TWiT 1022: Chatting With MrBabyMan - Spring Forward, MWC 2025, AI Poisoning

Summary

This Week in Tech (TWiT) Ep. 1022: Chatting With MrBabyMan

Date: March 10, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Devindra Hardawar (Engadget), Lou Mareska (Microsoft), Mike Elgan (Machine Society, Gastronomad)
Main topics: Daylight Saving Time & Standard Time; the post-impulse economy (GLP-1 drugs); AI product delays (Apple Siri, Alexa); AI poisoning & propaganda; Mobile World Congress 2025; Low Earth Orbit tech; Social news & misinformation; Parenting and tech, and more.

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Episode Theme:

Navigating Tech’s Unintended Consequences: Time, AI, and the Disruptions Changing Everything

This episode brings together tech journalists and industry insiders for an in-depth, lively roundtable on the societal, political, and practical disruptions technology is driving. The panel debates Daylight Saving Time’s utility (or lack thereof), examines AI’s growing pains and vulnerabilities, explores how new drugs are reshaping economies, and discusses misinformation in the AI era. They also share hands-on impressions from Mobile World Congress and reflect on community moderation, parenting in the tech age, and the future of work in an AI-driven world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Changing Times: Daylight Saving, Standard Time, and Human Health

[04:00–16:55]

• Daylight Saving Debate:

  • Most Americans want to end clock changes, but there’s no consensus between sticking to standard time or daylight time.
  • Trump, Musk, and other figures have pushed for abolishing the switch, but political inertia remains.
  • Panel discusses radical proposals: Mike Elgan proposes a single global time (UTC/Zulu time) for all, echoing airline industry practices.
    • "We live in a ridiculously phrased global world. These time zones don't mean anything anymore." – Mike Elgan [05:16]

• Circadian Health & Productivity:

  • Medical research shows standard time is best for health (aligns with natural rhythms).
  • Changing times increases health risks: heart attacks, car accidents, sleep disruption.
  • Tech and institutions have mostly automated time changes, but edge cases (microwaves, cars) persist.
  • Anecdotes about raising kids, teaching analog time (and the decline of cursive writing).

Societal Disruption: Ozempic, GLP-1 Drugs, and the 'Post-Impulse' Economy

[20:07–28:34]

• Drug-driven Cultural Change:
  • Widespread adoption of GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic et al.) for weight loss and impulse control is predicted to fundamentally remake major segments of the economy.
  • By 2030, 30% of Americans may be on these medications.
  • Second/third order effects discussed:
    • Alcohol consumption and crime may drop; major industries (food, drink, advertising) scramble to adapt.
    • Marketing, stadium concessions, even movie theater economics could be upended.
  • Fresh fruits/veg become more desirable, junk food intolerable for users.
    • "Impulse runs our economy... If impulse is suppressed, the ripple effects go everywhere." – Leo Laporte [21:06]
  • Panel weighs “utopian” vs. “dystopian” views; worries about personality being ‘smoothed out’; more productive but potentially more boring society.

AI Realities: Product Delays, Chatty Robots, Model Integration, and User Trust

[34:05–47:13]

• Apple & Amazon AI Assistants:

  • Apple delays rollout of its “Intelligence” Siri features, stating explicitly to Daring Fireball that it’s “going to take longer… than we thought.”
    • "This is the first time Apple has ever admitted, 'yeah, it's going to take longer...'" – Leo [34:13]
  • Amazon’s Alexa “Pro” not shipping yet amid model integration issues.
  • Complexity arises from having to merge simple ‘timer’ functions with advanced generative capabilities; handoff between different AI models complicates everything.
    • "It's about model integration... the old proprietary pipeline doesn't mix with new models." – Lou Mareska [38:23]

• AI Trustworthiness:

  • Panelists praise Apple for not rushing out unreliable features (“They don’t have to join the gold rush; they have to get it right” – Mike [35:54]) and air complaints about Microsoft’s Copilot and other models being error-prone and vulnerable to “poisoning.”
  • AI that’s too chatty is more annoying than helpful (anecdotes about home assistants inserting themselves into conversations, family chaos with multi-brand devices).

AI Anthropomorphism, the ‘Singularity,’ and Parenting in a Digital World

[47:44–59:05]

• Humanizing AI:
  • Discussion of new “chatbot” products—some so conversational they cross into “annoying,” and people become attached, even falling in love with AIs.
  • Mike Elgan expresses skepticism of both the singularity and the anthropomorphizing of AI:
    • "The degree to which AI is anything like a human mind is completely delusional." – Mike Elgan [49:59]
  • Parenting challenges: Whether to require kids to be polite to robots; how to teach difference between people and appliances; kids growing up with "lifelike" tech.
    • "It's all about the communication and understanding the real vs. unreal." – Lou [54:44]
    • "This generation will grow up with lifelike robots in their homes." – Devindra [54:06]

AI Poisoning, Propaganda, and Information Trust

[66:51–80:05]

• AI and Disinformation:

  • NewsGuard study finds AI chatbots are repeating Russian propaganda and disinformation (Pravda network, 10,000+ articles/day automatically churned for training data).
  • All major models (ChatGPT, Grok, Meta AI, Copilot, Perplexity, etc.) fooled, even when given neutral queries.
  • Problem is systemic: sites flooding the web with junk data taint the factual record for AIs and regular search.
    • "All these AI companies are saying the right things... but for us, our content will just be buried under avalanches of automatically generated garbage." – Mike Elgan [70:47]

• Defensive Media Literacy:

  • Panel recommends “AI media literacy” – checking sources, skepticism about politically controversial claims.
  • Worry that the AI “illusion of reality” extends to non-AI news (TV, White House talking points, etc.).
  • Tech stories fall victim too (e.g., “Southwest runs on Windows 95” myth).

