 Oh, the world building is really cool. Like there's just tons of beautiful art of like what the planet looks like after humans are gone. And so, and then there's like a big fight with Godzilla, of course. And of course, we're talking about Amazon's yearly earnings call for those of you just right now. No, that's, you know what? I have been meaning to get around to that and I need to. So that's, that's good to know. It sounds like it's worth it. And Annalie just double checking. Editor-at-large-at-art's-technical or do you want to go with a different? I mean, you can also just call me an author and journalist. I will call you author and journalist. Just because Godzilla expert? Godzilla expert, yeah. This shows premier Godzilla expert. Yeah. We brought her in because something is coming out of the ocean. Yes, a correspondent. We knew you were a correspondent. Yeah, I actually, I could just be a Kaiju correspondent because I really, I like, you know, I go for Pacific Rim. Roger and I today, we're trying to go through all the people we have on the show and sort of like put some categories of like, okay, this person's really good at fintech or the, you know, this and that. So we'll definitely at Kaiju. Yeah. Well, when the new Godzilla comes out, I would probably have a lot of. And you being so close to San Francisco, man. You would experience a fight first hand. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. This is like, this is where all the Kaiju action happens. Yes. This is where like the United Federation of Planets like winds up having a tomb base. Like, that could be a good crossover. Hit upon a great find. All right. Are y'all ready to break from our Godzilla show for San Francisco? Yes, I think I'm ready. We can come back right after. No problem. That's why I like that we've set this up this way. All right. Let's get going then. Roger, are you ready? Yes. Here we go in three, two. Oh, you know what? Wait. Fake out. I forgot to add a person to the thing. I have to thank a person. Oh, and quick at the top just for Analy's edification. Tom is just going to go through these quick hits very quickly. And then when he hits the top stories, that's where you and him will have a like two-minute discussion. When it turns red, that means it's time to move on. All right. Here we go in three, two. Casey Russell has supported Independent Tech News directly for five years. Be like Casey. Become a DTNS member at patreon.com slash DTNS. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 8, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. From the land of potato and cheese pierogies, I'm Len Peralta. From the land of taco trucks and sunny skies, are the shows produced for Roger Chang. Roger Chang, just rubbing it in the face of our guest today, author and journalist Analy Newitz, who's in the rain in San Francisco. That's right. How's it going, Analy? Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Sarah Lane is off today on her other job. She'll be back on Monday, but we are very excited to have Analy here. We are going to talk about a really cool invention for sort of turning your thoughts into speech, or at least making an advance down that road. But we also have Jeff Bezos to talk about. Yes, so many hot. So let's start with a few tech things you should know. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has opened a store in Cambridge, England to offer to sell its single board computers and the accessories around the Raspberry Pi. The store will feature some exclusive products. No details on what those would be yet. It'll be located on the first floor of the Grand Arcade Shopping Center in Cambridge. Microsoft security architect Chris Jackson has written a blog post called The Perils of Using Internet Explorer as your default browser. Yes, even though IE is just a compatibility mode in Windows 10, many companies still use IE, sometimes in older versions of Windows, because they created internal tools that rely on it. Microsoft's Edge browser is not available in Windows 7 or 8. So Microsoft, starting a campaign to get people to stop using their product, please. Apple told TechCrunch it is informing developers that they must properly disclose the use of screen recording or remove any such functionality. TechCrunch had reported that some apps were recording screen interactions in order to use the data to improve user interface issues but did not explicitly note that in privacy disclosures. And additionally, one or possibly more of the apps weren't protecting sensitive information like passport numbers and credit card numbers. And Apple has released an update for iOS that fixes a bug that lets people hear or see you in a FaceTime call before you answer it. So you might want to implement that patch soon. This is the bug that was reported by 14-year-old Grant Thompson and initially ignored by Apple for weeks. Apple did say they are going to pay a bug bounty to Thompson's family as well as contribute to the cost of Thompson's education. So at least trying to make up for it now. The update also fixes two zero-day exploits discovered in the wild by Google. Another reason to get that update as soon as possible. All right, let's talk a little bit more about Amazon but not Jeff Bezos quite yet. The Washington Post reports two sources tell it that Amazon is considering withdrawing its commitment to open a large office in New York City, one of two large offices that