This Week in Tech Episode 862 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. 

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech. Oh, we got a great panel for you. Editor in chief from CNET Connie Cuglielmo is here. Turns out I didn't realize this. She was also at the, there at the beginning of Wired magazine. We'll talk a little bit about that from w G V H in Boston. And of course, MacBreak weekly. Andy Ihnatko stops by and from the register do co UK. Iain Thompson will talk about the main streaming of crypto, the web telescope receiving its first photos, the Samsung galaxy tab. It's so big. Is it a laptop replacement? And France says, go ahead, take our meta. It's all coming up next on to it.

... (00:00:45):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:55):
This is TWiT this in tech episode, 862 recorded Sunday, the February 13th, 2022, a game old bird, a reminder to all our TWiT listeners. It's our annual survey time. Once again, to help us understand our audience a little bit better, we wanna make your listening experience better and also helps us sell advertising. We don't wanna track you so it's completely voluntary, but if you can take a few minutes to let us know a little more about you, we sure appreciate it. Go to TWiT.tv/survey 22. And thanks in advance. This episode of This Week in Tech is brought to you by mint mobile. If saving more and spending less is one of your top goals for 2022. Switching to ho is the easiest way to save this year. Get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month and get the plan shipped to your door for free.

Leo Laporte (00:01:51):
Go to mint, mobile.com/TWiT, and by better help join over 1 million people. Who've taken charge of their mental health. As a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting better help.com/TWiT and by worldwide technology and Intel with an innovative culture. Thousands of it, engineers, application developers, unmatched labs and integration centers for testing and deploying technology at scale WWT helps customers bridge the gap between strategy and execution. To learn more about WWT, visit wwt.com/TWiT and by checkout.com modern businesses need flexible payment systems that can help them adapt to change, grow and scale. Fast. checkout.com is a lead eating cloud based global payment solution provider request a free no commitment demo at checkout.com/TWiT It's time for TWiT this week at tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news with a panel of brillIaint journalists, we're thrilled to get Connie Gomo back on our microphones editor in chief of CNET, big shot. Look at that beautiful set. It's marvelous. Thank you for being here, Connie.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:03:14):
My pleasure.

Leo Laporte (00:03:14):
I say that because I was always jealous of SNET CS studio. It looked, it always looks beautiful.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:03:22):
Well, not for the past two years cause we haven't gone. Right? I

Leo Laporte (00:03:25):
Miss it. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you about that in a second. But first let's say hi to Annie and ACO. You know him as host of MacBreak weekly, he's here slumming with us on TWiT. It's nice to have you.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:37):
No, no, it's it's it's it's, it's nice to have something to do professionally on a Sunday, cuz otherwise it's like, you know what? It's three, but I bet I could sleep for another two hours.

Leo Laporte (00:03:45):
This is a good day to shop because the streets will be empty. Yes, because everybody's watching some game or other Andy of course the host of the material podcast regular Mac break weekly and regular w GB H in Boston on other things. This would've been a good time, Andy, to announce your, the launch of your gIaint new project. But

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:05):
Yes, yes. In the middle of the super bowl, when nobody's paying attention to anything,

Leo Laporte (00:04:09):
That's exactly

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:11):
That I would be consistent with my business acumen and self promotion, but I'll give you that

Leo Laporte (00:04:16):
Also with his Iain Thompson, from the register.co.uk. My favorite Brit. Hi Iain.

Iain Thomson (00:04:22):
Hey, how's it going?

Leo Laporte (00:04:23):
You're the Ted lasso of Ttech. No way, but that's that's I got it wrong, but anyway, welcome. Good to have you was fun. You don't care about hand egg or whatever it is. They call this super bowl.

Iain Thomson (00:04:34):
Oh, well the runny kicky throwy game. It's ah, it's, it's fun. I'm just astonished that you manage to stretch a one hour game out to four hours of adverts, but

Leo Laporte (00:04:45):
You said that on TWiTtter and I had to point out that somebody did the mass it's quartz actually, and there's only 11 minutes of action in a normal football game.

Iain Thomson (00:04:56):
It, it doesn't yeah, doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, the way you've got the rules set up, it seems to be an awful of just hanging around, waiting for singers, dancers, advertisers, to get them, to get their money in. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:05:07):
If you go to a American football game there, and I noticed this at a 49ers game, there's a guy with big orange gloves. They go to his elbow, gIaint orange gloves. And I asked my wife who's that? She said it that's the TV timeout guy. And they watch this guy. He's got big orange gloves because he is listening to New York and they say, okay, stop. We got a commercial. And he goes, wait with his big orange gloves. And then they watch him until he says, okay, you could begin again. And they're just standing around TV commercials are the most important as you can tell. In fact, I think Connie, you agree that TV commercials, the most important part of the super bowl?

Connie Cuglielmo (00:05:49):
Well, somebody has to pay all of those salaries and for whatever it costs to rent a stadium. I don't know that that's a lot of money.

Leo Laporte (00:05:56):
Do you wanna know how much it costs to buy an ad on the super bowl? Sure. Six and a half million for 30 seconds. Oh good

Iain Thomson (00:06:04):
Grief.

Leo Laporte (00:06:05):
Six and a half million for 30 seconds. And

Iain Thomson (00:06:09):
They

Leo Laporte (00:06:10):
Apparently used this opportunity to announce that their 5g was five gigs.

Iain Thomson (00:06:17):
Hmm. I don't think that's how are they still asking their dancers to dance for the exposure? Not for free to get paid for

Leo Laporte (00:06:23):
Free. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (00:06:24):
Which is shameful. Yeah. You know?

Leo Laporte (00:06:27):
Yeah. Anyway, that's fine. You know, it's an American pastime and so of course capitalism rules. It's number one. It's the number one job of of capitalism. So

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:40):
Can I, can I just say in American football's defense that when our guys throw to the ground and appear to be injured, they, they are actually suffering lifelong debilitating

Leo Laporte (00:06:50):
Careers.

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:50):
That's good point. Not like this. Ooh, my knee, my knee,

Leo Laporte (00:06:52):
My knee for American football fans. When we watch UK ball, we watch soccer, the guy is running fast. Somebody touches him. He falls to the ground and rides in agony. We think, what is he talking about?

Iain Thomson (00:07:08):
Ah, but you see there, there's the rub. You're watching soccer, soccer, which is basically a game of people. Yes. Who will cheerfully dive in front of the referee if they think it gets, if it gets from a, a point rugby on the other hand, which means Get her, you know, I've seen a guy with his ear half ripped off, back on his head, run back out to the field. Exactly. Another one punched his knee cap back into play after getting it into

Leo Laporte (00:07:33):
Oh, oh

Iain Thomson (00:07:35):
Yeah. At least

Leo Laporte (00:07:37):
Soccer armor armored, as you say, but rugby players, man, they're on their own. You go out there and good luck.

Iain Thomson (00:07:42):
Well, they've got a British rugby team and an American football team to play each other's games. And they both came out of it saying that each person had each the opposite, had it harder because the rugby players, like with all this armor on you couldn't really muck someone up. And the American football players was I not wearing armor. I'm gonna get really maxed up. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:08:04):
I remember and it wasn't that long ago, maybe, I don't know, 20 years ago the very first technology advertisement on the super bowl. And I think it was pets dot. No it wasn't pets.com.

Iain Thomson (00:08:18):
Didn't apple do the 1986. Exactly. Super bowl. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:08:22):
Okay. That would be a tech advertiser. You're right. And then there was no, I

Connie Cuglielmo (00:08:26):
Don't know if that was the first one though.

Leo Laporte (00:08:27):
Well, I think it was, and there was a long drought after that. Maybe I'm thinking the first internet advertiser. Ah, okay. On the super bowl because really, I mean apple, IBM you know, the big ter companies probably have been doing that for a long time.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:08:44):
Pets.Com still though had a great tagline, which is because pets can't drive.

Leo Laporte (00:08:53):
I think the I'm trying to remember the, I guess what I should say is really the first.com, right. That would be more pro because then because then, you know, like the internet has come of age when they have dot coms. Now they're all over the super bowl. I mean, that's all you see is.com advertisers. Here's a list from business insider of eight.com spent millions on super bowl ads and no longer exist. And number one, look at the dogie hold the mic, pets.com.

Andy Ihnatko (00:09:25):
It was a bizarre idea. I mean, it's on level level of Uber for bad economics, but yes, it's

Leo Laporte (00:09:32):
In 2000, there was a ill, super bowl commercial for a company called epidemic.com. I don't think they would do well these days.

Andy Ihnatko (00:09:43):
Yeah. There's a, there's a whole, there's there's a New York times article from the weekend, basically calling it the crypto bowl for all the commercials this year, ITD be all crypto blockchain at some point.

Leo Laporte (00:09:51):
Yeah. I'm not sure. I think that actually I'm curious, maybe this be our first topic of the day. Crypto really has gone mainstream. In fact there's a stadium in Los Angeles, not where the super Bowl's being played. That's SoFi stadium, but the state, the old staple center is now crypto.com arena. Crypto has gone mainstream. I worry that there are a lot. That means they're gonna be a lot more suckers. Yeah. But maybe whenever I say that, I, my kids say, okay, boomer Connie, where do you come down on NFTs blockchain, crypto?

Connie Cuglielmo (00:10:26):
I, I mean, your point is correct. They have become much more mainstream. People know what crypto is and they know what Bitcoin is or coin base and all that stuff. Do I think the, oh, that means that there's massive opportunities for scams. Absolutely. Yeah, there are no, there are no experts who can tell you there are purported experts. I think we were gonna talk about some scams online who claim that they can give you advice on how to buy and sell crypto. But it it's the early days, it's the wild, wild west and in the wild wild west who makes the money. Most of the people are the people selling the picks and shovels, right? Not the people who are doing the shoveling. So it's early days and there's gonna be a lot of scams.

Leo Laporte (00:11:10):
And I think because it's early days, a lot of the people, including maybe some super bowl advertisers who are really promoting crypto and FTS and all this are, are the people who got in early who want to sell and make dollars off of the crypto as opposed to people who really are believers. But then there are. And I, I agree there are the true believers and certainly blockchain is not gonna go away. Cryptocurrencies, who knows maybe the future of currency. I'm not saying that. I just think that a lot of speculation is going on and that means risk. The other big advertiser on on the super bowl. It's been on NFL all season is you know, fantasy sports and betting gambling. I think they go hand in hand gambling, crypto, you know, two sides of the same coin. You think? So, Andy, you agree.

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:57):
Well, well, one, one of the, one of the biggest advertisers of all like big time sports has always been financial services companies. True. And this is part of crypto. It's not just the idea of people who are investors, who are trying to get, or even basic people who are trying to get in and trying to make money off of a off of crypto exchanges. But also it's an opportunity for all of these exchanges to get in new customers and make money, not necessarily off of cryptocurrency itself, but off of all the fees and services that they can charge investors. So there's, and on top of everything else, although I agree 100% that there's a, there's a very, very double digit percentage. I, I think that that's motivated by, we need to have a new wave of suckers come in to prop up the earlier waves of suckers and the initial waves that now of now millionaires and billionaires.

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:43):
But a lot of it is that we are really still at the age where people understand a lot. It's still absolutely mumbo jumbo to so many people last week on on Boston and PR. I talked about the of course about the crypto, about the crypto laundering arrests. And I thought that I had laid the groundwork very, very well, but the basic understanding of what a digital currency is, what a crypto based currency is and how it works. That's, it's kind of like trying to explain personal computers to people in 1978, they just need the, they, they don't understand the verbs, the nouns, the ad verbs or anything you really do have to. And as part of our responsibility, I think as tech commentators, to make sure that people understand that the here, here is what here is what a, a single Bitcoin is like, no, it isn't just like moving numbers from one account. Number one account to another account. It is an actual thing that you can drop down a sewer and lose completely all the basic stuff. So I, if it makes people more aware and hopefully puts by next year, a lot more people on their guard that this isn't just a system where you put a hundred dollars in and you get $2,000 out the next month, that hopefully will be a good thing. And

Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
I suppose, you know, you could have made the same argument. It, you said financial services, insurance ads are all over NFL football. And I suppose you could make the same argument. Insurance is a gamble too, right? You're, they're betting. They're gonna make money on you. You're hoping that your house burns down. Wait a minute. No, that's wrong. But you get, you get, you get what you get, what I'm I'm saying, but the

Iain Thomson (00:14:12):
Thing is it isn't the currency at the moment. It's, it's still just a speculation vehicle. You know, I mean, it's not like people are actually going out and buying stuff with this where with, with Bitcoin and the rest of it, what they're doing is speculating on its, you know, potential RAL RAL four,

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
Well NFTs particularly seems to be that it's almost as if money lawn grows thought, what can we, how can we get people, give us money for our Bitcoin? And they said, NFTs again, there's gonna be some value down the road. It's not a bad idea to have Providence stored in a decentralized imutable database called blockchain. We were talking on the tech guy today with Sam bull, Sam, who, who told me that alpha Romeo has announced that, that their new vehicle will have its repair history stored in blockchain as an NFT, which is on the face of, it sounds like, oh, that's great. So you, you, you will be able to, if you're looking at a car, be able to get without, you know, cuz it's blockchain. So it's nobody controls it. Be able to see what the repair history, but then Sam added one little tiny piece, which is only Alfa Romeo dealers will be able to write to the blockchain.

Andy Ihnatko (00:15:28):
Of course. So

Leo Laporte (00:15:29):
It really is. And this is the perfect example of a good idea that ends up being a lock in for dealers doing your repair.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:15:37):
I will say about cryptocurrencies to Andy's point education. That's the part of the process we're in right now. And that makes a lot of sense, cuz it's early. As soon as the government starts talking about creating a virtual dollar, which that it has been, they, the EU they're talking about a crypto version, Bezos, those are all like a, you know, they're not a 2022 thing. They're gonna start talking more seriously. Think in 20, 23 and beyond they know that virtual form of our currency will be part of the future. And I think that's when more people will start to understand, especially if you're gonna get paid in virtual dollars or virtual,

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
Well, in a way we are, I mean my paycheck, I never see a dollar bill. My paycheck is just bits that get transferred to some place where I store my bits and then I give my bits to somebody else when I buy something. There's really no, no currency involved. Yeah. The only difference between that and blockchain is that blockchain has a decentralized ledger as opposed to my bank having my ledger and that kind of thing. And so, well, we're almost there, right? I mean, how often do you use cash these days?