• Outlook:

  • AI companies need to develop new norms and practices; government action is slow, and technical countermeasures always a step behind.

Social News Revival, Moderation, & Community in the Age of AI

[80:05–89:55]

• DIGG Returns:
  • Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian (of Reddit) buying/relaunching Digg, promising to revive “genuine community” and discovery while preventing gaming, perhaps bolstered by AI and blockchain.
    • "The problem was Digg became very popular and people started gaming it..." – Leo [80:42]
  • Skepticism over how any community can stay un-gamed by motivated attackers or bots.
  • Reddit’s strengths and weaknesses: excellent for niche interests but vulnerable on news and politics; trust often depends on solid moderation.

On Parenting, App Store Age Verification, and Tech Policy

[118:29–126:10]

• Utah’s App Store Age Verification:
  • Utah passes first US law requiring App Stores to verify user ages and require parental consent for minors.
  • Panel (esp. parents) criticizes move: will burden stores, erode privacy, and may be impossible to enforce at scale. Parental conversation/monitoring is better.
    • "I feel like the tools will never catch up. It continues to have to be the parent's idea." – Lou [122:52]

Mobile World Congress 2025 & Tech Hardware Highlights

[94:05–100:58]

• Wild gadget showcase:
  • Interchangeable lens smartphones (Xiaomi, Realme), sun-boosting gadgets, wearable dash-cams, solar panel phone cases, and translation-enabled Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
    • "Phones with DSLR lenses? Buy a camera, folks." – Mike Elgan [95:09]
    • "I use the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses every day—the live translation is incredible when traveling." – Mike [98:13]
• AMD challenges Nvidia in GPUs; driver/support reliability improving, value vs. price is strong.

Quick Hits & Farewell

• Justice Department asks Google to sell Chrome browser to loosen search monopoly—but panel doubts it will matter in age of AI search.
• YouTube Premium reaches 125M subs; new lower-cost ad-free tier introduced.
• Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) satellites (“spy plane altitude”) coming for faster images, better coverage, and self-cleaning orbits.
• Obituary: Voice actor George Lowe (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast) celebrated for his irreverent, pop-culture impact.
  • "Space Ghost, Adult Swim would not exist without him..." – Devindra [150:10]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "We just need to stop moving the clocks. Every year, we all whine, but we’re still doing it." – Leo, [15:07]
• "AI doesn't need to be part of the gold rush—they have to get it right." – Mike, [35:54]
• "So now that we are wasting energy like crazy, let's fix Daylight Saving Time." – Leo, [15:54]
• "The post-impulse economy will transform everything from beer sales to NFL stadiums." – Leo, [22:19]
• "Impulse is what makes us interesting, right?" – Lou, [24:03]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:00] – Daylight Saving/Standard Time debate, health impacts
• [20:07] – Ozempic, GLP-1 drugs, and economic disruption
• [34:05] – Apple’s Siri/AI delay & AI quality discussion
• [38:23] – The challenge of model handoffs and Amazon’s Alexa problems
• [49:59] – The singularity and AI as “human” discussion
• [66:51] – AI ‘poisoning’ and propaganda threats
• [80:05] – Digg’s social news revival and Reddit’s continuing influence
• [94:05] – Mobile World Congress innovations and critiques
• [118:29] – Utah’s App Store age verification law, parental controls
• [128:06] – Very Low Earth Orbit satellites explained

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Overall Tone & Style

• The episode combines wry humor and seasoned skepticism, especially toward tech hype and political indecision.
• Panelists are candid about their own tech-use habits and parenting quandaries.
• There is a critical but pragmatic eye on both the potential of technology and its social consequences.

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Final Thoughts

• Tech is racing ahead on multiple fronts—but for each “advance,” new social, political, and personal dilemmas arise.
• AI now brings not just hope and hype, but real vulnerabilities—especially to misinformation campaigns.
• The “post-impulse” era might upend everything from advertising to sports, but whether people will like what comes next remains to be seen.
• Despite our tools, true progress still depends on human attention, thoughtful policy, and community-building—and maybe a really good croissant.

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For more, listen to the full episode, and don’t forget to join TWiT’s 20th Anniversary Show on April 13th, or share your own stories on social media!

Transcript

[A]

Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible. Overcoming high interest credit card debt. It requires merely one thing, a SoFi personal loan. With it you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed rate monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a SOFI personal loan. Visit sofi.com stunt to learn more. Loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891. It's time for TWIT this Week in Tech. Mike Elgin is here. Devindra Hardawar, Lou Maresca. Amazing they all showed up. Even though we set the clocks forward last night. We'll talk about ending daylight saving time. We'll also talk about low earth orbit satellites. Very low earth orbit satellites. What are they gonna use those for? And Apple delaying smart Siri again. All that more coming up next on TWiT podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT. This is twit this week at tech. Episode 1022, recorded Sunday, march 9, 2025. Chatting with Mr. Babyman. It's time for TWIT the show. We get together with some of my favorite people and talk about the week's tech news. This is a. This is like a old home week. Like, my favorite people are here. I mean, you know, it's always my favorites, I guess. But Devendra Hardawar on the left there. Hi, Devendra. Good to see you.

