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This Week in Tech (Audio)
TWiT 1024: Payday Loan Burrito - Section 230, Intel's Future, TikTok's Fate
02:49:42
Section 230, Intel's Future, TikTok's Fate
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:58]
A
NMLS696 it's time for TWIT this Week at Tech. Harry McCracken is here from Fast Company, Father Robert Balasaire from the Vatican and from France, Patrick Beja will talk about the future of Intel, TikTok's future, who's going to buy it and what's going to happen. And finally, France has freed Pavel Durov. Our long nightmare is over. It's all coming up next with a whole lot more on Twitter, podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is twit this week in tech. Episode 1024 recorded Sunday, march 23, 2025. Payday loan burrito. It's time for twit, the show where we cover the latest tech news this week in Tech. And three of my favorite people are here. The technologizer himself, Harry McCracken from Fast Company, who has in many ways you've become our Internet historian or a technology historian. I love that. Love all your wonderful pieces on old technology. Great to have you, Harry. Thank you for joining us.
- [02:17]
C
Great to be here, Leo.
- [02:19]
A
Fr. Robert Balisair joins us from high atop Vatican. He is not in Vatican City. I can't quite figure it out. But you are overlooking St. Peter's Square, right?
- [02:34]
D
So there's Vatican City and then there's the land that the Vatican owns that's outside of Vatican City. I'm on one of those pieces of land. So it is the Vatican. It's just not Vatican City. And by the way, we are the history of technology here. We have all the oldest.
- [02:48]
A
It's all here, baby. Yeah. In fact, it looks like you stole something from our studio with that thing behind you there.
- [02:55]
D
There may be some elements of Twit.
- [02:58]
A
Okay, well the studio's officially gone now. We gave it back to the landlord so it's over. Great to see you Robert. And of course from. I think you're back in France, aren't you? Patrick Bajan.
- [03:10]
B
Yeah. Yes, yes, I'm back in France. So it's delightfully early here. Only 10pm early days.
- [03:20]
A
I see you have the mythic quest sword in your kitchen which is a little.
- [03:24]
B
It is not the mythic quest sword. It's actually I used to work at Blizzard back when we thought, you know, it was a healthy company. And this is my five year sword which I keep very proudly displayed.
- [03:39]
A
They give you a sword after five years.
- [03:42]
B
They give you a like a kind of big mug. What's the. A big beer thing. Old time.
- [03:49]
A
A beer style. Yes.
- [03:50]
B
After two years then the big one is the sword after five then you get a shield after 10 and a crown after 15. No crown is 20 and the ring is 15. But I got the sword. I'm happy with that.
- [04:05]
A
Is the sword an actual sword? I mean could you.
- [04:08]
B
It is. It's very sharp, it's very dangerous. So it's here at my studio. Not where my kids can.
- [04:15]
A
It's not the Minecraft sword that Father Robert is now wielding. Do you get that after five years of playing Minecraft, Father? I think so.
- [04:24]
D
No, no. This is actually given to all the Swiss Guard.
- [04:26]
A
Oh yeah. This guy's dressed so cute. By the way, I understand the Holy Father is out of the hospital. He's home just around the corner and doing better and that's great.
- [04:39]
D
He has a lot of work in Santa Marta. Yeah, he's resting. We're hoping that he will listen to the people around him. He is a workaholic and he just wants to get back at it. And we' all telling him just be calm, relax, take it easy and slowly come back.
- [04:56]
A
Joe, by the way, says you're not at the Vatican Pro. Max, you're at the Vatican plus special edition Special. A little Vatican Se. Yeah. Breaking news. This just came in moments ago. The new CEO Lip Bhutan of Intel has decided to go ahead with the Intel Vision conference at the end of the month. So they were going to be doing it much later in the year. They've moved it up and so I guess we will find out what is going to happen to intel in just a week or so.
- [05:37]
B
Very good move. I think a little bit surprising but there's Been so much uncertainty around intel in the past three months. What was it when Gelsinger was ousted? And whatever he says, I can't imagine that he would, you know, sell off the foundry business. It's such an opportunity now. But whatever he says, whatever they do, he has to announce the strategy for the next few years and whatever he says at least will know.
- [06:07]
A
And uncertainty is the worst possible thing.
- [06:10]
B
Yeah, uncertainty is always bad. So I think that's a pretty good, a pretty clever move on his part.
- [06:15]
C
I remember Pat Gelsinger tried to pull off something similar by announcing a big conference. But he was admired in the pandemic. And I believe the big conference he announced, it ended up, they could not actually hold when they expected to. And I actually, I worked on a big story on him and they had rented out Fort Mason in San Francisco and then they had to cancel that, but they already had it. So I was like the one person who attended their big conference in order to talk to Pat. And other than that, they just broadcast from Fort Mason, but there was nobody there in person.
- [06:48]
A
Intel's stock has actually recovered somewhat in the last few months after the announcement. You can see this is right around when they announced the new CEO a couple of weeks ago. There was quite a big dip, although it isn't fully recovered from its heights of last year or even actually last February. So it's still pretty low. In fact, if you look at the five year, it's obviously people are, you know, intel was, you know, well over $60 a couple of years ago, is now just around $25. Not a lot of confidence. I'm surprised you think he might not break it up. It seems like that's the only possible strategy. And integrated intel has not done well.
- [07:36]
B
Yeah, no, it hasn't. But it seemed like Gelsinger had the right idea because for which he was fired.
- [07:45]
A
Yes.
- [07:46]
B
I don't really understand. Well, maybe I'm still on Gelsinger's plan and that's why I think he can't spin it off. I think probably for shareholders, which is maybe what he cares about. It could make sense to split the company in two and have two very competent companies instead of one. Middling. But it seems like if he can execute, there is so much need for not relying on Asian manufacturing in the chip space. And intel has huge assets in that field. I don't see how they could not leverage that now. Maybe technology wise, they're behind. I don't know. It seems like such an asset. The foundry business seems like such an asset. And if they manage to turn it into a, you know, as Gelsinger wanted to do and has started doing, you know, manufacturer to order outlet, it would be hugely profitable because people want to have things manufactured more locally, especially in the U.S. but I don't know it. Maybe he has a. Obviously he knows the business better than I do, but it does, it does.
- [09:02]
A
Seem like big technology companies are struggling in this new era. Yes. Apple announced last week that it wasn't going to be able to get its AI into the iPhones this year. I guess you could say Microsoft's doing okay. Although everybody I talk to loathes Windows.
- [09:25]
C
I mean, unfortunately, intel has been struggling ever since the Windows based PC stopped being the thing at the center of computing. So pretty much the moment smartphones came out and it had no smartphone story. Been trying to rectify that ever since. And you would think that if they were still going to follow Gelsinger's strategy, they would have Gelsinger doing that and that would suggest they will try something significantly different, whether it's truly splitting it up or making some other radical change to what Gelsinger was attempting to do, which I don't feel like they gave him enough time to do.
- [10:04]
D
I mean, they're all struggling under the weight of their own legacy. Microsoft, Apple, Google.
- [10:10]
A
Add Google to this.
- [10:11]
D
All of them.
- [10:11]
A
Right.
- [10:12]
D
It's very hard to innovate when you're tied down to what you're expected to maintain. But if you look at Tan's legacy, if you look at what, what his lineage is, he is a chip design guy.
- [10:22]
A
That's where. So was Gelsinger, right?
- [10:24]
D
I mean, yeah, but Gelsinger was more, I mean, he did chip design, but he was more on the administrative side.
- [10:29]
A
Okay.
- [10:30]
D
Tan actually has a background where he understands what's going on, so he could. What I'm hoping is that this conference is not just going to be a hype cycle where some PR guy said we need to get out there to stop the bleeding. And he's actually going to say, look, we have to stop. We have to look at what we need. We have to listen to our customers, we have to listen to our designers, we have to listen to the market and we're going to design a new piece of silicon around that. And I'm with Patrick. I think if they sell off the foundries and tells us good is dead, if they have to go out and design things out of house, they have no competitive advantage. As it is right now, they're so far behind that they, it will not do well. Enough for them to be incremental. Here they have to announce that they are. They are shooting for a new processor fabric or it's just going to be, oh, the next chips going to be slightly faster and that's not going to cut it.
- [11:25]
C
Go. Singer, who. He started intel, like, as a. An intern, I think maybe in the late 70s originally. He was the principal architect of the 486.
- [11:37]
A
So, yeah, he was a real. In fact, I'm not sure Lip Bhutan really was. He has a master's in nuclear engineering from MIT and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. He, you know, he ran Cadence, which was a chip design firm from 2009 to 2021.
- [11:56]
C
That they're like a chip design software company.
- [11:59]
A
Yeah, but that doesn't mean he was actually active. I mean, he ran it. He really. I think he's more of a money guy. So I don't. I mean, he might be the guy you bring in if you wanted to sell off a company, to be honest.
- [12:11]
D
Oh, God, please, no.
- [12:12]
A
That's what happened to ge, right? GE just got so big, got out over its skis so far that they just ended up chopping it up into pieces, each of which has done fine. What would you chop intel up? Fab and design.
- [12:27]
B
Well, that's the delineation that makes sense. There are many options. I mean, you can sell off one part and keep the other. Either would do. You can split the company in two and I don't know the technical financial terms, but essentially get stuck in both resulting companies. But again, maybe it's because I see this from the eu, where strategic independence in the area of chip manufacturing is absolutely essential. But I feel like the world has realized this with COVID right? When chips became less available, then everything stopped and every country has started thinking, okay, we need to bring back manufacturing locally to an extent. Maybe you don't necessarily need to become a leader, but you need to have some measure of independence. But maybe intel is so outpaced in that area that the partnerships with TSMC in the US Are enough.
- [13:32]
A
They got a big chunk of change from the CHIPS Act. I don't know if they'll get to.
- [13:36]
C
They did.
- [13:36]
A
Yeah.
- [13:37]
C
But now that is somewhat uncertain because Trump says. Trump says the CHIPS act is terrible, which is, as far as I can tell, he's saying only because it was a Biden thing. Given that in a lot of ways, the chips.
- [13:48]
A
What he wants to do, which is bring chip manufacturing back to the economy.
- [13:52]
C
Trump should love the Chips Act.
- [13:55]
A
Intel's market cap is only 100 billion. I mean this in an environment where others are in the trillions, it's price to earnings ratio is in the negative. Is negative. So the market does not believe in intel at this point? Well, I think it might be a bargain.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends. The issue is the processes, right. With intel they made huge technological bets like mistakes and they didn't go to whatever the process is that what's the Dutch company that they enable the euv.
- [14:36]
A
The extreme ultra extreme ultraviolet process.
- [14:40]
B
But Gelsinger was saying, okay, we made a mistake there, we're going to switch to that technology that ended up being the one that everyone uses now. And. But maybe it's too late, maybe intel is too far behind and by the time they implement that technology, you know, it would take three or four years and I don't know, maybe that's, you.
- [15:03]
A
Know, Patrick, you could also say that American big tech is foundering because the EU is killing us. Right? I mean, Google.
- [15:13]
B
No, you could not say. I mean, you could say it. You would be wrong.
- [15:16]
A
But would we be wrong? Okay, yes, I, I have a lot.
- [15:22]
B
To say about this, but I will let you.
- [15:24]
A
Well, in some, you know, I have to say if you're a privacy advocate in the United States, you're grateful for GDPR, the, the EU's privacy regulations because we don't seem to be able to make any privacy regulations here in the US but on the other hand, I mean Apple, Microsoft, Google, everybody's getting fined dramatically by the eu. I can't seem to get it together.
- [15:50]
B
I wouldn't say dramatically, but yes, there are very large fines that are possible if you don't follow the new rules. Especially the DSA and EMA are quite stringent.
- [16:03]
A
And the Digital Markets act and the Digital Services act, both of which are both Apple and Google's stores are in trouble with that many social networks in trouble with the dma. Right.
- [16:19]
B
It touches on a lot of things. I think the most prominent one, the most visible one is the way that Apple has been forced to open up iOS. And there's been a story in the past week that is kind of things are heating up between Apple and the European Commission because now the latest from the European Commission is that Apple has to open every function of iOS that is privately available to Apple to its competitors. And this is like the first time when even me I'm thinking, oh, okay, this is pretty big. The thing is this is trying. I think it's being discussed a lot in the US especially under the impression that this is just to annoy Apple and to get back at them because we're so angry that the Americans have managed to have such success in tech. And I mean, maybe there's some of that, but this is not what these regulations are about. I think one element that is very much obfuscated in those discussions is that the issue is fair competition. If you don't have free and open competition in a market, which is actually, I think, the basis of the free market and capitalism, then the machine is stuck and it doesn't work. And currently we have several markets where competition is arguably not free and open. New entrants have a very, very difficult time entering a. And one of those, to take the example of Apple and iOS, is the smartphone market. And maybe it's not in numbers, a monopoly. It's certainly there's a case to be made that it's monopsony, meaning if you're a developer and you want to make money, you have to be on Apple's platforms so they can set up their rules. But in order to. Breaking open is a, I guess a loaded term a little bit. But in order to enable other entrants to compete, not even in the smartphone market, but in adjacent markets, connected devices, watches, all of that, if Apple restricts.
- [18:55]
D
The.
- [18:57]
B
Functionalities that you have access to, then you're never going to be able to compete. And so the sort of free open competition doesn't work. And what the EU is saying is you have to open everything. Like for example, one of the things that Apple is very angry about, or at least we believe they are, because they've communicated in a very strange way through a letter sent to media outlets that are usually sympathetic to them and nothing public. So we don't know the details of what they don't like. But one thing they've been saying is if you enable third party watchmakers to access notifications, then it's a privacy nightmare and everyone can access all of your information and suck it up. And Meta has been asking for this and it's unconscionable. I understand the idea that opening up enabling notifications to be available to any third party actor could be a privacy issue, but if you take the problem from the competition aspect, in order for someone else than Apple to be able to compete, then you need the access to those features. It's not a ridiculous idea, even though it does have some drawbacks, which again, the reason you agree to those drawbacks is that you have a market that is completely closed now with Apple's dominance in that space.
- [20:37]
A
Apple's Defense is always, well, it will make it insecure and it's starting to, frankly, wear a little thin. Patrick. I'm sorry, Father Robert, you are standing like a colossus with a foot astride both continents, but you're also a security expert. Can you. Is there any credibility to what Apple's saying?
- [21:00]
D
I mean, yes, anytime you open up a closed system, of course there's, there's going to be security exploits. There's going to be the possibility that you are making a closed environment open to attack. But that's not necessarily a reason not to make it open. I mean, if you come from the open source background, which most of my compatriots do, you recognize that opening up a closed system will reveal security exploits and even more quickly it will help to patch those security exploits. So that whole idea of the security sky is falling while it makes for really, really good press when you're trying to explain why you won't do X, Y or Z. I mean, remember, this goes back to the original iPhone and jailbreaking it. The ability to install your own apps was one of these things. They said, oh no, no, no, that's so insecure. And we're just trying to protect the users. We can't open up these features, we can't let you use your, your phone as a hotspot without charging you because it's allowing people to access parts of the operating system that they shouldn't have to ask. I mean, this goes back more than a decade. This, this goes back to the, to the foundation of Apple's ascendancy in the tech space. And unfortunately we've just heard it far too many times. I'm with Patrick here. I think, yes, I understand why Apple wants to keep it closed and at the same time I understand why the EU really does want to open it. Not to punish Apple, but to spark competition in the space which just doesn't exist with the juggernauts of Apple and Samsung on the other side.
- [22:44]
B
And I think another aspect of this is the way Apple is doing things is absolutely awesome and I love it. And I think in a world where Apple. The irony of all of this is that the reason Apple is so dominant is because they have made this closed, convenient, super controlled system and users do love it and that's why they're so strong in that field, at least partly why. And I love that proposition for the user. The problem is they're so dominant that competition doesn't exist anymore.
- [23:25]
A
So you can, do you punish a company that's that success because they're successful.
- [23:30]
B
No, you don't punish them. You enable competition. And it's not about punishing Apple, it's about enabling competition, which is the bedrock of capitalism. You know, you should be the ones defending this, not me.
- [23:44]
A
I defend it, believe me. I defend. So I'm not taking a dog, I'm not picking a dog in this hunt. Martin Peers, writing for the Information this weekend, says that Apple's troubles actually might be good for them in fighting off these antitrust issues, both in the US and in the eu. Antitrust regulators might have a harder time proving Apple's market power because Apple's struggling both in AI. They're struggling with the Vision Pro. And he's pointing out Spotify leaves Apple Music in the dust. Yeah, Apple Music has 100 million subscribers. Spotify 263 million paying subscribers. I mean, that's a big difference. And by the way, it is Spotify that is complaining about Apple in the eu, right?