Andy Ihnatko (00:16:49):
Well, in, in, in addition of course then the other necessary difference between this is that a dollar, a dollar is backed by a federal government and treasury. That's gonna control inflation and make sure that you don't have that the, the value of a dollar doesn't go so wildly that it really disrupts your ability to use it. But this, I, I hope that Bitcoin and other digital currencies doesn't become just associated with, you know, it's not a digital beanie baby. It's a fad that got blown out very, very quickly by people who are just speculating and doing, turning something silly, cuz it's a, it's, it's a very, very powerful concept. There are so many people, even in the United States who simply don't have access to banking period, and the ability to have some of the power of what you're just talking about, about having the ability to move money from one place to another quick clean instantly without a whole lot of transfer fees without a whole lot of having to sign documents and prove to somebody that you're that you have a legal authority to be inside this country and to have a job, it will allow these people to get jobs, get paid, pay their rent pay utility bills, pay pay, things like that without ha be without having to live on the fringes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:17:58):
And that's a lot of where a lot of the exploitation and abuse happens when you have people who are forced to, for whatever circumstance or another to live on the fringes. So it's it's, as Connie said, it's early days hopeful leave these growing pains will shrug them off and it'll be, it'll realize some it's potential to really help humanity. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:14):
I'll sharpen the attacks from the Bitcoin bros, cuz I'll get 'em. I am not, I am not against the technology. I think there's a lot of future in it. And I agree with you and Connie both we need education and there is at root something really sensible about this, but right now wild west makes it a little bit risky and, and dangerous. And I, it always makes me nervous to see all the advertise all the hype around it because yeah, that's when I go, you know, Hey, calm down, calm down. This isn't a get rich quick scheme. So don't, don't talk,

Iain Thomson (00:18:47):
I think for something except it is as is yes, exactly. You've exactly. Got

Leo Laporte (00:18:52):
It. A moment of Puerto Rico, baby, actually a couple of people who did think it was a get rich scheme by, well, what they thought was they could they could Rob a Bitcoin exchange and be anonymous. Turns out no, the department of justice has charged two people Lipton Stein, and Heather Morgan. We have to

Iain Thomson (00:19:12):
View the video. That video is just car crash, television

Leo Laporte (00:19:16):
As the individual's responsible for attempting to launder 119,754 Bitcoin stolen from bit Finn, a crypto currency exchange in in 2016. The, and I think the assumption was, oh, you know, it's on the blockchain, I'm anonymous now. But as soon as you try to try to collect, I think she's, I'm not sure which video you're talking about. The one from Rael Khan, her rap video has now been made private, unfortunately.

Iain Thomson (00:19:45):
Oh really? Oh. That's APAC.

Leo Laporte (00:19:48):
That was finally,

Andy Ihnatko (00:19:48):
Finally, finally she discovers dignity. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:19:53):
So, so if you will, Iain walk us through so this, this is the woman Heather Morgan, who actually has a career as a rapper performance artist and, and Forbes columnist, which is kind of, they all go together. Oh,

Iain Thomson (00:20:09):
Well, I mean, I mean the, the whole Forbes, the Forbes situation, there was a lovely piece out this week where they basically just looked at the history of Forbes over the last a hundred years. And yeah, there's a huge market in being a Forbes influencer because they'd given up on all editorial standards. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:20:25):
You pay, you pay to be part of the Forbes contributor network. There is legitimate, I think journalism coming from Forbes, the problem is they're mixed together and you can't tell which is which she, interestingly published a story on Forbes called experts, share tips to protect your business from cyber criminals. Had we known of her expertise? We might have read that article anyway. Iain, what was the, tell me about the video.

Iain Thomson (00:20:51):
Well, I mean, basically this was it's one of these it's sort of setting us up a as an influencer, a rap, you know, a rapper or whatever else. It was possibly the most cringeworthy thing I've seen all week. And that's against, I'm sorry. I'm it has to be said, but it's it's, I mean, it's around online. She's basically just making bad music for money, but I mean, there, at the point you made in terms of the traceability of blockchain, yes. There are ways to launder, if you like these funds, by going through in multiple mul multiple mini transactions, feeding stuff through various different wallets and into a, into a central core. But yeah, the, the arrest did show that this is not perfect. And 

Leo Laporte (00:21:39):
DOJ said they obtained private keys to the wallet using search warrants, allowing them to seize more than 94,000 of the 119,000 stolen Bitcoins. The funny thing is they're worth a lot more than they were when they were stolen. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (00:21:55):
Oh yeah. There was 68 million when they were stolen. They're up up to 4.5 billion now in total.

Leo Laporte (00:22:02):
Yeah. And

Andy Ihnatko (00:22:03):
$600 per Bitcoin at the time of the theft. Now it's valued at about 40,000. Yeah. And the, the really interesting part of this is going to be that the Bitcoin exchange that that was robbed, claims that within eight months after the theft, they've settled all their debts to their customers. Wow. Everyone who they're claiming that when the people who were, who, who were entrusted their Bitcoin to the exchange had their, their Bitcoin stolen him, that the exchange has settled their deaths with these people. And now they are in a blog post on their own, on their own servers. They're saying that they're looking to recover that Bitcoin from the government and meanwhile, individual people who are customers saying, Hey, look, we didn't, I didn't agree to, I didn't agree to anything. I want my Bitcoin back, especially now that it's worth a, a, a double digit multiple of what it was when I put it inside that wallet and the government so far has said that we are looking into how we're going to restore that Bitcoin to whoever it is, was a legal claim to it. There's speculation that there's simply going to auction it believe it or not, the government seizes, Bitcoin, just like they seize boats, paintings, anything. And just like they of seized property. They will, they do auction off digital currencies like that. So that's

Leo Laporte (00:23:14):
Bizarre shows you the, A big fight Bitcoin in dollars, you wouldn't auction off dollars. They have a value. How can you, you know, I'll pay $10,000 for that $5,000 pile of money. No, but Bitcoin is the value is so all over the place. Maybe it is worth more than today, tomorrow, or maybe not. And that's here. I found some of the video, Iain, ah, you're in luck from Jack. Weger

Iain Thomson (00:23:39):
Actually know I've seen it. I'm not in luck. It's really, really bad. I

Leo Laporte (00:23:43):
All right. Okay. It's only 30 seconds kids. Jack's tweet is, I don't know much about crypto security, but this person should not have been able to steal 4.5 billion of it. And I should Hasen as a good journalist. I'm sure. Connie would tell me to say allegedly, allegedly steal 4.5 billion. Here we go.

Speaker 6 (00:24:03):
Kirk, is Martha a keep gun up in your shirt, been trapping with this hurt.

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:09):
Don't do that with your pelvis, please. Lady

Speaker 6 (00:24:12):
Young on with a,

Leo Laporte (00:24:15):
I dunno what the sound effect is

Speaker 6 (00:24:18):
Dog. She Ky

Iain Thomson (00:24:24):
Like a bad,

Leo Laporte (00:24:25):
This is as this. I would be better at rap than her. This is awful.

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:31):
What I love about this is that I'm sure that in block, if you went to blockbuster video in 1997, you could also see like white women instructing you how to do hiphop dance and exactly those same moves. Oh dear.

Leo Laporte (00:24:44):
Ah.

Speaker 6 (00:24:45):
Or, or, or white men.

Leo Laporte (00:24:46):
Yes. Yeah. Or white men or white men. Yeah. Now you have to go to TikTok for that kind of thing. 

Iain Thomson (00:24:52):
I do love one of the comments in the IC Rebecca BA Rebecca Black produced

Leo Laporte (00:24:56):
It, but oh yeah. There's a, there's a name from a blast from the past. All right. Let's take a little break. This might be a somewhat shorter show because Connie really wants to see Scarlet Joe Hansen and her husband flogging Amazon's echo. They, you know, it's a shame they've ruined that commercial cuz they've leaked out bits and pieces of it. There's no surprise in that one. But the premise of it is what if Amazon's echo could read your mind and then, and then Colin her husband says things like, yeah, when is the date of that show? And that, and the echo says, send a reminder to fake my death on that date and then more so see that,

Andy Ihnatko (00:25:42):
That that's just brillIaint marketing because I think that Amazon knows full well, the, that there's one thing that people trust about the Amazon echo is that it's not secretly collecting

Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
Information. I'm reading your mind that you don't know about. It's definitely not doing that. All right, yet, yet a little break here. Maybe they're just pretending they don't know. That could be too. Yeah. Our show today brought to you by I don't think mint mobile spent six and a half million on a super bowl ad. This is just gonna have to do for them. The money they save goes right in your pocket. Mint. Mobile is amazing. It's the easiest way to save this year. They sell premium wireless service online only their first company to do that. So no stores, no expensive ads means maximize your savings. Get this how much just before I say an amount, I just want you to think in your mind, a little thought experiment. What is your monthly wireless bill right now? 10. Is it $80? $90? I have one with a no name company.

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Leo Laporte (00:28:31):
Yes. They're minty green mint, mobile.com/cut your wireless build to 15 bucks a month. Mint mobile.com/TWiT. I will voucher these guys. It's really great service at a great price. I think sometimes you hear at that price, you go, that can't be, it is. It really is. Plus you get to have Deadpool as your IP. No, not bad. Right? Good deal. Up, I guess we should talk about the Samsung galaxy S 22 ultra and the S note S eight, the new tablet, Samsung and the on Wednesday, little bit of a mess up at the Samsung website. You couldn't buy it. The pre-orders were open. You'd go through the whole thing. You'd tell 'em what you're trading in. I know cause I did it about 800 times. You get, you'd do the whole thing and you click the button pre-order and it spins and spins and says, Nope, sorry. Finally fixed it by the end of the day, but I wonder how many sales they at least got deferred this Connie. I'm sure you'll be reviewing it. Not you personally, but CNET will be reviewing it. Soon. In fact, you probably already have a review unit. Did you get a chance to play with it at all?

Connie Cuglielmo (00:29:41):
I personally did not, but our team did. Yeah. And what's the takeaway cameras, design references to people who know the galaxy note. I'll let the, I'll let Andy talk about it, cause I'm sure he has a more technical take on it. Starting price $1,200. And what they're gonna ship it later this month. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:30:01):
I will get it in two weeks. I'm excited. I think it's a beautiful design these days. You're in an ecosystem and you know, I, I, for instance, my wife who wears an apple watch has an iPhone, has a Macintosh. I said, you wanna try the flip three because I I'm, I'm trading it in for the ultra. She, do you wanna try it before I do? And she said, can I use my apple watch with it? I said, no. She said, forget it, Andy, you have, it's funny cuz you're on Mac break weekly. We're an iPhone user for years, but you've switched over to Android. Are you able to live this mixed marriage?

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:41):
Yes. There are times where I think as a Mac user I'm thinking and an and an iPad user, I'm thinking, gosh, it would be nice to have this on my phone. It would be, it'd be nice to have an apple watch on my phone apple watch that actually works with my phone. But yeah, no it's, it's PO it's certainly possible. Particularly if as I did before I switched a number of years ago, I was making a concert, an effort to not be so relIaint on apple services that aren't transferable to. Other things I had switched from apple notes for instance, years earlier to something else because I was becoming aware and very annoyed of, of lock in. But yeah, it's, it's not ideal. One thing that there's so much that I admire and like about apple products, one things I don't like is that they re have to be absolutely forced to support any other platform or even make it palatable to use apple services on other platforms. I mean they would not be having, you would not see an apple music app on Android, if not for the fact that they are in such a tight fight with with a Spotify and other services

Leo Laporte (00:31:41):
As, as Lisa had Chico point of it out your colleague at CNET and you just mentioned kind of in passing Connie, this is the note replacement and you know, I was a note fan from day one. I loved the big phone. Everybody's got big phones now, but essentially, even though Samsung hasn't officially said no more note, it's pretty clear the ultra with its stylist and its styling and its size is their new note. And I think it's gonna be a good, I think it's gonna be a good option for people who like like notes.

Iain Thomson (00:32:16):
It's I mean, it's, it's, it's a great looking phone and certainly the camera looks really interesting, but coming back to your point, as we saw this week, we did a piece of a out this in Holland, apple has been forced to allow third party payment systems on certain dating apps.

Leo Laporte (00:32:30):
Oh my gosh.

Iain Thomson (00:32:31):
And they have made it so incredibly difficult. It's not worth doing, and we're gonna see the same thing all the way down. The thing, they hate it when people leave their, their ecosystem and they will do anything to stop it.

Leo Laporte (00:32:41):
Yeah. In fact developers have, I don't know if we covered this last week. I think we did developers have are incensed at apples insulting offer to the Dutch dating apps. We'll take 3% off our 30% commission. And that's because you know, you're gonna use somebody else for the credit card fees, which means you'll pay at least as much as you were paying to us. Plus we're gonna give you all sorts of hoops to jump through in order to get that app on the app store, including a dedicated, separate app for the separate payment plan. I, the Dutch regulators decided to continue their 5 million Euro oh, week fine. It's my guess. They haven't responded yet that they're not gonna see this as responsive.

Iain Thomson (00:33:25):
Well, I mean, I worked it out. Okay. The maximum they can charge apple is 50 million euros. And if you look at Apple's 2021 end of year results, five hours of profit, that's it. And this is hardly what you call and send. Ugh.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:33:41):
I was gonna say apples, they're the first company to have a $3 trillion market cap that happened in January. And they did that off of their closed ecosystem. So for people who like tech, you know, I'm not gonna say that it's the be all end all, but for people who like tech and want to go through. So some of the pain that is involved in using disparate services and getting different devices to work together, you can build whatever, you know, collection of tech you want for people who just want the tech to work for them. Apple is a very appealing alternative, hence $3 trillion.

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:17):
No, that's, that's, that's absolutely true. The, I, I just always like to one of the things that's annoying, the other things that's annoying about apple is that boy, they, they can be so frustrating when they're, when they're trying to respond to accusations legal problems. They're willing to say when they're they're, they, they pull, they, they put to gather this image of themselves as this very, very benevolent company. It's always for the users, we're just doing the, making the best products and we're trying to change the world. And, but if you say that, wow, that's great. Wouldn't it be great if you supported you supported security software on app stores and countries where your users are kind of under the, under the thumb of a very, very oppressive totalitarIain surveillance state. They said, oh, well, gosh, what can we possibly do? We have to comply with whatever laws are local in the, the country, which we're offering the ops app store. But then when you ask them to do something that they don't want to do, which is to simply look, here's a local law local ruling that says that you need to allow your developers to do this. They say, well, great. We, we we'll write that $50 million check and continue to do exactly what we want. Do, do

Leo Laporte (00:35:26):
You think that's what they'll do? They'll just thumb their nose and touch regulators and say here, take your 50 million euros. Who cares? They'll

Andy Ihnatko (00:35:35):
That's They'll I, I, I do think that that's what they're going to do.

