← All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
Loading summary
Transcript799 lines
- [00:01]
Leo Laporte
It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Owen Thomas joins us from the San Francisco Business Times. Doc rock from YouTube of YouTube fame, and Wes Faulkner, who's got a big announcement about a new business he's starting. We'll talk about the latest ChatGPT5. Winner or loser? Seems like the jury's still out on that one. Tell you who is a loser. Probably Perplexity. At least it seems unlikely Apple will buy them and what Apple did cleverly did to ensure no tariffs on their chips. All that more coming up next on this Week in Tech.
- [00:38]
Owen Thomas
Podcasts you love from people you Trust.
- [00:42]
Leo Laporte
This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week at Tech. Episode 1044, recorded Sunday, August 10th, 2025. Elephants on the moon. It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech, the show. We cover the week's tech news with the smartest darn journalists and tech gurus and just plain old enthusiasts in the biz. Joining me right now, Owen Thomas. He is the managing editor at the San Francisco Business Times, longtime friend. Hello, Owen.
- [01:21]
Doc Rock
Hello, Leo.
- [01:22]
Owen Thomas
I prefer to think of myself as a passion advocate.
- [01:25]
Leo Laporte
An advocate for passion. I love it. Do you share the passion or you just merely advocate?
- [01:31]
Owen Thomas
I, you know, I'm also an enthusiasm enthusiast.
- [01:37]
Leo Laporte
I always call myself an enthusiast. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a geek. But I feel like I'm more of an enthusiast than anything else. And I think we make twit for enthusiasts, basically. If you're an enthusiast, that's all it takes. Wes Faulkner is also here. Good to see you, Wesley. Oh, we got a new lower third. I'm going to ask you about that in a second. Before I do, though, let me say hello to Doc Rock, who is of course YouTube star and Director of Strategic Partnerships at ECAMM. Of course, the software we use to switch this show remotely even. You know, it's so funny because I thought your. Your baseball jersey said Eminem, but now I realize it says ecamm. The CNA were hidden by the microphone. Oh, he's an Eminem fan.
- [02:21]
Doc Rock
I should make. I should make an Eminem one. To where I go to conferences. That'd be fun.
- [02:27]
Leo Laporte
All right, Wesley, you better explain what is worksnotworking.com.
- [02:34]
Wes Faulkner
It is a community website. I have extensive community experience doing it for other companies and this is my first time doing it for myself. Creating a community to help with people who need. Need suggestions, navigating the work environment.
- [02:51]
Leo Laporte
A lot of. Oh my God. And these days that is a lot of People, a lot of, A lot.
- [02:55]
Wes Faulkner
Of suggestions out there or just like, oh, have this conversation with your manager or maybe go to HR with this and they'll help you. And we all know that's funk. That doesn't.
- [03:04]
Leo Laporte
That's not true.
- [03:05]
Wes Faulkner
So the system itself, oh, you could.
- [03:07]
Leo Laporte
Be employed, you're saying, but just you don't like your job or it's not working for you.
- [03:11]
Wes Faulkner
That kind of the thought is, in this economy especially, you might be in a really bad situation, but you can't just can't leave or, or even find another job. You might be stuck. And so you need to find a way to cope and manage through those situations when the stacks, the deck stacked against you. So how do you, like, deal with a toxic work environment? How do you deal with a manager who's trying to.
- [03:36]
Leo Laporte
I'm going to sign up right now.
- [03:37]
Wes Faulkner
Your work, all that stuff, and instead of, instead of getting suggestions of saying, well, lay out all the work you've done and then show the impact on the company, they don't care about that. Instead you have to figure out, how do you protect yourself because your manager is trying to protect their job. And if it means throwing you under the bus, then that's how it is. And so what do you do in those situations when you know you can't go to HR because HR is going to say, well, your manager evaluates you and if they're thinking, you're not pulling your weight. And I think we've all been in that situation where we try to like, bring evidence. Evidence. We try to make a case of why you are in the right and the other person's in the wrong and it goes nowhere. It's just frustrating, demoralizing, gaslighting and soul crushing. And so this is a site for people to, to. To find either ways to get through it or to work around it.
- [04:30]
Leo Laporte
Nice. That sounds like a great idea. You founded your own company. Now tell me about the website. Did you design it from scratch or are using. What are you doing? Is it a. Is it a Fediverse?
- [04:43]
Wes Faulkner
It's being constructed and so I am announcing on the show, but we're not launching until November 5th.
- [04:49]
Leo Laporte
That's why I can't go to that website yet. Okay, I got it.
- [04:55]
Wes Faulkner
The website should be up.
- [04:57]
Leo Laporte
Oh, all right. Wait, maybe I mistyped works--working working.com. do I have to type www in front of it?
- [05:09]
Wes Faulkner
No, you're.
- [05:11]
Leo Laporte
You know better.
- [05:12]
Wes Faulkner
Actually, the redirect for WWW is not set up.
- [05:15]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I know, I know what's happening Here. Oh, I don't know. It looks like your cloudflare says everything's working except you.
- [05:23]
Wes Faulkner
Oh, no, I made some changes right before the show.
- [05:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I also use Next DNS, which blocks. And I thought maybe this was it. Which blocks? Websites that are brand new. Like if you registered that domain in the last month, it gets blocked because.
- [05:42]
Owen Thomas
That'S a lot of places I'm picking up the website. So that might be.
- [05:45]
Leo Laporte
Okay, good. That might be it must be that then Next DNS. So maybe it's not you. I apologize. I apologize.
- [05:51]
Wes Faulkner
Well, it should be working, hopefully.
- [05:53]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I'll turn off Next DNS next time.
- [05:55]
Wes Faulkner
The logo is a little inside joke for people now.
- [05:59]
Leo Laporte
I really want to see it.
- [06:01]
Doc Rock
I got it.
- [06:03]
Leo Laporte
Your back channel for surviving work and keeping. And it's a Phoenix rising from the dumpster fire. I get it.
- [06:08]
Doc Rock
I love it.
- [06:09]
Leo Laporte
Join us in redefining the work of the future. Nice. Nice. Congratulations. Congratulations. That's great.
- [06:18]
Wes Faulkner
Thank you.
- [06:20]
Leo Laporte
So this, the big story this week was ChatGPT 5.0. And on, I guess, was it Tuesday or Wednesday or. No, it's Thursday, I guess. We. We streamed the very awkward Sam Allman and. And his team announcing it, showing, by the way, two graphs of its performance that were nonsensical, which apparently, I, I hope they didn't use chat gpt5 to design kind of. That's kind of embarrassing. And then it launched and he said, everybody's going to have it. In fact, you're going to be able to use it even if you're on a free tier. And the complaints that started flowing in. I can't see it. I can't. I think it's just taking a while to roll out. I got it right away. Played with it quite a bit too. I. I'm kind of impressed. But there, there is a broad swath, a broad range of opinions over Chat GPT. What do you. What. Before I go to Gary Marcus, what do you guys think of it?
- [07:29]
Doc Rock
Opinions are like eyeballs. Everybody got two. Yeah, they got the one that they share on social media and the one that they keep for themselves.
- [07:36]
Leo Laporte
I like it, Doc.
- [07:38]
Doc Rock
It's funny. I just came up with that. I should write that down.
- [07:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [07:40]
Doc Rock
Because, you know, I'm at an age where I forget that. No, what happens is it is super fun to be just hyper.
- [07:46]
Wes Faulkner
Just to keep in mind you are wearing glasses, so you're kind of f. Wor.
- [07:50]
Doc Rock
Okay, this is true. It's super fun to be hyper outraged on Internet if everybody else is hyper outraged on Internet. But at the same time you're still using it the way you're using it. So it depends on what you're trying to do. I would say one number two, know that when it first comes out, everybody and their mother is going back to try it. So you're going to get weird survey issues and things like that. And the rollout is different from two years ago when we're rolling it out to a handful of users. Now we're rolling it out to, like, half the population maybe. And so, yeah, it's a different game, bro. It has to scale. Like, I get super. This is going to be Leo. You'll understand this. And I swear I won't turn this show into sports ball because people get mad. People are irritated at right now at hearing what player contracts are making. I'm like, take those numbers and use a inflation calculator and put it back to what Jerry Rice got paid when he got. Accept it. It ain't that different, bro. The numbers sound crazy now because that's where the economy is right now.
- [08:50]
Leo Laporte
Well, even more than that, even if it wasn't inflated or it were inflated, these guys make that much money. NBA stars make that much money for their teams. The teams wouldn't be paying it if they didn't get a reward, a profit out of it.
- [09:08]
Doc Rock
They're actually underpaid, by the way. This is Benito. They're actually underpaid.
- [09:11]
Leo Laporte
I think they're probably underpaid.
- [09:12]
Doc Rock
Absolutely are underpaid. And the only reason why people are mad is because you played. I'm gonna say something mean. You played in high school, but you sucked. You didn't make it to college, you didn't make it to the pros. And now you're mad that somebody else is getting paid for the dream that you had didn't work like they did. And a lot of. A lot of pros retire in Hawaii, right? Yeah, I see Marshawn lynch in Hawaii all the time. He has.
- [09:35]
Leo Laporte
You can't miss him. He's beast mode is big.
- [09:37]
Doc Rock
Yes, I see Marcellus Wy in Hawaii all the time. As a matter of fact, he uses part of our wish shot whenever he feels like working.
- [09:43]
Leo Laporte
Oh, nice. Oh, nice.
- [09:44]
Doc Rock
That dude's body. He looks older than me, body wise. I mean, he took it.
- [09:49]
Leo Laporte
He took a beating. That's why he took a beating.
- [09:51]
Doc Rock
Right. You know, these things happen. So these guys are paying, you know, get paid for what they get paid for what they do. And so taking it back to tech, when you release something like this, the problem is these guys can if they don't go out and do the Steve Jobs on stage, people talk spicy. If they do the Steve Jobs on stage, people says, oh, they lied or they overhyped it or they did whatever. The shareholders need them to say one thing and the users want everything for nothing. So somebody got to give. Something has to give. Like, let's be reality about this. Yeah, it's crazy.
- [10:23]
Leo Laporte
It's fun to read the subreddit chat GPT for a range of things. It's absolutely diabolical. I'm done with you forever. GPT thinking is worse than O3. I mean, up and down, over and out. One of the things OpenAI did almost immediately is they killed all. At least in the ChatGPT app, they killed all the other choices. And there was such a hue and cry that they brought back 4O and they said, if people keep using it, we'll see.
- [10:58]
Doc Rock
Yeah, you're right. That was weird because on the first day all the choices were there, and then on the second day they were all missing. I made like three videos right away and I was like, wait, my video no longer. Right, because you can't go back to the old models.
- [11:10]
Leo Laporte
Here's a Image made by ChatGPT5 of the difference between GPT4, which is friendly and warm and candlelit and as a glass of wine, and GPT5, which is you're in a boardroom with HR and doesn't look like it's going well.
- [11:24]
Wes Faulkner
We were talking right before we started that they're low on hardware and servers, so they have to get rid of the old models to make room.
- [11:32]
Leo Laporte
Yes, they needed the GPUs. That makes sense. Yeah.
- [11:39]
Owen Thomas
So I'm mostly impressed that they have delivered improved factuality. That's a great product feature to tout in their. In their blog post.
- [11:51]
Leo Laporte
I've been playing with it and I have had good results. I did notice it's quite a bit drier in its results. I fed some information about a friend's medical situation to it. That person asked me to do so, so I did. And it actually said something which I think is dangerous. It said that that person should discontinue a medication they're on immediately. And the person's doctor said, well, we'll talk in a month. So I'm going to trust the doctor, I think. There's also this story which is in ChatGPT5, but still pretty hysterical, about a young man who changed his diet because the AI had told him not to do salt sodium chloride, but instead to do sodium bromide, which is a psychoactive drug and it actually gave him a brain disease. So maybe that is a reason not to trust it. On the other hand, and by the way, this is one of the things OpenAI pushed. In fact, they brought a cancer survivor on saying this was. I got a very kind of terse email from my doctor and I got scared and I didn't know what to say. So we gave it to ChatGPT5 because we had an early version of it and it was so helpful, it was so great. It gave me all the information I needed. And they're put and Sam Altman saying, yes, we think this is going to change the world. This is one of our missions. Well, it's maybe not so good if it tells you to eat sodium bromide instead of sodium chloride.
- [13:35]
Wes Faulkner
It's really hard to bring dead people on and say on stage how it failed me.
- [13:42]
Leo Laporte
Those people don't end up in the.
- [13:44]
Wes Faulkner
Yeah, I have issues with it using memory. It doesn't. Its memory usage is worse. From my experience, that might be another.
- [13:54]
Leo Laporte
Thing because they had the resource issues.
- [13:56]
Wes Faulkner
You saying, yeah, it could be, but 4.0 definitely work better. But this is like, you know, the first iteration. I think Doc is saying, like this, this is going to change, this is going to evolve. They're taking all the feedback.
- [14:08]
Owen Thomas
Can I ask a meta question here? Which is not meta the company, but.
- [14:13]
Doc Rock
I was going to say Owen, but.
- [14:17]
Owen Thomas
Like, does it really matter if. If ChatGPT is better? You know, is it kind of like Google where it's just locked in as the, you know, perceived number and it's going to get more usage, it's going to get more data because it gets more usage. And all of the technical stuff is just kind of playing on the margins.
- [14:38]
Leo Laporte
I think it's important for a couple of reasons. One, because Sam Altman hyped it to the sky even at the beginning of. Yeah, but people believed him. And in the beginning of the talk, he even said it's kind of, you know, before, having chatgpt in your pocket was like having a smart high schooler. Now it's like having a smart PhD in your pocket. And he said, your life will change when you have somebody smarter than you in your pocket could make your pants really heavy. But so the hype is part of it. I think also there was even this feeling among accelerationists anyway that this might be the breakthrough, this might be the one. This might be AGI. It's not obviously.
- [15:20]
Doc Rock
Okay, so the problem with hype. Let's. Let's cover this because this happens a lot in tech. And there's. I'm a YouTuber, of course, right? Prefer content creator, but I use the word words, you guys understand. Every time somebody drops something new, no matter what the industry, it could be a hard drive company, it could be a computer company, a soundboard company, microphone company, camera companies especially, everyone goes in and goes, oh, well, this product was overhyped. It doesn't match the hype or whatever. Now you and I, Leah, are old school. We remember when releases were pretty much we learned everything all the same day at the same time. Now there's crazy levels of leakery. And then there's the idea that companies are leaking stuff on purpose. And then there's the ideas where they leak it to the people who are influencers so that they can tell. And then there's the idea, well, the influencers are getting paid, so they're lying. And there's like, well, the CEO lied because they said like all of the above are these people's jobs and this is what they're supposed to do. You are an adult. Your job is to make adult decisions. So when some information is handed it to you, it is up to you to decide what to do with it. I had teachers all throughout school who told me that I needed to be a priest and live a Catholic lifestyle. Guess what I don't do today. When I got old enough, I ran, right? You have the ability to make decisions, but everybody wants to blame all these things on stuff instead of them taking responsibility and believing it. So first of all, I need to receive receipts on the person that Chad told them to do sodium bromide. And number two, I went to high school. I know what sodium bromide is. I was high in, in chemistry class, but I remember not to take that. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? So like, if you're an adult and you don't know what sodium bromide is, that's on you, dog. We all learned that mess in school, you know what I'm saying? Like we all had to do the periodic table, so at some point in time that's kind of sort of on you, right? I think we are giving up too much of our self responsibility and blaming everybody else for things that aren't going the way it is. And even AI people have always told us at the bottom of every response it says I may get things wrong. Double check your answer. It legit says that on every freaking response.
- [17:41]
Wes Faulkner
I am in alignment with you, doc, for the most part. But we'll go over a story about Tesla and their liability.
- [17:47]
Leo Laporte
Oh, dear. Yes. Yeah.
- [17:48]
Wes Faulkner
But there is a line where you can't just announce that we are training it on health data to be better at health data, and then someone goes to their friend who's the tech guy and says, hey, could you tell me what it says that's going to happen? There are too many things in the world for people to focus on every release for every product, especially if it's not in their domain. And so they just hear things. And it might be true, maybe not, but.
- [18:18]
Leo Laporte
Well, there's a lot of that, regardless of AIs out there. I mean, that's. That's the world we live in now.
- [18:23]
Wes Faulkner
Yes. But when you're raising money and you're. You're not, you're amplifying this and you're downplaying the risk. And yes, it says that at the bottom of every prompt, but every website says, can we store your cookies?
- [18:34]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [18:34]
Wes Faulkner
People ignore that.
- [18:36]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [18:36]
Wes Faulkner
If they're. If they think that they are. And it's wild. I agree. That's like, people should have some personal responsibility. It's just like, think a little bit harder or. But sometimes people are busy and they can't. And when you hear, like, there's an AI revolution, when you hear that jobs are being displaced and people are losing work and being replaced with AI, there. There is a narrative out there where people are putting too much faith in this because they are not giving equal parts measure of truthful with equal parts measure of hype. And that's the kind of world.
- [19:08]
Leo Laporte
I think part of the problem is distinguishing what AI is good at, because it's definitely good at some things, like, really good.
- [19:17]
Wes Faulkner
It's good at some things some of the time.
- [19:19]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And so we're not used to being discriminating. We're not sure how to discriminate between the good stuff and the bad stuff that we get from this source. Right. Normally, if I know somebody. No. Yeah. But if I know somebody who's a BSer, I'm on. Everything that person says is suspect, and I'm going to take it with a grain of salt. On the other hand, if I know.
- [19:42]
Doc Rock
Somebody, that's why we're friends.
- [19:45]
Leo Laporte
If I know somebody's really smart, that person's gonna. When they say things. I may not take everything on face value, but I'm gonna give it a lot more credence. In fact, this was the. That's why we're friends. This is the warning that, going way back, Tim Negreux and Margaret Schmichel and Emily Bender gave in their Stochastic parrots paper. Is that you got to be. We got to be careful here because people are going to give it more credence because it came from a computer and there will be misinformation and disinformation that comes out of this machine. I got to say, in my opinion, we've kind of started to take AI for granted. If five years ago I had said, here's a thing that's going to generate this JavaScript code that I wrote yesterday for my Obsidian that works and it's great, it's amazing. Here's the thing that's going to tell me whether my supplements are good and what's missing and what interactions I should worry about. Of course I verified. But if you had told me it's going to do that based on the fact that it ingested a lot of content, turned it into tokens, and then is now basically using probability to decide what token follows, which I don't get. How it goes from spicy autocorrect to something that's actually useful. I don't even know how that. I don't think anybody understands why LLMs are so good at what they do. So I'm, I'm not going to take it for granted because I'm amazed. Yes, it's not perfect. Yes, there's all these problems. I'm still amazed at what it's doing now there. I notice also that some of the criticism comes from people with a bent one way or the other. So let's.