- [24:33]
B
I think software is complaining about Apple.
- [24:35]
A
Okay.
- [24:36]
C
I think software is a little bit. Software is a little bit different than a hardware, though it is possible to really establish yourself on Apple's platform is an app such as Spotify and compete, even though Apple does even have some advantages there. But Eric Mitchikovsky, that the pebble smartwatch.
- [24:54]
A
Guy, he's been complaining.
- [24:56]
C
He had a good post that went up right before the EU announcement about how he can't make a Pebble smartwatch awesome on iOS because he simply does not have access to the same stuff that the Apple Watch people do.
- [25:09]
A
Pebbles releasing. In fact, you could place orders now, I think, for their new pebble watches. Mitzikovsky kind of bought the company back. He was the original creator. But he has complained that while they'll be powerful and sophisticated if you use it with an Android phone, it won't do nearly as much if you use it with an iPhone. This is a long time story, right? I mean, this has always been the case, not just for pebble, but for a lot of things.
- [25:36]
C
Yeah, I mean, I had a Garmin Watch for a couple of years, which in a lot of ways I liked, but it was dependent on Bluetooth to talk to my iPhone, which is always going to be a little bit flaky. And when I switched to an Apple Watch, it was just so clear that there's this extremely reliable communications bandwidth between two Apple devices that you just don't get access to if you're not Apple.
- [26:02]
A
So it's interesting because on the one hand Apple says, well, we're doing that because we make A better product and it's closed and that makes it more secure and better. But then on the other hand, people like Eric Menzikovsky and Pebble say, yeah, but that means no one else can make something as good.
- [26:24]
C
Apple also says, I mean, Apple also says if you don't like what we're doing and you want it to be.
- [26:29]
A
More open, you can use Android.
- [26:30]
C
You have great use Android. It exists and it actually has vastly larger market share worldwide than we do.
- [26:37]
A
Well, and you know what, with the failure of Apple AI and the success of Google's Gemini AI, maybe people are starting to say, hmm, maybe I shouldn't buy an iPhone. Should Apple be worried?
- [26:52]
C
I think AI is this inflection point that is still in the process of playing out. And it is at least conceivable that on the other end, smartphones will look quite different and Google will have a lead in terms of innovation on the experience standpoint that it has not had historically.
- [27:10]
B
Yeah, but I think if that happens, if Apple falls on its face with AI, then that will be. And you know, let's say in five years, iPhone sales decline because the AI products that Apple is creating aren't up to par with what Google is creating. I doubt that will happen. They have such an established base, they have the, a dominant platform now. But maybe if that happens, then the decline in market share for Apple or in revenue share, you know, that's the main thing in that market will be because Apple failed on AI. Right, because the opened up the OS enough that pebble is able to do a decent watch.
- [27:56]
A
That's what free marketers would say is just let the market decide this. And the market is.
- [28:01]
B
No, I mean the free marketers would say free market awesome all the time, except when there's a monopoly. That's the basic.
- [28:12]
A
Even Adam Smith said that. Yeah, yeah. This is Mijikovsky's post from March 17. Apple restricts pebble from being awesome with iPhones and he points out that their app is stuck. And this is really one of the big complaints people, a lot of developers have about Apple is the App Store process is arcane, is opaque, is challenging, frustrating. And he's having a hard time with that because Apple won't let his App Store app through to the App Store. Well, you know, I love, see I'm sitting here with a daily driver, which is the iPhone. And like mo, like many users, we love what Apple has done. But I also understand the issue, especially for third party developers, that Apple is maybe over controlling.
- [29:08]
D
So I worked with a company that has exhibited at ces. I'm going to leave their name out of it, but they designed a product that works for both iOS and for, for Android, and they said they were able to work with some very competent Apple engineers on getting the product to work.
- [29:25]
C
Work.
- [29:25]
D
What took them the longest time was getting Apple marketing to approve everything from the packaging to the font.
- [29:31]
A
They're very.
- [29:32]
D
To how they write the instruction manual. Yeah, so that's, that's actually another level of the difficulty to work inside of a closed system. Apple is.
- [29:40]
A
But they say they're protecting users, they're protecting the user experience by delaying a.
- [29:45]
D
Product for eight months until they get the right color on the box.
- [29:49]
B
But I think, you know, so this, if Apple wants to function that way, I think it is absolutely their prerogative. You know, it is their company, their products. And while we could discuss the frustrations that developers and partners have with Apple, I think they've proved time and time again that it works really well for them because it works really well for their customers. And, you know, I have an iPhone. I've had an iPhone for a very long time. I use a PC, but I also use a Mac. I have an Apple Watch. I have. I have AirPods frauds. I'm in the Apple ecosystem mostly, except for work. But this is not the issue that the EU is trying to address here. Again, monopoly slash monopsony. That's the problem. And we can complain about the way Apple handles their developers for marketing reasons, and those complaints are valid, but they're separate from the things that the EU is trying to achieve with these, except.
- [30:49]
D
When they use those marketing hurdles as punitive. So the company that I was working with, in order to make all the issues go away, they took out the packaging that said that it works with both iOS and Android, and it said only iOS. And then suddenly everything went.
- [31:08]
A
Everyone says, oh, fine, right now, they can't prove that.
- [31:13]
D
They can't prove it, but it feels punitive.
- [31:16]
A
It does.
- [31:17]
B
That's another aspect of this, of this whole thing, is that.
- [31:20]
A
Did they demand an apology? Robert.
- [31:25]
B
Apple isn't shy about using all of these advantages or specificities or quirks to gain competitive advantage, which is normal. That's what any company would do, obviously. But again, when there's a monopoly, rules are different.
- [31:45]
A
Mitchakovsky says we're going to try anyway. The problem is 40% of everyone who signed up still uses for the new pebble watch. RePEBBLE.com still uses an iPhone. So we're going to make a damn iOS app. He says, I Guess we're gluttons for punishment. Apple will never change their ways. Unless you, the pebble curious iPhone user, complain loudly or switch to Android, which is also hard because Apple tries its best to lock you into their platform.
- [32:16]
C
And the Apple Watch is one of the best tools they have to lock you in. I mean, the Apple Watch is literally kind of the only thing that if I were to go to Android permanently, I would really miss my Apple Watch. I think everything else, I could figure out a suitable alternative on Android.
- [32:33]
A
All right, let's take a little break. Great conversation. It's nice to have some people from across the pond. We, as it were, Patrick Beja, representing the EU today. Sorry to put you in that position.
- [32:47]
B
I was angry at all of these ideas for such a long time and I was the one saying, but look, we have Android, we have the alternative, the open alternative.
- [32:56]
A
In fact, Android sells better in the eu, does it not?
- [32:59]
B
Well, the issue is it doesn't matter if it sells better because the money is in iOS.
- [33:05]
A
The profit.
- [33:06]
B
The profit. And for developers, financial monopoly.
- [33:09]
A
Sure, yeah, yeah, it's great to have you. NotPatrick.com he has, as many of us, have now abandoned X.com formerly Twitter, and is on BlueSkyotPatrick.com Follow him there. Father Robert Balasaire, you are. Where are you these days? You're on Blue Sky. I see.
- [33:29]
D
I am on Blue Sky. I mean, it just became so toxic on Twitter about six months ago, and so I just gradually pulled away and at the end of the last year, I just pulled the plug entirely and I've actually been very happy on Blue Sky.
- [33:43]
A
Blue sky is as close to the old Twitter as anything.
- [33:46]
B
For now.
- [33:47]
D
I haven't really had a bot problem. I haven't had a problem with people coming into a conversation just to be in a nuisance. So fingers crossed.
- [33:55]
A
Yeah, I stopped posting on Twitter when Elon bought it. I kind of saw the future, but I finally, this week deleted the the X app from all my devices because I kept going to it and I kept. It's like a traffic wreck. I kept looking at it and I said, stop it.
- [34:14]
B
I still go to it too.
- [34:16]
A
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard not to look at it, but I realized the things I was seeing were not good for me or other living things.
- [34:26]
D
I am so much health here emotionally, now that I don't go to Twitter.
- [34:31]
A
Exactly. And Harry McCracken from Fast Company, you are also on Blue Sky.
- [34:37]
C
Well, I use this app called Open Vibe, which lets me post to Blue Sky Mastodon and Threads. So I use them all a little bit. I'd say probably Blue sky the most. Mastodon a little bit behind and Threads somewhat. And I'm off Twitter and I found it remarkably easy to not keep returning to what I do. Look at it occasionally, just because if you're writing about tech, it's kind of have to, you kind of need to look at it sometimes. But I thought I would be quietly still addicted, which turned out not to be the case at all.
- [35:09]
A
Yeah, well, it is palpably worse. I mean, it's not, you know, there's still a lot of people I respect there, like Cory Doctorow. But I've noticed on this show there's been this gradual move. This is the first time, I think on this show that nobody is on Twitter at all. Gradually, our panelists have slowly been moving away from it. So there you have it. Let's take a little break. When we come back, lots more news with our fabulous panel this week in Tech brought to you by Monarch Money. I've been using this, I really like this, a website. There's also an app that is a really great way to keep track of what's going on in your financial life. Finances can be confusing and messy. We're getting close to tax time. Talk about messy. Monarch Money acts kind of like your personal cfo, your chief financial officer, giving you full visibility and control so you could stop earning and start growing. Okay, think of it that way. It's more than your average budgeting app. It does that, of course, But Monarch Money is a complete financial command center for your accounts, your investments, your goals, your net worth. Don't just manage your money. Start building wealth with 50% off your first year for our listeners, because honestly, they know you're going to get hooked. I have moved completely to Monarch Money. Now it's all I use. And 50% off is fantastic. But you have to go to the website for that monarchmoney.com and use the offer code twit. Once you do that and you link your accounts, by the way, that's a completely secure way to do it. And it's the easiest way I've found of any app to link all your finances, then it just kind of updates itself. Remember in the early days of computers, one of the things people said, oh, why do you get a personal computer? So you could balance your checkbook? And we, we all had checkbook balancing apps. That's, I never found the bank making an error. I never did. So that was a silly reason. And I didn't like all the manual entry or the importing, Monarch Money just does it. It's easy, it's clear. You know exactly where your money's going. You know exactly what you could do to start earning, start managing your finances to build a life you actually want. If you don't have a clear financial picture, your financial dreams just are nebulous. They're kind of out there, out of reach. But Monarch makes managing money simple. Even if you're busy, it's got all your accounts, your credit cards, your investment accounts, your home, all your net worth. You always know where your money stands without the hassle. You could track your spendings, your savings, your investments, effortlessly, literally. You don't have to do anything. It just happens. So you can focus on what matters most, making your biggest life goals a reality. It's a financial tool people actually love. Over a million households now using Monarch Money. I had never heard of it, but then Wall Street Journal said it's the best budgeting app of 2025. I said, I gotta try this. It is now the top recommended personal finance app by users and experts. 30,000 5 star reviews and now you can get half off. Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Just use the code twit@monimalmoney.com you do that in your browser. That's the only way you can get this half off your first year. 50% off your first year. Monarchmoney.com, the offer code is twit. I could not recommend this more highly and there is a try before you buy if you want, but I absolutely think this is the tool. I've settled on this one. I love it. Monarchmoney.com, the offer code twit at the website. Thank you Monarch Money for supporting the show. We appreciate it. Google says it is testing removing its European News content for 1% of users. Did this for 8 EU countries. And guess what? Guess what? The data shows, according to Google, that people visited Google only slightly less often when news was removed. And more importantly, from Google's point of view, ad revenue did not significantly change. This is the reason for this blog post at Google's keyword blog is to set governments on notice that, hey, you could start trying to make us pay for news links. We'll just leave. It's not going to hurt us, it's going to hurt you. They did it in Australia, they did it in Spain first.
- [39:42]
D
It's amazing how often this story keeps popping back up because I remember, I remember covering the Spain thing when I was still living In California.
- [39:50]
A
Right.
- [39:51]
D
And it's, it's like no one learns they don't need you. They don't have to have to rank your content. If you want them to take you off, they can take you off and they'll be perfectly happy. So why would you turn away free advertising for your content? It's.
- [40:06]
A
This is. Yeah, this is, it's. You know, I think Rupert Murdoch started this in, in Australia, the link tax, where, hey, you, Google, are making money off of our content. So when you link to us, you need to give us money. Australia passed that law. Canada passed a law to do that. Spain did. Google withdrew. Facebook's withdrawn pretty much from Canada. And it turned out these companies don't really need the. They don't need the traffic. The newspapers need the traffic.
- [40:39]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [40:40]
A
Google writes, during our negotiations to comply with the European Copyright Directive, we've seen a number of inaccurate reports that vastly overestimate the value of news content to Google. So we did a little experiment and it wasn't good for you guys.
- [40:58]
B
I think it's easy to see that this as Google marketing, and especially in the context of it doesn't reduce our ad revenue, which obviously Google is gigantic. It's not this one thing that's going to affect it. So I think they put it in a context that's favorable to them. But I do think this argument from the newspaper industry comes back so often and it doesn't seem to ever die, that I think they wanted to have a piece of data that they could earnestly show the newspaper industry to say, you keep saying that you provide value to us. We assure you that's not the case. You don't have the cards. To paraphrase someone in the Oval Office a few weeks ago, in this case, that's completely true. The newspaper industry has no leverage on Google. The one thing they can demand, like, recently the argument has morphed into, you have to pay us if you use our links, but also you have to use our links like, you can't not link to us anymore because the argument has morphed because Google is like, okay, fine, if you want us to pay you, we won't include you in Google News or we'll shut down Google News. And the newspaper industry doesn't seem to understand what is happening there. So I think they really wanted to have an experiment, somewhat academic to say, look here, it doesn't change our bottom line. We won't cave. That being said, in all of those negotiations, there was usually, and I think actually always money that Google would Cough up. And they referenced that in that very short blog post. They referenced the fact that they give money to the newspapers.
- [43:01]
A
They gave Canadian news outlets $100 million, continue to do so a year, which is not a lot from Google's point of view. Meta. Famously, when Canada passed the Online News act in 2023, said, Fine, no more news for you. And the impact has not been on Meta. It's been on Canadian news publishers who faced substantial declines in online traffic. But there is a consequence, and this is kind of an interesting side effect. Canadians are consuming less news as a result of the ban. So when you take the news out of the search engines, out of the social networks, sure, it doesn't cost the social networks or the search engines, but it does maybe cost something to the Canadian people.
- [43:49]
D
How much of that is the change in the news industry itself? I mean, if you go back 15 years, the landscape of reporting, reporting across the, across the world was very different. You still had a lot of independent reporting. You still had a couple of new shops that were really good at their jobs at investigation. Now all outlets basically parrot the same talking points. They get the same releases. Sometimes the wordings are the same on two top ranked sites. So it's not as if I need to use your search engine to find the story that's going to end up on your site anyways.
- [44:23]
A
Well, in the long run. And honestly, I feel like Google is in trouble anyway. I don't go to Google for news. I guess some people still do, but I use AI Now, I was going to say that's the real threat.
- [44:38]
C
I think that the news outlets do at least somewhat of a better claim with AI because the deal, whether you wanted to be part of the deal or not with Google was always. You'd get traffic if people went to Google. And if we're talking perplexity or.
- [44:56]
A
Yeah, that's what I use.
- [44:58]
C
And they weave together information from your content and you don't get traffic. That seems to me to be, to be a more legitimate beef.
- [45:07]
A
Yeah.
- [45:08]
D
Of course you've got Altman saying that if you don't let us steal all that copyrighted material, we'll never have AI.
- [45:13]
A
Steel is a loaded word. Father. Robert. Robert, are you shoveling into the book? Are you stealing the book? No, you. You're reading it and remembering it, maybe even regurgitating it.
- [45:26]
D
But if you have the text of, of my book in your LLM and I can actually find that text, that is stealing.
- [45:33]
A
Yes. Yeah, but can you find that text? I don't. I think you don't you have tokens? Right, so if you, let's say you memorize a poem, should you pay the poet?