Leo Laporte (00:35:39):
It also is a problem because the reason they do, they, they claim that they're, they bow down to the Chinese government all the time is, well, you have to follow local laws. Yes.

Iain Thomson (00:35:50):
Now, I mean, this is, this is what irritates me. When you see apple advertising themselves as privacy, first company, they should have a big as risk there with offer does not apply in China. You know? I mean they, but

Leo Laporte (00:36:00):
Why do they count outta the Chinese, but not the Dutch?

Iain Thomson (00:36:03):
Well, because the Chi China is a much bigger market. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
Market size.

Iain Thomson (00:36:06):
So yeah. Thank the market from Netherlands to apple is minuscule, whereas is absolutely key that they keep the Chinese market under control.

Andy Ihnatko (00:36:15):
I'm

Connie Cuglielmo (00:36:15):
Gonna reign on people's raid, but let's remember these are all for-profit companies. Yeah. I was trying to think, Andy, when you were talking and I'm not an apple apologi by Andy stretch of the imagination, but what, what is a benevolent tech company? Like who's a benevolent of they're all for profit. Right? And they do whatever's expedient. Facebook is that benevolent. Twittter's that benevolent, Google benevolent. Microsoft sat through the Microsoft antitrust trial back in the, you know, early days. So, I mean, yes, we can all VE they, they have a PR image that they apple, you know, is privacy first. And with the lots of asterisks, not just one for China, there are many asterisks there. But I, I would love to know what is a benevolent tech company and that makes an ecosystem I can buy in too.

Andy Ihnatko (00:37:02):
Yeah, I agree. 100%. I, what, what the source of my annoyance is that other companies like Google, like Facebook, they don't try to make, they don't try to identify themselves that way. Whereas apple, they, they, they got the C C machine making this beautiful golden halo with a perfectly beveled and champ front edges and no, no headphone Jack. And they strut what they put that on. They strut in front of everybody else saying, yes. Oh gosh. If, if only everybody else cared so much, we cry nightly about the problems of privacy. I'm like, others seem not to even care. It's like, yeah. But again, that, so Connie that's, I completely it's like every,

Connie Cuglielmo (00:37:41):
I

Andy Ihnatko (00:37:41):
Was gonna say our company should be

Connie Cuglielmo (00:37:42):
Hashtag courage, Andy, hashtag courage.

Leo Laporte (00:37:46):
Well, then that's another irony because Samsung has done ads talking about apple, dropping the headphones, Jack and mocking apples notch just ends up doing the same thing eventually. Anyway. So there's Enough courage to go around.

Iain Thomson (00:38:01):
I mean, that isn't particularly on the he phone Jack, that isn't intensely annoying. I mean, I I've just upgraded my phone and got one of the last pixels or the headphones Jack on. Yeah. But my wife, who's an apple user is now living the Donal life and it's hate it badly. I

Leo Laporte (00:38:14):
Hate it.

Andy Ihnatko (00:38:15):
Even, even, even Samsung's ginormous, but is a, the

Leo Laporte (00:38:19):
Room.

Andy Ihnatko (00:38:20):
Yeah. They, they have a Fort, they have a 14 inch tablet. They announced this week and it doesn't have a headphone Jack. And that is just, what is your excuse? What is your explanation? Usually? Oftentimes, oftentimes the explanation is that, well, there there's, there's pre there's so little room inside the inside a phone that we don't have room for, or gosh, it interferes with, with dust and water intrusion. Okay, fine. Maybe, but on a tablet with that in the iPad pro it's like you have room people like

Leo Laporte (00:38:44):
It, nobody's going swimming, swimming with a four inch tablet.

Iain Thomson (00:38:48):
It it's a full it's

Leo Laporte (00:38:49):
It's to sell it's let's face it. It's obvious it's to sell Bluetooth earbuds, which both companies make. And both companies make a lot of money on and it's shameful, I think. But because Bluetooth will never be as good as wired. I'm sorry. It just won't.

Iain Thomson (00:39:04):
Well, I mean the amount of software that people stick in their own Bluetooth stacks makes it incredibly difficult to even now. I mean, we are managing to do remote management on the James web spells space telescope over a million miles a away, but we can't get our Bluetooth headphones to connect some software in the stack. It's incredibly frustrating.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:22):
Yes, but, but, but try, try to get your, I, your, I iPad iPods, max. So to your, your, your AirPods massive connect to the space telescope, you'll have it back the same problem.

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
So, you know, half, half the time I'm on a phone call, all of a sudden the AirPods go to of the telescope. It's crazy. It's crazy actually peripherally. This is a complete rat hole, but I do wanna say, wow, James Webb is out there. It is. Yes. Almost a million kilometers away. We are talking to it. In fact, it just sent back how many gigabytes of data they're, they're they're currently tuning it because they have, what is it, 18 segments on the mirror that they have to adjust to make sure it gets one image. So this is, theit what they call the initial alignment. Mosaic. Each of the segments took a picture of one star and now of course, they're gonna have to slowly align those segments. So that, that one, those 18 dots turn into a single dot. Let me see if I can find from this NASA story, how many gigabytes of data that was, it was a huge amount of data, 54 gigabytes of raw data that they sent a million kilometers away. You know I guess they're using mint mobile, cuz there's no way you're doing that on Verizon.

Iain Thomson (00:40:41):
Well, I was lucky enough to see it being built at Godard. Really? Yeah. I, I was out at the at a, at a astronomist conference out there. It's, it's just the most amazing instrument ever. It's also the ultimate piece of space, AAMI, the way managed to fit that into a single area and capsule and then UN I mean the engineer cuz they're so NASA is so still aches at the memory of the hubs mistake. So they had to get this. Absolutely. Right. So they built it. Then they put it through a vibration chamber to simulate launch. Then they put it through a near vacuum vibration chamber. Then they spent two, two months chilling it down using liquid nitrogen to make sure you could still unfold. It it's an I marvelous instrument and a triumph engineering. I'm just hoping it works properly.

Leo Laporte (00:41:27):
I think that, you know, we're getting very, that was the problem is you could test it all you want in a nitrogen box, but you don't know what is gonna happen when you get into space. And if you're a million kilometers away, there's no repair mission as there was with Hubble to go out and fix it. But I have to say it got there. It unfolded we're getting images back. They are now calibrating and it seems to be going very well. What it, we live in really this really interesting era of contradictions where there are, are people sleeping on the street in San Francisco you know, who, and then we have this amazing technology. It it's just, I guess his has life always been this way. And I just noticing now, or it seems like the, the, the gap between the most amazing thing humans can do and the worst things humans can do is widening

Connie Cuglielmo (00:42:22):
Well. We're seeing it play out every day. NASA is an amazing organization. I'm a, I'm a huge admirer and I'm very envious that you got to go see that. Yeah, no kidding being built. Me too, but you know, people are questioning science, right? Yeah. We've been living through a pandemic where science and facts are now something that you can debate and say, it's my personal choice. Whether to believe in science or not. So I that's always been the case. I just think the stakes are higher. And to your point about wealth distribution, you know, all the crypto scammers are taking all the money. Right. So, and it is a, a very we're, we're moving through an unusual period.

Leo Laporte (00:43:03):
They're, they're all moving to disused oil platforms and started and sea studying their new country where there's no regulations, no rules. All right back. That was a, that was a little dis little detour, but a good one. I think of an exciting one. Yes. You know, it's so easy. We, and we sometimes I think we talk about the negatives of technology so much. I, I know this was a debate that they recently had it wired and there was a great editorial where the editor in chief and I'm sure Connie, you watched it with interest said, you know, we've gotten kind of negative and we weren't started to that way. Wired was originally 20 years ago, a techno optimist to publication. We don't want to go in that all fully in either direction. And I feel the same way. You know, I'm a tech optimist, I'm doing this job for my pretty much my entire lifetime because I love technology and I'm excited about the potential and I want people to be able to use it for good. But it's very easy to look at it and go, oh my God, meta, you know, we're in deep trouble. So,

Connie Cuglielmo (00:44:05):
Well, it's important to remember. I'm a, I'm a tech T as well. And I wrote for the first issues of wired, I was a contributing editor. They

Leo Laporte (00:44:13):
Launch, I didn't know that. I guess I did know that now that I think of it. Oh, that's right.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:44:17):
And they were, I mean, I think we're all tech off optimist. Otherwise we wouldn't be tech reporters. But it's just important to remember that tech is a means to an end. It's not the end it's people who are driving, how that tech is deployed and used. And so you have a problem with profit before humanity, you know, social media, you know lots of debates what's happening there, but you know, tech in and of itself is a, is a wonderful thing if it's deployed correctly, but it's up to people to set the policy and deploy that. So, so that's what we should be talking about is, you know, who who's doing this stuff, why are they doing it? Andy's point earlier about cryptocurrencies, the number of people who don't have access to banking in this country or in the world for that matter, it, it can help solve that problem, but somebody wants to, somebody's gonna need to wanna solve it in a meaningful way and maybe not put profit at the top of the list of priorities and what they're doing. And that's where it can get a little discouraging.

Leo Laporte (00:45:21):
Well we, we may be at the precipice let's if you really want to get grim about this and have to solve these problems, like if we don't solve these problems we're gonna be in trouble. My wife is reading John do's new book. She loves it speed and scale. And it's an action plan for solving climate crisis. And it really, he makes a very good point. There's not a lot of time left. And and we, and we seem, I mean, if we, we seem to lack the political will to, to do what we have to do. And if we wait until it's all tumbling around our ears, it may be too late.

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:04):
But, but I mean, this, this America's in kind of a bubble about this. I mean, if you looked at, I was Anglo Mekel is just resigned into Germany and they had an election tour replacer, and the candidate spent 20 minutes per debate talking about climate change. Whereas in America, they hardly discussed it at all during the last presidential debates. And at least one of the candidates didn't think it was real anyway. Yeah. America is, is very strange on this front. And as a European who's over here, it it's kind of disturbing because you're right. We are running out of time rapidly and this needs to get sorted. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:46:38):
It's also a global problem. So if America's not on board, if China's not on board if India and Africa are not on board, it's not gonna matter that Germany cares. We have to, then that's another thing we're not very good at global action.

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:55):
Well, a lot of fortune, sorry, sorry. No, just, just, just quickly. I mean, not to, not to be a downer, but a lot of this problem is a simple problem of lobbying. One, one of the reasons why the, the James web telescope is where it is right now is because there was no money trying to prevent it from happening. There was no profit in trying to stop it from happening. There was no political gain in stopping it from happening in a, in a direct sense. And that's the sort of thing that can happen, where people can have an argument. And at some point, someone will say, you know what, your NASA, you know, more about this than we do, we're giving you appropriations to spend largely as you see fit, go ahead and do it. Whereas once it becomes ver once it be once global, once global warming is starting to see, starting to be seen as a threat against the energy businesses.

Andy Ihnatko (00:47:39):
And now they have money in order to convince or coerce lawmakers in the United States to make sure you vote against it. Once you also start to make that into a political ledge and to saying that, oh, well, you know what? Those awful people who, who claim based on theoretical, no evidence that the complainant is doomed is trying to close down these minds. They're trying to close down, you know, what, you know, what do you realize? How many how many people get killed because of wind power get killed because of solar. And, but don't worry, we're fighting for your behalf to kind of make he's insane hippies. This is unfortunately the, the best thing for any technology is to be ignored is to get in under the radar, which is weird because the technology is supposed to be at the service of society, which means that society needs to know about it needs to be part of that conversation. It's a horrible contradiction. It's,

Leo Laporte (00:48:25):
It's sad though, that it's people are using to who their political advantage using these talking points. When it's, it's, it's purely for their own political advantage. It's not looking out for the long term future of the planet. That's terrifying to me. And that's the problem we really have to solve. But back to the Galaxys eight back

Andy Ihnatko (00:48:48):
To the catch

Leo Laporte (00:48:48):
A phone. Yes. Actually, I'm interested in Connie, you have a couple of reviews of the galaxy tab. This is a gIaint tablet going straight against Apple's iPad pro in fact Joshua Goldman writing for CNET said it should have been a Chromebook with gala with decks built in it comes with the key. It is yes, high price, but considering that you get the stylist and the keyboard as part of the price right now, anyway maybe not so out outrageously priced. Is it finally time for Android tablets to to unseat the iPad?

Connie Cuglielmo (00:49:26):
Well, I mean, I don't know if at, at that price point, right. That's the reason that iPads it's a laptop, everyone doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the convergence of these devices. Right. And if nothing else, the pandemic has gotten people, you know, using more technology than ever before. And for a lot of people that was their mobile phone and the screen is small on a mobile phone, unless you have a large format phone, and then you have your, your laptop. Right. Remember people thought, you know, desktops were dead in the past two years has been the resurgence of desktops because we've all been locked in our son's bedrooms. Right? Yep. Using technology,

Leo Laporte (00:50:01):
Is this your son's bedroom?

Connie Cuglielmo (00:50:03):
This is my son's.

Leo Laporte (00:50:03):
Oh, I thought you were really into the MandalorIain. I'm sorry. Nevermind.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:50:06):
Well, that's a star wars helmet, but someone on my staff has offered and is 3d printing AndorIain helmets and oh, wow. The next time I come on, I'll have MandalorIain. That would be nice. Wow. But yeah, it's about the convergence of devices. And I mean, we've been talking about this for a long time tablets, or, you know, at what point does a tablet replace your laptop. And it it's really just a matter of price, right? At some point to get to a mass market, the capability and the technologies there, iPad has done a really good job. Apple has done a really good job. The Android tablets for better or worse have been considered, you know inexpensive limited function devices. And so now you're seeing people challenge that because people are actually wanting to spend the money. If you're gonna go out and carry your laptop laptop around, you know, even that even your lightest laptop is still heavy compared to a,

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:00):
I don't know how many they made, but they've sold. So they've the ultra, the big one, the 14.61 they've mades they've, they've sold so many in the us. They've actually stopped. Pre-Orders. I had, I had to go to best buy to see if I could get one from them. It is a huge, super Alet screen, 29, 60 by 18 48, 240 dots per inch, 120 Hertz freight for refresh rate. And of course Samsung's known for the display is there couldn't be anybody better to do this. And Josh says got, got zoom meetings. This will be your new best friend. And I guess, I mean, based on sales this, this is a pen up demand. This is something a lot of people want. It's, it's bigger than some laptops at 14.6 inches. And, and certainly as expensive $1,200 for the thing itself. Once you add in the, the good keyboard that you would probably need to have in order to justify, well, they're selling it now right now included with a keyboard and stylist, which may be why it's sold out so fast.

