Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 475: Yan Zhu
Episode Date: November 20, 2021Yan Zhu, digital privacy advocate, programmer, and head of security at Brave, joins the DTFH! You can follow Yan on Twitter, @bcrypt, listen to her tracks on her Soundcloud, or check out her web bro...wser, Brave! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. StoryWorth - Visit StoryWorth.com/Duncan and receive $10 off your first purchase! BetterHelp - Visit betterhelp.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling!
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Good evening, and welcome to the Ducatrustle Family Hour
podcast.
Recently, you've probably heard about this, Commander
Gethric's coal of the infernal legion accidentally
shape-shifted into his demonic form at a cafe in Hollywood.
One of the humans dining at the cafe went insane.
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the judge of time?
Absolutely not.
And yet, this is exactly what the so-called protectors
of the Covenant want us to think is normal.
Over the last decade, punishments
given out by the adjudicator and his servants
have grown increasingly severe.
In fact, there have been 7,000 additional wing pluckings
this last season, more wing pluckings
than all the seasons combined.
Many of us are asking, why?
Some don't seem to want to admit what we all know.
The adjudicator has entered his 300th season
and has yet to shed his skin.
He is entering his cycle of decay.
This is normal.
I wish him well.
But at some point, we must invoke the pact of Hamlin
and bring the adjudicator to the arena,
where he can prove his power through the trials
of the seven cauldrons.
It's always been this way, nothing new,
except for the fact that the adjudicator
is trying to use his power to change the law,
to avoid the trial of the seven cauldrons
and, as a result, rule for another season.
Maybe more.
Why not six seasons or 10 seasons?
Or you know what?
Why not forever?
When we return, we have an interview
with Arch Cranston, Denivore Grinch,
the Lord of Snakes, to find out what he thinks
can be done to renew the covenant
and invoke a new adjudicator,
who can lead us to glory
as we colonize this garden world.
We'll be right back.
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Before we jump into this fascinating conversation
with Yanzu, I would love to invite you,
love to, I'm going to invite you to sign up for my Patreon
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Why? I'll tell you why
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Now, if you're a longtime fan of this podcast,
then you probably listened to the conversation I had
with Bill Day, the DJ, Mr. Bill.
And we talked a little bit about how creepy it is
that these massive tech companies are sort of in control
of all of our privacy or emails
and pretty much anything that you are doing
when you have a phone with an app open on it.
They track where you're going.
Apparently they listen to some of the things you say.
And he mentioned to me that his partner,
Yanzu, is a digital privacy advocate.
Right now she's the head of security
over at this wonderful open source web browser
called Brave, check it out.
If you're looking for an ethical web browser
that isn't selling your data to God knows who,
that's where you need to go.
Also, Yanzu got to interact with Chelsea Manning
just prior to the leaks that I'm sure you all are aware of
and the story about that is really fucking creepy
and super cool.
Also, Yanzu is a programmer.
She's designed a lot of awesome apps
that you can actually use in Ableton
and she's a spectacular musician.
You gotta listen to her tracks.
All the links you need to find,
Yanzu are gonna be at dougatrestle.com.
But now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH, Yanzu.
Yanzu, welcome to the DTFH.
I'm very excited to talk to you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I wanna talk to you just to start off,
to have a chat about online privacy.
And I think I'm something of a privacy nihilist
in that I think a lot of us have just surrendered
to this reality that some incredible AI algorithm
is vacuuming up all of our data, our behavior patterns.
And selling it, parsing it, using it to manipulate us.
But I'm curious because this seems to be
like one of the central aspects of your life.
Why should we be worried about our online privacy?
That is such a good question.
And over the years, it seems more and more often
people start to self-identify as a privacy nihilist
and say, like, look, Google has all my location,
they have all my emails, you know,
there's nothing I can do about that
if I want the convenience of being able to, you know,
have my travel itinerary and my calendar automatically
every time I book a flight, you know.
And I think if people were actually privacy nihilists,
like if I said, give me your phone unlocked
and let me look through it, like they would all do it.
But I've asked like 12 people this
and none of them are ever willing
to give me their phone unlocked,
which means maybe they still have something to hide,
you know, privacy is kind of the right,
well, in my mind, it's the right to selectively choose
what information you share with people and what you don't.
I show people and organizations and corporations
and all that.
So yeah, so I think it's worth asking yourself, you know,
if you're really a privacy nihilist,
would you give me like pretty much a stranger
to your phone unlocked, right?
You know what, honestly, just cause I know Bill,
I would give you my, I'd give you my phone unlocked.
I don't know, like, yeah, go for it, you know,
but not everybody, I wouldn't want everyone to have that.
No, I wouldn't want everyone to have that.
So that is a fantastic point.
But we already did it, right?
Isn't that the idea is like, well, it's too late.
We already gave them our phone unlocked.
Like they theoretically, all of the data,
if we haven't been using some kind of VPN
or being super careful or using all the things
that folks like you recommend that we use,
isn't it too late?
Yeah, so that's kind of the other argument, right?
That it's kind of a lost cause
that if you've used Google or Apple
or Facebook or these services,
they've already been collecting all your data
and there's nothing you can do about it.
I think that's true to some extent,
but I think it's important for people to still say,
like, hey, look, we do care about privacy
because otherwise there's gonna be no limit
to how much data they're gonna collect and profile you.
So I think my role in this world is kind of just being
a voice in tech that says, like, yes, you know,
there is some compromise where people have to give you
your data for you to provide useful services,
but can we limit that somehow?
Can we put safeguards and regulations
on how tech companies are allowed to use this data?
For instance, there was recently a study
that showed that there's all these apps
that people have been downloading,
which actually are selling their location data
to advertisers and other third parties, right?
So you might download some game
and you just wanna play the game,
but then, you know, you don't wanna be also,
you know, so you have like kind of a trusted relationship
with that app, but you're not expecting
that app developer to sell your data
to like 40 other companies, right?
Yeah, I remember when they were saying with TikTok,
it's collecting keystrokes when it's on.
And I remember relaying that to folks I know use TikTok
and they're like, yeah, whatever, it's so great,
I just love TikTok, I don't care that it's collecting.
And then that gets really interesting
and that, you know, I think one of the assumptions
folks have as well, what?
The data's gonna get sold to Amazon or something,
who gives a fuck, but it's like,
this data could be sold globally, anywhere,
like you don't know where it's gonna end up.
Or the, you know, I remember one of these
like deep fake apps that came out, you know,
put your face on Bruce Willis or whatever, right?
But the terms of service basically said,
like we can use your picture anywhere that we want,
you know, we now own your likeness
and that was in the terms of service.
