Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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It is with tremendous sadness that i heard the announcement that Stacey is leaving TWIG. The wit and repartee between Stacey and Jeff made this the hands down fav TWIT show. On days when Stacey wasnt there, it just didnt seem worth listening. Also that both Stacey and Jeff are journalists 1st, and tech ppl 2nd, made the show a lot more interesting for me.
Honestly, Ive been afraid that this day would come, as Stacey increasingly seemed to be “off this week” in recent years.
There’s a lot more i could say, but suffice it to say, that I dont think the show will ever be the same, or as entertaining.
My favorite guest on the show, when Stacey was out, has been Cathy Gellis. She sees the tech world from a different perspective than the usual techies, and can throw the barbs and jabs with Jeff and Leo.
Also happy that Ant has opened up and laughs along with the others.
Hoping for the best for TWIG…I just hope it doesnt become yet another show of techies talking hard core tech, or a foodie show. (Sorry Leo and Mike Elgan, Im just not a foodie at all, and while I respect your interests in food, its just not something that I have any interest in at all)
Best to Stacey in her new job working for Consumer Reports. Will miss her so much. Hope she decides to come back and make guest appearances frequently…and throw waffles at Leo.
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Yeah we’ll miss Stacey. Just as we missed Gina when she left. Each host adds a unique, and un-reproducible, element and Stacey was the best.
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I won’t say diverts are evil, well, they are a necessary evil, but to Jeff’s point, it isn’t the adverts that are the problem. I’m happy to see adverts on a website, as long as there is no tracking.
As I regularly say, track the flaming website and base your advertising based on what they are showing, that is probably going to be a lot closer to adverts I want to see, than so-called targeted advertising.
YouTube is showing me baby vaccine, women’s hair care, make up ads and women’s clothing, when i watch GTA5 videos and motoring videos by a 50 something ozzy. I’m over 50, male and nearly bald, so none of that is really very well targeted.
It is a waste of my time and it is simply fraud on the part of Google, charging their customers forsuch poorly targeted ads.
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Leo asked if anyone still has 78 RPM records. My ex-girlfriend has one. Sun Records label Carl Perkins "“Blue Suede Shoes”. She threw me out and now sleeps with Carl.(the record)
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I’d be okay seeing a FEW, well placed, non-flashing, jumping or humping, no auto-play video, NO SOUND unless I enable it, not wasting screen width for reading, not constantly resizing, causing what I am trying to read to jump around and as you said, not tracking, trying to guess who I am or what I want, and definitely not trying to sell me something I just bought.
For example, I love Ars Technica, but I block their ads, because they’re nearly insane. It feels bad not to properly support their ads, but they need to get a grip and tame them down, because I think they have every one of my undesirable behaviours listed above.
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beth_marshall Totally endorse your comments on Stacey. She will be sorely missed. I will be very interested to see who can fill her shoes but, for me and regrettably, no one who stood in during any of Stacey’s absences would retain my attention.
Ditto your comments on Ant who continues to grow into the role.
However, I have to disagree on the ‘foodie’ aspect (awful word for a vital interest). I would love to see more of Mike Elgan on the network.
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I’ve been following World Bollard Association on Twitter for a few years now, it is a fun account and I have re-tweeted it on several occasions.
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So funny how random accounts like that gain traction 
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I decided to check if they had any presence on Mastodon. They are “trying” to echo it onto the Fediverse via some sort of “tool” or service. It seems to not be going well probably because of all the BS going on over on Xitter. (Blocking and limiting and charging, etc.) Guess I’ll need to wait until they become Fedi-first and leave the nasty dead blue bird behind.
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I’m definitely going to miss Stacey, she’s the best. OTOH, I’m a Consumer Reports subscriber so I’m glad that I’ll be contributing at least indirectly to her next gig!
Re: Topics. Is it better that all of the data Google will continue to collect gets locked up into their own vaults and doled out at their discretion to their customers? Steve seems to think this is the right technical solution, but I don’t see how the problem is technical. Google controls the detail-resolution of the topics and may change it at any time, and has a direct business interest in doing so.