- [45:45]
B
I think this is a very valid argument, but also the form changes. The conclusion. If you're talking about, if you're talking about, for example, to do a very quick aside, moderation, for example, when you only have, have 10 outlets, moderation is possible. When you have social media that spews out information continuously, all the time and millions of pieces of content every hour, then the issue of moderation is different. And I think that's why in the eu, again, sorry to come back to that, we've sort of somewhat, a little bit deputized the platforms themselves to take out the content that is egregious very quickly themselves. And we can't put a judge behind every single piece of content. So freedom of speech is very wide. But the conversation becomes different and the arguments become different when you have people in a town square and national newspaper than when you have everyone being able to say anything about anything. And it's, it has global reach in this case, to come back to AI. I think you're right, Leo. Obviously, when you read something and you remember it and it informs your creative process, I think that's not copyright infringement. However, if you industrialize it and automatize it and make it systematic on every piece of knowledge, then I think the conversation becomes different and the conclusions you reach are not necessarily the same. Now, to be clear, I think I fall on the side that is more. It is not actually copyright infringement. It's different, it's transformative. But I understand that someone might say the argument is not necessarily the same, the conclusion is not necessarily the same, and we should re examine the thinking behind it before we declare, yes, it's the same and it's not copyright infringement. It is a different process.
- [48:06]
C
The Atlantic had a good piece a couple of days ago about the fact that Meta trained llama on an enormous collection of pirated books.
- [48:16]
A
Yes.
- [48:17]
C
And they had internal communications and made it pretty clear that Meta was not proud of the fact it was using pirated books.
- [48:24]
A
They knew it.
- [48:25]
C
To me, using pirated content is an entirely different question than trading on stuff that you've either purchased or which is openly available for free.
- [48:36]
B
Is it different, though, if they had gone and purchased every single book, digitized it and trained their LLM on all of those, would it be different?
- [48:45]
C
Well, I mean, if I as an individual go in and shoplift books from Barnes and Noble and read them, that's quite different than buying them From Barnes and Noble.
- [48:53]
B
Trouble, sure. But then the issue is the theft, not the training of the LLM, right?
- [48:57]
A
They could have. What our producer Benito has always said is is his real concern is it's these big rich companies getting richer based on absorbing content from writers, creators, artists.
- [49:09]
C
I mean, I know that a lot of publishers also wouldn't be happy if Meta had purchased all this stuff, but.
- [49:14]
A
The publishers would still hate it.
- [49:16]
C
But I think, I think Meta gives up a little bit of the right to get on a high horse if it uses pirated content.
- [49:24]
A
Do you have. What do you have in France to protect websites, comment sections or social media against lawsuits? We have something in the United states called section230. Oh my God, the Communications Decency Act. Is there anything like that in Europe?
- [49:44]
B
I don't Even know, because section 230 is, is, has become something such again, I'm going to say the bedrock of the Internet. I don't even know. I'm sure there's some legal mechanism in France as well, and in the EU. If we do, it's probably very similar to Section 230. And I can't believe that it's now actually we've come to a place where it is under threat.
- [50:08]
A
There actually is a book, the 26 words that created the Internet, which is based on the 26 words. It's very simple of section 230, which says that social networks, Meta, TikTok, my own sites, my Mastodon site, my forums are not responsible if somebody puts something up there that it violates the law or is libelous, that that person's liable. But not the interactive computer service. It's simply no provider or user of interactive computer service should be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider that has resulted in, I think, a very vibrant, exciting user generated Internet. Because Google and Facebook and Twit don't have to worry about our liability. In fact, it would be thrown out in court if somebody sues us over something somebody put on our Mastodon instance. However, it's at risk. Paris Martineau, writing in the Information this weekend, points out that next week Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, planned to introduce a bill that would set an expiration date at the end of next year for section 2:30. And I have to tell you, if that happens, I probably would shut down our forums, I would shut down our Mastodon, I would turn off comments because I can't afford to go to court to defend somebody's posts on our sites.
- [51:56]
D
The Most, the most disingenuous part of any attempt to shut down Section 230, either from the Republican side or the Democrat side, is they say this is necessary to stop the flow of misinformation on the Internet and to stop, stop the flow of defamatory information on the Internet. But section 230 specifically addresses that it's not an unlimited power to post, publish anything you want. There is a provision in section 230 that says if someone finds copyrighted or otherwise offensive, slash, illegal content posted, then the, the, the, the website owner, whoever's actually hosting it, needs to take it down. So there's a, there's a system in which you can submit a complaint and action needs to be taken against that content in a reasonable amount of time. There is no timeframe, specific timeframe set, otherwise that public, that, that hoster does become the publisher. So section 230 already has a remedy for the things they say they want to fix by removing section 230. That's the strangest thing. I don't know if it's incompetence of the law or they just don't understand how hosting works.
- [53:07]
A
But Josh Hawley, Masha Blackburn, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar, talking about unlikely bedfellows, have all co sponsored this bill. Dick Blumenthal and Peter Welch also discussed joining as co sponsors. The thing that's really important is this also gives, and I think this is why the right doesn't like it. It gives these social networks the power to moderate without getting sued. And if you take away their power to moderate, then you, you think X is bad.
- [53:37]
B
Now the way you, you probably know this better than me then, but the issue there is that they can moderate without becoming essentially editors, right? Without becoming liable for the content.
- [53:52]
A
We're not now publishers of the content.
- [53:55]
B
Right. Mike Masnik, a tech dirt, has a brilliant paper up that essentially says, yes, it is incompetence that is the issue. They don't understand what the law does specifically for the, the Democrat senators that support that bill.
- [54:11]
A
His headline, democratic Senators team up with MAGA to hand Trump a censorship Machine.
- [54:17]
B
That is so weird. And that is the issue. The problem is the, the, the maga movement has been livid with the fact that the big Internet companies are able to moderate misinformation and disinformation. Because, I mean, I don't think it's actually politically, it is charged, but I don't think it's political to say that a lot of their platforms run on, I mean, the MAGA platforms run on disinformation. Donald Trump lies all the time about everything. It's become very common. And the fact that for many, many years, Twitter and other platforms could say this is not true. They would label things, you know, they had third party check, fact checkers, label misinformation and disinformation, which by the way, has gone away on both Twitter and Facebook, is a problem for the political movement of the Maga party. And I think that's why. I don't know why the Democrats want to get rid of Section 230, but that's why the Republicans want to get rid of it. It creates a world where moderation becomes incredibly difficult. Masnik writes, I honestly think that's what they do.
- [55:47]
A
That Dick Durbin confuses actual criminals who can and should be prosecuted with the tools they misuse. He says it's like blaming the phone company for criminal conspiracies plotted over phone lines. The thing I want to say is, you know, whenever these conversations come up and there will be debates over this and Congress will talk about this, they always talk about Google and Twitter and Facebook. But what they forget is those companies probably can afford to defend themselves. But there are a myriad of small forums, chat rooms, discussion areas run by small companies like mine that absolutely cannot defend ourselves in court. We could not afford this, and we would be immediately attacked by people who would sue us, and that would be that. If this passes, I will then shut down all of our interactive content, all of our chat rooms. I mean, right now we have. We're streaming on eight different platforms and all of them have chat rooms open. So I can see what people are saying about this. That would all go away, I can assure you. That would have to go away already. There's a fixi site, a fixi forum in the UK that is closed because of a change in the laws in the uk, he says, I'm, you know, it's the small guys that are going to suffer. It's the forums that you participate in, the discords that are going to go away. You know, X isn't going to go away. Facebook's not going to go away. Well, they can afford this.
- [57:23]
B
I don't know if they're liable for every piece of content that is posted up there.
- [57:30]
A
It's not going to be fun for them. I'm not saying.
- [57:33]
B
I don't know that they can function. You know, that's the issue. And by the way, it is set to. What is it? Sometime in 2027, I believe the idea is to force big tech to come to the table to find a solution. The problem is what solution to what? Like what do they actually want? No one knows. But I don't think in their intent they actually want to invalidate 230 by that time. They want to negotiate what.
- [58:03]
A
But what are they going to carve out? You know, Klobuchar in 2021 proposed a carve out that said that the CDC and the NIH could take down misleading health information. And that would be a modification which would give RFK Jr. The right to take down any vaccine information on every social site. I mean any carve out is. Is fraught with peril. Mike points out, Even with Section 230, if a website wants to defend its right to keep content up or take it down, winning such a case typically costs around $100,000 absent Section 230 protection. So it's 100,000 with Section 230. Without these protections, even if you ultimately win on First Amendment grounds, you're looking at about $2 million in legal fees now for Meta or Google. That's a rounding error. He writes for a small news site like Techdirk, Masnix or a blog, it's potentially fatal. It would certainly be fatal.
- [59:03]
D
It's also fatal to something like Twitter. Twitter, Truth Social Gap. Those are all gone.
- [59:08]
A
Because are they. Can they afford. They can afford to defend themselves?
- [59:11]
D
No, they can't afford it. The most healthy among them would be Twitter. And Twitter is operating on razor thin margins. If anything, you add the apparatus you would need to respond to. To every challenge, it's done. There's no way it's going to survive.
- [59:26]
A
It really feels like these senators don't even understand what they're legislating.
- [59:30]
C
That does seem to be at the crux of it. And I just as an individual with a few blogs, I'm worried. I have self hosted blogs.
- [59:38]
A
Yeah.
- [59:39]
B
As do I Can still publish, right? You can still publish. You just have to turn off, let.
- [59:44]
A
Comments be something defamatory on there. And I would get sued for that.
- [59:49]
C
That.
- [59:50]
B
Yeah. Is there a way to get out of it by never moderating anything. Does that. It doesn't.
- [59:55]
A
Right. No.
- [59:56]
C
Good.
- [59:56]
D
No, because it's still. It's. There's. If they remove the safe harbor provision, it's no longer doable. It's. No. It's no longer reasonable for you to be able to post anything that could cause offense to anybody.
- [60:08]
A
You break the Internet.
- [60:09]
D
You break the Internet.
- [60:10]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, just thought you'd like to know that will be on the. Fortunately, Congress is completely Dysfunctional and nothing can ever get through. But it is going to be on the table. And what's really scary is it has broad bipartisan support. And that, to me, is very, very scary. We need to educate.
- [60:29]
D
Anybody want to take bets on whether or not Trump issues an executive order to remove section 230?
- [60:35]
A
You know, I wonder why he hasn't.
- [60:36]
C
He may have done it while we've been on the air.
- [60:39]
A
Don't give many ideas. All right, let's take a look.
- [60:43]
B
That's how it works.
- [60:44]
A
But, yeah, totally how it works. It really don't give many ideas. He's got plenty of his own. Let's take a little break. We will come back with more Father Robert Balaser, the digital Jesuits here. He's got on the bottom, on the lower third there, a plug for his app that he created, the Jesuit pilgrimage app@jesuitpilgrimage.app. what is that?
- [61:05]
D
So it was just something that some of us had too much grapple one night, and they said, hey, why don't we do an app? And six months later, and a lot of recording and writing. We've got an app in multiple languages that show you basically the path that St. Ignatius, that's the founder of my order, took as he was roaming around the world looking for enlightenment. It has some very nice recordings.
- [61:30]
A
People follow the pilgrimage. Do they? Do they like.
- [61:32]
D
They do.
- [61:33]
A
Oh, that's cool.
- [61:34]
D
So because it's on your phone, it knows where you are and it will say, okay, you're near this site or you're. You should go here. And we are improving it all the time. We're actually integrating it a little bit with the. The Jubilee year that's happening in the Catholic Church right now.
- [61:49]
A
I need to go to Rome this year.
- [61:50]
D
Yeah, I think you do. Just to go through the Holy Door.
- [61:54]
A
The door has been. Has it been opened?
- [61:56]
D
The door has been open since December 24th.
- [61:59]
A
Oh, my goodness. So how often is that door? This is a door into St. Peter's Basilica that is normally closed. How often is it open?
- [62:09]
D
It's only open during the Jubilee year, so that was 13 years ago. It's not often if you've. You've been in St. Peter's yes.
- [62:15]
A
And if I. Yes. Which is, by the way, everybody in their life has to see it, Catholic or not. It's the most amazing architectural feat. And of course, the Pieta is there. There's so much beautiful artwork. It's just.
- [62:26]
D
That's where the Holy Door is. So if you were standing at the Pieta, if you were to look to the right. That wall is actually a door. They just. They wall it up in between jubilee years.
- [62:37]
A
Wow.
- [62:37]
D
So that's open now and you can go through it.
- [62:39]
A
And does it wash away all my sins if I go through that?
- [62:44]
D
Okay, I'm going to give you the official spiel here. This is how it works. According to the Office of Faith, you can go through the door. And every time you go through the door, you can get two indulgences. One for you and one for a person who cannot be there.
- [62:59]
A
Oh, nice.
- [63:00]
D
They only take effect if you go to Mass and confession in a reasonable time.
- [63:05]
A
After you go to Mass, immediately, you just go. Well, you're going in. You go in, you confess, you sit for the beauty. I bet the. You've served mass in St. Peter's right?
- [63:12]
D
I have.
- [63:13]
A
At the big altar.
- [63:15]
D
Yeah. Oh, of course. Naturally. I've got my. I got my celebrant. My. The little Roman identification card specifically, so.
- [63:22]
A
I could do that. Oh, my God. But Leo.
- [63:25]
D
So maybe, maybe I can advertise this. I'm going to jump back and forth through the door and then I'm going to sell the indulgence because I don't think there's going to be any trouble with that.
- [63:36]
A
Just, you know, get some post it notes, write down somebody's name, jump through the door. Good thinking.
- [63:42]
B
Used to work like that.
- [63:44]
A
I'm an entrepreneur back in the Middle Ages. Yes.
- [63:47]
B
A few centuries ago.
- [63:49]
D
And we, we had. We had words about that.
- [63:53]
B
Yeah, Microtransactions.
- [63:55]
A
We had words. That was the answer.
- [63:57]
C
Oh, my gosh.
- [63:57]
A
It wasn't our fault.
- [63:58]
D
No, I'm using that, Patrick. We had the original microtransactions.
- [64:04]
A
Indulgences. Patrick. Beja also here. Not Patrick on blue sky or notpatrick.com.
- [64:11]
B
No, notpatrick.com. actually, I created my blue sky account. It was notpatrick. And then they were like, oh, you can, you know, use Your domain, I'm LeoLAport, to identify yourself.
- [64:24]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [64:25]
B
So I went and did that and didn't realize it would free up. Not patches, Patrick. And it was before they had the protection system.
- [64:32]
A
Oh, no. So somebody got. Not Patrick.
- [64:34]
B
Yes, somebody did. And I was very frustrated and angry. I wrote. I wrote them and. And they were like, yeah, sorry, we didn't have that in place before, so.
- [64:44]
A
Oh, I didn't even think about that. I. I am Leo Laporte. Me. Which is also a website, which means Leo Laporte is probably still Leo Laporte. Oh, man. Oh, man. If you go to notpatrick.com you'll see all of his French language. Is Phileas Club still around? You still doing that?
- [65:01]
B
It's actually back in a different format.
- [65:04]
C
Yeah.
- [65:04]
A
Because the last time you were here you said you stopped the English language show.
- [65:07]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. But I relaunched the Filius Club because I wanted to talk about stuff and for other reasons. But it's a different format. I'm alone and I do every couple of weeks a kind of a letter from your friend from a different place from outside the US and I talk about something local and something international.
- [65:30]
A
And most recently, we are not completely insane.
- [65:35]
D
I would debate that.
- [65:38]
B
Completely not insane.
- [65:41]
A
What did just add a. I shouldn't ask this, but you're compatriots. When you look across the Atlantic at what's going on in the US Right now, I bet there's probably. Imagine a mix of points of view.
- [65:59]
B
No, no mix. No, we're concerned. The real thing is concerned. Very concerned.
- [66:08]
A
They understand that there will be a change every few years in our governance. Right.
- [66:14]
B
So. So that's one of the things I discussed in one of the latest episodes.
- [66:19]
A
It makes us. It makes us nutty because it swings like a pendulum back and forth.
- [66:24]
B
No, it doesn't matter. Matter. It doesn't matter.
- [66:25]
A
It doesn't.
- [66:26]
B
Broken the problem. If you're thinking internationally, the trust is broken, especially with issues of conflict, like military conflict.
- [66:37]
A
Yeah.
- [66:39]
B
If. If you can't trust what happens every two or four years, then you have to prepare for a situation where, you know, you can't. And so especially militarily, you can't plan for. Well, you know, maybe, maybe they'll be.
- [66:58]
A
Back in four years, maybe not.
- [67:00]
B
And, you know, maybe for. In four years, in three years, things will improve for, you know, America's standing in the world. But then maybe four years later, you know, J.D. vance runs or Donald Trump Jr. Runs and with the same platform.
