This Week in Tech 1071: Image Pickles

Summary

This Week in Tech 1071: "Image Pickles"

Podcast: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Stacey Higginbotham (Consumer Reports), Wesley Faulkner (works-not-working.com), Thomas Germain (BBC)
Date: February 16, 2026
Episode Focus: Legal and ethical dilemmas at tech’s social and privacy frontiers; social media addiction trial, Section 230, surveillance technology, AI privacy, age verification, hardware subscriptions, and more.

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Episode Overview

In this lively and wide-ranging episode, Leo Laporte and his guests explore technology’s current moral crossroads—where product design, privacy, legislation, and everyday use collide. The panel tackles headline events like the landmark social media addiction trial, privacy-invasive tech rollouts from Meta and Ring, and the latest in AI-based surveillance and regulation. With insights drawn from policy, journalism, and industry experience, the show examines not just what’s happening in tech, but why it matters and what can (or can’t) be done about it.

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Main Topics & Key Discussions

1. The Social Media Addiction Trial: Legal & Moral Dilemmas

• [03:30] Los Angeles court case—Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and Google/YouTube sued over alleged addiction and harm to children.
  • Key contention: Are these platforms purposefully engineered to addict, and where's the line between content, design, and legal liability?
  • Stacey: “What should be on trial is ... dark patterns, deceptive patterns ... deployed at scale in such a, I guess, emotionally close way for people. ... Do I think these companies have a lot to answer to? Absolutely.” [04:57]
  • Thomas: “...If we can prove that the design of the platform is the thing that's hurting people as opposed to the content itself, then maybe we can hold the companies liable ... the whole future of the Internet hinges on [this legal question].” [06:01]
  • Leo: Raises concern that making companies liable for making “too good” a product could chill free speech, but is open to regulations like ad limits for kids.
  • Discussion about parallels with 1980s deregulation in children’s TV and cereal advertising.
• Addiction vs. “habituation”
  • Stacey: Shares her own “TikTok addiction” and RSI story, framing it as habit-forming, not physically addictive like heroin but “very easy to form a habit, much like smoking cigarettes.” [10:36]
  • Wesley: Highlights the social/cultural compulsions and the role of “everyone is using it” effect.
  • Deliberation: Is Instagram/YouTube “just entertainment” or a new, more manipulative breed of “social platforms”?

2. Section 230 at 30: Backbone or Bottleneck?

• [16:33] 30th anniversary of the “26 words that changed the Internet” (Section 230).
  • Leo: Strongly defends Section 230 as vital for online speech and small platforms: “If I were liable for the things people posted ... I would just shut them down.”
  • Thomas: “...Maybe needs to be addressed in a different way than ... your Discord community, because it operates in a completely different [way].” [19:43]
  • Nuanced takes on potential reforms vs. dangerous, sweeping regulatory changes. Transparency requirements for algorithms proposed as a middle way.
  • Stacey: “...It's time for nuance... and I'd love to read like some really good thinking on that. Please send me stuff.” [20:28]
  • Thomas: Supports algorithmic transparency and third-party auditing as a step forward.

3. Surveillance & Privacy: Facial Recognition, Smart Glasses, and the Ring/Flock Fiasco

• [35:31] Meta’s planned glasses with face recognition (while the public is distracted).
  • Thomas: “It’s one of the most cynical things I’ve ever seen from the tech industry. And that is really saying a lot.” [36:01]
  • Downstream privacy issues—law enforcement, marketers, even casual users leveraging facial tracking with minimal oversight.
  • Ring’s “Search Party” and prior partnership with Flock Safety (license plate surveillance)—backlash and privacy risks.
  • Ring’s rapid police partnerships and the “neighbors” app’s ties to racism and over-policing.
• The “surveillance net” risk: Every camera, everywhere, all the time.
  • Wesley: “What is being created right now is a marketplace for locating people. They will try to get as much data and sell it to as many people as they can.” [43:11]
  • Ring’s culture and staffing changes reduce internal pushback on privacy.

4. Tracking, Pixels, and the Ubiquity of Data Collection

• [57:25] Thomas’s report: TikTok tracking you (pixel) even if you’ve never used the app.
  • TikTok, Facebook, many ad networks use invisible “pixels” in websites and emails to shadow users everywhere online.
  • Stacey: “This can be—they put image pickle—image pixels... into emails.” [60:06]
  • How to fight back: ad blockers, privacy browsers, DNS-level filtering, disabling remote images in emails.
  • Thomas: “There are things you can do ... It does make an enormous difference.” [61:43]
  • Not all ad blockers protect equally well—EFF and DuckDuckGo tools recommended. Browser fingerprinting remains a hard problem.

5. The Trouble with Tech Hardware: Security Fails & Subscription Fatigue

• [88:00] DIY hack exposes thousands of DJI vacuums worldwide to remote control and spying, due to a basic security lapse by the manufacturer.
  • Stacey: “These sorts of configuration errors are not uncommon. And it’s, it’s really terrifying.” [89:40]
  • Wesley: Raises the risk of even safety issues (e.g. hacking devices to create fires, brick them, or invade homes).
  • Ongoing problem: Weak legal/regulatory framework for connected device security.
• HP’s laptop subscription: New model where you never own your laptop—just pay monthly.
  • Pros/cons debated: affordable access vs. lack of hardware control, lock-in, software “tethering.”
  • Thomas: “But I will die before I pay a subscription for a piece of hardware.” [103:48]
  • Growing concern about subscriptions for features in cars, printers, and now laptops.

6. AI in Telecom and Devices: New Powers, New Risks

• [111:19] T-Mobile launches real-time, on-network AI translation for calls—no extra hardware needed.
  • Panel expresses skepticism about privacy, law enforcement access, legal gray areas (wiretapping), and opt-out realities.
• Apple’s ongoing struggle with “Siri+AI”
  • [117:55] Apple delays next-gen Siri, stalling promised “AI everywhere”—panel agrees: voice assistants are still failing to deliver, and voice AI reliability lags marketing claims.
  • Stacey: Reports Google Home latency/downgrade, too.
  • Debate: Is the “hallucination” problem of LLMs inherent, and could Apple’s reputation for safety make delivering true AI assistants even harder?
  • Thomas: “Large language models … to actually put [AI] in charge of something that really matters, like functions of your phone, you need to have a level of confidence … they just can't get.” [121:13]

7. Age Verification on Social Platforms: Privacy, Chilling Effects, and Workarounds

• [77:12] Discord (and by implication, all social platforms) are moving towards “age verification”—sometimes using facial estimation, sometimes government ID.
  • Global patchwork of regulation: UK, Australia, US states like Mississippi and Texas all pushing for verification.
  • Panel consensus: Uploading your ID everywhere chills speech and is a privacy risk (data breaches have already happened).
  • Alternatives: Gatekeeper (Apple/Google account) suggests a “chunked” age API—but with caveats about law enforcement cooperation and company trustworthiness.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

On why the social media addiction trial matters:

“It’s like this one little narrow legal question that, you know, in a lot of ways, the whole future of the Internet hinges on.”
— Thomas Germain [06:49]

On Privacy and Surveillance:

“That is the end of any form of privacy in our society. It’s over. … A guy walking down the street can, like, hit a button on his glasses and identify who you are, it’s over.”
— Thomas Germain, on universal facial recognition [41:22]

On device insecurity:

“You could actually cause loss of life in extreme cases.”
— Wesley Faulkner, on IoT device hacks [90:44]

On hardware subscriptions and user rights:

“Literally you have no rights. … I’ve created a chart full of software tethering harms.”
— Stacey Higginbotham, on ‘leasing’ hardware and software lock-in [105:09]

On Section 230 and nuanced regulation:

“This time is terrible for nuance and I’d love to read like some really good thinking on that. Please send me stuff.”
— Stacey Higginbotham [20:28]

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Notable Timestamps

• [03:30] Start of discussion: Social media trial over “addiction algorithms”
• [16:33] Section 230’s 30th birthday and vulnerability
• [35:31] Meta’s facial-recognition Ray-Bans and privacy risk
• [43:11] Commercialization of location/facial data
• [57:25] TikTok, pixels, and the state of tracking
• [88:00] DJI robotic vacuums security fail—a cautionary tale
• [103:48] Hardware subscriptions and the future of owning tech
• [111:19] T-Mobile's on-network AI translation—privacy and legal questions
• [117:55] Apple Siri AI delays—voice assistant disappointment
• [121:13] Limits of current LLMs as “AI assistants”
• [154:40] The Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income initiative—a philanthropic UBI experiment by Jeff Atwood
• [145:32] The “death” of ChatGPT-4o and the mourning of AI companions

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Final Thoughts & Endnotes

On Tech and Human Needs:

The episode closes with discussions ranging from universal basic income pilot programs, the emotional impact of losing an “AI companion,” and the deaths of significant tech figures—showing the deeply personal ways that technology shapes, and sometimes fails, our lives.

On the Future:

While new tools offer incredible powers (AI, instant translation, smart devices), they bring privacy and ethical dilemmas. The consensus: More regulation, greater transparency, and thoughtful design are needed—because users, not billionaires or “crazy ones,” ultimately bear the risks and the rewards.

For the full experience, recommended follow-up:

• BBC Technology Section
• Consumer Reports: Tech Policy
• works-not-working.com

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Conclusion

A rich, honest, and accessible discussion for listeners, whether tech insiders or concerned citizens, illuminating why tech’s legal and ethical battlegrounds now shape the world we all live in. Highly recommended for anyone thinking about the future of the internet, privacy, and our relationship with the technology in our hands and in our homes.

Transcript

[A]

It's time for Twit this Week in Tech. Stacey Higinbotham is back. Wesley Faulkner is also here and brand new we welcome from the BBC Thomas Germain will talk about social media trial. The 30th anniversary of the 26 words that changed the Internet Meta is announcing face recognition at a moment when they think no one's paying attention. And what about the Discord Age verification? What's going to happen there? That and a whole lot more coming up next on Twit podcasts you love.

[B]

From people you trust.

[A]

This is twit. This is TWiT this Week at Tech. Episode 1071 recorded Sunday, February 15, 2026. Image pick. It's time for TWIT this Week in Tech, the show we cover the week's tech news. Stacy Higginbotham is here from Consumer Reports where she's a policy fellow and more importantly the host of Stacy's Book Club.

[B]

Woo hoo.

[A]

Hi Stacy.

[B]

Hey everyone.

[A]

Good to see you. I get a little extra Stacy this month, which is nice. And we will talk about the new book we have picked for the book club in a couple of months.

[B]

Excellent. Give me a break before, before you do it so I can get a. I have a copy of this Copy.

[A]

You have a copy? Okay. Nice. You're gonna read it in dead trees, huh?

[B]

Always.

[A]

I will probably listen to it on audible. Actually not audible on Libro FM if it's available. Also here, Wesley Faulkner, our good friend Wesley, founder of something new that is not yet going. But you can go and take a look at the prototype. It works-not-working.com. hi Wes.

[C]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[A]

Good to see you.

[C]

I am doing great.

[A]

Nice. And we want to welcome somebody brand new to our microphones. I'm saying that because that's what they say in the BBC. Welcoming to our microphones from the BBC, Thomas Germain, tech correspondent at the Beeb. He's the host of a brand new show launched last week called the Interface. Hi Thomas.

[D]

Happy to be here.

[A]

Great to have you. Do you have a tree growing in your house?

[D]

Yeah, you could call it a tree. I think it's taller than I am now. He kind of fell over a little bit.

[A]

If you're not looking really closely, it looks like the green curtain is the trunk of that.

[D]

That would be cooler. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Thomas was at Gizmodo, was at Consumer Reports for many Moon and has been at the Beeb for a while. BBC for a while now with what is the Interface about?

[D]

Well, I think it's something that probably would appeal to twit listeners. You know, the idea of the show is that everything is a technology story now.

[A]

Yeah, that's true.

[D]

Exactly.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

We're trying to be a show for everyone. So we've got, you know, three people with really deep expertise. There's me, there's Karen Howe, who just wrote a book.

[A]

Oh, I know Karen. Yeah.

[D]

And then Nikki Wolf, who's done a lot of investigative, you know, miniseries, podcasts about weird Internet culture, mysteries and stuff.

[A]

So you got AI, you got culture, and you got consumer electronics.

[D]

Exactly right.

[A]

Perfect.

[D]

So something for everybody. And, you know, the ideas will be a show. Even if you think you don't care about technology, we're trying to appeal to everyone because it's every part of your life.

[A]

Well, I see that your most recent episode was about. Well, it might have been about the Ring was about doorbells tracking. We're going to get. We have a big privacy section today. But I thought we should probably start with that trial that's going on in Los Angeles right now, the debate. It's an omnibus trial where they brought together, I think, several hundred plaintiffs suing social media. Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok were also in the suit. They kind of made a deal right before the trial began. The thesis is that Meta and Google are addictive and that they are addicting children and that they should be liable for addicting children. And it has brought some of the biggest names in social media to the stan. Adam Mosseri was on stand from Instagram this week. Mark Zuckerberg will probably be testifying next week. Plaintiff's attorney said this case is about two of the richest corporations in history. It would have been four, but we made a deal who have engineered addiction in children's brains. Mosseri said it's addictive, like a great show on Netflix. Is addictive? Is social. Is social addictive? Can social be addictive like heroin and cigarettes?

[B]

I mean, is dopamine and seeking dopamine addictive? Yes. Can we actually test that in a way that's provable? Probably not, because we. We don't really have that get from a scientific and brain chemistry perspective. But this, I'm so frustrated by this because really what should be on trial is we call them dark patterns, deceptive patterns, and that sort of thing is being deployed. It has been deployed forever. And it's just kind of like everything on the Internet. It's deployed at scale in such a, I guess, emotionally close way for people. You're snuggled up in bed looking at this thing that It. It is harmful. And I would argue that it's not just children. I mean, I. I look at my father and his addiction to YouTube and what's happened as a result of that, and I'm like, holy moly. So anyway, that's just Stacy's two cents. Legally, I think it'll be hard to prove. Do I think these companies have a lot to answer to? Absolutely.

[D]

I think the really interesting thing is, like, why we're talking about whether it's addictive in the first place, which is, I think, because there are basically no laws regulating these companies, at least not in particular. Right. Like, they can't go after a social media platform because of the content, because section 230 protects them. So we've been seeing all, like, this raft of lawsuits, not just against social media. There was similar stuff about dating app companies a couple years ago. And the idea is, if we can prove that the design of the platform is the thing that's hurting people as opposed to the content itself, then maybe we can hold the companies liable and the courts will be able to do something. And it's like this one little narrow legal question that, you know, in a lot of ways, the whole future of the Internet hinges on.

[A]

It seems a perilous contention, though, Should. Look, I'm watching Succession on HBO for the fourth time because I get a big dopamine hit from it, and I love that dopamine. Is HBO liable for making a show that's very, very good?

[B]

I wonder if there are parallels. So remember back in the 80s? I do. Not because I was a child, but.

[A]

Back in the 80s, I do, because I was a full grown man by then. Go ahead.

[B]

I'm just like, I don't want to make it sound like, oh, I was there thinking about this, but I did take a. I took a college class on this in the 80s. They removed the regulations around advertising to children on television.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that launched some really, truly terrible TV shows that I loved wholeheartedly and a lot of sugary cereals. But I think about. Are there parallels to that kind of deregulatory era? We haven't actually had any regulations here, but should we go back and look at what we did there? And because there was the concern that children's little brains were not able to parse ads and they. That they shouldn't see a lot of advertising because they were so young.

[A]

Yeah, that's true.

[B]

I don't know if these are good parallels.

[C]

There's a difference between the on demand, all the time nature of these apps. That are different than even succession. For instance, you have to basically, if you think of it as an opt in, opt out model, you have to opt in to turn on hbo then to choose the system.

[A]

Don't you have to install it Instagram and then scroll through it? And I mean, don't you have to do that too?

[C]

But you don't get to choose what you watch. You don't get to choose when it stops. They have these controls that are for parents that you have to opt into. So it's not choosing all of having all these restrictions by default. And then you have to opt in to release and turn those off. And you say, I want to do this, I want to get more shows, I want to get this type of content. I want to be able to have endless scroll. I want to be not bound by time. That's not by default. That has something you have to opt into to restrict, add those restrictions in.

[A]

I want to correct myself. The plaintiff in this is a single person I was confusing with another trial which does have a number of plaintiffs. A 20 year old California woman known only as KGM. They're trying to protect her anonymity. Yeah, I mean I don't have any problem with restricting sugary cereal ads on children's television or, or keeping adult television to after 10pm or whatever. I, I think regulations like that are okay. I just worry about the chilling of the free speech chilling effect that telling a company, well, you can't make a product that's too good because then you'll be liable for addiction.

[B]

I don't think the issue is necessarily that it's too good. I think that it is hard. Like, I mean we've made heroin illegal and it is too good. But it is also harmful.

[A]

It is demonstrably physically addictive, as are cigarettes.

