Leo [00:00:24]:
Good afternoon, Gary. How's Denver these days?

Gary [00:00:28]:
Pretty nice. Pretty nice today.

Leo [00:00:30]:
It's funny. We're good.

Gary [00:00:31]:
Things there. I know you've had some weather.

Leo [00:00:32]:
We have had some serious weather. And in fact, I'll talk about some of the impacts about it a little bit. But right now, it is foggy of all things. We've had a solid fog for, I wanna say almost 2 days. So the the side effect, of course, is that when you're outside, it's really, really quiet, which is nice.

Gary [00:00:51]:
Yeah. A fog does create that kind of eerie quietness. We get that sometimes a couple days a year here in Denver, but not every year. But it is interesting. I'd like to, when I see it, get out, you know, go out and walk around in it.

Leo [00:01:07]:
It's the same kinda it it feels like the same kinda quiet we have when there's been, like, fresh snowfall.

Gary [00:01:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody kind of, like, is wary about the outdoors. They stay healthy. More people are staying home. People feel that when they're walking around, they need not to talk for some reason.

Leo [00:01:24]:
My theory is that, the snow itself Mhmm. And then now that currently the fog actually acts as a bit of a dampener to sound that is trying to travel.

Gary [00:01:35]:
Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

Leo [00:01:37]:
Anyway Yeah. What you got? What's up?

Gary [00:01:40]:
Well, all all sorts of things. Let's see. There is, one thing I spotted. We've talked about this kind of thing before where Google kind of gets loses its way. Google loses its way a lot, where, you know, Google's supposed to be mainly primarily a search engine. Right? That's like their primary business, the center of all things for them.

Leo [00:02:02]:
Remember those things.

Gary [00:02:03]:
They actually they actually make money off of ads. Right? But the search engine is what, you know, if I said Google, I mean, it's a verb actually to Google.

Leo [00:02:11]:
Yes. Yes.

Gary [00:02:11]:
And but the thing is about search engines is they need to make money while you're searching, but the goal of a search is to take you to a web page Right. Where you will, you know, not be using Google anymore. You know? You've used them. Now you've arrived. The in the past, they have basically acknowledged that it's weird because they sometimes they wanna show you ads too, and they'd rather you click on the ads and actually go to the website, which is kind of, like, goes against what you were searching for. But I guess if that's what you want and it makes them money. Other times, and this has happened in the past, they try to give you the answer before you actually go to a site, which is, you know, where things started to go wrong many years ago with Google because the idea was it's like, oh, you're just indexing the web's content. But, you know, you rely on all the people that actually create content, else there'd be nothing to search for.

Gary [00:03:06]:
But then when you kind of hijack that and say, here's the answer. No need to go to these sites. Then it's like, well, you're taking money away from creators who, you know, probably somehow make money from that content. So, you know, Google's had to balance this. Sometimes they show information. Sometimes they, show web pages. It's a mix. You know, where do they want you to really go? Sometimes it just seems like the different departments of Google fight over this.

Gary [00:03:30]:
And there's another little aspect to this now. In one instance, when you search for something in Google, you take you go to a website, and now you're at the website. And when you're reading, say, an article at a website, there might be a link in that article, which you figure would have been put there by the person who wrote the article or the person that owns the website. And that link may be just a link to another, piece of information or it could be an ad.

Gary [00:03:59]:
In this

Gary [00:03:59]:
case, there there could be an ad, but it's not put there by the website owner or article writer. It's put there by Google. As a very specific case, it's when you're using the Google app, the Google mobile app, which is a weird thing because I didn't really even think about the fact that you could browse the web with the Google app. I'm not talking about Chrome.

Leo [00:04:24]:
Right.

Gary [00:04:24]:
Because on my iPhone, I can get Chrome. I could use the Chrome browser on my iPhone, but I could also use the Google app, do a search in the Google app, and then tap on a link and it will show me the web page. And now it's like I'm just browsing the web. It's like a web browser. But I haven't left the Google app. I'm not actually in Chrome or Safari or Edge or anything. And in that case, when you're looking at an article in there, sometimes, reportedly, I could not get an example myself that I could see, but, they, you know, there's an article at The Verge that shows an example. They might put a link there that wasn't in the original article.

Gary [00:05:05]:
It's only in the version there in the Google app and that will take you, somewhere else either to another search or it's somehow linked to some sort of advertising, which is a problem because it's like that's not part of the article. Like, you you would not either the writer of the article did not intend that to be a link and certainly did not intend that to be a link that would benefit a completely different company, not them. What's interesting

Leo [00:05:31]:
I'm trying this right now on my phone, because, of course, being a Pixel, it's it's like all Google all the time. And, yes, you could do a search in the Google app. I just did. Yeah. But what's interesting about that is that when I click on one of the results or tap on one of the results Yeah. It's actually taking me to Chrome.

Gary [00:05:51]:
Interesting. Definitely doesn't for me. I mean, maybe it varies by what you want. I mean, so I do a search, for, say, Macmost in the Google app, and I'm in the Google app. And I tap there, and it brings up a little window, and I am in still in the Google app and I'm looking at my own website.

Leo [00:06:13]:
Interesting.

Gary [00:06:14]:
So maybe it's

Leo [00:06:15]:
Very interesting.

Gary [00:06:16]:
An iPhone thing?

Leo [00:06:17]:
It could be an iPhone thing. It also could be some random setting that I have set differently.

Gary [00:06:22]:
Yes. You may have to get a setting in there.

Leo [00:06:24]:
A quick look at the Google app, settings, and there's a bunch. I'm just not sure, which one might apply. But anyway, that's but it's very interesting. And you're right. I mean, it's it's kinda sort of another way of, Google to hijack content that isn't is, isn't there?