Amazon built as second headquarters. The other one that's going into Virginia near Washington, D.C., is on its way. Funds have been approved by the city, but nothing has been spent and no tax breaks have been approved for Amazon in New York, so they could pull out without really losing anything at this point. The sources to the Post attributed the potential change to the opposition, to Amazon's increased presence in the city. Annalie, there's been some anger in New York City, it sounds like, about Amazon not so much Amazon moving in and gentrifying, which is part of it, but also getting money, getting tax breaks from the government for it. Well, that's right, and that's something we've seen here in the San Francisco Bay Area happening a lot, where companies are coming in, they're reaping the benefits of being in the area, and they're getting tax breaks on top of it. And so I think that in New York, they've looked here to the west and they saw what happened and they're worried. I mean, they're worried that people will be pushed out and they're worried that those 150,000 new jobs that Amazon is promising are not going to go to locals. And so it's just a big mess there right now. Yeah, the governor Cuomo and the mayor of New York City are still on the side of getting Amazon there, but I know not everyone in the government, State Senator Michael Gianaris, had nominated to the Public Authorities Control Board, said he would veto the deal, which he would have the ability to do. So it doesn't even break down along party lines. I mean, Mayor de Blasio is a very progressive mayor, but he helped broker this deal. Yeah, it's true. And I mean, one of the things that they've said is that this is the biggest deal they've made in 50 years for the biggest city in the United States. So it's going to be a loss in some ways, but it's the gain for another city if Amazon relocates there. And maybe that's the best idea. Yeah, I mean, I've been a little cynical about this because Amazon went around and made a lot of cities, do a lot of work, and compete for something that didn't even end up being a second headquarters. It got split into two 25,000 person spaces, which isn't small, but it's not headquarters. And then they gave them to New York City and Washington, DC, which are kind of the obvious choices if you don't do any work. And you already have a presence in, say, San Francisco and Seattle, which Amazon does. So I just, I always kind of rolled my eyes at this, but the idea that maybe it would go to a city that needs it more could be interesting. Yeah, I would love to see it go somewhere in the south of the Midwest. That would be fantastic. Yeah, bring it to Omaha. Yeah, hell yeah. Yeah. Spotify published an updated terms of service that explicitly bans ad blocking on the service. According to the new terms, circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify service can result in either immediate termination or suspension of a Spotify account. The new terms of service go into effect on March 1st. This bugs me because I use privacy badger. It's not an ad blocker, but one of the side effects of it is it circumvents or blocks advertisements sometimes because it says if you haven't given permission to a site, we're not going to let it track you across sites. Yeah, I mean, this is a weird one. I wonder, I mean, I feel like this is the beginning of a bunch of services doing this kind of thing and trying and sort of testing it out. Like, can we actually just kick people off our service if they're using ad blockers? And I'm curious to see how that works. I'm not sure this will end up panning out for them, but maybe it will. Maybe they'll reap some $10 extra by doing this. Yeah, I mean, I walk through and I understand that Spotify has not been making as much money off the free tier through advertising that it would like. And they may look at the data and say, yeah, I mean, a lot of it is ad blockers. That seems reasonable that they might conclude that. My question is, do you really, like you say, you're going to get more than $10 by kicking out your users? Are you really going to change behavior? Because ad blocking is something that's built in to a lot of browsers now. And it's something that a lot of people do not because they don't believe in ads. A lot of people even use something like ad block plus, which whitelists things. So you do see ads, you just don't see abusive ads. I feel like this is ill-conceived, at least the way it's being presented here. Yeah, I think it's just going to end up feeling like punishing their users. And I think if they're already worried about a diminishing user base at the free level, this is not going to endear them to the people who are using their service. Yeah, again, I don't have a problem with sort of the concept of, hey, this is an advertising-supported service, and if you're going to stop us from showing you ads, then you shouldn't be able to use it. I get that. But the way you do it is hard. It's hard to tell who's actually blocking ads because they just want to sneakily get it without paying for it with their eyeballs. And who's blocking ads because they have a legitimate reason or they're blocking scripts or they're using privacy badger. There's so many other ways that you end up falling afoul of this where you weren't trying to get away with anything. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, and as someone who writes a lot for digital sites, ads have supported a lot of my writing. And so I think that's fine. But I agree that they're just, they're really not going to be able to regulate this well. It's going to end up being like a giant hammer for a really teeny, tiny, weak nail. Yeah, they're either not going to ban most people. They're only going to go after people that are really, really bad or if at all, then maybe they just use it as a scare tactic or it's going to blow up in their faces as a PR nightmare, possibly. Yeah. Yeah. Sprint filed a lawsuit against AT&T in the Southern District of New York, claiming the company's use of 5GE for 5G evolution when connected to 4G services that are very fast, LTE advanced type services, was false advertising and damages the reputation of 5G standards. The complaint cited a survey commissioned by Sprint that found 54% of consumers thought 5GE was equivalent or better than 5G. So they're trying to show there is confusion when this term is used. The suit seeks an injunction preventing AT&T from using the term on phones or in advertising. Now, T-Mobile did this with 4G, right? They put out some HSPA plus 3G services and called them 4G on your phone, which I never liked either, but nobody sued them over it. This is interesting. Yeah. I'm curious about where it's coming from. I mean, why is Sprint trying to compete with AT&T over 5G? Is that why they're so worried? Like, is there some kind of 5G standards body that might be a better place to have this lawsuit emanate from? I mean, it's just kind of funny that it's Sprint suing them. Yeah, I agree. It's a standard. It's not a brand. The standards organization that determines 5G could bring this, but they won't because AT&T is part of that standards body, right? So I guess it has to be outside the standards body, but why Sprint? Is it because they have the least to lose because they're in poor place? And maybe it gets them some good press because a lot of people are angry about this with AT&T, but I also am trying to figure out, other than the press bump from those of us who are in the know and are like, yes, AT&T shouldn't do that. I wonder what else Sprint gets out of this. I really do think it's just about a press and just trying to smear AT&T. I mean, AT&T is admittedly always doing terrible things. It's always like, oh, and they were also spying on users without warrants and things like that. So AT&T has had these kinds of cycles in the news before where they've been revealed as kind of a bad guy for consumers. And so sort of playing on that. I mean, and it is slimy. Like, come on, calling something 5G when it's not is, let's call it bad. Let's call it false advertising. It's true. I am with you up to like, is it legally false advertising to label a connection with a label that if your audience doesn't understand what 5G is, I think that's where T-Mobile was. It's like, man, people don't really know what 4G is. I know there's a standard's body, but it's a very loose standard. It's just a way to say fast and HSPA plus was almost as fast, if not faster than some 4G implementations. And that's what AT&T is arguing is their LTE implementation here is actually as fast as a lot of the 5G implementations will be when they launch. I don't buy it. I'm dubious. 5G is an actual thing. And they're calling their thing 5G and I mean, when you look at things like trademark law, like one of the rules of whether a trademark is being violated is initial interest confusion. People think they're getting 5G and they're not. But 5G is a marketing term, not a trademark. And I think maybe that's where they get their wiggle room, their puffer, they can do puffery defense. Is that a thing? Yeah, puffery is where you can legally make an outlandish claim because people don't really take it seriously. We're the best cleaner. You don't have to show evidence that you're the best cleaner. To say you're the best cleaner, you can just say that. Legal puffery, I like it. Yeah, I learned that in advertising class in college. I like to just call it 4.9G. If you all round that up to five in our head. I don't know, they just call it ultra-fast. Like, come on, turbo. Just come up with another cheesy name for it. Yeah. And a team led by Columbia University's Nima Mesagrani used electrodes connected directly to the brain to monitor and playback the speech the subjects heard. So let me say that again. They used electrodes directly connected to the brain to monitor what the brain was doing when they were listening to speech. All the subjects were already undergoing surgery for epilepsy that required the placement of the electrodes. So they were just sort of taking advantage of that without having to do invasive surgery for an experiment. Subjects heard a series of 40 numbers. They weren't in order, randomly spoken. And an AI was used to decode the detected brain waves and then turn it back into speech. Now, you can say like, well, couldn't they just have listened to the speech? Yeah, that's not the point. The point is, can we take the brain waves from that are detected while hearing speech and be able to figure out what that person is hearing? And they were kind of able to do that. A group of volunteers listening to the AI-generated speech correctly identified what had originally been said about 75% of the time. Which is an incredible number in science. If you're getting 75% accuracy on something like this, it's really good. The thing that is so