TWiG 796: Holding Space for Defying Gravity - Pixel Tablet 2, Facial Recognition Tech, Social Media

Summary

This Week in Google (Audio) - Episode 796: Holding Space for Defying Gravity

Release Date: November 28, 2024
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau
Description: In this episode, the hosts delve into a range of topics from Google's tech products to the evolving landscape of social media age verification, and the controversial actions of Elon Musk on X.com.

---

1. Pixel Tablet 2: Design and Market Reception

The discussion begins with Leo Laporte sharing his perspective on Google's Pixel Tablet:

• Leo Laporte [08:36]: "I spent $400 on this Pixel tablet. You can get it now for $279 everywhere, Amazon, Best Buy, and even at Google."

Key Points:

• Design Flaws: The Pixel Tablet's aspect ratio (16:9) is criticized for being too thin and wide, making it less versatile compared to the iPad.
• Functionality Issues: While the docking station with pogo pins for charging is innovative, the tablet lacks practicality for standalone use.
• Market Strategy: Jeff Jarvis suggests that Google's investment in the Pixel Tablet was based on concerns about potential regulatory pressures on Chrome products.

Quotes:

• Jeff Jarvis [10:38]: "Do you think, by the way, that we were talking about this on Windows Weekly earlier, that Google was maybe prescient or got a tip that the Department of Justice was going to try to get them to sell Chrome?"

2. Age Verification Technology and Privacy Concerns

Paris Martineau presents her recent work on age verification technologies employed by major tech companies like Meta:

• Paris Martineau [42:01]: "So, right now, the way Meta and TikTok are increasingly doing it is through facial age estimation."

Key Points:

• Facial Age Estimation: Utilized by companies like Yoti to determine if users are minors, especially for platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
• Accuracy and Bias: Yoti claims high accuracy within a year or two for ages 13-16, but discrepancies exist, especially across different racial and gender lines.
• Regulatory Approaches:
  • Louisiana: Implements identity verification through LA Wallet, requiring users to upload IDs to verify age.
  • Australia: News Corp lobbies against online safety bills, with Elon Musk opposing similar regulations on X.com.

Quotes:

• Leo Laporte [44:04]: "They say kid or not kid. And so that's the thing is Yoti might be a year or two off, but really what they're doing is say Instagram wants to check whether or not people are 17 or under."

3. Elon Musk’s Controversial Actions on X.com

The hosts express strong opinions on Elon Musk's recent behavior:

• Jeff Jarvis [63:57]: "Elon Musk's lawyers objected to the sale of the Infowars X accounts that would have gone along with the sale."

Key Points:

• Doxing Federal Workers: Musk targets federal employees, leading to public harassment and fear among government workers.
• Comparison to Historical Figures: Jeff draws parallels between Musk’s actions and those of Father Coughlin, a demagogue from the 1930s.
• Ownership of Content: Discussion on how platforms like X.com claim ownership over user content, limiting users' control and rights.

Quotes:

• Leo Laporte [65:04]: "This is totalitarian fear. This is a nightmare."
• Jeff Jarvis [67:03]: "This is intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up."

4. Ownership and Rights of User Content on Social Platforms

The conversation shifts to the implications of content ownership:

• Leo Laporte [77:12]: "So, how do you know that they're subject to parental control unless you know that they're young or who's not young?"

Key Points:

• Content Ownership: Platforms like X.com assert that user posts are their property, affecting users' rights and the potential for content to be used in AI training.
• Legal Implications: Without protections like Section 230, platforms could face significant legal challenges over user-generated content.

Quotes:

• Jeff Jarvis [79:04]: "They consider your posts their property. That's how they could sell it to AI."

5. Parental Controls vs. State-Level Age Verification

The hosts debate the best approach to safeguarding minors online:

• Leo Laporte [48:56]: "Shouldn't this really be in the hands of the parents?"

Key Points:

• Parental Controls: Emphasized as a more effective and privacy-preserving method compared to state-mandated age verification.
• Challenges: Parents often lack the time and resources to effectively monitor their children's online activities, leading to calls for stricter regulations.
• Balanced Solutions: Combining parental controls with user-friendly platform features to empower parents without infringing on privacy.

Quotes:

• Paris Martineau [50:02]: "But I think the issue and how we've gotten to the place we are right now is up until a couple years ago it was basically the wild west out there."

6. The Future of Decentralized Social Networks

A deep dive into the potential and challenges of decentralized platforms like Blue Sky:

• Paris Martineau [131:07]: "Blue sky is focusing on data ownership with their implementation of Federation using their own protocol known as atproto."

Key Points:

• Blue Sky’s Approach: While aiming for decentralization, Blue Sky currently remains centralized, limiting its true federated potential.
• Comparison with Mastodon: Mastodon operates on ActivityPub, allowing for more genuine federation and user control.
• Credible Exit: Blue Sky's strategy to enable users to move their data seamlessly is discussed as a step towards true decentralization.

Quotes:

• Leo Laporte [133:53]: "Blue sky is not meaningfully decentralized. It’s built by good people who care, but it’s not yet a truly federated platform."

7. Elon Musk’s Impact on Social Media and Free Speech

• Leo Laporte [57:33]: "Even this week, Elon admitted for the first time something people had known in practice for a bit, that he's purposefully throttling any posts that contain links on Twitter."

Key Points:

• Content Moderation: Musk’s decision to limit link sharing to keep users on the platform has sparked criticism and debate over its impact on information dissemination.
• Free Speech Concerns: The balance between moderation and free speech is challenged by Musk’s policies, potentially hindering news sharing and open conversations.

Quotes:

• Paris Martineau [75:18]: "It's the same sort of line of thought as to why he made that stupid choice where previously when he'd post a link, it would populate as a card that would say the headline of whatever website you're talking about and description. But he got rid of that for some reason."

---

Conclusion

Episode 796 of This Week in Google tackles significant issues surrounding technology, privacy, and the governance of online platforms. From critiquing Google's Pixel Tablet to exploring the complexities of age verification and dissecting Elon Musk’s controversial actions on X.com, the hosts provide a comprehensive analysis of the current Big Tech landscape. The conversation underscores the ongoing tension between user control, corporate policies, and regulatory measures, highlighting the need for balanced solutions that protect privacy while ensuring safety online.

Notable Quotes:

• Leo Laporte [08:36]: "I spent $400 on this Pixel tablet. You can get it now for $279 everywhere, Amazon, Best Buy, and even at Google."
• Paris Martineau [42:01]: "So, right now, the way Meta and TikTok are increasingly doing it is through facial age estimation."
• Jeff Jarvis [63:57]: "Elon Musk's lawyers objected to the sale of the Infowars X accounts that would have gone along with the sale."
• Leo Laporte [57:33]: "Even this week, Elon admitted for the first time something people had known in practice for a bit, that he's purposefully throttling any posts that contain links on Twitter."

---

This summary provides an overview of the key discussions and insights from Episode 796, offering valuable information for listeners and those interested in the latest tech trends and controversies.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Twig. This Week in Google. Paris Martineau is here from the Information. Jeff Jarvis, our journalism professor. We have lots to talk about. Meta is pushing Apple and Google to do age verification. Paris just did a whole piece on age verification technology and the information. She explains what the latest AI technology can do. But is it a good thing? We have a little, I guess, a little bit of a debate over this. Elon Musk unleashes his army of sycophants. Unloadly federal workers. Doesn't seem like a good thing at all. And then. Do you own your tweets? X says, no, it's our property. All of that and a whole lot more coming up next on this Week in Google. Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWIG. This is TWIG. This Week in Google. Episode 796, recorded Wednesday, November 27, 2024. Holding space for defying gravity. It's time for TWIG this Week in Google, the show where we cover everything but Google. Actually, today we have some Google News. So it'll be about Google, but also about the Internet and social media, about the media climate in general, about everything that's going on in the world around us. Because, you know, when you have such a good panel, you got to talk about everything. Paris Martineau is not here, but there she's in Florida.

[Paris Martineau]

I am? Yeah, I'm in the bad place. They say.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's the good place. When you're there, she just click those ruby slippers and there's no place like home. I take it you're there for Thanksgiving.

[Paris Martineau]

Thanksgiving. What's that?

[Leo Laporte]

No Papa gonna do the turkey fry again.

[Paris Martineau]

He is. I am right now staring at a giant silver pot that the turkey is going to be deep fried in. I could he put it in the room in case I want to show.

[Leo Laporte]

It on the podcast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So. So show it off.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay, hold on, hold on.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Come on.

[Leo Laporte]

While she's preparing, that's Jeff Jarvis, who is the professor of journalism now at Stony Brook Graduate School of Journalism at cuny. Now he's at suny. He is also going to be teaching at Montclair State University.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What does that say? Attention.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a hot. What?

[Jeff Jarvis]

If you don't speak French, you get burned.

[Leo Laporte]

Now, I'm going to pass along a little tip, Paris, that your dad ought to know. I'll wait till she's back on the.

[Paris Martineau]

Headphones, which is don't do it inside. And also make sure you defrost the turkey.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, and the other key is not to overflow the oil onto the flame where it will then explode. So what. What I was told Yesterday by our MacBreak Weekly team is you put the turkey in the pot, you then add the oil, making sure that the oil plus turkey do not go over the rim. Then remove the turkey, heat the oil.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes, something like that. I think my dad at this point, he's probably been doing this for. He's not 10 years.

[Leo Laporte]

He's never more.

[Paris Martineau]

He's never burned down. This. We also do it just in the driveway.

[Leo Laporte]

Away from all.

[Paris Martineau]

Away from the past. There is video in the past. If it's not raining tomorrow, I will be posting a video of him doing.

[Leo Laporte]

Does he have a Derek. A turkey Derek? Yeah. To lower the turkey into the bath.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Derek can't be that big of a Derek.

[Paris Martineau]

This.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he's a hand. It's a hand Derek.

[Paris Martineau]

It goes. The turkey goes on this and then this sits in the pot and then he uses it to pull it out.

[Leo Laporte]

He would do it with his bare hands.

[Paris Martineau]

Sometimes I think that there's like a glove situation. I can't recall. I know that I have in the past, before I took medication for anxiety, was very concerned about him burning himself.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, now you're fine, dude, do whatever you want, man. It's okay with like.

[Paris Martineau]

It's not really mine.

[Leo Laporte]

Whatever. Whatevs.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Olivia. Through chemistry, it's a great thing.

[Leo Laporte]

So here's the really the fundamental question. Does it. What does it taste like?

[Paris Martineau]

Fantastic. I mean, so deep frying a turkey, you'd assume that it'd be like super crispy. And it's it. And it is crispy. It gets a nice golden brown. It's lovely. But then it's also moist on the inside.

[Leo Laporte]

How long. So do you submerge it in the boiling oil?

[Paris Martineau]

Maybe like 45 minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's pretty quick. That's another good reason to do it.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, we also, before we cook it, we get kind of those bait, like a buttery creole based. And then you inject the turkey all over that butter gets under the skin and things like that. And then you rub it, of course, the spices. Then you put it in there and we wait until about 30 minutes before the feast is set to begin and then. And we're good to go. I'm also going to be making. Tomorrow I'm making a coconut caramel tart and I'm always the person who makes the stuffing. I've got a.

[Leo Laporte]

What's your stuffing recipe?

[Paris Martineau]

It's a great question. Let me see if I can pull it up here.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, you don't have to give it in detail. Is it a cornbread stuffing? A regular.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a normal. It's a normal bread stuffing. It is.

[Leo Laporte]

No.

[Paris Martineau]

Orange juice?

[Leo Laporte]

No. Italian sausage.

[Paris Martineau]

Italian sausage? No, we don't stuff it in the turkey cuz then it would be fried with it, I guess, ostensibly dressing, but I think stuffing is the right way to do it. Italian sausage is in that. Onions, shallots, apples. It kind of goes in with the. What's it called? Celery. As well as a kind of chicken broth thing. It ends up fantastic. And then of course, I usually do a mixture of parmesan cheese, because parmesan is perfect, and fontina, because fontina gets that Piness. As far as cheese goes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, this sounds really good. And you put that on the top.

[Paris Martineau]

It's really good. Yeah, put that on the top. It's. I'll find the recipe because it's just some, I don't know, random website, but all of my parents. Friends in the area always ask me for it. Every year, I bet, because it's great.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, so is this a big festival with. With neighbors?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I think we have like 12 people total tomorrow. My parents are the sort of people that always invite whoever wants to come over for Thanksgiving to come.

[Leo Laporte]

Friends giving.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, friendsgiving.

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff, are you going to Chipotle for Thanksgiving or what's the plan?

[Jeff Jarvis]

But I suppose I should go because as. As Nicole Wallace said last night, she stands with Chipotle in the fear of disappearing Guacamole.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there a fear of disappearing?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yeah. Where Guaca. Where are avocados?

[Leo Laporte]

Mexico.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

There'd be a 20% tariff on it.

[Paris Martineau]

Guacamole is already so expensive.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah. Avocados are not cheap.

[Paris Martineau]

Also, I did find the recipe. It's from the Cozy Apron I posted in Discord. It's great.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. The Cozy Apron. I. I love them. Okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did I. Did I tell you the story about my pumpkin chiffon pie episode?

[Leo Laporte]

No, but that sounds quite good too.

[Paris Martineau]

No, that sounds delicious.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So when I was trying to impress a young woman many, many, many years ago, my mother had a recipe for pumpkin chiffon pie, and I asked her for the recipe so that I could cook.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what dating was like back in the 19th century.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It was in Paris.

[Leo Laporte]

You would.

[Paris Martineau]

Isn't this also how you burnt yourself? Like making a cereal?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, that was for myself. That was for myself. That was indulgence. So she gave me the recipe and I never cook, so I thought cooking is so Weird. It's just so imprecise. I couldn't figure it out. 1 1/4 C period, canned pumpkin. So I said, okay, here's one can of pumpkin and here's a quarter can of pumpkin. And then I realized, oh, my God.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you thought the sea was can.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I had to. Luckily, the pumpkin was in a glob, so I could then measure how much pumpkin takes out.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because otherwise you'd have an overflowing pumpkin. Siobhan pie. Maybe you were trying to send a message to the young woman.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, hey, I'm not doing the cooking in this relationship.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the message. Good message. So Google has. I have. I apparently am the only one who owns one of these. Canceled. The Pixel Tablet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It was never a great idea.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, it was cool. This is the one that docked. I have the docking station over the desk. It would dock on the desk and see, it has little pogo pins. It would charge and so it would be a standing device. And then at some point it would. You could take it and go somewhere with it. I've never done anything, never made any sense.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, the name of it calling it the Pixel Tablet is like if iPads were called iPhone Tablet. I mean, I know that's not why it failed, but that just, I think, indicates the lack of thought that went into thinking of this as its own standalone product.

[Leo Laporte]

What they should think there's never been a successful Android tablet. I mean, maybe.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, no, the Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 was successful and they loved that. And we loved that tablet, but they killed that too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, there won't be. Although they had already done, apparently, according to Android authority, considerable work on the Pixel tablet, citing fears the product wouldn't sell very well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

From experience.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Now this is from a source this is not public at yet.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I wonder too, whether this has an impact on the reports we talked about last week, which are just reports that if the next Pixel book is an Android product, maybe they confuse things with this.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you think, by the way, that. That we were talking about this on Windows Weekly earlier, that Google was maybe prescient or got a tip that the Department of Justice was going to try to get them to sell Chrome, and at that point they said maybe we better have a plan B for the Chrome books.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's what I kind of hinted at last week.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But Chrome OS is one matter and Chrome browser is another.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it? If you sell Chrome, do you still get to do the Chrome os?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Who knows? The whole Planet is not going to ever happen, so it doesn't really matter. But I thought the Pixel tablet was okay. But I think Google was probably smart that there is no market for the Pixel tablet. 3.

[Paris Martineau]

What made it just okay? As someone who hasn't messed around with.

