if people went to Google and if we're talking perplexity or.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's what I use.

[Harry McCracken]

And they weave together information from your content and you don't get traffic. That seems to me to be a more legitimate beef.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Of course you've got Altman saying that if you don't let us steal all that copyrighted material, we'll never have AI.

[Leo Laporte]

So steel is a loaded word, Father. Robert. Robert, are you shoveling into our LLM? Read a book. Are you stealing the book? No, you're reading it and remembering it, maybe even regurgitating it.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But if you have the text of my book in your LLM and I can actually find that text, that is stealing. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but can you find that text? I think you don't. You have tokens. Right? So if you, let's say you memorize a poem, should you pay the poet?

[Patrick Beja]

I think this is a very valid argument, but also the form changes. The conclusion. If you're talking about, if you're talking about, for example, to do a very quick aside, moderation, for example, when you only have 10 outlets, moderation is possible. When you have social media that spews out information continuously, all the time and millions of pieces of content every hour, then the issue of moderation is different. And I think that's why in the eu, again, sorry to come back to that, we've sort of somewhat, a little bit deputized the platforms themselves to take out the content that is egregious very quickly themselves. And we can't put a judge behind every single piece of content. So freedom of speech is very wide. But the conversation becomes different and the arguments become different when you have people in a town square and national newspaper than when you have everyone being able to say anything about anything. And it's. It has global reach in this case, to come back to AI. I think you're right, Leo. Obviously, when you read something and you remember it and it informs your creative process, I think that's not copyright infringement. However, if you industrialize it and automatize it and make it systematic on every piece of knowledge, then I think the conversation becomes different and the conclusions you reach are not necessarily the same. Now, to be clear, I think I fall on the side that is more. It is not actually copyright infringement. It's different, it's transformative. But I understand that someone might say the argument is not necessarily the same, the conclusion is not necessarily the same, and we should re examine the thinking behind it before we declare, yes, it's the same and it's not copyright infringement. It is a different process.

[Harry McCracken]

The Atlantic had a good piece a couple of days ago about the fact that Meta trained Llama on an enormous collection of pirated books.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Harry McCracken]

And they had internal communications that made it pretty clear that Meta was not proud of the fact it was using pirated books.

[Leo Laporte]

They knew it.

[Harry McCracken]

To me, using pirated content is an entirely different question than trading on stuff that you've either purchased or which is openly available for free.

[Patrick Beja]

Is it different, though, if they had gone and purchased every single book, digitized it, and trained their LLM on all of those, would it be different?

[Harry McCracken]

Well, I mean, if I as an individual go in and shoplift books from Barnes and Noble and read them, that's quite different than buying them from Barnes and Noble.

[Patrick Beja]

Sure, but then the issue is the theft, not the training of the LLM. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

What our producer Benito has always said is, is his real concern is this. These big rich companies getting richer based on absorbing content from writers, creators, art.

[Harry McCracken]

I mean, I know that a lot of publishers also wouldn't be happy if Meta had purchased all this stuff, but.

[Leo Laporte]

The publishers would still hate it.

[Harry McCracken]

But I think, I think Meta gives up a little bit of the right to get on a high horse if it uses pirate dead content.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you have. What do you have in France to protect websites, comment sections, or social media against lawsuits? We have something in the United states called section230 oh my God. Of the Communications Decency Act. Is there anything like that in Europe?

[Patrick Beja]

I, I don't even know because section 230 is, is, has become such again I'm going to say the bedrock of the Internet. I don't even know. I'm sure there's some legal mechanism in France as well and in the EU if we do, it's probably very similar to section 230 and I can't believe that it's now actually we've come to a place where it is under threat.

[Leo Laporte]

There actually is a book, the 20 some the 26 words that created the Internet, which is based on the 26 words. It's very simple. Of section 230 which says that social networks meta TikTok, my own sites, my Mastodon site, my forums are not responsible if somebody puts something up there that it violates the law or is libelous, that that person's libel. But not the interactive computer service. It's simply no provider or user of interactive computer service should be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider that has resulted in I think a very vibrant, exciting user generated Internet. Because Google and Facebook and Twit don't have to worry about our liability. In fact, it would be thrown out in court if somebody sues us over something somebody put on our mastodon instance. However, it's at risk. Paris Martineau, writing in the Information this weekend, points out that next week Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, plan to introduce a bill that would set an expiration date at the end of next year for section 2:30. And I have to tell you, if that happens, I probably would shut down our forums, I would shut down our Mastodon, I would turn off comments because I can't afford to go to court to defend somebody's posts on our sites.

[Father Robert Balasare]

The most disingenuous part of any attempt to shut down section 230 either from the Republican side or the Democrat side, is they say this is necessary to stop the flow of misinformation on the Internet and to stop the flow of defamatory information on the Internet. But section 230 specifically addresses that it's not an unlimited power to post, publish anything you want. There is a provision in section 230 that says if someone finds copyrighted or otherwise offensive slash illegal content posted, then the, the, the, the website owner, who, whoever's actually hosting it, needs to take it down. So there's a, there's a system at which you can submit A complaint and action needs to be taken against that content in a reasonable amount of time. There is no timeframe specific time frame set. Otherwise that pub that, that hoster does become the publisher. So section 230 already has a remedy for the things they say they want to fix by removing section 230. That's the strangest thing if it's incompetence of the law or they just don't understand how hosting works.

[Leo Laporte]

But Josh Hawley, Masha Blackburn, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar talk about unlikely bedfellows have all co sponsored this bill. Dick Blubenthal and Peter Welch also discussed joining as co sponsors. The thing that's really important is this also gives, and I think this is why the right doesn't like it. It gives these social networks the power to moderate without getting sued. And if you take away their power to moderate, then you, you think X is bad.

[Patrick Beja]

Now the way you, you probably know this better than me then, but the issue there is that they can moderate without becoming essentially editors, right? Without becoming liable for the content.

[Leo Laporte]

We're not now publishers of the content.

[Patrick Beja]

Right. Mike Masnik, a tech dirt, has a brilliant paper up that essentially says, yes, it is incompetence that is the issue. They don't understand what the law does specifically for the Democrat senators that support that bill.

[Leo Laporte]

His headline Democratic Senators team up with MAGA to hand Trump a censorship Machine.

[Patrick Beja]

That is so weird. And that is the issue. The problem is the MAGA movement has been livid with the fact that the big Internet companies are able to moderate misinformation and disinformation because, I mean, I, I don't think it's actually politically, it is charged, but I don't think it's political to say that a lot of their platforms run on, I mean, the MAGA platforms run on disinformation. Donald Trump lies all the time about everything. It's become very common. And the fact that for many, many years Twitter and other platforms could say this is not true. They would label things, you know, they had third party check, fact checkers label misinformation and disinformation, which by the way has gone away on both Twitter and Facebook, is a problem for the political movement of the MAGA party. And I think that's why, I don't know why the Democrats want to get rid of Section 230, but that's why the Republicans want to get rid of it. It creates a world where moderation becomes incredibly difficult. Masnik writes, I honestly think that's what they do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Dick Durbin confuses actual criminals who can and should be prosecuted with the tools they misuse. He says it's like blaming the phone company for criminal conspiracies plotted over phone lines. The thing I want to say is, you know, whenever these conversations come up and there will be debates over this and Congress will talk about this, they always talk about Google and Twitter and Facebook. But what they forget is those companies probably can afford to defend themselves. But there are a myriad of small forums, chat rooms, discussion areas run by small companies like mine that absolutely cannot defend ourselves in court. We could not afford this and we would be immediately attacked by people who would sue us. And that would be that. If this passes, I will then shut down all of our interactive content, all of our chat rooms. I mean, right now we're streaming on eight different platforms and all of them have chat rooms open. So I can see what people are saying about this. That would all go away, I can assure you. That would have to go away already. There's a fixi site, a fixie forum in the UK that is closed because of a change in the laws in the U.K. he says, you know, it's the small guys that are going to suffer. It's the forums that you participate in, the discords that are going to go away. You know, X isn't going to go away. Facebook's not going to go away. They can afford this.

[Patrick Beja]

I don't know if they're liable for every piece of content that is posted up there.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not going to be fun for them.

[Patrick Beja]

I'm not saying I don't know that they can function. You know, that's the issue. And by the way, it is set to. What is it? Sometime in 2027. I believe the idea is to force big tech to come to the table to find a solution. The problem is what solution to what? Like what do they actually want? No one knows. But I don't think in their intent they actually want to invalidate 2:30. By that time they want to negotiate.

[Leo Laporte]

But what are they gonna carve out? You know, Klobuchar in 2021 proposed a carve out that said that the CDC and the NIH could take down misleading health information. That would be a modification which would give RFK Jr. The right to take down any vaccine information on every social site. I mean, any carve out is fraught with peril. Mike points out, Even with Section 230, if a website wants to defend its right to keep content up or take it down, winning such a Case typically costs around $100,000 absent Section 230 protection. So it's 100,000 with Section 230. Without these protections, even if you ultimately win on First Amendment grounds, you're looking at about $2 million in legal fees. Now for Meta or Google, that's a rounding error. He writes for a small news site like Techdirk, Masnix or a blog, it's potentially fatal. It would certainly be fatal.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's also fatal to something like Twitter. Twitter, Truth, Social Gap. Those are all gone because are they.

[Leo Laporte]

Can they afford. They can afford to defend themselves?

[Father Robert Balasare]

No, they can't afford it. I mean, the most healthy among them would be Twitter. And Twitter is operating on razor thin margins. If anything, you add the apparatus you would need to respond to every challenge. It's done. There's no way it's going to survive.

[Leo Laporte]

It really feels like these senators don't even understand what they're legislating.

[Harry McCracken]

That does seem to be at the crux of it. And I just as an individual with a few blogs, I'm worried. I have self hosted blogs.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, as do I.

[Patrick Beja]

You can still publish, right? You can still publish. You just have to turn off comments.

[Leo Laporte]

Be something defamatory on there. And I would get sued for that.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah. Is there a way to get out of it by never moderating anything does that. It doesn't, right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

No, no, because it's still. It's. There's. If they remove the safe harbor provision, it's no longer doable. It's. No, it's no longer reasonable for you to be able to post anything that could cause offense to anybody.

[Leo Laporte]

You break the Internet.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You break the Internet. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, just thought you'd like to know. That will be on the. Fortunately, Congress is completely dysfunctional and nothing can never get through. But it is going to be on the table. And what's really scary is it has broad bipartisan support. And that to me is very, very scary.

[Father Robert Balasare]

We need to educate anybody want to take bets on whether or not Trump issues an executive order to remove section 230?

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I wonder why he hasn't.

[Harry McCracken]

He may have done it while we've been on the air.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't give many ideas. All right, let's take a look.

[Patrick Beja]

That's how it works.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But yeah, totally how it works.

[Leo Laporte]

Really don't give them any ideas. He's got plenty of his own. Let's take a little break. We will come back with more Father Robert Balaser, the digital Jesuits here. He's got on the bottom on the Lower third there a plug for his app that he created, the Jesuit Pilgrimage app at JesuitPilgrimage app. What is that?

[Father Robert Balasare]

So it was just something that some of us had too much grapple one night, and they said, hey, why don't we do an app? And six months later, and it looks. Lot of recording and writing. We've got an app in multiple languages that show you basically the path that St. Ignatius, that's the founder of my order, took as he was roaming around the world looking for enlightenment. It has some very nice recordings.

[Leo Laporte]

Follow the pilgrimage. Do they? Do they like.