Gary [00:06:42]:
And to or to profit off of content. I mean, they they profit off of everybody's content anyway, but the you know, it's it's a little bit there there's a line, a fuzzy line, and it it there's this kind of feeling that Google comes up to the line a lot and sometimes steps over it. And the feeling on the creator side, like, people like you and me is to push back every time because if we just say, it's not that big of a deal. Like, who uses the Google app for search? You know, it's it's not a big deal. Well, then, you know, if they don't get pushed back, it's like, well, that's okay. So where can we step next? Like, you know, how much where can we push this? And and there have been many different, you know, instances of the same thing where they insert content into your or they insert links or ads into your content without with your permission. They do it all the time. They still do it now with, you know, tons of sites do that.

Gary [00:07:43]:
Until recently, I did it. But the, the they've had things where not only can they put things in there, but they've sometimes enabled others to put content in your So

Leo [00:07:57]:
is that Google Keep? Am I remembering that correctly?

Gary [00:08:00]:
Yeah. That sounds about right. It was like that service where so you had to enable it. You were to say, I wanna use this, and then you could put a note on a web page.

Leo [00:08:10]:
Right.

Gary [00:08:10]:
And then somebody else that says, yes. I wanna use this too could then see your note.

Leo [00:08:16]:
Right.

Gary [00:08:17]:
And it so it was kind of opt in, but only for the viewers. For, like, the content creators, there was, like, now a certain percentage of people that were seeing additional notes on their stuff online. Right. It was a very weird like, it's like, oh, this seems kind of neat, but it's also very weird and seems like it steps on some bound you know, over some boundaries.

Leo [00:08:41]:
Right.

Gary [00:08:42]:
It's just it's just was an odd kind of icky feeling.

Leo [00:08:45]:
And that went away, and I'm not sure if it went away due to, somebody pushing back, although I don't think so. I think it just went away because it wasn't used. Nobody cared. Nobody used it.

Gary [00:08:57]:
Yeah. I think I think you're right. I think that was we kinda got lucky with that one in that it wasn't that big of a deal because nobody cared. You know? It was and I and I see other companies try to do the same thing from time to time. Say, oh, here's a cool new thing. Nobody's thought of this. You can mark up you know, they always call it something different. You can mark up a web page, and others can see the stuff you marked up.

Gary [00:09:19]:
You can leave notes on a web page, and others can see there's always somebody, like, every 3 years reinventing the whole idea. But, you know, when Google did it, it was kind of scary because it's like, oh, it's Google. Right? They could just decide, hey. Let's just push this out to everybody. Whereas these smaller companies, when they do it, well, you usually see there's pushback, and it's a small company. It's like, it's not gonna it's not gonna happen. You know? So, you know, it doesn't worry you too much. But it is a it is a constant fight out there if you're a creator for people trying to, I guess, benefit from your work, either profit or get their own traffic from your work, step by stepping over lines that, you know, they shouldn't be stepping over, whether it's Google or other companies or, you know, all sorts of different things.

Gary [00:10:05]:
So, yeah, just something something to be aware of.

Leo [00:10:08]:
So I just I just did a little, double checking. I was wrong. Keep still exists. Keep is basically their notes their notes app, which is interesting because the feature that they introduced to, allow people to add comments between web page search results. Yeah. Let's see. It's called notes.

Gary [00:10:32]:
Oh, wow.

Leo [00:10:33]:
So yeah. It's it was interesting.

Gary [00:10:37]:
So okay. Yeah. That is weird. There so you thought it was called Keep, but it's actually called Notes, which is like

Leo [00:10:43]:
And Keep

Gary [00:10:44]:
is Notes. What Apple the yeah. Okay. Alright. Yeah. But, glad it's glad it's but it is around? Is note notes is around still? Or Not

Leo [00:10:52]:
anymore. That's that's long gone.

Gary [00:10:54]:
Okay. Cool. Well, speaking of things that are long gone, I came across this really interesting article. I don't know if you got time to check out this link.

Leo [00:11:05]:
I think I took a quick look at it earlier.

Gary [00:11:07]:
Yeah. So here's the thing. There is a, there was a time on YouTube, really interesting time, between 2,009 and 2,012 when there was a YouTube app for the iPhone that had a little, way to you could just tap a button and it would record the video and then you could tap, you know, done, and it would just upload it to YouTube.

Leo [00:11:36]:
Right.

Gary [00:11:37]:
And it they tried to make it as simple as possible. Keep in mind, 2009 to 2012. Right? So this is early. This is before all the YouTube creators, the whole creator economy. Nobody was making money off of YouTube. Companies were suing YouTube left to right for copyright infringement, that kind of thing.

Leo [00:11:53]:
It was a very different for a while, they didn't even handle full full resolution that you expect today. So

Gary [00:11:59]:
it was a very different type of YouTube back then, but so they had this thing where you could just basically record on your phone, hit stop, and then it went up to YouTube. You didn't even have the chance to name it, and they just basically named it, got named these things like img_ and then some numbers, and the and it other people could watch it. So it's a quick way to share a video. You know, you wanted to show a video of your cat to a friend, you would just do this. It would go to YouTube, and then you could send them the link to the YouTube video, and only they would see it. Right? Because, you know, it was back in those days. It wasn't like anybody was getting famous off this stuff. So the weird thing is is that, of course, YouTube doesn't take stuff down.

Gary [00:12:46]:
So between 2,009 and 2012, thousands and thousands of these things got uploaded, and they're all very identifiable because they all start with img_, and they're from those years. And they're very strange because they're all before any kind of editing and YouTube, you know, video editing styles. Nobody was trying to make anything to be kind of impressive or, you know, get an audience or whatever.

Leo [00:13:10]:
We're all very short.

Gary [00:13:12]:
Very short. Yep. I mean, this is, like, you know, you know, people were walking around with phones that maybe, I guess, 3 g had started then. You know, not everybody had super fast Internet at home, that kind of thing. So, yeah, it's so somebody made a little, like, site here where you could just go through and randomly look at these. And when you do it, it's it feels very much like TikTok is today because they're short. They're very personal. There are people doing silly things, and it's just it's just weird.

