Tech News Weekly 281 Transcript

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.
Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next on Tech News Weekly. It's me, Jason Howell, my co-host Mikah Sargent. We start the show with Nitish Pahwa from Slate who wrote about Twitter Inc. Becoming X Corp. It's a little confusing. Why did they do it? We talk all about it. Also, Mikah talks about H B O Max becoming Max. Everybody's changing their name. It seems like it's, it's in the air. Taylor Lorenz from the Washington Post spills the beans on CK notes. It's Twitter like competitor Nock did not change its name. And I talk about a report that shines a light on the environmental impacts of ai. All that more. Coming up next on Tech News Weekly
V.O. (00:00:42):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Jason Howell (00:00:51):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 281, recorded Thursday, April 13th, 2023. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by ACI Learning aci. Learning amplifies expertise across industries that command higher pay ACI learning, transforming how companies train and technology professionals learn to fuel the modern workforce for premium training in audit it and cybersecurity readiness visit go dot aci learning.com/twit
V.O. (00:01:21):
And by delete me, reduce enterprise risk by removing employee personal data from online sources. Protect your employees and your organization from threats ranging from doxing and harassment to social engineering and ransomware by going to join delete me.com/twit tv.
Jason Howell (00:01:40):
And by decisions, don't let complexity block your company's growth decisions. No code rules driven process automation software provides every tool needed to build custom workflows, empowering you to modernize legacy systems, ensure regulatory compliance, and renew the customer experience. Visit decisions.com/twi to learn how automating anything can change everything.
V.O. (00:02:05):
Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am one of your hosts. Mikah, Sargent.
Jason Howell (00:02:15):
I'm the other guy. Jason Howell. Not, and Pruitt this week, not this time. Welcome
V.O. (00:02:19):
Back.
Jason Howell (00:02:20):
Thank you. How
V.O. (00:02:21):
Was it?
Jason Howell (00:02:22):
I mean, Costa Rica. Oh, I spent two and a half weeks in Costa Rica. It was fan ulous. Good. Costa Rica is awesome. If you've never been, you gotta go. It's beautiful. Country varied. You got your beach, you got your rainforest. The people are just amazing, you know. Was
V.O. (00:02:37):
There skiing though? Cuz it's not your
Jason Howell (00:02:39):
Thing. Well, <laugh> that was earlier. That was in the winter. Not
V.O. (00:02:43):
Rica.
Jason Howell (00:02:44):
<Laugh>, as far as I know, we don't Maybe water ski, water skiing, possibly. Oh, didn't, I couldn't even see that to be honest. But anyways, it's good to be back. Thanks for covering for me. And thanks to Amper for filling in for me. Yeah, he was great on the episodes that he did. I couldn't do these things, you know, we can't, we can't take our vacations without help and Exactly. So I appreciate it. So, alright, well let's get into our first interview. Twitter is done. That's it. No longer exists. <Laugh> and I got your attention, didn't I? So you can still go to twitter.com Don't worry. You can do all the things that Elon hasn't removed from the service to date, at least. But Twitter, the company, apparently it doesn't exist anymore to explain what I mean, and I wanna know what I mean. Yeah. What does that mean? <Laugh>? We have Nitish Pahwa from Slate on the line to help us talk about X Corp, which is kind of the new thing that we need to put into our brains as far as it has to do with Twitter. Anyways, welcome to the show.
Nitish Pahwa (00:03:42):
Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah,
Jason Howell (00:03:44):
It's great. Good to be hear. Yeah, it's great to get you on. You wrote an article for Slate about this kind of confusing transition of Twitter into X Corp. And I think, I think the first thing that came to mind when I started, when, when I became aware of this w was the transition from Google to Alphabet was the transition from Facebook to Meta. And then now we've got, you know, Twitter to X Corp. <Laugh> are, are these at all related? Like, could, could we lump them into the same category? But it, I mean, at the same time, I, I fully realize that this is done for a very specific reason that maybe had nothing to do with the reason that Google did their alphabet thing and Facebook did their meta thing.
Nitish Pahwa (00:04:28):
Yeah, absolutely. I think you can definitely trace a through line through all those three rebrands in the sense of changing what the company's ultimate direction is and really widening the scope. So Google taking on a alphabet as a parent company, that was their declaration of, yeah, no, we're not just a search engine, we're going way beyond this. Like, we're taking over almost every facet of your life. Like the Alphabet <laugh>. Then you had the same thing with Facebook and Meta, which obviously indicated their little metaverse gambit, which, you know, more than a year later, maybe not the best move, but yeah. Just to say <laugh> and Jerry's still
Jason Howell (00:05:11):
Out on that one for sure.
Nitish Pahwa (00:05:13):
<Laugh>. Yeah, definitely. And now with Twitter and X Corp, it's interesting. So X has been just a motif and Elon's life for decades now, but it seems like from just like little hints he's given here and there since his Twitter takeover is that he wants x to be some sort of everything app that meaning sort of American equivalent to WeChat, which, you know, combines everything with messaging, social networking, and all sorts of other functions, and get up to a user base like that, which WeChat commands. And it may seem like that this switch from Twitter to X Corp is one step toward that.
Jason Howell (00:06:03):
It's interesting. It's also, I, I should say, and your story does a good job of kind of walking through this, it begins with a lawsuit. So, so it's, it's kinda like in my head it's like, okay, on one hand this makes sense if Elon wants to do what he has been talking about, which is this, you know, kind of this super app thing. But then there's this lawsuit that kind of triggered some of this stuff initially are they, like, they're not at all related, right? They, it's just like, what, what happens to benefit from the fact that the other is, is occurring right now, this lawsuit? Tell us a little bit about the, the backstory on that.
Nitish Pahwa (00:06:40):
Yeah, totally. The lawsuit thing yeah. Is really more incidental than anything else. Like the Ex Corp thing does not seem to have come out as a result of this lawsuit. But to get into a little bit of what we're talking about a few years back Laura Loomer, the famous very online, far right figurehead was banned from Twitter multiple times, but she sued when she was banned in 2019 for some particularly inflammatory tweets. And when she sued Twitter, it was still known as a company, as we normally recognize it, Twitter, Inc. And this was way before the Elon acquisition. Now, when Elon took back over the platform Luer got her account back, but the lawsuit is still ongoing because Twitter is not the only defendant. But meta and Facebook is as well. Mm-Hmm. Similarly for content moderation, account restriction reasons, and it just happened to be the case that my colleague Mark Joseph Stern found that they, Twitter <laugh>, at least as we as we know it, had registered a new filing in this particular lawsuit saying that Twitter Inc could really no longer be a defendant in the suit as it were because Twitter Inc does not exist anymore.
(00:08:09):
Twitter Inc is now Ex Corp. And it turns out around the same time that filing appeared in the Loomer lawsuit a similar filing popped up in a different lawsuit from down in Florida from some company called Don't Tread on Me. I only found out about this after our reporting. So that was interesting to me. But Twitter is engaged in a lot of other lawsuits right now. There's the lawsuit against India that's been going on a while. And there are the newer lawsuits that have popped up with employees suing Twitter or others. There was also the ruling from Germany over anti-Semitic content on Twitter. And the fine that has resulted from there. And I think in all these cases, we at least court watchers are going to be seeing more filings from Twitter, clarifying that it's no longer Twitter, it's X Corp. All this has to be litigated as X Corp from here on out.
