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dot global and of course Mac break

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weekly from the register We've got Ian

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0:15

speaker extraordinaire Cory Doctorow

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3:35

time for TWIT this week in tech. A great

3:37

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3:39

is a great panel. Alex Lindsay is joining

3:41

us, slumming from MacBreak Weekly. Hello, Alex. It's

3:44

good to be here. It's good to see you. Also

3:47

with us, the wonderful Ian Thompson

3:49

from theregister.com. Hello, Ian.

3:53

Hello there. Welcome. I'm waiting for the

3:55

day when those bookshelves snap in the middle

3:57

of a show. They seem over burdened

4:00

slightly. Well, I got a comment on the

4:02

last twit I did with you where someone

4:04

said, you've never read all those books. It's

4:06

like, seriously, there's like four more of these

4:09

things. I know you've read them. He's

4:11

a literate man. And then we go

4:14

to the bookshelves of one Mr. Corey

4:16

Doctorow, who's written half the books

4:18

on the shelf. They seem

4:20

to be creating a life of their own. In

4:22

fact, it looks like Cordyceps is emerging now from

4:25

the bookshelves. Yeah,

4:27

I, I definitely well,

4:29

there's a reason my domain is crap pound

4:31

dot com. Actually,

4:35

the bezel is about to come out in audio

4:37

book. You've got to kickstart it for that. Yeah.

4:40

Yeah. So, well, we

4:42

read the audio. Nice. And as with

4:44

all my other audio books, Amazon refuses

4:46

to carry it. So though the book

4:48

is coming from Macmillan and Bloomsbury in

4:50

the UK, I had to make my

4:52

own audio. And so there I am

4:54

kickstarting it. You can you can get

4:56

the DRM free audio, the

4:58

DRM free ebook. You can preorder the hard

5:01

covers and get signed hard covers. And there's

5:03

one opportunity left

5:05

to name a character. Oh,

5:07

next one of these books comes out next

5:09

year. This is one of the Martin

5:11

Hench books, the sequel to Red Team

5:13

Blues. He is determined to

5:15

make a forensic accountant, the next

5:17

James Bond. And I, for one,

5:20

support this. There were I

5:22

mean, look, there are so many ways to

5:24

make money disappear into a spreadsheet. And

5:28

every time I come across a bit of

5:30

spreadsheets called Agri, I'm so delighted, like the

5:33

academic fraud where they caught the

5:35

scholar, the highest paid academic,

5:37

and I believe MIT knows

5:40

Harvard fudging her data. And

5:42

they and she'd saved it out not

5:44

as a CSV, but as an XLSX,

5:46

which embeds all the document history. So

5:48

I can actually watch her by rolling

5:50

the document backwards. They can watch her

5:52

clicking in the cells and changing the

5:54

numbers. And they're attributed to her and

5:56

her licensed copy. I mean, it's

5:58

this is the The golden age of fraud,

6:01

but it's like the golden age of fraud

6:03

forensics. Don't tell people too much though, Corey.

6:05

We want them to continue making those dumb

6:07

mistakes. You know what? I

6:10

am convinced after 20 years ago

6:12

in the InfoSec conferences that you can

6:14

explain with eye-watering detail all the ways

6:16

that people can screw up and they

6:18

will continue to screw up. Absolutely. I

6:20

love it when they redact stuff on

6:22

PDF. Oh, that

6:26

was an absolute goldmine for journalists. I

6:28

mean, we would highlight, yeah, more of

6:30

that please. I love it when Sam Beckman-Freed and

6:32

his friends have a group chat called Wire Fraud.

6:37

Well, it was ironic of Wire Fraud. Yeah,

6:41

it was ironic. Like when Jeff

6:43

Bezos called that program to extract

6:46

large discounts from small publishers

6:48

Project Gazelle and exhorted his

6:50

managers to view themselves as

6:52

cheetahs hunting down and killing

6:54

the most sickly and weak

6:56

gazelles in the past. Oh

6:58

my God, that's amazing. This

7:00

wasn't an anti-competitive action. Gazelles,

7:02

you know, they're beautiful, graceful

7:04

animals. It would have

7:06

been better if you'd name it Sick and Dying Gazelle. Then

7:09

we'd know. We are

7:11

here, joined together, gathered together today

7:13

in the first week of the

7:15

ascendancy of the Vision Pro headset,

7:17

the new future. Soon

7:19

we will all be wearing computers on

7:21

our foreheads. Alex, did

7:24

you buy one? I'm doing the

7:26

neck exercise. I got two weeks to get ready.

7:28

I hear it's really heavy. So that's

7:30

the big thing that I've heard. And so I've talked

7:32

to some friends that have gotten tested and they say,

7:34

well, it's heavy. So I have ordered one. So

7:37

I'm doing some, you know, just I've got some weights.

7:39

I got that little head thing and I've been like

7:41

trying to work on my neck a little bit so

7:43

that it doesn't feel as heavy. But yeah, I've got

7:45

one coming. It's extremely important that you prepare. Yeah.

7:49

It's funny, all the YouTubers, including Marques

7:51

Brownlee saying, oh, man, this thing turns

7:53

out to be, it's not actually more

7:55

heavy than the Oculus Pro, I don't

7:58

think. But they, they're... the

8:00

way they're offloading the weight with a

8:02

strap, apparently, is not... Well, I think that the

8:04

issue is that nobody has been given... No

8:08

one has been given one with a strap over the top.

8:10

Now it is coming... It's supposed to ship with the strap

8:12

over the top. And I think that they just didn't want

8:14

pictures of it. I think Apple didn't want anyone taking pictures with

8:16

the strap over the top, and so they didn't send it to

8:18

any of the reviewers. So now all the reviewers... Now

8:21

all the reviewers complain about how heavy it is. Once

8:23

the strap's over the top, it's probably going to

8:25

be pretty well distributed. I've been

8:27

reading some of the reviews. I mean, Apple is

8:29

notoriously harsh on journalists that don't give them an

8:32

absolutely, you know, perfect record. But even then, people

8:34

are just like, well, the battery pack's a bit

8:36

of a pain. The weight,

8:38

it's okay. After 30 minutes, your

8:40

neck gets tired. It doesn't

8:43

seem like they've really done the thing... It's a

8:45

fine art of knowing exactly... And by

8:47

the way, only reason to know this is because I

8:49

have gone too far. But it's a fine art of

8:51

knowing how far you can go to show

8:54

your editorial independence without actually pissing

8:56

Apple off to the point where

8:58

they stop letting you have these things or see them

9:00

early and so forth. I don't

9:02

think that's what editorial independence means. Yeah,

9:05

no. I mean, when

9:08

I first came over here, I couldn't invite

9:10

it. It's the appearances wife's editorial... You have

9:12

to appear to be editorial independent. Well,

9:14

no. I mean, when I first came over here,

9:16

I got invited to a couple of Apple events. And

9:18

the first one I was very positive about, I think

9:20

it was an iPod launch. And the second one,

9:22

it was just kind of like, no, okay, this

9:24

is bad and this is bad. That's it. Blacklisted forever

9:27

after. I feel like I am pretty bullish on Apple

9:29

stuff. But in any case, I've

9:32

been calling this one Tim Cook's folly. There

9:35

is some data already that this might

9:37

have some headwinds.

9:40

Three of the big developers, the app developers, three

9:42

of whom who have complained about Apple's 30% vig

9:45

in the app store, have

9:47

declined to make apps for the

9:50

Vision Pro. Netflix, Spotify,

9:52

and YouTube

9:55

will all be missing on the shipping Vision Pro.

9:58

One of them said, well, you can still use

10:00

the... browser like that's a good experience but

10:03

it's widely thought Mark Gurman thinks it's

10:05

it's kind of retaliation it well

10:07

the issue though is that I think that

10:09

for Apple because Apple makes music and because

10:11

Apple makes it has their own video Netflix

10:14

and Spotify not jumping into the headset number one

10:16

it doesn't affect them at all because the sales

10:18

are so low it's not it's like a it's

10:20

noise pretty easy thing to do you know it

10:22

doesn't make as much difference for them but

10:25

the YouTube might be a bit missed as

10:27

far as being able to watch those things but again as they said

10:29

you can watch it through the browser but

10:31

the the other thing is is that no

10:34

Google no Facebook it's

10:36

not really it doesn't really move the needle I

10:38

mean Facebook's not gonna do it because

10:40

they have their own headset they don't want to they never

10:42

famously made an iPad app either so it does yeah so

10:44

so I think that that's but I think that the where

10:49

it's a real boom is for small developers because

10:51

if you're a developer right now you know 80,000

10:53

sales you know the most likely the rumors are high

10:55

80 to 100,000 sales already at

10:58

that number that's

11:00

a really small number for Netflix like almost

11:02

not like I can't see that number they

11:04

can't see that number of people in their

11:07

in their in their spreadsheet but

11:09

if I was able to put out something

11:11

that's really cool for five dollars and I can sell 10,000 of them or 20,000

11:13

of them into a market

11:15

of people who already spent four thousand

11:17

dollars on their headset and are willing to

11:19

look at anything cool it's a really good

11:21

opportunity for small developers to get in and

11:23

do things and play in a

11:25

place where the larger developers may go well I'm

11:27

gonna wait until there's two or three million or

11:29

five million sure this is where this is where

11:32

this market opens up selling I know I'm more

11:34

$500 device that the chief thing seems to be

11:36

you can watch movies in it and there's no

11:38

Netflix and there's no YouTube I think

11:42

that does some damage Cory are you a

11:44

are you bullish on nerd helmets so

11:47

I am so a-stigmatic that I can't

11:49

even converge that stuff I

11:52

live with a technology executive for a major

11:54

movie studio who happens to be married to

11:56

me and she She

12:00

is also a former champion video

12:02

game player. She played Quake for

12:04

England. And so we have

12:07

all the headsets. Yeah, seriously.

12:09

And so yeah, so she's in charge of

12:11

like zombie defense and VR in

12:13

our house. And for

12:16

me, I just try to avoid them because

12:18

I get just blinding headaches from using it.

12:20

I assume that's because my eyes are looking

12:23

at it wrong. Right. In

12:25

the job. You're looking at it wrong. Yeah.

12:29

I mean, they are doing like corrective lenses

12:31

for the headsets, but they cost

12:33

an extra 200 quid. And

12:35

when I went through the order process, they also said

12:37

something. You upload your prescription,

12:39

but they said, do you have, what

12:41

was it? Delta in your prison?

12:43

I'm going to ask Prism. Prism, I think

12:46

it's for astigmatism, I think. So yeah,

12:48

so people like Corey, and I'm slightly

12:50

astigmatic. I also don't really

12:52

have full stereo vision. Anyway, I went through the process and

12:54

right at the point where I had a pressure button, I

12:56

said $3,500. I said, you know.

12:58

Yeah. No, I mean, I'm with you. Oh,

13:01

my $3,500? Mine was worth it. Oh, yeah. And

13:04

if you order, oh yeah, you can get more lens storage. I

13:08

got the one terabyte. I got

13:10

the $149 for the prescription lenses,

13:13

$200 for the plastic case, the

13:16

travel case. I didn't get that.

13:18

Yeah. Yeah. There's

13:21

a reason Apple makes two billion a

13:23

year. I feel like this is predatory

13:25

almost. Yeah. And remember, and this

13:27

is the other thing, that the timing is not

13:29

great because Apple, as you

13:31

may remember last week in the Supreme

13:33

Court, declined to weigh in

13:36

on Apple's appeal on the Epic

13:38

decision. So Apple does have to open,

13:40

not open

13:43

their app store, but allow apps to. Third

13:46

party payments. Yeah. We have

13:48

a click in there that says, oh, you want to buy a

13:50

Kindle book? Oh. So right now,

13:52

if you open the Kindle app and want to buy a

13:54

book, Amazon says, yeah, you can't buy it here. That's all

13:56

they're allowed to say. take

14:00

the money in a 30% hit but the gross margin on

14:02

that book is 20% and they don't want to do that.

14:05

So they can't give you a link but

14:07

wait that's more, wait I'm not done. So

14:09

Apple's now forced to provide you, provide Amazon

14:12

and everybody else with the opportunity to click

14:14

the button, go to their store but Apple

14:16

says oh and by the way we know

14:18

we're watching and you

14:20

better pay us 27% commission on that

14:22

transaction. And

14:25

Google's doing the same thing right? Okay. Oh

14:28

yeah, no, no, no, the duopoly, this is

14:30

the hilarious thing about the idea that we

14:33

have mobile competition is that generally in competitive

14:35

markets the firms involved don't

14:37

all offer exactly the same thing. This

14:39

is like Henry Ford saying you can have it in any

14:41

color so long as it's black and then Edsel coming along

14:44

and saying you can also have it in any color with

14:46

us so long as it's black. You see the market is

14:48

working. The

14:50

malicious compliance from Apple here really reminds

14:52

me of the kind of stories I

14:54

used here from my great aunt Lisa

14:57

who bossed an engineering shop in

14:59

the Soviet Union and all of

15:01

her reports were surly drunks and

15:04

they would find the most imaginative ways

15:06

to just like technically

15:08

do what she ordered them to do

15:10

without actually doing it. Apple's

15:12

also thrown an interrupter in there so that

15:15

when you click on it you get the

15:17

screen that says like warning, fraud ahead, you

15:19

might lose all your money, don't click on

15:21

this but if you must click on it

15:23

but we wash our hands. Jamie

15:26

Zawinski had a really good blog post where he went through

15:28

the history of these starting with NCSA

15:31

mosaic having an

15:33

interrupter that said you are

15:36

visiting an outside website which

15:38

may contain pornography. Don't

15:43

tell me with a good time but no, I

15:45

mean it's the same story with

15:47

the Apple repair business. Apple was finally

15:49

forced by public opinion to say okay

15:51

you can repair your kit. Now in

15:53

order to do it you've got to

15:55

get these briefcases worth of kit, you've

15:57

got to buy all the parts to

15:59

vey. very high price. I mean, they

16:01

are musts of this kind of shenanigans.