Gary [00:13:44]:
It's like a little almost feels like a time portal window. You could just open up a time portal window and look in somebody's house. Most of these are just, you know, they're one take. So it's just somebody started recording and stopped recording. So it's from this minute to this minute in somebody's living room. You know what I mean? It's, it's very, very strange, and it's neat to watch. So I will link to that.

Leo [00:14:06]:
It's addicting.

Gary [00:14:07]:
It it it is. It's addicting. It's and it's very innocent too. There's an innocence to it that TikTok has, but not all the time. Like, you can watch a bunch of stuff on TikTok and feel a little bit of the innocence to it and then see something it's not you know, that that feels okay. Somebody was really trying to hit the algorithm and figure stuff out and promote whatever. But this is all, like, in very innocent stuff.

Leo [00:14:29]:
It's funny. So one of the things the article suggested just was to, search for go to go to YouTube and search for IMG underscore and then 4 digits. Use your use your birth date. Right? So I just search for IMG underscore 0910. And, oh, yeah. Yeah. There's all sorts of interesting stuff. They're all, like, 11 12 years ago.

Leo [00:14:52]:
Oh, 14 years ago. They're all short. They're all I shouldn't say all of them, but many of them are not the quality we're accustomed to in terms of technical quality. And like you say, they're all just these little, glimpses into people's lives. And what's also funny is that if I'm not mistaken, yes, they are categorized as shorts.

Gary [00:15:22]:
Interesting.

Leo [00:15:22]:
Which I thought was really bizarre.

Gary [00:15:25]:
Yeah. I mean, it's weird because YouTube basically had the the big, you know, killer app of video stuff right there. They had it in 2012. And they went and said, nah. We're not gonna do that anymore. And then years later, not that many years later, really, you know, TikTok came along and basically took it from them, and, and YouTube is playing still playing catch up with YouTube shorts. So

Leo [00:15:49]:
That's pretty funny.

Gary [00:15:51]:
Yep.

Leo [00:15:51]:
Yep. Fun times.

Gary [00:15:53]:
Yeah. So I think you and I have both been, you know, doing stuff on Blue Sky.

Leo [00:15:59]:
It's we have. And I wanna talk a little bit about it because I think it reached kind of a tipping point for me today. It's somebody else's observation, but it's a it's a, like I said, I'll just call it a tipping point. And that is this. Well, first of all, TikTok ain't what it used to be. I think I think that much we can all agree on regardless of whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's a thing, and it is a different thing. So actually calling it, something other than Twitter.

Leo [00:16:30]:
Did I say TikTok? I meant Twitter. Yeah. Oh, you meant Twitter.

Gary [00:16:33]:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Now that makes more sense.

Leo [00:16:35]:
Yep. Sorry. Calling it something other than Twitter makes sense because it's not Twitter anymore. Right? Yeah. It's this other thing and we'll just call this other thing x. I used to go to Twitter for honestly breaking news. If something was happening, that was of import and it could be global, it could be national, it could be local. Most of the, sources that I cared about and specifically trusted, they were there, and they were posting on it.

Leo [00:17:12]:
They were tweeting about, you know, whatever was going on. Be it, the latest, declaration of Marshall Law in a surprising company or country.

Gary [00:17:23]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:17:24]:
Or, you know, the latest, accident on a local freeway. So Twitter is not good for that anymore.

Gary [00:17:31]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:17:32]:
X isn't good for that. But I'm starting to find that Blue Sky is filling that niche.

Gary [00:17:40]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:17:40]:
It's really interesting. And the thing that that, just put it in my face is that somebody else made that comment specifically on Blue Sky. They said something to the effect of, you know, thank you Blue Sky for letting us once again do breaking news. Because this is how I learned of, and in this case, it was the martial law thing over in South Korea. But the bottom line is it was breaking news in more or less real time, on a service that had the appropriate people, interacting to actually allow you to a, believe it, and, b, get the information you're looking for. So I've been playing more with Blue Sky. I'm posting random things out there now. It's probably my, I don't wanna say my favorite, but it is definitely, a social media platform that I am using more.

Leo [00:18:39]:
I think I still end up spending more time on Facebook just because that's where all my friends are, and that's where the organizations that I support are. But Blue Sky is turning into more of an information flow fan. And and I'm I'm just happy for that. I'm glad to see that. It's it's becoming more Twitter like. How about you?

Gary [00:18:58]:
Yeah. So I mean, my I'm loving Blue Sky right now. I I don't know why I about a year ago, I started really missing social media, and it wasn't like I mean, the downfall of Twitter didn't really kick me off because I spent a few years not really being too into social media.

Leo [00:19:18]:
Right.

Gary [00:19:18]:
And I was really disheartened with Facebook for business reasons, and I I wasn't seeing too much going on on Twitter that, you know, even before it started going downhill. So it's kinda weird that I I, you know, I feel now it's like, well, I want that back. I want the feeling of, like, 2010 or whatever, like, on Twitter back. It's like, yeah and I I had that and I kind of let it go on my own while Twitter was still good. I kind of left, you know, I didn't I stopped doing much but anyway I guess you know you get nostalgic after a while. Well so and about a year ago about the time that I got on to Blue Sky because, you know, I started with Blue Sky just like with you, you know, on the beta, the imitation only period. Right?

Leo [00:19:57]:
Quite some time ago. Yeah. I've got I've had an account forever. Yeah.

Gary [00:20:00]:
Right. And and at that time, I had signed up for Mastodon a long time ago but didn't do much with it. So my account is old, but I wasn't doing much with it. And then threads came around, and it became this thing, and I kept hearing people repeating it. They would just say, like, blue sky Mastodon threads, Like, those three things. Like, that was what replaced Twitter. These three specific services, they're always used. Even products that are coming out like an app that will post to your social media says, like, in the in the promos for it, you know, blue sky mastodon threads it's like the 3 over and over again because threads was new and it was exciting when it launched you know I got a little into it but it quickly grew big enough and by taking on all of Instagram's users I think it became I wouldn't say completely toxic, but maybe not fun, after a while and very algorithmic.