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:02):
Probably. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, we're, we're seeing you, it, it really is kind of shocking how bad that everybody's right. That, and Google has not really made any sort of a priority up to this point in trying to make a make Android tablets into, as productive and useful a device as as, as iPad tablets are, they're really, really good. If you wanna sell a 60, $70 fire tablet, which is extremely useful. It's, it's a good, valuable thing. I it's, I wonder what put the bug up their nose recently to, to decide that, wow. Now, now that the iPad has been out for, for almost 10 years maybe we should look into this and now that they're coming out with Android 12 L, which is not simply, whereas before whenever when when Google would announce here's the new version of Android, they sort of throw in that, oh, we've added some, some support for larger screens and different screen sizes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:55):
This is the one in which they're saying, no, here's an actual distinct version of Android that's intended for large screens and also multi screens, like folding screens, that stuff like that, given that Samsung is essentially the hardware arm of Android. Yes. The Google makes their own phones, but in the United States of America, there is no market for Android phones. There's a market for Samsung phones worldwide, even although Android is the largest operating system for mobiles anywhere. If you took it worldwide market share, Samsung has the market share of all. I'm trying to remember from last week when I looked this up, if you look at the pie chart, they have the market share of the next three, plus like the remainder after the fourth. Yeah. And so basically you, you wonder what kind of meetings have been having that Samsung has been had saying, look, we have, we are a premier or display maker.

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:45):
We could sell so many more displays. If we, if you guys allowed us to make really, really good Android based tablets, what are you gonna do to help us to make tablets that are gonna justify that kind of price level? So maybe we'll see some change in the next year, year and a half, but boy do. They ha they, they sat on their, they sat on their hands for so many years that it's hard. Tome. Imagine someone who coming into a store with a thousand dollars who doesn't decide to buy a laptop with that money to decide, to overlook an iPad and simply go with Android. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:15):
Histor, historically Android tablets have, have fallen because of the software. And so interestingly, Samsung's doing a lot of their own software. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (00:54:24):
But I mean, it, it is weird how good drop the ball on this one? Because the nexus tablets, when they came out were pretty good tablets, the nexus phones were fantastic. You know, the latest pixel things are massively overpriced for what they are, but they're still pretty good handsets, but I don't understand why Google dropped the ball on the market. Samsung,

Leo Laporte (00:54:44):
Google dropped the ball on dot. I mean, that is, that is the story of Google and, and, and inexplicably the story of Google these days. And I, you know, we've talked a lot about it on this week in Google. We can't figure it out. Mike Elgin's contention has just Sundar PCHA is a terrible CEO and hasn't wrangled all these individual, you know, autonomous teams into a, a whole, and they're competing with each other much like Microsoft used to do. And they just, they can't stick with anything. They're, they're a D D in the extreme, it's very disappointing, frankly. Well

Andy Ihnatko (00:55:21):
It, sometimes it comes down to what is the nature? What is the, the, the story that the, the, the company is, is tell about itself. Google has always been an amazing services company. Apple has not done anything really, really great with services but Apple's a hardware company and they are man. They can focus and they can prioritize and they can target and manufacture amazingly and Google. They're not fundamentally a hardware company, and they're still trying to figure that out. They only just gotten gone to the game a few years ago, what five years ago, when they hired Rick Olo from Motorola to essentially be their hardware, their hardwares are and famously for the, the famously and perhaps most embarrassingly for, for Google hardware. There was that meeting of Google hardware a month before the release of the pixel four come years ago, in which the head of hardware basically got the team together about this phone. They were about to announce and say, wow, this is a terrible phone. I'm really disappointed in all of you, which is like, what are you people

Leo Laporte (00:56:19):
Doing? It's a little late to mention that Rick, I like Rick a lot. He does not have a success. His track record is I'm sorry. Since he left Motorola, since he went to Google has been terrible. And that's part of the problem, certainly, but ultimately it falls in sun Pacis court. He's gotta get this company under. Yeah,

Iain Thomson (00:56:41):
Well, that's innovating, gone into rent seeking. I mean, this is what, what find very frustrating about, but

Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
That's, what's kept them alive, right. Is search search advertising is, is

Connie Cuglielmo (00:56:49):
Search and

Leo Laporte (00:56:50):
Youtube and YouTube. Yeah. And they have so much cash flow from that, that they can fail at everything else. And they have,

Andy Ihnatko (00:56:57):
Well, they're, they're, they're doing what they're doing well with, with cloud. They're still losing money, but they're still putting money into it as a distance. They can.

Leo Laporte (00:57:04):
It's a distant third after Microsoft and Amazon,

Andy Ihnatko (00:57:08):
But it's, but it's a, it's a really good place to be in growth when, when you're charging people just for access of your servers, when you're basically making money, every time another services based company gets is established, it becomes profitable. That is a really good place to be there. They're at least that they're at least in much better position than Facebook slash meta is where meta has got nothing going on apart from the advertising business. And it's a very limited advertising business that they're in. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's an interesting time for Google, but I think it's there's room for optimism for Google, because they do seem to be realizing that they can still make a lot of there's. There's still a lot, there was still a lot of parts of the world in which they're not making nearly as much money as they possibly could with their most popular products.

Andy Ihnatko (00:57:50):
So it's, it's interesting, but I would love to see them crack hardware because the, the pixel phones, I like, I I've, I've never owned any other, excuse me. My first Android phone was a Samsung all subsequent phones where nexus devices or pixel devices, because I really do think they've got a lot of great ideas for hardware they've and they've definitely, they can definitely take advantage of Apple's point of view of if we make the hardware and the operating system and the developer package, then we can do some exciting things that other companies can't do. So I hope that they get their act together on all basis because they're

Leo Laporte (00:58:23):
Doing great stuff. I'm absolutely root for, for 'em. I'm just disappointed.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:58:26):
We should just mention that other people have noticed that, you know, apple has owned the tablet space and Microsoft to their credit has done some good stuff with the surface.

Leo Laporte (00:58:36):
Oh, excellent point. In fact, you could also say this note eight ultra has kind of aimed at the surface, same idea. In fact, the reason they're using decks on it is because it is sort of a computer kind of

Iain Thomson (00:58:54):
No, I mean, I, I used to surface for many years and I did love it in its way, the, apart from the fact, the kickstand at the back, which if you spend a fair amount of time commuting try using that on your lap in a, in

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:03):
A battle.

Leo Laporte (00:59:04):
Yeah.

Iain Thomson (00:59:05):
Yeah, exactly. But I mean, it's, it was a great laptop. It, it could be an opportunity for Google to do this properly. I just

Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
They've abandoned the Chromebook. Yeah. I mean, they, they made the best Chromebooks. They were pricey, but they made the pixel book. They they're out of support and they don't have a replacement. I don't get it. Well,

Iain Thomson (00:59:24):
It's I I've, I, my, my Chromebook, my pixel Chromebook still works now that I've stuck a new operating system on it, but they were building in OB obsolescence to this. Yeah. I mean, you, it, it would die. I, it literally died on you after a few years. It's frustrating. And that's incredibly frustrating for a laptop user.

Connie Cuglielmo (00:59:41):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna reign on the parade again, as a business reporter margins on hardware, right. Are pretty tight, right? Ask Michael Dell, what's the margin on a PC 2% less. And apple has something like 30% on the max unheard

Leo Laporte (00:59:54):
Of their margin is amazing. Isn't it?

Connie Cuglielmo (00:59:57):
Well, cuz they own that and they've streamlined the production Tim cook can for 'em operate. It's brillIaint. But yeah, my, my point is Google make services. The margins on services businesses are 60 plus percent, right? So if you're gonna look at where you're gonna invest your money to get the most bang for the buck, it's not gonna be in hardware unless there's a reason you wanna do it to put a stake in the ground. And I think the Chromebooks were right, a stake in the ground to go after of the education market with low margin and, you know, seed that younger generation and make them all Android friendly Android wear. And I guess they decided in the end, they didn't need to do that anymore. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:36):
Apple's profit margin. December 31st was 28% entire cause my have services brought that up and let's not forget. Google writes a approximately a billion dollar a month check to apple, which goes in their services category for apple, continuing to use Google on the iPhone. So that's a pretty big chunk of the total services. Revenue just comes from from another services. Let's take a little break, come back with more Connie Goya go Yamo is here. She is of course, EIC at C N E T at like it at tech leads on the TWiTtter. Andy Inco, who is chief tech correspondent, w GB H public radio in Boston. One of my favorite all time. Favorite stations. That's where I heard Hitchhiker's guy to the galaxy for the first time is I'm WGB H in Boston and from the register, the snark capital of the Western world, probably the Eastern two. I don't know what they have in China. Iain Thompson, where he is, what

Iain Thomson (01:01:38):
As

Leo Laporte (01:01:38):
A, your, your news editor, is that still your title? I can never remember

Iain Thomson (01:01:43):
Us editor at the moment. We, we it's, ah, honestly, I, I miss being a reporter, you know, it's kind of like, but it's journalism. They, they kick you upstairs. If you get too good at it. So

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
Well, it's the Peter principle, right? You rise to the your level.

Iain Thomson (01:02:01):
Sure. The Peter principle works in this case.

Leo Laporte (01:02:03):
Like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That was a mean thing to say. I was just teasing you, you know, you're the best honestly our show today brought to you by better help. I know a lot of us have been suffering metal anguish of one kind or another during the pandemic. It's, you know what, it's the, I think it's the it's human nature. There's, there's a lot of things to deal with, but the good news is help is out there and better help is making it easier and more affordable than ever before. Better help. It's not a crisis line. It's a not self-help is professional counseling from licensed professional therapists done securely online and it is amazing. And I can say that from personal experience, better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. You can connect in a safe and private online environment and you can connect the way you want.

Leo Laporte (01:03:00):
You can do weekly video if you want. You could do phone sessions. If you don't want the camera on a lot of people like that, you can message your counselor anytime and you'll get timely and thoughtful responses. So you're really getting help throughout the week. It's convenient. You can start communicating in under 48 hours. I mentioned that because cuz it's not a crisis line. So there are crisis lines. If you're in crisis right now, please take advantage of that. But if you want long term guidance, counseling coaching, this is a great way to do it without ever sitting in an uncomfortable waiting room in private with great therapists. And by the way, one of the things I've always been a big believer in is you've gotta find the right therapist for you. Everybody's different, better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches. So they make it easy and free to change counselors anytime if you need it.

Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
And that's, I think an extremely important point don't hesitate in fact, to try a few different counselors to for on somebody who really fits your needs. It is more affordable than traditional, offline counseling. They do have financial aid, so don't let money get in your way of getting the help you need. This is a global service. You could, you could find a variety of expertise and because it's global, you don't have to limit yourself to whoever's near you. So you can go see 'em. You could find an expert in any area pulling from a large pool of licensed professional counselors, depression, stress, anxiety, relationships, sleeping, trauma, anger, family conflicts, who doesn't have those these days, LBT Q matters, grief. Self-Esteem all of these things can, can be absolutely changed. Everything you share is confidential, it's convenient, it's professional. And again, it's very affordable. Check out the testimonials.

Leo Laporte (01:04:56):
They post new ones on their site every day. In fact, so many people have been using better help their recruiting and additional counselors all over the country right now that this is the time, right? But don't suffer in silence. Don't suffer alone. I want you to start living a happier life today, 10% off your first month, visit our sponsor. Better help. H E P better help.com/a million. People now have taken charge of their mental health using better help. You can too better help. H E p.com/TWiT. This is really an idea whose time is come instead of really great service, better help.com/with thank you for your support. Talking about meta, talking about Facebook, they're threatening to shut down, shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe. If those darn regulators, Joe, don't let up, you gotta stop knocking us, man. The problem is this privacy shield, the agreement that was initiated between us social media networks and other companies storing data in the us and European regulators. The privacy shield was designed to make it so that if, if, if they are gonna store European data in American servers, they adhere to all the privacy laws of the EU.

Leo Laporte (01:06:27):
The EU has decided apparently the privacy shield is not working. And and they're about ready to go to companies like med and say, look, you're gonna start storing your stuff in European servers, cuz you're not adhering to our regulations. And meta now has fi in a filing with the S E C warned. If a new framework is not adopted, if the company can no longer use the privacy shield agreements, they will not be able probably this is in a quotes, probably not be able to offer quote its most significant products and services that would, I presume include Facebook and Instagram in the EU. Connie, is this a bluff?

Connie Cuglielmo (01:07:10):
I'm laughing because yeah, it's a bluff, but you know, they can say whatever they want in their company filing, oh, it's hurting us and we might have to pull it. And then the rest of the story is that after they said that and put that statement out in their filing, I believe it was a regulator in Germany, but it might have been in France who said, yeah, that's good. You know, we don't need it. It was both Facebook,

Leo Laporte (01:07:34):
Germany in Germany

Connie Cuglielmo (01:07:36):
And in Germany said, yeah, whatever, we don't need it. But my life is better without you guys go away. So somebody, one of the executives from Facebook then put out a statement on the company's blog saying, no, it's not our intention to walk away from,

Leo Laporte (01:07:53):
Oh

Connie Cuglielmo (01:07:53):
You are. But you know, we we're really concerned about this is gonna have a material impact on our business, which you know Facebook makes a lot of money. They're not a, they're not a nonprofit. And so it's gonna cost you more to do business in these countries. And that's the ultimate call. I will say Facebook's growth is not in Europe. It's not in the us either. Right? Like I was looking up some stats, 90% of Facebook, daily active users come from outside. The us and Canada and their biggest growth opportunities are in India, Indonesia, Brazil. Right? So other markets. So it's not that they don't need Europe, but that's not where the growth is. But at the same time, this is a cost of doing business. And it's a cost of doing business calculation.

Leo Laporte (01:08:38):
It's a little weird that they funny that they wouldn't just say, okay, fine. Well put our data on servers in the EU. What are, what are they afraid of? Why wouldn't they do that

Iain Thomson (01:08:49):
Is well, I mean

Leo Laporte (01:08:50):
That they can't live with the privacy requirements.