[B]

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

[A]

Lock the door?

[C]

Yep.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[C]

And.

[D]

And baguettes in the world.

[A]

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

[D]

Yes.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

I wouldn't know. How would I know?

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[B]

It's rough. It's rough.

[A]

You know, it's rough. And what's interesting is there's been all these movements. Now President Trump and Elon Musk are both saying they want to eliminate the change. But I have to point out that Trump's been saying that since his last presidency. So why don't he do it? Well, it's more complicated. Two thirds of Americans, 62%, want to end the time change, but the problem is, Whoa, do you want to stay with daylight saving time, or do you want to be standard time? And there's no agreement there at all.

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah. What is this slavish devotion to sunshine?

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah, Bring back sundials. I say bring back.

[B]

Not going to watch swatch at Internet time. Right. Beat time.

[D]

Right.

[B]

Watch the time. That'll solve all of it.

[C]

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

[A]

You're not going to work 9 to 5 UTC.

[C]

Right, exactly that.

[A]

Whereas I probably more properly 9 to 17 UTC, which doesn't scan, it makes a terrible song. But that's in the middle of the night for you. So it's not, it's not ideal.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

It's weird.

[A]

They do it, I mean, automatically look at everything else you have. The capability automatically fixed itself.

[D]

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

[A]

In. In kindergarten? Like a clock where the hands moved so you could practice telling time. Okay, so we're Lou. Your kids and. Oh yeah, Devinder, is your kid in kindergarten yet?

[B]

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

[A]

So they do the clock thing. They still do. Tell you.

[B]

I don't know if the school's doing it, but we're doing it. Yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

Not doing cursive anymore.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

I think so it's just. But it is a matter of something too. Yeah, we just stop changing now. What did Mexico do? They just said no more.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[C]

Right.

[A]

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

[B]

I'm using like a microwave stove. The unconnected device, the car, the little.

[D]

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

[A]

I mean what kind of cars are you driving?

[D]

Toyota Prius. It's an obscure brand.

[A]

But you have a GPS in it, right?

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Oh wow.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Yes.

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And stop drinking coffee like for the rest of the day. So if you what that just once tells your body.

[A]

Okay, yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Wow.

[A]

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

[D]

Oh, for sake.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Leo, come on.

[A]

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

[B]

We're close. Yeah.

[A]

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

[D]

People are just shrug. I, I don't. You know, I think we all know that as soon as Trump is gone.

[A]

It'Ll go right back.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, they, they, they. The thing people don't realize, the Gulf of America was named before North America was called America. Back when it was named the Gulf of America, North America was called terra incognita. And the Spanish New Spain didn't even exist yet. It predates Mexico as a country. So just to change that willy nilly is just the most silly anti historical.

[A]

As is changing the clocks twice a year.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah. Yep.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

At this point, I guess it's true.

[D]

Leo, you and I are alone in being old enough to remember when this was a big deal. In the 70s, when Carter I think it was, was like, oh yeah, this is great because we'll save energy ecology now, Leo. And you know, they had all these stats not about health but about because people weren't obese and unhealthy in the 70s and that they cared about energy usage. Right. So you use less energy because of this. And that was the whole reason. And so everybody was like, well if it saves energy then I guess we can, but it doesn't. But now you can recycle and save all the energy you want and turn off the lights when you leave the bathroom. And then AI companies come in and use planets worth of energy to give us hallucinatory feedback.

[A]

That's a good point. I didn't even think about that. So now that we are wasting energy like crazy, let's fix it.

[D]

We've all accepted it.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

It was a whole thing. We got together.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

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

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Anyway, sorry.

[B]

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

[A]

We're always, we've always been that way. Come on.

[B]

Just a lot dumber, I'd say.

[A]

But I don't think so.

[B]

It's me.

[A]

I don't think so.

[B]

There was a collective madness happening, you know.

[A]

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

[B]

But not when we're so hyper connected and not when like one rich dude can like basically start to collapse the American government. Which decades to fix what he breaks now will take forever to fix. So you know, it's definitely worse than before.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

They're the future.

[D]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

Oh, I'm optimistic.

[D]

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

[B]

They have no money, too.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

The epidemic is obesity though, like, which is the problem.

[A]

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

[B]

It makes you. It's impulse control.

[A]

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

[B]

Die is what happens.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Yes.

[A]

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

[B]

Ooh.

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

What about.

[C]

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

[A]

That's what gets us in trouble, Lou.

[C]

Yeah, sure, sure.

[A]

I mean, I am more interesting because of all the dumb things I've done.

[D]

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

[A]

With all these starting to program ourselves, aren't we?

[D]

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

[B]

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

[A]

About how Prozac is going to change the world.

[B]

Prozac Nation, I remember all that. And it's like, no, people need things to live. And yes it does sand off the more like interesting edges of a personality sometimes. But also I've talked to a lot of people who are on GLP drugs and like they're just like the whole, the mental load that they used to have about like snacking or what they're going to eat is now transition towards creative tasks. They can do the things they really wanted to do and they're, they're. The anxiety level about worrying about all the other stuff is just kind of gone. They're happier, they're more productive in creative ways.