- [67:17]
A
So you know what makes me crazy? A 200% tariff on French champagne. That's what makes me crazy. That's just not right.
- [67:26]
B
We're not big and I could, if you want to hear more about what I think about all of this, I talked in details about the detail in the Phileus Club.
- [67:35]
A
I'm very interested. Yeah. I mean, we're not a political show. We're talking about technology. But I just, you know, I just was curious. What, what the. What the thoughts.
- [67:43]
B
Yeah. Concern, I think. Concern and dismay.
- [67:46]
A
I know, I know. We no longer have any friends in Canada. They just. They just written us off completely. We are. We're our Cousins from.
- [67:54]
B
I don't know.
- [67:55]
A
I don't know.
- [67:56]
B
I, I, I don't want to prolong this too much, but I think everyone understands what is happening in, in the US and it's not the will of the majority of Americans, which is actually even more concerning.
- [68:12]
A
That's more concerning, yeah. And Mr. Harry McCracken, the technologizer FastCompany.com lives in San Francisco. Say hello to Marie.
- [68:23]
C
I will.
- [68:23]
A
What you working on?
- [68:25]
C
Well, I just had a big story come out. Our print issue just came out and the COVID story is on Waymo and I wrote that and that's also available on our website. And that was based on talking to a bunch of people at Waymo and outside Waymo and people who love Waymo and people who are skeptical about the whole question of whether self driving cars are really necessary to make the road safer.
- [68:53]
A
Waymo is dominant in San Francisco. You cannot drive down the street in San Francisco without seeing multiple Waymo vehicles.
- [69:01]
C
Totally. I mean, in theory, self driving cars, because they drive rather cautiously, help improve safety partially because like a grandma. Yeah. The car is behind them. Can't drive any faster than they do.
- [69:15]
A
Must drive people crazy. On the other hand, because I drive like a grandpa and I know people are so annoyed behind me.
- [69:21]
C
On the other hand, there's also just recently a report about the number of parking tickets Waymos have gotten, which is extremely large and they often cause problems by parking where they should not or stopping where they should not.
- [69:33]
A
That you had interviewed Larry page back in 2013.
- [69:38]
C
Oh yeah, yeah. That was my newsletter last week. Larry does not talk to the media anymore and has not since shortly after I talked to him. But Even back in 2013, the Google Self driving car was a big story and we talked a fair amount about it for the story I did for Time magazine and I dredged it up and it is 12 years old, but it's some of the most recent stuff he's said about self driving cars. It talked about the fact that when he was at Stanford, even before there was a Google, he was excited about the technology and he was already impatient and he kind of wished that somebody else had started tackling it 10 years before Google did.
- [70:16]
A
Yeah. Your cover story. Hail Waymo. I get it, I get it. Inside the company.
- [70:24]
D
Be proud that the car has never run into an actual Acme style Wile E. Coyote picture.
- [70:30]
A
Oh my God. Mark Rober, the NASA engineer turned YouTube star, drove several Teslas through a wall that was painted to look like a road like Wiley Coyote. And it made it's cute because I guess he pre cut the hole so it made a roadrunner looking hole in the, in the wall.
- [70:56]
B
It's. That's kind of dumb, isn't it? It doesn't prove anything.
- [70:59]
A
Like, well, you don't want to drive around where there might be a coyote drawing pictures of the highway.
- [71:04]
C
I mean, in theory it might say something about whether lidar is important or not.
- [71:07]
A
That was the point.
- [71:08]
B
Right, right.
- [71:09]
A
The camera can't distinguish.
- [71:10]
B
I, I understand that, but it's such a specific case. You're never going to encounter this.
- [71:17]
A
In actual, It's a typical YouTube link grabbing headline.
- [71:24]
C
On the other hand, Waymo's Waymo's happened.
- [71:26]
D
Never gonna encounter this. But I mean, I'm, I am guaranteeing you at DEFCON this year, someone is gonna do it.
- [71:32]
B
Of course, I mean, you can do it, you can do it, but there are a million things you can do that. You know, here's the thing. Nails on the road, I think we've.
- [71:40]
A
Learned do not paint a horizon with a road on your garage door. Yes, that would be a mistake. Although I have to point out that later tests with subsequent Tesla vehicles, including some with the more recent full self driving, successfully avoided running into the fake road walls.
- [71:59]
C
And even Waymos have been known to drive into wet cement.
- [72:03]
A
Oh, I remember that.
- [72:05]
C
Which they can't tell is not dry cement.
- [72:08]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's hard. Poor AI. Poor AI.
- [72:14]
B
It is. Okay, I just want to say I have had that article by Harry opened on my desktop for like three days and I want to read it because I didn't realize, I didn't realize until now that it's actually fascinating and Harry, who wrote it, but Waymo's like dominance is incredible. Like, we've been talking about the self driving cars for 15 years, right? And at some point the hype cycle died and it went away and no one's talking about it and Waymo is doing it. Like we actually have self driving cars.
- [72:51]
A
That's it.
- [72:52]
B
Like they're here.
- [72:54]
C
A lot of the companies went away before they got there and Waymo is only in a few Cities. It's doing 200,000 rides a week, which is minuscule compared to Uber or Lyft.
- [73:06]
A
Isn't Zoox coming to San Francisco next?
- [73:09]
C
Zoox is testing in San Francisco and on the Strip in Vegas.
- [73:14]
A
That's the one that looks like it's out of Westworld. It doesn't have a steering wheel.
- [73:17]
C
But there is some question about whether a car without a steering wheel and brake pedals is Legal or not. And Zoox does not have it all. The waymos that are currently on the road are converted conventional cars.
- [73:33]
A
Jaguar. I think it'd be kind of fun to ride in a Zoox, but I've never even ridden an Awaymo. It just makes me. The whole thing makes, it makes me scared.
- [73:44]
D
I want to see how a Waymo would do in Rome. That looks very different from anything it scanned.
- [73:50]
A
First of all, it couldn't fit down half the streets. So there's a problem there. I remember walking in Rome and pedestrians and vehicles, especially in the old part of town, are really in competition for a very narrow strip of street. So you're walking in the street, street. And Lisa's constantly pulling me over. I said, they're not going to hit me. So she looks it up, how many pedestrian deaths occur in Rome and says, well, the statistics say, yeah, no, that's not good.
- [74:24]
B
The ultimate test is the Place Charles de Gaulle Etoile here in Paris.
- [74:29]
A
Oh, that's crazy.
- [74:30]
B
200.
- [74:30]
D
Not the arch. The Triumph, not the little.
- [74:33]
B
That's the one, that's the one.
- [74:35]
A
Because the roundabout rules are different for that one roundabout.
- [74:39]
B
No, they're the same, but it's just chaos. You have 12 major arteries coming into that one roundabout. I thought that no traffic lights. It's crazy.
- [74:48]
A
Normally in a roundabout the cars in the roundabout have the right of way.
- [74:52]
B
Well, in theory they do.
- [74:56]
D
The last time I was in Paris, my thing was once you enter the, you never leave. I think I did like 12 laps just trying to figure out where the heck I'm supposed to go.
- [75:06]
B
Ironically, it's very safe because everyone's scared to death.
- [75:08]
A
Yeah. Except for pedestrians.
- [75:11]
B
Do not walk across, they do not walk there.
- [75:13]
C
No, there are, I mean there are several cities in China that have robo taxis and some of those Chinese streets are also kind of crazy.
- [75:22]
A
But see, if all the cars were talking to one another, you could actually navigate this kind of thing safely because, you know, it's. After you, Alphonse. No, after you, Alphonse. They would, they would kind of take.
- [75:34]
D
No, no, no, they're, they're French cars. So they'd be.
- [75:39]
B
No, but I think, I think the hype cycle is burying the fact that we essentially have self driving cars in many. Not everywhere, obviously not here or in Rome. Yes, but in, in like they're here. And 10 years ago we were like, oh, they're coming, they're coming. No, it won't. And they're here, they're here, they're working. Two, two people riding them all the time. Time. Yeah, it's crazy.
- [76:01]
D
I drove a Land Rover here with all the new avoidance features on it. It does not work in Italy. Well, the first time we got swarmed by Vespas, the thing went crazy and it didn't slow down. Yeah.
- [76:16]
A
All right, we're gonna take a little break. I hope you're having fun. I am. This is this Week in Tech, our weekly roundup of the week. Tech news. We'll talk about TikTok next. They say it's gonna. The sales are gonna wrap up soon. This episode of this Week in Tech brought to you by ExpressVPN, the one and only VPN that I use, the one I trust. The other. You know, a couple weeks ago we flew to Tucson, Arizona, and I got to the airport sfo, and you probably have this experience. Free airport WI fi pops up on my screen. Now I really want to use the free airport wi fi, but I'm also terrified. Right. I remember. Oh, yeah. I'll just fire up ExpressVPN. What I forgot is to turn it off. I left it on for the whole trip. And you know what? Didn't even notice a few. It's not just for security. It's not just for geographic restrictions. It's also for privacy. A few decades ago, private citizens were largely that private it. But everything's changed with the Internet. Think about all the stuff you browse, you search for, you watch, you tweet. Imagine all of that data being crawled, collected, and aggregated by data brokers into a permanent public record. I wasn't so much scared of hackers on the free airport wi fi I was. I was worried for my privacy. Right? Having your private life exposed for others to see was once something only celebrities had to worry about. But in an era where everybody's online, everybody is, in effect, a public figure. So to keep safe, to keep private, when I go online, I turn on ExpressVPN. It's a great boon because the other thing I can do with ExpressVPN is catch that out of market football game or this morning, the F1 race. Don't want to miss that. Everyone needs ExpressVPN. It's one of the easiest ways for data brokers to track you through your device's unique IP address. And it also reveals information about your location. With ExpressVPN, your IP address is hidden and your location is wherever you say it is. This makes it much more difficult for data brokers to monitor, track, and monetize your private online activity. ExpressVPN is the only VPN I use. Why is ExpressVPN the best? Of course. It encrypts 100% of your network traffic, keeps your data safe from hackers when you're on that free airport, wi fi, or in the hotel or the coffee shop. It also works on everything you've got iPhone, Android phone, laptop, Linux, Windows, Mac tablet, you name it. They have apps for everything, including, by the way, routers. You just tap one button, turn it on, you're protected. It's just that easy. Protect your online privacy today. Visit expressvpn.com twit that's E X P R E S S vpn.com twit get an extra 4 months free when you buy a 2 year package. I will never be without my ExpressVPN. You shouldn't be either. Expressvpn.com twit 4 months free when you buy a two year package. We thank ExpressVPN so much for supporting this Week in Tech JD Vance says the TikTok deal should become clear early next month. He said Friday he expects the outlines of the deal that allows TikTok to keep operating in the US will become clear by early April. There will almost certainly be a high level agreement that satisfies our national security concerns. It's so funny, really. We're still concerned about that, aren't we? Allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise. He told NBC this in an interview aboard Air Force Two a week ago. He's the guy doing the negotiation, according to President Trump, but he didn't say anything about who might buy it. It the information reported that Oracle has emerged as a leading contender to play a major role in the deal Oracle has been running. That was Project Texas that Oracle's been storing TikTok's data for American citizens in Texas in Oracle servers for at least a year OR 2. Now TikTok owner ByteDance is hoping the Trump administration will approve a deal based on the same contours of Project Texas and that it would store the user data on Oracle servers in the U.S. oracle were to review the app's algorithm. Meanwhile, of course, congressional aides are a little concerned about well, what does that mean? Here's Larry Ellison just sitting there in the White House. That's actually back when they were talking about the Project Stargate. Oracle met with top aides on Capitol Hill to talk about how they plan to work with TikTok in the United States in the coming weeks. April 5th is the deadline. You think this deal will be done? Are we going to Be safe forever now from TikTok. Are we even worried about TikTok now that we know that Chinese hackers are sitting in our phone system and the phone companies can't do anything about it?
- [81:34]
D
You know, Leo, honestly, so much has happened since. Since this was first pushed back, it's almost comical to think, who cares anymore? Nobody cares anymore, right? I mean, look, if you were concerned that Tick Tock was destroying our youth because it was destroying their debt, whatever it is that you were, you were arguing, that's not going to change just because a US company owns it. It just means that a US company is now going to misuse that information. If you were hoping that TikTok's going to go away, that's far too big to make it go away. Even if a deal doesn't come by on April 5, there's going to be another executive order that's going to further push this down the road. I'm having trouble caring, honestly.
- [82:21]
A
Well, as soon as it came out and the phone companies themselves said there's nothing we can do about Chinese hackers listening to your phone calls, I figured, you know, TikTok is minor compared to that.
- [82:34]
B
All right, can I convince you that it's still an important issue?
- [82:39]
A
Yes, please. Hit me.
- [82:41]
B
Everyone seems to be concerned about the Data aspect of TikTok being owned by essentially the Chinese Communist Party. And while I understand that it is part of the concern, I think it pales in comparison to the algorithm issue, which gives. So would you agree that media can have an influence on what is a concern being discussed in any society?
- [83:16]
A
Sure, yes, of course.
- [83:17]
D
Absolutely.
- [83:20]
B
TikTok being a major source of information, not like news. But just consuming content in a country becomes a problem because the algorithm can be tweaked by the government of China, which is not a full friend of the United States or France for that matter. And tweaking the algorithm in maybe subtle ways, maybe not so subtle ways, can present to you disinformation, misinformation, certain types of opinions that some people might take as fact or influence their thinking it.
- [84:03]
A
Is.
- [84:06]
B
A political weapon. And actually we've seen this in Taiwan in an article which I don't remember where it was published here, but it was criminally under reported on about how the sentiment of national. National pride in Taiwan has been steadily going down in younger people who primarily use TikTok. And you've seen in Taiwan specifically some content that shows up in young Taiwanese feeds that show China in a more favorable light, that of course don't discuss the more unsavory aspects of the Chinese totalitarian regime. And it's funny, there were elements that showed that it was through TikTok because there were some slang words. Slang, Am I saying this right? Yeah, keywords, slang words that were from rural Chinese areas that started entering the Taiwanese youth language and they showed up through TikTok. So the problem is not so much data. The problem is the influence that a massive media can have on society and on the opinions of people that consume it. And that's, that's not just TikTok, it's media in general. But as you well know and discuss often, Rupert Murdoch had to become an American citizen right before he could buy Fox News, correct?
- [85:54]
A
Oh boy, was that a long time ago. Sure, but it really did protect us, didn't we? Australian influence in our national media.
- [86:03]
B
No, but if Chinese, if China has an influence through tick tock on American youth and American, the American public in.
- [86:09]
A
General, you're not wrong. In fact, really, there seems to be a lot of evidence that the reason this bill started was because the Anti Defamation League, the Jewish Anti Defamation League, didn't wanted to be able to control the anti Israeli propaganda on TikTok and didn't feel like they could control it. So they went to Congress and they said, said, we need you to suppress TikTok. They have actually called for TikTok to submit to an independent antisemitism audit.
- [86:45]
C
Also, to Patrick's point, it seems totally clear that Even in the US TikTok is suppressing stuff about the Uyghurs who the Chinese government really would prefer you to not think too much about. I do find that troublesome.
- [87:01]
A
But I also should point out that we are, are very happy to have Chinese and Russian disinformation on x dot com. They have plenty of outlets that are owned by the United States for their disinformation.
- [87:18]
D
But see, that's, that's why I don't care about TikTok. Because Patrick, the problem that you described, it's not a TikTok problem, it's a social media problem. I can do exactly the same thing that you described that the Chinese state can do on TikTok tok with micro buys on Meta or Twitter. So I don't have to own the company to be able to get the influence. The companies exist and they're more than happy to take my money. I can micro target the people that I think are most acceptable to the message that I'm trying to push. In fact, we showed that that actually was in effect in the 2020 and the 2016 elections.
- [87:52]
A
Yeah, the Trump campaign had a Facebook people embedded in the campaign. Clinton campaign turned it down. Maybe they should have paid attention in 2016. There is also, if you're talking about privacy, there's also the issue that we have no privacy regulations in the United States. Data brokers collect all the information they ever could want, including our Social Security numbers, and sell it to the highest bidder, which includes often foreign governments like China. So TikTok isn't collecting anything that China can't get otherwise. China has other ways to propagandize American youth, ample ways. I mean, I agree with you, Patrick. TikTok isn't a vital service. You know, I mean, we'll survive without TikTok. And I should confess I have a little bit of conflict of interest here because my son's career started because he went viral on TikTok as a. As a TikTok chef. So I see the. This is my problem. There are a lot of creators, there are a lot of talented people who have. And TikTok is advertising this all the time, by the way, who've made their businesses and made their careers on TikTok, who will lose that outlet for an opportunity to go viral.