[Leo Laporte]

The biggest problem with Android tablets is that Android apps are. They are really not well designed for tablet screens. So it's really. It is a Pixel. It's a phone.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Which means they're also not well designed for laptops, which is going to be an issue if they do make a Pixel book.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's far worse than the iPad, really. I mean, it's, you know, here's the Google Chrome browser in it. I mean, it's. You could sit there with your, with it in your lap just like you would with an iPad and do you kind of, you know what's wrong with it is the. You see the aspect ratio is 16,9. That is, that is messed up. It's too, it's too thin and wide.

[Paris Martineau]

It's computer sized.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And I think I'll compare it to the iPad. Here's an iPad mini, which is just a little.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris just asked, what do you use the iPad for? Anything?

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing.

[Paris Martineau]

I was gonna say. I've never heard someone tell me what they use. I guess my parents use iPads, but just as books. Like E Reader.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a decent reader. I mean, the iPad mini, which this is, is a. Is a reader size. So it's, it's good for a reader or lying. It's basically. This is my lying in bed looking at TikTok, Reddit, that kind of thing. YouTube.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I used to, I used my Nexus 7 in the old days to watch shows and movies on the plane.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. This would be good for that too. Then the big, the big iPad is so big. It's really a laptop. In fact, the way Apple wants you to configure it with the keyboard, it is a la. Look at it. It's a laptop, but it's a touchscreen laptop. So Apple is very schizophrenic on this thing because it really is their touchscreen operating system. It's not a, not a Macintosh. How do I turn it on? Oh, yeah, there we go. I guess I turned it off and it has.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do you ever use it? Do you use that? No.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what I mean?

[Paris Martineau]

The fact that it was off. Potentially not.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it was off for another reason. It was off because it steals my mouse. But that's a Complicated ex. I don't want to get into it, but I don't want to talk about it. But what this is really good for is photography. So that's, that's really what I, I mean that's really the one thing. So when I get good for like.

[Paris Martineau]

It'S good for taking photos or editing.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no, no, no. It's good for processing photos. So I connect my, Yeah, I get, I connect my camera up, download the photos wirelessly and then I have a bunch of different apps that I can use like Photo Mater, which Apple just bought, or Darkroom or there's quite a few really good affinity photo. Very good apps for editing photos on here. And this has a very good, very accurate screen. So it's a, it's actually a good choice for photo editing. And the thing is with photo editing I have the pencil and I have my finger. So you can kind of do it in a more natural. You're not using a mouse, you're actually touching it, enlarging it, resizing it, sketching out colors and stuff like that. And I think that that actually is a natural workflow. At least that was a story I told myself when I spent $2,000 on this.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh my God, it's a laptop fancy computer for that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, I think I'm thinking of the Remarkable. Again, I'm debating.

[Leo Laporte]

So, Mr. Steve, we were talking about.

[Paris Martineau]

This before the show last week because Jeff and I are both big paper people when it comes to.

[Leo Laporte]

I like the Remarkable. Steve said, do not get the Remarkable three. Get the old one, the Remarkable two, because it's lighter and it's not trying to do color, which is a mistake to do color. Yeah, I had the Remarkable actually I gave it to Micah, but I think the Remarkable was quite good. I like the Remarkable quite a bit. I also have the Amazon Kindle Scribe, which is pretty big and you can read books on it, but you can also. It has a pen and you can annotate with that. I think the Remarkable, if you take handwritten notes, Steve uses it for his coding notebook. So a lot of times when you're writing a. Solving a computer problem, it's easier to visualize it if you sketch it out. And it has kind of infinite graph paper. Right. So it's very nice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris. And I use it wrong here, Paris for marking up documents, for reporting. Ah, right.

[Paris Martineau]

We talked about marking up documents. Or also I like do very in depth written outlines when I'm working on a kind of gnarly story. And then I.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's your hand with my.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't outlining easier on a keyboard?

[Paris Martineau]

Yes and no. It. But it. When I type something, it leaves my brain in a way that writing it down doesn't. And also frankly, what I've realized. The reason why I end up doing paper outlines is because I like my. One of my biggest problems. Second, I guess to when I'm writing is figuring out what the beginning of a story is. I can't do anything else. All that. But then it's organizing all the different discrete parts. It can really gum up my workflow if I'm trying to think about how things should go. So I will write all of the discrete parts on different pieces of paper and then lay them out on my kitchen table or on the floor and then move them around until I figure out the correct order.

[Leo Laporte]

It's so funny, but I guess I.

[Paris Martineau]

Could do that with something digital.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you come up with that on your own?

[Paris Martineau]

I did, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's funny you should say that because that's exactly what Strunk and White suggest. I mean that goes back to the forties.

[Paris Martineau]

Really.

[Leo Laporte]

They suggest. Yeah, they suggest you cut out. You take your thing and you cut it out and you rearrange it just like you're doing. It's brilliant.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean. Yes, because that I've realized will often be. The thing is I will be writing a section and then be like, well, should it go before or after this section? Then I will hem and haw and sit there frustrated for 30 minutes because I can't complete a section till I know what begins and ends it. And it's much better if you just write a quick little outline of each one and then move them around.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you in. In J school or later in life or maybe in high school. Did you read the Elements of Style by Strunk and White?

[Paris Martineau]

No, I didn't. I should.

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff, you know this journalist school?

[Paris Martineau]

Oh yeah, I didn't do journalism school.

[Leo Laporte]

This is. This is a little skinny book that is a classic. There's other.

[Jeff Jarvis]

AB White is a major writer, Charlotte's Web and all that. And so the fact that he was part of a style piece and it's very.

[Leo Laporte]

It's skinny and it's very simple. And I've lived the Strunk and White lifestyle my whole life. There's another book that's less known by. Who was the guy who wrote I, Claudius? He was a kind of. A kind of scratchy. Robert Graves has a book on writing. Let me see if I can find this that I really liked. Do you read books on writing at all.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. I've read the Art and Craft of Feature Writing, which is by William Blundale. It's based on the Wall Street Journal's guide, and I like that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Does that include a necessary insertion of moral panic about technology and hate for the Internet?

[Paris Martineau]

Probably. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. You know, Blooms. Bloomsbury? Jesus. No. Bloomberg used to have the Bloomberg way.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And it was very idiosyncratic. And you had to follow these rules exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. No, I'm not talking about. Stephen King has a very good book about writing that I like a lot. My chief takeaway from that is don't use adverbs ever. Ever. Nothing with ly Ever. And then Annie Lamott has a very good book about writing. I don't know why I don't write, but I read books about writing.

[Paris Martineau]

I would really recommend then. Have you read Robert Caro's Working?

[Leo Laporte]

No, I haven't. I love Robert Caro, of course, because.

[Paris Martineau]

It is all about his process and how he has decided to write and work throughout his life. It's very interesting. And his interview style. Something that sticks with me from that is when he was interviewing a bunch when he moved to Lyndon B. Johnson's hometown in order to basically.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you believe he did that?

[Paris Martineau]

He moved there with his wife, lived there for a couple of years because he said, people aren't going to tell me anything. His wife is his research assistant, too. Right. But he's like, people aren't going to tell me anything unless I show them I mean business. So he moves there. But then he had this great bit of advice for when you're doing a tough interview. And he, of course, takes all of his notes handwritten, which is crazy. But he's like. Whenever I would be. Someone would be telling me something I really wanted to hear, I would be compelled to try and interject, be like, oh, and ask questions. Because instead I'd force myself to look down on my notebook and write S U S U S U S E, which stands for Shut up, Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's so great. And it's.

[Paris Martineau]

Just be quiet for as long as possible.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Because people will continue to volunteer information.

[Leo Laporte]

Absolutely. If you just let the pauses get uncomfortable, they will fill the sign. Yeah. For you. I would think that that's. That's what you. Because that's your. That's your craft.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know why. Here's another one. This is the Robert Graves book, the Reader over your Shoulder, which I think is less known than in the Elements of Style. But I thought was just as good. I mentioned Stephen King's book, and Annie Lamott's book, I think is called Bird by Bird. Let me see if I can find it. She's a wonderful writer.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I have an illustrated, fancy version of Strunk and White back there.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's fancy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Bird by Bird. I think you might like Bird by Bird because it's. It's not just about writing. It's about living well. Very classic book. And she's. She's a marvelous writer, but these are all more prose than what you do. You're. You're a journalist, but prose is still good. Well, it's ironic because I can't write. I mean, I write well, but I can't do the f. You know, I've written books.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The process of writing is so painful. It is difficult that I can't do it. It's just. I think I'm also hampered by my aphasia, my inability to see images in my mind because I can't, like, see the castle and then write up all the details.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What does that do in terms of. Can you. Can you visualize an outline of a structure or something?

[Leo Laporte]

Only abstract. Every. Nothing's visual. It's all abstract. I can intellectualize, you know, so, yeah, I think nonfiction's not as much of a problem for me, but I don't think I could. I want to write fiction, and I just can't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, same here. I just.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you. Have you ever started a novel, Jeff?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, I. Up there in my cabinet is my very embarrassing novel I wrote in 1981 about the Berlin Wall.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there other spies?

[Paris Martineau]

Can you. Can you read us? Can you open it? Just read one page for us. The beginning of one page.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All right.

[Paris Martineau]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Stephen King's book is called On Writing A Memoir of the Craft, and also very good. He's. It's unfortunate because as a genre fiction author, he's kind of. People don't think about him as a great writer, but actually, he's a phenomenal writer. He's brilliant. Yeah. And so this is a very interesting book to read. I don't know why I read so many books about writing.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I think it's just fascinating to hear people talking about their craft.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it is.

[Paris Martineau]

You're right into a process like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh, my gosh. Jeff is pulling out four boxes.

[Leo Laporte]

What? The. What? You have the manuscript. He has the full man.

[Paris Martineau]

The typewritten pages. Do we think it's gonna be typewritten or handwritten?

[Leo Laporte]

Typewritten. Right. Is it typewritten Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, this is. I bought my. I wrote this on my Osborne one.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my God. It's. It's print. It's a. It's what is. It's a very early computer and I guess those would be printouts. Did you burst and decollate those printouts?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I bought. No, I bought a.

[Leo Laporte]

You had a laser printer.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Printer. No, no, this is before that. So it was. It was. I bought an impact printer. The printer cost more than the.

[Leo Laporte]

It was like a typewriter. Those impact printers were basically typewriters. Yeah, computer controlled typewriters.

[Paris Martineau]

What a world.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at that.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh my goodness.

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff, come on. We now. I bet you. You know what you should. You should really think about reread readdress this because maybe it's good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This got rejected in 1990.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but.

[Paris Martineau]

So the world wasn't ready for it.

[Leo Laporte]

Google wasn't wrong.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It was also wrong because I said the wall wasn't going to come down.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh well, now it could be on alternative history.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the man in the High castle.

[Jeff Jarvis]

God, I even did umlauts. Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Lots not easy to do on a impact printer, let me tell you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Carson read his story one last time, then picked up the hotel phone and dialed his office in Chicago.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Sheen on the other end of the line answered his call beeping its hello. And Carson stuck the phone into a rubber brassiere.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so it's a little dated by his portable computer.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Then he hit one button to send his story across half of Europe, a whole ocean and half of America in three minutes worth of high pitched digital gurgling. By the time. I have not read this in literally 40 years.

[Leo Laporte]

This is this the opening paragraph.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, this is. This is page nine.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh no. Give us the first paragraph.

[Paris Martineau]

That's the first line.

[Leo Laporte]

The first line is whether you're going to finish. Read the book or not.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Bulletin Urgent. West Berlin upi. A car bomb exploded at the Berlin wall today, exactly 25 years after East Germany built it and divided this city into two. So it was a mock news story.

[Leo Laporte]

What's the next sentence?

[Paris Martineau]

I liked page nine.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, nine was good. I thought that was good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'll skip the next paragraph. Especially Chicago newspaper. An editor named Frank read the green computer screen that itself dates it.

[Leo Laporte]

See you. So you know what this is because you love technology.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Great.

[Paris Martineau]

Honestly, I like that. This is a beautiful blast from the past.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a few more years and it will be retro. It'll be so people will love it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That carried the news and shouted Carson.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

So Carson is a reporter.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Chapter two. Berlin, August 14th. The dike has cracked, but still nothing can flow through save sound. Carson read his paragraph, grinned at it, then erased it from his small gray computer screen and started.

[Leo Laporte]

Carson is you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He wasn't writing a novel, only a news story. Okay, that's enough.

[Leo Laporte]

I like it, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I have not opened that up, literally, since 1990.

[Leo Laporte]

I think you should readdress this, Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

I do think you should publish it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The only people who read it were my parents. Say that because it had a sex scene in it and they made fun of me for it.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

How old were you?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, it was in. I was in my late 20s.

[Leo Laporte]

You were Paris, his age. Now, here's the thing. Here's what I would do. Don't publish it. Forget publishers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it's embarrassing.

[Leo Laporte]

We're going to turn it into a podcast, Jeff.

[Paris Martineau]

We're going to do a. You're going to need a third podcast. That's what you need.

[Leo Laporte]

And are there male and female voices in this? Is there a Carson.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

And is there a woman in this? Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes, because he falls. He falls in love with an East German woman, and they can't together because.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's hear your German heart. Let's hear your East German accent. Paris. I'm going to direct.

[Paris Martineau]

At one point, I could do a German accent, but I can't anymore. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It sounded Irish. You sounded like you're Irish.

[Paris Martineau]

Sound in Irish.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You have to be a little more staccato.

[Paris Martineau]

I have to be a little more. More staccato.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, I think we could work on it, maybe listen to some.

[Paris Martineau]

There was a time when I could do a German accent, but that was high school. I've lost it.

[Leo Laporte]

You're going to have to do a sexy German. What's her name?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I don't know what her name is. I can try to find.

[Leo Laporte]

And Carson is you, obviously. Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

God damn. The thing is 568 pages.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's.

[Paris Martineau]

It'll be a multiseries podcast, I honestly think.

[Leo Laporte]

Are there cliffhangers, like, moments where you go, what's going to happen next?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Don't remember. I don't remember.

[Paris Martineau]

You got to digitize this. Jaffa.

[Leo Laporte]

Look, I'm looking for scripts that we can.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Somewhere. Somewhere. I have five and a half inch discs of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Paris, would you like to be part of a radio drama?

[Paris Martineau]

I would love to be part.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Her name was Petra.

[Leo Laporte]

I cost you as Petra.

[Paris Martineau]

Petra.

[Leo Laporte]

Petra. Petra Martino. And. And is there. I could be the narrator. You're Going to need a narrator because it sounds like it's not all dialogue.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Or I could be the cantankerous newspaper editor cousin. Or maybe get in here.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Maybe it was. That's. That's perfect. Yeah. Maybe it was UTA Croft.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't remember who Craft. I like it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think it was Petra.

[Leo Laporte]

Start casting it, John. Ashley, what do you want to play?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I need a role. I think. I think he's got to be at East German guard. I mean, can you be. I not going to attempt to do it. No. I don't get paid enough for that, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there'll be. There'll be money for you because this is going to be huge.

[Paris Martineau]

It's going to go.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the next wicket.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No one's ever. No amount of money will try to get me to do a German act. Jackson, thank you very much.

[Leo Laporte]

I love the. Let's see. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a quick break and then I will get to the next.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Story after that diversion.

[Leo Laporte]

I've. You know what? That's what this show is.

[Paris Martineau]

I think we got big money here.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And I love. I've been looking for. I want to do radio theater on podcasts. Unfortunately, I'm late to the game. I had been thinking about this for 20 years and then, of course, many people have done it like the moth. But I would very much like to take your novel and dramatize it.

[Paris Martineau]

I think that would be great.

[Leo Laporte]

It's no worse than Megalopolis.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's bad.

[Paris Martineau]

Did you see it, Leo?

[Leo Laporte]

Not yet. I'm waiting till it comes out in streams.

[Paris Martineau]

It's out on streaming. It's out.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it out in streaming?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is it out right now? Really?

[Paris Martineau]

I thought so because I saw people posting.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they promote it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Or if you want to watch it for free, you can watch a really poorly AI.