- [21:28]
Doc Rock
Yeah, with a bone to pig.
- [21:29]
Leo Laporte
Gary Marcus, who is a AI. We've had, we've interviewed him on our AI show Intelligent Machines. I like the guy, he's smart, but he's, you know, he's made a Living debunking AI. His article almost immediately. This was August 9th, so the next day is GPT5 overdue. Overhyped and underwhelming. And that's not the worst of it. He almost gloating that ChatGPT was so bad. I wouldn't gloat about it. And I don't think it's so bad. Yes, admittedly it's not. Well, it's certainly not AGI and it's. I, I think maybe Sam Altman overhyped it for sure, which was a mistake. But it's, but still. And it's not just Chat GPT, it's. It's Chat GPT and anthropic Claude and you know, Kimmy, and there's a bunch of them and they're Doing amazing things. And I think that that's. Here's.
- [22:28]
Doc Rock
I gotta tell you something, which is super funny. So Wizardling just put in the chat that drivers blindly follow GPS into rivers and off the side.
- [22:36]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, I do that all the time.
- [22:38]
Doc Rock
We have a space in Hawaii on the big island. Yeah, that's. I think Maps has fixed it since then, but in like two weeks time frame, three different tourists drove their car into the harbor. And then as a person who lives here and know what these boat ramps look like, I'm like, yo, stop blaming the GPS for that. That's somebody who can't drive. There's no way. You don't see the water coming and don't be like, let me stop. But one lady drove a minivan in and, like, a fisherman just happened to be emptying the boat, and he had to get her kids out because she didn't even know how to, you know, break the glass or, you know, do any other things that you're taught in driver's ed. And so she literally was in peril. And it's funny because it's like, how do you drive into the ocean? Like, we don't have little secret creeks here. We do, but, I mean, what they're driving into is the Pacific Ocean and there's tons of yachts next to it.
- [23:30]
Leo Laporte
Just open your eyes. You might notice.
- [23:31]
Doc Rock
I'm like, saying it wasn't like in some weird rural situation, like when you see the. The SS Faulkner next to it, you don't drive in. I'm just. But people do it. So I get that. That I miss.
- [23:44]
Leo Laporte
I miss off ramps all the time. I go play. You know, I have a little too dependent on gps. I admit it. I used to, you know, get out the Thomas. Where they call it the Thomas Guide. That book.
- [23:59]
Doc Rock
Well, I thought we had. We had triple A maps. You know, my dad used to get the one that you can never hold back the trip. It just becomes a crumble of paper because it was so obnoxious. Yeah, but Sam is not one of my favorite people, but I ain't mad at him either. But just understand that Kyle Shanahan and Pete Carroll and 30 other coaches are telling everybody that their team is going to win the super bowl this year because that's their freaking job. So you should not really listen to Sam. You have to take it with a block of salt, because that is his job. You guys, put your own feet a.
- [24:35]
Owen Thomas
Block of sodium chloride or sodium bromide.
- [24:38]
Doc Rock
I'm going with bromide in this particular case because Sam is Sam, let's take a little break.
- [24:43]
Leo Laporte
We're gonna. We've got lots more to talk about. Great panel. Good to have you. For those who are watching live, I think we fixed the glitches. I pray we fix the glitches. It's pretty hot where Benito lives, and apparently his computer is not happy. We've all been there. Owen Thomas is here from the San Francis Business Times. Great to see you, Owen. As always. Wesley Faulkner in his new business, which is great. Works-not-working.com. that site's opening when? In a couple of weeks.
- [25:13]
Wes Faulkner
You said November 15th is the opening day. And what we're doing is it's going to be gated. So those who sign up now for the newsletter to stay up to date will be guaranteed to come in. After that, we will be releasing spots every once in a while for people to join.
- [25:30]
Leo Laporte
So get in there and sign up. Nice. Who doesn't work in a toxic workplace after all? And Doc Rock, whose workplace is his home? So how toxic could it be if you got a rice cooker?
- [25:44]
Doc Rock
My team is awesome, though, so I. I have a comedic workplace. Like, everybody on my team, we're just like a big family. Like, we rarely have fights. Like, we're pretty. We're pretty fun.
- [25:55]
Leo Laporte
But you're all remote. Or are they all in Hawaii?
- [25:57]
Doc Rock
We are remote, but we do get together about three or four times a year through going to headquarters or going to various events. Actually, I just came from Max Stock, catching up on all of our old friends, which was amazing.
- [26:08]
Leo Laporte
What was it?
- [26:08]
Doc Rock
Max.max doc. Yeah, it's like an event that goes on. So you remember when Macro closed, everybody was super sad. Well, Barry Falk and Mike Potts put together a conference in the middle of Illinois that just all the OG Mac guys can go and hang out. And so that's what we did.
- [26:25]
Leo Laporte
I remember when they started that. It's still going, huh?
- [26:28]
Doc Rock
That's nice to be 10 years old, bro.
- [26:31]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [26:32]
Doc Rock
Super fun. We had a blast. I got to catch up with my whole. To our team. Like, we were hanging out, slurping whiskeys, having a blast.
- [26:38]
Leo Laporte
The ultimate Apple website. Tua not Hawk Tour. That's a different kind of tour. That's a whole nother tour.
- [26:47]
Doc Rock
When that got popular, I was so sad. I'm like, people are going to connect that to.
- [26:52]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Hey, our show today, brought to you by one of my favorite. They're all my favorite. I love all my sponsors, like I love all my children, but sometimes you love one more. Bitwarden, the trusted leader in passwords and passkeys and secrets management. I use Bitwarden Security Now's host, Steve Gibson, our security guru. He switched to Bitwarden a few years ago. Pretty much everyone I know. In fact. It's a good way to test somebody's security iq. What password manager you use? Bitwarden, of course. Bit Warden's consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction, both by G2 and software reviews. More than 10 million users now. What surprised me a little bit is it's also used by business. 50,000 businesses use bit Warden now. I know a lot of you are traveling for the summer. Bit Warden's here to help make your travel safer and easier. For example, you can do what I do. Bit Warden isn't just for passwords. You have secure notes. I keep my passport and my passport number in my vault. Easy access for tax free shopping. But also, you know, they always say have a copy of your passport with you. I used to xerox it and put in my luggage. That's not a great idea. I keep it in Bitwarden now where it's accessible to me and only me should I need it. Same thing with that driver's license, my Social Security number. Bitward is a great way to share secrets to. It's also a great way to share secrets with your travel partner. For instance, your hotel lock code or your or your locker code at the airport. Now there are a few other tips Bit Warden wants to share because they care about security. Things like while you're in the airport or the hotel and you're using that WI fi, you might want to secure your data, protect against cyber threats. That's, you know, you keep all your secure secret stuff in Bitwarden. It doesn't matter if somebody even could get into your computer. They can't get into the vault. It's strong encryption. You should only connect, of course, the airport or hi Fi, the official airport or hotel WI FI network. Every time I go to San Francisco, there's free SFO WI Fi and my finger always hovers over that button. Is that the real deal? Should I join it? I want to. Also with Bitwarden, enable autofill for credentials. This is really important because it won't automatically fill in your password or information or your passkey on a spoof site. You may not be able to tell the difference. Bitwarden can. Bit Warden can. And by the way, when you leave that public WI Fi, forget the network in your device settings so it doesn't automatically join it again. That's another trick bad guys use, they spoof these WI Fi access points and your laptop says, oh, we're back, let me just join up. No, forget it. When you're done. And of course, be careful about downloading files, clicking unfamiliar links, accessing sensitive personal or work accounts when you're connected to a public WI fi. Students are these days spending a majority of their time online, not just for socializing and gaming, but they're learning, they're doing other things, they're online all the time. And with that comes a number of accounts, new passwords. And if you know teenagers, you they're not, they're not using strong, they're making up passwords based on their birthday and their favorite band's name or whatever. Even if students know the security risks, let's face it, all of us, convenience often takes precedent. That's why you want to take your teenager and teach them how to use a password manager. Teach them how to use Bit Warden. It will generate a unique strong password every time on every site unique to that site. Students can use it. They could put Bitwarden on their phone, on their laptop, on every device. And the best part about Bit Warden, for individuals, it's free, it's open source, so it's free forever. They promised me free forever, unlimited passwords, pass keys, hardware devices. I actually pay a whopping 10 bucks extra a year for a premium account just because I want to support these guys. But you don't have to. And for a teenager on a tight budget, maybe that's a good thing. Absolutely free. There's one other good thing, you know, nowadays if you have, if you're, you know, no cyber security, potential employers are going to really welcome that, right? If you say to them at that interview after you graduate, yeah, I use Bitwarden. I think it's really important to be secure with passwords. Every company likes to know their employees take password security seriously. Because you know what, a lot of companies have employees that don't. I know that Bitwarden setup just takes a few minutes. It supports importing from most password management solutions, so it's easy to get started. And because it's open source, anyone can inspect their code. It's on GitHub, and it's audited regularly by third party experts. Of course, Bitwarden meets all the standards. SOC2 type 2 GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA compliant. They support ISO 27001:2002. They're certified. That means they have the highest possible security. Get started today with Bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise Plan or get started for free across all devices as an individual@bitwarden.com twit that's bitwarden.com twit. I use it every day. I love Bitwarden. I'm so happy I have it. You will be too. And we thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. Here was a strange AI story. It's not gonna be all AI today, but there's one more I wanted to mention. Disney. This is from Mike Masnick writing in Tech Dirt on Friday. Disney spent a year and a half negotiating with Dwayne Johnson, the Rock to create a digital version of the Rock for the live action Moana film. They got an agreement, gave him money. The Rock agreed the technology was ready. Then, according to Mazda, Disney killed the deal. Not because they were worried about Dwayne not being happy or privacy concerns. They were worried that the jury's still out on whether you can copyright AI creations. And they were worried that parts of the film, the AI parts of the film might end up in public domain just because it's created by AI. So they yanked it.
- [33:07]
Wes Faulkner
I think that's amazing. This is the holy grail of protection of workers. Because if this can happen to Disney, where they're worried about their creations using AI being not copyrightable, what about all these engineers that are getting fired and those works. Software could be free for everyone. Everyone's now open source. Maybe not open source, but open license. So I think this is really a turning point where people are realizing that if you can't copyright this, then it almost has no perpetual value. So that's a big flag.
- [33:46]
Leo Laporte
They're going to take all of the AI created Moana footage out. When it comes out, it's not going to be in there. And I suspect this, all of Hollywood now will now start to think maybe we shouldn't use AI in our movies. Which is a shocker, right?
- [34:03]
Doc Rock
Leo, I'm sorry for this. What do you think about the movie itself?
- [34:08]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I don't know.
- [34:10]
Doc Rock
It doesn't matter what you think. Sorry, I couldn't help it. I had to do it. I had to do it. I'm sorry.
- [34:16]
Leo Laporte
Can you smell what Doc is cooking? That's what I want to know.
- [34:20]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God. I was itching to do that.
- [34:23]
Leo Laporte
I love it. You know what? I think the Rock is great. I love the Rock that he's so.
- [34:28]
Doc Rock
You know, he's. He's actually a super nice person. Even like growing up, you know, like, he was always around. Like when he comes home, he's Hawaiian goes to the gym. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's. He's Simone, but Simone still goes to the gym. He doesn't, like, you know, hide behind, you know, his celebrity, whatever. And years ago, I used to go to the gym super late at night, so that way it was open because 24 Hour Fitness in Hawaii is busy because everybody comes here. It's right near Waikiki. I'm working out one day, and he's like, oh, can I jump in? I can't see because I'm on the bar doing my thing. And then jump in, I get up. And I was like, yeah, if you don't mind me taking off all the plates so you can handle it. And he just, like, squeezed me on the shoulder and laugh. And I was like, that was the most awesome but yet painful squeeze on the shoulder. He's really just a nice.
- [35:15]
Leo Laporte
You know, it's really heavy. I've got two 25ers and a 10 on there. Sir, you may not want to try.
- [35:21]
Doc Rock
To lift, that is. I just. I just like the report because I think a lot of people don't understand, like, so many celebrities are just, you know, a little bit out there. But he is legit one of the nicest people in the world.
- [35:30]
Leo Laporte
And I'm glad to hear that because.
- [35:31]
Doc Rock
It hasn't much changed him. It hasn't. Seems like he's gotten way richer off the liquor deal. But super, super nice cat.
- [35:38]
Leo Laporte
Does he have a tequila? Yeah, yeah, everybody has a tequila.
- [35:42]
Owen Thomas
Now here. Here's an interesting thing, though. Like, so the Rock can license his likeness to. To Disney for AI use.
- [35:52]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [35:53]
Owen Thomas
But then Disney can't use copyright. Protect that. So, I mean, ultimately, like, are all these likeness deals, you know, especially for, like, actors who've passed away, you know, the. To recreate their voices, like.
- [36:08]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [36:08]
Owen Thomas
What is. And, you know, like, if there's some AI in the mix, but overall, it's, you know, it's human created. I think that's. That's probably going to be litigated over, you know, over the coming years.
- [36:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I'm sure Disney hopes the courts will say, oh, no, AI creation are well within copy copyright. But I don't. The courts have not said that.
- [36:31]
Owen Thomas
I believe what the copyright office has said is there's got to be a human author. So if the. If the human author uses AI tools, that does not void their.
- [36:40]
Leo Laporte
The author has. Yeah. So I got. I've. I've scanned Dwayne, I've scanned the rock, and now I want to put the rock in the movie. If a human, maybe like the voiceover person is protected, but that image, is that protected? I don't think so. I don't know. That's what Disney World.
- [37:04]
Owen Thomas
Is there a monkey photo case some years back?
- [37:07]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [37:07]
Wes Faulkner
Yeah.
- [37:08]
Owen Thomas
Like where the monkey triggered the shutter on a camera and ultimately the photographer.
- [37:17]
Leo Laporte
Said, I own that picture.
- [37:19]
Doc Rock
The monkey was like, call my agent.
- [37:22]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know who defended the monkey? PETA.
- [37:26]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God.
- [37:29]
Leo Laporte
PETA, The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals said that the macaque in the picture, this is the picture, owns the rights to that picture. Yeah, there it is. He shot that. He pressed a button that automatically took the picture, which is a great picture, by the way.
- [37:46]
Doc Rock
The funny thing is that picture actually looks AI, but that one's real.
- [37:51]
Leo Laporte
That is another sad side effect of this is I can no longer tell. And like we were talking about the bunnies jumping on the trampoline and you had an interesting reaction, actually, Wesley, because I said, well, yeah, nobody knew if they were AI or not. Yeah.
- [38:10]
Wes Faulkner
I said I didn't care.
- [38:11]
Leo Laporte
And you said, who cares?
- [38:13]
Doc Rock
Chat wins every time. People listen. I'm gonna do a quick commercial for Leo about Club Tweet and why you need to be in there.
- [38:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Because the chat, they jumping on a trampoline. They also have me, by the way. And this is not AI. That is a 50 pound dumbbell with. Which is. It has a strange geometry though, doesn't it? It looks like it's kind of a curved dumbbell.
- [38:39]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God. Swole Leo is the best.
- [38:42]
Leo Laporte
Swole Leo. Here's some. Here's some video of. Is this AI or not? Foxes jumping on a trampoline. I don't know. I don't know. And you say wesley, who cares, Right? This is definitely AI.
- [38:57]
Wes Faulkner
I remember when my kids were young and they would watch television and they couldn't tell the difference between the news and a movie, which was real, which was not. And in terms of entertainment, both were the same. They were seeing a car drive down the street. They look out the window and they see a car down the. Drive down the street. They look on tv, they see a car down the street, they look on my phone and see the car driving down the street. If they think it's a funny looking car, they're going to laugh no matter what way it's presented to them. The question is, when you start using that information to inform what you do next or where to invest your money or who to fire, that's when it's a problem. If it's no one's Making a decision, saying we are going to invest and trampoline stocks because these bunnies are having so much fun. If that's not part of the calculation, it doesn't really matter.
- [39:55]
Leo Laporte
That's kind of true Perplexity and a little bit of hot water for a couple of reasons. And one of them I'm not sure is a good reason. Cloudflare, which is a company that protects a lot of. We've interviewed actually their former cto, John Graham Cunning, many times. He was just on Intelligent Machines a couple of weeks ago. He's on the board now, no longer cto, but that was to talk about a new product that they had for websites. You know, Cloudflare, often, in fact, it's in between me and your website, Wesley. You use it to protect yourself against DDoS attacks. One of the features that Cloudflare offers is blocking AI web scrapers. So often AI ignores the robot txt robots. Txt file, which isn't a law or anything, it's just a norm that if it's. If the robots. Txt file says no, no AI scraping, you shouldn't scrape it. But most AIs ignore that. Perplexity has for years. But Cloudflare said they're ignoring. Even when we have our own protections, which are pretty stringent, they ignore every signal from the user that they don't want this site scraped. And the way Cloudflare did is they created a site, they put up the, you know, the super duper robots Txt, this is no scraping. And then they went to Perplexity and they said, tell me about this site. And Perplexity did. Now Cloudflare says that Perplexity is violating norms by doing that. I disagree because Perplexity, just like any browser, if you tell a browser, tell me, show me this site, it's going to show you the site. That's how the web works. So is it so different if an. If a Perplexity, an AI looks at that site and gives you a report on it, not the site's image, but just a report on it. How is that different from a browser pulling the site and displaying it? And this is what Perplexity said. This is not a fair test of this. So that's problem number one. This is a story of 9 to 5 Mac. There was a rumor actually started by Eddie Q at Apple that they were looking at Perplexity. It may be buying the company to give them the AI chops they have not yet been able to create on their own. The other thing that Perplexity just Did is they are now the official source of an AI for the President's social network, Truth Social. And in fact they have an AI that is trained only on Fox News, the oan, the One America network. Breitbart. They literally said we're only going to train it on these correct sources of information.
- [42:40]
Wes Faulkner
So I don't know.
- [42:42]
Leo Laporte
Do you guys use Perplexity? I have been a big Perplexity fan for a long time. This gave me. This, not the cloud. This gave me a little pause.
- [42:49]
Doc Rock
I've been a big Perplexity fan for a minute because first I ignored it, but then I got it for free when you did something stupid like buy a rabbit. And then I've been messing with Comet and Comet is pretty cool. Like you could do some really cool.