- [89:06]
B
Leo, both can be true, and it is very true. I use TikTok a lot as a consumer and I also post a little bit on it. But I think it's an awesome platform. It doesn't change the fact that if it becomes one of the main entertainment outlets of countries, the fact that it is controlled essentially by the government of an adversary government is a problem. And I understand what you're saying, father. It is also possible to micro target and to do similar ish things on other platforms. Doesn't mean you should just be happy that they have the keys to the one most used platform in the country. Right?
- [89:52]
A
I mean, honestly, I'm not normal. TikTok goes away, I think, because any creator then moves to Instagram. I do feel like there's a little bit of conflict of interest that Meta would be very happy to see TikTok go away so that their platform.
- [90:06]
B
Course, of course there is. Obviously there is. All of these things are true at the same time. All of them can be true.
- [90:13]
D
I don't want to spend energy addressing TikTok. I want them to address the larger problem, the ability to buy misinformation. The fact that truth is. Now, how do you fix that in.
- [90:25]
A
A country where the First Amendment is difficult to fix?
- [90:27]
B
That is a very difficult problem to fix. And I'm very concerned by it. I think that's putting us in a very difficult situation. But I don't think we could find a solution to that problem that would satisfy everyone if we talked about it for 15 hours. I think TikTok is a more specific issue that can be. I don't want TikTok to go away.
- [90:49]
A
I don't. I like it.
- [90:50]
B
I spend a lot of time on it. But the fact that the control of the algorithm is a problem. It's not even about the algorithm. It's the control of prominent media by a foreigner at a foreign adversary. The article I was talking about, we.
- [91:06]
A
Have enough adversaries in the United States that I concern me. Now you do.
- [91:10]
B
Yeah. Now you do. Is TikTok pushing Taiwan's young people close closer to China? It's a Financial Times article from January 17th.
- [91:19]
A
Yeah.
- [91:19]
B
And I encourage everyone to read it because it's a subtle thing, the way they're. They're doing it. But it seems, I don't want to speak in absolute. It seems to be showing that the Chinese government is using TikTok to specifically do what we're fearing they could do elsewhere.
- [91:36]
C
TikTok has also been pushing America's young people closer to Donald Trump, and I think Donald Trump. Trump is aware of that. And so the odds are probably pretty slim that TikTok goes away. If a deal is not ready, they can just keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely.
- [91:53]
A
Yeah. And a huge Republican contributor, Jeff Yass, owns about a third of TikTok, so that's also an issue.
- [92:01]
C
There's no one sound up for the Trump administration to actually get do away with the service.
- [92:06]
B
It's not going away. And, and I would be very interested to know there was a line about Oracle checking the algorithm. I would be very interested to know exactly how that's going to work and how often they're going to check it. Are they going to check every change to the algorithm? Like every time they change a line, add a thing, there's someone at Oracle that's going to look at it and say, yes, good, you can push it or not. That seems weird.
- [92:35]
A
Here is the piece actually referring to the Financial Times piece in the Taipei Times saying TikTok could be affecting. This is from January, affecting views of young Taiwanese compared With other platforms, TikTok's algorithm pushes a disproportionately high ratio of pro China content. You know what? If I were the Taiwanese government, I could see suppressing TikTok. Absolutely.
- [93:00]
D
But that's not an issue with the algorithm. You, you can't fix that by fixing the algorithm, you fix that by saying we're not going to sell advertising space, we're not going to sell micro targeting to certain entities or we're going to fact check what they want to push that again. And as Patrick has mentioned, that is a much bigger conversation and a much bigger problem. But until we're willing to sit down and say, oh, it's not just TikTok, it's. We have to adjust the entire industry, I just feel like we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
- [93:35]
A
Yeah, I, you know, and I, I do feel like it's one small part of a larger Chinese influence operation. And I guess the question is. Okay, let's say you close Tick tock down. Is everything okay now? No.
- [93:51]
D
Yeah.
- [93:51]
A
No, no, it hasn't improved anything thing. It's just one venue of, of dozens.
- [93:57]
B
Well, no, you're saying is everything okay then? No, but it hasn't approved anything. I would disagree with that. It fixes a. Probably, hopefully a small thing and it's not even. It fixes something for now. I really don't think China is push is manipulating the algorithm today to it's for future this or that. I don't. Yeah, it's something for the future. Like I'm sure if there is a pro Trump crowd on TikTok, I'm sure it's genuine. It's not China tweaking the algorithm there.
- [94:32]
A
Well, everything on TikTok is originally created by an individual. The algorithm is what surfaces it. And you're right, they can, but it.
- [94:43]
D
Feeds back because people will create content.
- [94:46]
A
Yes, that's right. That's true.
- [94:47]
C
True.
- [94:48]
A
Henry says that. My son says that. He says the way he succeeded on TikTok was watching carefully, went viral and making more of that. Something I should have probably done years ago, but for some reason I just can't figure that out. I don't know. He always says that to me. He says, dad, your socials are God awful. I said, yeah, we're trying to be unsuccessful. That's our goal. We don't, we don't want.
- [95:14]
D
Was it his first viral video? Jousting on a hoverboard in a dorm? Yes, I think that, that's, that's.
- [95:22]
A
You're right. Yeah, it was on Talk Soup or whatever that. That show was early days. Early days when he was at CU Boulder. I gave him a hoverboard. His friend, his roommate. Actually. No, I accidentally bought two hoverboards by accident.
- [95:40]
B
That's such a thing to do.
- [95:42]
D
That is the least surprising thing I've.
- [95:44]
A
Heard so far when you have two hoverboards, what's the first thing you got to do is joust naturally. Yeah, yeah. So I guess I'm responsible for all of this.
- [95:56]
D
You created TikTok, Leo. That was you.
- [95:59]
A
Late night Instagram purchases. That's really the problem. If they ban that, I'll be very happy. You're watching this week in Tech. Our show today brought to you by. We'll have more with Father Robert Patrick Beja, Harry McCracken, the technologizer in just a moment. But first a word from Melissa, the trusted data quality expert since 1985. I've been talking to Melissa's folks and they have really moved into the AI sphere with acquisitions and it's really interesting. They're so smart. It's really interesting what they're doing. Melissa's AI enabled data quality solutions go now so far beyond just address verification. They're leveraging, of course for decades since 1985, of accumulated data knowledge, advanced machine reasoning, cutting edge AI. They're taking this raw data, this raw address data and turning it into actionable, reliable insights for your business. Melissa's ability to enrich and cleanse data spans multiple industries. In fact, if you go to their page, you'll see they have solutions for financial, for fintech, for healthcare. Government uses Melissa education uses Melissa real estate. The list goes on and on. Melissa's suite of verification and cleansing services will benefit any business that doesn't want to, you know, hire data scientists and figure this all out for themselves. Whatever this is. What's so cool? Whatever rules your business operates within, Melissa can apply those business rules to your contact data, to your address data, to your customers and supplier data and give you actionable insights. Melissa's there to support you. It's like having a data expert that never sleeps. Melissa's intelligence system verifies identity, of course, but that's helpful in preventing fraud. And well, there's know your customer regulations, gaming operations. If you want to talk about medical. It ensures valid patient and medicine identification and healthcare systems. They actually match the image of the medication being prescribed to the patient information to make sure that they're getting the right medication and the right dosages. It's amazing what Melissa can do. They can securely update and verify constituent data across government databases. Know your business enables verification and monitoring for financial institutions. Melissa guides you through complex data management with ease, making advanced data data quality accessible to everyone from small businesses to enterprises. You've got data scientists on your team and with real time data validation, comprehensive Enrichment, cross reference verification with gold standard reference data and intelligent anomaly detection. It's no wonder Melissa has now become the trusted data quality expert worldwide. It's really, it's a wonderful thing to watch that them incorporate these new technologies into what they already do to give you an even more valuable tool. Of course you never have to worry about your data. Melissa treats it like the gold that it is. They securely encrypt all file transfers. They have an information security ecosystem built on the ISO 27001 framework. They adhere to GDPR policies, they are SOC2 compliant and so on. You know your data is safe with Melissa. Contact Melissa's team, find out what they can do to elevate your business and evolve your data quality. And if you want to take a look at their API, you should. You can get started with 1000 records right now. Clean for free. Go to melissa.com TWiT M E L I S S A melissa.com TWiT these guys are remarkable in what they're doing and I think you should find out more. Melissa.com twit I know they can help your business. Business. Thank you Melissa. They've helped our business and you support us when you use that address. Melissa.com twit so Pavel Durov has come home. You people have released him?
- [100:03]
B
We let him go.
- [100:04]
A
I think this was a victory for the French authorities actually who arrested the founder of Telegram, saying he's not cooperating with law enforcement. As a result, he immediately stepped up, you know, their moderation, their investigation into illicit activity. And I guess the French authorities at that point said, okay, you can go. Is that what happened?
- [100:32]
B
That's what it seems. That's what seems to have happened. It took a few months.
- [100:37]
A
They held him for a long time.
- [100:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, held him. He was probably in his, you know, luxurious hotel somewhere. But yeah, there was a lot of confusion about this story because there was a fear that the French authorities wanted to break encryption, which actually the parliament tried to do like last week, which was outrageous, but ended up not happening, thankfully.
- [101:03]
A
And of course the Brits have already done that with investigatory powers Act. I'm sure America will. Australia has done the same thing. Encryption is under threat all over the world.
- [101:14]
B
Yes. Including in France. Repeatedly the government has asked to include backdoors, which they say, you know, oh, but they won't be back doors. And then they describe them and they're back doors, backdoors. And you're like, what are you talking? But thankfully the law didn't pass so that we're safe for now. But in the case of Durov, in the case of Telegram, it wasn't about encryption, it was about metadata. And the fact that Telegram as a company did not even respond to legal requests. Like it seems we don't have all the details, but it seems they didn't have any contact that could, you know, when you say, okay, we have this person talking to this person, we want times and maybe IP addresses. I don't know the level of encryption they have. They didn't get a response. Or there was one person lost in an office somewhere and that's what's changed. And in the intervening months they have apparently used some of their money to create a department that does that. So it really wasn't about encryption. It's not like the French government or the authorities were trying to get into private messages. It was really like at some point you're like, come on man, we're just asking, we're being reasonable. And you're the one not being reasonable. And it seems he ended up agreeing that he wasn't being reasonable and acceded to the demands of the authorities.
- [102:47]
A
He was charged with complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of csam child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud. And we know this by the way, the Telegram is full of groups. It's one of the things Telegrams does really well is these groups to do all sorts of illicit at stuff and then refusing to cooperate with law enforcement when they made inquiries. Every big tech company cooperates to a point, right. Putting a backdoor in end to end encryption is a bridge too far for some companies like Apple. But everybody, when provided with a subpoena or whatever you call it in France, a legal order from local authorities will provide information, apparently Telegram to do that.
- [103:32]
B
Right.
- [103:32]
A
Information they have now Telegram has in fact we talked about this on Tuesday and security now scientists have finally kind of looked at what Telegram is doing in its encryption. It's always done a roll your own encryption system, which they claim to be strong but is in fact not standard end to end encryption. Well known standard technologies. And these researchers said yeah, it's just a Tower of, Tower of Babel. It's not really, it's not really real encryption. I think Pav Al Durav's brother. Have you looked into that Robert, at all? What the encryption of Telegram?
- [104:09]
D
Well, I, I did at the start of Telegram when we were evaluating it as a global communications platform. And like you, I couldn't find straight answers on exactly what was used, what standards were going to be in Place. Place. And whether or not there would be any records kept of the messages that we were sending back and forth. They had the option to turn off logs, but that wasn't enough for us, so then we just said no. But we, we use it as a distribution platform for generally public information, but we do not use it as a secure messaging platform.
- [104:40]
A
Yeah, and no one should. On the other hand, it's, it's, you know, perfectly fine to use as just kind of casual messaging. I always liked Telegram quite a bit. In any event, after Durov was arrested, this is almost a year ago, isn't it? It's been a while. Has it?
- [104:57]
C
It has been a while, yeah.
- [105:00]
A
Let's see. Durov was arrested in France. It just says last year. This is the New York Times story. He'd been barred from leaving France, but the prosecutor's office in Paris said on Monday the judges handling his case had lifted the traffic restrictions. But he does have to go back to France April 7th for a hearing. But immediately. Oh, it was last August, so it wasn't quite a year, but last August, immediately. Telegram seems to have moved quickly to give the authorities the information they wanted. So it worked? It worked. After being released from custody last year, he was required to check in at a police station twice a week. You're right, he wasn't suffering. He has, he has, by the way, I think a joint, dual citizenship with the United Arab Emirates and France. Right.
- [105:53]
C
He's triple citizenship, I think.
- [105:55]
A
Triple citizenship, yeah. He's from Russia. In fact, Telegram was created in Russia. Putin forced him out, forced him to sell. He was at the time considered the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia because he had a social network work. After Putin forced him to sell, he went to Dubai and created Telegram. Yeah, I, you know, I, I feel like it's not unreasonable for these platforms to give authorities in the countries they operate in the information they request. I do feel like it's a bridge too far to force companies to break end to end encryption. This is what Apple decided it couldn't do in the uk. But it ended up being a victory for the UK in my opinion, because Apple withdrew its advanced data protection from the uk, so.
- [106:49]
B
So, in fact, no one can use it. So no one has.
- [106:52]
A
Right. English users now have no protection, basically.
- [106:55]
D
So, you know, Leo, every time I hear a government spokesperson say, oh, no, but we'll keep the key.
- [107:01]
A
Yeah, right, we'll take care of it.
- [107:03]
D
I always think back to remember when the tsa, they published a photo of this super secret TSA skeleton key that could Open all TSA locks, not realizing that the photo meant. Oh, now anyone can create that skeleton key. Excellent.
- [107:16]
A
Yeah. And by the way, those locks are still on. Suitcases sold everywhere. And. And the. Plenty of people have keys these days.
- [107:25]
D
I've got three of them.
- [107:26]
B
I think we should. We should.
- [107:28]
A
You have three of them? What do you have three for?
- [107:31]
D
You know, sometimes you never know when you're going to need. Well, honestly, it's because we get guests into the Korea all the time and sometimes I get. They don't know how to open up their own luggage. So I've got a couple sets.
- [107:39]
A
Hey, it's okay. I got the master key. Wow.
- [107:44]
B
I think we should pat ourselves on the back a little bit about this.
- [107:48]
A
Yes, I think so.
- [107:50]
B
I think it's the relentless education that people, like all of you have been doing for years, that means most of the time those laws don't go through. True. Because people understand now what seems like a reasonable idea. Oh, we'll just have the key and we'll give it to no one. Actually doesn't work. It's not an idea. That is. That is instinctive. Like you could think it works.
- [108:21]
A
Right.
- [108:21]
B
We've explained it enough that people now understand.
- [108:23]
A
You know, what did happen in the United States in 19, I think it was 1996, the FBI convinced Congress to pass a law called CALEA.
- [108:35]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [108:36]
A
Assistance to Law Enforcement act, which provided a backdoor to digital communications to law enforcement. Because law enforcement said, hey, you know, we've been able to wiretap all these analog systems with these new digital systems. We can't get into them. So the backdoor was provided. And that's exactly the backdoor that Chinese hackers use used to get into the phone system so they could tap administration officials. The same Chinese hackers we can't get rid of. Because these backdoored systems are so prevalent and would be so expensive to remove and would take. We'd actually. Somebody said. Somebody from the telecom said it would take us. We'd have to take the entire United States telecommunications system down for 12 hours to fix it. We're not going to do that.
- [109:21]
B
Is it hard coded in the hardware?
- [109:23]
A
It's SS7, right, Robert? Is that what it would be?
- [109:26]
D
You would have to do a forklift upgrade. You literally have to rip equipment out.
- [109:31]
A
Yeah.
- [109:31]
D
In order to make this work properly.
- [109:32]
A
It's built into all the hardware.
- [109:34]
C
I'd be willing to live without communications for 12 hours if it would help.
- [109:37]
D
That actually sounds kind of fun. I mean, I'd be volunteer.
- [109:41]
A
Okay. Harry, Good for you.
- [109:42]
C
Just not on a Sunday. Since then we can do twit.
- [109:45]
A
Yeah, I have other podcasts, you know, I mean, there's only a few days of the week you could actually do this without killing me.