[Father Robert Balasare]

They do.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's cool.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So because it's on your phone, it knows where you are, and it will say, okay, you're near this site or you're. You should go here. And we are improving it all the time. We're actually integrating it a little bit with the Jubilee year that's happening in the Catholic Church right now.

[Leo Laporte]

I need to go to Rome this year.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah, I think you do. Just to go through the Holy Door.

[Leo Laporte]

The door. Has it been opened?

[Father Robert Balasare]

The door has been open since December 24th.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my goodness. So how often is that door? This is a door into St. Peter's Basilica that is normally closed. How often is it opened?

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's only open during the Jubilee Year, so that was 13 years ago. It's not often if you've been in.

[Leo Laporte]

St. Peter's yes, yes. Which is, by the way, everybody in their life has to see it, Catholic or not. It's the most amazing architectural feat. And of course, the Pieta is there. There's so much beautiful artwork. It's just gorgeous.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That's where the Holy Door is. So if you were standing at the Pieta, if you were to look to the right, that wall is actually a door. They just. They wall it up in between Jubilee years.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So that's open now and you can go through it.

[Leo Laporte]

And does it wash away all my sins if I go through that?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Okay, I'm going to give you the official spiel here. This is how it works. According to the Office of Faith, you can go through the door. And every time you go through the door, you can get two indulgences. One for you and one for a person who cannot be there.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, nice.

[Father Robert Balasare]

They only take effect if you go to Mass and confession in a reasonable time.

[Leo Laporte]

After you go immediately, you just go. While you're going in, you go in, you confess, you sit for the beauty. I bet them you've served mass in St. Peter's right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

I have.

[Leo Laporte]

At the big Altar.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah. Oh, of course. Naturally. I've got my. I got my celebrant. My. The little Roman identification card specifically so I could do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But Leo sue, maybe. Maybe I can advertise this. I'm gonna jump back and forth through the door and then I'm gonna sell the indulgence because I don't think there's going to be any trouble with that.

[Leo Laporte]

Just, you know, get some post it notes, write down somebody's name, jump through the door. Good thinking.

[Patrick Beja]

Used to work like that.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm an entrepreneur back in the Middle Ages. Yes.

[Patrick Beja]

A few centuries ago.

[Father Robert Balasare]

And we, we had, we had words about that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

Microtransactions we had.

[Leo Laporte]

That was the ant. Oh, my gosh. It wasn't our fault.

[Father Robert Balasare]

No, I'm using that. Patrick. We had the original microtransactions indulgences.

[Leo Laporte]

Patrick. Beja also here. Not Patrick on blue sky or notpatrick.com.

[Patrick Beja]

No, notpatrick.com. actually, I created my Bluesky account. It was not Patrick. And then they were like, oh, you can, you know, use your domain, I'm.

[Leo Laporte]

Leolaporte to identify yourself.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, yeah. So I went and did that and didn't realize it would free up not Patrick. And it was before they had the protection system.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, no. So somebody got. Not Patrick.

[Patrick Beja]

Yes, somebody did. And I was very frustrated and angry. I wrote. I wrote them and. And they were like, yeah, sorry, we didn't have that in place before, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I didn't even think about that. I. I am Leolaport Me. Which is also a website, which means.

[Patrick Beja]

Leo Laporte is probably your website.

[Leo Laporte]

Stole Leo Laporte. Oh, man. Oh, man. If you go to notpatrick.com youm'll see all of his French language. Is Phileas Club still around? You still doing that?

[Patrick Beja]

It's actually back in a different format.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Because the last time you were here you said you stopped the English language shows.

[Patrick Beja]

Absolutely. Yeah. But I relaunched the Filius Club because I wanted to talk about stuff and for other reasons. But it's a different format. I'm alone and I do every couple of weeks a kind of a letter from your friend from a different place from outside the US And I talk about something local and something international.

[Leo Laporte]

And most recently we are not completely insane.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I would debate that.

[Patrick Beja]

Completely not insane.

[Leo Laporte]

What did Just add a. I shouldn't ask this, but you're compatriots. When you look across the Atlantic at what's going on in the US right now, I bet there's probably imagine a mix of points of view.

[Patrick Beja]

No, no mix. No, we're concerned. The real thing is concerned. Very concerned.

[Leo Laporte]

They understand that there will be a change every few years in our governance. Right.

[Patrick Beja]

So that's one of the things I discussed in one of the latest episodes.

[Leo Laporte]

It makes us nutty because it's swings like a pendulum back and forth.

[Patrick Beja]

No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't broken the problem. If you're thinking internationally, the trust is broken and especially with issues of conflict like military conflict. Yeah. If, if you can't trust, what happens every two or four years, then you have to prepare for a situation where, you know, you can't. And so especially militarily, you can't plan for. Well, you know, maybe, maybe they'll be.

[Leo Laporte]

Back in four years, maybe not.

[Patrick Beja]

And you know, maybe for, in four years, in three years things will improve for, you know, America's standing in the world. But then maybe four years later, you know, J.D. vance runs or Donald Trump Jr. Runs and with the same platform.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, you know what makes me crazy? A 200% tariff on French champagne. That's what makes me crazy. That's just not right.

[Patrick Beja]

We're not, we're not big. And I could, if you want to hear more about what I think about all of this, I affiliates club in details, about detail in the affiliates club.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm very interested. Yeah, I mean we're not a political show. We're talking about technology. But I just, you know, I just was curious what, what the, what the concern.

[Patrick Beja]

I think concern and dismay.

[Leo Laporte]

I know, I know. We no longer have any friends in Canada. They just, they just written us off completely. Where are we our cousins from?

[Patrick Beja]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Patrick Beja]

I, I don't want to prolong this too much, but I think everyone understands what is happening in, in the US and it's not the will of the majority of Americans, which is actually even more concerning.

[Leo Laporte]

That's more concerning, yeah. And Mr. Harry McCracken, the technologizer FastCompany.com lives in San Francisco. Say hello to Marie.

[Harry McCracken]

I will.

[Leo Laporte]

What you working on?

[Harry McCracken]

Well, I just had a big story come out. Our print issue just came out and the COVID story is on Waymo and I wrote that and that's also available on our website. And that was based on talking to a bunch of people at Waymo and outside Waymo and people who love Waymo and people who are skeptical about the whole question of whether self driving cars are really necessary to make the Road safer.

[Leo Laporte]

Waymo is dominant in San Francisco. You cannot drive down the street in San Francisco without seeing multiple Waymo vehicles.

[Harry McCracken]

Totally. I mean in theory, self driving cars, because they drive rather cautiously, help improve.

[Leo Laporte]

Safety partially because like a grandma.

[Harry McCracken]

Yeah. The car is behind them. Can't drive any faster than they do.

[Leo Laporte]

Must drive people crazy. On the other hand, because I drive like a grandpa and I know people are so annoyed behind me.

[Harry McCracken]

On the other hand, there's also just recently a report about the number of parking tickets waymos have gotten, which is extremely large and they often cause problems by parking where they should not or stopping where they should not.

[Leo Laporte]

You had interviewed Larry page back in 2013.

[Harry McCracken]

Oh yeah, that was my newsletter last week. Larry does not talk to the media anymore and has not since shortly after I talked to him. But Even back in 2013, the Google Self driving car was a big story and we talked a fair amount about it for the story I did for Time magazine and, and I judged it up and it is 12 years old, but it's some of the most recent stuff he's said about self driving cars. It talked about the fact that when he was at Stanford, even before there was a Google, he was excited about the technology and he was already impatient and he kind of wished that somebody else had started tackling it 10 years before Google did.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Your cover story, Hail Waymo. I get it, I get it.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Inside the company be proud that their car has never run into an Acme style Wile E. Coyote picture.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my God. Mark Rober, the NASA engineer turned YouTube star, drove several Teslas through a wall that was painted to look like a road like Wiley Coyote. And it made it's cute because he, I guess he pre cut the hole. So it made a roadrunner looking hole in the, in the wall.

[Patrick Beja]

That's kind of dumb, isn't it? It doesn't prove anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, well, you don't want to drive around where there might be a coyote drawing pictures of the highway.

[Harry McCracken]

I mean in theory it might say something about whether lidar is important or not.

[Leo Laporte]

That was the point. Right. The camera can't distinguish.

[Patrick Beja]

I understand that, but it's such a specific case, you're never going, going to.

[Leo Laporte]

Encounter this in actual typical YouTube link grabbing headline.

[Harry McCracken]

On the other hand, waymos happened.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Never gonna encounter this. But I mean I'm, I am guaranteeing you at DEFCON this year someone is gonna do it.

[Patrick Beja]

Of course, I mean you can do it, you can do it, but there are a million things you can do that you know, here's the thing nails on the road.

[Leo Laporte]

I think we've learned. Do not paint a horizon with a road on your garage door. Yes, that would be a mistake. Although I have to point out that later tests with subsequent Tesla vehicles, including some with the more recent full self driving, successfully avoided running, running into the fake road walls.

[Harry McCracken]

And even Waymos have been known to drive into wet cements.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I remember that.

[Harry McCracken]

Which they can't tell is not dry cement.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, it's hard. Poor AI. Poor AI.

[Patrick Beja]

It is. Okay, I just want to say I have had that article by Harry opened on my desktop for like three days and I want to read it because I didn't realize, I didn't realize until now that it's actually fast. But Waymo's like, dominance is incredible. Like, we've been talking about the self driving cars for 15 years, right? And at some point the hype cycle died and it went away. And no one's talking about it. And Waymo is doing it. Like we actually have self driving cars. That's it. Like they're here.

[Harry McCracken]

A lot of the companies went away before they got there. And Waymo is only in a few Cities. It's doing 200,000 rides a week, which is minuscule compared to Uber or Lyft.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't Zoox coming to San Francisco next?

[Harry McCracken]

Zoox is testing in San Francisco and on the Strip in Vegas.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the one that looks like it's out of Westworld. It doesn't have a steering wheel, but.

[Harry McCracken]

There is some question about whether a car without a steering wheel and brake pedals is legal or not. And Zoox does not have it all. The Waymos that are currently on the road are converted conventional cars.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Huh. I think it'd be kind of fun to ride in a Zoox, but I've never even ridden in a Waymo. It just makes me. The whole thing makes me scared.

[Harry McCracken]

And then I want to see how.

[Father Robert Balasare]

A Waymo would do in Rome. That looks very different from anything it scanned.

[Leo Laporte]

First of all, it couldn't fit down half the streets. So there's a problem there. They were walking in Rome and pedestrians and vehicles, especially in the old part of town, are really in competition for a very narrow strip of street. So you're walking in the street and Lisa's constantly pulling me over. I said, they're not going to hit me. So she looks it up, how many pedestrian deaths occur in Rome and says, well, the statistics say, yeah, no, don't look good.

[Patrick Beja]

The ultimate test is the place Charles de Gaulle etoile here in Paris.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's crazy.

[Patrick Beja]

200.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Not the arch de Triomphe. Not the little arch.

[Patrick Beja]

That's the one. That's the one.

[Leo Laporte]

Because the roundabout rules are different for that one roundabout.

[Patrick Beja]

No, they're the same, but it's just chaos. You have 12 major arteries coming into that one roundabout. I thought that no traffic lights. It's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

Normally in a roundabout, the car. Cars in the roundabout have the right of way.

[Patrick Beja]

Well, in theory they do. The last time I was in Paris.

[Father Robert Balasare]

My thing was once you enter the roundabout, you never leave. I think I did like 12 laps just trying to figure out where the heck I'm supposed to go.

[Patrick Beja]

Ironically, it's very safe because everyone's scared to death. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Except for pedestrians. Do not walk across.

[Patrick Beja]

They do not walk there.