Iain Thomson (01:08:53):
I mean that there's a cost aspect, but also Europe has, as you put and pointed out very strong privacy requirements. And 

Leo Laporte (01:09:00):
So they're really saying we don't wanna protect your privacy. That's too much a bridge too far. Well,

Iain Thomson (01:09:05):
I mean, kind of the EU has been painted into a corner on this one because they didn't really want to pick a fight with Facebook in the first place, but there's a lovely AustrIain bloke called max Shreem who took the whole thing to court and pointed out that. Yeah. Okay. You can't do business like that under existing EU laws. So that's kicked the whole thing off,

Leo Laporte (01:09:22):
By the way, his name is now lives in infamy. Right? Cuz they call it the Shrems the max Shrems rule.

Iain Thomson (01:09:29):
But I mean, Connie, Connie has exactly has it exactly right. Facebook threw that down on the table and the French and German government said, yeah, okay, fair enough. Withdraw services. We can live with that and call the bluff. And now Facebook is backpedaling faster than Olympic rower.

Leo Laporte (01:09:45):
I love I'll give you the quotes. This it was a meeting of economic ministers from Germany and France, Germany economists economy, minister, Robert habe told reporters after being hacked, I've lived without Facebook and TWiTtter for four years and life has been fantastic. And and the, and then to which the French foreign finance minister Bruno LAER said, I can confirm laugh without Facebook is very good. I'm sorry. I made him in the popular pew. I didn't mean to do that. 

Iain Thomson (01:10:15):
It would've been nice if the, if spokesperson has gone,

Leo Laporte (01:10:20):
Digital gIaints must understand the European continent will resist and affirm its sovereignty. I felt in your general election. No, he didn't say that part. Then I added that. 

Iain Thomson (01:10:32):
Anyway, it'd be nice having FA air lavash, but still

Leo Laporte (01:10:34):
Is I think honestly that it's a little bluffing on both sides. Will, do you think they'll work something out, Connie?

Connie Cuglielmo (01:10:45):
Yes. I, I do think they'll work something out, but it it's gonna be gradations, right? It they'll have some sort of something for a limited period of time and they'll revisit and revisit it. But I think Anne's point is correct. The European union has been extremely forward thinking and very aggressive in privacy protections. Facebook does not want those protections, you know, to have to adhere to them. It would not allow them to exploit user data the way they have been because they make a lot of their money from ads. 90 plus percent of Facebook's money comes from ads. Not all ads are created equal targeted ads, ads that know something about you and that are being fed to you based on preferences are the most valuable in the hierarchy of ads. So you know, they go to capital hill by the way, along with the, the other tech companies and say, well, we're willing to accept some regulation cuz privacy and it's important, but I haven't ever seen any proposals for what kind of regulation they're actually willing to accept. So this is a dance. So they have started you know, their dance and is going to, it's going to work its way through.

Leo Laporte (01:11:52):
I think there's also a lot of testing fingers to the wind because obviously EU politicIains don't wanna do anything that their constituency will hate. So if, and I'm sure Facebook's saying, well, watch this when we pull, I don't know if Facebook's the big deal. I think maybe WhatsApp is a bigger deal in some of these countries, but if we pull our products out of your country, you're gonna, you're gonna be, you know, thrown outta office. And I think the politicIains are also saying, well, is that the case? How dependent are people on this? And aren't, I think increasingly consumers are aware of the privacy issues and maybe are less then happy about how much data Facebook collects. So I think everybody's kind of Jo joing jocking a little bit to see, well how, how, how is this gonna affect us in the long run?

Andy Ihnatko (01:12:45):
Yeah, it's, it's a little like prohibition. You can get enough ground support to say, yes, we should definitely do this. We, we were with you, we're on your side government regulators, but then once you take away this from everybody, that's when you start dealing with the problem of, is this really populous support action or is this something that you probably should have negotiated out better? It, it real, it really is a, it really is this plus things like the rulings that Google has been suffering recently that Google analytics is now violates GDPR use of Google fonts for high GDPR. That that's

Leo Laporte (01:13:19):
Crazy, isn't it? Well,

Andy Ihnatko (01:13:20):
It's it's if GDP it's, this is, this is the test of, of GDPR. Is it good? Is it necessary? Is it right? And is it, is it flexible if it is all of those four things, then all of these international companies, excuse me, international, mostly, mostly the huge Titans that are based in the United States they've been used and I, including apple here, they've all been used to the idea of, we can do whatever we want and our products are so popular and beloved worldwide that your government or your people are just gonna have to deal with it. They're not this, this old fashioned way of we are gonna of apple and Google and Facebook having essentially one international policy and making little trims and adjustments for local legislations is not gonna work anymore. You're gonna have to have essentially a Facebook for each individual political geopolitical unit because each one is gonna want to have their own regulations, their own protections for privacy, and they can fight it, but that's gonna buy them some time until they're forced to acknowledge that we can't just simply pull out of every country that doesn't allow us to do exactly what we wanna do and how we wanna do it.

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:23):
And that's what I think we're gonna do. I think, I think we're also gonna see a lot more pressure on the department of commerce on of American tech companies too, fix the privacy shield, find a way to negotiate internationally so that whatever it is that was made this okay, for most people in 2016, but failed in 2020 can be renewed and enabled for 2022, because it is much easier for American industry to be able to simply comply with and a regulations imposed by a diplomatically agreed federal standard than to simply come up with a brand new product for every sphere in which they want to operate. They don't wanna do that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
And then there's the UK.

Iain Thomson (01:15:06):
Oh, great. Yeah. Jump on the Bri.

Leo Laporte (01:15:10):
I remember when this was first floated back in 2017 that if you wanted to watch porno in the UK that you'd have to go to a pub and verify your age so that, that could be put on record, so you'd be allowed to do it.

Iain Thomson (01:15:33):
Yes. Okay. So first off, I, I would like to say this isn't about just pornography. I know the reg gets the reputation for being somewhat smutty, but we do, but guys actually real really nailed this. This is about age Verifi verification for a whole bunch of servers, including social media and as is the style with the British government these days and these Brexit island moments they're not gonna do it themselves. They're going to hand it off to a third party supplier. So all the age verification and credit card details are going to the lowest bidder who is going to run the service for the government. Oh, that

Leo Laporte (01:16:10):
Is what a nightmare.

Iain Thomson (01:16:11):
Exactly. I mean, you, you're not only creating a large database of really valuable information, you're linking it to pornography, which means that the the sort of the kind of criminals who will go after people on blackmail grounds will also say, oh, this has showed up. You are accessing this stuff. Right. So that's another, another attack factor being used. It is a dis disaster in the making unfortunately disasters in the making of what Britain's become quite quite known for, for

Leo Laporte (01:16:39):
Some time, one export. It seems besides Stilton geez

Iain Thomson (01:16:45):
To teacakes of course, and tea cakes

Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
And Marmite Mar I, well you say, so you say yeah, just the specter of an 18 year old walking into a bar to verify his age. It's a, it's a, a little disconcerting. Do you think this is gonna happen?

Iain Thomson (01:17:03):
They've been talking about it for, for many years now. I mean, I think this plan was first MOED about three years ago and it got shot down fairly quickly because you had people in, you know, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:17:13):
We marked it government. I remember. Yeah, yeah,

Iain Thomson (01:17:15):
Yes, exactly. However, this is Britain we're talking about at the moment and the ability for my country to cut its own throat has been tested and found wanting many, many times over the last few years. So I think it may well go through and they'll, they'll, they'll put it down as, oh, this is an anti pornography measure, but it's, it's a disaster waiting to happen and it's, it's going to happen. It seems. I mean, the, the, the current government is well, okay. If you've been following British politic the current government in a bit of a pickle to say the least and I think they're gonna let this one, let this one go through because enough conservative MPS seem to think it's a good idea, because they don't really understand the technology on it.

Leo Laporte (01:18:00):
A disaster in the making that almost happened in the us, the IRS was going to use a third party id.me to collect face recognition information, to verify yourself on the IRS sites, after a lot of criticism and and Sabre rattling from people like us included the IRS has backed down, but what is unknown is they already ID to at me already collected 7 million facial records from people who signed up through the IRS. And it's unknown with what's gonna happen. Ron widen, who wrote the letter that finally convinced the IRS, maybe Senator widen of course pretty smart about, pretty savvy about technology forced the IRS to say, okay, maybe we shouldn't be collecting face recognition information, just just to prevent fraud. I'd be very curious. The chair now of the house oversight committee wants to know whether the agency will tell id.me to erase, erase what you have already. We don't know yet. So there's news. They're gonna drop that face recognition requirement. Although 30 other states and Ted federal agencies still use it unknown what'll happen to the existing data.

Iain Thomson (01:19:23):
I mean, it comes back to what you were saying before in that a lot of people don't have the technology to make this work. You know, there is a, a large number of people in the us for people who don't have a decent laptop who don't have a phone that, that could work with this and just giving all that data to a third party, particularly if something like tax was just insane, it's the same problem that we have with the, with the UK and their, their age verification problems. They are two sides of the same coin.

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
Yeah. Take a little break, come back with more with RS steamed panel. Great bunch. We're trying to, I don't wanna say rush through the techno, but Connie wants to see the commercials on the super bowl. And I and I kind of do too sure. Use me as your excuse. I wanna see Mary JLI in the halftime show. So that's, we,

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:08):
We, we all do because collectively we have a responsib, we, a lot of people work very, very hard in these commercials. Exactly. It, which it would just take the Mickey right out of them. If none of us walk them, I think, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:20:19):
Oh, up Dwayne Johnson is now on the field. I don't understand why the rock gets so much attention, but apparently he's beginning the football game with some sort of huge scream.

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:35):
So that, that, that is a good tactical choice because he can, he can clear the field just with his charisma. Yeah. That's it.

Leo Laporte (01:20:42):
Charisma clearing.

Iain Thomson (01:20:44):
Well, I get very lucky cuz our local pub doesn't show know it. They don't have a TV in, so it's, isn't

Leo Laporte (01:20:49):
That nice. It's very quiet in there.

Iain Thomson (01:20:52):
Well, yes, but there's honestly a pub shouldn't have a TV in it because it automatically draws the eye

Leo Laporte (01:20:58):
Into yeah. Nobody talk conversation. Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent. Somebody was selling for years, a remote control that you could carry into a bar and turn off all the TVs,

Iain Thomson (01:21:07):
Which you remember somebody using that at CES, a couple of people got thrown out because they, they they'd gone around the displays. And just like the

Leo Laporte (01:21:13):
Trick is, keep it in your pocket guys. I guess that's in a way kind of my motto for life. Our show today brought to you by worldwide technology and Intel w WT. We love these guys win out. That was my, that was our last visit right before pandemic began. We Lisa and I flew out to St. Louis to visit WWTs world headquarters. And they're amazing advanced technology center. This is an incredible thing. You know, those of us have been in the tech business for a while. Remember, you know, big PC magazine and the labs that they had and all of these, all of these, you know, independent labs are kind of gone by the wayside. Thank goodness WWT has now invested ha they have half a billion dollars worth of OEM technologies in their ATC, a huge amount of equipment.

Leo Laporte (01:22:05):
It's spread from one building to two to three to four, I think there's or six now. And what's great about these labs. Of course, the engineers at WWT use it to spin up proofs of concept, to integrate hardware and software, to help their customers who are bringing technology into their enterprises. But what's great about this is you can use it to the advanced technology center offers hundreds of on demands schedulable labs that you can use yourself to try out these technologies before you buy featuring solutions that include technologies like Intel's Zion, scalable processors, and Intel's obtain persistent memory and obtain SSDs. There are labs representing all the newest advances in everything like multi-cloud architecture, security, networking, primary and secondary storage, data analytics and AI, DevOps, everything you need to know when you're incorporating technology into your business. Now the engineers have used this for years, but now partners can use the ATC, spin up their own proofs of concepts, their own pilots select the best solutions.

Leo Laporte (01:23:12):
And it's more than just these labs. There's technical articles, white papers, expert insights, demonstration videos. There's hands on labs. There's all sorts of tools to keep you up to date with the latest technology with the advanced technology center, from WWT and Intel, you can test out products and solutions before you go to market. It's not only a physical lab space. It's a virtual space that you can use any time of the day or night, anywhere in the world. And guess what? It's free to, yes, it's free to become a member of ATC platform. And while you're there at, do you wanna also check out the events and communities? They do some great stuff. They bring in lots of smart. We've done a panel there. It was really fantastic. A place you can learn about a technology trends here, the latest research and insights, whatever your business need, whatever business you're in WWT deliver scalable, tried and tested tailored solutions solutions for use specifically because they understand business.

Leo Laporte (01:24:14):
They know that whatever technology you use has to support your business strategy. That's what WWT does. They bring strategy and execution together to make this amazing new world happen, to learn more about WWT, the ATC to gain access to all these free resources is very simple. Go to wwt.com/TWiT. Make sure you to go to the slash TWiT part. So they know you saw it here. That helps us a lot. Wwt.Com/TWiT. Create an account on there, ATC platform and get learning wwt.com/TWiT love these guys. And boy, if you're in business and you're using technology, you will love them as well. Word of warning from bleeping computer, I, this was inevitable. Microsoft has turned on and I've heard a lot of annoyance about it. The ad for windows 11, if you're still running windows 10, you're gonna get a popup saying, Hey, you could get windows 11.