Gary [00:20:52]:
I mean, I know there are ways that, you know, you could you could moderate, you know, just see what you wanna see and all that, But it just it was like, yeah, that was nice. Here we go again. It's just going you know, it's starting its decline already. And and I I'd liked Blue Sky. 1 of my artist friends was all in on Blue Sky from the beginning, invitation only period as well. And I like the fact that he said basically all of his artist friends he's a, like, you know, a cartoonist. He, he said that, they all just went to Blue Sky, which I thought was really interesting that his, like, whole like, audience and friends all went to Blue Sky very quickly. And I thought, well, you know, it's a very different vibe.

Gary [00:21:36]:
And especially they were all on Instagram too, but didn't want to go to threads. I was like they're almost the same thing, you know, but they didn't want to go to threads but blue sky, yes, they were all in on blue sky. And I like the vibe on blue sky and I was for the last year now just posting to all 3 equally. You know, if I posted something, it went to all 3. And, but it strangely just before Blue Sky started taking off, which was right after the election Mhmm. It was about 2 weeks before I just really started to get into Blue Sky just as, like, instead of looking at all 3, I would just browse Blue Sky, see what other people were saying, click on some articles that people had recommended, that kind of thing. And it really started to become my number one at that point. So I started posting to it on a much more regular basis instead of just my 3 videos a week.

Gary [00:22:27]:
So I have 3 posts a week, one for each video. I started posting extra tips and extra observations, starting about 2 weeks before the the election. And then when the election happened and people started going to blue sky, whether or not that was really the reason why people started doing it probably, I I kind of found I was on a wave. You know, there were new people coming in.

Leo [00:22:54]:
Right.

Leo [00:22:54]:
They were looking for, like, oh, what do I read about and stuff? And they were doing lots of searches and all that. So I started to get lots of new followers. I don't have that many new many followers, but I did definitely see it start to grow, faster than any, you know, mastodon or threads was growing. So I started really enjoying it. The funny thing is is that I never I I never stopped posting the other 2. I would think of I'm gonna post to Blue Sky and this is what I'm gonna come up with and I'd have it be the number of characters for Blue Sky and every single time when I'm done I'm like, well, should I post this to Mastodon and Threads? I guess I can't see any reason why I wouldn't so that I do so it's always equal but yet my blue sky, follower count has grown far faster than either of those my mastodon follower counts hardly moved and my threads has definitely gone up but not at the not as you know quickly as blue sky has and it's a it's a nice environment I like reading what people are saying there but I I think what people really want to know is why why Blue Sky? Why is, like, this better? And I, you know, I'd listen to what other people have to say about that, and I've also been reading about it. And what it really comes down to is, you know, a few things. 1st, less algorithm.

Leo [00:24:10]:
Yes.

Gary [00:24:10]:
There is an there has to be an algorithm. Right? They can't just say, here's everything everybody just posted. Right? They have to, you know, okay, who are you following? Who are they following? How many likes have there been? It's a very simple algorithm.

Leo [00:24:23]:
Yeah. I'm thinking that their algorithm I'm thinking that their algorithm is the simplest one possible. Who are you following, and what have they posted? Let's list it in reverse chronological order, and that's it.

Gary [00:24:35]:
No. That's actually that's one way to view blue sky.

Leo [00:24:39]:
K.

Gary [00:24:39]:
The other way to view blue sky is that plus things that people you follow have liked and based on how much liking they've done.

Leo [00:24:50]:
Popular with friends feed?

Gary [00:24:52]:
Popular with friends and also things that are popular and popular with friends. In other words, if somebody were to I I believe I mean, I don't know if they publish it anywhere, but I believe it's like if somebody you know likes something and it also has a 1,000 other likes, Right. That's good. If somebody if or on the other hand, if 10 people you follow like something, but it only has 20 likes, that's good. You know, that kind of thing. So it's probably doing a lot of that, but it's keeping it very simple so people aren't you know, there's no gaming of it. You know? There's no, like, well, if I put the right keywords, the right tags. Like, I've noticed tags aren't used very much on blue sky.

Gary [00:25:28]:
They are used, but people like, most of the stuff I see doesn't have tags anymore. I stop putting tags on my stuff. So there's that. Also, the blocking. So the blocking on Blue Sky is like the anti Twitter. So Twitter has always had, like, questionable blocking stuff. Like, you can block people, sorta. And then since, Elon took over, it's even more sorta.

Gary [00:25:52]:
It's like sometimes the blocks can be overridden, or sometimes the people you block can still see your stuff, or you could still see their stuff, and it's very difficult to actually block somebody. Whereas blue sky is just all in on, like, oh, a block is a huge block. Like, they call it the nuclear block. Like, you block somebody, it removes history of, like, things where you've interacted. There's it's like a huge thing. It's like completely removing them. And you can have lists and the so, yeah, you can create a list. Like, I've created a list of just like Mac news, you know, things on Blue Sky mostly so I can look at it if I just really wanna find out what's, like, you know, on a big Mac or Apple Newsday, what's going on.

Gary [00:26:35]:
But other people can search and find mine and then say, oh, I wanna follow that list. That seems like something I'd like, but you could also look at that list and say, oh, I wanna mute or block everybody on that list. So people create lists that say there are a lot of trolls they encounter and they just put them on their block list, and you can go and use that list and say, I'm gonna block all those people too.

Leo [00:27:01]:
There's a problem with that.

Gary [00:27:03]:
What's the well, I know they're I I wonder if it's the one you're when people put, fake ones together.

Leo [00:27:10]:
No. No. It's, how do I how do I wanna say this? So you're following a list rather than the individual members of that list, right? Yeah. It's kind of like the programmatic equivalent of an include statement. Yeah. The problem is that as that list grows, it may start to contain people that you don't want to block. Yeah. And

Gary [00:27:34]:
so That that's it. You have to trust the list builder.