16:03

They reformed that a little and they

16:05

replaced it with something called parts pairing,

16:08

which they tried periodically before really it came out

16:10

of the automotive industry where it's called VinLocking. And

16:13

this is where you have a little

16:15

tiny cheap chip in each component.

16:18

And it does a cryptographic handshake with

16:20

the main CPU. And

16:22

until it gets an unlock code,

16:24

the CPU won't talk to it.

16:26

And so, you know, this is

16:29

done with car engines and some components and

16:31

engines. It's done with tractors from John

16:33

Deere. Medtronic does it with their ventilators

16:35

and Apple just went like

16:38

basically the same week they announced

16:40

that they were now supporting right

16:42

to repair rolled out a whole

16:44

ton of new parts pairing, which

16:46

caused iFixit to rescind

16:48

their rating on

16:50

the latest iPhone. Now Google

16:53

did go to Oregon and

16:55

say we support the right to repair and

16:58

we are against part pairing. Yeah. Yeah.

17:00

Yeah. That's I mean, look, that is where

17:02

competition actually is working. Like I don't think

17:05

Google is made up of people who are

17:07

nicer than Apple. Right. I just

17:09

think that like they they looked at

17:11

the incredibly good press Apple got when

17:13

they climbed down from their right to

17:15

repair stance and then the incredibly bad press they

17:18

got when it turned out that they were scamming

17:20

and they went, why don't we just do the

17:22

first part and not the second part? And if

17:24

we can get some good press. Well, good luck

17:26

Google. It's not like they make, I mean, they

17:29

make the they make the

17:31

pixels pixel. Apple has a

17:33

lot more to lose. Here, by

17:35

the way, thanks to JWZ, Jamie

17:37

Zawinski. Here are some of those

17:41

interrupters. This is on the left where it's

17:43

the the current Apple one. You're about to

17:45

go to an external website. Apple is not

17:47

responsible for the privacy or security of purchases

17:49

made on this web. And there's even more

17:52

pros under this. He's got also MySpace's

17:54

warning. And he's

17:57

got this one is from Mosaic, I

17:59

think. say is Mosaic, right?

18:01

Beware, despite our best... was this for

18:04

any link in a browser? I

18:07

think it must have been when you were clicking off

18:09

of the Mosaic website. I mean, it's hard to tell

18:11

what the context is. I just love that Jamie's got

18:13

a hard drive full of this crap. He saved it.

18:15

Oh yeah. In fact, he has previously. And

18:18

I don't even know if they need to. I mean, the

18:21

reality is 99% of the people are not going to

18:23

leave it because if you have an iPhone

18:25

and you have an Apple TV, you know better

18:27

than to start buying apps that require you to

18:29

go outside to pay for them because the

18:32

Apple TV is a disaster. I mean, it is a

18:34

dumpster fire because I get in there and

18:36

now I got to type in this code and

18:39

now I have to go over and I have

18:41

to register with this activate. It's a disaster. You

18:43

know, and so the thing is, is that as a

18:45

user, my argument against all the reason I'm never going

18:47

to go to something else. And if

18:49

someone puts their app on an outside thing or has

18:52

me pay for it, I'm gonna be like, I don't need that.

18:54

You know, like I don't need to have that app in my

18:56

life because I don't want to go

18:58

over there because I don't want to, it's, I don't care

19:00

about the percentage. I don't care about charging me 30% more.

19:04

I just don't want to deal with the time. To

19:06

me, time is valuable. And then Apple for a lot

19:08

of Apple users, time is more valuable than money, you

19:10

know, and so the thing is, is that it is

19:12

a, you know, we just don't want to deal with

19:14

it. And I think that the Apple TV is a

19:16

perfect example of what happens when you start to fragment,

19:19

you know, fragment the buying experience. I just want to

19:21

go up and buy the app, pay for it there.

19:23

And most importantly, I want to be able to kill

19:26

the subscription anytime I want to. For

19:28

whatever money we're saving as users for it to

19:30

be on the outside, you save a lot more

19:32

like when I buy an app, I sign up

19:34

for a subscription, I wait a day, and then

19:36

I cancel the subscription. And then it

19:38

warns me and it dies if I don't move, if

19:40

I don't use it again. And I

19:42

can't do that with anything else. And so as a user, I

19:44

just, I just don't think that I think I get

19:47

why we're doing this, but I don't think it

19:49

serves the user of the owner of the phone,

19:51

I think is getting a worse experience. So I

19:53

have to respectfully disagree. So first of all, the

19:55

way to get firms to stop ripping you off

19:57

with subscriptions is for the Federal Trade Commission. to do

20:00

what it's just done, which is click to cancel orders.

20:03

And then if they don't let you cancel with

20:05

the same ease that you signed up, the Federal

20:07

Trade Commission comes in and finds them thousands of

20:09

times more than they're making from it. Allowing

20:12

firms... I just don't know where it is. Like, I

20:14

have to get... Now I have to dig through all

20:16

my stuff. Right, but that's also a violation of the

20:18

click to cancel order. It has to be as easy.

20:20

And the cable companies, by the way, have responded to

20:22

click to cancel, telling the NTC... Some

20:24

of these arguments this week have just been

20:26

absolutely hilarious. And when we make it that

20:28

easy to cancel, our

20:30

customers might cancel by accident. Right.

20:34

And, you know, I have watched

20:36

all forms of sideloading in the

20:38

mobile duopoly get much harder over

20:40

the years, which is weird, right?

20:42

So I loved the iPod.

20:44

I was at that same iPod announcement that you

20:46

were at, Ian. And

20:49

I went out and bought one, you

20:51

know, the day I could. And

20:54

I remember I just plugged it into my computer and everything

20:56

synced over. And then whenever I had any new music on

20:58

my computer, I'd double click it, it would show up in

21:00

iTunes. The next time I plugged my iPod in, it would

21:02

just work. As someone who sells

21:04

media on the web that is

21:07

sold outside of Apple's stores, because

21:10

Apple refuses to sell audio that isn't

21:12

locked to its platform forever with DRM

21:14

and won't give authors the chance to

21:17

unlock it, I have

21:19

watched my users, like really sophisticated

21:21

technical users, struggle with trying to

21:24

move media from the web to their

21:27

phones. Now I don't believe that this

21:29

is because it got harder as an

21:31

intrinsic technical matter to sideload media.

21:33

I think it's because the mobile duopoly gets

21:35

30 cents every time you spend a dollar

21:37

in their store and loses that 30 cents

21:40

every time you spend that dollar on the

21:42

web. And since they control that

21:44

ecosystem, they've made it a lot harder. So

21:46

by contrast, for example, I just set up

21:48

a Chromecast. And again, I'm not a Google

21:50

fanboy. I have written some of the most

21:52

vitriolic prose about Google that

21:54

has been published, I think. But

21:57

I just set up a Chromecast and there were a bunch

21:59

of streaming services. services we need to set up for it. And

22:01

I was like, oh my God, am I going to have to

22:03

type my passwords into

22:05

this? And it was like, just aim a

22:08

phone at a QR code and click a

22:10

button and the thing would just recognize it.

22:12

And so as a technical

22:14

matter, I think interconnecting

22:16

devices from heterogeneous vendors that

22:19

want their customers to be

22:21

able to access a service is

22:23

possible. And I think that when we

22:26

see burdensome connectivity

22:28

that our first suspicion should not

22:30

be that this is intrinsically difficult,

22:32

but rather that either someone's not

22:35

good at their job or that

22:37

an artificial barrier has been erected.

22:40

And where there's a profit margin,

22:42

where there's a very significant profit

22:44

margin, remember that the payment processing

22:46

cartel makes 3% to 5% on

22:49

every payment. And that's considered a monopolistic price

22:52

gouge. It's gone up 40% since the start

22:54

of the pandemic. Apple, Google are

22:56

charging 30%, right? That's a

22:58

thousand percent more than the monopoly rate. And

23:01

when you see that the firms that control

23:03

this, the most valuable companies in the history

23:05

of the planet are unable to

23:07

somehow resolve an easy matter whereby you

23:09

pay for something in one place and

23:11

it shows up somewhere else. When they

23:13

used to do that as a routine

23:15

matter, then I think that either

23:18

their heart's not in it or they're pulling

23:20

against it. I don't mean

23:22

to sound like a conspiratorialist, but I

23:24

refuse to believe that it's a revenue thing. It's a revenue thing

23:26

that they built. It's

23:30

kind of like I built this train and everyone's like, I'd like to

23:32

get on the train and not have to pay for it. You know,

23:34

like the reason that it's there. It's

23:36

more like you sold all these

23:38

people Nikes and I'd like to sell them shoelaces.

23:40

And they're like, no, once you buy

23:43

the Nike shoes, you got to wear the Nike

23:45

shoelaces, you got to wear the Nike socks and

23:47

we'd really strongly prefer if you only wore the

23:49

Nike trousers. I think Occam's races

23:51

suggest that this really is, you know, monopolistic behavior.

23:53

There's really, I mean, there's a lot of smart

23:55

people at Google and Apple. They know that this

23:58

stuff is a pain in the back. to

24:00

use them, they're perfectly happy with that. What

24:02

about the argument though that 30% seems

24:05

to be the standard VIG, it

24:07

is Microsoft and the Xbox. Well,

24:10

no before, no, no, no, no, no, no, Sony

24:12

was doing it on the PlayStation, Microsoft is doing it

24:15

on the Xbox. Consoles have

24:17

been 30% since forever. Like

24:19

that has been the number and that's where they took it.

24:21

That's where the number came from, not from Apple. Okay, that

24:23

doesn't mean it's not any competitive, I should point out. We

24:27

should probably take that one down first. Well,

24:30

we can walk and chew gum, we can do both.

24:34

The problem is that they build the

24:37

platform, they support the platform, they develop

24:39

the platform, as someone

24:41

who has sold a lot of software

24:43

over for the last 25 years and I'm about

24:46

to sell another one into the app store in

24:48

the next six months or so. On the Vision

24:50

Bro? No, no, no,

24:52

it's just this little program here, you draw

24:54

on things. Anyway,

24:57

so the,

25:01

as I look at it, I used to sell, so

25:03

I used to sell a Keene software for Final Cut

25:05

and we used to put it up, looking at the

25:07

Wares sites, we were pretty

25:09

sure that the number that we

25:12

sold versus the number that were

25:14

being used was about 50 to 1. So

25:18

that was, and trying to, as a

25:20

small developer, trying to go after those

25:22

folks was just going to be impossible. You know,

25:24

it was just going to be like, I'm not going to go down that path.

25:28

And it was just a really, for me, when

25:30

I look at the idea that there's a platform

25:32

that solves the install, that solves the security, that

25:34

solves the updates, that solves all those other things,

25:37

as a developer, knowing that I'll never make more

25:39

than a million dollars. We have to remember that

25:42

98% of the developers exist. I don't have

25:44

any complaints. Nobody's suggesting that that should exist.

25:46

I don't think there should be a choice. There should be a choice. If

25:48

you want to do it that way, you should do it that way.

25:50

But let's look at the numbers. The

25:53

number of developers being affected by 30%. We

25:55

keep on throwing around 30%. Look at the Macintosh platform. By the way, there

25:57

are a lot of developers. very

26:00

concerned that Apple is about to do this on the Mac

26:02

platform. I don't think they are. I hope they're not. No,

26:04

they're not gonna. But this

26:06

exact scenario that you describe exists

26:08

on the Mac where you can

26:10

have a as a independent developer

26:12

put your site up, have

26:15

an app on your site, sell it directly. Apple does

26:17

not take a percentage. Well, that's

26:19

what I'm saying. You have a choice or you could

26:21

do it in the app store. Okay,

26:23

you know what I can say. But there are a

26:25

lot of companies that are big

26:28

enough that want to do it. And they keep

26:30

100% of the revenue. And if they want to

26:32

do that, they should have the choice. Before

26:35

the Berlin Wall came down, they used to

26:37

insist that the wall was there to stop

26:39

people from West Germany sneaking in. And Apple

26:43

says that the only reason we

26:45

don't permit people to choose another

26:47

word like to sideload is because

26:50

we don't think our developers or

26:52

customers want that. Apple

26:55

wouldn't have spent like tens

26:57

of millions of dollars and its

26:59

best PR efforts fighting sideloading if

27:02

this was a thing that everyone genuinely preferred or

27:04

if they genuinely believed that this was a thing

27:07

everyone generally would have to. Well,

27:09

no, but to argue

27:11

that case just for one second is that what

27:14

I, again, as a pretty hardened

27:16

Apple user, like I

27:18

have a couple PCs over here and a couple

27:20

of Unix machines over here, but generally I'm a

27:22

Mac environment and Apple TV is my only interface.