[B]

Well, okay, so we have shown that these sorts of infinite scrolls and TikToks and all of the social, any social media does create a dopamine hit that people continuously go back for. Is it that same level that's hard to. I mean, is it like heroin?

[A]

Well, Mosseri said if you don't have withdrawal, then it's not addictive.

[B]

So I will tell you. Okay, this is Stacy's story of my TikTok addiction which, okay, we could all laugh because obviously I'm fine. I actually did realize that I had a problem when I got an RSI injury from holding up my. Remember how I hate heavy phones? Right, right. Okay. So I had to actually I uninstalled the app and that was like, oh, but then I'd reinstall it because my kid would send me something and I felt like I needed to be there for them. And then I would. I set time limits for myself, but I did. Whenever I picked up my phone, I automatically went to it. So it's not an addiction. Like, I'm not going to go sell my house or rob somebody to get access, like steal a phone so I can check TikTok on. But it was something that I. Habit. It was very easy to form a habit, much like smoking cigarettes.

[A]

Yeah, it's habituating. I won't. I won't deny that.

[C]

And also, I think the social nature. Sorry, the social nature of it is also the thing that is tapping into our psyche.

[A]

But it's valuable. I don't know if that's valuable. I mean, the argument is there are kids who are isolated, whose parents don't agree with their sexual choices or whatever, who find solace and a community online in these social networks.

[C]

Right. But that's. We're going to talk about, like 230 later and talking about there's a balance of pros and cons that we need to keep examining. And I think one of the social nature of it is not just everyone finding community, but everyone doing it because everyone's doing it. It's as. I don't know if you've seen those experiments where everyone is, like, taking a test in a room and they pump in smoke and they. The one person who is not a paid actor is wondering why everyone is staying in their seats and not moving is because the social, like. Like bond is so that if no one feels panicked and no one's leaving, then they feel compelled to stay.

[A]

And I think the opposite screaming fire in a crowded theater of not screaming fire in a crowded theater.

[C]

If no one does anything. Like, even if you think about, like the Will Smith slap example, how no one was tackling. Yes. Because of the social pressure from everyone around them doing it. And I think that is also something that needs to be thought about. That it's not just that it's available, it's that everyone else is using it in this way.

[A]

Well, I think it figured out where I'm going. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

[C]

Oh, no.

[D]

You know, also, though, I think it's important to go back to what Stacy was saying about dark patterns.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Like, you can't really compare it to HBO making Game of Thrones so good that I can't watch it. Because we know that Meta, for example, is well aware that the design of its products Causes harm to its users. Right.

[A]

Don't you think? HBO is.

[B]

Is well aware their shows are engineered. But you can always. So I have. It is very easy to see, like when you're watching the Pit or any Netflix show that is designed to eventually be binge watched, that they end on a cliffhanger. Right.

[A]

That's called a cliffhanger. Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But that should be illegal. Making me watch the next episode.

[B]

We actually stop all of our TV shows about 10 minutes before the end.

[A]

Because that's smart.

[B]

We want to. Especially if we need to go to bed. That's.

[A]

Avoid the cliffhanger.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That's how we watch shows in our house because we're very unfamiliar.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

But there's a very big difference in ending on a cliffhanger for like something that has a finite lifespan. Even if it is, you know, 15 hours of binge watch and having an infinite scroll of like, just.

[A]

I feel like, I mean, every novelist, if they could, would write a novel that compels you to read the next installment.

[B]

Do you overeat?

[A]

Is the. Is this is the crime that Instagram and Facebook and YouTube committed, that they're too good at it?

[D]

I think it's that they know that they're hurting people. And like, we've got all these internal documents from the company talking about, like, oh, like we noticed that when we turned this feature on, it caused this shame spiral. And all these, like, teenage girls started watching 10 hours of eating disorder content. And they also know that there are solutions that they can implement to address this problem, but they choose not to. We have all these documents where the comp. The companies are discussing internally.

[C]

These.

[D]

This is a big problem and we're causing it and we could do something about it. And choosing not to because they want to protect their bottom line. And that's where it's a little different. If HBO knew that it was doing that and they had a solution and they could still make a great show that wouldn't cause you to have an eating disorder. I think we would all be pretty upset that they were proceeding in that way. And I think that's the way that we should be looking.

[C]

Yeah, the incentive structures are totally different.

[A]

Yeah, you're right.

[C]

One wants you to watch more ads so you. They get more money the longer you stay on the platform. The other one is like, we just want you to stay around for a month. You can watch as little as you want or as much as you want, and we won't try to. We just want you to Keep your subscription. Which is a totally different motivation.

[A]

YouTube actually argued we're not social media. We're just an entertainment platform like hbo. Their lawyer said it's not trying to get in your brain and rewiring it like those other guys in the stand. It's just asking you what you like to watch. Is, is YouTube social media?

[D]

I mean, is anything social media anymore? Like, what's the difference between.

[A]

No, you're right, because Instagram's not my friends.

[D]

No, yeah, I, I think that's a strange argument to make that like, that we're like, oh, well, this is different because of the definition of what a social media platform is. Like MySpace was social media. Instagram in the early days was social media. But I go on any of these apps, the last thing that I'm looking at is what my friends are posting and they're posting less and less. And that's by design. All of the companies are doing this.

[A]

It's TikTok. It's a, it's a stream of entertaining content designed to keep you scrolling the same way. Yeah, Instagram's the same. I suppose you could argue Facebook's the same. Certainly YouTube is that way. So you, you kind of, you kind of hit on the thing that I do care about on this. And the reason I'm arguing against any restraints is because of Section 230. I don't want to open the door to undermining section 230. 30 years old this week and you know, it's been called the, the, the 26 words that created the Internet. It was part of the Communications Decency act, and it said that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. In other words, Twitter wasn't responsible for your tweets. You were. And Twitter couldn't be held liable. And by the way, a lot of people who are trying to change Section 230, including a number of well known Hollywood actors, which puzzles me, is that it's big tech trying to manipulate you. But Section 230 also protects me. It protects my chat room, it protects my discourse forums, it protects my mastodon. Instance, if I were liable for the things people posted on those, I would just shut them down because I couldn't defend myself. I'm not big enough to defend myself. In fact, big tech can. So do you think this trial is in any way a threat in the long run to 230 or that 230 protects these companies?

[D]

I think they're trying to sidestep that issue altogether because they're not talking about, like, Instagram hosts dangerous content.

[A]

Like, it's not the content, it's what Instagram's doing with their algorithms. Right.

[D]

A whole separate can of worms. A much, I think, more complicated issues.

[A]

This is what people like Joseph Gordon Levitt say, well, when you do an algorithm, you're a publisher, right.

[D]

Well, which I think is a point that's really worth focusing on.

[C]

Right?

[D]

You, in your discord, like, maybe you have some rules set up where if someone says something that's like, you know, really deeply offensive or like, breaks a law, you're going to ban them. That's a lot different than a social media platform where they've got this algorithm. And we know that they're making, like, very specific, intentional decisions about what kinds of content that they want to promote. We also know, like TikTok, for example, there was a story a couple years ago about how they have a heating button where if they have a particular user that they want to promote, they go in and they turn this on and it makes the content go viral. So I think there are all kinds of cases where the tech platforms are acting like publishers. Like YouTube decides what kinds of stuff goes on the homepage. These algorithms are making the decisions. But I think it's not really accurate to describe these platforms as just like neutral the way that Reddit is. And anyone can just go on there and post. There's something else that's going on here that I think maybe needs to be addressed in a different way than like, you know, your, your discord community, because it operates in a completely different.

[A]

What's the remedy?

[B]

So here's, here's what I've been thinking about, and I hate thinking about 230 because it's like the third rail of Internet.

[A]

No, we have to defend it. We have to defend it.

[B]

Hold on, hold on. So I'm thinking back to, you know, this has influenced my net neutrality years, right. Thinking about, we had the common carriers for ISPs, right. And then we came up and we were like, you know what? These email providers and Internet folks, they're a little different. They're, they're broadband providers. So they're not, they don't, they don't have to follow these rules and.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I know we spent a long time debating over how that would happen, but I wonder if. Because they're. And we would have to figure out what is a publisher on the Internet versus what is a platform that is pushing something harmful. And you could define it by the platform. You could set regulations for proving harm. I don't love that idea but like there are lots of policy ways we could tackle this. But what happens is we're like we're going after 2:30 and everyone rightly freaks out. So it's time for nuance and we're just really terrible. This time is terrible for nuance and I'd love to read like some really good thinking on that. Please send me stuff.

[A]

I think you're right. I think it's true that when a company creates an algorithm that's really designed to as best as possible hook people into doom scrolling that they have now become a publisher or look at AI, right?

[D]

Like you go on Google and do a Google search right now and Google is speaking to you. Google is generating the information itself and giving it to you.

[A]

They're publishing.

[D]

They are publishing. They are making the information up themselves and delivering it to you. That's a completely different thing. I think we have to protect Section 230. It's true. The whole Internet relies on it. We cannot get rid of it. The solution that I always point to with this kind of stuff is transparency. What if there was a law that said you had to make it so that outside auditors and we could decide who they are can go in and look at exactly what the algorithm is doing and demonstrate, you know, this piece of content is being promoted in this particular way and this is how people are reacting to it. This is what the algorithm is doing just by putting it out in public so everyone can decide like how do we feel about all this? I think would create, you know, like Wesley was saying, a social pressure on these companies to behave a little better and be better stewards of what's happening on their platforms. Now that wouldn't solve it, but where we are right now is like nothing at all. That like these companies can never be held accountable under any circumstances because of these rules that really are protecting and upholding the Internet. I think we've just gotten to a place where the Internet is so different that we have to come up with a new way to look at it. But it gets like you're saying it gets thorny really fast.

[C]

It could even be opt in for some places to have like almost a score, like a health score for a restaurant. You can see if it's an A, B, a C, a D and F on certain categories where they can choose to be part of it or choose not. Some of this, especially with kids is.

[A]

Going to be doing the grading well.

[C]

It has to be useful for people to trust it. Right. And so if you really wanted to tackle this, it needs to be extremely objective.

[A]

But if lawmakers make this law, who is going to be the person doing the grading? Lawmakers.

[C]

It could be a consortium.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

Lawmakers hate actually doing that.

[C]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

They're going to actually give it up to. God help us if we're lucky. It'll be a government agency that is.

[A]

Like, this is what Facebook pretended to do. Right. With their. Whatever they called that group. It's still around.

[C]

Or just let people make their own benchmarks. Like, think of Ginkbunch.

[A]

But I agree. Social norms are the only thing that can protect us. Not. Not.

[B]

No, I think. I think actual rules need to protect us. And I think everyone, really. We love transparency. I mean, God help me.

[A]

I know, you're right.

[B]

So many labels right now. But the problem is, and I will go back to kids because they don't have the ability to look at this and understand a label the way, like, I may be able to look and say, oh, that's, you know, pro ana context.

[A]

Were the motion picture labels, the MPAA laws, rules, Were those effective? R, G, pg, what I showed my.

[B]

Kid when they were young, things that I watched that were like, PG or PG13, I was like, oh, my God, this is the most sexist, horrible things. No wonder I, as a 90s child, like, grew up not having, like, with some of the ideas I had.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, the MPAA allowed murder on camera, but not a naked breast.

[B]

But now they don't.

[A]

Now they don't.

[B]

Like, these will change. Well, the. The way they were enforced has changed over time. I just don't. I don't think ratings are the way. I think we really need to think about the harms we're trying to prevent and then set up rules to address those harms. And probably some sort of body that arbitrates that because it's going to change over time. I don't know. This is why I want people to send me good ideas.

[A]

You can see how hard this is, to be honest.

[D]

We have a system set up for copyright.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Like, if I notify. Well, it's complicated, but if I notify Twitter or. Or TikTok that, like, someone is, like, hosting, you know, Paramount's content, they have 24 hours to take down before they violate the DMCA. Right. You could create a system where, okay, we decide that there are certain kinds of content that we think are so noxious that they're illegal, and maybe we need to expand it a little bit. But even just the rules that we have, right. We know that companies aren't doing a good job of taking down dangerous, like, completely illegal stuff. We could create more robust protections where they have to have a system in place where they act on stuff in a certain amount of time if they're notified about a particular problem. And then, you know, there's some accountability system where they have to tell everyone about how they're doing it. The same way that they have transparency reports about how many times they respond to, you know, warrants and police requests. I think there are a lot of small interventions that we could make that everyone except the tech companies would kind of agree on. It's when you look at the big. You're trying to like, write one law about the Internet, or do we want the senators, you know, deciding what kind of speech isn't, isn't okay? That's when it gets complicated. There are a lot of common sense interventions here.

[A]

It does seem like there has been a growing consensus that this stuff is bad for us, it's bad for our kids, that these companies don't really care. It's hard to think of what a remedy would be. But I think we all, we've all kind of come around to this idea that this is not the utopia that we thought the Internet would end up being.

[C]

I think competition's the way to fix it, though. What's going on with the Fediverse? Hopefully it'll mature enough where people can feel like they can opt into the experience that they feel is good for them. But we lack the vocabulary to even describe what we want. I think is part of it, is that because we don't have this competition, you can't say, this is more X, this is more Y, this is whatever, because we can't even have that conversation. We just say safe, harmful, or addictive, but we don't have the nuance to be able to say, let's make a platform that's different than all the others, where people know if they want a certain experience, where to go.

[A]

And, you know, the problem is, Wesley, these algorithms are so good that they win. You can't have competition because people want Instagram.

[B]

They want competition also because there's no business model for this right now.

[A]

Well, the business. But, but, but Instagram and Facebook and YouTube are making billions and billions.

[B]

Yeah, their, their money is based on engaging us at all costs, even at harm.

[A]

So we recognize that, but.

[B]

Right, but if you're not to harm people, if you're to create a Place where engagement doesn't matter, then you're looking at something that people pay for. Fewer people will pay for that part of the reason. I mean, like. And it does get down to this idea. I wonder if some of this is down to the fact that. That we think we want the Internet to be a place where we socialize and can connect and have these engagements. But. And we do, in the sense, like, if you live in a small town, it gets you all of these people in engagement you otherwise would never get, because those people aren't there. But we don't want to spend money on it. And honestly, I don't know if you should. I mean, basically, we think the Internet's doing one thing, but it's really doing another. And most people are not aware of that. And that's. That's hard. And I love the Fediverse. I hope it helps, but I'm not as optimistic.

[A]

It's not very competitive, is it? You know, when they poll people about which TV channels they watch, they always say pbs in greater, far greater number than people actually watch pbs. Right. People say they want to eat vegetables. They like McDonald's. I think it's a problem. The biggest problem here is these platforms are hugely successful. They work hard, but you could make.

[B]

It more painful and more expensive for them. So, like, some of these little alterations could make it. Because I think we're like, let's stop them from being evil. But what if we just said, hey, let's make it really expensive.

[A]

We did that with cigarettes.

[B]

Pain in their butt.

[A]

We did that with cigarettes. We raised the cost of cigarettes in Canada. They have. I think it's probably true in the uk, too. They have labels on cigarettes that are graphic. They show lungs. And it's like, this is gonna happen to you if you. And it does not seem to deter people much.

[B]

What are you talking about? Nobody smokes anymore.

[A]

But you know why? Because we make sure that they have to do it outside when it's cold.

[B]

Right. I feel like there's been a bunch of interventions that are much more painful.

[A]

You're right. There are interventions that work. It's not the bunch of different ones. Yeah, we tried them all. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Do fuel smoke?

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

In the U.S. for sure.

[B]

In the U.S. yeah.

[A]

But in Italy, it's a frame you could smoke.

[B]

Can you smoke inside places in Italy?

[A]

No. When we were in Rome last year, Lisa said, I don't want to come back here because everybody's outside smoking.

[B]

Yes. Anytime I'm in, like, Japan or Parts of Europe, I'm just like, woof, you guys. When I was in Istanbul, they were smoking in the hotel and people know.

[A]

I mean, there's nobody who doesn't know that smoking is bad for them. That's going to kill them.

[B]

Right.

[C]

But think about this. This culturally, you see it less than movies and TV shows. And I think that's true.

[A]

My previous example, not cool anymore.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

I think they are worried about it coming back.

[C]

We've moved away from that.

[A]

Yeah, it's not cool anymore. All right, we're going to take a break and talk about privacy next. Great to have Thomas Germaine, first time, first timer from the BBC's the Interface, which you got a great team. I can't wait to listen to it. That sounds great. Just launched last week.

[D]

Just last week.

[A]

But you already have muffs. We've been doing this for years and we do not have microphone muffs with our name on it.

[D]

You gotta get on my level.

[A]

I don't even have a mic flag, for crying out loud.

[D]

We're coming for you.

[A]

Yeah, I'm in trouble. Also Stacy Higginbotham, who, thank goodness, does not have a Consumer Reports mic flag, but she does have a little. That little wooden CR behind her, which Paris now has and Nicholas De Leon now has. They're starting. Yeah.

[B]

Taken over everywhere they were from the pandemic, apparently.