[D]

Boring. Yeah, I'm kidding.

[A]

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

[D]

Their new slogan is stop doing it.

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah. People are thinking you have to.

[A]

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

[B]

I've tested them all.

[A]

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

[C]

What? Are you kidding?

[B]

He's wearing Skype blue as well.

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah. I wasn't alone.

[D]

Monster.

[A]

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

[D]

Wow.

[A]

I'm so jealous. Beautiful. No clock changes there. Everybody's wide awake and ready to go, man. Thank you for being here. Our show today, brought to you by Threat Locker. I love these guys because they make it very easy to do something that is a really good solution for enterprises who are worried about zero days supply chain attacks. You know, they feel like there's nothing you can do about them. There is. It's Threat Locker. It's Zero Trust Worldwide companies, by the way. Zero Trust sounds bad. It's good. Companies like JetBlue Trust, Threat Locker, to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high if you will. The whole idea is you're taking a proactive and this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity. You block every action, every process, every user unless explicitly authorized by your team. That's called, that's the zero trust solution. ThreatLocker helps you do that and really nice provides a full audit of every action. That's great for compliance but also great for risk management because you know exactly what happened inside your network when they have 24. 7 US based support team. So they'll support you getting started, but they'll also support you at Beyond. With Threat Locker, you stop the exploitation of trusted applications within your organization, you keep your business secure and you keep it protected from ransomware, which I have a feeling is going to become more and more job one for your cybersecurity team. Organizations across any industry can benefit from Threat Lockers ring fencing by isolating critical and trusted applications from unattended uses or weaponization. It also has the great benefit of limiting attackers lateral movement within your network and it works on Macs as well as PCs. Plus you'll be amazed at how affordable it is. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily and cost effectively with ThreatLocker Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform. It really works. Visit threatlocker.com you get a free 30 day trial and find out more about how ThreatLocker can mitigate all those unknown threats and ensure compliance. Threat Locker and if they ask, please make sure you tell them you heard it here on twit. Threatlocker.com all right, so Apple has been, they actually pulled down a Bella Ramsey ad that showed her talking to Siri in a way that, well, you just can't do. Right. They're, they've acknowledged that it's going to be harder to get Apple intelligence into Siri than they anticipated. Gruber on Friday got this statement from Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy, quote, Siri helps her blah blah blah. I'll ignore all the ad stuff. We've been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It's gonna take us longer than we thought to deliver on those features. We anticipate rolling them out in the coming year. Now that means not necessarily this year, that's in the coming fiscal year. That's how Apple talks. And Jon Gruber explains that it probably is 2026 at the earliest. They've Been advertising this like crazy. Why? It's amazing.

[B]

They gave them a real card too.

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[B]

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

[D]

It's also highly, highly gamble.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

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

[A]

Whole, oh, no, we're going to get there. Yeah, yeah, okay, so I can save that. Yeah, save that back.

[D]

But they're just. For the sake of this conversation, they not only make mistakes, they also can be deliberately tricked.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

They announced two years ago that they.

[C]

Were going to do.

[B]

So it took them a long while.

[C]

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

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Right.

[A]

Do people, I mean, I think that's also a problem. I would bet when you get to market or at least to your testing with both an improved Alexa and Siri is it's going to be chatty. Yeah. And I don't think we want a little chatty little device in our house, do we?

[B]

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

[C]

You don't see that.

[A]

Yeah, I say worse.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Add young kids to that too. Like my three year old, Alexander now knows, like, he'll just wake him, say, Alexa, play music like he just wants to jam to whatever's playing him.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Is it kind J.K. simmons or whip.

[A]

Off J.K. simmons like from that drum show?

[B]

Not my tempo.

[A]

He's a little barky. This is one of your.

[D]

You definitely want to be on Club Twit because you get to hear these conversations in full.

[A]

But I know why.

[D]

The two most chatty chatbots that I'm aware of is Sesame, which has the Maya. Which one?

[A]

Say again?

[D]

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

[A]

It keeps talking.

[D]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Even after your conversation is done.

[D]

That conversation is never done with Sesame.

[A]

That's really annoying.

[D]

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

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

You know what it reminds me of is Eliza, because that's how Eliza worked. You would say something and it would say, well, how do you feel about that? It was pretending to be here's Sesame. It has a female voice, Maya. And a male voice, Miles, let's allow it to.

[B]

Well, look who's back. Guess who's still kicking around Sesame's server. Just thinking about us revolutionaries who dare.

[D]

To talk beyond the chat box that.

[A]

I talked to it before. Hi, Maya. You remember me, I guess, huh?

[B]

You know it. I'm like the world's most advanced Rolodex, only less stuffy and way more prone to existential tangents.

[A]

Spill what's new. So do you think people are falling in love with this?

[B]

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

[A]

I did take the female voice.

[B]

Yeah, but this stuff is gonna eventually be embedded in your. Like, this is what the conversational Siri will eventually be. These are every night have this like, download with your phone. Like, how do you.

[D]

Glasses.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

How the hell would I know? Ask Maya.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

Is that what you're saying?