27:24

And I've had every iPhone that was released and

27:26

I have Apple watches and all the other things,

27:28

right? What I'm

27:30

concerned about as a user is

27:33

companies taking away my choice. So saying Netflix, saying

27:35

I'm only going to let you have it if

27:37

you sideload it. Like I'm no longer going to

27:39

make it available to you. So as a user,

27:41

I get a lower, I get forced

27:43

into a sideload

27:46

that I don't want to do. It works fine

27:49

on the Mac, though. I don't understand why it

27:51

wouldn't work on iOS. Why is it different? Because

27:53

right now the iOS is very secure and very closed

27:55

down and I can manage all the payments and I can

27:57

do all the things that I want to do. I

28:00

don't want to sideload and I don't want to be forced to

28:02

sideload. And for the Mac, on the Mac,

28:04

I buy apps that

28:07

are generally high-end apps

28:09

that are, you know, $300 or more that are, that I'll buy a

28:11

site. If

28:13

you have a little app under $100, there is

28:15

zero chance that I'm going to buy it. But

28:18

you have the choice. That's the point is

28:20

you can have an app store and you can

28:22

have an open ecosystem at the same time. That

28:25

is, but what people will be, what app, what right

28:28

now the user doesn't have

28:30

to make that choice. Right now

28:32

the user is in a closed garden. No,

28:34

okay. If you think

28:37

that more than 1% of Apple users... They

28:39

do on the Mac all the time. And if they

28:41

were to do this, you even said if they were

28:43

to do this on the Mac, it would be the

28:46

end of the Mac platform. They don't care. Like they

28:48

don't care. Apple users don't care about this. And the

28:50

thing is, is as soon as they, I mean really

28:52

like real people, like not us in the geeky world

28:54

or whatever, but real people barely even know this exists,

28:56

let alone care about it. Well, you might

28:58

care about it. We're in the tech. They don't

29:01

care. They don't even know it's here. And the thing

29:03

is, is that what they will know is when

29:05

Netflix suddenly requires them to go into a side load

29:07

or Facebook requires them because Facebook wants to build

29:09

its own store or Epic, then they're

29:11

going to be upset and then it's too late. Like

29:13

it's already out the door and then you're going

29:15

to have people, people are going to be

29:18

upset after it happens, not before

29:20

it happens. Right now they don't know

29:22

and they're going to be, and people will, and Facebook is going to

29:24

do that. You know, they're not going to want to

29:27

keep on developing. If they're allowed to go on the other side, they're

29:29

going to want to put everything over there because they want

29:31

to, they want to manage their own marketplace. The problem

29:33

is that Apple, it works

29:35

well when it's making good choices on your

29:37

behalf, but because when it

29:39

makes a bad choice on your behalf, you

29:42

can't overrule that choice. It fails very badly.

29:44

So thinking here of something like the OG

29:46

app, which was an app that used WebKit

29:48

to get you to log into Instagram, grabbed

29:50

the token and then gave you an Instagram

29:53

feed where they removed all of the ads,

29:56

all of the surveillance, so no telemetry was sent to

29:58

Meta and only showed

30:00

you things and all the suggestions and only showed

30:02

you things from people

30:04

who you had subscribed to

30:06

which was wildly popular and which Apple took out

30:09

of the app store setting section 522 of

30:11

their developer agreement saying that you may not

30:13

have an app that violates anyone else's terms

30:15

of service. Right? So the terms

30:17

of service, have you ever read the terms of

30:19

service on any app you've ever used or any

30:21

service you've ever used? It basically says abandon hope

30:23

all ye who enter here. So what

30:26

you have is Apple showing up and putting its

30:28

thumb on the scales for allowing Facebook to spy

30:30

on you. Now when Apple was stopping Facebook from

30:32

spying on you by giving you a one click

30:34

opt out which by the way violated Facebook's

30:36

terms of service and very rightfully Apple told

30:38

Facebook to pound sand. That was

30:41

great and that worked well but

30:43

because Apple is not disciplined by the fear

30:45

of users figuring out how to install a

30:47

third party app store

30:50

they are also willing

30:52

to run roughshod over what you do. Those

30:55

self help measures are a powerful force of discipline

30:57

on tech firms. Right? So

30:59

there's a level in which say ad blockers could be

31:01

installed. Every time someone in a product development meeting says

31:03

hey let's make the ads 25% more obnoxious

31:06

and we'll get 2% more revenue per

31:08

user someone else might say but look

31:10

25% of our users are

31:12

going to type how do I install an ad

31:14

blocker when you put that in and our expected

31:17

revenue from those users falls to zero forever. Now

31:19

half the web has installed an ad blocker.

31:22

Zero app users have installed an ad blocker

31:24

because installing an ad blocker in an app

31:26

requires decompiling the app which is a felony under

31:29

section 1201 of the DMCA. So

31:32

you can think of an app as just a

31:34

webpage that pays a 30% commission wrapped in enough

31:36

IP that it's a felony to put an ad

31:38

blocker in it and the fact that when devs

31:42

try to actually intercede on behalf of

31:44

users to block the negative conduct of

31:46

some of the most harmful companies in

31:49

the world Apple helps those companies. Right?

31:52

It tells you that Apple itself

31:54

cannot be the sole arbiter of what's in

31:56

our interest. They can be an arbiter of

31:58

what's in our interest. but if we

32:00

don't get to override their choices, then they

32:03

will not use that authority wisely. Now

32:06

I agree, I mean you mentioned this at DEF

32:08

CON in your speech, where it's specifically an app

32:10

is basically access to a web page with a

32:12

bunch of IP thrown in there to make sure

32:14

that you don't do anything that isn't

32:16

wanted at the time. And

32:18

that's a tremendously dangerous situation. I mean,

32:22

we're supposed to be individual users of

32:24

these devices, and yes, it might be a

32:26

slight pain to sideload stuff, but it's certainly

32:28

a right that must be protected. I

32:30

love Brent Simmons' take on this. He's a

32:32

longtime Apple developer. I

32:34

think he was the one who came up with a pull to refresh.

32:37

He did that newswire in his

32:39

blog at essential.com. Corporations are not

32:41

to be loved. I need

32:43

to remember now and again that Apple is a

32:45

corporation. Corporations aren't people. They can't love you back.

32:48

You wouldn't love GE or Exxon or Comcast,

32:51

and you shouldn't love Apple. It doesn't care

32:53

about you personally in the least

32:55

tiny bit. And if you were in their way

32:57

somehow, and I have to think Brent might have

33:00

some personal experience here, they would

33:02

do whatever their might, effectively infinite

33:04

compared to your own, enables

33:07

them to deal with you. Apple

33:11

has, like he says, luckily Apple has just provided us

33:13

all with a reminder. Just like the

33:16

sixth finger in an AI-rendered hand, Apple's

33:18

policies for distributing apps in the US

33:20

that provide an external purchase link are

33:22

startlingly graceless, and

33:27

jarring, but not

33:29

surprising. Reminder, Apple is not a real person and

33:31

not worthy of your love. It's hard for, I

33:33

think, and I'll include myself in

33:35

the cult of Mac. Those

33:38

of us, and you were early on a cult

33:41

of Mac member, Corey, I know you've

33:43

moved on. I have an Apple tattoo. Yeah.

33:45

You do, really? My only tattoo, I have

33:47

a sad Mac with a hexadecimal error code.

33:50

Oh, that's great. Where

33:52

is that, by the way? Inner thigh? On

33:54

my right bicep where it turned into a kind

33:56

of smudge because I got it like 28 pixels

33:58

square. You know, I dumped the... the roms on

34:00

an SE and then laser printed it

34:02

and brought it to a tattoo artist and he was like, this

34:04

is going to smudge. And I'm like, no, I'll be careful. And

34:07

now it's just a story. But

34:09

that's a beautiful story. So at

34:11

the time you clearly were a fan. I

34:16

think that as with

34:18

my relationship with Disney theme parks,

34:20

it is quite possible to love the sin and hate

34:23

the sinner. But you

34:25

don't have to excuse all

34:27

of the bad things that someone does or a

34:30

firm does just because they've made things that you

34:32

enjoy and that make your life better. You

34:34

can give them some grace, but you don't have to

34:37

be blind to their bad actions.

34:40

And I think that so much of the kind

34:42

of painful stuff that we get into

34:45

when someone or some firm

34:47

that has done something that we like disappoints us

34:50

arises out of this weird idea that

34:52

all ethical conduct sits in this balance

34:54

scale. And if all the

34:57

bad things that someone's done are worse than all the

34:59

good things that someone's done, all the good things are

35:01

wiped away. And if all the good things are better

35:03

than all the bad things that someone's done, then all

35:05

the bad things are irrelevant.

35:08

And instead we can just have those exist in

35:10

superposition. We can say when Apple has its

35:13

customers backs, right, when Apple is

35:15

kicking Facebook spying out of iOS,

35:17

when Apple is fighting the FBI

35:19

on surveillance and encrypted messaging, Apple

35:22

is doing good and Apple's

35:25

conduct and the products that arise from that conduct are

35:27

good. And then when Apple

35:29

is removing all working privacy tools from the

35:31

Chinese app store, when

35:34

Apple secretly turns on its own ad-based surveillance on

35:36

iOS platform after kicking Facebook out, then Apple is

35:38

bad and doing bad. We don't have to say

35:41

Apple is a bad company for having done bad,

35:43

nor do we have to say Apple is a

35:45

good company for having done good. What we have

35:47

to say is what are the forces that discipline

35:50

Apple so that on balance its conduct is good?

35:52

And What are the policies that create

35:55

a regime in which when Apple does

35:57

bad, we are not forced to take

35:59

those bad. Decisions on or rather can

36:01

make another choice. Which is why things

36:03

like side loading and third party app

36:06

stores are good. Not because necessarily any

36:08

one that you know will use them,

36:10

but because the possibility that someone will

36:12

use them might discipline Apple into conducting

36:14

itself better and the operation of it's

36:16

own app store. And should Apple's hubris

36:19

our way it's it's self defense or

36:21

it's self self preservation instinct, then you'll

36:23

have a remedy, right? You can go

36:25

somewhere else. If it ever gets bad

36:27

enough, you can go somewhere else. Does

36:31

the issues debate hold on? We're going to

36:33

stop now. This debate will continue on Mac

36:35

bi weekly. It is a good cause to

36:37

me up it is it Located is an

36:40

ongoing conversation that we have a Mac break

36:42

quickly. As. Alex His position

36:44

as is cited a well known and well

36:46

well as well executed by staff and for

36:48

a just was assumed ones that ten seconds

36:51

sir. It's. Not that Big Apple does everything

36:53

right. I hate the Apple Tv at this point. Like that

36:55

they are Iowa a servant T B O S I I

36:57

complain about it all the time. It's not that I that

36:59

I. That. I I that I

37:01

think Apple does better. I just measured

37:04

against everything else, including the United States

37:06

government and shoes Apple over almost all

37:08

of those other things. Because their business

37:10

model selfishly is user centric is far

37:13

as not not developer centric and not

37:15

government century, but user centric. And and

37:17

that's their business model. I don't claim

37:19

that they're good. I. Just don't. I'm

37:22

only say that their business model is to keep folks

37:24

like us. Happy. You know and

37:26

a were those out than offered the of which is

37:28

not apply in China. In. I mean it's

37:30

kind of those bathroom and my government of a see

37:32

I mean know like as long as you like about

37:34

kingdom talk about not getting to choose my the. There's

37:36

a lot of things I don't like about California, but

37:38

I've chosen to live here. you know, like you know

37:41

and and I'd and and there's a ton of things

37:43

that I think heard crappy about the state. but I'm

37:45

here, I'm here and I I don't. I'm like and

37:47

this is where I live. You know and I'm not.

37:49

I'm not going anywhere. Weirdo so that humans are so

37:51

you always have to take it. take all those pieces

37:53

together as a home. Humans are such a. Tribal.

37:57

A. species in it's how we

37:59

can or organized our lives and

38:01

survived and succeeded so long.

