Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Twit this Week in Tech. Christina Warren is here from GitHub, reid Albergati from Semaphore and my friend Sam Aboulsamid, my car guy. We will talk about Pavel Durov, just arrested in France. But are the platforms responsible for the content on the platform? We'll talk about it. Elon is both a hero and a goat, once again saving the astronauts on the space station, and the lawsuit against live nation and ticket master heats up that and a whole lot more coming up next on twit podcasts you love from people you trust.
00:42
This is TWIT. This is TWIT this Week in Tech, episode 994. Recorded August 25th 2024. Time moves on, but I don't. It's time for TWIT this week in tech, the show we talk about the week's tech news. I have assembled a wonderful panel just for you. Our car guy, sam abul samit, is here, principal researcher at guidehouse insights. His podcast is at wheelbarringsmedia and he is in his uh paneled man cave in ypsilanti, michigan, filled with cars. Hi, saliel, hey, how are you today? Great to see you. Sorry about, uh, your beautiful daisy. I uh it, it happens unfortunately to put it down.
01:37 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah that's.
01:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's so sad. Thank you, yeah, great to see you, sam, also with us. Christina warren, senior dev advocate at GitHub, the original film girl, the one and only and you had. I was following your exploits with Delta a few weeks ago after the crowd strike.
01:57 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah.
01:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You couldn't get home couldn't get home.
02:05 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, it was, it was. It was very frustrating, but um, but I was able to get home um a couple weeks ago when I was in atlanta, and then I was in portland and now I'm here, so just got back just got back, literally like 20 minutes ago well, you probably haven't seen any of the big stories because almost all of it's breaking right now.
02:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I'll fill you in as we go. Also with us from semaphorecom, the wonderful reed albergati. He's a technology editor there. Hi, reed hi how's it going? Thanks for having me on always a pleasure. This just in a judge has ruled that martin has to surrender his wu-tang album copies. Just thought I'd let you know that's very important news very important breaking news. Shkreli, who I think, is in jail right now, isn't he?
02:49 - Benito (Announcement)
uh, no, I think he's been out for a while did he get out?
02:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, that's right, he was tweeting advice, uh to, uh, uh to for jail time to somebody I can't remember, wasn't it to sam bankman freed? Yeah, I think it was spf. Yeah, you're saying you know it was. It was. It was hysterical, but I think it was genuine, like genuine useful knowledge. If I could find it, I'll pass it along because you probably should know it too. I certainly made a note of it. Uh, he bought many, many moons ago, with his ill-gotten pharmaceutical gains, the one and only copy of once upon a time in shaolin from the wu-tang clan. I feel like christina warren.
03:28 - Christina Warren (Guest)
You might be a wu-tang fan, I don't know why I mean, I I definitely listen to wu-tang albums and I definitely know the lore um, and I know that a lot of people were very, very angry when he bought the record. Uh, because it is like this coveted piece of kind of like, but shouldn't they be angry at wu-tang for selling it to that way?
03:45
I mean, probably right, but like, if you're a fan of the artist, you're not gonna you're never gonna be mad at the artist, right? That's not a stan culture, um, and and I think, like you know, it's one of those things where he would, I remember, before he went to jail, he would do like live streams where he would, you know, say he might play part of the album or something like that, um, but uh, wow, I mean I don't know if anyone's ever going to see this. I hope he ripped it like. I hope that at least for all of our things. That he ripped it.
04:09
It says this can find its way to you know the torrent site somehow it says that he must surrender all his copies. I don't know well, great well, I'm sure he'll be right on top of that totally, totally. And look here's the thing again. Like I said, I hope he rips it because, yeah, he might have to surrender all his copies, but if it's on a torrent someplace, I mean I don't know man the court issued a this is from uh court listenercom.
04:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A court issued a preliminary injunction enjoining him from possessing, using, disseminating or selling any interest in the album, including its data and files, or in any way causing further damage to plaintiff not sure who plays plaintiff wu tang respecting the album through this conduct, ordering him to provide an inventory and accounting of the copies he's retained, the individuals to whom he's given these copies and any attendant revenue. He also has to turn over to counsel all recording of the album's contents that he possesses or controls by August 30th.
05:09 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
So he has to turn them over to the court.
05:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I don't know who is the. This is an ongoing lawsuit, I don't know with whom.
05:20 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, so it's just so. In wikipedia it says um that in june 2024, the museum of old and new art and hobart, or the first public exhibition the album, was in june 24th, the museum of old and new art and hobart, tasmania. That month, shkreli live screen live stream the album on X, triggering a lawsuit from pleaser Dow, please or Dow oh, it's an nft thing.
05:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's right, he sold it, didn't need to please your Dow yeah, please, or.
05:56 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Dow also began selling partial ownership of the album as an nft, with each purchase accelerating the release by 88 seconds. That's what a dow is for, yeah yeah, anyway, it's silly.
06:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a silly story, but I just broke so I had to give you the latest, and I just wanted to do that for christina I appreciate it.
06:12 - Christina Warren (Guest)
No, thank you. Thank you.
06:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know how much I love, like the scam artists and, uh, I love, I love this like latest in in the martin screlly like lore, that okay okay, okay, so the really big story actually broke, and you may not even be up to date on this yet, but okay, okay, okay, so the really big story actually broke, and you may not even be up to date on this yet, because you just got off a plane.
06:31 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I heard about it last night. I heard it last night, but do we know why he was arrested? Has that come out yet?
06:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so Pavel Dorov, who created something called V-Contact, which a lot of people for a long time we, we thought of him as the um mark zuckerberg of russia. V contact was a fate, was like a facebook in russia, but then the russian government forced him to sell it to them and he left. He's been living in dubai, but he's apparently has joint citizenship in france and dubai flew into france yesterday on his private jet from azerbaijan and was immediately arrested uh, by french authorities. There's a law in france that says you have to moderate your site. He owns telegram. He created a telegram. It's worth, by the way, according to wikipedia, 11 and a half billion dollars due to his ownership of Telegram and some shrewd crypto investments. Is there such a thing? Really Lucky, maybe would be a better word than shrewd. So he miscalculated leaving.
07:40
Russia, said former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Russia, said former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev how Elon Musk is a little concerned too, because there's a apparently a French law that says he's responsible for the contents of telegram. Telegram, by the way. We I don't know, are we doing it yet? Benito, we were going to start streaming on telegram.
08:00
I don't think it's started yet we haven't started yet yeah, anthony's still figuring it out there is no, as Igor Ack ackerman says. Uh, in our uh discord, there is pa de section 230 in france. There is no section 230 in france. Uh, in france, uh he, they're saying you allow terrorist content. Uh, there.
08:20
And there is apparently on telegram all sorts of stuff, including soon our show. But like any, it's a messaging platform, but it has public channels. Durov has been quoted as saying there's only 30 engineers on the site and only 50 moderators. So there's no way, given the amount of traffic on Telegram, you could possibly moderate it. Elon Musk, it's 2030 in Europe and you're being executed for liking a meme. I think Elon's probably feeling. I don't think Elon will be going to France anytime soon. Let's put it that way.
09:04
So the French authorities claim he's a complicit in drug trafficking and other serious crimes, but his complicity is that they don't moderate it on telegram. So I'm really torn on this one. I honestly I'm torn on this one. I on you know you wouldn't arrest an executive at AT&T because terrorists are using the phone system. Right, you would arrest the publisher of the New York Times if he published a recipe for bomb making. But in between those two extremes there is this middle ground of social media where they're not a common carrier, they're not a phone company, but they're not a publisher either.
09:45
In the US, section 230 protects them so that they can moderate without liability and they can't be held responsible for stuff that's on X In the US, on X that is illegal. That's the responsibility of people who post it, and this feels like there's a lot of tech anti-tech prosecutions going on, where I think of google all the time, where they're held responsible for having a search index to a piracy site but the piracy site isn't held. Response it's like you should prosecute the criminals, but should you prosecute the people who and I don't even want to use this word empower the criminals by providing them with a platform for speech? I'm very torn on this, so I want to give. I want you to persuade me, reid Albergati, one way or the other.
10:39 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Gosh, I don't know if I I don't know if I have a strong opinion on this either. I mean, I do think that it's a sign of the times of this sort of global closing in on social media and tech. I also think I mean, if you look at some of these stories, a big part of this seems to be their unwillingness to comply with law enforcement requests. So it seems there's a bit of a you know him not wanting to play ball and that's going to really upset regulators. It probably doesn't help that he's I mean, maybe he's not a Russian citizen, but the Russian government has come out and said they're upset about this. So we know nobody's a fan of Russia, so there's definitely a political aspect to it. We know nobody's a fan of Russia, so there's definitely a political aspect to it.
11:27
If you look at all the US social media companies, I mean they have law enforcement people who are practically embedded there and they're not going to comply with every request. But when it comes to, like a kidnapping situation or you know something to do with this very time sensitive involving're, they're going to get on it very quickly. And you know, I think there there's probably a lot of leeway around these in these laws. But if you own one of these platforms, I mean you better, you better have people who are, who are playing ball. Whether you think you're you morally opposed to that or you want to, you know you think the principle is wrong. I mean, it seems to me he kind of, he kind of miscalculated here, durov miscalculated and probably made a big mistake.
12:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, durov's lawyer says it's ridiculous. He says that, by the way, in the semaphore story about this, telegram says they abide by eu laws, including the digital services act. Its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving. Telegram's ceo, pavel dorov, has nothing to hide and travels frequently in europe. It's absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform, and you might have hit on something, because a police source there's no official statement from the police yet, but told Reuters that he was arrested as part of a police investigation into allegedly allowing a wide range of crimes due to lack of moderators on Telegram and lack of cooperation with police, to lack of moderators on telegram and lack of cooperation with police.
13:09
The other point, uh, which chocolate milk mini sip is making making in our discord, is that the russian russian troops use telegram and may even be coordinating troop movements on telegram and that may be part of what's going on. Sam, what do you? What do you think? I don't. I feel like, uh, he's not responsible for what's going on on telegram, is he?
13:34 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I'm torn on this because, yeah, I think, ultimately, you know, the platform owner, owner, operator probably shouldn't be responsible. But yeah, I, I don't like to, I don't like to have binary answers to something like this, I think it feels like there isn't a clear cut answer.
13:54
Yeah, I mean it needs to be more nuanced. And you know, while I absolutely support free speech, support free speech, you know, I think that there should, I think that you know there should be some responsibility, you know if there is illegal activity going on there, but I don't know how you do that without at the same time potentially infringing on free speech. It it's, it's a, it's a really tough call um, you know, and I certainly, I certainly don't want a billion monthly active users yeah, uh, including me I.
14:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
When I, when telegram came out, I really liked it. I was quick to tell people don't it, don't think of it as encrypted. It's not encrypted by default and even when it is encrypted, it's encrypted using an internal uh algorithm that is not yet is not really fully vetted by the crypto community.
14:49 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It's roll your own encryption right, but at the same time it's a great messaging platform.
14:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I really like it. It had a lot of. It has a lot of nice features. It's very comfortable to be there. It has both public and private channels. I subscribe to a number of telegram channels. One of the telegram channels I subscribe to is just a republishing of apple's press releases, so I get notifications from telegram every time apple releases a new press release, which I find useful. On the other hand, apparently, according to law enforcement, telegram is widely used by drug dealers it's like silk road in that respect by terrorists. Uh, it was used by the dan january 26 insurrectionists to organize the insurrection. Christina, we haven't come to an answer.
15:35 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Maybe you can be the judge and jury I mean, no, I wish that I could right. I mean I've been trying to. When I was um first, kind of, I heard about this last night and I was trying to find some information about, like, well, what are they claiming that he did? And and I guess you know, look, if the French authorities are saying that he violated some law, he violated some law. I'm still kind of stuck on the why would you fly into France thing. Right, like knowing that you have this, this warrant out, why would you, frankly, be in any part of the EU?
16:04
I'm not sure why he would make that decision.
16:06
It's not as if a private plane is going to mean that they don't know, you know, there aren't flight records and that countries don't know who's going to be entering their airspace and that sort of thing.
16:16
But I'm also kind of, I guess, stuck on the free speech thing because on the one hand, I don't feel like I do feel like there should be common carrier rules, just as applied to the telephone, and that's why I do actually I'm a strong supporter of, you know, the DMCA kind of exceptions. I know that there are a lot of groups that are unhappy with how that works out, but it's the system that we have and I think it's important for the Internet going forward, and I also understand that that obviously doesn't apply in other countries and other jurisdictions. But it does feel weird to basically say, okay, because this platform is being used for illegal activity and I'm sure that it is, I have no doubt that it is that you can arrest someone for participating in that simply because they run the platform. I would question, you know, like, what makes Telegram different demonstrably from something like Signal or even you know something?
17:16
like iMessage or something you know, like you know, in any of the other kind of messaging services that we have, regardless of like what encryption level, like what makes it different, and especially Signal, I think, is a good kind of I guess corollary. There are some differences where, as you mentioned, you can publish things to Telegram, you can do live streams, people can publish feeds and whatnot, but at the end of the day, it is a messaging platform and, without having more information about why they took this step, there's a big part of me that is very uncomfortable with arresting the owner of a messaging platform for the content that takes place there. This is not a Silk Road situation and you know he was arrested for a lot of reasons, but this is not a Silk Road situation where the only purpose of the service is to have, you know, illicit activity take place. Um, I'm sure that it happens, but that that's not. You know that. Even the, the primary use case I think the primary use case is for a lot of people, just like using whatsapp.
18:18
That's another service that has some has many of the similar features with the telegram, like why is? Why is WhatsApp okay in Europe but not Telegram? And I would want to know more from the French authorities, I guess, about their response to that, but at the same time, like it's, if their argument is that there's been a lot of implicit allowances of certain types of behavior and there's been nothing done by the platform at all to curb, you know, use cases or abuse. Um, I mean, I don't know if it goes to the level of arresting someone, but certainly I can understand why, why authorities would would potentially want to get involved and why there might be legal consequences galia in our club twit discord uh, she lives in israel.
19:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She says that she she uses telegram. There's an uh, israeli home front telegram channel for alerts about incoming attacks. She says one time I was in a car we didn't hear the missile siren, but the phone vibrated on an alert from telegram uh, and they pulled over. So it I it's clear that there are both. There's like, I would imagine, on any messaging platform. There is good stuff and there's bad stuff and maybe really really really bad stuff.
19:36
What is the onus? How much responsibility is the platform owner? Does Facebook do a good job of moderating WhatsApp? I would guess that Telegram doesn't moderate it much, if at all. Is that not enough? How much is enough? And then I think, reid, you really made a good point that you know. Dourav has previously said that the FBI tried to get a backdoor to the platform and he denied them. It could very well be that's exactly what happened here. The French police wanted a backdoor and he said no, and they said all right, on your way to the jail. It feels to me I mean, I want to be fair and reasonable that people who run these platforms have some onus of responsibility for the content on there. But when you have a billion users, is there any way you could possibly moderate it, especially if you offer encryption? You could moderate in a way that would be satisfactory.
20:36 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I don't think so. You know, mike Masnick has talked about this a lot and I think his, his basic philosophy is that moderation at scale, at this kind of scale, just doesn't work. It's not really possible. I think one important thing to consider here is difference between moderation, or lack of moderation, and amplification. Amplification, yeah, if I, as far as I know, you know, telegram is not amplifying any of any of this bad stuff or or anything for that matter. That's a good point.