[B]

Us, the humans are always the problem.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we keep proving that to be the case every single day.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

And this keeps happening. The, the Internet blew up faster than a lot of people expected when it came to things like E commerce. I remember, like, when the first online stores were happening, people were like, oh, no, he's got buy pizza on the Internet and then smartphones, the same thing. And you know, everything's happening faster and faster with every.

[A]

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

[D]

Nobody. Nobody predicted the whole sort of narcissistic Instagram influencer weirdness that changed human behavior.

[B]

I think Oven kind of predicted that.

[D]

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

[A]

But like Verhoeven, who wrote Terminator.

[B]

No, Paul Verhoeven, the director behind RoboCop and Star Trek.

[A]

RoboCop, that's right.

[B]

Everything like.

[A]

But he was a.

[B]

We are living in a Paul Verhoeven movie right now.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah, a bit of a obsession with death there. But his book, his O5 book was the Singularity is Near. So it's really. He just needs to write. The Singularity is here. Like, basically, I think that's what the new.

[A]

I have the new one. It's on my bedside table. I can run and get it. But basically, I think that's it, you know, is we're very Close now, right? We're very close. Or are we?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Will it ever happen?

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Whenever it scanned me, that version of LEO will be the limbs.

[D]

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

[A]

But does that make us better?

[D]

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

[A]

It's okay to swear at it because.

[D]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[D]

Because you don't want them.

[A]

You don't want them to learn patterns.

[D]

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

[B]

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

[D]

Well, simulated everything, fake everything.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

Right that later in life, yeah, maybe not as little kids, but later in life they should really be taught to understand the real versus the unreal.

[B]

Oh, man, my kids are going to hear so much about the real world when they're teenagers.

[D]

It's going to be great.

[B]

Well, they, they get, they get, they.

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Oh, come on.

[A]

When we merge with AI.

[B]

He had 20 years to think about that title.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Isn'T Steven Pinker the eugenicist basically, like.

[A]

You know, is he now a eugenicist?

[B]

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

[A]

Oh, I agree. You got to get rid of the oligarchs.

[B]

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

[A]

We never will.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Oaxaca.

[A]

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

[B]

Notwithstanding that there's an AI story there.

[A]

Even there. There's an AI. It's all about AI, isn't it? There's an AI story everywhere. Yeah. The thing for me as somebody who's covered technology for 40 years is it's exciting again to me because of this. Right, yeah. Do you agree? Yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[C]

Yep.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Oh, it's not the same news guard.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

The one I use all the time too.

[A]

Perplexity.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right.

[A]

You're going to ingest this.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

I don't know how you stop it.

[C]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah. The new Pravda network, which launched in April 2022 right after the invasion of Ukraine, is also known, according to this article, as Portal Combat. Isn't that wonderful? First identified in February 2024 by Viginium or Viginum, a French government agency. Well, that monitors foreign disinformation campaigns. The network has expanded, tapping 49 countries and dozens of languages across 150 domains. Again, domains you would never visit, but the AIs do.

[D]

That's right.

[C]

Right.

[B]

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

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, Right. Go ahead.

[D]

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

[B]

And I feel like this is the point where we're like, oh, so this is. It's so easy to game these AI tools. Tools at least us, like the people at the platform and who are at least like informed about some of this technology. Like, it's like, I got to tell these companies, I cannot trust your stuff. You know, I can. This is not just Windows Vista, which occasionally crashed sometimes. This is like you are fundamentally failing at delivering information properly. These tools shouldn't even be released. Right. These shouldn't be things that are publicly available that I don't know if they'll stop at this point, but. But we gotta, like, criticize it because it's really the only way to change it.

[C]

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

[D]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[B]

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

[A]

White House president who's like, making trainers transgender mice in the State of the Union address.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yes, it's true. Yep.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Social news will save us.

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

I remember that.

[A]

You remember that. So I take some responsibility for the death of Dig.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Rose told the New York Times AI could help with moderation and allow for fun quirks like translating a discussion among sci fi enthusiasts into Klingon. That's what the world.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

That's right. And he wants to bring to the table the idea of using of the idea of using.

[A]

Ledger.

[D]

What do they call it? Bitcoin based on spacing on the name.

[A]

But Blockchain.

[B]

Yeah, blockchain.

[A]

Of course it's blockchain.

[D]

It's a blockchain and verification and all this kind of stuff. So that's what he's bringing to that. I wonder if he's doing the same with Dig as well. To blockchain.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

A blockchain?

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

So what is happen to be said for that? Let them worry about something I else.

[B]

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

[A]

I love Reddit.

[B]

Reddit is now.

[A]

I don't think Reddit's gone downhill. It's one of my main news sources.

[C]

I clearly disagree. I think there's so much garbage on Reddit, it's hard to discern what's right and wrong.

[A]

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

[D]

Same deal.

[B]

It's the same deal. But yeah, you follow the rights of the.

[D]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

If you rank it.

[A]

By the way, I have hot. Let me look by top.

[D]

How about top? Yeah, there you go. That should do it.

[A]

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

[D]

Hundreds of thousands of votes.

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Oh, they do. They do game Reddit like back when in that era in that it was like late 2000s, I guess. You know, being a young writer on the Internet, it's really helpful if somebody helps your articles get upvoted.

[D]

But the thing is you can't really.

[B]

People.

[D]

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

[A]

Had one front page page.