[Paris Martineau]

It's out on streaming.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, good.

[Paris Martineau]

20 bucks, but it's out on streaming.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what? Francis deserves my money.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leo, I want to save you $20, though. You should go look up.

[Paris Martineau]

I argue it's worth. It's worth.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Or you can go to YouTube, go to movie recaps and look up the AI summarized version of Megapolis for free.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no.

[Paris Martineau]

Already? It's already. Basically the AI summarized version.

[Leo Laporte]

It is so 1424 radius original incarnation. I think I need to buy this and see if I was Adam Driver. Or maybe I was Giancarlo Esposito. Or maybe I was Natalie Emanuel. I don't know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

2.1 stars.

[Paris Martineau]

Hold on. I Just posted a link in the Discord that is. Someone compiled some of the craziest things that happen in Megalopolis because it's now on streaming. If you want to watch a couple of them. Or you could. You could keep. Yeah. Keep your mind pure.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow, There's a chariot race.

[Paris Martineau]

There's so much in this movie.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't decide between this and Wicked. I don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

There are multiple dick jokes. It's like a whole thing, really. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Francis is quite. Is quite a piece of work. All right. I can't wait to watch this tonight. It is available and I will be watching it. How's your Nick Vember going, by the way?

[Paris Martineau]

It's going great.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a long month, isn't it?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Almost at the end.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's quite a lot of Nick.

[Paris Martineau]

It's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Are you going to subject your parents, your family to anything?

[Paris Martineau]

I am. They're excited. They have a whole.

[Leo Laporte]

What are you watching tonight?

[Paris Martineau]

It's a great question. Maybe Con Air or.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's good. The folks would like that one. Yeah, that's a Parent pleasers. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

All right, let's take a break. You were saying that before, but we've got to do it because we have a lot of ads this episode.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We do.

[Leo Laporte]

We have a lot of ads today. Two at least. Our show today, brought to you by. Actually, this one should be a public service announcement. I'm not going to take your money. Bit Warden, because everybody needs to use a password manager. And Bit Warden is the only password manager I use and recommend. Why? Well, few reasons. It's really well done. I mean, it's very. It's. I like the ui, I like the interface, I like how it works. I like it ease of use. But most of all, I like the fact that it's open source GPL license. That's good for a number of reasons. Any. In my opinion, any cryptography program, any program you use that has encryption in it should be open source. That's the only way you can know that there's no back doors and that it's implemented properly using appropriate technology for encryption. And even if you can't verify that, the fact that it's open source means others have. In fact, Bit Warden is regularly audited by third parties parties. And Bitwarden does something a lot of companies refuse to do. They do the audits. But sometimes other companies go, but I'm not going to publish your results because they don't want you to know what the audit turns up. Bitwarden always publishes the full results. So you. And sometimes, yeah, there's an issue. The auditors say, hey, you know, this isn't done properly or whatever. Bitwarden fixes it right away. So, you know, this is battle hardened. It's a password manager trusted by millions of users, but also thousands of businesses. Like every password manager, it generates and autofills strong unique passwords, but not like everyone, it does some interesting things. First instance, you can also use unique emails with every single account and they all go to the same inbox. There are a number of email providers, including Fastmail, which I use, that will support this. So you can generate unique logins and then unique passwords. That makes it really hard to guess what your login is for anything. It also has very nice AutoFill, works with iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux. And it will only autofill a password on the right site, which means it can't be spoofed, right? It looks like, you know, tvr. I use that as an example because I almost fell for that. But it's not TW I T T E R And Bitwarden will say, no, no, what are you talking about? That's not Twitter. But now it does that with credit cards, identities and even passkeys as well, directly from the inline autofill menu without leaving the page. That is not only the right way, the most convenient way, it's the safest way. So you were guaranteed not to autofill something that isn't right. Bitwarden continues to expand its integration ecosystem for businesses across all the platforms businesses love and use, which means you're going to have seamless operations and elevated security. For instance, Microsoft Intune, you use that well now. Microsoft Intune enhances device security and user identity management because it enables secure Bitwarden app deployment on any intune managed endpoint, including desktops and mobile devices. Use rippling for your hr. Rippling makes it easy to onboard and off board employees with Bit Warden allowing IT teams to assign and revoke access as they join or leave. That's really nice to use Vanta for compliance. Another one of our sponsors, Vanta and Bitwarden Compliance together. Vanta Compliance and Bit Warden Password Manager together will audit and report with Secure Password Manager so that you can demonstrate your compliance with security and passwords. It meets SoC2, ISO 27001 and other standards you use. Rapid7. Rapid7 ensures improved threat detection and response. This is so clever. It correlates the credential usage from Bit Warden with security events, which means you know you can figure out what happened. It strengthens both proactive monitoring and the intelligence for enterprise security teams. These are just a few of the integrations Bit Warden works with your stack to centralize security management across the entire enterprise and on employee devices as well, which gives you better control over sensitive information. Is such a great tool for business. And of course Bit Warden users can seamlessly connect tools for IT management and compliance and security automatically. To improve and standardize the deployment of enterprise credential management throughout your organization, you deserve a cost effective solution that can dramatically improve your chances of staying safe online. You need Bit Warden it's only a few minutes to set up Bitwarden supports import from all the major password management solutions. So it's very quick and as I said it because it's open source, you can be sure it does exactly what it says it does. And I should mention this Tomorrow Thanksgiving in the United States, if you're going to dinner with family and friends, ask them. Just say hey, what do you do for password management? And if they tell you they've got oh I got it all in the post it note on my screen or what do you mean all? Well I only use the same password everywhere. Oh don't, don't freak out. Just gently tell them about Bit Warden. And one of the nice things is for individuals Bitwarden is free forever. You can also get a free trial of the teams or enterprise plan. All you have to do is go to bitwarden.com Twitter tell them about it. You'll be doing your family and friends a favor. Bitwarden we thank him so much for supporting this week on Google. You support us when you go to that address. Bitwarden.com TWIT I do think one of.

[Paris Martineau]

The funniest possible things you can do at Thanksgiving is saddle up next year family and say hey what are you doing about password?

[Leo Laporte]

Here's an even better one. Go wherever the computer is in the library and look at the post it notes, write down the password and then sidle up to him and say is this your password? And see what they do. Actually I there was some list of.

[Paris Martineau]

The most popular passwords.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Released a week or two ago and hysterical.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Two of them that had reached the top in the US were Internet and computer and that just makes me giggle.

[Leo Laporte]

But you know that probably 80% of the general populace does that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Oh of course. The dumbest possible password.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I have a friend, Randall Schwartz. He used to host our Floss show. He's a well known computer coder. Also kind of a hacker in his Own right. We used to go. He used to go on every geek cruise with us. We'd go on these cruises and do geek stuff. And on one of the cruises, he was doing that, he was writing down because he was watching WI Fi traffic. This is in the days before the traffic was encrypted. And he would write down the person's password, write it on a piece of paper, and go up to him, say, is this your password? I told him, randall, stop. The point is well taken, but that's not the way to do it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What was the reaction?

[Leo Laporte]

Usually, well, when he did to me, my hair was on fire. I said, how do you. What the. What? He said, WI Fi unencrypted. I said, oh, yeah. Nowadays, by the way, almost always when you log into something, it's. Everybody's encrypted now. So that would no longer work.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And two factor. I had one account that I hadn't done two factor on yet. And coming back from Germany, I'm waiting in line again on the plane, and I get a text from this institution saying, your password has changed. If you didn't do it, call. And it's an account that mattered. Hurriedly calling, getting the account locked.

[Leo Laporte]

Good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And must have been a hotel. Must have been.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Two factor.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And so I two factored it. I just. I just finally did my onboarding for. For Stony Brook University. At one point, I wanted to, you know, leave us your comments. I want to say you're not effing Fort Knox.

[Leo Laporte]

But they are.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But they are.

[Leo Laporte]

But they are. I'm telling you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But they had three different two factor apps. Can't you just agree on one?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Are you using Duo or something? I found this annoying at nyu.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Duo's good. Yeah, they. Some. They sometimes have Octa and Duo and, you know, variety.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm just annoyed by the ones that have to call me on the phone to let me in. I'm like, just put it on an authenticator app.

[Leo Laporte]

I used to have to do that with iHeart because they would change. They would require password changes, I think every three months. It was. It was a lot. And I never logged into iHeart. I didn't work inside. I didn't use the email. So. So when I had to log in for my training on not to how not to do plugola, every time, my password was no longer good. So I had to call and say, hey, my password's not good anymore.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You got scolded for not changing it.

[Leo Laporte]

Didn't you change it? No.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I don't work for you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Don't you know who I am? I'm the tech guy.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. That's the irony of it. They had no idea.

[Paris Martineau]

That is very funny, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you Leo Lappert? Who are you? No idea. So Metta has come up with a clever ploy, and I'm curious what you think about it. We're talking about age verification. And, you know, there's a lot of. There's a drumbeat going, boy, in Washington.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wait till we get to Australia on this story.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, and all over the world where they say it's up to, you know, these social networks have to verify the age, make sure they're not serving kids. Which I understand the motivation, but it's also, as you know, very difficult to do age restriction and preserve privacy. If you do or if you're doing it, you have to do it for everybody, every user. And that means what? Am I going to give you a picture of my driver's license? Hell, no. So Meta who? You know, Instagram, WhatsApp, and of course, Facebook, they don't want to do this. So they are lobbying hard in Congress to say, oh, no, it's not our job, it's the App Store's job. Make Apple and Google do it so we don't have to.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, nice try.

[Leo Laporte]

Apparently, according to the Washington Post, they're. They're making headway in this.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Jesus.

[Leo Laporte]

In this lobbying.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Surgeon General. The new surgeon General thinks that we all should ban, like, Australia, children under 16 from social media.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, I mean, it's quite interesting, actually. I wrote a story this week we have on one of the ways that we're doing it underneath that story we were just talking about in the rundown. So right now, the way that meta and TikTok so right. Metta recently rolled out these Instagram teen accounts and the underlying.

[Leo Laporte]

Which, by the way, that's. That's a good idea. They're advertising it like crazy.

[Paris Martineau]

But the underlying, like, question with all of these pushes for, you know, regulating kids in social media, something like Cosa. Tina comments like, how the heck do you. You determine if someone's a kid or not? Because anybody can just put in that they're 75. On my kids did the Internet.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

And how they're increasingly doing it is through facial age estimation. That sounds dystopian, but is surprisingly. I don't know. I. I had been looking into this quite a bit because I had heard a question that I'd been asking in my field of work is like, there are all these attempts to figure out how kids are how old are kids? And one of them is the traditional form of age verific or identity verification that involves an ID. And that's not super viable for most people because one, kids don't have IDs. Two, no one wants to upload their ID for every website they go to on the Internet, be it porn or social media. But turns out the middle ground of this is this thing called age estimation. And in specific cases, like for Instagram and TikTok, they're turning to facial age estimation. Is there increasingly. Yes, but they're increasingly using one provider, this, which I profiled in my story this week, this British company called Yoti. And there are, according to Yodi's own research, it seems to be quite accurate. There's been little independent research onto this except for the National Institute of Standards and Technology did a study basically judging the efficacy of a bunch of these providers, albeit the results are kind of skewed because they used government data in order to estimate. So it was like visa photos of 4 year olds. And in most cases, Yodi was the most like was the most accurate. For say like kids age 13 to 16, it could identify their age within a year or two by taking Yodi.

[Leo Laporte]

Say how old they are or just say kid or not kid.

[Paris Martineau]

They say kid or not kid. And so that's the thing is Yodi might be a year or two off, but really what they're doing is say Instagram wants to check whether or not people are 17 or under, and if they are 17 or under, they're going in a teen account. If they're 18 or over, they're going in an adult account.

[Leo Laporte]

And the only Yodi recommends kids on the border, like we're 18.

[Paris Martineau]

And so that's the problem is the kids that are in that kind of negligible zone. So what Yodi and these other companies recommend to platforms is you actually make for facial age id, you make the cutoff age higher. It's like that sign you see at the grocery store. It's like if you look under 35, we're going to ID you. Yodi will say, if someone looks under 25, we're not going to let them pass with facial age estimation. They might have to upload an ID or like get a second person to vouch for them or something. So right now, what a pain in the platform for Instagram, for Facebook dating, for TikTok, if you want to use certain features, or in Facebook Dating's case, I guess have your age verified, you have to take a video Selfie and Instagram says Meta said that it caught something like 96% of teens trying to change their accounts in previous tests. But I just thought you talk about.

[Leo Laporte]

Louisiana, which has been requiring this for a while now, but Louisiana, Louisiana do it.

[Paris Martineau]

So the interesting thing about this field is there's kind of like three different buckets. If we're talking about how you're going to figure out what age someone is. The easiest bucket is called like age declaration or age getting. That's a thing pops up. It says give me your birthday. The medium bucket is facial age estimation. What we just talked about, the hardest bucket is what Louisiana is doing called identity verification or age verification. That means you have to prove someone's a very specific age. And Louisiana's case, it's people over the age of 18, 18 and up can views at porn sites. So what porn sites have to do is they connect to this third party app the state has kind of given the go ahead for, called LA Wallet. That essentially you upload your ID to LA Wallet. Yes, you upload your id, you upload your ID into it. And ostensibly what they're supposed to do is they'll give you like a, a token that if you want to verify with pornhub, you'd enter in the token. Pornhub doesn't get any information about you, but it does check that token against LA Wallet. And LA Wallet says yes above 18 or no below 18. Obviously wallet has your Dr. Driver's license and ostensibly data about what sites you're, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Is LA Wallet run by the state of Louisiana? Is it owned by.

[Paris Martineau]

No, it's run by a third party company.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a private company.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a private company. And basically the Louisiana provision for this law says that any third party company will do. Ellie, Walt just kind of the one that has emerged. So that's, I think the big question. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Back in the day, Sites thought that everyone online was from Virginia because we came through aol. How is geographic targeting now? If you're, if you're in Louisiana can.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's another point. It's better, but it's not perfect. It's IP address.

[Paris Martineau]

It's better. So what I understand is it's IP address based and people are able to get around it with like VPNs and whatnot. Right. But it also ends up being a problem because ostensibly like the Louisiana rules are supposed to just apply to citizens of Louisiana, but if someone's like driving through, they can't look at porn or things like that. It'll catch you know, anybody who just or someone's near an IP address that's designated as being in Louisiana. Even if they're over the border, they might not be able to access porn sites.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a lot of, obviously a lot of issues with age identification, age verification. Tell me why my position on this is wrong. My attitude is it's not about chronological age. Some 13 year olds should be on TikTok doing their thing because they're making a million bucks. Some 18 year olds shouldn't be and the people who know that best are the parents are the custodial adults. Shouldn't this really be in the hands of the parents? Shouldn't the parent. I hate it that state governments and soon the federal government are going to weigh in on this with imperfect technologies for identification when the parent knows how old the kid is. What in my opinion should happen is Apple and Google and other companies and certainly all apps should have parental controls and the parent should have to set it. Yes, this kid is, it's appropriate. Yes, it's not appropriate.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How do you know that they're a kid? I agree with you but the problem is how do you know that they're subject to parental control unless you know that they're young or who's not young?

[Paris Martineau]

And I also think, I think that's a very valid point, Leo and I think that's a common sense argument here. But I think the issue and how we've gotten to the place we are right now is up until a couple years ago it was basically the wild west out there. These social media websites as well as every other website wanted to know if you were 13 or younger because then they'd have to deal with coppa stuff and they wouldn't want you on the platform otherwise you got an adult account. I think it was only like 2019 or 2020 that TikTok even introduced kids accounts. Instagram didn't just introduced Instagram teen accounts. Up until recently the parental controls were non existent to very, very small.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what needs to be got to.

[Paris Martineau]

Be a very big problem. And so people are pushing in the absence of past controls they're pushing for the harshest possible punishments for these companies.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the mistake because they're mad make.