- [43:03]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's their, their browser which I've been using.
- [43:06]
Doc Rock
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just like, that's just like finding out that like you know, your brother in law is in the CIA or something. Like, you just, you just ruined my life.
- [43:16]
Leo Laporte
I just worry that they're willing to take their search engine and their AI, it's an AI, slash search engine, and slant it in, in that way. I mean, I don't think they're doing that to the regular Perplexity, but it just bothers me that they're willing to do that first. Yeah, somebody who comes along and says, hey, could you just take out all the left wing stuff and just the.
- [43:38]
Doc Rock
That Bob, it says that it's a, that puts it back into. It's just the money thing. Right. And I, I don't, I don't like that concept when, you know, people in my YouTuber camp love to say, well these companies are just trying to make money. And I'm like, fam, I don't know if you know how business works. That's every company. The lady that you know, Sweets at the cupcake store at the end of your block, she trying to make money, go buy a cupcake. But this is a little bit different. This is just like playing on people's worst sensibilities and that, that part ain't cool.
- [44:11]
Wes Faulkner
I think it's a, it would not pass an IRB in terms of a study to see how the effects of this works. But I could totally understand that you can white label a product when you have a contract.
- [44:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's what it is basically, isn't it? Yeah.
- [44:26]
Wes Faulkner
But I also want to touch a little.
- [44:28]
Leo Laporte
They're not hot, by the way. They're not hiding their participation. They put out a press release.
- [44:32]
Wes Faulkner
I mean it's, it's, I, I, I would find it interesting to see how that turns out. We saw what happened with Grock when they tried to de wokeify it and all the stuff that was considered truth. But to go back to the, the crawling with Cloudflare, you have to realize that I'm not defending or trying to promote what they're doing is right, but just giving some context that Google's crawler gets fed into Gemini. Right. So Cloudflare can't specifically de facto block them gathering information because it shows up as Google's crawler.
- [45:11]
Leo Laporte
Right. And if you were to block that, then you would not show up in Google Search.
- [45:15]
Wes Faulkner
Exactly. And the same thing is with OpenAI and Bing Search. And so is a war or a battle that is not exactly on an even playing field.
- [45:25]
Leo Laporte
It's already lost.
- [45:27]
Wes Faulkner
I just want to just, just put it out there. Says why they would be so adamant to continue to do this is, doesn't.
- [45:33]
Owen Thomas
That, doesn't that seem like a bundling case? Waiting to, waiting.
- [45:38]
Leo Laporte
Interesting. Yeah.
- [45:39]
Wes Faulkner
Wedding against whom? I mean like who's going to prosecute that?
- [45:42]
Owen Thomas
Well, the ftc, I guess. It depends. If Trump is mad at Google this week. I think he's kind of mad at Google over, supposedly over YouTube. But you know, who knows?
- [45:52]
Leo Laporte
He's not mad at Apple anymore. They gave him a gold bar with a piece of glass embedded in it and that was all it took. Oh, that and the promise.
- [46:00]
Doc Rock
Two seconds later he said that, that Tim is not an athlete. And I was like, pot Kettle, like insta pot Kettle. What the heck?
- [46:09]
Owen Thomas
Also, Tim Cook is like a, is like a champion biker who wakes up at 3am to work out.
- [46:15]
Leo Laporte
Just look at him. Put him next to the president. Who would you want to race in a, in a hundred yard dash?
- [46:22]
Doc Rock
Tim has been known to ride the Saddle Road on the Big island and like that's a long ride. So I'm like, dude, you, you're spotting things that you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, well, never mind, never mind.
- [46:36]
Leo Laporte
So funny though, you can't, you can't tell Tim Cook. You can't say Tim Cook's not doing the right thing because Apple is threatened with a big tariff on the chips that it uses. Here is the president receiving the piece of glass from Corning. There's Tim Cook holding that. Cook said, we are going to make a hundred billion dollar investment in Corning, an American company in Kentucky to build to made all of our phone glass and watch glass out of their glass, which by the way they've been saying they've been doing all along. But anyway, apparent, by the way, there's.
- [47:17]
Owen Thomas
A great story there about the original iPhone. It was supposed to be plastic. Steve Jobs decided Steve Jobs, like, saw a prototype, it got scratched, it looked bad. And he was like, it's got to be glass. And Apple, you know, Apple's engineers had to scramble and find a glass supplier and it was Corning. So it's always been Corning.
- [47:37]
Leo Laporte
Well, even more than that. That's that gorilla glass that they talk about. Corning had just shut down the plant that made it because they couldn't find a market for it. Apple comes in knocking and they said, oh, we happened, we could reopen that plant. So since 2007, Corning has been making iPhone glass. They haven't been making the watch Sapphire glass. Somebody else outside the US Makes that. And to be fair, even though it will be made, the glass itself will be made in the US it has to be then sent overseas, probably China for shaping and installation. They make big sheets and then they have to cut out the little sheets for the iPhone and the Apple watch. Cook says they're going to make a massive, you know, he said this before, a massive investment in the United States, mostly of stuff that they had already committed to. The president wants Apple to build iPhones in the US he's been very clear about that.
- [48:33]
Wes Faulkner
It's a masterstroke by Tim because from everything that I've read about the $500 billion investment, they're all contingent on other partners or players.
- [48:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Meaning that Cook is very good.
- [48:47]
Wes Faulkner
They fall through. They can't. Oh, well, Corning didn't make enough, so we didn't pay enough. So that's. But it's all. If assuming that we sell a billion iPhones, then that's when we'll have a bill like 500 billion. And yeah, it's, it's all based on other people, people that they don't have control over. And that's where the estimates are coming from.
- [49:05]
Doc Rock
Yeah, people don't give him enough credit for his foresight. Every time somebody likes to mention Tim, they like to talk about his, you know, supply chain management skills and, you know, when, when and if he does step down, which I think he's probably extended, I thought he was probably going to be good for a slide out, you know, within the next two or three years. But realizing that he has this to contend with, at least the board is.
- [49:30]
Leo Laporte
Not going to let Tim Cook go.
- [49:31]
Doc Rock
Yes, I think he expand his. I think he expanded his his ticket, you know, he called the, called Delta and be like, hey, can I change my flight? I think he changed his flight by three years because of this. And he's super brilliant with, with this play. This play was phenomenal. You know, I, If Steve was around, Steve would have said, tim, you're holding it wrong. Why'd you put your finger through the Apple?
- [49:53]
Leo Laporte
Do you think Steve Jobs would have gone to the White House and presented President Trump with a gold bar? I don't think so, no. No, I don't think that would have happened.
- [50:03]
Doc Rock
Steve would have done something more. I don't want to say crazy, but that was his turn.
- [50:08]
Leo Laporte
I think he would have flipped him off, which would be disastrous for Apple because the President says he wants to raise a put a hundred percent tariff on semiconductors made outside the United States. That includes the semiconductors in the iPhone.
- [50:23]
Doc Rock
This doesn't, this doesn't matter. And I'll tell you why. Because this dude is going to lower drug prices by 1500%, 2000% or 4000%. So he don't know how to math, bro. Just whatever he says is just.
- [50:37]
Leo Laporte
Okay, you say that, but I think they're putting those. I mean, whoever's doing the math isn't the President, it's somebody at the borders. And they are putting those tariffs on those products coming into the country.
- [50:47]
Owen Thomas
But didn't they calculate the tariffs with ChatGPT?
- [50:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they did a very weird calculation.
- [50:54]
Wes Faulkner
But no matter what, the tariffs won't hurt the biggest players because they still have volume discounts. So even tariffs aren't.
- [51:01]
Leo Laporte
We're never going to hurt anybody. They're going to hurt the people who buy iPhones, the people buy laptops, the people who buy everything that is made outside the U.S. who is that? That's us.
- [51:12]
Doc Rock
U.S. u.S.
- [51:13]
Leo Laporte
Doesn't hurt China.
- [51:14]
Doc Rock
I mean, the U.S. stands for us.
- [51:18]
Leo Laporte
I mean, you could say, I guess you could say it is certainly the case that it puts pressure on these companies to try. I. Well, Trump says they're going to absorb the cost. That I remains to be never happy.
- [51:28]
Doc Rock
He wouldn't absorb the cost.
- [51:30]
Leo Laporte
He wouldn't do it.
- [51:33]
Wes Faulkner
But Trump's going to be out of office in three years. Right? There's.
- [51:37]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [51:37]
Wes Faulkner
And if you're.
- [51:38]
Leo Laporte
I wouldn't put money on that, but. Okay, if you think so theoretically, let's.
- [51:42]
Wes Faulkner
As of today, right now, as what's the over.
- [51:44]
Doc Rock
Under chat. Let's go.
- [51:46]
Wes Faulkner
So the question is like, it takes, it will take years to be able to bring this on and people are, I think with the taco trade, how it's going right now, they feel that it's not going to be worth it long term.
- [51:59]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Look, I'm looking at my, my investments and I can't understand why the stock market's going up, but it is. It goes up.
- [52:06]
Doc Rock
I might point out, here's the funniest things that I have not heard anybody talk about. And if I have, I wish somebody would point into me because I would love somebody to, like, help me with this thought. So we want to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. fine, whatever. And the way we're going to do this is by embarking all these terrorists and everything. Okay, whatever. That's your play. But we're going to take education and blow up the Department of Ed, and then we're going to, like, do. How do you get the bodies and the brain power to work at the type of factories you're asking to come home if in this same stroke you're going to blow up education? If anything, this should spark the idea of wanting to bring STEM and like, put money in stem, put money in other forms of education that would eventually get to that. And if it was a long play, I think I would be on board. But you just ain't making no sense, bro. Again, the math don't matter.
- [52:57]
Wes Faulkner
We still have immigration, so that. Oh, sorry, never mind.
- [53:00]
Leo Laporte
Nope, Stop it. Nope, just stop it. So immediately after Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the President that nice gift and the promise of a $7.5 billion investment in Corning and Kentucky to go along with the $600 billion investment that they are planning to make in the United States. Which is all good. I'm glad. I mean, that's great for us, right? They're building factories and stuff. The President said, nope, no tariffs for Apple. They're exempt from my tariffs. However, he did say that we're going to put a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors. Unless you're building in the United States or have committed to build, without question committed to building the United States, there will be no charge to which tsmc, who makes Apple's Apple silicon and a processors for the phones, said TSMC is exempt because it has set up plants in the United States. So, I mean, they say we're exempt, but I don't. I don't think that's the final authority anyway. We'll watch with interest.
- [54:11]
Wes Faulkner
This is just more uncertain ties to China. We're going to force them to resign.
- [54:16]
Leo Laporte
Well, isn't that a story?
- [54:17]
Doc Rock
Here's what they should have said. They should have said The T&TSMC is now Trump.
- [54:23]
Leo Laporte
Trump. Yeah, you're covered.
- [54:26]
Doc Rock
You're covered. All you gotta do is put his name on it and you're covered. Unless it's Eric.
- [54:30]
Leo Laporte
That is, by the way, one of the most interesting stories this week. The president has urged Lip Bhutan, the new CEO of Intel, to step down. He says Thanh has investments in companies in China that are associated with the Chinese military. The CEO of Intel is highly conflicted and must resign immediately, said Trump on Truth Social on Thursday. There's no other solution to this problem. And he always writes this. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I don't know why he writes that. I don't understand. Thank you for your attention.
- [55:08]
Doc Rock
That's his GROK AI that did that. He didn't know how to say that.
- [55:13]
Leo Laporte
The post came after Tom Cotton. The Republican Tom Cotton asked the chairman of intel to answer questions about his ties to China. He is apparently Chinese. He looks Chinese and that's all that matters, right? I don't know. He's got a Chinese name. Including investments in the country's semiconductor companies and others with connections to the country's military. Tan said in an emailed statement to employees at intel later that day. There's been a lot of misinformation circulating about my past roles at Walden International and Cadence Design Systems. Cadence is a US based company which he ran for 10 years, but he sold products to a Chinese military university. In fact, the company pled guilty last month for violating U.S. export controls by selling hardware and software to China's National University of Defense Technology. He says Thanh says he's always operating within the highest legal and ethical standards. Quote, we're engaging with the administration to address the matters that have been raised, ensure they have the facts. What can you say? It's headline making, I guess. And that's the main point.
- [56:31]
Owen Thomas
I mean, it does move the stock and that's going to be of concern to investors.
- [56:37]
Leo Laporte
Well, Intel's in deep trouble no matter what, right?
- [56:42]
Wes Faulkner
I mean, the board feels like he's compromised not necessarily because of this, but just because he has the ire of the president. They could just kick him out because of the thought that, hey, we might need a bailout from, from the government, we might need some other investment. And so we should just like Paramount and all these other companies, they might just saying like, we need to make sure the company itself is safe and just this might be the fall guy.
- [57:08]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [57:09]
Doc Rock
And their tempurpedic laurels had been long upset. So you know, they're already like. Like Owen said, they're already in trouble.
- [57:17]
Leo Laporte
Oh, they're in deep trouble. It's terrible. All right, let's take another break. Lots more to talk about. You're watching this week in tech with the doctor himself, Doc Rock, the doctor of Rock at YouTube.
- [57:30]
Doc Rock
How can I get the Apple shirt, bro? You know, I'm an Apple fanboy, but this taking it just one step higher.
- [57:37]
Leo Laporte
Did they. They haven't hit 4 trillion yet, have they? I know Microsoft and Nvidia did. Is Apple closing in on it? Actually, Apple stock went down, I think, after the tariff threat.
- [57:46]
Doc Rock
Oh, it went down after giving the glass plaque up. We'll find out after. After the phones come up. I just got to say I love the shirt.
- [57:54]
Leo Laporte
That's all I'm excited about. We'll talk about the phones. I'm excited about the phones. I don't know if I'm gonna buy one, but I'm excited about it. I might be the first year in years that I haven't bought the new iPhone because the old one is so good. And I want to save my pennies because the in next year, Apple's rumored to be doing, you know, a super thin phone that opens up like that. And that would be pretty cool, wouldn't it?
- [58:19]
Doc Rock
I would be in if they could find a way to 86 de crease. I'm in.
- [58:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, the crease. Everybody says the crease. Everybody. Nobody likes the crease.
- [58:27]
Doc Rock
It's like phone crack is where sweat gets in.
- [58:30]
Owen Thomas
I say bring back the home button. That's my.
- [58:34]
Leo Laporte
You are an old school man. Owen Thomas from the San Francisco Business Times and Wesley Faulkner, who has a new business. It's opening up in November. Works-not-working.com Go there right now. We're glad you're here watching the show. We appreciate it. We appreciate the support of our fine sponsors like the folks at Oracle. This episode of this week in Tech is brought to you by Oracle in business. They say you can have better, cheaper or faster. But you only get to pick two. But what if you could have all three at the same time? That's exactly what cohere Thomson Reuters and Specialized bikes have since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database, application development and AI needs where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment and spend less than you would with other clouds. How's it faster? OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second, cheaper OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage and 80% less for networking. Better. In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads right now with zero commitment. Try OCI for free. Head to oracle.com twit that's oracle.com twit thank you Oracle. Moving right along. Actually app, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with Apple in a month. They've got new phones coming out. Rumors are they may have to raise the prices due to tariffs, but not as much as maybe they could. They're not. They are, it looks like going to absorb some of it. In fact Apple's amazing quarterly results last week showed they have 49% margin. So you know they, they could get 40% and still be pretty happy I would think. Apple has decided to because of this threat of tariffs, work with Samsung to build the iPhone image sensors in Texas. For years Apple's have used Sony sensors to great effect. They have the best cameras, everybody agrees. But Samsung makes some pretty nice sensors. In fact this Samsung Galaxy Fold I have here has Samsung sensors in it. Quite nice imagery and one of them is 200 megapixels binned but still Apple would presumably get that sensor. They also Samsung is building chips for Tesla as well over the next few years. 16 and a half billion dollar deal for that.
- [61:33]
Wes Faulkner
Just keep in mind that the use of the tech though is like a few, maybe not, not one, like multiple far generations. But it's not cutting edge technology that.
- [61:44]
Leo Laporte
Is it's the legacy, they call it legacy nodes. It's not the, the main processor, it's the this, the other processor. But every phone has a number of processors in it, right?
- [61:55]
Wes Faulkner
I'm just saying that if people are expecting that things will be primarily made here anytime soon, even even if they are able to, to get to the same level of technology, the amount of quantities, the volume still won't be there for a bit.
- [62:13]
Leo Laporte
Apple's struggling a little with AI. Although after the reception of ChatGPT 5 I'm thinking Apple may be saying yeah, we're not involved in all of that. There's a big brain drain going on. Meta has stolen at least four of their top researchers from Apple AI. Mark Gurman in his usual Sunday newsletter, his Power on newsletter from Bloomberg is talking about how Apple does want to use AI and its next generation Siri to control the phone. You'll be able to talk to Siri and have it do things on your phone using app intents. What do you think of this doc? You follow this space man?
- [62:58]
Doc Rock
I'm waiting. This is all I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for app Intense to do the one. Okay, this is gonna sound really crazy because I should know better, and I've done this forever, but time zones are time zones, and I don't change. When Nito hit me up the other day and said, hey, can you fill in? I was like, yeah, no problem. And I forgot to put it on the calendar. So I get up this morning, and then I was like, well, there's nothing F1 happening today, so let me see what I got to do to get ready for the show. And I was going to get ready an hour early, and I was like, yo, Siri, what time is my. Am I supposed to be on Twitter? Then she was like, what's twit? You know, So I had to go and dig back in and pull up the Excel sheet and realize, you know, 11 your time. Well, 11 my time. 2:00pm your time. And I, you know, adjusted. But, like, Siri should be able to do that. And I've done this. I've sat in this chair enough times that she should be able to look at my calendar and go. Based off of, you know, Mercury not being in retrograde, but this time of year, you and Leo are X many hours apart. In October, you and Leo are X many hours apart.
- [63:58]
Leo Laporte
I bet you could ask me the right time chat GPT5 then.
- [64:02]
Doc Rock
No, because they would have told me if I wanted to be on.
- [64:05]
Leo Laporte
We say you need more sodium bromide in your diet is what it was.
- [64:11]
Owen Thomas
Yeah, I. I worry that this is going to get spammy. You know, look at notifications. Notifications were super useful. And then, like, now patients, my notification screen is just like, first of all, turn off update.
- [64:27]
Doc Rock
Oh, so good.