So I get it, like a lot of these apps,
it's like, it's not just that they're trying
to sell us Vitamix or something,
it's like they're taking something deeper.
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that,
the possibility of some future golem,
some future synthetic replicant based on the data
that's been vacuumed being owned by a corporation.
Is that just a paranoid fantasy that I have?
Or is that a possibility?
I think some lesser form of that fantasy already exists
because a lot of companies are using AI
and machine learning to train models based on the data
we're providing.
And then those systems are making automated decisions
without humans in the loops.
No, I don't know if you would call that a golem, but.
Wait, you mean they're sort of like creating some,
reflection of our online behavior patterns.
And already like using that,
like the thing is already in some neural network existing
as a shadowy version of us, is that what you mean?
Well, I think it's often a lot more innocuous sounding
than that, for instance, if you use Netflix or Hulu,
then those companies are using data about what you're
watching and what you're interested in to build a model
of use so they can recommend other things
that you might want to watch.
So if that's possible, then it would be pretty natural
to say based on your online behavior,
people can build more sophisticated models
of what you're interested in and target ads
for you based on that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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You know, have you heard the stories how they used to put
cocaine and Coca-Cola?
I have.
And I've always thought, man, those are the good old days.
That must have been incredible to be able to buy cocaine
or opium over the counter.
You know, when things were heroin,
you could just get heroin from a pharmacist.
I've never tried heroin,
but I imagine that must have been nice too.
But is that what we're experiencing right now?
But with technology, are people gonna look back
and be like, what were you thinking
to allow these unregulated algorithms
to manipulate your nervous system?
That is an interesting question.
I honestly don't think so.
I think maybe I'm not a nihilist,
but maybe I'm a pessimist with online privacy
and data collection because I just, you know,
I look at all the supposed benefits people are getting
out of this data collection and they're pretty big, right?
Like being able to, you know, what's a good example.
I guess like even with online advertising,
a lot of people say like, hey,
I do get advertisements for products I actually buy
and this is creating real value in my life.
And I think we'll look back and say like,
oh, all these advancements we've had in convenience
was all thanks to this vast amount of data
that we were willing to share with the algorithms.
So yeah, I kind of don't see us
regretting this in the future to be honest.
Oh, that's sweet.
That's pretty cool.
That's an interesting take.
You know, my feeling on it has been so like weirdly pessimistic,
like hyper pessimistic and apocalyptic really,
just this sense of like, my God,
there's some kind of collecting scanning,
the collective scanning that's happening,
like we're being scanned by these self-created machines
that are then, you know, tricking us.
But that's nice to hear that you think this could lead
to some like actual positive future
because it seems like the storyline these days
is like, holy shit, the AI is going to destroy us.
It's, we're doomed.
You don't vibe with that?
Well, I think there's kind of two sides to this.
One is kind of using AI in the sense
of machine learning algorithms that learn more about us
and what we like so they can give us useful features
and more things that we like.
And then there's this kind of amorphous fear
of such an AI becoming more intelligent than us.
And then using that power to like destroy humanity
because it decides that our existence is not in line
with its goals.
And so, yeah, I have a lot of friends
who are kind of more worried about that latter scenario,
which, you know, might come about regardless
of whether we keep using Netflix recommendation engines.
As long as people keep working on artificial intelligence,
but I don't know, to me, I feel like climate change
and these more immediate threats are more compelling
than this kind of apocalyptic robot feature.
Okay, well, let me present an argument to that
and please shoot it down.
So, omnipresent climate change,
we all know the story by now,
everyone knows the story by now.
This is happening simultaneously
with some of the most hypnotic,
I would argue paralytic technological advancements
in human history.
Like here we have this reality and then with it,
I mean, I only, I resisted TikTok for a long time.
And then finally I jumped in
and was thrilling to realize,
oh my God, this thing is like,
it's noticing how long I'm peering at these videos.
And then from that, finding better ones that I like
and then dialing it in and dialing it in,
the effect being very long,
I've heard that it's like sometimes hours people spend
just staring at the screen.
So, you know, don't you think like the fact
that we have these pressing issues that have met
this incredible algorithm
that as much as I would love to believe
it's making people get out and like change their lives,
it seems mostly it's just keeping us stuck
staring at these machines.
Yeah, that's kind of the,
I think what you're referring to is often framed
as like phone addiction or social media addiction, right?
That these engines keep generating more content
that you like and that like hit some button in your brain
and you just keep wanting to spend time on these platforms.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I think that's a real problem.
I just, I'm not sure if like the,
how that will feed into the bigger apocalyptic fear
about an AI that's like super intelligent
and eventually will control all of us.
I think that's certainly possible in my mind,
but I don't know.
Yeah, I don't really have a good answer
to how to address the problem of companies being incentivized
to just get more and more of your attention.
And so this is like a machine in itself
that just keeps building things that are more addictive for us.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty scary.
It's scary, but I got lost in the stratosphere,
my apologies.
I would love just to, and again,
I'm sorry if people ask you these questions all the time
or if this just seems mundane or something,
but I would love some real,
like if I decided today to like reverse my privacy nihilism
and start like protecting my like online behaviors
and everything, what are some just pragmatic things
that we can do?
And not just with our phones,
but like are there things that we need to be doing
with our routers and like what would you advise
if you could give just some like real simple,
hopefully simple tips for us
who have are completely like barebacking the internet?
Well, so one, I guess I've just been thinking about phones
and like location data a lot recently,
but one big one I think is to kind of turn on that setting
that and when you download new apps,
that says like only let this app see my location
when I'm using the app.
Right.
Because you know, if you download Yelp or something really,
it doesn't need to know your location all the time.
It don't really only needs to know
when you're like looking up a restaurant in your area
and that kind of limits the amount of data
that app can collect on you.
And then therefore limits the amount of data
they can be selling to some random third party.
And the reason why I think people should care about this
is like, you know, let's say you're a gay person
and some oppressive regime that doesn't like gay people, right?
And you're using Tinder to find other gay people.
And so you might not care that like Tinder knows
that you're gay and you live in this country,
but maybe that country's government could go to Tinder
and say, hey, give us this person's location and identity
and then you could be in some trouble.
Wow.
That is so creepy.
I mean, theoretically, sorry.
I guess the point, yeah, the point is like, you know,
maybe you trust the person who made this app,
but they could have relationships with other governments
with other companies that aren't going to act
in your best interest at all.
And you don't know that
because you probably haven't read their privacy policy
and know who they're sharing data with.
What, yeah, is there, where is the regulation here?
Like why is it that they're allowed to have
these like massive privacy policies
or like terms of service that no one's gonna read?