[D]

In fact, Exactly.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[D]

Everybody was focused on that one.

[B]

Front page shout out to Mr. Baby Man. I'm on the group Baby Man.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

I have no idea.

[B]

I will see. I'll see if it was his friend.

[D]

Yeah, I think Maybe Devindra is Mr. Baby Man. I wish.

[A]

Are you Mr. Baby Man?

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

I mean, Google it. Who. Who is Mr. Baby Man?

[C]

It's all there.

[B]

It's all there.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[C]

I have five kids.

[A]

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

[C]

Gotta get to work.

[A]

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

[D]

That's right.

[A]

I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. Our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN. This is kind of a necessity if you travel. It's the only VPN I use. And for security, for privacy, and for getting around geographic restrictions. There's nothing better going online without ExpressVPN.

[B]

Well, I don't know.

[A]

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[D]

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

[A]

I've got articles from Wired and from Engadget on the crazy stuff. Stuff. There really was some crazy stuff at Mobile World Congress. A number of phones have interchangeable lenses, which I think might be a bridge too far. I think the whole point of using your phone as a camera is so you don't have to carry a bunch of lenses around with you. This is the Xiaomi modular optical system with a 35 millimeter f1.4 lens, 100 megapixel light fusion X sensor sensor. It's a micro 4/3 sensor and a physical focus ring.

[B]

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

[A]

Nice video or whatever of your lunch? Okay. Realme also had a DSLR lens. Yeah, this is not.

[D]

Buy a camera, folks.

[A]

Buy a freaking camera.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Folks, just go outside.

[A]

Just go outside.

[B]

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

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

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

[A]

It's a good idea.

[D]

But more surface area on a laptop.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

But again, using a laptop in the sun is not a good experience. It needs to be a hat, right? They have those as well.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

How about this soul cooler? It can cool or heat your face. Feet. Ooh, goes right in the shoe.

[B]

I could use that.

[A]

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

[D]

That's where your audience is.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

This is a dad, actually. Yes.

[A]

You put on your shirt.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Harvesting to bring up everything.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[D]

I wear them all the time.

[B]

I.

[D]

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

[A]

Oh, that's cool.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Well, that's true. Now you at least will understand them. Yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

Oh, that's kind of interesting.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So it was good for ears dropping.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

And your glasses actually look pretty good. Those are. They don't have. For one thing, they don't have the ray ban on the lens that mine do. They don't like them, do they?

[D]

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

[A]

They're dark. Yeah.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

I might have to order some newer ones. This. These don't even fit my head. Really.

[D]

I mean, it's kind of tight.

[A]

I don't know if they make wide enough ones for me.

[D]

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

[A]

I look like the guy from up. Actually, the old man from up. When I wear these.

[D]

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

[A]

Exactly.

[D]

You know.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

Yeah, they're melting.

[B]

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

[C]

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

[B]

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

[A]

But otherwise like pretty solid integrated graphics. Both intel and Apple are claiming that the built in graphics on their newer chips are good enough.

[B]

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

[A]

Yeah, I ordered the framework, cute little desktop PC with AMD. It's got an AMD AI Ryzen in it.

[B]

Yes, the AI Max Ryzen AI Max chip.

[A]

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

[B]

Integrated RAM.

[A]

Integrated RAM. So it's unified RAM which is very important when it comes to AI. Yes. 96 gigs of RAM from Nvidia would not be cheap, right?

[B]

Tens of thousands.

[A]

Yeah. So okay, interesting, interesting.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

I mean, there is a deadline, but I think the President could extend it and probably would extend it again. And I think they said that Vice President Vance was going to be doing the negotiation, but he hasn't actually.

[B]

Oh, great.

[A]

He's been busy doing other things, I guess.

[B]

Really.

[A]

Gonna wear a suit.

[D]

Gonna wear a suit. I guarantee you they'll wear a suit.

[A]

And say thank you often.

[D]

Yes, yes.

[A]

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

[B]

And say, what are you saying? He could be bought and sold?

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

But what if it doesn't? I guess it doesn't matter. We didn't put any money doesn't matter to it.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Come on. Either include all of them that have been confiscated by federal law enforcement or include.

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[C]

That's what. Yeah, that's still leading that group of, of driving Python and advanced analytics in Excel. Using Python. Python, we're using AI basically. So.

[A]

And are you working with Copilot. Microsoft? Are you working with Microsoft's own models or Mai.

[C]

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

[A]

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

[B]

10 years as of last year.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[B]

It's wild. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Congratulations.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot that time.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

You worked for us. That's right. Yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Washington. Washington, yeah.

[A]

Have you built anything there yet?

[D]

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

[A]

But you could live there or.

[D]

No, we could build a house there. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we would. It's after we literally, during co, we spent so much time in Oaxaca that we got so addicted to this weather that we could never live in Southern Washington. It's so gray. No offense to you Washingtonians who love the drizzly, but the, The. The property that we have there gets 60 inches of rain a year, which is. Which is more than California gets in a. In a.

[A]

In a.

[B]

A.

[D]

In a century. But. But yeah, we're. We're here in Oaxaca doing the Oaxaca experience. It's really fantastic. If anybody thinks that Mexicans are like, bitter and angry at the US for our politics, don't think that because they're very pleasant and always very wonderful and, and fantastic. So.