fascinating about this, aside from sticking electrodes in people's brains, which is always kind of delightful, is the fact that this is the beginning of having some kind of brain-computer interface that can actually read what you're thinking or what words you're thinking or numbers in this case. This is something that people who are suffering from paralysis, it's a dream. It's the idea that you could actually have an implant that would allow you to communicate really easily instead of having to kind of slowly move a mouse across the screen, which we can already do with brain implants. And so now, with people want to communicate, they can move a mouse across the screen and kind of pick letters out of a chart. So this would be one step further. And the reason why they want to use the idea of people listening to a number and then seeing if the output works is because then they can say, okay, objectively, we know what number was spoken to them. And then when we get the same output, we know we've actually read something that they really were hearing. And so I think the idea eventually would be that if this continues to work and we refine this, what people will do who want to output their thoughts to a computer is they will imagine hearing those words. So it will recreate that kind of electrical signaling in the brain as if you're listening to something. So it's pretty exciting. It's also wildly creepy in a lot of ways. It brings to mind a lot of dystopian science fiction where it's like, we can read your thoughts. We don't need to give you a lie detector test anymore. We just stick an electrode in your brain and say, what did you hear? You have to have invasive surgery to read my thoughts. Does it make me feel better about it? No, no, no, no. You definitely, it's like in two years, there's definitely going to be like a CSI episode with this in it, where it's like, what we've done is drilled a tiny hole in his mind and we've stuck in an electrode. And now it's all in mystery. In a basement, exactly. So this is, I think, it's exciting news for people who are already using brain-computer interfaces to communicate. And it's a huge breakthrough. And it's honestly kind of unbelievable to me that we're watching brain-computer interfaces evolve this quickly in my lifetime. I did not think that I would ever see something like this. And it's just moving so fast. So yeah. So basically, 10 years from now, we're all going to be cyborgs. Like we won't need to be talking. We'll plug these earphones directly into our brains and we'll just have a show that way. Get ready, Mike. We're going to go back to the internet. Yeah. Now, this is a huge step, because like you said, if you can detect the speech people here, because the way you detect it is the brain processing it, then when you speak to yourself silently, it is the next step. And then other thoughts, it's almost like a risotto stone, like, OK, if we can detect that move, we can detect this kind of thought or pictures. Although, to be fair, the act of imagining hearing something may produce a different set of electrical signals than thinking it to yourself. So your private thoughts may for now be still private. In fact, that's a really good point, because it's almost more about the AI being able to decode the brainwaves, right? That's where I see the big advance here, is like, ah, it was able to take brainwaves and figure out something. So maybe it will be able to do that with other brainwaves, maybe not. Folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. And now, Jeff Bezos. Thursday, yeah, I know. I know, it's OK to giggle everyone. There are funny aspects. There are very not funny aspects to this story, but there really are. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos posted on Medium that the company AMI, which publishes the National Enquirer, told him it would publish embarrassing photos of him. They've already published embarrassing texts that they've acquired from him, but that they would publish embarrassing photos of him if he did not publicly state that the Enquirer's coverage was not politically motivated, which is something that he has been insinuating, that it might be. His investigator has been insinuating that. Instead of complying, though, Jeff Bezos posted the emails from AMI. One of the emails posted was from Howard Dillon, Chief Content Officer at AMI, describing the photos. So the description of the embarrassing photos is in the email which Jeff Bezos published on his own Medium post. They are photos both of Bezos and a woman named Lauren Sanchez, whom Bezos is said to have an affair with. A separate email from AMI Deputy General Counsel John Fine proposed terms wherein, if Bezos publicly affirmed there was no political connection to AMI's coverage, AMI would agree not to publish any more texts or any of these photos. Now, a few things you need to know before we start talking about this. The National Enquirer previously ran a story with incriminating texts implicating Bezos with having an affair with Lauren Sanchez and implying this was one of the causes of his divorce. So they've gone full out on covering this and they're saying, we'll keep going and also going full out on covering this is what caused Bezos to say, I bet they're doing it because of political reasons. As part of an agreement with federal prosecutors previously, AMI, the publisher of Enquirer, admitted that it paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 