[Harry McCracken]

No, there are, I mean, there are several cities in China that have, have robo taxis and some of those Chinese streets are also kind of crazy. So.

[Leo Laporte]

But see, if all the cars were talking to one another, you could, you could actually navigate this kind of thing safely because, you know, it's. After you, Alphonse. No, after you, Alphonse. They would, they would kind of.

[Father Robert Balasare]

No, no, no.

[Harry McCracken]

They're.

[Father Robert Balasare]

They're French cars, so they'd be.

[Patrick Beja]

No, but I think, I think the hype cycle is burying the fact that we essentially have self driving cars in many. Not everywhere, obviously not here or in Rome, but in, in like they're here. And 10 years ago we were like, oh, they're coming, they're coming. No, it won't. And they're here, they're here. They're working people riding them all the time. Yeah, it's crazy.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I drove a Land Rover here with all the new avoidance features on it. It does not work in Italy. Well, the first time we got swarmed by Vespas, the thing went crazy and it didn't slow down.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, we're going to take a little break. I hope you're having fun. I am. This is this Week in Tech, our weekly roundup of the week's tech news. We'll talk about TikTok next. They say it's going to. The sales are going to wrap up soon. This episode of this Week in Tech brought to you by ExpressVPN, the one and only VPN that I use, the one I trust, the other. You know, a couple weeks ago we flew to Tucson, Arizona and I got to the airport sfo and you probably have this experience. Free airport WI fi pops up on my screen. Now I really want to use the free Airport WI fi. But I'm also terrified. Right, I remember. Oh yeah, I'll just fire up ExpressVPN. What I forgot is to turn it off. I left it on for the whole trip. And you know what? What? Didn't even notice a few. It's not just for security. It's not just for geographic restrictions. It's also for privacy. A few decades ago, private citizens were largely that private. But everything's changed with the Internet. Think about all the stuff you browse, you search for, you watch, you tweet. Imagine all of that data being crawled, collected and aggregated by data brokers into a permanent public record. I wasn't so much scared of hackers on the free Airport wi fi. I was. I was worried for my privacy. Right? Having your private life exposed for others to see was one something only celebrities had to worry about. But in an era where everybody's online, everybody is in effect a public figure. So to keep safe, to keep private, when I go online, I turn on ExpressVPN. It's. It's a great boon because the other thing I can do with ExpressVPN is catch that out of market football game or this morning, the F1 race. Don't want to miss that. Everyone needs ExpressVPN. It's one of the easiest ways for data brokers to track you through your device's unique IP address. And it also reveals information about your location. With ExpressVPN, your IP address is hidden and your location is wherever you say it is. This makes it much more difficult for data brokers to monitor, track and monetize your private online activity. ExpressVPN is the only VPN I use. Why is ExpressVPN the best? Of course. It encrypts 100% of your network traffic, keeps your data safe from hackers when you're on that free Airport WI fi or in the hotel or the coffee shop. It also works on everything you've got. IPhone, Android phone, laptop, Linux, Windows, Mac tablet, you name it it they have apps for everything, including by the way, routers. You just tap one button, turn it on, you're protected. It's just that easy. Protect your online privacy today. Visit expressvpn.com twit that's E X P R-E-S-S vpn.com twit get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package. I will never be without my ExpressVPN. You shouldn't be either. Expressvpn.com Four months free when you buy a 2 year package. We thank ExpressVPN so much for supporting this Week in Tech. JD Vance says the TikTok deal should become clear early next month. He said Friday he expects the outlines of the deal that allows TikTok to keep operating in the US will become clear by early April. There will almost certainly be a high level agreement that satisfies our national security concerns. It's so funny really. We're still concerned about that. Are we allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise. He told NBC this in an interview aboard Air Force Two a week ago. He's the guy doing the negotiation according to President Trump. But he didn't say anything about who might buy it. The information reported that Oracle has emerged as a leading contender to play a major role in the deal Oracle has been running. That was Project Texas that Oracle's been storing TikTok's data for American citizens in Texas in Oracle servers for at least a year or two now. TikTok owner ByteDance is hoping the Trump administration will approve a deal based on the same contours of Project Texas and that it would store the user data on Oracle servers in the U.S. oracle were to review the app's algorithm. Meanwhile, of course congressional aides are a little concerned about well what does that mean? Here's Larry Ellison just sitting there in the White House. That's actually back when they were talking about the Project Stargate, Oracle met with top aides on Capitol Hill to talk about how they plan to work with TikTok in the United States in the coming weeks. April 5th is the deadline. You think this deal will be done? Are we going to be safe forever now from TikTok? Are we even worried about TikTok now that we know that Chinese hackers are sitting in our phone system and the phone companies can't do anything about it?

[Father Robert Balasare]

You know Leo, honestly, so much has happened since, since this was first pushed back, it's almost comical to think who cares anymore? Nobody cares anymore, right? I mean, look, if you were concerned that Tick Tock was destroying our youth because it was destroying their debt, whatever it is that you were, you were arguing that's not going to change just because a US company owns it. It just means that a US company is now going to use misuse that information. If, if you were hoping that TikTok's gonna go away, that's far too big to make it a go away. Even if a deal doesn't come by on April 5, there's going to be another executive order that's going to further push this down the road, I. I just. I'm having trouble caring, honestly.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, as soon as it came out and. And the phone companies themselves said there's nothing we can do about Chinese hacks hackers listening to your phone calls, I figured, you know, TikTok is minor compared to that.

[Patrick Beja]

All right. Can I convince you that it is still an important issue?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, please.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Hit me.

[Patrick Beja]

Everyone seems to be concerned about the Data aspect of TikTok being owned by essentially the Chinese Communist Party. And while I understand that it is part of the concern, I think it pales in comparison to the algorithm issue, which gives. So would you agree that media can have an influence on what is a concern being discussed in any society?

[Leo Laporte]

Sure.

[Patrick Beja]

Yes, of course. You would?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Absolutely.

[Patrick Beja]

TikTok being a major source of information, not like news, but just consuming content in a country becomes a problem because the algorithm can be tweaked by the government of China, which is not a full friend of the United States or France, for that matter. And tweaking the algorithm in maybe subtle ways, maybe not so subtle ways, can present to you disinformation, misinformation, certain types of opinions that some people might take as fact or influence their thinking. It is a political weapon. And actually, we've seen this in Taiwan in an article which. I don't remember where it was published here, but it was criminally underreported on, about how the sentiment of national. National pride in Taiwan has been steadily going down in younger people who primarily use TikTok. And you've seen in Taiwan, specifically, some content that shows up in young Taiwanese feeds that show China in a more favorable light, that, of course, don't discuss, you know, the more unsavory aspects of the Chinese totalitarian regime. And it's funny, there were elements that showed that it was through TikTok, because there were some slang words. Slang. Am I saying this right? Yeah. Keywords, slang words that were from rural Chinese areas that started entering the Taiwanese youth language, and they showed up through TikTok. So the problem is not so much data. The problem is the influence that a massive media can have on society and on the opinions of people that consume it. And that's. It's not just TikTok, it's media in general. But as you well know and discuss often. Rupert Murdoch had to become an American citizen right before he could buy Fox News. Correct.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, boy, was that a long time ago?

[Harry McCracken]

Sure.

[Patrick Beja]

But it is protected there.

[Leo Laporte]

Australian influence in our national media.

[Patrick Beja]

No, but if Chinese. If China has an influence through TikTok on American youth and American, the American public in general.

[Leo Laporte]

You're not wrong. In fact, really, there seems to be a lot of evidence that the reason this bill started was because the Anti Defamation League, the Jewish Anti Defamation League, didn't wanted to be able to control the anti Israeli propaganda on TikTok and didn't feel like they could control it. So they went to Congress and they said, you know, we need you to suppress TikTok. They have actually called for TikTok to submit to an independent antisemitism audit.

[Harry McCracken]

I mean, also to Patrick's point, it seems totally clear that Even in the US TikTok is suppressing stuff about the Uyghurs, who the Chinese government really would prefer you to not think too much about. I do find that, that troublesome.

[Leo Laporte]

But I also should point out that we are very happy to have Chinese and Russian disinformation on x dot com. They have plenty of outlets that are owned by the United States for their disinformation.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But see, that's, that's why I don't care about TikTok. Because Patrick, the problem that you described, it's not a tick tock problem, it's a social media problem. I can do exactly the same thing that you described that the Chinese state can do on TikTok with micro buys on Matter or Twitter. So I don't have to own the company to be able to get the influence. The companies exist and they're more than happy to take my money. I can micro target the people that I think are most acceptable to the message that I'm trying to push. In fact, we showed that that actually was in effect in the 2020 and the 2016 elections.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, they, the, the Trump campaign had it. Facebook people embedded in the campaign. Clinton campaign turned it down. Maybe they should have paid attention in 2016. There is also, if you're talking about privacy, there's also the issue that we have no privacy regulations in the United States. Data brokers collect all the information they ever could want, including our Social Security numbers, and sell it to the highest bidder, which includes often foreign governments like China. So TikTok isn't collecting anything that China can't get otherwise. China has other ways to propagandize it. American youth, ample ways. I, I mean, I agree with you Patrick there. TikTok isn't a vital service. You know, I mean, we'll survive without TikTok. And I should confess I have a little bit of conflict of interest here because my son's career started because he went viral on TikTok as a. As a TikTok chef. So I see the. I, this is my problem. There are a lot of creators, there are a lot of talented people who have. And TikTok is advertising this all the time by the way, who've made their businesses and made their careers on TikTok who will lose that outlet for an opportunity to go viral.

[Patrick Beja]

Leo, both can be true and it is very true. I use TikTok a lot as a consumer and I also post a little bit on it. But I think it's an awesome platform. It doesn't change the fact that if it becomes one of the main entertainment outcomes outlets of a country, the fact that it is controlled essentially by the government of an adversary government is a problem. And I understand what you're saying, father. It is also possible to micro target and to do similar ish things on other platforms. Doesn't mean you should just be happy that they have the keys to the one most used platform in the country. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

I mean I honestly, there's no loss goes away I think because any creator then moves to Instagram. I do feel like there's a little bit of conflict of interest that Meta would be very happy to see TikTok go away. So that their platform.

[Patrick Beja]

Of course, of course there is. Obviously there is. All of these things are true at the same time. All of them can be true.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I don't want to spend energy addressing TikTok. I want them to address the larger problem, the ability to buy misinformation. The fact that truth is.

[Leo Laporte]

Now how do you fix that in a country where the First Amendment is.

[Patrick Beja]

A very difficult problem to fix. That is a very difficult problem to fix and I'm very concerned by it. I think that's putting us in a very difficult situation. But I don't think we could find a solution to that problem that would satisfy everyone if we talked about it for 15 hours. I think TikTok is a more specific issue that can be. I don't want TikTok to go away. I don't. I like it. I spent a lot of time on it. But the fact that the, the control of the algorithm is a problem. It's not even about the algorithm. It's the control of a prominent media by a foreigner at a foreign adversary. The article I was talking about, we.

[Leo Laporte]

Have enough adversaries in the United States that concern.

[Patrick Beja]

Now you do. Yeah, now you do. Is TikTok pushing Taiwan's young people closer to China? It's a Financial Times article from January 17 yeah. And I encourage everyone to read it because it's a subtle thing, the way they're doing it. But it seems, I don't want to speak in absolutes. It seems to be showing that the Chinese government is using TikTok to specifically do what we're fearing they could do elsewhere.

[Harry McCracken]

TikTok has also been pushing America's young people closer to Donald Trump. And I think Donald Trump is aware of that. And so the odds are probably pretty slim that TikTok goes away. If a deal is not ready, they can just keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And a huge Republican contributor, Jeff Yass, owns about a third of TikTok. Indeed. So that's also an issue.