21:12
They just whereas platform you know, you look at something like Twitter or X, you know, or Facebook, and they do, you know, through their algorithms they do amplify a lot of stuff that we probably don't want amplified, and so I think that's where, when you're starting to use algorithms to amplify or suppress certain content, it goes both ways. Then it becomes more the responsibility of the platform owner, whereas for something like this, where it's just dumb pipes for lack of a better phrase, you know, and people sending stuff to each other, then I think that's a little bit different story. I think there's as much as I'd like to say yes, they should be responsible for cleaning this stuff up, but, you know, if it's, particularly if it's in the encrypted channels, then maybe we don't want them doing that.
22:11 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I think you have to be a good citizen.
22:13
I remember when I was at the Washington Post and the Facebook papers leaked and they basically gave a consortium of newspapers access to these reams of documents that came out of Facebook.
22:29
I spent a weekend along with everyone else covering tech at the Washington Post looking through them and I thought some of the most interesting documents which didn't really get any coverage, were these investigations that Facebook would do, were these investigations that Facebook would do.
22:44
They have people who are basically I don't know, former law enforcement or coders, who are just really interested in this topic, who find stuff on Facebook and do criminal, basically what amount to criminal investigations. In one case this guy had broken up an international sex trafficking ring on his own with just Facebook on data, and then they sort of hand this over to law enforcement on a silver platter and let them do these investigations, and I think that's the kind of stuff that you know to be sort of like a good citizen, you're expected to do when you get to a certain size, and if you're not doing that, I don't know. I think you're just you're're waiting for me. It's kind of the same point I made earlier, but I just think you're, you know you're, you're asking for trouble mav's guy in our discord says the entire business model for these platforms is get to a business a billion users.
23:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So their excuse can't be well. Well, it's just so hard when you get this big. I'm sorry we can't. That's what. That was their goal in the first place. Um, but can you moderate? I mean, can you, especially if there's private channels? Um, and should you be forced to moderate if people are using your platform to organize, let's say, an armed rebellion or a terrorist action or, as has been accused, assassination plots?
24:08 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Discord is actually a great example of this. Right, you mentioned Discord. They had the whole Charlotte's Charlottesville thing and they got a lot of bad press. After that, they, you know, they stepped up their moderation and even even in closed groups where I don't know if they're encrypted, but they're closed they're able to do moderation using automation, you know, ai basically. So they give people's privacy, but if there are certain you know, I don't know, it's not keywords, but you know something along those lines trigger things, they can then go and alert authorities or what have you, and I think their image has gotten so much better since doing that.
24:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it sounds like we agree that there should be some burden on these companies to try to keep the worst stuff off of them, you know, child p*rnography, things like that.
25:01 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean, I guess I think it also truly kind of depends on what the encryption level is for what's being used, right?
25:07
Because obviously one-to-one and in some group conversations are encrypted, which means that Telegram can't see its contents, and in that case I'm not actually comfortable with any government demanding encryption keys to view that I think where it becomes different, and I think where Telegram potentially does do things very differently from many other services, is that because they do have a public or semi-public, viewable, unencrypted view of things, right, and these that should be moderated. That that I do believe there should. There is something that, yeah, I think there is some sort of responsibility that the very least you know the worst of the worst. But, yeah, I think there is some sort of responsibility that the very least you know the worst of the worst. If we're talking about planning terrorist plots, if we're talking about assassinations, if we're talking about, you know, csam, we're talking about things at that level Then I don't think that you can just hide behind the guise of oh well, we're just the platform, right, well, you're making this public Right. Like even the telephone, these are one-one conversations. It's not as if it's being broadcast to everyone. In fact, when it is broadcast, there are regulations around that right, and there are laws around what can be broadcast.
26:11
So I think that that, to me, maybe is the distinction point, which is if illegal activity and discussions are happening, no matter how heinous, on your encrypted network, I think that's just a reality of running, you know, kind of public airwave, things right, like this is just going to going to happen, and I don't know what you can require of these companies short of turning over their encryption keys, and I don't think that that is at all a valid response.
26:38
But if you are talking about these, these public or semi-public unencrypted channels where, um, you know, collusion might be happening, or or drug deals, or or, you know, the exchange of other types of illegal information, that I think becomes different, and then I don't think you can necessarily, you know, just, uh, use it as excuse of, well, we can't do any sort of moderation now. Do you have the ability to do moderation at scale, as mike, you know, as I point out, no, are there going to be things that fall through? Yes, uh, but I I don't think you can just act as if you don't have to do anything at all, which perhaps has been the approach that telegram has been taking yeah, I, I and I agree with what you're saying, christina, and also, uh, what you said, reed, especially.
27:19 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
um, you know, as far as being a good citizen, you know, in those in those public or semi-public channels, you know I think you have a responsibility to at least make a good faith effort, and then you know if you've done that, I think that's the best we can ask for.
27:36
I don't know that we can actually regulate that in any kind of reasonable way, but then you know, if a company or a platform is not doing that, then you know it to some degree becomes the responsibility of the users to say, hey, is this something I want to continue to support by continuing to use this platform if they're not making at least a good faith effort? And you know that, for example, that's why I'm not on Twitter, because I don't see them making that good faith effort. And you know that, for example, that's why I'm not on Twitter, because I don't see them making that good faith effort. And there's other platforms that I don't use for the same reasons. So I think it's up to you know, up to the platforms to make that a reasonable effort and then up to users to decide what are they willing to continue to use in spite of what may be happening there.
28:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think the reason I'm concerned is because of continuous attempts by all of the governments, but especially the Five Eyes, to break encryption, to eliminate encrypted messaging. They just don't like it that their citizens can talk without law enforcement seeing it, and that's a problem. That's a big problem and I think we all agree we don't want that to happen. We want privacy, um, regardless of the kinds of conversations we're having. So I think there's a legitimate concern about that. There's a and there, besides being the, the public attempts that governments are making with laws to break the encryption.
29:07
The uk actually has has outlawed it in some respects to say that platforms have to provide clear text. I think that's on hold right now, but but nevertheless they keep trying it, uh, and also the backdoor methods that the fbi has tried, for instance, with doro, he says, to get him to provide back doors in the telegram. Those things are reprehensible. We don't want that, but at the same time, we, we, we don't, I don't know, do we? I also think that there's a hazard here that if you say no, you've got to have this moderation and you have to make sure this never happens, that it's just going to make it only possible for the big guys for google, facebook, amazon, apple, microsoft to do messaging, because everybody else you, if you're a startup, you just don't want to incur the liability. That's why section 230 is so important. In the us we wouldn't have chat rooms if it weren't for section 230, because I can't afford to go to court to defend myself if somebody says something illegal.
30:07 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I think I think conflating the issue of the encryption debate and and sort of the spy agencies and national security and law enforcement is a little bit of a mistake I think for those agencies they don't have much trouble getting getting finding back doors.
30:24
They know more than ever before, right, yeah, I mean, I think the FBI iPhone thing was like just as such a perfect illustration of that, because they went to court, they you know they were fighting that battle, and then they realized, oh, like we've got somebody who can just get us in. And I think after that they weren't, they didn't make much of a fuss because they realized how easy it is to just break into any iPhone they want. But law enforcement has a different issue, which is they need admissible evidence to investigate things. So they need companies to actually comply with them. They can't just go in without a warrant and look at somebody, look at messages, just because they want to. So I just would just sort of like separate those issues, I guess, is my point.
31:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and but also there's that issue of you want people to be able to create new technologies, new messaging platforms, without the, you know, being put out of business instantly because bad people use it. Look humans there are a lot of there. Because bad people use it. Look humans there are a lot of. There are bad humans and and every platform is going to have bad people on it doing bad things. If the only people can set up platforms or people are going to afford to moderate 100, you're not going to have mastodon, you're not going to have discord, you're not going to have anything. You're going to have whatsapp.
31:44
But you know it's a little harder to defend pavel durov. If this happened to signal, I would be up in arms. Right, if meredith whitaker or anybody at signal were arrested for the same thing, I would be furious, I'd be up in arms. Durov really seems to have the attitude uh, anything. He's a little bit like elon anything goes, free speech, we're not gonna. I really think durov says to himself if not in public, we're not gonna moderate. This is a platform, we're gonna let anybody do anything they want. So maybe there's some legitimate reason to to take him to task.
32:19 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I think arresting him is not the right answer, but yeah, I was going to say I mean I I think you're right in that he is a much harder figure to defend and to want to defend, but at the same time, I mean that aren't those the people that we still have to defend the most right? Like if the principle is the same now, if something is shown to be, you know, really egregious and if there are circ*mstances that we don't know about that go above and beyond, that's one thing, but I feel like if the principal reason that he's being arrested, what would stop the authorities from arresting people from Signal or others? Right, that's, I guess, the thing that concerns me.
32:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And maybe all the French want is for him to make some effort.
33:03 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Just try, pavel, just try a little bit for us, bit of an extreme step. If they just want to, yeah, they kind of risk turning into into a martyr.
33:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, I think yeah yes, well, he is, I'm sure he is. Yeah, um, all right, well, I, I knew this is a a challenging uh question because it really there is no obvious ease. There's no easy answer to this. It's highly nuanced, um, but in general, I think I, I think I come down on the side of free speech as as as deplorables it sometimes is. You know, go after those people, not the platform they use. If you shut down telegram, it doesn't mean terrorists can no longer communicate true yeah, no, it's not going to go away like this.
33:55 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Is you know people? Are horrible, absolutely some people now a tiny, tiny percentage of people the bad things are going to happen, regardless of whether telegram is shut down or not. If anything, like you said, it risks turning into a murder and it can also disrupt the very useful ways that these services have been used. That said, I do feel like, especially if you're operating as a you know, a for-profit entity, you cannot be above the law. You cannot be above any sort of you know.
34:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, that's true.
34:26 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, you have to adhere to the law of every country you operate in right and I keep going back to you like why would you fly into paris? Like why, why would you do this? Why, what are you was he looking potentially to? To force the confrontation? Was this? You know? Some sort of error? I'm not sure right, but like in my mind I have to think like why would you, knowing that you have, you know, um, uh, you know uae citizenship? Like why would? And you know that there's a you know russians?
34:52 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
he, I, I realized I recognize, did he actually? Are we sure that he knew? Is that is that?
34:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is that we don't know the fact that, yeah, yeah all the reuters story said is the french police looked at the manifest on the flight, saw that durov was on it and there was a outstanding warrant for durov. So durov may have known that there was.
35:12 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
They must have known, right, you must right, not necessarily in the I mean, I don't know french law as well but, like in the us, you can have a sealed warrant, so fair fair, I mean, if that's the case, and that's that makes it even more in my opinion, opinion, potentially, I have questions about the French right.
35:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, don't we all?
35:30 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yes, okay, but you know what I mean. You make a good point, reid, but it could have been sealed. But in that case I wonder okay, well, what are you really trying to accomplish, right? Like, have you really tried to reach out and try to get something done, or were you just monitoring when the flights were coming in? So if he was ambushed, that's a different scenario and I have fewer questions. But with it being outstanding, I guess my impression was that he or his lawyers knew that there was something there.
35:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wanted a showdown.
35:55 - Christina Warren (Guest)
And I don't know if he wanted a showdown or if he was just had enough hubris that thought, oh well, they're not going to arrest me.
36:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm a billionaire. Right, get me out of here. I'm a billionaire. Samibul Samad, christina Warren, reid Albergati got a great panel for you. We started with the hardest story. We'll get to more in just a little bit. It's great to have all three of you You're watching this Week in Tech brought to you this week by 1Password.
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39:33
Um, let me see what else is going on. Elon musk is the hero, iron man is back, so it's a tragic, a tragic tale of two astronauts off on an eight-day cruise to the international space station on a fine boeing vehicle who uh found out that the boeing vehicle uh had some thruster issues. Nasa said, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't can, and they there's. They've been stuck there. They've been stuck there. Sunita williams and barry butch wilmore have been unable to get home because the starliner is unreliable.
40:15
Nasa thought about it, thought about it and and finally, on friday, they announced what they're going to do. They've been in space for two months, a little longer than the eight days they're they're rationing clothing at this point. There's plenty of food. They don't have to worry about air. I mean, you know, but they didn't you know, bring, I think they told their family we'll be home next week. So NASA has announced that they are not going to let the Boeing Starliner bring them back. They're going to return it to Earth uncrewed, just in case, because if this thruster thing doesn't work, it could be disastrous. Right, that's how they get back into the atmosphere and through it. They've announced that SpaceX has now got the contract and in February a SpaceX flight will come to the space station and take the two home. The way SpaceX's Dragon works, they, I think, have four seats, so maybe they'll, on that flight, on that mission, send up two astronauts and then come back with four. Just another black mark for Boeing, sam.
41:32 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, they, they can't seem to get anything right lately. He's Louise ever. Ever since they merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, it has been just a steady downhill stream for Boeing because the management there has been more focused on the financials than on actually producing good products. And you know, really you know, boeing used to be known as a great engineering company and for the last 25 years it's just been a complete mess. You know, every program, every new aircraft program they've done, whether it's civilian or military or space, has just been a catastrophe. And you know, from the 787 to the 777X, the 737 MAX, the KC-46 tanker for the military, everything's been completely screwed up.
42:33
And Boeing just announced a new CEO. A couple of weeks ago they brought in a former executive from is it Raytheon? I forget? It's a company that makes avionics systems for aircraft and he just started last week. You know it's going to take a while to really get Boeing's organization and culture back on track. That's not something you turn around overnight. I mean, this is a problem that was 25 years in the making and it's probably going to take years to sort out what's gone wrong at Boeing. Kelly.
43:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ortberg will be taking over. He's from Rockwell Collins.
43:13 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, he's. Yeah, he started last week and you know the Starliner has just been plagued with problems long before they had its first launch. They've had all kinds of hardware issues, software issues with that capsule. The original plan was they were going to do an uncrewed flight into orbit and then do a crewed flight into orbit. Well, the first uncrewed flight had so many issues that they spent two years working on it and had to do another uncrewed flight before they would allow astronauts on it. And then that one still had a bunch of issues. But they thought they had it all under control. And now you know, this time, you know it launched OK, but then once they got up into space, they discovered leaks and issues with these thrusters that help with maneuvering. And, as you said, those maneuvering thrusters, if they're not working, when a spacecraft comes down, comes back into the atmosphere, it has to be in exactly the right orientation or it burns up, and so they cannot afford to, or it skips on the atmosphere and heads out into deep space.
44:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, so they can't afford to. It can go really badly.
44:27 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
They can't afford to mess that one up, so it makes sense that they're going to bring back those two astronauts on a Crew Dragon instead.
44:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you kind of. You know it must have been a tough decision for NASA. It's especially tough because NASA really had hoped to have at least two companies working on this, Boeing and SpaceX, and Boeing has just failed. At this point they are so reliant on Elon and this is something that you know. I'm kind of dealing with this myself, you know. I have up here in the studio we're on Comcast Business and it's been acting funny. It dropped out a couple of times last week so we ordered what else else. I had no other choice I was. It was either dsl from at&t that wasn't going to do it, or and we got one uh from, uh from spacex, a uh, you know, starlink, and I feel I feel kind of.
45:25 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I feel kind of dirty I mean look, at least, at least people are going to potentially be getting home safe, right like that. That's the more important thing.
45:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's important, yeah, but but.
45:34 - Christina Warren (Guest)
But the real concern of the us government is how reliant we are on on on a guy who really seems somewhat unstable yeah, but I mean at the same point I think to sam's point like this is 25 years in the making for boeing where they've made mistake after mistake, after mistake, oh no, they earned it you know right, and and I you have to wonder, it's like okay, well, as the government, like, why have you?