to kill her story at about an alleged affair with the president. So there is precedent of AMI having a connection with doing something on behalf of the president. On February 5th, the Washington Post ran an article called Was tabloid expose of Bezos affair just juicy gossip or a political hit job? Of course, Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos. So you can see the timeline. Enquirer does this, the post does that, Enquirer sends the email saying, hey, you do that again, we're going to do this. We don't know how they got the photos. This is the most technical aspect of this story. It does not appear to be an exploit but more likely some kind of social engineering. Bezos private security consultant Gavin DeBecker believes it is a politically motivated leak he has only named Lauren Sanchez's brother Michael Sanchez as among the subjects of his investigation. But Washington Post reporter Manuel Roig Franzia says DeBecker thinks it might involve a government entity, foreign or domestic. There's lots of fun. We don't know lots of conspiracies, no facts about how this data was obtained. In response to Bezos post, AMI says it believes it acted lawfully but its board has begun an investigation because Bezos made this all public. We have lots of places we can go with this and I know we will, Annaly, but I want to start with the gumption, I will say, of Jeff Bezos just saying, I'm the richest man in the world and I'm going to suck it up and these are embarrassing but I'm not going to give in to this. Here's what happened. And doing it on Medium. Yes, there are and there's a lot of interesting stuff about the fact that he published it on Medium because a huge part of this go round with AMI had to do with them associating him with the Washington Post and if you look at some of the letters that they sent to him or emails that they sent to him, they actually refer to Bezos and properties like Washington Post or they'll talk about the Washington Post as being somehow Bezos affiliated. So in their minds, I think that the two things are one and so I think he went to Medium to say like, all right, this is like a neutral ground. I'm not going to the Washington Post to talk about this. I'm going to go to a place that's just a public area and also posting those emails, they are hilarious, the emails that they sent him and also his post is hilarious. No thanks, Mr. Pecker. And there's like all of these Pecker jokes in the piece that he wrote and he just, if there's some kind of office that like Bezos and Musk were like competing to be in, I think he just won. Like I feel like it's now like in the rich dudes with spaceships race, I think I'm voting for Bezos now because this was a pretty gutsy move. Yeah. At one point, no thanks. Mr. Pecker refers to the owner of the National Enquirer, led by David Pecker. I didn't mention his name just now because he didn't send any of the emails, but it is- His representative sent them. Bezos was responding to the owner of AMI. Yes, exactly. And you can tell that he is delighting in the pun because of course they are threatening to reveal, they're threatening to reveal dick pics and he's like, all right, fine. And the thing, like I said, that was so delightful about the emails that Pecker's representatives sent is that they actually describe these prurient images that they have and that they're threatening to release and the language they use is like practically Victorian. It's like, we have an image of your male member peeking out of a zipper and it's like, really? Like, I don't know. It was, it just added another layer of complete surreal weirdness to it. But yeah. And he also says in his response that he's proud to have support at the Washington Post and it's something he'll be proud of when he's 90 years old and so he's not backing away at all. He's like, no, I'm in it. I think my favorite of the descriptions of the embarrassing photos is the one described thus, a selfie of Mr. Bezos fully clothed. Yeah, there's a selfie of him at a meeting. Like, how did that one get in there? Right? The one at the meeting, at first I was like, Mr. Bezos face selfie at what appears to be a business meeting. I'm like, okay, maybe that's showing irresponsibility because he's taking a selfie at a meeting that he then sent to his lover and that somehow would undermine investor confidence. It's like, it's a stretch, but I'm like, I guess, but like a selfie of Mr. Bezos fully clothed, that feels fairly uncontroversial. Yeah, but he was sending it to a lady. Right, it's all about the target. Yeah. And they also have this weird moment where they don't seem to be able to tell the difference between cargo pants and cargo shorts. And they're like, he's wearing dark cargo pants, perhaps shorts, maybe underwear. We can't tell. They're Amazon basenics though, that's for sure. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because now we have basically, if it's true that AMI is deeply connected with the Trump administration, which there are lots of pieces of evidence suggesting that, we have kind of this billionaire going after another self-proclaimed billionaire who, there's some questions about that. And so it's becoming this kind of weird, we were talking about Kaiju before the show started, it's becoming this kind of giant monster fight between these two men. And because Trump has gone after Bezos on Twitter a lot, and so it's starting to feel really personal. Yeah, and Jeff Bezos' medium post definitely takes it personally as well. Yeah. I hesitate to want to cheer for Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, too much, because he's definitely using this to best advantage. So if nothing else, it's very skillful, but also it's unheard of for someone to do this. To say, I'm going to post the full emails of what you sent, you sent them to me in writing. Those sorts of situations are gambled on the fact that no one would want what I'm writing here to be public. So it's safe for me to send it in written form. And if you read them, they are very carefully worded, so as not to be threatening. One email says, these are photos we have. We think we've legally caught them because of news gathering. And that's one area where I disagree with Bezos. He says, I don't think this is news gathering. It is. He's a public figure. Oh, yeah. No, it definitely is. I mean, they get to publish whatever they want under the rules that we have in the United States. It wouldn't be the same in other countries, but here I think they're safe on that. But they're just describing them. And then a separate email says, hey, if you agree to do this, we'll also agree to do that. Quid pro quo, that's up for a court to decide. And I think it's also telling that AMI's response was, we think we've done everything by the letter of the law, but we're going to investigate because that's the board saying we have to make sure that our investors feel like we didn't do anything wrong if there is a lawsuit. Yeah, which I think we may be heading in that direction. Although the damage is done now. Like, they certainly can't. He's laid it all out there, so there's nothing they can do now to intimidate him. So I think that, in a sense, weirdly, it reads like a good old-fashioned blog expose from 2008, where it's like... Could have been on Valley Wagon, right? Yeah, I was thinking that. My old employer, Gawker Media, would have absolutely been all over this. And I mean, Deadspin always had a dick pic section, so it'd be great. I hadn't even thought about that, but this is another little piece of evidence that what was once Silicon Valley and the tech sphere is now worldwide, right? And also the threats that are being launched at people, it's now like, oh, we have your private sexy pics, and that's what we're going to expose, as opposed to something like about your finances or whatever. And it's funny that this is happening as Trump is worried about this p-tape that we were also gleeful about a couple of years ago. And so it's like the president is possibly in some kind of weird compromising sexual tape, and now there's Bezos. So it's, yeah, politics and social media are one. The upshot of all this, though, is, as a tech user, I don't think this is going to hurt Amazon. I think Jeff Bezos has successfully avoided a scandal because even if the inquirer prints this, it just makes the inquirer look worse now that he's kind of preempted them. And I don't think it's going to affect the products that Amazon puts out in any way. I don't think it's going to affect Blue Origin. I don't think it's going to affect the Washington Post and my ability to read them online. So it's really, it could have, right? It could have blown up into a scandal that drove Jeff Bezos out of office if it had been, if it had played out in a different manner. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say before we set this aside is that we were talking at the top of the hour about how the problem with New York City's relationship with Amazon and the fact that there are all these people protesting the idea of Amazon coming. And I think that those people who are protesting Amazon's arrival there are the exact people who are probably gleeful about this story, not gleeful because they want to see Bezos smeared but because they're happy with what he did, that he stood up to these bullies. That kind of action, yeah. Yeah, that kind of action. And in the service of journalism, he makes a lot of points in his post about what good journalism is. And so it's funny. Like I think it is weird to be in that situation where it's like, well, I'm extremely skeptical of Amazon and on almost every level. And yet at the same time, it's hard not to feel like this was really a great thing that he did. Like it was the right move. It was morally correct at some level. And it's nice that he was able to do that. Certainly, certainly interesting. And if there's any more related to this that comes out, well, we'll keep looking at it. I kind of feel like this is it. I don't expect other shoes to drop. I think he's pulled the wind out of their sails, but who knows? Yeah, we'll find out. All right, let's check out the mailbag real quick. Andy Beach responded to yesterday's free tech newsletter. If you haven't checked it out, freetechnewsletter.com. It gives you some gifts and funny headlines to go along with the day's tech news. Andy liked yesterday's edition saying, this might be the best one of these yet. Well done. The issue was simply titled No, No, No. It was about net neutrality investment and the leaking of personal data and the screen recording that we talked about earlier. So you can check it out freetechnewsletter.com. All right. I cannot wait to see what Len Peralta has been drawing as we've discussed to the news of the day. I'm sure it's about Spotify's ad blocking policy, right? Oh, probably. Of