[Harry McCracken]

There's no one signed up for the Trump administration to actually get do away with the service.

[Patrick Beja]

It's not going away. And I would be very interested to know there was a line about Oracle checking the algorithm. I would be very interested to know exactly how that's going to work and how often they're going to check it. Are they going to check every change to the algorithm? Like every time they change a line, add a thing, there's someone at Oracle that's going to look at it and say, yes, good, you can push it or not. Like that seems weird.

[Leo Laporte]

Here is the piece actually referring to the Financial Times piece in the Taipei Times saying TikTok could be affecting. This is from January. Affecting views of young Taiwanese compared with other platforms. TikTok's algorithm pushes a disproportionately high ratio of pro China content. You know what, if I were the Taiwanese government, I could see suppressing TikTok. Tick tock. Absolutely.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That's not an issue with the, with the algorithm. You, you can't fix that by fixing the algorithm. You fix that by saying, we're not going to sell advertising space, we're not going to sell micro targeting to certain entities, or we're going to fact check what they want to push that again. And as Patrick has mentioned, that is a much bigger conversation and a much bigger problem. But until, until we're willing to sit down and say, oh, it's not just TikTok, it's, we have to adjust the entire industry. I just feel like we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I, you know, and I do feel like it's one small part of a larger Chinese influence operation. And I guess the question is, okay, let's say you close TikTok down. Is everything okay now? No, no, it hasn't improved anything. It's Just one venue of dozens.

[Patrick Beja]

Well, no. You're saying is everything okay then? No, but it hasn't improved anything. I would disagree with that. It fixes probably, hopefully a small thing. And it's not even. It fixes something for now. I really don't think China is manipulating the algorithm today to push this or that. Yeah, it's something for the future. Like, I'm sure if there is a pro Trump crowd on TikTok, I'm sure it's genuine. It's not China tweaking the algorithm there.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, everything on TikTok is originally created by an individual. The algorithm is what surfaces it. And you're right, they can, but it.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Feeds back because people will create content.

[Leo Laporte]

We think. Yes, that's right. That's true. Henry says that. My son says that. He says the way he succeeded on TikTok was watching carefully, went viral and making more of that. Something I should have probably done years ago, but for some reason I just. I can't figure that out. I don't know. He always says that to me. He says, dad, your socials are God awful. I said, yeah, we're trying. We're not. We're trying to be unsuccessful. That's our goal. We don't. We don't want.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Was it his first viral video? Jousting on a hoverboard in a dorm? Yes, I think that that's. That's.

[Leo Laporte]

You're right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It was on Talk Soup or whatever that. That show was. Early days. Early days when he was at CU Boulder, I gave him a hoverboard. His friend, his roommate, actually. No, I accidentally bought two hoverboards by accident.

[Patrick Beja]

Such a thing to do.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That is the least surprising thing I've heard so far.

[Leo Laporte]

When you have two hoverboards, what's the first thing you got to do is joust naturally.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I guess I'm responsible for all of this.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You created TikTok, Leo. That was you.

[Leo Laporte]

Late night Instagram purchases. That's really the problem. If they ban that, I'll be very happy. You're watching this Week in Tech, our show today brought to you by. We'll have more with Father Robert Patrick Beja. Harry McCracken the technologizer, in just a moment. But first, a word from Melissa, the trusted data quality expert since 1985. I've been talking to Melissa's folks and they have really moved into the AI sphere with acquisitions, and it's really interesting. They're so smart. It's really interesting what they're doing. Melissa's AI enabled data quality solutions go now so far beyond just address verification. They're leveraging of course for decades since 1985 of accumulated data knowledge, advanced machine reasoning, cutting edge AI. They're taking this raw data, this raw address data and turning it into actionable, reliable insights for your business. Melissa's ability to enrich and cleanse data spans multiple industries. In fact, if you go to their page, you'll see they have solutions for financial, for fintech, for healthcare. Government uses Melissa education uses Melissa real estate. The list goes on and on. Melissa's suite of verification and cleansing services will benefit any business, any that doesn't want to, you know, hire data scientists and figure this all out for themselves. Whatever this is. What's so cool. Whatever rules your business operates within, Melissa can apply those business rules to your contact data, to your address data, to your customers and supply of data and give you actionable insights. Melissa is there to support you. It's like having a data expert that never sleeps. Melissa's intelligence system verifies identity of course, but that's helpful in preventing fraud. And well, there's know your customer regulations, gaming operations. If you want to talk about medical it ensures valid patient and medicine identification and healthcare systems. They actually match the image of the of the medication being prescribed to the patient information to make sure that they're getting the right medication and the right dosages. It's amazing what Melissa can do. They can securely update and verify constituent data across government databases. Know your business enables verification and monitoring for financial institutions. Melissa guides you through complex data management with ease, making advanced data quality accessible to everyone from small businesses to enterprises. You've got data scientists on your team and with real time data validation, comprehensive enrichment, cross reference verification with gold standard reference data and intelligent anomaly detection, it's no wonder Melissa has now become the trusted data quality expert worldwide. It's really, it's a wonderful thing to watch them incorporate these new technologies into what they already do to give you an even more valuable tool. Of course you never have to worry about your data. Melissa treats it like the gold that it is. They securely encrypt all file transfers. They have an information security ecosystem built on the ISO 27001 framework. They adhere to GDPR policies, they are SOC2 compliant and so on. You know your data is safe with Melissa. Contact Melissa's team, find out what they can do to elevate your business and evolve your data quality. And if you want to take a Look at their API, you can get started with 1000 records right now clean for free. Go to melissa.comTWiT M E L I S S A melissa.com TWiT these guys are remarkable in what they're doing, and I think you should find out more. Melissa.com twit I know they can help your business. Thank you, Melissa. They've helped our business and you support us when you use that address. Melissa.com Twitter TWIT so Pavel Durov has come home. You people have released him?

[Patrick Beja]

We let him go.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this was a victory for the French authorities, actually, who arrested the founder of Telegram, saying he's not cooperating with law enforcement. As a result, he immediately stepped up, you know, their moderation, their investigation into illicit activity. And I guess the French authorities at that point said, okay, you can go. Is that what happened?

[Patrick Beja]

That's what it seems. That's what seems to have happened. It took a few months.

[Leo Laporte]

They held him for a long time.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, I mean, held him. He was probably in his, you know, luxurious hotel somewhere. But, yeah, there was a lot of confusion about this story because there was a fear that the French authorities wanted to break in encryption, which actually the Parliament tried to do, like, last week, which was outrageous, but ended up not happening, thankfully.

[Leo Laporte]

And, of course, the Brits have already done that with investigatory Powers Act. I'm sure America will. Australia has done the same thing. Encryption is under threat all over the world.

[Patrick Beja]

Yes. Including in France. Repeatedly. The government has asked to include backdoors, which they say, you know, oh, but they won't be backdoors. And then they describe them and they're backdoors, and you're like, what are you talking? But thankfully, the law didn't pass, so that we're safe for now. But in the case of Durov, in the case of Telegram, it wasn't about encryption. It was about metadata. And the fact that Telegram, as a company, did not even respond to legal requests. Like, it seems we don't have all the details, but it seems they didn't have any contact that could, you know, when you say, okay, we have this person talking to this person, we want times and maybe IP addresses. I don't know the level of encryption they have. They didn't get a response. Or there was one person lost in an office somewhere, and that's what's changed. And the. In the intervening months, they have apparently used some of their money to create a department that does that. So it really wasn't about encryption. It's not like the French government or the authorities were trying to get into private messages. It Was really like at some point you're like, come on man, we're just asking, we're being reasonable and you're the one not being reasonable. And it seems he ended up agreeing that he wasn't being reasonable and acceded to the demands of the authorities.

[Leo Laporte]

He was charged with complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of csam, child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud. And we know this by the way, the Telegram is full of groups. It's one of the things Telegrams does really well is these groups to do all sorts of illicit stuff and then refusing to cooperate with law enforcement when they made inquiries. Every big tech company cooperates to a point, right. Putting a backdoor in end to end encryption is a bridge too far for some companies like Apple. But everybody, when you know, provided with a subpoena or whatever you call it in France, a legal order from local authorities will provide information. Apparently Telegram is willing to do that.

[Patrick Beja]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Information they have. Now Telegram has in fact we talked about this on Tuesday and security now, now scientists have finally kind of looked at what Telegram is doing in its encryption. It's always done a roll your own encryption system, which they claim to be strong but is in fact not standard end to end encryption, well known standard technologies. And these researchers said, yeah, it's just a Tower of Babel. It's not really real encryption. I think Pavel Durov's brother. Have you looked into that, Robert, at all? What the encryption of Telegram?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Well, I, I did at the start of Telegram when we were evaluating it as a global communications platform. And like you, I couldn't find straight answers on exactly what was used, what standards were going to be in place and whether or not there would be any records kept of the messages that we were sending back and forth. They had the option to turn off logs, but that wasn't enough for us. So then we just said no. But we use it as a distribution platform for generally public information, but we do not use it as a secure messaging platform.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, and no one should. On the other hand, it's, you know, perfectly fine to use as just kind of casual messaging. I always liked Telegram quite a bit. In any event, after Durham was arrested. This is almost a year ago, isn't it? It's been a while.

[Harry McCracken]

It has been a while, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's see. Durov was arrested in France, it just says last year. This is the New York Times story. He'd been barred from leaving France, but the prosecutor's office in Paris said on Monday the judges handling his case had lifted the traffic restrictions. But he does have to go back to France April 7th for a hearing. But immediately. Oh, it was last August, so it wasn't quite a year. But last August, immediately. Telegram seems to have moved quickly to give the authorities the information they wanted. So it worked. It worked. After being released from custody last year, he was required to check in at a police station twice a week. You're right, he wasn't suffering. He has, he has, by the way, I think a joint dual citizenship with the United Arab Emirates and France. Right.

[Harry McCracken]

He's triple citizenship, I think.

[Leo Laporte]

Triple citizenship, yeah. He's from Russia. In fact, Telegram was created in Russia. Putin forced him out, forced him to sell. He was at the time considered the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia because he had a social network. After Putin forced him to sell, he went to Dubai and created Telegram. Yeah, I, you know, I feel like it's not unreasonable for these platforms to give authorities in the countries they operate in the information they request. I do feel like it's a bridge too far to force companies to break end to end encryption. This is what Apple decided it couldn't do in the uk. But it ended up being a victory for the UK in my opinion, because Apple withdrew its advanced data protection from the uk, so.

[Patrick Beja]

So in fact, no one can use it. So no one has.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. English users now have no protection, basically.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So, you know, Leo, every time I hear a government spokesperson say, oh, no, but we'll keep the key, we'll take care of it. I always think back to remember when the TSA published a photo of this super secret TSA skeleton key that could open all TSA locks, not realizing that the photo meant, oh, now anyone can create that skeleton key. Excellent.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And by the way, those locks are still on. Suitcases sold everywhere.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And. And the. Plenty of people have keys these days.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I've got three of them.

[Patrick Beja]

I think we should, we should have three of them.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you have three for?

[Father Robert Balasare]

You know, sometimes you never know when you're gonna need. Well, honestly, it's because we get guests into the Korea all the time and sometimes I get. They don't know how to open up their own locker luggage. So I've got a couple sets.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, it's okay. I got the master key. Wow.

[Patrick Beja]

I think we should put ourselves, pat ourselves on the back a little bit about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. I think sore.