- [64:28]
Leo Laporte
Turn off all notifications anyway. Right. The notifications. But I do like the notification summaries. Not because they're good or accurate. They're hysterical.
- [64:36]
Doc Rock
Yes, they are.
- [64:37]
Leo Laporte
It's a little bit of comedy every morning when I open my phone.
- [64:41]
Doc Rock
It's what. It's what gives us for summaries for what's going on in our slack.
- [64:45]
Leo Laporte
Hysterical.
- [64:46]
Doc Rock
I sometimes screenshot them because they're absolutely funny. Yeah, it goes. There's. There's worry over, you know, such and such. And I go. And it's like, that's not what they said.
- [64:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but.
- [64:56]
Doc Rock
But I do feel like the notifications. There's a new feature. Oh. And which we'll all find out more in September. But it's called Reduce Interruptions. And Reduce Interruptions has been freaking phenomenal as far as, like, not bothering me with stuff that I don't pay attention to, but giving me the stuff that I need. And hopefully that gets better. As you know, as we get this.
- [65:20]
Leo Laporte
I actually am coming around. I did put the beta, the public beta of iOS 26 on my phone and iPad, 26 on my iPad and even Mac OS 26 Tahoe on my Macs. And I'm coming around. I'm not crazy about the gel. I feel like I'm looking through breast implants at everything. I don't like that part, but other than that. All right, now let me explain. Here's a summary that I just got from. It says, Amazon delivery attempted. Secured pets turn on light. Delivery completed. Here's another one from the Atlantic. FBI on Epstein client list.
- [66:05]
Doc Rock
Oh, wow. See, that's. That's the eat shoots and leaves. The copper plays, right?
- [66:12]
Leo Laporte
I. I love it. I just. I don't know what it means. I don't care. I know I can open it and I can find out. I just. It just makes me happy.
- [66:21]
Doc Rock
It's like I've just been liking the ones in mail. The male ones have been the best so far. And I do like the reduced interruptions. But, you know, here's the thing about Apple, and we've known this forever, and it's never going to change. And people just keep wishifying it to change. They will come out of the gate less and then, okay, here we go. Exhale and then just take over. Over. So I don't care if it takes them two more years to get it right, as long as they get it right. Because right now, we started the show off talking about how everybody else is screwing it up, right? Perplexity is screwing it up. You know, GPT5 and open AI is screwing it up. So if Apple comes in, like, you know, 2027 and be like, here you go, here's what we meant, or here's what you actually wanted, I'm cool with that. Like, I don't mind being in last place today.
- [67:06]
Leo Laporte
I just think it gives the iPhone a little personality. It's not a great personality, but it's kind of. It's like I got a little imp in my phone.
- [67:14]
Doc Rock
I still laugh at how many times Siri disappoints me, and I'm like, you know better, dude, why did you even bother to ask her?
- [67:20]
Leo Laporte
All I could do is laugh. Lisa swear. My wife swears at it. She like, she is like there is not a moment. Well, no, but yeah, that's right. Instead of swearing at me, she swears a Siri, which is good. That's an improvement. You have an Android phone. I know. Don't show off. Are you excited about the next Pixel? Are you going to buy a Pixel 10?
- [67:42]
Wes Faulkner
No, absolutely not.
- [67:43]
Leo Laporte
No.
- [67:48]
Wes Faulkner
I generally am a Pixel person. I love the phones. They are a little shaky with their new processor because they're doing a new one in house. The reason why I probably won't upgrade is not because of not wanting it or thinking it looks cool. It's all of the firing that I saw of the Pixel staff and employees makes me feel wary that they're either going to find issues before it ships, fix issues before they ship or after it ships. Being able to fix them on time. It's always felt like a skeleton crew for those in the Pixel team and now it's just like I don't want to invest any money into being saddled with a lemon and just being told to deal with it.
- [68:41]
Leo Laporte
In 10 days, Google will, you know, they have their Made by Google event. By the way, we'll stream that for club members in our club. Twit Discord. Micah Sargent and I'll be covering that 10am Pacific on Wednesday, October 20th. Sorry, August 20th, but I agree with you. I'm. Has Google lost their mojo? Yeah, it feels like they just don't know what the hell they're doing anymore.
- [69:04]
Wes Faulkner
They lost their personality or they haven't. They lost their brand on the Pixel side, especially in the earliest, like you have a little problem. Oh, just call, we'll replace it. Just way back when when Amazon prime, when you would have an issue, they're like, oh, we'll just send you a return. That's easy. Now it's the insertification of everything. It's just like now it's just like they have a really good camera. They fix that. That which is great. And now it's just like now what? Now they're leaning into AI, but it's not a differentiator for me.
- [69:36]
Leo Laporte
Although Gemini, their AI is not bad. It's a pretty competent AI.
- [69:39]
Doc Rock
It's really good.
- [69:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [69:41]
Doc Rock
But can do something.
- [69:42]
Wes Faulkner
You could download that on any phone. It's. It's.
- [69:44]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's why I wouldn't worry if I were Apple because you can use any of the AIs on your iPhone. Right. You don't need Siri. Here's my worry about Siri becoming, you know, hey, Siri, put a Comment on Doc Rock's latest video, you rule Doc, which in theory, this is what those app intents are going to allow it to do. You know, remember Samsung tried this with Bixby. It was not well received and as far as I know, nobody uses Bixby anymore. It's still in there somewhere, hidden in my Samsung phone. You know, all these companies have lost their mojo, haven't they?
- [70:23]
Doc Rock
They all feel when they pick Bixby.
- [70:25]
Owen Thomas
As a. I say bring back Microsoft, Bob.
- [70:31]
Leo Laporte
I think Copilot is getting a little bit more like Bob, to be honest, all the time. Or more like Clippy, Clippy Clippy Clippy 2.0.
- [70:40]
Wes Faulkner
Now with any obvious surgeons, they need to find the things that they do well and be able to do it consistently. It's like the voice dictation. When it was like even 93% accurate, it was still very annoying to go through and try to correct those errors. And it was only like, you know, recently where it can. The, the transcriptions have gotten like really, really high quality where it's like, oh, it's, it's an error, it doesn't bother me. But with these assistants, that's where if you can't rely on it to do something in the upper 90%, 100% of the time, you'll just like if I have to verify it every single time, I'm. It's just a waste of my time. I was listening to Hard for and they were talking about the Alexa plus and one of the.
- [71:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I've been playing with that. It's dopey too. Yeah.
- [71:29]
Wes Faulkner
They said like we can see why Apple hasn't released.
- [71:33]
Leo Laporte
Yes. And why Amazon put. Put it off for so long.
- [71:36]
Wes Faulkner
Exactly.
- [71:37]
Leo Laporte
It's just dopey.
- [71:38]
Wes Faulkner
You have, you have to do it well. And one of the hosts said that it messed up a timer. Like one of the things like the.
- [71:44]
Leo Laporte
Core, the one thing you use. The Echo 4. Exactly. Yeah.
- [71:48]
Wes Faulkner
And so. So you need it to be reliable. And with these agentic systems that are not predictable, it is like a landmine. And so they have to be able to do it and be able to say it will do these features and be extremely confident that it will do it.
- [72:09]
Leo Laporte
Most of the time people in the club Twit Discord say I shouldn't buy a new phone for a couple of years and Instead buy this $6,000 Chinese robot that can do cartwheels and handstands. The Unitree R1. Ultra lightweight, fully customizable. I don't know if I need a gymnastics robot though. I mean oh. Oh, that's scary. It's punching. It's punching.
- [72:35]
Doc Rock
Well, yeah.
- [72:36]
Wes Faulkner
Now, now you don't have to do your own handstands. You can just get.
- [72:38]
Leo Laporte
I can get somebody else to do the cartwheels for you.
- [72:42]
Owen Thomas
Can it, can it empty the dishwasher for me?
- [72:45]
Leo Laporte
No, that's a little. I did see, it was the funniest thing. You've probably seen this video too of a robot doing the laundry. Have you seen this one? And I don't know, it might be the unit.
- [72:56]
Wes Faulkner
Someone kept putting more laundry in the basket.
- [72:58]
Leo Laporte
Yes. And the robot moves at an infuriatingly slow pace because it's a robot and it takes each piece of. It's like 100 year old man going, yeah.
- [73:10]
Wes Faulkner
And not checking the labels.
- [73:13]
Leo Laporte
No. We didn't know if it's colored, if it's delicates. That's my brassiere you're putting in there. And it puts it in and then it goes. And it takes another one. By the way. They never show it starting the laundry. I can put the laundry in the washing machine. That's not where I need help. They never show it starting the laundry, putting it in the dryer, taking it out of the dryer, folding it and hanging it up. They don't show it. Do that. That.
- [73:37]
Doc Rock
I just need the folding part. I would have been cool. See, that's what they. These. So I think Wesley talked about this at the very, very beginning of the show. We're trying to do too much with these things. Instead of doing something, then add a little more. If AI had came out and the only thing it knew how to do in the very beginning was actually translate languages flawlessly and get the nuances in that of human conversation. Because it's read all the books, that would have been fucking fine. But they couldn't leave it at that. They had to show all the other Thousands. Here's the 85 use cases. If they had to checked it off a little bit at a time, we would have been totally fine.
- [74:12]
Leo Laporte
It's pretty good at translation though, right?
- [74:14]
Doc Rock
Yeah. Oh, it's actually relatively amazing. It's, it's doing so much better. And the thing where you put it in chat mode and you say, okay, you know, I, I speak Japanese and my other friend speaks English and we're going to have a. Oh, have you.
- [74:28]
Leo Laporte
Done that with people?
- [74:30]
Doc Rock
Yeah, I've done it with myself because I can understand it and I'm actually pretty impressed by it. Is it pretty close better when you do it with another person? Because it knows that two different people are talking and I can't change my voice enough to make it think it's working. So it is absolutely incredible at that and it will only get better. And now, because it works so well, there's a bunch of companies selling like translator earbuds and things like that, which kind of helpful.
- [74:56]
Leo Laporte
Or as I'm still holding out hope for augmented reality glasses that can translate in real time for you while you're wearing them. So you don't.
- [75:05]
Doc Rock
The new meta update does a good job of, like, looking at signs and helping you read what they do. I think it's 17. Oh, I think.
- [75:16]
Leo Laporte
But install it.
- [75:17]
Doc Rock
Yeah, yeah. It's actually pretty good at looking at signs and telling you what it says and. And things of that nature. But this part is where they could have just left it as something relatively simple, but they. They're trying to do too much and this is why people are freaked out. And if you knew that you were going to scare people with the job taking, then why would you do that? You know, because you get greedy.
- [75:39]
Leo Laporte
My glasses are up to date. Did you have to apply for some sort of special.
- [75:44]
Doc Rock
No, no. It just put the case next to it and then catches on.
- [75:49]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I have automatic updates on. So maybe I never use this, but it's kind of cool. I can say, hey, Meadow, what am I looking at right now?
- [75:58]
Doc Rock
Some bald git in Honolulu, Hawaii.
- [76:02]
Leo Laporte
You've got a computer set up with multiple monitors. Keep going. Can we.
- [76:07]
Owen Thomas
Can we agree that.
- [76:08]
Doc Rock
Oh, it's telling you. Go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry.
- [76:11]
Owen Thomas
Oh, can we agree that that meta's AI on Facebook.com is terrible.
- [76:17]
Leo Laporte
Everybody says it's terrible. I've never used it. What does it do?
- [76:20]
Owen Thomas
The post summaries are just ridiculous. Like, you know, like there's no, you know, there's no. No sense of context and there's no. No evidence that the AI is interpreting the post correctly.
- [76:33]
Wes Faulkner
So not the same delight as the summaries on the iPhone?
- [76:39]
Owen Thomas
No, not. I mean, it's not. It's not even that, like, you know, hilariously bad. It's just annoying too, because, like, meta's kind of sh it into the interface.
- [76:49]
Wes Faulkner
I've never used. Oh, is this on the mobile app or the website?
- [76:54]
Owen Thomas
Usually I'm using Facebook on mobile. So you see it under. Under a post, like just, you know, meta AI offers like kind of prompts to, you know, for discussion based, quote, unquote, based on the post and comments, and they're just really bad.
- [77:12]
Doc Rock
Oh, and then you see. Oh, my God. Oh, and you just mentioned something that's incredibly true. Okay? So again, you should understand context, right? So I'm doing a post, and in my community, I'm teaching people about, you know, doing their live streams. And I'm like, okay, if you want to create something and you don't want your audio to suck, here are a couple settings that you have to say. And I press go. And it won't take the post. And it's not highlighted. It's not telling me what it is. It just. You hit go, go, go. It won't take the post. It doesn't tell you the post doesn't work. It doesn't tell you why it won't take it. It. So then I looked at it and I said, okay, let me just try this, because I. I think. I think I know what they think they're doing. So I removed the word suck, and then I put something else, and then I hit it, and it went. But. And that would have been fine if you told me you're like, say, I can't say. Yeah, if you're Sister McGillicuddy from my Catholic school freak, I get it. But you didn't even highlight it. And go. You can't use that word. Right?
- [78:07]
Leo Laporte
And they send you feedback.
- [78:08]
Doc Rock
I got in Facebook jail for telling my brother, like, dude, if you post that picture of me in that outfit, I will kill you. And I got in Facebook jail. Do you know how many siblings say to each other, I love my little brother. That's my. That's my home.
- [78:25]
Leo Laporte
You say bra all the time, bruh.
- [78:28]
Doc Rock
Yeah, in Hawaii, we use that as a. As bruh. Right? We don't say it, like, the way you think it as a boulder holder. We say it as, like, a brother. It's bruh. Hey, bruh, Right?
- [78:39]
Leo Laporte
No, the Shaka bra. Hang loose, bro. Yeah, it's.
- [78:44]
Doc Rock
It's really dumb. And I'm like, if you're going to censor what I'm saying, tell me what I'm saying wrong.
- [78:48]
Leo Laporte
Then, yeah, I agree. It should give you feedback. That's not so good. I have. I don't. I have a medic Facebook account, but I. I don't use it for reasons like that. I want to tell people they suck. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Wrong just means that you're so low you would suck eggs is what that means. It's nothing. What do they think it means?
- [79:10]
Doc Rock
Is it.
- [79:11]
Owen Thomas
Is it telling that that the junk meta AI is on the Facebook app but not on Instagram? Does that tell you something about how.
- [79:19]
Leo Laporte
How they feel about Facebook. Yeah, they do, because, you know, their. Their llama is pretty good. In fact, the local version of llamas were quite good, I thought.
- [79:28]
Owen Thomas
So they're willing to junk up the big blue app, but not. Not Instagram, which is increasingly that they.
- [79:34]
Wes Faulkner
Just want to pump their numbers for how many users they have of meta AI and so that's why it's there. Does it work?
- [79:41]
Owen Thomas
No, I think, Wes, I think you're. I think you're exactly right. Like, it's just a use. It's just a kind of ego. User. User number play.
- [79:49]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [79:50]
Leo Laporte
All right, let's take a break. We've decided now the entire tech world sucks. Can't say that I'm gonna kill them. No, no, I'm not. No, I am not.
- [80:02]
Doc Rock
I guess you can't even say killing time anymore.
- [80:08]
Leo Laporte
Well, they took away all the human moderators, right? That's what you're seeing. The result of this is this is machine moderation at work.
- [80:14]
Doc Rock
And this is also why we have words on YouTube like unalived and stuff like that. That's why they say stupid like that.
- [80:19]
Leo Laporte
It's the funniest one is TikTok, where, you know, everybody's a corn actress and stuff like that. It's just, I think, I think somebody's got to write a book on Internet age euphemism to get around because I'm.
- [80:33]
Doc Rock
Still wrapping my head around Crash out.
- [80:36]
Leo Laporte
Crash out. You can't say that either, unless you're Tesla.
- [80:39]
Doc Rock
No, but you. You're going ballistic. Right? Or we would say, like, they're crazy or something and those are too mean. So you got to say that they crashing out.
- [80:48]
Leo Laporte
It's like the whole tech industry is taking sodium bromide. That's what I'm thinking.
- [80:52]
Wes Faulkner
It's all skippity toilet, skippity.
- [80:55]
Leo Laporte
Did you see the big Labubu robbery.
- [81:01]
Doc Rock
I never thought you'd hear on Twitter.
- [81:02]
Leo Laporte
What have we sunk to on this show? We'll get back to more real tech in just a bit with Wesley Faulkner, founder, startup guy. Now, is this your first business that you've started up?
- [81:16]
Wes Faulkner
It's my first one that's actually going to ship. I mean, I did try one before, but it never got to.
- [81:21]
Leo Laporte
Well, you didn't have AI to help you.
- [81:23]
Wes Faulkner
Yeah. So this is also my bag. This is community. So I.
- [81:28]
Leo Laporte
Nice. It's totally your thing. Yeah. Thousands of dollars worth of Labubus stolen as toys. Popularity continues to soar on World News Tonight. Also here, do you have a Labubu doll Doc? Rock.
- [81:47]
Doc Rock
Absolutely freaking nuts. I do have nothing against collecting things that don't make any dang sen. Although I've taken a lot of them out of the shot. I have so many of these little, like, Star wars doohickeys around here, I have no room to talk.
- [82:04]
Leo Laporte
But no, I love when you read in the newspaper where they say the Lububu dolls, which are creatures with 14 teeth. And I mean, they try to describe it, like you can somehow make sense of the phenomenon. Anyway, enough. Enough of that. Also with a. I need to break.
- [82:24]
Wes Faulkner
All right. To Labubu.