[Paris Martineau]

And so I think maybe it's going to end up somewhere in the middle.

[Leo Laporte]

Make the platforms empower parents. And to answer your question Jeff, if you're an adult, you don't, you, you don't use parental controls. So parental controls are only for parents to turn on for Their kids. And if the parents don't. Oh, I see what you're saying, kids. Then there's no controls and it's up to the parents.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's device based.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Yeah. So every iPhone has parental controls, every Android phone has parental controls, Every app should have parental controls that, that the parent could say, okay, first of all, the parent should say whether Instagram is on that 13 year old's phone or not, that actually exists. Now if Instagram's on there, the parent should have a setting on Instagram that says no. Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, hold on, hold on for a second. What if it's just I'm getting to this stuff through the web. How does the parent know what to.

[Leo Laporte]

None of this apply? I mean. Yeah, you're right. I mean the web is an issue. That's why it has to be, probably has to be at the level of the phone. Look, nothing.

[Paris Martineau]

The issue is in practice it's very difficult parent. What parents seem to be reacting to is it's very difficult for even parents with the means and time to police their kids activity.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't matter. That's their job. That is their job. It's not the government they're looking for.

[Paris Martineau]

They're looking for more ways to do so. And I think in absence of having common sense parental controls, a lot of parents are pushing for extreme measures to be taken. And we're just starting to see the results of that. Where companies in response to all of this are rolling out their own like responses, like just a good enough solution. It seems so far to be quite good. I mean, I was really surprised with it. Yeah, I think that in most cases it seems to get it right. I mean they have even a demo on their website where you can like upload, where you can try to check out with like a knife and a couple bottles of alcohol and drugs. And then it takes a photo of your face to determine whether or not you're over 21. And within one second it was like, yeah, you're over 21. And I was like, oh, well, I mean I guess that's true, but I didn't want to be that fast. But it seems to be very good at determining whether people are kids or not. Albeit there are like you mentioned some disparities across racial lines as well as across gender lines. It does seem to be less than like 1% in many cases. It's like 2 or 3/10 of a percent difference in terms of accuracy. But of course if these solutions are deployed at scale, that's going to be a problem. And that will result in, you know, more barriers to entry for younger looking black or brown adults or women.

[Jeff Jarvis]

More Asian people are often seen as younger.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean the issue is less in fairer skinned people and it's more in people with the darkest skin tones. Although there's some slighter disparities with people from Asian regions.

[Jeff Jarvis]

If I may add a media angle into this, what's happening in Australia, and I have a video queued up below, is that this is coming from Murdoch.

[Leo Laporte]

And why does Murdoch care about this?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because he hates the Internet.

[Paris Martineau]

Are you sure? Because the Wall Street Journal has spent like $20 million lobbying against Cosa.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Jeff Jarvis]

There are exceptions in this, I don't know.

[Paris Martineau]

But this was recently, if you look up there was the Wall Street Journal. I was shocked by this. The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article inside Big Tech's bid to sink the online kids safety Bill. And in it there was a disclosure that I didn't notice at first.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I didn't notice that either.

[Leo Laporte]

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has just weighed in on the government's proposed teen social.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Media ban, calling it the backdoor way.

[Leo Laporte]

To control Internet access for all Australians.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hello, I'm Paul Barry, welcome to mediawatch. This is a great show. Hi.

[Leo Laporte]

Correct.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, it's great. I queued that video up, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

I clicked the link and it did not jump to the. So what's the.

[Paris Martineau]

News Corp has spent about $2 million lobbying against Cosa in the past.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Say why?

[Paris Martineau]

It doesn't say why, but it does say non tech companies are also objecting for reasons including concerns about determining the age of users.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There you go. It's inconvenient but in Australia I'll find it for you, Leo. Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

That's all right.

[Paris Martineau]

So in Australia they've recently taken down by ABC anyway they recently introduced a bill banning kids from social of 16 and under. I believe in Australia.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, it's more than it's about, it's about to be implemented and what this video, this show is really great. And they have this great compilation of all the editorials in the Murdoch papers and all the stories in the Murdoch papers and it's just in sync of pushing for this because he pushes against the Internet platforms because he hates them. Media company which was boasting this month.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a major win for News Corp's Let Them Be Kids campaign.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That News Corp campaign, launched six months ago on the front pages of its Sunday tabloids, had one main aim, to pressure the government into barring access to social media for anyone under 16. Arguing that the age limit is desperately needed because teenagers are facing the greatest crisis of a generation.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God. Of a generation. What about last generation and the next generation? I ask you. We don't have a memory for that of a generation. Since rock and roll, there's never been a greater threat to teenagers. All right, I don't. I just feel like this shouldn't be a, a law, a regulation. I think the parents should be doing it. And if parents don't do it, well, it's on them. But we mean, we don't make parents do a lot of things.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But, but parents. I do think it'll be easier for parents.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Give them the tools. I agree. Give them the tools.

[Paris Martineau]

I do think we're already starting to see like, very impressive results. And I mean, it's crazy that it's taken these companies multiple years into very costly, like litigation as well as legislation to start making change changes. Like yesterday, TikTok announced that it will no longer allow beauty filters to be used on like kids under a certain age. And I mean, listen, probably should have been top of my mind, but they should have done that from day one. And it's surprising that it has taken this much money and time for these companies to actually take common sense actions.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, I oppose this as a hypothetical. Actually on Sunday, if perfect face recognition age ID were cape you were capable of it, would that be. Would then these age ID rules be okay? And people still bristled. They still didn't like the idea of having to do this. I mean, maybe it's as unobjective as you could get. Right.

[Paris Martineau]

Yodi claims, and it's published a lot of white papers and the underlying data to support this, that when it comes to identifying whether 13 to 17 year olds are under the age of 21, it's 99.7 or something like that, percent accurate.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But. But the data coming from where again?

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, coming from Yodi, it's not. They did an independent test with some company, I'm forgetting that also said it was in the 99% range, the numbers are quite a bit lower when it was tested by the US government. Albeit Yodi and the other companies say that's because instead of using selfies, which is what the data is trained on, the US Government used US government data, which is like border crossing photos and mug shots, which are not super accurate, but still it was one of the most accurate ones. I don't know. I think it's an interesting way to try and address this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But I think the articles in the information weekend, the big read, a complex new age of face tech by one Paris Martineau.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thank you for the work on the job.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, very good. Let's take a little break. We come back lots more, including Scooter X's Google changelog. Fire it up Scooter X. But first, a word from our sponsor. You're watching this week in Google with Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau. This segment of this Week in Google brought to you by our fine sponsor, US Cloud. I've talked, have I talked about US Cloud on this show before? They are the number one Microsoft Unified support replacement, the global leader in third party Microsoft Enterprise support. You might say, well, what's wrong with Microsoft Enterprise Support? Nothing. Except what if you could save money, get better support from smarter engineers in less time. Oh, that Sounds Interesting, right? US Cloud supports 50 of the Fortune 500. Because of that, switching to US Cloud could save your business 30 to 50% on a true comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. Now I have to say when they, I had a great afternoon talking to these guys. When they said, talked about the price, I said, well you should really focus on the fact that it's better support. It's not cheap support, it's less expensive, but it's better. US Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack. They're there 24, 7, 365 days a year. They respond faster and they resolve tickets quicker. It's better and they do it for clients all over the world. You're always going to talk to a human. In fact, expert level engineers, they work really hard to get the best engineers out there. Average of 14.9 years experience and that's for Break Fix or DSE. 14.9 years experience. You're talking to somebody who really knows their stuff. You'll also be glad to know that's 100% US based teams. Your data never leaves the US and here's something US Cloud does that Microsoft has never done, will not do. Financially backed SLAs on response time and the response time is amazing. Initial ticket response averages under four minutes. So to recap, better support, faster support and less costly support. In 2023, 94% of US cloud clients, almost all of them reported saving 1/3 or more when switching from Microsoft unified support to US Cloud. From Fortune 500 companies to large health systems, major financial institutions and yes even federal agencies, US Cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for over 6 million users globally every day. That's funny. I said, how come I've never heard of you guys? And they said, well, that's why we want to buy some ads. People need to know. Brands that trust US Cloud include, get ready for this, some of the biggest and best brands in America. Caterpillar, HP uses US Cloud. Aflac, Dun and Bradstreet, Under Armour, KeyBank, they all use US Cloud. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen US Cloud for their Microsoft support. I mean, that's pretty good. There's a quote here from a director of Information technologies and here, and I'm going to, I'm going to act it out because I want to get a recording of this because it's so great. And within an hour, US Cloud responded with, I want to say, four engineers. Not only did they bring the right guys to the call, they brought the cavalry. I just felt like, wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I had experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier. We made the right choice with US Cloud. When it comes to compliance, no one gets it better than US Cloud. They are ISO compliant, gdpr, ESG compliance. And these I got to tell you for, you know, after my conversation, I understand these aren't just for US Cloud, just regulatory requirements. They are really strategic imperatives. They drive operational efficiency, legal compliance, risk management and corporate reputation. The standards that they adhere to, these, these, yeah, you could say requirements. But these standards require and foster trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders. They attract investment and they ensure long term sustainability and success in a competitive global market. I mean, US Cloud does it. They're the best. Visit uscloud.com book a call today. Find out how much your team can save. Faster, better and less expensive Microsoft Support for less from US Cloud. Uscloud.com We thank US Cloud so much for supporting this Week in Google. You support us when you call them and if they ask, say, hey, yeah, I heard it on this Week in Google was on the Twitter network. Yeah, I heard it. It's pretty good. All right, back to the show. Paris Martino. Jeff Jarvis. Elon Musk. We said the name, we might as well talk about him. Unleashes an online army on federal workers.

[Paris Martineau]

This is, this is a sign of what is to come.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the nightmare. He is doxing federal workers just like line level. Not even like he's just by name.

[Jeff Jarvis]

CNN tried to get people to come on the air to talk about this. Experts and none of them would do.

[Leo Laporte]

It, of course not because Elon will sick his army on them. This is not how you want to improve government efficiency. This is a reign of terror. This is Stalin Esque. This is not good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is totalitarian fear.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm not going to mention the names, but he zeroed in on one director of climate diversification at the U.S. international Development Finance Corp. And brigaded her. Basically 32 million views, an avalanche of memes and ridicule from his followers against the employee. I.

[Jeff Jarvis]

This has got free speech, man.

[Leo Laporte]

Elon. This has got.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's not going to stop. It's not going to stop.

[Leo Laporte]

He's done it before.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Probably not even First Amendment. It's probably not even First Amendment because he's not a government employee. He's not official in government.

[Leo Laporte]

He went after Yoel Roth, remember? After. After Yoel left Twitter and y'all really said it was a nightmare. It's a nightmare.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He called him.

[Leo Laporte]

His targets this week include Nancy Pelosi's relative and a senior climate advisor at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But that post, according to the Wall Street Journal, also include the names of tubes. By the way, the Journal's publishing the names, which kind of makes me mad. I'm not going to do that. The post included the names of two obscure federal officials with climate related jobs, including one who is no longer at the Energy Department. The tactics are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees, said the president of the American Federation of Government Employees. It's intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up. And yes, they already are. They won't go on cnn.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, this is about experts on this topic. Won't go on. On.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

If you're an academic studying this kind of stuff, studying totalitarianism. Are you going to go on? You're going to.

[Paris Martineau]

Very unfortunate.

[Leo Laporte]

This is totalitarianism. This is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You're going to yell that on cnn, let alone off.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, go ahead, Elon, take me on. You see, the problem is we're not widely distributed, so to speak.

[Paris Martineau]

Only one of us has been on CNN in the last couple of weeks.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah? Aren't you afraid?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Me?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Scott Jennings is a clown.

[Leo Laporte]

I'd be more afraid of Elon. Elon, this is. Talk about punching down. Here's the richest man in the world. He owns Twitter and he's using Twitter as a platform to dox and attack and brigade with his army of little sycophants, hardworking people in the federal government. But let's say these guys are terrible people in the federal government. He still shouldn't do it. No, it's not okay.

[Paris Martineau]

Being a bad employee does not mean you should be harassed by pillaring pillory in people.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And it's not about being a bad employee. It's about a job that he doesn't think should exist.

[Leo Laporte]

Sigh.

[Paris Martineau]

I do think it's very funny that this will be his, like, seventh job, being the leader of some company or entity.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Can he hold a job? What's going on?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I know I've said it before, but I just finished. I'm going to write a post, I hope, next week when I'm in California of Harahana, Iran, for journalists.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And we've got a look at the lessons to be learned.

[Leo Laporte]

For those who don't know, I'm sure many of you do. She wrote the book on totalitarianism, explaining how Hitler's Germany happened and the Soviet. And Stalin. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And part of the lesson of this is, and this is a big one for journalists, is that it's about the creation of a fictional world, that the real world we live in is messy and difficult. And so part of what you do to become an authoritarian or totalitarian is you create a fictional world in which the facts don't matter. And so we in journalism think, oh, well, we'll solve this with facts. And disinformation will be solved with information. Nope. And we don't have the right tools to figure this out. How do you deal with Elon? By naming the people he goes after in a huge publication? No, Walter.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, and I do think it's very interesting that one of the first things Elon did when he took over Twitter was he, you know, published his Twitter files, had Bari Weiss and Mat Tabby go through about all the different ways that Twitter had worked with the federal government, by which it meant, like, responded to some Biden admin emails about taking accounts down that were harassing or impersonating them. And now a major social media platform is going to be a de facto arm of the state. I do think that that's something we're considering far worse than. Yeah, he is. Yeah. And it's very strange now that we have a platform run largely by one man that is trying to be the right hand of the president. I don't think we've ever had that in terms of a social. It's also a platform that, I mean, I'm being neutral.

[Leo Laporte]

He's not the right hand of the president or elect. He is his own man.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, we did have newspapers. I think if you go back to Pulitzer and Hearst, we had media that was similarly powerful. Or Father Coughlin. Coughlin on the radio.

[Leo Laporte]

I think people forgot how dominant Father Coughlin was in the. In the 30s.

[Paris Martineau]

And who is this?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, see, you know, Rachel Maddow did a really good piece on Father Coughlin. It's probably on YouTube. You go back and look at it. I should warn you, if you're an Elon Musk fan, he says she lies. So. But it's historically everything. She also did a podcast.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She did a great podcast.

[Leo Laporte]

She did a podcast about rage.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But he was a demagogue, kind of, you know, the demagogue.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He was a priest on radio who was railing against. He was an anti Semite communist everywhere. Also antisemitic. Right. And he would attack.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. There's also a PBS documentary called on him. Or actually, is it a documentary or an article today? Let's see. Yeah. The Father Coughlin Story, Exploring Hate, A Public Media Initiative. He was the guy. And, you know, it's funny because he was listened to by almost everybody. He had huge power and wielded it, I mean, so irresponsibly.

[Jeff Jarvis]

He was the precursor to McCarthy.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, he. He was pro Nazi. I mean, he was. This was not a good. A good person. He. The only thing that stopped him was the church ordered him off the airwaves in 1942. He died in 1979. He was alive in our lifetime, but fortunately he was silenced. But he was one of the first to use the new medium of radio, and very.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So I came across a great little tidbit this week when I was doing some research for my Linotype book. And. I know, sorry. When I was reading Hannah Iran, she kept on quoting the same book. Well, it turns out it was a. It was a guy who used to set up Hitler's loudspeaker system.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Rallies.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Then he got into the inside of the. I'll put air quotes. Administration. And he was the developer of the People's Radio.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Her thesis was the AV Squad was what enabled Hitler.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah. Basically. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I really liked that, actually, at being a former member of the AV squad. Anyway, I don't. You know, is Musk another Father Coughlin? I guess so, in some ways. Although. So Coughlin had really more sway over the American public than anybody has had ever since.

[Paris Martineau]

So, I mean, I know that Twitter is, comparatively to other bigger social media platforms, a small drop in the public.

[Leo Laporte]

It's 300 million people. It's not.