Jason Howell (00:09:09):
Right. It's not a matter of absolving Twitter or like, Hey, we found the loophole. We no longer have to be held responsible for anything cuz we're not Twitter anymore. It's just, it's just kind of messy right now. Because as Eric Duckin and Chad, you know, pointed out, put in succinct terms, Elon informed a corporation that corporation bought Twitter, Twitter no longer exists. That's kind of, and and, and as we've said, you know, repeatedly already, that just, that kind of happens with companies when they want to kind of put a, a finer point on what they actually do as a business. This opens up door, other doors for them, but it doesn't remove Twitter from any sort of culpability or anything in these cases. Right?
Nitish Pahwa (00:09:50):
Yeah, exactly. And the X Corp thing is also interesting because when Elon originally bought Twitter, he had three different holding companies set up for the purpose. There was X Holdings one, which was to be the parent company of a newly privatized Twitter. There was X Holdings two, which was going to merge with Twitter, basically take over all the remaining public equity and take it private. And then, and then per the merger agreement, it was supposed to X Holdings two, supposed to completely disappear, and the company was still supposed to operate as Twitter, under Delaware law as it had normally registered just this time as a private company. Then X Holdings three was helping manage the 13 billion loan from all the big banks that helped to finance the Twitter takeover, which as you'll recall, ended up in the neighborhood of $44 billion. Yeah. So, yeah.
(00:10:54):
And what's interesting about this is that, so all the three original X Holdings companies were originally based in Delaware, where Twitter is, and many of Elon's other companies are based as well. But now, so with this filing, what we've seen is that X Corp is an entirely new company that has merged with and basically swallowed Twitter and X Holdings one, which was Twitter's original parent company, is now just N X Holdings Corporation. And there's no numeral or anything like that. That's just the parent company. And now they're both registered in Nevada to be governor under Nevada State laws instead of Delaware laws.
Jason Howell (00:11:44):
And what kind of benefit does that give? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, <laugh>, there's gotta be a reason. I know that different states have different laws and that, that benefit businesses, and usually you do it in Delaware.
V.O. (00:11:52):
So the fact that they're doing it in Nevada is diff is interesting.
Jason Howell (00:11:55):
Yeah. Any ideas as far as why Nevada?
Nitish Pahwa (00:11:59):
Yeah, I have some speculation. We haven't really gotten any clarity. Elon Musk has not
V.O. (00:12:06):
Clarity from him.
Nitish Pahwa (00:12:07):
<Laugh> Yeah. On this point, you know, I, I did ask for comment just to put that on the record. Did not get very much help there, but did
V.O. (00:12:14):
You get the little emoji back that he likes to send
Nitish Pahwa (00:12:17):
<Laugh>? Better believe it, yeah. Came back in record time, like 10 seconds, but <laugh>, so, yeah. I've seen some people speculate basically. Yeah. So Nevada, sorry, Delaware is normally known as, yeah, a lot of corporations like to register here because it's a bit of a haven. There's, you know, lower taxes, you know, certain favorable regulations. I think with Nevada, there's the matter of one, they, Nevada also has a lot of corporate friendly laws as well. Mm-Hmm. And Elon perhaps wanted to take advantage of that when it came to establishing a quote unquote super app like X And also, so Elon has also talked about how he could make a big X company that would oversee all his businesses. So that would be Tesla, SpaceX, Neurolink, boring company, everything. And if that were to happen. What's also advantageous about Nevada is that Tesla has a huge gigafactory out there that just got another deal for further expansion.
(00:13:36):
And the Boring Company also has some projects out in Nevada, some that are in development, and some that are already in function like the Las Vegas Convention Center loop. So I think Nevada could be either one, a more favorable location for a super app and the business regulations that would need to be kind of draped around that. Or it could be the perfect location for Elon to bring all his businesses together under the same roof, which I still don't know how feasible that is. Even in Nevada trying to take Tesla Private has definitely gotten him in trouble before, but I mean, he, he now has Twitter, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I, I wouldn't count it out. <Laugh>.
Jason Howell (00:14:27):
Yeah, no kidding. Hard to count anything out. When it comes to Elon, especially right now like are you optimistic that he Elon can pull off this super app Grand Vision based on, on what we know, you know, he's doing right now?
Nitish Pahwa (00:14:43):
That's a really good question. I gotta say, just as someone who has always liked Twitter, been on there a while now, I cannot say that Twitter, the Twitter experience under Musk's oversight has been exactly my favorite. Mm-Hmm. It's definitely been a lot messier, a lot spammer, just a lot less pleasant and useful for me in general. So, I mean, obviously it was a suffering company before Musk took it over and, you know, various steps were taken and we'll see how those work out down the line. But I mean, if Elon can't even really get a handle on just Twitter, then I'm not super optimistic that an Everything app will work out either.
Jason Howell (00:15:43):
Yeah. Well, we'll certainly be following that and seeing how this goes. I love your I love your article for kind of diving into what seemed to be kind of complicated rationale you know, all the steps and, and kind of drawing the lines between the the theme of X in the life of Elon Musk. So I definitely learned a few things. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for hopping on Naish pua from Slate slate.com. Definitely check out the article if people wanna follow you online, where can they find you?
Nitish Pahwa (00:16:14):
Yeah, you can follow me on Elon Musk's Twitter at howa underscore natas.
Jason Howell (00:16:20):
Right on. Thank you so much. It's great talking with you. We'll see you soon.
Nitish Pahwa (00:16:23):
Thanks for having me, guys. All
Jason Howell (00:16:24):
Right. Take care. Take
Nitish Pahwa (00:16:25):
Care.
Jason Howell (00:16:26):
All right. Coming up Max san's the H B O <laugh>, we'll talk a little bit about that. But first, this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by ACI Learning for the last decade. Our partners at IT Pro have brought you engaging and entertaining it training so you can level up your career level up your organization even. Well now, IT PRO is part of ACI learning with it. Pro ACI learning is expanding its reach and production capabilities. This offers you the learning content that you need at any stage in your development. It's pretty awesome what they're doing. One of the most widely recognized beginner certifications is the CompTIA A plus certification. Comptia courses with IT pro from ACI learning make it easy to go from daydreaming about that career in IT to actually launching it. So earning certificates it that really opens the doors for most entry level.
(00:17:24):
It positions, it supplies potential promotions for those already in the field. They're just really important. Tech is the one industry where opportunities outpace growth, especially when you're talking about something like cybersecurity. The demand for talent super strong remains strong as technology continues to be a field that requires expertise, it commands higher pay. We all know about one third of information security jobs require a cybersecurity certification. That's compared to 23% of all IT jobs. While organizations are hungry for cybersecurity talent, the cyber skills gap is actually growing daily. The average salary for cybersecurity specialists is $116,000. ACI learnings, information security analyst and cybersecurity specialist programs can get you certified so you can get in the door. ACI learning offers multiple cybersecurity training programs that can actually prepare you to enter or advance within this, this amazing industry that's just on fire right now. C I S S P certified Ethical Hacker Certified Network Defender, cybersecurity Audit School, cybersecurity Frameworks, they all offer the most popular cybersecurity certifications.