45:55
I do have questions about them and about nasa. Why have they not been more exacting? Why they've not demanded more from their suppliers?
46:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
well, as I said, I think nobody wants to have a single source, right, right, especially a source that is maybe as unpredictable as elon. There's a article about elon and starlink. You know the ukrainian military was using starlink, but elon forbade them, blocked them from using it, uh in in a mission uh that they wanted to do because he thought it was ah, you're gonna, it's not good, we don't want to cause a war, so I'm not going to let you use it. He's making foreign policy decisions, in effect, because he controls Starlink and he's I mean, I don't think anybody would deny a little unpredictable. I don't know what his priorities are anyway. Thank goodness he's there to you know what? I shouldn't knock it right, because he's going to save these two astronauts. Thank goodness he has a system that works.
46:53
One of the reasons they wanted Boeing, according to the Atlantic, is that SpaceX's bid seemed impossibly low and they thought, well, can we trust this guy? Well, I mean, both of them had cost overruns, but it turned out that they could trust spacex and they can't trust boeing. Um, right now, according to the atlantic, must nasa has no other reliable way to send people to space from us soil. They used to use russian uh vehicles.
47:23 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Obviously they're not gonna do that anymore, and and, with boeing's flop, no prospect of a second option for potentially years to come. You know what one of the issues is that you know. I mean the problems with the boeing starliner have been so long, been going on so long that nasa really should have gotten another supplier going years ago. Right, you know it was clear that boeing was not going to be able to get the get its problems sorted out this quickly, or or you know that in in any kind of reasonable time frame and they should have had a third source. Yeah, they can't quit space.
48:03 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Who would be the competitor? Like would would you? Are you looking at like blue origin or someone like that and thinking that?
48:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they might win. What about the ESA? What about the European Space Agency?
48:11 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
They don't have a crewed vehicle that they can send up. They have rockets that they can use to launch satellites. They do not have a crewed vehicle. And right now Blue origin is so far behind schedule as well. As blue origin was supposed to be uh launching, or they were supposed to be supplying their engines, their rocket engines, to ULA, uh, which is the joint venture between uh, lockheed Martin and uh and Boeing um, that was the other company that was launching satellites, uh for the US military. And you know the ULA had been for years been using actually Russian rocket motors on their launch vehicles and that's no longer an option. You know they can't get those anymore. I think they just launched their last rocket, their last couple of those Russian rocket motors, and they had been planning to use the Blue Origin rocket motors. But Blue Origin is years behind schedule as well, yeah.
49:15 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Do you think there's going to be? Do you think I mean, there are so many space startups now People have. You know SpaceX has. There's like a bit of a SpaceX Mafia. You know Diaspora of of entrepreneurs now do you think that it'll just take time and eventually there will be sort of a competitive private space market?
49:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it can't take too long. The ISS is going to be de-orbited in 2030, in five years. So, uh, I think Elon, I think Elon's got this one I think SpaceX is probably going to be fully responsible for sending astronauts to the ISS for the United States. But you're right, I mean, if we want to continue space exploration, it feels like we should get some competing bids.
49:59 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, I do have kind of a pseudo-related kind of query for you all, have kind of a pseudo related kind of query for for you all, as the, as you know, american tech companies go, which one is is the bigger kind of embarrassment, or you know kind of failures? Is it intel? Is it boeing?
50:14 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
oh yeah yeah, I would say, it's boeing you know, intel's problems, you know as big as they are.
50:22 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Um generally don't haven't killed people yet oh, fair enough I just mean I think in terms of just like, the enormity of like, where we've seen like these great institutions, just yeah, really become fall apart. But yeah, I mean, I think you make a good case for boeing.
50:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They definitely cost people's lives, so that's yeah you know, I mean, like I said, I'm kind of in the microcosm of the same problem, which is, I don't't you know, and this is true in everywhere in America you don't have many options for high speed internet. In many cases just one, as in my case, and it's a cable company. So thank goodness that Starlink exists, I guess.
50:58 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I, I think my, my observation, my Elon observation, is just that it's it's so remarkable you know just his personality and the things that he's decided to go and say, how much that has affected him. I mean, if you look at Twitter, had he decided not to go and say all these? You know pretty terrible things right after he bought the company He'd still be Iron.
51:24
Man, it would be the amount like it would be one of the great business turnarounds in history, right? I mean you just get rid of most of the staff and had he not shot himself in the foot with advertising? And then here you've got this situation where I mean it seems like you know, basically you know a government agency saying we will literally take, like boeing, not knowing if they can get the job done, because we don't want to work with this elon guy or we'll do everything we can to to to avoid having to work with them on this. And then you talk about like broadband. I mean they're not working with with starlink. I mean they say it's because the the equipment's too expensive, right for these, for these like rural broadband programs. But I mean it's clearly, it's just clearly because you know they're scared of elon yeah right, I mean I.
52:14
It's just amazing, like, despite the fact that he's that he has these, you know that feels the need to kind of like say the most crazy things publicly, he's still able to, you know, be so this is related a little bit to pavel dora flying into paris.
52:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, it's like these guys, um, it's hubris is the word you used, right, christina, it's. Yeah, they, um, they think they're untouchable. Elon, clearly, and and you know what? Maybe he could make a case that the reason he's so successful is because he's an iconoclast, because he's willing to do things and say things that no one else will do, or say that he is, that he breaks the mold. Maybe that's the secret of his success.
52:57 - Christina Warren (Guest)
So who are we to say, yeah, but you're weird I mean, I mean, I think I think there's one thing I think you can be successful in some areas and not others. I think that the my, my, my biggest, I guess kind of observation about Elon is that he's someone who believes that he is equally successful at all things and that because he has the ability to run, you know, build one company that might be, have capabilities, he can do that for all and and that we should give him the same gravitas in all areas. And and that's just not true, that's not true of anyone there's a new twitter book.
53:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's so many books about twitter now too many books uh, there's a new one that is coming out.
53:34
Um, that talks about the weeks after. There's an excerpt in the new york times today. Uh, the weeks after elon bought it, when he told Esther Crawford and her team you have two weeks to come up with the blue check mark system and and if you don't, you'll be fired. That's when she remember, posted her picture of her sleeping on the floor of the conference room in a sleeping bag hashtag. What was it? Uh, sometimes you have to sleep at work.
54:09 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I can't remember or something like that. I would love where you work. It was, it was love, it was sleep where you work yeah where you work, or something like that. It was, it was done in a way that it was, you know, almost like promoting that sort of insanity which, look, if you're on deadline and people have all had to do crazy things, that's fine.
54:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My problem with that was always the the way that it was almost like, you know, like it didn't go well, would be a nice way to put it, no, no, it did not so ryan mack and kate conger have a new book called character limit how elon musk destroyed twitter, which gives you some sense of where they're going with this, and they tell this story about the, about the blue check, and one of the things they said I thought was very interesting, which, uh and this is, I think, they're they had a hundred interviews with former employees and current employees, particularly with esther crawford, who, uh, tried to work with elon. She had created something. She had a startup called Squad that Twitter bought in 2020. And she was a pretty high level engineer there when Elon moved in. That's why he went to her and said you're going to create the Twitter blue. Her observation was she could talk to Elon one-to-one that what and he and he and you could argue with him and you could say no to him one-to-one. But the minute he was in a room with other people, it became really important that no one doubt him, that he was the smartest in the room and and he and he just became a different person and I thought that was a kind of an interesting insight. I mean, we don't have a lot of insight. This is one of the problems. Everybody thinks we know Elon Musk from his tweets, but obviously no one except these few. The other thing that they talk about is Jason Calacanis, who we know well on this network he's been on many times and David Sachs, who were kind of his cronies in the early days, hung. You know, he would just go around everywhere with elon and it was they. It was they who said no, no, we gotta do twitter blue.
56:14
Sax wanted it to be expensive. Uh, calacanis, uh, I think, said it should be 99 a year. Um, but el Elon decided on $8 and tweeted it. As soon as he decided it, he tweeted it. That was it. It's done. It's a fascinating excerpt.
56:36
And Sacks said that it should be $20 a month. It was for Twitter. Blue was $4.99. It should be raised to $20 a month. He said anything less felt cheap and he wanted to present blue as a luxury good. Chanel could make a fortune selling a $99 bag, but it would be a one-time move.
56:56
A promotional offer may not. By the way, they have the emails, so this is a direct quote. A promotional offer may not be the position we want. A luxury brand could always move down market, but it's very hard to move up market once the brand is shot. Calacanis disagreed, saying it should be $99 a year. During one meeting, calacanis launched into a spiel about how Twitter users were more likely to open their wallets for a $100 a year subscription if it seemed slightly cheaper at the $99 price, as though he'd just watched a YouTube video explaining the basics of consumer psychology. Oh, jason, jason, jason, jason. Elon asks Walter Isaacson, who's writing the biography at the time, for advice. Walter, what do you think to employees? Discussions were baffling. Here was Mr Musk, a man who had built a multimillion-dollar empire, soliciting advice from people who had no experience building social networks. They were billionaires, rich men, not representative of the hundreds of millions of people logged in every day.
58:03 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
But you know, as we talked about before, you know the billionaires, you know they. They think that once they've succeeded one thing, that they can do everything Right. And you know, elon is a classic example of that, where you know, like, over the last 15 years at Tesla and I would presume at the other companies as well, he has always been the guy that felt, you know, he's been a micromanager who always felt, you know, I'm the only one that can save this situation, I'm the only one that can create full self-driving, I'm the only one that can keep Tesla out of bankruptcy. And instead of you know, delegating you know to smart, capable people of you know delegating you know to smart, capable people you know he would go sleep on the end of the assembly line, which is not helpful to anybody no, in fact.
58:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Imagine yourself as a worker and there's the guy who can fire you like that, uh, looking over your shoulders, saying, hey, shouldn't you tighten that nut a little less, a little more? It's like that's not a good way to build a car.
59:12 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, I mean years ago I think it was about 2018 or so, 2017 or 18, there were all kinds of reports that came out about safety problems at Tesla's Fremont assembly plant and Elon came out and said going forward, I want every single safety issue to come directly to me. It's like no, this is not what a CEO is supposed to do. You hire people that have experience in industrial safety and factory safety processes and how to make a safe work environment, and you give them the responsibility and the authority to do their jobs. The one guy doesn't have to be the one that does everything. Especially at the time, I think Tesla was about 35,000 people. It's well over 100,000 now. That's terrible management.
01:00:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He is a great marketer, great at selling stuff, but he has always been a terrible manager the one of the things they wanted to do is launch this verification system that you just paid for the blue check. By the way, you didn't actually have to be who you say you were and you remember when they launched it. There was all the people impersonated him, many others.
01:00:26 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Wasn't it, Eli Lilly, that like, immediately, like their stock was impacted because people you know someone bought, you know a check mark and and it immediately.
01:00:36 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
They were going to drop the price of insulin. Yeah Right.
01:00:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And the stock tanked, costing billions. So it's the weekend before. This is again from the the times excerpt from this new book. The weekend before us voters headed to the polls, ms crawford made one last attempt in a private chat with her boss, because they're concerned about election interference. They know as soon as they put out the blue checks, you're going to get all these people saying you know they're joe biden, etc. Do you want to be blamed for the outcome of this election? She asked Remember, this is this is the weekend before. Oh well, when is it? Mr Musk replied it's in two days.
01:01:14
Miss Crawford said, stunned, that he hadn't clocked the date that she and her team had been warning about since the start of the project. Mr Musk paused processing. Oh, I didn't realize. He said after a moment. Oh yeah, it's fine, we can wait. Why don't we wait? This is an interesting way to manage anyway. Uh, new book. I uh will try to get them on when the book comes out. It's uh, it's just piling on, everybody's piling on. This is the story of twitter blue, how elon musk got tangled up in blue, ryan Mack and Kate Conger, and the book is called Character Limit, how Elon Destroyed Twitter, although I have to say I'm going to take the other side a little bit. Didn't we all think Twitter would just collapse when he fired half the engineering team took?
01:02:00 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
servers offline. We were wrong. I was right. If you had read some before, you were right. You were right, reid. You said it's going to be fine. Yeah, I mean technically it is fine, right, I mean there's no.
01:02:12 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean, there are problems.
01:02:14 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
The thing that people don't point out enough about this is that the advertising is really the issue right, and I think Twitter never had enough users. Twitter never had enough users. It was never enough of an essential place for advertisers to go to kind of force them to advertise. It was always a bit of like well, we'd like to have our brand associated with this place where the movers and shakers or the media or whatever are talking about the news, but it's not like. I don't think advertisers ever had a true sense of ROI on Twitter, and I think that was the thing he didn't really like. Musk didn't really pay attention to or didn't really study hard enough that like.
01:02:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He didn't need to. He had got a bunch of banks to give him billions of dollars.
01:02:55 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Well, he breaks things down into first principles, right, and I think that's how he's been able to be successful in these places. Like you know, the space industry, or like you know Neuralink, or you know sort of upending the way the automotive industry works. He kind of like rethinks how everything works and that there's sort of a logic to it. Right, but there's no logic to advertising. I don't think is compatible to this sort of like weird world of of you know advertising, where it's a lot about, like you know, getting invited to the luxury box and like who do you know and all this stuff. That just it doesn't really compute for him, and I think that's that's one of the points I think people miss about the whole Twitter thing.
01:03:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Twitter has an outside influence. It has a cultural influence that's much bigger than the size of its absolutely or it did right.
01:03:46 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean, and I think, I think, it still does. I mean, I would agree with you in comparison to the others. Having said that, I I don't think, I think it's unquestionable that since he bought it, that that influence has absolutely waned.
01:03:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right like, twitter still has much more influence than threads, still has much more influence than yeah, but when joe b Biden announced that he wasn't going to run, where did he do it?
01:04:06 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean, he did it on Twitter. He was on Instagram as well, to be fair. Yeah, he did it on all the platforms he did it on all of them, I mean, but you saw it on Twitter, because they actually know how to do. Real-time and Threads is a dumpster fire when it comes to anything news-related or seeing anything even remotely remotely current. Right Like threads is where you go to see things that happened two days ago.
01:04:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Threads doesn't want to have politics and news Meta does not want to get in that business.
01:04:27 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Okay, but even putting that aside, they don't want to be real time because literally that's where you go. If you want to see what happened two days ago is you go to threads for two day old hot takes.
01:04:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you know I mean, that's a good point.
01:04:38 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean honestly like that, I refresh it and refresh it, and it's still two days old. I don't understand absolutely. Um, because they're using different signals and and twitter, you know, at its core and elon has nothing to do with this was always a real-time network feed um, and and I I do think that the, the cachet, you know, culturally, the impact and kind of the whatnot is still stronger there, but it's definitely dissipated. It's not what it was. It doesn't have the impact that it did um, but it is still better than many of the other things. Um, now, you know I I fully agree.
01:05:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you were going to make a big announcement, where would you do it today? Let's say, christina warren's going to run for president, where would you announce that?
01:05:21 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
like if you had to choose one like I mean, what the?
01:05:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
reason people like joe biden and donald trump love it is because they go directly to the people right you don't have to go call the new york times to put something in I mean, it's also instagram insta.
01:05:35 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, and it's not so much that you're going directly to the people, it's that there are still a lot of journalists that refuse to give up twitter, and so you post it on twitter.
01:05:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All of those all those reporters are going to see it. Oh no, the real, real people aren't on twitter. That wasn't, or x, that wasn't asserting that, but if you wanted to get the word out fast, x is a good place to do it.
01:05:59 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Sure it still sort of seemed. It's like the cnn of social media, like people go there when there's some big news event and and and honestly it has the juice when it comes to the memes and the.