Leo [00:27:37]:
Sometimes that can be done maliciously. Right?

Gary [00:27:41]:
Well, yes. That has happened. Yes. And I think people have even complained and gotten those lists removed. But the I think the main way it's used now is, like, say somebody will build a anti vaxx block list. Right? Right. And you can look at it, and it's all these are all these you know, maybe it's a, a biologist posting, and they're just getting a lot of this. So they're like, well, I'm gonna put them all in a list and block the list.

Gary [00:28:10]:
If you want, you can also use this list to block the anti vaxxers. I'm this person. You know me because of whatever my podcast, my writing, whatever it is.

Leo [00:28:22]:
This is

Gary [00:28:22]:
what I'm using this list for. And then people I'll I I've mostly seen, like, tech journalists, for instance, use it. They're getting trolls attacking them and saying, if you want my block list, it's right here. It may help you. Stuff like that.

Leo [00:28:39]:
Right.

Gary [00:28:40]:
So, yeah. But there there has been at least one case I read about where somebody made a list and said, hey. This will block all of whatever. And people are like, great. I'll use that. And then they throw in people that are the opposite

Leo [00:28:52]:
Exactly. Yep.

Gary [00:28:53]:
To that one. So it's that, but it does provide a really interesting, because, you know, all you need to do at that point, you recognize that the solution is easy. It's not like, you know, a lot of solutions with things like Twitter are like, oh, now there's nothing I can do. No. You can just say, oh, I'm not going to block that list anymore.

Leo [00:29:12]:
Right.

Gary [00:29:12]:
Done. Alright. And you might

Leo [00:29:14]:
take the extra step of blocking the individuals that you really want.

Gary [00:29:18]:
Definitely. And you could read about, you know, people will spread the word. That's how I found out about that one instance. People were spreading the word. This is a fake block list.

Leo [00:29:26]:
Right.

Gary [00:29:26]:
You know, that kind of thing. But there's still there's a lot of that going on. So what's happened is that, you know, the the gatekeepers of blue Blue Sky are all these people that were there like us during the early days, that are like, this is great. We all have civil conversations and talk about things and all that. When the trolls come, we're gonna tell you. Like, we'll tell you this person's here now. This per you know, this person's here. These are what these people are saying.

Gary [00:29:55]:
This is, you know, whatever. So there's been a lot of that going on, and Blue Sky is kind of providing those tools, which is, I think, you know, it's kind of so far holding back, you know, holding in the good feelings, I guess, the niceness of blue sky. It feels very nice. It feels very congenial. It's not perfect. I've I get some comments on my stuff. I did get a snarky one, but it was just one snarky one. And I'm like, yeah.

Gary [00:30:24]:
You know, it's the kind of thing like, maybe if I knew that person, that would actually be funny. But I don't know that person, so I don't know if it's funny or they're being mean. I don't know. But it hasn't been that bad, whereas threads, I've already seen stuff there. Like, I've seen I've seen when I post Mac tips on threads, I've already seen the anti Apple group come in and be like, well, you just to fix that, you just need to get Windows. You know? That's all you need. Throw throw that piece of crap back out the you know, out and get a Windows machine. It's the typical stuff.

Gary [00:30:56]:
And, I haven't had any of that on threads even though I've gotten probably more comments

Leo [00:31:01]:
Right.

Gary [00:31:01]:
On my tips that I'm posting. So anyway, it it feels good. I hope it lasts. It would be nice to have a plate.

Leo [00:31:09]:
Yeah. There's there's a couple things that I mean, right now, I agree. It's it's the, it's I don't wanna say it's the best, but it is definitely the most promising of the alternatives that are out there right now. Mhmm. I think that the biggest risks, I see there are 2. One is that they promise to federate, which means that they promise to be able to allow you to move to, you know, other instances, presumably Mastodon or Mastodon ish instances. Mhmm. But right now, they are a single service, a single site, a single everything.

Leo [00:31:41]:
Yeah. And, unlike Mastodon, but very much like everybody else, they are owned. In other words, there's a there's actually VC investment. Right? That, is what's running this. And at some point, the concern is that they're gonna want a monetary return on their investment. How that happens will be unclear. But it could be the, the beginning of the intitification of Blue Sky. I hope it never happens.

Leo [00:32:19]:
I do like it a lot. But as with all of these, there are risks down the road. And by the way, since it's a single service, one thing that cracked me up is as we were talking, I was poking around on my my following list and my discover list, and I popular with friends. And, you know, I went out and took a look at who you were friends with and friend has few more of those. Mhmm. It did discover and popular with friends stopped working. It was a server issue. It was overcapacity.

Gary [00:32:47]:
Oh, interesting.

Leo [00:32:48]:
And one of the things that I have heard in the past week is that, the folks out at Blue Sky are indeed scrambling to add capacity for this influx of new users that they're seeing. So that's one of those good news, bad news things. Right? I mean, yay, it's a problem. Oh, shit. It's a problem.

Gary [00:33:08]:
Yep.

Leo [00:33:10]:
Now. Alrighty. Let's see. I was powerless. Powerless.

Gary [00:33:19]:
That's horrible feeling.

Leo [00:33:20]:
It is a horrible feeling. So for those that don't know, there was a large windstorm that came through the Pacific Northwest couple weeks ago. We learned the term bomb cyclone, which has apparently a very specific meteorological meaning. But the bottom line is, heavy wind and rain, which, given that, so much of our, infrastructure is above ground, power lines on poles, and there's a lot of trees around here. You can imagine that the 2 didn't play together well. So we lost power. We lost it for 2 full days, which is probably the longest power loss we've had here, probably in a good decade. This this was a big one.

Leo [00:34:07]:
So, however, having done this before, we do own a generator. We've got a a portable 6 kilowatt generator gas generator. It's loud, but, when the power's out, you really don't care. And we're in a situation where it doesn't really bother the neighbors. And it ran continuously for, I wanna say almost 48 hours. I actually waited a couple of hours to make sure it was gonna be a long term thing, but then I kicked it in so that we could power the refrigerator and freezer at least. It ran for, like I said, 2 solid days. It was awesome.