(00:18:43):
Now, how you learn matters as well, right? A c I learning offers fully customizable training for all types of learners. So whether, you know, you prefer in-person on demand remote, you can take your learning beyond the classroom and really get involved with it. You can explore everything that a c I Learning offers beyond just watching, you know, the, the streams watching the videos. This is IT Pro, this is Audit Pro Practice Labs. You get learning hubs, you get their partnership program for teams of two to 1000 volume discounts. Start at just five seats. And you can ask about a free two week trial for training your entire team. Also, don't miss it. By the way, this weekend coming up, so it's April 13th at the time of this recording, April 15th through 16th, ACI Learning and IT Pro are offering Azure Free weekend. So you can learn a bunch about Azure and you can do that for free. That's pretty awesome. ACI Learning Transforming how companies train and technology professionals learn to fuel the modern workforce for premium training in Audit IT and cybersecurity readiness visit go dot aci learning.com/twit. That's go dot ACI learning.com/twit and use our special code TWIT 30 for 30% off a standard or premium individual IT Pro membership. We love what they're doing and we thank them for their support of Tech News Weekly. All right, so no more H B O, it's just Max.
V.O. (00:20:18):
Yeah. So <laugh> Warner Bros. Discovery Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Discovery has made the choice to ditch the H B O branding and go with a new streaming platform called Max. It announced it as we're recording this show just yesterday, and kind of talked about some of the upcoming stuff that will be part of the max launch. But what I found <laugh> interesting was how upset people were getting about this this change. <Laugh> and I, I,
Jason Howell (00:20:58):
It doesn't take much to upset. No,
V.O. (00:20:59):
Let's, no, I I mean, change, change is the thing that gets people upset, but indeed it's always fascinating when it's some, like you, <laugh>, H B O's been around for a long time. Yes. It's something that you pay for, and then you get to watch shows on it. And so I struggle, I guess what I'm saying is I struggle a little bit with the, with understanding how someone's identity can be tied up in it so much mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that they get so bent out of shape about the fact that <laugh>, you're getting rid of H B o part of this, what in the world, regardless of that, that's what's happening. The launch is going to happen May 23rd here in the United States. It'll come to other places later on. And I also, according to this variety article they're planning on launching an average of more than 40 new titles and TV show seasons every month. Wow. That's a lot.
Jason Howell (00:22:00):
Right? That is, I wonder how that compares to like Netflix, cuz Netflix in its heyday, and I think we're kind of beyond the Netflix heyday at this point. Yes. That, I mean, it, that felt like a reality. Yeah. It, there was so much streaming new stuff always into there, and, and so much of it was internally produced mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it wasn't just, you know, third party content that they got licensed for. And it got confusing, like at a certain point. Yeah. There's, it was just too overwhelming.
V.O. (00:22:24):
What, what do I even where, what's new? What's not Yeah. What's theirs, what's not, what's still available, what's been taken off, that kind of thing. They've definitely slowed down some, but there's still new content appearing there all the time. Sure. And that, that does kind of seem to be what H B O Max is doing, or excuse me, what Max is planning on doing. Hmm. what along with this change is going to be some changes in sort of the pricing and tier structure. So I wanna go over this. There are three, there are going to be three tiers. An ad light, an ad free, and an ultimate ad free. Sure. the ad light plan, of course, is going to cost the least amount of money at $9 and 99 cents a month, or a hundred dollars a year.
(00:23:11):
 You can have two people streaming at the same time. It's only 10 80 p resolution. You can't download anything. And then there's not Dolby Atmos for the sound, the ad free version, of course. It's just like the ad light version, except you don't have ads. You can do 30 offline downloads. So if, if what is an offline download, it just means that at any time, if you know you're going to be without Internet connection, you can download several episodes or movies and have those available for a certain period of time. You're
Jason Howell (00:23:47):
On a flight to Costa Rica, let's say
V.O. (00:23:49):
You're on Exactly. Yeah. And you don't wanna pay for the air the airplane's wifi or whatever. Right, right. That'll bring it up to 1599 or $150 a year. And then the Ultimate Ad Free Plan course has ad free content four concurrent streams, and that's the only one that features the 4K content with Dolby Atmos. So the, the pricing structure is interesting along with Warner, Warner Brothers discovery, making the change in in January to actually bring up the price of H HBO O Max at the time for the plan that didn't have ads, if you were on the ad supported plan, it was fine. I am a little curious, cuz I believe right now I get H B O Max through my at and t like that's my phone plan. Mm-Hmm. And as part of it, they offer H B O Max. So I'm curious how that is going to change if it is going to change. So I'll be keeping an eye out for that. If, if you're wondering what's on Max and what's going to be on Max, you've got Game of Thrones, the last of us, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, the Dark Knight Trilogy, a lot of very popular movie franchises, as well as a few television show television shows that have been pretty popular. But
Jason Howell (00:25:10):
Is this, that those shows are gonna be there in 4k or that those shows are only there?
V.O. (00:25:16):
Those shows I think are just only going to be there. Oh, wow.
Jason Howell (00:25:19):
What a bummer.
V.O. (00:25:20):
Because that's tho that, I mean, those,
Jason Howell (00:25:22):
That's their, they're premium stuff.
V.O. (00:25:24):
Exactly. For sure. Yeah. So that's already been a part of, of, you know, what they offer. I mean, let me be clear in terms of streaming, it's only going to be there if you want to buy it. They're still going to sell it in those different online stores. But as far as, hey, anytime I want to watch the two towers, I would need to have this plan. And it does say that the, the, you know, it's gonna continue to add more 4K content and we'll even try to do some theatrical releases. But of course there was a question of why are we getting rid of H B O? And it does sound like the biggest reason for this is kits. So they, when, when Warner Brothers Discovery was looking at this as a whole and knowing that on top of having the, the sort of classic H B O content that they've always had, but that it was going to be bringing in this, this content library that includes a lot of stuff for kids. The, I like the way that the CEO of Global streaming and games put it said it's not exactly where parents would eagerly drop off their kids talking about HBO O <laugh>. So, so the idea is like,
Jason Howell (00:26:42):
If HBO was a place that you could, your if, then
V.O. (00:26:45):
Yes, you wouldn't drop it off there. But Warner Brothers Discovery has a lot of kids characters, animation, all that kind of stuff that kids are into. So they want parents to be aware that in subscribing to Max, they can get the stuff they want. The kids can also get the stuff they want. Their worry is that if the parents, I guess, see H B O, then they think, oh, that's that racy stuff. That's that stuff that, you know Right. Would not be for the kids. But I did I did find it interesting as well, and I'm trying to find it now basically addressed directly that people can get kind of up in their feels about it. Casey boy's, chief Content officer of H B O and Max said, <laugh> and I quote the same people who are concerned today about taking H B O out of the name and a lot of cases are the same people who were outraged that H B O was put in the name in the first place that it was called HBO O Max.