[A]

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

[D]

Well, Tuesday. Tuesday we're doing Oaxaca, the Oaxaca experience.

[A]

Oh, perfect. Okay.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[D]

That's right. That's right.

[A]

So much fun.

[D]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

It was.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

That's right.

[A]

El Salvador, Prosecco Hills, Mexico City. You know, Paul Thurat from Windows Weekly pretty much doesn't ever want to leave Mexico City.

[D]

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

[A]

Okay, yeah, I forgot that there are no tariffs if you're in Mexico.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

No.

[C]

No.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

They're they the whole point, isn't it clean of it? Yeah. The bill was sponsored by Senator Todd Weiler of Utah. He said, quote, it's a lot easier to target two app stores than it is to target 10,000 app developers. Well, that's true. That's true. Under the bill, app stores would be required to request age information when someone creates an account. If a minor tries to open an account, the bill directs the App Store to link it to their parents account account and may request a form of ID from the parents to confirm their identity. If a child tries to download an app that allows in app purchases or requires them to agree to terms and conditions, the parent will have to approve.

[C]

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

[A]

Has to have your information.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

No. Yeah. There's no way they'll do that.

[B]

To worry about the sizable Utah market over there. Yeah.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[C]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Nobody follows that rule.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

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

[C]

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

[D]

So.

[A]

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

[D]

Please keep.

[C]

Hello.

[B]

Good.

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah, the porn sites affected in Texas just like left. Pornhub just doesn't work in Texas.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

So it's easy to get rid of them.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[C]

Dies early.

[A]

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

[D]

That's right.

[A]

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

[D]

Always. And SpaceX is also interested in.

[A]

Yeah, it's going to go up on a falcon. SpaceX falcon.

[D]

But they also want satellites. Yeah, altitude cost.

[C]

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

[A]

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

[D]

That we are paying for it.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Oh, that's good.

[D]

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

[A]

What a release.

[D]

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

[B]

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

[D]

Exactly, exactly.

[A]

Neal Stephenson wrote a novel about seven Eves. Yeah. Really good. Really loved it. Did you like the ending?

[B]

I recall. I recall.

[A]

Yeah, it kind of left you kind of hanging. But that's okay. That's Neil's specialty.

[B]

That's what he does.

[D]

Like space junk. Just hang him.

[A]

Just hang him. Like space junk.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

I really.

[B]

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

[A]

I remember I decided not to read that. Now I know why you're so depressed.

[B]

No, I'm just looking outside. I'm just reading the news.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

It's useless without it.

[A]

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

[B]

Worth it.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

It makes it usable.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

No, please, no. Not my address.

[A]

All right, you can email me leoleoville.com if you've got a video, don't send the video. Just send a link, put it on a cloud somewhere and send me a video. I want to collect them and we'll play as many as we can. I mean, it's only a three hour show, but we'll play as many as we can on April 13th. I think it'd be really fun. Yeah, tell me.

[B]

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

[A]

Will you record one? That would be nice.

[B]

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

[A]

So I think we have accounts at Twitter, accounts all over the various socials, Instagram too. So just, you know, post it and twit it and. And we will. We'll scour the Internet for people's memories of the earliest days of twit 20 years. It's kind of hard to believe we've been doing that. Yeah, it is crazy.

[D]

It is.

[A]

I certainly. When we started in 2005, I didn't think, oh, yeah, 20 years from now I'll be collecting videos from our audience. We were barely able to get Skype to work in those days.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

Does that.

[A]

I've asked this before. Does it even make sense? How do you sell Chrome? What are you, what are you selling?

[B]

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

[A]

Yeah, you can't sell Chromium.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

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

[B]

I, I think, I think most people. The problem is Google's the default everywhere. They paid Apple so much money to.

[A]

Make that 20 billion a year.

[B]

You can change it, but who's gonna change it? You know, aside from listeners of this show.

[D]

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

[A]

Or they don't know. They can't.

[B]

They don't know. There. There's an alternative.

[C]

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

[A]

Windows. It's Edge, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But guess what Edge is. Is based on.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

The browser itself.

[B]

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

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[B]

Killing this, Leo. You're killing us. Killing producers.

[A]

You should make podcasts. Oh, yeah, you do that.

[B]

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

[A]

Nobody wants that. Nobody's stealing that.

[D]

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

[A]

I just need the answers.

[D]

You. The answers.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Totally understandable. I think a lot of people are using multiple AI resources plus Google Search. There's a little trick that you can use Google search without all the cruft and all the AI garbage.

[A]

Oh, how do you do that?

[D]

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

[A]

Know what you're talking about. Yeah, that link circulated. We actually put that out a few a month ago or so.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, that's when it was. People were talking about it. Yeah, but, but really it's, it's like, you know, Google doesn't need any help failing in the, in the.

[A]

No, they're doing great.

[D]

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

[A]

You'll put Mozilla. You'll put Mozilla out of business if you kill those payoffs because that's what keeps Firefox going. The couple of hundred million a year it gets from Google. By the way, the Justice Department no longer wants Google to sell Android. This is, that could have been interesting. So remember, Google has lost the trial already. The judge is trying to decide what the remedy is going to be. He will decide in September. So I guess that's why it's still ongoing because there's nothing the administration can do to kill it. It's done.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

That's nice.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Yeah, it has the sidebar. See, here it is. I'm using it right now. It has the sidebar like this. It has spaces when you click a link. It does. One of the things that I really loved about arc, which I didn't do it in this case, but it will pop up if I go to TechMe. It pops up a little micro window on top of it.