01:06:10 - Christina Warren (Guest)
You know like the funny comments and the weirdness. It's still better. It's different than it was, but it this the the funniest stuff you will see. There is still there. It is not on any of the other platforms and unfortunately I wish that, although we're not true like all the platforms, it has TikTok envy, doesn't it?
01:06:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh absolutely so much video now everywhere. It's all short video TikTok.
01:06:31 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean honestly, honestly, if you were depending on and I think the question you ask is a good one, but I think it depends on who your audience is, and in some cases I think, like TikTok, youtube would be a top tier pick. I would also have Instagram there. But, yeah, I would post to Twitter before I would post to threads, absolutely.
01:06:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it. Steven, in our YouTube chat, says Elon's being bashed by somebody working out of their attic. Okay, you're right. You're right, I am not a billionaire. I have no business acumen whatsoever, apparently, but you have, lisa. I shouldn't say that We've been in business 20 years. It takes something to stay in business for 20 years?
01:07:10 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yes, it does. Don't diminish yourself that way.
01:07:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually there's nothing wrong with being in the attic, I realized it was crazy to have a studio. Why should we have a big studio? Nobody has a studio anymore. That's crazy talk.
01:07:24 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Even Elon doesn't have a studio anymore that's crazy talk.
01:07:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think elon uh doesn't have a studio. He does it out of his garage or whatever. I don't know I just think let's pause the elon talk because, okay, we'll be done upset, although I do want to ask you about tesla sam, because it seems like they're not. I mean, for a while it was the hot stock, right it's still pretty hot, I mean it's not.
01:07:48 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It's not going up, but it's. I mean it's still worth way more than than it should. Well, let me rephrase that the valuation is way more than it's worth, right? But uh, you know, it wasn't see. Friday closed, the market cap was 690 billion dollars yikes, which is, you know, as more than the next 10 biggest automakers in the world right?
01:08:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, that's the question is tesla worth more than ford? Is it worth 10 times more than ford?
01:08:16 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
no, it's not worth more than ford not worth more than toyota. Is it a meme?
01:08:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh, absolutely, it has been for a decade. Yeah it?
01:08:20 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Oh, absolutely, it has been for a decade. Yeah it. You know the.
01:08:26
The valuation of Tesla has always been about this story, this belief in Elon.
01:08:32
You know this cult of personality around Elon Musk himself, and because Tesla is the only one of Elon's companies that is publicly traded, I think it also benefits a lot from what the other companies are doing. So a lot of people. You know a lot of retail investors and Tesla has an unusually large number of retail investors. So a lot of retail investors buy Tesla because they're buying into Elon's narrative of what all of his companies are doing and this idea that Tesla is someday going to be worth trillions of dollars because it's going to unlock all this value in cars through full self-driving and turn everybody's Tesla into a robo-taxi all of which is nonsense. And turn everybody's Tesla into a robo-taxi all of which is nonsense. But there are a few stock analysts out there that have kept putting out this story People like Cathie Wood, people like Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley that most of their target price of what tesla should be worth is is based on all of the supposed revenue it's going to get from robo taxis, which is never going to become a reality yeah, you were.
01:09:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We were talking before the show. You said, uh, that they've started to take down blog posts that said that they had self-driving hardware built in to the cars.
01:10:06 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, back in October of 2016. And it's funny, I was in California at the time because I was speaking at a couple of conferences in San Francisco that week and I listened to this conference call that they had where Elon announced that. Let's see the very first sentence, and there's a recording of this call that you can find on YouTube and I put the link in the rundown. But the very first sentence, very first words out of Elon's mouth on this call, was the basic news is that all Tesla vehicles exiting the factory have the hardware necessary for level five autonomy. I remember that, yeah, that was like wow. And you know there was also a blog post that they published at the same time. That said, you know essentially the same thing. In the last couple of days, tesla has all of a sudden started pulling down all these blog posts, all these old blog posts from its company blog, uh, including this one, uh, and you know, I think they're pulling down the master plan that, uh, I think the master plan might still be there.
01:11:14
I haven't, I haven't looked through everything electric says uh, they might have pulled down the original master plan, the first master secret, master plan yeah, uh, what's the theory?
01:11:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
tesla motors master plan, just between you and me, has been pulled down okay, so that, yeah, that was the original one.
01:11:30 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, and he's done. What's the theory on why now? Um, because in the last week or so, um, the last couple of weeks, uh, they have started to seed out the latest version of their full self-driving software, which is version like 12.5. And they've seeded it out to a few select Tesla influencers and there's all kinds of videos online of this stuff running. And somebody came to the realization I can't remember exactly who figured it out but some small number of current Tesla vehicles are being built with what's known as hardware for. So this is part of the problem. Going back to that original announcement, he said every vehicle built, being built from here on out, will have the hardware necessary, with just software updates, and that is untrue because at that point they were releasing hardware to hardware, version two and that's relevant because you're assuming, when you buy the car, that you could pay for an upgrade.
01:12:33
Well, that is, the whole premise of paying five, ten, twelve thousand dollars for full self driving is that you will one day suddenly magically get this over-the-air update that will enable you to turn your car into a robo-taxi. And since 2016, they've released at least three other hardware computer revisions for full self-driving, and earlier this year, they started building some cars with version 4. Well, it turns out that this latest FSD software only runs on version four hardware. It will not run on the two million or so older Teslas that have hardware three or hardware two still on them, and so I think they're trying to trying to purge evidence of these claims. Trying to purge evidence of these claims, you know, and there, you know I think it was comment from somebody.
01:13:28
Oh, some, there's. There's somebody on Twitter. His name is Omar Qazi goes. His Twitter handle is whole Mars blog and he's always been, you know, one of the big Tesla fanboys, and you know he's been making claims on Tesla. Oh, tesla never promised that the older hardware would would support, you know, fully self-driving, which is exactly what Elon himself said in his own words. Yeah, you can.
01:13:58 - Benito (Announcement)
I don't know if you want to play that that, that YouTube link, that's.
01:14:01 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
That's in there. But just like the first sentence, you can hear Elon say those words.
01:14:07 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I mean just the idea that anybody thinks that that's going to get them out of a lawsuit, right, I mean, it's so easily findable, it's so easily provable?
01:14:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, exactly, well, should I just play? I could play a little bit of this.
01:14:21 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, just play like the first 20 seconds. All you need to hear is the first sentence.
01:14:26 - Benito (Announcement)
Okay, the basic news is that all Tesla vehicles exiting the factory have the hardware necessary for level 5 autonomy.
01:14:36 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Not true, that's a lie.
01:14:39 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Do you think he believed it at the time, though, or was he just totally in your opinion? I'm just curious.
01:14:44 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
You know it's hard to know what he actually believes.
01:14:48
Um, but you know, the funny thing is, like I said, that week I was in San Francisco speaking at two different conferences, and one was a hard conference on autonomous vehicles and, um, as it turns out, you know, I was, I was, uh, sort of that was the chairing the autonomous vehicles Conference, and on the second morning the opening keynote was supposed to be done by George Hotz.
01:15:11
Yeah, and I'll get to that in a second, but I ended up doing the opening keynote and this was a couple of days after this conference call, and I asked the audience how many people here actually believe that the autopilot version two hardware will be capable of self-driving, and I think about two people out of about 150 in the room raised their hands and I said no. I'll explain to you why. It'll never be true, Because the definition of level five means that the vehicle can operate without human supervision or intervention under all driving conditions. So what? Any weather, any time of day or night, you know any roads, and the problem that the Tesla system has always had is they don't have any any mechanism to keep the sensors clean, which means that if you're driving in winter conditions and you get snow and slush built up on the cameras and the radar it's not going to work.
01:16:08
So by definition it cannot be level five. But as far as George Hotz was concerned, he was supposed to do the opening keynote that morning, talking about his Kama AI project.
01:16:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Self-driving you can add to any vehicle.
01:16:23 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, and as I was walking into the event space I happened to glance. I looked at my phone and looked at notifications and saw there was a TechCrunch article just published that George Hotz, or Kamei, had gotten a letter from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a couple of days earlier, just asking for more information about what they were doing. Not accusing them of anything, but just asking for some information about what they were doing. And HOTS almost immediately canceled the project, said OK, we're not doing this, I'm leaving, we're done. And as I walked into the event space I talked to the organizer and said um, let me guess george called the cancel. He's not going to be doing his keynote this morning, right, and so, fortunately I I had a presentation that you know that I had already done a couple of times before that I was able to just do it yeah, my son, the the in a internationally famous tick tock chef, salt hank, has a model three and he says, I said, do you have self full stop driving?
01:17:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
he says yeah, I pay 200 bucks a month for it but I don't use it. He says it, it drives like an a-hole. Yeah, it rolls through. He turned it on and we rolled through a stop sign. He said, yeah, that's what it. I said I'd heard that it was actually trained on elon. He said, yeah, I think it's elon, the way elon drives. He said I used to use it on the highway but it was so aggressive I felt like a jerk anyway that's just.
01:17:55 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
He should just turn. I mean, if he didn't pay up front for it, he's just doing the subscription.
01:18:00 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
He should just turn it off until he's going to do that, until it, until it actually works which it never which it never will we, uh, we rented a full self-driving car and drove it around and test drove it and this I know it's gotten a lot of better since then. It was a few years ago, but I mean it was absolutely terrifying it's terrifying.
01:18:18 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Have have you ridden in uh waymo or a cruise or anything like?
01:18:21 - Christina Warren (Guest)
that yeah yeah, I have yeah um the Wemos are amazing. I was going to say the exact same thing. I've had fantastic Wemo experiences. I look forward to, you know, when I go to San Francisco. As long as I'm staying in an area that Wemo serves, I'm like, actually, this is really good.
01:18:38 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
But it's not level five.
01:18:40 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
No, no, it's level four because it's it's geographically restricted, you know it. I mean the only difference between level four and level five? They're both. They both are. You know that the there's no human required to supervise it or intervene. You know it can get it. If it runs into a problem, it can get itself to a safe stop without human intervention. Then somebody can can intervene. And level five just means it can do it anywhere at any time. Level four means it's got some constraints on where it can operate. You know, usually geographic constraints, sometimes weather. But yeah, it's level, it's a level.
01:19:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You said on this show some months ago that there will never be a level five.
01:19:18 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, I don't.
01:19:20 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I don't think there will be, or if there is, it's going to be a very long time Years years, I used to think that I used to think there never will be, or if there is, it's going to be a very long time, years, years. I used to think that I used to think there never will be, but I think I don't know. I've I've become less of a doubter now because of all the, all the stuff that's been happening in ai. I'm like I just it's, it's so hard to predict. I'm just it is you never know, right?
01:19:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, but this is sam's one big job, you know this is all he does is write about cars and all of that.
01:19:46 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Hey, let's just say, like barring a breakthrough or something, yeah it could be, yeah, barring a breakthrough, that's fair.
01:19:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Or maybe it'll happen in 100 years or something, yeah, but as it stands today, that seems highly unlikely. I I think that's fair.
01:19:59 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah yeah, I mean, if you ask anybody at waymo or any of the other companies you people that actually work on this stuff they will tell you no, we don't think we're ever going to get to level five. It's too hard.
01:20:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, let's take a little break. Sam Abulsamit, our car guy, is here. He does a great podcast, if you love this stuff. Wheelbearingsmedia, also principal analyst at GuideHouse Insights. Christina Warren film also principal analyst at guidehouse insights. Uh, christina warren film girl, she's a senior dev advocate for github. I love the green github t-shirt. Is that a brat summer t-shirt?
01:20:34 - Christina Warren (Guest)
it is, and I want to be very clear this is not brand approved.
01:20:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You made it. You had it made it um, yeah, I made it.
01:20:40 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I I made the svg myself and had it printed um, but you know this is not brand approved, which feels most brat, honestly, yeah yeah, yeah, it's perfect.
01:20:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And, uh, reed albergati, who is at the semaphore he's their technology editor. It's great to have all three of you. Always fun to have smart people on to fill me in on what it really, what's really going on, because I'm just pretty much baffled by the whole thing.
01:21:04 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I put a lot of thought into my wardrobe too yeah, yeah, ai is very baffling.
01:21:11 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I. I did change from a green t-shirt to to a gray one because I've got a green screen behind me. Yes, I didn't want to float.
01:21:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, it didn't want to be a floating head oh okay, oh, gee, you fooled me.
01:21:24 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Oh, it looks real I was gonna say that I really thought it was real. I was like oh yeah, I mean that is an actual.
01:21:29 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
That is a. That is a photograph of my office. Sure, I'm just not. My office is upstairs, I'm just not sitting in my office right now no, I didn't.
01:21:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I'm sitting in mine, even though it's proof positive that I'm a terrible business person that I'm up here in my attic. Our show today brought to you by net suite. Now I know this much about business the less your business spends on operations, multiple systems and delivering and manufacturing your product or service well, the more margin you have, the more money you get to keep that's called profit. In order to reduce costs and headaches, smart businesses are graduating to NetSuite by Oracle NetSuite, the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, hr all into one platform, which is great because it means one source of truth. With NetSuite, you reduce IT costs because NetSuite lives in the cloud, no hardware required, and it can be accessed from anywhere. That's very nice. You cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems because you have it all in one unified business management suite. You improve your efficiency by moving all your major business processes into one platform so you don't have the. You know context switching and the and the and the errors that are introduced by manual tasks. Over 37 000 companies have already made the move. So you do the math. See how much you'll profit with net suite.
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01:23:36
So we've been talking about it for several weeks this incredible breach, this data breach from National Public Data. This was a data broker, you know, one of those sites you go to if you want to do a background check or find out where your high school sweetheart lives and that kind of thing. They were breached. They admit they were breached and I think it was three billion records, not people, but three billion records were released. Some of them corrupted, some of them not were released. Some of them corrupted, some of them not accurate, some of them very accurate. I did a search on my name and found the last two digits, my social, which means they had that. My social was my social security number was in the leak. Uh, it also had a bunch of addresses, but it wasn't up to date, which is interesting. It didn't have the house I've lived in for the last 11 years, so I think it's a fairly dated one.
01:24:26
Brian krebs, uh, in his blog krebs on security, published a story in which he said explained how the leak happened, new details emerging about the breach at npd, apparently, uh, when they had somebody come in and design their website.
01:25:07
Apparently, when they had somebody come in and design their website, the people who designed the website put a zip file on the site as a convenience with all the passwords, plain text usernames and passwords in the source code and left them there, uh, and I guess that probably is how the hacker got in the uh. Salvatore salverini, who is npd's founder, a retired actor and sheriff's deputy from flor, when reached via email by Brian Krebs, said the exposed archive containing credentials had been removed from the company's website and that site, recordschecknet, which is identical, by the way, to NPD's site, is going to cease operations in the next week or so. Old version of the site made by uh creation. Next, a pakistan-based web development firm that apparently designed both npd site and record check site and left the passwords on the site whoops I should have used pass keys yeah, for real, you have one job, you have one job, you have one job, just don't you know.
01:26:07
Actually we had an engineer many moons ago in the brick house who just, I guess maybe didn't know about password managers or something, but just thought it'd be a good idea to put all of our passwords are like to everything and on a web page, a public web page oh god uh, no, nothing bad happened thank goodness but you know, I mean, these things can happen to anyone, but it's especially egregious when it happens to you know data breakers, or you know when the last pass breach happened.
01:26:39 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Uh, that took a lot more obviously than um, what this took, but still, you, you know when, when, when you're responsible for so many people's important information.
01:26:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, what can we? Just ban these guys.