(00:27:50):
It was a lot of how has, how was H B O going to be put next to the Big Bang theory? So I understand and appreciate the passion that people feel for the HBO O brand and protecting and believing. Nobody believes that more than me and my team. But as I said before, it's a premium brand. It is not designed to take on everything in library or in the streaming service. So very clearly saying like, yeah, we've heard those folks whining before, and everything worked out just fine at that point. So it's gonna be fine this time. I mean,
Jason Howell (00:28:19):
It's really, at the end of the day, it's
V.O. (00:28:21):
Just a name change. It's a name change <laugh>, it's just a name
Jason Howell (00:28:24):
Change. I mean, we got used to the Nintendo, we mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like there are bad names all over the
V.O. (00:28:29):
Place. When the iPad was the
Jason Howell (00:28:31):
Ipads, that was a Yes,
V.O. (00:28:32):
Exactly. I remember all of the conversations. Oh
Jason Howell (00:28:35):
Boy. Yes, I remember that
V.O. (00:28:36):
Too. And now it's just, you know, no,
Jason Howell (00:28:38):
It just is what it is. Yeah, exactly.
V.O. (00:28:40):
I think, you know, no one's going to be, ultimately, no one's going to be confused going, what, what is this? I don't know what this is. All of a sudden when the people who had H B O and wanted to continue to have H B O are going to know where they can get H B O through this subscription. So yeah, I, I guess it's, it's fun. It's fun and funny as sort of branding confusion when, or not a branding confusion, but sort of examining the fact that this has taken place and going, I wonder why they made this change. But as far as the company goes, I think they'll be fine. Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:29:22):
Do you remember when Netflix changed this name to Quickster?
V.O. (00:29:25):
No. <laugh>. Was that an April Fool's joke, or was that
Jason Howell (00:29:28):
No, this was a real thing and, and they, they ended up reverting it if I, if memory serves. This was God, when was this? I think it was like 20. Yeah, it was 2011. In fact, venture beat Davindra oi writing about it September 18th, 2011 on VentureBeat. Oh, wow. But yes, because they, because they felt they needed to have a different name for the D V D delivery service and the streaming service. And it did not last very long. But yes, quick Quickster spelled Q W I K S T E R, <laugh>.
V.O. (00:29:56):
Oh, that's terrible.
Jason Howell (00:29:58):
Yeah. I'm sorry.
V.O. (00:29:59):
W I, you
Jason Howell (00:30:00):
Know, name changes happen. Max is not the worst name change, although it feels very generic to me.
V.O. (00:30:06):
It, that is the one I agree. If, if in terms of a branding play, it does feel incredibly generic. Where are you, where do you watch that? On Max. Max
Jason Howell (00:30:16):
Who? Max
V.O. (00:30:17):
What? Max <laugh>.
Jason Howell (00:30:19):
Yeah. Max.
V.O. (00:30:19):
Who's Max? Yeah. Max Max
Jason Howell (00:30:22):
Delivers dvd. What's the, yeah, Blu-Rays to me. <Laugh>,
V.O. (00:30:25):
Sorry. Dvds. That's so lucky. Yes.
(00:30:28):
Max with the, with the B Blueray library right now. Discovery Plus is going to continue as a standalone service according to Variety. So for folks who are subscribed to just what Discovery Plus offers, you'll get to continue to watch. I believe that's HGTV Food Network Discovery Channel tlc, those shows will continue to be available through Discovery Plus. So you don't have to worry about in the sort of attempt to merge a lot of the content together. They're not going to drop that less expensive subscription because h or Discovery Plus is just 6 99 a month without ads, 4 99 a month with ads. So yeah, outside of sort of kicking HBO o to the side everything is remaining relatively the same. Okay. And I guess also congratulations to Warner Brothers Discovery for getting the max.com url. That's where you'll be able to find the services@max.com. So Max, the one to watch is the tagline there, what to watch. It's all here. Iconic series, award-winning movies, fresh originals, and family favorites.
Jason Howell (00:31:48):
Okay.
V.O. (00:31:49):
Start streaming May 23rd.
Jason Howell (00:31:51):
It doesn't upset me. Although H B O I have fond memories of H B O when I was a kid. No, no, no, no. That opening Yeah. Intro thing. Like, it's, it's permanently ingrained in my head. So, HBO o as a brand has a, has a long, like a, a long, I have a long felt affinity for HBO o as a brand cause it's been in my life for so long. So whatever Matt HBO you, do you Yeah. You wanna be Max, you want people to call you Max. Maybe that's Max is your new name.
V.O. (00:32:19):
We should think about it as like HBO O just wants to, wants to go. It's retire. Yeah. It's worked for so long.
Jason Howell (00:32:26):
H you know what HBO o just wants, wants to give itself brand new name <laugh>. It wants to be known differently. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's had that life. There you go. It's time for something new. Something new.
V.O. (00:32:35):
<Laugh>. So yes, max.com and folks with HBO O Max will see that rollover take place. And for the most part, at least for now, you won't see any changes in pricing or structure for yours. Like when it launches in May. That is gonna remain the same. I would imagine that at some point, just like any time a a cellular carrier gets new plans, you eventually get rolled over into the new plans. Yeah, yeah. But as it stands, that's just gonna stay how it is. All right. All righty. We've got another story of the week coming up involving artificial intelligence. Yeah. But more from like an environmental standpoint. Exactly. No, I think it's a kind of important. I agree. No, a hundred percent. I agree. But let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our sponsor. It's Delete Me.
(00:33:23):
No, no, don't delete me. It's the sponsor is Delete Me, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. I'm curious, are you dedicated to protecting the data inside your company's network? Well, what about the executive and employee data that's outside of your network, specifically designed for the enterprise? Delete me for business makes it simple to remove executive and employee personal data available on the Open Web. Bad actors will utilize publicly available data online in social engineering attacks. This includes data from sources like data brokers. This data is being effectively weaponized against executives and employees in ways security professionals may be overlooking, like easy access to employee personal data online and vulnerable data leads to potential harm. Doxing, harassment, social engineering and ransomware attacks increase with every volatile moment. So who is impacted by this data that's being exposed? Executives and board members are targeted and harassed online by cyber criminals, by ex-employees who use their family's personal data to get to them.
(00:34:33):
Executives have a 30% higher exposure risk than the average employee or public facing employees who may have their home addresses and affiliations exposed online by angry customers and other bad actors. And by individual contributors, personal email addresses and mobile numbers that are used to socially engineer their way into enterprise systems. Delete Me actively Monitors for and removes personally identifiable information for your employees to reduce enterprise risk, you can protect yourself and your employees and reduce risk with Delete Me. And just five easy steps. Employees, executives, and board members. Complete a quick signup, delete me scans for exposed personal information. You can opt out and remove all of this, this information. The, the Delete Me will actually go through the process of opt-out and removal requests. And then initial privacy reports are shared and ongoing reporting is initiated. So you'll get those updates and know, okay, this has been removed.