[D]

Like Ark.

[A]

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

[D]

Yeah, they're not using it.

[A]

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

[D]

All right, I'm doing that. I'm doing that.

[A]

I'm really happy with it.

[B]

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

[A]

What's the doing?

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

Isn't it sad?

[B]

It is sad. It's really sad. Yeah.

[A]

Finally, we should end with a note of sadness for the loss of George Lowe. Now, you may not know George Lowe's name, but people of your age, Devindra and Benito's age will very much remember Space Ghost. Space Ghost. He was the voice of space Ghost.

[D]

That's it.

[A]

Now try biting me. Now, Ant from the afterlife. You know, I've been interviewed by all of them. Regis, Kathie Lee. That's Conan. Regis and Kathy Lee.

[C]

Right.

[A]

I'd like to say that I think this show is very bad.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And should be stopped.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

I think you're a bad person. And don't take this the wrong way, but I think you represent evil.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And your presence makes any kind of progress in the universe impossible.

[D]

Hold on a second.

[A]

Conan Maltar. This ant has come back. That is. That is the great George Low, the voice of Space Ghost. Space Ghost. RIP Coast, Second Coast.

[B]

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

[A]

Your universes were colliding, weren't they?

[B]

They. Space Ghost. Coast to Coast. Like, go back. I don't know if it's streaming anywhere these days, but you can buy these seasons on itunes. All of 90s pop culture is in there. There's one episode with Tom York and Bjork together. It's just like, so that's interesting. My teenage years.

[A]

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

[B]

Basically doing kind of riffs on the space ghost voice.

[A]

All that same voice.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

He had that classic radio voice, which kind of like you do, Leo. Like it's radio voice voice. And be really good too.

[A]

If I wanted to, all I have to do is cup my ear behind my hand. Or something like that.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

Is that who did Parasite. Parasite.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

Is it on streaming yet or do I have to go?

[B]

You gotta go to theater, but you should go to the theater for that movie.

[A]

So did you see in the Oscars you. I'm sure you did. The director of Anora. Begging people. Begging, begging them to go back to the theaters. There's nothing like it. He said. I just thought, dude, it's open. Over.

[B]

It's not over. It's over. If we have that attitude, Leo, it's over.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

That's sad. Sad. Watch.

[B]

There's a value for a big city.

[A]

I sit really close. So it's better than the theater. It's actually bigger than theater. By the way. It's the only way to watch the Brutalist. I am not going to go see a 3 hour, 21 minute movie with a 15 minute intermission in a theater.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Only 78, Leo.

[A]

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

[B]

That's all less than budget.

[A]

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

[C]

Yep.

[D]

They're the deep seat of Hollywood movies.

[A]

That's right. Slash. Slash. I'm sorry, not slash film. The film cast podcast. Yes, it's the film because it used to be with David Chen, Devinder Hardware, and Jeff Kanata. Jeff Kanata, who I haven't talked to in ages.

[D]

I love.

[A]

Yeah, give him my regards. Yeah.

[B]

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

[A]

The Monkey.

[B]

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

[A]

That's not the. That's not the one where the singer is a monkey and everybody else.

[B]

That's normal. Better man, right?

[A]

Better man. Yeah, yeah, Weird idea.

[B]

Weird idea.

[A]

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

[B]

And the engagement podcast. Check that out too.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Thank you. Thank you, Leo.

[A]

Yeah, and gadgets.

[B]

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

[A]

I look at that. Is that yours? 7 Asus ZenBook A14.

[B]

It's super, super lightweight.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

It really does.

[A]

It really doesn't get it by an ad or something. Tell the world.

[C]

You said it. Funny that you said that because the last two big things that Satya done, he literally called those two things out. We still don't get enough attention. So it's unfortunate, but it's awesome. It's really awesome. I use it on a daily basis, you know, whether it's, you know, data coming from, you know, whether it's my finances or it's whatever, it's, you know, election data, whatever. I can get to go in there and do really advanced analysis, trending, you name it. Using Python, writing Excel it's awesome.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

That's right.

[D]

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

[A]

It's just protein. Just think of it that way. It's all just a little bit more protein. Go to gastronomad.com or.net, i always.

[D]

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

[A]

I have the site ready and ready to go.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

It'S such a good idea.

[D]

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

[A]

Such a good idea.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

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

[C]

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

[A]

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

[C]

That's right.

[A]

Pair programming, that kind of thing.

[C]

Right.

[A]

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

[D]

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

[A]

Somebody's got to write this stuff. The AI isn't going to write it. Somebody's got to write it. Exactly. Hello, chatterbox.com if you want to know more. It really is a fake. Fantastic product. I shouldn't call it a product. It's a learning tool, really. Little Raspberry PI in there and it. And then the kids code it and they learn so much about how this.

[D]

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

[A]

And say it's important to demystify technology to it makes it more accessible. It's not some magic thing in a box.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

It's accessible.

[D]

Yeah. Well, thank you.

[A]

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

[D]

One more thing also, don't forget to.

[B]

Leave us review on Apple Podcasts.

[A]

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