That said: I use loads of Google products and I don’t see that changing. I just think this is more of a story around the bad rap of cookies than it is about privacy.
That’d only be the case if there are no other players in the industry. If other advertising generating organizations use the same taxonomy and the same browser feature (it is open, is it not?) then they can’t make changes willy-nilly without breaking it for others.
I too agree with many of beth_marshall 's comments. The show tends to be more “heavy handed” without Stacey, and a lot of her contribution to the show was in the form of consumer products and consumer technology. The growing number of “Stacey is off this week” episodes was worrying. It would be nice to have a female perspective on the show. It seems that when a woman leaves a TWIT show they are either not replaced at all, or replaced by a man, ie Lory Gill on Macbreak Weekly, or more recently, Windows Weekly.
Anyway, Stacey, you will be missed!
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A couple things:
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Isn’t the ability for Google to unilaterally shift the web taken as granted here?
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The feature may be open, but the metadata is easily updated. In fact, you would not want a static taxonomy or else you couldn’t advertise to new interests that develop over time. What is the governance model for the taxonomy? I bet it will be “whoever developed the primary implementation reviews requests for change.”
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Ad generators? You mean advertisers? They have no incentive to request less information from the taxonomy and every reason to collaborate with Google in setting up a more fine-grained set of topics.
No, I mean ad brokers I guess.
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Isn’t Google the ad broker? 
It is everything. It is all of the middle-men in the chain. You have the end user and you have the advertiser, every step between them is Google, they broker the ads, they run the bidding platform, they sell space for ads on websites. Facebook is the same, on a slightly smaller scale.
That is one of the reasons why they are being investigated. We went from a “thriving” advertising industry with dozens of possibilities for selling advertising, to just a couple of companies controlling a vast majority of the industry.
And they did that by promising unparalleled targeting of adverts, at least that is what the conned the agencies creating the ads and their customers. In reality, the targeting is next to useless. It doesn’t target the material you are watching/reading, it targets who they think you are…
In my case, a 50 something balding male, it seems that I am interested in women’s hair colouring products, make-up for teenagers and trendy women’s clothing… And all that whilst watching GTA5 videos and automotive reporting on YouTube…
The targeting is a waste of time, it is a pure waste of my time, I am not going to buy mini skirts and tube tops, especially not with my hairy legs and pot belly! And no matter how much hair colourant I buy, it isn’t going to help me grow enough hair for it to be luscious and flowing. It is all lies and fraud, on the side of the advertising platforms, they are not selling adverts to people who need those products, it is a third rate guess, flipping a coin would give them better targeting, in my experience.
On the other hand, on Brain Blaze, Simon does regular adverts for Keeps (hair preservation fluid), which is much better targeted… But he does his own advertising based on his audience, just like TWiT.
I think Cory is correct (Sunday’s TWiT) and I’ve been saying the same thing for 2 decades. We don’t need to target the visitors, they don’t want to be tracked and more and more are using tools to help with blocking. They should be targeting the content, they know what demographics are likely to look at that content, so they should be targeting that, not the individuals, which they have amply proven they cannot do anyway.
Sounds like a good point
Bye, Stacey! Sorry to see you go. But you’ve soldiered on bravely through many years and many hours of great shows - often too long for your liking. Your perspectives, cheerfulness, and great counterbalance to Jeff (on topic) as well as Jeff and Leo (being silly boys) was an epic service. Insights too, certainly, but at least to me, most of the fun comes from listening to great / exciting chemistry beyond anything else.
Thanks for many great shows, Stacey, and good luck for your new mission!
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I will agree on Stacey being sorely missed however I will disagree on Mike Elgan. I think his points of view are good, however I don’t know if on video I’ve ever seen him smile or laugh once (hopefully their experiences are more fun than he seems to portray otherwise no fun allowed on those trips!). He has a very VERY dry personality and I think good fit for the more serious nature of TWiT but not the more fun nature of TWiG
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