(00:35:33):
Delete Me provides continuous privacy protection and service all year long. I have to tell you, I can remember getting, and I know several of our several of my colleagues too have gotten text messages, and it's from someone claiming to be our C e O Lisa. And then the text message is signed by Lisa, which seriously text message signatures. That's so like 2000. But in, in doing so, you know, that information is available online enough to where they could find the c e o of the company and then try to pretend to be the CEO o of the company to reach out to me and know my name, and know my name tied to my phone number. And with Delete Me that can be taken care of. That information can be wiped away from these public data brokers. And that way you're not having these social engineering attacks happen.
(00:36:28):
So it's incredibly important to protect your business. And by protecting your employees, you then are protecting your business. So protect your employees and your organization by removing their personal data from online sources by going to join delete me.com/twi tv. That's join delete me.com/twit tv. And of course, our thanks to delete me for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right. We are back from the break, and I have a surprise for you. We're not doing a story of the week just yet. Not yet. I will wait. Yes. I'll stand down. It will come soon. But I am excited to say that the Washington Posts, Taylor Lorenz is here to talk to us about another Twitter competitor who has entered the race. Yes, they're everywhere these days. But there's another one here. Taylor, thank you so much for being here.
Taylor Lorenz (00:37:22):
Thanks so much for having me.
V.O. (00:37:24):
Yeah, it's great to get you on. So let's let's, first I think there are some folks who might not even know what Sub is. So if you could start by telling us about Sub before we get into sub notes, I would love that.
Taylor Lorenz (00:37:38):
Yeah. Subs is a newsletter platform. So it's basically allows you to amass of following a mailing list and easily send out newsletters to that mailing list. It's similar to things that we've had before, like Tiny Letter or MailChimp. Those are services people might have heard of before. The difference with Subs is that they have more network functionality built in. So they have a lot of recommendation systems. If you subscribe to one Subs, you can be recommended others. And now of course, they've built this Twitter competitor as part of their product as well.
V.O. (00:38:10):
Got it. So yeah, let's talk about Subs notes. Can you maybe give us a comparison, tock itself, sort of how it differs, and then as a competitor to Twitter tell us how it does compete.
Taylor Lorenz (00:38:27):
Yeah. Well, so subs Stack itself, again, is just a newsletter platform. So when you wanna write that long newsletter, you know, you wanna reach people in their you're gonna write a subset post. But then there's this short form content, right? A lot of people that are newsletter writers or journalists like myself who have cks that we use to promote our work. We might have little missives or we might wanna wanna share news on our beat, things like that. And so for that Subset Notes is exists now. And it's basically a Twitter clone looks, functions almost exactly like Twitter. You can what they call quote Stack, I think the equivalent of a quote tweet. And there you can po post short updates, links, photos, gifts, things like that to kind of have these more lightweight interactions with your audience. So far it's been pretty popular with big name writers. I think a lot of big subs, stackers have sort of used Twitter as their audience engagement platform because there was no way to really easily engage their audience in a short form way within. But now, with all of the chaos and Elon Banning, you know, people all the time and the crackdown, you know, that we've seen on Twitter in terms of free speech a lot of big people are moving Tock notes to, to engage with their audience and share interesting content.
V.O. (00:39:44):
So the one thing about sort of Twitter or Ma on, or any of these other social media networks that exist in this particular short mess, short missive space is that anyone can go on and create an account, join the platform, post their own gifs, post their own text, et cetera. Does CK notes work this way? Or is it a, a posting platform for the journalist for the person who has a CK newsletter? I guess in, in, in other words, if I don't have a CK newsletter, can I join CK notes to post my own stuff and also follow other people that are posting things?
Taylor Lorenz (00:40:27):
Of course, you just need a subs account. So it's kind of like Twitter where you sign up for a Twitter account and you can begin posting with subs as well. You can begin posting as soon as you have a subs account. And a lot of readers have subs accounts because they're following multiple subs stockers. So they have an account with the platform already, and they can easily participate in those conversations. I mean, subs notes is for readers to engage as well as the content creators themselves. So, you know, you might, you'd have to set up a sub account, but you don't have to like be publishing a newsletter or anything like that.
V.O. (00:41:02):
Okay. That's good to know. Now, there was some interesting controversy which surprise if Twitter's involved <laugh> where when announced sub notes on April 5th something happened at Twitter where you weren't able to find content through search. Tell us a little bit about what, what happened after CK announced CK notes or maybe even a little bit leading up to announcement.
Taylor Lorenz (00:41:34):
Yeah, so subs announces notes you know, they say, Hey, look, we're coming up with this. I don't think they framed it as a Twitter competitor. They just, even though it obviously is. But they just said like, we have this new way to engage our audience, build on our product, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, that did not sit well with Elon who got extremely upset and banned. Not only did he ban subs like the U R L to any sub, any subs newsletter, he also banned news articles from search that were about this topic, which is just an whoa, unprecedented level of censorship on a major social platform. I mean, it's to, to ban from search, you know, a, a news article simply because of the content covers a competitor is really aggressive. I mean, look, it's within Elon's purview to block links to a competitive site.
(00:42:30):
You know, they famously Twitter cutoff access to Instagram early on where of course you can still share an Instagram link, but it doesn't auto-populate. The difference is with subs, you couldn't even click out to people's subs links. So this was a huge, you know, this is, it's really big blow to independent journalism and independent voices and free speech. And so people obviously set off a huge controversy, and you saw a lot of people who value independent journalism and free speech running Tock, because CK has a really good track record on those things. So it's been a lot of drama. Also, you know, Hamish, one of the co-founders of CK famously worked with Elon previously at Tesla. So I think that there is, you know, Elon is, is known for drama, and I think that there might be some competition there.
V.O. (00:43:17):
Yes. Now, l i I, I know that this is going to be a question that ends up cropping up. Whenever you say that Twitter banned these links or banned these these, these news pieces, what does that mean in effect? And how was someone able to discover that that was the case? Was it someone within Twitter that said, yeah, we, we, we clicked a button and there was suddenly a filter for this content? Or was No,
Taylor Lorenz (00:43:43):
No, no. It wasn't someone within No, it was the users. I mean, obviously this had a huge effect on the platform. I mean, you have independent journalists and, and, and content creators. The lifeblood of Twitter sharing links to their articles, their subs, newsletter articles, and users, when they try to click that link, are blocked from clicking it. It says it's an unsafe link, and you're unable to access that content. And then, you know, with our article, Mya article, I wrote about subs notes and had my article, you know, blocked where you could put the link, normally you can put a link and search for it in Twitter and, and find it. And when you tried to link search it because of the content, because it, because the article was about subs it was blocked from search. There was no way to find out, find that link anywhere through search.
(00:44:31):
Actually, even if you search the word ck you were blocked from seeing the results that, you know, for subs. You were instead directed to a separate search term for newsletter, and CK was blocked from Thats those search results. So in multiple different ways, you know, this is censoring and, and it's really, as a journalist, I think any journalist, we rely so much on, you know, free speech and the ability to share our work on Twitter. It was shocking, you know, especially because so many of us use Subec to promote our work and to expand on our articles and, you know, have debate. And you've seen a lot of big name journalists such as Casey Newton from The Verge, for instance, that have left mainstream media companies to become independent through subs, and now their work is completely, you know, cut off.