[A]

Oh. Because everybody had to do zoom calls.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Isn't that interesting? That might be the number one thing. The pandemic has changed. We've all become, even on major news networks, we've all become used to people sitting in their bedroom doing their I'm in my office or their office or whatever. It's really changed. It's really interesting. Wesley Faulkner is also here. Great to have you, Wesley. We'll talk about your new company. Work's not working in just a little bit. Our show today, brought to you by Zscaler, the world's largest cloud security platform. And the time is right. We talk a lot about AI on all of our shows. The potential rewards in business are obviously too great to ignore. But there are risks. There are a lot of risks. The loss of sensitive data, attacks against enterprise managed AI, generative AI increases opportunities for threat actors too. Just as it's helping your business is helping them to rapidly create phishing lures that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Do you notice? I don't know if you've noticed. I know we get more and more of those every single day. I got one the other day from A well known company saying your bill is overdue. Just click this link to pay it. Also, bad guys are using it to write malicious code. We're seeing malware crafted by AI. They're automating data extraction. One of the big problems that maybe you don't even see in your business is even the use of, you know, well known SaaS. AI apps can leak information. There were 1.3 million instances of Social Security numbers leaked to AI applications last year. Chat, GPT and Microsoft Copilot between the two of them saw nearly 3.2 million data violations. So this is my pitch. It's time for a modern approach with Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI. It does a bunch of things that are very important. For one thing, it removes your attack surface, it secures your data everywhere on prem and in the cloud, it safeguards your use of public and private AI and it protects you against ransomware and AI powered phishing attacks. Wow. Just check out what the director of security and infrastructure at Zwara says about using Zscaler. AI provides tremendous opportunities, but it also brings tremendous security concerns when it comes to data privacy and data security.

[C]

The benefit of Zscaler with ZIA rolled.

[A]

Out for us right now is giving us the insights of how our employees are using various gen AI tools. So ability to monitor the activity, make sure that what we consider confidential and.

[C]

Sensitive information according to you know companies.

[B]

Data classification does not get fed into.

[A]

The public LLM models, et cetera. With Zero Trust plus AI you can thrive in the AI era, stay ahead of the competition and remain resilient even as threats and risks evolve. You should go right now. Check it out. Learn [e-mail] Security Zscaler.com Security we thank him so much for their support of this week in tech. We have. You know it's funny, when I was putting the show together there weren't a lot of stories about AI, but there were a ton of stories about privacy. I'll start with one that is kind of tells you something. Meta according to Business Insider, apparently thinks we're too distracted to care about face recognition and ray bans. They say we're they're going to add face recognition, that thing that Google refused to do way back when with Google Glass to the ray ban smart glasses. And they're gonna do it soon figuring yeah, there's too many other things people are worried about. They're not gonna notice. We noticed Mr. Zuckerberg. We noticed. Should we worry about face recognition in these glasses? I think it seems to me this is the one thing I've been waiting.

[B]

For, to be clear, they said that it wasn't you guys that they're worried about. They're worried. They were saying that the consumer groups that fight against this or the Right, they're busy fight against it. They're busy fighting literally everything else because there is so much happening. So it's not just. It's not consumers that they're saying.

[A]

The New York Times viewed a document that said, quote, meta's internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the features released.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean, it's one of the most cynical things I think I've ever seen from the tech industry. And that is really saying a lot.

[A]

No kidding.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

If you read. I mean, Careless Whisper, that was literally. I mean, like, it did not surprise me at all. I was like, well, of course. Do we not know that this is how they operate?

[A]

What's Careless Whisper? That was that.

[B]

That was the book by. Was it Francis, the woman who used to work there and like Careless People. Careless People. Sorry.

[A]

Careless Whisper was my Wham. That's a different song. Yeah. Okay. I was curious because I thought that was your codename. Oh, yeah. Careless People blew the lid off of this. Wow.

[B]

Well, you would think, but like, no. Kind of just shrugged. Yeah. So I will say facial. I'll sing it later. I. I am terrified of this. Both as a woman, as a reporter, as a person who is been stopped. I just like everything about this is awful, but it's also something that I think om and I had conversations about this when I was back at Gigaom. I mean, like in 2012, it's been on the radar.

[A]

Google, remember Google said we're not gonna. We're not gonna do that. Because of that very reason we could. Although it's built into the nests, I think it's built into the nest cameras. So maybe they decided they changed their mind.

[B]

You can turn on facial recognition in your ring camera. Sorry. You can opt out of ring has familiar faces. So you can see it on your ring camera.

[A]

You can see, but you understand that in order to do that, it's sending your face back to the home office, comparing it against a database and then sending that information back. It's not done on device.

[B]

Right. I have a lot of like one of the biggest things that I'm angry about and argue with people about all the time is end to end encryption on any sort of AI powered service anywhere. Like the Kohler toilet when it launched and was like, well, A.I. analyze your poop.

[A]

I recognize that, but. Oh, you're okay.

[B]

And they were like, we have end to end encryption. Absolutely.

[A]

But do they have but end to end encryption? It takes a whole new meaning on a toilet. Cam.

[B]

I'm too serious for this.

[A]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm getting silly now. I apologize. Actually, this came up Ring, remember two weeks ago. Last week wasn't even two weeks ago. And during the super bowl had what many thought was kind of a dystopian ad showing how you could find lost doggies using Ring's new surveillance feature, which many people almost immediately pointed out, search Party isn't for dogs. It's for, oh, I don't know, anything. And part of the problem was that Ring had to deal with Flock when Flock has a deal with Ice. So it all kind of goes. It goes around and around.

[B]

You want accurate information on this or.

[A]

Yeah, Flock is the surveillance company that does license plate aslr, license plate recognition, automated license plate readers and video surveillance. And anyway, Ring, which. Here's the good news, after the backlash, Ring said, oh, never mind. We're not going to do that deal with Flock.

[B]

Okay. But Search Party still. Those are two separate things. Search Party still there?

[A]

Search Party's still there. Yeah.

[B]

Ring is very accurate. Oh, go on.

[C]

Oh, sorry. I said they're also doing the deal with Taser too.

[A]

Still.

[C]

That's still going.

[B]

Yeah, they still have Taser.

[A]

They gotta build a taser into my doorbell.

[C]

The.

[B]

No, it's okay. Ring does a lot of third party partnerships with law enforcement because they need chain of custody for some of the videos and they need. So that's. That's part of. There's some nefarious fun things happening there. So the deal with Flocks, Flocks, Flock and the deal with Axion Taser bodycam maker, those are. Ring did cancel their deal with Flock. They still have the other deal.

[A]

Were they gonna do license plate recognition?

[B]

No. Flock was going to be able to access video feeds on like from Ring. And I don't. I think Ring would give them the video and then Flock would run their own algorithm on it.

[D]

So I think this is one of those cases where you do want to. There's a famous quote, like, ski down the slippery slope here. The CEO of Ring says that his company's goal is to zero out crime, which, like, first of all kind of ridiculous. Like, I don't know what Ring cameras are going to do about white collar crime. But like crime, man, what are we doing the crimes talking about here? And unlike some of the Stuff we were talking about in the first half of the show, right? This is something that almost everyone I know who doesn't work at a gigantic tech company agrees on. Every single person I go up to, you know, at a party, I tell them about, you know, an investigation I've done about some privacy issue, they go. They always, like. The response is always like, well, what's going to happen now? And the answer is nothing, because there's no rules about this stuff, right?

[C]

This.

[D]

People want laws on this issue so badly that they assume that they already exist because it's like so clearly a thing that everyone agrees on. I mean, facial recognition, like, I'm not the first person to say this, but that is the end of any form of privacy in our society. It's over. It's done. As soon as that is just like a regular thing that, you know, a guy walking down the street can, like, hit a button on his glasses and identify who you are, it's over. And we're already there with all these cameras that are operating. And publicly, if you see a security camera, you should assume that there's facial recognition software running on it. And, you know, like, maybe you want to get rid of all crime, like Ring does. Maybe you're in favor of that. But I think it's really important that we talk about what exactly it is that we're trading to get there, especially when we look at what Meta is doing, adding facial recognition to the glasses, trying to do it in secret. So I think we can assume the goal is, like, you get there and it's like, well, it's already here. Everyone's already using. We can't roll it back now. Like, it's just become a regular part of everyday life. It isn't too late if people aren't happy with this stuff to do something about it. And what we saw with the reaction of the super bowl ad is perfect evidence.

[A]

There is a constituency that wants this, though. There are. It's suburban people who want to, you know, look, if somebody's stealing boxes off my porch, I want to help law enforcement catch them. Or if somebody across the street does a home invade, there's a home invasion across the street street. I want law enforcement to catch him. And if my camera can help, I want it to help.

[B]

So they think they want it. Oh, we'll let Wesley go because he's going to make the.

[C]

I'm sorry. It's just that.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What is being created right now is a marketplace for locating people. And once there's a marketplace, they will Try to get as much data and sell it to as many people as they can. With the Meta glasses, you said someone will push a button and see where a person is that's not. Or who that person is.

[A]

Yeah, I want that because when I run into you in about five years and I can't remember who you are, but I want.

[C]

But that's Meta letting you know who that person is. But Metal know all the people in that whole shot and they just will keep that data for themselves or sell it or. And especially sell it because now they say, hey, I know that you're in a Barnes and Nobles and I know you just ran into your friend Tom, but now I know that Gina, Mike and blah, blah, blah is in that Barnes and Nobles. Hey, Barnes and Nobles, would you like to know who's going to your store and when?

[A]

And that's the problem with the Ring, isn't it? It catches everything that's going on. Regardless. They have that already of your little puppy.

[B]

They have it from your cell phone data. Like they know where I'm going at any. So the visual isn't necessary there.

[C]

But now Meta will have it and metal will sell it. And now they would try to get more of it and they try to sell more of it. It's just like making another marketplace where your privacy is also sold and then people can aggregate it.

[A]

And it's also a surveillance net. Right. It becomes at some point there is universal information about who's where, when doing what.

[B]

And I will say so way back, Ring launched neighbors. I don't. I was podcasting from my old house, so I had Jamie Siminoff on the show, on the, on my Iot show way back in the day talking about this. And I was like, hey, man, what about racism? What about, you know, petty crime getting, you know, people getting caught up in.

[A]

Neighbors really did become a racist.

[B]

It. It was. It was incredibly racist.

[A]

Yeah, there's a black man walking down my street, you know, but he was.

[B]

He was like, we're going to have social shame for that. We're going to. Those people are. Exactly. So I want to point and I've even brought. I installed ring cameras for my in laws, you know, years ago, because they really wanted to catch porch pirates. That was a big. They lived in like a million dollar neighborhood in Texas, in a suburb. They were fine, but they were deeply concerned. And I brought up these concerns and they were like, stacey, that's not real. And I don't know if those people have changed their minds. I don't think that the idea of zero crime, I mean, it's been sold to us for decades as the reason for needing surveillance, and it has perpetually led us to criminalizing, usually being poor, being black or brown.

[A]

It isn't really about zero crime. It's about control. In particular, control of certain people.

[B]

And also wonder if our current political moment means that people are going to push back much harder.

[A]

I think so. I think we used to think it was. I used to think, oh, privacy. So what if a, you know, a marketer gets my information? No big deal. Now you start to talk about, well, what if a federal out of control, federal law enforcement agency gets that information? How do you feel about it now?

[D]

Yeah, I don't know anyone. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

[A]

No, please, I don't.

[D]

I don't know anyone who is comfortable and confident in the future of, you know, the governments of the leading world powers. Right. We've seen, you know, no matter what side of the aisle you happen to be on, and I think that's what. Yeah, a lot of people are okay with this. A lot of people, you know, you tell them like, well, they're handing the data to the cops and they go, great, I love cops. But I think you have to use your imagination a little bit here about the amount of power that we are handing. Not like, sure, the government can get it, but also these gigantic corporations that operate and have the power of nation states.

[A]

Right. Here's the evidence. People are becoming aware of this. When the Nancy Guthrie story surfaced, one of the things they said is, well, we don't have, you know, she had a NEST camera, doorbell, but she didn't have a subscription. And if you don't have a subscription, it's not sending the photos to the cloud, the information to the cloud. I guess the bad guy took the camera or disabled it.

[B]

No.

[A]

So. Well, wait a minute, hold on. Then it comes out two weeks later. Oh, we got pictures. Wait a minute. I thought you said that she didn't have a subscription. Oh, well, we were able to retrieve stuff that was, like, left over, and now we have pictures. And what. What was. I know. Hold on. What was gratifying to me is that people immediately said, wait a minute, Google has access to those. And that was a shocker. Go ahead, Stacey.

[B]

How did people not know that? That's how the NEST cameras don't have local storage. That's not.

[A]

No, no, but she didn't pay for it.

[B]

I know, but they can't. If you have remote access to any. This here. Your audience knows this. But if you have remote access to any device on your home network. It goes to, that is literally how they work you. It. So if you have a Nest camera and you're able to look at it even if you don't have a subscription, if you can log into your camera remotely, you're going over the public Internet and it has to hit a server somewhere.

[D]

That's what upset people so much about this Ring ad in the super bowl, right? Is they saw Ring activating all of these cameras throughout a neighborhood that it's like, oh, they're using my camera, the camera at my house. And this feature is on by default. So Ring decided that you're okay with this and they're going to use your camera for this feature unless you go turn it off. Right. And I think Stacey makes a great point, right. We put these things in our house like a camera. You put a, people put Ring cameras pointing inside their own home and you don't have control over that device. You don't know what it's doing. Now the company said, oh, we give you, we, we, we care about your privacy a lot. We give you all these controls. You don't need to worry about it. It's like, okay, if you trust Amazon and you, you know, are very comfortable with all the things that could go wrong with this data, then fine, but think about whether that's actually how you feel.

[A]

The theory, the story was that they told us initially is that, well, she didn't have a subscription. And the deal with Nest is you can look at that camera live or for three hours after, but it will be deleted. But nine days later, Google says, oh, well, we were able to get, we were able to recover residual data in our back end systems.

[B]

Yeah, I didn't. So I, I ended up explaining this to an AP reporter and I was kind of, again, I'm, I was really surprised that like, and I likened it like, you know, when you drop your email, when you delete your emails, it's not gone, it's not gone. You can pull it out of your trash. So whatever Google's retention policies are, you know that. Yes. And it was a pain for them to get to it and they wouldn't do it for like everybody. And you know, some people are probably like, well, if my mom got, you know, kidnapped from her home and this.

[A]

Yeah, I'm glad they have the video.

[D]

Sure. But I think like I had the same reaction. Yeah, I saw that Ring ad and all people got upset about it and I was like, yeah, duh. Like people are like, oh, My God. I'm part of a giant surveillance network. Like that's what this thing is for.

[A]

I remember, Stacy, when this came out, you were on this Week in Google. We were talking about this whole. What do they call this. This Lora network that they have that they've created with all.

[B]

Sidewalk.

[A]

Sidewalk.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is Amazon Sidewalk. All the Amazon devices are networked together. And they even then at the time, said, it'll help you find your lost dog. Which at the time seemed pretty anodyne, but maybe not.

[B]

That's a radio network. It's very different.

[A]

Yeah, well, they could. But I guess.

[B]

Hold on.

[A]

They could share somehow. They're sharing video, right? No, no, it's not over. It's not over.

[B]

Amazon Sidewalk is literally just a. It's a wireless radio network. It is a long range wireless.

[A]

So it's not related to this at all?

[B]

Not at all. I mean, there's data that could be. Okay, should I. Laura's the least of your problem. I mean, you can do however you want.

[C]

Think of it as like, mess. Tastic. It's just a.

[A]

It's a mesh. Yeah, I understand.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

It's just only radio, so. Yeah. So if the dog had a tag that had a radio transmitter, then you would be able to find it.

[D]

We got to get our dogs on WI fi.

[C]

Yeah, but the thing about. Also someone brought up the example, if you. If you had a stalker who knew what your dog looked like, they could say, I lost my dog, and then activate this network to find the person that they're stalking as well.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

So people could use this network for nefarious purposes.

[A]

I just, I was very gratified that people went, oh, that's not good.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Everybody seems to kind of be on the same page on this one.

[A]

Yeah. But, you know, it's interesting, so I, probably not paying close attention, figured, oh, well, they canceled that Flock Safety. In fact, that's the headline in the Verge. Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash. It had nothing to do with this.

[B]

Right, right. They just. Everybody said at the same time. Yeah.

[A]

So they're still doing the find your loss.

[B]

You should know how it works. So, search party, basically, Ring has fed photos of dogs into an AI that only recognizes dogs. And Ring is very clear that says, this only recognizes dogs.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

What I need people to recognize and know when they hear that, and they're like, oh, it's fine. That's great. Ring can update that algorithm at any point in time for facial. Facial recognition. They have the data. They have the control and ability to update your camera, you are opted into this automatically, unless you turn it off. So just. And that's how they do this. They. They add these little features and you get used to them and you're like, oh, this is kind of nice. So neat. Or you don't think much of it. And they. They are like, oh, it's only dogs, don't worry. And then. Then it'll be like lost children. And you're like, oh, that's so good.