[Paris Martineau]

But I do think that it's notable that even this week, Elon admitted for the first time something people had known in practice for a bit, that he's purposefully throttling any posts that contain links on Twitter and said it because he doesn't want anybody leaving the website. But I do think that goes back to the point you were saying before about limiting information and making it more difficult for people to figure out what is real or not.

[Leo Laporte]

He finally admitted it. Paul Graham, who I respect and like the founder of Y Combinator, and he says he has 2 million followers. He blasted Twitter's biggest flaw, the deprivation of tweets with links in them. He complained about that on Sunday. Musk's workaround. Hey, no problem. Just write a description in the main post and put a link in the reply. This stops lazy linking. That's what he's against, is lazy.

[Paris Martineau]

A ridiculous request for a modern social media platform that you can't post a link in your post or else it won't get any pickup that you have to apply to it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's happening with Instagram and Facebook too.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, yes, that's. I think this is also part of reason with threads, they don't want links. So I do think this is part of the reason why Blue sky is taking off, is I can post a link to something or a story or something, and people will see it and be able to discuss it. And that's lovely.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I think it makes sense that the Elon's blocking links just because he doesn't want you to click a link and stop reading X. Oh, no, it's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's that because that's news. What you're linking to is generally news. And that's the way to degrade news. Exactly the same thing that's happening on all the better properties. They're doing it as a way to degrade news.

[Paris Martineau]

It's the same sort of line of thought as to why he made that stupid choice where previously when he'd post a link, it would populate as a card that would say the headline of whatever website you're talking about and description. But he got rid of that for some reason. And so all these different news websites changed the way that images displayed on websites like Twitter to include a headline in a description. But then he changed it back to be some tiny little part of it. And it's just. Why are you trying this? To deprioritize the news experience.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, one more X story and then we'll move on. This is kind of an interesting story. So you remember the Onion bought Infowars for about half what. What Infowars was offering. Yeah. Wait, you say Infowars was going to buy infowars? Yeah. So Alex Jones is being forced to sell Infowars in a settlement to the Sandy Hook families, who won a multi billion dollar award. And he's, you know, he's got to sell off all his assets. But interestingly, a consortium of people formed by the products he was selling, I guess offered a considerable amount of money which had basically put it back in his hands. The Onion offered half that, but the parents said, no, no, sell it to the Onion. We like that much better. Well, on Monday, X weighed in. Remember we talked about the fact that they were going to have something to say about this. Elon Musk's lawyers objected to the sale of the Infowars X accounts that would have gone along with the sale. Right, all the, all the X accounts for infowars. Elon Musk said, no, we own those. X owns all the accounts, including ours, including yours, including mine, including Paris's. You do not own your followers. You do not own your account. You do not own anything at all. And actually, as 404 Media points out, this is Jason Keibler writing, that's probably true for all social platforms. They consider your posts their property. That's how they could sell it to AI.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right, but does, but does that, does that presume that you can't, you have no power over it to give it to somebody else?

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, that's it. I mean, when the president, the POTUS account on Twitter @POTUS doesn't belong to Barack Obama. It belongs to whoever the President of the United States is. Or does it? It. No, it turns out it doesn't belong to anybody but X.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I think this is probably what they're trying to do is X had a bit of a side hustle for a bit. I don't know if it's still going on where they're now trying to hawk hot usernames to people. Like if there's dormant accounts that have maybe like a four or five letter username or a one letter username, after a certain point they'll be taken offline and then some people who work at X will go around and try to hawk it to interested buyers for six figures.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Which, by the way, folks, is why you don't want to kill your account. Make it go dormant, do whatever you want. I'm still there, but that's a different discussion. But don't kill it because it'll get taken over. Yeah, can I do one more Leo on this topic? Which is. Yeah, the financial piece of this is just interesting. I was interviewed by the observer, the Guardian observer, and he asked me about the takeover of Twitter. And I said. I was among those who said it was stupid and dumb. But it turned out to be a damn fine investment for Elon Musk because he got to the center of power. Meanwhile, Tesla stock has shot up in far more value. Well, the other thing that happened just now is that Elon is going to give his backers who aren't the center of power. They gave him the money, the 44 billion to buy it. Now he's giving them stock in XAI.

[Leo Laporte]

And which is currently valued in the billions. Right, right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's calling this a windfall for them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, there you go. See, it was smart to invest in Elon's acquisition of Twitter.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Good move.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. I.

[Paris Martineau]

All right, I guess while we're on the subject, similar but different. I found it really interesting this week because last week we talked about how Blue sky has, according to some metrics, now a highly daily active user number than Threads. And I guess Threads was paying attention and Meta was paying attention because over the last week they've now rolled out two copycat or announced that they're going to copycat two features from Blue Sky. One, the ability to have custom feeds or opt into a default chronological feed on threads and two starter packs where you can put together a list of people to automatically have somebody follow. I think it's just very interesting that it feels like Meta has over the last decade or two taken most of its most popular features from other apps like Stories and Instagram.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So it's a skill, it's a talent, it's a feature. By the way, Paris, what was the method you said last week for how we cook? It was broken at the time, but it came back up. How you can find out what Clear Sky.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, tell me about that. What is that?

[Paris Martineau]

So Clearsky app, if you pull it up, this is something just built by a third party guy that has been down for quite some time. It ostensibly shows you on top the top people who've been blocked or are blocking someone on Blue Sky. But if you put in your account name there, so I'll put in Paris nyc, it will show me. Well, it one shows you who I'm blocking and who I've been blocked by. But there's also a thing on there on the side that says lists and you can click on the lists and it will show you what lists you on include starter packs.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You only block three people.

[Leo Laporte]

You're a nice person.

[Jeff Jarvis]

A nice person. But what she's blocked by, there's also blocking.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, she is on quite a Few lists including.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. More. That's a long list of lists.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paris.

[Paris Martineau]

I've been gaining fall. I mean I since last week have gained 7,000 followers and I congratulate.

[Leo Laporte]

I gotta see. Can I enter Maya? Am I allowed to mine?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, but you need to figure out if you have a bluesky social handle, then you need to enter the whole thing, whatever it is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, he has a. He has a.

[Paris Martineau]

Then just enter in what your username is.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's Leolaport me, I guess. Right.

[Paris Martineau]

But the thing is anybody can look this up. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. It's public. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's my little image at the top.

[Paris Martineau]

You're only blocking Martin Shkreli, which I think is very funny. Leah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Very well.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't even know. I mean, I mean like that is silly. Let's see if I'm blocked by anybody. I don't post very much.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean you have there. So if you saw on the first few people. Blocking is a thing, a big thing. On Blue sky, if you saw when ClearSky app came up, it shows you the top blockers on the website and it's become a bit of a race for people to see who can have more because it shows you the top five blockers. The number one right now is this person named Palomar who has blocked 408,000 people.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I saw him on your list as it went by at Paris. Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, yes, because he's blocked most of Blue Sky.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Brianna.

[Leo Laporte]

Who is in the top most blocked is Brianna Wu. Yeah, yeah. Brianna's iconoclastic.

[Paris Martineau]

Iconoclastic. But it also show you in the last 24 hours and you can see because libs of tick tock just joined. They've been the number one blocked in the last 24 hours.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah. So this is using the API. I guess this is all legit, right? This is secret information.

[Paris Martineau]

It's a very technically difficult thing to pull off, especially lists because right now I believe I'm probably going to describe this wrong because I'm not savvy in this. But the only way to determine if a user is on a list is you literally just have to check every list and then do the equivalent of control F to see if their name is on it. So since bluesky now has like 20 million plus people, this it took them like a week or two to pull up to get all this information back together. Because there are so many lists and people.

[Leo Laporte]

I want graphs. I want to know if you're blocked by more than you're blocking or like that. Let's see how many lists I'm on 100 lists, which is. I'm pretty happy about that. I might have to post more on Blue Sky. You are also on 100 list, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm on 100.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I think it might just tap out at 100.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it does. Yeah. Yeah. 100 is the highest.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The frustrating thing is I wish I could click on that list and go to the list to see who else is on it, which is why I want to do it instead. It just takes you to the person.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you're on blockenheimer.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, some lists. Some lists are there to be to block everyone on that list.

[Paris Martineau]

You know, there are block lists on Blue sky as well. Lists of people to block. And then you can just auto block all of them. Them. They also have accounts that are specific labelers which I haven't really gotten into, but it'll be things like you could subscribe to a labeler and that it'll auto label certain things like news accounts from this bent or that bent or people that are tech versus non tech. It's very interesting.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So let me just say one more. So if I go. If you, Leo, go back up and click on one of the lists. Any list doesn't matter.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, I moved it to me.

[Jeff Jarvis]

How do we get to the starter kit?

[Leo Laporte]

I am on Bonnie's starter pack, but I guess I can only go to Bonnie.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Bonnie. So how do you then find out where the starter pack is?

[Paris Martineau]

To go to that, basically what you need to do is you need to click. No, you need to click their username on that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

And then look at Bonnie's at. Yeah, if you click their at, it'll pull up their profile and then it shows starter packs on your profile.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, and this is interesting. She is requested to obscure records from unauthenticated users. Now I can authenticate because I just haven't. I wasn't logged in on this page. So.

[Paris Martineau]

So essentially there's a setting that you can have on bluesky that says, I don't want my posts shown outside of Blue Sky.

[Leo Laporte]

And so now I'm logged in.

[Paris Martineau]

So then if you click starter pack list.

[Leo Laporte]

Starter pack. Yeah, there it is. There's Bonnie's starter pack.

[Paris Martineau]

And then also she has a list that you're maybe on as well. Like. Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And is it nice? Leo is there next to the Onion.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm next to the Onion and right above Stephen Colbert.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Colbert. Ryan Reynolds. You are in good company.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a good list. I'm gonna follow this list. These are good people.

[Jeff Jarvis]

George.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm also looking at a list from someone named why Marner. And you are? There's an editor for something called Midas Touch, then you and then Chuds of TikTok.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm one of the chuds, I think. What's a chud?

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's a chud?

[Leo Laporte]

Never mind.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Why? Mariner Consoles, starter pack. I'm not sure I want to be in that group. I don't know. It depends what a CHUD is.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground dwellers.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I'd say it's like. It's like a loser, I'd say. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So his list is of losers?

[Paris Martineau]

No. I mean, no, that's not the list name. That was just an account called Chuds of Tick Tock.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I see. He's following. I see.

[Paris Martineau]

Chuds of TikTok is in the list. Yeah, you're in the right.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm right above chud.

[Paris Martineau]

You're right above Chuds of TikTok. Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Chuds of TikTok is an independent journalist covering conspiracy, politics, history, extremism, corruption and more. An account, according to Newsweek, often critical of conservatives. BJ Novak. I like that. This. This is a good bunch of people too. I like this one. Ryan Reynolds on all of these.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You ought to follow that one. Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

I like this one. Following all of them. This is one of the nice things about Blue sky. When you do that, you get, you know, a lot of good things. I have a post I'm going to put up. I have to get in a car and drive over to a restaurant because they. For some reason it's next door to a drive through. And for some reason at the end of the drive through it says exit only and then an X. And I thought that might make a really good.

[Paris Martineau]

That's really good. That's a good. That's a good post.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't tell anybody. That's going to be my next post. I have to make a trip over.

[Paris Martineau]

You heard it here first, guys.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do you have to go through the drive through and order something?

[Leo Laporte]

No, I can. I can go to. Just go to the exit and take a picture of it. I wish I had when I was there. I wasn't. It came to me later. I should make that a post. But see, and again, I'm going to give you a. A little nudge. If I go to Microblog and I make that post there, it not only posts on my blog, on the Microblog blog, but also on Threads, Blue sky and Mastodon. So I'm telling You. I love microblog. You should do that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm planning to do it. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

It's posse, right?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Post once, syndicate everywhere. I don't know what the second S is. All right, time for a break. And then we're going to do what I like so much to do, which is Scooter X's changelog.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And then drive kicking and screaming.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we need to get a little.

[Paris Martineau]

Icon of Scooter X in the Changelog video.

[Leo Laporte]

His icon is just like an octopus, a red octopus.

[Paris Martineau]

We just have an octopus in there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Scooter X is hydraulic.

[Leo Laporte]

Is he Hydra. What is his? Why is that? What is his. What is that? It's an octopus with a skull.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hydra.

[Paris Martineau]

It's Hydra.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Marvel. Explain yourself, Scooter.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's a Marvel thing. You just wouldn't understand. Yes, okay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's okay, Leo. It's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

I saw a Marvel movie once, actually. It was a good one. It was Black Panther. I loved that. That, that was a great movie. But I haven't seen any others since then. Our show today, brought to you by. And again, Scooter exchange log coming up. And you each pick your story because I. There's so many stories in here. So many of them. Like Hank Green plugging your book, Jeff.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, I want to brag about that. We haven't even shown our. Our social realm pictures yet. That's something to stay on.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Oh, see photos of me and Jeff irl dressed all fancy in.

[Leo Laporte]

In black tie. Wow. Well, we got.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Tie is black, but.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, that's nice.

[Leo Laporte]

That counts. Our show, you're listening to and watching this week in Google with Jeff Jarvis and Paris Martineau. And our sponsor for this segment is the great Cash Fly. We. We are literally brought to you by Cash Fly, not just as a sponsorship, but. But Cashfly is our content Delivery Network. Our CDN. For over 20 years, CashFly has held the track record for high performing ultra reliable content Delivery serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries, including, by the way, us. And one of the reasons we love it is because its servers are closer to you wherever you are in the world. So you get our shows faster without interruption. It's just a great solution. And Cash Fly, by the way, is prepped for the holidays better than ever before. It's the only CDN built for throughput. Okay, that's good for the holidays. It's good all year round. They do ultra low latency video streaming, which is pretty impressive. Video delivered to over a million concurrent users with latency of less than a second. Okay. That's pretty good for your holiday efforts. Oh, do you do gaming? Lightning fast gaming delivers downloads faster with zero lag, glitches or outages. So it's a great solution for gaming companies. Any company that serves images on the Internet, including ours, loves Cash Flies Mobile Content Optimization, which automatically optimizes your images so your site will load faster on any size screen. One of the things that made a big difference to us with Cash Fly is their flexible month to month billing. We weren't sure 20 years ago when we started using Cash Fly, we weren't sure. You know, our bandwidth was real spiky. How much bandwidth should we buy all of that? Well, it worked out really nicely because they offered us flexible terms and we were able to figure it out. So you can get flexible month to month billing for as long as you need to to figure it out and then once you know what you need, you get discounted for fixed terms. The point is, you design your own contract when you switch to Cash Fly. Now some news from Cash Fly. A couple of new features they're happy to announce, including managed Object storage. Cashfly is a new object storage solution designed to increase speed and reliability to industry leading levels. Get this, the hardware is entirely NVMe, so it's really well suited to, you know, users with a large number of small objects, which is probably almost everybody. It's still completely S3 compatible. It'll easily integrate into your cache fly moss S3 or other tool set you've designed. There's no this. I love this. There's no cost for egress or ingress, it's just a flat volume fee. Plus, Cash Fly is happy to announce a brand new pop in Vienna. Not Vienna, Virginia. Austria's capital city Vienna. Central Europe should see significant performances in latency and average transfer speed. In fact, let us know if you're getting better results downloading our files in Vienna. Reseller features added to the portal. You can now be classified as a reseller. Great for MSPs. Have numerous full accounts under your reseller account, each of which can operate independently while billing remains centralized. So that's nice. I think these guys are real innovators in this space and we were really thrilled when they came to us and said hey, we'd love to host your content. We've been with them for almost 20 years now. CashFly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content in their cloud. We've been doing that for some time now. Which means it's 100% cash hit ratio, which is fantastic. And with Cashflies Elite managed packages, you're going to get VIP treatment. Your dedicated account manager will be with you from day one, which ensures a smooth implementation and then reliable 24. 7 support when you need it. Learn how you can get your first month [e-mail], you've heard me say it for years. Bandwidth for this week in Google is brought to you by Cashfly at Cachefly. Thank you, Cash Fly. Thank you. All right, you want to see pictures of Jeff and Paris all dressed up. They got papped, but they're on Getty Images. Oh, that's a cute shot.