V.O. (00:45:22):
Yes. now going down that route you, in talking about journalists who have used subs as a means of promoting their work and are using notes you did speak to some folks who sort of had some thoughts about where notes was going to fit in for them. Could you talk a little bit, a little bit about what their plans are for CK Notes and if you're seeing many folks sort of view the platform as a means of replacing Twitter or as a supplement to Twitter, or maybe even going, you know what, this is not going to be something that I'm using.
Taylor Lorenz (00:46:03):
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people are abandoning Twitter. I mean, famously <laugh> Matt Taibbi, who previously was basically doing PR for Elon and now, you know, has abandoned the platform and there's bad blood. I think subs notes for now is a supplement to Twitter. I think Twitter, the, the value of Twitter, I love this tweet by Joe, Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg. He recently said, you know, like, until you can tweet in an airline or, you know, get a refund or something from, on another platform, like Twitter is still the default. Basically, I'm, I'm butchering it so badly. But the, the point is, is that there's this network effect and there's no other social platform that every major government agency, every you know, brand, big brand and big media company has a presence on. So Twitter is incredibly powerful, and I think Elon has sought to dismantle that network. I think he has, you know, part of what he seems to wanna be doing with Twitter is to kind of, you know, cen journalists cut down on people's free expression drive brands away for some reason. I, I don't understand sort of that thinking because you, you, you know, he requires advertising money, but I, I don't know, I thi I think basically subset notes could be a viable competitor if Twitter continues down this road and becomes essentially unusable for these power users.
V.O. (00:47:32):
And my last question for you, how, for you does sub Stack notes compare to some of the other options out there? Like Mastodon, like t2, like Spark? Is it, I can't re there's so many now. There's so many. But how does it compare in your minds to those platforms? And do you think that itself, even though I didn't mention it in the announcement for it, do you think that CK itself sees notes as a potential replacement for Twitter?
Taylor Lorenz (00:48:07):
Well, I think subs would love if Notes became a, you know, <laugh> replacement for Twitter. It just, it goes back to exactly what I was saying about the network effect. Like it is, it's not just the functionality of Twitter, right? Like, there's all these twi I mean, truth, social famously gab, right? Like, these have the same functionality as Twitter, but they don't have the user network. And that's what's really valuable, is the fact that every government, you know, agency, every you know, notable, all these notable people that took a really long time to build. And you have to remember, Twitter emerged in this time where people were really optimistic about social media, and they wanted to be, you know, in conversation with followers and the public and feedback and stuff. I, I think if a new social platform launches today, as we've seen with notes, t2, all these things, it's gonna be a huge uphill battle.
(00:48:57):
I think now we're seeing these legacy institutions retreat. They do not wanna hear feedback from the public. They're trying to make themselves as sort of a, as least available as possible online. So I think it's gonna be really hard to recruit people to something like that. I think it seems like people are splintering, right? Subs might be a place for journalists and intellectual debate, things like that. And some of these other platforms might be good for, you know, I know Maidan has a strong tech and open source community, so I think we might see a fracturing. I don't know that one will emerge as the true replacement.
V.O. (00:49:33):
Understood. Well, te Lorenz, I wanna thank you so much for your time today for joining us. Of course, folks can head over to the Washington Post to read some of your work. Where else should folks go to find the work that you're doing including your CK
Taylor Lorenz (00:49:48):
Yes, I was about to say Taylor lorenz.sub.com. I have a book out this fall called Extremely Online. It's available for pre-order. You can find that on my subs, find the link. So yeah, find me, find me online on any, I'm Taylor Lorenz on every other platform. <Laugh>.
V.O. (00:50:07):
Awesome. Thank you so much. I will definitely be pre-ordering that book. And we appreciate you for joining us today.
Taylor Lorenz (00:50:14):
Thanks for having me.
V.O. (00:50:15):
Thank you, Taylor. Appreciate it. All right. Coming up my story of the week, we talked about it earlier, <laugh>, it's gonna come up next after, after a short break. We're gonna talk about the environmental
Jason Howell (00:50:26):
Footprint of artificial intelligence. I think it's an important conversation. So that's coming up. But first, this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by decisions. Decisions Gives IT and business experts, the tools to automate anything in your company, all within one no code platform, no code to deal with it's awesome decisions is proven to fix any business process and prepare you to withstand economic uncertainty. Recession resilience. It requires a deliberate management of resources and the flexibility to adapt at a moment's notice The decision's, no code environment makes it easy for your team to collaborate, to build and adjust workflows, dynamic forms, decisioning processes that fit your unique and ever-changing business needs. And it's especially important with today's IT talent shortage, right? We want to be more effective with what we have. And so automation can help that. Decisions process automation software is a complete toolkit.
(00:51:27):
It allows developers and business users alike to build applications and automations with no code required. Their no code platform is powerful. It includes robust rules and workflow engines, and a host of pre-built integrations so that you're not starting from square one that connect to any legacy system via api. All within a simple drag and drop visual interface design. Really easy to understand. It can be deployed on-prem or in the cloud. You know, it's not very long ago that we experienced the pandemic and everything related to that, and companies were actually caught pretty flat-footed when that all began, right? But decisions, customers were fully equipped to respond. One of the country's largest private banks built an entire P p P loan application process for small businesses affected by covid 19. All it took them was just two days. They were the first to market.
(00:52:23):
They issued $1 billion in loans before their competitors even got started. Pretty amazing decisions lets you customize workflows to automate the small decisions, producing faster results with greater accuracy that allows your team to focus on the really important decisions, scale your business to better serve your customers while reducing operational costs and saving your team valuable time. Here's just one great example of how decisions automation software can help Otis Elevator. They implemented decisions to run daily pulse checks across their 2 million units, their 2 million elevators operating globally by finding potential problems before they occur. They avoid downtime, they manage their service technicians more efficiently. As a result, if you happen to be riding in an Otis elevator, you can rest assured you're gonna arrive safely to your destination. So we've got this recession. Seems like it's approaching, right. We're still kinda monitoring things. Things don't feel very solid at the moment.
(00:53:24):
The durability of a business's foundation will directly impact how its performance and ability you know, is how it's capable of surviving this. How strong is your foundation? Super important to ask yourself. Decisions can help decisions. Automation platform provides the solution to any business challenge, automating anything and changing everything to improve your company's speed to market. Your company's financial growth as well, and your operational success. They help industry leaders alleviate bottlenecks and automate pain points in their business. So you can do what you do best and change the world. To learn more about decisions, no code automation platform and scope, your free proof of concept, all you gotta do is visit decisions.com/twit. That's decisions.com/twit. And we thank them for their support of Tech News Weekly. All right. Large language models, they're neat and all, don't get me wrong. You know, I'm, I'm following 'em.