01:26:50 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I agree, I agree, I mean, but I also feel like there should be some sort of sanctions, some sort of financial sanction when these sorts of things happen.
01:26:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, absolutely.
01:27:00 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Absolutely. What do you mean? You want to ban data brokers? Yeah, can we do that read? I mean, it does seem like a business that is not. I mean it's not needed. It's like what, what purpose you know?
01:27:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do they say I'm sure there is some information. They buy it from isps and websites and applications.
01:27:23 - Christina Warren (Guest)
They collect it and then they sell it and they sell it and it's awful. Yeah, no, I mean it enriches them, but it it harms society.
01:27:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I used to one of the reasons I've been told that we don't have a national, a federal law against this is that law enforcement likes it because they can buy this data.
01:27:41 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I was just gonna say journalists like it too yeah, do you use this kind of stuff? Reed have you, I mean you. There are services right like like legit services to try to get people's phone numbers, and yeah, I mean lexus, nexus is one of them, but um, but nobody answers their phone anymore anyway, so it's like I don't know who cares I answer my phone, do you okay?
01:28:02 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I'll call you soon. I do if I recognize the phone number or if it's in my contacts, because I actually do get a lot of phone calls, do you?
01:28:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
really yeah. I'm just going to guess that Christina Warren does not ever get a phone call Ever, I mean.
01:28:21 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I get my mom, your mom, of course. Mostly I get texts. Look, I get hundreds of texts a day. Look, I get hundreds of texts a day. I get hundreds of texts a day. I get very few phone calls. Um, when I get a phone call from a friend, I'm usually like freaked out. I'm like facetime is different, facetime request is different. But a phone call I'm like okay, like what happened?
01:28:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, this is an emergency.
01:28:40 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
You're probably in jail yeah, I, I often get calls from reporters looking for comment on stories.
01:28:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, sure, my role as an analyst, so I do actually get a lot of calls yeah, uh, I got a couple of calls from the sonoma county jail, but I turned him their collect calls, so I turned him down what did salt?
01:28:59 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
what did hank do now?
01:29:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think I know anybody in jail. I really, really don't. If you're listening and it's you, knock it off.
01:29:13 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Wait, you really did, or? I can't tell what's a joke here and what's not.
01:29:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's not a joke. Some guy named Mike every few days calls me from the Sonoma County Jail and because you know you have to call collect, because you know the jail system really sucks.
01:29:27 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It's like $20 to make a call and it's such a scam too.
01:29:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's a total scam. So I just say no.
01:29:37 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Actually I don't answer it.
01:29:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't answer it. Hey, here's somebody that should be put out of business. Live Nation Ticketmaster and, as you know, the department of justice has uh has sued them, trying to break them up. 10 more states joining it, which means now 39 us states. The district, columbia, the united states department of justice are all going after live nation, seeking to break it off from its ticketing subsidiary ticket master. The company, according to the doj, engaged in monopolization and other unlawful contact designed to thwart competition in the live music industry. You cannot be a performer in the united states and play a big venue without cooperating, because they own all the venues.
01:30:29 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, I mean almost all of them, like there are a few that AEG owns and then we'll go through like an alternate ticketing system, but it is like a handful it is in terms of large stadiums. There are maybe some smaller venues that don't have to do it, but it is impossible as an artist to avoid any of these large things and almost all of them are affiliated with with live nation and ticket master. Now I think there are there is an argument to be made that simply breaking this up doesn't get rid of some of the broader you know, scalping problems and some of the broader kind of, you know, uh, problems that that um are associated with that. But without a doubt doubt I mean the fact when Live Nation, when the roll up was allowed to happen to begin with in, it was at the late 90s or the early 2000s. This is exactly what the critics at the time said was going to happen and it has. You know, it has become kind of an extortion ring to a certain extent for, you know, promoters and for artists.
01:31:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Live Nation says what are you talking about? We're? We're actually. We charge less than many businesses. Five percent commission on tickets is lower than airbnb. 17.2 percent. Uber 25 stub hub 37 percent. Live nation, in response to the lawsuit, says the doj ignores everything that's actually responsible for higher ticket prices. Don't blame us. Increasing production costs, artist popularity but what?
01:31:58 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
what about you know the, you know the, all the fees that add up to 50 exactly?
01:32:03 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I was going to say.
01:32:05 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I was going to say that commission is maybe just one small piece of it, but there's a whole bunch of other things.
01:32:11 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I was going to say that 5% is really misleading. Now I will concede with them that they do make a good point about StubHub and some of the other secondary.
01:32:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what they say is look, because I buy stuff from StubHub If I can't, you know we're going to be in New York.
01:32:28 - Christina Warren (Guest)
There's no way I get a ticket to a Broadway show without going to an aftermarket after sales so I and they say that's what Live Nation says.
01:32:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See, people are paying so much for tickets.
01:32:36 - Christina Warren (Guest)
That just proves that we should charge more the market will bear it, right, well, and it's like you've done this Well. But part of it is the part of the reason the market bears. It is because you know venues no policies, scalpers, yeah, right, well, because well, but also venues, because of their policies, make it sometimes hard, you know, to do resale. Sometimes you can do it through ticket master, who I hate to say this, I'm not because they're a company who is terrible and we've all they talking about people who've, you know, stolen your data.
01:33:05
I think I've received like six or seven ticket master settlements in my lifetime because of various things that they've done, um and um and various data breaches that you know you get like every you know couple of years you're like, oh, congratulations, this address and this stuff was was leaked in your stuff. But I will say their secondary ticket pricing is somewhat better than like vivid caesar, sub, sub hub because they take fewer fees. But that doesn't make up for the fact that you know they, they kind of have this monopoly, you know of collusion, of having like owning the venues and the, the ticketing place, and they do such a terrible job stopping bots that it leads to, you know, know the over abundance you know of resale things. Now some shows there are the demand simply does outstrip the supply. That's absolutely true. But in a lot of things that's not the case and they know it and they actively don't do anything to stop it.
01:33:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right so it's not Taylor Swift 80% or more of the major concert venues. Primary ticketing for concerts, yeah, and a growing share of ticket resales. In fact, that's exactly what Stochastic Guy says in our Twitch chat A lot of StubHub is Ticketmaster reselling their own tickets.
01:34:19 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah.
01:34:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
For a big markup right.
01:34:23 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Remember when you used to actually have to go out and buy tickets from the scalper on the sidewalk outside the venue before a show. I've done it.
01:34:30 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I loved that I used to live in New York City, yeah totally. You never bought tickets to a show. You just walked down and buy tickets from a scalper.
01:34:39 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
When I went to shows when I was in high school and college, I would actually have to go down to the record shop or wherever you know where they were selling the tickets and get in line to buy tickets. Not, you know none of this online nonsense.
01:34:54 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Well, no, the problem even was doing outside the show stuff. Because you can, some people will still do it. But counterfeit tickets are such a big problem, I mean, and they're all over StubHub and stuff like that too too. I mean that's one of the and again, this is sort of a part of the monopoly kind of argument is that you know which is?
01:35:10
Again, I'm not saying anything nice about Ticketmaster, but if I can buy it aftermarket through them, I will only because I can be guaranteed that the ticket I get will actually be legit, because I've had on multiple occasions that pub give me a ticket that then won't scan at the door and then you have to get on the phone with StubHub and you're like the show starts in 45 minutes and they have to track down another, another ticket or do something for you. So you know, but but obviously Ticketmaster can control their own transfer system and guarantee authenticity. But yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons. Like I would not, at least for a popular thing. If it's for a smaller show in a smaller venue, I might still buy something outside the door, but these days, like, people will just resell QR codes a million times.
01:35:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You used to see. Before you go to a ball game, you see people selling the tickets out front, do you still? I haven't been to a ball game in a while. You still see that? Or has it all been subsumed by these new online? Now you just wave your phone right, it's just just, I mean it just kind of depends, right.
01:36:12 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean, I guess it depends on how much you either want to get rid of these these things, because the problem with those third-party services is that it's like a 40 or 50 markup, so what you pay on step up, what the price shows and then what you actually pay is very different right, hi, this is benito, uh is, is this a place where nfts can actually like do?
01:36:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
something I mean blockchain could absolutely guarantee that a ticket's real sure yeah, and maybe get rid of the middlemen too, right, just and there should be a solution that would be really an opportunity for somebody with real power in the industry, like taylor swift, to put a stake in the ground and say, look, I'm going to sell my own. But then you don't get the venue then you can't get the venue.
01:36:55 - Christina Warren (Guest)
So this is the problem, because she did actually have a taylor tickets thing. It was called taylor ticks and it was part of a ticket master verified fan thing and she did this in 2017 for the reputation tour. Ask me how I know.
01:37:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ask me how many times I, how many times did you see the eras tour?
01:37:10 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Well, I've seen that three times and I'm hoping to see it once more, but I, you, you did. To be able to buy the tickets to the reputation tour, which I saw twice, you needed to earn points and you could do that by either streaming doing certain things.
01:37:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I may have written a JavaScript and a Python thing to-. You downloaded 800 copies of the tapes.
01:37:31 - Christina Warren (Guest)
No, no, I literally just looped the look what you made me do music video to play in the background with the sound off and also complete certain actions, and I did that, like for eight hours a day. Thank you very much, microsoft, for paying me to do that instead of work in August of 2017.
01:37:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You were just polishing up your skills, that's all your med skills, you know what?
01:37:52 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Honestly fair point. But also you could earn points by buying merch and things like that and then that would get you higher in the rank to be able to then buy the tickets through Ticketmaster. But yeah, at the stadiums almost all of them I think the one in Phoenix and there might be like one other state are not controlled by Ticketmaster. But even if she didn't want to use them, she has to because that's through the venues. Right, you can't get the venue.
01:38:19
No, and even if you're Taylor Swift or Beyonce or any of these other artists who are able to and it's very few- artists who can sell.
01:38:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What are you going to do? Play in the park.
01:38:25 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Right, it's like well, it's like 70,000 people, who else are you going to go with? And they have these multi-year exclusivity things because most of those things are sports related. Right, like it's. I mean, this is one of the reasons why people you bad for the industry and, uh, you know the the doj then was just like, oh, it's fine bless your heart, greg scott.
01:38:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Greg scott in our twitch chat says oh, christina must have a daughter who's into taylor swift oh, that's really no.
01:38:59 - Christina Warren (Guest)
No, really fun that you think that no bless your heart, greg.
01:39:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really, really fun that you think that now. Bless your heart, greg. Oh no, she goes. You've seen. You've seen the iris show all over the world, all over the country, the us just over the us.
01:39:14 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I haven't gone to any of the international shows. Um, I might go to one of the ones in canada if I can get tickets. Um, I'm really glad now I was going to maybe buy one for one of the european like things, and now I'm glad I didn't. I was my my fear she canceled it or had to cancel a bunch of sh*t well, she had three in Vienna and and my fear there hadn't been that it was more like dealing with the international ticket systems. I was like, am I gonna get ripped off right?
01:39:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so that was that was my ticket. Master is a blessing to all Americans?
01:39:45 - Christina Warren (Guest)
no, it's, it's the worst, but it is what we have.
01:39:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's what we got and it works.
01:39:50 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Nobody can afford to go to these things anymore. I was talking to a venture capitalist in Paris for this article and I said, oh, are you going to go to the Olympics? And he's like, oh, I can't afford to go to those things. You're a venture capital who knows. Then I was going to say he's the one who can.
01:40:07 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, no, I mean, I only and, to be fair, I only scalped one of my three heiress tour shows. Again, I think because of my botting with the look what you made me do video stuff and getting points, I'd had tickets to the canceled Loverfest from 2020 and that got me higher in a queue. So I was actually able to buy like Aerosport tickets the official way for two shows and I didn't have to scalp. But yeah, no, the pricing is out of control when even the venture capitalists are like I can't do this.
01:40:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's pretty funny. Yeah, oh no, we can't afford that. You have to be a billionaire. We are Talking Tech with Reid Albergati. He is the tech editor at Semaphore Great publication, highly recommended. And subscribe to Reid's newsletter too, because then you get a regular dose of great information. Thank you for being here. It's free, unlike the Olympics tickets. Unlike the Olympics, you don't have to be or you could be a venture capitalist and subscribe. A chief venture capitalist. Christina Warren is also here. She's a senior dev advocate at GitHub and one of the GitHub brats. And Sam Abul-Samad Kargai, principal researcher at GuideHouse Insights. You know, nowadays you don't actually have to be rich to be a venture capitalist, thanks to our sponsor Fundrise. This is really cool.
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01:43:08
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01:43:55 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I you know if I were still a sports reporter. Yeah, that's about the only way, though. Yeah, it's the best. It's the best sporting event if you can ever go.
01:44:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I you know you know what was really interesting to me this time around? I guess every four years, you know, four years is a big leap in technology. This time around, the meme ability of everything you the amount of content being created, maybe because the networks invited creators there, but it was fantastic. I thought it made the olympics much more interesting and fun, everything from lady gaga slipping on the steps to uh, who was the? Was the break dancer? Richard gulley? Australian break ray gun.
01:44:38 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
There's some great memes with uh there's some great videos that have been posted on Instagram of her and then showing a picture of a dog swarming around on the grass on its back.
01:44:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just saw a an iPhone holder. That's Ray Gunn in the green track suit. Ok, that's great.
01:44:59 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
That's good what I love is that my wife is Australian and so I was reading some of the Australian. I wanted to know what they were saying and it like everyone, like the, from like former prime ministers to like the famous actor they've all weighed in on this and they all like unilaterally love her. It's like they call it like the reverse tall poppy syndrome. It's like you know she gave it a go.
01:45:25 - Christina Warren (Guest)
And I was going to say I was. I was gonna say I work with a lot of australians and like we were memeing on it in slack and like they were like popping up instantly to like defend her. They're like, oh, she didn't do anything wrong when there were some and they were incorrect allegations against her and and I was, you know, some of us were trying to be like we don't actually care. This is just funny 36 year old.
01:45:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're like no professor of dance right or something movement um yeah I think that's wonderful. She qualified, she got in, she didn't win she didn't even score a point.
01:45:55 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Um she, she, look she. Zero literally. Didn't like the worst you could possibly do, but you know what like that's the point of the olympics.
01:46:04 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
It's it's like the.
01:46:05 - Christina Warren (Guest)
It's like the jamaican bobsled team from the early 90s exactly in fact, there will be a ray gun movie I was gonna say there's gonna be a ray gun movie. Rachel dratch will play her.
01:46:12 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
It'll, it'll be great rachel dratch is the other ray gun I just want to have the other names.
01:46:17 - Benito (Announcement)
I love shooting, oh yeah has a dissenting opinion because all the actual break dancers who were really competing there like that.
01:46:27 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Oh, there was amazing stuff look, of course it is, but that's on australia, that's on oceania, frankly right but they're all loving it, see, and that's not I mean you're not, you're not wrong, but like take it up with that particular, like olympic committee for that sport, like we, we can all enjoy it I.
01:46:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, yeah, the jamaican bobsled team probably didn't score gold either.
01:46:48 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Maybe not close. No, they did not okay, but they did get a movie with john candy.
01:46:54 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I was trying to remember the movie as well. I was like but they really tried it's an amateur, it's supposed.
01:46:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean despite steph curry and lebron james, I mean the olympics have not been about amateurs.
01:47:04 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
The olympics have not been about amateurs for decades. Oh, okay.
01:47:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are there professional break dancers? I suspect they're probably probably actually the closest thing to a professional she teaches it.
01:47:19 - Christina Warren (Guest)
No, no, they're. They're like actual dance crews and actual like people who you know are very skilled dancers who do that.