It seems like they should be forced to say upfront,
if you use this app, we're gonna sell your movement,
your data to Saudi Arabia.
If you happen to go to any of these places,
we will have no problem letting them know
this is a gay person coming to your country.
Why don't they say, it seems like it seems so obvious
in the same way that, you know,
they have to list the ingredients on food.
Why aren't they being forced to be completely upfront
about what's happening with your data?
Honestly, I don't know why there seems to be
so little regulation on like the complexity of language
and privacy policies in terms of service.
I'd guess that, you know, companies would argue,
hey, our policy is just really complicated
because it has to be and we don't know
if we're gonna get acquired by some other company
and then have to give them our data, et cetera.
But there was a project at an organization I used to work at
called the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
which basically took companies terms of service
and tried to like dumb them down.
So like, you know, a five-year-old
or a 10-year-old could understand them.
I don't know if they're still doing that,
but that is a good question, right?
Like if these terms of service were actually so easy
that like anyone could understand them
when people actually read them
and make different decisions based on that.
I mean, it seems kind of clear
the reason that they're complex
is because if people understood just what you just said,
if people even thought about that,
there would be a real hesitation
when it came to using these apps.
I've, you know, one of the terrifying possibilities
that I heard is like, and also don't forget,
regimes change all the time.
Like the way, I mean, we just saw it.
We just saw it.
It can happen just like that
where suddenly, oh, this isn't a democracy anymore.
Oh, that's over.
And then the new state, whatever it may be,
could theoretically force companies
to give them all of this data
and they can use it for whatever they want,
including arresting people based on the new laws
that they've created via whatever coup has just happened.
So that's the other creepy possibility
when it comes to our data sitting out there,
which leads me to a big question I have for you.
Is there any hope in eradicating our footprint online?
The current thumbprint that exists,
is there any talk or hope of being able,
if we wanted to, to completely obliviate
all that stuff sitting out there?
That's a, I don't think there is any way
to completely obliterate it,
but there is a regulation in the EU called GDPR
that allows people to request that companies
delete any personal data that they have on someone.
And so, so I work at a browser company called Brave,
Brave.com, and we, since this regulation went into place,
we've actually gotten dozens of requests
from individuals saying,
hey, please delete all the data you have on me.
And so people are actually making use of this law now.
And I think there's some services
where you can put in your email
and they'll just automatically contact the privacy person
at a bunch of companies and say,
hey, I reside in the EU and under this law,
you have to delete all my data.
I'm not sure if it applies to people
on other jurisdictions.
I think there's a similar law for Californians now, so.
Whoa, really? Wow.
Yeah, so I mean, it is within the power
of state and federal governments to say like,
hey companies, you have to have a process in place
for deleting all personal data for people
under these jurisdictions.
And that could actually work in practice.
When did you get into this?
Like, when did you start on this very strange path?
Because, I mean, you truly are in the front lines
of what I, and again, I'm sorry, I'm a weirdo,
but I think of it as magic.
But just because, what's that quote everybody use,
any sufficiently advanced technologies
indistinguishable from magic,
which for me, having no idea how most of this stuff works
makes it all pretty magical.
But when did you start learning about this?
I mean, and maybe I should have asked,
I had a question before that.
Do you consider yourself a hacker?
I consider myself a hacker in kind of the old school
sense of the charm of someone who just likes to figure out
how things work and figure out ways to circumvent rules
built into technology.
Not the person with like the bank robber mask
who's like on their computer trying to hack into the banks.
Right, but I mean, surely that is a quality of the hacker.
Even the old school hacker,
the power of what's a captain crunch,
the captain crunch whistle, you know?
The whistle, yeah, yeah, the 2600 hertz.
Yeah, so when did you realize this about yourself?
Like when did you realize, oh shit, I'm a hacker?
That's a great question.
So I did not go to school to do anything related to computers.
I went to school for physics
and that was kind of my first interest.
And then when I got to grad school, I quickly realized
like, I don't really want to work for the rest of my life
in this field where, you know,
you kind of are uncovering some great mysteries
of the universe, but it really has not that much effect
on people's day to day lives.
It's kind of just this like abstraction
or this kind of curiosity that I'm working on.
So I took a leave from grad school
and started volunteering at this organization called TOR
which builds a network.
I guess you can describe it as like a network of computers
that you can pass your computer's traffic through
to keep your IPO address anonymous.
TOR, yeah, the deep web.
The deep web, the dark web, yeah.
That's what most people know it for.
The Silk Road, the place where people try to buy drugs
and assassins and all that.
But I would say actually the moment that I realized
I cared about online privacy was in my last year of college
when I was living in this like crazy hippie co-op at MIT
and we always had people coming in and out
and like staying with us.
And one day someone brought their friend
who most people now know as Chelsea Manning.
Yeah, so she later became this like famous whistleblower
who like leaked to WikiLeaks this video
of the U.S. Army doing, I don't know what you call it,
like an airstrike where they were killing
a bunch of civilians.
It's murdering people.
Yeah, yeah, and it caused a lot of outrage at the time.
I think 2010, but when she came to visit our house,
she was completely unknown.
I just knew her as my friend's friend who's in the Army
and kind of had this like haunted look
about the things that she'd seen in the Army.
And so yeah, so I chatted with her for a bit
during that visit and I was like,
wow, you just come from a completely different world
than me, right?
Like I'm some college kid just studying physics
and you've been in the Army
and you've seen these like horrific war crimes.
And that kind of stuck with me.
But I guess the interesting part is that when she did,
a few months later after that, after I met her,
she leaked that video to WikiLeaks
and it was all over the news.
I think it was like the front page of Wired
and the New York Times and her identity became known.
There was a lot of government interest in her
and who she was.
And my friends and I became like really paranoid
because there was this like black van parked
outside our house and we thought it was like the FBI
or something who was following us.
To this day, I don't know if this actually was what it was,
but suddenly we were all like,
oh, we should like encrypt our emails
because we were in contact with her
and they're like, do you have these investigations
into her and we don't want to be followed?
Yeah, and so that's when I learned to like kind of
encrypt my email to kind of like care about privacy.
It was when I thought there was like, you know,
some government agency that was like really interested in me.
Whether they were or not, yeah.
What a disaster because it's like the narrative
for every paranoid schizophrenic is that
there's a black van watching you.
And so like when it really happens,
I think, and I think the people who do this sort of observation
are fully aware of the psychological component
in being observed, which is why they do it the black van.
It's like, they could do any van.
They could have a UPS or didn't have to be a van.
I'm sure they could have a couple of cars or whatever,
you know, but they do the black van
because they want to fuck with your mind a little bit.