- [82:26]
Leo Laporte
So, yeah, go get your. Go cuddle your. Labubu. Managing editor of the San Francisco Business Times. Great to have all of you here on a hot Sunday afternoon or morning or whatever it is evening for you. Our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN. This is timely. This is timely. We're gonna actually talk about why it's timely in just a little bit. The UK has adopted the online. The snoopers charter, right. Which has online age verification. What happened immediate, immediately, the day that law took effect last week or the week before, people downloading VPNs went up like 10 times in one day. Why? Because that's. You get around this stuff. Now, if. If you're. If you're going to talk about VPNs, I gotta. I gotta tell you, I know you're probably already in the market for one. There's only one I recommend. There's only one I use ExpressVPN. I'm gonna tell you what. Why. Yeah, I know you have a choice, but there's really. There's. There's. The best one is ExpressVPN. If you've ever browsed in incognito mode, this is one reason it's not as incognito as you might think. You know the quote, private browsing. Google just recently settled a $5 billion lawsuit after being accused of secretly tracking users in incognito mode. What was Google's defense? Your Honor, incognito does not mean invisible. No, it does not. In fact, even in private browsing, all your online activity is still 100% visible to third parties. Except if you use ExpressVPN, the only VPN I use and trust. You better believe when I go online, especially when I'm traveling, when I'm at that airport coffee shop in other countries, ExpressVPN is my go to. How does ExpressVPN unblock content? Well, a couple of ways. Netflix hides content from you based on location, right? Maybe the UK government might be doing the same thing. ExpressVPN lets you change your online location. So when you want Netflix to sync your located in Paris, for instance, they have servers in over 100 countries. You pick the country, you can gain access to thousands of new shows and never run out of stuff to watch. This works with many other streaming services too. Disney Plus BBC's iPlayer and more. Now, why do I say ExpressVPN is the best VPN? Well, privacy number one. It hides your IP address, rerouting all your traffic from your computer to their server via an encrypted tunnel so nobody can see it. And then you emerge onto the Internet with their IP address. And ExpressVPN is good. They rotate their IP addresses. Not all VPNs do this. This. In fact, they even have a new feature where the IP address isn't even associated with them. So people can't even tell you're on a vpn. And often that's how you get around some of these restrictions, if you know what I mean. It's easy to use too. You just fire up the app, you click on a button to get protected. Now that you click the button, it's going to pick the server that's fastest, closest to you. But you can also say, no, I don't want to be in England right now, I want to be or, or, you know, Texas. I want to be in Canada. And you are 100 different countries. ExpressVPN also works on everything you use all the devices, phones, laptops, tablets and more. So you can stay private on the go. Rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and the Verge. If you're in the market for a vpn, this is the one you use. Protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com TWIT that's E x p r e s s vpn.com TWIT to find out how you can get up to four extra months free. Expressvpn.com TWIT we thank them so much for their support and I congratulate them on their success. Here's the story from Tech Dirt. Mike Masnik writing didn't take long to reveal the UK's Online Safety Act. That is exactly the privacy crushing failure everybody warned about. This is the, this is the thing they turned on. That is going to have age checking requirements. It turned on. It became in effect end of July. Mike says let's start with the most obvious sign this law is working exactly as poorly as critics warn. VPN usage in the UK has absolutely exploded. Proton VPN reported an 1800% spike in UK signups. Five of the top ten free apps on the App Store in the UK. VPN's Mike says when your child safety law's primary achievement is teaching kids how to use VPNs to circumvent it. Maybe you missed the mark just a little bit. But the real kicker, and this is actually more to the point, is what consent, what content is now being gatekeeped behind this? You know, age verification system. Users in the UK now need to submit a selfie or government ID to access Reddit communities, not just sexy communities, communities about stopping drinking and smoking, about menstruation, about craft beers, support for sexual assault victims, not to mention documentation of war. Those are all considered too grown up for people under 16. So you gotta identify yourself. Spotify for music videos that are tagged as 18 plus blocked. War footage, protest videos on X blocked. Even Wikipedia has now had to consider limiting access to users in the uk. Now they're actively challenging the law, but even Wikipedia. And they don't want to do the age verification thing. Nobody does because it's a privacy nightmare and they're the ones who would have to do it, right?
- [88:28]
Doc Rock
Yep.
- [88:29]
Wes Faulkner
Not necessarily. I was just thinking about. This is a slight pivot, so bear with me. I'm sorry. I'm super surprised that companies like X aren't really embracing this because if they were able to do the verification themselves and then then have other companies use their logon, just like you would log on with Google or Facebook into a property and just you and say oh, make some money.
- [88:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, by being a provider of age verification services.
- [89:01]
Wes Faulkner
Exactly. And if they want to be the everything app, they'll know like where people are visiting.
- [89:07]
Leo Laporte
And here's the problem.
- [89:08]
Doc Rock
You know who has but won't do it? Apple. Apple has that data but you know, they're so privacy oriented they wouldn't do it. But that was your exactly right. Like doing it as a single sort of sign on thing. That would actually be brilliant. And Leo, I know this is true and this is the strangest like you know, correlation causation thing. It's. It was this football preseason round, not Oblong. Well now Oblong started yesterday.
- [89:32]
Leo Laporte
Hand egg we call it here in.
- [89:34]
Doc Rock
The so Die Hard, you know, Manchester United fan and well that kind of football.
- [89:41]
Leo Laporte
Oh, okay.
- [89:41]
Doc Rock
Yeah. All of the shows that I watch watched in the last like say July in August. We're sponsored by ExpressVPN.
- [89:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, good on them. And guess who that audience they're going after is? They're going after the UK audience. Right.
- [89:58]
Doc Rock
100. So it's funny that guys that used to be manscaped, like a couple months ago, all of their stuff, all the shows, they're all sponsored by various VPN companies.
- [90:08]
Leo Laporte
We used to have Manscape. We used to have them as a sponsor, but now we have ExpressVPN. So what does that tell you? Something. Something.
- [90:15]
Doc Rock
Hey, you know, hey, got to keep up with the UK safety laws.
- [90:19]
Leo Laporte
It's a. It's just.
- [90:20]
Doc Rock
Don't. Don't nick your Ghibli bits.
- [90:22]
Leo Laporte
It's just amazing. Now, how long before. Go ahead. I know you're gonna just like.
- [90:27]
Wes Faulkner
Just like Brexit. It's going to be coming to the United States.
- [90:30]
Leo Laporte
Yes, it is. Already. It's in Texas. It's in something like 20 states have age verification laws. It's not quite as broad as the snoopers charter in the uk, but many have pointed out it would block things like LGBTQ information. It would.
- [90:48]
Doc Rock
I got one that's funny for you. I was at a conference in Iowa just a little bit ago, and I overheard a conversation in the coffee shop where the dude said out loud, in the coffee shop, hey, in Iowa. I didn't know this, but you can't go to pornhub.com in Iowa.
- [91:05]
Leo Laporte
How'd you find that out, buddy?
- [91:08]
Doc Rock
I laughed out loud. You know, you try to. When somebody say something dumb in public and you try to not hold your laughing. I'm not good at that. I got a loud laugh and I was just like.
- [91:16]
Leo Laporte
And you have extra small condoms here.
- [91:19]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God.
- [91:21]
Leo Laporte
Hey, George, do we have extra small condoms for this guy?
- [91:25]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God. And you know, YouTube is doing something kind of similar where they're. They're doing some age verification thing that's coming up and it's. It was designed to.
- [91:35]
Leo Laporte
They say they can do it. Yeah, they can do it just by looking at you.
- [91:39]
Doc Rock
They don't need to what you want.
- [91:41]
Leo Laporte
They can tell by what you watch.
- [91:43]
Doc Rock
Yeah. Which is not cool because sometimes my nephews are over and they're, you know, being little turds. I'm like, sit your butt in the front. Do this while I make something to eat.
- [91:52]
Leo Laporte
You know that doc watches a lot of bluey. I don't know what's going on there.
- [91:56]
Wes Faulkner
Listen, kids ruin everything. I mean, messing up your Spotify wrapped and all that.
- [92:02]
Doc Rock
How come yours is so much baby shark there, Wes?
- [92:05]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, you seem to watch baby shark an awful lot. You probably shouldn't see this.
- [92:12]
Owen Thomas
Does anyone have a problem with their spouse? Uses their like, streaming account. And like.
- [92:18]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, completely.
- [92:19]
Doc Rock
I mean, I. I had to put my foot down because I was getting like, Bridgerton and all this other stuff, and I'm like, nah, fam, don't mess me up.
- [92:27]
Leo Laporte
You got Bridgerton Project Runway showing up in my Netflix feed. I don't get it. What? I'm.
- [92:33]
Doc Rock
So now on Apple tv, you actually can select the user by what you're doing. And yesterday I went to go do one of the workouts, and when I hit it, it, like, noticed both watches in the room and it was like, okay, which one of you is doing this?
- [92:46]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's cool.
- [92:47]
Doc Rock
Right? So then because it's doing by the.
- [92:49]
Leo Laporte
By the Apple watch, it knows.
- [92:50]
Doc Rock
Yeah, because you're connected in the same room.
- [92:52]
Leo Laporte
That's cool.
- [92:53]
Doc Rock
What. You know what? What's funny is the reason why people in my. My. I'm in the. This conversation grew with Renee. You know, he's at YouTube and everybody's mad. It's like, yo, I watch tons of anime fam. And like, now YouTube is going to think that I'm a little kid because I watch anime. Like, most of my grown folk friends watch anime. So how is it?
- [93:10]
Leo Laporte
What's wrong with anime?
- [93:11]
Doc Rock
Pick up? Nothing. You know, K Pop Demon Slayers for the win, son. I don't know what y' all talking about.
- [93:19]
Wes Faulkner
I might be old, but I'm no soda pop.
- [93:22]
Owen Thomas
Okay, so. So everyone is like, beating up on Paramount, right?
- [93:26]
Leo Laporte
For.
- [93:26]
Owen Thomas
For Paramount Plus. But I ask you, how can there be a better streaming app than one that combines Star Trek and RuPaul's Drag Race? Do you need anything else?
- [93:37]
Leo Laporte
They belong together.
- [93:38]
Doc Rock
I love my Paramount plus because I get those two plus Champions League football. So let's keep it real.
- [93:44]
Leo Laporte
Well, get ready. Disney and Hulu are gonna be kind of into one. Disney plus is gonna become Hulu. Well, Disney owns Hulu, but out right now I say think, but they're going to absorb the Hulu app into the Disney plus app. And that's what you're seeing with the Warner's acquisition, right? All of a sudden, I'm watching HBO prestige content next to Dr. Pickle Pimple Popper.
- [94:08]
Owen Thomas
So actually they're splitting this up with.
- [94:10]
Leo Laporte
Now they're splitting them up again.
- [94:13]
Owen Thomas
Oddly, Discovery plus is going with Discovery. So they're going from like one combo app. They never killed Discovery plus apparently, because there were some people who were just paying for that. So they're going to pull them apart now.
- [94:28]
Leo Laporte
I think the idea in most of these cases is let's offload the end of the line. Cable news networks, all the stuff, the tv, all the stuff is dying. And that's one company. And then we'll preserve the streaming stuff, which is the future. But it's kind of hard to assume that you're streaming system is going to be the next big thing when YouTube and Netflix are so dominant.
- [94:54]
Doc Rock
I could.
- [94:54]
Leo Laporte
Disney plus is struggling.
- [94:56]
Doc Rock
Right. But I just saw somebody making a joke about, you know, it was on hbo, which is now HBO Max, which was formerly HBO Cinemax, which was then turned into it, and it was Max.
- [95:08]
Leo Laporte
Now it's HBO Max.
- [95:09]
Doc Rock
I don't remember the person who said it. They nailed it. And I was like, man, it must have took you forever to remember that line. But it was good. Just figure it out exactly where we are. It's so crazy. Like I don't even know what to call it anymore. I don't even know what I'm paying for. I got that thing that has Game of Thrones on it.
- [95:26]
Leo Laporte
I wonder if the UK is going to do what China and Russia have done and ban VPNs. That's the next step, isn't it? If you cannot, that would be pretty awful.
- [95:36]
Wes Faulkner
Well, I mean, people use VPNs for work too.
- [95:40]
Leo Laporte
That's true.
- [95:41]
Wes Faulkner
You can't just ban VPNs.
- [95:43]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [95:44]
Wes Faulkner
And then travelers. I mean there's. There's got to be a lot of travelers that go through that have to have VPNs for what they do you. Yeah, I don't think that'd be possible.
- [95:53]
Leo Laporte
The British government dismissed all criticism as support for child predators. You must like child predators if you don't like, oh my God, I hate that. Isn't that awful?
- [96:04]
Doc Rock
I hate that it can't be like a combination of things. And. And again, this drives me the most crazy here. I can speak more to What I know about where we live is there's still no heavy conversation about seeing the four year old with a full ass can of Pepsi in their hand.
- [96:23]
Leo Laporte
Oh God, that's terrible.
- [96:25]
Doc Rock
You know what I'm saying? What's more dangerous to the kids? Some perceived thing that they're not gonna watch because they're interested anyway.
- [96:31]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [96:31]
Doc Rock
Or 16 tablespoons of sugar.
- [96:35]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [96:35]
Doc Rock
And bubbles and whatever, you know, like, so we always are looking at the wrong thing. Like we're always watching something while Jason's standing in the back with the fricking hockey mask and you don't see him. But you're.
- [96:49]
Leo Laporte
As usual, Mike Masnick on Tector cuts through it to a very clear Statement. Let's talk about what this law actually accomplishes. It makes it harder for adults to access perfectly legal and often helpful information and services. It forces people to create detailed trails of their online activity linked to their real identities. It drives users towards less secure platforms and services. It destroys small online communities that can't afford compliance costs. That's an important point. Yeah. X can make money on it by offering this as a service. But my little Mastodon instance, I'm not going to be able to do age verification. And it teaches an entire generation that bypassing government surveillance is a basic life skill. Meanwhile, the actual harms it purports to address, those remain entirely unaddressed. Predators will simply move to unregulated platforms, encrypted messaging or services that don't comply. Or they'll just use VPNs. The law creates the illusion of safety while actually making everyone less secure. How many laws can you say that about? That seems to be a common.
- [97:58]
Doc Rock
That is a very common thing.
- [98:00]
Wes Faulkner
Also, the free VPNs aren't necessarily the most.
- [98:03]
Leo Laporte
They're no. Better.
- [98:04]
Doc Rock
Better.
- [98:04]
Leo Laporte
Yes. Yeah.
- [98:05]
Wes Faulkner
And that could be putting you in some real harm using those services.
- [98:09]
Leo Laporte
Absolutely.
- [98:10]
Wes Faulkner
Especially the people who think that they're protected. That's even worse.
- [98:13]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. You can't offer an expensive service for free. If you're doing it, then you're making money somehow. Exactly. Somehow. I'll tell you who's not making money. Amazon on podcasting. Oh, man. You know they bought Wondery Podcast network started like five years ago for $300 million. They just fired 100 Wondery employees. The head of Wondery left. They've taken all of their audio only podcasts, the ones that I think they probably bought wondery for, like Dr. Death and Dirty John, both of which had been turned into TV series. And they're moving them into Audible, the audiobook arm of Amazon. And not trying to sell ads, they're just going to make money through subscriptions. And then their celebrity shows like the Kelsey Brothers, you know, and Dax Shepard's armchair expert will be in a new Amazon division, not called Wondry but creator services. They are going to continue to try to sell advertising. I suspect that this is why they're doing this, that advertising sales were not easy to. But they are exploring other revenue streams such as e commerce. I don't even know what that means.
- [99:31]
Wes Faulkner
They struggle all the time with these types of business.
- [99:34]
Leo Laporte
They just, you know, I can tell you right now, selling Dax Shepard T shirts is not going to pay his salary.
- [99:40]
Wes Faulkner
I mean, Twitch was Or is like still a brand name, barely working, they still can't make money off. Yeah, yeah, they, they, they are not able to get synergies working with all of their other properties to the point where they're able to make these businesses sustainable, spend out, spend and shell out a lot of money acquiring these companies and they just totally let them rot on the vine. It's really, really sad.
- [100:05]
Leo Laporte
Amazon, it's interesting, did have an insight into this. They basically said there's two kinds of podcasts. The audio and video podcasts have very different audiences and very different styles. The audio shows tend to be narrative shows in which the host, the person telling the story, like in serial, isn't the product. The story story is the product. Right. But video podcasts are the opposite. It's all about the celebrities, you know, Alex Cooper and call her daddy or Joe Rogan. And it's about their talent, their fan bases and their franchise potential. It's about building an audience. And this sounds like Amazon. It's about building an audience and finding lots of different ways to monetize that audience. Audience.
- [100:52]
Wes Faulkner
You can't tell me that they saturated. They're saturated all of their viewers. Like they, they've, they've expanded so much that they've gotten all the viewers they're gonna get. That's not true.
- [101:03]
Doc Rock
No, no, it's not true. Here's what they did wrong, okay? I, I coach this, I get, I get paid to travel around the country and coach this to people. The biggest mistake that these large companies have is they're still focused on, on audience and audience size.
- [101:19]
Leo Laporte
Right?
- [101:20]
Doc Rock
And what makes Leo one of the best in the game?
- [101:23]
Leo Laporte
I have a tiny audience before.
- [101:26]
Doc Rock
No, you, I'm, I'm not gonna let you sell yourself out. You have.
- [101:31]
Wes Faulkner
I won t. Audience.
- [101:32]
Doc Rock
You have a community. Audience means. Listen to me spout nonsense. Community means talk back and forth.
- [101:38]
Leo Laporte
That's really true.
- [101:39]
Doc Rock
Dialogue. Let's have a discourse.
- [101:42]
Leo Laporte
And by the way, that's why we can continue to sell advertising. Because, because people trust us when we talk about a product, because we have a community.
- [101:50]
Doc Rock
Look, look at the chat right now. The chat is here. They're always engaged. They're some of the funniest people in the planet. They. A lot of knowledge like that. We have a multiple directional conversation with people who would have many, many things they could be doing on Sunday. But they're hanging out with us. And you invited me and Wesley on the same time again, which was. I don't know who's booking, but that was stupid.
- [102:12]
Leo Laporte
No, we Love you, Doc. You know what? Joking. We try to get people on who also have a community and an audience who people like and respect.
- [102:21]
Doc Rock
Yeah, I. Stop trying to build an audience. Stop trying to build views. You want to build a community. Community is everything. Because you know what happens why creators, quote, unquote, get burnt out, you know, is they've been just performative and they don't. They don't feel like the audience can provide anything for them. But when you have a community, even when I don't feel like doing something, I'll come out and do it, and the community instantly makes you feel better and then you're on. So, you know, because you've been doing probably longer than anybody.
- [102:48]
Leo Laporte
20 years, buddy.
- [102:50]
Doc Rock
Crack the mic and you ain't feeling.
- [102:52]
Leo Laporte
You were in high school when I started this. 20.
- [102:55]
Doc Rock
No, no, but you were.
- [102:57]
Leo Laporte
You were on the. On the ground in Afghanistan as a medic, probably when I started this.
- [103:02]
Doc Rock
Yeah. So it's one of those things where you definitely feel different when you know that your people are riding with you. And so while everybody else is trying to be performative and all they'd have to do, and this is why I think Colbert will land on his feet, is because.
- [103:18]
Leo Laporte
Absolutely.
- [103:19]
Doc Rock
What's his whole production in house and.
- [103:21]
Leo Laporte
Countdown to Colbert's podcast. Right. Isn't that what Conan did? And his podcast is hugely successful.