01:47:24 - Benito (Announcement)
Yeah but it doesn't put down the people who were really amazing, in fact, no but she took a slot from somebody who could have, because it took a slot in the Olympics from somebody who could have well, did she take us?
01:47:34 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
did she take a slot from someone else from Australia, you know?
01:47:37 - Christina Warren (Guest)
yeah, I mean I was gonna say I don't think that many people showed exactly I was gonna say. I don't think that many people showed up to the qualifiers.
01:47:42 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I think there was only 16.
01:47:45 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Australians cannot break dance. It's a well-known fact. Absolutely, totally.
01:47:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And it was not true that she created the governing body which ran the qualifiers, nor was her husband on the panel. All of that was just libel.
01:48:00 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, she got in. There wasn't, I guess, a lot of competition. Honestly, I think that's what it was. I there wasn't, I guess, a lot of competition. Honestly, I think that's what it was. I think that Australians it's a very white country they dance a certain way. They didn't have a lot of. Maybe a lot of people didn't know about it, which is a different problem, but like that's not her fault that enough people didn't know to audition.
01:48:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, I mean, you know, I mean uh tay hirotanga wapiha, who is from new zealand, was a judge on the oceana qualifying panel said ray gun won fair and square. All us judges talked about how she was going to get smashed, absolutely smashed, at the olympics. She knew it was going to be rough, so it's actually courageous of her okay, okay, chill out.
01:48:47 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Like there's like a line here, right, like it's like you can be, like she won fair and square. We, we stand by our, our voting decisions, which, okay, I watched the qualifiers and and I would have picked the other person, but I'm not a judge and I don't know what they're looking for. So you know, my, my opinion is just that. But there's a big line between like we defend she won fair and square and being like it was courageous for someone who knows they're terrible to compete against these very skilled dancers.
01:49:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Come on, there's not courage apparently there were break dancers in australia who were a little upset, but did they go to try to qualify, if you know? Okay. Anyway, I don't know how we got on this subject, but well, I was going to say the Turkish shooter was my favorite oh, yes, that's right fantastic, so that was a perfect example and probably the air gun target competition wasn't a big, widely watched thing, but those memes made it very interesting and I think it probably brought a lot of new fans to the sport totally.
01:49:49 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I would be really curious to know from peaco*ck um as well as that, you know the um what are the partners were in in other countries who had the streaming, to see if the there was an impact, like more people went back and watched you know the competitions after the fact, after seeing the memes, because I know I definitely did right, like I I would never have watched the, the airgun stuff and I did because I'm with you really like he was fantastic I went back and I was like okay this hand in his pocket and I never, I never lenses, he just goes boom and I never ever would have like tuned into that.
01:50:19
So I would really be curious and I don't know if they would do the breakdown, but it would be really interesting to see you know, did they see an uptick? And and rewatches and replays, because I'm sure they did.
01:50:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't even. I wasn't there. You know, there's so many sports right. I wasn't even aware of it.
01:50:33 - Christina Warren (Guest)
So exactly you know that was one of the things I thought that, like peaco*ck, did really really well. Um was, you know, just I thought the app worked really well, I thought the streams were good and, from you know their own um press releases. Uh, the reporting seems to be like you know that the viewership was way up, but I would be.
01:50:50
I I think that, um, this is the first one you know they've been trying to do the olympics and have kind of a digital streaming presence for probably tokyo was a massive failure it was and and they, they tried to, you know, tie it to various cable logins and all kinds of other things, and it feels like they finally got it right this time and and really, you know, met people kind of where they, you know, actually are, which I, which I think is great whether they made money or not, and I'm sure they did.
01:51:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But even if they didn't, uh, they, it was a global. It was exactly what the olympics were supposed to be a global celebration of sport, and that was fantastic. And I even think ray gun was fantastic. I'm glad she did it, but you know, of course, they're better break dancers. I bet you more people watch that competition, though because of her now right, they're more aware of it, I know I won't be in the olympics next time right. Well, that was already chosen.
01:51:41 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I hit but that, but that wasn't because of her right that wasn't her, that was already chosen I but that but that wasn't because of her right that wasn't her, they've canceled it because of break I heard that, I literally heard that.
01:51:50 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Oh yeah, I heard that she was so awful they canceled break dancing it's like no.
01:51:54 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Los angeles was like, well, no, we're not doing that um yeah, the, the host, the host city, gets to select, uh, some number of new events exactly.
01:52:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They'll try out oh, so this, so this is a Paris thing.
01:52:06 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, got it Very French, I think it's. If an event gets selected like three consecutive games, then it becomes permanent.
01:52:17 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Ray Gunn is performing at halftime though at the Olympics. Sorry, I'm spreading my own misinformation.
01:52:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think she should be at the Super Bowl halftime show. I really do, I think she should be at the Superbowl halftime show. I really do.
01:52:26 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I think the meme will be over by then. But you know what Like I really like, I want, I want this for her. Like this 36 year old, like college professor, like she's the ultimate millennial, you know, it's like it's been told her whole life that like you can do anything and then like life and that you can't like it's just it's, it's perfect here is, if I can pull it up here, the from Massimo the ray gun 3d printable phone stand this is while doing the podcast I want this so badly.
01:52:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's really good uh and it folds up 3d printer now yeah, yeah, I. I hope it's on thingiverse so we can all, we can all print it well, I'll be there.
01:53:19 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I'll be in uh, sydney, as I do every year with my australian wife. I'll see if, if they have those, I'll pick some up, and would you yeah, would you.
01:53:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How does your wife feel about ray gun? Did she have an opinion?
01:53:30 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
she is not extremely online, uh. So I I told her about ray gun, so I was very proud of that, but yeah, she of course loves her and defends her, like all we'll talk about when we come back.
01:53:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The biggest game in china right now, as we continue with this week in tech and read albergati from semaphore and from github film girl christina warren, sam abul samad, our good friend and my personal car guy. He's the expert. Uh, we're glad you're here. Our show today, brought to you by look out, look out, look out, look out, love. Look out, especially nowadays. Today, every company is a data company. That means every company is at risk, right? Cyber threats, breaches, leaks it's just the new normal, and cyber criminals are more sophisticated by the minute. At a time when boundaries to your data no longer exist, what it means for your data to be secure has changed fundamentally, and that's why you need Lookout. From the first phishing text to the final data grab, lookout stops modern breaches as swiftly as they unfold, whether on a device in the cloud, across networks, even when your data is working remotely at the local coffee shop, lookout gives you clear visibility into all your data, at rest and in motion. You'll monitor, assess and protect without sacrificing productivity for security. With a single unified cloud platform, lookout simplifies and strengthens reimagining security for the world that will be today. Visit Lookoutcom right now to learn how to safeguard data, secure hybrid work, reduce IT complexity. That's Lookout, l-o-o-k-o-u-t, lookoutcom. We thank them so much for supporting this week in tech Big game in China, in fact, maybe one of the biggest game launches of all time.
01:55:31
I was talking to Benito, who's our resident gamer. He said I want to play it. He hasn't yet. Tencent released something called Wukong Black Myth Wukong and so many people are playing it. It actually surpassed the record set by Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam when it debuted Tuesday, ranking just above Pal World and Counter-Strike 2 by peak concurrent players Strongest first-day performance in a long time and it's kind of brought some attention to China's $40 billion-plus gaming business. So, benito, what is the game like? Tell us.
01:56:21 - Benito (Announcement)
I haven't played it, but it's an action game. You know it's a beat-em-up.
01:56:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a shooter. Is it a first-person shooter? No, no, no.
01:56:25 - Benito (Announcement)
the game like Tell us oh, I haven't played it, but it's an action game. You know it's a beat-em-up, it's a shooter. Is it a first-person shooter? No, no, it's like a third-person combat game like Batman or one of those kinds of games.
01:56:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
A third-person adventure game. Basically it's interesting because, I mean, I'm sure that there are very popular games within China.
01:56:42 - Benito (Announcement)
But this seems the interesting part to me is that, like I'm I've been I've had this suspicion for a long time now that there have been really good games in china that just don't come we just don't know about. Um, yeah, this might be sort of the first peek through the peek through the curtain here is a trailer from youtube for wukong blackmuth.
01:56:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wukong, it's in chinese, as the mouse gives way to the ox. We have a growing talent and force. I don't know what that means either. Is it using Unreal Engine? I bet it is right. So it's not necessarily all Chinese technology, or do they have their own engine? Now? I'm not sure what this was built on Looks like Unreal. I'll move ahead a little bit. So it's is it? I'm going to turn off this sound. Is it like Mortal Kombat?
01:57:29 - Benito (Announcement)
no, no, it's an action adventure game where you're just like more like Elden Ring.
01:57:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In fact, they say it has a Dark Souls like. That's. What I find very interesting is now so many people are gamers that games are getting harder and harder. I used to be able to play games. Maybe it's me, I'm just getting older and older, but I feel like they're getting. Maybe I'm wrong, but elden ring, the dark souls series, is a perfect example of these are intentionally extremely difficult games and people love them, gamers love them. All right, you're not. Obviously you guys are not gamers.
01:58:07 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
If you get a Neuralink implant then, I think you can play them much better.
01:58:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ah, that's what's missing. I just needed a real story.
01:58:17 - Benito (Announcement)
Like you know, has said, like the guy who got the first Neuralink implant said he's like destroying people on Counter-Strike.
01:58:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're kidding? Yeah, is he, but he's using the implant to play. Yeah yeah well, I have to admit I you know I find it a little bit difficult to push the buttons in in the order appropriately fast enough. So maybe that's the key. Maybe that's the key uh, is it cheating?
01:58:42 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
is it doping? Is it video? Yeah, it's definitely cheating. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's the problem. Uh, is it cheating? Is it doping? Is it video? Yeah, it's definitely cheating.
01:58:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's the problem with cross-platform play. You know, you don't know what. What special tools people are using.
01:58:52 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You don't know who has a neural link and who doesn't.
01:58:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These days exactly now you would think one thing you don't need to be connected to the internet, or online or or digital would be the derailleur on your bike. But apparently shimano, which is one of the big japanese bike derailleur companies, those are, the shifters that let you change gears are, in fact, digital. And not only that, they're vulnerable to simple replay attacks, the same kind of replay attacks that allowed people to get into your car by using an amplifier replaying your car, you know button into the car, allowing attackers to capture and weaponize data wirelessly exchanged by hardware parts. Gizmodo says attackers could use an attack to unexpectedly shift gears or jam the shifters and lock the bike into the wrong gear. This is from wired magazine radio. Hardware to do this is actually pretty cheap. They even say please don't, but if you have shimano di2 shifters, you may want to update your software.
02:00:07 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Wow, and I do have a cycling expert on the uh on the show, but I had you're a cyclist, are you?
02:00:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I feel like I?
02:00:14 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
we talked about this before, right yeah, yeah, wrote a book about it too about, uh, the tour to france it was about doping. You know, the lance, the Lance.
02:00:23 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Armstrong. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I read your book. It was great.
02:00:26 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Oh, thank you, I appreciate that, but I had not seen this story. This is crazy, is?
02:00:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
that wild. I mean, you could imagine.
02:00:34 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I mean, like just last year, there was a case where Mark Cavendish, who just broke the record for the most Tour de France stage wins ever this year Last year he almost broke the record in a sprint and his shifter kind of malfunctioned. I'm not saying that this was a hacking attack or anything like that, but you could see how somebody could really do some damage, like a competitor in the race.
02:01:09 - Christina Warren (Guest)
That's how I could see this being used. It's pretty, pretty interesting. That was my first thought, too was how was? How would somebody?
02:01:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
nefariously, you know, take advantage of this, and it's that cutthroat, right reed I mean you know, I wouldn't say it's.
02:01:17 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I don't think there's a problem with, like, sabotaging people, but like, oh good, okay, they will, you know, do a lot of stuff to try to win. So you know, usually it's to make yourself faster, but who knows?
02:01:29 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
why? Why would you want to use a wireless mechanism to shift your gears? I mean, it seems. It does seem silly that they I mean I can understand, you know you'd want your bike to be as light as possible, but you know when you add in. You know, when you add in, you know the batteries and everything, and the um, the radios and the, the, the, the actuator itself to do all this, it doesn't seem like it would save that much weight over just cables.
02:01:53 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
It's not. It's not about weight. I don't think it saves any weight really, um it it? In fact, at first they were kind of heavier, honestly, than the other. It's more about I mean, otherwise you have to run a cable through the bike and there's all sorts of things that you know go wrong with that right. It's probably more useful for, like consumers. It's a lot less maintenance. I mean basically, like if you're you know most people like to adjust their derailleur. They go to a bike shop and have them do it. I mean, now you can literally do it while you're riding. You can like fine tune the shifting, like while you're pedaling. That's cool. I mean maybe I shouldn't recommend that on the show, but it does make things and it makes installing. If you're doing your own maintenance or building up a bike yourself, it's just so much easier to install.
02:02:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the explanation. This was revealed, this hack, at the Usenex Woot Conference, woot24. Makeshift security You've got to have a good name if you've got an exploit right. Makeshift Security. Analysis of Shimano Di2 wireless gear shifting in bicycles. Modern bicycles, they say, say, are cyber physical systems that contain embedded computers and wireless links to enable new types of telemetry and control. The key motivating factor for moving away from traditional mechanical systems are the ability to gain insights about a rider's physical performance, better responsiveness and gear shifting, customizability of how the gear shifters operate and easier setup and maintenance. So maybe you know, maybe, maybe you do want a electronic shifter they're all.
02:03:31 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
They're all electronic now like my, oh they are. My bike is electronic. Yeah, I mean at the high end it's. It's pretty much gone, like the whole cable shifting, like even in mountain bikes which were kind of like the last two, but definitely on like a decent road bike now is going to have electronic shifting.
02:03:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um huh what do you? What do you?
02:03:51 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
ride. Well, I've got. You mean like the type of bike I have a road bike.
02:03:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What kind of bike do you ride?
02:03:56 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
yeah, road bike, a gravel bike and a mountain bike. It's kind of a. You are serious. I live in county like you have to. You know they don't let you move here unless you have like multiple bikes. So it's.
02:04:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Have you ever done a double dipsy on your bike? The?
02:04:12 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
dipsy is not a bike race, it's a running race.
02:04:17 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean, you could.
02:04:18 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You'd get a massive ticket if you tried to ride the dipsy.
02:04:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I feel like my trainer did that, but maybe I misunderstood him. I thought he rode the Dipsy. There's no way to ride the.
02:04:31 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Dipsy, it's a running, it's a.
02:04:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it's a famous running race. It's Mount Tam right, Mount Tam yeah.
02:04:36 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You go, you go, like, up and over Mount Tam, you know, from the, from, you know, know, the marin to the ocean, basically mill valley to the ocean. I have not, I'm not a runner, but it's a, it's a great rate. I think it's like the oldest that's famous. Yeah, trail race or something like that in the, in this country. I mean people, people love that. But again, cycling expert, not not a running expert jester.
02:04:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One in our youtube chat says the woman's.
02:05:01 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Oh, there was a woman cyclist in the olympics who got on her backup bike and the battery was dead on her derailleur. So she, this guy, wanted to do this big ride in in europe and he was training for it, actually doping for it, and then at the end of he finally does the ride and it was the same thing like his battery was dead or something.
02:05:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So funny you're so silly, so silly uh, if you are an amateur radio enthusiast, as I am and as many of our audience members are, you might be sad to learn that the nonprofit ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, got hacked. Who would hack the ARRL? Maybe because they have a lot of information about hams. Maybe because they have a lot of information about hams, but apparently they confirmed that when they were attacked in May with a ransomware attack, they paid the million dollar ransom Wow To obtain the decryptor. In fact, they had to negotiate it down. They were covered by insurance, so it came out of their insurance.