38:03

It's hard not to be tribal. And one

38:06

of the attributes of tribalism is my side is

38:08

right and your side is wrong

38:10

always and forever. And

38:13

tribalism doesn't really solve this problem at

38:15

all. And while I do

38:17

not have an apple tattoo, I do

38:19

have a twit tattoo. And it hasn't

38:21

changed. Why do you have that? It's

38:26

a long story. Let's

38:30

put it this way. It was New Year's Eve. I

38:32

came home the next morning with my head shaved and a

38:35

tattoo on my ass. That's all

38:37

you need to know. That's all you need to

38:39

know. I thought you were going to

38:41

say that most of the time it says twit,

38:43

but at very special moments it says, Twitter the

38:45

company came after Twitch and network. We

38:50

used to have a paragraph, because we'd call

38:52

people from Twitter and they'd say, Twitter. And

38:54

we had a whole paragraph where we'd say,

38:56

no, Twitch predates Twitter. It's

39:00

a network, podcast network, not a, anyway,

39:02

fortunately. I don't have to do that

39:05

anymore, because Twitter is

39:07

the company formerly known as

39:10

Twitter. But as long as we're

39:13

in the, I want to take a break, we need

39:15

to take a break, but I do, as long as

39:17

we're in the annals of companies behaving badly, you saw

39:19

that Verizon has agreed to settle a

39:21

class action lawsuit of $100 million. That

39:24

is the craziest one I've read that. I

39:26

was like, what are they doing? They

39:29

are agreeing to make a payment, but

39:31

they're not agreeing to stop the behavior.

39:34

And if you look at what they're willing to pay people, they're

39:36

actually making a profit. We're talking about 30%. They're

39:39

making 60% on the profit. This is

39:41

the so-called telco recovery fee, which

39:44

the class action lawsuit asserted

39:46

is nothing but just more

39:48

profit for Verizon. They

39:50

admitted no wrongdoing, but did settle for $100 million and

39:52

then said, oh, and by the

39:56

way, we're going to continue to charge the fee.

40:00

a problem when it comes to regulation in

40:02

this country and this is something that the

40:04

reg is being part of pioneering when a

40:06

fine or settlement like this is announced you

40:08

don't just say it's a hundred million you

40:10

say this is what 0.2 percent

40:13

of their net profit for the last

40:15

year this is a cost of business

40:17

you know cost for them this isn't

40:19

a fine this isn't a deterrence in

40:21

any way they also agree business they

40:23

also agree to amend their variety

40:26

my Verizon Wireless customer agreement

40:30

to include this explanation of the charges

40:33

which range by the way it's a few bucks per

40:35

bill but it's on every month and

40:37

it doesn't do anything except give them money

40:39

in their pocket in addition to

40:41

the cost of your planned Verizon rights or any

40:43

features to which you may subscribe our

40:45

charges may also include an administrative

40:48

and telco recovery charge

40:51

the administrative and telco recovery charge

40:53

is an attacks it

40:55

isn't required by law it's

40:57

not necessarily related to anything the

40:59

government does and is

41:01

kept by us in whole or

41:03

in part and

41:06

the funny thing is that nobody will ever read that

41:09

and they end up as you one dollar a

41:11

quarter one dollar a month for all the months

41:13

that you had it right you're paying three dollars

41:16

right you don't get your money back the settlement

41:18

every five years the the lawyers will take uh

41:21

you know 40 billion 40 million the lawyers get

41:23

40 million Verizon makes a profit and you get

41:25

a little bit of a rebate back but that's

41:27

exactly what this is this is watch this happen

41:30

in five years from now yeah like a 40

41:32

it's like eight million dollar a year deal for

41:34

this law firm to just say we're just going

41:36

to keep settling every five years we'll take some

41:38

money we'll send some back to everybody and we'll get

41:40

a little bit of press and i'll move on Verizon page

41:42

is started back there's a

41:44

phrase from the law and political economy movement here which

41:46

is that a fine is a price um

41:49

and you know this this is the

41:51

issue with um uh rather than prohibiting

41:53

conduct finding people for the conduct and

41:55

it's also the problem With

41:57

certain kinds of consent-based regimes are noted,

42:00

Notification based Regimes Rights By By As I

42:02

said before, we're talking about Apple's saw developer

42:04

tail section five to two and and you

42:06

know you may not violating when else is

42:08

T O S that the fact that the

42:11

T O S says you know by being

42:13

dumb enough to use our product you agree

42:15

that are allowed to come to your house

42:17

and punch your grandmother and where your underwear

42:20

and miss long distance calls and eat all

42:22

the food near for it doesn't actually like

42:24

should not constitute consent and you know that

42:26

the outer periphery. Of what you

42:28

can consent to without being able to

42:31

negotiate should be much more tightly constrained

42:33

by that them. The idea that we

42:35

should have a higher threshold for a

42:37

wedding contract was called unconscious ability. A

42:39

clause that's happy and forced because it

42:42

shocks the contents should be much higher

42:44

in these on our contracts. Have a

42:46

decision or click through contracts for you,

42:48

don't get a say otherwise you just

42:50

how you just have this thing where

42:52

you say okay, well you're not allowed

42:55

to do this and are they say

42:57

great? Well from. Now on will just tell

42:59

people were doing aunts and either gets buried in

43:01

a fine print or you see it in the

43:03

fine print and you're like but I still need

43:05

the thing right? bus back to the point or

43:07

whatever they can do is low enough. so now

43:09

it's a couple of bucks a month. Was

43:12

and. In and and really the question is

43:14

when she get it if it became a regulation

43:16

rather than a settlement was my probably why the

43:18

keep his the settlements the I is what wants

43:20

you to a regulation you keep on doing it

43:22

than that becomes that starts to eat your smoke

43:24

lots of small have. Lots. Of

43:26

small crimes and add up to a big crime is

43:28

rico. You. Know what you know and as

43:30

I know I want to channel I want to

43:33

tell Can why here and say it's probably not

43:35

read tough decisions I know, but. While

43:38

arrivals take a break, not agree pale.

43:41

Lots. To discuss. I.

43:43

Love it when a panel or does not

43:45

necessarily see eye to eye and thus. I.

43:47

Think we got as three smart people

43:49

were who argue that case. Well Cory

43:51

Doctorow is here his new book The

43:53

Bezel is on kickstarter if you want

43:55

to. Support. The audio

43:57

addition wizard a wonderful will. In.

44:01

A I love I love the first Martin

44:03

had spoken. Can't wait to read the Bezel.

44:05

This is great, Are secular is great. Yeah

44:07

and you know I'll be fair. You say

44:09

Amazon was sell it but let's be fair.

44:11

The reason Amazon or so as because you

44:13

won't put Drm on it. So sure, right?

44:15

But but you know that that's like saying

44:17

I'm. At. Your Amazon also won't sell

44:20

books that, ah ah, for a while. Anyway,

44:22

they wouldn't sell books that had links to

44:24

sites other than Amazon and Numb And right,

44:26

you know the answer might be. while you

44:28

could just write a book that didn't have

44:30

those requirements and and Amazon would sell it,

44:32

sir. Okay, if if I allowed Amazon to

44:35

lock every book that I sold to Amazon's

44:37

platform forever, you know sections What one of

44:39

the Dmz provides for a five hundred thousand

44:41

dollar fine and a five year prison sentence

44:43

for removing Drm See Which means that if

44:45

I as the author of the book and

44:47

the person who financed. The audio book. Where.

44:50

To provide you the person who bought the book from

44:52

Audible with a tool so you can move it out

44:54

of Audible that. And. Played in another app.

44:57

Not. Only would that be punishable by

44:59

a stiffer penalty than you just pirating the

45:01

book from some torrent site? It's It's a

45:03

much higher penalty than you pay if you

45:05

shoplifted the book on Cd from like a

45:07

truck stop. and it's even probably harsher than

45:10

the penalty would pay if you stock up

45:12

the truck that deliver the season metics on

45:14

Saturday. Night And and

45:16

the fact that Amazon says well all you

45:18

have to do as consent to this term

45:20

where his ass you We get to send

45:22

you to prison for five years if you

45:24

help your listeners listen to a book that

45:26

you made. For me to, someone else is out here

45:29

if you know. Yeah, sure, Amazon will sell my books.

45:31

If I agree to that, I won't agree to that.

45:33

But I said shut up. You. Know that

45:35

that's a. That's. A Reasonable

45:37

Things are not. Agree to

45:39

Hide I agree. Kickstarter Search

45:41

for the Bezel. You'll. Find

45:43

it pretty quickly. What? Is a

45:46

bezel. So. Vessels Johnson of

45:48

Dalhousie are term for the magic interval after

45:50

the con artist has your money but before

45:52

you know it's a con someone else as

45:54

you feel like you're better off. We both

45:56

long. As an aside some

45:58

that increase of happiness and the. The.so think

46:00

about you know how everybody felt about

46:02

and as T V for the inner

46:04

peace prostrate that was the Bezel right?

46:06

How everyone feels about. Ah, you know,

46:08

the Metaverse before the Metaverse crashes, How

46:11

everyone feels about arm. You know, all

46:13

the Ai exuberance before. You know ninety

46:15

eight percent of the Ai companies pull

46:17

the plug on. There are very expensive

46:19

to run servers and all the integration

46:21

you've done with with a I Tools

46:23

goes away. So what you're saying is,

46:25

if you're happy right now, you're probably

46:27

in the Bezel. Know

46:31

but I think that such as you're

46:33

reading into I'm into and certification his

46:35

and we'll have to censor books and

46:37

we will develop added my next book

46:39

I got sent off the proposal so

46:41

excited. If you know I don't think

46:43

it's inevitable that companies abuse their customers

46:45

like I was. Thing about Apple I

46:47

I'd I'd been the beneficiary of many

46:49

instances in which Apple did the right

46:51

thing for their customers. Ah, And

46:53

I'm more interested in. How.

46:55

We discipline Apple and other companies

46:58

by making it so that the

47:00

past that they bear. For.

47:02

Failing to have their customers back is

47:04

higher than expected return and so that

47:07

when they fail to take that ah,

47:09

calculus seriously, we can go somewhere else

47:11

than I am with. Like trying to,

47:13

you know, create a moral hierarchy of

47:15

which trillion dollar companies are good Trillion

47:18

dollar companies and with trillion dollar companies

47:20

are bad trillion dollar companies. As simple

47:22

as really important, I. Think

47:24

contextual station. That. There's good

47:26

and there's bad that isn't Doesn't let anybody

47:28

off the hook you not weighing your soul

47:30

against the weight of a feather. it is

47:32

not replicated. By about I

47:35

have a short story and mods or

47:37

final Dangerous Visions anthology that Harlan Ellison

47:39

South literary executor Joe Stirs and Ski

47:41

is putting out about Harlan Ellison in

47:44

Purgatory. Ah Harland, it's a wonderful thing

47:46

to do was her first example is

47:48

in Asia and it's called the Weight

47:50

of a Heart The Weight of Us.

47:52

Other instance of this gonna be the

47:54

so Dangerous to the prisoners completion groceries

47:57

and Ski has bought the book and

47:59

it's coming from Blackwell Unless one of

48:01

the great last pieces of sign language

48:03

dunk the mean I dummied I did.

48:05

I wasn't as a bit rape as

48:08

a in a bar in San Francisco

48:10

it includes some had Napoleon Complex Social

48:12

also put a sign that he was.

48:15

A fantastic right I'm so glad to

48:17

see coming back and up and also

48:19

wonderful friend. Oh. Really I you

48:21

if you do Harlan Ellison. but he

48:23

wasn't my friend. oh with the friend

48:25

of many of my friends, but he

48:27

was gratuitously rotten to me. He was

48:29

also my teacher and he was quite

48:31

bad as a teacher. ah but he

48:33

was. I watched him do a thing

48:36

that he was infamous for which is

48:38

to to the goat and she's an

48:40

angel in the class I was neither

48:42

of them for the records and sour

48:44

one with saw praise and and reduce

48:46

the other to tears just seemingly to

48:48

show that he to do I. But.

48:50

There there at the stories of the way

48:52

that he was a generous, kind and thoughtful

48:55

friend to other people are not made up,

48:57

and they are not cancelled out by the

48:59

stories of the ways in which he harmed

49:01

other people. They. Are in just

49:03

as I say in superposition. And.

49:06

You know that the idea that we can write

49:08

the books clean of all the good Harlan did

49:11

because of all the terrible things he did is

49:13

no more valid than the idea that we should

49:15

ignore all the terrible things he said because he

49:17

was so good and kind so many times they

49:20

just have to both be we're not very good

49:22

as humans and know living in paradox visits. the

49:24

more I learn about life, the more I realized

49:26

with us what we live in. And.

49:29

We will have to be black and white. and

49:31

it isn't. It is not like whenever. In any

49:33

case, I was going

49:35

to be and that's the wonderfully and

49:37

Thomson from the register. Always a pleasure

49:40

to have you forget respond to be

49:42

a threesome I want to say Intellectual

49:44

Zombie A Smart People and Alex Lindsay

49:46

from Office Hours.global own I know media

49:49

of course Macri quickly or so to

49:51

they brought to you by Mint Mobile.