They want you to like wonder and feel crazy
and they want to demonstrate to you their power
and show you that it's like, yeah,
you don't really have any control of anything.
Like we're watching you now.
That's terrifying.
I would have, that must have been so frightening
to realize that you had been interacting
with someone who for a little while,
at least from the state's propaganda mechanism,
became public enemy number one.
Yeah, I think at the time I was like so young
and like naive in these things that I didn't even real,
like it didn't even scare me that much.
I was just like, wow, this is kind of exciting,
like a spy movie, like what's going to happen now.
And then definitely at the time I was like,
well, you know, I have nothing to hide except that.
I did talk to this person and I did have contact with her.
I think like people were,
the main reason we thought the government
was interested in us particularly as like MIT students
was that she had visited some of us
and they were wondering if she had given us like material
that she was trying to leak or if like we in some way
were like helping her disseminate this stuff.
And so like I, to be honest, wasn't like,
I didn't have anything, but my friends were really paranoid
and were like, oh, we don't want people looking
through all our computers and just poking around
in our business.
Yeah, and because I mean, even though I'm sure
you wouldn't say it out loud, I mean,
like if anyone there was helping,
if someone was probably helped, I mean, it's an MIT commune
with of hackers with somebody who's got like valuable
information regarding like a horror war crime.
So anybody with chances are someone there is going to help.
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This is what's so scary about hackers.
This is why people like me are kind of terrified of hackers
because this idea that y'all like, you know everything,
like you have the ability to like find out all the stuff.
I mean, how far away from the truth is that?
Honestly, I feel like that's pretty far, right?
Like if you're worried about that with random hackers,
like how worried are you with like some random employee
of Facebook or Google who decides they wanna look
at all your email or all your messages?
Worried, I mean, cause to me it's that very human reality,
which is somewhere in these companies,
more than likely there's at least one person
who's just bored and who just, you know,
has some spare time and a back door into this,
whatever it may be, people's phones, people's messages,
whatever it may be, and just decides to start going in there.
I mean, how possible is it that somebody at Apple or Google
or Facebook or any of these mega companies
has the ability to do that?
Honestly, it's very hard for an outsider like us to tell.
I've never worked at Facebook or Google,
but I've heard from people who work there
that they have some kind of safeguards
against employees accessing data.
Like maybe they'd have to go through layers of management
and get people to sign off on it,
but who knows how well that works in practice
or if it was some way a random employee could bypass it.
Like from my perspective, if a company is collecting data
on you, then it's safest to assume their employees
can't see that data if they really are motivated to
for whatever reason.
Right, right.
And this creates a kind of shadowy power imbalance,
doesn't it?
Like in the sense that if what you're saying is true,
which it must be, I mean, I want to believe
that there are like intense walls of encryption,
but I don't, I just don't, I just knowing humanity
and knowing curiosity and knowing the basic drive to power
that you would, it would be more shocking
that there was a true system of ethics
within these companies preventing people there
from looking into other people's private data
than that this stuff was constantly being siphoned
and potentially being, you know,
anytime they start talking about breaking up Google,
breaking up Facebook, anytime the government starts
talking about that, I always think, really?
Because I bet they know stuff about you.
I bet they've got information on people
who can make the decision about breaking up the company
and they could use that to manipulate the government,
meaning that in some weird way,
there's like a kind of secret tech government
that could theoretically be pulling strings right now.
Please stop me if I'm just being too paranoid,
but just do, you know, thinking of human nature.
This is what sometimes when I'm having dark fantasies
about the way the world works, this is one of them.
Yeah, no, this is great because what sounds
like what you're doing is kind of thinking
of worst case scenarios and from kind of the privacy,
paranoid advocates perspective,
that's like what I do all the time is saying, like,
hey, if they have this data,
like what's the worst that can happen?
For example, Brave and a lot of other companies
actually use Google for a company email
just because it's like the most convenient service.
Yeah.
And so like, you know, if you're a competitor to Google,
you always kind of have this like worry
in the back of your mind that Google can see your emails.
They could be using this information to, you know,
like see what products they're about to launch
and just, you know, launch them themselves
or do something to throw a wrench in your plan.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's actually an antitrust case against Google
right now going on.
I forget how it was brought up,
but basically the government's like collecting
a bunch of information to make the case
that Google might have kind of a monopoly.
And it's a lot of it's really interesting
because I think one example they gave is that,
so Google's essentially an advertising company, right?
They sell ads, you see ads on search as a result
and they found that they basically gave
preferential treatment to Facebook ads.
So for most advertisers, when they're trying to serve an ad,
they have a timeout of like 300 milliseconds or something
before they can serve that ad,
but Google gave Facebook a double that.
They gave them a 600 millisecond timeout.
So Facebook just had like twice the window of opportunity
to show you an ad.
Yeah, and so they can make arbitrary rules like this
and it's not clear if like, you know,
it's not obvious to other people.
Like certainly other advertisers
weren't given the same opportunity
and that wasn't fair to them.
But who knows why Google chose
to have this special relationship with Facebook.
It's all kind of shadowy to us.
It's scary.
It's so scary.
You don't want to piss off Google, by the way.
I mean, that's the other thing.
It's like, I don't want, I would hate to imagine
Google just decided, I don't like,
I don't like that podcast or whatever it may be.
It's just so much, it's so much power.
And I remember when, you know, I don't,
I bet you do recall,
remember when they were trying to get Apple
to get into people's iPhones?
Like, do you remember that?
This was the San Bernardino, like terrorist iPhone,
their shooter iPhone, yeah.
Yes, and Apple, you know, I think was,
where they were very like, they were amazing
and that they resisted and they said,
listen, if we start doing this,
we have to, we'll never stop doing it.
Every law enforcement agency, not just in this country,
but around the world is going to be asking us
to open up people's iPhones.
We're not going to do it.
We're never going to do it.
But their lawyer, this, and again, Stoner,
especially at that time, I was eating a lot of them,
but their lawyer said something along the lines of like,
to me, seemed like a threat, which is like, look,
what if all of a sudden Apple just started coming out,
saying that the CIA was responsible
for the assassination of JFK.
And then almost after he said that,
immediately they just left Apple alone.
And I kept thinking like, was that like,
because Apple has some shit that they just are hanging onto,
secret stuff that like, they're like, look,
you want to like force us to open up our phones?
Okay, but we're going to start leaking
all the information we have on you.
And so back off.
Oh, I just was wondering, was that what that was?
And why?
Oh.
You know, like, so to me, like,
it seems like these tech companies
are becoming like many nations or something, you know?