02:06:21 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Okay, that was going to be. My first question was yeah, by insurance. So it came out of their insurance. Okay, that was going to be. My first question was was yeah, because I and I wonder if this is increasingly, if it's either a common or an uncommon writer, where you know you're, you can get insured and use it for um a ransomware attack, or if the insurance policies are starting to, you know, not let people um have writers that will offer that.
02:06:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm curious it's in the arls uh blog post, um, or their news post. The serious instant incident was an act of organized crime that took place during the early morning hours of may 15th. As staff arrived, it was immediately apparent that we'd become the victim of an extensive and sophisticated ransomware attack. Fbi categorized the attack as unique because they had not seen this level of sophistication up to this point Within three hours. I mean, it sounds like the ARRL was well prepared. A crisis management team had been constructed of management, an outside vendor with experience in the ransomware recovery space, attorneys. Of course, the authorities were contacted. They, after days of tense negotiation and brinksmanship, the ARRL agreed to pay a million dollar ransom, largely covered by the insurance policy, but to attack a 501c3 non-profit.
02:07:46
Uh well, what do you get? What do you expect? Uh, too bad, terrible, yeah, terrible. All right, one more break and then we can, we can wrap things up. You guys are great. I love having you on. I appreciate it. Uh, read albergati and notice everybody's in their own space. Read albergatti from semaphore. Uh, christina warren from github. Samuel samet who, who, for some reason, has moved to a palm tree line beach, I decided I'd rather be in kona than in my that's the beauty of technology and I want to thank the club members for letting me do the show from my house, from the attic.
02:08:28
Um, you know, we're really trying to keep our costs low because we understand, uh, you know, times are tough for podcasts. Uh, advertising has pretty much gone away. I feel like we're in the middle of something right now. Actually, I was thinking about this because originally, podcasting began with consumer goods like mattresses and and food boxes and we had all those sponsors. They've all disappeared, you know, and it's really hurt podcasting. We're fortunate because we get we have a lot of security vendors, um, supporting us, a b2b clients, uh, people like that, and so we're surviving. But I'm waiting for the return of traditional advertising to podcasts, like you know, for toothpaste soap. You know, these guys spend a lot of money on tv ads that are probably not very effective. If I were to say I only use this, you know, dr bronner's peppermint soap, I think that that could sell some units. Until then, we need to turn to you, our fine audience, uh, for making up the difference. We've cut our costs as best we can, but thanks to the club, we're able to keep doing shows and new stuff all the time and really innovate, because I believe that we are needed more than ever. With the advent of AI, technology has become more complicated. It's in our lives, everywhere we go, and I think we all need to know it, understand it and know how to use it and defend against technologies aimed at us. And that's what this network is all about. If you'd like to support us, we'd love to have your support.
02:10:06
There are benefits to Club Twit. You get ad-free versions of all of our shows. You get access to our Discord, where some really smart, interesting, wonderful people hang out day and night. You also get special programming that we don't put out in public, like the coffee show that I did last week. That's available to club members as well. And all of this only seven bucks a month. It's $1 less than Twitter Blue. How about that? Huh? Twittv slash Club Twit and you get so much more. If you're not yet a member, please consider helping us out and joining the club. And if you can't, if you can't afford it and I understand, times are tough that's fine too. We will continue to offer everything we do for free ad supported, for as long as we can. Twittv slash club twit. We are doing a special event for not just club twit members but for everybody who watches and listens.
02:10:59
I'm going to be in New York City for a vacation in a couple of weeks and we've decided to have a meetup on September 7th Saturday. We're going to do it outside, because I think I heard COVID's back. So we're going to do it outside at Bryant Park, which should be nice If the weather is nice. It should be a lot of fun. I hope you'll join us from 3 to 5 pm Eastern Time, bryant Park, september 7th Saturday. And one of our club members, joe, who's a very good street photographer in New York City, has put together an itinerary for us for a photo walk right after. Should be beautiful during the golden hour. So we're going to go meet up at the park 3 to 5 pm and then Joe's going to take us on a photo walk. We're going to go to Grand Central, take photos of the terminal, one of the most beautiful railroad terminuses in the country. Walk to the Tudor City overpass for that classic shot you've all seen of the Chrysler building and Midtown. He says this will be a great place for long exposures. We're going to take a subway to washington square park. Going to get pictures of the bloody angle on doyer street, which has just been repainted, by the way, or is in the process of being repainted the manhattan bridge, and if we have time we'll get uh, we'll get to go inside and outside the oculus, which really is a photographer's dream. So you don't have to be a club member for this, but thanks to the club members who are making it possible, and I hope you will come see us. We're gonna have fun and I've I've invited other hosts to join me. We'll see if they come, but I think some of them are thinking about taking the train up, uh, to bryant park, saturday, september 7th at 2 pm. Uh, our show today, brought to you by oh, I'm very excited about this.
02:12:46
Shopify. What's the easiest choice you can make? For example, uh, window seat, not middle seat, right, picking a vendor who sends great gift baskets, outsourcing business tasks you hate. What about selling with Shopify? Aha, can I tell you, mr Salt Hank, my son, has made an incredible business selling salt, and it was Shopify that made it possible. I have another family member who sells t-shirts through Shopify. Shopify is amazing.
02:13:20
It's a global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. How often do you go online to buy something something maybe you saw in the middle of the night on Instagram and it's a Shopify site which makes it easier, gives you some confidence too when you're buying. From the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did wewe-just-hit-a-million-orders stage, shopify is there to help you grow. I love Shopify, if only for what it did to help my son get his business off the ground. Whether you're selling security systems, marketing memory modules or selling salt, shopify helps you sell everywhere, from their all-in-one e-commerce platform to their in-person point-of point of sale system. Yeah, often when you're in a store, you're buying something through Shopify. Whatever and wherever you're selling, shopify has you covered. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers of the internet's best converting checkout up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms 36% better and sell more with less effort thanks to Shopify Magic, your AI-powered all-star.
02:14:32
I am a fan, a huge fan of Shopify. It powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US, including my own family members Allbirds yep check used it. Rothy's yep Brooklinen check. Millions of other entrepreneurs in every size across 175 countries. That's another great thing about Shopify You're global. You're suddenly a global operation, plus, shopify's extensive help resources are there to support your success every step of the way, because businesses that grow, grow with shopify. Sign up for a one dollar a month trial period at shopifycom slash twit that's all lowercase shopifycom slash twit to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in shopify s-h-o-p-i-F-Y, shopifycom slash klitz that's the sound of Shopify Ka-ching. Thank you, shopify, for supporting the show. Thanks to our great panelists who have been putting up with me for a couple of hours.
02:15:38
Now, just a couple more stories. We got to mention that probably in a week from this, coming tuesday, apple's going to have an event. They haven't sent out or actually it's two weeks, isn't it? They haven't sent out an invite yet. They usually send it out around a week ahead of time, but mark german says it's going to be september 10th. The company will unveil its latest apple watches, its latest iphone, the iphone 16, and possibly a robotic I don't know if this is true a robotic ipad. There were, we know they're, we know they're working on it. I don't know if they're ready to release it or not, but uh, are you? Do you? Are you? Even though you work for microsoft, you still have an iPhone, right? Christina?
02:16:26 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Obviously. What else am I supposed to use, Leo? What else would I use?
02:16:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What else would I do?
02:16:33 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Of course, Also, iphone is genuinely, physically attached to my body 20 hours out of the day. So, yes, I'm very excited. I will buy the, the newest, latest, greatest iphone, just as I do every year, just as I will continue to do I, I don't, I don't care. Like in the future, like what am I going to buy? A pixel?
02:16:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what else am I going to buy? I just got the google pixel line. I'm sure it's very nice I'm sure it is it's very pretty, but it's not an iphone, is it?
02:16:59 - Christina Warren (Guest)
by the way, I love your new uh your new digs you moved into the simpsons apparently um, yeah, the family guy house. Yeah, oh, family guy, what am I saying?
02:17:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, yeah, I see megan peter on the wall there I mean I, I can.
02:17:12 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I can do simpsons for you, if you want no, that's okay.
02:17:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just now it's only reed who's stuck in. Uh, in the cyberspace man.
02:17:22 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I had a nice background and then I rearranged my office. So now I have to figure something out.
02:17:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We put a lot of effort into this. You know, getting this to look like something.
02:17:33 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I want to see the rest of your attic. I'm like very curious.
02:17:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You want to see what my point of view is. Oh okay, wow. Oh, that's an impressive attic, so I brought this gear from the brick house, right With the twit bug on it.
02:17:48 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I have a lot of hats, as you can see.
02:17:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's very, it's comfy.
02:17:54 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
It's comfy. That's really another bedroom.
02:17:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean that's that's you, can you know? Somebody says it's not an attic. I'm over the garage. Does that make it an attic? We don't have attics in California. Well, go back to the shot, because I was just going to show you the best part of it.
02:18:17 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I have a remote control that lets me open the bomb bay doors. Oh nice, that's pretty cool.
02:18:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry, I just get a little excited. So I'm at the highest point of the house. Does that make it an attic?
02:18:27 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I feel like it does I mean it used to be an attic, but then, oh, I see you think it should be like dusty with skeletons and old toys and things. Yeah, I was thinking there was exposed, you know insulation, I'm sure there was at one point. Yeah.
02:18:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You think I you know insulation. I'm sure there was at one point, yeah, at one point. You think I'm gonna sit in, you know in insulation. No, I'm gonna have a nice, nicer space here. Yeah, it's fun. Uh, we don't if. If it is september 10th, we will cover it. That's a tuesday, uh, it makes sense that that would be then. Uh, it will go on sale. Uh, at usually a week from the following Friday, which would be September 20th, I will be out of town. I'm going on vacation. I timed it perfectly.
02:19:09
So Micah will have to do the event and all of that. It's going to be important for Apple. They've had a kind of a sluggish season and of course the new iPhone is always a big quarter. Uh for them. New apple watch, as well as series 10 that german says will be thinner with larger screens. They're going to revamp the airpods lineup with new low-end and mid-tier models and maybe even an update to the airpod max.
02:19:38 - Christina Warren (Guest)
God, please, please please, I I need that desperately. Um, mine are more than I've there are, however, old the they are, so I guess four years old, yeah they haven't yeah well, no, the, but the battery is dying and the problem is is that you can only get apple care on them for two years and apple won't let you renew that and they're 550 and I'm absolutely not spending 550 on a second pair.
02:20:01
But as much as I hate them and as much as I complain about them, they are the best, like most usable over your headphones, even though they're completely overpriced if you use a bunch of apple gear, as I do because of the instance now you're in the simpsons.
02:20:14
I just noticed now, now you, you said that, so yes, now I I look through my archives of zoom backgrounds, of which I have I have right over my shoulder here AirPod Max, like I did not I thought that's I'm not spending 550 on those and yet you did.
02:20:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ridiculous, and yet you did and you know what it is. And this is the strength, and everybody who hates Apple is really hating us right now, but this is the strength of the Apple ecosystem. Play no, they're not the best headphones ever. Yes, they're wildly overpriced so overpriced but they work so smoothly with your apple mac and your.
02:20:45 - Christina Warren (Guest)
It's true, it's just natural I I bought the sonos um, ace and and they're good um for the price that I got them out, I have no complaints. But I I got them at a different price than what they're available at retail and they are better for travel, in my opinion, because they have much better battery life and they fix many deficits that I problems I have with the AirPods Max. But when people have asked me, well, what should I buy the AirPods Max or the Sonos, my question is always well like, are you an all Apple? You know phone, ipad back first. Because if you are, unfortunately, even though I prefer, the Ace and mine are the same, or also the pink red one, so good, good call I was gonna say do not judge me no well, I would judge me, because I will absolutely buy the pink ones always doesn't it look more orangey than pink?
02:21:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
but yeah, but like the band does but,
02:21:31 - Christina Warren (Guest)
not the band does the band is, but the sides are rose gold. Come on um baby. But. But, like you know, the the problem is that I that I have is I'm like even though I complain about them endlessly, if you use multiple apple things, just the way that they switch. There's nothing else like it, and so I will. As long as they have usbc, and I would love for them to add a power button. They won't. Um, I would love for them to get.
02:21:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, that's right, there's still uh lightning as well. That's the problem that's the problem yes, that's.
02:22:00 - Christina Warren (Guest)
This is why I'm mad at them I would buy another pair tomorrow if they were usbc let me show you what I do that yeah I will never buy another lightning same absolutely not absolutely not not happy I.
02:22:11 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I have anchor uh soundcore um noise canceling headphones and they have usbc and a power button and they cost a lot less than the this was a auto pair
02:22:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
so this was a recommendation. Uh, from mac break weekly. It's the max stand designed by rotating pixels in germany. I don't know what that means, but you add a little dongle to your max and then you just it just sits on the stand and the dongle charges it, so I don't ever have to see lightning oh, that's nice yeah, and plus it's a nice little yeah nice little stand for the headphones there. It is okay, and they charge on that. Well, you have to obviously have a type c cable going into this right and and this is lightning.
02:23:02
Uh, you know, even though you never see it, this is lightning internally. But yeah, see, that's that makes it converted, it to type C and it matches nicely. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do a home shopping Channel, a little qvc moment there but no one buy those for real.
02:23:20 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Like do not buy AirPod Maxes today there's rumored new ones but even even if not like, no one buy them unless they're like 200 then maybe.
02:23:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But they're not that good. They're not the best headphones ever, absolutely not, but I will.
02:23:31 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I will absolutely buy the next version.
02:23:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're convenient question. Yeah, uh, I won't wear them on an airplane, though I'm too embarrassed to. It's like wearing a vision pro on an airplane I mean I will but.
02:23:40 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I have switched to? Oh god, I have. Has anyone seen a vision pro? Oh yeah, I I was in portland.
02:23:47 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
I haven't seen one on a plane, but I was in uh portland at the end of june and I, about five minutes after I saw a cyber truck. I saw a guy riding around portland on a bicycle with his vision pro on.
02:24:00 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
That's dumb god, that is so dumb I see way more cyber trucks than vision pros I was going to say I've seen.
02:24:07 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I've seen like multiple cyber trucks in the last like couple of days. I even at wwc I did not see any um any vision pros like in the wild that were not like oh, I saw.
02:24:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I saw one on a jet blue flight just uh, when I flew out to see my mom a couple of months ago, amazing guy was wearing it as as the flight took off and I thought, is he gonna wear this the whole time? And, uh, I think he just wanted people to come over and say, oh, that's cool yeah, probably nobody did after about half an hour he took it off and never put it back?
02:24:37 - Christina Warren (Guest)
well, yeah, because it's two and a half pounds and it's only ran out of batteries exactly right it's one of those things.
02:24:42 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You it's yeah, it's it no okay I just got the first cyber truck on my street, by the way, I think oh, really someone's parked in my in my across the street neighbor's garage.
02:24:53 - Christina Warren (Guest)
It couldn't fit, but it was in there so did they get a wrap, or is it? Or is it just the, the standard it's?
02:24:59 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
just raw, raw, just a grubby looking stainless steel with all the stains on it there's a few bullet holes in it.
02:25:04 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Yeah, it's just raw. Raw, just a grubby looking stainless steel with all the stains on it. There's a few bullet holes in it.
02:25:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's just you'd think that they would have learned something from the DeLorean, which instantly looked terrible, and that was stainless right?