Leo [00:34:49]:
I really I hadn't used it for that length of time. I did have to, you know, fill it up a couple of times as an 8 gallon tank. I think we fill it up twice, which also wasn't bad. I was surprised that that the, the quote unquote mileage. One of the things I discovered though is that many of my, computer equipment is on a UPS, an uninterruptible power supply. And they, of course, when the power went out, they all kicked in. I've got, I think, 3 of them. They all kicked in and kept their respective pieces of equipment running for as long as they could.

Leo [00:35:27]:
It was a case where, okay, I was able to come over to my desktop and shut it down. The networking equipment in my house, some of it anyway, is connected to a dedicated UPS. So that, laptops, which essentially have a UPS built in, and Wi Fi and the network out of the house, those would all continue to work in case of a power outage. However, UPS is, you know, they're not gonna last for 48 hours. They were good for, depending on the load. I suspect my my primary desktop machine would have run for about half an hour. The networking equipment ran for a few hours and so forth. So you'd think that firing up the generator would allow me to charge up my UPS's.

Leo [00:36:16]:
No. It was interesting. The problem is that I don't wanna say this is a rudimentary generator, but it's not terribly sophisticated. I mean, it's a, you know, it's a gas engine with something that generates electricity. It's nothing nothing terribly sophisticated. But what that means is the power that it generates is kind of noisy. In other words, we normally expect power to be a nearly perfect sine wave, at a specific frequency, 60 in the United States, and a specific voltage, typically a 120. Mhmm.

Leo [00:36:51]:
The power was dirty, and I believe what that meant was that it approached a sine wave, but it definitely wasn't smooth. It definitely had its, you know, spikes in it, noise in it, etcetera. And that was enough for the UPS is to think that there was a power problem they had to help with rather than recharge from. So they would power up for a little bit and all of a sudden say, oh, the power is duty. I need dirty. I need to go to work. Well, it didn't have enough power to do that. So, none of the UPS's would charge, which like I said, is unfortunate.

Leo [00:37:30]:
I suspect that if I had to, if I wanted to actually fix that problem, I'd actually have to get some kind of power conditioner that would take the noisy power out of something like a UPA, out of the generator and turn it into something a little cleaner for the house. However, so the power went out. Yeah. Then about half an hour later, the Internet went out. I'm on cable, and my assumption was either of 2 things. Either, you know, a tree fell on a cable, which, you know, is totally reasonable. However, the timing made me wonder if the cable company was suffering from the same problem that I had just suffered from, and that is their equipment probably had switched to backup power an uninterruptible power supply or battery, and the battery drained because the power was off for too long. Anyway.

Leo [00:38:24]:
Okay. Great. It happens. You know, Internet goes away. I'm sure you have a backup plan. I have a backup plan. And as it as if for most people, I suspect, it's my mobile. It's my mobile phone.

Leo [00:38:41]:
I just all of a sudden, I just say, okay. Great. I will plug it into the bat you know, into some kind of a battery that I can recharge from. Even though we were without power, I had some of those lying around, and I will turn on the hotspot. Well, my cellular network went down, or rather the, the I believe it's the tower, from which I normally get a relatively strong signal at hope. Because what I discovered is that I had no bars, barely one bar. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes it wouldn't work.

Leo [00:39:16]:
I mean, it definitely was acting like it had just the barest of signals. And indeed, if I went to one specific place in my house upstairs at the end of the house, then, yes, I could more or less reliably get a signal. It it was a bear, you know, like I said, barebone signal, but just that. So I was actually almost in the process of, moving my workplace into this to this random corner of the house because I had a signal there. And again, much like the cable outage, I have to wonder, was this specific tower working for a while and did it run its batteries dry or some other problem that was related to everything that was happening around us? In other words, was the power failure just the first step in a cascade of failures that caused these other utilities to eventually fail? Anyway, you know, we we so one of the things I ended up doing, on the second day, because I needed to get some messages out and get a few things going. I drove into town into Woodinville and parked in the grocery store parking lot and fired up my laptop connected to my phone's hotspot because the phone had a very strong signal in downtown Woodinville. Downtown Woodinville itself was dead. Right.

Leo [00:40:41]:
All the power was out. The grocery store that I was parked in front of had no power. But there I was parked in the parking lot. And what's really funny is I was not the only one because there are other people who are clearly facing the exact same problem.

Gary [00:40:56]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:40:58]:
So, you know, that worked. But then, like I said, on the second day, the power came back a few hours later. The I wasn't a few hours. It was almost a day later, actually, that the cable came back. So that actually leads me to believe that it may not have been as simple as a battery. And about the same time as the cable came back, our mobile connectivity got better as well. But I think it's interesting because especially for everyone who relies on the Internet for their livelihood, their business, as you and I both do, it's really interesting to work through some of these scenarios and understand, okay. Yeah.

Leo [00:41:37]:
What if your power goes out? What if your Internet goes out? But if your backup Internet goes out, how do you deal with all of these things? Especially when you don't know how long it's going to take. There were people in our area that were without power for, I think, 6 days. And, you know, we were lucky, 2 days. But, you know, 6 days, that's that's a fair chunk of time, especially if you're trying to run a business. So anyway, I just thought I would share that story because it's, it had some very definite, implications for, for Ascolia. The good news is, of course, that it was the week before Thanksgiving. So we got our power back the Saturday before Thanksgiving, which was also the day that our first guest was arriving for Thanksgiving. Interesting times.

Gary [00:42:25]:
It is. And it's interesting. So I as you know, I live in a building. Yes. Condo building. Not I wouldn't call it a skyscraper. It's not that big, but, a tall building, and it is also a tower for for t mobile as it turns out. Oh,

Leo [00:42:43]:
really?