[Paris Martineau]

You two sharing about cats? Maybe. I don't know, something.

[Leo Laporte]

Tell us where this was. What was the event?

[Paris Martineau]

It was at the Glass House, a building I know nothing about other than that it's called the Glass House, and it's really inconvenient. Yeah, it was very far away from any subway or things like that. But we were there for the Committee to Protect Journalists Press Freedom Awards.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's great.

[Paris Martineau]

And John Oliver was the mc. Jessica Lesson of the Information was the event chair. And three or four different journalists got awards for various great things they've done, impressive works of journalism or impeccable careers.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's an image that's not from Getty, so we can show it. I probably shouldn't have shown those other ones. There you are on the step and. What is it? Stepping forward.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Step and repeat.

[Leo Laporte]

Step and repeat. And this is kind of cool. This is the whole information team.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, you can see Jeff's shadow down there at the bottom. Because he took this photo.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, that's. That's his head.

[Paris Martineau]

I. We were looking for someone to take the photo. I was like, oh, wait, Jeff's here.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's funny. They had to step and repeat, but no photographer.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, well, I mean, they had photographers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Roaming, but he was busy taking.

[Leo Laporte]

And. And there's your founder, by the way, Jessica. We want to give some credit to Jessica Lesson, who founded the Information. Took a big chance, really, on a. On a no advertising fee only news site. It was. And it was expensive. $400 a month. A year.

[Paris Martineau]

And a year, not a month.

[Leo Laporte]

And I joined immediately because, you know, I know Jessica and Sam, and I think they're great people. They've both been on our shows, and I knew that Jessica would do a good job. I didn't know how good a job. This has been a huge success. And of course, they hired a very talented reporter for the weekend named Paris Martineau. I love that. What a great. That's a great photo. Good job, Jeff.

[Paris Martineau]

Lovely time.

[Leo Laporte]

Next time, get your silhouette out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I tried to. I was doing that.

[Paris Martineau]

No, it was very difficult. No one could really get. They had really intense lights on. It was clearly meant for a professional camera. It wasn't great, but they. Throughout John Oliver's little set, throughout the night, he kept making fun of Google, which really made me laugh because they were trying to.

[Leo Laporte]

What, this wasn't a Google event?

[Paris Martineau]

No, no. They were trying to raise money. And Google had a table which was right near the front. And so John Oliver, as he was trying to kind of get the crowd to donate money and agree, he was like trying to get someone to donate $50,000, like anybody from Google. Google. Are you going to do that? What about $25,000? 5001. And kept all night ribbing the Google employees and then at the end had to read off. And now for the Google sponsored cocktail hour.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, boy. I love it.

[Paris Martineau]

But I thought it was very funny.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he's a funny, funny guy. I used to listen to his podcast. No, I watch Wasig tonight, but he's been doing that for 10 years. Before that, he did something called the Bugle.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Wait.

[Paris Martineau]

With Andy Zaltzman.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it was a hysterical podcast.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, if you're an Andy Zoltzman fan, Leo, may I recommend a show that I've already recommended you before called Taskmaster, but this most recent season, which was. Zaltzman is on it and he is Unchained. I cannot recommend it enough. He's in perfect form.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I will definitely watch it and go back and listen to the old Bugle episodes. I'm sure they're still. Because he and Oliver Bugle. Yeah, he still does it, but he was. It was him.

[Paris Martineau]

And he spends the entire time of Taskmaster, which, like, is five days of shooting, then like 10 episodes in studio in a full. Cricket whites. And then in studio he has other wacky costumes. He's like, like dressed as a Roman soldier, a wizard, a whole thing.

[Leo Laporte]

What is his real job? Is he a reporter? What is he? What does he do?

[Paris Martineau]

I think he's a comedian.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, maybe he's a comedian podcast.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, something like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen, your patience was now going to be rewarded because it's time.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You know, you've been waiting, you know, you've been hanging, calling in the kids, calling in grandma. It's time.

[Paris Martineau]

Get the whole family in for our.

[Leo Laporte]

Favorite Scooter X's of the show, Google Changelog.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Come On John. There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, I put this one in and I don't think. I kind of regret it. Google Labs has a new AI generative AI tool called Gen Chess Labs. Google.labs.google/, Gen Chess. I'll choose my Google account. And now I can make a classic chess set inspired by cheese.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Good.

[Leo Laporte]

So it does. It does. The pieces in the. Now see, they're all cheddar. That's not good. Let's do this one. Ice cream. I saw that one once and I thought that was quite good because there's all different flavors. The cheese. Apparently there's only one kind of cheese, Velveeta, but there you go. You got mint chocolate chip, you got pep. Pep. I don't know what. Strawberry.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's, that's, that's just about.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And chocolate.

[Paris Martineau]

Pistachio maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

That's pistachio. Yeah. And you can even edit it. You can go in here and say hi. That should look different. I can regenerate it. I don't know what you do with it. I don't know why you do it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Try Bauhaus. Try Bauhaus.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Bauhaus. That's interesting. Here's ice cream versus hot chocolate, which would be. Oh, now that's a chess set I'd like to play with. Yummy, yummy, yummy. Now we can play chess. Ice cream versus hot chocolate. It. Oops, I pushed the button too fast. Let's move my strawberry flavored pawn two squares forward. Oh, he's playing the Peroni's defense. I don't know. I don't know what he's up to. Let's. He likes moving his knight an awful lot.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Squares.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I know, it's terrible. It's a terrible chess set. I would never. I would never want to use this chess set, but I do like it. The hot ice cream's going to beat hot chocolate. We're going to make them melt until they melt.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right? Exactly. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Can you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

In the style, Picasso?

[Leo Laporte]

You can't. You know what? It seems like it's better than it is. I just want to.

[Paris Martineau]

That's AI's whole deal.

[Leo Laporte]

I just want to say that. How do I get.

[Paris Martineau]

It's the two year anniversary of Chat GPT this week and I think that's a great.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paris Martineau]

In the last week. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Picasso, huh? All right.

[Paris Martineau]

Okay. I did do a. Make a creative chess set inspired by Cryptids and it came up with some. I mean, they're not all Cryptids, but some of them are good.

[Leo Laporte]

Please try a different prompt. See, he doesn't like the name. What was yours? Bauhaus.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Because? Because I put it in the. In the chat. Bauhaus had a famous chess set.

[Leo Laporte]

Chess design. Okay, but let's see if this is the Bauhaus chess set. Well, it's very angular.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it's not.

[Leo Laporte]

No. Let's look at the official Bauhaus chess set.

[Paris Martineau]

Do a make a creative chess set inspired by Christmas.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this in notion?

[Paris Martineau]

Turned out quite well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Just search for Bauhaus chess.

[Leo Laporte]

Sent me a notion link. Oh, here.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look at this. Oh, this is beautiful. It's Etsy.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So the point is that this shows the. Yeah, that shows what? The part does the X. Oh, you see?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. The bishop moves as an X. That's the only one. Oh, the knight does the knight shows as well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what, those Bauhaus were really smart. Yeah, but that's not the only Google change log. Oh no, that was enough, Leo.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That was plenty.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it was. I think it was more than enough. Google's. Oh, wait a minute. He just sent me the same one. Scooter, let me find another one. Oh, the. By the way, we've got some holiday. Just briefly as an intermezzo, some holiday badges from Joe Esposito.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, thank you, Joe.

[Leo Laporte]

May your turkey be free of moral panic, says Jeff Jarvis. I say I'm putting extra alfhog in my stuffing.

[Paris Martineau]

That one's really good.

[Leo Laporte]

And Paris says, baste your ham with plenty of nihilism.

[Paris Martineau]

Good work, beautiful.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Joe Esposito. You're the best.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You're the sticker man.

[Paris Martineau]

You're the man.

[Leo Laporte]

And now for the Google sponsored cocktail hour. No, I'm going back in time to try to find Scooter X's. He Scooter put him in so long ago.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I mean it. When we originally talked about it, it was a minute minute ago.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, there's a Google Black Friday sale. Are you excited about. Does anybody do Black Friday anymore? That's Friday and nobody. I don't hear anybody talking about it.

[Paris Martineau]

Amazon, Everybody does Black Friday like the whole week. Basically.

[Leo Laporte]

Google's Black Friday sale features record low prices on Pixel Nest and more. And you know, if you want to buy one of those old Pixel tablets, we'd be glad to sell it to you for nothing. All right, so it's pretty. It's a $200 20% off.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's good. There's the tablet, the Pro XL.

[Leo Laporte]

I spent 400 on that Pixel tablet. You can get it now for 279 everywhere, Amazon Best Buy and even at Google. Don't by the way, the Pixel watch, 280 bucks. That seems a little high. Yeah. Anyway, you'll find them all on the Verge or at the Google Store. Oh my God. Scooter X has done a massive dump of changelog stories. Here's the full list of Gemini extensions and what they can do. Gemini extensions give access to first and third party apps. So Google Flights, Google Home, Google Hotels, Google Maps, Google Workspace. Oh, you don't want to use Google. How about openstacks, utilities, YouTube, YouTube, music, WhatsApp, phone messages and Spotify? Coming soon. So you go to the Gemini app, you tap your profile photo, you select extensions and you can toggle those on. So the list is actually built into the app. So there you go. Google is going to enhance now playing on the Pixel and tweaks the home screen icon. We don't have to go into more depth. I think that speaks for itself. Google TV gets major Roku channel update with new features and more free channels. Again, speaks for itself. Now I am an Nvidia Shield user so I'm going to pay attention to this one. There is a new Nvidia Shield TV available. Update available. But it might cause Google Home issues. But that's okay because I don't really care. So security enhancements for 4K DRM content playback. Support for parental controls in the French language, which is where parental controls should always be. How my parents used to speak in French when they didn't want me to understand what they were talking about. So maybe that's for them. It is only being unable.

[Paris Martineau]

You shouldn't speak French. It seems wrong. It seems wrong language.

[Leo Laporte]

In Chateau de Matante. What else? Google Photos gets navigation redesign on the web with collections. Google iOS app now injects this is actually not a feature. This is a bad thing. Google's iOS app now injects links on third party websites that go back to search.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's a no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Not not cool. Google not cool. You don't want to inject anything on other people's websites. Google calls them page annotations. The feature, as Google explains it extracts interesting entities from the web page and highlights them in line. Effectively, it creates links on a website that you've opened through Google's browser. The website owner did not put there the links when clicked to perform a search. On Google, it's just artificial intelligence at work. You're going to love it. Good reason not to use Chrome if you were even thinking about it. The Google Developer program is now well, could be now as much as $299 a year. They're offering a premium tier there. It is a free program, but if you want more, you can pay for it. And there's a whole explanation of what's the difference between standard and premium that I can't I really be bothered to tell you. Google Maps now lets you report police instead of just speed traps.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's what the popo on Waze, it says, police.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a popo, right? Mostly it'll be speed traps, but Scooter X says if someone who has an allergy. As someone who has a stair allergy. Oh, it's a Scooter X. This is good. Google Maps now does a better job of highlighting stairs. Actually, that is useful if people.

[Paris Martineau]

Wheelchair users.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you know, if you're getting walking directions, it will let you know that, oh, this one has some stairs. I think that's a really good idea. I do like that. Why is Brave opening? Make Brave faster. No, I don't want to make Brave anything. I guess I must have made on Windows Weekly earlier. I made Brave my default browser app by accident. Google Calendar rolls out full Google Task integration on Android. Oh, what time is it? Gemini app for Android. What? No, I already said that one.

[Paris Martineau]

Gemini.

[Leo Laporte]

Gemini app for Android and iOS users is now rolling out to Google Workspace users. Congratulations, Jeff. Jiminy's with you. And that is Scooter X. Google change law.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Send your complaints to Scooter X.

[Leo Laporte]

Send your complaints. Scooter X. Here's one more little thing from Joe Esposito. A little, you know, we like you. We want to talk about it. We love you. If you join Club Twit, make it a lot more fun. Be part of the tech enthusiast community. The best tech enthusiast community around, apparently. I am Indiana Jones. I'm a gymnast, and I'm Michael Jackson. Are you tired of tech coverage that focuses on outrage and clickbait? Do you want to help grow a network of hosts and shows that prioritize spreading light instead of just generating heat? Then join us. That's my new slogan, by the way. Way all the light, none of the heat.

[Paris Martineau]

You're doing a great pose there. As a gymnast, I think this.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know where he found these pictures of me because it really looks like I'm straining and I'm kind of a little heavy, a little hefty in there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And that's amazing you can hold yourself up like that. What strain.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not easy. What you don't see in this still Picture is my arms are shaking like mad.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, that's why. That's the beauty of photography.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. You miss. You miss the vibrational stuff. Well, that's. Thank you, Scooter X for a fabulous change login. Thank you, Mr. Joe Esposito for a lovely bunch of pictures, images and stickers and posters.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. I said I would let you guys pick some stories and I will do that in just a moment. You're listening to this Week in Google. Is that right? Is that the name of the show? Wait a minute, let me check. Oh, yeah. This Week in Google. No one knows why we named it that.

[Paris Martineau]

We talked about Google today.

[Leo Laporte]

We did quite a bit.

[Jeff Jarvis]

We did.

[Leo Laporte]

Just did a whole changelog. Right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Better than this Week in Musk.

[Leo Laporte]

Black Friday week is here and so are amazing deals at Amazon. You'll save so much on early holiday beauty gifts like hair care, makeup and skincare. You'll have money left over to get your sister that ring light for her makeup tutorial.

[Paris Martineau]

Hit that subscribe button.

[Leo Laporte]

Or waterproof mascara for that one cousin that makes you laugh till you cry during the family photo shoot.

[Paris Martineau]

Say cheese.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, what fun it is to save. Black Friday week is here with deals up to 35% off. It's better over here. After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and AT&T. @T mobile.com keepandswitch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service ported 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required card has no cash access and expires in six months. By the way, Elon, I'm sorry. Eric Schmidt it from the New York Post. This just in. Ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns perfect AI girlfriends could worsen loneliness for young men. Thought you'd like to know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You crypto incel boys better watch out of.

[Leo Laporte]

Better watch out. You incels.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Hi. And Kevin Roos.

[Paris Martineau]

I think AI can have them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I am a little puzzled why Eric Schmidt decided to weigh in on this. He has a bunch. Maybe he's lonely. He.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, he tends not to be.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, maybe that's it. He doesn't need a perfect.

[Paris Martineau]

He said this during his podcast with Scott Galloway.

[Leo Laporte]

I wasn't going to say that name.

[Jeff Jarvis]

God, no.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Slowly I turn step by step.

[Jeff Jarvis]

That's a reference that no one in this audience knows.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you see that? He claims that he makes $10 million a year on the Professor G show.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, oh. Just. Just. Just poke a hot stick up my rear end.

[Leo Laporte]

Joe. Do not make a sticker out of that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No. Oh, God, please do it, Joe.

[Paris Martineau]

Please do make a flash game, though. Please do make a splash game, man. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, wow.

[Jeff Jarvis]

God. Oh, Lord.

[Paris Martineau]

All right, I got to justice.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, it is time for Paris Martin's story of the week.

[Paris Martineau]

Are you guys holding space for a little song called Defying Gravity? So this is what this week?

[Leo Laporte]

Is this from Wicked, the song?

[Paris Martineau]

So these, the two people. Yes, it's from Wicked, which recently came out in a movie. And the two actresses who play the main characters have been having the most baffling press tour, which I think can be best explained by this short clip from one of their most recent videos, where a simple question, frankly, a weird question from the interviewer gets an even weirder response from Ariana Grande.

[Leo Laporte]

And Ariana Grande, who plays the pink person and Glinda. Yeah, Glinda and Elphaba, the. The witch. What? Who's the actress playing her? I feel bad for them because. That's right. Yeah. They have to go around dressed in pink and green for all of these interviews.