49:54

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thank them so much for their support. The

52:00

World Economic Forum which just concluded in

52:02

Davos, the new

52:05

president of Argentina,

52:07

Javier Mille, his

52:09

special address. Now the things

52:12

he said were a little unpleasant so I'm

52:14

not talking about what he said. Let me

52:16

play the normal video

52:18

of this. This is from the

52:20

translator, simultaneous translation as

52:22

he's speaking. But

52:25

this concept which in the developed world

52:27

became fashionable in recent times. So you

52:29

can hear in the background, you can

52:31

hear his Spanish and you

52:33

can hear an English accent, a British

52:35

accent, a translator translating

52:37

it. My country has been a constant in

52:39

political discourse. In real time. In 80 years

52:41

the problem is. So really it's just kind

52:44

of getting all the words out there. But

52:46

you demonstrated, you show us something which is

52:48

very interesting. This is a YouTube video with

52:51

the English speech rendered

52:53

by HeyGen.ai. Tell me

52:55

what's happening here Alex. So

52:57

what's happening here, this is a deep fake

53:00

that is taking his Spanish, converting it to

53:02

English and then also reforming his mouth. Now

53:04

this is all, again this is

53:06

all. It looks very similar. I mean it's a deep

53:08

fake. There's the original and here's the video. The

53:12

interesting thing is, so we've been doing, this has been

53:14

finding its way into visual effects for a while. We

53:16

have to like, someone swears and we have to make

53:18

a TV version. Someone does this, whatever. And

53:20

so inserting these things into it has been

53:22

something that companies have been doing for the

53:24

last couple years. It's

53:28

not completely unknown but it's not brand

53:30

new either. But I

53:32

had not seen it in this environment and I will

53:34

admit this is an environment that I live in so

53:36

I know a lot about it. I've done hundreds of

53:38

events with 6 to 15 languages. We

53:42

have this stuff going out. There

53:46

is such a loss of energy and we talk

53:48

about it all the time. A loss of energy

53:50

for the speaker that happens when you have

53:52

a translation. When they have to speak in their

53:54

own language, a lot of them will attempt to

53:57

speak in English because it gives

53:59

them a greater impact. around the world. You see

54:01

Volkow doing that, but it's broken English and

54:03

it loses impact for that. We

54:06

have a school in Rwanda and so our students

54:08

stream most of the government events and so on

54:10

and so forth there. So

54:14

President Kagame isn't a completely

54:16

different person in Rwanda than he is in

54:18

English. Yeah, that makes sense. And

54:21

so what he says is how he says it and everything else.

54:23

I would be a completely different person as well, right? And

54:26

so because we're trying to find the other language and

54:28

say the words in the best way we can, in

54:30

this case, you're allowing that person and again, I think

54:32

people will be scared about this, but I think this

54:34

is a great thing for the people who are actually

54:36

saying it, assuming that it's accurate. We

54:39

have to remember that almost all translation is not

54:41

accurate and we're still arguing over what the Bible

54:43

says. So this is the AI is also doing

54:45

the translation as well as the D-Translate. This

54:47

is to my knowledge. This is my knowledge

54:49

of it and this is the process. It

54:51

would probably not in real time. It

54:54

is I'm going to take changing from one

54:56

language to another is something large language models do really

54:58

well, probably better than human beings most of the time.

55:02

Then the second piece is building a

55:05

voice model and these guys

55:07

are doing it. Probably the leader in this right

55:09

now is 11 Labs. They are just...

55:11

Yeah, my AI Leo voice is from

55:13

11 Labs. It's frightening. Yeah, I know

55:16

some folks that are like that they're doing their

55:18

interviews with it, like they type it out and

55:20

just send it to somebody. It's pretty wild. I

55:22

don't want to... And so the 11 Labs is

55:24

kind of nailing that process. This one is... But

55:28

then the hardest part is this idea of I'm going

55:30

to change the mouth movement. So I'm going to move

55:32

and... But we can do it and we've

55:34

been doing it in visual effects for the

55:37

last couple of years where you're using... You're

55:39

basically rebuilding that model. Now what in

55:41

visual effects the impact is all those dubs that

55:43

you see eventually we'll use

55:46

this for movies, for the releases. So you don't

55:48

have any kind of lack of

55:50

sync with the person talking. But

55:52

I think that this really benefits and when it becomes

55:54

real time, which is probably going to be a while.

55:56

This is probably 100x. to

56:00

100. So it probably takes a long time

56:02

to render. But

56:04

when it happens, it means that the individual speaking

56:07

about what they care about, whether it's what he

56:09

cares about, or what Zelensky cares about, speaking in

56:11

their own language, coming in in English or French,

56:13

or whatever language it needs to go out to,

56:16

is a huge value for

56:19

that speaker to increase the impact of

56:21

what they're saying. Because

56:23

right now, everybody's crippled by

56:25

translation, the

56:27

interpretation in this case. Everybody

56:30

gets crippled by interpretation because the interpreters, they

56:32

have bad mics, they're always kind of droning

56:34

on, they're not any more

56:38

accurate than the large language model, in my opinion. And

56:41

so it's just really frustrating. You always go, there's got to be

56:43

a better way to do this. And this is the best. I

56:45

was just kind of... So let

56:47

me show you again the actual

56:50

speech. Millais is talking

56:52

to Davos. And

56:54

you hear the... And

57:02

actually, I think the simultaneous translator is doing a decent

57:04

job of getting the intonation in there.

57:06

This is the deep fake. It

57:19

sounds like his voice, by the way. I should say, if you

57:21

heard Millais's voice... The

57:23

mouth movements are perfect. I

57:27

think it looks a little funny every once in a while. You

57:30

know, if you didn't know ahead of time to look for it... That's

57:36

the scary part, right? Well,

57:38

and that's the deep fake concern is that

57:40

you could put this in the mouth of

57:42

Benjamin, that and Yah. Everything,

57:46

as Corey succinctly said earlier,

57:48

everything comes with good and

57:50

bad. The

57:52

good side of this is allowing people to speak to the

57:54

whole world in their native... I can speak

57:56

in my native language. It goes out to them in their native

57:58

language. It is a... head

58:01

and shoulder ability to communicate in a

58:03

much more powerful way and we're eliminating

58:05

you know it's like Star Trek you

58:08

know no one thinks about language. I

58:10

saw hate and I see yes four

58:12

years ago they had fake people but

58:14

they were based on real people so

58:17

these are these are presenters

58:21

that look very real apparently

58:24

though they can do it with now with

58:26

real people as a deep fake which is

58:28

interesting and these well

58:31

I think these are simulated presenters right

58:33

you choose the presenter you want the

58:35

language you want to speak in it's kind of

58:39

amazing. I do worry though

58:41

because we're in a way you know 2024 is going

58:44

to be a major election year we've got presidential

58:46

elections in the US we've got the general election

58:49

in the UK and this

58:51

kind of technology is really coming of

58:54

age as it were I

58:57

suspect we're gonna see some

58:59

really interesting examples this year

59:01

of completely fake scandals coming

59:03

through. I don't know

59:05

maybe I don't know I

59:08

have more faith in people's ability to detect these

59:10

or at least just

59:12

be suspicious of them I

59:14

think generally what happens is people believe what

59:17

they want to believe and they look for

59:19

things to reinforce their beliefs

59:21

I don't think people's minds are changed

59:23

by these things am

59:25

I is that hopelessly

59:27

naive of me? It

59:29

might be I think there's a lot of we just

59:32

have to remember that you know that

59:37

not everyone is above average you know and so

59:39

and so the thing is that we easily pushed

59:41

around this discussion you know often feels that with

59:43

almost patronizing to me like well you can't trust

59:45

real people to know the difference no I don't

59:48

mean real people but I mean I just have

59:50

that you know you have to have if it

59:53

builds into their own narrative that they already look at the

59:55

world they tend to latch on to it and it doesn't

59:57

matter how smart in fact sometimes they're smart enough to... are

1:00:00

obviously fake. I mean, if you see

1:00:03

Donald Trump with a physique that would

1:00:05

rival, you know, Superman,

1:00:07

you know that's fake. And

1:00:10

people who embrace it and put it on their trucks

1:00:12

or raise it up on the flag know that it's

1:00:14

fake, but that doesn't matter because it says something to

1:00:17

them that is true, a deeper truth. But

1:00:20

part of the challenge is that we're lying to people all the time.

1:00:22

So how do we know what is true?

1:00:24

You know, our government will tell us all these things

1:00:26

they're not doing. And they are. Yeah. You know, there's,

1:00:29

you know, when, when, you know, like, you know, there's

1:00:31

a lot of things that we, the government will tell

1:00:33

us over and over and over again. And then, and

1:00:35

then after a while, they're like, well, it

1:00:37

wasn't exactly that way. Is this a form of, you know,

1:00:39

and, and, and, you know, and then we don't know. No,

1:00:42

I guess this is different. I mean, look, I

1:00:45

was telling the joke before we started that I'm

1:00:47

okay with people using certification colloquially, however they want.

1:00:49

We speak English. It doesn't have a language Academy.

1:00:51

Go ahead. I made up this word. I don't

1:00:53

get to have the final say about how

1:00:55

people use it. I didn't even know the Corey made it up. I

1:00:58

use it all the time. I'm

1:01:00

glad that I have the origin now. I

1:01:05

love it, but I just dread seeing it in the

1:01:07

headline because I know everyone's going to be like,

1:01:09

how dare they be? Well, this

1:01:11

is one of the reasons I think

1:01:13

it's successful is that it's anyway, that's

1:01:15

a separate point. But I think that

1:01:17

Leo, both actually both Leo

1:01:19

and Alex, you hit on something really important there, which

1:01:22

is that the, it's

1:01:24

often the case that we already

1:01:26

have both norms and rules against

1:01:28

the kinds of uses of deep

1:01:30

fake technology that we're worried about.

1:01:33

So for example, there

1:01:35

are pretty strict rules about election interference

1:01:38

that apply irrespective of

1:01:40

whether you're doing with a computer or

1:01:43

not. You know, thankfully, unlike say in

1:01:45

privacy, where we have somehow

1:01:47

decided that you can violate the law so long

1:01:49

as you do it with an app, we have

1:01:51

not gotten there with election interference. We

1:01:54

do take that seriously. There are pretty stiff

1:01:56

penalties. I was just on

1:01:59

a panel right after the. George Carlin, bad

1:02:01

George Carlin. Oh my God, was that awful.

1:02:04

And his family were very

1:02:06

upset, and I understand, but

1:02:09

we have personality rights in places

1:02:11

where that would apply. And

1:02:15

we have also had impersonators for

1:02:17

a really long time. And

1:02:21

the fact that the impersonation is easier

1:02:23

and faster has some

1:02:26

changes at the margin, but it's a

1:02:28

change in degree and not a

1:02:31

change in kind. And

1:02:34

we already have rules about when an impersonator

1:02:36

crosses a line and when they don't. Elvis

1:02:39

is obviously dead, supposedly. But

1:02:42

if an Elvis impersonator were

1:02:44

to try to access the Elvis Presley estate and

1:02:46

draw the money

1:02:56

out of it, we would know what the cause of action

1:02:58

was. And

1:03:02

in the UK,

1:03:05

for every year, there's a

1:03:07

season on Channel on Radio 4

1:03:09

where dead ringers impersonate political people.

1:03:11

It's not election interference. There

1:03:14

is no intention to fool someone. If

1:03:16

someone is fooled, there is not a

1:03:18

crime that's been committed. And

1:03:21

probably the people who make the show will,

1:03:23

having fooled someone, make a point of

1:03:25

letting it be known that they weren't

1:03:27

intending to fool you and try and

1:03:29

set the record straight. So there are

1:03:31

some genuinely novel, scary

1:03:34

things about AI

1:03:36

and deepfakes and so on. But

1:03:39

of really large numbers of the ones

1:03:41

that people come up with really seem

1:03:43

like they're part and parcel of the

1:03:45

whole kind of weird thing that AI

1:03:47

bros do where they hold a flashlight

1:03:49

under their chin and say, AI, you

1:03:52

know, like the spicy

1:03:54

autocomplete is going to turn us into

1:03:56

paperclips. In the future, no one

1:03:58

will know. know what's true.