And their entire arsenal is not military, is not weaponry,
but data that they have on people in high positions of power.
And it seems to me that you're not refuting that
or that that isn't necessarily my own pair and why.
Yeah, I don't know.
I guess I have never been like close enough
to the upper echelon of these massive tech companies to know
whether there's like some kind of relationship
with the government where they're like saying,
hey, if you don't do this,
we'll keep this data private.
And like they're making bargains with each other.
Certainly it couldn't be, I guess,
but you know, in the first place,
Apple employees should not be looking
at people's personal data.
So like, if that were happening,
that would be kind of seems like a big violation
on the part of the tech company.
Well, you know, what's the alchemical maxim
as above so below?
And God knows, in human society,
people look at each other's phones
when they're jealous or worried
or they think people are cheating on them,
they go into their phones.
And if that happens in families,
it definitely is, it's probably happening in tech.
But you know, you're at the forefront of security at Brave.
I mean, could you do that if you wanted to?
Is it even possible if you wanted to like
start snooping into someone's data
who's using that browser?
Could you?
Honestly, no, because one of the principles
that we have at Brave is we just don't collect the data
if we don't need it.
So like really, for the vast majority of users,
we don't have any data on them.
Like we don't have their email addresses,
we don't have their contact information.
So like if I tried to look really hard,
I could maybe, I could see like a bunch of IP addresses
because there's various servers
where we're getting IP addresses,
but that's not usually like traceable to an individual.
And we don't really have any like other interesting data
that's associated with the IP.
But how do you make money over there without the data?
Like what's the monetization route?
That's a great question.
So we kind of, we're kind of in the mindset
that people, you know, if they want to give us data,
well, maybe I should just give the straight forward answer,
which is that Brave has an often privacy preserving
ads platform.
And so what that means is that we let advertisers show
ads to users who opt into them,
but these ads don't leak any data about people.
So they're kind of like non...
So I say privacy preserving
because the way we actually decide
which ads to show users is not in the traditional way,
which is where an advertiser kind of collects
all this information about like what websites
are visiting and kind of built a profile of you.
And then based on that decides like,
hey, you're interested in buying shoes
or you're interested in buying a car
and then shows you those ads.
And so what happens is that on your own device,
and it's important to note this data
never leaves your own device.
The browser itself sees what your browsing history is.
And then based on that,
just picks an ad out of a big catalog of ads to show you.
And so as a result,
the advertiser doesn't learn this information about you
because that information is just kept on your device,
but you still see like a relevant advertisement, hopefully.
That's cool.
That's beautiful.
That's so futuristic.
That is like, that's the path forward.
I mean, that's what it's going,
that's clearly anyone with a brain
is going to choose that over the other thing
that they're doing.
But how much money do you think?
Like theoretically, if you had to guess,
how much money are you losing doing that?
That is, I don't have a specific answer for you on that
because I don't work on that side of Brave as much,
but I will say, yes, like this is a new model
and a kind of a challenge we have
is convincing advertisers that this works
as well as their traditional method
of siphoning everyone's data, building these online profiles.
And so we have to prove to them
that building these local profiles
where the data doesn't just get shared with them,
works as well and will lead to people
still buying their shoes or cars or whatever.
So yeah, it's still kind of in its early stages
and we're still kind of just trying to show people
this works and you should switch to showing people ads
in this more private way.
Look, isn't that so crazy?
Like truly, it's like there's just more money
and like being unethical, it seems like.
And that's why companies like Brave and it's in the EFF
and it's like, they're amazing.
That's what I love about the like old school hacker ideology.
There is this kind of mystical punk rock ethic to the thing
where free software, what's that song?
Do you know the song I'm talking about?
The hacker song?
Oh my God, I'll send it to you.
It'll give you goosebumps.
I'll send it to you.
It's very lo-fi.
Maybe I'll play it at the end of this.
But it's just a whole song
about how keep the software free.
The software should be free, keep everything free.
And this seems to be what Brave is mirroring that a little bit.
But you should also make some money.
My God, I mean, what are you gonna do?
We live in capitalism.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
Like a surprising number of people don't seem to understand
is like, yes, we do wanna be ideological purists
and give out free software and not make any compromises.
But at the end of the day,
I've seen so many free open source projects
just basically get abandoned
because they couldn't make enough money to sustain themselves.
So at some point you have to say, like,
hey, we have to come up with some way
to like make money and sustain our business,
but also not compromise like this core set of values
which are like basically untouchable.
And so, yeah, I think it's tough.
I definitely see a lot of projects
which are basically like the backbone of the internet
that everyone relies on and the people running them
are just like one or two people randomly
who do it in their spare time
and never really try to monetize it.
That kind of scares me.
Yeah, well, right, yeah, right?
Because like you gotta eat.
And, but is it do you with,
you know, like everyone now is like obsessed with NFTs
and with crypto and like,
and what are your thoughts on that as a monetization
as an avenue of monetization for these people, you know,
as some kind of like monetization engine
that transcends the current mechanisms
people are using to make a buck
or do you think it's just a nightmare?
I have a lot of thoughts about NFTs actually.
Let's hear them.
Well, so I think like,
well, I think not speaking about NFTs,
but I think crypto speaking about cryptocurrency
more generally, I'm kind of a pragmatist
in the sense that I think if, you know,
people who really need the money
and are trying to do good things with it
are able to use the hype around these new currencies
and investments in order to support themselves
or support their businesses.
I think that's a good thing, right?
Like in some ways a lot of projects have been using
cryptocurrencies kind of as like a replacement
for Kickstarter where instead of just asking people
like donate some money to our projects
so we can build a thing, they say,
hey, buy our coins so we can build the thing.
And then when the coin goes up,
those people also get rewarded.
So I don't think that's like inherently a bad model
for funding software.
I think where it gets really tricky
is just the fact that these currencies have been,
you know, such attractive investments
to a lot of people who don't necessarily have
like the best ethics.
And so I personally think a lot of NFTs
are used for money laundering
where, you know, basically someone says,
I have this cryptocurrency
which is from a ransomware attack
but I want to cash it out without showing that
it was, you know, stolen from a ransomware attack.
So the way I'll do that is I'll make an NFT,
like sell it to myself and then I get my money back
but now it looks clean, you know.
Holy shit, that's crazy.
You can do that?
Yeah, I think that's why you see all these sides
with like all these crappy artwork
that's being sold for a large amount.
I think someone's just making bad artwork
and selling it to themselves to like clean up their,
you know, dirty money or whatever you want to call it.
My God, that's the most grim thing I've ever,
that's so sad, that's so weird, that's so sad.