course. Of course. Actually, you know what? This sometimes these images draw themselves. This is one of those weeks where, of course, it drew itself. For those of you who aren't watching the video, I drew Jeff Bezos holding a box. An Amazon box in front of his naked self. Well, you might be right. And I just want to tell you. In front of his male member. I just want to remind people that next week is Valentine's Day and this would make a great gift for anybody, honestly. Male or female. And you just got to go check out the store. LenPeraltaStore.com. Check out Bezos versus Pecker is what I call this one. It is safe for work in case you're not, if you're wondering, go to LenPeraltaStore.com. It is possibly the funniest thing Len has ever drawn on this show. Please, thank you. And thank you, Annalie Newitz, for dropping in. And we just lucked out in having this amazing topic to talk about. It was really fun talking with you about it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. If folks want to find out what you're doing, where should they go? You can follow me on Twitter. I'm Annalie N on Twitter. And you can also check out my website, AnnalieNewitz.com. And I have a podcast. It's called Our Opinions Are Correct. And you can find it at ouropinionsercorrect.com. Go check all of that out, folks. Don't forget, our goal each month is to get one more patron than last month. And you could be that person that puts us over the top. Become a DTS member. You can get an ad-free RSS feed, special episodes from myself on why we do the show the way we do. My philosophy behind that. Episodes looking back on tech news of the past. It's all available at patreon.com. Slash D T N S. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 21.30 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com. Slash live. See you Monday. Nth Mike in our chat wants Len to start a calendar of CEOs. Oh, my God. When I was tweeting about this yesterday, somebody said, it really puts the member in prime membership. Yeah. I like prime members. That was a good one. Oh, man, that's a better name for this. Membership has its purpose. Really, like Victorian is the proper term for how that letter is written. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was a work of art. Well, what's interesting is, oh, sorry. Oh, no, no, I just was going to start. I was just risking seeing what titles have been suggested for this episode. At the top at showbot.chatrealm.net is Bezos' medium of choice. Oh, very nice. And then Bezos' prime. Obviously, Bezos exposes Pekker, referring to the owner of the MI. Not using 90 people is up there as well. Almost as popular. Bezos delivers his package. Oh, man. Amazon Prime now Bezos emails. A selfie of this episode of details. That's a good tip. Oh, right. Yeah, I can't choose. The hell looks so good. Anybody have a favorite out of those? I like them all. I like Bezos exposes Pekker a lot. I like the Bezos delivers his package. I also like that one. That was like my other day. Like I regressed to junior high on that one, but it's really funny. Yeah, no, I'm always there in junior high. So I don't even have to regress, really. I'm sorry. I think that one perfectly. I hesitate to use the word straddles, but it's on the line of acceptability and exclamation. It really makes the point. Yes. It's a package of revelations that he delivered. I want to see if anybody buys this print because it'd be interesting to see who would on their wall. I feel like, you know, Amazon people. I feel like Amazon people would enjoy it to share. I feel like that letter revealed that he actually has kind of like a sassy sense of humor a little bit. Like you might actually enjoy this. You know, I was going to tag him on the tweet, but I thought differently. I'll say this of anything that belongs to the t-shirt. That might be one of them. Yeah. That actually, I could see people having it as a t-shirt. Like, especially if you did like membership, and then as you make it so that it doesn't have the head. It's just a t-shirt. Oh, man. It just says prime member. Yes. I love prime members. That's even better. Yeah. I could see people being into it as a t-shirt. Yeah. Especially if the story continues on not directly, but like whatever's been covered. Well, you know, the Washington Post will be covering it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Len, you should send him two prints and ask for one to be signed and sent back to you. Oh, yes. I like that. I like that. Where would you even send that just to Amazon headquarters? On corporate office, care of Jeff Bezos. I'm going to do that. There's your, by the way, there's your image. It's actually like a very, you know, it's kind of a pro Bezos picture. Like it's not anti. No. It's like actually like it's sort of jaunty and fun. You know, I don't think that he's going to be offended. Yeah. If he sounds like he has a good sense of humor. He really, yeah. I liked how he kept calling pecker a pop lectic. A pop lectic. A pop lectic. Yeah, I noticed that too. I can't even say that. A pop lectic. Mr. Pecker. Okay, anyway, whatever. That felt like an inside jab too somehow. Like maybe that's something. Yeah, it was odd, but it was delightfully well written. It is one of those few situations because a lot of times this kind of stuff I talk about on my editor's desk all the time is a lot of times I'll go to these stories and I'll say, okay, like for