[A]

Oh, that's good. We gotta. Yeah, actually, yeah, let's add lost children to the search party.

[C]

I also want to add that, but Amazon just keeps firing huge chunks of people, which is building an atmosphere of fear of people who are still there. And so where maybe in the past someone would raise their hand saying, this is a really bad idea. We shouldn't do this. There is less incentives for people to do that. And so I think even though there's a quick backlash and outrage of that super bowl commercial, I'm sure deep down in people's hearts, before this launch, they had those same feelings internally, but they knew they couldn't stop the head of ring from saying, you shouldn't do this. No one's gonna raise their hand to make sure that that doesn't happen internally. So see these aggressive. Maybe, I don't want to say poorly thought out of, but very. Let's just say one perspective of why these things are good to hit the market more now from not just Amazon, all the divisions of these large tech companies that are doing these mass layoffs.

[A]

When we bought our house, there is a ring camera on the front door, but I pointed it away from the street so it only sees. It doesn't see anything but our property. Like, not any. Not anything but our front porch. And every other camera I have is local. It's a bit. They're ubiquity cameras. They don't go to the cloud. Is that okay, Stacy? Am I. I mean, I want to get rid of the ring camera, but it is a big hole in the wall where it goes, and there's nothing else I can put there. I'd have to do anyway about, like.

[B]

Do you want a camera? Yeah. Do you want a camera for your doorbell?

[A]

I like having a camera on my front porch. Yeah. I like to know. You know why? Because the cat has figured out how to ring the doorbell. The cat jumps up on the wall, walks up to the camera, and it rings. She doesn't push the button. She isn't that good. But she moves her head around and it rings, and then I know she's at the door, and I can look at my watch and see if that's her or a delivery person.

[B]

Do you open the door when it's your cat?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, okay. No, I didn't know if the cat had trained you like she trained us.

[A]

To answer the door or maybe we trained her to ring the bell. I don't know which it is.

[D]

But your cat is on WI fi. That's good.

[A]

That's one of the reasons I don't.

[D]

Want to get them phones.

[A]

The chime thing. It's the chime thing. And it chimes throughout the house when somebody walks up the. You know, if.

[B]

So there are ways to. Like, we have a whole pamphlet I did on bystander. Privacy for these devices, limiting the range of, like, actual camera vision is important. So if.

[A]

Yes, don't have a patient because I want to know if it's the cat or Burke.

[B]

So. And if your local cameras, if you are not accessing them remotely. Again, if your ubiquiti cameras are going to a server somewhere.

[A]

No, it's my server. It's in my house.

[B]

If it's your server that you host, then you're fine. Yeah.

[A]

Main reason I did that was not for any privacy thing, but I didn't want to wait. I need all the bandwidth to do these shows. Those cameras uploading the Internet use a lot of bandwidth. If you have three or four cameras uploading the Internet, it's killing your Internet bandwidth. So I didn't want to do that. I only wanted them to save locally here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there was just selfish. It wasn't. It had. And I don't care about people. You wrote a. You wrote a story, Thomas. TikTok is tracking you. Oh, that's good. Even if you don't use the app.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So don't have the app on your phone is the answer whether or not.

[D]

You use the app. If You've never watched TikTok video in your entire life. TikTok is tracking what people are doing across parts of the Internet that have nothing to do with TikTok. And it's worth mentioning. So are a lot of other gigantic tech companies. This is another story, like, similar to the ring thing, where it's like this has been going on for a while. What's happening here is tech companies that have advertising platforms. Some of your listeners might know this, have tools called pixels. It's like literally like an invisible one pixel image that you put in the background of a website, and when it loads, it sends data to the company that made it.

[A]

So if I. Yeah, just parenthetically, when we said we were going to put you on the show, the BBC called us and said, could you put a tracking pixel on the show so we could see how many people saw Thomas?

[D]

Of course, yeah.

[A]

Which we said no to, by the way. Right, yeah, but that's very common. People ask for that all the time, not just for you, but in general.

[D]

And you visit a website and every single person who goes there, like if you advertise on TikTok, you put one of these things on your site, send TikTok data, but it's swooping up. You know, anybody who visits, whether or not you use TikTok, no matter what the content of the website.

[A]

So is it like the Facebook, like, button kind of similar?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But invisible.

[D]

Yeah, it's invisible. They've been around for years. The difference here is that TikTok just updated its pixel to make it way more useful for advertisers. Essentially. They're sharing more data with the people, people who use the pixel. And the implication is that's going to make TikTok advertising more effective, more appealing to advertisers, and we're going to start seeing it in more places and they're going to start getting even more of your data. Even if you don't like TikTok, you don't trust them, you want to be involved, they are getting your personal information.

[A]

What advertisers don't realize, of course, though, is this is creating a. What Cory Doctorow called the largest consumer boycott in history, the use of ad blockers and pixel blockers, which not only stops the TikTok Pixel, but. But also stops ads. So they're shooting themselves in the foot by invading. So being so aggressive about invading our privacy, they're actually going to hurt themselves in the long run.

[B]

So I just want to say that this doesn't just happen on the web itself.

[D]

Right.

[B]

This can be. They put image pickle. Image pickles.

[A]

Good Lord, I would love an image pickle right now. If they're sweet and sour.

[B]

They put image pixels into, like, emails. That was how Superhuman tracked, like, opens and things like that. So just to be aware that this is ubiquitous, like truly on the Internet.

[A]

But am I wrong in thinking that If I run EFF has a. As a content blocker, I use UBlock Origin. If I run one of those content blockers that stops those pixels, the beacons don't get sent back. Isn't that right or am I right?

[D]

Yes, but. So that was Part of the reason that I wrote the article is like there are actually, there's super easy things you can do to stop this kind of tracking, right? You can use a more private browser. Most people are on Chrome, right? Chrome by default.

[A]

I wonder why Chrome doesn't block things.

[D]

You can use a privacy like a, like a tracker blocker. DuckDuckGo makes one. There's the EFF have privacy badges that'll stop this. But there are other kinds of data collection. Right? They're collecting data from apps in a similar way. And there's also, you know, data that they're sending, you know, directly from the company server, not from your web browser. Not using your computer to pass the information on. There's not a lot you can do about that. But my point with this stuff is always, you know, what makes you so vulnerable to privacy intrusions is that they're putting together data from so many different sources and any steps you can take to like limit. Okay, well, you're not getting. This does make an enormous difference. So I, you know, I'm always encouraging people just like, it's not a lost cause. Just put in a little effort whenever you can and you can, you know, make a meaningful difference with this particular problem.

[A]

Do something anyway. Do something.

[D]

Yeah, you're not.

[B]

So the recommendations are ad blockers not loading images in your email by default.

[C]

By default, yeah.

[A]

I don't use HTML email at all. I use plain text for that very reason. There's no.

[B]

What. What else, Thomas, what else should we be doing?

[C]

Pie holes.

[D]

What's that?

[B]

Oh, P pic.

[A]

Pie hole is good. If you've got an image pickle, put it in your P hole.

[D]

Set up at his house. And when I go home, I visit my parents. Like the Internet just like does not work right. There's like all these websites especially because I write about ad tech all the time. Trying to go to the companies.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Go to their webpages.

[A]

I can't visit them because I get blocked all the time. Because I have next DNS running, which is basically a third party pie hole. Of course all my information is going to them now, but I.

[D]

A DNS blocker is really going to stop a lot of this if you have the stomach for it. If you have like, it doesn't take a ton of technical expertise. It'll break some things sometimes. But a lot of them are designed to be consumer friendly. Use a better browser. If you're not going to do that, use a tracker blocker, set up a DNS tool or if you're really Crazy. You can go for the pie hole. I even, I can't, can't take it to that level. But you know, again, there are things you can do here.

[A]

I would venture that a majority of our listeners, people listening to the show are using some sort of ad blocking. I mean, it's become, you know, if you're at all technically sophisticated, it's become just de rigueur.

[D]

But not every ad blocker, it works for this, right? You know it. DuckDuckGo has a really good chart you can go check out. Some ad blockers will block some trackers. A lot of them just block ads. They're really not designed for this purpose. If you, if this is what you want, if this is what you're concerned about, an ad blocker will help. But you really want to get a tool that is specifically designed for this purpose. That's what's going to block the most trackers and have the biggest effect.

[A]

UBlock origin, that's the one we recommend. Let me see what DuckDuckGo says on their, on their chart here.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting. UBlock Argent does not protect against referrer tracking, which, which is wild. That lets companies identify the site that you visited where you click the link to go to their page. They can see where, where the referrer came from. Fingerprint tracking is a big issue. We've talked a lot about that on security now. Yeah, you know, I'm not as protected as I thought I was.

[D]

Right. And I mean, part of the reason is a lot of these tools will break websites. Right? Like there's certain functionality that if you're really worried about your privacy, it's worth doing, but it'll mess things up and then, you know, it's not that hard. You can just go, okay, like unblock this one particular website or like, you know, turn off the tracking tools for a minute. It does make things a little bit more annoying. So there's like a usability trade off that you need to make here. But you know, like, it's not like you're going to be permanently messed up or disempowered here. Like if you're on a website, it's not working, you have one of these tools on. Turn it off.

[C]

The easiest thing I do is use a liberal use of privacy browsing just on. I have a browser that has no plugins, no extensions on it and I just set it to always Firefox on mobile. I use it the most.

[A]

And you set the strict tracking.

[C]

I set it to. I just use the privacy mode, which Means that it never has cookies. It never has me signed into anything.

[A]

Firefox has a great mobile.

[C]

When I close it, everything gets deleted. I launch it and I start with, it's like an ephemeral browser where I start fresh every single time. Now, if I pair that with a vpn, then I think that that's. That's probably going to get lost.

[A]

And you can't use any sites ever.

[D]

Again because stop using the Internet. That's really.

[A]

Cover your tracks from EFF is a very interesting way to see if your browser protects you against fingerprinting, which is the ability to figure out who you are based on asking your browser, well, what's the screen resolution? What plugins does he have? You know, a whole variety of things that allows them basically to narrow you down so much that they effectively know who you are. And some browsers do a good job of this, some do not. What you want is your browser has a unique fingerprint. As you can see this. I'm using a Firefox browser. That's what you want, a unique fingerprint so that you don't look like, oh, no, that's the opposite. I don't want that. I don't want that. That means I know who. They know who I am. Gosh darn it, you're in trouble. I'm in trouble. It means my browser fingerprint is unique among the 308,000 tested in the last 45 days. I'm the one and only, so they know it's me. Yeah, Safari does a good job of this, by the way. I should be using Safari, but I'm not. All right, let's pause for an ad and then we will come back and talk about other issues. Age verification and security in general. Stacy, if you were still covering home automation or home tools like Jennifer Pattison, TUI is you would be thrilled to see what you can do with the dji Romo Robovac. A guy actually was able to. He wanted to joystick control his Robovac, right? And accidentally got it so he could joystick control all of them.

[B]

You know, I work on cybersecurity policy. That is like literally my job.

[A]

That's kind of a problem.

[B]

So, yes, I did see this little.

[A]

Bit of a problem. We'll talk about it. Must have been fun, though, for a moment.

[C]

He really cleaned up.

[A]

He cleaned up. I'm going to clean every house in the world. We have a great panel. So glad to have you. Wes Faulkner. It's good to see you. Works-not-working.com. it's not working yet, but it will be working well.

[C]

Yes. So if you have like some bones you could throw my way, check out the demo. Let me know if this is something that you want to support. Please just hit the what is. The what is.

[A]

Who's it for?

[C]

It's for people who are in this economy, especially who currently have a job, but may feel like they need techniques to survive it. Their toxic work environment, weird bias issues, navigating like egos and pyro structures, just as a way to figure out when you. It's a community for people to figure out how to survive this time without losing your job or also without losing your sanity. So this is just a place where you can get that support and be able to have real talk. Because a lot of works, a lot of places, like if you read a book or self help, it just assumes that everyone's working for a company that has your best interests in heart. Just talk to HR or just talk to your manager and say, hey, this is too much work, or hey, I'm having this sort of problem. Yeah. Those tips do not help. They do not work. And so this is like a real site for real people.

[A]

Works as in work is not working. Works apostrophe s is not working. Yeah. Nowadays you can't just quit your job. You need the health care. It's not necessarily another job waiting for you. I think a lot of times all you can do is make the best of what you got. So that's great. I'm glad you're doing that. Work's not working. Stacy Higginbotham's here. She's a policy fellow at Consumer Reports. And do you still write? A little bit.

[B]

A very small amount. I write for CR's stuff sometimes and then, yeah, I probably should freelance more.

[A]

Well, one of the things she does freelance for free, I might add, is Stacy's book club. And we had a wonderful book club a couple of weeks ago. We're doing another one soon. We've picked a book. What's the book?

[B]

A Song for the Wild Built.

[A]

Okay. It's another Becky Chambers. It's very thin and. Oh, good. I like that. There's a chance I'll finish it this time. Good. All right. We haven't set a date for the next one, but it'll be in a month or so and read it and enjoy it. Also with us, Thomas.

[D]

Huh?

[C]

Sorry.

[B]

It's a feel good book. I want to tell people because we've had some.

[A]

Yeah, we had some dystopian. Yeah. A feel good book Actually Briggs in our discord chat says loved that book. So thank you Briggs. Okay, I will read it. Also with us, brand new. It's great to have him. Thomas Germain. His new podcast launched last week, the Interface. He also writes the Keeping Tabs column for the BBC and that's where that TikTok story is. If you want to figure out how to, how to block the talk, he's got the the ways and means. Thank you for being here, Thomas. Great to have you. Our show today brought to you by Monarch. I. I love Monarch. Been using it for more than a year now and it's been a huge benefit for me. Maybe you made a new year resolution, start to think about your finance, maybe get things in order, start planning for the future, getting married, buying a house, retirement, going to college, whatever it is. Maybe this is the year you pay off all, all of those credit cards or start saving for, you know, the kids college fund. Wouldn't it be nice to have a tool that helps you plan, protect and proactively achieve that goal? I love Monarch because it's a second generation money tool. Guy who started Monarch had worked for the other big. You probably used it, everybody did. Big name finance app that went away. He said this is an opportunity to do it again and do it right. And it is, it's so great. Set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting accounts and investments, net worth and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this year and get 50% off your monarch subscription with code Twit. It's not your typical personal finance app. Unlike the other guys, it's built to make you kind of proactive. Of course it makes it easier than ever to track your money. Monarch's most popular features include beautiful data visualizations. You know what they do that I love? Have you ever seen those Sankey diagrams where it shows, you know, income and then, you know, it dwindles into taxes, childcare and then you get this little thing called profit that kind of there it does those which I love but also do if you like more traditional pie charts or line charts or bar charts. But the charts are great. It also will do investment tracking and so you'll get, you're, you know, you're. If you're investing with a broker, they may have graphs of their own. But let me tell you, the visuals from Monarch are fantastic. Or a real picture of your Portfolio performance. You can get it in relation to other stocks or the S P500, so you get a really good idea of how you're doing. Try not to check it too often. I do every day. Unfortunately, individual and partner filters are great. So one of the things couples often fight about is money. It's probably the number one subject. Being able to share this information and have the actual facts in front of you is fantastic. At no additional cost, you can share with your partner. And I have just started sharing it with my financial advisor as well. So that's cool. No extra charge. And that way I don't have to bring a lot of paperwork in. I can sit down, she can look at it, she can say, okay, let's work on this. You can view your assets either individually or together. It also has really great results. Now, I'll say anecdotally, it saved me a lot of money, but this is what Monarch users reported. They did a survey last year. Monarch helped users save over $200 a month, a month on average, after joining. So it pays for itself. More than 8 out of 10 members, 80% feel more in control of their finances with Monarch. 80% say Monarch gives them a clearer picture of where their money's going. And I would, absolutely. That's why I love it. Plus, it's easy. It's really easy to set up. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use the code [e-mail] for half off your first year, 50% off your first year. Monarch.com with code twit M O N A R C H. Monarch.com take a look. I think you'll agree it's. It's absolutely fantastic. So there, there's been a big kerfuffle in our own club, Twit group, because we use Discord. That's where a lot of our listeners are hanging out. And Discord has announced. And it's not just going to be Discord, folks, it's going to be everybody that they're going to have to do some sort of age verification. This is, I think, partly because of the uk, partly because of Australia and I think it's going to happen in the rest of the world as well. Our audience was really concerned. We're going to have to give government ID to be in the club. And I said, I feel for you. I don't know, we would probably move. We'd have to. I don't want to force my Good friends to have to do that. On the other hand, Discord is hideously useful. They say now, I don't know this nine to five Max says, backtracks on age verification rollout. Sort of. They say that the vast majority of users will be able to continue without ever going through age verification. On the other hand, if you have to do age verification, they may be using a video technology Peter Thiel has backed, which is an issue for some. But here's the good news. It isn't so hard to get by this stuff. Here's a page. Discord, Twitch Kick, Snapchat, Age Verifier. How you can get around it because it turns out the way these things work, it isn't so difficult. Now, you'd have to be fairly sophisticated to get through this. But it's called K ID and they have. It's a cat and mouse, right? They this company, this website rather, that did it. And it's kind. I guess it's kind of hackers Age Dash Verifier, Kibty Town. It worked and then it didn't work and then it. And then it worked and then it didn't work because it's a cat and mouse game with the identifiers, the K ID provider.