Leo Laporte (01:25:14):
Sometimes even if you can't by the way. But now there are bad guys out there. We call 'em threat actors. And I'm not talking Sylvester Sloan here, or these are bad guys. Who've started distributing popups that look like their Microsoft popups saying, Hey, it's here. You can install at windows 11. Except when you click the link, it doesn't take you to a Microsoft site. It takes you to site that looks just like Microsoft. It, it used to be window upgraded.com. They obviously they've shut the good guys have shut that down, but there will be other sites. Can you tell the difference if you're a normal user from this in a Microsoft site? No, but if you click that button that says download now, you're not gonna get windows 11. You're gonna get something called the red line Steeler, which as you might have guessed, that's a, that's a malware. Yeah. Actually I thought it was gonna be the name for the new Washington, the new name for the Washington football team. But no, it's not it's which it would've been good name, right? The red line Steelers. But no,

Andy Ihnatko (01:26:25):
If, if, if Canada can have two to two football teams named rough writers, we can have two. There

Leo Laporte (01:26:29):
You go. Names, Steelers. These are the red line Steelers again. Anyway you, I have to think people are falling for this right. And left cuz it looks in every respect, like a real thing. So just a word of warning. Tell, tell your family, friends, people who don't. Yeah. Anybody who listens to any of our shows is too sophisticated fault for that. I think

Iain Thomson (01:26:49):
You think I, I have say though, I mean with Microsoft it windows, they they're getting a, they learn from the windows 10 experience in the even nay though. It is, it's less naggy than it was when windows 10 came out and they were trying to get everyone to upgrade and they're not forcing stuff out on, on, on everyone. But yeah, I mean looking at the, at the screenshots of what they're putting out, it's very convincing stuff and you know, I'm, I'm warning people, you know, warning my parents just be careful on this one. Just leave it alone. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:20):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's who, that's who you have to talk who is normal people. I'm, I'm kind of an outlier here. I'm of the opinion. No normal person should be using windows. Honestly, if, if, if you're not willing to be a security expert, if you're not strongly motivated because I don't know what you needed for work or you're a gamer and you're not willing to really kind of keep your eye out for stuff like this, you should be using a Chromebook or an I, you shouldn't be using windows. It's just, it's too risky. Am I, am I, is that I know that's kind of, that's annoying when I say that

Andy Ihnatko (01:27:58):
The, the problem, the problem is that a Chromebook or an iPad is a wonderful wonderful substitute for a top operating system until it isn't. And then you're really, really hosted. When you, when you've got, when you've, when the only way you can you can register for for, for COVID testing. They're assuming that you've got an actual, like desktop grade browser and desktop grade operating system. That's a problem iPads, more of a problem than Chromebooks. But again, it's a great solution until it actually isn't, they're getting better, but it's still a problem.

Leo Laporte (01:28:31):
Okay. I guess my philosophy, if I tell people, okay, don't buy windows, but if you do, don't call me.

Andy Ihnatko (01:28:40):
Yeah. They there's still, there's still gonna be a lot of problems. They're

Leo Laporte (01:28:43):
Still gonna call you aren't they as well. Yes.

Andy Ihnatko (01:28:45):
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not, it's not as, it's not as pure as it once was. I used to make, I used to make the exact same thing. I would say I'll, I'll great. If you're looking for a laptop, I'll help you. If you buy, I used to be used to be, I'll give you like three, three service calls on windows, unlimited on Mac. And

Leo Laporte (01:29:00):
I started, I stopped joking about that because not because I was not willing to help people friends and family, but because I thought in modern times, it gives people an maybe inaccurate picture of how you know, of, of how much stable and how much more secure and safe a Mac is. It used to be that bother. There just is no malware out there for the Mac. Oh wow. There's just almost no, there really is nothing to think about. Yeah. So you can't be careful, I think general purpose operating systems, which of course have their place. That's how computing began, but their general purpose they're designed to let you do what you want to do. And that is inherently risky. And I don't think most people need more than a Chromebook. I mean, yes, you're right. If you, they say I'm, oh, I've decided I'm gonna create the next Oscar winning film. You might need something more than a Chromebook, but most people just browse the web and do email and buy things on, you know, out overstock.com. I mean, they don't, I don't think they need windows. And if that's all you do, you shouldn't, you shouldn't. But I know, I know, go ahead. Everybody yells at me when I

Connie Cuglielmo (01:30:02):
Say that. Yeah. Yeah. You, you have to remember that companies dictate what computer systems you use at work. And a lot of professions still usually run on one dedicated app. And a lot of those are written for

Leo Laporte (01:30:17):
Window. No, and I agree,

Connie Cuglielmo (01:30:17):
Especially in the medical community,

Leo Laporte (01:30:19):
But in that case, you probably have an it department. If you don't have an it department, you are the it department and you,

Connie Cuglielmo (01:30:26):
Yes. But that doesn't mean it makes it easier. If your windows is compromised or you haven't updated that month's security, right. Update. And then there's an X point. There's still pain

Leo Laporte (01:30:36):
Involved. There's pain, there's pain, there's pain, there's pain. If you listen to K O w in Seattle and you're driving a 2016 Mazda there's pain in life, life is life is full of pain. This is kind of a hysterical problem Mazda's entertainment system apparently is not sanitizing its inputs and Mazdas. From 2014 to 2017, have this problem discovered by Mazda owners in Seattle who are forced, forced. I tell you to listen to the local NPR station they, they tune it in. And in this case, the station was sending you know, there now is this new system where a station could send additional information over the airway, like album art or, or song titles and stuff. And most, and radios now will display the song title. Well, apparently Mazda. It was written in such a way that when the image files came in and they didn't have extensions, it bricked the infotainment system and you were stuck on K U O w. This is not knew though. Apparently there's a podcast, 99% invisible podcast that had the same problem because they have a percent sign in their name. And it was also bricking Mazdas. So they made a Mazda say feed for their podcast. That was 99 P E R C E N T instead. So this is not a new problem. That's not an unknown problem. The question is who's gonna fix those Mazdas because you can't, they're at a, had a warranty.

Iain Thomson (01:32:20):
Yeah. I mean, it's okay. We love the story cuz it gave us a great subhead video, killed the radio stuff came and broke your car.

Leo Laporte (01:32:29):
Oh, thank you. Thank you. The register is a gift that just keeps on giving aren't.

Iain Thomson (01:32:33):
But I mean, it, it does seem at this point, like it's going to be almost impossible to fix. They're gonna have to order a new components with the supply chain issues. That's gonna be a, a massive delay if they can actually get the components in the themselves. So it's just one of those embedded tech problems, which is the be devilment of the industry. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:53):
Yeah. And it's also another, another sort of timely story that here in the United States that 3g cellular networks towers are being shut down, starting with at and T on the 22nd of, of this month. Oh yeah. Get ready. Which is two

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
Is oh two

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:08):
Or which is not a problem, which is not a problem for users with phones. But the thing is most of the digital digital connections to the, the network that are, that are happening through cars are through cheap 3g modems. And if solution to this problem would be, oh, well, no problem. We'll just push out a software update. Well guess what? That 3g tower you're gonna need. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to drive somewhere where there is still a three Z tower in order to connect to have your car automatically connect to that server or take the car into a service center just to have them up apply a software patch and given how much or complex not just the the entertainment console software is, but also just the software that keeps an engine running and keeps an engine tuned properly is, is how much more, how many more billions of lines of code are being into the source stuff. This could start to be a problem. Things that things that used to work automatically and the user just didn't understand that, Hey, overnight, while you were parked, you received a very, very critical critical software update. Now your car is dead and your service center will say, oh, well, we'll cost you $300 for a new 4g radio or will, or gosh, it's a 10 year old car. Anyway, why don't you just buy a brand new car? This is difficult to say the least

Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
Sanitize your inputs, boys and girls. Yes,

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:22):
That's

Connie Cuglielmo (01:34:22):
What I will say though, is I'm a big fan of 99% invisible. And so I recommend that if you haven't listened to that podcast, they have a great one on how goodnight moon was not distributed at the New York public library for a very long time. Cuz the librarIain there was setting the taste for all libraries in the United States about what children's books they should listen to.

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
They banned goodnight moon.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:34:44):
They just didn't offer it or put it on the recommended list. The woman who was the librarIain and who was like this industry figure, but 99% invisible did a podcast about it called goodnight. Nobody. And those of us who have kids who have memorized goodnight moon,

Leo Laporte (01:34:58):
Me too. Yep.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:34:59):
Or just like what? So go listen to it. It's worth your time.

Leo Laporte (01:35:02):
It's a

Iain Thomson (01:35:03):
Great, I've never even heard of goodnight moon, but looking at it, this, you don't have a huge piece of cultural history.

Leo Laporte (01:35:07):
You dont have kids, Connie and I, I don't know about you Connie, but I went through probably 40 copies of goodnight moon until I found there's one, that's a board book or maybe it was fabric and, and Abby couldn't tear the pages out of it. As we went,

Connie Cuglielmo (01:35:23):
Iain, you should just go up to YouTube and type in goodnight moon and the parody of it. Oh, are

Leo Laporte (01:35:28):
Incredible.

Iain Thomson (01:35:28):
Samuel Jackson

Connie Cuglielmo (01:35:29):
Has a great one

Leo Laporte (01:35:31):
About fantastic. Careful about that one. Yes.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:35:34):
Yeah. That's not safe for work, but if night noon is definitely a, is a, a cultural institution to all of

Leo Laporte (01:35:42):
Kids. Margaret

Iain Thomson (01:35:43):
We've only been here a, a dozen years, but I'm still getting used to this kind of stuff. I mean, I'd never even heard of the cat and the hat till I came over here. So it's just, yes, it is a, a cultural divide.

Leo Laporte (01:35:58):
Sam. I, we had a, a couple of years in a row we did a 24 hour new year's Eve telecast. And that was the closer one year. I read a goodnight moon to a group of small children. I got a lot of trouble, the Samuel Jackson version that,

Iain Thomson (01:36:20):
That, that, that probably should have been vetted to be

Leo Laporte (01:36:22):
Yeah, maybe the librarIain was right, at least in that case. No, that's great. I'll have to list 99% invisible. Excellent podcast do not listen into 2016 Mazda. Otherwise you're good. You're you're fine. Speaking of bugs Elon Musk bit by a solar storm last week, the story from the register.com SpaceX launched, even though the space weatherman predicted tricky conditions, wait a minute, there's a space weatherman in,

Iain Thomson (01:36:55):
Oh, we have space. We have satellites out between us and the sun now for thank goodness, which will predict when solar storms are coming in and give us the two days notice we need to lock down transformers and take preventative action. In this case it was more that solar activity hit the earth. This causes the atmosphere to expand slightly. And because these satellites were in such a low Orbi that dramatically in increased the amount of drag that they were undergoing and yes, 40 outta the 49 either have already fallen to earth or are on the way back down.

Leo Laporte (01:37:29):
Wow. Now you have to put that in perspective, the SpaceX is ma manufacturing a hundred of these a week. Yeah. And launching them as fast as they can. So a certain percentage of it loss is not the not the end of the, or

Iain Thomson (01:37:42):
Also they're they're in low orbit, low orbit, which is the basically before they transition to their permanent orbits, they put into low orbits, partly for this reason. So that if during the checkout, they discover that, oh, this,

Andy Ihnatko (01:37:54):
This this satellite's not gonna work out. They can very easily just deorbit and put into the ocean before it becomes like permanent addition to our collection of space junk. But that's, it's, it's, I mean, that ties into kind of another news story from, I think from last week where right now they're about 1700 Starling satellites in orbit. They want permission to go, go into the tens of thousands. And now the world, the world science community is basically saying, yeah, we're kind of, we kind of don't want 40,000 new objects, basically a multiple of the number of orbiting objects around our planet at the, at the moment to be there, to service one company's profits, perhaps that will have an impact on R B to not only put our own spacecraft into orbit, but also to just see beyond our own planet, perhaps you should just tap the brakes on that. Elon

Leo Laporte (01:38:45):
On the other man, I talked to somebody, I mentioned rural. Where was she? Rural Texas who has no internet access at all and started, she just got her satellite did she's so excited about start, like, go ahead, Connie, what did you think we were gonna talk about?

Connie Cuglielmo (01:38:59):
I thought you were gonna mention Elon Musk because of all the Tesla recalls, cuz like wasn't there three or four last week, but that's another story we can do that another day.

Leo Laporte (01:39:06):
Elon is the gift that just keeps on giving to tech journalists. It's on the one hand he's nuts. On the other hand, he's incredibly brillIaint. And I don't know it's so

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:19):
That, that that's a combination that we always works out great for you

Leo Laporte (01:39:23):
That's well, we do know if you saw the movie, the Netflix movie now nominated for an Oscar. Don't look up that the evil billionaire genius mark Reland who plays that character in the movie admitted now? Yes. It's based on Elon Musk. I thought maybe there was a little mark Zuckerberg's run in there for a good measure.

Iain Thomson (01:39:41):
Well, I mean with, with Elon, the, the Germans have a great word for it, which is fascia did, which is someone who is absolutely superb in their specialist area and then ignorant as hell about other things. But yeah, I mean with, with a SpaceX thing to credit, I interviewed Don Kessler, he of the kero effect a few years back and he was like, SpaceX are actually pretty good about yes,

Leo Laporte (01:40:04):
Pretty good

Iain Thomson (01:40:04):
Planning to deorbit this stuff. They're

Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
In a

Iain Thomson (01:40:07):
Way that in a way that you, in the way that many national governments aren't, but I'm, I, you know, I'm totally with you on this. The, the amount of problems this is causing astronomers and the potential problems. If it all goes wrong, somebody needs to stop and say, look, have you really thought, thought this one through other than with your own company's interests?

Leo Laporte (01:40:26):
Well, we know the NASA said the international space station is going to de ORP deorbit, the word they use sometime in the next 10 years, probably 20, 30 or later. But they learned from Skylab. Remember in the late seventies, Skylab started orbit, started decay, and then nobody thought about it, nobody planned. So it just, it, they, all they could do was let it crash. They, you know, they figured, well it's mostly water, so we're probably all right. And in fact it crashed in Australia, but that's another story for another day. I think they learned the lesson. And so now there is enough you know, juice to deorbit it in such a way that will crash into the Pacific and, and actually

Andy Ihnatko (01:41:12):
Actually go, I'm sorry. I think you're about to say what I was gonna say.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:41:15):
I'm sorry. There's an effort to clean up space debris. Is that what you're gonna say, Andy? And that the us is very far behind. We put up a lot of junk, but we've been really bad about taking it down.

Leo Laporte (01:41:23):
We're number one.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:41:25):
Yeah. So I know that there are private companies that want to go drag some of these space parts into low orbit. So they supposedly burn up on reentry, but that sounds like a bad plan

Leo Laporte (01:41:35):
Too. Well, I think it was a business, right? That somebody somebody's a British company is, is proposing a

Iain Thomson (01:41:42):
Giaint, thank you

Leo Laporte (01:41:44):
Giaint space net to, to it's the removed debris satellite. And it's a gIaint space net to it's actually been deployed to capture space junk it's from Airbus. Thank you very much.

Andy Ihnatko (01:42:06):
Combining the cutting edge bus technology to

Leo Laporte (01:42:09):
New

Andy Ihnatko (01:42:09):
Unprecedented aerody yeah, no. For, for years now, the, or have been satellite, China started launching satellites, I think in 2016 that have, that've been testing, grappling grappling features so that it can actually interact with other satellites, move them into different orbits, pull them out of orbit and necessary. And a lot of the a lot, a lot of the conversations been, oh, this there's gonna be new wars in space in which we tack each other's satellites. I know that's and I know that's actually, that's, that's a likely possibility for, and the grand scheme of things, but also this is a necessary technology. We need the ability to simply say, when we, when there's a conflict between two spacecraft, one of which is delict, we need an ability and, and we need an ability to deal with it that doesn't simply come down to.