[Patrick Beja]

I think it's the relentless education that people like all of you have been doing for years. That means most of the time those laws don't go through because people understand now what seems like a reasonable idea? Oh, we'll just have the key and we'll give it to no one. Actually doesn't work. It's not an idea that is instinctive. Like you could think it works. We've explained it enough that people now understand.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, what did happen in the United States in 19, I think it was 1996, the FBI convinced Congress to pass a law called CALEA.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, of course, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Assistance to Law Enforcement act, which provided a backdoor to digital communications to law enforcement. Because law enforcement said, hey, you know, we've been able to wiretap all these analog systems with these new digital systems. We can't get into them. So the backdoor was provided. And that's exactly the backdoor that Chinese hackers used to get into the phone system so they could tap administration officials. The same Chinese hackers we can't get rid of because these backdoored systems are so prevalent and would be so expensive to remove and would take. We'd actually. Somebody said, somebody from the telecom said it would take us. We'd have to take the entire United States telecommunications system down for 12 hours to fix it. And we're not going to do that.

[Patrick Beja]

Is it hard coded in the hardware?

[Leo Laporte]

It's SS7, right. Robert, is that it would be.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You would have to do a forklift upgrade. You literally have to rip equipment out.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

In order to make this work properly.

[Leo Laporte]

It's built into all the hardware.

[Harry McCracken]

Willing to live without communications for 12 hours if it would help.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That actually sounds kind of fun. I mean I'd be volunteer.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, good for you.

[Harry McCracken]

Just not on a Sunday. Since then we can do Twitter.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I have other podcasts, you know, I mean there's only a few days of the week you could actually do this without killing me.

[Patrick Beja]

Imagine, imagine if that actually was the. I guess the, the solution is that you slowly upgrade the infrastructure over time. And when you replace hardware, you put hardware that hopefully doesn't have a back door.

[Father Robert Balasare]

The problem with that is if you introduce new hardware with the exist any of the existing hardware, there's a venue for them to infect the new hardware.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So it wouldn't work. You'd have to rip it all out at the same time.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, great. That was the, that was the lesson. Yeah. We gave the FBI a back door. The FBI at times said, great. You know, this is. We're never going to let anybody know. And here we are, you know, 15 years later. Mo. Almost 20 years later.

[Patrick Beja]

30 years later.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it worked for 30 years.

[Patrick Beja]

What are you complaining about Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

It worked. True.

[Patrick Beja]

We don't know how long they've been in the system. Maybe they've been in the system for 29 years.

[Leo Laporte]

Forever. SS7 has been widely known to be broken for at least a decade.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So it sounds like it wasn't.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

The solution is actually to never say anything on a system that doesn't have strong encryption. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Patrick Beja]

So you need now more than ever strong encryption everywhere.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually. I would be able to do the shows if they took down the telecommunications system. Nobody else would. But I have Starlink here. We're running on Comcast, which would go down. But I bet Starlink is secure. Right? Robert, I don't have to worry.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But the base station Starlink terminates to ground somewhere and that's running on equipment.

[Leo Laporte]

That you'd have to shut that down. Yeah. Amazon. I'm sorry, not Amazon. Alphabet has a Starlink competitor we need. By the way, let's get some Starlink competitors up in the sky as quickly as possible. Right. Elon has way too much power at this point and you know he can turn off Starlink for anybody he doesn't like. He could right now say I don't like Leo and flip a switch. Alphabet has. You remember Project Loon? This was where they were going to have balloons with lasers.

[Harry McCracken]

That was from the same era as the original Google self driving car.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Larry did. Larry talk about Project Luna in time.

[Harry McCracken]

We did a list of all the moonshots, some of which are totally forgotten. Waymo is one of the few that's actually happened and loon kind of evolved into this thing that's happening.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So loon to the amphitheater. Yeah, sorry.

[Father Robert Balasare]

They brought a loon setup to the very first Google I. O that they had at the amphitheater. So you were actually able to go and touch and see the hardware.

[Leo Laporte]

They were. They were. They weren't in orbit. They weren't even in. Were they in the stratosphere? Where were the stratosphere?

[Father Robert Balasare]

So big balloons with basically baskets hanging with all the equipment that you would need to be able to.

[Leo Laporte]

Like the wizard of Oz. Okay.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah. But the cool part of it, the cool part of it was they would be auto launched. So whenever they needed more coverage or when once one balloon was going down, they'd auto launch. And then depending on where they have it on in altitude would depend on that.

[Leo Laporte]

Shows they control where it went.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Right. So they could bring it up and down and these things could loiter for weeks and weeks on end. So very interesting idea. Not super practical. And they tended to have issues with bad weather. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, right. So the Financial Times once again says that Alf Alphabet has spun off this technology from Project Luna. They are now putting these lasers on towers, giant towers and to connect remote areas to the Internet. They do, they do.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I, I used a couple of them in the DRC in Congo and the drc. So they are extremely useful when you have a stubborn last mile Right. Problem where you just, you can't run fiber. A wireless link is either too slow or it runs into issues with interference. You can get 20 kilometers, you can get 20 gigabits per second. Wow. Yeah. The nice thing about it is the terminals. So you need two of them. They have, they're going to a solid state but right now they have a mirror system so that they will automatically adjust so you don't have to get like super, super solid like you.

[Leo Laporte]

But they are line of sight systems.

[Father Robert Balasare]

They are line of sight.

[Leo Laporte]

So is rain. Does, does fog inhibit them? This is their rain.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It can, it can do. As long as it's not too heavy. But cloud cover and fog, that kills it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. So it's not super reliable.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Not super reliable. But if you've got an area like, I don't know, Congo and most of.

[Leo Laporte]

Africa, there's nothing else where you are.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Going to be able to get line of sight and clear skies for 99 of of the year. It's a lifesaver. I mean it saves so much money and the speed is amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is, they're calling it Tara Taa R A. I don't know where that name comes from. It operates in 12 countries now, including India and parts of Africa. They've created a five kilometer laser link over the Congo river between Brazzaville and Kinsasha, which is the capital of the drc. It also supplements overloaded mobile phone networks at events like Coachella. The music. The music festival. Yeah. Okay, Tara, this is the Financial Times writing has a long way to go before it can compete with Starlink whose 7,000 satellites generated an estimated $9.3 billion in revenue last year from 4.7 million subscribers. I'm one of them. Not because I want to be, because I have no choice. It's Comcast or Starlink or nothing. And I needed redundancy in case the Comcast goes out, which it does from time to time.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's not a true competitor though. It's interesting technology. It is great for point to point deployment. It is great when you need elastic, a temporary last mile solution to deploy to something like Coachella or South by Southwest, where you just need to get some temporary towers to increase your bandwidth for an event. But it's, it's not a global delivery system. It's not a permanent system. You're going to have all the issues that you do with terrestrial towers. So I want a competitor to Starlink this. This ain't it.

[Harry McCracken]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Harry McCracken]

I mean, I think, I think a lot of this originates from Google wanting to reach the next billion people who were not on the Internet at all sometimes because it was very hard to get the Internet that last mile to them. And so this, I think, has really been tailored for that rather than Starlink, which is this massive global consumer product.

[Leo Laporte]

This week, Evan Feynman, former director of bead, the broadband equity access and deployment program, just the name alone tells you they're probably in trouble. In the Trump administration, they provide grants to expand Internet access across the country. The former director, now former, resigned and warned in a scathing resignation letter that Elon Musk intends to get rich at the expense of rural Americans. He wrote in a lengthy email obtained by Politico, stranding all or part of rural America with worse Internet so that we can make the world's richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington. The Infrastructure, Investment and jobs act granted $42.5 billion to the bead program in 2021. As of yet, no projects have actually begun. And in a statement earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Biden's woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies and burdensome regulations had prevented Bede from connecting a single person to high speed Internet. Lutnick says they're going to rip out the pointless requirements and probably set up Elon to provide that bandwidth. Elon was mad. He was hopping mad because he had tried to get to be one of the providers for BEAD and was refused because it was, I guess, so expensive. They, I think they were also continuing costs. Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Continuing costs of starlink are far more than installing a fiber network. Yes. A fiber network is way more expensive upfront. You have to put a lot of capital outlay in order to make it work. But once it's in the ground and once it's connected, it's not just connecting rural communities.

[Harry McCracken]

It's.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It increases the possibilities for those rural communities to use that fiber. So we're losing out on something that could be infrastructure for 10, 20, 30 years down the line in order to get something that will be obsolete in a year. That's not a good trade.

[Leo Laporte]

No. Yeah. If I had fiber, I wouldn't need Starlink. Come to think of it, we haven't been able to get it up here. All right. Yeah, sorry.

[Patrick Beja]

No, I'm just. You know, I lived for six years in Finland in a very rural area. Incredibly rural. We had fiber. Yeah, I understand that it's not easy to lay out and. And we didn't have fiber. I mean, there were government subsidies and help, but it was essentially a community, half community have official project. So we did have to pay a lot of money. But it was. It allowed me to work from there and I had faster fiber than I did when I was in France before I moved to Finland. The. The advantages of laying down that groundwork are immense. And I still don't. I mean, I understand why it's not happening like in a place like where you are, Leo. I understand why. But it's such a shame that it's not more voluntarily encouraged and implemented by government effort.

[Leo Laporte]

I can see the attractiveness of wireless solutions though. Right. You don't have to dig holes in the ground. It's quicker to set up.

[Patrick Beja]

It's awesome. But it's a. It's a quick temporary fix as.

[Leo Laporte]

Temporary.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, father said.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I. We did the math on it and according to Elon's plan at about year eight, it is now as expensive as it was to run fiber. And then from then on it's way more expensive. So again, it's. If it's a one administration type thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It makes sense because it looks good on paper, but for the course of a generation it is a horrible deal.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Here's a fun one. You know Clearview AI, that's the face recognition company that is used by law enforcement all over the country, also has issues, of course, and has been the cause of false arrests of people of color. Because of its false positives, they apparently spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase 690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos from all 50 states. This is a story from 404 Media which does a great job on investigative reporting. Attempted is good news. Sounds like they weren't able to. For years they've collected photos from social media websites like Facebook. They just scrape Facebook, LinkedIn and others. And then they sell access to its facial recognition tool to law enforcement. New documents obtained by 404 Media Review that they spent a million dollars in a bid to buy all of this arrest records and arrest photos, including current and former home addresses, dates of birth, arrest photos, Social Security. By the way, I Say this again and again and nobody can believe me. It's not illegal to sell Social Security numbers. Nope. That's just mind blowing. Cell phone numbers and email addresses. The contract was signed in mid-2019. Ultimately, the deal fell apart after Clearview clashed with the seller about the utility of the data. Each company filed breach of. They got in a fight. Breach of contract claims.

[Harry McCracken]

Thank goodness for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, thank goodness. Anyway, they're trying to I guess is the point. They're trying to collect this information that's working to acquire all US mugshots nationally from the last 15 years. By the way. I don't know how it is in France, but in the United States if you're arrested, there's a mugshot, it doesn't mean you're guilty. But the fact is if you have booked.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Just that you've been booked. The fact is that if a mug shot exists, anybody who could find that's going to say, well, obviously they're a crook. It's probably not good.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That's why if you ever get arrested, remember to smile because you don't smile that dower.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. No, always smile. Yeah. Don't look unhappy. Be happy. Hi. I love it. I'm being arrested.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I mean you can they. This would have succeeded if they had gone to a company like Palantir. Palantir.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the problem. They went to the wrong company.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah. Yep, yep.

[Harry McCracken]

I think we're lucky that Clearview is not more competent. Inept that it has. As inept as it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they are too. By the way, this is not the first time. All right, I want to take a little break. Come back with more. You're watching this week in Tech fabulous panel with Harry McCracken who you know, you interviewed Larry Page in 2013. Had the last interview.