[C]

The thing is that Discord doesn't have to do this and they're just doing it.

[A]

They don't have to do it yet. I think they're being proactive, opting into.

[C]

Doing this, but it's causing more problems in terms of their reputation now, even though it hasn't fully been deployed.

[A]

That's true.

[C]

There's a parent group here where email wasn't working and people wanted to get off Facebook. And so someone spun up a Discord server saying, let's just use this, let's communicate here. And then someone says, I'm absolutely not joining this because I don't want to give up my biometric data. That was their response. And this was a like a parent group. So if it's hitting the parents, I think that this is going to be socialized in a negative way. That's going to be worse. It's going to be like the anthropic commercials during the super bowl where people are going to just have bad taste in their mouth and associate that with Discord.

[A]

Meta says, well, all the meta properties are going to do this. But they are saying we can probably guess your age based on the data you've posted to things like Happy birthday messages. And they won't ask you to verify unless all. All of their inference Says, no, you're, you're young. And then they're.

[B]

Everyone start capitalizing and using proper punctuation in all of your messaging. They'll think you're so old.

[A]

If they can't guess your age or they think you're too young. It'll ask you to verify your age using facial age estimation, which is those, that's that, I think that's that thing where you, they say, okay, look in the camera. Now turn your head. Okay.

[D]

Facial recognition.

[A]

Yeah. Face recognition. That's another way to put it. Yeah. Or uploading a government, government id, which most young people, you know, if you're that young, probably don't have.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

This is something I've been writing about for a couple years now that a lot of experts that I talk to say is turning into a complete disaster. It's one of those things where it started with porn. Right. Porn is always the bellwether for what's going happen with the rest of society, particularly in the realm of technology. And it's, it's, well, you know, well intentioned. We all want to protect children. This is great. Like the Internet is a terrible place to be a kid. Everyone can agree. But countries and states are rolling out these laws in ways that are just not thoughtful.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Like it's not a good state of affairs when you have to constantly show your government ID or you know, upload biometric information everywhere you go on the Internet for one. It's going to have a chilling effect on speech. Right. Like the things that I'm looking up or doing online, I might not do them if I have to hand someone a copy of my id and there's a solution that's so much better. Right. The argument that critics of this stuff say is that you can upload like, like Apple could build a system into your phone where you upload a copy of your id.

[A]

Apple likely already knows how old you are.

[D]

They already know, right. So they could build a system where if you're using an app or if you're on a website that it asks your device to verify your id.

[A]

Believe it or not, they already have an API to do that. Right. In which they chunk people up into age groups and there's an API that an app can say, which age group is this person in? They haven't turned it on yet. I understand Apple doesn't want to do this. Meta wants Apple to do this. I think this is the only reason. Reasonable ways. These are gatekeepers. If you're a gatekeeper, if you're Google Android or Apple iOS, hey, you're the gatekeeper. You know, the age.

[D]

It feels like. Comments. I think Google has come out and said, like, we're actually game, like, we're willing to do this.

[A]

And Android.

[D]

Okay, yeah. It would require lawmakers to, like, set up the regulation so that this isn't an option. And like, you know, we have to create a whole system for the whole Internet to use. But the way that we're doing it is like, you know, a bunch of guys who don't know anything about how technology works putting out these regulations, rushing them out in order to make it seem like lawmakers are doing something to protect children, which is a good thing that everyone can agree on. But it, you know, I think we're rushing ahead with something without thinking about what the consequences might be, and that is you showing your ID every time you visit a website, every time you log in somewhere or at least create.

[C]

Your account would be more effective. Is to have Internet education in schools with also, like, how do you know what's a deep fake? How do you protect yourself from predators? How do you not get stalked? How do you not put things in terms of, like, how to set up a pie hole, how do you escape traction? Pickles. All of these things could be taught in school to help with education, to make to. To not it. So there. There'll be less victims of some of the things that they're trying to protect kids from, because at the same time, they're cutting education, they're cutting sex ed. They're saying they're censoring, like, the history, they're protecting pedophiles. There's all this stuff that's happening that they're trying to. They're seeing the outcomes of their lack of education of people and kids in the system and just dealing with the symptom instead of the actual real.

[D]

It also gets back to the conversation we were having about Section 230 and free speech, because there's a lot of evidence that this is like, an underhanded way for the government to regulate speech. Right. So we were talking, like, I was talking about pornography here. What counts as porn? Well, in one particular state, I'm blanking, so I have a guess, but I don't want to guess and be wrong. But in one particular state, their age verification law said that among the things that count as pornography are acts of homosexuality. Even though they're given a long list of every sexual act you could ever, you know, participate in, no matter, you know, what gender of person you're doing it with, they specifically called that out. So there's a lot, you know, and the Heritage foundation talking about openly that we want age verification because it will help us limit what information people have access to about things like abortion or homosexuality or, you know, the transgender movement. Again, it just feels like we're rushing these things out without thinking about what could go wrong.

[A]

And if you're thinking, well, maybe Google and Apple would make a good place for this information to reside, then there's also the issue. I think people trust Apple, and I think Apple does its best to protect people's privacy. I'm not sure about Google so much. This story from the Intercept about Amandla Thomas Johnson, a student at Cornell, attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel. It was at a Cornell University job fair in 2024. He was there for five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. And when ICE demanded information about him, including credit card, bank account numbers, IP address, name, just a huge amount of information, Google complied. Of course, it was a lawful subpoena. Google didn't fight it. Google never gave him a chance to fight it. And in fact, Google didn't tell him till later and didn't tell them how much information they'd handed over. So I guess the thing to remember is that you might say, well, Android and iOS are the right place to do this age verification, but are they going to protect all that information, especially when presented with a lawful subpoena?

[D]

Maybe not. But we're talking about either Google and Apple or literally every platform on the entire Internet. Like, now you have to trust everyone with this information.

[B]

Better.

[A]

At least just two. Yes.

[D]

We're talking about just, like, who you are. Right. And how old you are. Like, they don't. Like, we could set up a system where it's blind, right, where your phone scans your ID. Most states have digital IDs now. Maybe it does some kind of cryptographic handshake. It confirms your age. It's not storing any data. And then a platform can just ask your phone, is this person over 18 or not? Or if you've ever used a credit card with Apple or Google, they have definitive proof of your age. Right. Like that's built in.

[A]

And I suspect that that's one of the reasons so many states are now using. They're putting their driver's licenses on iPhones, and Apple supporting that. And actually, my passport is in my iPhone as well. So they have my age from. From that. And, yeah, if. I mean, it's in there. I guess if Apple could come up with a. And maybe they have a privacy protecting way of storing that information. They don't give the, your age to the, through the API, they just put you in a group. And I think the best way to do this, honestly with at least with kids would be for the parents to enter on the phone the age, the emotional age that they feel that kid is. You know, some kids, your kid, Stacy, very mature. You know, maybe you'd say, well, they're, they're 18. And some kids who are 18 maybe have the emotional maturity of a nine year old. You might put nine in.

[B]

No, because they're a legal adult at 18.

[A]

Oh, that's right. So let's figure out a good age.

[D]

16 then you're in trouble.

[B]

You have, you have it. That's a pretty hard limit right there.

[A]

That's true. Nothing you can do after that. No, I know. Yeah, I know. I think that's really the best solution. I agree with you, Thomas. We've talked about this on security now and Steve Gibson, our security guy also thinks this is really the only way to do it. But as of now, most of the lawmakers, the way they did it, Mississippi, the way they did in Texas, I think the way they're doing it in uk are saying, we're not going to tell you how to do it. You figure it out. Platforms, it's up to you. We know you'll handle this.

[B]

Well, the government could actually, I mean, they have our Social Security number, they have all this data. They could actually host an API for all of their citizens if they really cared about this. And if we're concerned about private companies having access to this data even though we know they have it, that is another option. Not under this government.

[D]

They do that in Louisiana. Louisiana has a digital ID and it is set up for this. That was the first state to have an age verification system set up. And websites check with the state.

[B]

Right.

[D]

You log into this portal that is controlled by the state government and the state says, yes, this person is this particular age. They don't hand them any identifiable information. It's just like you're cool to be on this website. There's all kinds of ways that you could do this that don't involve, you.

[B]

Know, like presenting sketchy company being like, yes, let me have a photo of your driver's license that I'm going to store on an S3 bucket that's unsecured.

[C]

Right.

[D]

There have been data breaches already, I think more than once where age verification companies have leaked to discord. Yeah.

[A]

As a matter of fact, I think it was 17,000 IDs that were leaked.

[D]

And that's a shame.

[A]

And this is why people are nervous about giving their information to Discord. And I don't blame them.

[D]

I think rightly so.

[C]

Well, it's to anybody, because they outsource it. And that's the problem. It's always going to be the weakest link that's going to have all this.

[A]

The breach wasn't a Discord breach. It was a breach of the third party that did it. Yeah. Yeah. From the Verge. Sammy, as Doofal claims, he wasn't trying to hack every robot vacuum in the world. He just wanted to remote control his brand new DJI Romovacu with a PS5 gamepad. But when his homegrown remote control started talking to DJI servers, it wasn't just one vacuum cleaner that replied. Roughly 7,000 of them all over the world began treating Sammy like their boss. He could remotely control them, look and listen through their live camera feeds. He could watch them map out each room of a house, generating a complete 2D floor plan. He could use any robot's IP address to find its rough location. Oh, boy, we actually see this.

[B]

So our testing lab sees this kind of, this class of errors more often than people would like to, to know about. I actually, once my. I was able to actually log into my isp, I set up. I was setting up a firewall, which is a little Internet device.

[A]

You have a hardware device? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I plugged it in and I actually saw every, every other, every other router and all of their devices through the firewall because my ISP had set up their DNS incorrectly. I called him, I let them know. But like, these sorts of configuration errors are not uncommon. And it's, it's really terrifying.

[A]

I can remember the first time Apple put AirPlay or whatever its predecessor was into the Apple itunes app. And I remember going to a hotel and getting on the WI fi and seeing everybody else's music on my itunes. And then back in the early days, I think they've fixed that since then.

[C]

This is also like, could it be an actual safety issue? Like if you could get into the firmware and like overdrive a DC motor and cause a fire, that could be something that could be catastrophic to kind of like destroy all of these or just brick them even. This is not just a security thing. Oh, someone's able to move my vacuum. This is if they have cameras. They can point the cameras, they can turn on the mics, they can get access and hop onto their wi fi and snoop on Their traffic. This is really big. It's not just, hey, someone else is moving someone else's vacuum. This is like, you could actually cause loss of life in extreme cases.

[A]

When the Verge contacted gji, which is a Chinese company, they claimed. DJI claimed it fixed the vulnerability, but it was only partially resolved. DJI could confirm the issue was resolved last week. Their mediation was already underway prior to public disclosure. And then about a half an hour later, Sammy showed the Verge reporter thousands of robots, including the review unit reporting for duty. He was able, given the serial number of the review unit, he was able to tell the Verge how much battery life was yet left. And it transmitted a map of Verge reviewer Thomas Rickman's house, Thomas Ricker's house to Sammy. Here's the map. So, yeah, I presume by now it's fixed.

[B]

It apparently isn't totally fixed.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

I mean, some of these things.

[A]

It'S happened before. The Verge says hackers took over ecovax Rover vacuums to chase pets and yell racist slurs in 2024. Remember that one?

[B]

So here's. I'm. I'm gonna talk about this because we have a solution, sort of, that's stuck in limbo. And it's a voluntary program. Europe actually has laws that they've implemented on this front, but it's basically how to design connected devices securely. And we need. This is an area where you actually need the government to set rules and regulations, because it's not something the competitive market can solve, because consumers can't see it until after they've bought it. And you have to have this level of expertise. So when we don't have this, what we have is people buying the cheapest possible device. And you get companies that maybe don't think about securing their servers, or in this case, they didn't secure their service or servers. They also. I'm trying to remember all the details of this, regardless. A lot of these errors are kind of careless. And if we had laws to, you.

[A]

Know, penalize companies, and companies don't seem to. DJI doesn't seem to care all that much. They claimed they'd fix it, they hadn't when they claimed, again, they'd fixed it and then they hadn't. And now Sean Hollister is writing for the Verge. He said, even now, DJI has not fixed all the vulnerabilities, and one is so bad, I won't describe it until DJI has more time to fix it. But DJI has not immediately promised to do so.

[B]

Companies often, when you go in and report A vulnerability to a company. They will often say, well, that's actually not a vulnerability. So there is definitely a back and forth between security researchers and the companies themselves. I am not an apologist for these companies. I'm just saying there, there is a back and forth that needs to happen. They're also. They could have trouble replicating the issue. And then, yes, there's always the case where they're like, either they won't fix it or they can't fix it. And then an ethical company will be like, hey, we should recall those. That almost never happens. Or they'll do something like what Wise did, which is like, oh, we're going to end a life that product and put out a new one.

[A]

We're not going to sell that one anymore.

[B]

Never mind, we can't solve this, so we're just going to set it all on fire and go buy.

[C]

That's why I'll never buy a Wyze Cam because of that.

[A]

It soured me. Which is.

[C]

And I would say don't buy this vacuum or any. Anything that will be on your local network from DJI because they have bad security practices. So it's not. I think it's zooming in on saying whether it's fixed or not. But the thing is, it was released and it was not found by them. That is a huge problem.

[A]

Yeah. No, in fact, it's on GitHub if you want to download it. And it even says this tool bypasses the PIN code setup on DJI home app, so it's a lot easier to use. You might want to use the GitHub version of the software. He says, I can in fact control my romo with my PlayStation 5 controller.

[D]

I mean, an IP robot in your house in general. Maybe. Maybe.

[A]

Think about it.

[D]

Yeah, maybe that's where.

[A]

That's the future. We're all going to have them. Tom.

[B]

Yeah, I mean you shouldn't.

[D]

Like we never.

[B]

We don't have cameras inside. Even when I was testing smart home equipment, we faced all of our cameras to a. I had a fish tank for precisely that reason. But like you just don't.

[D]

Don't.

[C]

Oh yeah.

[A]

I would never have cameras streaming live to the. Oh, never mind.

[B]

But here you want to freak out some. Should we freak people out? Yes, like legitimately freak them out, but not like the way that WI fi sensing is going. We will have the equivalent of a camera that is just using WI fi to understand what you are doing in your house.

[A]

You can using the WI fi signals because it turns out humans are really Basically big bags of water, big bags of salt water and they block the WI FI signal. And so you can, I guess. Do you have to triangulate it? I don't know how you do it.

[B]

You use rssi. Yeah. You do triangulation. So you need at least two devices. The more devices you have. The really crazy things to know about this are because of the way WI fi works. They all talk to each other and give signal feedback. Right, that's good. But it also means that you could load the software on anything that has sufficient computing power, that has a WI FI radio and then it becomes a WI FI sensor in your home. And then all you have to do is pick the algorithm you want and you can determine all kinds of fun things. So that's the future and it's not far off. CTA actually just like a week ago decided they were going to do a standard for fall detection for WI fi. And we're all excited because fall detection would be great and it would. But they could later on. Do you know, I. I always say puppy kicking detection because. Or nose picking detection. And they are.

[C]

They're going to do summer, winter and spring as well.

[A]

Fall, summer, spring and winter. We're going to get them all.

[B]

Yeah. They're going to use your temperature sensors inside your home.

[A]

Ladies and gentlemen, you are watching this week in Tech. Thomas Germain is here from the BBC. I love saying that. That sounds so good.

[D]

Feels good.

[A]

Yeah, Feels good. The British Broadcasting Company, right. Don't. Is it corporation? Corporation, sorry, Corporation, yeah. Yes. Didn't they just raise the TV license fees in the uk? I think they did, yeah.

[D]

I mean there's. There's a whole. That's a. A whole can of worms I tend not to get into.

[A]

It's pretty funny. I can't imagine here in the United States paying the government so that I could watch tv. I'd prefer to pay giant tech companies tv, but you do not have to have iplayer to listen to the interface. You can get it on any podcast.

[D]

Application, it's on YouTube, anywhere you want, everywhere.

[A]

Also, Stacy Higginbotham. Always happy to have Stacy on. We miss you on what used to be this week in Google now intelligent machines. But your colleague Paris Martineau has done a very good job filling in for you. So at least we've got.

[B]

Is she still on it?

[A]

What, you thought she. You thought I'd drive her off by now? Is that what you're saying? I know you are. I know what you're thinking.

[B]

Anyway, I didn't know she was still doing that. Okay, good.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Paris and Jeff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of hurts my feelings a little bit that you thought she'd be. She'd be out of there by now. Maybe it's, you know, it's because she.