Wow, wow, that's amazingly weird.
I don't know how I missed the boat
on just that obvious aspect of it.
I've always thought, oh my God, that's incredible.
Like anytime like monetization becomes possible for artists,
I just think it's incredible, you know,
cause so many, so many like musical artists
are really just getting screwed
and like a way for them to like get more profit
from what they're making
or just a normal amount of profit
that's currently it's being cut up
in a million different pieces
and given to whatever the particular server
that is showing their music to people,
it seems great, but yeah, is there a way to fix that?
Part of it, is there a way to make it
so that it really is benefiting artists
and not just being used to launder ransomware money?
Well, so first of all, I'm really sympathetic
to the kind of the sentiment
that creators and artists need better ways to monetize
cause yeah, and music piracy is a huge thing.
And like from streaming, I think someone calculated
that if a single person listened to a single artist song
on Spotify nonstop for a year,
that artist would only make like $23 from those streams.
It's crazy.
Such a small amount, right?
But I don't think NFTs are the answer
because there's, I feel like they've just been polluted
by like the money launderers and the people
who are trying to use them for like pump and dumps
where they try to convince a lot of people
that some art's worth a lot of money,
but really they're just trying to like make their,
make a bunch of money off of it.
I really like in the NFT space,
I don't think much of it is really about the artists
themselves, but rather it's about like,
how can we make the most money
and make our money look legitimate as fast as possible?
I get approached every once in a while
with a good pump and dump.
Like someone's got some coin that they want me to talk about
and then for, and they make it seem so appealing.
And for a second, I'm like, my God,
what an incredible chance.
And then you realize like,
oh, that's one of those things they're talking about.
Speaking of music, by the way,
wow, SoundCloud.com, Ford slash Azuki.
That's you, your music is so good.
I mean, I didn't know if we start talking about your music
or start talking about your technological work,
but wow, like, wow.
And also on top of that,
you're making your own VST, you're making filters for the,
you're just making music software?
You make that sound so much more impressive than actually.
Oh, okay, okay.
It's impressive.
Give me a break.
As I'm like researching you
and going deeper and deeper into this crazy rabbit,
it's like, oh, and also you're making like digital synths?
Holy shit.
Let's talk about it.
Well, so I think the thing most people know me for
in the music software space is basically a plugin.
It's both available as a VST and a Max for Live device,
which is only usable in Ableton,
but basically it takes this existing piece of software
called Spleter that was developed at the company Deezer
for splitting a song into stems
and kind of packages it in a way that more producers
can just use it in their DAWs.
So I mean, I think that's kind of a passion of mine
is just taking research projects that companies have made
where it's really cool technology,
but it's not packaged in a way where like normal people
can use it and just making it more usable.
So I don't know, I don't,
I feel like I don't really do any of the hard work
on that one.
Okay, well, let me, can I run some ideas by you
that I would like you to do?
Yeah, please do.
Are you familiar with UberDuck?
No, what's up?
UberDuck uses deep, is it just,
you can type in sentences and get famous people to say it.
It's like deep, fake audio.
And oh, it's glorious.
It's amazing.
Some of them aren't, I mean, it just depends
on how much time somebody spent on the particular voice.
Some of them are really great.
Some of them are low grade, whatever it is.
It's an incredible technology, weirdly anonymous.
You go to UberDuck, I can't remember the exact website.
It's, let me see here.
Google, I'm on Google, I'm sorry.
UberDuck, I'm not used to it.
I will switch though.
I will switch to UberDuck, okay.
Yeah, uberduck.ai.
And it's really amazing, but my God,
I just keep, I have this dream of being able
to interview these people.
You know what I mean?
Like somehow connecting UberDuck to,
what's the new AI that Elon Musk was so freaked out about?
You know what I'm talking about?
Like Elon Musk mentioned it.
It's a new AI engine, philosophy bot.
You know that philosophy bot?
No, I've never heard of it.
Okay, philosophy bot, let me see if I can find it.
Uses this like, yeah, philosopher AI.
It uses GPT-3, have you heard of that?
Oh yeah, I do know about GPT-3.
Yeah, so you can ask it a question
and it instantly produces a convincing response
that is just from an AI.
So anyway, will you please combine UberDuck
with that software so that we can interview famous people
for our podcasts without having to act?
So you wanna like basically interview Kanye West
or someone and have it be like their voice,
but speaking like a completely,
the GPT-3 generator text, got it.
Yes.
What do you think?
How hard would that be?
Yeah, that doesn't seem too hard,
but do you think they could like sue you for doing that?
I don't know what the like legal question is.
Yes, I think they could sue you for doing it.
I do, but I don't think they could sue you
for combining the technologies
so that if we wanted to do that,
because then it opens up all this other stuff,
which is, I mean, like, you know,
like the ability to call these people
and just have conversations with them or the, you know,
and again, someone's gonna do it.
You might not be the person, but someone's gonna do it.
And to me, it's one of the pathways
to this kind of like fame diffusion.
You know what I mean?
Like I think we're in the last days of fame.
You know what I mean?
Like AI is going to obliterate, it's gonna dilute.
Like the meat body Kanye West becomes almost insignificant
when there's five billion AI Kanye West
that anyone can communicate with at any time, you know?
Yeah, I wonder, this actually, I just had a thought,
which is it would be really cool to have something
like this for famous singers like Adele or Beyonce,
where you could just write like a melody and some lyrics
and just have them sing it and use that in your song.
Like I think people would find that super useful.
Yes, incredibly useful.
Or just as a podcaster to have my own AI version
so that if I like lose my voice,
I could type in what I wanna say and it would say it,
things like that.
Or I mean, aside from all the silly stuff,
people who maybe lose the ability to talk, you know,
I think, you know, or the other for grief counseling,
you know, like the ability to communicate
with people who've passed away
by creating an algorithm for their voice.
Yeah, well, to do that,
it seems like you'd also need like a big set of
basically a large body of texts that they've written
or said in the past so the AI can kind of learn
like what they're likely to say.
I think there was actually a Black Mirror episode
about this where, you know, someone dies,
but you feed them like a recording of them
or like basically all the texts that they've ever sent
and then they make a bot that kind of can reply
in the same way this person would reply to you.
Yes, yeah.
I mean, this is the, one of the creepiest things
I ever heard about these neural networks
is they don't know what they're doing.
Like inside the neural network and some of these layers,
they're like doing things that people just can't figure out
what's happening.
And do you get much into simulation theory?
I used to be a big fan of the theory
that we all are just living in like a simulation
of like a single brain that's in the universe.
It's called like the Boltzmann brain theory.
Okay, thank God.