instance, when the National Enquirer first published the text messages, I was like, we don't care. That doesn't affect my daily life. It doesn't affect how I'm going to use technology. Not for us. And so when I first saw these headlines coming in yesterday afternoon, I was like, what is this? Oh, he wrote something. Oh, this is going to be cringy. And then I read it and I was like, no, this is actually, because you're used to overpromise, undeliver from headlines, right? Like, did he really quote the emails? Like, he didn't quote them. He published them in full. He published three of them. Yeah, I was actually like, it was funny because yeah, when I saw the news initially, I was just like, I roll and I posted like a snotty tweet about it. And then I read it and I was like, wow, this is actually like him taking a stand for journalism because there's a lot more at stake than just him. I mean, there's also this whole evolving story about like Saudi interests in AMI and their connection there. And what about the story that we didn't touch on? But you're right. Yeah. And so this is like, this is like a legitimate thing to be investigating. It's not just sort of like going up his own naval or whatever. And so he was like, look, these guys are basically acting like secret police here. They're holding information on political figures and trying to extort. And so I was like, dang, you know, that was why I said the thing about Elon Musk because I feel like I'm so sad. Elon Musk, remember when he was cool? And then he just, there was a whole thing with the weird accusations of pedophilia in Thailand. And it just was all bad. Yeah, that was when Elon went from being kind of like, I was like, oh, he seems cool to like, oh. And so now I'm like, I need a new like screwed up hero of the tech age that has rockets. And I'm like, well, maybe now Bezos will be cool finally. He's the flawed hero you need. Yeah. And he's never been cool. Like that's the thing is like, he's never even tried to be cool. Which makes him cooler. I know. Because now he's just like, hey guys, I'm the richest dude in the world. I can do this. I think a lot of people were, if they don't follow this closely, were taken by surprise when he became the richest man in the world, when Amazon became so valuable. Because he wasn't out there doing keynotes like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, or, you know, throwing chairs like Steve Ballmer and then Satya Nadella. Who's going to be the guy that replaces Steve Ballmer? There's a lot of attention on those guys. And like you say, Bezos, you know, when he has done those Amazon keynotes, people are like, oh yeah, he's just not real good at that. Well, he's also like, he's been a genuinely private guy. And you know, and I don't think, again, people hadn't really thought about that, you know, how weird it was that he was outside the spotlight. And when this whole revelation came out about like his love life, I was like, what really? Like, do we, why do we even care? And then I was like, wait, why did we never know about his personal life before? Like that's so weird. Like you said, like most huge tech titans are like, in the gossip pages a lot. There's a certain level of narcissism where you want to see yourself brought up in a, in almost every possible way, because that's how important you are. Right. And a lot of that kind of personality often does rise to the CEO level. Sure. Yeah. And so there's a little bit of a selection bias going on there, I think. Bezos is one of the few, and Steve Jobs is one of these people too, who started the company and is still there, right? Yeah. He delivered, as he says in his media post, he delivered the packages to the post office when Amazon started, right? He was there working from the very beginning. He wasn't just an investor. He wasn't somebody who came in later. Like he built this from the ground up. I think that feeds into it as well. This is someone who feels a lot of personal responsibility for what he's built. Even if you disagree with the way workers are treated or we didn't touch on it on today's show, but there's a thing about Amazon allegedly not paying the tips out to their delivery drivers for some of the grocery delivery that they're doing now. So it's not like Amazon's a perfect company. They've been very anti-union. They have a terrible reputation for how they treat their employees. But at the same time, I think he owns all of that. And he believes there's a reason why they do things the way they do versus just a sort of like pragmatism of like, well, this is the way you run companies. And I got my golden parachute. So I'll be out of here in a moment, right? I think that that's what that kind of CEO would have done in this situation was like, you know what, I'm just going to resign. I'll just take my money and wash out. Yeah. But yeah, he really, I think he takes seriously his role as somebody who's kind of shepherding the Washington Post at this point. Well, not shepherding, but at least supporting. And so he was like, well, look, I have a duty to the public to expose this corrupt company that's working for the government. So, yeah. Well, folks, we'll go to the video. We're going to stop down. We'll keep going on audio here. So stick around if you're on the discord or listening to the audio version of Good Day Internets. And video folks, thanks again. We'll see you tomorrow or actually we'll see you Monday.