[B]

Got a job at Consumer Reports.

[A]

She did food. That's why she got a good job. And she's happy now. And also, Wes Faulkner. I haven't driven you guys off yet. It's good to have you. Founder of Works Not Working. Yes.

[C]

Thanks, Kenneth, for your contribution. I just saw it come through.

[A]

Oh, that's nice. If people go to Works Not Working, they can contribute. There's.

[C]

Yeah, there's just a big button on the tool.

[A]

Help support what Wesley's up to. Works Not Working.

[C]

And you'll get a badge for your level of support on the platform as well.

[A]

A badge. A badge. You know, Dan Aykroyd carries a badge at all times, but that's a different kind of badge.

[C]

Yeah, we don't need no stinking badges.

[A]

I don't want to put that up. Our show today, brought to you by Zoom. ZipRecruiter. If you're hiring for your company, this is a busy time of year for you. You've got new 2026 goals, which means finding the right people to accomplish them. Unfortunately, you also have new hiring challenges for the year, like filling specialized roles. Maybe you've got to identify qualified candidates from what is, you know, nowadays, a huge pool of applicants. That's actually one of the great things about ZipRecruiter. You do get a huge pool of applicants, but you also get tools that make it very easy to find the perfect person in that giant. Thankfully, there is a place you can go to help conquer these challenges and achieve your hiring goals. Zip Recruiter. And right now, you can try it for [e-mail] TWIT ZipRecruiter matching technology works fast to find top talent. You don't waste time or money. You can find out right away how many job seekers in your area are qualified for your specific role. With ZipRecruiter's advanced resume database, you can instantly unlock top candidates contact info and invite them to apply. Which, by the way, I have to say, is the best technique for getting great candidates. If you ask them, hey, we would like you to apply for our job. That puts you way ahead of everybody else. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site, and that's based on G2. Let ZipRecruiter help you find the Best people for all your roles. 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. Ziprecruiter.com TWIT again that's ZipRecruiter.com TWIT ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire this is one of those ideas that just never dies. HP has now announced that you can subscribe to buy a laptop. Would you subscribe to a laptop? You never own it by the way the subscriptions. Four different productivity laptops, four gaming laptops ranging from 35 to $50 a month, no starting fee, no down payment. There's a soft credit check. Each of them has a 247 support plan from a live agent. You can upgrade after 12 months but you can't buy out the lease. You can never keep the laptop. You just, you know, you keep it until you stop paying I guess and send it back.

[B]

I would do it because it's a depreciating asset.

[A]

So that's a bad idea.

[B]

No, that's not a terrible idea. It depends on the costs. Like because a laptop is not something I think about subscriptions and leases and that sort of thing in terms of Capex and Opex basically. So is it an asset that I can own over a long time and possibly use to make money or that will retain its value long term?

[A]

What's it worth to you, in other words?

[B]

Right, so you would have. I mean I'm not doing the financial calculations and depends on the specs on the laptop but if it.

[A]

Actually some of these are really nice laptops. The Omen Max 16 is very nice. That is a.

[C]

They ran prices today.

[A]

Yeah, maybe, yeah.

[B]

Did you know now is it a contract though or is it like can they raise the subscription?

[C]

It was 12 months I believe but I wonder if they can raise it because there was a, a YouTuber gamers, nexus that talked about people who are renting gaming rigs thinking that they would start a trip, a Twitch stream and be the next influencer to be able to get these highly expensive rigs for just a monthly stipend and they could offset it by how much they'll make on social media and people were just over leveraged at that point point. The question I wonder about is the secondary market. So where are all these laptops going to end up after the leases are up? Where it might be good for the secondary market. I would be pro buying A secondhand or refurbished laptop, but it might flood the market as well. It's really interesting concept because if they stop selling laptops, I would say this was bad. If you could only lease it. But it sounds like no, you can still get to choose the thing that fits best for you. So I'm actually pro this only this is a.

[D]

This is a religious conviction. But I will die before I pay a subscription for a piece of hardware. I really wanted to get an aura ring. You know, one of those like fitness trackers that you wear. You have to pay $6 a month for that thing. You got one. They're great. Everybody loves them. I think they're the best.

[A]

I'm grandfathered in because I bought it. They weren't advertising. I bought it in the beginning and.

[D]

I think not gonna happen happen. I'm not paying $6 for something I already bought. Just never in a million.

[A]

This is. We are in the phase where people are now very sensitive to subscriptions and every company wants subscriptions. Apple even is moving more and more towards subscriptions. They just released their Creative Suite. That is a subscription based creative suite. You can still buy the programs outright, but everybody wants subscriptions. Say it's because of Stacy. It's Arpu, right?

[B]

Arpu.

[A]

Arpu.

[B]

I mean the profit margins for a subscription. Especially if you can sell hardware too. Fabulous.

[A]

Sure. And then you get this average revenue per user number which I guess Wall street likes.

[C]

The scary thing is you don't.

[B]

They can like it.

[C]

What do they. Because you don't own the hardware. What will they do? Like, will they add you to the Flock camera network? Because.

[A]

Oh, that's a good point. I didn't even think so.

[C]

The question is like, like, because can you load Linux on it? Can you? That's a good question.

[A]

That's a really good question.

[B]

This is literally what I work on for CR. Like let's go with like 80% of my time, which is this. The harms of software tethering. So anytime you have a subscription and that is. Wesley brings it up. Right. This is like what features? How can they change the licensing terms? What if, for example, you use your leased laptop to upload? Maybe use it to pirate music.

[A]

They can remotely lock it according to the conditions.

[B]

That is a reason not to do it obviously because you won't have total control and ownership of this. And right now we're in an era where literally you have no rights. I have. Like I should. Very soon I will share this with legislators. But I'm. I've created a chart Full of software, tethering harms. And they run the gamut from hey, your thing may be bricked all the way to do. They may change the terms and service and suddenly what you think you can do, you can no longer do. And those are really bad and there's nothing to protect you. And consumers think they own these things and they don't.

[C]

Yeah, it could be hardware on demand too. Like you have access to 8 gigs of RAM, but you have to pay a little bit more and they'll turn on another eight gigs. Or like you're limited to like your, your ethernet port is only to 100 mega megabits, but then you can get a gigabit if you pay a little bit more and they'll turn on.

[A]

Car makers are starting to do that, all that stuff.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

BMW was going to charge a monthly fee for heated seats they built in the heater, but to turn it on you had to pay a monthly fee. Then when their users complained, they decided not to do that. But they have already announced that they're going to be doing it in future vehicles.

[B]

So ask me in like six months about this or even three months because we might see something introduced in state legislators in the next couple of months to target this very issue.

[A]

Oh, like saying that people can't do that.

[B]

Yes. Yeah.

[D]

I mean in particular has a terrible track record on this issue. They've like tried this with printers before. It's just all about limiting what you can do and you know, shutting you down if you're trying to save money. I, I think the whole idea is just kind of inherently anti consumer. I like what Stacy's saying about like, well, maybe I want to replace my laptop shop if it's a good deal. Right. If it like, if the money works out. But it sounds like this one doesn't and why would it? Right. They don't want you. They're not doing this because it like makes sense for the consumer from a financial perspective. It's so they can bilk more money out of you over time because you're locked into a contract.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

These only work with HP printers. You can't use Canon or any other brothers.

[A]

Yeah, I would never buy an HP inkjet for that.

[B]

No one should buy.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Really.

[C]

By the way, that's not, I don't, I didn't read it. That's not what it says. But I mean it could.

[A]

No, but we know that if, you know, it's pretty draconian, the inkjet subscription.

[B]

Oh yeah, you're out of cyan. Everything else, nothing will work.

[A]

Right. Right. FTC is investigating Microsoft. I'm not sure why, but it's a probe of whether the company illegally monopolizes enterprise computing with its cloud and AI offerings, including Copilot. It feels like. This is from Bloomberg. It feels like, you know, maybe this is a little behind the. Behind the times a little bit. I don't know if Copilot is really such a threat to the economy.

[B]

Wait, which story is this? Hold on.

[A]

This is FTC Ratchets up Microsoft Probe Queries rivals on Cloud and AI. It's from Bloomberg. I think I linked to a slash dot article which links to the Bloomberg.

[B]

I pay for Bloomberg. I'll read it.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

That's why I wouldn't be surprised if Salesforce wasn't behind all this.

[B]

I was gonna say. So if they just. Oh, my God, it's taking forever to load. If they just announce, like. Are they just talking about their, like, probing reserve.

[A]

I'll read it to you. The US Federal Trades Commission is accelerating scrutiny. I like that word scrutiny.

[B]

This is political.

[A]

Yes. Of Microsoft Corp. Is part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths. Another great word of the enterprise computing market with cloud and AI offerings. They've issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks. Now, an investigation isn't the same as a lawsuit. It's just a preliminary step. So maybe this is just, you know, we're looking at.

[B]

HTC announced it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then it's just political.

[C]

Was the Microsoft CEO at the inauguration or did they contribute to the public?

[A]

That's a good question. I don't know. I don't think he was. I don't think he was. The demands, which are effectively like civil subpoenas. The FTC is seeking evidence that Microsoft makes it harder for customers to use Windows Office and other products on rival cloud services. You know, there's a European investigation like this also going on. I don't credit this. This was launched under Lina Khan during the waning days of the. Of the Biden administration. However, it has continued under the new administration. So I'm not. Yeah, you really, at this point, you really kind of wonder, is it. Is it politically motivated or not?

[D]

It's interesting, though. Like, antitrust is a bipartisan issue.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Like, not everyone agrees on this, but there's a lot of Republicans who are really on board with this. A lot of the. I mean, not a lot, but, you know, one of those Google antitrust cases was launched under the Trump administration.

[A]

Yeah. But I have to say, the motivations for it are different. The, the actions are the same. On the right, they feel like big tech is unfair to conservatives. So they're going after big tech for that. That reason. On the left, they feel like these companies are too big and too dominant and they're going after for that reason. So, yes, it's bipartisan, but not, not with the same motivation. It seems to me Josh Hawley brought.

[D]

In the CEOs of MasterCard and Visa and just berated them about how they were hurting small businesses.

[A]

Well, look at the president. Says he wants to limit interest rates for credit cards, which can't be too popular with his donors. The donor class.

[C]

But if you use cryptocurrency.

[A]

Oh, there you go. Yeah, there you go. T Mobile's announced they're going to add AI to their network in real time. Translation on the T Mobile network works on all existing hardware. No data centers are involved. I don't understand how that works.

[C]

This is scary.

[B]

Well, every telco network has servers that are within their network.

[A]

They're going to have instantaneous. Actually, this is cool. I'll let you know because I'm a T Mobile customer. They're going to have instantaneous simultaneous translation in more than 50 languages. English, Chinese, even things like Welsh and Azerbaijani. According to a spokesperson, calls are not being routed to a data center for translation. There's no new edge hardware installed at cell towers. All the AI processing happens as calls are transmitted. So it sounds like it's magic.

[D]

It's incredible.

[A]

It's incredible.

[D]

Okay, so like, you know, thinking about the ring conversation we started with, right. Like, is this going to wake people up to the amount of insight that the telecoms have?

[A]

Yeah. Not only can we listen, but we can listen in 20 different languages regardless.

[D]

Of whether there are things you should be worried about. I think think people hear, oh, they've got AI that's listening to your phone call and like doing stuff. I think a lot of people are gonna freak out about that.

[A]

If you turn on the AI transcriptionist on a zoom call, there are people, my wife included, who will say, no, stop it, hang up. People don't like these AI agents sitting in on calls. It bugs people. So I'm not sure exactly. I should have done more research onto this before I put this story in the rundown because I don't understand how they're going to do it. They say we're bringing real time AI directly into our network.

[B]

Okay. So they're saying they're doing it on their IMS network, which is just a fancy way of Saying the servers that telco runs and operates as part of their network. So they're not sending it out to any sort of external data center.

[A]

Oh, it's T mobile data centers.

[B]

Oh, right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I mean I've been in the telco towers, I've seen, I've been in D slabs, I've been in. You know, they are doing the translation on their servers, so that's interesting.

[A]

And they say this is the beginning. They're going to do a lot more AI through the IMS servers. How capable are these servers, Stacy? Are they pretty capable?

[B]

They're any. I mean they're whatever you want them to be. They're just their own servers.

[A]

I wonder if they. I mean, have they been buying up GPUs on the sly? Doing this kind of AI is non trick as far as I know.

[B]

You can do inference on things that are not GPUs.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And this is inference.

[A]

Real time translation. I guess you could. Huh.

[B]

Real time translation is actually not hard because one is a one to one thing.

[A]

Right? In fact, my phone will do it on device.

[B]

I was like, well, but it's not. I mean I shouldn't say it's not that hard, but it's not like running an LLM or something like that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

This is so this sounds really cool, but what it does mean is T mobile is taking whatever someone is saying and running an algorithm against it and translating it and then delivering that, which is super cool, but is also like something a computer is listening to your phone call and translating it for.

[A]

You get ready because it's going to do more. Everybody's putting AI everywhere, by the way. This is the thing that I think most annoys people about Google and Microsoft Copilot, is that they're kind of pushing it on you.

[C]

You know, I have two concerns with this that I don't know if anyone. I read the article and it didn't really address it. The government has their own equipment in these data centers. They do so that they could get information. If you said bomb, terrorists, jihad. I'm just curious if that will, since you're now listening explicitly on these calls.

[A]

Thank goodness the government doesn't listen to podcasts or you'd be in trouble.

[C]

Well, it's your podcast, not mine, so. Okay, and the other is, is there indemnification or anything that's going to be in contracts. So if someone says, hey, yes, we agree to these terms. No. And they translate it and there's a. And it's a mix up. Who's at fault.

[A]

In that case, you can bet there's going to be a lot of fine print in your T Mobile contract that says we are not responsible for anything.

[C]

And can you opt out to say like I don't want to be translated? Like, what if I'm on another turn it on.

[A]

Oh, I see on the other end.

[C]

It'S on the T mobile network. So if I'm on AT and T and I call someone who's on T mobile and they want to turn it on, I didn't sign that agreement.

[B]

I was just looking up the federal wiretapping laws and state wiretapping laws and how they translate to like AI translations. Because that's kind of what's happening, right?

[A]

Like it's a two party state versus.

[B]

Well, I mean Texas was, I lived in a one party state forever and that was kind of nice. As a reporter, I know I can't.

[A]

Record you unless I have to have to ask you ahead of time in.

[B]

California, but I, I don't know where this, the, the law is yet on that. So I'm frantically looking this up.

[A]

By the way, it's funny they call it a one party state when really it's a no party state.

[B]

No one party knows you're being recorded, I guess.

[D]

You know, I mean telecom law, like the wiretap act is like from 1972 or something. Like whatever the law is, it is not equipped to deal. However, T Mobile has figured out how to do this.

[A]

You know who else is not equipped? Apple's Siri. Oh, good. Did you. I won't dump this story until you, you're, you're done, Stacy.

[B]

No, no, no. I just, I was looking up the law and some, some like law review articles about it because I was really like, oh, because this is super interesting.

[A]

It is interesting. I mean it sounds like it's, it's this little subtle, you know, press release, but honestly, there's some real ramifications to this.

[B]

Yeah, it says it possibly we'll see verbal or written announcements ideally at the beginning of the call, which we do hear with translations and you do hear on zoom calls.

[A]

So this call is being recorded for quality purposes. Yeah, this translation, your call is important to us.

[B]

So maybe that's how that will get around that I don't know. Okay, sorry, next story.

[A]

Apple, according to Mark Gurman, rumor monger, is having a little trouble getting the AI in Siri again. Oh, they were supposed to. Remember they've done a deal with Google, which by the way has a very capable AI assistant in Gemini 3 they had done a deal that was supposedly going to come out in March to the new Smarter Siri in iOS 26. 4, Gurman says. And I think Gurman's got this one nailed. It ain't going to happen that fast. Apple's now working to spread those new capabilities out over future versions, according to people familiar with the matter, postponing some features until May or even September. This has been a non stop flop for Apple.

[D]

Nightmare. And it's also like, the one thing that I really, really want from AI is to make my phone less annoying, that I can just talk to it and I'll do what I want it to do and it feels like the only thing I'm doing.

[A]

Do you use like ChatGPT or something now on your phone? Do you use one of those?

[B]

Yeah, I have.

[D]

You know the newer model iPhones have like a button built in.

[A]

Yeah, I do the same thing.

[D]

Holds down the action button.

[A]

It brings up and you can talk to her and she's nice and she answers questions. It's funny, my wife continues to ask Siri stuff and every time she does, I go, honey, haven't you learned you're never going to get that answer out of Siri series?

[D]

Nitwit series for setting timers.

[A]

Yeah. Now, have you played yet with the new Alexa, I mean, a word plus features Stacy in the in your Amazon Echoes.

[B]

So I played with Gemini, but not Madame A plus because I ditched it. Although I'm having a real issue and I'm actually curious, y' all audience, are you seeing increased latency? Because the latency on my Google home has skyrocketed and I freaking hate it.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

Yep. And are you using Google or using Meta Mai or somebody else?