Gary [00:42:44]:
In other words, yeah, we've got a T Mobile thing on our roof. The the weird thing is is that they showed up one day saying, you know, in the in the parking lot they actually are here, like, at least once a month. They go up into the roof. I don't know. They adjust things. They check things. Who knows? I I you can hear them. And, anyway, they showed up one day with all this equipment in the parking lot and, saying that they were going to take one of our parking lot spaces and, put this power generator there for backup power.

Gary [00:43:19]:
And, right away, the HOA, of course, said, you no. You can't take one of our parking spaces.

Leo [00:43:26]:
And those are precious out there. Yeah.

Gary [00:43:27]:
You don't have yeah. We we don't have that many. You just can't take one. They were kind of just hoping it would be like, okay. You know? And but it was like, no. And you can't have it. And so they're like, well, if we can't have 1, we're gonna have to put the backup generator on the roof. And whisper down the lane, by the time this got to me, it the the thing was a diesel power generator was going on the roof.

Gary [00:43:53]:
Now I was all up in arms about that because a diesel power generator means a diesel tank

Leo [00:43:59]:
Right.

Gary [00:44:00]:
Which is liquid, which eventually one day will leak, especially up there. It's exposed to all the elements up there. One day, it'll leak, And when a diesel power generator leaks, you have a pool of diesel on a roof of a building, with electric and all sorts of stuff up there. So I'm like, that's a disaster waiting to happen. Is that even legal? Can you even do that? So anyway, I kept complaining about it, complaining about it until somebody finally said, oh, someone along the somewhere along the line made made a mistake. No diesel power generator. It's natural gas. So it's not there's no tank.

Leo [00:44:39]:
Right. It's

Gary [00:44:39]:
just they're going to have, you know, the natural gas line, which is fine. If the natural gas leaks, it just goes away. And there's already natural gas going to the building Sure. For a few things, so there's gas here. It's not. So anyway, I was like, well, that was but, you know, the whole idea is, I guess, is they want to have they probably do have a, like, half hour battery up there. I'm sure they have a battery for some amount of time. But the idea is they want to be able to withstand a longer power outage with this natural gas backup.

Gary [00:45:09]:
And, you know, the only thing I could think of is, like, is there a way I could tap into that? I mean, you know, if there's if there was a big power outage, right, you know, and it it took out many blocks downtown, I'm sure nobody's gonna be that concerned about our one tower. Is there, like, a little outlet up there? I was

Leo [00:45:27]:
gonna say a socket that you could plug a plug an extension cord into.

Gary [00:45:30]:
I could run an extension cord down the side of the building into my window, and, Yeah. You know? It's funny.

Leo [00:45:36]:
Now that you mentioned natural gas, it turns out that our neighbor, years ago, had a permanent generator, installed, and it was automatic. It just kicked on and ran off of natural gas for the entire duration of the of the power outage, you know, implying that they basically didn't feel the effects at all. I always wonder about natural gas, here. I suspect there, it's not quite the same, but here because we are earthquake prone. And

Gary [00:46:08]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:46:08]:
Concern is that while you know, there's there's 2 concerns. 1 is that, you know, pipes break. It's very possible that either at your generator or somewhere in the line towards it, yeah, there's not gonna be any gas, which means that you have a generator you can't use because there's no way to, you know, there's no way to connect it to something else. But anyway

Gary [00:46:33]:
Yeah. Anyway, so speaking of, like, mobile stuff Yes. So there was an interesting article I read. This was a few weeks ago, and it was an article about, privacy stuff, right, or you know it's privacy and security. The it's from Wired, the Wired Guide to Protecting Yourself from Government Surveillance. And the idea is okay, let's say you really you care about privacy even you wanna make sure, like, none of the apps on your phone are stitching on you, that the operating system on your phone isn't stitching on you. It isn't giving your location to somebody that shouldn't have it. Well or anybody really except you.

Gary [00:47:10]:
Right? And then your data isn't getting out there. Nobody can access your stuff. Right? So, yeah, there's encryption. There's VPNs. There are all these different things that you could do, and the article goes through all these different things you can do to be as private as you possibly can. But the one thing that they say you can't really fix, which is always what I felt, but it was nice to see it mentioned in an article like this, is, your location being tracked by your phone. Because simply you in the United States, you have either AT and T, Verizon, or T Mobile, or you have a company that's actually buying the service from AT and T, Verizon, or T Mobile. And your phone's connecting to these mobile towers, and you you know, they they know when your phone is connected to a tower.

Gary [00:48:00]:
And, actually, they can triangulate by looking at various towers and your signal strength.

Leo [00:48:05]:
As anybody that has watched a a cop drama on TV has seen.

Leo [00:48:09]:
Yep. And the thing is that there doesn't seem to be any privacy protection for this. Like, there's nothing you could do. If you wanna use mobile service, you're going to be connected to these towers, and the companies will know where you are. They have the data to know where you are, not just where you are, but where you've been, right? They can look at the history and there's nothing you can install on your phone, no setting for it, nothing you could do besides literally just leaving your phone at home or turning completely off in some some cases that may not even work, maybe putting in a Faraday box of some sort. There's really nothing you could do about it and it's very interesting because a lot of times people are the privacy concerns people have aren't seem very far fetched situations or very, like, minor situations, like, you know, getting hold of some bits of data that's like, well, how would that be used against you? Whereas knowing where you've been, like, having a complete map of everywhere you've been and what you've done seems pretty big to me, and that's just out there and available to I I mean, yeah, it's but, yeah, the company you subscribe to should be protecting that. Right? And the government shouldn't be asking for it unless they've got the proper paperwork and the reasons and all that. But, you know, what concerns me more than anything is, like, if the information's there, you know, who who's to say, like, how much you know, couldn't somebody be bribed? Couldn't somebody who could a stalker work for a phone company and stalk somebody? I mean

Leo [00:49:43]:
Eventually, it's gonna get out there. Yep.