1:04:03

And I think that

1:04:05

it's possible to like

1:04:07

cleave the silliness from the

1:04:09

real issues, and there's some real issues. I'm

1:04:11

a science fiction writer. I love digging into

1:04:13

those without kind of just

1:04:17

creating a situation which you can sound profound by

1:04:19

rubbing your chin and saying, well, what about after

1:04:21

AI comes to this? Well, even

1:04:23

worse, I think a lot of AI

1:04:26

executives are using this to hype their

1:04:28

products. Sure. Famously, Sam

1:04:30

Altman talking to Ina Freed, I think

1:04:33

this was also at Davos, said,

1:04:36

chat GPT will have to evolve

1:04:38

in uncomfortable ways. And

1:04:40

it gives you the veneer of, oh, I

1:04:43

care. I'm really paying attention to this,

1:04:45

and we really care. But really, really what it's

1:04:47

all about is saying, see how brilliant our AI

1:04:49

is. It could

1:04:51

even be uncomfortable. Ha ha. The

1:04:54

scholar Lee Vinsol at Virginia Tech has

1:04:56

a really useful term for this. He

1:04:58

calls it Krita hype. Krita hype. I

1:05:01

love it. Yeah. Yeah. So,

1:05:04

you know, this, like, and he, he, I think

1:05:06

coined it mostly to talk about tech bros who

1:05:09

work for surveillance advertising companies making

1:05:11

claims about having built my mind

1:05:13

control rays or

1:05:15

Cox Media Group saying we can listen

1:05:18

to every device in your house. Yeah,

1:05:20

exactly. Yeah. Exactly what it's like,

1:05:22

right? You can criticize these companies on the one

1:05:24

hand for claim for like wanting

1:05:26

to build a mind control rate, like wanting to

1:05:28

build a mind control rate objectively makes you a

1:05:31

very bad person, right? But you don't have

1:05:33

to believe that they built the mind control

1:05:35

rate, especially when they're like these much more

1:05:37

parsimonious explanations for what's going on. Like maybe

1:05:40

the reason you're getting so much money for

1:05:42

your ads is that ad tech is a

1:05:45

duopoly. And you guys

1:05:47

have this secret program called Jedi Blue, where

1:05:49

Google and Facebook illegally collude to rig the

1:05:51

ad market. And maybe that's why the ad

1:05:53

market is so lucrative and not because you

1:05:56

figured out how to make Grampian to a

1:05:58

QAnon. Yeah.

1:06:00

You know I think of the I think that it's not so

1:06:02

much that ah. I guess

1:06:04

what am I am when I look at I'm a

1:06:07

big fan of a I I I promise I all

1:06:09

i cooker ai recipes now as chatty be t like

1:06:11

I'm I'm like you are as three either the key

1:06:13

with chatty Btc talent where it's coming from what you

1:06:15

want you know and then the output and say you

1:06:18

are A as a Michelin chef. Make.

1:06:20

Me A to meet A give me a recipe

1:06:22

for tomato soup and it'll give me I just

1:06:24

needed him screamed i'm anyway so eyes so anyway

1:06:26

the Am and so and I used to journey

1:06:28

all day you know so so like these are

1:06:30

and chatty Beauty my wife who is not necessarily

1:06:32

hi tech for it she just pull that chatty

1:06:34

Bdr phone all the times I use ask questions

1:06:36

and does it so I don't I I think

1:06:38

that it is part of our lives and it's

1:06:41

going to make a lot of things better at

1:06:43

the same time. You know I do think we

1:06:45

have to beat. We have to know that You

1:06:47

know it. You know to err is human but

1:06:49

to really screw things. Up requires a computer and

1:06:51

and and and as much enterprises it's it's the

1:06:53

mass of of production that can be done In

1:06:55

on I look at it. We there was someone

1:06:57

who there was something like that I wanted to

1:07:00

do for a long time and I was talking

1:07:02

arms see days. A friend of mine he's he

1:07:04

is He did his resolve and I said here's

1:07:06

what I want to do. I want you to

1:07:08

look at a movie, I want to look at

1:07:10

a movie and when she to cut all of

1:07:12

the scenes. oh every time. every camera angle and

1:07:15

then I want them frame in the middle of

1:07:17

that camera angle so that we can look at

1:07:19

color. You know. And I was like I've I've

1:07:21

been asking black magic for this for a decade of

1:07:23

like add this thing because it lets us analyze movies

1:07:25

and am and he and his he wrote it and

1:07:27

he in like it's a little script that works inside.

1:07:30

I'm black magic and just send you a poster. literally

1:07:32

a light would you want Thirty Rose Wider, Forty Rose

1:07:34

White's for the how are you programming years I've never

1:07:36

programmed at all and other woot woot what are yours

1:07:38

and I did the whole thing and chatty Beauty and

1:07:41

you're like Ios I I pointed Chatty Be T towards

1:07:43

the scripting language and opened it up and told a

1:07:45

when I wanted and I just keep on and then

1:07:47

I was a couple little things to correct your in

1:07:49

their. an eye out haven't looked at

1:07:52

the code and years but i've never program

1:07:54

that asked why was i was like oh

1:07:56

alexander or by the way that that's going

1:07:58

to be an effective tool though talk to

1:08:00

a lot of AI people saying yeah

1:08:02

writing code is dead. It's

1:08:04

good for. Well I'm going to

1:08:07

say Stack Overflow banned chat GPT-3. Yeah

1:08:12

because it's a huge threat to them. Because

1:08:14

huge numbers of errors. Now I mean. Well

1:08:17

I think more because it's a threat to them because

1:08:19

people won't go to Stack Overflow anymore they're going to

1:08:21

go to chat GPT and do the same query. I

1:08:25

mean I use I use I created

1:08:27

an expert GPT in my language of

1:08:29

choice which is common list and

1:08:31

it will write code but I will never I guess

1:08:34

I could cut and paste the code but

1:08:36

it is very useful for me as a

1:08:39

reference that I can use as I

1:08:41

code and by the

1:08:43

way one of the things I did which I think is important

1:08:45

I don't know if

1:08:47

co-pilot does this or not but I suspect they

1:08:49

do as I said please don't I don't want

1:08:51

hallucinations only come up with an

1:08:53

answer that you can get from the corpus of materials I

1:08:55

gave them all sorts of list

1:08:57

books and stuff that's why it works well with common

1:09:00

list because it's so old there's a lot of stuff

1:09:02

in public domain and it's quite good and I asked

1:09:04

it this morning I forgot that

1:09:06

I was still in the expert instead of in the

1:09:08

regular chat beat GPT and I asked it a question

1:09:10

during ask the tech guys I said I don't know

1:09:13

anything about that if you have a question about common

1:09:15

list I'll be glad to

1:09:17

answer it which I may be very

1:09:19

happy it wasn't it isn't going to

1:09:21

hallucinate. I think there are uses right

1:09:23

now for AI I guess

1:09:25

like coding but certainly for expert systems

1:09:28

or coding assists just like someday

1:09:30

we'll be able to take our hands

1:09:32

off the wheel and read a book while a car drives

1:09:34

but for right now the smart thing

1:09:36

to do would be keep your hands on the wheel

1:09:38

and work together with the AI

1:09:40

as it drives. I mean you mentioned hallucination and

1:09:43

this is something which is it's kind of a

1:09:45

hot button for me because obviously when all this

1:09:47

stuff came out as a journalist

1:09:49

you first thought it's right let's check it

1:09:51

out can we actually write articles can we

1:09:53

automate things like financial results stories or outage

1:09:56

reports and that's what they're sporting. We

1:10:00

tried it out and the amount of time

1:10:02

we have to spend editing to get rid

1:10:04

of these hallucinations. Well, that was your mistake.

1:10:07

Well, I've been hallucinating. It's just a really nice

1:10:09

way to say, put that

1:10:11

up. Just put that up. We don't care.

1:10:13

It doesn't matter. What happened

1:10:15

to Sports Illustrated has been very strange

1:10:18

this week. And I mean, as a

1:10:20

Brit, I didn't really quite understand the

1:10:22

cultural significance of the two tissues. The

1:10:24

amount of people screaming about it online.

1:10:26

Huge. So just for those who don't

1:10:28

know, Mass Layoffs at Sports Illustrated. It

1:10:31

had a very weird economic

1:10:34

pinning. The name

1:10:37

Sports Illustrated and the rights

1:10:39

to Sports Illustrated was

1:10:41

owned by one company, which had purchased

1:10:43

it from Time, Inc. many years

1:10:45

ago. But then licensed to

1:10:48

another company, which was responsible for

1:10:50

editorial content and publishing the magazine,

1:10:54

the Arena Group. So the

1:10:56

company that owns the Sports Illustrated

1:10:58

name and rights, which apparently only

1:11:00

was interested in things like building

1:11:04

Sports Illustrated hotels, Authentics

1:11:07

Brand Group, they're a licensing company.

1:11:09

Yeah, there was going to be a Sports Illustrated hotel.

1:11:12

So the sad tale

1:11:14

of this is, and it's pretty much the same

1:11:16

tale about all media empires

1:11:19

from years gone by. Meredith, big

1:11:22

magazine publisher, bought Time, Inc. for

1:11:24

$3 billion in 2017. A

1:11:27

couple of years later, they started to sell

1:11:29

it off for parts. Sports Illustrated was sold

1:11:31

to this Authentics Brand Group, which

1:11:33

is a licensing company that acquires the rights

1:11:35

to celebrity brands. They bought it for $110

1:11:38

million, mostly for

1:11:40

the name, so they could have a Sports Illustrated

1:11:42

hotel. And then they asked

1:11:44

this Arena Group, which owns Men's Journal

1:11:47

Parade, the street. For

1:11:49

10 years, they did a 10-year deal that you

1:11:52

will publish in Operation Sports Illustrated. It

1:11:54

paid about $45 million in New York Times, $45

1:11:56

million for the rights to do so. Well.

1:12:01

I'm Arena Group has been running into trouble and

1:12:03

is basically laid off My almost all of the

1:12:05

staff including some of the. Most. Famous

1:12:07

names in sport writing. Ah,

1:12:10

they got also then trouble for having an Ai

1:12:12

right? some other articles. In fact the Ceo lost

1:12:14

his job over that. Ah at

1:12:17

is that right now Arena Group! So

1:12:19

they had a seven minute zoom call

1:12:21

on Friday. With

1:12:23

this with the staff laid most of them

1:12:26

off, many of them they said, well when

1:12:28

I prefer you now, you have ninety days

1:12:30

which is nice isn't not exactly an incentive.

1:12:33

We will continue to produce the Sports

1:12:35

Illustrated brand. They said an online content until

1:12:37

the situation is fully resolved. There.

1:12:41

But. I mean the same thing happened was

1:12:43

seen at this week as well. I mean

1:12:45

seen, it will put up for sale by

1:12:47

their owners is that? that's a really crying

1:12:50

shame for what used to be great already

1:12:52

destroyed that's read ventures rapid turn. Yeah yeah

1:12:54

and of course I did the same saying

1:12:56

they had and they i writing articles so

1:12:59

maybe that's the yeah canary in the coal

1:13:01

mine. When you start seeing a I written

1:13:03

articles that's a sign that that of if

1:13:05

you start seeing a I generated podcasts on

1:13:07

twitter. That's. A sure sign.

1:13:10

That the whole thing is going to

1:13:12

get sucked in the words that are

1:13:14

booming? It's it's really important. Understand that?

1:13:16

Of when we see things that

1:13:19

a eyes are good at right?

1:13:21

like identifying are potentially cancers, masses

1:13:23

on x rays, or maybe outlining

1:13:26

an essay. or maybe reading some

1:13:28

software on that. The

1:13:30

the way in which that makes for

1:13:32

a better world is one in which.

1:13:35

The. person a human with skills ah a

1:13:37

who's who would normally do that job gets

1:13:40

a second opinion right right like i really

1:13:42

liked that i have a car that when

1:13:44

i put my signal light on if there's

1:13:46

a car and my blindside is yeah he

1:13:49

beefs the right and i rented a car

1:13:51

little while ago that had a thing where

1:13:53

if i crossed the median and had a

1:13:55

virtual rumble strip adam yep and had i

1:13:58

have texans steering well we're at all those

1:14:00

things are really great and

1:14:03

the thing to understand is that the pitch from

1:14:05

the firms and that the pitch from the investors

1:14:08

is not, hey, your radiologist

1:14:10

who currently processes 10 test x-rays

1:14:13

a day will only process 9

1:14:16

because the second opinion from the AI is going

1:14:18

to come up 1 out of 10 times and

1:14:20

that radiologist is going to redo it. You will

1:14:22

catch more cancerous masses but it's going to cost

1:14:25

you more. The pitch for AI

1:14:27

is, hire some radiologist. So

1:14:31

I am all for things

1:14:33

that help people. After many

1:14:35

years of auto disabling spell

1:14:37

check or disabling auto spell check,

1:14:39

I finally turned it back on and I'm

1:14:41

catching typos while I write. Literally,

1:14:44

I did this like a month ago. I

1:14:46

have not had auto spell check on until

1:14:49

a month ago for my home writing career

1:14:51

because it drives me crazy to get

1:14:54

interrupted. Are you a very good

1:14:56

speller, Corey? Well,

1:14:58

I'm a pretty good speller but I would run spell

1:15:00

check after I was done with the document. What I

1:15:02

didn't want was the machine saying, basically,

1:15:05

it's just low key clippy, right?

1:15:07

The underline red line is low

1:15:09

key clippy. You seem to be

1:15:11

spelling a word, right? Would you like help with that?

1:15:13

And I might but I don't want help with it

1:15:15

while I'm writing. And I just I

1:15:18

reached a point where I finally said, okay, I'll do it. Where

1:15:24

you've got journalists using Grammarly

1:15:27

for various other AI apparently

1:15:30

writing tools, which can and it just

1:15:32

comes across as so bland and... Well,

1:15:35

you can ignore it. So Corey,

1:15:37

I just have to know though, you've turned it on

1:15:39

now. Is it a disadvantage? Is

1:15:41

it annoying you? Is it?