[Paris Martineau]

Frankly, I think they're choosing that. They also said in a different interview I watched that they got like six tattoos, each representing their characters before.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no. Did that. Did no one tell him tattoos are permanent?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. And someone. She was like, yeah. We were showing them to the director and he was like, wow, it's bold of you to get these before you see what the final cut of the movie looks like. And they're like, we just.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Or the rocks office.

[Paris Martineau]

So much. Wait. But you can see. I would describe it as the most theater kid energy anyone has ever produced is what Cynthia and Ariana are producing here. So let's watch this clip.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's just watch this clip I've seen this week.

[Paris Martineau]

People are taking the lyrics of Defying Gravity and really holding space with that and feeling power in that. I didn't know that that was happening. I've seen it. Yeah, that's really powerful. Yeah, that's what I wanted.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

And then Ariana holds her middle fingers on her middle finger. I don't know how widespread, but, you know, I am in Qu Media, so that's my cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I've seen.

[Paris Martineau]

It's just this week a truly baffling.

[Leo Laporte]

30 seconds, I think. I think, honestly that Cynthia does not have. Does not know what to Say in Ariana Grande by grabbing her middle finger, which has, by the way, a 3 inch long nail fingernail on it says it all.

[Paris Martineau]

And it's just. It's just a video that I could watch again and again because two of two just baffling. Three baffling responses from human beings. One, what does I hear people are really holding space for? The lyrics of Defying Gravity mean.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, in their hearts and in their.

[Paris Martineau]

Souls, in their hearts, in their lives. I mean, it's just baffling.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yes.

[Paris Martineau]

And then that's what I wanted is a wild response for it, as if she wrote the song or the musical.

[Leo Laporte]

So let me just. We can't play Defying Gravity, but I can give you a dramatic reading of it if you'd like. And maybe you can hold space for it.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it starts with Glinda speaking. Elphaba, why couldn't you have stayed calm for once instead of flying off the handle? I hope you're happy. I hope you're happy now I hope you're happy how you've hurt your cause forever, I think Hope you think you're clever. I hope you're happy I hope. Now Elphaba says, I hope you're happy too. I hope you're proud. How you would grovel in submission to feel your own ambition. So then together they sing so though I can't imagine how I hope you're happy now. Then Glinda says, elfie, listen to me, Just say you're sorry. You could still be with the wizard. Oh, was she with the wizard? What you've worked and waited for. You can have all you ever wanted. I know but I don't want it no, I can't want it anymore Something has changed within me Something is not the same I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game Too late for second guessing Too late to go back to sleep. It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap.

[Paris Martineau]

And then she's going to be.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, finally we get to the reason for the whole song. It's time to try Defying Gravity, I think. So does she fly?

[Paris Martineau]

She's on a broom. And it like on the stage production, she's lifted up off the stage into the air and it's kind of big, you know, moment. But people apparently. I think she was interviewed by the New York Times. This went. This video went super viral because it was baffling and it is the showstopper.

[Leo Laporte]

In act one, right?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Which is the end of the first movie, basically, because it's two movies.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. The movie ends at act one.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah, yeah. It's a two parter.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But act one is like just a setup.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So she fly. They fly off in their brooms and that's it.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I don't know. I didn't see it, but I assume it ends with defying gravity.

[Leo Laporte]

Now I gotta tell you, on Broadway, and I saw the Broadway you probably did too. It was Christian Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, better known as Phenomenal.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

What did John Dervolter call her? And those two, I mean, I'm sure they brought that to life. I don't know how Cynthia Rebo and Ariana Grande did.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Who did this interview with him.

[Leo Laporte]

It was the. Out. Out.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It was out. New York Times.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, it was out.

[Paris Martineau]

As she. As she says in the clip, she's in queer media, which you can tell based on her hair that she is in queer media. But Madison Malone Kercher at the New York Times did an interview with the interviewer asking how this happened.

[Leo Laporte]

Holding.

[Paris Martineau]

She interviewed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. What does that mean?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paris Martineau]

And she said, I had just seen that date. Toni Morrison from Glass. Define gravity and really holding space with that and feeling power in that.

[Leo Laporte]

And then of course, Cynthia Rivo just all choked up.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. And I guess the context for this is apparently this interview had taken place just after the election. So she saw people posting the lyrics of, you know, defying gravity to say like, you know, we're, I guess all in this together.

[Leo Laporte]

Does anybody wonder what Kamala's doing after the election?

[Jeff Jarvis]

This is actually old, but it's for.

[Leo Laporte]

But a driveline is easier. And do it brine for 24. But 48 hours is best if you can. If you have the time. Make sure you guys getting a fresh turkey. Yes.

[Jeff Jarvis]

For being delivered.

[Leo Laporte]

So just little. Okay, fine. That's fine.

[Paris Martineau]

Now we know acceptable dry brine.

[Leo Laporte]

Dry brine.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm doing a wet Brian. But that's all right.

[Leo Laporte]

Let us give some credit to Mr. Jeff Jarvis on that because he is getting name checked.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There was a wonderful brothers Hank Green.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And at the end he did a bibliography.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's. Let's go back.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Change his clothes there. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Are infinite lies. As you're doing the work to try and get everything right. A grifter on reels has run a couple of around you. So they have that advantage, but they also have a disadvantage, which is that the things that they are saying aren't true. And as we get better at not letting social media cast spells on Our brains as we always went back a little too far. But the folks with the better information do tend to win out. Yay. Eventually. The question is how long the space between the Reformation and the Enlightenment was not quick.

[Paris Martineau]

Hey, this seems like the. Jeff.

[Leo Laporte]

This seems important to me that this path here be a lot shorter than that.

[Jeff Jarvis]

So let's focus on what's gonna happen.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll see you on Tuesday. A bibliography for the end of this video. This was video is heavily inspired by and informed by Jeff Jarvis Gutenberg parenthesis. Very interesting and I would suggest it to anyone. I also pulled a lot.

[Paris Martineau]

Yay.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I was so happy. I was so honored.

[Paris Martineau]

Wow. And you're the first one peripherally was.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Informed as is as he's going through the whole. A bunch of the whole video. Yeah, I said that.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's probably the. Yeah, I mean he. The things he was saying and that's why I played a little bit of that were really from your book. And by the way, the Green brothers are amazing.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The best.

[Leo Laporte]

They are novelists. Very successful novelists. Very successful YouTubers. 3.82 million subscribers. That's a good plus.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They. And they do. They spread education and truth.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You know what? I have huge respect for them.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They're the best.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, often I say bad things about YouTube influencers and something but that. But these guys are the real antidote.

[Paris Martineau]

And Hank Green is a very competent Dungeons and Dragons player. He's been on my favorite show, Dimension 20.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Really?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah. We should get them on our show. Should we?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, that would be wonderful.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you think, John Ashley? Is that doable or is that too. Too big a stretch for us?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Anything is possible.

[Leo Laporte]

Just say that the author of the Gutenberg parenthesis would like to return the favor and have them on his really big show.

[Jeff Jarvis]

There you go.

[Paris Martineau]

Honestly, I think that's a good pitch. Jeff, you should ask. Ask him if he wants to come on.

[Leo Laporte]

You could also say, you know, Jeff Jarvis is a well known speaker at the Commonwealth Club. He's. He's in fact speaking coming up next Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club 5:30pm in San Francisco talking about the web. We weave his new book the title of the talk how we reclaim the Internet. You can be there in person. I would recommend it. But if you can't be there in person, you can get online tickets as well at Jeff Jackson.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Just Google Commonwealth Club and Jeff Jarvis and you will find it. And please, I don't want an empty room. It's so embarrassing.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you know what? It's on Them, not you. If they don't promote it, it's just.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Like selling books now. It's all on us. Yeah, that book, I found it in two Barnes and Nobles and I saw single copies.

[Leo Laporte]

Somebody sent me a picture of Hank's book at the local bookstore here in Petaluma and somebody, probably Hank, had turned it facing out. So I was very pleased.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You can thank Burke for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Burke did that? Oh, that's right. I was looking in the wrong place. It was in the slack. Burke saw it. Burke is one of our few employees who actually goes to the bookstore. And there it is right next to.

[Paris Martineau]

It's because he needs things to cut apart with his lunches.

[Leo Laporte]

My mom called me. She'll be 92 in a couple of months. My 92 year old mom called me. She said. I said, have you read. Because Hank calls out his grandma and ravioli. Have you read the book yet? She said, oh no. So she called me last night, she said it's really good. He's a writer. I said, yeah, mom, it's a New York Times bestseller. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he isn't speaking at the Commonwealth Club, so there.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And I'm sorry, I misspoke. It was Kevin.

[Leo Laporte]

Kevin. Well, whoever. One of our employees, whoever it is, gets a bonus. A bonus free copy of Hex book. Our Christmas party, or what do you call it? Holiday get together gathering. Next week.

[Jeff Jarvis]

A place where.

[Paris Martineau]

Are we not allowed to say party anymore?

[Leo Laporte]

You can't say Christmas anymore.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, you could say holiday party.

[Leo Laporte]

Holiday gathering. Well, it's going to be in a local tiki bar this year, so that'll be fun.

[Paris Martineau]

That's fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Jeff, did you have a. I've. I probably stole your story, but do you have a story this week that you'd like to talk about?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No. What I thought I would do instead is given. And I'm going to plug again. Given that this is. We're recording this the night before Thanksgiving. Yes, given that in my book.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's do a little reading, shall we?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no, no. I have a thank you note to the Internet. So I thought I would like to hear the three of you say something.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, what we're thankful for.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thankful for the Internet, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Do you want me to start? I'll start. Let me start because I know what the answer is. Because as somebody who worked in broadcast radio and television for almost 50, more than 50 years, when AM radio went belly up, when tech TV went belly up, I realized that I didn't need a big old transmitter and an FCC license to do the stuff that we love to do, to talk about technology, to help people understand technology, to empower people with technology. And back in 2004 and 2005, I realized all I need is the Internet. So for 20 years, the Internet has been feeding me and my family. So I'm very grateful to the fact that I can distribute what we do. We can distribute over the Internet, and we don't need a gatekeeper to help us do that. And I think, really, when I look at somebody like my son Saul, Hank, and so many people on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram Reels, the Internet has given people a voice that when I was starting out, you had to beg and plead to somebody who owned a radio station or TV station or newspaper to get your voice heard. And that's just changed 100%. And I think that is a very positive. You know, we talk a lot about the negatives, but that is a very positive thing that's happened in our world. And I'm very. I'm, as a beneficiary, I'm very grateful and I'm very happy that that exists for so many people like my son.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, I think my thankful thing for the Internet, the thing I'm thankful for is something similar. I guess it's the power of social networks. I think I owe my last two jobs that I've gotten to Twitter. Tweeting out that I was looking for a job is how I got the last handful of job offers I ended up getting. And that wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a platform of people who care about technology and tech news that had chosen to follow me on these sites. And I've been thinking with this a lot with bluesky over the last couple of weeks, which I'm thankful for, the ability to rediscover my love of posting again. I feel like I went there quite a few years where I was going hard on posting on Twitter. I loved it, but then I got a bit burnt out of it. The whole pandemic, you know, everything that's happened in the last four or five years.

[Leo Laporte]

And just remember, Jay Graber owns all your posts. Okay. I'm just saying.

[Paris Martineau]

Well, no, she doesn't.

[Jeff Jarvis]

She doesn't. That's the good thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Who owns the posts on Blue Sky?

[Paris Martineau]

I do.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it a public benefit corporation? I mean, what is.

[Paris Martineau]

No, it's. It is a public benefit corporation. But hold on, I'll find there's a.

[Leo Laporte]

There's actually a terms of service that says you own your posts.

[Paris Martineau]

I will actually hold. Let Me put this in the Discord chats that you guys can open it. A Blue sky employee wrote about the benefits of an open network recently, because all on this thing called 80 protocol. And they're only to scroll down to the drawings of the house first and show that. So normally what happens with a website is you might have like Instagram's house or Twitter's house. I have a room in that house. Blue sky is different because it is basically what you are doing. We are building on the app protocol, our own house. It's Paris Martineau's house. And right now I'm posting in the Blue sky room of that house to where my posts are going out to all the other Blue sky users. But I could post it to, you know, other like, platforms and things like that. They haven't fully made it integrated where you can integrate it with like mastodon stuff. But it's essentially I can take all of my posts and my handle and take it anywhere, because my handle right now is my website. I am technically posting onto my website. And if you look at the bottom of this post, there are bluesky comments because it's integrated. This is part of this employee's website, but it's also integrated into bluesky. So I don't know, I just. I really enjoy. Bluesky has made me rediscover my love of posting. But I also think that it makes me happier to be growing a following on a website like this where I kind of own part of the platform that I'm posting on.

[Leo Laporte]

Very nice. I agree. I'm not sure I agree with the Blue sky part of it, because they haven't really federated yet. But let's presume that their intentions are good and they're going to do that. There was a post by the woman who authored the Activity Pub protocol, Christine Lemmer. Webby Lemmer, Is that right?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. Let me read part of this. This. It says Blue sky is just one app built onto an open network, which is called the AT Protocol. If Blue sky is open Twitter, then you can imagine an open Reddit or an open Instagram too. In fact, this is becoming a reality now with apps like Whitewind for blogging, Front Page, a web form, Smoke Signal, an events app, and Blue Cast, an audio app. With Instagram X and Reddit, you're creating an account on their app. It's like you have a room in their house and you have to follow all of their rules. If the app shuts down, you lose your room there. This seems to happen every few years. You connect with all your friends, then that app crumbles. You have to start all over.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me though, as a counter, I don't want to harsh your Thanksgiving mellow, but Christine Lemmer Weber says it's cosplaying decentralization. And until they do it. And by the way, this is why Cory Doctorow has not yet moved to bluesky. I agree the potential is there, as does she, but it is currently very centralized. And so I personally kind of prefer what I would suggest is getting a website that is on the Fediverse like Microblog, and then cross posting to bluesky. But maybe someday bluesky will offer Federation and then we can all celebrate.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think the more popular it gets, the less time they have to work on the federation maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

Or the more incentive they have not to federate, which is the concern I think a lot of people have.

[Paris Martineau]

I mean, I don't think that's the case. I don't think Mike Masnick would have signed up to be in the board if they weren't planning to do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, she says Blue sky and at Proto are not meaningfully decentralized and not federated either. This is not to say the Blue sky is not achieving something useful. While Blue sky is not building what is presently a decentralized Twitter, it's building an excellent replacement for Twitter. And Blue Sky's main deliverable goal is something else instead. A Twitter replacement with the possibility of a credible exit. You know, I think you could say a lot for what Blue sky has done and it certainly is the case that you can, I think, suck your skeets out of Blue Sky. Right. And put them somewhere else. Or can you?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah, yeah, you can. Okay, you can do that.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's.

[Paris Martineau]

But you can also, I guess, host your own like personal data.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I do that at Microblog and so when I post on Microblog it goes to bluesky, but it doesn't. It's not dependent on bluesky for the hosting. And that to me is an important distinction. It also goes to Mastodon and Threads. That to me is an important distinction. But that's why I'm so hi on Micro Blog. And maybe I kind of agree with Christine Lemmer Weber that maybe we should be a little skeptical of Blue sky until they actually do the work.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And she was an author of Activity Pub.

[Leo Laporte]

She wrote Activity Pub.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It sounds like she's willing to embrace Blue Sky.

[Leo Laporte]

Absolutely.

[Jeff Jarvis]

They've got to embrace the Federation. She's not necessarily. Is she saying that they federate with. With Activity Pub or. Because that's the whole thing is they have their own. When they do open up, it's going to be their own form of federation. Is that acceptable or not?

[Leo Laporte]

This is a technical argument that is a little deeper than anything I can summarize on the show. I would read her article. She is currently a little skeptical of at Proto. She says Blue sky is built by good people who care and it is providing something that people desperately want and need. If you're looking for a Twitter replacement, you could find it in bluesky today. However, I stand by my assertions that Blue sky is not meaningful, meaningfully decentralized.