Andy Ihnatko (01:42:55):
This spacecraft has to get out of the way. There's a, what was it? Two, three years ago, where there was a, there was a another incident. I wish I could remember the actual details about the air force that was tracking. All this information basically gave a warning to the, the operators of one spacecraft that look you're, you're basically about to crash into something else. And because there was no specific or the no chain of orders in place to say that, look, if you are operating a spacecraft, you have to have somebody Manning a station so that if we send you this warning, somebody gets it. Somebody puts it into the right hands and you take action. But unfortunately it sat in somebody's inbox for three or four days. And a certain amount of emergency action had to be taken to avoid a crash that would've put a whole bunch of new debris into a space.

Leo Laporte (01:43:37):
Isn't

Connie Cuglielmo (01:43:37):
That the plot for the movie gravity, Sandra Bullock.

Leo Laporte (01:43:40):
Yes, exactly. They get, she gets hit by a space debris. Oh,

Iain Thomson (01:43:44):
That film drives me nuts. I mean, as, as a space geek, it's just like, really, you can transfer orbits that easily just use it. But anyway, but I mean, it is a massive problem. The is

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
Sandra Bullock, she can do anything.

Iain Thomson (01:43:59):
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's not as bad as I'm again, which rumor has, it is still shown to potential NA employees to find out how many inaccuracies you can get. And the record is, as I understand, it is 106. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:44:11):
My gosh. 

Iain Thomson (01:44:13):
Okay. I mean,

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:14):
You, you clearly have screen space camp, which I saw with a bunch, what they call

Iain Thomson (01:44:19):
Oh's hilarious, bad.

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:21):
My Polytechnic instance, Polytechnic university, people who

Connie Cuglielmo (01:44:25):
Moon is now at the top of the don't watch list for me.

Iain Thomson (01:44:30):
Don't doesn't it

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:30):
From, from what I, from what I hear from a lot of people it's bad and it's crazy, but it's like national treasure level bad where they know that they're going nuts here and they're leading into it. And like if only if only they had Nicholas cage in there, they then the people would've understand. Okay, look, we know the science here is wonky. We're just having a good time here.

Leo Laporte (01:44:50):
Kind of the same plot. Isn't it? Although this time it's the moon. Not a, not a, not an asteroid. Right? True. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:44:56):
This is the moon breaking up. This, this, this one that I

Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
Seemed like

Iain Thomson (01:45:00):
A Neil Patrick Wilson. This seemed like a Neil Stevenson plot, but

Leo Laporte (01:45:04):
It's a movie where there is a line. I need you to help me get in touch with NASA right now. The moon it's got is out of orbit.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:45:14):
Yeah. It's got a TWiTst. The moon is not what you think. I actually have seen it. And I interviewed the director Roland Emerick this past week. Cuz he's the guy who wrote independence day. Yeah. And a bunch of he's done a bunch of movies and it is ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
Ridiculous. I've seen so many bad reviews and yet I really wanna see it. They tried to explain it where D oh, don't watch the trailer. It's a spoiler alert. I'm not gonna say anything, Connie. Now I understand what you're talking about.

Iain Thomson (01:45:46):
Hang wasn't rolling over when he did 2012, the film

Connie Cuglielmo (01:45:52):
He did the day I after tomorrow, which was the climate change one

Leo Laporte (01:45:57):
That,

Iain Thomson (01:45:57):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Iain Thomson (01:46:00):
Yeah. Okay. Well, 2012, which was a, why

Leo Laporte (01:46:02):
Did you see funny? Let me ask you. And did you see in the theater more, more to the point?

Connie Cuglielmo (01:46:06):
No, no, no. I, I had the opportunity. I, I get to, co-host a podcast for CNET called I'm so obsessed. And we talked to actors, other creative types and I was able to screen it ahead of time in my living room. And then I talked to the director RO ER,

Leo Laporte (01:46:21):
Oh, oh wow. Nice.

Connie Cuglielmo (01:46:22):
A couple days before it was launched. So good stuff. Yeah. I mean, I I'll watch anything because I stuck at home with anybody

Leo Laporte (01:46:31):
And I love

Leo Laporte (01:46:32):
Obsess. That's why, you know who obsessed is the 19 year old teenager, Jack Sweeney, who tweets the location of Elon Musk's jet, which he points out on his TWiTtter feed is completely legal. Elon. Doesn't like it so much and has offered him all sorts of things. Jack says, I want a car. It started as a hobby and I don't wanna let go of a hobby for something. That's not gonna really change my life. I don't have a car right now. It would be great to have a car and a test would be really cool. 

Iain Thomson (01:47:13):
And so Elon blocked him, you know?

Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
Yeah. Well Elon said it's a security issue. I guess it is, but it's public information. It's not, this is all, you know, in the public database. So Elon apparently offered him $5,000. Now I should point out Elon Musk, a richest man in the world worth 224 billion. I, if I, Jack might be insulted by $5,000 a car, wouldn't be too much to ask. He also tracks the private jets from Jeff Bezos, mark Zuckerberg, bill gates, and Donald Trump. So if you know, follow him on the TWiTtter Elon jet.

Andy Ihnatko (01:47:49):
Can I say that if the guy is smart, he'll ask for electric car, that's a little bit better made than a Tesla That, that treats its employees a little bit better.

Leo Laporte (01:47:57):
That would be the height of irony to say, Elon, I want a car, but anything but a Tesla. Okay.

Andy Ihnatko (01:48:03):
Those, those panel gaps. I, I just can't. I can't even, I, I don't wanna be made fun of it cars.

Leo Laporte (01:48:08):
Oh my God. Little break. Oh,

Iain Thomson (01:48:09):
No, make

Leo Laporte (01:48:10):
Go. I'm gonna make you take a break, go have some Marmite or whatever it is. You British

Iain Thomson (01:48:17):
People. That's, that's very nationalist of you.

Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
I,

Iain Thomson (01:48:21):
You go and eat a TWiTnky. If,

Leo Laporte (01:48:23):
If I'm going to eat you know, the effluent from a brewer, I'm gonna eat mite. I mean, I'm just saying, given the

Iain Thomson (01:48:31):
I've tried so hard with you, Leon Leo. I, I, I just, I dunno where to start it. Mite is sickly. Sweet. It's horrible stuff. Is it,

Leo Laporte (01:48:39):
Is it sweet? It seems salty, but you're saying

Iain Thomson (01:48:41):
They put caramel in it. I mean, compared to proper Maite, they put caramel in it. Now that's

Leo Laporte (01:48:45):
A

Iain Thomson (01:48:46):
Good, a big difference.

Leo Laporte (01:48:47):
That's a good idea. It's

Iain Thomson (01:48:48):
Really not. But that want to each thorough, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:48:51):
I was present at the dismantling of the Marin brewing company, which had failed for some reason in Marin and watching them carve out the used hops or whatever it is, the, the, the debris at the bottom of the, of the VAs. And I thought, dude,

Iain Thomson (01:49:09):
Oh, the Walt. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:10):
The wart you call it

Iain Thomson (01:49:12):
Brewers. Wha

Leo Laporte (01:49:13):
Yes. Brewers wart, O w O R T.

Iain Thomson (01:49:16):
I believe so. Yes. I, I would need to check.

Leo Laporte (01:49:18):
Is that what Mar mind is made of

Iain Thomson (01:49:20):
Well, that's it's the remains of the yeast. That's gone through various different, yeah. Gone through various things, which makes it vegetarIain friendly as well. But

Leo Laporte (01:49:29):
I almost shouted out to the guys you're missing a bed here. We need an American Marmite. You know, this is your shot.

Iain Thomson (01:49:35):
Anyway, I dunno, it doesn't seem to work over here. My wife to her credit tried it TWiTce and then said never again.

Leo Laporte (01:49:41):
I have two jars, one of Vegemite, one of Marmite in my cupboard at home. And I've had them for years. For some reason, they, they don't seem to be going anywhere. Well, never goes off. So never goes bad. Just like brewers, wart. Our show today brought to you by checkout.com tech. My friends should not stifle innovation, traditional and payment systems can really, you know, be heavily layered, disconnected. And I think most businesses see them as a, as a cost center, right? Modern businesses need a flexible payment system that can help them adapt to change, to grow and to scale fast. And I can tell you, there's a company with tech. It has a brand new radical new way of thinking about this it's checkout.com. Well named checkout.com. They partnered with Oxford economics conducted an end to end analysis of the payments value chain for merchants last year alone in the UK, the us and France, or in Germany too fall declines, false, not real ones, but, but, but declines for a, a spurious reason cost markets, 20.3 billion.

Leo Laporte (01:50:59):
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Leo Laporte (01:51:56):
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Leo Laporte (01:53:00):
This guide is full of expert advice and merchant insights to fast track your path, unrivaled payments, performance, checkout.com as a customer. You love it cuz it's fast. It's easy and it takes everything you want to use as payment as a business. You'll love it because you don't lose money, big money on false declines. And so many other things request a, a free no commitment demo at checkout.com/TWiT. You're gonna love checkout.com request a free no commitment demo. Checkout.Com/TWiT checkout.com/TWiT payments for a digital economy. John, can you tell me what I'm seeing on the super bowl screen? It's just a bouncing QR code. Is this a, is this one of those dumb ads where they didn't wanna spend any money on budget? No audio. There's no audio. It's just bouncing around. Oh, it's a Coinbase ad. How about that? That'll get some attention. They literally spent six and a half million dollars to put a bouncing QR code on your screen for 30 seconds. And we were talking just about this, right? The, the money these guys have unbelievable.

Andy Ihnatko (01:54:12):
Oh God, I hope I, I hope against hope that it takes you to a Rick as video

Leo Laporte (01:54:17):
That would be now, then 6 million points for style for sure on that good one. Good one. That would be hysterical.

Iain Thomson (01:54:25):
Well, there was a lovely tweet week where cuz the queen had made an announcement about prince Charles. His wife Camilla actually being queen Camilla when the queen passes on, but she was pictured next to a bunch of documents in her Queen's box. She reads go through and somebody, a security specialist drove down and looked at what Photoshop could do to actually find out what these things and that now we've revealed the final document and it was never going to give you up, never get money. It was a great payoff, but he was making a serious point. We

Leo Laporte (01:54:56):
Have it with us. Our royalty watcher is the queen. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:55:01):
There's some worry because Carl has COVID right. And he was with the queen two days earlier and she's 95. Congratulations. Her platinum Jubilee was last week, 70 years, the longest reigning Monarch in the UK and history

Iain Thomson (01:55:18):
Longest reign Monan history. As I understand it,

Leo Laporte (01:55:21):
70 years. Well, we don't know. I might be aand as well. Yes.

Iain Thomson (01:55:25):
True. But still, I mean I'm not a huge, huge fan of the womb system of government, but she is, she is a game old bird and

Leo Laporte (01:55:32):
She's, you know, she's

Iain Thomson (01:55:33):
Done her best for the country. Bird.

Leo Laporte (01:55:35):
Lisa

Iain Thomson (01:55:35):
Said,

Leo Laporte (01:55:36):
Lisa told me you're very respectful of the queen. That's why I thought you might be.

Iain Thomson (01:55:40):
Honestly, if we're going to have a Monarch, she's the probably good a lot's really her, her idiot son on the other hand, I'm having problems with. But yes he is in lockdown with COVID 19. It's reported that Andrew is in lockdown with Mandy 17, but isn't coming out until mums tells the police to go away. That's a

Leo Laporte (01:55:59):
British joke for those of you listening who say what?

Iain Thomson (01:56:02):
Yes. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:56:03):
We have football, they have the Royal family, you know it.

Iain Thomson (01:56:05):
Yes. I mean it's she may be okay. But she's just lost her husband. And typically when older couples, when one of them dies, the other one dies within a year or so. I know. She has

Leo Laporte (01:56:17):
Family around her, lots of lots of corgi. And the other thing that I think was reprehensible, Boris Johnson, who got dinged for holding all these parties at 10 Downing street while the poor queen has to sit all by herself at her husband's funeral,

Iain Thomson (01:56:32):
Literally the day before her husband's funeral, they were having a party. Yeah. The day before. And I mean, I've got without wishing to get too personal, but myself and others have had people die over this, over this epidemic. And we couldn't go and see them. We couldn't go and give them comfort. And in one case, my aunt had to die in a hospice because she wasn't even allowed to go home. It's sorry. I've yet to see British people, this angry about something for quite some time, but Boris seems to be prepared to just bracing it out. He has no shame what fine.

Leo Laporte (01:57:05):
By the way, that was a Coinbase QR code and TWiTtter is going crazy right now. Here's a tweet from Neil rule. Funny to watch my son scan that qu based QR code, the ad worked, the ad worked.

Iain Thomson (01:57:22):
So didn't actually much scan it though, though. An awful of TV.

Leo Laporte (01:57:26):
It worked. Coinbase is trending on TWiTtter right now, which is probably probably what they wanted. Here's a, here's a picture me when the Coinbase commercial came on,

Andy Ihnatko (01:57:40):
Actually I, some of the PR is coming across that that was actually directed by Ridley.

Leo Laporte (01:57:47):
No.

Iain Thomson (01:57:48):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:57:48):
He sold out best out of the super bowl. Here. It is. Basically I'll give him an extra. They only charge him 150 bucks for this. There it is the best out of the super bowl, a bouncing QR coat. We had a great week this week on TWiT. Let's take a look. We made a little mini movie celebrate.

Speaker 7 (01:58:08):
I have a question regarding Umpo. Yes, sir. Can you, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to call you back. I have a yell man. Yell at

Leo Laporte (01:58:16):
Me. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. We don't want anybody yelling at you. Hey, what are you doing on the phone? Get off the phone, Kim, just, you know, keep an ear out when he is done with the altercation

Speaker 8 (01:58:29):
On TWiTtter news,

Speaker 9 (01:58:32):
Kind of the marque device for the event. And the thing that I was looking forward to most was the S 22 ultra. This is by all accounts. This is the next note, right? It's a note by a different name. It's the galaxy S 22 ultra

Leo Laporte (01:58:46):
Tech news weekly.