[Harry McCracken]

Not quite the last, but almost.

[Leo Laporte]

How was his voice? Was he talking back then?

[Harry McCracken]

This was soon after the news came out about him having some issues. So actually the story addresses that. But the main thing, when I played back my old recording, the main thing I was struck by was that old audio recordings sound terrible. Just because microphones have gotten so much better. I must have recorded it on my iPad at the time. And it sounds like we did it underwater just. Just because the quality has gotten so much better since then.

[Leo Laporte]

Amazing, isn't it? Technology never ends. Never stops moving. Also, Patrick Baja, we always love having you on. And it is getting later and later. I'm sorry, it's almost midnight now.

[Patrick Beja]

It is a quarter past midnight. Oh, but no, you keep me energized. I'm sorry for being the, the angry European.

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's, that's why you're here. You're here to be the angry European. European. Shake your fists, say zuta Lor.

[Patrick Beja]

That's ex. You. You have been to France.

[Leo Laporte]

And father Robert Ballis here, who as I said, is a colossus who astrides both continents and he's pretty good. You look good in shades. You look dangerous.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Sort of a future so bright I gotta wear shades.

[Patrick Beja]

Shades.

[Leo Laporte]

It's great to have all three of you. Our show today brought to you brand new sponsor. Glad to welcome him to the family. Kinsta K I N S T A When you run an online business, you have many different hats to wear. It could be overwhelming to manage your web hosting. I mean, who. I mean, that's an area of expertise that's kind of beyond what you learn in running a business. Right? You got a million other things to do. Kinsta is managed WordPress hosting with an expert team that will handle everything for you. So you could just sit back now, every. These days, every business has to have a website. Not having a website would be like not having a phone number. I mean it's, you gotta have a website. I don't even do business. If I, if I search for a website and I. And I don't find one, I go, I don't know, is this even a business? Kinsta makes it easy. They've bundled up all the essentials to make sites stress free. And of course, very important these days. The site has to be quick, responsive. The speeds of the Kinsta site will wow your visitors, of course. Absolute security. It never sleeps. And a dashboard so intuitive you'll wonder why everything isn't this easy. Here's the good thing. When you hit a snag, real humans are there 247 every day of the year to help out. In short, Kinsta is a perfect place for people who want professional results without needing a technical background. Kinsta doesn't just host WordPress websites, they deliver blazing speed. Your website could run up to 200% faster. Ironclad security, ultimate reliability. And if you're worried about moving from your current provider, don't worry. They'll migrate your entire website for free. And there's a 30 day money back guarantee, so there's no risk when it comes to security. And I know this is really important. Kinsta is in a league of its own. It's one of the few WordPress hosting providers that backs its promises with multiple enterprise certifications. You can see it all at the website and their custom control panel. It's, it's a, it's a work of art. And of course, whenever you need help, WordPress pros, not AI chatbots, real humans experts are there to respond in minutes and tackle even the trickiest problems. Who uses Kinsta? TripAdvisor, NASA? You ever hear of them? Indeed. Among the 120,000 businesses that trust Kinsta with their WordPress websites. WordPress is great for a website, but you don't want to manage it. You want to have somebody who really knows what they're doing. If you're tired of being your own website support team, switch your hosting to Kinsta. Get your first month free and don't worry about the move. They're going to handle the whole transition for you. No tech expertise is required. I think this is a great solution. Visit kinsta.com TWIT to get started. K-I-N-S-T A kinsta.com TWIT we welcome them to the family. Great to have you Kinsta. And we appreciate your support. You support us, dear listener, by going to that website. That way they'll know you saw it here. Kinsta.com/twit Are you ready? Scientists always love any story that begins with scientists achieve record breaking fusion stability. Bringing us one step everyone. And guess what? They're French scientists, so you know they're good. Scientists in France have just shattered a fusion energy record. Holding plasma. It's hard to hold plasma. They've held it longer than ever before. Big step toward nuclear fusion. We keep making these steps. The French Atomic Energy Commission in southern France has held maintained a plasma field for 22 minutes. Stability obviously is important. The particles are at 100 million degrees Celsius, which is in freedom units 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit. Atoms collide at incredible speeds. That's where the plasma comes from. A superheated electrically charged gas. But maintaining that stability is challenging and the 22 minute record is a significant improvement over previous attempts.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You know Leo, I, I love science and I love fusion technology. I love the advancements that they've been making. But as, as much as this is sort of big headline science, the, the issue is no matter how long you're able to maintain a fusion or even a fission reaction in a controlled environment, the mechanism that we use to convert that into usable electrical power goes back to the steam engine. We haven't made any massive strides in the conversion of this energy directly into electrical power that we can use to.

[Leo Laporte]

Power still have to turbine to generate Electricity with steam.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

This is, this is just a bigger fire. It's a bigger boy, but it's a.

[Leo Laporte]

Bigger fire that is, that burns not coal, not oil, but water. That's a start. Right?

[Patrick Beja]

The, the thing about fusion is that for people, I'm sure everyone knows, but it is, it essentially means unlimited energy.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Correct.

[Patrick Beja]

And like we have enough advancements, as you mentioned, Leo, in the past few years there's been significant improvements and advancements to the experiments that we could imagine in the not too distant future that actually working. The problem is now it still eats up more energy to create that reaction than it puts out. So it's really not usable at all yet. But until you have a gain in.

[Leo Laporte]

Energy, you're not doing anything important.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But see, even then they're talking about the net gain of how much power you have to put into to start the fusion reaction and then create the magnetic bottle to contain the fusion reaction versus the amount of heat that it puts out. It's not even factoring the fact that we're going to lose a massive percentage to the, the heat and mechanical loss of pushing it through a steam engine.

[Leo Laporte]

So you need a lot of net. This is part of a broader international effort to create fusion. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER is being built in southern France. It's a collaboration of China, the eu, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, the us Everybody's trying to do this and they're working together, which is pretty damn impressive, to build the world's largest tokamak. It will stand 30 meters tall, weigh 230, sorry, 23,000 tons. And they're the primary goal to achieve a tenfold energy gain. In other words, producing 500 megawatts from 50 megawatts of input.

[Patrick Beja]

And so there are two things here. First of all, this isn't going to be practical. Like we're not going to have lights lit up by fusion reaction for the next few decades probably. I don't think, you know, it's not until we probably won't be here anymore. But imagine a world, it changes everything. That.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

Where energy, energy is essentially free. It is insane. The impact on society that it would have, like that's the most scarce.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That's a post scarcity world, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, that's same technology used by the sun.

[Patrick Beja]

It changes everything. It changes everything.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

And like the first thing you think, well, maybe not everyone thinks about that, but when you think about AI and big data centers, the first thing at least I think about is okay, where are we getting the Energy. Right, right. And how much is it going to cost energy wise? That's the main constraint. That's what half what Jensen Huang spent half his keynote talking about almost last week. He was like, your gains, your business profits are going to be constrained by how much energy you can have. Like this is the main concern. So once we have fusion it's going to change everything. However, it's not coming for a while and we do have something.

[Leo Laporte]

I was getting my hopes up.

[Patrick Beja]

Works really well and that is the next best, best thing. And that's like fission nuclear.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Gen 4 nuclear reactors.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Gen 4 nuclear reactors can actually take the waste released from previous generation reactors.

[Patrick Beja]

And use it too. Yeah. And it seems like again AI is pushing a lot of companies, including big tech companies in the US to kind of get the financial impetus to fight the negative image that nuclear has in the US and elsewhere and actually invest in nuclear because it is, is, it's not super clean, but it's definitely decarbonated. I don't know if that's a term in English. And it creates a lot of energy and it is a solution to a lot of our problems until we get fusion going. In France we have I think something like what is it? 70% of our energy is.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That's down. Right. You were 80, I believe at one point. And that's.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, no, I think it's more, I don't have the exact. Basically we don't have to worry about energy because we have so much nuclear and is a specific thing that we have in France. And it is old model reactors like it's the ones that we were building in the 70s. The new generations are much, much better and more efficient than recycled and safer waste product. Yes.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You can't melt down a Gen 4 reactor. It's physically impossible because they designed the fueling system so that if it gets to the point where it's an out of control reaction, the pellets actually expand and it shuts down the reaction. It's, I mean gen 4 would be amazing except for the fact that we had Three Mile island and Chernobyl and we are so afraid as a nation. The United States, I'm talking about that we don't even want to talk about nuclear power.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Unlike Germany decommissioned all of its nuclear power plants. It took them all offline.

[Patrick Beja]

But AI is, you know, that's the beauty of capitalism.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. We need the, we need the power now. Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

And now who is it like Google Meta and someone else went and signed the agreements of. I can't remember the name of the organizations is. It's essentially promising. Try vying to triple the amount of energy with these new modular.

[Leo Laporte]

So small modular nuclear power plants. So you mentioned gtc. I completely forgot. This was just this week. Jensen Huang, Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference, which is now. A lot of. It's about AI. Were there any big stories coming out of that? What were the stories coming out of it? We didn't really cover it.

[Patrick Beja]

I think there were two interesting aspects of it. Of course, Jensen Huang being Jensen Huang is the story. He's so cool in a way that I'm kind of scared to point out, because the last tech giant that was cool turned out to not be so cool. But there are two things. First, he is laying out the plans for AI GPUs or AI chips for the next like three or four years so that companies can plan what they're going to buy and what they're going to do. And in. In big details. But the other thing, the most exciting thing I think to our audience is going to be from GTC and from other outlets as well, other companies as well. The progress in robotics. I think it is incredible what we're seeing in robotics, aided by AI, of course, but not just that mechanically as well. There's Gemini Robotics that was announced two weeks ago, I believe, and it seems like, I don't know if you've seen the new version of Atlas and there are a few other companies that create robots that don't even need the big wires that connect them to the power supply and such. And they mechanically move in a way that is so they can do so much like the machines themselves, the articulations, the power that they put into the limbs. They can do movements that are incredibly lifelike already. And then you have AI that enable these situations, these movements in context of a request or a changing environment. I think we're maybe getting into the beginning of a new robotics type cycle.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this going to be the year of robots everywhere? Are we going to see robots?

[Patrick Beja]

Well, maybe not this year, but I think in the next five years. I don't know if they're going to be financially viable. It seems like it's going to be very expensive, but I think they're going to become extremely capable. Like we're seeing robots rise up. I was going to say the little.

[Leo Laporte]

Robot that he brought out was very cute. Was that autonomous or was it. Was there somebody with a. Yeah, it.

[Patrick Beja]

Seemed to be autonomous. It's a joint project between them and Disney and someone else. But the more interesting ones there. So one thing that they're doing at Nvidia is thanks to their digital twins technology, which is Omniverse and Cosmos and another technology together, essentially they can train AIs to do things in actual environments. Because the physics simulation is so true to actual real world physics. They can train AIs faster than they could train the physical items in a more, in a, in a, in a sufficiently realistic environment, digital environment that they can do it really fast. And so the robots become trained with the AI models that are dedicated to that. And as I was saying, Gemini has a robotics version of the model as well. And we have companies that are creating the mechanics of it that work like you can see robots doing cart flips. And even more impressive than Boston Dynamics Atlas, even the new version is vastly improved.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the new one is like doing somersaults and cartwheels and all sorts of stuff.

[Patrick Beja]

And it's very, it's human shaped in the sense that it doesn't have the bulky backpack, it doesn't have like, it, it works. I don't know how much battery life it has, but I think we're seeing robots arriving like now.