1:15:44

As is the case with many technological

1:15:47

changes, it was

1:15:49

very annoying at first and then I got used to

1:15:51

it and it just progressed to the mean. This is

1:15:53

the thing I mean, I knew that would happen. It's

1:15:56

the thing I tell everyone is like, oh, I could

1:15:58

never switch to Linux or Firefox or Thunderfog. or

1:16:00

whatever, it's like, you know what? For the

1:16:02

first two weeks, it's going to drive you

1:16:04

crazy. And then if you're ever noticing your

1:16:06

operating system ever, ever, something is

1:16:08

bad. I

1:16:11

don't notice my operating system. I don't think

1:16:13

of myself as an Ubuntu user any more

1:16:16

than I think of myself as a shoe

1:16:18

wearer or someone with centralized heating. Or,

1:16:20

you know. Like

1:16:22

it's just- Oh, you're one of those centralized heating

1:16:24

guys. I know. Yeah. It

1:16:27

doesn't make me a member of an oppressed ethnic minority

1:16:29

or anything, right? But

1:16:32

the other thing that I want to say

1:16:34

is that oftentimes the solutions that automation

1:16:37

proposes are solutions

1:16:39

that literally can't work. So you talked about keeping

1:16:41

your hands on the wheel, taking your hands off

1:16:44

the wheel. I mean, when

1:16:46

I'm in not the city

1:16:48

I live in now, LA, but the

1:16:50

city I grew up in, Toronto or the city I've spent

1:16:52

13 years in, London, I take my hands off the wheel

1:16:54

and I'm traveling down the road all the time because I'm

1:16:56

in a bus. And it's great. You

1:16:59

never have your hands on the wheel. In fact,

1:17:01

it would be a breach of the law to

1:17:03

put your hands on the wheel. Geometry

1:17:05

hates cars, right? There isn't a world

1:17:08

in which- That's terrible. There isn't an

1:17:10

AI algorithm that will let you solve

1:17:12

the Red Queen's race where every time

1:17:14

you add a car to the road

1:17:16

you increase the distance, you

1:17:18

increase the amount of road you need which

1:17:20

increases the distance between the things that you're

1:17:22

trying to get to which increases the amount

1:17:24

of cars that you need, right? I've been

1:17:27

traveling to Southern California since 1989 when I was 18 years old

1:17:29

and I always started

1:17:33

going to Disneyland from an early age. I

1:17:35

then worked at Imagineering. I was driving from

1:17:37

Glendale down to Anaheim and I've watched the

1:17:40

five down in Orange County go from like

1:17:42

eight lanes to 16 lanes. Now there's places

1:17:44

where I think it's over 30 lanes wide

1:17:46

and the traffic is worse. It's worse, right?

1:17:48

It's not better. Osh painting,

1:17:51

right? There isn't an

1:17:53

amount of cars that is

1:17:55

going to solve this problem, but there is an

1:17:57

amount of trains that will solve that

1:17:59

problem. And so I just think that

1:18:01

a lot of the times when we

1:18:03

are confronted with really serious problems there's a

1:18:05

technological way of approaching it that's often posed

1:18:08

as an all of the above solution, right?

1:18:10

Where it's like, well, we need to do

1:18:12

everything to resolve the

1:18:14

climate emergency or get people around cities. We

1:18:16

need cars, we need buses, we need this, we need

1:18:18

that. But these are actually at odds with each other,

1:18:20

right? If you're building highways, you're not building subways. What

1:18:23

you really... This is such... I finished The Power

1:18:25

Broker a few months ago and I can't stop

1:18:28

talking about it. But this is one of the

1:18:30

lessons of The Power Broker is this old Robert

1:18:32

Moses who was not only racist but

1:18:34

just had for some reason believed in

1:18:37

cars, I think he was taking money

1:18:39

from the rubber manufacturers and the gasoline

1:18:41

manufacturers and the car manufacturers and was

1:18:44

so adamantly against mass transit that

1:18:46

he thwarted every attempt to do it in

1:18:48

a sensible way. For instance,

1:18:51

when they were building these highways, he

1:18:53

called them parkways because he

1:18:55

thought of them as a park. He

1:18:58

pointed out, you could easily, at minimal

1:19:00

cost, put train tracks in the middle. You

1:19:03

would then kill two birds with one stone

1:19:05

because you've now got, during this infrastructure build,

1:19:08

very inexpensively you've got train tracks and

1:19:10

cars and he would thwart it at

1:19:13

every... Yeah, he built the footings so

1:19:15

that it was impossible to install a train underneath

1:19:17

it. He deliberately changed the shape of the

1:19:19

footings to make sure no trains could run...

1:19:21

And he also made the

1:19:24

bridges too low for buses because he didn't

1:19:26

want black people buses

1:19:28

too... Yeah, apparently that's a myth

1:19:30

but... It's not a myth. No, no, no. I've

1:19:33

talked to people. Those bridges are

1:19:35

10 feet high. You could get a personal

1:19:37

car beneath them but not a bus. So

1:19:41

there's a really good read along of

1:19:43

The Power Broker on 99% Invisible right

1:19:45

now and they just did the first

1:19:48

episode... Yeah, somebody's been telling me about

1:19:50

this. They had Robert Caro on. He's

1:19:52

still... Oh yeah. He's had

1:19:54

him on and he talked about going to

1:19:56

Robert Moses' offices and... interviewing

1:20:00

for the book and he told this incredible story about

1:20:02

the day Robert Moses figured out that it wasn't going

1:20:04

to be flattering and like, it's a

1:20:07

great, I listened to it yesterday, just

1:20:12

dropped last week, it's terrific, I really recommend

1:20:14

it, it's called The Power Broker but

1:20:16

it's in the 99% Invisible Feed. I'll

1:20:19

tell you, my wife recommended

1:20:21

I read that book because I'd

1:20:23

never even heard of Moses. I've

1:20:26

never heard of him either and I grew up in

1:20:28

New York but it's kind of buried in the history

1:20:30

of New York but he created

1:20:32

that city, I mean as in

1:20:34

the modern form. You

1:20:37

know it's funny, it's something like 1600 pages,

1:20:40

it's so thick you can barely carry it

1:20:44

and I wish it weren't over. I was so sad

1:20:46

when it ended, I want to read it again. It's

1:20:48

one of those books where it's daunting

1:20:50

to look at it but then

1:20:52

it's just incredible. Carrow's amazing. There's

1:20:54

also a good documentary, I think

1:20:57

it's called Turn Every Page about Robert Gottlieb,

1:20:59

his editor and Robert Carrow, features both of

1:21:01

them. That's really a great documentary,

1:21:03

I highly recommend. I got to take a break.

1:21:06

We're having way too much fun and I

1:21:08

didn't even get to inshittification so

1:21:11

we'll talk about that. We're

1:21:13

going to have some fun with that. We're going to

1:21:15

have some fun with that. In fact, while I'm doing

1:21:17

the ad, you can look up the original piece. It

1:21:21

was republished in Wired but read

1:21:23

it on pluralistic.net which is Corey's

1:21:25

blog. The title of it is

1:21:27

Tick Tox and Shittification. Is this the first time you

1:21:29

used that phrase? No, I

1:21:31

used it a few times before that but

1:21:34

it was the one that enshrined it in

1:21:36

the American language. And that was like

1:21:39

a year ago yesterday or the day before. Happy anniversary. Life

1:21:41

comes at you fast. Here is how

1:21:43

platforms die. We're going to talk

1:21:45

about that in just a bit but first, a

1:21:48

word from our sponsor. Corey Doctorow is here. Alex

1:21:50

Lindsay. Ian Thompson is a great

1:21:52

panel. More twit coming up but first, a

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word from Palo Alto Networks. Palo

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Palo Alto Networks dot com. That's

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Palo Alto Networks dot com. We

1:23:25

thank them so much for their support of

1:23:27

this week in tech. One

1:23:31

of the things I'd like to plug before we

1:23:33

talk about how platforms die is how

1:23:36

podcasting is dying. Really,

1:23:38

you've written a little bit about this too, Corey, I know, because

1:23:41

of Google and Facebook

1:23:44

and YouTube sucking all the wind out of

1:23:47

advertising. Podcasts like ours come

1:23:49

to you via RSS, which

1:23:51

means we don't know anything about you, we can't track you,

1:23:54

we don't. But

1:23:56

Spotify can, Amazon can, and so

1:23:59

can, you know, every... platform that

1:24:02

requires you to use their app to

1:24:04

listen to shows. Advertisers

1:24:06

are so hooked. It's

1:24:09

like sugar or heroin. They're so hooked

1:24:11

on metrics and knowing more about the

1:24:13

audience and they

1:24:16

just don't want to give that up. So increasingly

1:24:19

it's been difficult for us to sell advertising.

1:24:21

We work. We love our advertisers and

1:24:23

they do a great job for them. They

1:24:26

benefit from it but they still want

1:24:28

those audience demographics and we're still unwilling to give

1:24:30

it to them. So we realized...

1:24:32

Well Google... Sorry? I was

1:24:34

going to say Google's manifest B3 is going

1:24:36

to really put the capital... Oh, get ready

1:24:38

for that. ...for this one. Yeah. Yeah.

1:24:42

Now Google... Oh, actually we should talk about this

1:24:44

because Steve did a great piece on this new

1:24:46

thing that Google is doing to replace third party

1:24:48

cookies. It's

1:24:51

really interesting. We'll talk about that too a little bit

1:24:53

later on in the show. I

1:24:55

just want to say at this point if you want to support

1:24:57

the network, the best way to do it... Yes,

1:24:59

support our advertisers. Yes, we're going to continue to

1:25:01

get great advertisers on but the best way to

1:25:03

do it is to join the club. Increasingly,

1:25:06

this is... You know what? This is

1:25:08

the value that we add. It's a community

1:25:10

and it's a great community and we know you

1:25:12

love being a part of this community. So

1:25:15

if you join the club, seven bucks a month,

1:25:17

that's all. You get ad free

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versions of all the shows. You get the

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Discord. You get the Twitplus feed. You get

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shows you produce exclusively for the club including

1:25:25

iOS Today's now moved into the club plus

1:25:27

lots of fun events. We've got Stacy's book

1:25:29

club coming up in a couple of weeks.

1:25:32

That's going to be great. We're doing Paolo Bache Galupi's

1:25:35

The Water Knife. Wow, what a

1:25:37

book that is. That'll be a very

1:25:39

interesting club event, February 8th.

1:25:41

You have the same agent, me and Paolo. Do

1:25:43

you? I love The Wind Up

1:25:45

Girl. Great book.

1:25:47

Great one of my favorite sci-fi books and then I started

1:25:49

reading The Water Knife. I haven't finished it yet. I'm reading

1:25:51

it for the book club. It's

1:25:54

grim. It's about a

1:25:57

very grim climate change future.

1:26:01

But you know it's also important and he's

1:26:03

such a good writer. It's just his character.

1:26:05

He is amazing. And a mensch. Just a

1:26:07

really swell fellow. Oh I'm so glad to

1:26:09

hear that. Oh I love him.

1:26:12

Yeah. One of the good ones.

1:26:14

Oh I love his stuff. Anyway that'll be part of the

1:26:16

club too. So if you would, this is just a plug

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to join club twit. 7 bucks a month. twit.tv

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slash club twit.

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We love our club members and we'd like you

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to be part of this distinctive

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group of people of smart

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people in

1:26:33

the club. Thank you

1:26:35

in advance. I appreciate it. Come

1:26:39

join us. It

1:26:42

is a great meme. So

1:26:44

in certification, and

1:26:46

this is how Corey begins that now

1:26:49

I think classic blog post. Here

1:26:52

is how platforms die. First

1:26:54

they're good to their users. Think

1:26:57

Amazon and it's customer centric approach.

1:26:59

And then they abuse their users

1:27:02

to make things better for their business

1:27:04

customers. Again think about Amazon and the

1:27:06

third party sellers. Half of

1:27:08

what you buy on Amazon now doesn't come from Amazon. It comes

1:27:10

from third party sellers. And then finally,

1:27:13

and this is the stage Amazon's in, they

1:27:15

abuse those business customers to claw

1:27:17

back all the value for themselves

1:27:21

and then they die. It's

1:27:24

kind of the new digital business cycle. And

1:27:27

it happens. And over and over again, Corey's

1:27:29

been very good about documenting it. Corey,

1:27:33

your argument, which I completely agree with

1:27:35

is not that you're

1:27:37

going to ever stop this, but this is the

1:27:39

argument for interoperability. We should be able to hop

1:27:42

from platform to platform. And as platforms start

1:27:44

becoming user hostile, we just go to the

1:27:46

next one. Yeah,

1:27:48

I think about that as being

1:27:50

sort of related to the problem of

1:27:53

wildfire in California. We've

1:27:56

always had fire in California. The indigenous people

1:27:58

lived here before the settlers came. used

1:28:00

to have controlled burns and that would

1:28:03

clear the dead stuff away from the bottom of the

1:28:05

forest and it would open up the canopy for new

1:28:07

growth and when the settlers came they declared war on

1:28:09

fire. Isn't it amazing that these indigenous

1:28:13

peoples knew to do that? Well

1:28:16

they were here for like a long time.