- [103:27]
Doc Rock
It's so much better than the show.
- [103:28]
Leo Laporte
It's better than the show.
- [103:30]
Doc Rock
Oh, Conan these Friends is way better than the TV show. And the show was good, but the podcast is epic.
- [103:37]
Leo Laporte
And I bet for Conan it's a lot easier and a lot more fun to do do. Right.
- [103:42]
Doc Rock
He can say and do whatever the heck he wants.
- [103:44]
Leo Laporte
What is all this about YouTube being the number one podcast platform?
- [103:48]
Doc Rock
Oh, man, YouTube is kicking buttocks like it is so good. Well, okay, here's the prime play. And this is where everybody, again, doesn't really pay attention to these things, but these things just happen. Everybody chat tv, whatever you're listening to, Go grab your TV remote and point to me. The Facebook button. Yeah, point to me. The Apple podcast button. Point to me. Anything other than YouTube and Netflix button. Maybe you have a Roku button, depending on where you. Your tv, if you have a fire tv, whatever. But every television sold in the planet in the last 10 years has a YouTube button on the remote. And once they figured out during the pandemic, YouTube had a tab called Listenable at the very top of your YouTube page. There's tabs across the top, whatever you most likely watch. Then there's news. And there was a tab that said listenable. Now that tab has changed the podcast because by switching it to podcast that means that when you, when, when you and Andy and the boys are talking on Wednesday, I don't have to watch you. I could be in the kitchen, you know, cleaning the. Right.
- [104:49]
Leo Laporte
But people like having the video there and they just listen. Yeah.
- [104:53]
Doc Rock
Cuz I need to see. When Andy says something crazy, I need to see expression. Right. Or if you're showing something, he's like, hey, I just bought this gadget for pick of the week and you want to show what it is. I run back into the living room cuz I'm like, what did Leo buy that I need to buy?
- [105:07]
Leo Laporte
You know, we started doing video in 2008.
- [105:10]
Doc Rock
8 100% Apple.
- [105:13]
Leo Laporte
And it was always an issue for me because I knew that most of our audience is still the case for almost all our shows is audio. Probably 80% in many cases. But and so you have to be careful. You can't say. You see what I'm saying here? You can't because you don't know that everybody's going to be watching it or even have the video. But at the same time it does. I think think it. Even if you only watched a little bit or one show in 10, there's a value to seeing it and seeing what the people look like and stuff. And that stays in your brain after as you continue to listen to it.
- [105:45]
Wes Faulkner
I don't agree.
- [105:46]
Doc Rock
Because of you.
- [105:48]
Wes Faulkner
I would say NPR podcasts are the exception. Do not watch those. Seeing what people actually look like ruins my brain.
- [105:56]
Leo Laporte
I know this because I watch, gosh, most of my life and I would meet people and their. You could see their face visibly fall like oh, that's what you look like, huh?
- [106:09]
Doc Rock
Yeah, they have a face for radio. But no, seriously, I, I bought ipod video because of you. Because I wanted all the twitch shows that I could put.
- [106:18]
Leo Laporte
Ipod video. Is that a product?
- [106:20]
Doc Rock
Yes sir.
- [106:21]
Leo Laporte
I don't even remember that it had a little screen, didn't it?
- [106:26]
Doc Rock
Yeah, it was about you. Mine's I can't reach it. But yeah, it's only about your. When we started that was out watch video on it.
- [106:32]
Leo Laporte
When we started doing video and I had decided at the time if people are going to watch on that we better. Everybody's head had better on the screen had better be this big so that you could see us. Otherwise we're little dots on the screen. Yeah. Everybody get close. This is for ipod video. And then I realized if we do that It'll be terrifying.
- [106:55]
Doc Rock
But you remember even from way back when Adam Christensen would put the. The visual chapters in all of his, you know, podcast, because people were buying, you know, players with screens. And it. It's the thing, I think one other biggest hang up that we're having right now. And again, I speak at podcast conferences all over the planet.
- [107:13]
Leo Laporte
Are you going to podcast movement in a couple of weeks?
- [107:16]
Doc Rock
I was going to go to podcast movement, but it's going to coincide with a Japan trip that I just canceled. Not technically I can go, but Lisa's.
- [107:24]
Leo Laporte
Going, if you go, say hi.
- [107:25]
Doc Rock
Definition of podcast is messing with people. And, like, it's too short.
- [107:31]
Leo Laporte
Wait a minute. Say that again. That's the definition of a podcast.
- [107:35]
Doc Rock
No, wrapping your head around the definition.
- [107:37]
Leo Laporte
What it is. I get it. Yeah.
- [107:38]
Doc Rock
Yes, yes. It's too. It's too strange to people. And it should be a little bit more. Because if you create a show and just a piece of content, right? Because a lady asked me the other day, she goes, oh, I thought all podcasts had to be an hour because she wants to do a five minute podcast. And see, it's funny to us because we've been in the game so long and we remember things like, Sam used to have the 3 minute app iOS daily or whatever. And so I was like, no, her name is Mariana. Said, marion, you could do a podcast that's three minutes long. And she was like, what? How? And I'm like, literally. I had a buddy that used to do iOS apps when they first came out, and it was three minutes long. And it was one of the best because you always knew what was going on. Until now. There's thousands of apps every day, and that show probably wouldn't really make sense.
- [108:23]
Leo Laporte
So one of our. One of our agencies, one of our agencies, Oxford Road, actually created a podcast series I know because I was in it called what is a Podcast? It was intended more for advertisers, right? So that they could understand what this medium was, which is why I was glad to participate in it. But they had to do a show about. A show about podcasts just so that people could understand what. What the hell that was, right?
- [108:53]
Doc Rock
It's. It's the opposite of Seinfeld.
- [108:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [108:56]
Doc Rock
Wait, so what's the show? The show is like, so this.
- [108:58]
Leo Laporte
This right here, right now, what we're.
- [109:01]
Doc Rock
Saying, this is a podcast.
- [109:02]
Leo Laporte
I don't think he liked it because I. I did. I said exactly what you just said, Doc. I said, well, first of all, it's the worst name possible. It's not descriptive, you know, and, and it's like saying a TV show is like a crt. It's a. Or I'm gonna go watch a Zenith tonight.
- [109:20]
Wes Faulkner
Just.
- [109:21]
Owen Thomas
You think, do you think like Gen Z thinks that the pod and podcast is for AirPods?
- [109:27]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Or something they don't think about. Yeah.
- [109:29]
Doc Rock
It used to be ipod, but they don't even know. Right.
- [109:32]
Leo Laporte
Exist. And then there was an attempt, people.
- [109:34]
Doc Rock
Thinking you could only hear podcasts on ipods.
- [109:37]
Leo Laporte
Right. I hated that name.
- [109:39]
Wes Faulkner
Remember?
- [109:39]
Leo Laporte
I. At the very first podcast, whatever it was called at the time, I said, said, can we just. Let's all agree we don't call it podcasts. It's a bad idea. Apple could sue us. It's tying it to the platform. Instead of talking about we are. Can we call them netcat? Remember? I. This was a crap net cat you.
- [109:54]
Doc Rock
Love from the people you trust.
- [109:56]
Leo Laporte
Such a stupid. It wasn't stupid. It was right. It was the correct thing to say. Just like on tech tv. They want. They, they wanted to call it the Webcam Network. I said, well, you know, technically, it's not the web, it's the Internet. That one I won. They called it the netcam Network, but nobody knew what it was. You mean a webcam? Yeah, yeah. Webcam podcast. You mean a podcast, right? Yeah.
- [110:20]
Owen Thomas
But going back to the question, you know, now, what's the definition of a podcast? It's like a video you watch on YouTube, right?
- [110:27]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [110:27]
Owen Thomas
And that's because of monetization. YouTube offers consistent monetization. It's not. It may not be the most, you know, the highest CPA DM that you get, but look at the problems that Amazon is having. Like, it's very, you know, it's.
- [110:43]
Leo Laporte
Without YouTube, they can't monetize.
- [110:45]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [110:46]
Leo Laporte
Isn't that funny? Isn't that a little ironic?
- [110:49]
Doc Rock
Oh, and so here's the funny thing, because you mentioned Paramount, I don't know if most people realize this, but Colbert is on YouTube 45 minutes after the show goes off.
- [111:00]
Leo Laporte
What?
- [111:00]
Doc Rock
Really? In Hawaii? Yes. Me living in Hawaii. I don't have to wait till late at night to watch Colbert bear because it comes on at 11 here like it does everywhere else. But I get my cold bear at like two. Something in the afternoon, Three in the afternoon. Because they package the show and put it up as soon as it's over.
- [111:16]
Leo Laporte
The entire show?
- [111:18]
Doc Rock
No, no. They break it up into the commercial breaks.
- [111:20]
Leo Laporte
Oh, the little bits. Yeah.
- [111:21]
Doc Rock
Right. So if every segment is eight to 10 minutes long, they pull that segment, they put it so does Colbert. So does Myers. You know, so does Jimmy, the other dummy.
- [111:30]
Leo Laporte
Do you remember when YouTube first started started, they came inches away from being shut down because NBC was pissed off that people were posting Saturday Night Live clips.
- [111:43]
Doc Rock
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
- [111:44]
Leo Laporte
Remember Lonely Sunday?
- [111:46]
Doc Rock
Viacom was the biggest one.
- [111:47]
Leo Laporte
But yeah, yeah, Viacom and NBC both hated this. And then they suddenly realized, oh, wait a minute, we've never had better ratings for Saturday Night Live in years. It's good for the show. Show. And now all the shows, I guess, realize, oh, yeah, it's actually good to post on YouTube. It drives.
- [112:04]
Doc Rock
I used to say this years ago, the Internet was the terriblest, most worsest, most terrible thing possible, to coin the Charles Barkley phrase, until the networks figured out how to make money with it. And once the networks figured out how to make money with it, they stopped doing all the scary network is going to get you stuff to Catch a Predator kind of sort of went off the air. As soon as the network NBC started making money on, you know, putting the regular shows on air, they legit. Chris Hansen lost his job because they didn't want to scare people about the Internet because every show. Anyway, go to our website and get xyz. So prior to that, it's like, don't be on the Internet. Your brain's gonna blow up.
- [112:46]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I'm just saying. Oh, well, let's take a little break because I have to monetize. Somebody's got paid for this. That's Doc Rock right there. The guy with the. With the Eminem T shirt. Actually, it's a. It's. It's a. It's a jersey that says ecamm. Because he's director of Strategic partnerships, ecamm. And we are very happy. ECAMM customers is what we use to switch our shows. So thank you, Doc. Of course, he's also a YouTube creator, YouTube.com docrock and he has regular lunches with Renee Richie, which is nice. Not in person though, right?
- [113:22]
Doc Rock
No, we just chat all the time.
- [113:24]
Leo Laporte
He's moved to San Francisco, hasn't he?
- [113:27]
Doc Rock
Yes.
- [113:27]
Leo Laporte
Nice. With Cali Lewis.
- [113:30]
Doc Rock
Correct.
- [113:30]
Leo Laporte
Which. Which is really cool. I know her as Cali, but she's of course not. Yeah, yeah. She was Cali for a long time and then she started using her real name and they're an item, which is. Makes me. It warms my heart. It's so good. Cute. They're two of my favorite people. Love to see them together. Yeah. Also here from the San Francisco Business Times. He's their managing editor, the wonderful Owen Thomas. Still looking great, sir. What do you bench?
- [114:04]
Owen Thomas
Let's see. I think just got up to two plates, so that's 225.
- [114:09]
Leo Laporte
God dang nothing.
- [114:12]
Owen Thomas
Not a. Not a big flex in. In gym world, but it sounds like.
- [114:15]
Leo Laporte
A flex to me. I just. I just benched £95. That's a bar and two 20 pound plates.
- [114:23]
Owen Thomas
You just, you just start, start where.
- [114:26]
Leo Laporte
You are and you gotta work your way up, right? Gotta work your way up. Not 225. Wow, that's pretty good. They say if you could bench your weight, you're strong, so that's good. You're benching more than you're your way. Also, the wonderful. I won't ask you how much you can bench Wesley Faulkner. He. He doesn't have to. He doesn't have to flex because he's got his own startup now. Works dash. Look at those guns. Not working dot com. Wow. Y' all strong men. I'm a little puny weakling.
- [114:59]
Wes Faulkner
Oh, and get it in there.
- [114:59]
Leo Laporte
Get it in. Let's get the gun show on. Yeah. All right. Gun show time. All right. All right, everybody. You got to figure out a way to get your biceps in. In there. Let's see, I bought a ticket to the gun show and all as I got was this peashooter.
- [115:15]
Doc Rock
The beach is that way.
- [115:16]
Leo Laporte
Beaches. Which way is the beach? That way. That way. Great to have all three of you strong people on the show. You know who's got bigger bi. The biggest biceps in our family is my wife. I said, honey, I've been working out. Feel my biceps. She said, said, feel my biceps. I went, oh, crap, she could take me. I'm not kidding either, by the way. Our show today, brought to you by those great folks at NetSuite. It's an interesting time. That's one way to put it. An interesting time for business. Trade policies and tariffs are. What's the word? Dynamic. Supply chains are squeezed. And cash flow, well, it's tighter than ever. However, if your business can't adapt in real time, you are in a world of hurt. You need total visibility, from global shipments to tariff impacts. And real time cash flow. Well, there's a way to do it. Netsuite by Oracle, your AI powered business management suite trusted by over 42,000 businesses. NetSuite is the number one cloud ERP for a lot of reasons. It brings accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one suite, which is fantastic because that means you have one source of truth. It gives you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions with Real time forecasting. You're peering into the future with actionable data. And with AI embedded throughout, you can automate a lot of those everyday tasks, which means your teams can stay strategic. NetSuite helps you know what's stuck, what it's costing you, you and how to pivot fast. Wouldn't you like that? It's one system, full control. Tame the chaos with NetSuite. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook Navigating Global Trade. 3 insights for leaders@netsuite.com TWiT that's netsuite.com TWiT thank you NetSuite, for your support of the show. Now I know I can watch Colbert. I don't have to stay up late anymore. How about a nuclear reactor on the moon? Are you ready?
- [117:31]
Wes Faulkner
I saw Neil Degrasse Tyson said that this is a good idea.
- [117:35]
Leo Laporte
Well, yeah, I mean, better there than here, I guess, than my backyard.
- [117:40]
Doc Rock
How do you get the cable back?
- [117:43]
Leo Laporte
It's not. It's for the moon men. So if we're going to build, we need power if we're going to build on a habitat had on. On. On the moon. Right. NASA says by the year 2030, which according to my careful calculations is less than five years off, we are going to build 100 kilowatt, which is not huge, but big enough kilowatt nuclear reactor on the moon. And according to Wired, it's ambitious, but it's achievable. This comes from the new interim director at NASA, Sean Duffy. Everybody in the Trump administration has many hats. He's also the Secretary of Transportation. Apparently China and Russia have both said they are going to do something, in fact a joint effort to place a reactor on the moon by the mid-2030s. So we want to beat them. There is an hour a reactor on the moon race and it's kind of a necessity for Artemis, which is NASA's plan, to land on the moon. It would be on the lunar south pole. It would be built with commercial partners. 100 kilowatts is about enough to power 80 families. It's not a massive amount, but enough to power any, you know, colony on the moon. Hi. Hi.
- [119:01]
Doc Rock
This is Benito. Is this really about power?
- [119:03]
Wes Faulkner
Because they could.
- [119:04]
Doc Rock
Isn't solar like better?
- [119:07]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, especially on the moon. There's no cloud cover. Huh.
- [119:10]
Wes Faulkner
Well, they said that the, the poles get sun at different times. So like one, one month, two weeks will get sun, two weeks, it won't get sun.
- [119:19]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [119:19]
Wes Faulkner
So unless you put the solar panels on both poles, then that would matter. But it'd be nice to have reliable power especially if they're thinking about doing some sort of moon base or something to have 3D printers running 247 to help with creating either drilling or, or building structures all the time. 247 having reliable power I think is, is a game changer. I think this is a really, really good idea. One thing to note is that there was thought about nuclear propulsion for rockets and using earth to slingshot. And the, the thought was or the worry was that if it's a failed launch or if it crashes, the fallout of having something that's nuclear on board was a big deterrent.
- [120:02]
Leo Laporte
So I remember reacting, yeah, it probably.
- [120:06]
Wes Faulkner
Won'T be a problem but that might be something that might come up.
- [120:10]
Leo Laporte
They'll be concerned there'll be plutonium or something on it. Right? Uranium, There'll be some nuclear fuel source. According to Wired. Actually this is actually an email to Wired from aerospace engineer who I guess felt like he should put this in terms that we would all understand. The 100 kilowatt design would be roughly equivalent to sending a couple of African elephants to the moon with a fold out umbrella the size of a basketball court. Okay. The elephants produce the heat. The umbrella is not for shade. It's for dumping the heat into space. Okay.
- [120:59]
Doc Rock
You know, well thanks for clearing that up. I'm gonna assume, I'm gonna assume crazily that you know, people of the vintage of say Owen and myself, we were probably in like you know, kindergarten first grade when 14 touched down. And you know, from that moment on we thought so much more things were going to happen with the moon between sad then, then and now. And so the fact that we even get him back to some sense of trying things, I'm cool with it. Like I don't mind there being experiments or whatever but I feel like, you know, we lost so much momentum after say so, you know, quote unquote, Cold war ended or whatever, whatever the reason was for stopping all of the moon stuff. I thought for sure by now, now we would be able to like catch the shuttle going there. Just the way I would catch a flight to Boston. You know, I would be catching the flight to the moon to go do something. You know what I mean? We had all these grandiose, all our cartoons were about that life, you know, all of the comic books and TV shows. Like we just thought it was going to be so much more. And I feel like I'm glad we're going back. But then again we also thought we'd have flying Cars. And I realized people can't drive in 2D. So that one can take some time.
- [122:16]
Leo Laporte
You may remember, since you remember Apollo 14, this little quote from Apollo 13, that's Captain James A. Lovell, Jr. Who Tom Hanks played in the movie Apollo 13. That's him telling NASA that there was a near catastrophic leak in the Apollo 13. And this was a mission that was aborted. But we've talked before about this, saved in kind of a miracle way by engineers at NASA. Lovell was the captain, was the guy who reported the problem. Actually, I take it back, that was a rusty, sweet Swigert. Captain Lovell echoed his words when NASA asked for a message to be repeated. So in other words, Swigert said it first, and then Captain Lovell repeated it when NASA asked him to repeat it. I think apparently it's.