(00:54:24):
Even while I was away, I was still kinda like reading some articles on AI because the news just doesn't slow down, especially when it, when it has to do with ai. But they're also very energy intensive. And there's this new research that points to just how energy intensive they actually are. Because at the heart of it all are these massive data centers, right? They all need to be cooled, very warm rooms, many, many machines. How do you cool them and how do you do it responsibly? Well, researchers from the University of Colorado Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington are behind this research report that's called Making AI Less Thirsty. And the report found that a chat G P T conversation was roughly equivalent to pouring a large bottle of water on the ground if you had to put it into terms.
(00:55:15):
Basically open that bottle of water, pour it out on the ground. That's your conversation. That's your one conversation with chat. G P t Oh, to train G P T three, the amount of clear freshwater needed is the same as that needed to fill a nuclear reactor's, cooling tower <laugh>. Whoa. And now I should also specify, these are estimations. Of course, OpenAI has not released the normal training time, so there's no exact sense of the amount of time required to train for G P T three. So the, the, in order to do the report, they had to do some estimations. What they found is when they looked to Microsoft, which had said that its latest supercomputer has 10,000 graphic cards, more than 285,000 process records that gave them kind of a place to start. And figuring out the scale of these things, of these kinds of operations throughout these data centers, though, this would also assume that training happens in Microsoft's US data center, right?
(00:56:12):
Right. And Microsoft's probably more efficient than I'm guessing what open AI has at this point. Mic, Microsoft's been doing this for a heck of a lot longer probably has their systems refined great, greatly by comparison. So that kind of points to open AI probably being up to three times higher water consumption by comparison, potentially, right? It's all kind of a guess, but this is, this is what the report was all about. And then of course, as that system gets bigger, it gets better, more powerful these demands increase even further. So that's kind of where we're at. I mean, the need of, of fresh water to cool data centers. This is nothing new, right? Like data centers are a thing. The need for, you know, this, this discussion has been a discussion for a long time. I think what these researchers wanted to do was shine a light on this, this, this quick movement towards this next big thing. Artificial intelligence, what it takes to train these systems. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and the, yeah, the environmental impact of, of all of that. I, I mean, I remember, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we were having these conversations about crypto, crypto mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, and so, but, so it's good to, to take a look at these things and to, to get an understanding of it and to put it into terms that people can understand. These
V.O. (00:57:33):
Are, you know, it's, it's how many full size lasagnas does Garfield eat terms? You know what I mean? <Laugh>, I can at least understand the scope of that.
Jason Howell (00:57:44):
Yeah. Like pouring out a bottle, giant bottle of water that for a single query, it's like, God, do I need to do that query? I don't
V.O. (00:57:50):
What I like bottle of water. What I like about this is that it has a, the, the focus of it is not necessarily on the individual. And that it is on, this is the kind of research that I think is important is when we focus more on the corporation side of things. Because there's there a lot of people, you know, they recycle, they try to be sustainable, this, that and the other. And what all of the numbers show is that individual responsibility makes such a little impact because businesses and corporations continue to skirt the rules or not skirt the rules cuz they're following the rules, but to the letter of the rule, right? And that is where the impact needs to happen. That is where,
Jason Howell (00:58:37):
Because little responsibility is there, they really need to and put that responsibility on the end user as
V.O. (00:58:42):
A result. Yes. And that is, we've seen, that's not going to make a difference. Right. And the the, the science continue, the, the numbers continue to show that that does not make a difference. And so not enough. It's, yeah. Not enough of a difference. And so it's important that we do have this focus. I think, you know, because I don't understand everything that goes into sort of water processing, but I was thinking about how when a company, so I know that the, the big issue at one point with the drought that has been long longtime drought in California was that the water bottlers were taking water from sort of California's system and then shipping it to other places. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because they were, they sell water. And so the water was quite literally leaving the state. And that is an issue.
(00:59:35):
But if a person is taking a shower or washing or, or you know, watering their plants, well, watering their plants is a little bit different, but let's go taking a shower, it is showering and then it is going into the drain, and then it is going back into the water system, right. To be recycled again. So that is one aspect, you know, the water cycle is actually working as it's intended versus in the case of the, the bottlers where they're taking it out of the state. And I guess what I'm saying is I'm appreciative of the focus here. Cause I think that it's being put on the right, it's being put in the right place. And then as you said, sort of trying to understand that impact. Cuz just yesterday on Windows Weekly, Paul Tht was talking about how Microsoft was working on making xboxs, or has been for some time worked on making Xboxs more energy efficient mm-hmm.
(01:00:33):
<Affirmative> and how it was, there was this whole sort of low power mode and this and that and the other. And again, then it was sort of individual responsibility that doesn't make that big of an impact. But there was a way for the corporation to sort of get the best of both worlds in introducing an active hours aspect. So during the hours of, you know, depending on when you play, let's say you get home from work and you play till it's time to go to bed, which that's a lot of play, but we'll just say 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM those are your active hours where you're most likely playing the Xbox during those hours. The Xbox is running at full capacity, but then overnight it can go into like full hibernation mode and then that saves energy and it does that at a global scale because all of the xboxs that are plugged in and working can make use of that feature.
(01:01:28):
 Apple has done this now in regions that support it. There's a charging functionality where it does its best to not take a charge until it is a period of time where the grid is running on sustainable energy mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so it uses a bunch of information, you know, all these databases that have an understanding of the power structure and the surrounding area. And then when the hours are such that part of the grid is being powered through those sustainable resources, that's when it will charge your device. And so those are changes that the corporation can make that in effect are resulting in individual users getting to also participate in making that change. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I like when it could both come together. But I don't know if, if it, does it make me a terrible person, <laugh> if I'm using chat g p t as long as I'm not taking that bottle of water at the same time and also dumping it out.
Jason Howell (01:02:34):
Yeah. I don't know. Twice as much water dump twice,
V.O. (01:02:36):
Twice as much water.
Jason Howell (01:02:38):
I mean they, they all, they do point out that at least you know, this, this article on Gizmoto pointed out, I'm not sure if it's part of the report itself, but you know, some municipalities kind of similar to what you're talking about, encourage off-hour usage of things like dishwashers mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you know, so how do you translate that into something like this? While if training an AI is so intensive and, and requires so much, you know, the, the, the kind of the amount of water to cool based on those operations happening mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, if that can be moved and, and that's not something that has to happen immediately. Right. Like the, there could be off peak hours. Right. Right. Where things like that are ran to kind of offset things a little bit, you know. But again, it goes back to putting the responsibility in the hands of the companies that are behind kind of creating these systems and not then just like pawning it off onto the user.
(01:03:37):
 There was a documentary on, I think it was on Netflix that our family watched a handful of years ago and one of the, one of the episodes focused on the recycling industry and how, you know, recycling that was one of the points that they made, which was, you know, the, what they effectively did is they took the responsibility out of the hands of any of the businesses that choose to, you know, create these bottles that either can or cannot be recycled, whatever, and put this complicated mess in the hands of individual users to figure out. Meanwhile, shocking. Right? Yeah. Meanwhile, you know, there's all these recycling numbers on the bottom of your, of your plastic items and which makes you think they can all be recycled. Yeah. But they're just matched up with each other. But meanwhile it's like two of them can, the rest of them are total junk and then, and we are the ones that are shamed because of it,
V.O. (01:04:24):
You know? Yes. And when it gets to the recycling center, then because everybody there is also jaded. Yeah. Then it's just like, well, we're throwing out this whole batch cuz it's been ruined and so then it doesn't end up working in the end anyway. And it sh and honestly it's sh it's really kind of frustrating to me that I'm only just quite literally, I think it was a couple of weeks ago where I was in the store for the first time in a long time cuz I usually have the groceries delivered. I was at the store and I walked by and I saw like a, a major brand, say Windex, I don't think it was Windex, but we'll just go with that. That had a bottle and next to it were some little tablets that you put into the bottle and then you add your own water mm-hmm.