I winced when I asked you the question
because I felt like it's such a mundane, boring question,
but can you explain what the Boltzmann brain is
to some folks listening?
Cause they might not have heard of it.
Yeah, oh man, this is, I think if you've like studied
thermodynamics, this becomes like really compelling,
but basically the theory is that, you know,
the universe is really complex.
And because in thermodynamics,
it's very difficult for like complex organized systems
to just arise out of nowhere.
It is actually more like statistically likely
that the universe we live in is a simulation
of like a single brain like in an empty universe
than the possibility that all of this complexity
that we observe actually exists.
So essentially like what we're living in
is like a dream of like a single brain
rather than a reality.
Yes, and so that the weirdly the Boltzmann brain
completely mimics like a lot of mystical traditions
that say that we're the thought process of God
and that we're what happens when God's thinking.
What's the difference between the Boltzmann brain
and God?
Isn't that God's brain?
No, yeah, maybe it's like God,
but without the whole religious connotation of like,
you know, Jesus lived and did all of that.
But yeah, I guess in some sense,
it's like a, it's God in the sense that it's like omniscient
and is the creator of everything.
Yes, right.
And then within that, we have this realm
that we're in a synthetic reality
where a thought form of this kind of Boltzmann brain.
But this is, do you ever think to yourself like,
oh yeah, I'm in a neural network.
I'm part of some processing unit that is using
like even this conversation
and all the conversations you've ever had
to try to reach some, I don't know,
some form of data output, some resolution to a question.
You ever, do you ever wonder that?
Yeah, I do.
But at the same time, I'm like cognizant
that this isn't a testable hypothesis.
So it's something where, you know,
we can speculate on it,
but we can't ever know if this is really what's happening
because there's no experiment we can construct
where, you know, we decide if we're living
in a perfect simulation or if we're living
in this actual reality that we observe.
Well, but there could be like,
maybe not an experiment to truly test it,
but couldn't there be some like mechanism of hacking it?
Like couldn't theoretically there be like some,
as like something that we would consider to be like,
oh my God, it's like the next, you know, industrial revolution,
but it's really like some form of hacking into this thing
to gain access to higher processing power or something.
Yeah, if it's like a leaky simulation
or some simulation with some way of like escaping it
and detecting what's outside it, that would be interesting.
How do we hack it?
I don't know, I think it depends on if like the laws
of the simulation that we're living in like allow us
to somehow see what's outside it.
I don't know how we would figure that out.
By doing it, I mean, you would just have to figure,
you would just have to, my theory would be,
well, one hypothesis I would,
if it's a closed system that's designed to like keep you
from hacking outside of it, then I would imagine anyone
who came very close to hacking outside of the system
would be like would die or would just, you know,
would be eradicated or something
or would, you know, go insane or something like that.
But it seems to me like the thing follows some kind of,
again, I don't know what it is,
but don't you think it follows like some pretty obvious
like video game logic?
You know, like in a video game,
it's inevitable that you think you only are able
to do this one sort of, maybe you just don't realize,
like the thrilling part of the video game is suddenly,
you take flight, you're like, holy shit,
now you can fly in this video game.
So if the simulation is an entertainment mechanism,
then, you know, part of the game might be the intent
to hack it to escape,
which just leads you to another level of the game.
Yeah, maybe there's a, yeah, I could see this,
you know, becoming more of a thought in my head
if, for instance, we notice like,
some stuff that couldn't be explained by science,
like, you know, people spontaneously disappearing
or something, it would be like, oh, that's like
some kind of glitch, you know, we should look into that.
Yeah, a glitch.
Sometimes it feels like it's glitching out.
Well, I, you know, I just want to talk a little bit
about your music.
Do you have a few more minutes?
Yeah, of course.
When did you get into mute?
Like, when did you start recording music?
Oh, so I actually was, so in middle school,
I started playing the flute.
And then shortly after that, I discovered
I was much more interested in like composing music.
So I kind of became this like child composer
when I was in middle and high school.
And I started really being interested in like
writing music for like jazz bands and wind symphonies
and all that.
And that kind of like stopped when I went to college
because I decided like a lot of people that I should just,
you know, pursue a career that's more fruitful
more likely because I, yeah, like I think even that
I was super realistic that like the field
which I was really interested in, which was film scoring
was just ultra competitive and extremely difficult
to get into.
So yeah, and then after that, around maybe like five years
ago, I started messing around and Ableton
and kind of just discovered the world of electronic music
and thought that was really interesting.
I'm still not an expert by any means in that
and I'm still learning and it's kind of like
messing around with Ableton.
I still don't feel like totally comfortable with it.
How could you?
It's the most insane thing I've ever,
what is the craziest software of all time?
Are you making your own beats?
Who's, what's your process when you're making beats?
I, it's been a while to be honest.
I kind of like stopped making music
at the start of the pandemic
because I just lost motivation like so many people.
I was like, oh, there's no shows happening.
Like what's the point in doing this, you know?
But yeah, I do work a lot.
So I find I'm actually most inspired by like vocals.
So if I can find someone who has like a vocal melody
that they're singing that they wanna like give me
or someone who has like a rap
that they wanna put a beat under
that's like more fun for me to work with.
Oh, I see.
So you don't start with a beat first.
You start with some inspiration
and then figure out the beat from there.
Yeah, that's usually more of my process.
Cause whenever I try to make a beat,
it's like, I feel like if there are invisible guardian angels
watching us, they're cringing at the horrific beats.
I can't do it.
Like what do you do?
How do you do this?
I don't understand it.
These, your bill or you or any of these people,
any like, how do you do it?
Is it, am I just missing some fundamental component
of my soul or something?
When I sit down at the push two and try to make a beat,
it either comes out the same as all my other beats
or it just, it sucks.
Yeah, honestly, I kind of had the same process for a while.
I think early in my like electronic music exploration,
I was using a Launchpad controller.
And I was like, cause I'd seen videos of people
like making quote unquote beats
and they were all just like playing them live.
And so I was kind of like limited by my personal
like rhythmic abilities to like play something
on like a physical instrument.
And then I think when I started looking up
like the way Bill and other people were working,
I was like, oh, they just open Ableton
and like click in the midi track.
They're not like actually playing these things.
And then so then I was like, okay, your limit.
Like there's no longer limitation.
You could just click on whatever, you know, in the grid.
I know you click in the grid.
That's great.
I click in the grid, it still sounds like shit.
Maybe it's just hopeless.
I don't know.
I'll just give up on that part of my music creation.
But God is, I can't believe you stop making music.
Your music is so good.
I really hope that you resume this practice
because it's really beautiful.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I think, yeah, there's a lot of factors in that
and my like kind of demotivation.