- [123:17]
Wes Faulkner
He says we've had a problem also. So the word we've had a problem.
- [123:23]
Leo Laporte
So that's Lovell saying that. Okay. Yeah. And Hank said, we have a problem. Okay. Yeah.
- [123:34]
Owen Thomas
Not words we hope to hear about the nuclear reactor on the moon.
- [123:37]
Leo Laporte
No, no. Anyway, you know, a great astronaut and hero. And like you, I grew up watching these guys, and it was kind of sad we got so far and then just kind of said, okay, we're done.
- [123:50]
Doc Rock
Well, I was near one of the NASA buildings at that time. Elementary school for me was in Rockville, Maryland. And the NASA place was, was like, right up the street. So there were people whose parents that I went to school with, you know, work there. And then, of course, the Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian, spun up, and I was a little kid, used to hang out there all the time. So I think I became kind of a space nerd just because of the timing of this. You know, when 13 landed, I was 4. So I wasn't smart enough yet. But when 14 landed, I would have been 5, pushing 6. And that was the beginning of, I wanted everything, space. And then Star wars came out in 77, and I was like, you know, Ken, you're still young and you don't know enough that this was not even close to real. We just thought so much more stuff was going to go down. But we had Star Trek and Star wars and Battlestar Galactica, and, like, we were so heavily sort of space and theme oriented as kids. Like, I really thought we'd be further along than we are. So I'm just happy to see some things happening.
- [124:52]
Leo Laporte
Lovell never did make it to the moon because of the problems. He, he, he came up flying a Gemini 12 with Buzz Aldrin his good who remained his good friend to the rest of his life. Of course Aldrin second man to walk on the moon. But Lovell never got to go to the moon. I wanted to James A level show this.
- [125:15]
Wes Faulkner
I was lucky.
- [125:16]
Leo Laporte
That's the SLS I was lucky enough.
- [125:18]
Wes Faulkner
To go to one of the test fires for the for the rocket.
- [125:21]
Leo Laporte
Oh that's cool.
- [125:22]
Wes Faulkner
And that was 10 years old ago. That was in 2015. And so hope back then was the that we would be so much further along with our journey back to Mars. Sorry to the moon. They even had astronauts there that we could meet which was an amazing. And it's just so sad what they're doing and have done to NASA to the point where a lot of this programs are scrapped. Even though this sounds amazing about having a mission to put this nuclear reactor on the moon, they're scrapping years and decades worth of work.
- [125:56]
Leo Laporte
It's so hard because that's happening across the government including the half a billion dollars that they were spending to develop MRNA vaccines not just for Covid but for HIV and cancer. And the problem is you defund those things, they don't just spin right back up. If somebody comes along and gives them more money. You lose a lot of momentum, you lose a lot of knowledge and you lose a lot of people.
- [126:22]
Wes Faulkner
In the case of NASA, they're deorbit orbiting satellites, they're burning them up in the atmosphere. We're losing decades of possible data that we could be getting from these very high class expensive missions that have been.
- [126:35]
Leo Laporte
Going oh, but here's the good news. There's going to be a Bluetooth satellite network. Well I use Starlink as a backup. If my terrestrial Internet dies during the show, I don't know what I could do with Bluetooth. The Hubble network plans a massive satellite upgrade to create a Bluetooth layer. It's kind of to do find my for Enterprise they're going to put two new satellites up in 2027 that will detect Bluetooth Low Energy signals at 30 times lower power than current capabilities. And then they will have a Bluetooth low energy finding network for enterprises. So instead of I guess having to put a GPS on that Amazon truck, they'll just know where they are at all times. The company has seven spacecraft on orbit right now with a target of having 60 in operation by 2028. They want to upgrade all of them to the new Bluetooth LE network. Huh.
- [127:50]
Wes Faulkner
I saw this and I was like what? I have a connection when I leave the room and there's Going to be a satellite that's going to be able to connect it.
- [127:57]
Leo Laporte
I mean.
- [127:58]
Wes Faulkner
Yeah, yeah.
- [127:59]
Leo Laporte
Weird.
- [127:59]
Owen Thomas
I mean, Bluetooth can't, you know, like my AirPods won't reliably connect to the StairMaster.
- [128:05]
Leo Laporte
No, no, yeah, no, this, I, I don't, yeah, this is a little, this is a find of mine basically.
- [128:12]
Wes Faulkner
And I think it's four hours story comes up.
- [128:14]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, that's right.
- [128:16]
Doc Rock
It's funny. The story comes up today I just started trying out cots, a glucose monitor. And yesterday, my first time trying it out, mine failed. And the support was like, put your phone in your left pocket on the same size as your arm. And I'm like, I got it. I'm a big massive water well. Whisky, whiskey. And it doesn't crisscross. But come on, son. Like you to tell me this hundred dollar monitor can't freaking connect to my phone on the opposite side of my body. Yeah, I was doing good. I was doing my 105s and I was showering and I forgot I was wearing it. Third day and I knocked it and it said, okay, it'll be better in three hours. And it wasn't. And my patches to cover it like that are coming on Amazon like right now.
- [128:59]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, just get a new, just get a new one. I've had pro. Which one are you using? I use the Dexcom. Stella.
- [129:05]
Doc Rock
Stella.
- [129:06]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And I had a bad one and I just, they, I, I message support and they literally mailed it right away. They didn't even question it.
- [129:12]
Doc Rock
Okay, cool. Because they said they'll get to, they'll, they'll do my case on Monday. So I'm thinking they're going to send me another one. But it was just nice knowing what you're doing or whatever. Can I tell you how It's a really cool take.
- [129:21]
Leo Laporte
What a victory 105 is for me.
- [129:24]
Doc Rock
Oh, me too.
- [129:25]
Leo Laporte
So, yeah, well, I was d. I have type 2 diabetes. My doctor said you can never get cured, but you can at least get remission. When it hit, when my A1C hit 8.43 months ago, my doctor said, yeah, we're gonna put you on Ozempic. So I've been on Ozempic for 10 weeks now. My A1C went from 8.4 to 5.7. It is a miracle drug. Now if I keel over tomorrow, at least I won't be a type 2 diabetic. When I kill, it won't be from eating. Eating too much sugar.
- [130:01]
Doc Rock
Ballpark. I started with govee December 16th.
- [130:04]
Leo Laporte
Good.
- [130:05]
Doc Rock
Hey, I, I Just checked in the other day. I have lost 42 pounds.
- [130:10]
Leo Laporte
Wait a minute. Where.
- [130:12]
Doc Rock
What is the answer to everything in the meaning of life.
- [130:15]
Leo Laporte
Congratulations.
- [130:17]
Doc Rock
That's awesome. Them. I was the only one that got that joke. All the nurses and doctors in the office is like, why 42?
- [130:23]
Leo Laporte
That's a good number.
- [130:24]
Doc Rock
I'm like, it's. It's the meaning. Talking about like they didn't know. They're not.
- [130:28]
Leo Laporte
I hope I get to 42. Hey, congratulations. That's fantastic.
- [130:31]
Doc Rock
I just started trying out.
- [130:33]
Leo Laporte
These are good. I really like these. In fact, this is why when Apple says we're going to somehow get a continuous glucose monitor in the watch, that will be transformative. There are, yes, think 14 million type 2 diabetics in the United States. We have an obesity epidemic. And probably, I don't know why, probably because of all the processed foods, but I'm not sure. But I think the knowledge of what happens to your blood sugar when you eat that hamburger or whatever is going to be very.
- [131:00]
Doc Rock
I'll put you on a rabbit hole. I have been watching this. This lady, her name is Jessie and I will not attempt to say her last name because my French is not that good. You might be better at it being a lady support. But she is known as the glucose goddess. And I've been watching, watching her clips and I've been learning so much stuff from her. And the best thing is she's not about dieting or doing something weird. It's about how to eat so that your glucose properly gets processed.
- [131:25]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [131:26]
Doc Rock
And it's not about changing, it's just the order. So it's something to the nature of.
- [131:30]
Leo Laporte
I eat protein first, baby.
- [131:32]
Doc Rock
Yeah, and salad and stuff first. Then you're protein. Well, then add your carbs and you'll do better. And it's working. It's working. And so my A1C just came into the little green line on the chart and I was like, I have an appointment with my, you know, regular doctor in like a week. And I'll be like, take that lady.
- [131:49]
Leo Laporte
Because, you know, that's pretty awesome.
- [131:51]
Doc Rock
She's like, you keep going.
- [131:53]
Wes Faulkner
Super jealous.
- [131:54]
Doc Rock
Yeah, your YouTube channel will close in a week. And I was like, wait, what?
- [132:00]
Wes Faulkner
The last time I lost over £40 was I was in London and paying for something. But I would love to be able to lose weight. So congratulations on both your.
- [132:11]
Leo Laporte
As I'm sure the doc has done too. I've lost and gained thousands of pounds over my lifetime. I know how to lose weight. I just don't know how to Keep it off. Because my body doesn't want to, apparently. And I did keto a few years ago, got my A1C down this low, but as soon as I went off it, it right up, right back up. And of course, that's bad for you, too. This is. Look, I'm not doing an ad for. For any of these GLP1s or the GLP1 GYP drugs at all. You know, ask your physician if it's right for you. But as they say in the ads. But what a miracle it has been.
- [132:48]
Doc Rock
It's been a game changer for me, bro.
- [132:50]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I tell you, for so many people. I hear from so many people. It's amazing. All right.
- [132:57]
Doc Rock
Sad. It's so far removed from people who probably, you know, it's expensive.
- [133:02]
Leo Laporte
Thousand dollars a month.
- [133:03]
Doc Rock
If you live in a poor place or whatever, you. You have food deserts which cause you to have horrible food possibilities. And so I. I understand it more so than ever. Yeah. Because I am at a position now where I can afford to buy what I want to eat, but I know that large members of my family and, you know, place where I grew up, up. You know, there's no good food nearby. The idea was like, oh, just go to Whole Foods and get this. I was like, they don't put Whole Foods in the hood, homie. I don't know where you come from.
- [133:29]
Leo Laporte
No, it's really true. It's really true. And these drugs are very, very expensive. I was lucky. My insurance covers it.
- [133:36]
Owen Thomas
They are. There are some tests now for oral drugs. You know, the.
- [133:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Lily has a oral version of this.
- [133:43]
Owen Thomas
Yeah. The. The current ones, I believe, are all injectable, which is, you know, it's. Yeah, there's a.
- [133:48]
Leo Laporte
You know, that sounds like you're going to have to use a hypodermic needle or something if you're a diabetic. You know what a finger prick is like. That's the downside of this is before these kind of continuous glucose monitors, I had to prick my finger several times a day, draw blood. It's less than that. It's a tiny, little, very thin needle. You just put it in your fat.
- [134:08]
Doc Rock
Bee sting because it came off. It's so skinny. I'm like, how does that even.
- [134:14]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you're talking about the cgm. I'm talking about the Ozempic injection.
- [134:19]
Doc Rock
Oh, yeah. There's nothing, Nothing, nothing. Squeezing it in the fat anyways.
- [134:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. It's great.
- [134:24]
Owen Thomas
Also the refrigerated supply chain. That has to be adding to the costs.
- [134:28]
Leo Laporte
Yes. And that's Interesting. It looks like that was a choice by Novo Nordisk to not put preservative in it. And I'm not sure if that was an economic decision or a technical decision, and it's not clear here. But the pills will solve that, right? Lilly makes. That makes Manjaro. Yeah, yeah. There's clearly. There's clearly a big deal.
- [134:52]
Owen Thomas
Yeah, I mean, that will. That will make.
- [134:54]
Leo Laporte
Not to mention 200% tariffs on drugs made outside the United States, which will triple the cost of my Ozempic. But Lilly makes its drugs in the United States, so I imagine Lilly is on the upper swing. Let's see what else. Real quickly. San Francisco's metro area unemployment is skyrocketing. Why is that? Why is that, Owen?
- [135:20]
Owen Thomas
It's really interesting because there's a push and pull. The push of the AI boom is obviously lifting the regional economy. Also IPOs like Chime and Figma, those are all helping. The drag is kind of the national economic picture. Tariffs, consumer spending, those, you know, those are going to affect tech at some point, right? You know, like tech cannot defy gravity, but it's got a lot of things lifting it. So that push, that pull, where is it going to land? You know, an interesting thing too about the AI boom is that while we're seeing a lot of hiring and leasing of offices, AI companies like to work in person. They're not. They're not big, remote work. But while they've been hiring, mainline tech like Google and Meta have been. They've been shedding offices. They've been, you know, kind of quietly or not so quietly reducing staff layoffs. You know, in Meta's case, I think they're doing a lot of performance reviews that are. That are basically stealth layoffs. So that's, you know, that's been hurting because San Francisco's benefited benefited enormously in the past decade, pre pandemic from big tech's kind of expansion.
- [136:38]
Leo Laporte
Is San Francisco an AI headquarters in the same way it was for all of the other technological revolutions?
- [136:46]
Owen Thomas
Absolutely. And I think San Francisco, specifically within the Bay Area, has kind of disproportionately been the center of the AI boom. It's pretty similar to the mobile and social app revolution, which really was more centered in San Francisco, was not so much kind of a peninsula Silicon Valley phenomenon. With Nvidia and other companies obviously being in the South Bay being important players, it's a little more spread out. But even Nvidia is reportedly looking for office space because OpenAI is a big customer. They want to be close to it. They want to be in the mix. And that's been interesting. The hotspot actually is around OpenAI headquarters in Mission Bay, which is just south of Oracle Park. The. You know, the. The ballpark on the. On the southern waterfront. It's a. It's a newer neighborhood, redeveloped rail yards.
- [137:44]
Leo Laporte
That's where the ballpark is. Right? Or the.
- [137:46]
Owen Thomas
Yeah.
- [137:46]
Leo Laporte
Just as well as the warriors play there. The. Yeah.
- [137:51]
Owen Thomas
So basically. Basically, the space between Oracle park and Chase center is kind of AI Central now.
- [137:57]
Leo Laporte
Oh, interesting.
- [137:58]
Owen Thomas
Yeah.
- [137:58]
Doc Rock
Yeah.
- [137:59]
Leo Laporte
You know, when you drive down that street, it feels like AI Central. It's very. It's very kind of weird.
- [138:04]
Owen Thomas
It's new, glassy buildings. Like, it feels a little urban canyon.
- [138:07]
Leo Laporte
And then the wayos are going back and forth, zipping around. I feel like I'm in the 21st century.
- [138:12]
Doc Rock
And every billboard. Every billboard is an AI is an AI company.
- [138:15]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah.
- [138:15]
Doc Rock
On that stretch of 101.
- [138:16]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [138:17]
Owen Thomas
Oh, yeah. But. But also there are some, like, really cool restaurants. Aro Bakery, which is like, the chef's kiss. Croissant is.
- [138:25]
Leo Laporte
As a.
- [138:26]
Owen Thomas
An outfit.
- [138:28]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [138:28]
Owen Thomas
I'm sorry, you guys are talking about glucose Montana croissants. I'm throwing croissants in the mitts. I'm just not helping.
- [138:34]
Leo Laporte
Killing.
- [138:36]
Wes Faulkner
Also, we're talking about bonito. Talking about billboards. There's one that says, stop hiring humans, so.
- [138:41]
Owen Thomas
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [138:42]
Leo Laporte
That's unbelievable, isn't it? This is what a world we are.
- [138:45]
Doc Rock
Right.
- [138:47]
Owen Thomas
But that startup is getting talked about. So they're winning, right, with this weird billboard campaign. But, yeah, I mean, that's part of going back to the unemployment picture. That's part of the push and pull is how much employment is the AI industry actually going to, like, in the long run?
- [139:06]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [139:07]
Owen Thomas
Because they're trying to get more efficient using AI. I mean, Salesforce has talked about, you know, wanting to, you know, wanting to, like, kind of keep their hiring under check. The problem, though, is they found they need to hire more salespeople to sell their AI products. So they've actually kind of reversed that, you know. Oh, we might reduce our headcount. Yeah. You know, like, no. No one wants to show weakness. No one wants to show, like, they're kind of out of touch or not successfully riding the AI boom. So it's. There's a lot of tension there. But, yeah, it's an interesting time. Definitely not, you know, like, not the. Not the best numbers that the San Francisco economy has shown. But, you know, big picture, San Francisco is doing. Doing pretty well.
- [139:58]
Leo Laporte
And they have the best croissants. They're a little large, but other than that, I think. Let's take a break. We're gonna see. If you weren't watching the video, you didn't get the joke. So it doesn't matter. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back, a couple of final stories. In fact, the end of the line for a dear old friend. I'll give it a good hint. Huh? That's coming up next weekend. Tech Our show today brought to you by. I love saying this. Shopify. I love Shopify. Hey, imagine this. You're lying in bed late at night scrolling through this new site you found, hitting the add to cart button on that item you've been looking for. Now you're ready to check out. But then, then you remember your wallet is in the living room downstairs. Just as you're getting ready to abandon your cart. That's when you see it. That purple shop button. If you've shopped online, chances are I know I have. You've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know whose business is powered by Shopify? My son, Salt Hank's business is powered by that purple shop pay button button. When you see that at checkout, I love seeing it makes buying so incredibly easy. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. I love that sound. Actually, you know, my son Salt Hank had no experience in any of this stuff. He said, dad, I want to, you know, I've got this TikTok success. I want to monetize it. I'm going to start selling my social media salt online. I said, oh well, good luck. I should have told him about Shopify. I didn't have to. He found it right away and man, it's been a huge success. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started like Salt Hank. It's saltloversclub.com if you want to buy some salt or pickles, the pickles are very, very good. Shopify gives you that leg up from day dot with hundreds of beautiful ready to go templates to express your brand style and just forget about the code. Tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more. Spread your brand's word with built in marketing and email tools to find and keep new customers. And I can't remember, did I mention that iconic Purple shop pay button that's used by millions of of businesses around the world. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Because your customers already love it. They already know it, they see it, they go, yay. I don't have to get up and get my wallet. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com TWIT go to shopify.com shopify.com TWIT I love them. I love them. I love that sound. Sales are just pouring in. We mentioned this briefly. I'll, I'll, I'll give you an update on this. We saw last week that Tesla had lost in a jury verdict and was being punished by more than $200 million fine. This is the first time Tesla has been found and its autopilot has been found to blame for a crash. The jury did find that the driver was 2/3 responsible, but Tesla was 1/3 responsible. But now, as people are starting to see the transcript from the trial, it's becoming apparent that Tesla actually actively blocked the prosecution of this case. It was caught withholding date data, lying about it, and misdirecting authorities covering up for autopilot within about three minutes of the crash. This is from Electrek Co. The model S this crash happened in 2018. Uploaded a collision snapshot. This is video can bus streams EDR data. I mean so much information. As soon as the crash happened, it uploaded to the Tesla server and the servers acknowledged it. The vehicle then after the receiving the acknowledgment, deleted its local copy. That's an interesting move. It meant that authorities couldn't get it from the car. Tesla was the only entity that had the data. What ensued were years of battle to get Tesla to acknowledge the collision snapshot exists at all. The police repeatedly attempted to obtain the data from the snapshot. Tesla led the authorities in place plaintiffs on a lengthy journey of deception and misdirection that spanned years. Again, this is Electrek writing. They denied that it existed. They said it had been. Tesla told the plaintiffs it doesn't exist. Tesla's written discovery responses were shown during the trial to prove the company acted as if this data was not available. Tesla's lawyer scripted the homicide investigator's evidence request, told him what to write. He said, it's, you know, the, the investigator said we're going to subpoena the data. And the lawyer said, oh no, no, no, you don't need to do that. He write me a letter. I'll tell you what to put in the letter. I specifically wrote down what the attorney at Tesla told me to write down in the letter. But the letter was crafted by Tesla's attorneys to omit sharing the collision snapshot. They gave them data from the infotainment system which contained merely call logs and a copy of the owner's manual. And it goes on and on. I mean it is appalling the stonewalling that Tesla went through. The jury knew it. This is all in the trial because it's coming from the transcript.