Gary [00:49:45]:
Yeah. So it's just it's just interesting that it usually gets glossed over when people talk about they'll go on for pages and pages or, you know, many minutes on a video about this kind of protection. Oh, like VPN. Like, oh, you don't need VPN anymore in Internet cafes because every service you use is SSL. Everything's encrypted. But you do need VPN if you don't want them to know what website you're going to. So they'll know that you checked your Gmail because they saw you go to mail.google.com, but they couldn't say anything beyond that. And people go on and on and on about that, but that's easy to protect yourself from you can go with the VPN, number 1.

Gary [00:50:24]:
Number 2, you can just decide not to use public Wi Fi. But this bigger thing of, like, just somebody can actually find out every movement I made pretty much, at least with my phone in my pocket. Anyway, it's it's just a weird thing to think about.

Leo [00:50:43]:
Indeed. I included a link to, an EFF, page, on surveillance self defense. EFF, they've got a slightly different focus. They're, you know, like, trying to protect people like, whistleblowers, journalists, that kind of stuff. But anybody that has this real deep need for, making sure that they are not being surveilled or at least surveilled as little as possible. There's just a lot of interesting stuff there. So since I figured anybody who's interested in this topic should also have a look at that page. So link in the show notes for that.

Gary [00:51:19]:
Yep. Okay.

Leo [00:51:22]:
So ain't it cool? I I go with yours because I'm I'm searching for it right now.

Gary [00:51:29]:
Yeah. So I yeah. I'm surprised I was able to get to this first because we're both fans of this sci fi series. And, it's the Babaverse series by Dennis e Taylor that we've talked both talked about before, here. This is book 5, not till we are lost. And the basic premise of the entire thing is it's far future sci fi where a, Von Neumann probe with an with the imprint of a human brain in it, in other words, like a digitized human brain, goes out to space. It's this guy, Bob, who they had his brain scanned, and they basically copied the brain scan, put it in a probe, and then said, you are now going into space to be to, you know, find life or habitable planets or whatever. And they send him out there, and, it's fascinating.

Leo [00:52:21]:
It's really good sci fi, but it's also funny in parts, and it goes in all sorts of interesting different directions, as Bob not only fulfills the von Neumann probe mission of just exploring other stars, but the whole idea that he duplicates himself because that's what a von Neumann probe does. It gets to a star system. It explores it. It make copies of itself that go off in different directions, and they continue to make copies of themselves. And they go out and, but then suddenly there's a lot of bobs around. There's a bobiverse of these, kind of funny charming, you know, Internet geek type people floating around as space probes encountering all sorts of fascinating things, not only outside of our solar system, but, you know, in the series, they return to the solar system and there's, dealings with humanity here. Book 5 takes stuff even further. I I don't even know what to say about it because I don't want to give anything away, but, definitely if you've never read the series and you like sci fi, pick up the first book.

Gary [00:53:25]:
What is the first book called?

Leo [00:53:27]:
We Are Legion.

Gary [00:53:28]:
We Are Legion. Yes.

Leo [00:53:30]:
We are Legion. We are Bob.

Gary [00:53:32]:
We are Legion. We are Bob. Pick that up by Dennis Taylor, and I guarantee you, you will end up at book 5 eventually. And, I'm sure there will be more books to call me. Definitely,

Leo [00:53:45]:
at I am ever so slightly annoyed. Yeah. You listen to this book as you as you usually do. No doubt. Yeah. I'm looking at it right now, and apparently, it is currently only available as an audiobook.

Gary [00:53:59]:
Really?

Leo [00:54:00]:
I'm not finding any references to hardback or Kindle, you know, paperback, whatever. So, yeah, like I said, I am I am ever so slightly annoyed.

Gary [00:54:13]:
I have not ever heard of a book being done. It's the it's at Amazon, but it's Amazon. It click on it. It's audible. So I wonder what the deal is.

Leo [00:54:25]:
So I gotta you know, I'll be I'll be watching for it. I'm gonna be reading it since I've got the other 4 on Kindle, but looking forward to it. Yeah. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Okay. Mine is Dune prophecy. It's the series that is currently on Max that actually, basically, it takes place during the time the Bene Gesserit were forming or coming to power, coming to do what they were doing.

Leo [00:54:54]:
If you've read any of the, Dune books that precede Dune, You know, there's a bunch of them that were written not by Herbert, but by his son, who honestly is a much better writer. But, you know, they're very entertaining. Love, you know, great books, good storytelling, give you a lot of background. This series not only does that, it's actually showing some of the things that you may have read about, but it's actually referencing things from many of those prequel books. And I just I find it fascinating. They're doing a really good job on it. So that's Dune prophecy, and that is on Max.

Gary [00:55:37]:
Cool. Alright. Let's promote ourselves.

Leo [00:55:43]:
So did we did we actually did talk briefly about AI, haven't we?

Gary [00:55:48]:
Oh, you've been here. Talk much about it in this,

Leo [00:55:50]:
Well, it's time. So the article I'm going to point folks at is how AI is revolutionizing scams. Can we no longer trust our eyes or ears? We've talked about this before. You know, AI is improving. Deepfakes are becoming deeper. Audio is becoming better. The ability to randomly create things that look real is only improving over time. And of course, the scammers are aware they are using this technology for a variety of things.

Leo [00:56:19]:
And the article goes into what some of those things are, what some of the things you might want to consider, and the things to look out for. So that's how AI is revolutionizing scam. It's askleo.com/175501.

Gary [00:56:34]:
Cool. I'll, point to, 1, a video of mine that did well over the holiday. Ten hidden copy and paste functions on a Mac. Just, going beyond the standard, obviously, copy and paste things with some extra tips.

Leo [00:56:48]:
Cool. Yep. Well, we've done it again. Yep. We have come to the end of another show. That will wrap us up for this week. Thanks for being here, and we will see you or talk to you again real soon. Take care, everyone.

Leo [00:57:05]:
Bye bye.

Gary [00:57:06]:
Bye.