One is like being around Bill more
and just seeing like the music industry
and just being like, oh, there's so much of this
that I don't want to like immerse myself in
because it's ultra competitive.
You have to do a lot of self marketing
to be successful, it seems.
And there's a lot, you know, in that
that's not just sitting around at your computer
like doing creative work that you actually want to do.
And also shows, I think I like don't actually like
being at shows or playing shows
because I used to DJ a lot more often.
And is that just because of like the possibility
of getting a disease at the shows?
Well, that is part of it now.
But I think also just having to like stand up
in front of a lot of people and act excited about something.
You know, it's a lot of pressure
because like that's a lot of DJing, I think,
is just like the kind of performance aspect
of like standing there in front of people
trying to be excited so that they're excited.
And I'm just not good at like faking excitement
for not actually excited.
You know what, this is something I've been going back
and forth on myself.
I just interviewed a comedy writer, Martin Olson
and his, we were talking just about how like, well, yeah,
I mean, you've got to be a con artist
if you want to be an artist.
Like you have to like overcome that part of yourself
that wants to emote what you're authentically feeling.
You have to like find a way to like actually do the thing
that so many people say, that's like dishonest or terrible,
which is to, you know, exhibit like some kind of exuberance
that might not even be there.
But I've noticed when I do that,
the exuberance might just show up from the crowd, you know?
Like it's possible to generate it in real time
with even if you feel complete.
I mean, Jesus, I know so many comedians
who are like in the midst of like a 10 year depression.
And they go on stage and like are able to like
completely tune into like some energy
that maybe isn't exactly the energy of, you know,
be having an endogenous depression or something like that.
Wow, yeah, that's so amazing.
And it definitely seems like comedy
is one of the more difficult stage performance types, right?
Cause you kind of have to like react to the audience so much
and like, do you find yourself like,
I don't know anything about stand-up comedy,
but do you find yourself having to like respond a lot
to the audience and kind of just like see what their energy is
and keep adapting according to that?
Yeah, I think that's one of the,
I mean, there's so many different ways to do it.
That's one of the ways, that's one of the like, you know,
you do hear this stuff about, oh, comedians,
they always come from like fucked up childhoods.
And one of the explanations for that
is not the fucked up childhood made you funny,
but the fucked up childhood forced you to attune yourself
to the moods of whatever chaos bubble you were in.
So you became hyper-tuned to if mom is angry,
your dad's angry, your brother's angry,
or what's happening in the room with your like,
you know, drunk, abusive, whoever, so that you could survive.
And so that like, finally tuned to an environment thing
that sometimes gets translated into like, well, I'm an empath.
And it's like, well, you're someone who like,
as a kid learned how to instantaneously adapt
to shifts in energy so you wouldn't get beaten.
Oh, that's so interesting.
So like, then so comedians have just, some comedians,
not all, I do think we have to try to let go
of this like sick artist paradigm
because I think it makes people sick
because they so want to be an artist.
You don't have to do that.
But I do think, you know, and comedians
and probably some DJs and stuff like do that naturally
just because they like had to survive with it, you know?
So yeah, I think that's part of comedy.
It's part of music too, I guess.
I mean, like we have to do in real time
with our shitty neural network,
what the algorithm is doing, you know,
it's like weirdly similar, you know,
that the algorithms mirroring our behavior online
back to us in a kind of manipulative way.
It's strangely like a performance
that some AI is doing for us, I guess.
Yeah, that to me just, it all sounds so difficult.
And I've learned about myself through the pandemic
that I really prefer work
that doesn't have any like real time component to it.
So like software engineering, right?
Like, or even writing, you know,
you can just kind of hone in on what you want to say or do
and you don't have to like keep taking inputs
from the external world and adapting to it.
And you can kind of just like take your time
getting things to how you want it to be.
Here's my last question for you.
Thank you for being so generous with your time.
Of course.
If you were given an infinite, infinite money,
what software would you design?
Oh, that is such a good question.
Might have to think about that for a minute
cause like you never think about like,
what if you had infinite money?
Cause it's just not like a realistic situation.
Yeah, and also if you just like want to spit ball,
it's totally cool.
It's not like, you know, whenever we're thinking
about things, when you're thinking about making stuff,
like making a sketch or something,
we always start with infinite money.
Like what if we had Steven Spielberg money
and what would it look like at that level?
And then from that, you can kind of reduce it down
to like whatever you have around you.
But I just would love to hear what you would create
if you had unlimited resources when it came to technology.
I think in terms of impact,
like if I had infinite money,
I could buy up every other tech company, right?
I could like buy Google, Facebook, Apple, et cetera.
And then I could just like run those companies
in whatever way that I thought was like best for humanity.
For instance, I could say like Google,
stop all third party tracking and make sure like people,
you know, have like consent to share whatever data they want.
Like you can basically go through these companies,
like identify whatever like ethical or privacy issues
that you think exists there and just fix them, right?
Cause you're like, I have the resources to do that.
That might be the most effective thing to do actually.
What else would be cool?
I don't know.
I guess like maybe cut some kind of alternative
to Facebook where it's not so addictive
and it's actually helping people connect
in some meaningful way
rather than just make themselves feel bad.
Cause like I have heard through the pandemic
with like people not being able to have in person events
that it's been more useful for them to have social media
and have these ways online of like sharing what's going on
in each other lives and like keeping those connections going.
But I just think like with Facebook and Instagram,
there's so much negativity that comes with that, right?
There's the fact that Facebook is mining all the state
out to sell you stuff.
And then there's the fact that what the things
that get the most likes or the most attention
in these algorithms is not necessarily like the positive.
That's things that are good for people to see.
So maybe just thinking about how can we like redesign
social media to keep the positive connection aspects
but reduce the like mental anguish
and other negative side effects that come with it.
Beautiful.
Yanzu, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's been a real joy getting to know you.
And maybe you can tell people where they can find you.
Sure.
So I think I'm most active on Twitter these days.
My Twitter handle is bcrypt, b-c-r-y-p-t and yeah.
And yeah, check out brave, brave.com.
If you're looking for a new browser,
we actually also have a search engine now.
Cool.
Yeah, I'm on it.
And thank you very much.
All the links you need to find,
Yanzu will be at dunkintrustle.com.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much, Sanka.
This was really fun.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
That was Yanzu, everybody.
All the links you need to find are gonna be
at dugintrustle.com.
Tremendous thank you to our wonderful sponsors.
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And most importantly, my friends,
have an incredible turkey day.
I'll actually see you next week.
It's a two episode week.
Until then, Hare Krishna.
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