- [146:25]
Wes Faulkner
They had to do a bit copy of the memory and then they found the checksum.
- [146:30]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [146:31]
Wes Faulkner
Of the raws, the zipped up or the compressed data that got sent. They're like, here's the checksum and here's the log saying it got sent to you. And that's. Yeah. The jury saw all this and said this was seems to be an intentional cover up to make sure that they didn't ever see the.
- [146:49]
Leo Laporte
Not only did they deny that one of the reasons they denied they had this snapshot is because it shows the autopilot was on. It shows that it accelerated to 60 miles an hour. It does show the driver's hands off the wheel. The driver apparently dropped his cell phone, reached down to get it, thinking that the autopilot would continue to drive, wouldn't possibly hit anything. Continued at 60 miles an hour into a parked car, killing a pedestrian.
- [147:17]
Wes Faulkner
Also, it knew that it was an area that was flagged that where it should have disengaged autopilot because the car.
- [147:25]
Leo Laporte
Knew it was in a restricted zone. Yet autopilot did not disengage or issue a warning. I talked to Sam Abulsamet, our car guy. I mentioned this last week about this and he said this is going to uncork a avalanche of lawsuits because it's the first time Tesla has not been able to settle out of court. To keep it out of court, to keep discovery out of court. It's the first time Tesla's been found responsible even though it's only a third responsible. So this is a big story. Tesla says you guys are just making it hard for self driving vehicles, which is in the long run a safety improvement. I agree with that. In the long run it is a safety improvement. Humans are worse. Far more people are killed by human drivers than they are by autopilot. But Tesla needs to stop saying it's driving itself because it isn't.
- [148:17]
Owen Thomas
But they're, they're completely Eroding the trustworthiness of.
- [148:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, who's doing that? Tesla or the trials? Tesla.
- [148:24]
Owen Thomas
Yeah. Tesla is destroying its own credibility.
- [148:28]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [148:29]
Owen Thomas
And now that kind of the fanboy glow is dissipating around Tesla and Elon Musk. You have to wonder what the long term value of the company is. I have covered Elon Musk a very long time. I'm not the only journalist who has pointed out that he repeatedly makes. Makes promises that never come to pass. He has out and out lied.
- [149:01]
Wes Faulkner
With.
- [149:02]
Owen Thomas
Very little in the way of consequences. Will Tesla actually face some consequences here? That's what we're going to find out.
- [149:10]
Leo Laporte
Well, a big fine, but of course they're going to appeal it. So who knows ultimately what will happen? Yeah, you know, I had a Tesla Model X. I loved my Model X. My wife did not, not. She called it Christine, the killer car from the Stephen King novels. She claims it tried to kill her frequently, which maybe it did, I don't know. Anyway, I haven't owned a Tesla since then and even when I had it, I didn't trust it to drive. I mean, supposedly it's gotten better, but she says it would constantly stop for no reason and jam on the brakes, throw her into a, you know, barrier, that kind of thing. Roll forward when it's supposed to go backwards, things like that.
- [149:56]
Wes Faulkner
One other thing is that Tesla is supposedly, which you mentioned before about the new computer systems. And then I think Elon is saying something similar to this will be fueling the next full self driving engine going forward.
- [150:14]
Leo Laporte
Forward.
- [150:14]
Wes Faulkner
And people are mad because that's what he said for the previous version of the computer.
- [150:19]
Leo Laporte
Said it for years.
- [150:20]
Wes Faulkner
Yeah. And they're like, what? And so he is overhyping things over and over and over and over.
- [150:26]
Leo Laporte
You know who really has no credibility? Elon Musk. All right, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to end this show because my blood sugar is now dangerously low. I haven't seen it go below 100 in 10 years. Years.
- [150:41]
Owen Thomas
We're just, we're just wiping you out.
- [150:43]
Leo Laporte
You're just, you're wiping me out.
- [150:45]
Owen Thomas
Yeah, putting all your, all your. It's, it's. Your brain is just like sucking all.
- [150:51]
Leo Laporte
The glucose like a burning it up.
- [150:55]
Owen Thomas
Nuclear reactor on the moon.
- [150:56]
Leo Laporte
I can't leave this story.
- [150:58]
Doc Rock
Well, my sodium bromide levels are going to go up because. Oh yeah, ordering. I'm ordering salt and pickles from nephew over here.
- [151:05]
Leo Laporte
Are you looking at salt?
- [151:07]
Doc Rock
I was like, bruh, So I got umami powder cuz I can't Help me. You know, I got. Oh, f. This is good. And then hot pickles. Anything else I need to add?
- [151:19]
Leo Laporte
Oh, add them all, man. And then the next time you're in Manhattan, stop by Saul Hank's restaurant. Handcrafted with love on.
- [151:27]
Doc Rock
Is there a Uncle Doc discount code? I'm about to put this in. I'm just.
- [151:30]
Leo Laporte
I will call ahead. You, you'll need to.
- [151:33]
Doc Rock
Because.
- [151:33]
Leo Laporte
Because the line starts half an hour before the restaurant opens. It goes around the block and they're sold out by 1:30.
- [151:40]
Doc Rock
All right.
- [151:41]
Leo Laporte
It's like Franklin's in Austin family card. Yeah, you need to, you need to.
- [151:46]
Doc Rock
That sandwichover got me.
- [151:48]
Leo Laporte
I should point out I have never had any of his sandwiches. He's probably the most famous sandwich chef in the world now. I have never had a sandwich of his.
- [151:58]
Doc Rock
What the hell?
- [151:59]
Leo Laporte
Heck. What the heck? I'm even an investor in the pickles. He called me up and said, dad, I need some money to buy the pickles. I said, okay, I'll help you. And I. Did I get any pickles? No.
- [152:11]
Doc Rock
Yo, the best part was the bottle said, it's almost as hot as your mom. Just for that. I'm getting it. Just for that.
- [152:20]
Leo Laporte
He is a character. I tell you what, I, I, I hope that you all have children as successful as this kid. I, I can please.
- [152:31]
Doc Rock
Oh, my God. That got me right away, though.
- [152:33]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, he doesn't use that puts.
- [152:37]
Owen Thomas
The bro in bromide.
- [152:38]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah. He, he's amazing. He's amazing. He's really, he's. I'm very, very proud of him. I really am. He's a great guy.
- [152:48]
Doc Rock
And yes, scrolling pictures of food right now.
- [152:50]
Leo Laporte
I know. Hey, I'm the one whose blood sugar is tanking.
- [152:53]
Owen Thomas
Yeah, this is, this is dangerous for you, Leo.
- [153:01]
Leo Laporte
Yes. And by the way, yes, he does use Shopify. If you go ahead and buy that, you'll see that purple Shopify button. So there you go. I'll just, I'll just check out some salt. And there it is. There's the Shopify button. The shop pay button right there, baby. All right. Oh, I have to do the eulogy. Oh, it's the end of the line.
- [153:27]
Owen Thomas
This hurts. This hurts. This really hurts.
- [153:29]
Leo Laporte
For AOL dial up Internet. Did you know they still offered it?
- [153:35]
Owen Thomas
Who can do the modem screech.
- [153:41]
Leo Laporte
Now? If you have a 56k modem, you.
- [153:46]
Doc Rock
Forgot the haze part in the middle. I'll just go say that. When you did it the first time, I was like, you forgot the haze check in the middle to see if you were 56 or better.
- [153:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. The bang bang. Is that what that is? The boing boing.
- [153:59]
Doc Rock
Yeah. Oh my God.
- [154:01]
Leo Laporte
I. I was looking to see if I have the sounds in my, in my collection here and I don't. But here's a website with the sounds of dial up modems and related equipment. Which one do you want? You get your Choice. You want V92. That's the one you were talking about?
- [154:22]
Owen Thomas
Yep.
- [154:25]
Leo Laporte
There's the boing boing. That's it. We have handshake Houston. We have no problems.
- [154:34]
Doc Rock
Handshake. AC get off the phone. Mom.
- [154:37]
Leo Laporte
Mom, I'm downloading something. Mom. I just amazed that there is obviously there were still customers. AOL says:September 30th you have a month and a half the service and the associated software, the AOL dialer software and AOL Shield browser which are optimized for older operating systems and dial up Internet connections will be discontinued.
- [155:03]
Doc Rock
You better burn all those hours on.
- [155:05]
Wes Faulkner
Those CD ROMs people.
- [155:06]
Leo Laporte
If you've got the CD ROM these quick can you buy a modem?
- [155:10]
Wes Faulkner
Are they. When was the last modem sold, I wonder?
- [155:13]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you know what Zyxel was selling them. Let me see. Let me go to Amazon.
- [155:18]
Owen Thomas
Something fascinating is CNBC had a story about AOL dial up in 2021 four years ago. And a source told the reporter that the number of dial up subscribers were in the low thousands. So they've kept dial up a lot.
- [155:33]
Leo Laporte
Just for those people.
- [155:34]
Owen Thomas
People for. Yeah, that, that is. That is mysterious to me. Like what? Not. Not that it's still alive today. But like why did they. Why were they still operating it, you know?
- [155:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, a thousand is not a revenue model. Especially whatever it was $10 a month.
- [155:49]
Doc Rock
But apparently tell you why Owen, cuz Dave or whoever who ran that office, his Aunt Clarita or his mom Thelma was still on that joint. And he can't, he can't piss off.
- [156:00]
Leo Laporte
I can't cut off my mom.
- [156:03]
Owen Thomas
Apparently Net Zero is still offering dialogue Internet Earthlink killed it in back in 2023 I read. But yeah, you can still here is.
- [156:16]
Leo Laporte
On Amazon for $55, which is a lot less than I paid for it. The US Robotics V92 56K modem. But hurry, there's only one left in stock. Order soon. Order soon.
- [156:33]
Doc Rock
The form factor is still the same. I remember.
- [156:35]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it looks exactly the same.
- [156:37]
Doc Rock
I remember what a gangster. I feel like when I bought a Haze Trailblazer because like all of the real deal dudes they had the like 19 inch card or 17 inch card. It was called the Hill Haze Trailblazer. And I just thought I was cool because I finally got one that was like the Mark II or something.
- [156:54]
Wes Faulkner
Was it?
- [156:55]
Doc Rock
It was massive, bro. Yes.
- [156:56]
Leo Laporte
Did it plug into your computer shooter? Yeah.
- [156:59]
Doc Rock
No, you put it in the slot. It was a big car.
- [157:01]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Oh, I'm so tempted. I don't know why. This is $279 but this is the Courier, which was the one, Right? Remember that one?
- [157:08]
Doc Rock
That was the one too.
- [157:09]
Wes Faulkner
Yep, yep.
- [157:10]
Leo Laporte
Why 279? The other one's 55 bucks.
- [157:13]
Owen Thomas
Oh wait, it's a fax modem.
- [157:15]
Leo Laporte
Oh, both of them are. Oh, you gotta have a serial port. But look at that. Remember that I had a bulletin board in 1985 that had two of those. Those and I felt very fancy.
- [157:31]
Owen Thomas
My brother somehow talked my parents into getting a second phone line to run a bulletin board.
- [157:38]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [157:39]
Owen Thomas
This was in the. Would have been in the 80s.
- [157:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. It was fun running bulletin boards back in the day, I have to say. Do they still sell couplers acoustic, those suction cups you put your. Do you even have a phone with a handset anymore? More you push into the rubber cups so you can connect. I spent a lot of time on CompuServe with one of those 300 bps.
- [158:03]
Doc Rock
So is 56k really like the. The physical limit of dial up? Like they could not get it faster than.
- [158:09]
Leo Laporte
It's using. It's using acoustic lines, right? It's. It's doing. That's what that noise is, is the data is not being sent electro electrically. It's being sent as a sound down the phone hole line.
- [158:21]
Owen Thomas
Oh yeah.
- [158:22]
Leo Laporte
It's only six bits of resolution or six or seven bits. It's very low resolution.
- [158:27]
Owen Thomas
It was. It went from 9,600 to 14. 4 to 28.8 to 56.
- [158:33]
Leo Laporte
Right. Well that's because you're young. You don't remember. There was also 300.
- [158:38]
Doc Rock
I've used a 300.
- [158:39]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in the day, the text go like that.
- [158:45]
Doc Rock
Compuserving prodigy on 300bot. And we thought we were.
- [158:48]
Leo Laporte
Or the picture of Raquel Welch in a bikini. Yeah.
- [158:54]
Wes Faulkner
This generation doesn't know seeing a picture being drawn line by line.
- [158:58]
Doc Rock
Line by line. UU encode, UU decode.
- [159:01]
Leo Laporte
And they didn't ask your age in those days?
- [159:03]
Doc Rock
No.
- [159:04]
Leo Laporte
If they figured you can. If you can get it, you're probably old enough, ladies and gentlemen, if you can get it, get it. We're glad you're here and we are so happy that you're a listener. If you are not a member of the client club, consider joining. You could be in the discord right now watching the show, chatting with smart people. We do a lot of special events in the club. It is definitely the people, the place for people with big muscles and big brains. Join the club Twit. TV Club Twit. And we look forward to seeing you in there. I'm gonna look. I'm gonna look like that. Maybe it'll be AI, maybe it won't. But I'm gonna look like. Like that. Thank you big gun guys, to Owen Thomas. Thomas is so great to see you. Look at those guns. Time for the gun show. He's managing editor at the San Francisco Business Times. He can bench £225. My God. Thank you, Owen. Always is a pleasure to see you.
- [160:03]
Owen Thomas
Good to be here.
- [160:04]
Leo Laporte
Appreciate it. Also to you, Wes Faulkner. Congratulations on the new new enterprise founders. Yeah, he's the founder of Works Dash. Not dash Working.
- [160:15]
Wes Faulkner
Yes. Thank you for letting me announce that this is the public debut.
- [160:19]
Leo Laporte
Yay. Yay. So great. I really appreciate you so much, Wes. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate all three of you. You're all great. I like getting together with my good friends to talk about what's been going on in the world. And of course, thanks to you, Doc Rock.
- [160:36]
Doc Rock
Thank you.
- [160:37]
Leo Laporte
We're ohana. We're all in the fam.
- [160:39]
Doc Rock
4.32 petaflops. That's what I geek bench.
- [160:44]
Leo Laporte
Me too. Me too. On a fiber optic cable. It weighs next to nothing. You'll find the doctor@YouTube.com docrock of course. Director of strategic partners at ecamm partnerships at ecamm. We are a strategic partner of ecamm. We love ecamm. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do twit every Sunday afternoon, 2 to 5pm Pacific, 5 to 8pm Eastern, 21100 UTC. We stream all of our shows live thanks to the club members. Of course, they get special access behind the velvet rope in the Club Twit Discord. But there's also YouTube, Twitch. Because you know, YouTube is the home of podcasting. YouTube, Twitch TV, TikTok, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. Eight different ways you can watch us live. And. And even then you don't have to watch us live because guess what? What? We record this thing on 15 IPS reel to reel tape, then edit it with a razor blade, grease pencil and scotch tape to produce a beautifully handcrafted version of the show that you can download from our website Twit TV. There's a YouTube channel. We have to mail those reel to reel tapes to YouTube but fortunately they do accept that we send it along to them and you'll see the YouTube channel linked on our website TWiT TV. That's actually useful. Useful for sharing clips with other listeners. If you want to help spread the word. Best way to get this show and all of our shows, subscribe on your favorite podcast client. Whether it's a pocket casts, which we love, or itunes or overcast or there's so many good ones. There's a. What was that new one I just saw? Is available now everywhere. Caster is pretty nice too. Anyway, if you do download it as subscribe you that's for free. You'll get audio or video or both every week as soon as it's done. But do us a favor in return, please give us a good review at 5 stars would be wonderful and help spread the word. 20 years we've been doing this and I think we've been doing it so long, I think a lot of people forgotten we even exist. So help. Help us remind them, will you? That we'd appreciate that. And as I have been. Thanks to Benito Gonzalez, our editor, technical producer, producer and booker. We appreciate it. Benito, are you is vacation soon?
- [163:03]
Doc Rock
I got next week's show and then I'm off for two weeks after that.
- [163:06]
Leo Laporte
Then he's. Then he's on a jet airplane. A big old jet airplane. Well, we appreciate all you do, Benino. Thanks. Is it Kevin King editing today? Thanks to Kevin.
- [163:15]
Doc Rock
Yes, Kevin.
- [163:16]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, he does a great job. We appreciate it. Appreciate our whole team, all of you. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. And as I have said, you see, we'll for 20 years. I'll say it again, another twit is in the can. Take care. This is amazing.
- [163:40]
Doc Rock
Hi, I'm Chris Gethard and I'm very.
- [163:41]
Owen Thomas
Excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random.
- [163:45]
Doc Rock
People on the phone.
- [163:46]
Owen Thomas
I tweet out a phone number, thousands of people try to call you talk to one of them, they stay anonymous.
- [163:51]
Leo Laporte
I can't hang up.
- [163:51]
Owen Thomas
That's all the rules. I never know what's gonna happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings, crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's gonna happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today. Beautiful anonymous.