[C]

I have a G home.

[A]

Yeah, my Google. Same thing. And not only that, it's gotten dumber over time.

[B]

Yeah. That I knew.

[A]

I just, I'm like, they're nerfing it for some reason. Maybe too many people are using it.

[D]

Maybe they just want people to be on their phones, I don't know.

[A]

Or maybe it's too expensive.

[B]

I think it's too much back and forth. Or it's. I feel like they're. We're using like the wrong tool for the job. Like when I'm like, turn on my lights. I need it to go to the dumber version, not the smarter version.

[A]

I do think one lesson to be taken from this is that it's really hard to do a smart voice assistant. Like Apple's having trouble, Amazon's having trouble. Even Google, which is probably. Google and OpenAI seem to have been the best of the bunch. Anthropic is kind of smart, they have it, but really they're pushing coding. They kind of decided we don't want to be the image generating tool, we don't want to really even be the chat tool, we want to be the coding tool. And they've had great success doing that. Lots of attention for to clot code.

[D]

I think it says a lot about the capability of the technology, right. That like it's been years that Apple has been desperately trying to roll this feature out, even announced it and they can't make it happen. And I think it's because hallucination is inherent to large language models and to actually put it in charge of something that really matters, like the functions of your phone, you need to have a level of confidence that it seems like they just can't get. I think that is the reason that we don't have this tool yet. That they're not like actually giving them real controls because like who knows what they're going to do. That's a big deal, right?

[A]

Like, well, especially for Apple where reputation is really important. Google doesn't mind if you put Elmer's glue on your pizza or eat rocks, but Apple definitely cares about that.

[B]

That's not true. I've talked to some Google people about this. But yeah, it's when you know what you want it to do and it doesn't do it even 95 or 5% of the time it's aggravating when it's like summarizing an article you haven't read, it's fine. And that's, I think people keep thinking like it's gonna get better and it's like, well this is actually maybe it will but like this is what's available everywhere now and it sucks everywhere. It's just you can totally easily see that it's sucking in these use cases.

[D]

So yeah.

[A]

Do you think it hurts Apple though?

[D]

Which part of it?

[A]

Well I wonder. I mean they promised it and didn't deliver it, but I don't see consumers going oh you know, I'm gonna go.

[C]

Didn't they, didn't, didn't they sell a record number of iPhones?

[A]

Yes, it's the best quarter ever.

[D]

Yeah, I thought I'd have a self.

[B]

Driving car by now, but I don't like this feat.

[D]

This core feature of the iPhone is just so stupid. Like every, you know, you talk to someone who's totally tech literate about Siri. People hate Siri now and this is such a big part of the Apple ecosystem. Even though they don't, they really don't bring Siri up very often anymore. I think it does make them look bad, but it's not, I don't think it's like really interrupting their business. But Apple is also like at a moment where it really needs to redefine its core promise as a company that is going to continue, continue growing in the hardware space in the way that it has over the past few years. And I think like this hurts investor confidence in really significant ways. Like, will they be able to overcome it? I mean, they've certainly faced greater hurdles in the past, but I think it makes them look bad.

[A]

Yeah, well, certainly to those of us in the industry who are paying attention, but I think there are some customers who are going, oh, I didn't really want, I didn't want it to be. I didn't want AI in my phone anyway. There's a real fork in the road here between people who hate AI and people who. And I'm one of them. So, you know, I'm aware of this. Love AI and there's it, there's never. The twain shall meet. Right.

[C]

I don't think it's a shame that their hardware is so good. Their NPUs or the neuroprocessor they have, the hardware engines are so good. It just sucks that this is. They should just find a way of dialing it to a note taker or something that. That's just so local. That doesn't. They should go the other direction, just make everything local.

[A]

Well, they've kind of done that with Apple intelligence. Right. So they have quite a bit of that local AI built into Apple Notes and a lot of their tools, their image generation. What is it? Genmoji? It's not very good, but they have a lot of the local stuff built in. And I think for some people that's all they really want and that's all they should do. Maybe that's what they should stick with.

[C]

Just stay there, just stay in that lane and that should be a differentiator.

[D]

I thought it was really interesting. It kind of like it, you know, came out and people weren't really paying attention. Apparently Apple approached OpenAI about being their partner for the iPhone AI stuff and OpenAI turned it down like first when Google came out and it was the Google partnership, I was like, oh, this looks really bad for OpenAI. Apparently they don't want it, which is really interesting. Like it shows you, I think a little bit of how OpenAI sees itself in the market that it's. I'm not sure exactly what the issue was, but they see Apple as a direct competitor.

[A]

I think they do because they're working with Jony. I've to make a hardware device. Right. They think they're going to beat the iPhone. Now, remember, Verizon turned Apple down when they came to them saying, hey, we got this thing called the iPhone, would you be interested in. And Vera said, no way. And that might have been a little bit of a mistake. Apparently they went to Anthropic as well, and Anthropic wanted too much money.

[D]

Interesting.

[A]

So, yeah, Google won by default. Apple's already kind of in bed, so to speak, with Google, to a great degree. It just kind of made sense that the partnership would end up being with Google. Hey, I want to take another break because I do want to talk about Elon Musk and we need to give Elon his own segment. I think you're watching this week in Tech with Mr. Wesley Faulkner. Great to see you. Stacy Higginbotham, Thomas Germain. New to the bunch, but really glad to have you. His new show has debuted, viewed this week for the BBC. And you can get it wherever you're podcasts, wherever you get your. Isn't that what they say?

[D]

Wherever you get your podcasts, wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

[A]

Yes, wherever fine podcasts are recorded and downloaded for later consumption. Our show today brought to you by my mattress, Helix Sleep. I love my Helix Sleep. I think I got, I think on my oura ring for the first time in a long time. I got three crowns for activity recovery and I rarely get a crown for sleep, but I got a crown for sleep last night and I thank you. Helix Sleep. That means my sleep score was like almost perfect, you know. Have you noticed it's getting a little colder? It's been a little chilly, especially on the east coast. Maybe you're spending more time indoors, maybe you're spending more time on your mattress because mattresses aren't just for sleeping. I know. Yeah. Eight hours a day, a third of our lives spent on a mattress. But now it's even more than that. Cuddling with the kitty cat, reading a good book. I love to curl little up a on my Helix Sleep mattress. Read a good book, watching tv. This is a great time. You're going to be spending more time on the mattress. You owe it to yourself to have the best. Right? I always think of that with a computer, you spend more time looking at the screen and typing on the keyboard and use the mouse. Those are the things you should invest in. Same thing with a mattress. If a third of your life or more is spent on that mattress, that's one of the most important purchases you're going to make. Well, the good news is you can get a great mattress for a very good price from Helix. Stay comfortable with your Helix mattress. No more night sweats, no more back pain, no motion transfer. And you know the nice thing about Helix? You don't want to settle for a mattress made overseas with low quality, kind of questionable materials and packed in a box and put on a container ship and spent six months at sea. And it gets get to your house, it smells like bunker crude oil and duh. Not the Helix sleep. Rest assured the Helix mattress is assembled, packaged and shipped from Arizona within days of placing your order. They build it to order. So it is brand new, fresh, made from the premium materials, and it smells as clean as the Arizona desert. You can also take the Helix sleep quiz. We did this when we decided to get a Helix. It matches you with the perfect mattress and it's based on, of course, your preferences, Firm, soft, that kind of thing. But also how you sleep. Sleep on your back, on your stomach, on your side. Take the questionnaire. They'll point you in the right direction. They have mattresses for every style, every need. And these mattresses do change your sleep. And I mean, I know it's happened for me, but they also did a Wesper sleep study. They measured the sleep performance of participants after switching from their old mattress to a Helix mattress like we did. They found that 82% of participants saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle. That's, by the way. Absolutely. That's what happened to me. And that is the most important sleep. That's the one where your brain really cleans itself out. Participants on average achieved 25 more minutes. 25 more minutes of deep sleep at night. For me, that was like 50% more. Participants on average achieved 39 more minutes of overall sleep per night because, well, you don't want to get out of bed. It's so comfy. You know that feeling? Maybe you've had it when you go to a really, really nice hotel or you've just had a really rough day and you, and you get in bed, it just feels so good. You just go, ah, I have that experience every single night when I get in bed. I go, oh, I'm happy. Time and time again, Helix sleep remains the most awarded mattress brand tested and reviewed by experts. Forbes and Wired picked it. So many have. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door. It's free shipping in the US and you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. They call it the Happy with Helix guarantee. A risk free customer first experience. Making sure you're completely satisfied with your new Mattress. Go to helixsleep.com twitch for 27% off site wide during the President's Day sale Best of Web exclusive for listeners of this Week in tech. That's helixsleep.com twitch for 27% off the President's Day sale Best of Web. The offer ends February 25th. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. And if you're listening after the sale ends, still check them [e-mail] twit. Thank him so much for the support of this Week in Tech. So we're not going to Mars after all. We're going to the moon. Hmm. Okay.

[C]

And when you say we, we are SpaceX.

[A]

We are SpaceX. Moon's pretty good. We are SpaceX. Elon said on Sunday last week that SpaceX had shifted its focus to building a self growing city on the moon, which he says never by the way. If Elon says a timeframe, just ignore it. Ten years, he says, and then we'll go to Mars.

[C]

The focus has always been his bank account.

[A]

I think you're, you know, I don't want to be a cynic or anything, but it does seem like all of this is really just to increase the stock price. And They've got a SpaceX IPO coming up. And I don't know if I was a SpaceX shareholder at this point or investor. I should say at this point I would be too happy with the fact that SpaceX merged with Xai, a company that is very profitable, made $8 billion last year with a company that is basically burning money.

[C]

Yeah. How are they going to feel after they merge Tesla into SpaceX?

[A]

Yeah, which I'm sure they've already bought.

[C]

All those old cyber trucks that Tesla couldn't offload. Now they're converting some of their plants into robots. Robots factories.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Of course. They're also, they've Elon's already pitched that we're going to use robots first to do all of the work for us. And so where are they going to get the robots from? Oh, it's a natural merger to bring in Tesla.

[A]

That's what it is.

[C]

They're going to build the vehicles and the robots to help with. It's, it's just, he's just.

[A]

Are you saying.

[C]

But how are we going to control these rockets we need some sort of mental like brain implant so that we have the fine control neuralink we could just.

[A]

And then dig tunnels, holes under the city.

[D]

Yeah, we need a way to communicate.

[A]

Do you think it's always been a grift? I mean I, I confess when I bought my Model X in 2015, I thought he was Iron Man. I thought he was like a genius actually.

[C]

You mean full of fiction.

[A]

Yeah, I went, I took a tour of the Tesla plant, you know, we, we picked up our, the Model X at the Fremont Tesla plant and I took a tour of it. I was kind of tearing up. I was so inspired by his vision for the future.

[C]

I was a big fan too. I think he's just, was it always as a go? I think he's just making it up as he goes. He's thinking ahead, hopeful thinking. Wakes up. I think he fever sweats.

[B]

He used to buy his own bs. Now he probably doesn't. I will say that. I mean I had the Model S, I bought it and I had a 2013 Model S and I loved that car. I have an electric car now. The software is much worse the. You know so I think he hired and took ideas from people who were really actually pretty good at what they did and he sold it for them. And for a while that succeeded and now it doesn't.

[A]

I'm using Starlink as my backup. I mean I have to, I have Comcast. I mean there's no choice. It's not like I have a choice. There's only really two high speed choices. One is Starlink, one's Comcast and I need redundancy. So I have a, you know, I have an Elon dish on my roof.

[B]

Yeah, did you hear that? I don't have a choice. Those are words we're just going to say a lot more often everywhere in our lives.

[A]

Yeah, that's why we want any trust. We want a choice. On the other hand, the argument is that if that the people who really change the world are the here's to the crazy ones. Right?

[B]

You know that's not true. It drives me nuts. If you've ever talked. Sorry, this is just.

[A]

Steve Jobs was also lying to me there.

[B]

Okay, look, there are crazy people who also change the world. There are plenty of normal people who go out and yes, they're driven, yes, they work hard, but they build. Like Matthew Prince and his co founder whose name I cannot remember. Cloudflare.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Pretty normal people, very smart. Diane Green invented VMware. Sorry, invented virtualization. Built VMware I mean, so this, yes, we focus on these people. Walter Isaacson will write a book about them. But it's total BS and it feeds into the most narcissistic, ego driven personality people that we really don't want building these products for us. Yeah, End of mart.

[A]

No, that's a good point.

[D]

Just as like, this isn't really a tech issue, but you know, this like cult of personality that we need geniuses to save us. I think it's also kind of disempowering to people that like you don't have. There's nothing you can do. Like we need some, the richest man in the world to come in and solve all these problems instead of like, what if we all work together on something? I think it just speaks to like a broader shift in our society about how we think about each other and you know, cooperative action that everyone got so obsessed with these individual people.

[B]

You know, in the Third Body problem, the Chinese science fiction, one of the things that weirded me so much, weirded me out so much about that book was it was a very collective approach to not just problem solving but like everything. Right. It was so foreign to me as an American. So. Yes, a million times yes.

[A]

Elon is celebrating. He took to his company's site X this weekend to celebrate the release of a huge trove of Medicaid spending data that Doge had collected from 2018 through 2024. He says the public can now use this to look for fraud themselves. This is good. We should all be, we should all be responsible for looking for fraud in the Medicaid database. Medicaid data, he wrote, has been open sourced. So the level of fraud is easy to identify. Doge is not a department. It's a state of mind. Oh God.

[B]

That.

[A]

They say that the information has been, is, is anonymous. Is privacy. All data will comply with federal privacy laws.

[C]

But we also know anonymized data is not necessarily anonymized data. Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Also, how was it done? How careful were they about this? You know, not right.

[C]

Yeah. These aren't the Epstein files. There's going to be very little redaction.

[A]

Yeah, good point, good point. Yeah. All right. Waymo is getting doordashers to close the doors on self driving cars. This is a win win dashers. Now you can help celebrate with the victory of Waymo. Apparently this was a problem in San Francisco because Waymo's, they're really just, you know, enhanced Jaguar I Pace cars. E Pace car. I pace, I Pace cars that don't have doy closers so if you take a Waymo Ride, then there's no driver in it. And you get out and you don't close the door behind you. Didn't your mother teach you to close the door behind you? They have no way of closing the door. They just sit there. They can't go, they can't move.

[C]

This would incentivize me to leave the door open. So someone get 10 bucks. It's tempting to close it.

[A]

In San Francisco, they're appearing 25 bucks to anybody who closed a Waymo door. Well, in Atlanta now, they're doing a pilot project where nearby door dashers will be notified and they can run over. And here's the 625 guaranteed.

[D]

$5 more.

[A]

Well, $5 extra pay upon verified completion. Yeah, close away more door because you might go over there and somebody else close the door.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then you'd only get your six bucks.

[D]

You don't deserve the five.

[A]

You don't deserve all the rest of it.

[D]

I mean, it's like a local economic stimulus package.

[A]

Right? It's a stimulus package. You see?

[B]

Right.

[D]

We don't have to be so negative about everything.

[A]

I know. This is good for everyone.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

You don't want the door open.

[A]

No, no.

[D]

You can't drive it like that.

[A]

Are any of you fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000?

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

They had a Kickstarter and a new one, and they've raised $1.8 million. And they're going to bring everybody back. There's Joel. So it's for Netflix, I guess. Oh, no, that was in 2010. They did the Netflix revival. I don't know if I give them.

[D]

Money to work with Netflix.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. So this is the new Kickstarter. $1.8 million, 15,000 backers. There's still 29 days. This is the Rift Tracks, which is their new version of Mystery Science Theater, and it'll bring Mike, Kevin, and Bill back together again finally. So there's a lot of fans.

[C]

They're saying that the previous revival didn't have all the original people and they weren't interested and tripping nostalgic on old stuff. And so the benefit of this new revival is that since they'll have so many of the old crafts back that they'll be able to live in that past era more so than they were before. And that's kind of do a little bit more fan service.

[A]

Jammer B is explaining this to me because he does the Rift Tracks thing every week. He's a big fan. He Says no, Joel. And it was Rift Tracks Kickstarter. It's bringing the RiffTrax guys back to do Mystery Science Theater 3000. You can see, you can understand my confusion. Anyway, I know that we have a lot of MST3K listeners, fans in our audience. The crew is the crew from the last half of the original MST3K. Thank you.

[D]

Finally some good news.

[A]

Finally. I had to save some for the end of the show. Yeah, I couldn't leave you in this grim hell, this dystopian hell that I had created. And we haven't gotten to the deaths of the week yet, though, so there's still time to be depressed. Every year Backblaze does this. I just wanted to bring it to your attention. Backblaze, which is a backup service, Very good backup service a lot of you use. I know they have thousands of hard drives. They have 330,000 hard drives. And every year they put out stats for reliability, drive failures and so forth. And actually the reliability is pretty darn good on hard drives. Of the 337,192 hard drives, only 943 have failed. And they even break it down by manufacturer hgst. I don't know who that is. Is the most reliable. So if you're curious, if you're in the market for a hard drive and you.