(01:05:05):
<Affirmative> and, you know, we've had on the network a sponsor Blueland Yep. Who's been doing that for a long time. Amazon started doing that with their own brands. It is mind boggling to me that these companies have not faster to make that a norm. It should, it saves them money because they're not having to ship as much Yep. By having to ship containers filled with water that we could just add ourselves. I know this is completely going off the topic of what we're we're talking about right now, but it is, it is so wild to me how much there's just this punt to, oh, the next person down the line will handle it. The next person down the
Jason Howell (01:05:40):
Line will handle it keeps happening at a certain point. There's no one to handle, no
V.O. (01:05:43):
One to handle it. <Laugh> and China is, you know, it used to be the world's dump. And I don't mean, I mean that in the sense that quite literally they used to take all of the the world Yeah. Many, much of the world's recycling, much of the, and they saw how that impacted the way, this is one sort of theory about it that they saw how that impacted the way that other countries looked at them and their position and everything. So they stopped taking a lot of it, which had a huge impact Yes. On how the recycling system works in the United States. Yeah.
Jason Howell (01:06:16):
Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. So I mean, I think this is, you know, I saw this article and kind of thought about AI a little bit differently. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know that it makes you or I a bad person for using these systems. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there are a million different things in our lives that we're using that are probably, you know, bad for the environment. It's just a fact
V.O. (01:06:37):
Of we are bad for the environment.
Jason Howell (01:06:38):
Yeah. Right. Living is, you get down to it. That's that's absolutely true. But <laugh> but understanding these things can, you know, potentially change behavior
V.O. (01:06:48):
Because at the
Jason Howell (01:06:48):
Very we can small changes,
V.O. (01:06:50):
If you get enough people who are on that same mindset, that is what can lead to effective policy changes. Sure. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so it's not so much about, oh, I'm going to use this system less, but it's when the next time you see sort of a conversation about it and you start to spread that information and people are going, we want to use this, but now all of Theis are having to disclose. Mm-Hmm. here's our, because we're seeing that with with, with airplane, you know, the, now there are all of these ways that you can offset your own costs, your own what is it, c is it co, whatever
Jason Howell (01:07:29):
You know, carbon footprint.
V.O. (01:07:30):
Yeah, carbon offset. Co2. Thank you. Yeah. Offset. You can buy offsets for your tickets. And then Shopify has an app called Shop a sort of a system called Shop. And if you make purchases using Shopify, then they automatically do offsets for you. Etsy, I believe is another company where they do offsets for every purchase that you make for the shipping. So that has happened because A, those companies want to look good and how do they look good? They look good by giving the users what they want and what the users want is to feel good about not having as much of an impact on the environment. Right. And so then we start to have this, this full sea change because aware of, oh, AI was not a place where I was thinking about my carbon impact. So maybe down the line we're gonna see open AI go here is how much carbon, you know, we used in training this, we've got it trained now, so it's not using as much. But every time you type in a, in a request, you know it's using this much then people can offset if they want to. Or even open AI can make that part of the program. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is great that this attention is being focused. Yeah. Keep doing it.
Jason Howell (01:08:43):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Keep it up. Keep it up. All right, well we've reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. We do this show every Thursday. All you gotta do is go to twi.tv/tnw if you haven't already. If you go there, you'll find all the ways to subscribe and yeah, then you get it like magic every single week.
V.O. (01:09:01):
Something else that's magic is Club TWiT at twit tv slash club twit. Head there and consider subscribing starting at $7 a month or $84 per year. When you subscribe to Club TWiT, you get several great things. First, every single TWiT show with no ads. It's all the content, none of the ads, because you in effect, become the supporter of the sponsor of the show. You also get access to the TWiT plus bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show TWIT events, all sorts of stuff gets published into that feed. And then you get the key to the Club TWiT Discord server. You can join the club and chat with your fellow club TWiT members and also those of us here at twit. It's a fun place to hang out, share animated images and share links and all sorts of stuff.
(01:09:51):
Get your questions answered in many cases. So much fun at twit.tv/club twit. On top of that, you also are going to get some great shows. There's the Untitled Linux Show, which is, as you might imagine, a show all about Linux for all of you Linux lovers out there. You also get access to the Hands-on Windows program, that is Paul TH's show, where he covers Windows, tips, tricks, and everything else. And I'm really looking forward to some episodes that will make their way down the pipeline regarding registry editing. So for those of you who like to really get behind the scenes and make changes to your Windows machine I know that's somewhere in the pipeline, you also get access to Hands On Mac. That is my show. It's a short format show with tips and tricks for all of your devices. So right now I'm doing a series with Mac Os for text.
(01:10:45):
 Wow, what am I trying to say? Keyboard shortcuts is the phrase. So it's all sorts of, of text editing changes, text replacement, and you know, every, every little keyboard shortcut you might want to use that you may not have heard about. That's Hands On Mac. And then there's also Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geek. So if you want Home Theater Geeks, ah so if you want to learn about the home theater, what are the latest and greatest televisions and, and sound systems and have your questions answered there. You can also watch Home Theater Geeks, all part of Club TWiT, Twit tv slash club twit. If you'd like to follow me online you can find me at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network or head to chiwawa.coffee, that's C hhi H hoa h hoa.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Please check out Hands on Mac later today. If you are a Club TWiT member, check out on Sunday. Ask the tech guys this week featuring Scott Wilkinson. Yes, the home theater geek himself. And on Tuesdays you can watch iOS Today, which I record with Rosemary Orchard, who was just here in person with us this past week. It was great to have her here all the way from the uk. Such a blessing to get to join her in person for a few shows. And with that I'm handing things off to Jason Powell <laugh>.
Jason Howell (01:12:11):
Let me, let me see if I can remember cuz it was very disconnected to social while I was gone at Jason Howell on Twitter twi social slash at Jason Howell on Mastodon. And that's really it. But you're not gonna see a whole lot of activity cuz I just have not been very active. I still gotta get myself out of vacation Brain. I'm working on that. You can find me on all about Android every Tuesday, TWIT tv slash AAA. And yeah, I think that's that's about it. That's all the news that we have for today. So thanks so much for watching and listening. We'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody. It was like a magnet.
V.O. (01:12:51):
Yeah.
Jonathan Bennett (01:12:56):
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet, bunch of game consoles, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk. But you already knew all that. What you may not know is that TWiT now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Linox Show. Whether you're a Linox Pro, a burgeoning ciit man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on The Club TWiT Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Lennox skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club TWiT Exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a Club TWiT member yet. We'll go to twit.tv/club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.