[Leo Laporte]

Huang says this is going to be the, the year of the personal. A robot. This is the little Jensen robot.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah. I can't remember how it's cool, let's be honest.

[Father Robert Balasare]

That's Wall E. It looks just like.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, of course Disney designed it. He didn't really go into great depth about how it was working. It could easily have been remote controlled. But I gather that it's supposed to be responding to his gestures and his queries and so forth.

[Harry McCracken]

I am sort of sick of these remote controlled robots.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I don't want to see any more.

[Harry McCracken]

The bartenders at the Tesla event.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, right. Those are humans controlling that one, right?

[Harry McCracken]

Yes, yes.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah, but you need a robot that has its processing on board. As long as they're tethered to a giant bank of super power hungry servers.

[Leo Laporte]

Then it doesn't matter. I agree. So what I think is interesting is that in some ways AI has already eaten the Internet. It's eaten as much textual context, content as it possibly can. But what it lacks is this knowledge of the physical world. It's one thing that we have that AIs don't have. So robots now take it out into the physical world. And I think that that may actually speed up the development of AI. If it actually sees things falling, it can understand gravity a lot better than reading about it in a book.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah, well, that was Actually part of GTC as well, because he was talking about the advancement of photonics and advanced storage systems. Because that's sort of a missing puzzle. If you can store more data that you can access more quickly, then your models become smarter.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So if they become smarter, then they can do a better job at modeling the actual physical world. And that was sort of pushed to the side. No one really talked about that. But I think the advancements in AI infrastructure, for me, because I'm an infrastructure guy, that's far more interesting because if they get that working properly, that has ramifications beyond just in a better AI model, more efficient, faster storage that can be used in quantum states. That's extremely interesting.

[Harry McCracken]

For me, the quantum stuff is interesting, particularly because at ces, Jensen Huang seemed to say that people were overly excited about quantum computing and stocks dropped and people started talking about maybe it being another 20 years before there's anything kind of useful. And at GTC, he said that he had maybe sounded overly pessimistic about it. And in fact, there's a lot of stuff happening with AI on the classical supercomputer, like ones powered by Nvidia chips working in concert with quantum computing. And maybe it's not going to be 20 years until that stuff happens.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, he walked it back.

[Leo Laporte]

I just, I hope that we are not being surrounded by the most massive multiple hype cycles and that all of this, you know, AGI, ASI fusion, all of this stuff isn't just BS and it's just going to be the same, same old, same old for the next few decades because it's not so great the way it is right now. For instance, police are telling people, law enforcement telling people, if you have a smartphone, dangerous texts have soared 600%. This is because of a Chinese cyber attack tool. They're now saying the FBI and the FTC are saying, delete dangerous texts as soon as you receive them. I see more and more of these texts. Hello, how are you? Who are you? What are you doing? You want to go to dinner? That kind of thing. But there's a new one, the unpaid toll scam. And I have seen quite a few of these. Their messages tailored to the locale you're in. They look like they're coming from the local toll collection agency. And you're warned that unless you pay immediately, you'll be subject to escalating fines. And there's a payment link which looks like it's coming from the agency. Here's a E Z pass that looks, you know, this is fake. This is spurious. But if you click this link, you get a place that looks just like, you know, easy pass. And of course it's not. The best result, the FBI says if you fall for the scam is you'll lose some money. More likely you'll lose your credit card number and other personal information which will be harvested, sold on, delete and report is what the FBI says. And here's the graft. The graph Toll free scam texts in early 2025. I wish they had some scale on the left side. This is the worst graph I've ever seen, but there it is. Anyway. This is from Forbes. 604% rise in toll FREE toll fee Scam texts.

[Harry McCracken]

Is this a problem like all over the world or is like what do.

[Leo Laporte]

You do in France?

[Harry McCracken]

Yeah. Does France have the same issues?

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, I think less, but we do get some. And you get some of those calls that either, you know, that you connect and no one say anything, so you want, you try to call them back or there is now it's starting with.

[Leo Laporte]

AI Voices that sound like people, you know.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, no, actually, well, no, not, not quite that, but an automated voice that tells you, oh, you are. Because I, I have my, you know, I run my company and, or it's like you have, you have the right to get this kind of subsidy or you have this kind of thing that you could get and we can tell you, we can walk you through that or. And of course it's always existed, but because, because of AI, it's very easy to massively increase the amount of coals that are placed.

[Leo Laporte]

And if you can make a, a lot of them cheaply, the chance of you catching a fish go up and.

[Patrick Beja]

Just like, it's, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's just.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I would think the French would be less acceptable since you're all naturally cynical and skeptical.

[Patrick Beja]

No, well, I, I. So far I haven't fallen for anything, but I've certainly seen an increase in these kinds of things. And you know, the, the I think one that you've always, you, you've all seen as well, like, hey, I've changed my number. Please help. Like, hey dad, I've changed my number. This is my new number. Please send me money. Or yeah, these kinds of things with which I didn't see even six months ago or 12 months ago. Now I see them regularly. And I think in France we're probably better protected against these things because it's easier to take action legally. And I still see them every once in a while.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I, I have a Google voice number that I registered in Los Angeles a long time ago and I wrote a chat GPT client for it. And so it gets scam attacks and it keeps them on the conversation as long as possible.

[Harry McCracken]

I do that myself sometimes. I just chat with these people. But maybe that's a bad idea.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah, my dad does that. He loves answering those phone calls and just to waste their time.

[Patrick Beja]

You know what, what, who, who does that? Right. These calls.

[Leo Laporte]

There's, there's pig butchering scams out of Myanmar and.

[Patrick Beja]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

And these poor. This is why I don't want to torture them. It is horrible because these people are also slaves, right? They're not.

[Patrick Beja]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

They're un.

[Patrick Beja]

Human trafficking.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah.

[Harry McCracken]

Maybe I'll just, maybe I will just ignore them from now on.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, just, well, it's not like it's going to improve their situation, but I.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I have, I have issues. I mean, I've had too many people that are close to me who have fallen for that.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I know.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I, I, that's a soft spot for me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I don't blame you. It's inferior. My rage point, I guess just the point is that some, sometimes a person calling is as much a victim as, as, as your friends and family. Do you. Is there a move in France to ban cell phones from classrooms?

[Patrick Beja]

Yes, absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

There certainly is in the United States. California just implemented that. I know our local schools. The Lancet, the British medical journal has published a study that says researchers find no improvement in student well being or academic performance in schools that restrict cell phone use. It doesn't improve grades, it doesn't improve well being. The study examined 30 schools in the UK, 20 of which restricted cell phones in some capacity, 10 of which did not. In restrictive schools, the Lancet article says phones were not allowed to be used during the school day for recreational purposes, were required to be kept off inside bags, stored in lockers, kept in a pouch, handed into the school reception, or not even allowed on the premises at all. In permissive schools, phones were permitted to be used anytime or at certain times at breaks or lunch or in certain zones. Contrary to popular belief, the researchers found no significant difference in the well being of students allowed to use their phones compared to those who were not.

[Harry McCracken]

It did sound like even the non restrictive schools had some restrictions.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it does.

[Harry McCracken]

It was not binary between a band and do whatever you want whenever you want.

[Leo Laporte]

Taylor Lawrence writes in her substack. Reactionary hacks have been pushing the false narrative that social media and smartphones are leading to declining literacy and mental health. Problems. It's false. And it's simply the latest iteration of a long running freakout about the technology and media that young people are using. She represents the other side of that story. This is a fast.

[Father Robert Balasare]

My organization runs schools. That's, that's like yeah. Thing. That's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Father Robert Balasare]

And we have policies that go back 20 years now on the use of cell phones.

[Leo Laporte]

And how about laptops?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Laptops we allow. So we will allow laptops in classrooms, but we shut off the, the WI fi unless the assignment is needs connectivity.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's.

[Father Robert Balasare]

We allow cell phones to be used, just not in the classroom, not in the hallways. So it's, it's not just restricting the technology, it's putting the students in the right frame of mind to know. Okay, this is time for me to pay attention to X, Y or Z. Yeah. So I think that's where the, the, the report fails because they're just trying to do this binary. Well, if we put the phones away, does it increase scores? Or if we allow phones, does it do scores slip? It's, it's more important to look at the attitudes that students develop around the use of their devices.

[Leo Laporte]

I agree.

[Father Robert Balasare]

If they recognize that the devices are extre. Useful but that at certain times they're not appropriate, that's the lesson you want to teach. That's what our schools have been using for the last two decades.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, I think you're right. I forget, forget I even brought it up. Just forget. We're going to take a break and then I'm going to tell you the final story of the day that will convince you we are in fact in the worst timeline. Just if you add any questions, this will tell you. All right, Harry McCracken, Father Robert Ballisaire, the Digital Jesuit, and the wonderful Patrick Beja. Not Patrick.com. it's all wonderful to have all three of you here. Nice to have experts to talk me off the ledge. You know, just, you know, don't have cell phones in the classroom. You don't need them. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped. It's time to talk about our sponsor, this Week in Tech, brought to you this week by Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, right? From self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it ain't in your industry yet, don't worry, it's coming and fast. But AI needs a lot of speed, needs a lot of computing power. How do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure OCI OCI is blazing fast. It's a secure platform for your infrastructure, for your database, your app development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're going to save a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci. Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, Sunoai. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer. Go to oracle.com twit that's oracle.com twit and we thank them so much for supporting this Week in tech. This is how I know we're in the worst timeline. DoorDash has done a deal with the Buy Now, Pay later company Klarna, so that you can borrow money to buy a burrito. Pay for your takeout burrito in installments. DoorDash announced this week it'd be teaming with Klarna to offer a range of payment options to customers, including Buy Now, Pay Later. That allows users to defer payments to a more convenient time as well as you know, if you're borrowing money for a burrito, you've got problems. It seems like that's that's a sign.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Then you got to go pick it up yourself.

[Patrick Beja]

A sign of what?

[Leo Laporte]

It's a sign of poverty, obviously, but it's also unrealistic because if you can't pay for it now, what makes you think you're going to be able to pay for it later?

[Patrick Beja]

No, but I would like for everyone to go and this is the last story, right? That's what you said.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Patrick Beja]

So let's push this to its logical conclusion.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Patrick Beja]

If a society creates situations where people have to get a loan to buy a burrito, is the problem with the person getting a loan to buy a burrito or the society that is?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I agree with you. I agree with you.

[Harry McCracken]

I mean, anytime you use a credit card to buy a burrito, we are in some sense taking out a loan to buy a burrito. I like the fact that on Blue sky people were bringing up Wimpy, who.

[Leo Laporte]

Was famous for I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger.

[Harry McCracken]

Today on Popeyes, he invented this business model.

[Leo Laporte]

You're right.

[Patrick Beja]

You know, I don't think there are a lot of countries that have as much that live on credit as much as the US And I think that.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Is our biggest product. Debt is the biggest product of the United States.

[Patrick Beja]

You know, we don't really have credit cards here are mostly debit cards.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that interesting?

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's, here's from Chase passive income on x.com excited to announce I closed on a $31.38 transaction to secure a burrito inside of Chip's 20 year senior fixed rate financing provided by Klarna. Doordash provided delivery of the asset. Congratulations to all involved. You're absolutely right. It seems funny, but it really is a sad commentary on the rising cost of food and the rising amount of poverty.

[Father Robert Balasare]

The next step, the next logical step is for DoorDash to partner with Klarna and Patreon or GoFundMe so that you can also ask the public if they might want to chip in so you can get chips with your burrito.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I mean, it's, oh my God.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's all vertically integrated, Leo. It's ready to go.