[Jeff Jarvis]

True thus far, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

And it is certainly not federated according to any technical definition of federation we have had in a decentralized social network context previously. To claim that Blue sky is decentralized or federated in its current form moves the goalposts of both those terms, which I find unacceptable. However, credible exit is a reasonable term to describe what Blue sky is aiming for. It is Blue Sky's term, and I think Blue sky should embrace that term fully in all contexts and work that they.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's a very reasonable post.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. A credible exit is, she says, the best thing Blue sky can do so that you can move. And I think Corey has said that as well. If you can't move your stuff from a site to another site as you can with Mastodon, then it doesn't really count, you know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, Mastodon's limited. Right. You can, you can't move your content.

[Leo Laporte]

You can move your network and you move your followers. And followers.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm saying they're followers.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

But you can't move your content from one instance.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And that's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I think it's hard, which is not criticism. It's hard to design something that could do that well.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's again why I recommend instead of letting anything host your stuff, you should have your own website that hosts your stuff, which you then syndicate to Mastodon and anywhere else you want to syndicate.

[Jeff Jarvis]

When I, when I moved to, when I started using Medium, Dave Weiner reminded me that I should preserve my own blog. And so I always cross.

[Leo Laporte]

He was right.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Everything to my blog. Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

As he usually you need a place you control you own on the web. And it's fine to syndicate that content everywhere you put it on Medium and everywhere else, that's fine. Or bluesky or Twitter, but you have to have a place that is yours. I used to run it off of a server, which I have here, but it just technically it's something I probably don't want to do on my network at home. So I do it with Microblog and it works quite well. It's very affordable. Five bucks a month.

[Paris Martineau]

I had been struggling to understand that what seems like a very smart blog post. But I found someone who wrote a more explain like I5 explainer. His name is Nick Barnes on Medium. So if this is wrong, yell at him and he says what does Federation look like? With Atproto, BlueSky is focusing on data ownership with their implementation of Federation using their own protocol known as atproto. It allows any user to spin up and run their own servers. They can host their own data rather than their data being hosted on bluesky's server. But that's just about where Federation starts and finishes in BlueSky, the service said today. Rather than other than hosting your own data on your own server, you shouldn't notice any other differences. But it's not Mastodon to start with. Mastodon uses a different underlying protocol and its implementation of Federation is very different. It focuses on users being able to set up their own servers which have their own timelines, and each server can implement its own rules and moderation techniques, which is what a lot of frustrating with Mastodon is the onboarding process, because it's difficult to figure out all these settings.

[Leo Laporte]

You can go to a number of different places to live on Mastodon. In fact, I encourage you to go to Twit Social, which is Twits Mastodon instance. But you notice I don't even start there. I start a microblog and post to Mast to Twitch Social on Mastodon and.

[Paris Martineau]

They go on like if a server is not known to you, you may not see the post. There's just a bunch of different settings when it comes to Mastodon. Yeah, Mastodon is probably fully fed. It's difficult. And BlueSky, where it zigs and zags from this is BlueSky has taken an approach to focus on global conversation. So when you federate and host your own data on your own server, you shouldn't see any difference in the core service. Instead, bluesky pulls posts from all the servers and focuses on one global view. And your experience is based on the accounts and feeds you follow, not the server you're on.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a fairly different distinction. Yeah, and I apologize because I think for a lot of people it's a difference without a distinction.

[Paris Martineau]

No, but I do think it matters for people who really believe in Federation, and I do think it's interesting to be able to kind of understand that. But then also I guess Understand in some ways, you might say that difference is part of why Blue sky is taking off. And Mastodon has stayed at its comfortable level of kind of core users who are familiar with that technology.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's kind of why I think bluesky is going to end up staying centralized, because that's the functionality people leaving Twitter want. They want a centralized site. It's why they didn't migrate to Mastodon.

[Paris Martineau]

It's good to have a centralized platform for global conversation with. With the option to federate and take your data, take your toys and go home if you want to.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I mean, I on bluesky, I use leolaport me because that is. It's not a bluesky handle. It's my handle, which I control. We used to have Kevin Marks on a lot. I should get him on soon. Maybe next week when you're gone, Jeff, to talk about this. He's of course a big promoter of IndieWeb and IndieWebcam. And that's their real focus is you gotta have your own publish on your own site first, own your own content and then if you want to syndicate elsewhere, go ahead. And that's the only true way to say I control my content.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leo, I don't want to extend the show for two hours with this question, but I'll ask that if Section 230 gets repealed, what's your view of maintaining Twitter?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's going to be challenging for us because we have Twitch Social, which is Mastodon Twit Community, which is a forums. We have multiple chats because we're on eight different platforms. There's actually chats on eight different streams.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

If I am suddenly responsible for anything anybody puts on any of those places, it puts me in a lot of jeopardy. I don't want to be hasty, but the prudent thing would be to take all those down. The prudent thing would be to say, all right, well, we're only going to post our content. Content we will be willing to take responsibility for and not allow our viewers, our listeners, to post content on our platforms. Because absent 230, we're liable for what they post. Maybe we wouldn't go to jail for it or be fined for it, but we would probably go to court. And there are people out there who would happily go after us if they could in court just to harass us. So it would make me very nervous. I might not be hasty with it. Lisa, though, who's runs the company and is probably more prudent than I would probably advise that we not take the risk, I know our lawyers would. That's the risk. With the loss of 230. Now, I don't think 230 is going to go away, but if it's modified, then it becomes even more critical. Then I have to get Denise Howell and Kathy Gellis in and ask them, what does this mean for small independent publishers who have user generated content on their sites? What does that mean? What it means for YouTube is, well, they have to allocate some of their massive profits to court costs. I don't have massive profits to allocate to court costs. We would not be able to defend it. It would literally put us out of business. So I think probably the prudent thing would be to take all user generated content down.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Blue sky had to quadruple their moderation team.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And this section 230 is still there. They're still protected by it. What if they weren't? And you know, I imagine Elon Musk, who can't afford to defend himself in court, would probably be happy to see section 230 go away. Because he can, he can afford it.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah. He wants the tax breaks for electric cars to go away because he believes that his brand, he doesn't need them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So this is regulatory capture. And this is a big risk, which is you're not putting the big guys, the incumbents get strengthened by this because no one can challenge them. Nobody can come along and say, hey, we're going to be the little guy and we're going to take on the big guy. The big guy is dominant because they have the war chest to defend themselves. The little guys go away and that's when you get. Then you really have a problem with big tech because there's nothing but big tech everywhere.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, what a great conversation. What are you grateful for, Jeff Jarvis?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm grateful that the web taught me how wrong I was about all of media and my life in it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It taught me that properly conceived, it's a conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. That's what I learned too. And I agree 100%. I often say it's no longer an audience because when you're on TV or radio, it's an audience. Right. You talk, they shut up and listen.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a, it's a conversation, it's a community.

[Jeff Jarvis]

It's also another Dave Weiner moment. At the first BloggerCon, I had a panel on politics and blogs and I said something to Dave about my panel and Dave said, no, it's not your panel. You know what? There Is no panel. The room is the panel.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I agree.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And I've always liked that. That's the way I look at events, and that's where I look at media and everything else. But it really came from blogging and the Internet.

[Leo Laporte]

You can imagine it's hard for somebody who has been able to control the microphone for an entire lifetime, more than 50 years. But it's been such a blessing. It's so much better to have a conversation. It really is. We really appreciate the chance to have that conversation with all of you. And we're very grateful for the chance to do what we do. I mean, are we privileged or what?

[Jeff Jarvis]

You should see how grateful we'll be if you join the club, though. Be that much more grateful.

[Leo Laporte]

Jeff Jarvis, it's great to have you on. Have a wonderful.

[Paris Martineau]

Thanks.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanksgiving. Jeff is a professor at both Montclair State University and the State University of New York, Stony Brook, two wonderful institutions. If you're a student at either of them, look for Jeff's classes. He is, of course, emeritus professor of journalistic innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Thank you, Jeff. Have a great day.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Don't have too much caviar tomorrow, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I can't wait.

[Jeff Jarvis]

You'll be thirsty.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna live at the caviar bar. Paris Martino is getting ready to fry the turkey at home in Florida. She's a reporter for the Information. You can catch her work in the weekend. A great piece on age verification. Fantastic piece on that. Thank you.

[Paris Martineau]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. And have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know your family's waiting for you, and we extended the show a little longer than we planned.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Do you wanna have them just come in for a minute it. And stand the camera so we can see the star? Do they want to.

[Paris Martineau]

Just haunting. I don't know where they are. Otherwise I would.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All right.

[Leo Laporte]

How many times showed you the video of his moment in Brazil?

[Paris Martineau]

Twice so far since I've been home. And each time I'm like, oh, yeah, I've seen it. And he's like, no, no, you gotta watch the whole thing.

[Leo Laporte]

We showed it on our show.

[Paris Martineau]

I did. I did tell him that. Yes. I was like, I've shown it to all my co workers.

[Leo Laporte]

If it had been me, I would show it to my kids over and over again as well.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, I completely understand.

[Paris Martineau]

As you should, Paris.

[Leo Laporte]

Have a wonderful week, Jeff. Have a wonderful week. Have a great talk in San Francisco.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry. I'll be here not there.

[Paris Martineau]

Good luck.

[Leo Laporte]

But I'll watch after we get off the air. And everybody should go buy tickets to The Commonwealth Club. December 4th. Jeff Jarvis talking about the web, we weave how we can save the Internet because it's worth saving. We do this week in Google. Every Wednesday round about 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, 2200 UTC. We stream live on eight different platforms. YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com, kik, and if you're in the club Discord, you can watch us live. But you don't has to because we also make a podcast out of the thing and post it on the Internet at Twit tv. If you go there, you'll also see a link to our YouTube channel. Great place to share clips, maybe share our Thanksgiving grateful gratitudes that we we said or whatever you think is worth sharing on the show. And that way you spread the word about this week in Google. So we thank you for that. Easiest thing for you though, of course. Subscribe and your favorite podcast players so you'll automatically get a copy of the show the minute we've edited it up. Thanks. Thanks so much to John Ashley filling in for Benito this week.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Thank you, John.

[Leo Laporte]

Benito is on vacation for a few weeks, so John Ashley's gonna do the hard work.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I drew the short straw. Hey. Hey.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you want tiki bar or not? John Ashley?

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah. You got an angle.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Okay, I am. I have angled for it because I.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you excited about Kapu?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well, it's also on my birthday.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, then we will celebrate a little bit for you.

[Jeff Jarvis]

J. A little umbrellas for you.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, John, we appreciate the work you do and all of our team. We have a great team in continuity. Besides Lisa and Debbie, there's Ashley and Sebastian. We've got great editors with Kevin and John and Benito. And of course Anthony Nielsen, without whom nothing would be possible. Did I say Viva?

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, you said.

[Leo Laporte]

I said Ashley. She doesn't work for us anymore. It's Viva. Yes, I was thinking John Ashley, and that was in my head.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Too much Ashley on the brain?

[Leo Laporte]

No, we love Ashley, but she's not here anymore. Viva took her place and does a great job. Have I left anybody out? Lisa. Did I get everybody?

[Jeff Jarvis]

Lisa? You left Lisa out?

[Leo Laporte]

No, I said Lisa, CEO and proud owner of the the Twit podcast network.

[Paris Martineau]

Voice of the gallery.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I know. I left out our marketing guy, Ty.

[Jeff Jarvis]

And don't forget Burke.

[Leo Laporte]

And Burke, who runs the studio operation. Oh, and our engineer who's off site in Massachusetts, Patrick Delahanty. I did say thank you Anthony Nielsen, our creative director. We got a nice team. We got good people.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Did you say Micah?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Micah.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Who's joining us.

[Paris Martineau]

You've been getting quite a few.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, I'm not gonna say all the other hosts.

[Paris Martineau]

There's a lot of people say he's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Leah was telling me I'm trying and want. And Leo wants to go to the Kapu.

[Leo Laporte]

I think more than I want to go to Kapu. I'm ready for the tiki bar.

[Paris Martineau]

What's. What sort of drink are you gonna get there?

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm. I'm reading something. I'm reading what you're having for.

[Leo Laporte]

Did they have drinks? Yeah, sorry.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Tomorrow he gets a choice at the seafood station of poached jumbo shrimp cocktails. Point.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you looking at the menu?

[Jeff Jarvis]

I am. Mini lobster, volume Dungeness crab Louis, lettuce cups, pastrami, spiced smoked salmon. And that's just. Ladies and gentlemen, the seafood station, the caviar station has house made bleenies, toasted brioche, hard boiled eggs, red onions, young celery, not old celery. You gotta do it.

[Paris Martineau]

Young celery.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you don't want to. Stringy celery.

[Paris Martineau]

They have journey man, charcuterie.

[Leo Laporte]

How are you guys reading the menu? I didn't say where we're going. Yes, you did.

[Paris Martineau]

Multiple times.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, I said the hotel, not the restaurant.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Well. Oh, you said the hotel. I mean, you got a reporter here. You got two journalists here, and you've been doing.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you post it in Discord? Where's.

[Jeff Jarvis]

No, no. Slow roasted Mary's organic turkey, brown butter, black truffle gravy. I don't like truffles.

[Leo Laporte]

I love truffles.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I'm not a truffle guy. Paris.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have truffles. Apparently you're not stuck with truffles. There's plenty of other things you can eat.

[Paris Martineau]

Mexican food. I'm gonna get dinner.

[Leo Laporte]

Go get dinner.

[Jeff Jarvis]

What's for dinner tonight? Paris, where are you going?

[Paris Martineau]

Mexican food.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Oh, God.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, restaurant or you're going out?

[Paris Martineau]

Restaurant.

[Leo Laporte]

Queso.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Queso.

[Leo Laporte]

Get the queso.

[Paris Martineau]

I'm hoping so. The local place that had the best queso ever got demolished to make room for a public. So we're going to another Mexican restaurant that's supposed to be quite good.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is there a rule about double dipping the queso?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's okay. It's family. You could double dip.

[Paris Martineau]

Frankly, with friends, I think it's fine. I think we're being too precious about double dip.

[Leo Laporte]

I Agree.

[Paris Martineau]

If your immune system can't handle the whatever is being introduced double dip chip, then you deserve to die.

[Leo Laporte]

And by the way, queso kills all bacteria. You don't.

[Paris Martineau]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Incidentally, sad to say, our 50 year old steakhouse in Petaluma, the Cattleman's, is being replaced. Torn down end of the year by a chick fil A. So Publix isn't the worst that could happen.

[Paris Martineau]

Devastating.

[Leo Laporte]

Devastating.

[Jeff Jarvis]

Is that place you took us to for the New Year's party still in business?

[Leo Laporte]

Where did I take you? Was it that awful, that terrible place? It was that awful place with the mashed peas. Yeah, yeah. There's. They've been in business. The Washoe House has been business for 100 years. They're an old road. The stage coach would go there. They have. They are so old, they have Confederate dollars stuck to the ceiling. It is ancient and it's never going away. Never.

[Jeff Jarvis]

All right, go to. Go, go to dinner. We got. Have you said.

[Paris Martineau]

Have we ended. Not ended the show.

[Jeff Jarvis]

The show has not ended officially. Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanks for joining us everybody. Have a great holiday. If you celebrate, we'll see you next time on this week in Google. Bye Bye. After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and AT&T. @T mobile.com keepandswitch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported. 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected. And each one more expensive and more complicated than the fast. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need and they're all connected on one platform. Doesn't Odoo sound amazing? Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Sign up [e-mail] that's odoo.com this sales.

[Paris Martineau]

Season, ritual is urging you to think about what's essential. Your daily health. Pretty essential. Making sure your products are heavy metal, tested clean, label project certified and sourced through a traceable supply chain. Also essential. So this Black Friday, skip the micro trends and put your savings where they your health. With 40% off daily essentials like stress relief and symbiotic plus. For gut support, head to ritual.com podcast and shop responsibly.