- [109:54]
B
Imagine. Imagine if that actually was the. I guess the solution is that you slowly upgrade the infrastructure over time. And when you replace hardware and you put hardware that hopefully doesn't have a back door.
- [110:06]
D
The problem with that is if you introduce new hardware with any of the existing hardware, there's a venue for them to infect the new hardware.
- [110:17]
A
Nice.
- [110:18]
D
So it wouldn't work. You'd have to rip it all out at the same time.
- [110:23]
B
Great.
- [110:24]
A
That was the. That was the lesson. Yeah. We gave the FBI a back door. The FBI at times said, great. You know, this is. We're never going to let anybody know. And here we are, you know, 15 years later, Mo. Almost 20 years later.
- [110:39]
B
30 years later.
- [110:40]
A
Yeah, it worked for 30 years.
- [110:42]
B
What are you complaining about, Leo? It worked.
- [110:44]
A
True. 30 years.
- [110:45]
B
How long they've been in the system? Maybe they've been in the system for 29 years.
- [110:49]
A
Forever. SS7 has been widely known to be broken for at least a decade.
- [110:55]
B
So the solution.
- [110:57]
D
It wasn't.
- [110:57]
B
Yeah, the solution is actually to never say anything on a system that doesn't have strong encryption. Right, Right. So you need now more than ever strong encryption everywhere.
- [111:10]
A
Actually, I would be able to do the shows if they took down the telecommunications system. Nobody else would. But I have Starlink here. We're running on Comcast, which would go down, but I bet Starlink is secure. Right, Robert, I don't have to worry.
- [111:25]
D
But the base station Starlink terminates to ground somewhere and that's running on equipment.
- [111:30]
A
That you'd have to shut that down. Yeah. Amazon. I'm sorry, not Amazon. Alphabet has a Starlink competitor we need. By the way, let's get some Starlink competitors up in the sky as quickly as possible possible. Right. Elon has way too much power at this point and you know, he can turn off Starlink for anybody he doesn't like. He could right now say, I don't like Leo and flip a switch Alphabet has. You remember Project Loon? This was where they were going to have balloons with lasers.
- [112:05]
C
That was from the same era as the original Google self driving card.
- [112:09]
B
Yeah. Yep, yep.
- [112:11]
A
Yeah. Larry did. Larry talk about Project Luna?
- [112:13]
C
We did. In time. We did a list of all the moonshots, some of which are totally forgotten. Waymo is one of the few that's actually happened and Loon kind of Evolved into this thing that's happening.
- [112:25]
A
Yeah.
- [112:26]
D
So loon gave up on the balloons to the amphitheater.
- [112:29]
A
Yeah, sorry.
- [112:30]
D
They brought a loon setup to the very first Google I. O that they had at the amphitheaters. So you were actually able to go and touch and see the hardware.
- [112:37]
A
They weren't, they were, they weren't in orbit. They weren't even in. Were they in the stratosphere? Where were the stratosphere?
- [112:44]
D
So big balloons with basically baskets hanging with all the equipment that you would need to be able to.
- [112:49]
A
Like the desert of Oz. Okay. Yeah.
- [112:52]
D
But the cool part of it, the cool part of it was they would be auto launched. So whenever they needed more coverage or when once one balloon was going down, they'd auto launch. And then depending on where they have it in, altitude would depend on.
- [113:06]
A
On that shows they control where it went.
- [113:08]
D
Right. So they could bring it up and down and these things could loiter for weeks and weeks on end. So very interesting idea. Not super practical. And they tended to have issues with bad weather. So. Yeah.
- [113:20]
A
Right. So the Financial Times once again says that Alf Alphabet has spun off this technology from Project Luna and they are now putting these lasers on, on towers, giant towers to connect remote areas to the Internet. They do, they do.
- [113:41]
D
I used a couple of them in the DRC in Congo and the drc. So they are extremely useful when you have a stubborn last mile problem where you just. You can't run fiber. A wireless link is either too slow or it runs into issues with interference clearance. You can get 20 kilometers, you can get 20 gigabits per second.
- [114:06]
A
Wow.
- [114:07]
D
Yeah. The nice thing about it is the terminals. So you need two of them. They have. They're going to solid state. But right now they have a mirror system so that they will automatically adjust so you don't have to get like super, super solid like you.
- [114:21]
A
But they are line of sight systems.
- [114:23]
D
They are line of sight.
- [114:24]
A
So is rain. Does fog inhibit them? Is there rain?
- [114:30]
D
It can, it can do as long as it's not too heavy. But cloud cover and fog, that kills it.
- [114:35]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So it's not super reliable.
- [114:39]
D
Not super reliable. But if you've got an area like, I don't know, Congo and most of.
- [114:44]
A
Africa, there's nothing else.
- [114:45]
D
You are going to be able to get line of sight and clear skies for 99% of the year. It's a lifesaver. I mean it saves so much money and the speed is amazing.
- [114:56]
A
So this is. They're calling it Tara T A A R A. I don't know where that name comes from. It operates in 12 countries now, including India and parts of Africa. They've created a five kilometer laser link over the Congo river between Brazzaville and Kinsasia, which is the capital of the drc. It also supplements overloaded mobile phone networks at events like Coachella, the music. The Music festival. Yeah. Okay, Tara, this is the Financial Times writing. Has a long way to go before it can compete with Starlink, whose 7,000 satellites generated, an estimate estimated $9.3 billion in revenue last year from 4.7 million subscribers. I'm one of them, not because I want to be, but because I have no choice. It's Comcast or Starlink or nothing. And I needed redundancy in case, you know, the Comcast goes out, which it does from time to time.
- [116:02]
D
It's not a true competitor, though. It's interesting technology. It is great for point to point deployment. It is great when you need a temporary last mile solution to deploy to something like Coachella or South by South Carolina, where you just need to get some temporary towers to increase your bandwidth for an event. But it's, it's not a global delivery system. It's not a permanent system. You're going to have all the issues that you do with terrestrial towers. So I want a competitor to Starlink this. This ain't it.
- [116:34]
A
Okay.
- [116:34]
C
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think a lot of this originates from Google wanting to reach the next billion people who were not on the Internet at all.
- [116:42]
A
Well, yes, sometimes.
- [116:43]
C
Sometimes. Because it was very hard to get the Internet, Internet that last mile to them. And so this, I think, has really been tailored for that rather than Starlink, which is this massive global consumer product.
- [116:55]
A
This week, Evan Feynman, former director of bead, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. Just the name alone tells you they're probably in trouble. In the Trump administration, they provide grants to expand Internet access across the country. The. The former director, now former, resigned and warned in a scathing resignation letter that Elon Musk intends to get rich at the expense of rural Americans. He wrote in a lengthy email obtained by Politico, Stranding all or part of rural America with worse Internet so that we can make the world's richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington. The Infrastructure, Investment and jobs act granted $42.5 billion to the bead program in 2021. As of yet, no projects have actually begun. And in a statement earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Biden's woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies and burdensome regulations had prevented BEAD from connecting a single person to high speed Internet. Lutnick says they're going to rip out the pointless requirements and probably set up Elon to provide that bandwidth. Elon was mad. He was hopping mad because he had tried to get to be one of the providers for Bead and was refused because it was, I guess, so expensive. They, I think they were also continuing costs.
- [118:38]
D
Yeah, continuing costs of Starlink are far more than installing a fiber network.
- [118:42]
A
Yes.
- [118:42]
D
A fiber network is way more expensive upfront. You have to put a lot of capital outlay in order to make it work. But once it's in the ground and once it's connected, it's not just connecting rural communities, it increases the possibilities for those rural communities to use that fiber. So we're losing out on something that could be infrastructure for 10, 20, 30 years down the line in order to get something that will be obsolete in a year.
- [119:06]
A
Year.
- [119:07]
D
That's not a good trade.
- [119:08]
A
No. Yeah. If I had fiber, I wouldn't need Starlink. Come to think of it, we haven't been able to get it up here. All right. Yeah, sorry.
- [119:20]
B
No, I'm just, you know, I lived for six years in Finland in a very rural area, Incredibly rural. We had fiber. Yeah, I understand that it's not easy to lay out and, and we didn't have fiber. I mean, there were government subsidies, but it was essentially a community, half community have official project. So we did have to pay a lot of money, but it was, it allowed me to work from there and I had faster fiber than I did when I was in France before I moved to Finland. The, the advantages of laying down that groundwork are immense. And I still don't, I mean, I understand why it's not happening like in a place like where you are, Leo. I understand why, but it's such a shame that it's not more voluntarily encouraged and implemented by government effort.
- [120:21]
A
I can see the attractiveness of wireless solutions though. Right. You don't have to dig holes in the ground. It's quicker to set up.
- [120:29]
B
It's awesome. But it's a, it's a quick temporary fix.
- [120:32]
A
As temporary. Yeah, father said. Right. I.
- [120:36]
D
We did the math on it and according to Elon's plan, at about year eight, it is now as expensive as it was to run fiber and then from then on it's way more expensive. So again, it's. If it's a one administration type thing. Yeah, it makes sense because it looks good on paper but for the course of a generation it is a horrible deal.
- [121:03]
A
Yeah, here's a fun one. You know Clearview AI that's the face recognition company that is used by law enforcement all over the country, also has issues of course and has been the cause of false arrests of people of color because of its false positives. They apparently spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase 690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos from all 50 states. This is a story from 404 Media which does a great job on investigative reporting. Attempted is good news. Sounds like they weren't able to. For years they've collected photos from social media websites like Facebook. They just scrape Facebook, LinkedIn and others and then they sell sell access to its facial recognition tool to law enforcement. New documents obtained by 404 Media Review that they spent a million dollars in a bid to buy all of this arrest records and arrest photos including current and former home addresses, dates of birth, arrest photos, Social Security. By the way, I say this again and again and nobody can believe me me, it's not illegal to sell Social Security numbers. Nope, that's just mind blowing Cell phone numbers and email addresses. The contract was signed in mid-2019. Ultimately the deal fell apart after Clearview clashed with the seller about the utility of the data. Each company filed breach of. They got in a fight. Breach of contract claims.
- [122:47]
C
Thank goodness for that.
- [122:48]
A
Yeah, thank goodness. Anyway, they're trying to I guess is the point. They're trying to collect this information. It's working to acquire all US mugshots nationally from the last 15 years. By the way, I don't know how it is in France but in the United States if you're arrested there's a mugshot. It doesn't mean you're guilty.
- [123:15]
C
But the.
- [123:15]
A
Fact is if you haven't booked.
- [123:16]
D
Yeah.
- [123:17]
A
Just that you've been booked. The fact is that if a mug shot exists, anybody who could find that's going to say well obviously they're a crook. It's probably not good.
- [123:28]
D
That's why if you ever get arrested, remember to smile because you don't smile that dower.
- [123:32]
A
Yeah. No, always smile. Yeah. Don't look unhappy, be happy.
- [123:37]
B
Hi.
- [123:38]
A
I love it. I'm being arrested.
- [123:41]
D
I mean you can. This would have succeeded if they had gone to a company like Palantir. Palantir.
- [123:46]
A
That's the problem. They went to the wrong company. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
- [123:49]
C
I think we're lucky that Clearview is not more competent, inept that it's as. As Inept as it is.
- [123:56]
A
Yeah, they are too. By the way, this is not the first time. All right, I want to take a little break. We'll come back with more. You're watching this week in Tech. Fabulous panel with Harry McCracken, who you know, you interviewed Larry Page in 2013. Had the last interview.
- [124:14]
C
Not quite the last, but almost.
- [124:17]
A
How was his voice? Was he talking back then?
- [124:20]
C
This was soon after he started listening. The news came out about him having some issues. So actually the story addresses that. But the main thing, when I played back my old recording, the main thing I was struck by was that old audio recordings sound terrible just because microphones have gotten so much better. I must have recorded it on my iPad at the time. And it sounds like we did it underwater just because the quality has gotten so much better since then.
- [124:49]
A
It's amazing, isn't it? Technology never ends. Never stops moving. Also, Patrick, Beja, we always love having you on. And it is getting later and later. I'm sorry, it's almost midnight now.
- [125:01]
B
It is a quarter past midnight. But no, you keep me up energized. I'm sorry for being the angry European.
- [125:09]
A
No, that's why you're here. You're here to be the angry European.
- [125:14]
B
Shake your fists, say zuta Lor. That's ex. You have been to France.
- [125:23]
A
And father Robert Ballis here, who, as I said, is a colossus who astrides both continents and he's pretty good. You look good in shades. You look dangerous.
- [125:34]
D
Sort of a future so bright, I gotta wear shades.
- [125:37]
A
Shades. It's great to have all three of you. Our show today brought to you brand new sponsor. Glad to welcome him to the family. Kinsta K I N S T A When you run an online business, you have many different hats to wear. It could be overwhelming to manage your web hosting. I mean, I mean, that's an area of expertise that's kind of beyond what you learn in running a business, right? You got a million other things to do. Kinsta is managed WordPress hosting with an expert team that will handle everything for you. So you could just sit back now every these days, every business has to have a website. Not having a website would be like not having a phone number. I mean, it's. You gotta have a website. I don't even do business. If I, if I search for a website and I. And I don't find one, I go, I don't know, is this even a business? Kinsta makes it easy. They've bundled up all the essentials to make sites stress free. And of course, very important these days. The site has to be quick, responsive. The speeds of the Kinsta site will wow your visitors, of course. Absolute security. It never sleeps. And a dashboard so intuitive you'll wonder why everything isn't this easy. Here's the good thing. When you hit a snag, real humans are there 24, seven every day of the year to help out. In short, Kinsta is a perfect place for people who want professional results without needing a technical background. Kinsta doesn't just host WordPress websites. They deliver blazing speed. Your website could run up to 200% faster. Ironclad security, ultimate reliability. And if you're worried about moving from your current provider, don't worry. They'll migrate your entire website for free. And there's a 30 day money back guarantee, so there's no risk when it comes to security. And I know this is really important. Kinsta is in a league of its own. It's one of the few WordPress hosting providers that backs its promises with multiple enterprise certifications. You can see it all at the website and their custom control panel. It's a work of art. And of course, whenever you need help, WordPress pros, not AI chatbots, real humans experts are there to respond in minutes and tackle even the trickiest problems. Who uses Kinsta? TripAdvisor, NASA? You ever hear of them? Indeed, among the 120,000 businesses that trust Kinsta with their WordPress websites. WordPress is great for a website, but you don't want to manage it. You want to have somebody who really knows what they're doing. If you're tired of being your own website support team, switch your hosting to Kinsta. Get your first month free and don't worry about the move. They're going to handle the whole transition for you. No tech expertise is required. I think this is a great solution. Visit kinsta.com TWIT to get started. K-I n s t a kinsta.com TWIT we welcome them to the family. Great to have you, Kinsta. And we appreciate your support. You support us, dear listener, by going to that website. That way they'll know you saw it here. Kinsta.com TWIT Are you ready? Scientists always love any story that begins with Scientists achieve record breaking fusion stability. Bringing us one step. And guess what? They're French scientists, so you know they're good. Scientists in France have just shattered a fusion energy record. Holding plasma. It's hard to hold plasma. They've held it longer than ever before. Big step toward nuclear fusion. We keep making these steps. The French Atomic Energy Commission in Southern France has held maintained a plasma field for 22 minutes. Stability obviously is important. The particles are at 100 million degrees Celsius, which is in freedom units, 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit. Atoms collide at incredible speeds. That's where the plasma comes from, a superheated electrically charged gas. But maintaining that stability is challenging and the 22 minute record is a significant improvement over previous attempts.
- [130:02]
D
You know, Leo, I, I love science and I love fusion technology. I love the advancements that they've been making. But as, as much as this is sort of big headline science, the, the issue is no matter how long you're able to maintain a fusion or even a fission reaction in a controlled environment, the mechanism that we use to convert that into usable electrical power goes back to the steam engine. We haven't made any massive strides in the conversion of this energy directly into electrical power that we can use to.
- [130:34]
A
Power turn a turbine to generate electricity with steam.
- [130:38]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [130:39]
D
This is, this is just a bigger fire. It's a bigger boy.
- [130:42]
A
Yeah, but it's a bigger fire that is, that burns not coal, not oil, but water. That's a start. Right?
- [130:50]
B
The, the thing about fusion is that for people, I'm sure everyone knows, but it is, it essentially means unlimited energy. Correct. And like we're getting, we have enough advancements, as you mentioned, Leo, in the past few years there's been like significant improvements and advancements to the experiments that we could imagine in the not too distant future that actually working. The problem is now it still eats up more energy to create that reaction than it puts out. So it's really not usable at all. Yet.