1:28:18

Millennia right? And so maybe they didn't at

1:28:21

first right? They just figured it out. They

1:28:23

burned. Yeah if we don't burn it it

1:28:25

will. God will. So yeah

1:28:27

so ending good fire didn't end

1:28:30

fire just ended controlled

1:28:32

fire and then now we have wildfire right? So

1:28:34

even if we resolve the climate emergency California is

1:28:36

still gonna burn because we have

1:28:38

all this fire debt. It's also the ecological cycle.

1:28:45

There's a whole bunch of plants that only

1:28:47

reproduce by creating fire and then they're seed

1:28:49

pods opening the fire and stuff but you

1:28:51

know the same thing used to be true

1:28:53

of tech right? It used to be prior

1:28:56

to the Carter era especially but

1:28:58

then slowly less and less in

1:29:00

the years afterwards that companies

1:29:02

weren't really allowed to buy their competitors or

1:29:04

merge with their competitors. They weren't allowed to

1:29:06

sell goods below cost in order to prevent

1:29:08

other firms from entering their markets. Those

1:29:11

were all just generally prohibited. There were there

1:29:13

were exceptions around their margins but that was

1:29:15

the way things worked and so it meant

1:29:17

that when no one at Cray could

1:29:19

figure out how to make a good computer anymore

1:29:21

that was the end of Cray and

1:29:24

it meant that you know when

1:29:27

IBM monopolized

1:29:30

its market it was taken to court for 12

1:29:32

years and eventually had

1:29:34

to do things like make PCs out of

1:29:36

commodity components and unbundle the OS and get

1:29:38

a third-party company called Microsoft to make its

1:29:40

OS and so we used to

1:29:42

have companies that rose and fall right? We fell.

1:29:44

We used to have good fire and

1:29:47

it meant that users

1:29:49

could be protected because it was very

1:29:51

easy to escape a platform. If

1:29:54

you had an IBM mainframe that IBM didn't

1:29:56

want to support anymore there were

1:29:58

the so-called seven dwarves. the

1:30:00

mostly Japanese electronics companies that would

1:30:02

continue to make peripherals for them

1:30:04

that were plug compatible. And if

1:30:07

you used Mac

1:30:09

OS and your CIO wanted to take

1:30:11

your computer away and replace it with

1:30:13

a Windows machine because Mac Office was

1:30:16

so bad that you couldn't communicate with

1:30:18

your colleagues, Steve Jobs could just have

1:30:20

his technologist reverse engineer office

1:30:23

and make iWork with pages, numbers, and keynote

1:30:25

that could read and write Word, Excel, and

1:30:27

PowerPoint files and you could switch from one

1:30:29

to the other. In fact, right after iWork

1:30:31

we got the switch campaign. It's

1:30:33

very easy to switch. You should switch.

1:30:36

It's the plug compatible software. Yeah. Right.

1:30:39

But do that today and they'll

1:30:41

bomb you until the rubble bounces. Make

1:30:43

a runtime for iOS that can, or

1:30:46

runtime for another platform that can run

1:30:48

iOS apps and playback media that Apple

1:30:50

has sold you or create

1:30:52

a scraper that lets you leave Facebook

1:30:55

but fetch the messages that are showing

1:30:57

up in your inbox or your OG

1:30:59

inbox or your OG inbox

1:31:02

or your create OG app. You

1:31:04

know, Google at one point sent software agents

1:31:06

to every server on the internet to say,

1:31:08

hi, I'm just a user. Have you got

1:31:10

any pages? I'd like all of your pages,

1:31:12

please. If

1:31:14

you were to try and scrape Google right now,

1:31:17

they bomb you till you glowed. And

1:31:20

so my argument is

1:31:23

that we've put, we've allowed

1:31:25

these firms to grow to an unsustainable

1:31:27

size. That a firm that

1:31:30

has $3 trillion in business and is taking 30% margins

1:31:33

out of an entire industry

1:31:35

and deciding unilaterally what

1:31:38

apps can and can't exist or effectively

1:31:40

what businesses can and can't exist or

1:31:43

Amazon, which is taking 51% out

1:31:45

of every dollar that its sellers make

1:31:48

and is the largest employer in

1:31:50

the country and whose employees are

1:31:52

laboring under just the most incredibly

1:31:54

awful conditions. They have double the

1:31:56

accident rate in Amazon warehouses relative

1:31:59

to other fulfillment. centers and

1:32:01

we all know about peeing in bottles and

1:32:03

so on. The

1:32:06

remedy for that is not to

1:32:09

try and make those companies behave themselves. We

1:32:12

should do that too, but not

1:32:14

to the extent that we create rules that

1:32:16

make it hard for other companies to enter

1:32:18

the market and not to the extent that

1:32:20

we have companies saying, well, if you force

1:32:22

us to open our app store, interoperate our

1:32:24

chat protocol or allow third parties to fulfill

1:32:27

orders that are placed

1:32:29

through our e-commerce platform. Or if you

1:32:31

prohibit us from selling on the platform

1:32:34

that we own, where we

1:32:36

are competing with our own independent vendors,

1:32:39

then we won't be able to keep our users safe.

1:32:43

Ultimately, the way you keep users safe is

1:32:45

by evacuating them from the fire zone,

1:32:48

not by adding more

1:32:50

fire suppression to the zone, which tempts

1:32:52

more people to pile

1:32:54

into this place that is going

1:32:56

to burn and

1:32:58

that we're there in danger all the

1:33:00

time. I mean, correct

1:33:03

me if I'm wrong, but didn't Facebook get

1:33:05

a big advantage when they created a tool

1:33:07

to allow people from MySpace to translate straight

1:33:09

forward, straight forward with all their contacts? If

1:33:11

you actually pitched that to Meta now, they

1:33:13

would see you into oblivion. Well,

1:33:16

it's what they did to a company

1:33:18

called Power Ventures. They destroyed

1:33:20

them for making an

1:33:22

interoperable multi-platform inbox for Facebook, LinkedIn,

1:33:24

and a bunch of other platforms,

1:33:26

Twitter, and so on, some of

1:33:28

which used APIs and some of

1:33:30

which used scraping. Every

1:33:33

pirate dreams of being an admiral, and their pitch

1:33:35

is always the same. When we did this

1:33:37

to those other companies, that was progress, but when

1:33:40

new companies do to us, that's piracy. I'm

1:33:44

not faulting Apple for

1:33:46

reverse engineering office. I think that was

1:33:48

great. I was a CIO back then,

1:33:50

and I was making those calls where

1:33:52

we had designers in an office full

1:33:54

of PCs, the designer with the only

1:33:56

Mac, who just like, first

1:33:58

I would put a PC on their desk. to use

1:34:00

as a office workstation because

1:34:02

they could not read or write office

1:34:04

files that came from their Windows colleagues

1:34:06

without corrupting them so they would switch

1:34:09

to another computer and when that became

1:34:11

too ungainly I just put big graphics

1:34:13

cards in their PCs and threw away

1:34:15

their Macs and I didn't like it and they didn't

1:34:17

like it but what was I going to do? I

1:34:19

loved it when Apple came out with

1:34:21

iWork Suite and I just

1:34:24

wish they'd share, right? I loved it

1:34:26

when Google came up with a great way of indexing

1:34:28

the web. I just wish they'd share. You

1:34:32

said we don't need regulation but it does

1:34:34

argue for good antitrust regulation, doesn't it? Yeah,

1:34:37

so we need antitrust, we do need interoperability

1:34:39

mandates, we need to clear the

1:34:41

way, we need to

1:34:44

immunize people who build interoperable products

1:34:47

and the, you know, the identification

1:34:49

thesis has broadened significantly since that

1:34:51

first article that's been just over

1:34:53

a year. I just

1:34:55

put together a book proposal for it and I'm

1:34:58

giving a big speech in Berlin that kind of

1:35:00

tracks the book proposal next week. I'm going to

1:35:02

be there for Transmediale

1:35:04

and I'm going to give them a McLuhan lecture

1:35:06

at the Canadian Embassy. I think it's sold out

1:35:08

but you can check. Will it be

1:35:10

streamed? It probably won't be streamed. They're going to record

1:35:13

it though. Is this the Marshall McLuhan lecture? Are you

1:35:15

doing the Marshall? Yeah, at the Canadian Embassy. Wow, Corey,

1:35:17

wow. That's my phrase, holy cow. It's going to be

1:35:19

cool. I

1:35:21

mean as a Canadian that's about as

1:35:23

good as it gets for sure. Yes,

1:35:25

that's, yeah, but in

1:35:28

the speech I lay out this idea

1:35:30

that there are four forces that

1:35:33

keep companies from identifying. One

1:35:36

of them is this fear of self-help, right? The fear

1:35:38

that a user will type into a search engine, how

1:35:41

do I get my data out of here? How do

1:35:43

I block these ads? How do I stop

1:35:45

recommendations? How do I turn off this anti-feature?

1:35:47

How do I jailbreak my printer to put

1:35:49

in third party ink? Because at that point

1:35:51

your revenue from that user falls to zero,

1:35:54

right? So that's one thing that firms fear and

1:35:57

the broad prohibition against reverse engineering

1:36:00

this kind of adversarial interoperability has

1:36:02

killed that constraint. But

1:36:04

there are other constraints. So one of them is competition,

1:36:07

right? Companies that fear that you will

1:36:09

go to a rival are

1:36:12

companies that will probably treat you better on average. And

1:36:14

if they don't, you can always go to that rival.

1:36:17

Now when firms are allowed to buy all their

1:36:19

competitors, you know, Google being a company that has

1:36:22

only made one really successful product in house,

1:36:24

a 25-year-old search engine, and then virtually everything

1:36:26

else they did. Well, very, right? But

1:36:29

then everything else they've made in house has

1:36:31

failed, almost with that exception. And

1:36:39

everything they have that works, their

1:36:42

video platform, mobile, ad tech,

1:36:45

server management, docs, collaboration,

1:36:47

maps, satellite photos, there are other people's

1:36:49

ideas that they bought and operationalized. And

1:36:51

as an ops guy, I mean, I'm

1:36:53

not saying operations is nothing, but they're

1:36:55

not Willy Wonka's idea factory. They're like

1:36:57

rich uncle penny bags and his room

1:36:59

full of janitors, right? I

1:37:03

had a Google PR

1:37:05

because we refer to them as a chocolate factory

1:37:07

because they came up with so many, you know,

1:37:10

interesting innovations. And I had a Google PR

1:37:12

say, if we could get you to drop

1:37:15

the chocolate factory thing, we would

1:37:17

be, I have a

1:37:19

directorship by now. But you're right. I

1:37:21

mean, other than search, everything else has

1:37:23

been bought in. And the same with

1:37:25

with MESA. It's the same to an

1:37:28

extent with other tech companies as well.

1:37:30

It reminds me of Larry Lessig, who

1:37:32

for a long time was really fighting

1:37:34

against like you, Cory, against copy

1:37:36

protection back in the day, DRM, and

1:37:39

realized ultimately that what's happened, and

1:37:41

I think this is really true in this

1:37:43

case, what's happened to these companies have become

1:37:46

so powerful and more importantly, so rich. And

1:37:49

our government is so

1:37:51

based on money

1:37:54

that they are effectively impregnable.

1:37:57

They can't be beaten because they become so powerful.

1:38:00

much money they can buy Congress,

1:38:02

they can buy the presidency, they can buy the

1:38:04

Supreme Court and so it's so hard for us

1:38:06

to turn it around at this

1:38:09

point. But it's not just how much money

1:38:11

they have, it's how few companies are in the sector because

1:38:14

if you remember the Napster Wars when Larry was

1:38:16

doing his thing, the tech industry

1:38:18

was ten times larger than the entertainment industry

1:38:20

but they got their ass kicked because they

1:38:22

were a hundred squabbling companies. Right. Right now

1:38:24

there are a cartel of five companies whereas

1:38:27

before the music and Hollywood Studios

1:38:30

firms were seven companies. Right. They found it

1:38:32

very easy to agree on what they were

1:38:34

going to say to Congress. Tech was never

1:38:36

on message. Right. They were always stabbing each

1:38:38

other in the back. Cartels

1:38:41

are a necessary precondition for regulatory capture

1:38:43

which is how you get this environment

1:38:46

today where privacy, labor and consumer rights

1:38:48

can be violated with impunity provided you

1:38:50

do it with an app. And

1:38:53

self-help measures can be destroyed because

1:38:56

you can not only when you capture

1:38:58

your regulators stop from being regulated but

1:39:00

you can also regulate your competitors. Right.

1:39:03

You can stop new market entrants from

1:39:05

entering by having regulations that prevent them

1:39:07

from doing these things. So

1:39:10

what Larry concluded was well the only

1:39:12

solution is to any of these

1:39:15