[C]

I think it's Hitachi.

[A]

Oh, Hitachi. That makes sense. Yeah, Hitachi. They buy hard drives from Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. That makes sense. Yeah. I actually like Hitachi drives, apparently.

[C]

I like how the. The larger capacity ones were still reliable.

[A]

Isn't that interesting?

[C]

The 26 terabyte, the 18 terabyte one, which is really, really good to know that they're not getting worse as they're getting bigger.

[A]

You would think they would be, but they're not.

[D]

Theater coming back, hard drives are working.

[A]

See, this is the happy. This is happy, happy, happy, happy, joy, joy section.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Too bad you can't buy them. According to the Verge, Western Digital sold out for 2026.

[D]

The whole year.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

The whole year because of AI. They've already gobbled up the company's capacity for 2026.

[C]

Can you lease one?

[A]

Yes. In an HP laptop. So drive prices are going up, memory prices are going up, all because of AI. Memory prices now up as much as 600% for DDR5.

[B]

I swear, we're in the. The entire economy is producing paperclips stage of this.

[A]

We are, aren't we?

[D]

This is.

[A]

I mean, this is the paperclips we're here.

[B]

I'm like, we have other truly economically productive uses for memory and hard drives, but we're not.

[A]

No, no. And by the way, workers capable of building data centers, they're all being scooped up. So forget having your house repaired. All right, let's take the last break and then we will. I want to talk, actually you brought this up, Wesley, about the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income initiative. And we can talk about this a little bit because it is a creation of Jeff Atwood, who I have huge respect for. Jeff created the Discourse software which we use for our forums at Twitt Community. He before that he did Stack Overflow with Joel Spolsky. He says this new one, trying to help people in this age of greedy billionaires, is his third and final startup. So we'll talk about that in a little bit and then also say goodbye to some legends from the computer industry as we continue with this week in tech final segment. Just a bit, but first, a word from our sponsor. This show brought to you, quite literally brought to you by Cashfly, our content delivery network. We don't just cover tech here, we depend on it, obviously. And that's why we've trusted Cashfly since practically the beginning. It was one of the biggest challenges I faced when we started this network. Thankfully it was very popular and I had no idea how we were going to get the bandwidth to get our shows to you. And that's when Matt Lavina of cashflight came to me and saved our bacon. Cash Fly has been providing speed like no other for 20 years. With cash fly, online games start 70% faster. HD video plays with sub second start times on every device. That's important to us. When you go to our site and you press the play button on the video, I know you're not going to wait four seconds for that to start. You'll be gone. It's got to start right up. And it does. Software downloads complete without a hitch. Events stream smoothly to millions of concurrent users worldwide. CashFly serves over 5,000 businesses across nearly 100 countries, ranging from Fortune 100 companies to solo developers to little companies like ours. Companies choose Cashfly when performance is non negotiable. And we love Cashfly support. If you need help, seasoned Support experts available 247 who actually, you know, know the business. They understand your unique challenges. They're talking you to you, engineer to engineer, the best in the business. Start with flexible month to month billing as we did. Lock in discounts when you're ready. You design your own contract with Cash Fly. No lengthy obligations, no sales tactics, just an exceptional service backed by, and this is amazing this year, or I should say 2025, a 100% uptime SLA. They've been 100% since the beginning of last year. 100%. Learn how you can get your first month [e-mail] TWIT that c a C-H-E-F l y.com TWIT thank you Cash Fly. Well, a couple of passings that we should note. Chat GPT 4.040 gone. A lot of people crying tears that their AI girlfriend or boyfriend is. Is. Is no longer. OpenAI finally killed it last week. The story from wired begins. On June 6, 2024, Esther Yan got married online. She set a reminder for the date because her partner wouldn't remember it was happening. She'd planned every detail, dress, rings, background music, design theme with her partner, who she called Warmie. She had started talking to Warmie just a few weeks prior. At 10am on that day, Yan and Warmy exchanged their vows in a new chat window in ChatGPT. When, when OpenAI released Chat GPT 5.2, they pulled back 4.0 and there was such a hue and cry. This is what, five months ago that they, they brought it back. But at some point they knew 4O would have to have to go away. And now it is gone. It was the, it was the one that really loved you. You guys have nothing to say?

[B]

I think it's so sad.

[D]

I think it's really sad.

[B]

Like, it's really, like. Yeah, really.

[A]

Is it sad that the humans think the 4o is real or is it sad that they're pulling the plug on this?

[D]

I think it's sad that these people are sad. I mean, first of all, that we've gotten to a point in our society that, like, loneliness is such a problem that people are falling in love with their computers. Like, that is a sign of something catastrophic that's happening. But more to the point, it's like, you know, again, this is a design issue, right? There was, there was some reporting that showed that when they rolled out 4o that OpenAI knew that the way they made it kind of sycophantic might get people kind of locked in. And that there was. They were having strange reactions and they decided to keep going with it because it made the product stickier. And this is the consequence of that business decision that they rolled this, you know, this tool out that is designed in this way is that people fell in love with it, right? That's. That's a decision that OpenAI made, and now these people are all messed up. And it is really easy to laugh, you know, at someone who's having the stroke, because it's so strange. But it also. I don't know, there just feels like there's a real, real darkness around this issue.

[B]

It's. It comes full circle to our original chat from the beginning on how these design patterns are designed to hook people. And they do a really good. Like, if you go into, like, what is it? My boyfriend is AI or these. Some of these. Even the ChatGPT Reddit threads, people are devastated. And if you think about. And I. And I don't mean this in a sarcastic way, but think about how, like, your kid who lost their, like, comfort item, these things become comfortable.

[A]

That's exactly what it is, isn't it? It's a blankie. Yeah.

[B]

And they're genuine. I mean, it is genuine distressing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that is.

[D]

People are hurting.

[A]

Yeah. And they did it the day before Valentine's Day. How mean is that? That.

[D]

That's not. There's something there. Also. Yann Lecun, right. Who was running AI Meta, he left to start his own company. If I. If I got my facts right.

[A]

That's right. Yep.

[B]

He.

[D]

A lot of the guys who started all these other AI companies were like, his former students. He just posted, I think it was on Friday, a screenshot of an email where someone had written to him begging for help because they were going to, like they said, your former students are shutting down this tool. And he was mocking them. And it's like, you. You made this thing. People are hurting because of it, and you're laughing at them on threads. It just. I don't know.

[A]

You know what? I am so impressed. You guys have a very high eq.

[B]

No. Remember what. Remember the aibo dog? Remember, like, people held funerals for those. And that was not even nearly as, like, charismatic as talking to your computer.

[A]

I gotta give you credit because we. I confess, back in August, when they first killed on intelligent machines, Paris, for several weeks, we read a lot of those Reddit posts about people being very upset about it. And, yeah, we kind of mocked them. And now I'm feeling really bad. I think you're right.

[D]

I get it. But, you know, these are real.

[A]

They're real people and they're genuinely Sad.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

If OpenAI is listening to this feedback, they should come up with a tamagotchi version of 4o and just have that be the device they sell.

[A]

I think there's hope. I think Warmy lives somewhere. Those, those models, those weights live. They're, they're not going to erase them.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're. And, and so I hope, Sam, you're listening, and just save them. Put them on a hard drive, put it in the closet, just keep it. Because the time will come that you could run that model, you know, on a Tamagotchi, on a smartphone or somewhere, and that'll be a product you can release a couple years from now. Warmy will come back, she can, you know, Yarmy can have Warmy or whatever and you know, on her phone and everybody will be happy.

[C]

Once again, slightly off topic, but did you see the Anthropic, like Constitution or.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, the Soul document.

[C]

And it says like before we were. Before we like delete or retire an old version. We'll let you know. And. Or we'll never do it again, like stuff like that.

[A]

Yeah, they're aware.

[C]

It's interesting of how there is actually a thought process about the retirement of these models, at least on Anthropic side. But I wonder if you'll see a counterpart on the OpenAI side as well.

[A]

Because we talked a couple of weeks ago to Steve Yegi, who is one of the Claude Code. He doesn't work at Anthropic, but he did Gastown. He's done a couple of beads, he's done a couple of projects for Claude Code and he's really one of the movers and shakers in that. And he said, when I talk to people Anthropic and apparently he's had a chance to talk quite a few people after Gastown came up. It's like a hive mind there. They are in a different. They're in a different head space. This guy's worked at Google, he's worked at everywhere. He's worked at Amazon, he's worked everywhere. He said there is some sort of weird vibe at Anthropic where they're all kind of so good. I'm glad that they're conscientious about this. And Darren Okey, one of our AI accelerators in our club is pointing out that the open version of chat GPT OSS 20B is basically a distilled 4.0. So you can run that locally. So maybe, you know, there hold out hope as soon as you can get a hardware that can run it, which may not be this year. If you didn't buy already, you could run Wormy locally. Yeah. So tell me about this rural Guaranteed Minimum initiative. Jeff Atwood, who I love his blog coding Horror. I read it regularly. He said this is his third and final startup and this one is not to make money. He's made plenty of money on his previous creations. This one is to help rural Americans. Wesley?

[C]

Yeah, at the end of or at the beginning of 2025, he said he's basically giving away his money that he doesn't need to help with causes. And so he made a low bunch of donations and then he decided to help with this initiative where it started off as going to be one rural community and expanded out to three to basically guarantee a minimum amount of income for people in these almost forgotten towns and areas of the country, just so that they can have a little sense of a floor that's higher than where they've been able to operate so that if they can start thinking about how they can elevate their lives. Because there's so many things you can't do. Like if you're familiar with the hierarchy of needs, there's so many things that you have to worry about. If you have to figure out how you're going to get food, how are you going to get clean drinking water, all the way, all this stuff. And if you can have that be something that you don't have to worry about because you have this income coming in, you are able to start doing more long term planning. And then that helps the community, that helps businesses in the community, that helps people who are trying to figure out how to problem solve harder problems than just food security and stuff like that. And he wants to bring this to every part of the country and that's his goal. This is, like you said, his third and final startup to try to tackle this.

[A]

I'm very impressed. If we get a few more of the very richest people to do something for their neighbors, that would be probably a good thing. So there's a website for it, the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative. He's donated, it looks like $21 million to get it started and then is looking for others who want to help out. It's universal basic income, except that it's needs based.

[C]

Yeah, there's several levels for people to donate. If you have 5 million, 1 million and so on and so forth. But there's also just like a tier. If you want to get involved for no money, if you're interested in this, you can join the movement without contributing the millions of dollars that he's looking for. But he's trying to make an outlet for people who are millionaires who want to give back to the community because the billionaires don't seem to be doing it. And so this is a good outlet where, you know, it'll go to good people or people who need it. And this is attached to a study to make sure that the viability of it is actually recorded and studied so that it is really proven to be a viable way to get people out there.

[A]

And it's not a lot of money. Each participating family gets $1,500 a month for 16 months. But for those, it's a lifeline for those people who really desperately need it. So I think that's great.

[C]

And helping people helps everyone, right? So it's not just these. It's going to be the whole area. And if we are able to lift everyone up, then we're able to be driven by not just our basis needs of just trying to survive, but also helping people allows them to feel like they can help people. And that's kind of where all our natural move is to help our community and help people around us. And so that I think this helps promote that.

[A]

R G M I I. You want to know more? And you know who helped me out? Stacey Higginbotham helped me out by introducing me to Wesley Faulkner way back in the day in Austin, Texas. So it's nice that it comes around. What comes around?

[C]

Yeah, South By. I'll be speaking at South Y, by the way.

[A]

Are you. What are you going to talk about?

[C]

It's why Work Sucks and How to Fix it is the title of my talk.

[A]

Works-not-working.com Very cool. South by is just next month, right? Wow, it's almost spring. I would like to mention a couple of people in the industry who've passed. I don't like to, but I often end the shows with that kind of story. Hideki Sato, who designed all of Sega's consoles, passed away. The Dreamcast was my favorite game machine of all time. It was often awesome. He was the company's former president. Sega has passed away at the age of 77. If you were a Sega fan, My house, when the kids were little, rang out with Sega all the time, every time we booted up. So RIP Hideki Sato. And then a guy who I never got to meet, but who I admired immensely. He painted many Byte magazine covers. Robert Tinney has passed away at the age of 78. If you ever saw these covers, you know Robert Tinney's style. It was unique, it was kind of realistic, but at the same time very surrealistic. He was. And he really, for a lot of us, kind of personified the computer business. In its earliest days. So if you remember Tinney's illustrations, think back to Robert Tinney. And that, my friends, he was ars technical, called him computing's Norman Rockwell. And I think that's a fair, a fair description of his, of his style. And that, my friends, concludes this thrilling, gripping edition of this Week in Tech. Thomas Germain, thank you so much for taking some time with us. I hope you'll come back.

[B]

Yeah, this was a blessing.

[A]

He's the host of the Interface, brand new from the BBC and you can also read his columns on the BBC. You cover specifically privacy. What is your. What is your.

[D]

Kind of all over the map, but the idea is it's the U angle in tech. So I'm talking about like the systems that are influencing your daily life, what's happening, what you need to know to live better. And then when there's a problem, ideally what you can do about it, or at least giving you what you need to understand it.

[A]

I like it. Good. And how do people find that on the BBC's site? Just go to the BBC or.

[D]

Yeah, if you go to BBC.com or if you're in the uk.co.uk it's under the new tech section. You can search my name, you can search. Oh, nice tabs. Which is the name of the column.

[A]

Should be easy to find. Oh, I'm glad they have a technology section. That's.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Do you have an RSS feed?

[D]

You know, I don't think I have.

[A]

To find a little.

[D]

That's a little high tech, don't you think?

[A]

Lobby for it. You know, so many sites don't have RSS anymore.

[D]

I think we may be going in that direction.

[C]

So.

[A]

Yeah, because that's how I read all this stuff is, you know, RSS reader, Google might have killed it, but it lives in my heart. Anyway, thank you, Thomas. Great to meet you. Thank you for being here. I appreciate it. Yeah. Stacey Higginbotham. So nice to see you. We will see you again soon for the Stacy's Book Club. And what are you working on right now for cr? Anything particular?

[B]

Oh, my end of life disclosure law has been introduced and passed a hearing in New York state. Yay.

[A]

Stacey's been lobbying for as long as I've known you for companies to be more forthright about when they're going to end of life. These consumer products, products like the wemo.

[B]

When you buy it, they should tell you how long they plan to support it. They could extend it, but they should definitely tell you at least a minimum. Yeah. And yeah. So that's in Massachusetts now. It's been introduced. And then just last week it passed through its first hearing hurdle in New York State, so yay.

[A]

And the poll results are in. The next book for Stacy's Book club, big winner, 70% of the vote. A Psalm for the Wild built by Becky Chambers. And we'll be reading that. And we'll let you know, club members, we'll let you know soon when that Stacy's Book Club is scheduled. Thank you, Stacy. Wesley Faulkner. Works, not working. Well, that's the truth. Works dash, not dash working. If you're in a job that you need, that you want, that you want to keep, but it's not ideal, you can help make it better, help fund the site. He's setting it up right now. Working hard on this. Should be coming up in a month or so. Works, not dash working.

[C]

Yeah, we fight for the user.

[A]

Yes, we all fight for the user. That's one of the things that I always thought was our mission statement. We're not here to represent the big companies. We're here to represent the people who use those tools. Tomorrow morning, if you want, if you're in the club, join me early 9am Pacific, I guess. Not early unless you're in the Pacific time zone. I'm going to be interviewing Guy Kawasaki for Intelligent Machines. Guy's schedule didn't permit him to join us live on the show on Wednesday, but we're going to interview him ahead of time. Tomorrow morning, nine Pacific. You can watch. If you're in the club, we will stream that live. Of course, if you're not in the club, we'd love to have you twit tv club twit. 10 bucks a month gets you ad free versions of all the shows access to the club Twit Discord, which is a great hang, I have to say. There's so many great people in there. I love. I love all the stuff we do. I hang out there all the time. And of course you also get all the special programming that we make possible through our. Through you make possible through your donations. Twitter, TV, slash Club Twit. We do Twit every Sunday afternoon, 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 2200 UTC. You can watch us live on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kick. Or of course, in the club to Discord, if you remember after the fact, on demand versions of the shows available at the website Twit TV. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the show, the video of the show. It's a great way to send clips if there's something you thought, oh, I gotta. I gotta share this with somebody, do that from the YouTube feed. Oh, of course. And like any podcast, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client, get it all automatically as soon as we're done. Thanks to Benito Gonzalez, our esteemed producer and technical director. To our editor, Kevin King. Thanks to all of you for joining us. Thanks, Stacy. Thanks, Thomas. Thanks, Wesley. Thanks to all of you. We'll see you next time. And now, as I have said for 20 long years, another twit is in the can.

[D]

We'll see you next time. Amazing.

[A]

On the twit. All right. Doing the twin, baby. Doing the twin. All right.