[Patrick Beja]

I love the U.S. i, I, everything I work on is probably at some point made in the U.S. or you know, thought of in the U.S. but when you come from Europe and we have problems in Europe, but when you come from Europe and you go to California and you see how things work, it is surprising. And that's the worst time you, you brought up the klarna thing with DoorDash, which is essentially, it probably is just.

[Leo Laporte]

A hype up Klarna because they have their IPOs coming up.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, that's the other thing. Is it a serious thing? Like, is anyone actually? It feels like.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I hope not. I, God, I hope not.

[Leo Laporte]

It seems like you're, I don't know, you should rethink your priorities, I guess.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I mean, if you're taking a loan to Doordash, they should have a partnership with an addiction specialist because you're doing something wrong in your life and you need to fix it right away.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, this is the country where every sporting event is sponsored by gambling concerns. And every ad for these gambling concerns features fine print at the bottom saying, got a problem? Call 1-800-Gambling.

[Patrick Beja]

So actually we're seeing a lot more gambling. Well, a lot of gambling sites in, in France as well. And the problem is you can't really ban them because they would operate outside of your jurisdiction.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true. Then they'd be illegal. Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

And people will essentially. Yeah. Gambling until the Internet or recently in the Internet age was just national. Is it companies or organizations that would organize, you know, lotteries, the lotto and stuff like that. But now you can bet on anything in France as well, where it was heavily controlled until now. And yeah, obviously that's, that's a problem. But I don't need to fight.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You can go to Vegas right now and bet on the next Pope. I'm dead serious. I love there.

[Leo Laporte]

Who is the front runner right now?

[Father Robert Balasare]

The front runner is Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Followed by Cardinal Pyrrolin.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah. They think it's time to get out of the, out of the Italian Pope thing. Of course. Your Pope is. Benedict is from Argentina, right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Argentina, yes, Argentina.

[Leo Laporte]

The Conclave. I've been meaning to ask you.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I. We actually, I did. That was a good movie. It was a fun movie. Not super realistic, but it was fun.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not realistic. How about.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I mean there is, there is a thing called the mamorazio and we do it here in the society just as they do in a conclave. And that's basically where you have one on one conversations with people of well, who do you think would be good for this? There's no campaigning. There's no, they're not supposed to be any campaign.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

It's supposed to be what qualities are we looking for? What does the next Pope need to be? What. What do we need him to do? And then it moves to a conversation of well, who would be good for that?

[Leo Laporte]

So, so, so there are front runners in the sense that there's a. Probably already a consensus. I mean Benedict is a one is an amazing Pope, but. But he is also a reformist and I know has made many enemies. Right. In the conclave. Right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yes. Well, I mean he has picked more than 80% of the cardinals who will.

[Leo Laporte]

They're all his cardinals now. Okay.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But that, that he, it's, it's not like he stacked the deck. He was picking the best.

[Leo Laporte]

Francis. I'm sorry, I keep saying Benedict. Benedict's the old Pope. Francis is the current.

[Father Robert Balasare]

His whole papacy has been about reforming the Vatican and reforming the hierarchy. So you get the best person for the job, not just the next who's in line.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

So. But there is a general consensus that the next Pope is probably going to be a European and is probably will continue to reform. Not from the Philippines. It'll probably be an Italian would be my guess, Italian or German and will probably be with the reform. But more conservative.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Just to sort of be the reconciling Pope.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, God willing, we won't have to worry about that for some time to come and Francis will have a. Make a Full recovery.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Well, they're gonna. That's gonna be Conclave 2, the sequel.

[Leo Laporte]

I loved Conclave. Lisa thought it was a little slow, but I enjoyed it. But now I'm disappointed that it was. I mean, they do sew the ballads together. They throw em in the fire.

[Patrick Beja]

Right?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yeah. No, the traditions are. But okay, I've got your triple header. So you have to start with the two popes. Then you have to watch the Pope's Exorcist. And then Conclave. I think that's.

[Leo Laporte]

There was a movie. Have you ever seen Anthony Quinn in the Shoes of the Fisherman?

[Father Robert Balasare]

Yes. Oh, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's a classic. And that's also the Conclave. Yeah. Yeah. But was that accurate? Don't tell me. I don't want to know. You're ruining all of my. All of my childhood fantasies.

[Patrick Beja]

Ask ChatGPT. It will probably let you know.

[Father Robert Balasare]

ChatGPT never lies. Just ask. It'll know.

[Leo Laporte]

Father Robert, so great to see you. I. I hope all is well in your neighborhood and your family's doing well. And we just. We just. I miss you so much. Now that we don't have a studio, I don't get to see anybody anymore, so.

[Father Robert Balasare]

But it also means you can come here.

[Leo Laporte]

I really would very much like to come for jubilee. I need to walk through that door a few times. I'm going to bring my post it notes.

[Father Robert Balasare]

I will take you underground.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I really want to do that too. Anyway, it's wonderful to see you. Jesuit Pilgrimage app is his app. He's on bluesky@padresj. Thank you for being here, Father. Thank you. Great to see you, Patrick. Thank you for staying up late as well. You guys have stayed up well past midnight. It's almost 1am Such a pleasure. OtPatrick.com don't be fooled by anybody impersonating Patrick Bay.

[Patrick Beja]

The other not Patrick.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Blue sky. Also notpatrick.com. you still have the website. And that's. That's what really.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Matters. Anything you want to plug? The Phileas Club is back. I'm thrilled to see that.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, I guess the Phillies club for this audience. I mean, I. I do my weekly tech news show called Laurent Vu Tech. I also have a daily, actually a very short three minutes called lactute. I've been doing this for a couple of months. It's really fun.

[Leo Laporte]

I have a lot of friends who are learning French. This would be a wonderful thing to listen to to perfect your French.

[Patrick Beja]

I think that's actually something I've been recommending to English speakers who want to learn French because it's usually a subject matter that they're familiar with.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. So you kind of going on.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, I have a wonderful voice. So that also plays into it. But the affiliates club is in English, and that's where I talk about the. The. The way things are currently and the thing. The way things are in France and internationally. And you can get links to that show, the podcast, @notpatrick.com it's very easy.

[Leo Laporte]

Love that. Be careful with that sword. It looks sharp and everything else.

[Patrick Beja]

That's why it's so high up.

[Leo Laporte]

Where are you working now?

[Patrick Beja]

Oh, I'm in. In Paris. I mean, my. It's actually my old studio apartment. That is my one thing I actually bought and invested in where I started podcasting.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Patrick Beja]

20 years ago now. 19 years ago, a show about World of Warcraft that introduced podcasting to a lot of nerds in France.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. You know, our 20th anniversary show is April 13th. It's in a couple of weeks, and we are asking people. I've been getting some great submissions if you've been watching the show or maybe if you're new. We want to honor our community. So make a video. Tell us how you found Twit, where you first watch it, how you watch it today, that kind of thing. Any reminiscence. Somebody wrote a poem. There's a guy on a boat. We're getting some fun stuff, and we'll play as many of those as we can on the April 13, 20th anniversary edition of TWIT. But you've been doing this almost as long, Patrick. That's cool.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah. And I mean, I remember very clearly that I started listening to you and to my friend Scott Johnson on the instance. That's right. And I traveled to Las Vegas for the podcast and new media.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the New Media Expo.

[Patrick Beja]

Yeah, Expo.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

And you had to stand there and I went to see you and I think. Think we did a thing. You had me on.

[Leo Laporte]

That's how we met. Yeah.

[Patrick Beja]

That's the first time we met.

[Leo Laporte]

It's awesome. It's wonderful. It's great to see you again, Patrick. We'll get you back soon.

[Patrick Beja]

Thanks.

[Leo Laporte]

Same for Harry. Harry and his wife Marie used to come to the studio. And I miss you guys. It was so nice to see you. Used to visit Petaluma. Do you still ride your bike up across the bridge in battle?

[Harry McCracken]

Yeah, I've gotten as far as Larkspur.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. It's an E bike.

[Harry McCracken]

It's an E bike. And I have two batteries, so it's like One battery gets me there and the other battery gets me back.

[Leo Laporte]

So cool. What a great idea. I got to emulate you. Read Harry's [e-mail] he's also in bluesky. Harry McCracken.com and I have a newsletter.

[Harry McCracken]

Which I should plug from Fast Company. It's called Plugged in and it just moved from Wednesday morning to Friday morning. And if you search online for Fast Company Plugged in, you should be able to sign up pretty easily.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's free.

[Harry McCracken]

It is free.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have to. So it's nice to have a. No, that's not it. That's from Focus on the Family. That's the wrong one.

[Harry McCracken]

Don't subscribe to that one.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't subscribe to that one. Subscribe to this one. Focus on the technology, please. Awesome. Yeah, very nice. Let me just click that subscribe button and you should all do the same. Thank you, Harry.

[Harry McCracken]

Thank you, Leo, as always.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Pleasure.

[Harry McCracken]

Hope to see you in person sometime.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you know, we got to figure out a way maybe we'll do a live show out in the world at some point and then invite local people.

[Harry McCracken]

Please do.

[Leo Laporte]

And France and Italy or a tour. Wonderful. Love to do it.

[Father Robert Balasare]

You could all come to Rome.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's just all go to Rome.

[Father Robert Balasare]

We have the Aula. It's a huge room. We could fit everybody.

[Leo Laporte]

I would be fun to do a live show in Rome.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Wow, a tour does sound fun. Let's go on tour, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Benito likes the idea.

[Father Robert Balasare]

Actually, Benito, the problem is we are set up for remote operations. So you could actually run it from there.

[Leo Laporte]

No, we have to bring him. That's the rule. Yeah, we have to bring him. He must come. Jammer B says live show equals new equipment. No, you can't unretire Jammer B. You've got to stay. We had lunch with Jammer B, came down to see Amphreese McGee. It was so great to see him again. Our old studio manager who's retired now, but still a regular listener. It's great to have you, John Slanina. It's great to have all of you. Thank you for being here, especially our club members. Really, you make a big difference keeping the show and all of our shows on the air. Club Twit members pay only seven bucks a month, but for that they get ad free versions of all the shows. They get access to the Discord, where a lot of fun stuff happens. Great people hanging out in the Discord. But also we do events like Stacy's Book Club and Chris Marquardt's. Photo Adventure. We just booked another Coffee Geek hour with Mark Prince, the coffee geek. So it is a lot of fun in our club. I know you get the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing you're supporting the stuff that we do. I think it's more important than ever, frankly, to do what we're doing and get the word out about what's happening in technology. So thank you in advance. Twit TV Club Twit. If you'd like to join, we'd sure love to have you. Another way you can help us out. Leave us a review, 5 stars if possible, on your favorite podcast client. That turns out to be a very important way for us to get new advertisers. Whether it's podcasts from Apple or Spotify or Pocket casts, whatever you use, just put a five star review in there. Thank you. Thank you for that. We will be back next week, next Sunday from 2 to 5pm every Sunday afternoon Pacific time. That's 5 to 8pm Eastern time, the middle of the night in Italy and France. Actually it's 2100 UTC. That's when we start the show and I mentioned that because you can watch us live. We stream of course for the club members into the discord. But there's also YouTube, Twitch, X.com we stream on Facebook, on LinkedIn, Kik and TikTok. As for as long as it's around. You can watch our streams live there. But it's a podcast so you can also download copies of the show, audio or video or both from our website. There's a video channel on YouTube dedicated to this Week in tech and you can subscribe in that podcast client of yours and get us automatically the minute it's available. Thank you everybody for being here. Hope you have a wonderful evening. We'll see you next time. Another Twit. This is in the can do on the Twit. All right. Doing the Twit, baby. Doing the Twit.

[Patrick Beja]

All right.