Speaker 10 (01:58:48):
Oh my gosh. Do we have the next Samsung phone in hand right now? Oh no. You're so lucky. I'm so jealous.

Leo Laporte (01:58:56):
This weekend, Google actually feature writing. Dying is a symptom of all LAR. I mean, there are still, by the way, there's still great feature writing. That's what new Yorker does is the

Speaker 10 (01:59:04):
Far fewer outlets for

Leo Laporte (01:59:05):
It. And I really do wonder if people are gonna read long form anything in the years to come

Speaker 10 (01:59:12):
Think they'll they'll have they have long form podcast. They have long form. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:59:15):
God knows we do those.

Speaker 10 (01:59:18):
Those aren't even well researched. My goodness. Harper is lovely. I'm glad you're not airing this right now.

Leo Laporte (01:59:26):
Oh, is it bad? Is it getting bad? Are they swearing?

Leo Laporte (01:59:31):
This is actually better than hearing. I would be. It would upset my tummy to hear them actually fighting. But hearing your reaction is kind of fun. The guy call this is the fun, the joy of live call in radio. The guy was on Venice beach. It was 88 degrees on Saturday on Venice beach. He starts asking me a question and some nut comes up and starts haranging him. And Kim was actually doing a play by play. Apparently got pretty profane. There was some compare. I don't even want, I, I shouldn't even, I should, I should just, I should just stop right now. Iain article from the register you writing, you're doing a little writing chip shortages. Sure. But it's a good time to be a Silicon wafer maker.

Iain Thomson (02:00:17):
Yeah. The revenues have they've had that, you know, the biggest bumpy year since 2007, when, you know the last, the last big bubble broke. Yeah, it's a great time to be in Silicon, but 2023 and 24 are gonna be quite unpleasant terms. I think cause overly is gonna kick in, in that point, particularly in things like 28 nanometer process stuff.

Leo Laporte (02:00:37):
I worry because yeah, everybody's building all this capacity and by the way, not just and I talked, we talked about this last week, not just the in tells in the TSMC of the world, but even the little legacy node factories are really ramping up because you know, there's a huge demand, but when they're all online, what's gonna, what's gonna happen.

Iain Thomson (02:00:53):
Well, I mean, this is, I mean, long in, in the long term, you know, the demand for processes and ship technology is only going to grow, but it's managing those peaks and troughs and yes, there's been this enormous build, build, build function because of the chip shortages and resulting supply chain issues. But yeah, there, the hangover is going to come. And it's a question of judging when, and you know how you spend your money in terms of building new FAS, building new manufacturing processes.

Leo Laporte (02:01:19):
Yeah. I'll tell you the business you don't wanna be in ensuring VR headset claims. There's a British company called Aviva British insurer who apparently does sell. In fact, a home insurance for damage caused by VR headsets. They say there's been a 31% jump in claims last year. And overall since 2016, a 68% jump, they cite a man who landed an upper cut on his ceiling fan. I don't know who got the worst of that. A woman slamming into furniture, a guy smashing, threw a lighting fixture one, one child smashed two designer, figuring I'm thinking hums perched on the mantle piece. When his game demanded a swipe, move there, go the hums flying. And honestly the kid might have done it on purpose. I'm just thinking, but you know, saying one customer launched a controller, his TV when a zombie jumped out during the game, ah, I can see, I can do that. I can see you doing that. Aviva said we did pay the claims, but they weren't warned. This is from Aviva spokesperson. I wanna, I wanna say Dick Wittington, but it's Kelly witington these devices can be a great source of fun, but we didn't I'm sounding like the Geico Geco aren't I, but

Iain Thomson (02:02:45):
We like, Hey y'all what are you doing?

Leo Laporte (02:02:48):
We'd encourage people to be mindful of air surroundings, governor, and take a look at their home insurance to make sure it suits their needs. They got got the plugin. You got, they got the plugin. 

Iain Thomson (02:03:00):
I'm gonna say writing 68% given the very low statistical base of VR stuff before 2016. That's not, yeah. It's not a surprise the end of the world. Not

Leo Laporte (02:03:08):
A surprise. And but the best thing I got out of that article was it turns out there is a sub Reddit, a forum on Reddit called VR to ER,

Iain Thomson (02:03:21):
That is, I need to see this now

Leo Laporte (02:03:22):
It's dedicated. I immediately subscribed. Of course is dedicated to damage caused during VR accidents.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:31):
Yeah. Does, does that have the picture of the Oculus controller? Like smash that's that's like

Iain Thomson (02:03:36):
In the TV

Leo Laporte (02:03:38):
Bed, in the TV,

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:38):
Have a hole in drywall. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:40):
Yeah. Welcome to the metaverse. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be fun. Isn't it?

Iain Thomson (02:03:47):
Well, honestly, based on their results, Facebook need it to be fun because their cool market's dying on them.

Leo Laporte (02:03:52):
Don't you know what I have to say? Facebook is not making it look fun.

Iain Thomson (02:03:56):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:03:57):
Now they've established it. It's

Iain Thomson (02:03:58):
Like second life that some, some of the stuff they've been putting out sub second life. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:04:03):
And because of that, they have to, they're worried now about VR harassment. So they're establish, they're establishing a, a four foot fair, no fly zone around every avatar so that you can't get harassed. Which isn't really that encouraging about like, oh good. Well, I'm glad they did that because,

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:25):
Well, there, there having a couple of incidents like that, where and digital

Leo Laporte (02:04:30):
Griefing I guess,

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:31):
Well, not, not, not just griefing, but in virtual reality, avatars reaching out and touching people in a way that even through virtual reality, they did not want to be touched unwanted

Leo Laporte (02:04:42):
Touching, show us on the avatar where he touched you.

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:46):
Well,

Leo Laporte (02:04:47):
You don't even have legs in virtual reality. So I don't know.

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:51):
It's no, it's, it's also, it's part of what it's part of the development process of something it's brand new to society that it may not be something that was even considered you hadn't thought about a couple years ago. But then, then when you put millions of people inside this, this environment, this is how it feels for some people who are maybe in worlds in, in real world being harassed and being victims of that sort of thing. It's I, I do not need this. This is the, this is way, way too real. I do feel like it's, if I violation, even though it's just pixels. And so now how do you prosecute it? How do you ban it? How do you limit it? This is, I mean, so now instead of 2000 reasons why meta has a really stupid idea for a pivot, add one more,

Leo Laporte (02:05:30):
Connie, I'm gonna let you get your smartphone ready for the QR code in the second half, because we're gonna, we're gonna let you get to the football game in a second. But one last story, a big breakthrough, I think for streaming in the Oscars this morning or rather this week's Oscar nominations gave Netflix power of the dog streaming only movie, 12 nominations. Remember Stephen Spielberg a few years ago saying streaming movies show wouldn't even be considered for academy awards. Apple got six nominations, including a best picture nomination for Coda. This is, this is, I think it is now clear, especially cuz of the pandemic that streaming movies are movies. And they're quite a few, including the way don't look up, which was, we were talking about nominated for a best picture. Yeah. And that was Netflix only as well.

Andy Ihnatko (02:06:25):
Yeah. See, this is significant because the, the budget for Koda was 10 million, one zero million. Wow. And it's, and it's, and it's, it's a good example. The sort of movies that, that people used to be com excuse me, a lot of act. And a lot of producers used to be complaining that we can't make a, we can't get, we can't sell a movie that costs less than X, hundreds of millions of dollars because the market for movies and theaters right now is that when, by the time you add in marketing, by the time you add in distribution, it has to make a huge pile of money before it can recoup it's it's it's funding back. And so a lower budget or a tier budget movie, which is usually what you're talking about. When you're talking about a straight on drama where people are just gonna go in there and act the hell out of the screen, screenplay, that kind of ACEs all them out.

Andy Ihnatko (02:07:09):
So that's, it's not surprising at all that the streaming services that that are largely entice creators with, look, if you're gonna be making us a movie for 10, 20, $30 million, we will write you the check you get to make the movie that you want. Here are some rules that we want you to follow, but we're not gonna have someone on set every single moment advising you on what you should and shouldn't do. This is sort of like the, the gold rush almost for, in terms of rewards and prestige for these smaller tier movies. So that might be the salvation for I'd that's right from Dre and let's bring back theaters eventually. And, and maybe they can benefit as well, small indie theaters and art cinemas theater theater has to become a communal activity. Again. I agree. You have to, you have to watch a movie as an audience.

Andy Ihnatko (02:07:54):
Yeah. Not just, not just for the big picture, not just for the great sound, but there's something about the cheering that happens in a, in, even in an action movie where somebody picks up the weapon that from off screen and suddenly enters the battle that you realize that this is why I paid $12 for not the effects, but because be one of 200 people cheering like Al at, at a static, again, this, this is a weirdly American thing, because if you did that in the UK, you would be considered incredibly rudely. I, I went, see, I went last, but you guys all rise to your feet at the end of the movie to sing God, save the queen. Oh, please. You know, well that said, whenever I do hear the national Anthem, I get the urge to stand. But yes it do. They still do that at movie theaters. This is a long time ago when I was in the UK. I don't think they still do that. They used to play the national Anthem at the end of a movie. They used to play the national Anthem every night when the TV shut down at midnight. Yeah, we did that too. Yeah, we did that too. Tvs to shut down. Sorry, TVs don't shut down anymore. That's the problem.

Connie Cuglielmo (02:08:54):
Yeah. I, I will say I hope theaters come back to my favorite movie event was the watching galaxy quest with an audience here in the bay area at the end of galaxy quest, every single fan stood up and applauded including myself. So that is a moment. Isn't that great? Yes. It is a recognition that the streaming services and their investment in studio production, you know, is count during the Hollywood. You have to have a hundred million dollar budget. And, and we wanna see that. I mean, I think the, the day that we get an Oscar nominated movie that was shot on an iPhone, on a Sampson phone is, is the day that we really sit down and go, what? Holy cow. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (02:09:33):
You think that day will come.

Connie Cuglielmo (02:09:35):
I do. I think movies are storytelling, right? And it's about compelling characters and, and stories. And I think a lot of, I mean, I'm a big movie buff. Don't get me wrong. I will watch anything. Moon fall was a 140 million wow. Largest budget for an independent movie ever raised. I liked Dakota, which 10 million. But I think that that it's the creativity of the work. And if you're relying on big budget special effects, that's a complaint of a lot of movies. Right. the story was Matt, but oh my God, they look at that explosion. Yeah. From 50 different angles. Yeah. So it will allow you to experiment. I, I do think that day is coming.

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:20):
Yeah. I and you can use this in. I'm so obsessed if you want. I really think movies are the original VR, the VR that works. Yeah. You're not wearing a helmet, but you're in a darkened room with a bunch of other people. There's music to make your

Leo Laporte (02:10:33):
Heart move your there's pictures on the screen that make you gasp you a good movie takes you away. It transports you into a different space. That's virtual

Connie Cuglielmo (02:10:44):
Reality. It's it's 4d when they throw popcorn at you

Leo Laporte (02:10:48):
Connie Gomo I'm so obsessed on CNET. She's editor in chief. It's seen.com February 2nd, Roland. Emerick that's a good interview. I'm gonna have to listen to that. I can't. That's a great get. Wow. How cool is that? Anything else you want to mention that you're up to Connie?

Connie Cuglielmo (02:11:06):
No, I'm I'm. Now I'm gonna go and see what that silly point that

Leo Laporte (02:11:10):
Is. I hope they do it in the second half too. I want, will they spell, spend 13 million for a passing QR code? That's the only question. Thank you, Connie. It's really great to have you. My pleasure, Andy and ACO. I'm gonna see you on Tuesday. He's one of our hosts on Mac break weekly also appears on w GBH Boston every week in does the material podcast in relay.fm, which is I all about Android. You cover the waterfront all about Google. All about Google. I, I iCal. I am embraced crazy technology of all faiths. Always a pleasure. It's great to see you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And Iain Thompson news editor. I'm sorry, us editor now. It's all the same. It's all the, there's only three people. It's the Regis. No, I'm kidding. It's the register. I was gonna.com. It's a great publication, which we quote every single week.

Leo Laporte (02:11:59):
Great to have you, Iain. I'm always was sorry that your wife took the car and we didn't get to have a, ah, no, she's, Booy building on Stinson beach at the moment. I'm glad to head out to the pub. So yeah, summer came early in California. It's weird actually. I hope y'all have a wonderful Valentine's day tomorrow. And I thank you all for joining us the day before we do TWiT on a a lovely Sunday afternoon, right after the radio show, usually it's around two 30 Pacific, five, 30 Eastern, 2230 UTC. If you wanna watch us do it live, we stream live audio and video at live dot TWiT, do TV. If you're watching live, you can chat with us live. There's two places to do that. Of course, the IRC open to all irc.Twit.tv and our fabulous discord that folks in the discord are members of club TWiT $7 a month gets you ad free versions.

Leo Laporte (02:12:53):
Of all of our shows, acts this to the discord with such great animated gifts as this God saved the queen. And you also get the TWiT plus feed, which we we're doing thanks to the members of the club. We're kind of subsidizing this some new stuff. It's given us the chance to do this week in space with rod pile, our space go I from the national space society and his co Tara Malik from space.com. They talk about space every week. And of course the untitled Lenox show, Jonathan Bennett, the host of that Stacy Higginbotham's book club every month. There's the GI fizz with dict Bartolo every week. There's also special events and interviews coming up February 24th, Octa, ah, and ask me anything with Owen, J J stone, aunt Pruitt, our community manager will host. That should be something that should be amazing.

Leo Laporte (02:13:46):
In fact thank you Owen for doing that and thank you Anne for doing that and thank you club members for making it possible. All you have to do is go to TWiT.tv/club TWiT, by the way, we do have corporate memberships. We wanna welcome yet another corporate membership, another company buying subscriptions for their employees. That's that warms me. That warms my heart. Thank you for your support. If you wanna watch the show after the fact of course there's free versions, ad supportive versions of everything else we do available to our website, TWiT.tv. There's a YouTube channel for all of the TWiTtch shows. If you wanna watch the video there, you certainly can. My favorite thing to do though, subscribe in a podcast player and that way you get it automatically, you don't even to think about it. I and, and watch or listen at your leisure. And if your podcast player supports reviews, please leave us a five star review. The longest continuous running tech podcast in the world now in its 17th year. Thanks for joining us all 17 years. I've been saying it. I'll say it again. Another tweet this in the cam, amazing byebye,

Speaker 11 (02:14:56):
Doing the, doing the right, doing the, doing the, doing the.