02:25:14 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
yeah, yeah, they're both stainless steel when they remake back to the future. It's going to be a cyber yeah, you know what?
02:25:21 - Christina Warren (Guest)
you're right, it absolutely is Mr Fusion on the back of a cyber. Yeah, you know what?
02:25:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you're right, it absolutely is, mr fusion on the back of a cyber truck, of course. Yeah, you're correct. All right, well, we will cover the apple event. There may be more uh m4, uh max as well, which would be uh awesome. Um, I like my m4 ipad. I just can't wait for that to come out on a macintosh. Uh. So stay tuned for more coverage. I think we should. Oh, one more story Do any of you rent? You probably all own homes.
02:25:52 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Oh no, I rent.
02:25:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You do.
02:25:54
Absolutely I mean I pay too much, but yes, Ah, you do pay too much, absolutely you do pay too much. And my daughter has complained about this and she said, dad, it's because of software. So apparently the United States government agrees. The Justice Department on Friday filed a complaint against software called RealPage for rental collusion. Antitrust enforcers say RealPage's software, which helps landlords set rental prices, has effectively raised price on renters illegally. It tracks, of course, all the rents paid all over the country and allows landlords to raise the rent algorithmically. This is actually the Justice Department's first big algorithmic collusion case. Uh, so it will be very interesting to watch, because I don't think this is the only app that's used by landlords. Um so, christina, you say you pay too much rent.
02:26:55 - Christina Warren (Guest)
My daughter says too, and she says it's because these programs raise the rent yeah, I, I've heard, I've heard, I've heard about this in my situation I think it's probably a combination of factors, um and and uh, but I would not be surprised at all if this is part of it, because I've heard about this that these programs basically can kind of figure out exactly what things are and raise things over time and kind of bid against one another so that renters are, of course, a landlord can raise the rent ifarily but these programs help them raise the rent just in the right way.
02:27:28
Exactly.
02:27:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The average US rent, the DOJ says, has gone up 33% since 2020, since the beginning of the pandemic.
02:27:36 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, mine hasn't gone up that much. Seattle had a for like a year or so. They had like a freeze, but then that ended and even though the city still claims they have an ordinance where it can't go up more than a certain amount, there are many actresses there and and my building absolutely, uh decided to take advantage of that, so yeah, real page has about 80 of the market for commercial revenue management software for conventional multi-family housing rentals.
02:28:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In the us, according to the lawsuit, 24 million units. So with that kind of uh information you can say, ah, in this market we can go up this high exactly isn't that happening?
02:28:18
it probably across like every yeah category, though, of course, oh yeah across like every yeah category, though, of course, oh yeah, yeah, I mean that's yeah. The private data landlords share with real page include a unit's effective rent, rent discounts, rent terms, lease status, unit characteristics all show the number of potential future renters who have visited a property or submitted a rental application. So imagine this and ai goes okay, we can see how as we adjust the demand more applications you get. You know, we know what's the maximum you can get away with.
02:28:51 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Basically, I mean I mean it's evil, it's brilliant. It's. It's evil, obviously, but it's brilliant. It's. It's not that different from some of like the, the trading, you know high frequency trading programs and and that sort of thing, just applying it to, to rents, um, and I'm I'm fortunate that I'm in a position where, even though I pay me too much and should absolutely move, um, plenty of people aren't and, depending on what part of the country you're in and what the available housing situation is and this is a uniquely american problem where you know people won't build and people will stand in the way of people building. So there is, you know, a constrained supply. Renters don't have a lot of recourse other than to pay. So you know it's it's pretty terrible.
02:29:33 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Wow.
02:29:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I actually watch with interest.
02:29:36 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, and that's more than half of all the rental units in the United States is about 44 million rental units in the U? S right now.
02:29:45 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
It's amazing there's this dynamic where these like these, you know AI automation software, whatever you call it is allowing the. You know it's really advantaging you know, big companies right now, and I think someone brought up some a really interesting topic on how you know you know like everyone's using this for, like job applicants, right, like vetting job applicants and all this stuff. Well, job applicants are now also using ai to kind of just like apply to a million jobs. Good, and so it's because it's like but the, but the companies don't want that, so they're trying to figure out, like how to stop people from using ai. So there's this like asymmetry and I think that's going to be a fascinating dynamic going forward, and there's like fight between, you know, average people and consumers using ai. And then you know, right, whatever.
02:30:39 - Christina Warren (Guest)
no, I think you're right like the ai is fighting one another, like can we find the watermark to see that this was ai generated if they use the word delve?
02:30:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you're right, like the AI is fighting one another, Like can we find the watermark to see that this was AI generated If they use the word delve, you know?
02:30:46 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Right Actually. I think you're right Exactly.
02:30:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What we try to do here at Twitter is arm you with those tools so you can fight AI with AI. I think that's exactly what should happen. You know, yeah, good, use AI. If they're using it against you, use it right back against them. I could guarantee you none of our panelists today were artificial in any way, just their backgrounds. Uh, reid albergati, it's so. I just love sema, for you do such a great job. His newsletter is a must subscribe. He's, it's free. He's also the technology editor, semaforcom. And what was the name of the book?
02:31:28 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
oh, it was called wheel men, that's right and it was about. It was about land it was based. I wrote it with my co-author, vanessa o'connell, and we, um, you know, we spent years sort of uncovering the whole doping conspiracy on that. You know, cycling team and and lance and everything.
02:31:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was once in a lifetime story, but so the tour, it was about lance and the tour, oh, it has that. I remember.
02:31:51 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Now it has that yeah, the subtitle lance on the cover yeah, yeah, it's, it's lance armstrong the tour de france and the greatest sports conspiracy ever, which which lance took issue with and he? He wrote me an email and said the number one sports conspiracy. Are you kidding me?
02:32:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what about the white?
02:32:09 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
socks german.
02:32:12 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I was thinking yeah, and, and then he said go f yourself, rather yeah, exactly and I wrote.
02:32:18 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I wrote back and I'm like the publisher wrote that part right, I came up with it and like what do you want them to say? Like one of the top 10 sports conspiracies.
02:32:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One of the biggest. He didn't respond. One of the biggest. That's hysterical, Wheelman. It's available on Amazon.
02:32:34 - Christina Warren (Guest)
It's really good.
02:32:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah. And it's on Audible right. Who reads it on Audible, Somebody good?
02:32:45 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You know, I can't remember the person's name, but they gave us a menu of options and he was the only one that didn't sound like the movie phone voice.
02:32:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So um, he's really good lance armstrong the tour de france here. Let's play a little bit here. Let's hear this guy. This is, oh yeah, I've heard you before. I've heard you already before. Let's hear it, let's jump right in the middle of it introduction Santino Fontana, I've heard you already before. Let's jump right in the middle of it. Introduction Not long ago, the world witnessed. It sounds like you, Reid. I'm going to imagine that it's Reid reading. It Sounds just like you. That's great. I can't wait and.
02:33:18 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I have an.
02:33:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Italian last name. Yeah, perfect, I have a credit. I'm going to use it right now.
02:33:24 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Thank, you, Reid, for being here.
02:33:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't expect a book plug but thank you Italian last name. Yeah, perfect, I have a credit. I'm going to use it right now. Thank you for being here. I didn't expect a book plug, but thank you.
02:33:33 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Well, yeah, the book came out 10 years ago so it wasn't an unreasonable expectation.
02:33:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really good. It's a little depressing, but I have a shelf over here of books that came out 20 years ago, none of which made any money, so I can be you in depression. There's about 13 of them uh, thank you, I'll order.
02:33:51 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
I'll order one of those in.
02:33:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, you can't they're not available no longer in print.
02:33:56 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
Oh, so they're collector's items yeah, oh, that's true find them on eBay at elevated prices.
02:34:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It'll happen happen in Bryant Park. I'm sure Somebody will show up with one and say would you autograph that for me?
02:34:09 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Yeah, and you know, it's one of those things?
02:34:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who was it saying it's no fun to write, but it's fun having written. It's one of those things that it's done now and I don't have to think about it anymore.
02:34:20 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You don't remember the pain is what you're saying. It's like birth, yeah.
02:34:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I relate Giving birth Christina Warren so great to have you. I love having you on Film Girl. Senior dev advocate at GitHub. She lives in the Simpsons house now in Springfield.
02:34:35 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I do Now I'm in Springfield, which you know what that makes sense.
02:34:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the red cheaper.
02:34:40 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yes, it is but uh yes, yeah it is.
02:34:41 - Christina Warren (Guest)
But you know, but that does make sense because that was supposed to be in the pacific northwest, because matt greening, but oh really. Oh, I didn't know that it's not springfield, illinois, or I mean, it's never determined, but matt greening is is from portland, so a lot of the things make references to to um oregon, I guess.
02:34:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I uh, I interviewed matt greening in fact, somewhere I have a book uh when he used to do a cartoon strip called life is hell, which is great, with a rabbit with one ben ear, yeah, and I interviewed him when they came out and he drew. I have a matt graining drawing. Uh, that's amazing. Yeah, that he autographed, uh. But this was well before the simpsons, and then I had dinner with him after the simpsons and I felt like such an idiot because I was laughing at the name homer and he said that's my father's name oh and I felt so terrible, but after the drawing.
02:35:33 - Reed Albergotti (Guest)
You got the drawing.
02:35:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was years later I had dinner with him. Yeah, anyway, those are my.
02:35:38 - Christina Warren (Guest)
That's my mac green but both my mac reigning anecdotes but the fact that you have, like the life is hell, you know, autographed thing, I mean, because that was what led to tracy ullman, which obviously led to the simpsons, which, yeah, you know, like 35 years later is still on television, which is amazing yeah, I should.
02:35:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll pull it out next time I do a show so I can show people. It's really cool. It's nice to have miss. Thank you, christina, for we appreciate it. Anything you want to plug.
02:36:06 - Christina Warren (Guest)
I mean you can always just go to my socials or you can go to the GitHub YouTube channel. I do do a podcast called Overtired that is infrequent in its what a great name oh, thank you, thank you. It's with me and Brett Terppstra and jeff severance gunzel and we do talk some tech things.
02:36:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love brett, but the great shell yeah, oh, thank you.
02:36:26 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Thank you very much. So if you're anyone is interested in hearing me talk about some other stuff, uh, over here overtiredpodcom.
02:36:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's. Uh, it's a. What is the subtitle is like taylor swift we are not a taylor swift podcast.
02:36:43 - Christina Warren (Guest)
That's a joke. But but, I mean, I sometimes talk about it and my co-host will placate me, right, and and they will, they will like okay, you can have five minutes, and then I'll say I'm so glad you're doing this.
02:36:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this kind of after after, uh, the end of the last one yeah, yeah, exactly, well, this one is actually predates it.
02:37:00 - Christina Warren (Guest)
Actually, I've been doing this one since gosh, I think you only have 414 episodes. What? Yeah, I don't and I don't think that actually count is correct, because we started we counted. Weird, I don't know how many episodes we actually have, because we were. We were intermittent for a while, like there was a period of time where we would do it like once every six episodes.
02:37:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I think. I think we're definitely over 200, but we're definitely not in the 400 range, where our 1000th podcast is october. What is it, benito? I got the date wrong. Seventh, sixth, it's coming up the sixth, yeah, the sixth, and we have invited, uh, the people who are on the original podcast to return to be.
02:37:39
That's so good. Patrick norton has already said yes. Kevin rose says, uh, he's going to be in a walkabout and he will be out already said yes. Kevin rose says, uh, he's gonna be in a walkabout and he will be out. Won't have any internet access, but he's gonna make his little video. And then I've asked robert heron and david prigger. So with any luck we'll get the original twit cast from twit one on our 1000th show in a few, in about a month fantastic, I'm so old.
02:38:05
I just I've given you like four, four reasons to think how old I am in the last 15 minutes.
02:38:10 - Christina Warren (Guest)
It's crazy well, no, I mean the thing is is that no, like time? But I am, you don't know well, you can just be like me. Like time moves on, but like you don't like ah, I don't.
02:38:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, that's exactly right time moves on, but I don't. Yeah, that's exactly right Time, moves on, but I don't Thank you. Thank you very much, thank you, thank you. Thank you. I have those in recording. Thank you, sam. He is my car guy. You've been never anything but the best recommendations Wheelbearingsmedia. If you love cars and you want to know more, don't tell me who won the formula one. I'm I haven't finished. I'm only halfway through guidehouse insights. That's his day job. He's a principal researcher there.
02:38:52 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Thank you, sam thank you for having me on here again, leo. It's been fun, fun conversation and, um, just uh, you know you were mentioning earlier about your uh, your in New York and Grand Central Station. If you ever do get back to Detroit, I highly recommend you pay a visit to the Michigan Central Station. They just renovated it, didn't they? Yeah, it was like a six-year renovation process. The place had been abandoned for 34 years. It was, the place had been abandoned for 34 years and it was just this shell of a building. That was an embarrassment to everybody in Detroit. And they've done an incredible job restoring that building back to its original glory. And it's just, it's beautiful inside and you know it dates back to 1913, I think, originally opened. Wow, yeah, it's fantastic. Who did this? Ford Ford Motor Company.
02:39:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, I remember reading about this. Yeah, and they use it as office space, but it's also an exhibition area.
02:39:59 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
Yeah, so Ford's taking up several floors or going to be taking up several floors as office space and there's going to be a hotel in there, and then there's a bunch of other floors that are available to other companies to use to rent and then event space down on the ground floor, and it's really stunning to look at. I got a chance to walk through there back in May before it opened up to the public, and it's really stunning to look at. I got a chance to walk through there back in May before it opened up to the public, and it's wonderful.
02:40:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it gives me an excuse to go back and visit. We went out to Dearborn and visited Ford when they were a sponsor and went down on the F100 assembly line, which was an amazing experience, and I'll never forget the the henry ford museum. Um, so good that now, and I know where I'll stay next time, at michigan central. Yeah, how fun. Thank you, and maybe, maybe we could do something with you. That'd be a lot of fun. Thank, you?
02:40:55 - Sam Abuelsamid (Guest)
yeah, absolutely love to yeah, appreciate it.
02:40:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you all for joining us. We do twit sunday afternoons 2 to 5 pm pacific, that's 5 to 8 pm eastern, 2100 utc. You could tell because I have a clock. My clock has a utc on it, so now it's after midnight utc. Holy cow, oh, oh, oh, 800 or something. Oh, 300, anyway, uh, uh, if you want to watch us live, you can.
02:41:23
We are on seven count them seven platforms. So we are, of course, on YouTubecom slash Twitch slash live, twitchtv slash live, and the chats are open there. By the way, I see the chat. It's great. I see somebody on Kik. We're on Kik as well. We stream to Discord for our club members. We streamed to Facebook, xcom and LinkedIn. Weirdly enough, I apparently LinkedIn is live streaming. Say hi If you're on LinkedIn. Hello, linkedin.
02:41:58
I think we're going to replace kick with telegram. We've been talking about that. We can only do seven, so we have to pick the right seven. So I think maybe we'll move that to telegram. If pavel gets out of jail, uh, we'll see, but you don't have to watch live. That's just if you're into it that we. We stream it live. After the fact, on-demand versions of the show, carefully edited to remove all the bad words, uh, available on our website, twittv. There's also a YouTube channel with the video, the edited video, and then, of course, the best way to get the show any of our shows is to subscribe in your favorite podcast player and that way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. We like to say the, the, the first podcast of your week on Monday morning, is the last word in tech this week in tech. Thank you Sam, Thank you Christina, thank you Reed, and thanks to all of you for watching. We'll see you next time, episode 994. Another twit is in the can.