- [131:30]
A
Yet. But until you have a gain in energy, you're not doing anything important.
- [131:34]
D
But see, even then they're talking about the net gain of how much power you have to put into to start the fusion reaction and then create the magnetic bottle to contain the fusion reaction versus the amount of heat that it puts out. It's not even factoring the fact that we're going to lose a massive percentage to the heat and mechanical loss of pushing it through a steam engine.
- [131:54]
A
So you need a lot of net. This is part of a broader international effort to create fusion. The International Thermal Nuclear Experimental Reactor ITER is being built in southern France. It's a collaboration of China, the eu, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, the US Everybody's trying to do this and they're working together, which is pretty damn impressive, to build the world's largest tokamak it will stand 30 meters tall, weigh 230, sorry, 23,000 tons. And they're the primary goal to achieve a tenfold energy gain, in other words producing 500 megawatts from 50 megawatts of input.
- [132:36]
B
And so there are two things here. First of all this isn't going to be practical. Like we're not going to have lights lit up by fusion reaction for the next few decades probably. I don't think, you know, it's not until we probably won't be here anymore. But imagine a world, it changes everything thing that.
- [132:55]
D
Yeah.
- [132:55]
B
Where en energy is essentially free. It is insane. The impact on society that it would have. Like that's the post scarce, that's a.
- [133:04]
D
Post scarcity world, right?
- [133:06]
A
Yes. Same technology used by the sun.
- [133:08]
B
It changes everything. It changes everything. And like the first thing you think, well maybe not everyone thinks about that but when you think about AI and big data centers, the first thing at least I think about is okay, where are we getting the energy?
- [133:23]
A
Right.
- [133:24]
B
Right. And how much is it going to cost energy wise? That's the main constraint. That's what half what, what Jensen Huang spent half his keynote talking about almost last week. He was like your gains, your business profits are going to be constrained by how much energy you can have. Like this is the main concern. So once we have fusion it's going to change everything. However, it's not coming for a while and we do have something.
- [133:54]
A
I was getting my hopes up which.
- [133:56]
B
Works really well and that is the next best, best thing and that's fishing like fission, nuclear.
- [134:06]
D
Gen 4 nuclear reactors.
- [134:08]
B
Yeah.
- [134:08]
D
Gen 4 nuclear reactors can actually take the waste from previous generation reactors and use it to.
- [134:15]
A
Yeah.
- [134:16]
B
And it seems like again AI is pushing a lot of companies, including big tech companies in the US to kind of get the financial impetus to fight the negative image that nuclear has in the US and elsewhere and actually invest in nuclear because it is, it's not super clean but it's definitely decarbonated. I don't know if that's a term in English. And, and it, it creates a lot.
- [134:46]
A
Of energy.
- [134:49]
B
And, and it is a solution to a lot of our problems. Until we get fusion going in France we have I think something like what is it 70% of our energy is, is, that's down.
- [135:01]
A
Right.
- [135:02]
D
You, you were 80, I believe @ one point and that's, it's.
- [135:04]
B
Yeah, no, I think it's more, I, I don't have the exact. Basically we don't have to worry about energy because we have so much, much nuclear and is a specific thing that we have in France and it is old model reactors like it's the ones that we were building in the 70s. The new generations are much, much better and more efficient than recycled and safer. Waste product. Yes.
- [135:28]
D
You can't melt down a Gen 4 reactor. It's physically impossible because they've designed the fueling system so that if it gets to the point where it's an out of control reaction, the pellets actually, actually expand and it shuts down the reaction. It's. I mean gen 4 would be amazing except for the fact that we had Three Mile island and Chernobyl and we are so afraid as a nation. The United States, I'm talking about, that we don't even want to talk about nuclear power.
- [135:54]
C
Yeah.
- [135:54]
A
Unlike France, Germany just decommissioned all of its nuclear power plants. They took them all offline.
- [136:00]
B
But AI is, you know, that's the beauty of capitalism.
- [136:04]
A
Yeah. We need the, we need the power now.
- [136:06]
D
Yeah.
- [136:07]
B
And now who is it? Like Google, Meta and someone else went and signed the agreements of. I can't remember the name of the organizations. It's essentially promising, vying to triple the amount of energy with these new modular.
- [136:23]
A
Small, modular nuclear power plants. So you mentioned gtc. I completely forgot. This was just this week. Jensen Huang, Nvidia's GPU Technology conference, which is now. A lot of it's about AI. Were there any big stories coming out of that? What were the stories coming out of it? We didn't really cover it.
- [136:46]
B
I think there were two interesting aspects of it. Of course. Jensen Huang being Jensen Huang is the story. He's so cool in a way that I'm kind of scared to point out because the last tech giant that was cool turned out to not be so cool.
- [137:03]
A
But.
- [137:04]
B
But there are two things. First, he is laying out the plans for AI GPUs or AI chips for the next like three or four years so that companies can plan what they're going to buy and what they're going to do and in big details. But the other thing, the most exciting thing I think to our audience is going to be from GTC and from other outlets as well, other companies as, as well. Well, the progress in robotics. I think it is incredible what we're seeing in robotics. Aided by AI, of course, but not just that mechanically as well. There's Gemini Robotics that was announced two weeks ago, I believe, and it seems like, I don't know if you've seen the new version of Atlas and there are a few other companies that create robots that don't even need the big, big wires that connect them to the power supply and such. And they mechanically move in a way that is so they can do so much like the, the machines themselves, the articulations, the power that they put into the limb. They can do movements that are incredibly lifelike already. And then you have AI that enable these situations, these movements in context of a request or a changing environment. I think we're maybe getting into the beginning of a new robotics type cycle.
- [138:46]
A
Is this going to be the year of robots everywhere? Are we going to see robots?
- [138:50]
B
Well, maybe not this year, but I think in the next five years. I don't know if they're going to be financially viable. It seems like it's going to be very expensive, but I think they're going to become extremely capable. Like we're seeing robots rise up. I was going to say the little.
- [139:05]
A
Robot that he brought out was very cute. Was that autonomous or was it, was there somebody with.
- [139:10]
B
Yeah, it seemed to be autonomous. It's a joint project between them and Disney and someone else, but the more interesting ones there. So one thing that they're doing at Nvidia is thanks to their digital twins technology, which is Omniverse and Cosmos and another technology together. Essentially they can train AIs to do things in actual environments. Because the physics simulation is so true to actual real world physics. They can train AIs faster than they could train the physical items in a. More in a, in a, in a sufficiently realistic environment, digital environment that they can do it really fast. And so the robots become trained with the AI models that are dedicated to that. And as I was saying, Gemini has a robotics version of the model as well. Well, and we have companies that are creating the mechanics of it that work. Like you can see robots doing cart flips and you know, like even more impressive than Boston Dynamics Atlas, even the new version is vastly improved.
- [140:31]
A
Yeah, the new one is like doing somersaults and cartwheels and all sorts of stuff.
- [140:36]
B
And it's very, it's human shaped in the sense that it doesn't have the bulky backpack. It doesn't have like it works. I don't know how much battery to life it has, but I think we're seeing robots arriving like now.
- [140:49]
A
Huang says this is going to be the, the year of the personal robot. This is the, this is the, the little Jensen robot.
- [140:59]
B
Yeah, I can't remember how it's called.
- [141:00]
D
Let's be honest. That's Wall E. It looks just like.
- [141:03]
A
I mean, of course Disney designed it. He didn't really go into great depth about how it was working. It could easily have been remote control, but I gather that it's supposed to be responding to his gestures and his queries and so forth.
- [141:18]
C
I am sort of sick of these remote controlled robots which.
- [141:22]
A
Yeah, I don't want to see any more.
- [141:23]
C
Like the bartenders at the Tesla event.
- [141:26]
A
Right, right. Those are humans controlling that one, right?
- [141:31]
D
Yes, yes, yeah, but you need a robot that has its processing on board. As long as they're tethered to a giant bank of, of super power hungry.
- [141:41]
A
Servers, then it doesn't matter. I agree. So what I think is interesting is that in some ways AI has already eaten the Internet. It's eaten as much textual content as it possibly can. But what it lacks is this knowledge of the physical world. It's one thing that we have that AIs don't have. So robots now take it out into the physical world and I think that that may actually speed up the development of AI. If it actually sees things falling, it can understand gravity a lot better than reading about it in a book.
- [142:15]
D
Yeah, well that was actually part of GTC as well because he was talking about the advancement of photonics and advanced storage systems, because that's sort of a missing puzzle. If you can store more data that you can access more quickly, then your models become smarter.
- [142:34]
A
Right.
- [142:34]
D
So if they become smarter, then they can do a better job at modeling the actual physical world. And that was sort of pushed to the side. No one really talked about that. But I think the advancements in AI infrastructure for, for me, because I'm an infrastructure guy, that's far more interesting because if they get that working properly, that has ramifications beyond just, just in a better AI model, more efficient, faster storage that can be used in quantum states. That's extremely interesting.
- [143:06]
C
For me, the quantum stuff was interesting particularly because at ces, Jensen Huang seemed to say that people were overly excited about quantum computing and stocks dropped and people started talking about maybe it being another 20 years before there's anything kind of useful. And at GTC he said that, you know, he had maybe sounded overly pessimistic about it. And in fact there's a lot of stuff happening with AI on classical supercomputers, like ones powered by Nvidia chips, working in concert with quantum computing. And maybe it's not going to be 20 years until that stuff happens.
- [143:45]
B
Yeah, he walked it back.
- [143:47]
A
I just, I, I hope that we are not being surrounded by the most massive multiple hype cycles and that all of this, you Know, AGI, asi, fusion. All of this stuff isn't just bs and it's just going to be the same, same old, same old for the next few decades because it's not so great the way it is right now. For instance, police are telling people, law enforcement telling people if you have a smartphone, Dangerous texts have soared 600%. This is because of a Chinese cyber attack tool. They're now saying the FBI and the FTC are saying delete dangerous texts as soon as you receive them. I see more and more of these texts. Hello, how are you? Who are you? What are you doing? You want to go to dinner? That kind of thing. But there's a new one, the unpaid toll scam. And I have seen quite a few of these. Their messages tailored to the locale you're in. They look like they're coming from the local toll collection agency. And you're warned that unless you pay immediately, you'll be subject to escalating fines. And there's a payment link which looks like it's coming from the agency. Here's a easy pass that looks, you know, this is fake, this is spurious. But if you click this link, you get a place that looks just like, you know, EasyPass. And of course it's not the best result, the FBI says if you fall for the scam is you'll lose some money. More likely you'll lose your credit card number and other personal information which will be harvested and sold on delete and report is what the FBI says. And here's the graft. The graph Toll free scam texts in early 2025. I wish they had some scale on the left side. This is the worst graph I've ever seen. But, but there it is anyway. This is from Forbes. 604% rise in toll free toll fee scam texts.
- [145:54]
C
Is this a problem like all over the world or is like what do.
- [145:58]
A
You get from France?
- [145:59]
C
Yeah. Does France have the same issues?
- [146:00]
B
Yeah, I think less, but we do get some. And you get some of those calls that either, you know, that you connect and no one say anything. So you want, you try to call them back or there is now it's starting with AI voices that tell you.
- [146:21]
A
It sound like people, you know.
- [146:22]
B
Yeah, no, actually, well, no, not, not quite that, but an automated voice that tells you, oh, you are, because I, I have my, you know, I run my company and. Or it's like you have, you have the right to get this kind of subsidy or you have this kind of thing that you could get, get and we can tell you, we can walk you through that or. And of course it's always existed, but because, because of AI, it's very easy to massively increase the amount of coals that are placed.
- [146:56]
A
And if you can make a, A lot of them cheaply, the chance of you catching a fish go up and.
- [147:03]
B
Just, it's, it's, it's just.
- [147:05]
D
Yeah, I, I would think the French would be less acceptable since you're all naturally cynical and skeptical.
- [147:11]
B
No, well, I, I. So far I haven't fallen for anything, but I certainly seen an increase in these kinds of things. And you know, the, the I think one that you've always, you, you've all seen as well, like, hey, I've changed my number. Please help. Like, hey, dad, I've changed my number. This is my new number. Please send me money. Or yeah, these kinds of things we. Which I didn't see even six months ago or 12 months ago. Now I see them regularly and I think in France we're probably better protected against these things because it's easier to take action legally.
- [147:46]
A
Oh, good. Okay.
- [147:48]
B
But you know, I still see them every once in a while.
- [147:51]
D
I, I have a Google voice number that I registered in Los Angeles a long time ago and I wrote a chat GPT client for it. And so it gets scam attacks and it keeps them on the conversation for as long as possible.
- [148:05]
C
I do that myself sometimes. I just chat with these people. But maybe that's a bad idea.
- [148:09]
D
My dad does that. He loves answering those phone calls and just to waste their time.
- [148:14]
B
You know what, what, who, who does that? Right? These calls, there's.
- [148:19]
A
There's pig butchering scams out of Myanmar and. Yes, yeah. And these poor.
- [148:23]
B
Yeah.
- [148:24]
A
This is why I don't want torture them. It is hard because these people are also sleeping slaves.
- [148:28]
B
Right?
- [148:28]
A
They're not.
- [148:28]
B
Yes.
- [148:29]
A
They're unwilling trafficking. Yeah. Yeah.
- [148:32]
C
Maybe I will just, maybe I will just ignore them from now on.
- [148:35]
A
Yeah, just.
- [148:35]
B
Well, it's not like it's going to improve their situation, but I, I have, I have issue.
- [148:41]
D
I mean, I've had too many people that are close to me who have fallen for that.
- [148:44]
B
No.
- [148:45]
A
Oh, I know. That's a soft spot for me.
- [148:48]
C
Yeah.
- [148:48]
A
I don't blame you. It's infected. That's my rage point, I guess just the point is that some, sometimes a person calling is as much a victim as you friends and family. Is there a move in France to ban cell phones from classrooms?
- [149:03]
B
Yes.
- [149:04]
A
Okay.
- [149:05]
B
Absolutely.
- [149:05]
A
There certainly is in the United States. California just implemented that. I Know our local schools. The Lancet, the British medical journal, has published a study that says researchers find no improvement in student well being or academic performance in schools that restrict cell phone use. It doesn't improve grades, it doesn't improve well being. The study examined 30 schools in the UK, 20 of which restricted cell phones in some capacity, 10 of which did not. In restrictive schools, the Lancet article says phones were not allowed to be used during the school day for recreational purposes, were required to be kept off inside bags, stored in lockers, kept in a pouch, handed into the school reception, or not even allowed onto premises at all. In permissive schools, phones were permitted to be used anytime or at certain times it breaks or lunch or in certain zones. Contrary to popular belief, the researchers found no significant difference in the well being of students allowed to use their phones compared to those who were not.
- [150:12]
C
It did sound like even the non restrictive schools had some restrictions.
- [150:16]
A
Yeah, it does.
- [150:18]
C
It was not binary between a ban and do whatever you want whenever you want.
- [150:24]
A
Taylor Lawrence writes in her substack, reactionary hacks have been pushing the false narrative that social media and smartphones are leading to declining literacy and mental health problems. It's false and it's simply the latest iteration of a long running freakout about the technology and media that young people are using. She represents the other side of that story.
- [150:49]
D
This is a, I mean my organization runs schools.
- [150:53]
A
That's, that's like yeah. Thing.
- [150:54]
D
That's.
- [150:55]
A
Yeah.
- [150:55]
D
And we have policies that go back 20 years now on the use of cell phones and they.
- [151:02]
A
How about laptops?
- [151:04]
D
Laptops? We allow, so we will allow laptops in classrooms, but we shut off the, the WI fi unless the assignment is. Needs connectivity.
- [151:13]
A
Oh, that's.
- [151:13]
D
We allow cell phones to be used, just not in the classroom, not in the hallways. So it's, it's not just restricting the technology, it's putting the students in the right frame of mind to know, okay, this is time for me to pay attention to X, Y or Z. Yeah. So I think that's where the, the, the, the report fails because they're just trying to do this binary. Well, if we put the phones away, does it increase scores or if we allow phones as a do score score slip. It's, it's more important to look at the attitudes that students develop around the use of their devices.
- [151:47]
A
I agree.
- [151:47]
D
If they recognize that the devices are extremely useful but that at certain times they're not appropriate, that's the lesson you want to teach. That's what our schools have been using for the last two decades.
- [152:00]
A
All right. I think you're right. I forget. Forget I even brought it up. Just forget. We're going to take a break and then I'm going to to tell you the final story of the day that will convince you we are in fact in the worst timeline. Just if you add any questions, this will tell you. All right. Harry McCracken, Father Robert Balisare, the Digital Jesuit, and the wonderful Patrick Beja. Not patrick.com it's all wonderful to have all three of you here. Nice to have experts to talk me off the ledge. You know, just, you know, know don't have cell phones in the classroom. You don't need them. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped. It's time to talk about our sponsor, this Week in Tech, brought to you this week by Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, right from self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it ain't in your industry yet, don't worry, it's coming and fast. But AI needs a lot of speed, needs a lot of computing power. How do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure OCI OCI is blazing fast. It's a secure platform for your infrastructure, for your database, your app development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for computer and 80% less for networking, so you're going to save a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, Suno AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer. Go to oracle, oracle.com TWIT that's oracle.com TWIT and we thank him so much for supporting this week in tech. This is how I know we're in the worst timeline. DoorDash has done a deal with the Buy Now, Pay later company Klarna so that you can borrow money to buy a burrito. Pay for your takeout burrito in installments. DoorDash announced this week it'd be teaming with Klarna to offer a range of payment options to customers, including Buy Now Pay Later. That allows users to defer payments to a more convenient time as well as you know, if you're borrowing money for a burrito.
- [154:43]
D
You'Ve got problems.
- [154:45]
A
It seems like that's, that's a sign.
- [154:47]
D
Then you got to go pick it up yourself.
- [154:48]
C
Okay.
- [154:49]
B
A sign of what?
- [154:51]
A
It's a sign of poverty, obviously. It's also unrealistic because if you can't pay for it now, what makes you think you're gonna be able to pay for it later?
- [155:00]
B
No, but I would like for everyone to go. And this is the last story, right?
- [155:07]
A
That's what he said. Yes.
- [155:10]
B
So let's push this to its logical conclusion.
- [155:12]
A
Yes.
- [155:14]
B
If a society creates situations where people have to get a loan to buy a burrito, is the problem with the person getting a loan to buy a burrito or the society that is.
- [155:32]
A
Oh, I agree with you. I agree with you.
- [155:34]
C
I mean, anytime you use a credit card to buy a burrito, we are.
- [155:38]
A
In some sense it's a loan.
- [155:39]
C
Taking out a loan to buy a burrito. I like the fact that on Blue sky people were bringing up Wimpy, who.
- [155:45]
A
Was famous for I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today on Popeye.
- [155:51]
C
And he invented this business model.
- [155:54]
A
You're right.
- [155:55]
B
You know, point, I don't think there are a lot of countries that have as much that live on credit as much as the US And I think.
- [156:03]
D
That is our biggest product. Product debt is the biggest product of the United States.
- [156:08]
B
You know, we don't really have credit cards here are mostly debit cards.
- [156:13]
A
Yeah. Isn't that interesting?
- [156:16]
B
Yeah.
- [156:17]
A
Here's, here's from Chase passive income on x.com excited to announce I closed on a $31.38 transaction to secure a burrito inside of Chip's 20 year senior fixed rate financing provided by Klarn Doordash provided delivery of the asset. Congratulations to all involved. You're absolutely right. You brought. It seems funny, but it really is a sad commentary on the rising cost of food and the rising amount of poverty.
- [156:51]
D
The next step, the next logical step is for Doordash to partner with Klarna and Patreon or GoFundMe so that you can also ask the public if they might want to chip in in so you can get chips with your burrito.
- [157:04]
A
You know, I mean, it's, oh my God.
- [157:06]
D
It's all vertically integrated, Leo.
- [157:07]
A
It's ready to go.
- [157:09]
B
I love the U.S. i, I everything I work on is probably at some point made in the U.S. or you know, thought of in the U.S. but when you come from Europe and we have problems in Europe. But when you come from Europe and you go to California and you see how things work, it is surprising and that's the worst time you. You brought up the klarna thing with DoorDash, which is essentially.
- [157:37]
A
It probably is just a hype up Klarna because they have their IPOs coming up.
- [157:43]
B
Yeah, that's the other thing. Is it a serious thing? Like, is anyone actually going? It feels like.
- [157:48]
D
I hope not.
- [157:48]
C
I.
- [157:49]
D
God, I hope not.
- [157:50]
A
It seems like you're. You. I don't know. You should rethink your priorities, I guess.
- [157:55]
D
I mean, if you're taking a loan to DoorDash, they should have a partnership with an entire addiction specialist because you're doing something wrong in your life and you need to fix it right away.
- [158:04]
A
Hey, this is the country where every sporting event is sponsored by gambling concerns. And every ad for these gambling concerns features fine print at the bottom saying, got a problem? Call 1-800-Gambling.
- [158:22]
B
So actually we're seeing a lot more gambling. Well, a lot of gambling sites in France senses as well. And the problem is you can't really ban them because they would operate outside of your jurisdiction.
- [158:36]
A
That's true. Then they'd be illegal. Yeah.
- [158:38]
B
And people will essentially. Yeah. Gambling until the Internet or recently in the Internet age was just national. Is it companies or organizations that would organize, you know, lotteries, the lotto and stuff like that, that. But now you can bet on anything in France as well, where it was heavily controlled until now. And yeah, obviously that's, That's a problem. But I don't need to fight.
- [159:05]
D
You can go to Vegas right now and bet on the next Pope. I'm dead serious. I lost time.
- [159:12]
B
I was there.
- [159:12]
A
Who is the front runner right now?
- [159:15]
D
The front runner is Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines.
- [159:18]
A
Really?
- [159:19]
D
Followed by Cardinal Pyrrolin.
- [159:22]
A
Ah. They think it's time to get out of the. Out of the Italian Pope thing. Of course. Your Pope is. Benedict is from Argentina, right?
- [159:31]
D
Argentina, yes.
- [159:35]
A
Did you see Conclave? I've been meaning to ask you. I.
- [159:38]
C
We actually.
- [159:39]
D
I did. That was a good movie. It was a fun movie. Not super realistic, but it was fun.
- [159:44]
A
It's fun. It's not realistic. How about.
- [159:47]
D
I mean, there is. There is a thing called the murmurazio and we do it here in the society just as they do in a conclave. And that's basically where you have one on one conversations with people of. Well, who do you think would be good for this? There's no campaigning. There's no. They're not supposed to be any campaigning.
- [160:03]
A
Right.
- [160:03]
D
It's supposed to be. What qualities are we looking for? What does the next Pope need To be what. What do we need him to do? And then it moves to a conversation of, well, who would be good for that?
- [160:14]
A
So, so, so there are front runners in the sense that there's a. Probably already a consensus. I mean, Benedict is a one. Is an amazing Pope, but. But he is also a reformist, and I know has made many enemies, Right, in the Conclave. Right?
- [160:31]
D
Yes. Well, I mean, he has picked more than 80% of the cardinals who will.
- [160:36]
A
They're all his cardinals now.
- [160:37]
D
Okay, there's Cardinal, but it's not like he stacked the deck. He was picking the best.
- [160:42]
A
Francis. I'm sorry, I keep saying Benedict. Benedict's the old pope. Francis is the current Pope.
- [160:47]
D
His whole papacy has been about reforming the Vatican and reforming the hierarchy. So you get the best person for the job, not just the next. Who's in line.
- [160:54]
A
Right.
- [160:54]
D
So. But there is a general consensus that the next pope is probably going to be a European and is probably will continue before reform. Not from the Philippines. It'll probably be an Italian. Would be my guess Italian or German, and will probably be with the reform. But more conservative.
- [161:16]
A
Right.
- [161:16]
D
Just to sort of be the reconciling Pope.
- [161:20]
A
Well, God willing, we won't have to worry about that for some time to come, and Francis will make a full recovery.
- [161:28]
D
Well, that's going to be Conclave 2, the sequel.
- [161:34]
A
I loved Conclave. Lisa thought was a little slow, but I enjoyed it. But now. Now I'm disappointed that it was. I mean, they do sew the ballads together. They throw them in the fire.
- [161:44]
D
Yeah, no, the, The. The traditions are. But okay, I've got your triple header. So you have to start with the two popes, then you have to watch the Pope's Exorcist and then Conclave. I think that's. That's the thing.
- [161:55]
A
There was a movie. Have you ever seen Anthony Quinn in the Shoes of the Fisherman?
- [162:00]
B
Yes.
- [162:01]
A
Oh, that's. Oh, that's a classic. Classic. And that's also the Conclave. Yeah. Yeah. But was that accurate? Don't tell me. I don't want to know. You're ruining all of my. All of my childhood fans.
- [162:12]
B
Ask Chat GPT.
- [162:14]
D
Yeah, Chat GPT Never lies. Just ask. It'll know.
- [162:20]
A
Father Robert, so great to see you. I. I hope all is well in your neighborhood and your family's doing well.
- [162:28]
B
Well.
- [162:28]
A
And we just. We just. I miss you so much. Now that we don't have a studio, I don't get to see anybody anymore, so.
- [162:36]
D
But it also means you can come here.
- [162:39]
A
I really would very Much like to come for jubilee. I need to walk through that door a few times. I'm going to bring my post it notes.
- [162:46]
D
I will take you underground.
- [162:48]
A
Oh, I really want to do that too. Anyway, it's wonderful to see you. Jesuit Pilgrimage.com app is his app. He's on Blueskyadre. SJ. Thank you for being here. Father.
- [163:00]
B
Thank you.
- [163:01]
A
Great to see you. Patrick. Thank you for staying up late as well. You guys have stayed up well past midnight. It's almost 1am Such a pleasure. OtPatrick.com don't be fooled by anybody impersonating Patrick Bay.
- [163:16]
B
Shot by the other not Patrick on other not.
- [163:19]
A
Yes. Blue sky. Also notpatrick.com you still have the website and that's. That's what really. Yeah. Matters. Anything you want to plug? The Phileas Club is back. I'm thrilled to see that.
- [163:29]
B
Yeah, I guess the Phillies Club for this audience. I mean, I do my weekly tech news show called Laurent Vu Tech. I also have a daily, actually a very short three minutes called LAC2Tech. I've been doing this for a couple of months. It's really fun.
- [163:44]
A
I have a lot of friends who are learning French. This would be a wonderful thing to listen to, to perfect your French.
- [163:51]
B
I think that's actually something I've been recommending to English speakers, speakers who want to learn French because it's usually a subject matter that they're familiar with.
- [163:58]
A
Right. So you kind of know what's going on.
- [164:00]
B
Yeah, I have a wonderful voice. So that also plays into it. But the affiliates club is in English and that's where I talk about the way things are currently and the way things are in France and internationally. And you can get links to that show, the podcast guest@notpatrick.com it's very easy.
- [164:23]
A
Love that. Be careful with that sword. It looks sharp and. And everything else.
- [164:31]
B
That's why it's so high up.
- [164:33]
A
Where are you working now?
- [164:35]
B
Oh, I'm in. In Paris. I'm in my. It's actually my old studio apartment. That is my one thing I actually bought and invested in where I started podcasting.
- [164:49]
A
Wow.
- [164:49]
B
20 years ago now. 19 years ago, a show about World of Warcraft that introduced podcasting to a lot of nerds in France.
- [165:00]
A
Wow. You know, our 20th anniversary show is April 13th. It's in a couple of weeks and we are asking people. I've been getting some great submissions if you've been watching the show or maybe if you're new. We want to honor our community. So make a video. Tell us how you found Twit where you first watch it, how you watch it today, that kind of thing. Any reminiscence. Somebody wrote a poem, there's a guy on a boat. We're getting some fun stuff and we'll play as many of those as we can on the April 13, 20th anniversary edition of Twit. But you've been doing this almost as long, Patrick. That's cool. That's great. Yeah.
- [165:37]
B
And I've been. I remember very clearly that I started listening to you and my friend Scott Johnson and on the instance.
- [165:44]
A
That's right.
- [165:46]
B
And. And I. I traveled to Las Vegas for the podcast and new media.
- [165:52]
A
Yeah, the New Media Expo.
- [165:53]
B
Yeah, Expo.
- [165:54]
A
Yeah.
- [165:55]
B
And you had to stand there and I went to see you and I think we did a thing.
- [166:00]
A
You.
- [166:00]
B
You had me on.
- [166:01]
A
That's how we met.
- [166:02]
B
Yeah. That's the first time we met.
- [166:04]
A
It's awesome. It's wonderful. It's great to see you again, Patrick. We'll get you back soon. Thanks. Same for Harry. Harry and his wife Marie used to come to the studio and I miss you guys. It was. It was so nice to see you. Used to visit Petaluma. Do you still ride your bike up across the bridge in Bay?
- [166:21]
C
Yeah, I've gotten as far as Larkspur.
- [166:24]
A
Wow. It's an E bike.
- [166:26]
C
It's an E bike and I have two batteries, so it's like one battery gets me there and the other battery gets me back.
- [166:33]
A
So cool. What a great idea. I gotta emulate you. Read Harry's work@fastcompany.com he's also in bluesky.
- [166:40]
C
Harrymcracken.com and I have a newsletter which I should plug from Fast Company. It's called Plugged in. And it just moved from Wednesday morning to Friday morning. And if you search online for Fast Company Plugged in, you should be able to sign up pretty easily.
- [166:53]
A
And it's free.
- [166:54]
C
It is free.
- [166:55]
A
You don't have to. So it's nice to have a. No, that's not it. That's from Focus on the Family. That's the wrong one. Oh, cow.
- [167:03]
C
Don't subscribe to that one.
- [167:04]
A
Don't subscribe to that one. Subscribe to this one. Focus on the technology, please.
- [167:10]
D
Please.
- [167:11]
A
Awesome. Yeah, very nice. Let me just click that subscribe button and. And you should all do the same. Thank you, Harry.
- [167:19]
C
Thank you, Leo, as always. Hope to see you. Hope to see you in person sometime.
- [167:22]
A
Yeah, you know, we got to figure out a way maybe we'll do a live show out in the world at Some point. And then invite local people.
- [167:30]
C
Please do.
- [167:31]
A
And France and Italy or a tour. Beautiful. Love to do it.
- [167:36]
D
You could all come to Rome.
- [167:37]
A
We should all go to Rome.
- [167:39]
D
We have the Aula. It's a huge room. We could fit everybody.
- [167:43]
A
I would be fun to do a live show in Rome. Wow, a tour does sound fun. Let's go on tour. Leo Bonito likes the idea.
- [167:52]
D
Actually, Benito, the problem is we are set up for remote operations. So you could actually run it from there.
- [167:57]
A
No, we have to bring him. That's the rule. Yeah, we have to bring him. He must come. Jammer B says live show equals new equipment. No, you can't unretire Jammer B. You've got to stay. We had lunch with Jammer B, came down to see Amphreese McGhee. It was so great to see him again. Our old studio manager who's retired now, but still a regular listener. It's great to have you, John Slanina. It's great to have all of you. Thank you for being here, especially our club members. Really, you make a big difference keeping the show and all of our shows on the air. Club Twit members pay only seven bucks a month, but for that they get ad free versions of all the shows. They get access to the Discord where a lot of fun stuff happens. Some great people hanging out in the Discord, but also we do events like Stacy's Book Club and Chris Marquardt's Photo Adventure. We just booked another Coffee Geek hour with Mark Prince, the Coffee Geek. So it is a lot of fun in our club. I know you get the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing you're supporting the stuff that we do. I think it's more important than ever, frankly, to do what we're doing and get the word out about what's happening in technology. So thank you in advance. Twitt TV Club Twit. If you'd like to join, we'd sure love to have you. Another way you can help us out. Leave us a review, 5 stars if possible, on your favorite podcast client. That turns out to be a very important way for us to get new advertisers. Whether it's podcasts from Apple or Spotify or Pocket casts, whatever you use, just put a five star review in there. Thank you. Thank you for that. We will be back next week. Next Sunday from 2 to 5pm every Sunday afternoon Pacific time. That's 5 to 8pm Eastern time. The middle of the night in Italy and France. Actually, it's 2100 UTC. That's when we start the show, and I mention that because you can watch us live. We stream, of course, for the club members into the Discord, but there's also YouTube, Twitch X.com we stream on Facebook, on LinkedIn, Kik and TikTok for as long as it's around. You can watch our streams live there, but it's a podcast, so you can also download copies of the show, audio or video or both from our website. There's a video channel on YouTube dedicated to this weekend tech, and you can subscribe in that podcast client of yours and get us automatically the minute it's available. Thank you everybody for being here. Hope you have a wonderful evening. We'll see you next time. Another Twit is in the Can.
- [170:43]
B
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